The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased. - Michael Parenti

Twelve states in the Great Plains have a wind energy potential greater than the electric use of our entire nation.

Street crime has also increased sharply (, 5/7/96). In the former Soviet Union, women and elderly who once felt free to sit in parks late at night now dare not venture out after dark. Since the overthrow of communism in Hungary, thefts and other felonies have nearly tripled and there has been a 50 percent increase in homicides (, 2/24/92). The police force in Prague today is many times greater than it was under communism, when "relatively few police were needed" (New York Times, 12/18/91). How odd that fewer police were needed in the communist police state than in the free-market paradise.

If the press cannot mold our every opinion, it can frame the perceptual reality around which our opinions take shape. Here may lie the most important effect of the news media: they set the issue agenda for the rest of us, choosing what to emphasize and what to ignore or suppress, in effect, organizing much of our political world for us. The media may not always be able to tell us what to think, but they are strikingly successful in telling us what to think about.