Added by PressForward
Directed by Lauren Greenfield. With Lauren Greenfield, Portia Antonia Alexis, Limo Bob, George W. Bush. A documentary that investigates the pathologies that have created the richest society the world has ever seen.
Rating ★★★½
"Meritocracy" was coined as satire; the messaging for and against Medicare for All; and Dutch economic historian Rutger Bregman.
A college admissions scandal has highlighted what people refer to as "the myth of meritocracy." But actually, meritocracy itself is a myth. This week, On the Media looks at the satirical origins of the word and what they tell us about why the US embraces it. Plus, the messaging for and against Medicare for All, as well as a historical look at why we don't have universal healthcare. And economic historian and Tucker Carlson antagonist Rutger Bregman.
1. John Patrick Leary [@JohnPatLeary], professor at Wayne State University, on the history of the satirical origins of the word "meritocracy". Listen.
2. Paul Waldman [@paulwaldman1] of The Washington Post on the messaging war over Medicare for All and what the media is getting wrong about the proposal. Listen.
3. Jill Quadagno of [@floridastate] on the history of why the U.S. has shunned universal healthcare. Listen.
4. Rutger Bregman [@rcbregman] on the myths about wealth and who creates it. Listen.
The Los Angeles Business Journal published its 58 Wealthiest Angelenos list (expanded with 8 more people from last year’s), and Pasadena (and the San Gabriel Valley) still had one of its own on it.
Based on a trove of confidential financial records, the Times report offers the first comprehensive look at the inherited fortune and tax dodges that guaranteed Donald Trump a gilded life.
Three reporters spent over a year digging through more than 100,000 pages of documents and chasing down key sources familiar with President Trump’s father and his empire.
The president has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s.
While there are a lot of things one can take away from this stunning, thorough, and long read, the thing that strikes me is what Trump did to attempt to cheat his own father, who had been repeatedly been digging him out of trouble, when he was against the wall. He tried to defraud and steal from his greatest benefactor. How can anyone trust him to fight for America or real Americans when his entire substance as well as facade is a complete sham?
Combined with the millions he’s losing on real estate and other deals over the past decade, one is forced (again) to wonder who exactly is funding him now?
University of Michigan students Griffin St. Onge and Lauren Schandevel have published an online guide that anybody can edit called "Being Not Rich at UM." It's a Google Doc about navigating the costs of college that has grown to more than 80 pages.
The two juniors were inspired to create the guidebook after their student government published its own guide about "cost-effective" living at the university, which St. Onge, a first generation college student, found out-of-touch. Its suggestions included skipping weekly manicures and opting to do your own laundry instead of using a service.
"I didn't really realize the culture of Michigan before coming here," she says. "I had been warned about it a little bit, but I had never met the kind of wealth that some of the students have here by the time I came to university."
Schandevel and St. Onge decided to take matters into their own hands.
Posing as ‘John Barron,’ he claimed he owned most of his father’s real estate empire.
