Journalists From The United States

"In a city riddled with dysfunctional institutions, the CBO has become one of the few organs of Congress that actually work. It is the arbiter of facts, a call-it-as-we-see-it outfit that is viewed as largely immune to political pressure."

"The 1980s broke a pattern in which the federal government ran big deficits only in wartime. The deficit topped $200 billion a year from 1983 through 1992. They would have been even bigger if Reagan hadn’t flinched on taxes, accepting significant tax increases in 1982 and 1984."

"“From the mid-1930s to the 1970s, the government made a set of commitments that led to expectations on the part of the American people about what their government owes them,” says Robert Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “And they are totally unprepared to go back to a different world.”"

"Adjusted for inflation, the federal government spent more on Medicare and Medicaid in 2011 than it spent on everything in 1960."

"Reagan enjoyed many victories as president. But starving the beast was not one of them. When he left office, federal spending was 20 percent higher, adjusted for inflation, than it had been when he arrived, and he never found a way to pay for it. In the twenty years before Reagan became president—under Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Carter—the budget deficit averaged well under 1 percent of GDP. In Reagan’s eight years, it averaged 4.25 percent of GDP."

"Except for four unusual years at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, the federal government has spent more than it took in every year for the past four decades. It borrows the difference, essentially promising that taxpayers in the future will pick up the tab for government spending today."

"The share of income most American families pay in federal taxes has been falling for more than thirty years. Today, Americans pay less of their income in taxes than citizens of nearly every other developed country."

"“The fiscal path we are on today is simply not sustainable. These deficits that we are incurring on an annual basis are like a cancer, and they are truly going to destroy this country from within unless we have the common sense to do something about it. “We face the most predictable economic crisis in history.”"

"Panetta summed up Reaganomics in a single sentence: “A significant tax cut was enacted at the same time that defense spending went up and…entitlement programs were also expanding.”"

"The federal government was smaller—4.3 percent of GDP in 1931—and narrower. About 70 percent of the spending went for three things: Defense, veterans’ benefits, and interest payments on the national debt. “The federal budget was not then, as it later became, a machine constantly generating new programs and expansions of old ones,” Herbert Stein wrote."

"In all, $1 of every $5 the federal government spent in 2011 went to defense, and about 20 cents of that $1 was spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"For every dollar the United States spends on the military, it spends another nickel on foreign aid, international development aid, and humanitarian assistance. Yet in a CNN poll in March 2011, the typical respondent estimated about 10 percent of the entire federal budget goes for “aid to foreign countries for international development and humanitarian assistance.” The reality: about 1 percent. That’s another problem with budgeting: the public makes woefully wrong assumptions about virtually every aspect of it."

"Eliminating the federal workforce entirely would have pared the federal budget deficit in 2011 by only one-third."

"Nearly all the growth in the federal budget over the next ten years [2013-2022] is going to come from spending on healthcare and interest payments unless something changes. “You can’t fix this without doing health care,” says Paul Ryan. “I mean, health care is the driver of our debt.” And, as he and others routinely observe, even though the United States spends far more per person on health care than any other country, it isn’t close to having the world’s healthiest population."

"... Mr. Rutten ... really does know what he's talking about when it's come to religion ... Not to make it too intimate, too warm or friendly ... the critical thing is this: what is most important to him is most hateful to me."

"The Christian worldview teaches that there is a short tether binding beliefs to the values and behaviors that flow from them. If the beliefs are false, then the behavior will eventually — but inevitably — be warped...."

"During a 40-year career, Rutten moved seamlessly across The Times’ — city bureau chief, metro reporter, editorial writer, assistant national editor, book critic and columnist. He was part of The Times’ team of journalists that won the for the paper’s coverage of the . “Original in thought and lyrical in print, his work is witty, well-reported, passionate, yet staunchly nonpartisan,” Times staff writer Thomas Curwen wrote in the paper’s 2005 Pulitzer nomination of Rutten for commentary. Rutten used his “Regarding Media” column to untangle the complexities of L.A., the nation’s s and the eccentricities of s."

"When the social and political history of Los Angeles in the late 20th century comes to be written, it’s likely that two men will stand out as fundamentally transformative leaders. One will be , the five-term mayor who changed the city’s politics and realigned its economic course; the other will be Cardinal , the Hollywood-born prelate who has led what is now America’s largest as archbishop for the last quarter-century, a post from which he will retire Sunday on his 75th birthday, as church law requires."

"One of American politics’ most comforting nostrums is the notion that we always are united by far more than what divides us. It’s a sentiment repeats frequently in his speeches, and both the president and California Gov. are relying on it to help them move toward resolution of government’s worst budgetary crisis in generations. A comprehensive new survey of the American electorate by the nonpartisan , however, indicates that the most politically engaged Americans now are fundamentally opposed to compromise, divided on virtually every basic national question and separated from each other by everything from their race to the choice of where they get their news. Moreover, the increasing numbers of independents, who’ve theoretically pushed national politics to the center with their preference for middle-of-the-road policies, no longer are particularly moderate. California has traversed this sort of political landscape for more than a decade, and now the rest of the nation seems poised to discover that it’s a difficult and discomforting place."

"... the arrival of any new technology that has significant power and practical potential always brings with it a wave of visionary enthusiasm that anticipates the rise of a utopian social order. ... From the coming of the , to the introduction of the telegraph, , motion pictures, centrally generated electrical power, automobile, radio, television, nuclear power, , and the computer (to name just a few), this has been the recurring theme: celebrate! The moment of redemption is at hand."

"What do philosophers need to know about technology? I mean, of course, philosophers who want to think and write about technology in fruitful ways. What kind of knowledge do we need to have? And how much?"

"Ethical responsibility ... involves more than leading a decent, honest, truthful life, as important as such lives certainly remain... Our moral obligations ... must include a willingness to engage others in the difficult work of defining what the crucial choices are that confront technological society and how intelligently to confront them."

"... In [the] of , spiritual and working life was divided into precise units of time, the , as a way to magnify the strength of the monks' religious devotion. This regimen gave rise to a need for devices that could measure time: hence the development of the first simple, reliable clocks."

"[About Donald Trump calling media "The enemy of the people"]: That stuff doesn't bother me. I've done a bunch of Trump rallies when I'm sitting in the press pin, and people turn around and boo you, and it's the least threatening thing in the world. If anyone tells you it is, the're lying to you. You walk out and people say "Oh, hey! I saw you in this" and they just take a picture. It's wrestling. It's fictional wrestling. It's part of the whole thing. The man is in the wrestling hall of fame."

"Through the scattering, thinning mist the horizon was magically filling with ships—ships of every size and description, ships that casually maneuvered back and forth as though they had been there for hours. There appeared to be thousands of them. It was a ghostly armada that somehow had appeared from nowhere. Pluskat stared in frozen disbelief, speechless, moved as he had never been before in his life. At that moment the world of the good soldier Pluskat began falling apart. He says in those first moments he knew, calmly and surely, that "this was the end for Germany." "Block," said Pluskat, "it’s the invasion. There must be ten thousand ships out there." Block said, "What way are these ships heading?" Pluskat, phone in hand, looked out the aperture of the bunker and reported, "Right for me.""

"What I write about is not war but the courage of man."

"Chris Wallace: People Were Scared When Mike Wallace Showed Up on Youtube"

"Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic, according to Opinion: Chris Wallace leaves CNN to go 'where the action' is. Why it matters (November 12,2024)"

"The U.S. hitting dozens of key targets in the Middle East, the strikes retaliation for that drone attack that killed three American soldiers at a base in Jordan, which the U.S. blames on Iranian-backed militants. In a statement, President Biden saying, while he doesn't seek war, quote, "If you harm an American, we will respond." But in an already volatile region, some worry where this will lead."

"I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion. But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable."

"Wallace, 77, is what you might call a member of mainstream media. In fact, you might say he embodies mainstream media. In 2021, he left Fox News, where he hosted the conservative-leaning network’s most even-handed show, “Fox News Sunday.” (A quick check of X shows that many of the more right-wing viewers still haven’t forgiven him for asking Donald Trump tough questions in 2020.) Before that, he worked at ABC, NBC and local TV in Chicago. He started his career as a newspaper reporter."

"Cheer up! the worst is yet to come!"

"My first assignment for Down Beat was to do an interview with Milt Jackson, whom I didn't know and who was not a very easy interview. I asked several of my musician friends. But the fortunate thing was that he was recording for Atlantic, and Down Beat arranged for me to attend the session. He was recording with Coleman Hawkins, whom I had at that time already befriended. In fact, Coleman did a very big thing for me in terms of establishing me in the musicians' circle. Coleman was known for never buying anybody a drink. It's not that he was cheap, but he once explained it to me. He said, "You buy somebody a drink. Then they buy you one. You wind up drinking more than you really want." But he was noted for not doing that. We had become friendly. Coleman had this big, booming voice. Even in a noisy bar you could hear him over the crowd. His voice really carried. He said to me, "Danny. What are you drinking?" Everybody turned around and looked. That was like my initiation. Anyway, Coleman was recording with Milt Jackson. I had a little bit – he could see that I – after the session, when I started talking to Milt, that Milt was – he didn’t know me from Adam. Who is this guy? I was not – I couldn’t say that I was an experienced interviewer by then. So Coleman came over and just put his arm around and said, "He’s okay." Then Milt opened up."

"As an unintended result of the Nazi occupation [of Denmark, where Morgenstern lived at the time], jazz became more popular than ever—a phenomenon universal to countries under the Hitler jackboot. In France, Django Reinhardt enjoyed the greatest acclaim of his career, and even in Germany, there were clandestine groups of jazz fans who'd meet to listen to records. Jazz was anathema to the Nazis. who considered it a mongrel affront to Aryan "culture," the product of an unholy alliance between Africans and Jews. But to those who hated the Nazis, jazz stood for freedom, for democracy, and for the spirit of America, which, especially after Pearl Harbor, seemed to embody hope for a better future."

"While most first-time visitors wanted to see the Statue of Liberty (arriving by ocean liner, I'd already seen it) or the Empire State Building, I wanted to go to Fifty-Second Street, that legendary block of jazz clubs I'd read so much about. It wasn't much to look at from the outside, though the names on the various marquees and sandwich boards made me drool. History tells us that by the spring of 1947, the street was well into its decline and fall, and to be sure, there were signs touting strippers and comedians. But having Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, and Billie Holiday all on the same block wasn't shabby. I soon discovered that it was possible to hear a lot of music from outside the clubs, if their wasn't too much traffic noise and the doorman didn't chase you away. Eventually I learned how to nurse a beer through several sets of music by drinking from the bottle, which was opaque, instead of from a glass, which the bartender could easily spot when empty, or, if I wanted to stick around all night, to tip the bartender well on the first transaction, after which he'd leave me alone with my empty bottle."

"Then the next thing we did, which was in 1955, Art Tatum had a trio at Storyville [in Boston, Mass]. I really wanted Tatum solo. Guitar and bass – it's a fine – but I wanted to hear him himself. So we propositioned him. That turned out to be something that he immediately responded to. So we made sure that we got the best piano on campus and had it tuned to a T. I wrote a piece about him. The concert was terrific. ... Tatum played wonderfully. Then when we took him back to Boston and thanked him profusely, he then said – and this was something that I think jolted me and gave me maybe in the back of my mind the thought that I might want to get involved in this kind of thing – he said, "I want to thank you, because this is the first time I've done a solo concert all by myself." What he meant by that was that he had of course performed publicly solo piano before, but always as part of a program where there were other attractions. 1955 is a year before his death. It's astonishing."

"Once, when his wife suggested that he attend church on Sunday for the sake of the children, Hale answered, “My creed is truth, wherever it may lead, and I believe that no creed is finer than this (the 100-inch telescope).”"

"Whatever gravity was, it must work, because he (Galileo) had the math to prove it."

"The universe is a work in progress."

"It is indeed like that, how often we are held by prejudice, so that we either do not admit what is before our eyes or bow as much as possible to a preconceived opinion because of the perverse wont of human nature. Nor do I except myself from that weakness."

"One would imagine that those who write about Communist theory would trouble to learn something about it."

"every issue, no matter how small, the bipartisan tory coalition saw one fundamental issue: who shall control the nation's destiny the handful of Wall Street monopolists or the masses of the people?"

"Lack of labor unity in Germany-for which the leaders of the Social-Democratic Party were primarily responsible, just as the leaders of the A. F. of L. are chiefly to blame for the division in our own labor movement-made possible the triumph of fascism through the duping of the middle classes and farmers In France and Spain, on the other hand, labor unity was the foundation on which was built the People's Front alliance of workers, farmers, and small business and professional people, through which the road was blocked to fascism. In our own country, the A. F. of L's executive council, by extending the split into the political field, is greatly increasing the danger of a reactionary victory. A united labor movement would overnight become a powerful attracting force for the farmers and middle classes and would help stiffen the spines of the faint-hearted New Dealers and progressives in Congress."

"in advanced capitalist countries the party of the proletariat, as well as the cultural movement of the proletariat, goes forward not through alliance with the liberals, but in irreconcilable struggle against them. Our allies are those who, breaking with treacherous bourgeois liberalism, seek their way, however falteringly, toward the world of all power to the workers. These, still filled with many of their bourgeois prejudices, require not sermons and decrees, not "Communist snobbery", as Lenin called it,but a personal approach and comradely guidance. And let us remember that these new allies are coming not merely to the proletarian literary movement, which in this country is at present very weak, but to the knowledge, the experience, the revolutionary clearsightedness and intransigence of a movement that is international in scope, that sets itself heroic goals embracing every field of human activity."

"The recent history of international Social-Democracy, both "left" and right, demonstrates that there is no middle-of-the-road between reform and revolution, that Communism, the Communism of the Communist International and its sections throughout the world, offers the only way out of the ghastly blind-alley of capitalism for all producers of hand and brain."

"What the liberals who advocate that the United States pursue the isolationist course desired by Hitler, Mussolini, the Mikalo, Chamberlain, and our own Hearsts and Coughlins fail to understand is that domestic and foreign policies are essentially a unit. The aggressions and banditry of the fascist dictatorships in their relations with other countries are the external expression of the policy of enslavement and terror at home."

"The future will not be fashioned by a few individuals, no matter how gifted, sitting down and cutting ingenious patterns, nor even by the efforts of governments alone. It is being fashioned by the action of the peoples of all countries, by their blood and sweat-yes, and by their vision too. The middle-class men and women of America have every reason not to permit themselves to be diverted away from this historic mainstream by illusory schemes and plans that have no roots in life; on the contrary, every consideration of the present and future should impel them to join fully with their brothers and sisters of other classes, particularly of the working class, in the great liberating war that alone can bring a great liberating peace."

"the pipers of reaction, despite themselves, also perform a positive function. Their diagnosis is wrong, their remedies are dangerous, they are quacks and shameless hypocrites, but they call attention to the fundamental maladies of our day. Certainly the New Dealers have no cause to be holier-than-thou. Without the New Deal and its trail of broken promises, there might never have been the Share-Our-Wealth Clubs and the Union for Social Justice. This is election year, but the question of which is the bigger and better circus cannot forever blot out the question of bread. There is an awakening in the land, and pipers of a new day are arising in the thousands of men and women who are moving toward farmer-labor action against threatening disaster. Therein lies the hope of America."

"the political situation in the past year and a half cannot be viewed in simple terms of growing strength of reaction. On the contrary, it is the strength of the democratic mass movement, the overwhelming Roosevelt victory in the 1936 election, and the tremendous growth and strike achievements of the C.I.O. that have caused the economic overlords to organise a widening offensive in an effort to halt and disrupt the legions of democracy. To defeat this offensive, to guarantee for our country "democracy-and more democracy," security, and peace, unity is needed, unity behind the recovery program, unity in the creation in every locality and on a national scale of a democratic front in the elections such as emerged with notable results in the last New York City campaign. The time is short in which to achieve this unity, but it is not yet too late."

"Let us not be blind to our own India: the Negro people. The two situations are not entirely identical, but it is a question whether the differences are in our favor. Though there has been improvement, can it be maintained that the treatment still accorded our 13,000,000 black fellow-Americans doesn't hurt both the war and the peace?"