3 billion people live on less than 2 bucks a day.

According to a new report, just over 8 million people worldwide control $31 TRILLION in assets. In other words, one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population controls one-quarter of the world’s assets.

A strong global economy gave 600,000 people an entree last year into a highly envied group: the world’s millionaires.

The annual World Wealth Report…found that there were 8.3 million people worldwide with $1 million or more in financial assets at the end of 2004, up from 7.7 million a year earlier.

Their total wealth rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets, according to Petrina Dolby, vice president of Capgemini’s wealth management practice.

Read the full report here.

Right-wing activist David Horowitz has been leading an aggressive effort “to limit what teachers may discuss and to bring more conservative views into the classroom.” Now he’s taking his ideological campaign to elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

“The last six months [have] been kind of a watershed for the academic-freedom movement,” says Bradley Shipp, national field director for Students for Academic Freedom, a group founded by conservative activist David Horowitz in 2003. “It is going to filter itself down to the K-12 level.”

It’s an important battle front, proponents say, because younger students are more impressionable.

Online groups like ProtestWarrior.com are already equipping youngsters with the materials they need to fight against “the liberal, bureaucratic, public school indoctrination machine.”

This week’s $120 billion giveaway to the tobacco industry was only the latest development in a sustained effort by the Bush administration to undermine the government’s case. Consider:

– On the campaign trail in 2000 Bush said “I think we’ve had enough suits. I don’t think you can sue your way to policy…. The lawyers I talk to don’t feel [the DOJ has] a case.”

– During the 2000 campaign Morgan Stanley analyst David Adelman wrote a research note titled “‘W’ is for Withdrawing the DOJ’s Tobacco Suit”

– Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft “opposed litigation against the tobacco industry while serving in the Senate.”

– Upon assuming office in 2000, Attorney General John Ashcroft “allocated $1.8 million to keep the lawsuit going, instead of the $57 million the department’s lawyers said they would need to mount a vigorous case.” The move “undermined the government’s negotiating strength…paving the way for a potentially weak settlement.”

– In September 2001, Sen. Dick Durbin charged that Ashcroft’s aides “have been bad-mouthing this lawsuit through back channels for months.”

When Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) put a hold on the nomination of John Bolton and Senators later delayed the final vote in order to obtain more information, the entire Right was up in arms.

The President:

“You know, I thought — I thought John Bolton was going to get an up or down vote on the Senate floor, just like he deserves an up or down vote on the Senate floor, and clearly he’s got the votes to get confirmed. And so I was disappointed that once again, the leadership there in the Senate didn’t give him an up or down vote… Now, in terms of the request for documents, I view that as just another stall tactic, another way to delay, another way to not allow Bolton to get an up or down vote.”

The Senate leadership:

“Some 72 hours after hailing an agreement that sought to end partisan filibusters, the Democrats have launched yet another partisan filibuster . Given the change to advance the cause of comity in the Senate, the Democrats have chosen partisan confrontation over cooperation.”

The pundits:

“The press won’t say it, but it’s a Democrat fil•i•bus•ter: [Quoting the Associated Press] ‘The Republicans needed 60 votes to end the Democrat ‘ Look at this! ‘Democrat procedural delay.’ (Laughter) A ‘procedural delay’ that required a cloture vote is a filibuster! Sorry to scream, folks but I want to be emphatic.”

And of course the blogosophere echo chamber:

“Boxer needs to get connected to the Oil for Food scandal…”

“Somebody provided the panties to the guards at Abu Ghraib and I’ve often suspected Babs of doing it out of partisanship. She’s losing her hair too.”

“UNCOROPERATIVE!!! If I said what I’d like to about Boxer I’d melt the cable lines.”

Now one of their own, the staunchly anti-choice Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), “has put a hold on the White House’s nomination of a prominent abortion-rights supporter to a diplomatic post.” It would seem that the crime of Julie Finley – nominated as ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe – is her extensive fundraising work for pro-choice candidates. The radical right-wingers are adamantly opposed to giving her the opportunity “to promote her pro-abortion views through the OSCE.” How is Brownback explaining his “obstructionist” tactics? The Senator contends, “I have some concerns about Ms. Finley and I would like to have assurances about these issues before I make any final decisions on the nomination moving forward.”

Don’t hold your breath for the Right’s indignant outrage…

Right-wing bloggers, led by Michelle Malkin, have exploded with outrage over a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that supposedly “[blows] the whistle on…human rights zealots who are trying to turn Ground Zero into a blame-America monument.” Malkin calls it the “Soros-ization of Ground Zero.”

Apparently the group — the International Freedom Center — that’s designing part of the 9/11 memorial has turned to a “radical leftists,” the “anti-American left,” the “Who’s Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world” — in other words, the ACLU, Human Rights First, George Soros, and university academics — for advice on the memorial, which is going to be a “history of freedom.” And that’s especially bad, since…

…the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, [while] the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground.

In the first place, a 50,000 square foot memorial is hardly “meager.” That’s thousands of square feet more than either the World War II or Vietnam memorials. The new Pearl Harbor memorial will be just 24,000 square feet. And does anyone consider it an insult to Thomas Jefferson that his artifacts are placed “out of sight and underground” in the museum beneath his memorial statue?

But that’s beside the point. The hysterics of Malkin and others have focused entirely on who the International Freedom Center has turned to for advice. Here’s an idea: how about looking at who the International Freedom Center has actually endorsed.

Turns out the IFC has been one of the great champions of Nathan Sharansky. Yes, that Nathan Sharansky: President Bush’s foreign policy guru, who was offered an hour-long meeting with Bush in the Oval Office, and who has been praised in the pages of the National Review and on David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag. Earlier this year, Bush told “opinion makers” they should put Sharansky’s book, The Case for Democracy, on their “recommended reading list.” “If you want a glimpse of how I think about foreign policy, read Natan Sharansky’s book,” Bush said.

And it gets better. Guess who turned Bush on to Sharansky? The co-founder of the IFC, Tom Bernstein, who sent Bush excerpts of the book shortly after his reelection, and “who was a financial partner with Bush in the Texas Rangers.” And guess who the IFC featured at its very first public program? Good ol’ Nathan Sharansky.

So the “zealots” and “radical leftists” designing the “anti-American” 9/11 memorial actually helped shape the very core of President Bush’s foreign policy. We’re speechless.