EthixBytes

(A Collection of Quotes, Comments, Statistics, and News Items)

“Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and the simple minded, however cruel—our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt.”
Novelist Graham Greene.

“The primary reason people do not act like Jesus is because they do not think like Jesus. Although most people own a Bible and know some of its content, most Americans have little idea how to integrate core biblical principles to form a unified and meaningful response to challenges and opportunities of life.”
A Barna Research Group report that only 4% of U.S. adults base their decisions upon a “biblical worldview.”

“There are known knowns. These are things we know we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know that we don’t know.”
Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, clarifying U.S. policy on the war on terror.

“Americans are full of misperceptions about the war and, in particular, about three issues—the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the existence of weapons of mass destruction, and the nature of world opinion. Why? . . . their misconceptions are closely related to their news sources.”
William R. Fore in response to a recent poll that revealed where Americans get their news: 19% from newspapers and 80% radio and TV.

“An estimated 61.1 percent of the Medicare Drug Benefits legislation dollars that will be spent to buy more prescriptions will remain in the hands of drug makers as added profits, an estimated increase of $139 billion over eight years.”
Report by Boston University School of Public Health.

“While headlines continue to tell us how great the economy is doing, states across the U.S. are pulling the plug on desperately needed health coverage for low-income Americans, including about a half-million children. The cruel reality is that Americans at the top are thriving at the expense of the well-being of those as the bottom and, increasingly, in the middle.”
Bob Herbert, New York Times, January 9, 2004.

“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”
Sen. Hubert Humphrey’s Last Speech.

“What does flipping pancakes have to do with how they are going to govern? Our job is to show how government and politics affect people’s lives. The concentration of ownership of the commercial networks has put journalism at a disadvantage . . . .The people who run the networks do what they do at the expense of democracy. The mainstream media has been neutered, and it’s a travesty.”
Bill Moyers of PBS “NOW With Bill Moyers” interviewed by Dianne Holloway.

“Greenspan’s comments [about new jobs replacing lost ones] are the view of a central banker who is much more focused on the benefits of flexible economies and shallow recessions and much less focused on the lives of working families.”
Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.

“A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration’s handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an ‘unnecessary’ war in Iraq and pursuing an ‘unrealistic’ quest against terrorism that might lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat.”
The Washington Post, January 12, 2004.

“Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global warming with mandatory controls, only a fraction of the thousands of U.S. companies with pollution problems—only 50—have signed up and only 14 have set goals. The General Accounting Office concluded in October that Bush’s plan would reduce overall emissions only 2% below what the nation would achieve with no federal program whatsoever.”
Guy Gugliotta, The Washington Post.

“The mid-range estimate is that 24% of plants and animals will be committed to extinction by 2050. We’re not talking about the occasional extinction—we’re talking about 1.25 million species.”
Ecologist Chris Thomas, University of Leeds, who led a 19-member international team studying the effect of global warming in five regions.

“When feminists first made this demand [equal pay for equal work] in the mid-60s, women were paid 69 cents for every dollar a man made. After 30 years of struggle and hark work, we now make 74 cents for every dollar a man makes. At the rate of five cents every 30 years, we can expect to achieve equal pay sometime in the 22^nd century. Except of course, for black and Hispanic women, who are now making 63 cents and 54 cents for every dollar men earn.”
Molly Ivins, syndicated columnist.

Updated Sunday, March 07, 2004