Category: Politics

Zakaria: The real burden on the U.S. economy

The United States isn’t broke. Taxes are at a historic low and have been that way for many years. The United States is one of the highest ranking countries for being business friendly, especially with low regulation and has been that way for many years.

What is hampering the U.S. Economy? Trends over many years of the United States not improving ( or maintaining ) its infrastructure, not investing enough in education and increased consumer spending at the cost of savings.

From Wikipedia

Fareed Rafiq Zakaria is an Indian-American journalist and author. From 2000 to 2010, he was a columnist for Newsweek and editor of Newsweek International. In 2010 he became Editor-At-Large of Time magazine. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, and a frequent commentator and author about issues related to international relations, trade and American foreign policy. In 2010, the government of India honored him with the Padma Bhushan for his contribution towards journalism.

An American’s Guide To British News.

I enjoy reading Google News. For each news story there are links to different news sites around the world. The reader gets to see how other parts of the world see an event and possibly hear about events s/he would not otherwise.

The problem is that sometimes you don’t know how to evaluate a particular source’s take on an event. Being an American, I know to take anything Fox News states, beyond the weather, with a grain of salt. Google News has included some interesting news sources over the years as they have refined their algorithms. For instance, until Google News got its act together I enjoyed “news articles” from “Pizza Face” posting from the tech blog slashdot.org and the Russian news site “Pravda”.

Thanks to the good people of Vegan Fitness, I know have a guide to at least the British news sites.

In Britain, there are 3 distinct types of news sites/newspapers:

  1. Broadsheets
  2. Tabloids
  3. Hybrids

The broadsheets are the serious news sources, the tabloids are like our supermarket rags and the hybrids are tabloids that masquerade as broadsheets ( serious news sources ).   The tabloids are nicknamed “The Red Tops” for printing their titles in red.  I have been told that “The Daily Mail” actually supported Hitler.   The news sites/newspapers that are hybrids between broadsheets ( serious news ) and tabloids are felt to be dangerous by a number of the British.  The hybrids are written at a low reading level for people who want to be fed material for rants about how the British way of life is threatened by science, immigrants, gays and liberal political activists.   “The Daily Mail” is supposed to be a prime example of the hybrids.   The people who gave me this opinion felt that the BBC was straddling between being a broadsheet, while having some tabloid elements to it like celebrity news, etc.

Biased To The Left Biased To The Right
Broad Sheet The Guardian

The Observer

The Independent

 The Times

The Daily Telegraph
Tabloid The Daily Mirror The Sun

The Daily Star
Hybrid The Daily Mail

To sum it up with a common joke from the British sitcom “Yes Minister“:

Hacker: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?

Bernard: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.