dnsmith, what are your unbiased media sources?
It depends on the issues. For Economic issues the Wall Street Journal or CNN Money (which has been accused of being to the left).[/quote]I SAID they were accused, I did not say they were. But now I see part of your problem, you can't understand straight English.
The Wall Street Journal is liberal in reporting. "In a 2004 study, Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo calculated the ideological bias of 20 media outlets by counting the frequency they cited particular think tanks and comparing that to the frequency that legislators cited the same think tanks. They found that the news reporting of The [Wall Street] Journal was the most liberal, more liberal than NPR or The New York Times. The study did not factor in editorials." -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal#Reporting_bias
So it is verifiable that your "unbiased" journals have biases. Therefore they are not unbiased sources. Since you used all caps when mentioning "unbiased sources" it must mean a lot to you...sadly it's a fact your sources are biased. So I hope you have enough intellectual honesty to come to terms with the disjunct between your false perceptions and reality.[/quote]Some say they are biased, but aside Daily Kos, Mother Jones et all, they are not left wing. Liberal or Moderate is fine with me, and they tend to tell the story before the commentary, which I told you I ignore.
It sounds like you need advice on (as-close-as-possible to) unbias sources. My advice is you can commonly find largely unbiased reports in government releases (like Congressional Budget Office),
I do use the CBO for government information, as I also read the Bureau of Labor and some other Govt sources but I also treat them with a grain of salt because they are sometimes as biased as the NYTimes. I trust the world bank as far as I can throw them. (A classmate of mine made his career with them and he made me aware of their biases. I could care less what disturbs you, but I sift the garbage and throw out the commentary which actually has no place in the news.
So the question becomes why believe the bias you read and not some elses? Because yours are factual? Good answer. We can verify that too. If we return to the reason we are discussing this, you were alluding that the rich do not benefit from government aide. That is factually verifiable claim and turns out to be absolutely false. Let me post some research for you to scan regarding the overwhelming aide that the rich receive from public funds:
Factually verifiable from whom? A government source?
"About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006."
My lord, do you believe that? The government spends almost $500 billion a year on various safety net programs to include food stamps, Medicaid, direct aid, extension of unemployment etc etc etc. Looks like your source is not a good one. But yes, the government does spend corporate subsidies, like to solar energy companies that go bankrupt, supporting key industries the that are critical to governmental functions. I agree they should, but they are not but about 20% of your "verifiable sources" tell you. BTW, the CATO institute is very RW in bias.
"To clarify what is and isnt corporate welfare, a no-bid Iraq contract for the prestigious Halliburton, would not be considered corporate welfare because the government technically directly receives some good or service in exchange for this expenditure. Based on the Pentagons Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) findings of $1.4 billion of overcharging and fraud"
That distresses me too, but are you sure your source is correct? The one below is not Verifiable? No, erroneous.
Think by Numbers » Government Spends More on Corporate Welfare Subsidies than Social Welfare Programs
This site provides numerous citations of unbiased reporting and numbers regarding how the rich benefit as the poor lag far behind. But ask yourself, do the rich need welfare? Are they the one's that have to decide between taking a lunch or going without so that her son doesn't have to do without?
Since that site is obviously incorrect, why would you trust it?
So the rich, despite their superior talent, receive more government aide than low income and poverty-stricken who desperately need it. Is this how you understand welfare from CNN and WSJ? In case you don't trust anything other than WSJ, they too identify corporate welfare as factually far larger than low income welfare.
Factually? I think not. Do a little research. I always do before I believe any source.
Our disagreement arises out of how you view the human. You clearly don't think humans have inherent value. That money determines their value. Why do you think this?
I said, ROTFLMAO! In fact I view humans in a more sympathetic manner than you do. It is the basis of my basic liberal positions. Perhaps it was my having lived in 3rd world countries, but my compassion for humans stems from my experiences with truly poor people rather than the typical relatively poor in the US who tend to be below the government determined poverty line. Having said that, since you actually do not strike me as a liberal based on your posts, but rather a left wing extremists who tend to blur the lines such that you are "liberals with borders" and I am a "liberal without borders."
This is not a competition for who has more compassion. That is a different issue and a personal one that only a misanthrope would decide over a message board. You must have a delicate ego that needs flattery often.
It has nothing to do with ego, but rather the insulting way you accused me of not having compassion for the poor, which of course is a lot of BS.
So I grant you are greatly more compassionate than me. Even if you are more compassionate than me, that doesn't change what you believe: that poor people deserve/earned their situation and the rich deserve/earned theirs.
You still do not understand English if you believe that crap.
Neither is this a competition between countries. Justice is not based on relative comparisons. If you had to decide between Hitler or Stalin, would your analysis of justice conclude that Germany was just? Is that how we should understand inherent human value?
I have never suggested that. What I said, and you obviously did not understand the language in which I expressed it, is, "the poorest people on this earth deserve our aid before we start to improve the life style of the "relatively poor" in any other country. If you can't understand that you do not have the compassion for the poor you are trying to imply you have. My concept of justice is, if you break the law you deserve to be punished, period.
The homeless in America may be better off in potential access to sustenance than the poorest African.
The homeless in America is a minute % of our people, and I have compassion for them and help them in any way possible
.Is that any way to understand inherent human dignity?
Certainly not the way you think I do.
What if both suffer malnutrition, preventable and treatable diseases, lack of medical care? Does the one that doesn't get spit (like they do in America) become suddenly deserving of compassion whereas the impoverished American deserves continued malnutrition, poor/no education, diseases and rarely affordable medical care in a land that gives twice as much aide to rich people?
Did you fail to read where I believe in universal medical care? Or are you just too ignorant to understand what you read.
I shall reiterate, when I have a specific amount of money to give, I will give it to a charity which helps the least wealthy people in the world before I give it to someone who is relatively poor in that they are less wealth than those who have more wealth. That should be easily understood, unless you are totally unfeeling toward the least of our human brethren.
If you choose to believe that people should not be held responsible for their actions you are a lost cause to humanity. If you choose to believe that adding some dignity to someone who is relatively poor instead of someone who is destitute with no food or means to get it, but instead can be fed by local food pantry or "soup kitchen". That is the difference between, you have no compassion for the poverty you can't see, but would rather improve the life style of the relative poor.
That said, there are a very small % of our population who slip through the safety net. We should take care of them before the above described relative poor.
One of our problems in the US is, we don't have a consistent solution to handle those who slip through the net. Most of our homeless people have mental issues, some of whom I know, but can't get help for simple reasons the government does not recognize. Many years ago, a man wealthy from construction industry offered the city of Atlanta to build a series of small "efficiency" apartments on his own land in what ever number was required to handle the homeless. The city of Atlanta turned him down because the size did not meet code for the size per individual inhabitant. So instead he built another luxury development and made a few more million $$$s. I see that as abject stupidity. Or the homeless person who can't get food stamps because he has no physical address. Or the government rules which require the housing authority to evict a person for even minor and non habituation drugs. There are technicalities such as the current federal laws which prohibit putting a mentally ill homeless person in an institution which will house him/her and feed them. I see those issues as the lack of compassion for the truly needy.
What distresses me also are the left wing extremists who try to judge those of us really trying to help the truly needy instead of helping fewer to a level of dignity. Fortunately for us we have a Capitalist Economic system, albeit a regulated one, which allows our government to collect sufficient revenues to address many of the social needs of our less fortunate citizens. Unfortunately countries like India do not have such a system, mainly because of the population exceeding their fiscal potential, thus they need help more than the absolute majority of US people in poverty. The welfare system in India is private, middle class Indian families (certainly not as well off as our lower middle class) hire several servants which tends to be all some of those poor can get. There are some free clinics, enough to tend to maybe half a million people country wide in a country of 1 billion people. Some people who sound like you wail and cry about us off shoring some labor intensive jobs which in the US at minimum wage makes the output uncompetitive, even though studies show that between 1 and 1.7 jobs are created in the US with minimal wage loss for every job outsourced. I cannot abide the phony liberals who wail about that.
So to recap, I do have compassion for the poor, the poor of the whole world, not just the relative poor in the US, but the truly poor in the entire world, to whom I give a couple of $1,000 a month when I can dig it up. I support the entire costs of a small foster home in Tamil Nadu run by a Catholic order, to include utilities, food, school books and supplies and the needs of the staff who get no salary. When you accuse me of no human compassion it is obvious you have your head firmly implanted in your excremental orifice.