Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
From Common Dreams—News anchor blows mall shoppers’ minds by showing real US wealth gap — using American pie. Latecomers though they be, when traditional journalists start scrutinizing economic inequality after decades of pretty much ignoring it, you know the situation has reached serious levels. CBS made its reporting on the subject more palatable and understandable than the usual dry statistics and charts used to describe the situation by using actual pies—pumpkin—to demonstrate to stunned shoppers just how skewed economic inequality is. But, of course, without offering an alternative, they felt compelled to stick a fork in the idea of a wealth tax, one means of helping reduce economic inequality.
A four minute video that aired on CBS Friday morning was praised for using slices of real pie to show the huge wealth gap in the U.S.—surprising passers-by who joined anchor Tony Dokoupil at a table set up at a mall in West Nyack, New York.
“Give this video four minutes and let’s start the revolution,” tweeted actor Matthew Lillard.
In the video, Dokoupil asks passers-by to divvy a pie sliced into ten pieces onto plates for quintiles of the U.S. based on income, top 20%, next 20%, etc.
Even the most cynical participant didn’t come close to the real amount—nine pieces for the top 20% of Americans and the bill for the lowest 20%. [...]
That “most cynical” wording chosen by CBS speaks volumes about what is wrong with most economics reporting in the popular media. Knowing that a good chunk of the rich have lined their pockets at the expense of the less affluent doesn’t have to make one a cynic, though such knowledge certainly has produced plenty. It has also made many people into activists. They are the opposite of cynics. They still believe things can be changed, hard as that often seems, and hard as it often is.
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“We are now about to take our leave and kind farewell to our native land, the country the Great Spirit gave our Fathers. We are on the eve of leaving that country that gave us birth. It is with sorrow we are forced by the white man to quit the scenes of our childhood … we bid farewell to it and all we hold dear.” ~~Charles Hicks, Tsalagi (Cherokee) speaking of the Trail of Tears (Nov. 4, 1838)
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2018—$1.5 trillion in tax cuts later, GOP insists on cutting $7.4 billion somewhere to save lives:
Here's your daily reminder that community health centers haven't been funded for 125 days and somewhere around 27 million people may soon have no more access to health care. That includes tens of thousands in North Carolina.
Last fall, Kim Wagenaar started to plan how she would close the health clinic she runs in rural North Carolina—when Congress let funding lapse for thousands of centers like hers.
The Cabarrus Rowan Community Health Center offers primary care services to patients, largely uninsured and unable to afford visits elsewhere. Its four buildings, scattered across suburban Charlotte and more rural areas to the north, do not suffer from low demand. They saw more than 8,000 patients last year alone.
“I’m usually a very optimistic person,” Wagenaar says. “I always feel like the community health centers have great support. But I’ll be honest, this is the first time I’m not 100 percent sure this will get fixed.” […]
Wagenaar estimates that losing federal funding would reduce their budget by 52 percent — and that would force the clinic to make some tough decisions. [...]