If the media is liberal, per the mantra of the right wing, why isn't it cramming the following information down the public's throats:
Sandy Berger (Clinton advisor), who was accused of stealing classified documents from the Library Of Congress and destroying ones that would put Clinton in a bad light, has been totally exonerated of all charges. The so-called liberal media featured the original charges for several days but only the Wall Street Journal has seem fit to spread the news of Berger's exoneration by the Justice Department.
The so-called liberal media has not carried the story about the IMF warning foreign investors against investing in the US because current fiscal policies are leading to insolvency.
The so-called liberal media, which touted the hundreds of thousands of new jobs created in the last quarter, has all but ignored the fact that the figures have been revised downward by about a hundred thousand. The so called liberal media has almost ignored the fact that most of the new jobs are part-time and provide few if any benefits.
The so-called liberal media, which have all but ignored evidence of Bush using connections to avoid being drafted and then went AWOL from the Texas National Guard, has given wide exposure to an ad featuring a phony group of "Vietnam Swift Boat veterans," claiming that Kerry did not deserve his Purple Hearts and medals and ignored the fact that there are videos of at least one of the men featured in the ad praising Kerry's bravery.
The so-called liberal media, which crammed news of the increase in value of stocks a few months ago, have all but ignored the fact that the Dow Jones average has slipped to about 9,800 from a high of just over 12,000.
The so called liberal media have also ignored the truth about Bush's energy plan that is a giveaway to oil and utility companies and the drug plan that is a giveaway to pharmaceutical companies.
The so-called liberal media have also almost totally ignored the Bush administration's assault on the environment, public lands and civil rights. If the media were truly liberal, why are all these stories that would be devastating to the Bush administration being ignored? Are the media actually in bed with the Republican Party? With the exception of Fox and a few blatantly right-wing publications, probably not.
I avoid listening to Clear Channel stations for anything but weather or traffic reports, but tuned into WLW a few minutes early for a weather report a few days ago and heard a talk show host put things into perspective better that almost anyone else I have heard. While defending major media's decision to carry only three hours of the Democratic National convention he said, "The media is in business to make money, not to inform the public and they wisely decided that they would make more money broadcasting their regular programs rather than the convention." Taking his point a bit further, corporate media make their money by selling ads to oil companies, utility companies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, automobile companies, etc. If they ran stories that demeaned any of their sponsors, ads would no doubt be pulled and placed with media outlets that are more corporate media friendly.
Going an additional step further, the Republican Party looks out for corporate interests and is thus preferred by most of their sponsors. That being the case, negative stories about the Republican Party are not going to please the sponsors and they might not be inclined to sponsor programs that are critical of the party.
The Clear Channel talk show host hit the nail on the head. Corporate media's primary concern is making a profit and they will pursue that interest above all else. Given withdrawal of public funding for Public Broadcasting, what was once a source of information that served the public's interest only now depends on corporate funding and must proceed accordingly or go under.
Lacking a fairness doctrine with teeth and an FCC willing to enforce it, the American public will be forced to turn to the BBC or uncensored news.
Charles Leach
Lynchburg, Ohio
Republicans are celebrating the passage of Amendment 2 [limiting marriage to opposite sexes in Missouri] as a victory for their party; they don't realize that without the support of (Yellow Dog) Democrats the amendment could have failed or at best passed by a slim margin. Don't tell me Democrats are weak on family values.
President Bush loves to paraphrase Luke 10:27 "Love your neighbor as you would like to be loved your self" but evidently didn't read past verse 28 or he would know who are his neighbors. I am tired of the Republican leaders pounding the Bible, then opposing legislation that would benefit low- and middle-income families.
Those of us in the "Democratic wing of the Democrat Party" believe our neighbor is not only the person next door that is in the same economic and social bracket but also the single mother trying to support her family on a minimum-wage job or the widow on Social Security forced to choose between food and medicine.
Most Republicans and some conservative Democrats want to put liberal in the same category as the four-letter F word. There is a four-letter word that is compatible with liberal -- love, as in "Love your neighbor as your self."
The July/August issue of the Labor Party Press feature article was "Working Poor." It reports that: "A quarter of American workers are working for $18,800 a year, the federal poverty line for a family of four." A person working for minimum wage, $5.25 per hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year would earn $10,920 before Social Security deduction.
Bill Moyers on PBS and Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert of the New York Times tell us that the wealthy are waging class warfare.
"I have to laugh when I hear conservatives complaining about class warfare," Herbert wrote. "They know this terrain better than anyone. They launched the war. They're waging it. And they're winning it."
The Republican base is southern white blue-collar workers, average income $20,000 per year. Nascar dads, the Bible-pounding Republicans are ripping you off, one set of values for you and another one for the fat cats. The Democrats have real family values.
Harold Smith
Raytown Mo.
I just learned, from a correspondent of mine, that Bush said, at the UNITY convention of minority journalists last week:
"When I was the governor of Texas, there were concerns that our big institutions ... were not diversified enough. So I went to the legislature and said, why don't we work together and say that there's automatic admission to our universities if you finish in the top 10% of your high school class, no matter what high school you go to. And it worked. It worked because the student bodies began to diversify at the University of Texas, and at Texas A&M."
I'd like to point out that Shrub had absolutely nothing to do with that bill! The author of the bill, state Rep. Irma Rangel, and the bill's other sponsor, state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, never heard a thing from Bush while they were steering the bill through the 1997 Texas Legislature. Gonzalo Barrientos' office confirms today that Shrub's claim was utter bulls***.
Donald L Feinberg
Naperville, Ill.
As a true conservative I am enormously upset by George Bush charading as a conservative. Conservatives want smaller government and smaller government expenditures. George Bush is only pretending to shrink government by privatizing the things taxpayers must foot the bill for. Privatizing military support for the troops in Iraq has cost taxpayers four times what it would have cost the military to perform foodservice and resupply costs itself. It's a way of expanding the military by pretending not to. To say nothing of turning a $200 billion budget surplus into a $400 billion national debt. He's spending money like water -- and it's not his money. It's ours.
Real conservatives want to insure personal privacy. George Bush wants a "sneak and peek" provision for law enforcement so government spies can enter our houses and businesses without telling us. The Founding Fathers would weep -- there's nothing conservative about this. These are Soviet tactics.
George Bush is pushing what Europeans refer to as a "neoliberal economic agenda." Gone are the social contracts built up between citizens and their governments since the Magna Carta. Let's just let the "free market" run the world economy with no regard for people or their property or their communities. That way we can get what Asia experienced a few years ago -- total financial collapse. This is radical economic Liberalism.
George Bush has been taunted for not having a plan to rebuild Iraq. That's not true. His idealistic and untried neoliberal plan was to let US corporations rush in and run everything. Even The Economist called post-war Iraq "a capitalist dream." And look at the mess we have on our hands now.
Jesus said forgive and make peace. George Bush says attack and make war. George Bush is no more a Christian than Joseph Stalin. To paraphrase St. James: Christians will be judged, not by their words, but by their actions. Talking about Jesus is good. Talking about Jesus and behaving like Stalin are the deeds of an anti-Christ.
George Bush is not a conservative. He is a radical Liberal who wishes to disrupt everything we hold dear.
Rich Zubaty
Ithaca, N.Y
Your editorial: "The People's Choice" [9/1/04 TPP] is absolute balderdash. Kucinich didn't have a prayer from day one. How many articles in papers did you see about Kucinich compared to articles about Dean and Kerry? Kerry may be the people's choice but it is a choice within a very sick system that is highly undemocratic. I'm not satisfied with this system if what it gets us is the current choice. It's not enough. Kerry emerged because he was the least offensive of all the Democratic candidates and the one judged to be the most likely to be able to defeat Bush.
I don't want least offensive. I want most attractive. Aren't you tired of watered-down centrist, non-offensive versus horribly right-wing in a corporate-sponsored made-for-TV campaign? It's sick. This is nothing to be satisfied. And no matter who gets elected, as soon as this ridiculous excuse for a democratic process is over with, we ought to all drop everything and work for election reform.
Michael Fogler
Lexington, Ky.
Evolution theory is making its way back into social behaviorism. Rightists argue that it proves humans are so motivated by hard-wired territoriality and aggression that we can't function adaptively without dictators to control us. Fascism works better than democracy.
The Left argues that while aggression is indeed part of our genetic tool kit, natural selection has determined that we're also hard-wired to love and connect. Our specie's adaptivity is better served when we operate as an intelligent group of self-actualized, relatively free individuals. Too powerful leadership tends to become corrupt and dysfunctional. Democracy works better than fascism.
Of course sociological predictions based upon evolution theory constitute huge speculation in the absence of real evidence, but often speculating is all we've got. C. Wright Mills advised that being rational means embracing this fact rather than denying it. It means we'd better speculate competently. When social scientists focus only upon variables they can quantify they wind up ensconced in an ivory tower, as ridiculous as Jonathan Swift's cloud floating intellectuals in Gulliver's Travels. Mills called such social science "crackpot reasoning."
My reading of history, and my 68-year-old gut tell me that left social-evolutionism makes sense. We must be hard wired to perceive forces impacting upon our survival and to strategize effectively to respond to these forces -- even as we seem to do precisely the opposite. Stated a little differently: yes, we're capable of being in serious denial a good deal of the time, but when the chips are really down surely survival instinct trumps denial.
We're about to find out. Election 2004 is about nothing less. With the ouster of Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean, both parties are defined by right-evolutionists -- one far more strongly than the other, perhaps. The election of the Democratic Party candidate will at least provide a brief opportunity for We the People who embrace Democracy to organize and re-create the Party as a movement that truly represents us. The Republicans already have a grassroots movement dedicated to fascism. More than US political power relations are at stake. Human survival may depend upon how all this plays out.
David Weiner
Austin, Texas