Freedom Is A Figment Of My Ecomagination

 

 

Once upon a time America was, the land of the free and the home of the brave.Supreme Court Justice MILLER delivered the opinion of the court in Savings and Loan Association v. Topeka (1875), he stated,"To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes is none the less a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation."

Welcome to the World of the PNAC
Last month the Center for Media and Democracy, Publishers of PR Watch issued their findings of widespread abuse in the area of FAKE NEWS. The report is summarized here.

“Over a ten-month period, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) documented television newsrooms' use of 36 video news releases (VNRs)—a small sample of the thousands produced each year. CMD identified 77 television stations, from those in the largest to the smallest markets, that aired these VNRs or related satellite media tours (SMTs) in 98 separate instances, without disclosure to viewers.

Collectively, these 77 stations reach more than half of the U.S. population…. In almost all cases, stations failed to balance the clients' messages with independently gathered footage or basic journalistic research. More than one-third of the time, stations aired the pre-packaged VNR in its entirety…

In sum, television newscasts—the most popular news source in the United States—frequently air VNRs without disclosure to viewers, without conducting their own reporting, and even without fact checking the claims made in the VNRs. VNRs are overwhelmingly produced for corporations, as part of larger public relations campaigns to sell products, burnish their image, or promote policies or actions beneficial to the corporation.”

The propaganda campaigns continue and include messages from corporate and government entities who use the “news” as a tool to shape public opinion. Front groups support these efforts with benevolent sounding names posing as consumer or grass roots organizations. The truth is that the American Government operates as a Corporate Welfare Program.

The media, including Hollywood, is ruled from the boardrooms of the biggest polluters and companies with the worst records of federal contract fraud. Too many elected officials and Agency Directors, in charge of the distributions of subsidies and tax breaks, are also beneficiaries on the corporate Boards of Directors. Until Americans stop taking the “news” as anything but advertising and begin to follow the money and match the policies with the profiteers they will continue to be robbed.

Propaganda is alive and well and thriving in Iraq. The world is asking the Us to cut back on the spin but the Lincoln Group has a mega million dollar contract and they’ve been selling the Patriotic picture to Americans for so long Lincoln has forgotten that the rest of the world doesn’t buy so much of the Stars and Stripes, sugar coated news.

While the journalistic posers are being paid top dollar to write news lies the truth is under fire. Attorney General Gonzalez warned American journalists that the full power of law enforcement and the long arm of the Bush regime justice would grab anyone writing about government secrets. That includes torture, prisons and other breaking, investigative coverage that in the past qualified for a Pulitzer.

The question of what will happen to the Wall Street Journal business reporters once Bush’s removal of financial reporting takes effect hasn’t been made clear yet. The sense one gets is flattering the leader is good and anything else is not. Pravda Redux is the theme for our future. The Brave New World is ruled by Ecomagination where all images of government are good and criticism is bad. General Electric is our model for corporate government and imagination turning reality to good things for life.

Following the fearless leader, the President boasts his support of the troops. While he is busy with photo ops shaking hands with uniformed personnel, 26.5 million veterans learned that their private data has been floating around on a CD. Apparently the security of the Homeland doesn’t extend to cover the social security numbers or health information for the brave defenders of freedom. The soldiers aren’t the only hardworking Americans being lied to.

PR Watch has uncovered a new attack on the labor unions. Here’s their summary of the situation. Their spin of the day is a must read alternative to the propaganda we get from the “news” groups paid to deliver our corporate messages..

The new industry-funded front group from lobbyist Rick Berman, the Center for Union Facts, has launched its first TV ad campaign. The 30-second spot, running on Fox News and local markets, has "actors posing as workers" saying "sarcastically what they 'love' about unions," like paying dues, union leaders' "fat-cat lifestyles," and discrimination against minorities.

The ad campaign cost $3 million, which was raised "from companies, foundations and individuals that Mr. Berman won't identify." Another TV ad will be filmed in June. Labor and economics professor Harley Shaiken said the effort "to create an antiunion atmosphere" more generally, as opposed to business-funded ads against a particular union organizing drive or strike, "is a new wrinkle." Needless to say, an AFL-CIO spokesperson called the ad's accusations "unfounded and outrageous." Oooh, it’s hard to guess who might have paid for this. Maybe they’d like to donate to Tom DeLay, he’s a hardworking everyman looking for funding. That’s where the nickname “The Hammer” comes from, isn’t it? One more hardworking member of Congress building a future.

Look at the building now. The estimated population of the United States is 298,781,081

so each citizen's share of this debt is $27,970.15. The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.79 billion per day since September 30, 2005. It’s good we’re building a wall to keep illegal workers out. We don’t want to share fortunes like this.

Perhaps Lewis Carroll said it best through Alice In Wonderland. “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” Yes Alice, we do.

Through the Looking Glass An Ecomaginary Voyage Through The Wonderland Of Washington

I’m not sure what they’re smoking in Washington. It’s pretty clear that they don’t know a serious topic from a joke. The ultimate bit of humor comes from Tom “The Hammer” DeLay who’s ruled this corrupt Congress for years and now finds himself in hot water for taking trips with indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In Congressional lingo they’re called junkets and the Members classify the trips as work. It is part of why they only have 96 days to be in session it takes time to fly to resorts and golf. The lobbyists pick up the tab of course. It’s one of the things Members of Congress come to expect, no matter what someone else will get the tab. It’s no surprise that Tom DeLay has posted a website with a plea for donations to help with his defense fund.

The jolly jokester has a clip from the Colbert Report. DeLay must think Steven’s charm will play with the viewers. If the sarcasm escapes them, the irony of DeLay appealing to the public for funds shouldn’t. He’s one of the architects of the K Street project, a hugely successful plan to fill all the key appointee positions with corporate interests and fill the key lobbying roles from the Republican ranks. The whole world inside the beltway is chock-full of Corporate Republicans and they’ve cashed in like never before in history.

Now it’s the consumer’s turn to hand money over to fund poor Tommy’s defense. What has DeLay done for the consumers in his leadership role in Congress?? It’s a long list. There’s the law passed in 2004 making it a crime for Americans to smoke a Cuban cigar anywhere in the world. That’s a good priority and a very important step toward protecting us.

DeLay has called the EPA the Gestapo and he helped to make bankruptcy harder for individuals and give more freedom to prosecute to the credit card companies. Never mind he’s been a supporter of the war and head of the Congress to take a surplus and turn it to trillions of debt in a few short years. Yes America, take your after tax dollars and help the poor man fight. He voted to let big oil keep their profits now he wants thanks.

What else is happening in the land of the corporate free ride? Oh it’s a busy day. President Bush has decided that defense contractors, and other public companies that do business with Uncle Sam, should be able to keep their financial data secret. Listen to the interview. Heck of a job Negraponte!!

If this policy had been in place before the Enron collapse no one would be on trial now. It could have been handled like the Federal Trade Commission investigation into the big oil price gouging. The FTC head was pulled from the corporate attorney’s for Texaco. Now that’s efficency.

Once public companies roll back reporting we can feel really safe. You know how those radical terrorists hedge portfolio risk. We can’t let them know how well GE and Halliburton are doing. How would it look if the terrorists knew how GE used nuclear waste in human tests. They could get ideas. We need to keep those ideas at home. We need to keep America safe and build walls across our borders. The President has a plan and our job is to let him run everything in secret, even if it seems like the secret plan is to run it into the ground.

All the pesky websites like open secrets and corporate watch would stop posting all the unflattering stories about the contractor fraud and waste. All that talk hurts the morale of the troops and things are tough in Iraq. Oops, the message is Democracy is growing and there are sunny skies ahead. According to the Global Warming data, really sunny skies.

Colbert Nation Leading The Leaders

Fittingly in this land of Orwellian doublespeak it’s up to the handsome host at Comedy Central to get the hard hitting news on the air. We are the Colbert Nation. Where are rest of the American media and news reporters as the PNAC rolls out their game plan?

They’re hot on the trail of Brittany Spears to make sure she has that precious little baby buckled into its seat facing the right way. Access Hollywood has replaced the White House Press Corp for investigative reporting and the President's nephew Billy Bush is delivering all the news we "need" to hear.

Billy has the pulse of the nation and the true spirit of the information the White House likes us to focus on. America is at the dawn of a new age where the same old news just won’t cut it anymore. The future is about Ecomagination where the corporate vision rolls out the news consistent with the corporate political agenda. It’s not your parents’ news.

Why wouldn’t the Washington beat reporters be a little nervous? Look at the mess that was started when Ambassador Wilson had the gall to challenge the claims of WMD’s. The White House still hasn’t recovered from that. The pesky prosecutors keep calling key staff to testify. What is Fitzgerald thinking with so much poking around? How could Karl Rove possibly be expected to keep track of all the E-mails from his office?

We are a Nation at war. We have the long war in Iraq and a war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on poverty and now we have a war on information and whistleblowers. Rebranding these campaigns has taken a toll, lobbying firms are tired of shaping news.

With the merger Fox and the White House press functions under the Snow-man it should be a lot easier to keep dirty details out of the headlines and keep the heart of America in support of the President’s vision.

General Hayden, former architect of the NSA spying program should be confirmed as the head of the CIA helping to fully integrate the corporate military industrial complex squarely behind the President and expediting the accumulation of Government secrets.

Great progress in that area has already been made by Executive Order; the President curtailed the release of information and increased the secrecy. It’s not just recent information either. Bush is reclassifying documents that have been public since the Korean War.

In The New York Times, February 21, 2006 Scott Shane reported, “Intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department…National Archives officials said the program had revoked access to 9,500 documents, more than 8,000 of them since President Bush took office.

I’m sure Steven Colbert would comfort us and remind everyone that Americans can trust the telling of history to the official government reports, which can be revised as the situation warrants. There is no need to have dusty archives filling high rent office space in the archives. It probably would be a good idea to go green and recycle some of that paper while we’re at it. Digital records are so much easier to modify and transport. Just this weekend we learned that a single Veterans Administration employee had the records of 26.5 million veterans on a CD at his home. They were stolen but there’s efficiency at work. Think how many file cabinets it would have taken if they were paper.

The Attorney General meanwhile is busy hunting the reporters who have leaked unflattering news about the White House. So many feathers have been ruffled by the whistleblowers behind the telephone companies’ release of calling data. Many Americans have lost sight of the fact that alerting the Taliban their phone calls can be monitored has compromised the war on terror.

At home we should feel safer to know one of every 136 Americans is behind bars. A few more episodes of Dateline and child predators can add to the ranks. The media is doing its job of fighting threats to Americans. As long as those threats stay focused on private citizens everyone in Washington will be happy.

Together George and Billy Bush are leading the way and blazing the trail. George is classifying what we shouldn’t know about government while Billy is exposing the details of the private lives of celebrities. That way we can all see how being famous doesn’t make someone above the law. By exposing the court documents of their divorces, arrests and child custody suits we know freedom of information is alive and well.

While Billy zooms in on the high profile personalities Uncle George can focus on the everyman. No one is left out in the wiretapping program and information is gathered on all Americans. The monitoring of phone calls hasn’t brought the nation any closer to capturing the top threat Osama Ben Forgotten, low wage AID workers have done a bang up job hunting down every sick bird in the far corners of the earth.

Success in the hunt for the bird flu has been overwhelming. If Osama had bird flu there’s no doubt he’d be in the hands of an AID worker by now. It probably proves the case that the needier people are the harder they work. These barefoot soldiers of flu-warfare have searched for the front lines. Their sick bird reports have riveted the nation; not a news cast goes on the air without the mention of a possible pandemic and the governments efforts to be in front of the curve.

The threat of pandemic has taken the place of the color-coded terror alert system. It’s not all bad news though, as the Dow Jones Average plunges, the portfolio values of Rumsfeld have soared due to the Gilead Sciences stock and their Tamiflu license. It hasn’t been this good for Gilead since the dot.com decline when small pox panic pumped up their share value. For those who don’t remember small pox panic followed anthrax but like Osama the’ve largely been forgotten. Not by Gilead and the shareholders though.

It just goes to show you that ever cloud has a silver lining. For the gang in the White House panics can be gold. Never mind what war is worth. That's been a windfall for the corporate interests and while the deficit explodes, so do the fortunes of the Washington-Wall Street revolving door leadership. What else is going on to protect us?

Condoleezza Rice continues to serve as a goodwill ambassador to a world of hostile allies dressed to project an image that says, whip me, chase me, make me write bad checks. To her credit the Secretary has managed to keep smiling through it all. It makes you wonder what she did for Chevron to name an oil tanker after her. Maybe it doesn't. It seems most thoughts relating to oil are tied to the price of gasoline and fuel costs. People keep suggesting the high prices are tied to the record corporate profits.

Facing growing consumer complaints of price gouging the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation. The FTC is the group that Congress formed to protect Consumer interests. It is nice to know that the Chairman of the FTC is a former lobbyist for Chevron Texaco. Deborah Platt Majoras was at Jones Day law firm as point person for ChevronTexaco and Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root.

That surely helped her get to the bottom of the pricing issue. With all the practice she had lobbying for them before she got to the FTC she must have a Rolodex full of people to call to answer the tough questions. It's so nice the Congress provides oversight.

Not only does Congress provide oversight, they manage to keep a few things out of sight. Their tight 96-day schedule this session has left little time for the critical task of legislating the key issues. They did vote to establish English as our official language, which must be an item of confusion and hot button with voters. That's the only reason to suggest it would have the kind of news coverage it has.

Congressional works not making the news should be acknowledged too. The Congress is hot on the heels of the whistleblowers. Yes, the great threat to freedom is those who leak information, which damages the White House. Thanks to the Presidential signing statements and declassification by on the fly provisions, stating that anything the White House does in its own interest, are exempt from the laws, the leakers around the Oval Office won't be affected.

The problem is the critics. Congressional leader and Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra is outraged by the whistleblowers and he's doing something about it. Without fanfare or media coverage Pete Hoekstra has decided to put an end to the government officials talking about secret prisons, eavesdropping and other sensitive matters of Homeland security.

This isn't like the law passed during the capture of Saddam where the Congress gave broader investigation rights to the President. Then the new legislation which increased the federal powers to investigate and reduced the privacy rights of American citizens: H.R. 2417, was called the Intelligence Authorization Agreement of 2004.

For starters Hoekstra attached his idea to a bill that was already passed, HR 5020 the spending bill for '07. Secondly it has a different name and a more focused target it's Section 413 revoking pensions. It's like a P.S. Hoekstra's little attachment goes right to the source, it punishes those who speak out and it makes them pay. This takes away their pensions.

Now Americans in the private sector won't be the only ones to have the benefit plans swept away, critics in Government will enjoy equal treatment. Isn't that the goal of our leaders? Equal treatment for all has upsides too. Until now the private sector were the only group enjoying the increased fortunes of dumping retirees. This changes that.

If enough critics are punished, the lost pensions in addition to criminal fines can add up to the tab for a good trip by a top-lobbying group. How much better does it get corporate America? Isn't this a step in the right direction for the Colbert Nation?

Where is our fearless leader in these days before Memorial Day weekend? How could he be off when the Congress is doing work? How can we know what to think about the transfer of powers? When all else fails we have Colbert and when it's a rerun we Redux.