NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

Why America Needs to Bring Its Rich to Heel

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Michael Blim - Mar. 16 (Opinion) - Sociology trumps mythology. We have one of the lowest rates of inter-generational social mobility of any industrial country. Income and wealth have become more not less concentrated in the hands of the American rich – all this at a time when some like the Obamas have achieved a good measure of their dreams in ways that are not only undeniable but laudable.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.1 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Those Chickens: The Economic Crisis and America's Poor and Struggling

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Michael Blim - May. 06 (Opinion) - Banks made greater profits on sub-prime loans because they could charge working class and near-power households more for their mortgages. They sold them in packages at higher prices to customers eager for extra profits. Everybody made out - except those purchasing the mortgages. Disaster was just around the corner.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Mufti and the General

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Ram Manikkalingam - Apr. 21 (Opinion) - I was impressed with the Mufti. He had summarized a quite complex debate into a very succinct articulation of the tension between Islam and the West. But there was still one question nagging me about his answer. How different is violent extremism from extremism without violence. Don't the two go hand in hand? Isn't extremism the first step to violent extremism? And to fight violent extremism, shouldn't one also fight extremism. The Mufti's toleration of Muslim extremism, even when he disagreed with it, sounded misplaced to me, given his resistance to violent extremism.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Senator Clinton and the ABCs (Anybody but Clinton)

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Michael Blim - Feb. 11 (Opinion) - Obama is the "Hail Mary" pass of American politics because our political system has no game plan, no plays to move the country toward mending its ways and sorting out how to become a decent society of equal opportunity and a good neighbor abroad. Its elite of which the Clinton are proud members has little intention of pulling American ambitions and power back from their world struggle for resources and military dominance. Americans, one senses, are finally tired of fighting for Standard Oil (we call it Exxon now) and fighting daily struggles for affordable medical care and education for their kids. They want a Social Security retirement they can count on, and would I think be interested in stopping the spending of its blood and treasure for imperialism and repression abroad.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Peace Process Delusion

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Saifedean Ammous - Dec. 31 (Opinion) - A serious pandemic of delusion is gripping the world. Ground Zero for the spread of this scourge was in Annapolis, Maryland in late November. Within hours, millions of otherwise intelligent people started exhibiting the symptoms of this horrible affliction: uncontrollable optimism, abrupt failure of reasoning, oblivious disregard of reality, and a deeply religious faith in a fictional 'Peace Process' that will be the New Messiah that will deliver the world from all evil.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Biofuels: All You Need to Know for a Bar Discussion

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 08:52:11 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Michael Blim - Aug. 13 (Opinion) - There is an enormous amount of news reports, analysis, discussion and media attention given to biofuels. One is first struck by the incredible variety of opinions expressed on the matter; from over the top excitement hailing biofuels as the answer to all of the world's environmental, economic, social and political problems, to severe criticism that views biofuels as an ultimate evil that will have a profoundly negative impact on forestation, food supply, poor-country economics and just about everything else.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.2 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Pitching Prescriptions and Patient Empowerment

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:44:58 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Michael Blim - Jul. 30 (Opinion) - The pharmaceutical industry in the United States and worldwide is a big business. That's why its critics (and now some Wall Street analysts too) call it "Big Pharma." In the United States last year, the pharmaceutical industry grossed $275 billion. To put this figure into perspective, consider that the American people spent more on pharmaceutical drugs than they did on new cars last year. Product "promotion" is key. No doubt you have noticed pharmaceutical representatives in your doctor's waiting rooms. Young, clean-cut, always smiling, they are the detailers hoping to get a word in with the doctor before she sees you. Blandishments include those free samples, "starter kits," of drugs your doctor passes on to you. Big Pharma spent $6.7 billion in 2006 on detailing, and another half a billion dollars a year advertising in professional journals. They spent $4.8 billion on consumer advertising. In all, Big Pharma spent $12 billion to push its products.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Alien Life May Be "Weirder" Than Scientists Think

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 08:14:27 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - Jul. 08 (Opinion) - Instead of thriving on water, extraterrestrial organisms might live in a sea of liquid methane. Or instead of getting energy from the sun, they might thrive on hydrochloric acid. These possibilities could revolutionize future space missions in search of life elsewhere in the solar system, says the report, issued today by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

NewsTrust Rating: 3.1 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The New Plessy versus Ferguson and White Privilege

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:17:16 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Michael Blim - Jul. 02 (Opinion) - There is something odious about privilege. In this case, white privilege. On June 28, the Supreme Court ruled in Parents Involved in Community Schools versus Seattle School District No.1 that using race as the sole criterion for assigning children to one elementary school or another violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Chief Justice Roberts writing for the plurality of the Court set down their ruling is stark terms:

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average - 10 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Did Bernard Kouchner really endorse the Iraq War?

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 08:57:36 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Alan Koenig - Jun. 25 (Opinion) - Kouchner had long decried the tyrannical horrors of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and he often berated the international community for not coming together to remove the dictator, but he repeatedly opposed the American invasion. This shouldn't be a terribly complicated position, and Kouchner first put it in print in early February of 2003 when he coauthored a "manifesto" entitled Neither War Nor Saddam in which he opined that the "solution to Saddam will take time," that "it can not proceed at the same time as military pressure," and the United Nations should call together a conference to bring more international pressure on Saddam.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Follow that Gay!

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:59:46 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Jaffer Kolb - Jun. 20 (Opinion) - In the mid 1990s, urban economist and sociologist Richard Florida devised the "gay index," a tool used to monitor and predict cities that could host profit-generating high-tech industries. The index essentially correlates the number of gay people living in an area and how many high-tech firms are located there. This, of course, is a good thing as it enables regional planners to better accommodate growth and accordingly adjust all of those terribly meaningful strategic plans that herald beautiful, functional cities. The gay index is directly linked to Florida's argument about the economic advantages associated with attracting the "creative class" to cities, which will lead to revitalization, regeneration, and economic success. In addition to the Gay Index, Florida proffered the "bohemian index," which measured the number of artists, writers, designers, and general "Cool" professionals located in certain cities against the presence of those same high-tech industries.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

What next after Karachi's carnage?

Mon, 14 May 2007 11:42:13 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Pervez Hoodbhoy - May. 14 (News Analysis) - General Pervez Musharraf is now a desperate man. Dozens were left dead in the horrific carnage on May 12, initiated by his violent political allies in Karachi, the MQM, in an attempt to stem the popular protests against Musharraf's dismissal of the chief justice of Pakistan. But this may still not buy him enough strength. Protests will continue. His "million man rally" in Islamabad, held on the same day, blatantly used the state's full organizational machinery and was widely ridiculed. It was seen as a sign of his weakness rather than strength.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Left Out In The Cold: The Impact From The Sub-Prime Mortgage Collapse

Mon, 14 May 2007 11:22:46 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Beth Ann Bovino - May. 14 (Opinion) - The house party has started to wind down. The result of these excesses has finally started to appear. Big sub-prime mortgage lender New Century Financial has filed for bankruptcy, while tens of thousands of sub-prime borrowers are unable to make their payments. Defaults on these mortgages, which are granted to homebuyers with low credit scores, and who have bought their houses with little or no money down, have increased sharply with little signs of slowing down.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Sandlines: Katrina recovery update

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 12:18:10 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - By Edward Rackley - Apr. 30 (Special Report) - Welcome to New Orleans--it is nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina, and your federal tax dollars are asleep on the job. You won't disturb the slumber of dumb money should you come to Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest, two essential sources of local revenue, where you will register few traces of Katrina's destructive power. Only by venturing beyond the warm embrace of the restored French Quarter, with its familiar old-world charms, can one experience the vast stretches of physical devastation and ruined lives that federal and state monies have yet to address.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Religion and Welfare

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 09:22:56 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Alon Levy - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - In most countries secularism is positively correlated with support for welfare, but does welfare make people more secular? Anthony Gill of the University of Washington says yes; in 2004, he and grad student Erik Lundsgaarde published a paper arguing that welfare provides a substitute for church attendance, making people less likely to attend church.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Gay men, blood donation and the limits of science.

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:43:15 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Bill Hooker - Feb. 19 (Opinion) - gave blood recently, and the barrage of questions asked of all donors reminded me that I'd been meaning to write this article since June of last year. At that time, Art Caplan wrote that it's time to let gay men donate blood, but he did not present much solid evidence for that position. As it happens, we can be pretty sure he is in command of considerable evidence, having served as Chair of the HHS Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability for four years, but the article was presumably written as an exercise in persuasion and contained just enough information to make me curious.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Teaser Appetizer: Health Care Agenda For Barack Obama

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 08:48:36 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Shiban Ganju - Feb. 05 (Opinion) - arack Obama has promised to provide health coverage for all Americans in next six years, which means 47 million uninsured would get some kind of coverage. Obama is certainly not the first candidate to garner electoral support by espousing liberal health care. In 1883, Otto Bismarck of Germany enticed labor support by passing the health insurance bill for the factory workers and he succeeded in severing the support of labor to the social democrats. On august 6, 1912 Theodore Roosevelt called for compulsory health insurance for the industrial workers, to outwit the liberal platform of Woodrow Wilson.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.3 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Below the Fold: Getting Concrete about Equality by Educating Girls and Women

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:07:39 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Michael Blim - Jan. 15 (Opinion) - Suppose you want to invest a dollar with the goal of increasing world economic equality, and so you are considering how to make that dollar work to the best advantage of poor people in poor countries. Consider subsidizing poor family incomes by rewarding people for keeping their girls in school. That is, give a family that keeps its daughters in school a monthly income supplement for every girl in school.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Dispatches: Sunday Bazaar

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 15:43:35 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Asad Raza - Jan. 08 (Opinion) - If anything, Pakistan and America are becoming more, rather than less, similar over time. In Pakistan, invented in 1947, political insecurity correlates to defensive national fervor: one of the saddest things is how often people conceive of Pakistan and India's relationship as a zero-sum game; praise of one automatically implies derogation of the other. It's utterly silly. (These days, Pakistan is faced with more instability in the form of seditious disquiet in the province of Balochistan.) In the U.S., of course, a similar experience of retrenchment has been underway for five years now, a festering provincialism that was always the least attractive part of America's cultural self-understanding anyway. In my last dispatch, I tried to suggest, maybe not clearly enough, that it's wrong to identify a country with the people who proclaim themselves as its most representative representatives. Just as, purely by definition, the residents of Dearborn, Michigan are as representative an American as those of Alexandria, Virginia, regardless of how important Americanness is to either group as an elective affiliation. Every nation, including these two, suffers from boorish patriots who claim to speak for it - that doesn't mean we should believe they do.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

A mole at the world bank? Truth-telling between the lines

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 21:52:14 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Michael Blim - Jan. 01 (Opinion) - The news gets worse. Economic growth through 2030 will only slightly close the income gap between rich and poor countries. For every positive economic stride taken by poor countries, for every climb on the income ladder made by this new middle class in poor countries, rich countries and most importantly their rich citizens, take two steps forward. By 2030, the rich will have increased their proportion of the world's income from 58% in 2000 to 69%. Thus far, massive industrialization in poor countries has not really shifted the economic balance of power. "Five decades of development have done little to bring the average incomes of developing countries closer to those of OECD (rich) countries," says the Bank, practically in an outburst of unusual clarity.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average - 9 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Where Have All the Liberals Gone?

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 21:53:17 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By J. M. Tyree - Dec. 25 (Opinion) - I liked it better when we were "winning" in Iraq - because the President's answer to "not winning" is to escalate the war. Not all liberals are continuing along in hand-wringing mode, although David Ignatius is. An intellectually serious antiwar movement, perhaps one based on the ideas of Randolph Bourne, is long overdue, but many liberal opinion leaders, whatever their misgivings, refuse to take a public stance against the continued military occupation of Iraq. Their current point of view, perhaps best exemplified by Norman Geras, is principled, but extremely strange. The war was wrong but it mustn't end, seems to be the idea - or something. Marty Peretz has begun to talk of "honor," vis-a-vis Iraq, and Spencer Ackerman, formerly of The New Republic's "Iraq'd" blog, has decamped from the magazine altogether in apparent disgust. Christopher Hitchens, meanwhile, contends that the current disaster in Lebanon, apparently, is about nothing except "nihilist violence." It has nothing to do with the shattering of its infrastructure as well as the destruction of the credibility of genuinely democratic forces during the late war, which Michael Walzer of Dissent endorsed as just.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.2 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Waiting for Tet

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 21:53:04 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Michael Blim - Dec. 18 (Opinion) - Engaged once more in a fantastic imperial over-reach, we are retracing the steps that led to the final defeat and withdrawal from Vietnam. Let us hope it is sooner than later, and no new Richard Nixon emerges to slow it down.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Sandlines: Exile and patriotism - Who will rebuild DR Congo?

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:52:39 -0800

3 Quarks Daily - By Edward Rackley - Dec. 11 (Opinion) - Throughout the Congolese conflict (1996 - present), civilian populations have served as the primary target for diverse combatant groups: ethnic militias, so-called 'popular defense forces', rebel factions and the government army. As attacks on civilians continue, persistent insecurity and suffering have triggered a different kind of explosion--a mass exodus of Congolese citizens seeking safety and opportunity in Africa, Europe and North America. An extensive Congolese diaspora was born.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.0 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer