January 2009 Archives

The inauguration and celebratory festivities were a wonder to behold. Never have I seen so many people with huge smiles and flowing tears sharing the same face. Never have I heard more people thank God for simply allowing them to see such a day. And never have I seen anyone, in the face of such adulation, remain so grounded, so real, and so humble, as our new president. As he admits, the road ahead will be rocky and an uphill battle. But calling all of us to service, President Obama is confident that working together we can do what needs to be done.

With this call for a united effort, still echoing in the halls of the Capital, Congress resumed its duties this morning. Still euphoric from the excitement and buoyed by the hope of a new start, I turned on C-Span to see the bipartisan efforts to move ahead with our country’s urgent needs. What do you suppose I saw?

Watching the Geithner confirmation hearing I saw that Jon Kyl is perfect, or a hypocrite, or guilty of excessive political posturing. Apparently in Kyl’s world, it is not sufficient to admit you made a mistake, apologize, and correct the mistake. You must also suffer a brow beating that laboriously digs for any possible way that you might have avoided making the mistake in the first place. This appears to be a search for some way in which you might be blamed and judged more harshly for your mistake. Perhaps we should take a magnifying glass to Mr. Kyl’s life and see if he ever made a mistake and then treat him as he treats others. What goes around comes around, Mr. Kyl, you might want to remember what happened to Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert, also serious blame-game players.

Moving on to the full Senate confirmation of Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State, which everyone agrees is assured, I saw that rather than just “getting it done” we must first endure yet more political posturing. Politicians, it seems, cannot stand to miss an opportunity to stick their faces in front of a camera and pontificate. That is, if they show up so the vote can take place. Even when there is so much important business to be done and so many issues that require real and serious debate, these “public servants” waste time (and therefore our money) by absenting themselves from the chamber or wind-bagging over issues that are already decided. Looking for some silver lining, might it be possible to use all the wind expelled by this august body as part of our alternative energy plan?

Let us hope that these examples of “business as usual” are an aberration and not a sign of things to come.

Why isn’t the media all over the trail of the bailout money? What do investigative journalists do these days? Or have they all been replaced by blathering fools who just read a teleprompter or rattle off political commentary in lieu of reporting the news.

Who is getting the bailout money? That is news.

How is the distributed bailout money being used by the recipients? That is news.

Is the distributed money achieving the intended goals? That is news.

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the bailout oversight said: "The rapid pace of implementation and evolving nature of the program have hampered efforts to put a comprehensive system of internal control in place. Until such a system is fully developed and implemented, there is heightened risk that the interests of the government and taxpayers may not be adequately protected and that the program objectives may not be achieved in an efficient and effective manner." That is news.

How were the four firms, Blackrock Inc., Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management, and PIMCO, selected to manage a total of $500 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities on behalf of the Federal Reserve? That is news.

How much are the four firms getting paid to manage the Fed's mortgage-backed securities purchase program? That is news.

So why aren’t reporters digging out the answers to these questions? Mentioning something once in passing is not “reporting” on an important issue. How can they ignore the significance of these issues to us and to our economic survival? Has our press deteriorated to such a degree that they will sit by and watch our economy collapse while they do fluff pieces?

The make up of today’s “news shows” (and they are more show than news) tells the story if you pay attention. Right off the top, 25% of the airtime is used for commercials. Another 25% is spent repeating clips of what is coming up in the broadcast. 40% is spent repeating non-news stories - items about celebrities; things that are happening on some local level that we have already heard about and that usually don’t even have new developments; and manufactured uproars about stuff that never was important. If we are lucky, the remaining 10% might be real news.

We should not have to work so hard to find out what is going on in our country and especially when it concerns the expenditure of taxpayer's money. That is the purpose of having journalists. That is the purpose of having news broadcasts. Since the existing establishment news networks no longer fulfill this purpose, we need to hit them where it will do the most good – in their bottom line. Not watching and not supporting their advertisers does just that.

So…TURN THEM OFF! And write or call the news organization and tell them what you are doing and why. And call or write their advertisers and tell them what you are doing and why.

If we continue to support these non-news shows, we will continue to get non-news. We will only get real news when we demand it and refuse to settle for anything less.

But all too often we only hear one side.

A case in point is the reported piracy off the coast of Somalia. As pointed out in an excellent article by Johann Hari, columnist for the London Independent, we are hearing about the evil pirates threatening the shipping lanes important to the Western world. What we are not hearing is information about what led up to this piracy.

After the Somalia government collapsed, foreign ships began dumping barrels of toxic waste off their shores and foreign trawlers began illegally fishing in their unprotected waters. The combination of these actions brought sickness and death to Somalia from starvation and toxic poisoning. Though there certainly is a criminal element of thugs among the pirates, many of them are simple fishermen defending themselves against toxic waste dumping and the invasion of their fishing waters. Where is the outcry and where are the news reports about these crimes?

Apparently what happens to the people of Somalia, “one of the most broken countries on earth” is not important to the Western world. But as soon as the Western world is threatened with disruption of the transit route for 20% of the world’s oil, the “evil” Somalia pirates are big news. What about the evil criminals who have been illegally dumping toxic waste since the early 90’s? What about the evil criminals who over fished their own waters and are now illegally over fishing Somalia's waters?

The Western world’s continuing disregard for the lives and welfare of the people of poor countries is a blot on us all. When prosperity is gained on the backs of the poor it is ill gotten gain and not worthy of the people of developed nations. The way to change this is to become an informed populace.

It is not enough to simply blame media for not informing us. We must step forward and demand information. Establishment news is controlled by corporations. Corporations are governed by their bottom line. We, the consumers of establishment news, have the power to affect that bottom line. Affecting that bottom line negatively will bring about change.

There are simple, no cost and low cost things we can do to accomplish this:

• Let corporations know we are tuning out and turning off broadcasts that lack balanced journalistic integrity.
• Let advertisers know we object to the coverage, or lack thereof, offered by news shows they sponsor.
• Seek out and support free press and public broadcasting news to encourage its growth.
• Commit to ongoing efforts along these lines to ensure continuing pressure for change.

As our new soon-to-be president has continually said, change is up to all of us. He cannot do it alone. And there are many small steps like these we can take that will, down the road, make a difference in the big picture.

And while on the subject of change, enough already with putting ignorant people in high places.

It is way past time for those who take pride in being ignorant to be relegated to the position they deserve – the back of the class, the bottom of the pile, the end of the line. Stupidity is an accident of birth. Ignorance, on the other hand is a choice. Willful ignorance is something to be shamed by, not a source of pride. However it came about that those who choose to be ignorant rose to the top, it is time for it to stop.

Chip Saltsman, candidate for chairman of the RNC, and those who support him make me ashamed to share my country, even my humanity, with them. How is it possible in America, in the 21st Century, that such blatant racism as exhibited by Saltsman’s disgusting Christmas CD, is acceptable to anyone? Why would any right thinking person even consider someone so small minded, so bigoted, for a leadership position in anything, much less a major party national committee.

This is the kind of thing that drove me out of the Republican Party. It is the kind of thing that should cause anyone claiming to be a "values centered" member of the party to consider leaving. Unless the Republican Party is trying to sign its own death certificate, it will soundly reject Saltsman and his supporters and eject them from the party. This is one story that does not have another side.