Reading the News Is Fun and Patriotic, But It Sure Can Make You Anxious

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http://www.alternet.org/media/reading-news-fun-and-patriotic-it-sure-can-make-you-anxious



***SNIP


Keeping up with the news should be like that. An informed citizen ought to get a nice buzz from following what's happening. It's part of patriotism. Loving your country requires knowing your country, and knowing about the world it's part of.

But boy can it be depressing. Infuriating, too. Here are some of my Times spit-takes from just the last couple of weeks:

* Nearly six million Americans below the poverty line in 25 states won't get the health insurance the Affordable Care Act gives them because their Republican governors or state legislators are refusing to accept federal money to expand Medicaid.

* Bank lobbyists—big contributors to both Republicans and Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee—basically wrote the bill the committee passed exempting Wall Street from what's left of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul.

* Apple avoided paying taxes on $74 billion between 2009 and 2012 by creating a subsidiary in Ireland with no physical presence and no employees that hasn't filed a tax return in Ireland, the United States or anywhere else. "It is not a shell company," Apple claimed.

* More active-duty American troops committed suicide over the past 12 years than were killed in Afghanistan.

In Sunday's Times, Nathaniel Rich said that the X-rays emitted by full body scanners used in airports by the Transportation Security Administration were so hazardous he took to calling them cancer machines. His piece is part a series called "Anxiety," which the Times has been running since the start of last year. I don't know why they confine that label there; they might as well put the whole paper under that masthead.