The Overlooked Revolving Door: Media and Government

Tweetios #3

By Clint Hulsey

Mike Bloomberg: Media tycoon, mayor of New York. The control of mainstream media by such people keeps the political consciousness of the American people confused and in thrall to the values of capitalism.

We often hear about the revolving door between big business and the agencies that are supposed to regulate them. This is extremely prevalent of course, but there is a sort of revolving door that I don’t think is focused on enough. This is the revolving door between government officials and media. Every time there is a war being discussed, whether it’s Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, or whatever other country, the major corporate networks always trot out whatever Generals they happen to be paying to drum up support for the war.

Anti-war activists obviously do not exist according to the corporate media, as they are never brought on to debate the Generals. To use another relevant example CNN had a segment after Bin Laden’s death on how to become a Navy Seal. On one of their “straight news” programs, they were doing a commercial for the military.

I have nothing against people serving in the military and respect them, but is it the media’s job to get people to join the military? When 1 in 3 homeless people are veterans, not mentioning the thousands of Americans who died in illegal corporate- driven wars, is the media’s job to convince more people to join? Shouldn’t the media be the ones yelling out these statistics instead?

Senator Joe Lieberman, along with several Republican candidates for President, are expected to join Glenn Beck’s Israel rally. This should really shock people, not because it’s Glenn Beck, but for politicians to be attending rallies held by members of the media (or political pundits), just shows you that the media is too close and too comfortable with government officials. Many Politicians have monetary interests in the media companies, John Kerry has millions of dollars in media companies (including Murdock’s News Corp.).

So we don’t have state media, but politicians own major stakes in the media? What is the difference?

all the mass media.—Eds

Well there really isn’t any. The mayor of New York has his own media company, and has his writers taking pot shots at his critics. There was a telling piece in the Atlantic that showed howCambodian comedians were basically propagandists for the government, mocking opposition groups, and performing for troops. Perhaps that doesn’t seem shocking, and it really shouldn’t because entertainers have become basically the same here in America.

Former FCC commissioner Henry Rivera has not only walked through the revolving door to work for T-Mobile, but Politico allowed him to write an op-ed for them to promote the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile, without mentioning the conflict of interest. Another FCC commissioner worked in the opposite way helping Free Press write an editorial form them. Even though I basically agree with the policy they were advocating for, it would be inconsistent to say that that is perfectly fine, while the other one is not. Instead there should be a strict separation between media and government.

And because I think that emphasizing corporations are authoritarian structures is just important as emphasizing that government is, its important to look at a recent story done that stated the obvious.“Right-wing” radio hosts like Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck are paid to constantly defend and promote groups like Americans for Prosperity and Heritage. These groups are of course funded by oligarchs and corporations. Americans for Prosperity is funded by the Koch brothers and profoundly influences elections.

The media doesn’t represent views that are popular with the majority. Instead, it lauds views that are actually unpopular. Take the Medicare issue for example, while a plan to end or “reform” Medicare is very unpopular, the media eats it up and calls it “brave” or “sincere”. We have a broken corporate media obviously.

CLINT HULSEY is a young man from Texas who thinks.

The Health Care Hindenburg Has Landed

Obama selling his snake oil to Ohians.

By Chris Hedges Posted on Mar 22, 2010 [print_link]

Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s decision to vote “yes” in Sunday’s House action on the health care bill, although he had sworn to oppose the legislation unless there was a public option, is a perfect example of why I would never be a politician. I respect Kucinich. As politicians go, he is about as good as they get, but he is still a politician. He has to run for office. He has to raise money. He has to placate the Democratic machine or risk retaliation and defeat. And so he signed on to a bill that will do nothing to ameliorate the suffering of many Americans, will force tens of millions of people to fork over a lot of money for a defective product and, in the end, will add to the ranks of our uninsured.

The claims made by the proponents of the bill are the usual deceptive corporate advertising. The bill will not expand coverage to 30 million uninsured, especially since government subsidies will not take effect until 2014. Families who cannot pay the high premiums, deductibles and co-payments, estimated to be between 15 and 18 percent of most family incomes, will have to default, increasing the number of uninsured. Insurance companies can unilaterally raise prices without ceilings or caps and monopolize local markets to shut out competitors. The $1.055 trillion spent over the next decade will add new layers of bureaucratic red tape to what is an unmanageable and ultimately unsustainable system.

The mendacity of the Democratic leadership in the face of this reality is staggering. Howard Dean, who is a doctor, said recently: “This is a vote about one thing: Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?” Here is a man who once championed the public option and now has sold his soul. What is the point in supporting him or any of the other Democrats? How much more craven can they get?

Take a look at the health care debacle in Massachusetts, a model for what we will get nationwide. One in six people there who have the mandated insurance say they cannot afford care, and tens of thousands of people have been evicted from the state program because of budget cuts. The 45,000 Americans who die each year because they cannot afford coverage will not be saved under the federal legislation. Half of all personal bankruptcies will still be caused by an inability to pay astronomical medical bills. The only good news is that health care stocks and bonuses for the heads of these corporations are shooting upward. Chalk this up as yet another victory for our feudal overlords and a defeat for the serfs.

The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care—$7,129 per capita—although 45.7 million Americans remain without health coverage and millions more are inadequately covered, meaning that if they get seriously ill they are not covered. Fourteen thousand Americans a day are now losing their health coverage. A report in the journal Health Affairs estimates that, if the system is left unchanged, one of every five dollars spent by Americans in 2017 will go to health coverage. Private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume 31 cents of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough, Physicians for a National Health Plan points out, to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans. Check out www.healthcare-now.org. It has some of the best analysis.

This bill is not about fiscal responsibility or the common good. The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense. It is the health care industry’s version of the Wall Street bailout. It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies on insurance and drug companies. The some 3,000 health care lobbyists in Washington, whose dirty little hands are all over the bill, have once more betrayed the American people for money. The bill is another example of why change will never come from within the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by corporations. The five largest private health insurers and their trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, spent more than $6 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug maker, spent more than $9 million during the last quarter of 2008 and the first three months of 2009. The Washington Post reported that up to 30 members of Congress from both parties who hold key committee memberships have major investments in health care companies totaling between $11 million and $27 million. President Barack Obama’s director of health care policy, who will not discuss single payer as an option, has served on the boards of several health care corporations. And as salaries for most Americans have stagnated or declined during the past decade, health insurance profits have risen by 480 percent.

Obama deplaning with Rep. Kucinich. Serious jawboning applied.

Obama and the congressional leadership have consciously shut out advocates of single payer from the debate. The press, including papers such as The New York Times, treats single payer as a fringe movement. The television networks rarely mention it. And yet between 45 and 60 percent of doctors favor single payer. Between 40 and 62 percent of the American people, including 80 percent of registered Democrats, want universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans. The ability of the corporations to discredit and silence voices that represent at least half of the population is another sad testament to the power of our corporate state to frame all discussions.

Change will come only by building movements that stand in fierce and uncompromising opposition to the Democrats and the Republicans. If they can herd Kucinich and John Conyers, the sponsors of House Resolution 676, a bill that would create a publicly funded National Health Program by eliminating private health insurers, onto the House floor to vote for this corporate theft, what is the point in pretending there is any room left for us in the party? And why should we waste our time with gutless liberal groups such as Moveon.org, which felt the need to collect more than $1 million to pressure House Democrats who had voted “no” on the original bill to recant? What was this purportedly anti-war group doing anyway serving as an obsequious recruiting arm of the Obama election campaign? The longer we tie ourselves to the Democrats and these bankrupt liberal organizations the more ridiculous and impotent we appear.

“I’m ready to listen to the White House, if the White House is ready to listen to the concerns about putting a public option in this bill,” the old Kucinich said on the “Democracy Now!” radio and television program before he flipped. “I mean, they can do that. You know, they’re still cutting last-minute deals. Put the public option back in. Make it a robust public option. Give the people a chance to really negotiate rates with the insurance companies … from the standpoint of having a public option. But don’t just tell the people that you’re going to call this health care reform, when you’re giving insurance companies an even more powerful monopoly status in our economy.”

CHRIS HEDGES, a former New York Times reporter, is now an activist journalist.