Fight Ignorance

This links to an article that provides a little hope for the news: The Economist effect: Not all news media are dumbing it down. Clearly there are downsides to news magazines that would be willing to reduce circulation as Times seems to be considering - but if it gets real news into the hands of people that will consume it... cool.

Another good note for the day: it sounds as if Congress has moved to place federal expenditures in a searchable database that is available online.

Less positive toward the US, the Human Rights Record of the US (published by China in 2003) is an interesting read and includes this statement: "Its (the US's) military spendings for the 2004 fiscal year reaches 400.5 billion US dollars, exceeding the total amount of defense budgets of all other countries in the world in summation"

"Most Wanted" Corporate Human Rights Violators of 2005 lists (and provides brief summaries of) some well-known corporations, including Caterpillar, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Ford Motor Co., Lockheed Martin, Monsanto, Nestle USA, Pfizer, and Wal-Mart, among others.

Read about the differences between the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and a relatively new idea of the GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) on this link at Redefining Progress's website. Politicians and business leaders are excited when the GDP goes up... but does that mean lives are better?