Bad Deeds for 6-28-2011

 

The Wealthy Are Doing Better Than Ever, While Everyone Else Suffers [Here is a sampling of the information on 15 statistics:]

• The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.
• The poorest 50% collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
• The wealthiest 1% of all Americans own over 50% of all the stocks and bonds.
• The average corporate CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year.
• In the United States, over 20 percent of all children are living in poverty. In the UK and in France that figure is well under 10 percent.
• According to the U.S. Census, the number of children living in poverty has gone up by about 2 million in just the past 2 years.
• The number of “low income jobs” in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.
• The average cost of tuition, room and board at America’s public universities is now $16,000 a year. For America’s private universities, that figure is $37,000 a year. The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.

The wealthy are not participating in the “shared sacrifice.”

[Here are 22 other statistics that show the American Middle Class is being wiped out of existence. It all started with the election of Ronald Reagan.]

 

Proven: Fox News Misinforms Viewers – The quantifiable evidence is overwhelming. Eight years ago, just six months into the war in Iraq, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland found that those who relied on the Republican network were “three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions — about WMD in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11, and foreign support for the U.S. position on the war in Iraq.”

As Ben Armbruster noted a while back, “An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out [in 2009] found that Fox News viewers were overwhelmingly misinformed about health care reform proposals. A 2008 Pew study ranked Fox News last in the number of ‘high knowledge’ viewers and a 2007 Pew poll ranked Fox viewers as the least knowledgeable about national and international affairs.”

In December, PIPA published a report, this time on “Misinformation and the 2010 Election” (pdf). The point was to measure Americans’ understanding of a variety of key developments that news consumers would likely be familiar with. As was the case eight years ago, Fox News viewers were “significantly more likely” to be confused about reality.

Researchers found that Americans who paid more attention to the news were more likely to know about current events. But Americans who relied on Fox News were “significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe things that are contrary to provable facts. In some cases, regular Fox News viewers would have done better, statistically speaking, if they had received no news at all and simply guessed whether the claims about current events were accurate.

What’s more, this isn’t necessarily about party affiliations — Democrats who watch Fox News were worse off than Democrats who relied on legitimate news organizations (though Dems who watch Fox News were still less confused than Republicans who watch Fox News). But, they are not informed enough to know that they are misinformed. Ignorance is bliss.

 

U.S. Military Spends $20.2 Billion Annually on Air Conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan – The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan is $20.2 billion. That’s more than NASA’s budget. It’s more than BP has paid so far for damage during the Gulf oil spill. It’s what the G-8 has pledged to help foster new democracies in Egypt and Tunisia.

“When you consider the cost to deliver the fuel to some of the most isolated places in the world — escorting, command and control, medevac support — when you throw all that infrastructure in, we’re talking over $20 billion,” Steven Anderson tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin. Anderson is a retired brigadier general who served as Gen. David Patreaus’ chief logistician in Iraq.

Why does it cost so much?

To power an air conditioner at a remote outpost in land-locked Afghanistan, a gallon of fuel has to be shipped into Karachi, Pakistan, then driven 800 miles over 18 days to Afghanistan on roads that are sometimes little more than “improved goat trails,” Anderson says. “And you’ve got risks that are associated with moving the fuel almost every mile of the way.”

 

And It’s Killing Our Troops – The U.S. military is embracing alternative energy—but not because of climate change. Up to half of the yearly American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan have been incurred guarding fuel convoys, and the Pentagon will no longer tolerate oil’s “burden in blood.” The good news: the military is switching to portable solar generators.

 

Michele Bachmann: People Think I’m a Clown, But I’m Deadly Serious – After announcing her candidacy for president on Monday, Republican Michele Bachmann told Fox News, “John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.”

However, actor John Wayne was not born in the town. It was serial killer John Wayne Gacy that resided in Waterloo. Gacy was known as the Killer Clown who dressed as a clown at fundraising events, and committed the rape and murder of 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978.

On Tuesday Bachmann said she misspoke about all those John Waynes. But she still insists that John Quincy Adams was a “Founding Father,” even though he was not yet nine years old when the Declaration of Independence was drafted.

In an effort to make a mistake into written history, after Bachmann’s interview, John Quincy Adams’ Wikipedia page was edited to describe him as a “Founding Father.” It has been corrected. But Bachmann is still wrong about Adams. But she may be right about having the spirit of that guy from Waterloo.

Regards,

Jim