1.
Portland, Oregon
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Portland is a port and the largest city in the U. S. state of Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. It is in the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of the Willamette, the city covers 145 square miles and had an estimated population of 632,309 in 2015, making it the 26th most populous city in the United States. Approximately 2,389,228 people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area and its Combined Statistical Area ranks 17th with a population of 3,022,178. Roughly 60% of Oregons population resides within the Portland metropolitan area, named after Portland, Maine, the Oregon settlement began to be populated in the 1830s near the end of the Oregon Trail. Its water access provided convenient transportation of goods, and the industry was a major force in the citys early economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the city had a reputation as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. After the citys economy experienced a boom during World War II. Beginning in the 1960s, Portland became noted for its liberal political values, and the city has earned a reputation as a bastion of counterculture. According to a 2009 Pew Research Center study, Portland ranks as the eighth most popular American city, the city operates with a commission-based government guided by a mayor and four commissioners as well as Metro, the only directly elected metropolitan planning organization in the United States. The city government is notable for its planning and investment in public transportation. Its climate is marked by warm, dry summers and cool and this climate is ideal for growing roses, and Portland has been called the City of Roses for over a century. Keep Portland Weird is a slogan for the city. During the prehistoric period, the land that would become Portland was flooded after the collapse of glacial dams from Lake Missoula and these massive floods occurred during the last ice age and filled the Willamette Valley with 300 to 400 feet of water. The Chinook people occupying the land which would become Portland were first documented by Meriwether Lewis, before its European settlement, the Portland Basin of the lower Columbia River and Willamette River valleys had been one of the most densely populated regions on the Pacific Coast. Large numbers of settlers began arriving in the Willamette Valley in the 1830s via the Oregon Trail. In the early 1840s a new settlement began emerging ten miles from the mouth of the Willamette River and this community was initially referred to as Stumptown and The Clearing because of the many trees cut down to allow for its growth. In 1843 William Overton saw potential in the new settlement but lacked the funds to file a land claim. For 25 cents Overton agreed to half of the 640-acre site with Asa Lovejoy of Boston
2.
Shanty town
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A shanty town or squatter area is a settlement of improvised housing, called shanties or shacks, made of plywood, corrugated metal, sheets of plastic, and cardboard boxes. Such settlements are found on the periphery of cities, in public parks, or near railroad tracks, rivers. Shanty towns are found in developing nations, but also in some parts of developed nations. Shanty is probably from Canadian French chantier, a station established for the organization of lumberjacks. Another possible derivation is from the Irish language sean tí meaning old house, hutment means an encampment of huts. When the term is used by the military, it means temporary living quarters specially built by the army for soldiers, the term is also a synonym for shanty town, particularly in developing countries. Since construction is informal and unguided by urban planning, there is no formal street grid, house numbers. Even if these resources are present, they are likely to be disorganized, unreliable, shanty towns also tend to lack basic services present in more formally organized settlements, including policing, mail delivery, medical services, and fire fighting. A sweeping fire on the hills of Shek Kip Mei, Hong Kong, in late 1953 left 53,000 dwellers homeless, shanty towns have high rates of crime, suicide, drug use, and disease. Stewart Brand has also written, more recently, that cities are Green. They have maximum density—a million people per mile in Mumbai—and minimum energy. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the shared taxi. Not everything is efficient in the slums, though, in the Brazilian favelas where electricity is stolen and therefore free, Jan Chipchase from Nokia found that people leave their lights on all day. In most slums recycling is literally a way of life, shanty towns are present in a number of countries. The largest shanty town in Asia is Orangi in Karachi, Pakistan, in francophone countries, shanty towns are referred to as bidonvilles, such countries include Tunisia and Haiti. Other countries with shanty towns include South Africa or imijondolo, Kenya, the Philippines, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, West Indies such as Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and Peru. In Russia, shanty towns - called truščóba - are present in cities as well in Chelobityevo outside Moscow. There is also a major shanty town population in such as Bangladesh
3.
Great Depression
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The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, in most countries it started in 1929 and it was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the economy can decline. The depression originated in the United States, after a fall in stock prices that began around September 4,1929. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%, by comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s, however, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. The Great Depression had devastating effects in both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%, unemployment in the U. S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries, farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered the most. Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 optimism persisted for some time, john D. Rockefeller said These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come, prosperity has always returned and will again. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April and this was still almost 30% below the peak of September 1929. Together, government and business spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the period of the previous year. On the other hand, consumers, many of whom had suffered losses in the stock market the previous year. In addition, beginning in the mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U. S, by mid-1930, interest rates had dropped to low levels, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment were depressed. By May 1930, automobile sales had declined to below the levels of 1928, prices in general began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930
4.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
5.
Herbert Hoover
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Herbert Clark Hoover was an American politician who served as the 31st President of the United States from 1929 to 1933 during the Great Depression. He was defeated in a landslide in 1932 by Democrat Franklin D, a lifelong Quaker, he became a successful mining engineer around the globe and retired in 1912. In the First World War he built a reputation as a humanitarian by leading relief efforts in Belgium during the war. He headed the U. S. Food Administration during World War I and his reputation as a Progressive businessman fighting for efficiency and elimination of waste was built as the Secretary of Commerce 1921-28. Hoover was a leader in the Efficiency Movement, which held that every institution public and they all could be improved by experts who could identify the problems and solve them. He also believed in the importance of volunteerism and of the role of individuals in society, in the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no elected-office experience. Although Hoover never raised the issue, some of his supporters did in mobilizing anti-Catholic sentiment against his opponent Al Smith. He reluctantly approved the Smoot–Hawley Tariff of 1930, which sent foreign trade spiralling down and he believed it was essential to balance the budget despite falling tax revenue, so he raised the tax rates. The economy kept falling, and the unemployment rate rose to 25%, with industry, mining. This downward spiral, plus his support for policies that had lost favor, set the stage for Hoovers overwhelming defeat in 1932 by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. Most historians agree that Hoovers defeat in the 1932 election was caused primarily by the downward economic spiral, Hoover became a conservative spokesman for opposition to the domestic and foreign policies of the New Deal. He opposed entry into the Second World War and was not given any role to play, in 1946, President Harry S. Truman liked Hoover and appointed him to survey war-torn Germany which produced a number of reports that changed U. S. occupation policy. In 1947, Truman appointed Hoover to head the Hoover Commission, by the time of his death, he had rehabilitated his image. Nevertheless, Hoover is often ranked by historians as one of the worst U. S. presidents. Herbert Hoover was born on August 10,1874, in West Branch, Iowa, he would become the only President so far born in that state and the first born west of the Mississippi River. His father, Jesse Hoover, was a blacksmith and farm implement store owner, of German, German-Swiss, Jesse Hoover and his father Eli had moved to Iowa from Ohio twenty years previously. Hoovers mother, Hulda Randall Minthorn, was born in Norwich, Ontario, Canada, both of his parents were Quakers. At about age two he contracted the croup and he was so ill that he was momentarily thought to have died, until he was resuscitated by his uncle, John Minthorn
6.
President of the United States
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The President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president is considered to be one of the worlds most powerful political figures, the role includes being the commander-in-chief of the worlds most expensive military with the second largest nuclear arsenal and leading the nation with the largest economy by nominal GDP. The office of President holds significant hard and soft power both in the United States and abroad, Constitution vests the executive power of the United States in the president. The president is empowered to grant federal pardons and reprieves. The president is responsible for dictating the legislative agenda of the party to which the president is a member. The president also directs the foreign and domestic policy of the United States, since the office of President was established in 1789, its power has grown substantially, as has the power of the federal government as a whole. However, nine vice presidents have assumed the presidency without having elected to the office. The Twenty-second Amendment prohibits anyone from being elected president for a third term, in all,44 individuals have served 45 presidencies spanning 57 full four-year terms. On January 20,2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th, in 1776, the Thirteen Colonies, acting through the Second Continental Congress, declared political independence from Great Britain during the American Revolution. The new states, though independent of each other as nation states, desiring to avoid anything that remotely resembled a monarchy, Congress negotiated the Articles of Confederation to establish a weak alliance between the states. Out from under any monarchy, the states assigned some formerly royal prerogatives to Congress, only after all the states agreed to a resolution settling competing western land claims did the Articles take effect on March 1,1781, when Maryland became the final state to ratify them. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris secured independence for each of the former colonies, with peace at hand, the states each turned toward their own internal affairs. Prospects for the convention appeared bleak until James Madison and Edmund Randolph succeeded in securing George Washingtons attendance to Philadelphia as a delegate for Virginia. It was through the negotiations at Philadelphia that the presidency framed in the U. S. The first power the Constitution confers upon the president is the veto, the Presentment Clause requires any bill passed by Congress to be presented to the president before it can become law. Once the legislation has been presented, the president has three options, Sign the legislation, the bill becomes law. Veto the legislation and return it to Congress, expressing any objections, in this instance, the president neither signs nor vetoes the legislation
7.
Democratic National Committee
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The Democratic National Committee is the formal governing body for the United States Democratic Party. The committee coordinates strategy to support Democratic Party candidates throughout the country for local, state and it organizes the Democratic National Convention held every four years to nominate and confirm a candidate for president, and to formulate the party platform. While it provides support for party candidates, it not have direct authority over elected officials. The DNC is composed of the chairs and vice-chairs of each state Democratic Party committee and over 200 members elected by Democrats in all 50 states and its chairperson is elected by the committee. It conducts fundraising to support its activities, the DNC was established at the 1848 Democratic National Convention. The DNCs main counterpart is the Republican National Committee, the DNC is responsible for articulating and promoting the Democratic platform and coordinating party organizational activity. When the president is a Democrat, the party generally works closely with the president, there are state committees in every state, as well as local committees in most cities, wards, and towns. The chairperson of the DNC is elected by vote of members of the Democratic National Committee, primary elections, in particular, are invariably conducted by state governments according to their own laws. Outside of the process of nominating a candidate, the DNCs role in actually selecting candidates to run on the party ticket is minimal. All DNC members are superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention whose role can influence a close primary race, sitting Democratic governors and members of Congress. Distinguished party leaders, consisting of current and former presidents, vice presidents, congressional leaders, in the 2002 election cycle, the DNC and its affiliated committees raised a total of US $162,062,084, 42% of which was hard money. The largest contributor, with US $7,297,937 was the Saban Capital Group, fred Eychaner, the owner of Newsweb Corporation, gave the second highest amount of money to the DNC and its affiliates, US $5,175,000. The third largest contributor was Steve Bing of Shangri-La Entertainment, who gave US $4,758,000, in the 2006 election cycle, the DNC raised a total of US $37,939,887. The three largest contributors were investment bank Goldman Sachs, university of California and Pond North LLP. The DNC introduced a fund raising campaign, the Democracy Bonds program. There were only 31,000 Democracy Bond donors by May 2006, the program no longer is in place. In the 2016 election cycle, the DNC raised a total of US $75,945,536 as of July 21,2016, the three largest contributors were hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, Newsweb Corp and Total Wine. In July 2015, during the 2016 election cycle, the DNC, led by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Chair, Tom Perez, former U. S. Secretary of Labor under Barack Obama Deputy Chair, Keith Ellison, U. S. S
8.
Slum
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A slum is a heavily populated urban informal settlement characterized by substandard housing and squalor. While slums differ in size and other characteristics, most lack reliable sanitation services, supply of water, reliable electricity, law enforcement. Slum residences vary from shanty houses to professionally built dwellings that because of poor-quality construction or provision of services have deteriorated into slums, Slums were common in the 18th to early 20th centuries in the United States and Europe. More recently slums have been found in urban regions of developing and undeveloped parts of the world. According to UN-Habitat, around 33% of the population in the developing world in 2012, or about 863 million people. Among individual countries, the proportion of residents living in slum areas in 2009 was highest in the Central African Republic. Between 1990 and 2010 the percentage of people living in slums dropped, the worlds largest slum city is in Mexico City. Slums form and grow in different parts of the world for many different reasons. Some causes include rapid rural-to-urban migration, economic stagnation and depression, high unemployment, poverty, informal economy, poor planning, politics, natural disasters and social conflicts. It is thought that slum is a British slang word from the East End of London meaning room, Slums were common in the United States and Europe before the early 20th century. Slums are now associated with Victorian Britain, particularly in industrial English towns, lowland Scottish towns. Engels described these British neighborhoods as cattle-sheds for human beings and these were generally still inhabited until the 1940s, when the government started slum clearance and built new council houses. There are still many left of former slum housing in the UK. By the 1920s it had become a slang expression in England, meaning either various taverns and eating houses, loose talk or gypsy language. In Life in London Pierce Egan used the word in the context of the slums of Holy Lane or St Giles. A footnote defined slum to mean low, unfrequent parts of the town, charles Dickens used the word slum in a similar way in 1840, writing I mean to take a great, London, back-slum kind walk tonight. Slum began to be used to describe bad housing soon after and was used as alternative expression for rookeries and this passage was widely quoted in the national press, leading to the popularisation of the word slum to describe bad housing. In France as in most industrialised European capitals, slums were widespread in Paris and other areas in the 19th century
9.
New Deal
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The New Deal was a series of programs, including, most notably, Social Security, that were enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1938, and a few that came later. They included both laws passed by Congress as well as executive orders during the first term of the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Republicans were split, with opposing the entire New Deal as an enemy of business and growth. By 1936 the term liberal typically was used for supporters of the New Deal, from 1934 to 1938, Roosevelt was assisted in his endeavours by a pro-spender majority in Congress. In the 1938 midterm elections, however, Roosevelt and his supporters lost control of Congress to the bipartisan conservative coalition. Many historians distinguish between a First New Deal and a Second New Deal, with the one more liberal. The First New Deal dealt with the banking crises through the Emergency Banking Act. The Securities Act of 1933 was enacted to prevent a repeated stock market crash, the controversial work of the National Recovery Administration was also part of the First New Deal. The economic downturn of 1937–38, and the split between the AFL and CIO labor unions led to major Republican gains in Congress in 1938. Conservative Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined in the informal Conservative Coalition, by 1942–43 they shut down relief programs such as the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps and blocked major liberal proposals. Roosevelt himself turned his attention to the war effort, and won reelection in 1940 and 1944, the Supreme Court declared the National Recovery Administration and the first version of the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional, however the AAA was rewritten and then upheld. As the first Republican president elected after Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower left the New Deal largely intact, Johnsons Great Society used the New Deal as inspiration for a dramatic expansion of liberal programs, which Republican Richard M. Nixon generally retained. After 1974, however, the call for deregulation of the economy gained bipartisan support, the New Deal regulation of banking was suspended in the 1990s. The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System, the phrase New Deal was coined by an adviser to Roosevelt, Stuart Chase. Although the term was used by Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court. From 1929 to 1933 manufacturing output decreased by one third, prices fell by 20%, causing deflation that made repaying debts much harder. Unemployment in the U. S. increased from 4% to 25%, additionally, one-third of all employed persons were downgraded to working part-time on much smaller paychecks. In the aggregate, almost 50% of the nations human work-power was going unused, before the New Deal, there was no insurance on deposits at banks
10.
Nonprofit organization
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A nonprofit organization is an organization whose purpose is something other than making a profit. A nonprofit organization is dedicated to furthering a particular social cause or advocating for a particular point of view. This is known as the non-distribution constraint, the decision to adopt a nonprofit legal structure is one that will often have taxation implications, particularly where the nonprofit seeks income tax exemption, charitable status and so on. The terms nonprofit and not-for-profit are not consistently differentiated across jurisdictions, in laymans terms they are usually equivalent in concept, although in various jurisdictions there are accounting and legal differences. The nonprofit landscape is varied, although many people have come to associate NPOs with charitable organizations. Although charities do make up an often high-profile or visible aspect of the sector, overall, they tend to be either member-serving or community-serving. e. It could be argued many nonprofits sit across both camps, at least in terms of the impact they make. For example, the support group that provides a lifeline to those with a particular condition or disease could be deemed to be serving its members. Many NPOs use the model of a bottom line in that furthering their cause is more important than making a profit. Although NPOs are permitted to generate revenues, they must be retained by the organization for its self-preservation, expansion. NPOs have controlling members or a board of directors, many have paid staff including management, whereas others employ unpaid volunteers and executives who work with or without compensation. In some countries, where there is a fee, in general. The extent to which an NPO can generate surplus revenues may be constrained or use of surplus revenues may be restricted. Some NPOs may also be a charity or service organization, they may be organized as a corporation or as a trust. Their goal is not to be successful in terms of wealth, NPOs have a wide diversity of structures and purposes. Some of the above must be expressed in the charter of establishment or constitution. Others may be provided by the authority at each particular jurisdiction. While affiliations will not affect a legal status, they may be taken into consideration by legal proceedings as an indication of purpose, most countries have laws that regulate the establishment and management of NPOs and that require compliance with corporate governance regimes
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