I've written a piece that I'd like to share with everyone who visits this site, and you can find it at my blog right here. It's entitled, Don't Tear Down The Big Tent.

Excerpt: The Democratic Party has changed dramatically this year, and has been overtaken, in large part, by the liberal underground. The Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, the Talking Points, and Howard Dean. Dean is a centrist, Kos is liberal, Joshua Marshall is moderate, and the Democratic Underground is the epitome of the squishy left of the Democratic Party. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

We've all read several pieces on why the Democratic Party lost the 2004 Presidential Election, and I'm sure most of us are sick of them. (For reference, however, I direct you to the dialogue Why Americans Hate Democrats on Slate.)

The Democratic Leadership Council is the part of the party where Bill Clinton, Al Gore and, to a much lesser extent John Kerry, get their ideologies from. It's generally more Conservative, but it's not the right-wingers-in-disguise outfit that Deaniacs and the Michael Moore-wing like to make it out to be. Honestly, many of my own beliefs come from the DLC.

The DLC has been under attack since the 1990s, being labeled, as Michael Moore put it in one of his post-election open letters, "the conservative, pro-corporate group of Democrats." Recently, these attacks have caused me concern over the future of the Democratic Party, specifically its Big Tent.

At the grassroot level, the number one cause of Kerry's defeat is considered the fault of the DLC. Some, including The New Republic, have gone so far as to say that the Council is on its last legs, and this is very bad news for the party.

The pundits have dissected the election and have, by and large, found that kisses, the image of sandals, and bearded lanky men cost John Kerry the Presidency. I think that's about right, but there's a tad bit more to it than that.

In its coverage, I have noticed that the media has disregarded what I call the Big Tent Theory of the Democratic Defeat, both this year and in the 1994 loss of Congress. (I, of course, don't consider a five-hundred thousand popular vote plurality to be a defeat, so I'm not counting the 2000 election in this.)

Terrorism, first and foremost, sunk John Forbes Kerry (particularly in the state of Florida), but I do believe that the Big Tent Theory is the strongest explanation for the Democratic Party's decline over the last decade or so.

Read that Michael Moore letter, titled "It's Time To Step Being Hit," and listen to his attacks on the DLC. In the same spirit of his letter I say it's time to stop tearing the big tent of the Democratic Party down. Hate for the DLC can easily be found, and I think it's time to end the warfare that's in the party for our soul.

Go to the link to keep reading, and sorry I haven't been posting much. Lousy schoolwork and grades. Pfft.

- ThePoliticalPenguin 9:21 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Read: Daily Kos :: BBC: Bush had pre-9/11 Iraq invasion plans

Then you can come back. (thanks)

- rob 2:59 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Bush was going to run the nation like a corporation.

He was going to be the CEO in Chief.

You know - like Bernie Ebbers .

See Bush has hidden the true costs of programs from Congress, much like Ebbers as CEO hid costs from shareholders.

But unlike Ebbers, Bush isn’t going to prison (yet), he still lives in the White House.

But the government acting like a corporation isn’t anything new. A lot of corporations falsify environmental impact like studies to get to build what they want.

Just like the Department of Energy did to the NRC: Scientist May Have Falsified Yucca Papers

When I worked at large banking firm long long ago. I marveled at the concept of letting go employees and then hiring them back as consultants at 2 to 3 times the cost. “It keeps company overhead down when viewed by the measure of the size of its salaried workforce.” See it looked better to share holders. The fact that it cost more wasn’t an issue… it was perception.

By contracting out many security services in Iraq to private concerns the Defense Department has the political advantage of reducing the number of US troops in Iraq. The downside doesn’t need to be discussed, such as the fact that:

• mercenaries aren’t bound by The Code of Conduct that our troops are bound by. In fact our military justice system can’t touch mercenaries.


• One has to wonder who they take orders from. Their managers or our military leaders. In theory our military is answerable to the officials we elected. Who do mercenaries answer to… their boss?


• Our own special forces have been dealt the blow of reduced numbers of troops staying for additional tours of duty. Why stay when you can do the same job for 5 to 10 times the money.

Corporations ain’t so hot. They, like the government, become dehumanized entities and the costs of their actions are removed from the individuals who enacted them.

Here’s the thing - the thing that is best for the environment, best for the employees, best for the economy, and best for America: Small businesses.

Politicians and Corporations hate small businesses. Small businesses can’t fill a politicians war chest. Small businesses are just a prop that both democrats and republicans trot about. Any safety regulation, or any regulation in general that a corporation doesn’t like is described as a threat to small businesses, though often the small businesses would not be effected. If the regulations in the end become enacted they are rewritten or repurposed to become a shield the corporations wield to defend themselves from competition from small new comers.

The present state of the FDA effectively eliminates the creation of any new small pharma company. You got a drug that eliminates cold sores? It will NOT go to market unless you give the rights to a big pharma company. The regulations now serve more as a barrier to competition then any safe guard to us citizens.

Big Business and Big Government are allies. In the post world war II America large corporations and the government have formed a symbiotic relationship. They need each other.

The GOP ran for decades under the cry “smaller government.” When they came into power the government only became bigger. They realized that their base (their true base: “The haves and the have mores”) wanted it that way.

So, while Wal-Mart can pretty much do as it pleases… the government is all over those dangerous lemonade stands.

Presently corporations too often operate without any checks and balances. Just like our present government.

The one promise Bush fulfilled: He’s running America like a business.

I wonder when he’ll start glazing the chicken with shoe polish.

- rob 2:40 PM - [PermaLink] -

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He is the Mozart of ineptitude

Mr. Magoo goes to the World Bank
The problem with Paul Wolfowitz isn't that he's an evil genius. It's that he has been consistently, astonishingly, unswervingly wrong about foreign policy for 30 years.

Critics are wrong to portray Wolfowitz as a malevolent genius. In fact, he's friendly, soft-spoken, well meaning and thoughtful. He would be the model of a scholar and a statesman but for one fact: He is completely inept. His three-decade career in U.S. foreign policy can be summed up by the term that President Bush coined to describe the war in Iraq that Wolfowitz promoted and helped to oversee: a "catastrophic success."

Even the greatest statesman makes some mistakes. But Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent. He is the Mozart of ineptitude, the Einstein of incapacity. To be sure, he has his virtues, the foremost of which is consistency. He has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years.

- rob 2:39 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Get used to it.


At least in your Hummer you won't get wet.

No Stopping Global Warming, Studies Predict

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even if people stopped pumping out carbon dioxide and other pollutants tomorrow, global warming would still get worse, two teams of researchers reported on Thursday.

Sea levels will rise more than they have already risen, worsening the damage caused by extreme high tides and storm surges, and droughts, heat waves and storms will become more severe, the climate experts predicted.

- rob 12:20 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Evangelicals Bush does not like.

"Don't they know that Jesus would have personally driven his Hummer up to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to supervise the drilling? You know... after picketing a family planning clinic and bombing Iraq of course."

The Greening of Evangelicals

Such "creation care" should be at the heart of evangelical life, Hedman says, along with condemning abortion, protecting family and loving Jesus. He uses the term "creation care" because, he says, it does not annoy conservative Christians for whom the word "environmentalism" connotes liberals, secularists and Democrats.
...
There is growing evidence -- in polling and in public statements of church leaders -- that evangelicals are beginning to go for the green. Despite wariness toward mainstream environmental groups, a growing number of evangelicals view stewardship of the environment as a responsibility mandated by God in the Bible.

"The environment is a values issue," said the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals.

- rob 12:00 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Some of TCS's earliest posts (over two years ago) had been about the dangers of e-voting.

More and more has come out about e-voting since then and all of it bad.

Scary and important read: Daily Kos :: Ghost in the Machine: a collection of e-voting facts

and also on Daily Kos read: Emerging Diebold Scandal in MD

According to county election officials and other sources, all Maryland voting machines have been on "lockdown" since November 2, 2004 due to statewide machine failures including 12% of machines in Montgomery County, some of which appear to have lost votes in significant numbers.

- rob 5:17 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Daily Kos :: More fake news

Information about the Washington Post editorial against the Bush administration's use of propaganda. ("hey weren't we doing a good enough job for you guys? Do we still get the turkee?"), and a link about the Department of Interior also using tax dollars to make fake news.

- rob 4:44 PM - [PermaLink] -

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George Bush advice to people considering electing office: Promising to blow up America probably isn't... he isn't sure.. but probably isn't a good platform to run on.

President's 3/16/05 Press Conference

I like the idea of people running for office. There's a positive effect when you run for office. Maybe some will run for office and say, vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America. I don't know, I don't know if that will be their platform or not. But it's -- I don't think so.

Okay I admit, for once TCS is being mildy unfair... it happens... Bush is talking about Hezbollah becoming a political movement and moving away from terrorism. (because terrorism is a lot like politics). So his statement sounds a lot less inane would put in context. But don't worry, Bush won't let you down:

I think people who generally run for office say, vote for me, I'm looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table.

Potholes! That is all government does (well that and that secondary bread thing). Last summer TCS poster B kept a running tally on Bush's obsession with filling potholes (just one of B's posts about Bush's pothole obsession).

It's good to know that even after the elections Bush still sums up the purpose of government as the entity that fills potholes.

- rob 4:38 PM - [PermaLink] -

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This is chilling.

And a brilliant post.

Whiskey Bar: Scenes From the Cultural Revolution

Please go and read it, here's just a taste:

The Left has taken over academe. We want it back.
Mike Rosen, Rocky Mountain News columnist
CU is Worth Fighting For
March 4, 2005


In this great Cultural Revolution, the phenomenon of our schools being dominated by bourgeois intellectuals must be completely changed.
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
Resolutions of the Eleventh Plenum
August 1966

...

Last spring I organized college students to investigate the voter-registration records of university professors at more than a dozen institutions of higher learning. I had them target the social sciences. The students used primary registration to determine party affiliation, although admittedly, it's not always an exact match.
David Horowitz
Closed doors, closed minds
June 20, 2002


The "working groups" organized sessions to expose and to criticize teachers and divided all teachers into four categories: good, fair, those with serious errors, and anti-Party, anti-socialist rightists.
Youqin Wang
Student Attacks Against Teachers: The Revolution of 1966
July 1996

...

Posters arose recently on the Ball State University campus announcing that history professor Abel Alves was "WANTED." His alleged offenses include indoctrinating freshmen with liberal books, such as Fast Food Nation, and guest lectures by the Humane Society.
Muncie Star Press
Students complain of liberal bias on campus
September 27, 2004


Inspired by personal feuds or sheer exuberance, many of the posters featured puerile attacks against officials and teachers for such allegedly "counter-revolutionary" activities as "luxurious living" or displaying "lordly airs."
Stanley Karnow
Mao and China
1972

That said, the inverse does happen as well to conservative teachers. That ain't right either. And I think most people will agree that some Beserkly professors are a bit... much (but they don't deserve to have wanted posters against them put up).

- rob 4:08 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Check out this link I found on Eschaton: Media: Still Hurting America

CNN is willfully only presenting crap and fluff as news. I really honestly believe Americans are interested in the world, but if they're fed Scott Peterson every day they are brain washed into believing it is worthy of their time and interest. It isn't.

- rob 3:21 PM - [PermaLink] -

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New Zealand tries to prevent its citizens from seeing government inaction.

Well, because everyone takes a nap.

Snooze picture reignites row

TV3 has thrown down the gauntlet by running pictures of a sleeping MP in protest at a plan by Parliament to boot their news cameras out.

The picture of Associate Education Minister David Benson-Pope snoozing during question time in the House yesterday flouts arcane rules under which broadcasters and photographers are allowed to operate in Parliament.

But the broadcaster made it clear yesterday that its action was in protest at a plan by MPs to exclude outside broadcasters and take over the filming of Parliament themselves - a move that will cost taxpayers $6 million in set up costs and $3 million-a-year after that.

By running the picture of the sleeping MP, TV3 risks being banned from Parliament.

- rob 3:13 PM - [PermaLink] -

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I think the phrase you are thinking is: Oh sweet Jesus No!

Daily Kos :: Raping the Dead

Sacred Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Boulder, Colorado, has taken upon itself the task of "rescuing" fetuses from the facilities where they are sent to be cremated. The purpose? To use the remains as part of a "memorial for the unborn." That's right. It's a memorial to the fetuses that have been lost through miscarriage, abortion, and stillbirth. And, it's all been done without the permission of the women whose pregnancies ended.

Originally instead of a memorial they were trying to figure a way to make the fetuses wash laundry.

... imagine for a moment, that you're Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or, like me, an atheist. You experience a miscarriage in a hospital. Your fetus is then turned over to the Catholics to make a holy shrine to it. Don't you think you'd find it a wee bit disturbing? Feel that perhaps your own religion had been denigrated by the assumption by another religion that it had a right to your fetus?

In the comments someone notes the grand hypocrasy here: If these Catholics truly believed the fetuses were human they would never take the body and use it for their own purposes without permission. If they believed these were humans and not political props, would they not respect the dead?

- rob 2:10 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Want to get ahead in the Bush Administration? Screw up so badly that tens of thousands of humans die and you'll get promoted.

Bush Recommends Wolfowitz for World Bank

Is Bush that insane or did the conversation go like this:

Rumsfeld: Look junior, I'll release the pictures if you don't give this to Paul. Uncle Dick is with me on this.

Bush: Okey Dokey

This all reminds me though: Get Your War On has been updated:

- rob 1:55 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Nostalgia for the Old Days -- Jan. 2002

Remember back in the old days when nobody remembered anything? Kind of like right now, when everything is just dust in the breeze? Here's a little exchange between two nobodys, two flyspecks, two grains of sand in a desert, two motes, two invisible men -- two American citizens -- about the entire state of California, the worst financial scandal in history, and the executive branch of the U.S. government under George W. Bush . . . I mean, Dick Cheney:

Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 10:21:09 -0500
From: Michael
Subject: Re he didn't fit in the shredder

If anything calls for investigative journalism -- a long-dead practice -- it's the alleged suicide of Enron VP Baxter. Whose interest is being protected by his death? That he was subpoenaed and about to sing like a canary is well-known, but my question is, who exactly did he have the goods on? Enron is now on its way to the bottom of the sea, its engines have imploded, all hands have abandoned ship, so why would any of those people care about Baxter? Methinks C***** had him killed (the General Accounting Office is now threatening to sue the White House to turn over the names of industry execs who advised Dick Cheney on nat'l energy policy). My guess is that anyone who follows this trail will wind up taking a long walk off a short pier. How many journalists are willing to risk their lives nowadays? This is bigger than Watergate. How many other bodies will turn up, I wonder?

Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 11:17:09 -0500
Subject: Re: he didn't fit in the shredder
From: jeremy

[NOTE: The Newsday.com link he sent me doesn't work anymore. It's too old. It's not available in their archive. I did an extensive search. Maybe one of you can locate it, if it still exists. -- M]

key passages-

Although Baxter's resignation was months before Enron's collapse, he was
identified by name in the explosive warning company executive Sherron
Watkins wrote last August to Enron chairman Ken Lay, who resigned earlier
this week amidst the mushrooming scandal.

"Cliff Baxter complained mightily to Skilling and all who would listen about
the inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM," Watkins wrote Lay. LJM
was one of hundreds of partnerships top Enron executives created that
concealed hundreds of millions of dollars of debt from the company's books.

What, if anything, was done about Baxter's complaints, was not known. No one
was able to say yesterday that his apparent suicide was in any way connected
to the Enron scandal.

Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 12:08:07 -0500
From: "Michael"
Subject: Re: Re he didn't fit in the shredder

Oh, and did I mention that Enron is a Texas-based energy company whose fortunes are inextricably tied up with Dick Cheney's Halliburton stock and other assets, and that it was pushing for deregulation behind closed doors with Cheney's energy task force during the California energy crisis -- a deregulation fiasco -- a state whose utilities, forced into bankruptcy, purchased at gunpoint said "energy" at sky-high deregulated prices, thereby further inflating Cheney's stock at more than ten times its value? That must just be a coincidence. No, this isn't a political scandal at all. Honor and Integrity and Accountability. These people shouldn't use such big words; they have a way of coming back and biting in the ass.

March 15, 2005: Not only does everyone have collective amnesia, but this guy got "reelected" -- after picking himself for the job over all the rest -- twice -- and starting a war strictly for loot, all by himself, with the help of every other branch of government, including the media. And he's still at it:

Excess billing for postwar fuel imports to Iraq by the Halliburton Company totaled more than $108 million, according to a report by Pentagon auditors that was completed last fall but has never been officially released to the public or to Congress.

In one case, according to the report, the company claimed that it had paid more than $27 million to transport liquefied petroleum gas it had purchased in Kuwait for just $82,000 - a fee the auditors tartly dismissed as "illogical."

The fuels report, by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, was one of nine audits involving a subsidiary of Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown & Root, that were completed in October 2004, in the month before the American presidential elections. But the administration has kept all of them confidential despite repeated requests from both Republican and Democratic members of Congress.

This whole thing sickens me. Up next: Iran, right after the Arctic drilling. And in the merry words of the Vice President, the rest of us can go fuck ourselves.

- Michael 6:12 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Who took the money?
Who took the money away? Part Three

I don't want to seem like we're only picking on Halliburton's KBR. There are other GOP friendly government contractors that feed off of your tax dollars and do crappy work. Not only in Iraq.

Like Bechtel: Engineer 'unable' to vouch for Big Dig safety

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- The independent engineering specialist who led an investigation into leaks at the $14.6 billion Big Dig project says he can no longer vouch for the safety of its tunnels.

"I am now unable to express an opinion as to the safety of the I-93 portion of the Central Artery," Jack K. Lemley wrote in the March 9 letter to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, a copy of which was obtained by The Boston Globe.
...
Lemley told lawmakers in November that there was no public safety risk to people driving through the tunnels.

In the latest letter, he said new information has surfaced that more than 40 large sections of tunnel wall contain construction defects and that fireproofing material has been damaged by leaks.

He also wrote that project officials have blocked him from obtaining records and data related to the new problems. Lemley added that his change in position also was driven by the apparent lack of any formal plan by Big Dig officials to address the leak problems.

Actually though Bechtel has a lot of connections with the Reagan administration they aren't as rapidly pro-GOP as the other contractors in rebuilding Iraq.

Check out this fascinating piece that describes the contracts, the companies, and the contributions of the contractors working in Iraq: Rebuilding Iraq -- The Contractors

Bechtel Group Inc.
The Contributions: $1,303,765 (59 percent to Republicans; 41 percent to Democrats)
Total to President Bush: $6,250
...
Halliburton Co.
The Contributions: $708,770 (95 percent to Republicans)
Total to President Bush: $17,677
...
DynCorp
The Contributions: $226,865 (72 percent to Republicans)
Total to President Bush: $7,500
Computer Sciences Corp. (acquired DynCorp March 7)
The Contributions: $276,975 (74 percent to Republicans)
Total to President Bush: $10,250
...
Stevedoring Services of America
The Contributions: $24,825 (77 percent to Republicans)
Total to President Bush: $1,000
...
SkyLink Air and Logistic Support (USA) Inc.
The Contributions: $3,900 (74 percent to Republicans)
Total to President Bush: $0

Not to say all the contractors were GOP donors. Research Triangle Institute gave 100% to Democrats and got a contract "to promote Iraqi civic participation in the reconstruction process." God what a bunch of wimps: "promote civic participation"- please What wimpy washy touchy feely crap. No wonder they donated all their money to Democrats.

- rob 4:25 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Who took the money?
Who took the money away? Part Two

The Spoils of War
Halliburton subsidiary KBR got $12 billion worth of exclusive contracts for work in Iraq. But even more shocking is how KBR spent some of the money. Former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official Bunnatine Greenhouse is blowing the whistle on the Dick Cheney–linked company's profits of war

What role had Dick Cheney played behind the scenes, given that the vice president had been Halliburton's C.E.O. from 1995 to 2000, walked away from the job with an estimated $35 million, and continues to get six-figure deferred-salary compensation from the company, despite his denials that he does? True, Halliburton's $12.5 billion division KBR had expanded over the years from oil and gas to do lots of government work: about half of its 60,000 employees in 43 countries handle military needs, from building bases to serving food. But other companies—Fluor for one, Parsons for another—service the military, too. Why hadn't they been considered?

Worse, KBR appeared to have mismanaged the work it got. At various hearings of the House Committee on Government Reform last year, ranking minority member Henry Waxman (a Democrat from California) turned livid as he detailed charges of reckless spending, chaos in the distribution of supplies, and profiteering by KBR executives—charges less often refuted than shrugged off.
...
Greenhouse's mission was to be sure some of the pie was saved for small and minority-owned businesses. That wasn't just policy—it was the law. Greenhouse had to sign off on every contract valued at more than $10 million. On no less than 50 of the documents she signed, she added clauses and conditions to make sure the law was upheld. There was grumbling from the start, and after Ballard, her mentor, left in 2000, she says, underlings started chopping big contracts into parts worth less than $10 million to try to evade her scrutiny. She could deal with that. But then came the war in Iraq, with its promise of glittering profits. And suddenly everything changed.

"The meeting was in the Pentagon—one of those really secure rooms," Greenhouse recalls. The date was February 26, 2003, three weeks before the Iraq invasion. The Army Corps's Lieutenant General Carl A. Strock was there; Greenhouse says he was the one who would lead the campaign to ax her 20 months later. There, too, were representatives from Defense, State, USAID and others, several dozen in all. A major item on the agenda was deciding which outside contractor would get the multi-billion-dollar job of putting out the oil-well fires that Saddam Hussein's troops would presumably set once the invasion began, and then getting the wells operating again. The project was to be known as RIO, for Restore Iraqi Oil.

Several U.S. companies had the know-how. Texas-based GSM Consulting, for one, had done such work in the wake of the Gulf War. Yet the assumption in the room was that KBR had the job—an assumption underscored by the extraordinary presence of KBR representatives at the high-level government meeting.

But what's the fuss? I'm sure they've done a good job.

Shipping was extra — a lot extra
KBR spent millions getting $82,100 worth of LPG into Iraq

WASHINGTON - Iraq needed fuel. Halliburton Co. was ordered to get it there — quick. So the Houston-based contractor charged the Pentagon $27.5 million to ship $82,100 worth of cooking and heating fuel.

ADVERTISEMENT

In the latest revelation about the company's oft-criticized performance in Iraq, a Pentagon audit report disclosed Monday showed Halliburton subsidiary KBR spent $82,100 to buy liquefied petroleum gas, better-known as LPG, in Kuwait and then 335 times that number to transport the fuel into violence-ridden Iraq.

Pentagon auditors combing through the company's books were mystified by this charge.

"It is illogical that it would cost $27,514,833 to deliver $82,100 in LPG fuel," officials from the Defense Contract Audit Agency noted in the report.

Rumsfeld then announced we would no longer allow Vulcans to work with the Defense Contract Audit Agency.

- rob 4:05 PM - [PermaLink] -

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It'll be light posting from me this week, but I'm sure whatever is posted here at TCS by Michael (or others) will be better than my cutting and pasting concept of posting anyway.

Who took the money?
Who took the money away? Part One

The demise of DeLay will no longer be delayed!: Money: So Where Did It Go?

March 21 issue - The FBI is trying to trace what happened to $2.5 million in payments to a conservative Washington think tank that were routed to accounts controlled by two lobbyists with close ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, NEWSWEEK has learned. The payments to the National Center for Public Policy Research were meant for a PR campaign promoting Indian gaming, center officials said. But internal e-mails obtained by NEWSWEEK show the lobbyists, Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, DeLay's former press secretary, never documented any work performed or explained what they did with the money despite repeated requests.

- rob 3:55 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Remember The Fifth Amendment?

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous
crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in
cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in
actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject
for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall
be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be
deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
shall private property be taken for public use, without just
compensation.

Don't you love it? It's so quaint, especially that part about being deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Can you imagine people actually ran a country that way? What were they thinking?

- Michael 2:39 PM - [PermaLink] -

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The death of Freedom of Speech

First you control/manipulate the news (you know - propaganda)

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show.

They are called "video news releases." The name is an allusion towards the accepted and widely understood term: "press release." But press releases have a dark side. Often a news agency might read straight from a press release and call it news. A "video news release" eliminates that problem. It guarantees that it will be called news.

A fake news segment is made. In the news segment you'll learn of some wonderful thing a corporation is doing to make the world a better place. You know, like Walmart actually paying for someone's health issues or something. Sometimes the news report is made with a fake reporter. More often it is made with a separate script; this way the local news station will have one of its own reporters narrate the story. This gives the "news" story even more legitimacy as it is narrated by a reporter the viewers recognize, and it helps out the local station because it looks like it is their story (i.e. it looks like they did something). You see that is why stations run these "news" segments. Local TV stations don't have any budgets for their local news. TV stations by law have to some how serve the people of the area in which they broadcast. Since bad reality shows aren't considered enough of a "service," TV stations offer local news. Local news is the last remaining part of TV stations serving their broadcasting area. In the old days in meant prime time documentaries about local issues, detailed reports of local politics and events. Now it means an under funded sexed (literally) up "local news" hour. So what do the news directors of these shows do to fill up their hour? They don't have a budget. Heck sometimes they aren't even located in the area, producing a canned "local" news show off in some warehouse where their media corporate masters push out "local news" on a production line (very common in radio). The news directors take these video news releases they get in the mail (free) and run them. Look ma: News!

A corporation pays for the production of a "news" story, and gets stations around the country broadcasting it as news. The viewer never knows it is simply corporate propaganda. This has been going on for years. I interviewed with a division of ABC News that produced these pieces back in 1989 (yes ABC news had a division devoted to fake news). In the interview I said, "ethics aside this sounds like a very interesting position." I didn't get the job (as it something I said?).

Okay it was bad when a corporation does it. But when the government does it. That isn't bad, that is illegal. That is - dare I say it - fascist. When people are being taken off the streets, are you going to see a news segment about how crime has gone down because of this well thought out, fair, crime preemption policy started by the government?


Next you control what people can say (via atrios)

May we call them fascists NOW?

just spoke with a barrista at Empire Coffee (the old Map Room at the corner of Madison & Main). On Thursday Empire was contacted by someone who claimed to be a "federal agent" and told that they were not allowed to display any signs critical of President Bush or his plans to dismantle Social Security. Empire posted a sign saying--and this is a paraphrase--- "We have been informed that we aren't allowed to display signs critical of Bush. We would like to remind the authorities that the First Amendment also applies in Memphis."

According to the barrista several other business owners in the CBD of Downtown were called and given the same line.

(and while we are this roll about corporate/government propaganda, here's a great post to read at Kos: The Most Massive Propaganda Campaign in History: Drug Prohibition.

Also while we’re on this roll check this out: Propaganda is spreading (given Arnie’s past should he really really avoid techniques that could be called fascist?): Calif. Gov. 'News' Videos Cause a Stir

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has acknowledged making several videos masquerading as news stories to promote its agenda, creating an uproar from Democrats and labor leaders in a controversy parallel to one ignited by the Bush administration.

``When the governor produces official government propaganda and tries to fake it to look like news it's very, very corrosive to democratic values,'' said Barry Broad, a labor lobbyist who compared it to efforts by totalitarian regimes.

Criticism initially focused on a video promoting labor regulations altering workers' meal breaks. But the administration later said it made videos on Schwarzenegger's efforts to reshape state government, stall rules that would increase nurse staffing at hospitals and alter teacher pay and tenure requirements, said aides to Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles.

Critics said the tailored-for-TV-news videos amount to taxpayer-funded campaign propaganda.

- rob 1:16 PM - [PermaLink] -

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- rob 1:09 PM - [PermaLink] -

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My father noted something he found by following a link found in an earlier TCS post.

It fits Michael's post about learning from the Nixon era.

Unfortunately we can learn from one of Nixon's cronies as well:

...Henry Kissinger's analysis of how people typically respond to revolutionary powers that do not accept the legitimacy of the existing order:

Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertion of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework. The defenders of the status quo therefore tend to begin by treating the revolutionary power as if its protestations were merely tactical; as if it really accepted the existing legitimacy but overstated its case for bargaining purposes; as if it were motivated by specific grievances to by assuaged by limited concessions. Those who warn against the danger in time are considered alarmists; those who counsel adaptation to circumstances are considered balanced and sane...

The revolution is being televised. Heck the media is participating in the revolution (see above post). This revolution isn't about giving citizens a land of freedom, away from the mendacity of a ruling class, away from a state religion, away from private interests making policy. This revolution is happening and it is about taking our freedom away as freedom is a threat to a ruling class. Freedom is a threat to a state religion. Freedom is a threat to corporate power.

- rob 12:54 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Please read Michael's post below. But don't stop there - read the comments .

There is good stuff in there too.

- rob 12:22 PM - [PermaLink] -

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