Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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the broader measure of poverty takes into account not only all income sources but also unavoidable expenses, like medical and work costs. Poverty, after all, is determined not by what you bring in but by whether you can live on it.
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Cigarette makers set the mold in the 1950s when they parried growing evidence of tobacco’s causal links to cancer with the creation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, ostensibly an independent group of scientists to study “all phases of tobacco and health.” In reality, the research topics were dictated by the tobacco industry and were designed to persuade the public that smoking was safe.
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The gambit worked—for decades. Despite overwhelming proof that smoking causes cancer, including a blockbuster report from the surgeon general in 1964, the white coats working for Big Tobacco sowed so much doubt that as late as 1970, 68 percent of smokers responded “True” or “Don’t know” when asked if “Cigarette smoking in moderation is safe.” It wasn’t until 1985 that cigarette consumption per capita in America fell below the 1950 level.
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Similarly, only 57 percent of Americans in 2021 agreed that “Most scientists think global warming is happening”—the continuing benefit of a secret communications plan adopted by the American Petroleum Institute in 1998 to portray climate change believers as “out of touch with reality.”
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A CBO study shows that 70 percent of recipients of funding from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families who do not work are afflicted by barriers to employment like mental or physical health issues, lack of child care, or caring for incapacitated relatives.