NewsTrust - Poverty - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - When I read things like this I'm simultaneously amazed by two things. The first is the unbelievable tone-deafness of people who would complain out loud, during a time when millions of people around the country are literally losing their homes, that their bonuses - not their total compensation, mind you, but just their cash bonuses, paid in addition to their salaries and their stock packages - are barely enough to cover the mortgage payments for their new condos, the taxis they take when walking is too burdensome, and their girlfriends with expensive tastes. The second thing that amazes me is that Sherman is buying all this.

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Money and Morals

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - Conservatives have started telling us that the growing inequality is about a decline in morals. But it’s mainly about money.

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Catholic hospitals split on giving contraceptives

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

San Francisco Chronicle - By bottomline@sfchronicle.com (Andrew S. Ross, Chronicle Columnist) - Feb. 06 - Presented By: Chicago Booth Business Forecast Ads by ...

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Famine in Somalia is over, says UN

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Feb. 03 - Exceptional harvest and food deliveries have improved conditions, but millions of people are still at risk An exceptional harvest after good rains and food deliveries by aid agencies have ended famine in Somalia, although conditions remain fragile and could worsen, the United Nations have said. The UN declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia last July and extended the famine warning in September to six out of eight regions in the country. The UN said initially 750,000 Somalis faced imminent starvation and lowered this to 250,000 by November. Six months after famine was declared, 4 million Somalis were in need of aid and the UN said the number now stood at 2.34m. "The gains are fragile and will be reversed without continued support," said Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia. "There are 1.7 million people in southern Somalia still in crisis. Millions of people still need food, clean water, shelter and other assistance to survive and the situation is expected ...

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Romney Isn’t Concerned

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Feb. 02 (Opinion) - If you’re an American down on your luck, Mitt Romney has a message for you: He doesn’t feel your pain. Earlier this week, Mr. Romney told a startled CNN interviewer, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.” Faced with criticis

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Nicholas D. Kristof Blog: Melinda Gates Shares Insights From Her Recent Trip to Bangladesh.

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By By THE EDITORS - Jan. 12 (Opinion) - Melinda Gates, just back from a trip to Bangladesh, along with Nicholas Kristof, answer readers' questions about the developing world.

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The economic illiteracy of economists | Mark Weisbrot

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Mark Weisbrot - Jan. 10 - The American Economic Association's annual meeting is red-letter day for 'the dismal science'. And dismal it proved The American Economic Association's annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction. Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating in an interesting panel on "the economics of regime change" , when I stumbled over to see what the big budget experts had to say about "the political economy of the US debt and deficits". The session was introduced by UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, who put up a graph of the United States' rising debt-to-GDP ratio, and warned of dire consequences if Congress didn't do something about it. Yawn. But the panelists got off to a good start, with Alan Blinder of Princeton, former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describing the public discussion of the US national debt as generally ranging from "ludicrous to ...

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Gingrich has it wrong about the poor

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

CNN - By LZ Granderson - Dec. 13 (Opinion) - This country isn't great in spite of the poor. It is great because of the poor.

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Op-Ed Columnist: Newt’s War on Poor Children

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Charles M. Blow - Dec. 02 (Opinion) - Gingrich says poor children do not have working parents as role models. He couldn’t be more wrong.

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Cracks in the GOP dam?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Greg Sargent - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - Buried in this big New York Times piece on the continuing war over the payroll tax cut extension is a telling detail: Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said Tuesday that she had suggested a tax increase on high earners that protected employers from that burden. “I don’t think we should be imposing additional taxes on working families at a time when the economy is so fragile,” she said. Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said his party’s plan could involve a small increase in taxes for some high-income people who meet certain criteria. In other words, senators Collins and Roberts are looking for a way to support the millionaire surtax, or something like it.

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The Poor, the Near Poor and You

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Nov. 23 (Opinion) - What is it like to be poor? Thankfully, most Americans do not know, at least not firsthand. And times are tough for the middle class. But everyone needs to recognize a chilling reality: One in three Americans — 100 million people — is either poor or perilously close to it.

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Archbishop Rowan Williams backs revolt against coalition's welfare cuts

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Daniel Boffey - Nov. 20 - Church of England bishops unite to take a moral stand against controversial policies that they say will hit the poorest hardest Bishops across the country, backed by Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, have condemned the coalition government's controversial welfare reforms, which they say risk pushing thousands of children into poverty and homelessness. Eighteen Church of England bishops, backed by Williams and the archbishop of York, John Sentamu, are demanding that ministers rewrite their flagship plan to impose a £500-a-week benefit cap on families. In an open letter in Observer, they say the Church of England has a "moral obligation to speak up for those who have no voice". Their message is that the cap could be "profoundly unjust" to the poorest children in society, especially those in larger families and those living in expensive major cities. The high-profile intervention comes after the Church of England became embroiled in an embarrassing row over its attitude to ...

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#Occupy: The Tech at the Heart of the Movement

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Alexis Madrigal - Nov. 16 (Opinion) - With the police raids in the past few days of camps from Oakland to New York, the Occupy movement is at a key juncture. We want to step back and look at the role of technology in the protests' establishment, spread, and future. This essay inaugurates a series of stories on the ways that protesters have shaped technologies to fit their needs -- and how technologies opened up new space for their messages. Let's start with what seems self-evident, but what I'm sure is more complex than it appears: Occupy is different from the protests that preceded it. To be honest, I'm not sure anyone can explain why. The list of factors contributing to its outstanding run is long: economic circumstances, a distance from the enforced patriotism that followed 9/11, disappointment on the left with Obama's presidency, the failure to adequately regulate banks, the neverending foreclosure crisis, the Adbusters provenance, severe cuts to social programs at the state and local level, the language of occupation, and the prolonged nature of the engagement.

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Op-Ed Columnist: Legends of the Fail

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - With Italy following Greece off a cliff, it’s hard to see how the euro can survive. Now that the euro project is on the rocks, what lessons should we draw?

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The Birth Control Solution

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - Family planning is crucial to solving poverty, climate change and other issues. And don’t worry: contraceptives don’t cause sex.

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France, Islam and the banlieues: a debate on the place of Islam and class in the suburbs

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Michèle Tribalat, Gérard Mauger - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - In an effort to allay concerns about Islam in France, policymakers and analysts have either tried to play down its importance or sought to blend it into the landscape. Islam is often portrayed as an integral part of French history: its presence simply follows on from ancient history. The basis for this argument is shaky, for it refers to an era when Christendom – not yet referred to as the west – was in retreat, driven back by the force of Islamic arms.

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Occupy Wall Street: Washington Still Doesn't Get It

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Oct. 26 (Opinion) - I'll have more coming out about this in a few days, but there have been two disgusting developments in the realm of plutcratic intervention on behalf

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Occupy the Classroom

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nicholas Kristof - Oct. 19 (Opinion) - The single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It's an expansion of early childhood education.

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Obama Rejects Obamaism

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Brooks - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - He claimed we can afford future Medicare costs if we raise taxes on the rich. He repeated the old half-truth about millionaires not paying as much in taxes as their secretaries. (In reality, the top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes, according to the I.R.S. People in the richest 1 percent pay 31 percent of their income to the federal government while the average worker pays less than 14 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.)

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Sewing Her Way Out of Poverty

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:28:10 -0700

New York Times - Sep. 14 (Opinion) -

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More restaurants are targeting customers who use food stamps

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - Sep. 07 () - The number of businesses approved to accept food stamps grew by a third from 2005 to 2010, U.S. Department of Agriculture records show, as vendors from convenience and dollar discount stores to gas stations and pharmacies increasingly joined the growing entitlement program. Now, restaurants, which typically have not participated in the program, are lobbying for a piece of the action. Louisville-based Yum! Brands, whose restaurants include Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver's and Pizza Hut, is trying to get restaurants more involved, federal lobbying records show.

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Rick Perry, by the book

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ruth Marcus - Aug. 31 (Review) - Rick Perry is no George W. Bush. This is not a compliment. Perry’s 2010 Tea Party-steeped manifesto, “Fed Up!,” makes George Bush look like George McGovern. Perry has said he wasn’t planning to run for president when he wrote the book, and it shows: ●The Texas governor floats the notion of repealing the 16th Amendment, which authorized the federal income tax. Perry describes the amendment as “the great milestone on the road to serfdom” because it “was the birth of wealth redistribution in the United States.” Raise your hand if you believe, as Perry suggests, that it is wrong to ask the wealthiest to pay a greater share of their income than the poor.

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World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Aug. 21 (Comedy News) - Taking half of everything the bottom 50% have in America would raise $700 billion.

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The sad facts behind Rick Perry’s Texas miracle

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Harold Meyerston - Aug. 16 (Opinion) - Consider the Texas that Perry holds up to the rest of the nation for admiration. It has the fourth-highest poverty rate of any state. It tied with Mississippi last year for the highest percentage of workers in minimum-wage jobs. It ranks first in adults without high school diplomas. Twenty-six percent of Texans have no health insurance — the highest percentage of medically uninsured residents of any state.

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Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Warren E. Buffett - Aug. 14 (Opinion) - for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate. My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

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