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Which countries own U.S. debt? A graphic representation
Visit http://j.mp/4JQ1jy for a historical representation in video.
Bright-Sided: The Negative Consequences Of Positive Thinking - Bright-sided - Jezebel
I love Barbara Ehrenreich, and this is a great review of her most recent book. I'd like to do a post on this myself.
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Ehrenreich also writes persuasively that the popularity of positive thinking in corporate America — she cites the rise of "self-described management gurus" like Tony Robbins and the book Who Moved My Cheese? as examples — has served to blind workers to their ever-decreasing job security.
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By and large, America's white-collar corporate workforce drank the Kool-Aid, as the expression goes, and accepted positive thinking as a substitute for their former affluence and security. They did not take to the streets, shift their political allegiance in large numbers, or show up at work with automatic weapons in hand. As one laid-off executive told me with quiet pride, "I've gotten over my negative feelings, which were so dysfunctional." Positive thinking promised them a sense of control in a world where the "cheese" was always moving. They may have had less and less power to chart their own futures, but they had been given a worldview — a belief system, almost a religion — that claimed they were in fact infinitely powerful, if they could only master their own minds.
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Working Class Zero - Timothy Egan Blog - NYTimes.com
From the article: "For average Americans, the last 10 years were a lost decade. At the end of President George W. Bush’s eight years in office, American households had less money and less economic security, and fewer of them were covered by health care than 10 years earlier, the Census Bureau reported in its annual survey.... [T]he decline started before the collapse in the housing and financial sectors — and it was calculated, in the eyes of some. Harvard economist Lawrence Katz called it “a plutocratic boom.” If anything comes close to defining the era, that would be my nomination. President Bush cut $1.3 trillion in taxes — and the biggest beneficiaries by far were the top 1 percent of earners. At the same time, Wall Street was inflated by the helium of a regulation-free economy that eventually gave us Bernie Madoff and banks begging for bailouts."
This We Know: Explore U.S. Government Data About Your Community
Searchable database of U.S. government statistics about individual locales -- search by town or zip code. Includes environmental (e.g. water quality), economic (e.g. employment) and other figures. From the guys who designed Quotably.
Ann Wallace, "Work ethic of 80-year-old Clarksville McDonald's employee shines," The Leaf-Chronicle (Sept. 7, 2009)
An article praising the "work ethic" of an 80-year-old McDonald's employee, in honor of Labor Day. Kind of sweet and all, but really, when I'm 80, I sure hope I'm not working at McDonald's. This was on @religioncrazy 's Twitter feed -- not sure why, except that the woman profiled here plays organ for her church.
The Grapes of Wrath revisited: a modern-day road trip through John Steinbeck's fiction to Barack Obama's reality | World news | guardian.co.uk
From the article: "Much of Good Samaritan's work is funded by hospitals trying to keep patients who cannot pay out of emergency rooms, where they must be treated for any immediate health crisis by law whether they can pay or not. Those same hospitals have an interest in promoting charity as an alternative to President Obama's plans for government to take the lead in getting healthcare to the poor and the middle classes likely to be bankrupted by catastrophic illness. Good Samaritan makes no secret of where it stands on the issue -- the government has no business involving itself in healthcare." Thanks to Mel M.
How American Health Care Killed My Father - The Atlantic (September 2009)
One of the smartest all-around pieces I've read on healthcare reform yet. Seen on @karl_bucus 's Twitter stream.
Malcolm Gladwell reviews Free by Chris Anderson : The New Yorker
Though I don't typically think of Gladwell as big on common sense, here he definitely injects a little common sense into the hype about how, in the new golden age of the web, everything will be free and everyone will get rich. As he points out, the psychology of free stuff has its downsides, and more importantly, no one is paying any attention to infrastructure costs. Reminds me of the old story of the town where the households all made a living by taking in each other's laundry.
Sue This School | The Big Money (on Trina Thompson, the Monroe College grad who sued because she couldn't find a job)
Interesting perspective on the Trina Thompson vs. Monroe College lawsuit. This one sides with the student -- you don't hear this too often, but he makes a good point, namely, that this is a purely for-profit operation that advertises itself solely on the basis of its ability to secure employment for graduates. Archived: http://sqrl.it/?u4mdz
Peter Singer, "Why We Must Ration Health Care," The New York Times (July 15, 2009)
Peter Singer's controversial article on why "rationing" health care is inevitable and on some principles for thinking about how it should be done.
The Withering Watchdog - Exposé: America's Investigative Reports
PBS's "Exposé" series covers the disintegration of serious, investigative journalism in the U.S. Laura Frank, the author, points out that corporate organizations were cutting investigative reporting staff well before the Internet started cutting into revenues. In fact, cuts were well underway during a period when media outlets' profits were at record highs.
Op-Ed Columnist - Health Care Showdown - NYTimes.com
From the article: "The real risk is that health care reform will be undermined by 'centrist' Democratic senators who either prevent the passage of a bill or insist on watering down key elements of reform. What the balking Democrats seem most determined to do is to kill the public option, either by eliminating it or by carrying out a bait-and-switch, replacing a true public option with something meaningless. For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives, would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs. Whatever may be motivating these Democrats, they don’t seem able to explain their reasons in public. Thus Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska initially declared that the public option -- which, remember, has overwhelming popular support -- was a 'deal-breaker.' Why? Because he didn’t think private insurers could compete: 'At the end of the day, the public plan wins the day.' Um, isn’t the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?"
Reed College, in Need, Closes a Door to Needy Students - NYTimes.com
A profile of Reed College during hard times: their endowment has lost 25% of its value, and demand for financial aid has skyrocketed, with the result that they have had to drop their full-need financial aid policy.
Thomas Fitzgerald, "Borough reflects national shifts" (on Trappe, PA), Philadelphia Inquirer (May 17, 2009)
A nicely-done piece of local journalism. Profiles the demographic, economic, and political shifts in Trappe, PA (near where I live) and actually quotes a friend of mine.
Michael Brooks, " Born believers: How your brain creates God," New Scientist (Feb. 4, 2009)
Webcite: webcitation.org/5gG8xKWyu
David Cohen, "Earth's natural wealth: an audit," NewScientist.com news service (May 23, 2007)
From the article: "Without more recycling, antimony, which is used to make flame retardant materials, will run out in 15 years, silver in 10 and indium in under five.... He estimates that zinc could be used up by 2037, both indium and hafnium - which is increasingly important in computer chips - could be gone by 2017, and terbium - used to make the green phosphors in fluorescent light bulbs - could run out before 2012."
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