October 19, 2005
October 18, 2005
The Nature of Big Media
This excerpt is from a book I've been leafing through.
Experimenters have discovered that you can turn a cat into an alcoholic. The normal cat doesn't expect it, but keep adding vodka to the dish and the cat will soon demand spiked milk as an absolute necessity.
The fat cats of the American mass media have lost their taste for the mother's milk of normal free enterprise: real competition for a reasonable profit. Thanks to addictive doses of sympathetic governmental policies and two decades of a drive for power, a shirnking number of large media corporations now regard monopoly, oligopoly, and historic levels of profit as not only normal, but as their earned right.
In the process, the usual democratic expectation for the media- diversity of ownership and ideas- has disappeared as the goal of official policy and, worse, as a daily experience of a generation of American readers and viewers.
-Ben Bagdikian
October 14, 2005
2%
That's really down there. Really.
That being said, I'm not convinced that it is in the best interest of any ethnic group to wholly support any one party. The political party wouldn't seem to have much incentive to listen to the needs of the group.
Just a thought.
October 12, 2005
Nation States
One of my former students told me about this simulation game. I created a little nation, and it is surprisingly interesting. There is no action, just a balancing act trying to balance civil liberties, economic justice and whatever else you want. Plenty of shortcomings, of course, but still fun and only takes a couple of minutes. Not the sort of thing to spend a lot of time on.
If your interested, my nation is a workers' paradise called "United Proletariat," not quite an accurate example of my genuine inclinations, but still fun.
Here is the break-down of mine:
The Republic of United Proletariat is a huge, socially progressive nation, renowned for its devotion to social welfare. Its hard-nosed, intelligent population of 283 million enjoy extensive civil freedoms, particularly in social issues, while business tends to be more regulated.
It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, liberal government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of Education, Social Welfare, and Social Equality. The average income tax rate is 77%, and even higher for the wealthy. The private sector is almost wholly made up of enterprising fourteen-year-old boys selling lemonade on the sidewalk, although the government is looking at stamping this out.
The mining industry is making inroads into environmentally sensitive areas, prime commercial land is being swamped with archaeological teams, United Proletariat is notorious for its citizens' infidelity, and hundreds of thousands of convicts work as slaves in United Proletariat's many privately-owned prisons. Crime is relatively low. United Proletariat's national animal is the chicken, which is also the nation's favorite main course, and its currency is the have not dollar.
October 11, 2005
Stand Up for a Moral Budget
See Sojourners' newest campaign, a version of something we've previously discussed.
Stand Up for a Moral Budget
The week of Oct. 17 to 21, Congress will make decisions about the federal budget that could hurt millions of poor people. Unless their hearts and minds are changed, Congress will vote in coming weeks to do two things: cut $35 billion from Medicaid and Food Stamps, low-income health care and nutrition programs; and pass new tax cuts of $70 billion, which primarily benefit the wealthy. Some political leaders want to make even more cuts to low-income programs, and the president recently called for increasing cuts to those programs by $50 billion - to a total of $85 billion.
That political leaders still plan to make these cuts - even after the depth of poverty that Katrina has exposed - is morally unconscionable. We need better leadership and better moral logic.
Budgets are moral documents. A nation's budget reflects its priorities. Now is the time to put those priorities in order - to draw a line in the sand against unjust policies and stand up for the common good.
Join us in urging Congress not to cut taxes for the wealthiest at the expense of "the least of these."