Republican Hypocrisy Continues…

I’m going to keep this one short. I’ve got a much longer post that will be coming soon (I was working on the longer post, but a computer failure brought it to a standstill for over a week.)

On February 25^th, the New York Times published an article on how the Democrats wanted to push the President’s agenda forward. In response, Mr. John Boehner (pronounced “BAYnor” not “BOHner”, no matter how much we wish it were), the MINORITY leader of the House, said the following at a meeting with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor:

You’ve all heard all the talk about fiscal responsibility. And based on everything I’ve seen, it looks like the era of big government is back. My questions for my Democratic colleagues are how are you going to pay for this?

My questions for Mr. Boehner are these: Why didn’t you show one tiny little bit of fiscal responsibility in the six years that the Republicans had control of all three branches of the federal government? Why did you let Mr. Bush increase the size of our government more than any previous President, even Mr. Reagan? Why didn’t you oppose the largest deficit in the history of the country, more than all previous Presidents combined? Why did you spend using credit like there was no tomorrow while decreasing revenue (taxes) for six straight years, and what did you expect the outcome to be?

And last, but not least, what makes you think you or your party have any credibility at this point?

New York Times article:

Democrats Vow Swift Action on Obama’s Agenda, By CARL HULSE

Published: February 25, 2009. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/us/politics/26web-obama.html?hp

What we need to do NEXT Part 4

This is the fourth part of my massive essay, "What we need to do NEXT." For the previous three parts, read them below.

Education

In the 1960’s, the average college graduate had little debt when given their diploma. Most of their education was funded through grants or the GI Bill. Now, most students graduate with a minimum of $30,000 in debt, usually more. Most of the funds spent on tuition and books come from loans. This needs to end. With credit becoming scarcer, we need to start funding our higher education. This is where fortunes are started, through education. Businesses cannot produce good products without well educated people. Government doesn’t work well without well educated people. Money spent on education is not lost, it is invested, and we need to start treating it this way, instead of treating it like it’s money thrown down a well.

We need to support our troops by giving them a free education. Honestly, how can we say that we are supporting them when in fact all of the funds they are getting for education right now are a part of their pay? We need to do more for those who would sacrifice themselves for us.

Money paid into colleges also helps our country by supporting basic research. The more basic research that is done, the more our industry benefits and the more jobs that are created.

For primary education, we need to start the reforms by paying our teachers better. The starting pay for an elementary school teacher in California is about $24,000. That’s nothing. Two teachers together aren’t making $50,000 per year. That needs to be changed dramatically. You absolutely can’t get a first-rate education from someone who can’t survive on their pay, let alone pay off their college debt. It’s scandalous.

After doing this, we need to reform our textbooks, and how they are written and chosen. History text books are written as propaganda pieces, and chosen based on how much they project the way we wish our country had been, not on actual history. That’s nuts. Let our kids know what has happened in our country, or they might make some kind of dumb mistake, like allowing a depression to happen again.

None of this is optional. If we refuse to do these reforms we have in effect decided that our country will fade away into history.

McCain's Victory Speech

By Ed Smallwood

This is the kind of speech that John McCaint may be giving this November if things don’t start changing real soon.

“My friends, I have just been told that we have achieved victory in our campaign! We have won this battle and will be in the White House this January, as we planned!

“There are some people that I must thank due to their special help! To those who supported Hillary Clinton and voted for me, I give a special thanks! You helped us win this election by an overwhelming mandate of almost 1% of the vote! You made all the difference! To those who refused to vote because Mrs. Clinton lost the primary, you helped by not standing against our mandate! Thank you!

“Your insistence on avoiding party unity helped to ensure that women’s rights will be set back in this country! By throwing a public tantrum through sites like ‘P.U.M.A.’ or ‘Party Unity My A$$’ you made sure I will be able to replace at least two moderate Supreme Court Justices with the most conservative judges I can find! You personally, either through your vote for me, or by refusing to vote for my opponent, made sure I can mend the divisions in our country by reaching across the isle in Congress and bullying the Democrats into voting in step with Republicans on important issues like making sure I can tap your phone conversations at will and without oversight, and ensuring that rich people get permanent and generous tax breaks! We will be able to pass an amendment to the Constitution outlawing all abortions in our country by the end of my Presidency, and it’s all because you couldn’t forgive Obama for not realizing it was a woman’s turn in office!

“Yes, my friends, we do owe these stubborn Hillary supporters a lot! Especially my friends in the financial and energy industries! By throwing the biggest hissy fit in our times, they have ensured that all government regulation of these and other industries will end, allowing fraud and outright thievery to take the pensions of innocent retirees! We will, because of Hillary’s most stubborn supporters, be able to hand Social Security trust funds over to the same people responsible for the current mortgage disaster!

“And we will be able to keep our troops in Iraq for at least the next hundred years, ensuring money flows through there to our friends in Black Water and Halliburton without oversight!

“Because of them and you, my friends, the mass shipping of U.S. jobs overseas will continue unstopped, and at a greater pace than in the past, to be replaced by minimum wages jobs! And if we can get those cowardly Democrats in Congress to back down, we can even get a reduction in the minimum wage to help our struggling industry keep pace with slave wages in communist countries!

“Yes, their help was invaluable to us, and we owe them a huge debt that we can never repay. Except through higher debt to foreign governments.”

The TV Networks Owe Us An Apology

Scott McClellan has done his first good deed to the people of the United States in the last 8 years. He has pointed out in his new book that the Bush White House manipulated the media to get a war that they knew was unnecessary, and that the television media in the U.S. was completely complicit in this deception.

We know that the White House lied to get us into the war. There is no reasonable point of debate on this issue any longer. We know that Congress allowed the White House to dominate this issue, and gave them the war they wanted without any significant debate. Even under the Democratic Leadership, Congress has been unwilling to reign in the White House’s excesses. We are painfully aware of how the Supreme Court has largely allowed the White House to do what it will, with only token disagreement by allowing Civil instead of Military trials of U.S. Citizens captured within the U.S. as terrorists.

Now, with McClellan’s and other voices being heard, there is no longer any doubt that the television media in the United States at best allowed the White House to completely have its say, and at worst actively suppressed dissent of a war that would kill thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Before the war former weapons inspector Scott Ritter came to the college I was attending to give a talk about his experiences. He made it absolutely clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because he and his team found and destroyed them. He also told us, as a former Marine, that he believed that invading Iraq would be a huge mistake. He believed that invading Iraq and taking Saddam out would mean that we would be mired in the country for decades. He said that he believed that Iraq would break out in civil war. He said all of this before we set one foot over the Iraqi border. Perhaps the President had bad information about how the Iraq war would go, but that means I had better information available to me. The sad thing is the media had the same access to this information I did, and ignored it.

Before we went into Iraq, CNN news chief, Eason Jordan, went so far as to say of Mr. Ritter, “Well, Scott Ritter's chameleon-like behaviour has really bewildered a lot of people…U.S. officials no longer give Scott Ritter much credibility..." Perhaps U.S. Officials didn’t, but CNN should have. Not long after, Paula Zahn said on her show that Scott Ritter had “drunk Saddam Hussein’s Kool-Aid.”

In the final weeks of the run up to the war, MSNBC fired Phil Donahue from his highly rated show because he was willing to book guests that were speaking out against the war. A memo from MSNBC stating this explicitly surfaced at allyourtv.com soon after the firing that confirmed the reasons.

Perhaps it’s this mind set that explains why, as reported by The New York Times, these news bureaus didn’t carefully check the connections that their military experts had with the Pentagon. The vast majority of the military experts seated in all of the networks were working directly for the Pentagon or for military contractors. If the analysts said anything the Pentagon didn’t like, then they were denied access to the Pentagon and threatened with being fired. This means that all military analysis that was seen on U.S. television was approved by the Pentagon. Considering that the White House fired any dissenters in the Pentagon prior to the war, for all intents and purposes all military analysis of the war shown on TV was approved by the White House. We got no differing views. The reporting was anything but fair and balanced. And this was happening at all of the networks.

There is no other way to say this: The “Fourth Branch of Government”, the one given its existence in the First Amendment, failed us completely and spectacularly, at least as badly as the three traditional branches of government.

The framers of our Constitution knew that Democracy requires a well informed citizenry. That is the reason why they created an independent press in the First Amendment. For at least the last decade, television news has completely fallen down on their responsibility to keep us well informed by making sure we know and understand all points of view.

Newspapers, the main source of news when the Constitution and the First Amendment were written, are no longer the main source of news in this country. Television surpassed newspapers decades ago. Those who work for television news have done everything they could to become the most important news source for us, without realizing that there is an enormous responsibility that comes with it. The use of the limited public airwaves, whether directly to the home, via satellite link, or over the internet, obliges them to help with the nurturing of our democracy. Becoming the primary source of news to the average citizen clinches that responsibility. This is a responsibility that cannot be disregarded. Doing so will guarantee that democracy in this country will fall into despotism, and even the television news organizations will not be immune to that.

In order for us to regain our trust in television news, it is necessary for the news organizations to apologize to us, directly and publicly. This is not optional, and the failure to do so compromises the integrity of those news organizations. The longer it takes to get that apology, the more serious the breach of trust.

All of us need to demand this of our news organizations, including all of the ones mentioned in this essay, as well as all of the others in this country. There has been a major breach of trust, and it needs to be fixed. An apology is the least that they can do, and it should be done now.

Sources:

CNN’s attack on Scott Ritter:

CNN's Hatchet Job on Scott Ritter, by Antonia Zerbisias, originally in The Toronto Star, archived at: http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0912-02.htm

MSNBC Fires Phil Donahue over liberal, anti-war bias:

Commentary: The Surrender Of MSNBC, by Rick Ellis, Wednesday, February 25th, 2003, http://www.allyourtv.com/0203season/news/02252003donahue.html

Some Critical Media Voices Face Censorship, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting), 4/3/03, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1825

Pentagon’s Control of TV Military Analysts:

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand, By DAVID BARSTOW, Published: April 20, 2008 in The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?ex=1366689600&en=eefc8e0bdd6ffc91&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink