HOME Tuesday, March 16, 2004 Ed Norton Rocks You know, there are many good people in Hollywood who care about humanity and the welfare of people in need. Latest case in point: Ed Norton Reported by the WP: "He has donated $1.1 million to the Enterprise Foundation in his home town: Columbia. His grandfather, the late real estate mogul James Rouse, founded the nonprofit community development organization." The nonprofit exists to rebuild "America's low-income communities by helping provide affordable housing, safer streets and access to jobs and child care." Asked about his contribution, Norton replied: "I made this financial commitment [because] I think that the issue of low-income Americans has really been I think, abandoned in recent times. I think people like you and me are getting tax cuts, and hard working, not only low-income, but middle-income families are really struggling to achieve the basic necessities of life, even a home. And so I made that commitment because to me, it's one of the more pressing and least publicized issues." Norton has donated the proceeds from the premieres of three of his films (Primal Fear, Red Dragon, and The Score) to this cause.    10:45:34 PM   | COMMENT [] | TRACKBACK [] Losing Trust In the Man Analyzing what the most recent polls say right now is like watching a championship football game in the first half between two good teams with two high-powered offenses who can score fast. They really don't mean anything except tell us things we have already guessed. Team Bush is sucking it up on the economy side of things and boy-howdy do they need to come clean on that sick Iraq war stunt they pulled or that will come back to bite em in the butt in the end. Anyway, here is the latest commentary on the polls from the Center for American Progress: Two new polls out today show that Americans are increasingly uncomfortable with the Bush Administration's economic policy prescriptions, or lack thereof. A Gallup poll shows 60% of Americans say they are dissatisfied with "the way things are going in the United States at this time" while a CBS/NYT poll finds only 38% of Americans "say they approve of the White House's economic record" and 57% say "they are uneasy about President Bush's ability to make the right decision on the economy." The fundamental problem is clear: as an earlier NYT poll shows, most Americans have not felt any tax relief from the President's tax cuts, because the benefits go mostly to a small sliver of the population. Meanwhile, those tax cuts have created massive deficits, energy prices are rising, and the economy has shed more than 2 million jobs. As CNN reported, "Morgan Stanley now calculates private payrolls are running 8.2 million jobs [below] what would have occurred in a normal recovery - that's more than $400 billion in forgone growth and wages." 10:14:28 PM   | COMMENT [] | TRACKBACK [] Blog banner taken from the oil painting "The Departure" (40"x 30") by Michael Parker, 1999. March 2004 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31       Feb   Apr Click on one of the calendar days to read my journal posting for that day. E-MAIL ME Film Page PREVIOUS POSTS Shaun of the Dead (2004) Love Me Like A Song Wilson: On Character December 26, 2004 University of Utah Dominates Pitt in Fiesta Bowl Top Ten Family Films of 2004 Look! I'm a Soundbyte Susan Sontag Tsunami Death Toll Rises Family SuperHeroes Top Grossing Films of 2004 Patrick Stewart's Reading of A Christmas Carol Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Decisions, Decisions, Decisions Busy VO Christmas Edition This Is Your Soul The Paper God Rummy and the Soldier Testing a new interface. One -Thousand Hedges: On Our Dual Nature's Archive 3 Archive Pages, 2 Archive Pages Shakespeare on Sunday FAVORITE BLOGS    Archives July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 MUSIC REVIEWS Mario Frangoulis Sarah Brightman's 'Harem' Spectacular Switchfoot: The Beautiful Letdown The Reinvention of Madonna NEWS   Salon   LiberalOasis   New York Times   Slate   Tom Paine   Mother Jones   The Guardian   CNN   The Washington Post   - Start your own blog   Subscribe to this blog in   Radio: Updated Salon Blogs Salon Rankings