Listen up baby it's like this.

Occasionally Salon has to stuff chicken cutlets down it's index page in order to get your attention, and sometimes it needs to rub a little ice on it's feature articles in order to get noticed. Salon understands in order to make it in the online publishing world, it needs to be likable, readable, have straight, blow-dried graphics.

If you weren't coming home all the time with other site's pixel dust on your collar, maybe Salon wouldn't have to try so hard.

I trust the Washington Post as a source of the truth as much as I trust the New York Times, or even Salon.com for that matter. In order for this story to have impact, you would have to ignore the white elephant in the room. The Washington Post, the New York Times etc...are nothing more than corporate owned shills for anti-democratic governments and the status quo of supporting the haves over the have-nots. Stop throwing so much respect their way. The mention of ethics and journalism in the same sentence should be avoided.

Another issue of note is the tendency to swarm like a pack of wolves on those who choose to speak in public. This over scrutiny will eventually limit the number of voices to:

Those who do active service in the military - preferably combat experience.(We all know now you can not have an opinion on war if you haven't served.)

Those who never run afoul of the law.

Those who never make mistakes in college.

Those who never cheat on their taxes.

Those who never cheat on a spouse, lie, plagiarize, gamble, overuse prescription drugs, and the other myriad of human frailties that all of us at one time in our lives are guilty of. What is the point of making a large issue of minor plagiarisms, when larger lies, with detrimental results to our democracy, exist unchallenged?

In another, yet truer paradigm, we would report on the miracle of good reporting, or the accidental truths that sometimes get published "major" newspapers. Loose some of this journalism school respect for the tired old monopolies of human thought. Try to remember that these bastions of truth were all started by publishing magnates whose most obvious goal was to do a land grab for power via control over the public's opinion.

I have a new idea. The concept of plagiarism as an ethical breech is a self imposed restraint on true free speech. Words, ideas, concepts, sentences, paragraphs, even out right lies should not be patentable, copyrightable, creditable or in any way not in the public domain. They should be for use as anyone sees fit without requirement to credit. I say let free speech run its true course. Anyone can say anything at any time without ethical, moral, or criminal/civil law constraints. Then real people can stand up and be heard and real statements of original thought might be proclaimed.

I did want the username "Sheeple" but it was already taken.

The irony of responding to a statement about the marginalization of voices, by marginalizing an opinion based on...a spelling mistake, or perhaps throwing negative comments at a username...could only be achieved by someone using a trademarked (spin off character from Happy Days) as a nom de plume.

Your ironic, but someone over the top satirical response is well taken, but will probably go right over the heads of most readers.

The individual's poverty is often a man made affair. Corrupt people in government creating famine, using food as leverage, not sharing the wealth of the nation with the people.

Easterly has no answer for Darfur. Helping an individual do anything in the Sudan is pointless when the Janjaweed are murdering the individuals. You obviously have to deal with the governments or institutions of power in poor countries. They are most often the cause of the poverty in the first place. Governments are people.

I also take offence at the distain with which 'rich white kids from America' is referenced. He seems to think that an educated person with training and a will to help those less fortunate doesn't have anything to contribute.

Please note that William Easterly is a rich white person from America.

Then hire Joan Walsh's nanny to look after it while you are on vacation. Kid's don't cost too much. About $5,000 for the birth, then around $3,000 per year. If you live in California, and as long as our senators don't make felons out of them, you can get a nanny for pennies on the dollar. If you are on a budget, because you might want to buy a pair of shoes or something important like that, you can buy used baby equipment. Pacifiers that are only half chewed on, and car seats that have at least one working buckle.

Cost benefit analysis.

$5,000 down. $3,000 per year for 20 years. Rough total: $65,000 (they can get a scholarship to college). Now assuming you are going to need to be taken care of for the last 15 years of your own life. $20,000 per year at 15 years. $300,000. I'd say a pretty good return on investment. Fuck it. Have a few. It's exponential!