Why Believe In Science When You Can Believe In The Free Market Gods?

The Article: Study: Belief in Free-Market Economics Linked to Distrust of Science by Steven Hsieh in AlterNet.

The Text: People who support free-market economics are more likely to reject proven science, according to a study published in Psychological Science last month.

Examining 1,377 visitors to climate change denial blogs, researchers found that belief in a hands-off approach to economics predicted denial that human activity causes climate change, a fact accepted by 97 percent of scientists. The study’s authors—which include Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia and Klaus Oberauer of the University of Zurich—noted that the anti-science movement is especially prevalent in the United States.

“The conspiracist ideation that all of the world’s scientific academies have conspired together to create a hoax known as global warming has found traction in American mainstream politics,” the study reads.

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Make Way For Koch News

The Article: Koch Brothers Plan to Buy up Eight Major Newspapers by Annie Rose Strasser in AlterNet.

The Text: The billionaire oil moguls Charles and David Koch are pushing ahead with their plans to purchase several news outlets across the United States, according to a detailed report in the New York Times on Sunday.

At a recent seminar in Aspen, one attendee reported that the brothers — infamous for bankrolling conservative candidates and causes — put forth the question of, “How do we make sure our voice is being heard?” Their answer, it seems, will be to purchase the entire Tribune company, which constitutes a huge swath of American print media:

The papers, valued at roughly $623 million, would be a financially diminutive deal for Koch Industries, the energy and manufacturing conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., with annual revenue of about $115 billion.

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Recession Over For The Wealthy; For Everyone Else It Drags On

The Article: Wealthiest Americans Only Winners in Recovery, Pew Says by Frank Bass in Business Week.

The Text: The U.S. economy has recovered for households with net worth of $500,000 or more, a new study shows. The recession continues for almost everyone else.

Wealthy households boosted their net worth by 21.2 percent in the aftermath of the recession, according to the study released today by the Pew Research Center. The rest of America lost 4.9 percent of household wealth from 2009 to 2011.

Pew attributed the disparity to gains during that period in the stock and bond markets, benefiting affluent households, while the housing market’s decline hit others harder. The report underscores the nation’s growing income inequality, with the top 13 percent of households recovering their losses from the 18- month recession that ended in June 2009, and the rest of the country continuing to hemorrhage wealth.

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Tennessee, Or Ayn Rand Land?

The Article: The Southern State Fast Becoming Ayn Rand’s Vision of Paradise by Les Leopold in AlterNet.

The Text: If you’re worried about where America is heading, look no further than Tennessee. Its lush mountains and verdant rolling countryside belie a mean-spirited public policy that only makes sense if you believe deeply in the anti-collectivist, anti-altruist philosophy of Ayn Rand. It’s what you get when you combine hatred for government with disgust for poor people.

Tennessee starves what little government it has, ranking dead last in per capita tax revenue. To fund its minimalist public sector, it makes sure that low-income residents pay as much as possible through heavily regressive sales taxes, which rank 10th highest among all states as a percent of total tax revenues. (For more detailed data see here.)

As you would expect, this translates into hard times for its public school systems, which rank 48th in school revenues per student and 45th in teacher salaries. The failure to invest in education also corresponds with poverty: the state has the 40th worst poverty rate (15%) and the 13th highest state percentage of poor children (26%).

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Lil Wayne’s Lyrical Fascism

The Article: Lil Wayne’s Lyrical Fascism by Henry A. Giroux in TruthOut.

The Text: “People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned. . . . People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply by the lives they lead.” – James Baldwin

We have come a long way from the struggles that launched the civil rights movement over 50 years ago. During that historical period, brave men and women marched, integrated white-only lunch counters, defied orders to sit in the back of the bus, challenged police brutality and put their bodies in the face of danger for civil and economic rights. Many of them were beaten, attacked by police dogs and jailed. They fought for a higher cause, and in some cases gave their lives in the face of insufferable injustices. They embodied the ethical grammar of hope, one that demanded courage, struggle and the creation of social movements.

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