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Nothing benefits a nation as much as good government, and nothing damages government as much as ignored flagrant conflicts of interest. For too long the grave conflict of interest presented by allowing industrialists to own all of the news media has been ignored! Show me a nation, like ours, that once had fair media, that conscience of nations, early warning system and reminder of past mistakes, and I'll show you a nation that once had better government and a more stable society!
Sandlewood ill keep trying signing and praying too. Im sorry if it came across that way. Wasnt trying to belittle Just beyond frustrated. Now i have two siblings getting hours cut again because then no health care through their workplace and they need food stamps already and food stamps are getting cut again. It should be illegal for politicians to vote anything other than what the peoples majority want them to do.
DAnne,
Not at ALL...obviously I didn't, therefore couldn't have said it better myself...did you know the FCC has monthly meetings that are open to the public? ( https://www.fcc.gov/open-meetings ). Trying, w/my ADHD hyper brain to figure out how to 30 rOckupy these...suggestions welcome.. !!
douglas m ~ $8 Billion in food stamp cuts? That is reprehensible!! How do these people live with themselves?
Nevertheless, I must agree with sandlewould, we cannot stop fighting. It is the least we can do...
Great letter. I have copied it and the link to do my own writing and to share with others. I agree with what you have written.
Our so-called democracy/republic is hanging by a thread.
sandlewould ~ Thanks for that excellent letter. Consider it done. I took the time to add this at the end...
Now, the last shred of a free press hangs in the balance; a free and open internet. You MUST move quickly to reclassify broadband carriers as public utilities, subject to the same rules as such. As powerful as your office is, even you, Sir, will not be invited to the party when the curtain falls. Please ask yourself..what kind of society do you want to live in? A civil one I hope, where all are indeed guaranteed certain inalienable civil rights. I believe the time has come to break up these media monopolies, restore the Fairness Doctrine, and return integrity to our commercial media. We should also endeavour to insure that our internet remains the last bastion of freedom of speech.
Hope you don't mind...
It sounded great until you got to the part that said, "The Government by the People Act would also increase matching funds in the last two months of a general election to counter outside spending groups...."
To me that leaves the giant loophole that the corporations will love. Was this bill written by ALEC? I have a feeling that things won't change in my lifetime but I guess we can keep trying. I wonder why we cannot put Public Funding of Elections to a vote of We the People?
Mark Saulys ~ If you meant "Opponents of Citizens United" then you took the words right out of my mouth. Legalized bribery is exactly what our current system not only allows but encourages. I also see no hope in any attempt to chip away at the problem. The money factor is too mismatched. We need to pursue aggressive Campaign Finance Reform and pass a Constitutional Amendment that forever bans Citizens United; or, any other law, or misinterpretation of the law, that opens the floodgates to legalized bribery in government. While we're at it, passing some strict laws against bribery might be a good idea as well. Like life in prison for accepting any fund or property transfer while in office. The same penalty would be enforced on the person or entity making the transfer.
The cure to our ills is really quite simple. We just need some committed and brave representation to pull it off. I don't see this bill as accomplishing much of anything. With this problem it is all or nothing. Quite frankly, I agree that even this modest attempt probably doesn't have a snowballs chance in hell of passing. It's just another smoke screen attempt to siphon off the limited resources, time and energy of We the People. I say demand all or nothing and accept no substitutes.
The "Government by the people" act is a well intentioned exercise in futility. Simply adding more money into the election mix, in an attempt to counter the big spenders is doomed to fail. Worse, it will just create an arms race between the powerful and the rest of the population. We know how that will work out because it is already happening. The very rich will just up the ante and the politicians will continue to do their bidding. The politicians will like the idea as it will inject even more funds into their pockets. But is it reasonable to solve the problem of money in politics by adding even more money?
You 'gotta' point, but I can't stop trying...it's all I've got left.
the community sent 544,975 emails to their members of Congress opposing any cuts to food stamps, along with 792,518 petition signatures with the same message.
Despite this, yesterday a Farm Bill with $8 billion in food stamp cuts passed the Senate—having earlier passed the House. The Farm Bill will now become law, and these food stamp cuts will go into effect?
After almost a million signatures Congress is nothing but a CON-JOB thinking our voice matters?
Now you think they will chop their own paychecks , that is laughable.
Well, not being a journalist, I guess I see anyone who comments intelligently and broadly as a journalist...or committing acts of journalism...whatever...as far as I'm concerned, anyone who keeps a journal is a journalist, whether public or private. The degree of latitude, for me, is not the issue, the presentation of facts and truths, regardless of the degree of so-called objectivity is. Journalistic objectivity in the face of much of today's truths, is in my humble opinion, tantamount to sociopathy. And yes, the inevitable final stage of Capitalism is cannibalism...and the corrupt media cheers it on.
Alice, I often suspect Kend is a shill, a liar for hire, I mean, I often can not believe anybody can genuinely be that dumb. He must be feigning stupidity. That's why I really lose my temper with him sometimes. It's usually a good idea, though, to not.
Anyway, his logic is easy to take apart.
I wonder how hard it would be for roving bands of "renegade" Fox channel frequency disruptors to, as a form of protest, disrupt the right wing propaganda around the nation? I kind of wonder if right wingers aren't already doing that to the lefty channels I watch. It happens all the time on RT, FSTV, Link TV...important points of a conversation are disrupted, some kind of interference, which tends to confuse what is being said. And since these channels usually do not have captions it is very discouraging. It could just be the channels...but I hardly ever see the same kind of thing on any of the other channels.
sandlewould: Just to pick a generally important nit, please distinguish between journalists and commentators. Thom is not a journalist. Commentators have and should have a latitude beyond reporters. Faux News has simply lost this distinction. I do appreciate your basic point, however. Our current monopolized media are not what I think the writers of the First Amendment had in mind. What we have is the final, inevitable corruption stage of dysfunctional capitalism.
I hope this is not too off topic, but considerring that coruption of our media is a HUGE reason why most don't even know what citizen's united is, perhaps not. I want to share an email I sent to FCC Chair, Tom Wheeler today (Tom.Wheeler@fcc.gov) and invite you all to do the same... Feel free to cut and paste some/all of the text and sign your name to it unless you'd rather write your own.
Dear Chairman Wheeler
After hearing from responsible journalists like Amy Goodman and Thom Hartmann of Fox News’ grotesque perversion of the CBO’s recent report re. the benefits to the labor force because of the ACA, I have reached a point where I can no longer remain silent. Since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and laws limiting media monopolies, I have watched the gradual degradation of American Media and American Society along with it. Commercial News media in the US has gone from news in the public interest to a Freak Show of anecdotal half truths that serve no purpose other than to distract Americans at best, and blatant lies at worst. Media has the power to shape history. Today, Dr. King would never be allowed a microphone or even a bullhorn. If the media covered Martin Luther King today, they would be fumbling with their carefully crafted corporate scripts, ignoring the crowds being beaten as they cross the bridge in Selma. We wouldn’t hear the exuberance as Dr. King shouts, “I have a DREAM…” No one would know of Dr. King’s dream, let alone the dreams of countless thousands. The 5 mega-corporations that have seized control of American media would crush any hope of civil rights for laborers, African Americans, women, and minorities. We might even descend back into an era of slavery…this time, some poor will be owned by the rich, the rest left to live in the squalor of decaying infrastructure, poverty and pollution.
Now, the last shred of a free press hangs in the balance; a free and open internet. You MUST move quickly to reclassify broadband carriers as public utilities, subject to the same rules as such. As powerful as your office is, even you, Sir, will not be invited to the party when the curtain falls. Please ask yourself..what kind of society do you want to live in? A civil one I hope, where all are indeed guaranteed certain inalienable civil rights. Thank you for your time.
Respectfully,
I must admit that until I watched him on the RT program I only vaguely remember something about him being the inventor of GNU...but now I see he's quite a progressive activist. And he supports the Green Party. Yay!!!
Stallman's website: http://stallman.org/
Whoa!! I didn't know any of this about Amazon....
http://stallman.org/amazon.html
Or, Skype...
http://stallman.org/skype.html
Or, Apple...
http://stallman.org/apple.html
for instance...Apple is in the censoring business?...they turned down an APP that reports on drones and numbers of people they kill....
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/aug/30/apple-blocks-us-drone-...
And one day, when our government sends out drones and manages to kill your children or grand children...Apple will be in the forefront of censoring it all.
The lobbyists will never allow this.
I don't know why the defendants of Citizens United didn't, or if they did but didn't prevail with it, make the argument that the current or an unregulated campaign finance system is simply legalized bribery.
PD, Marc- Thanks for cheering me up. I needed that...
And look out...I just heard that technology has provided a way to heal bullet wounds in 15 seconds..some kind of injection....expected to be very useful on the battle fields. I guess that means that we'll have a lot more wars! Of course, I doubt that the new invention will help grow new legs or arms...or heads. Maybe it's not "Beam me up, Scotty!" it's "Up your beam, Scotty!"
Richard Stallman, inventor of the original GNU project, was on Oksana Boyko in RT’s Worlds Apart show today, said that he never uses cell phones in large part because of the NSA spying program. He was also talking about the old UKUSA/Echelon program where each member country would skirt their internal laws against spying on their own citizens by spying on each others citizens then swapping the information. This was being done a long time ago. Now...they don't even have to do that...they spy on us directly. Exactly what they planned when they did the 9/11 false flag operation*. And as far back as 2005, businesses were able to spy on their own employees activities and whereabouts at any given time through the business cell phones they expected their employees to use.
When people give up their expectation of freedom and privacy... maybe they really do deserve what they end up with....fascist regimes like Nazi Germany...perhaps? You don't think it can happen again!? Maybe I'll ask you again one day when we are all sitting in gas chambers waiting for the Zyklon B to fall through the chutes. When rich and powerful controlling groups of people have all the technology to control what you think, say, or do we will all be brainless automaton slaves that will have no other recourse but to do exactly what they want us to think, say, or do. Hitler had the latest technology...provided by IBM in the US...and other businesses from ball bearings to bank loans.
You say you dislike this or that and think that all you have to do is go to the polls to vote in yet another obsequious toady President or Congress members. You really think you're going to change things? Yet, here you are falling prey to the tools that they manipulate to keep you from ever really ever changing anything.
Unless you get rid of those NSA spy devices or jail-break them and load them with non-proprietary (open source) software you, just like the pied piper of Hamlin's mice, will all be drowned in your own pool of stupidity.
As Richard Stallman said on the show...they are trying to say that it is all about governments spying on other governments..but, that's something governments have always done anyway...no big deal...what IS the big deal is that they are spying on the people...that's what they try to de-emphasize. That's what they don't want us to be constantly aware of.
So, these governments, who all spy on other governments are also now spying on all their own people. The rich and powerful of all nations have a vested interest in keeping the people from overthrowing them, internal dissent, and they work together to distract us from the truth. All these governments need the propaganda they generate to keep us fearful of the other countries but the real fear should be what our own ruling elite in each of our own countries are doing to us...no matter what country we live in. The real enemies are the ruling elites of each country.
So, just like all the other people who have been psychologized into sacrificing their future for convenience..whether it be that new car or house or big screen tv you really can't afford and put on credit...or that little device that causes brain cancer...that microwave transmitter you put up to one ear...you are all alike...you're all falling for the trickery of those who would imprison you one way or another. And there will always be wealthy people who will scorn you for not having will power or the sense to live within your means...or the sense to stop doing things that will do you in one way or the other.
*(note: some of the things I mention here was not talked about by Richard Stallman...I don't know what his thoughts are on 9/11).
http://rt.com/op-edge/stallman-surveillance-keep-democracy-894/
Aliceinwonderland ~ I'm surprised and disappointed. I would have so expected you to say, "Beam me up!"
I'm sure that is what the away team would have said had they ever encountered a lifeform like Kend. I can just hear Mr. Spock, "Fascinating Captain! It appears to defy logic. Certainly we should stay and examine this most peculiar anomaly?"
"No, Mr. Spock," Kirk replies. "I've seen enough! Beam me up!"
As the Enterprise flies out of orbit at Warp 8 Kirk says, "Log this class M planet as hostile with non intelligent lifeforms. I recommend a permanent quarantine."
Thanks Kend!
Lets not forget that people are the way they are largely because of the psychological manipulation through commercials. Our capitalist system is a system built on maximizing greed. And with all those commercial glamorizing greed and materialism what do you expect?
Mark, your patience is WAY more enduring than mine. No matter what I try telling Kend, he just doesn't get it. Perhaps he doesn't want to get it, but only wants to blame us for everything. At any rate, I'm done. I resign. - AIW
Kend, with our previous healthcare systems, a credit industry that encourages debt (to the point of pushing cards on college freshmen who lack the worldliness to manage their money wisely), a student loan system like we have, etc. there seems to be a willful try by the banks to put everybody into a debt bondage. Not that long ago (before 1980, of course, before Reagan) Americans had very little debt and much in personal savings. Now the opposite is true and I don't think it's because suddenly Americans lost any sense of self discipline, especially since it coincides with the most moralizing and self righteous period, emphasizing the absolute essentiality of "personal responsibility", in recent American history.