So now I hear, via Think Progress, that NBC's David Gregory is going to be the keynote speaker at a conference that is run by a Republican advocacy group that will also have notorious notables like Karl Rove and John Boehner. One of the fundamental tenets of journalism is that reporters must maintain their integrity by avoiding conflicts of interest that could bias their reporting. Could Mr. Gregory's appearance at that conference mean that the mainstream media has given up hiding behind their charade of impartiality? About three years ago, I made a comment (that grew legs and became part of our political dialog) on the Working Family Radio Network that we should make our Congressmen and Senators wear NASCAR style blazers bearing the logos of the corporations that own them. Perhaps we can get the FCC to enact a rule that forces broadcast "journalists" to wear blazers that have the logos of their conflicts of interest and biases? If nothing else, old school style broadcast news blazers, with a few additional logos added, will make the talking heads look like the Ted Baxters that they really are! Add Comment If you think that the ouster of pro-austerity leaders that took place in the recent French and Greek elections could happen here, you'd be dead wrong. To find our why, visit my Listen Here! page. The New York Times article about Apple's (perfectly legal under current laws) tax avoidance got my wheels turning. When you combine that with Apple's record of off-shoring their manufacturing to China, it looks as if Apple wants to squeeze out every penny of profit possible, even if it hurts our country in the process. Though what they are doing is prevalent in American industry, it is endemic to Silicon Valley in particular. I feel that the culture of Silicon Valley has engendered a particular mindset that makes the acts of job off-shoring and legal tax avoidance perfectly acceptable to their hi-tech CEOs and execs. Silicon Valley's real product isn't computers, smartphones, MP3 players, hardware, software or websites, it's intellectual property! In the 1980s/1990s, entrepreneurs became very rich building their empires from mere ideas. The cost to bring many of those concepts to life was mainly paid in research and development man/hours and in many cases, bought with stock options. The majority of those concepts were virtual only and existed as software routines running on computers or pieces of dedicated hardware such as mobile phones. Ideas that only exist in virtual space do not rack up large manufacturing expenditures. Silicon Valley CEOs are most comfortable with things virtual and least comfortable with things physical. After all, unlike virtual products, physical products cost real money to manufacture and can't be conjured up out of thin air. Is it any wonder that most of Silicon Valley contracts out its hardware production to factories in China? Are the people who run and manage America’s hi-tech industries cold, calculating and self-centered? My theory is when they spend most of their time working in the virtual world, they tend to see everything in life as an abstraction. They put infinite value on their virtual intellectual property, but want to get their physical products manufactured for the lowest possible cost. They are not concerned about little things like putting their country first by manufacturing in the USA or the fact that many of their Asian sub-contractor factories pay low wages and have oppressive working conditions. They can't see the suffering that it takes to hand make their luxury-priced products in those factories or the unemployment that we face here, those are concerns of the physical world. When it comes to non-virtual products that must be built in a factory, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing! Most of our electeds are uncharacteristically silent about the John Edwards trial. For a possible reason why, Visit my Listen Here! page. Did you ever write a letter or an article and realize that you just scratched the surface on the subject? Here is a quickie discourse that will tie all of the information of my previous posting together. What if the “two” party system was created to control a nation's populace? Please understand that the theory that I am going to present to you is purely hypothetical. - - OR IS IT? Just imagine that you are corporate and banking wannabe oligarchs. You make massive campaign contributions to and do other things to curry favor with BOTH political parties of a nation's “two” party system. Obviously, after making that investment in the future of BOTH parties and their politicians, you expect a decent return on your “investment.” You want that return to come in the form of little things like:
The key thing to remember is that this kind of “two” party system, which is really a virtual one party system, is the ideal way for corporate and banking oligarchs to take control of a country. The corporate and banking masters of the universe find it to be preferable to a one party system because it give the illusion of democracy, while it divides and conquers the citizenry. If voters are given the “opportunity” to pick one corporate and bank backed candidate from one corporate and bank owned party, even the most thick-skulled voter would realize that he or she has been had. The “two” party deception serves the corporate/banking oligarchy well, by having two corporate and bank backed parties that play one group of voters against the other group of voters in a double version of good cop/bad cop. I hope that this food for thought hasn't given you indigestion.  As you know, I am more than just a casual observer of the political scene. In fact, I have spent most of my life watching the comings and goings of our two party system. As such, I don't claim that I am the most qualified to make some keen observations, just that I've seen a lot of things, for a lot of years and kept my eyes and mind wide open. Over those years, each political party seemed to have its own unique identity:
The current GOP/corporate strategy seems to be to attack every Democratic initiative individually, using the same scare tactics they used during the cold war when they painted themselves as the patriotic bulwark against communism. They did their dirty work by reducing every Democratic initiative to a derisive slogan and elevating every GOP protected species and sacred cow to a glorifying slogan, healthcare legislation = Obamacare, job offshoring corporations = job creators. If you think that this tactic makes the Republicans seem like they are the only bad guys, read on. The Democrats forgot who really put them in office when President Obama, with the huge momentum of a solid victory that was a repudiation of Bush and Republican policies, threw away that bully pulpit by stating at the outset that he's “everybody’s President.” Well “everybody” didn't elect him, we did! When he spent the next three years trying to “compromise” with the GOP, he was “compromising” our futures and our families. That “compromise” lowered the bar in negotiating with the Republicans and allowed them to set the agenda! If you think that the whole thing looked like a fixed boxing match, you could be right. If you take away nothing else from this, I want you to realize that the extreme posturing of the GOP electeds made the apathetic indifference to their REAL constituency of the Democratic electeds look benign by comparison. All of that reminds me of a boxing match where the champion is “asked” to throw the fight by an unnamed “benefactor.” Corporate backers? Wealthy backers? Who knows? The evidence is circumstantial. We now find ourselves smack in the middle of an election year. We are being held hostage by the “lesser of two evils” meme that's been spewed out, ad nauseam, by numerous O-pologists! Until unions and other groups step up to the plate and sponsor their own candidates who are NOT part of the rigged duopoly that is basically corporate America's surrogate in government, we are doomed to living with and by the dictates of America's real rulers, corporations and the rich! One of the primary characteristics of mainstream media news and commentary is that you never really get to know what influences the thinking of their commentators and news people. As a member of the new and alternate media, I want you to know what influences my thinking. You can find out where I'm coming from by visiting my Listen Here! page. They say that a nation gets the government that it deserves. If that's the case, our nation that seems to consist of apathetic voters who drown their thought processes in “reality” shows and other idiotic mainstream media offerings is definitely getting what it deserves, corporate owned government! Many people base their voting decisions on the quickie soundbites and surreptitiously corporate backed political ads they see on the evening news programs. They believe that nonsense because it is repeatedly drummed into their thick skulls by a mainstream media that is an integral cog in America’s corporate/government complex. In the “good old days” when fairness and diverse sources of information were protected by government regulations, basing your vote on information gleaned from TV newscasts wasn't that much of a danger to our democracy. However, these days it's almost guarantees that our choice of any given political candidate or vote on any given issue will be corporate America’s choice. The electeds of BOTH parties created this situation years ago when the Fairness Doctrine was decimated by the Reagan administration and the Clinton administration's Telecommunications Act Of 1996 watered down The Communications Act Of 1934, letting a few mega-corporations own most of the broadcast outlets in the USA. Translation, this is a self-perpetuating mess created by BOTH parties! The only way that we are going to escape this chicken/egg situation is to get every American to use the internet as a primary source of information about every candidate and every issue. Those of us who routinely use the internet as a primary source of information about our world should educate everyone who uses the mainstream media as their sole source of information. If we can teach our friends and family to use internet tools like Google to crosscheck each and every bit of corporate propaganda that is palmed off as “news” by the mainstream media, we're well on our way to getting our country back! Does anyone remember the early days of the healthcare debate when the Republicans, right wing talk radio and Teabaggers were starting to hang the Term "Obamacare" on it? That pressure made the President and many Democrats fold and reduce a plan that would have been all-inclusive and constitutionally airtight to a watered-down plan that may not withstand the tests of a Supreme Court that basically has a right wing majority. You can hear what I have to say about it by visiting my Listen Here! page. Do you have a relative or friend who is a working person, but insists on badmouthing unions? Do they vociferously defend political policies that hurt working people, but attack policies that help us? Chances are that because they are addicted to right-wing talk radio and a certain right wing cable news network, their brains are fried! So how can we get through to people like that? Did you ever notice that three and four year old children are always asking "why?" It seems like every sentence out of their little mouths starts with why: “Why is the sky blue?” “Why are leaves green?” “Why is uncle Bubba a Republican?” Just kidding about the last one to see if you're paying attention. You can harness the power of those innocent questions for a noble purpose, winning people over to our side. The next time your relative or neighbor opens his or her mouth and a right-wing talk show host's words come out, use the power of that innocent question, why? Don't argue with uncle Bubba when he says that “unions kill jobs by demanding high salaries for their members that drive companies out of business”, use the power of why to ask him the following questions:
|  AuthorI am just an average middle-class guy who is convinced that there's no one on Talk Radio who speaks for us. I want to change that situation. Proud To Be On:Proud To Carry:Workers Independent News
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