According to my friends in Wasilla...Alaskans
Posted By: sm on 2008-10-22
In Reply to: We care because it's Alaska taxpayer money for her kids to travel, even though uninvited nm - Mrs. M
love her and don't have a problem with her family going with her on trips. Maybe you should consult them before you say what the taxpayers hate.
Very few up there have any problem with her, except the buddy system they had in place. Anyone still associated with them of course wouldn't care for her. She kicked their butts!
Complete Discussion Below:  marks the location of current message within thread
The messages you are viewing
are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select
the boards given in left menu
Other related messages found in our database
You have friends in Wasilla?
nm
The Alaskans Are Getting Restless....
Governor Palin Neglects Alaska Duties for Partisan Stumping on Campaign Trail in Georgia.
Alaska faces challenges that need attention now.
Anchorage - While Gov. Sarah Palin is out of state again, this time in Georgia campaigning for incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss on the eve of the runoff election, Alaska faces challenges including a lack of leadership from the Governor.
Palin will stump for Chambliss, the draft-evading incumbent Republican who waged a notoriously misleading campaign against a decorated war hero, at rallies Monday in Atlanta, Augusta, Savannah and Perry, Georgia. Palin has been back in Alaska at work for only a few days since running for vice president.
"Alaskans need our Governor here earning her salary and working on key problems facing Alaska families," said Alaska Democratic Party Chair Patti Higgins.
Alaska is facing significant challenges, Higgins said, including:
* Oil prices have dropped dramatically to about $45/bbl from the peak of $144/bbl in July, which threatens the state budget.
* Alaskans are paying some of the highest prices for gas in the nation, averaging $2.87 per gallon, while the national average is $1.91.
* The state's oil production continues to decline, due to falling prices and mature fields.
* The global credit crunch and falling natural gas prices threaten the Alaska gas line.
* The State is failing to meet its constitutional obligation to take care of public education as shown by the high drop out rates and the low graduation rates.
* Many Medicare patients cannot find doctors.
* There is continued flight from rural villages.
* Alaska faces the prospect of reduced federal dollars from Washington, D.C.
"Alaska's challenges are significant, and there is much that needs to be done right now. Our Governor should remember that her primary job is to work on behalf of the citizens of Alaska, not engage in partisan politics in other states," Higgins said. "Governing is more than creating photo ops. We'd like a commitment that the Governor is working, not just scheduling media appearances."
Enough is Enough! Someone needs to tell Sarah that SHE DIDN'T WIN. She has been paid for her governor job for months during a campaign. Show up or shut up.
Palin Hasn't Been To Alaska Office Since Election
In August when John McCain selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate, with the exception of Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes who still had pheromone up their nostrils from the lunch they had with Sarah in 2007 when the cruise ship on which they were riding stopped in at Juneau, no one else in the "lower 48" (as those of us in the subarctic call the US of A) had heard of the woman. Ninety days and counting later, Sarah Palin and her celebrity have become as ubiquitous a part of the popular culture as Paris Hilton and Madge Ciccone. ...
It's now been three weeks since the election. And Sarah has yet to set foot in Juneau. Next week she's off to Georgia. And from there up to Philly. By the time she gets back to Alaska the Holiday Season will be full upon her. So it's unlikely that Sarah will spend another night in the Governor's Mansion until the Legislature returns to Juneau in January.
That is VERY different from taxing "rich" Alaskans.....
and doling it out to "poor" or "middle class" Alaskans. Those checks go to EVERY person in Alaska...including the rich. That is NOT socialism. Socialism is Barack Obama levying higher taxes on working Americans and doling it out to, in some cases, people who don't even pay taxes. THAT is socialism.
Alaskans do get a check based on oil profit taxes that are...sm,
charged by the Alaskan government. That is why the poor Alaskans support her and agree to the rape of their land. A few thousand dollars is a lot of money to them.
Wasilla has only 8,000 pop, so even 1 meth lab is a lot and
Yeah... PALIN has lived there since she was 3 and became mayor there so for this place to have 42 meth labs is quite dramatic.
No wonder she rose to the top of her town, the rest were skanky white trash.
I have a cousin in Wasilla
and it appears that there is a large amount of support for here there. News media is notoriously liberal, so the newspaper support of Obama is not a huge surprise, is it?
Wicked Witch of Wasilla
She is being further investigated on yet more incidences of abuse of power. The fact that she and Todd built their brand new home using the same contractor that just happened to get the contract to build a new 10 million dollar sports complex in Wasilla simultaneously has led some to question the whole deal, and possibly acquiring, shall we say, the means to do so through this contractor. That's just one of them. Watch Keith Olberman tonight on MSNBC. They have her all figured out! Obviously someone believes this woman is shady enough to warrant this further investigation.
Wiki. 1984, Miss Wasilla.
nm
Let's talk about the 42 meth labs in Wasilla or
the Keating Five or how McCain's daughter voted for John Kerry.
On Palin, AKA The Wicked Witch of Wasilla
For someone that we collectively have only known now for 8-9 weeks or so, we sure have discovered a lot of very questionable things about her that blatantly shows her lack of integrity, her intelligence of matters of the country (and the constitution), the many, many lies that she has been caught in lies, her very un-Christian-like behavior that provokes people to such a base mob frenzy (all done with a simpering smirk), her very obvious hunger for power and the spotlight, and now she is even turning against her running mate trying to make him look bad in a very sneaky backhanded way in order to further her own very demigogic agenda. I, for one, cannot understand that there are still so many people out there that just will not see the truth. Trust me, there is lots more to come in the next 10 days!!
The Wicked Witch of Wasilla, talk
about goulish!!
The wasilla meth labs were kept quiet too... and sm
for all the rabid repubs talk about the "media"... nobody really bothered Willow or Brillo or Bristol and nobody really publicized the big anti Palin rally by Alaskan women! You gotta wonder! Palin should keep her piehole closed. She got an enormous break and still screwed up.
Gotta be thankful to her though, for giving Obama more votes.
Miss Wasilla please chill, a 30-billion pipeline is not God's Will! nm
1
Story about Wasilla meth labs from Juneau news sm
http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/030805/sta_20050308002.shtml
Troopers dub Mat-Su area the meth capital of Alaska
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASILLA - The Matanuska-Susitna area is the methamphetamine capital of Alaska, according to Alaska State Troopers.
In 2003, authorities uncovered nine meth labs in the area. Last year, the number increased to 42, said Kyle Young, an investigator with the troopers who works with the Mat-Su narcotics team.
Officials with the Office of Children's Services in Wasilla said the problem affects children. The office receives about 40 calls a month from people reporting abuse or neglect involving some aspect of the highly addictive drug.
In late February, the Mat-Su narcotics unit arrested a couple at their Willow home. Michelle Motta said for years she tried to warn authorities that her three young nieces lived in the midst of a methamphetamine operation run by their parents, Phillip Dean and Laura Jackson.
Alaska State Troopers reported finding a "large active meth lab" in a detached garage shop. The house was a frigid mess, with piles of dirty dishes, clothes everywhere and frozen pipes, investigators said.
Through a hatch in the shop floor, the team found an underground room with a meth lab in one corner, as well as old marijuana root balls and lights from a past pot-growing operation.
An investigator said the team didn't find the children at home but saw signs of them there. Motta said the girls - ages 14, 8 and 6 - at times slept in the garage with the lab.
A year ago, the oldest girl detailed the household's rampant drug problems and squalid living conditions in a handwritten letter to a judge.
"My parents grow marijuana and crystal the(y) did the drugs that they bought in front of (my sisters)," the letter begins. "They spent most money on them instead of food or doing laundry. I got left home with nobody there I got left home with drug(g)ies..."
Motta now has custody of her three nieces. The Jacksons are jailed at Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility in Palmer.
Children sharing homes with meth labs face the risk of contamination, fire, explosion, neglect and hazardous living conditions. Caseworkers report little children complaining of breathing problems from toxic fumes rising off chemicals such as acetone, ammonia and hydrochloric acid.
When authorities surrounded a converted bus housing a meth operation in Big Lake in January, a 13-year-old boy who answered the door bragged that his mom cooked the best meth in the valley, according to the troopers.
During a 2003 bust at a house outside Wasilla, officers discovered five children living inside, all younger than 8 years old.
The calls about meth to children's services in Wasilla accounts for as many as 40 percent of the agency's total monthly child protection calls.
The troopers are aggressively going after meth labs, said Capt. Ed Harrington, the supervisor of the state's drug and alcohol enforcement unit.
"It's just not a simple process," Harrington said. "Just because somebody calls in and says 'So and so's cooking meth' doesn't mean we're going to kick the door in the next night."
Palin's Wasilla has 42 meth labs and her daughter's new mother in law to be sm
got arrested for drugs.
At least I have some friends
and they are not hypocritical they are what keep this country safe from wackos like you. Buh-bye, have a nice life if you can keep your bitterness fro ruining it.
My Friends
That is too funny, because as I read your words, I heard his voice in my head, saying it ... and you are so right -- he says it constantly ... between those words and that grin & pause that he does (I guess that's a signal for applause).
I try to look at all the candidates, hear what they have to say and make an informed decision. I try not to fall prey to gossip, personal comments/videos on Youtube, etc. Initially I really did like John McCain -- felt a sincerity from him, but as time went on and he started running this "desperate times call for desperate measures" campaign that like I felt for him disappeared. I feel like all politicians lie, but when the lies are in the same sentence, phrase or paragraph -- that's bad.
Then your friends should have kept their
xx
Friends? I don't think so, sm
.
I have gay friends and I'm
against gay union. They know this too and we have learned to agree to disagree on that one. They are good people and I like them very much, but I cannot condone something that I feel is wrong. That doesn't mean I can't be friends with them. What they do in their life is their business but it doesn't mean I have to agree with it and it also doesn't mean I have to stop being friends with them.
Best friends?
Don't you mean appointees? At least he has the decency to get rid of them for failure to disclose. If you think the last administration was squeaky clean - you have problems.
yup I have purple friends
LOL, yup, my best friends are black, hun?? Had to make sure you made a point of that.how pathetic..For your information, my father's side of the family live and own a lot of land in Va..that is why I keep my ties to the south..I also have friends who are of various colors but I dont make it a point to state I have black friends, brown friends, yellow friends, white friends..friends to me are just that friends..no matter their color or belief..
All the President's Friends
September 12, 2005
All the President's Friends
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The lethally inept response to Hurricane Katrina revealed to everyone that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which earned universal praise during the Clinton years, is a shell of its former self. The hapless Michael Brown - who is no longer overseeing relief efforts but still heads the agency - has become a symbol of cronyism.
But what we really should be asking is whether FEMA's decline and fall is unique, or part of a larger pattern. What other government functions have been crippled by politicization, cronyism and/or the departure of experienced professionals? How many FEMA's are there?
Unfortunately, it's easy to find other agencies suffering from some version of the FEMA syndrome.
The first example won't surprise you: the Environmental Protection Agency, which has a key role to play in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, but which has seen a major exodus of experienced officials over the past few years. In particular, senior officials have left in protest over what they say is the Bush administration's unwillingness to enforce environmental law.
Yesterday The Independent, the British newspaper, published an interview about the environmental aftermath of Katrina with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst in the agency's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, whom one suspects is planning to join the exodus. The budget has been cut, he said, and inept political hacks have been put in key positions. That sounds familiar, and given what we've learned over the last two weeks there's no reason to doubt that characterization - or to disregard his warning of an environmental cover-up in progress.
What about the Food and Drug Administration? Serious questions have been raised about the agency's coziness with drug companies, and the agency's top official in charge of women's health issues resigned over the delay in approving Plan B, the morning-after pill, accusing the agency's head of overruling the professional staff on political grounds.
Then there's the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose Republican chairman hired a consultant to identify liberal bias in its programs. The consultant apparently considered any criticism of the administration a sign of liberalism, even if it came from conservatives.
You could say that these are all cases in which the Bush administration hasn't worried about degrading the quality of a government agency because it doesn't really believe in the agency's mission. But you can't say that about my other two examples.
Even a conservative government needs an effective Treasury Department. Yet Treasury, which had high prestige and morale during the Clinton years, has fallen from grace.
The public symbol of that fall is the fact that John Snow, who was obviously picked for his loyalty rather than his qualifications, is still Treasury secretary. Less obvious to the public is the hollowing out of the department's expertise. Many experienced staff members have left since 2000, and a number of key positions are either empty or filled only on an acting basis. There is no policy, an economist who was leaving the department after 22 years told The Washington Post, back in 2002. If there are no pipes, why do you need a plumber? So the best and brightest have been leaving.
And finally, what about the department of Homeland Security itself? FEMA was neglected, some people say, because it was folded into a large agency that was focused on terrorist threats, not natural disasters. But what, exactly, is the department doing to protect us from terrorists?
In 2004 Reuters reported a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, who believed that the war in Iraq had taken precedence over the real terrorist threat. Why, then, should we believe that Homeland Security is being well run?
Let's not forget that the administration's first choice to head the department was Bernard Kerik, a crony of Rudy Giuliani. And Mr. Kerik's nomination would have gone through if enterprising reporters hadn't turned up problems in his background that the F.B.I. somehow missed, just as it somehow didn't turn up the little problems in Michael Brown's résumé. How many lesser Keriks made it into other positions?
The point is that Katrina should serve as a wakeup call, not just about FEMA, but about the executive branch as a whole. Everything I know suggests that it's in a sorry state - that an administration which doesn't treat governing seriously has created two, three, many FEMA's.
My friends on the west
coast are still paying $4 a gallon for gas, as of Thursday, anyway.
I cannot plug in my television with antenna and get anything. If I do not have a cable connection I cannot get anything. The analog thing I just read in a publication Lockheed Martin provides to its employees. I have a friend who is an engineer there in Atlanta and he is always sending volumes and volumes of Lockheed stuff; so that is where my information came from.
I'm not sure where it is, but one of your friends from yesterday
kept bugging Debbie about it. Maybe she knows where the rule is.
I think it used to be that we were asked to post links, so as to save disk space for the MTStars website, something like that.
That way, we can click over to read what is posted. Also, it gives you backup to your posts for verfication. Much better to see who's point of view it is, and from what website in your link.
Does anybody know if this rule still exists under the new management??
yep, and you SHOULD be judged by the friends that
nm
Okay, worked together. He was friends with Rev.
nm
Apparently your friends must be among the better off...
Q: What are the current concerns among healthcare workers in the country?
A: The Canadian Healthcare Association, and other concerned bodies, such as the Canadian Nurses Association, have put forward a Common Vision for the Canadian Health System document. It argues that four key areas need improvement in the country's healthcare system: patient waiting times; overall healthcare funding; shortages in personnel and improvement of medical technology; and the expansion of the healthcare system to include home, pharmaceutical, and long-term care.
Moreover, Canadian nurses have expressed particular dissatisfactions with the healthcare system in recent years. In 2002, the Canadian Nursing Advisory Committee delivered a report which recommended increasing the number of nurses, improvements in education, and maximizing the scope of practice of nurses.
The lure of more lucrative salaries has also led to a "brain drain" of professionals to the United States in recent years. Although overall emigration has been relatively small, healthcare professionals constitute a significant proportion of the public sector workers who have chosen to leave Canada for employment in the United States.
Q: What are the current concerns among patients?
A: Waiting times to see specialists and for diagnostic tests have become a point of issue for Canadians. According to a study by the Fraser Institute, a conservative think tank, such waiting times have increased from 13.1 weeks in 1999, to 17.7 weeks in 2003, to 17.9 in 2004. Long waits to undergo elective surgery have also become an issue in recent years, as have crowded emergency rooms in the country's largest cities.
One response to these concerns on the part of patients has been to seek treatment in the United States or overseas. While "medical tourism" is derided by some in Canada as queue-jumping, others see it as a legitimate means of dealing with the healthcare system's shortcomings. The province of Alberta currently reimburses patients who have sought medically necessary physician, oral surgery, and hospital services not immediately available in Canada.
The frequency of adverse events, or errors in treatment that might harm the patient or the outcome of their treatment while hospitalized, has also raised concerns in regards to the country's healthcare system, both among healthcare workers and patients.
Q: What are the current challenges in providing healthcare?
A: In 2004, the federal government and the provinces struck a C$41-billion (US$34.2-billion), 10-year agreement to improve Canada's healthcare system.
At the center of this agreement is an attempt to reduce waiting times. A Wait Times Reduction Fund has been instituted to help the provinces accomplish this. The fund allows the provinces to increase the hiring of healthcare professionals, clear backlogs, increase capacity, and expand ambulatory and community care programs. The provinces have themselves agreed to set targets for acceptable wait times, and have also agreed to cooperate in establishing a common set of criteria to measure wait times across the country.
Tell me, when the long waits to see a specialist, elective surgeries, etc., happen here...where will the canadians go? Where will WE go?
Just asking.
Oh, what a tragedy. But, being friends with a
nm
Pub lesson on how to win friends and
This must be some sort of new maverick style of reaching across the aisle and getting that bipartisan cooperation Americans are so anxious to see again...he just left out the part about looking at his opponents down two barrels of a shotgun.
O has some bad friends. Not accusations,
nm
Tell us who a few of his close friends
shadowy backgrounds. If he and all his followers insist that all his questionable past associations mean nothing, then where are the ones that do mean something to him? Someone had to influence his life.
Well, O has too many friends who are enemies of
nm
Okay "my friends"
Signed Joe the (not) Plumber.
And this, my friends, is the kind of
on from our self-appointed, know-the-answer-to-every-post, highly educated, extremely intelligent, research-your-own, etc...... anonymous poster who loves to stir the pot. Here is where she expresses herself best, in the gutter!
YES, YES, YES. My friends and family are all better
We all receive tax refunds. No matter how much some of my freinds and family hate Bush they say that they've at least gotten tax rebates. Something they never once got while Clinton was in office. While Clinton was in a lot of them lost their jobs thanks to NAFTA. After GW got in they obtained jobs. Their taxes were lower and they had a steady income. Then along came congress and we all know what happened from there - the beginning of the downfall.
YES we are better off than with Clinton in. Unfortunately we've got another 4 years to suffer the same consequences we did when Clinton was in.
Tell your friends above to get a sense
of humor like yours!
Fox and friends? ROFL....(sm)
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=229028&title=Fox-&-Friends'-Lingerie-Football-Romp
As a side note, have you noticed the length of the skirts on just about every female on Fixed Noise while they are busy pointing the moral finger at everyone else? Priceless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77pQeypTKJM&feature=PlayList&p=FA705989A0C326B5&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=37
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDeHUyfh_iA
Maybe those ratings aren't for the faux news so much as for the Fixed Noise booty call. 
P.S. The ONLY reason I'm leaving is because you and your friends have
hounded ME off. It has nothing to do with my convictions. It has everything to do with my extreme DISTASTE for someone like YOU who does nothing but ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK, who treats her fellow human beings like S**T, who lies every chance she gets and justifies everything she does by saying her Lord Jesus Christ forgives you. You believe that Jesus, in your skewed mind, has given you the green light to do as many UN-Jesuslike things as you care to do, to be as mean and nasty and hateful as you can possibly be to other people, and all is forgiven, in your twisted mind.
Why on EARTH would I want to stay here and subject myself to the likes of YOU? I can read what INTELLIGENT Conservatives have to say on another site, and I don't have to get POUNDED INTO THE GROUND BY any of them in order to do it.
You -- especially YOU -- are the worst ever on this entire board. All you EVER do is project hatred, and then you go on to talk about Jesus. Why don't you try to be more LIKE Jesus? Jesus wouldn't ever treat people with such hatred and malice as you do.
As far as your friends leaving, I don't believe that for one nanosecond. They're still here. They just invented themselves with new monikers, but the same hatred and rage is there, and so are they.
Goodbye, MT. I'll miss you. I had a dental abscess last year. I miss that, too.
Read it and weep, my friends.
And to think of what might have been...sigh.
Remarks by Al Gore as prepared
Associated Press / The Media Center
October 5, 2005
I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled marketplace of ideas now functions.
How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered an alternate universe?
I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.
At first I thought the exhaustive, non-stop coverage of the O.J. trial was just an unfortunate excess that marked an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. But now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.
Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people? If the gap between rich and poor is widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low-income families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our role as citizens?
On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?
The decision that was then being considered by the Senate with virtually no meaningful debate turned out to be a fateful one. A few days ago, the former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt. General William Odom, said, The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history.
But whether you agree with his assessment or not, Senator Byrd's question is like the others that I have just posed here: he was saying, in effect, this is strange, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to have full and vigorous debates about questions as important as the choice between war and peace?
Those of us who have served in the Senate and watched it change over time, could volunteer an answer to Senator Byrd's two questions: the Senate was silent on the eve of war because Senators don't feel that what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters that much any more. And the chamber was empty because the Senators were somewhere else: they were in fundraisers collecting money from special interests in order to buy 30-second TVcommercials for their next re-election campaign.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was - at least for a short time - a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse that reminded some Americans - including some journalists - that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk with one another about the problems and choices that we face. But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.
In fact there was a time when America's public discourse was consistently much more vivid, focused and clear. Our Founders, probably the most literate generation in all of history, used words with astonishing precision and believed in the Rule of Reason.
Their faith in the viability of Representative Democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry. But they placed particular emphasis on insuring that the public could be well-informed. And they took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of ideas in order to ensure the free-flow of knowledge.
The values that Americans had brought from Europe to the New World had grown out of the sudden explosion of literacy and knowledge after Gutenberg's disruptive invention broke up the stagnant medieval information monopoly and triggered the Reformation, Humanism, and the Enlightenment and enshrined a new sovereign: the Rule of Reason.
Indeed, the self-governing republic they had the audacity to establish was later named by the historian Henry Steele Commager as the Empire of Reason.
Our founders knew all about the Roman Forum and the Agora in ancient Athens. They also understood quite well that in America, our public forum would be an ongoing conversation about democracy in which individual citizens would participate not only by speaking directly in the presence of others -- but more commonly by communicating with their fellow citizens over great distances by means of the printed word. Thus they not only protected Freedom of Assembly as a basic right, they made a special point - in the First Amendment - of protecting the freedom of the printing press.
Their world was dominated by the printed word. Just as the proverbial fish doesn't know it lives in water, the United States in its first half century knew nothing but the world of print: the Bible, Thomas Paine's fiery call to revolution, the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution , our laws, the Congressional Record, newspapers and books.
Though they feared that a government might try to censor the printing press - as King George had done - they could not imagine that America's public discourse would ever consist mainly of something other than words in print.
And yet, as we meet here this morning, more than 40 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by television.
Radio, the internet, movies, telephones, and other media all now vie for our attention - but it is television that still completely dominates the flow of information in modern America. In fact, according to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of four hours and 28 minutes every day -- 90 minutes more than the world average.
When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time that the average American has. And for younger Americans, the average is even higher.
The internet is a formidable new medium of communication, but it is important to note that it still doesn't hold a candle to television. Indeed, studies show that the majority of Internet users are actually simultaneously watching television while they are online. There is an important reason why television maintains such a hold on its viewers in a way that the internet does not, but I'll get to that in a few minutes.
Television first overtook newsprint to become the dominant source of information in America in 1963. But for the next two decades, the television networks mimicked the nation's leading newspapers by faithfully following the standards of the journalism profession. Indeed, men like Edward R. Murrow led the profession in raising the bar.
But all the while, television's share of the total audience for news and information continued to grow -- and its lead over newsprint continued to expand. And then one day, a smart young political consultant turned to an older elected official and succinctly described a new reality in America's public discourse: If it's not on television, it doesn't exist.
But some extremely important elements of American Democracy have been pushed to the sidelines . And the most prominent casualty has been the marketplace of ideas that was so beloved and so carefully protected by our Founders. It effectively no longer exists.
It is not that we no longer share ideas with one another about public matters; of course we do. But the Public Forum in which our Founders searched for general agreement and applied the Rule of Reason has been grossly distorted and restructured beyond all recognition.
And here is my point: it is the destruction of that marketplace of ideas that accounts for the strangeness that now continually haunts our efforts to reason together about the choices we must make as a nation.
Whether it is called a Public Forum, or a Public Sphere , or a marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in America's earliest decades.
In fact, our first self-expression as a nation - We the People - made it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay. It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government.
The three most important characteristics of this marketplace of ideas were:
1) It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry, save the necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not only to the receipt of information but also to the ability to contribute information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all;
2) The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most part, on an emergent Meritocracy of Ideas. Those judged by the market to be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the individual responsible for them;
3) The accepted rules of discourse presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement. That is what a Conversation of Democracy is all about.
What resulted from this shared democratic enterprise was a startling new development in human history: for the first time, knowledge regularly mediated between wealth and power.
The liberating force of this new American reality was thrilling to all humankind. Thomas Jefferson declared, I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
It ennobled the individual and unleashed the creativity of the human spirit. It inspired people everywhere to dream of what they could yet become. And it emboldened Americans to bravely explore the farther frontiers of freedom - for African Americans, for women, and eventually, we still dream, for all.
And just as knowledge now mediated between wealth and power, self-government was understood to be the instrument with which the people embodied their reasoned judgments into law. The Rule of Reason under-girded and strengthened the rule of law.
But to an extent seldom appreciated, all of this - including especially the ability of the American people to exercise the reasoned collective judgments presumed in our Founders' design -- depended on the particular characteristics of the marketplace of ideas as it operated during the Age of Print.
Consider the rules by which our present public forum now operates, and how different they are from the forum our Founders knew. Instead of the easy and free access
individuals had to participate in the national conversation by means of the printed word, the world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation today.
Inexpensive metal printing presses were almost everywhere in America. They were easily accessible and operated by printers eager to typeset essays, pamphlets, books or flyers.
Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens.
Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: it is accessible in only one direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation.
The number of cables connecting to homes is limited in each community and usually forms a natural monopoly. The broadcast and satellite spectrum is likewise a scarce and limited resource controlled by a few. The production of programming has been centralized and has usually required a massive capital investment. So for these and other reasons, an ever-smaller number of large corporations control virtually all of the television programming in America.
Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national conversation: the demonstration. This new form of expression, which began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now rarely an avenue for expression on national television.
So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is virtually no exchange of ideas at all in television's domain. My partner Joel Hyatt and I are trying to change that - at least where Current TV is concerned. Perhaps not coincidentally, we are the only independently owned news and information network in all of American television.
It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no meritocracy of ideas on television. To the extent that there is a marketplace of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.
The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as the refeudalization of the public sphere. That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.
It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, no nation can be free.
As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.
And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie Network, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed into the news business, which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates.
The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.
The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.
For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.
Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been dumbed down and tarted up.
The coverage of political campaigns focuses on the horse race and little else. And the well-known axiom that guides most local television news is if it bleeds, it leads. (To which some disheartened journalists add, If it thinks, it stinks.)
In fact, one of the few things that Red state and Blue state America agree on is that they don't trust the news media anymore.
Clearly, the purpose of television news is no longer to inform the American people or serve the public interest. It is to glue eyeballs to the screen in order to build ratings and sell advertising. If you have any doubt, just look at what's on: The Robert Blake trial. The Laci Peterson tragedy. The Michael Jackson trial. The Runaway Bride. The search in Aruba. The latest twist in various celebrity couplings, and on and on and on.
And more importantly, notice what is not on: the global climate crisis, the nation's fiscal catastrophe, the hollowing out of America's industrial base, and a long list of other serious public questions that need to be addressed by the American people.
One morning not long ago, I flipped on one of the news programs in hopes of seeing information about an important world event that had happened earlier that day. But the lead story was about a young man who had been hiccupping for three years. And I must say, it was interesting; he had trouble getting dates. But what I didn't see was news.
This was the point made by Jon Stewart, the brilliant host of The Daily Show, when he visited CNN's Crossfire: there should be a distinction between news and entertainment.
And it really matters because the subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: it leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both.
One of the only avenues left for the expression of public or political ideas on television is through the purchase of advertising, usually in 30-second chunks. These short commercials are now the principal form of communication between candidates and voters. As a result, our elected officials now spend all of their time raising money to purchase these ads.
That is why the House and Senate campaign committees now search for candidates who are multi-millionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources. As one consequence, the halls of Congress are now filling up with the wealthy.
Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue by one means or another to dominate American politic s. And ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power.
And what if an individual citizen, or a group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But they are not even allowed to do that.
Moveon.org tried to buy ads last year to express opposition to Bush's Medicare proposal which was then being debated by Congress. They were told issue advocacy was not permissible. Then, one of the networks that had refused the Moveon ad began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the President's Medicare proposal. So Moveon complained and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporary, I mean it was removed until the White House complained and the network immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the Moveon ad.
The advertising of products, of course, is the real purpose of television. And it is difficult to overstate the extent to which modern pervasive electronic advertising has reshaped our society. In the 1950s, John Kenneth Galbraith first described the way in which advertising has altered the classical relationship by which supply and demand are balanced over time by the invisible hand of the marketplace. According to Galbraith, modern advertising campaigns were beginning to create high levels of demand for products that consumers never knew they wanted, much less needed.
The same phenomenon Galbraith noticed in the commercial marketplace is now the dominant fact of life in what used to be America's marketplace for ideas. The inherent value or validity of political propositions put forward by candidates for office is now largely irrelevant compared to the advertising campaigns that shape the perceptions of voters.
Our democracy has been hallowed out. The opinions of the voters are, in effect, purchased, just as demand for new products is artificially created. Decades ago Walter Lippman wrote, the manufacture of consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the impact of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy.
Like you, I recoil at Lippman's cynical dismissal of America's gift to human history. But in order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum and create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the Rule of Reason. We must, for example, stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth.
I don't know all the answers, but along with my partner, Joel Hyatt, I am trying to work within the medium of television to recreate a multi-way conversation that includes individuals and operates according to a meritocracy of ideas. If you would like to know more, we are having a press conference on Friday morning at the Regency Hotel.
We are learning some fascinating lessons about the way decisions are made in the television industry, and it may well be that the public would be well served by some changes in law and policy to stimulate more diversity of viewpoints and a higher regard for the public interest. But we are succeeding within the marketplace by reaching out to individuals and asking them to co-create our network.
The greatest source of hope for reestablishing a vigorous and accessible marketplace for ideas is the Internet. Indeed, Current TV relies on video streaming over the Internet as the means by which individuals send us what we call viewer-created content or VC squared. We also rely on the Internet for the two-way conversation that we have every day with our viewers enabling them to participate in the decisions on programming our network.
I know that many of you attending this conference are also working on creative ways to use the Internet as a means for bringing more voices into America's ongoing conversation. I salute you as kindred spirits and wish you every success.
I want to close with the two things I've learned about the Internet that are most directly relevant to the conference that you are having here today.
First, as exciting as the Internet is, it still lacks the single most powerful characteristic of the television medium; because of its packet-switching architecture, and its continued reliance on a wide variety of bandwidth connections (including the so-called last mile to the home), it does not support the real-time mass distribution of full-motion video.
Make no mistake, full-motion video is what makes television such a powerful medium. Our brains - like the brains of all vertebrates - are hard-wired to immediately notice sudden movement in our field of vision. We not only notice, we are compelled to look. When our evolutionary predecessors gathered on the African savanna a million years ago and the leaves next to them moved, the ones who didn't look are not our ancestors. The ones who did look passed on to us the genetic trait that neuroscientists call the establishing reflex. And that is the brain syndrome activated by television continuously - sometimes as frequently as once per second. That is the reason why the industry phrase, glue eyeballs to the screen, is actually more than a glib and idle boast. It is also a major part of the reason why Americans watch the TV screen an average of four and a half hours a day.
It is true that video streaming is becoming more common over the Internet, and true as well that cheap storage of streamed video is making it possible for many young television viewers to engage in what the industry calls time shifting and personalize their television watching habits. Moreover, as higher bandwidth connections continue to replace smaller information pipelines, the Internet's capacity for carrying television will continue to dramatically improve. But in spite of these developments, it is television delivered over cable and satellite that will continue for the remainder of this decade and probably the next to be the dominant medium of communication in America's democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe that America's democracy is at grave risk.
The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen.
We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy's future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom.
Bush and Bin Laden were (are) friends!
Knew of this way back when 9/11 happened. He also had Saudi Arabians escorted out of the U.S. safely that night or the next night. Good grief! Keep up with the news!
And just as many of his friends denied he was a racist. sm
so who do you believe? You believe the ones saying he is a racist because that fits the *mold* that the Republican party has been cast in. Never mind that all the members of the *black caucus* in the House are blatantly racist. I cannot name the number of times I have heard Maxine Waters use racist language. George Allen is a racist because some friends of his say he was in college. I say he is not because some friends of his say he wasn't. The truth is, neither of us knows for sure. Ford claims racism in the reason he was not elected, but I never heard Lynn Swan or Michael Steele use the phrase. Why is it that blacks cannot get behind black candidates who happen to be Republican? Michael Steele had a bipartisan group of pastors working for him. That should say something about the man. J. C. Watts made it to the Senate because Oklahoma is a very conservative state. Would he have made it in New York. I don't think so, not as a Republican. What exactly is racism? Observor's question about Robert Byrd is a valid one. I don't know that one can get more racist that a grand wizard with the KKK. So is racism okay only if one is a Democrat? Ponder that for a few minutes.
Obama & his friends/associates
Wright, Phlager, Ayers, Dohrn, Rezko, for the short list.
So the company you or I keep says nothing about your character? If that's true by anyone's views, that's just a downright falsehood. Parents do the same re their kids, etc. Mine sure did, and good thing, too!
yeah, and all this matter more than O being friends
nm
Yeah, at least she is not friends or associates with
nm
Another day at the circus with sal and friends....got popcorn?
x
Hmmm....I thought it was just my friends
and classmates looking older and wondering why....
What's really sad is I have older, lesbian friends who
of FEAR. They're now in their early 70's, & live in a very tolerant city, and yet they are still so secretive and closeted, it makes me sad. They don't even allow themselves to say the word 'lesbian'. They exert so much time and effort into keeping it a secret. Obviously that's left over from the time you describe. They lived in the San Francisco Bay Area during the times of all the police raids you were talking about, so that must be why the fear they feel is still so strong, even in the 21st Century.
Some of Obama's friends are enemies of the USA
nm
unless you are talking thousands of friends,
I don't think your sample is statistically significant. Obama has led in the polls except for one week for the entire season. Once the Palin myth was unmasked, Obama bounced right back up. Never in the history of the any country anywhere has someone sustained such a lengthy lead and then went on to lose (if you don't count the last election's fraud).
friends in all the wrong places
One of the few trinkets on mediaresearch.org. Do you dare read anything here? The joke's on the drivebys, and I (well, we) can hardly wait!
4. Going Where Media Won't: Stanley Kurtz Connects Obama and Ayers Writing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal and National Review Online, Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow Stanley Kurtz traced Barack Obama's partnership with former domestic terrorist William Ayers when the two collaborated at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a charity established to help Chicago's public schools that was commandeered by Ayers to promote his radical agenda. The association between Obama and Ayers has received virtually no attention from the three broadcast networks, with the conspicuous exception of a primary-season debate sponsored by ABC when George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his relationship with Ayers. Out of 1,365 broadcast evening news stories about Obama prior to the end of the primaries, only two mentioned Ayers -- one a brief mention of the debate question on the April 17 Nightly News, and the other an April 20 World News Sunday story about McCain raising the Ayers issue on This Week.
|
