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The Faux/Fox News Dilemma

by Larry Sakin

The American people enjoy a rather quixotic relationship with the mainstream media. Most folks understand on a visceral level that what they see on tee-vee is bullshit; something that is created to make viewers more susceptible to advertising whether its network or cable news or the latest z-list celebrity “reality” program. Yet, no broadcast network has sustained as much controversy as Fox News, the official mouthpiece of media-Mafiosi Rupert Murdoch and his Republican consigliere Roger Ailes. Read more

A Post-Election Day Thought

by Larry Sakin

A major problem in articulating a liberal point of view is to define what government is.  Almost everything in the conservative mindset is based around the idea that more government is bad — that “government” is a distant authority that tells you what to do, and that you have no say over it. Classical conservatives will say that government is bad, because it’s government, and all decisions should be devolved to as low a level as possible.  Ironically though, it’s amusing to see what happens to some conservatives when they get elected and see what a little taste of power does to them. Read more

We Don’t Care, We Don’t Have To

by Larry Sakin

We are approaching final countdown for the 2008 elections this week, and the blurry mainstream media has been all agog over Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin showing her $150,000 slip. It is a perfect follow up to the wasteful spending insurance giant AIG displayed with their $300,000 resort conference taking place after the federal government bailed them out of their financial pain. Tsk, tsk, tsk- those republicans and corporate behemoths sure can plunk down the dough to aggrandize themselves.

What the press missed is the millions of dollars that went into campaign contributions for the presidential nominees of both parties, in both industry donations and corporate sponsorship of this summer’s party conventions. According to the website www.opensecrets.org, of the $240 million in donations Senator Barack Obama has accounted for, twenty-five percent or $60 million has come from lobbyists, corporate law firms, commercial banks, Wall Street, real estate interests and yes, insurance companies including AIG. Read more

None of the Above

by Larry Sakin

As the 2008 election winds down, more and more friends are asking two questions I cannot bear to answer. The first is: “Have you watched the presidential debates?’ and the second is “Who are you voting for?”

I don’t watch presidential debates because they are essentially free advertising venues for the candidates to demagogue their breezy talking points, which are mainly tiny bits of red meat to keep their party faithful frothing over the election. Frankly, there are already too many commercials on television. These corporate media gifts to the two major parties are just a little payback for the onslaught of paid campaign adverts to come. Read more

A Five Point Plan to End the War on Terrorism

by Larry Sakin

As the presidential campaign for 2008 draws nearer to a close, Both John McCain and Barack Obama have become entrenched in the muck of personality politics. In the meantime, Pakistan and Afghanistan are slowly deteriorating under the pressure of trying to be one thing to the warlords that actually run many of the militarized areas of both nations, and another to the West as a means of gaining military and foreign aid money. Read more

Much Ado About Sarah Palin

by Larry Sakin

Here we are, less than four weeks until Americans move the chairs around in the White House and GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin still dominates the progressive blogs and left leaning radio and television gab fests. The governor of Alaska, who up to six weeks ago was barely known in political circles, must be grateful for all the publicity she’s receiving from her opponents. Read more

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• Letter to the Editor: Good Cars need Good Teams - by R. A. Letcher, PhD

  Good cars need good teams -- designers, engineers, line workers… and learning-oriented managers by Robert A. Letcher, PhD [Author’s note: I submitted the following as a letter to the editor of The New York Times, after that paper carried an article under the headline, "To Fix Detroit, Obama Is Said to Drop Plan for ‘Car Czar’", 02/15/2009.] It is widely accepted that you can't win a horse race without a good horse. Of course, it helps to have a lot of money and a good plan for spending it. But, you still need a good horse. The authors reminded me of this when they wrote: “The companies’ plans are required to show progress in cutting long-term costs as a condition for keeping their loans.” I doubt GM and Chrysler can win this most important "automobile race" merely by having better accountants and more muscular negotiators: they still need a good "horse". That means the companies will have to show that their teams can still design and build cars that people are drawn to buy and willing to pay for: winners. I doubt they can. The problem isn't that they didn't know how to; it's that they don't know how to break out of the group-think that ensnarled them, their managers, their whole organizations, decades ago. I would be more optimistic, had the government also required the companies to include plans for transforming themselves into learning organizations. Aye, there’s the rub: learning entails risk-taking, not “yes people”.

• Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm

  

• Fiscal Therapy - Getting the economy back on its feet, giving taxpayers a break, saving your retirement fund and your kid's college tuition? Done. And it won't cost you a penny.

  For years now, whenever I've been invited to lecture students on how our tax system works, I have asked a simple question: What is the purpose of the United States of America? The most common answer, be it at prestigious universities, elite prep schools, rural community colleges, or crowded urban high schools, is this: To make people rich. This should come as no great surprise. For anyone born after, say, 1970, the world has been shaped by Ronald Reagan's remaking of government's relationship with private interests—a vision of lower taxes, less regulation, and maximum economic leeway for those at the top. In this view, the pursuit of wealth is the warp and weft of America; everything else will follow. By contrast, the preamble to the Constitution tells us the nation's reason for being in 52 words that can be reduced to six principles: society, justice, peace, security, commonwealth, and freedom. Individual riches don't make the list. They are a product of American society, not its guiding purpose. Progress, then, must begin with a return to the best of the values that created this Second American Republic—one born, it's worth remembering, from the failure of the Articles of Confederation, whose principles (weak government, unfettered capitalism) found their resurrection in the economic policies of the past three decades.

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  read more at Mother Jones

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• How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely

  

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