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Paul Buchheit reports via AlterNet
While Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and John Kiriakou are vilified for revealing vital information about spying and bombing and torture, a man who conspired with Goldman Sachs to make billions of dollars on the planned failure of subprime mortgages was honored by New York University for his "Outstanding Contributions to Society".
This is one example of the distorted thinking leading to the demise of a once-vibrant American society. There are other signs of decay:
- A House Bill Would View Corporate Crimes as "Honest Mistakes"
- Almost 2/3 of American Families Couldn't Afford a Single Pill of a Life-Saving Drug
- Violent Crime Down; Prison Population Doubles
- One in Four Americans Suffer Mental Illness; Mental Health Facilities Cut by 90 Percent
- The Unpaid Taxes of 500 Companies Could Pay for a Job for Every Unemployed American ...for two years ...at the nation's median salary of $36,000 ...for all 8 million unemployed.
Citizens for Tax Justice reports that Fortune 500 companies are holding over $2 trillion in profits offshore to avoid taxes that would amount to over $600 billion. Our society desperately needs infrastructure repair, but 8 million potential jobs are being held hostage beyond our borders.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Alfred on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:22PM
The one about affording pills assumes you are entitled to those expensive pills. How many yeas from any medical invention until 51% of the population could "afford" it? Many people will spend their fortunes for pills they are told will keep them alive. They forget that they are not entitled to immortality. Death at an old age is normal, get over it.
Really? Chicken or Egg
Prisons are messed up but the way this is stated doesn't prove, show or help anything.
1 in 4? Mental illness is real but how many of that 1 in 4 are pansies that need to man up? (If it is a real mental illness then that obviously isn't the solution.) You have a lot of I want attention types tying up resources for those who actually need them. Like the gluten free thing, some people actually have celiac disease but most who claim gluten free just want to be unique/special attention princesses/whores. I contend that there are fewer real mental illnesses than the statistics show. This speaks against people.
Every place is always changing, especially the USA. And hardly anything ever changes for the good. Downward spiral every time. Good people are content, greedy people are ambitious. One of those is more likely to cause change and the change will be as morally correct as their motivation.
Cute list of symptoms but we need to identify problems.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:31PM
Didn't I hear recently that Trump was polling at ~25%? Do you have a better explanation?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:42PM
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dear-media-stop-freaking-out-about-donald-trumps-polls/ [fivethirtyeight.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 08 2015, @10:09PM
That's a terribly cavalier attitude to have about illness. "Oh well sucks to be you." Are you 17, a mature adult who has somehow never had someone in his family or circle of acquaintances suffering from a severe but treatable illness, or a sociopath who doesn't give a damn about the suffering of others?
Let's see how you feel about the issue of affordable medication when it's your mother or father who needs it, or worse, your child.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @02:52AM
Thank you, I wanted to respond but was too angry about it to say something useful.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday December 09 2015, @03:42PM
We all have health issues. I have my own chronic heath issues. Eventually it sucks to be any of us, some earlier than others. The earth is mostly an inhospitable place. Life is not fair. The world doesn't owe any of us anything. Given these facts people seem to never be thankful that they live in a time where they are given penicillin instead of leeches. This is the best time in the history of the earth for this topic. Every drug was once nonexistent before it was expensive but there is now a spectrum of relatively cheap drugs. Is that not awesome? How about infant mortality? You no longer just assume that half your kids will be dead in their first year. How is that not amazing?
I could state my prediction as to how I would act when my sick child would live with a pill I couldn't afford. I suspect you don't want to hear more of my thoughts though. But..we all die. Maybe I have already come to terms with my own impending mortality.