Poor us

The Census Bureau released its poverty data this week and the results were pretty much what you would expect with a persistent recession and/or a very weak recovery further weakened by the phasing out of Recovery Act programs. Without the latter, things would have been much worse.

For an overview, here are the comments of Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and here's an article about the situation in West Virginia.

OKAY, LET'S LOOK AT SOME BUGS. Having satisfied my duties as a social justice blogger, I now suggest you check out this Wired Science post which shows close up pictures of scary monsters. Fortunately, these monsters are way smaller than we are.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED