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What Really Happened? Stella Liebeck, 79-years-old, was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson's car having purchased a cup of McDonald's coffee. After the car stopped, she tried to hold the cup securely between her knees while removing the lid. However, the cup tipped over, pouring scalding hot coffee onto her lap. She received third-degree burns over 16 percent of her body, necessitating hospitalization for eight days, whirlpool treatment for debridement of her wounds, skin grafting, scarring, and disability for more than two years. Despite these extensive injuries, she offered to settle with McDonald's for $20,000. However, McDonald's refused to settle for this small amount and, in fact, never offered more than $800. The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages - reduced to $160,000 because the jury found her 20 percent at fault - and $2.7 million in punitive damages for McDonald's callous conduct. (To put this in perspective, McDonald's revenue from coffee sales alone was in excess of $1.3 million a day.) The trial judge reduced the punitive damages to $480,000, but did state that McDonald's had engaged in "willful, wanton, and reckless" behavior. Mrs. Liebeck and McDonald's eventually settled for a confidential amount. The jury heard the following evidence in the case: McDonald's Operations Manual required the franchisee to hold its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit; Coffee at that temperature, if spilled, causes third-degree burns (the worst kind of burn) in three to seven seconds; Third-degree burns do not heal without skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability of the victim for many months, and in some cases, years; The chairman of the department of mechanical engineering and bio-mechanical engineering at the University of Texas testified that this risk of harm is unacceptable, as did a wid

Yet another study has been released that proves that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What's more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.

Documentary about how propaganda is being used to manipulate your mind. Sources for this film: -Beder, Sharon -- Consumerism: an Historical Perspective -Chomsky, Noam -- What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream -Darwinia -- WWI Propaganda -Ewen, Stuart -- Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture -Lazere, Donald -- American media and mass culture -Lutins, Allen -- An Eclectic list of Events in US Labor History  -Millies, Stephen -- The Ludlow Massacre and the Birth of Company Unions -Parenti, Michael -- Super-Patriotism -Simpson, Christopher -- The Science of Coercion -Smith, Sharon -- Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States -Snow, Nancy -- Propagnda, Inc., Selling America's Culture to the World -Stauber, John and Rampton, Sheldon -- Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq ; Toxic Sludge is Good For You -Tye, Larry -- The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of PR Film created by: http://www.metanoia-films.org/index.php

Without an expansionary fiscal policy, low interest rates have little effect. Companies won't borrow in order to expand and hire more workers unless they have reasonable certainty they'll have customers for what they produce. And consumers won't borrow money to spend on goods and services unless they're reasonably confident they'll have jobs. Fiscal austerity is the wrong medicine at the wrong time.

"Capitalism has evolved in at least three different forms: corporate capitalism, speculator's capitalism, and, most recently, creative capitalism."