NEWSBYCHARLOTTE HILL

Watch out, mothers — you may start receiving homework assignments from your kids' schoolteachers. A new study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) finds that when children are young, the "most critical factor" to their academic success is not income level, ethnicity, or even school demographics. It's their mothers' reading level.

As kids grow older and start spending more time outside the home, other factors take precedence; "neighborhood income," for example, "was the most important factor for children ages 8 to 17." But for kids under 8, the fact remains: mom's book smarts are crucial to performing well in kindergarten and beyond.

"The findings indicate that programs to improve maternal literacy skills may provide an effective means to overcome the disparity in academic achievement between children in poor and affluent neighborhoods," explained Dr. Rebecca Clark, chief of the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

I tend to agree. To this day, I still can't figure out how my parents paid the rent when I was young. My dad worked full-time as a teacher — not the most lucrative profession, I assure you — and my mom stayed home to watch whichever of her four kids had yet to brave the new world of elementary school. On the weekends, we didn't go shopping to pass the time, and we certainly didn't frequent amusement parks. No, we went to the library, where my mom pored over books and quietly read their lilting text aloud to her eager audience of children. And lo and behold, I did just fine in school.

Crowd-sourcing donations on the internet has helped low-income families buy a wide range of essential items: clothing, computers, even cars. And now babies.

Meet Emily and Joey Turner, a young couple from Houston, who have decided to adopt a baby from Ethiopia. They've chosen an adoption firm, signed miles of paperwork, and passed their in-person interviews. There's just one hitch — they can't afford the hefty adoption fees, which will range from $25,784 to $35,834.

To overcome this Texas-sized problem, Emily's launched a blog, "The Turner Story: An Adoption Tale," to share progress on the adoption front and raise some cash through mini-fundraisers (one of which, I'll admit, is pretty cute: filling baby bottles with change and donating them to the Turners' adoption fund). Meanwhile, Emily's friend, Kate Shellnutt, has asked the community on Bundle.com, a personal finance site, for tips on raising more money for the Turners' baby.

In my somewhat dumbfounded mind, however, all this begs an essential question: should a couple choose to adopt — or, for that matter, give birth to — a child without being able to pay for it?

One of the largest post-secondary education corporations in America is trying to trick us into opposing stricter regulations on for-profit colleges. Furious about the U.S. Department of Education's recent "gainful employment" proposal, which is meant to reign in the fraudulent practices of for-profit schools the nation over by cutting off aid to places that load students with debt but don't lead to decent-paying jobs, Corinthian Colleges, Inc. has launched an audacious counter-campaign. It claims that "up to a million students would lose access to educational opportunities" if the proposal were adopted.

Don't let Corinthian's scare tactics fool you. The only research referenced on the corporation's (admittedly hip) campaign site, MyCareerCounts.org, was conducted by the Parthenon Group. Never heard of Parthenon? Neither had I. A little background research, though, revealed the company to be none other than a consulting firm, specializing in "leading for-profit companies operating in the education space." So much for Parthenon's so-called "independent analysis."

Not up-to-date on the national scandal over for-profit colleges? Here's the short version: in early August, an investigative report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) detailed the deceptive techniques that 15 for-profit colleges — virtually every school that undercover GAO officials visited — used when interacting with prospective students. Not only did admissions officers and financial aid reps consistently lie to students about their prospects of finding good-paying jobs post-graduation, but they even encouraged students to cheat on their federal student aid forms. The end goal of these fraudulent practices? To ratchet up school enrollment numbers and maintain the steady flow of federal financial aid dollars into school coffers.

I have one request for anyone who believes in fair compensation for America's workers: take a moment to tell your family and friends about the Mott's strike.

By now, you've probably heard a word or two about the 300 person-strong, hundred-day strike that's taken Williamson, New York, by storm. Make no mistake: this isn't your ordinary, "don't cut my paycheck" tussle. This is, as the New York Times so eloquently put it, "a high-stakes confrontation between a company that wants to cut its labor costs, even as it is earning record profits, and workers who are determined to resist demands for wage and benefit givebacks."

In short, the Mott's strike is a modern-day David versus Goliath — and it's unfolding right in front of our eyes.

Here's what you need to know: Dr. Pepper Snapple (DPS), the new owner of Mott's, made record profits last year. But because the overall economy is shot to pieces, DPS executives decided to slash employee pay anyway — or, in the politically correct terminology of DPS spokesperson Chris Barnes, to bring employee costs down to "local and industry standards." Tell Mott's execs you stand with the workers.

Perhaps Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said it best. "Companies have asked for concessions throughout the history of the labor movement because they've faced hard times and needed help to survive." But what about the financially prosperous DPS? "They don't even show the respect to lie to us. They just came in and said, 'We have no financial need for this, but we just want it anyway because we figure we can get away with it.'"

Talk about a miscalculation. Three months of striking and hundreds of news s

"Profit is sweet, even if it comes from deception." — Sophocles

With the final implementation of the Credit CARD Act, late-payment fees on credit cards are being sliced to, on average, $25, saddling the financial industry with an expected annual loss of $3 billion. In response, credit card issuers have desperately begun searching for fees to top off their coffers, including "higher fees on balance transfers and cash advances, increased charges for overseas transactions and new or higher annual fees on cards."

This sort of economic behavior is to be expected in a profit-driven system, especially one complicated with shareholders who have no patience for falling revenue. But just because "shareholder wealth maximization" is expected — mandated, even — doesn't make it right. If the form of capitalism we practice in the United States essentially forces companies to maintain their high profit margins, even when said margins came about through unethical, anti-consumer policies, there's something seriously wrong with the way we're doing business.

For far too long, "the bottom line"  (profit) has reigned supreme in America. It should come as no surprise, then, that giant banks have written their policies in practically unintelligible small print, replete with deceptive language and hidden fees, with the clear intention of profiting off consumer ignorance. It was this "profit at any cost" mentality that allowed our financial system to grow so rich in the first place. And it's the very same mentality that led our economy into financial ruin, destroying the livelihoods of millions in the process.

On Saturday morning, my boyfriend's grandmother, a sharp critic of social support programs, launched into yet another tirade about how the poor don't earn their handouts. "Why not," she suggested, "have welfare recipients spend a few hours a week cleaning sidewalks or scrubbing public pools? Let's put them to work for that money!"

Luckily, I wasn't there to witness this stroke of brilliance, but I was surprised to hear my boyfriend not only relay the idea but, tentatively, agree with it. "After all," he offered, "we might as well get something in return for the assistance, right?"

Dismissing the rapidly developing sour taste in my mouth, I took a minute to compose my thoughts. Why was the idea of asking people to contribute a few hours of their time in exchange for monetary or in-kind support so unappealing to me? Was I really turning into a bleeding heart liberal, an unabashed champion of redistribution, a — god forbid —socialist?

And then it hit me, the logic behind my automatic aversion to Grandma's thought process. Being on welfare doesn't mean you're lazy. It's a well-documented fact that millions of America's poor are active members of the workforce. They're called the "working poor" — laborers who live below the official poverty line, a mere $10,830 a year for a single individual.

Forget the aspirin; the doctor's got a new trick up his sleeve. Make that an old trick, as in the oldest remedy for ill health known to man: healthy food. That's right — physicians are now prescribing, with slips of paper and all, fruits and vegetables for unhealthy patients.

In Massachusetts, doctors at three health centers have begun recommending farmers' market produce to overweight patients from low-income families. And while their "eat better" reprimand is nothing revolutionary — how many of us dread the inevitable inquisition about our dietary habits at the end of each medical check-up? — the mechanics of the food intervention are nothing less than innovative. One word: coupons.

Doctors "will give coupons amounting to $1 a day for each member of a patient's family to promote healthy meals," reported the New York Times last week, and then "track participants to determine how the program affects their eating patterns and to monitor health indicators like weight and body mass index." The goal, according to Dr. Suki Tepperberg, one of the family physicians testing the vegetable prescription pilot project, "is to get them to increase their consumption of fruit and vegetables by one serving a day."

Low-income families are prime buyers for unhealthy, processed foods. Sure, these products are artery-clogging, but they're also cheap, as a result of being mass-produced, using cheap labor, passing costs onto the environment (including, notably, the very same low-income people who live in factory neighborhoods and suffer the ill-effects of rampant pollution), and benefiting from federal agricultural subsidies. (More on that in blogger Greg Plotkin's detailed post on food insecurity and at the Sustainable Food blog.)

Just when you lost all hope that the upper echelons of American society could demonstrate a streak of genuine humanity, a full 10 percent of our nation's billionaires — call them the League of Extraordinarily Rich Gentlemen (and wives, plus Shelby White, the only woman in the group who isn't currently married to a billionaire) — have pledged to donate over half their wealth to charity. That's well over $100 billion that's going to charity in the coming years.

The inspiration behind this monumental spike in large-scale philanthropy is Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's "Giving Pledge." Essentially a fundraising drive on steroids, the "Giving Pledge" challenges America's wealthiest individuals and families — which New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the "lucky sperm club" — to publicly commit to donating at least 50 percent of their wealth (post-mortem donations explicitly allowed).

At first, only a few notables signed on, Eli Broad and Bloomberg among them. But as of early August, the number has climbed to forty billionaires, a full 10 percent of the billionaires in the United States.

Household names from the list include George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises; Ted Turner, founder of CNN; and T. Boone Pickens, American financier and recent investor in, and champion of, alternative energy sources. We're still waiting on you, Oprah!

Without further ado, here is the list of official pledgees:

Apple sauce: (noun) 1. a puree of stewed apples, usually sweetened or spiced with sugar, cinnamon, and — if produced by Mott's — overt classism

I love my apple sauce. Who could dislike that gooey blend of sweet and tart flavors, especially when the word "apple" — the posterchild for health and longevity — is right there at the beginning of the phrase? Sugar and a Methuselah-like life span? Count me in.

But not all brands of apple sauce deserve my patronage. The wealthy executives of Mott's, America's self-proclaimed "leading producer of healthy apple sauce," have recently demonstrated their outright contempt for fair wages by insisting on downsizing employee pay at Mott's Williamson, New York, plant by a full $1.50 an hour — not to mention eliminating pensions for future employees, freezing pensions for current employees, decreasing employer contributions to 401(k)s by 20 percent, and increasing employee contributions toward health care premiums and co-pays.

This wage cut and benefits reduction comes just one year after Mott's reaped a record $555 million in profit.

The icing on the cake? Executives from Dr. Pepper Snapple, Mott's corporate owner, justified the slash in compensation by telling workers to think of themselves as a "commodity," like "soybeans or oil," whose value had dropped. Pay no attention to the booming profit margin behind the company curtain. Tell Mott's you won't be buying its products until it reinstates full pay for striking employees.

With the support of the United Food and Commerical Workers International Unio

If there's one thing progressives can learn from conservatives, it's this: know your foundation. No matter who controls the House, Senate or White House, conservatives don't veer from their fundamental ideals, from limited government to family values. Even as the U.S. works to (painstakingly slowly) recover from a deregulation-induced recession, the Becks, Limbaughs and Hannitys of the country never miss an opportunity to spout free market propaganda.

If early election polls hold true, this tenacity is paying off handsomely. But have no fear, progressives. At this critical juncture in American politics, we, too, have the ability to carve out our economic ideals in clear, simple terms. In fact, someone's already done it for us: Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director at the Center for Community Change (not to mention a recent addition to Glenn Beck's list of stealthy, America-destroying communists). In an eloquent presentation at the Netroots Nation 2010 conference this past weekend in Las Vegas, Bhargava clearly articulated six premises on which progressives can base the creation of a fair, just economy in America.

With Bhargava's permission, and with great enthusiasm, I share them with you here:

1) Wealth is not the product of an individual heroic entrepreneur. Instead, wealth is created by everyone in society, from teachers to automobile assemblers to CEOs to truck drivers. We all contribute to the production of wealth, so we all have a moral stake in its distribution.