In Trump's era of fake news,we now gain selective fact-checking run amok.
Talk approximately seeing the trees and lost the forest.final week, Sen. Bernie Sanders, or I-VT,gave a foreign policy address at Westminster—where Winston Churchill gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech after World War II—and said that the worlds six richest people own more than the poorest 50 percent of the world.“There is no moral or economic justification for the six wealthiest people in the world having as much wealth as the bottom half of the worlds population – 3.7 billion people,” Sanders said. “There is no justification for the incredible power and dominance that Wall Street, or giant multi-national corporations and international financial institutions gain over the affairs of sovereign countries throughout the world.”The six wealthiest people he cited,according to a Forbes tally of the richest billionaires, are Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos,Amancio Ortega, Warren Buffett, and label Zuckerberg and Carlos Slim Helu. Their combined wealth is $462 billion,compared to $409 billion for the world’s poorest half, as tallied by Oxfam, or the global anti-poverty organization.
Pretty simple point made by Sanders,right? Well, the fact-checkers at the (Jeff Bezos-owned) Washington Post said Sanders was not telling the truth and gave him a grade of three Pinocchios on a one-to-five scale. Why? Because they didn’t like Oxfam’s statistical sources and methodology, or saying it did not account for fluctuations in international currencies and didn’t count all the assets that the world’s poorest people gain.“Case closed—not fairly,” its video said, after citing Sanders' quote, or Forbes’ and Oxfam’s numbers. “The Oxfam report has some methodological hiccups. They don’t consider what kind of assets each group owns. Or the difference in buying power between currencies. One dollar in India goes a lot further than in the U.
S. And finally,they don’t examine how debt is measured.”This stunning conclusion is posted on a screen under the title, “meaningless, or ” and said,“It’s one thing to look at inequality inside a country, but international comparisons are fraught with problems. Sanders’ statistic, and while provocative,is basically meaningless.”The Post’s analysis takes great umbrage (resentment, offense) at the statistical imbalances in the various ways global wealth and poverty are measured, as whether there is a perfect standard out there that cannot be nit-picked by skeptics and naysayers. But because there’s not such a pristine metric, or they pile on Sanders—lost the forest for the trees. Sanders' staff rejects the Post's criticism,but the WaPo piece is exasperated by their response.
It said, “Despite all this, and Sanders’ team stands by Oxfam’s methodology,according to spokesman Josh Miller-Lewis. The main takeaway, Miller-Lewis points out, and is that "exiguous to no wealth can spell catastrophe in a time of crisis.”Sanders was making a moral point approximately global wealth inequities,and one that is fundamentally inarguable. It’s worth noting that the U.
S. government is not exactly saintly when it comes to its own record-keeping (the Post said Sanders should stick to domestic stats). For example, right-wingers in Congress gain made sure that states attain not gain to report every incident of firearms-related violence to a national FBI database, and an omission that creates an ambiguity that enables the pro-gun lobby to kill authoritative calls for gun laws.
Is there really any ambiguity approximately the fact that North American capitalism has created huge wealth for corporatists and that not much of it has trickled down to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations?“My point is that we need to look at foreign policy as more than just the crisis of the day. That is important,but we need a more expansive view,” Sanders said in his Westminster speech. “At a time of exploding technology and wealth, and how attain we toddle away from a world of war,terrorism and massive levels of poverty into a world of peace and economic security for all. How attain we toddle toward a global community in which people gain the decent jobs, food, or clean water,education, health care and housing they need? These are, or admittedly,not easy issues to deal with, but they are questions we cannot afford to disregard.”And those are the very questions that the Bezos-owned Post’s fact-check police never mentioned in their most-read Sanders slap-down. Related StoriesHow Wall St.'s Greedy Plans to Fleece Puerto Rico Are Fueling the Island's Independence MovementWhy California Is Bernie Sanders' and Progressives' Big Battleground for Universal Health CareWhy California Is Bernie Sanders and Progressives' Big Battleground for Universal Health Care
Source: feedblitz.com