The Hypocrisy Of The Catholic Church

Remind me again why national media features a bishop’s response to the Ryan tax plan?

The Price Of Winning The Lottery

The Article: Lottery winner Craig Henshaw paid a big price for his millions by Sam Chung in The Toronto Star.

The Text: The shock of winning $21.4 million in a lottery was nothing compared to the jolts Craig Henshaw felt later.

They were not pleasant.

The story of Craig Henshaw, multi-millionaire, began one day last September when Craig Henshaw, high school teacher, went digging through his pockets for the $35 he had left to pay for some groceries. He had just enough cash to get him through the rest of the week, before the first paycheque of the new school year would come through.

He handed over the cash, plus a 2-month-old Lotto Max ticket. It had been plastered to the side of his fridge while he had spent the summer backpacking in Europe with his girlfriend.

Loud bells and alarms went off. The phone on the lottery machine began to ring.

“Initially, I thought I’d won $21,000,” Henshaw, 43, says. “Then the lady on the other end of the phone chuckled. It turned out that the digital readout on the ticket machine didn’t have enough space for all the digits.”

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Getting Political Power From Education

So how do we go about empowering citizens with a broken public education system?

America’s Idiot Rich

The Article: America’s Idiot Rich by Alex Pareene in Salon.

The Text: Some unknown but alarming number of ultra-rich Americans are now basically totally delusional and completely divorced from reality. This is now an inescapable fact, confirmed by multiple media accounts of billionaire thought and an entire special issue of the New York Times Magazine.

Here’s a brief list of insane things that are apparently common knowledge among the billionaire class:

-That President Obama and the Democratic Party have treated wealthy finance industry titans maliciously and unfairly.
-That the fact that they are perversely wealthy and growing richer during a period of mass unemployment and staggering debt is a sign that the economy is functioning correctly.
-That poor people, and not the finance industry, are responsible for the financial crisis and subsequent recession.
-That the ultra-wealthy are wealthy because they are smarter and work harder than everybody else, and that they are resented for their success.
-That the ultra-wealthy in general, and finance industry executives in particular, are the victims of widespread prejudice akin to that faced by ethnic minorities.

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How American Media “Works”

Even more sad, PBS doesn’t even get a nod in the list.