Latest news with #Depression
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Bill Moyers, former press secretary turned acclaimed journalist, dead at 91
Bill Moyers, a former press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson who turned into a longtime broadcast journalist and champion of public media, has died at age 91, his family confirmed to CNN. The acclaimed journalist's son, William Moyers, said he died of complications from a long illness. His wife of nearly 71 years, Judith Davidson Moyers, was by his side. Moyers, who was once described by Walter Cronkite as 'the conscience' of the country, was a public television pioneer, leading multiple installments of 'Bill Moyers' Journal' on PBS stations in the 1970s and again in the late 2000s. His storied career also included chapters as the publisher of Newsday; a presidential debate moderator; a correspondent at CBS News; and analyst at NBC News. Through five decades on the air, 'he reached the heights of excellence in journalism,' former CNN president Tom Johnson said, noting that many compared Moyers to 'the Edward R. Murrow of those times.' Johnson was an assistant to Moyers during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, when Moyers served as press secretary and one of the most trusted advisors to the president. Moyers was instrumental in setting up the task forces that led to Johnson's creation of the Great Society programs of the 1960s. 'At the root of the Great Society was only an idea,' Moyers wrote in his memoir, that 'free men and women can work with their government to make things better.' In a 2019 interview with CNN, Moyers — who was still busy analyzing the news, then at his own website — said that 'for the first time in my long life,' he feared for America. 'I was born in the Depression, lived through World War II, have been a part of politics and government for all these years,' he said, before observing that 'a society, a democracy can die of too many lies. And we're getting close to that terminal moment unless we reverse the obsession with lies that are being fed around the country.' Still, Moyers said, 'do facts matter anymore? I think they do.' Throughout his decades-long career, Moyers received 35 Emmy Awards, two Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia University Awards, nine Peabody Awards and three George Polk Awards. Moyers also received the first-ever Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the American Film Institute.
The Spinoff
5 days ago
- Business
- The Spinoff
The cost of being: A (mostly) retired nurse living alone
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a mostly retired registered nurse explains where their money goes. Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here. Gender: Female. Age: 73. Ethnicity: Tangata Tiriti. Role: Registered nurse, mostly retired, work about six hours one day a week in a private cardiology clinic. Salary/income/assets: Approximately $42,000 Super and salary – my home is mortgage-free. My living location is: Suburban. Rent/mortgage per week: None. I'm single and live alone. Student loan or other debt payments per week: None. And I pay my credit card in full every month! Typical weekly food costs Groceries: Average about $70-$80. Live alone. Eating out: Occasionally. Maybe $50 a month. Takeaways: About $30 a month. Workday lunches: None. Cafe coffees/snacks: $20 a month. Other food costs: I have a vegepod for growing herbs and a few veges such as lettuce, but I'm not great at it. I have several fruit trees, I bottle my fruit and make jam. Savings: I managed to save well while working full time, with KiwiSaver and an investment fund. Now I'm drawing from them, a set amount monthly, $1300. This is saved as much as possible for big expenses and travel. I worry about money: Rarely. Three words to describe my financial situation: Comfortable enough (mostly). My biggest edible indulgence would be: Whittaker's Dark Ghana – which I'm good at making last! In a typical week my alcohol expenditure would be: I buy wine by the carton, a week would be 2-3 bottles so about $30. In a typical week my transport expenditure would be: Fares paid with SuperGold card! Petrol about $15 a week. I estimate in the past year the ballpark amount I spent on my personal clothing (including sleepwear and underwear) was: $500. My most expensive clothing in the past year was: $90 fabric to sew some tops. Haven't bought much this year, other years it could be more! My last pair of shoes cost: $12 sneakers from The Warehouse. My grooming/beauty expenditure in a year is about: Moisturiser, shampoo from the refill stand at the supermarket, 4-5 haircuts a year, sunblock. So about $220. My exercise expenditure in a year is about: Lately, nothing. I walk and tramp, and my boots, raincoat, poles etc are very durable. My last Friday night cost: Nothing. Not my scene at my age! Most regrettable purchase in the last 12 months was: An e-bike. I didn't enjoy it, and then it got stolen! Most indulgent purchase (that I don't regret) in the last 12 months was: Tour to Egypt and Jordan. Expensive but worth it! One area where I'm a bit of a tightwad is: So-called luxury foods. Can't see the point. Five words to describe my financial personality would be: Careful, realistic, generous, content. I grew up in a house where money was: My father died when I was a child, and my mother was a child of the Depression, so it was a bit careful. The last time my Eftpos card was declined was: Never. In five years, in financial terms, I see myself: Pretty much as I am now. I would love to have more money for: TRAVEL! Describe your financial low: This month, probably! But it was just a combination of several big expenses, and I'll be fine again by next week. If there was ever a serious one, it's so long ago I don't remember. I give money away to: Charities. Some monthly, some annually.
Chicago Tribune
7 days ago
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Route 66: Hamburgers so savory, they can make you cry
EL RENO, Okla. — The air downtown smells of grilled onions, wafting from the flat tops of three Route 66 restaurants that have helped give this small town about 25 miles west of Oklahoma City a distinct culinary identity. They're called fried onion burgers. Plenty of places put onions on burgers. Few have been doing it as long, or as well, as they do here. 'They're not like any burger,' said Lyndsay Bayne, 48, the city's public information and marketing manager. 'It's hard to explain. You have to eat one.' A few years before the country plunged into the Great Depression and the nascent Route 66 ferried Dust Bowl refugees west, a man named Ross Davis needed a way to stretch the supply of expensive ground beef he had to serve customers at his Hamburger Inn in El Reno. Onions, he realized, were cheap. And so, the story goes, he decided to bolster each patty with shredded onions. Lots of them. Thus, the fried onion burger was born. After the stock market crash of 1929, its popularity grew and it took on a second name: 'the Depression burger.' The Hamburger Inn is no longer in El Reno, but the city's 19,000 residents have three options all within steps of each other on Route 66. Robert's Grill is the oldest, opened in 1926. Then there's Johnnie's Hamburgers & Coneys and Sid's Diner — a fourth, Jobe's Country Boy Drive-in, is about a mile west of downtown on Route 66. They all follow the same idea: A massive pile of thinly sliced white onions are deposited on top of the thinly pressed patty as it cooks on the flat top. Then, the entire thing is flipped on its other side, so the burger cooks on top of the onions, which caramelize and fuse with the meat. Follow our road trip: Route 66, 'The Main Street of America,' turns 100 The town has a festival every year where an 850-pound fried onion burger is cooked. Residents have their favorites among the pantheon of purveyors, and that seems to be largely based on tradition — they like best the place they went to in high school, or the place their grandparents took them as kids. There does not appear to be the same kind of fierce allegiance or rivalry seen with Italian beef in Chicago or with po'boys in New Orleans. But all are fairly united in the belief that the best fried onion burgers can only be found in El Reno. Of the burger joints selling them in places such as Oklahoma City, Bayne said: 'Bless their hearts.'
Otago Daily Times
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Counting on the census
One of the great pillars on which modern New Zealand society is based has been scrapped by the government in a move which has shocked many. The five-yearly, or thereabouts, census has seemingly had its day, Statistics Minister Shane Reti reckons. He announced on Wednesday that New Zealanders had, for the last time, needed to scurry about looking for a pen to fill out the forms or pray that the more recently online documents would work as intended. Citing the need to save time and money, Dr Reti signalled the census will be replaced with "a smaller annual survey and targeted data collection". This will, according to the somewhat breathless Beehive media release, provide better quality economic data to underpin the government's "growth agenda". In line with this thinking, there will be no census in 2028, with the new approach starting in 2030. The new method of collecting nationwide statistics will sharpen the focus on delivering "more timely insights into New Zealand's population", the minister reckons. Good luck with that. While we should not automatically kibosh something before it has had a chance to prove its worth, it is difficult to see how what may effectively be a scattergun approach will be superior to the system which has developed over more than 170 years. The census has, of course, never been perfect. There were well-publicised issues with the 2018 and 2023 counts, and the five-yearly spacing has been interrupted several times, due to such events as the Depression, World War 2 and the Christchurch earthquake in February 2011. There were also concerns about the robustness of responses when the 2023 census was held the month after Cyclone Gabrielle. Dr Reti also has some justification for being concerned about the cost of the census, which has ballooned during the past decade. According to government figures, the 2013 census cost $104 million, but outlay for the 2023 one was $325m, and the now-ditched 2028 one was expected to cost around $400m. The huge leap in price is certainly concerning. Based on those government numbers, there can be no doubt running a census is a very expensive business. However, we need to remember, and perhaps remind the government, that the policies which are meant to benefit everyone across the country in healthcare, education, housing, transport and so on, actually cost many billions of dollars. The price-tag for a census which informs those policies is definitely not chicken feed, but money generally well-spent. Reaction to this week's announcement has largely been negative and expressing surprise at the move. There is particular concern about how cherry-picking data and using smaller sample sets will affect the rigour of information about Māori and Pasifika communities, and also people with disabilities, rainbow communities, and smaller ethnic groups. Dr Reti's promised land of a "sharpened focus on quality" when it comes to statistics will be extremely difficult to achieve. There are crucial questions to answer around how people's existing data within government agencies will be appropriately and sensitively used, who decides what to use and when, and who will oversee the process to make sure it is as comprehensive and fair as such a potentially fraught new system can be. We are uneasy that this move appears to be another example of this government not being especially interested in the science or data necessary for good decision-making and for making policy which is evidence-based, instead careening ever-more wildly across the political landscape in pursuit of zealotry-driven outcomes. We unapologetically support the census system we had, and believe in the provision of proper statistical data sets for modern-day needs and as a source of valuable information for the historians of the future Beware the old saying: "Garbage in, garbage out."
Boston Globe
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Outrageous' proves the travails of the Mitford family are as timely as ever
And what lives they are. Nancy is a novelist, unusual enough in the era, and especially close to her sister Diana (Joanna Vanderham), who's married, boredly, to a kind and wealthy heir to the Guinness beer fortune. Diana has done what all six daughters of the Mitford family are meant to do, and married well. Widely praised as a beauty, she and Nancy are popular socialites, despite their baron father's shrinking fortune. Diana startles everyone by falling deeply in love with Oswald Mosley (Joshua Sasse), the head of the British Union of Fascists. What's more, she divorces her husband to be with him, then courts scandal for years while Mosley, a cad, delays their marriage (in part because he's having an affair with his dead wife's sister. He's a pretty wretched person all around). But her connection to Mosley leads their younger sister Unity (Shannon Watson) to develop a deep and horrifying affinity for fascism, and in particular for Adolf Hitler, who she manages to meet socially while at finishing school in Munich. Advertisement So that's three sisters down. We've also got Jessica (Zoe Brough), who sees starving people protesting a ball she's attending with her family during the Depression and promptly grows a political and moral conscience, developing a fascination with communism and a concurrent interest in a similarly rebellious and coincidentally quite handsome cousin. You can also think of her as This Woman Is Absolutely Right and Why Isn't Anyone Listening to Her. Second eldest Pamela (Isobel Jesper-Jones), sole brother Tom (Toby Regbo), and youngest sister Why did the family split like this? As their father (James Purefoy) bemoans to their mother (Anna Chancellor), he's normal and she's normal, but 'each one of these girls is more perverse than the other.' He's not wrong. The series has a light tone that contrasts sharply with its bleak subject matter (expect a jazzy soundtrack to intrude on scene changes), but that's also how the family experienced what happened. They were all living what they thought were parallel lives, until it became painfully clear that they weren't. At a time when many people's family members are supporting causes they find morally repugnant, the Mitford family, for all their wealth and distance from the present day, may bear more familiarity than we'd like. Advertisement Lisa Weidenfeld can be reached at
