Good for who?

To Convince a Person Against Their Will is of the Same Mind Still

This is interesting article that discusses how people can hold onto mistaken beliefs long after the facts have proved them wrong.  Seems relevant for today's times.


March 25, 2010
New York Times
The Fight Is Over, the Myths Remain
By Brenden Nyhan
Read original article

At the White House signing ceremony for health care legislation on Tuesday, President Obama declared, “In a few moments, when I sign this bill, all of the overheated rhetoric over reform will finally confront the reality of reform.” For Democrats nervous about political fallout from the bill in the November midterm elections, it’s reassuring to imagine that the myths about the legislation — that it provides free coverage to illegal immigrants, uses taxpayer money to subsidize abortions and mandates end-of-life counseling for the elderly — will be dispelled by its passage.

But public knowledge of the plan’s contents may not improve as quickly as Democrats hope. While some of the more outlandish rumors may dissipate, it is likely that misperceptions will linger for years, hindering substantive debate over the merits of the country’s new health care system. The reasons are rooted in human psychology.

Visual Guide to the U.S. Budget

Here is the 2009 U.S. budget breakdown graphed to scale for each expenditure.  This is an amazing piece of work.  Further proof that a budget IS a policy statement.  Click to get the full image, then R-click to save the file so you can view the entire image within your own graphics viewer.  (yes, its huge)

[ See original graph ]

Stingy or Generous?

The notion that the U.S. is a generous nation that spends vast amounts of money on foreign aid is an integral part of how Americans think of themselves.  The actual numbers show a very different picture.  In fact, while in gross dollar amounts you could say we give a lot, relative to nearly all other developed countries, the U.S. ranks at, or nearly at the bottom of the list of per capita donations by  nations.

OECD = Organization of Economic Development and Cooperation (top 30 developed countries)
ODA = Official Development Assistance

While in a straight dollar amount it would appear the U.S. is quite generous.......

.....on a per capita basis the U.S. ranks dead last among developed countries.

Furthermore, based on the commitments that were made by the OECD countries and the targets that were  set for delivering development assistance, we are far behind what we promised and even further behind what is needed to solve some of the problems.

Here is a break down for the U.S. of the assistance we deliver.

[ Read original source ]

WalMart Goes Green

Found these presentations that Walmart is giving and was impressed by how deeply they are thinking about this, as well as how quick they are acting and how widespread the effect has become.   As the world's largest corporation, this will have a profound impact on everyone up and down their logisitics chain.

Don't believe it?  Check these out:

Walmart Goes Green (part-1)

Walmart Goes Green (part-2)