America in Decline
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Despite the 6.5% stock market rally over the last three months, a handful of billionaires are quietly dumping their American stocks . . . and fast.
Billionaires Dumping Stocks, Economist Knows Why
Sir Anthony Hopkins doesn't suffer fools gladly.
Anthony Hopkins, 'Hitchcock' Star, On Oscar Season Glad-Handing: 'It's Disgusting'
America absolutely loves Wal-Mart. 100 million customers visit Wal-Mart every single week in this country.
Is Wal-Mart Destroying America? 20 Facts About Wal-Mart That Will Absolutely Shock You | Yolohub
NASA Bake Sale: Scientists To Stage Demonstrations Over Budget Cuts
By: Clara Moskowitz Published: 06/07/2012 06:10 PM EDT on SPACE.com Scientists are trading telescopes for aprons this week to sell Milky Way cupcakes, Saturn cake, and chocolate chip Opportunity cookies in an effort to salvage U.S. planetary science projects.
Loopholes, poor regulations, and off-shore havens allow corporations and the very wealthy to draw on the benefits of a strong nation-state without fully paying back in, eroding a system that's less tested than we might think. The Ugland House of Grand Cayman Island houses the office of the Cayman's largest law firm, Maples and Calder, and is the registered office of some 18,000 companies / Reuters Millions of dollars of Mitt Romney's personal wealth have been recently tied to bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, a Caribbean UK territory with decent SCUBA diving and spectacular don't-ask-don't-tell banking regulations. The Romney campaign protests, weakly yet amusingly, that "the accounts provide no tax advantage to American investors like Romney" but are there purely for the convenience of foreign investors who might wish to invest in Bain Capital without the "entanglements" of the United States tax system.
The Weakening of Nations: How Tax Work-Arounds Undermine Our Society - Eric Garland - International
People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say | Why the Best Candidate Never Wins | Psychology | LiveScience
The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts.
Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated — Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie ahead. Right now, in fact. At the moment, we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s decision to launch the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the post-World War II period: the invasion of South Vietnam, later all of Indochina, leaving millions dead and four countries devastated, with casualties still mounting from the long-term effects of drenching South Vietnam with some of the most lethal carcinogens known, undertaken to destroy ground cover and food crops.
The hysterical American decline - American History
Ranking 37th — Measuring the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System | Health Policy and Reform
Evidence that other countries perform better than the United States in ensuring the health of their populations is a sure prod to the reformist impulse. The World Health Report 2000, Health Systems: Improving Performance, ranked the U.S. health care system 37th in the world 1 — a result that has been discussed frequently during the current debate on U.S. health care reform. The conceptual framework underlying the rankings 2 proposed that health systems should be assessed by comparing the extent to which investments in public health and medical care were contributing to critical social objectives: improving health, reducing health disparities, protecting households from impoverishment due to medical expenses, and providing responsive services that respect the dignity of patients. Despite the limitations of the available data, those who compiled the report undertook the task of applying this framework to a quantitative assessment of the performance of 191 national health care systems.
Life Expectancy in U.S. Lags Behind Global Rates - in Public Health & Policy, Public Health from MedPage Today
Life expectancy at birth for American men was 75.6 years and 80.8 for women in 2007 -- 36th and 33rd in the world -- with wide variation from county to county, researchers said. County-level life expectancies for men ranged from 15 years ahead of an international average of top-performing nations to more than 50 years behind, Christopher Murray, MD, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues reported in Population Health Metrics. The range for women was 16 years ahead to more than 50 years behind. "The U.S. picture, with its remarkable combination of poor health outcomes despite the highest levels of health spending per capita, is even more stark and disturbing when examined at the local level," Murray and colleagues wrote. There are wide geographic and racial disparities in the U.S., but data had not been updated since 1999, the researchers said.
Is America In Decline? 24 Statistics About The United States Economy That Are Almost Too Embarrassing To Admit
(Before It's News)Do public sector workers earn more than private sector workers? Who cares? This boneheaded question has us fighting over the crumbs.