Just Say Why

The Ethics of the Corrupt Corporate Media
by
Paul Johnson

Have advertisements ever gotten you to buy something you later wished you hadn’t? Do you know of things others have bought that you knew they shouldn’t have? Of course. We all know this happens. We see it every day. Often, we don’t even realize we were scammed.

How many times have you gone to a movie that is supposed to be the best movie ever, only to find that it’s bunk. We will often chalk this up to just a difference of opinion between us and the critics, when in reality it is a discrepancy between what was promised and what was delivered.

Knowing how bad cigarette smoking is for us and how bad it smells and how it costs every single tax payer to help those being poisoned, we should question how anyone would ever be fool enough to get hooked. The answer is simple. Advertising is successful at getting you and me to do things and to buy things that are not in our best interests. The examples are endless.

Some people are more susceptible to marketing and different marketing affects different types of people. The more obvious the “bad purchase” is, the more susceptible the buyer is to marketing. But, we are all susceptible. With the years and years and billions of dollars that have been devoted to marketing research, most of us are easy pickings.

Is it morally acceptable for a company to advertise cigarettes?

My unscientific numbers show that people who buy political lies buy many other bad purchases. Of course, they don’t think smoking is a bad purchase any more than they think they made a mistake with their party.

In order to be competitive, a company today has to resort to unethical marketing or they will be washed aside. 25 years of Reganonomics (A. K. A.: Voodoo Economics) only the monster corporations survive. Ma Bell is coming back together, our Military Industrial Complex is moving offshore to avoid taxes, cigarette companies are still making billions. Why? Because we’ve been believing the Greed is Good marketing of the Free Market advertisers.

Why do we not have a national health system? Because of the same unethical marketing.

How do we fix this problem? How do we educate those most susceptible to unethical marketing (and the Corrupt Corporate Media)? How do we train buyers to resist this barrage of marketing?

Many college programs have courses on ways to take advantage of marketing and how to help avoid it. Everyone needs this training and the marketers need to be paying the bill for this education. Without the unethical marketing, there would be no need for the training.

Hence, we need a marketing tax. For every dollar spent on marketing, advertisers should be paying another dollar to help teach people to avoid their lies. However, how do we avoid charging the ethical advertisers to help protect us from the unethical ones? We also need to charge the big marketers more than the little shops as we can all but guarantee that the big fish got big by being just that little bit more ruthless, aggressive, and unethical.

I guess the real question is, is there a difference?

Other than infomercials, every advertisement is intent on getting us to buy something that we otherwise know we don’t need and don’t want.

We also need more strict penalties for unethical marketing and need a government that is serious about protecting the buyers.

A Health Care Story
by
David Schlecht

Surveys show that the majority of Americans know there’s a health care crisis, but less than half consider their coverage unacceptable. Why is that?

A little research of my own seems to indicate that the surveys are asking the wrong questions. Let me tell you a little story.

My wife and I have good friends, a married couple, Sally and Tom, who were happy with their health coverage, too. They are in their late 30s and until recently, quite healthy. Sally had a little trouble with Asthma when she was in her 20s but it went away.

Recently, she had an asthma attack that put her in the hospital.

You probably already guessed, but I’ll tell you, any way. Their insurance refused to cover the costs because it was a “Pre-existing condition.” In fact, since they failed to report a pre-existing condition on their application, the carrier decided it was a good time to drop their coverage, entirely.

The medical costs have destroyed their life savings and they have had to take loans out against their retirement accounts. Tom is in the software business and had a pretty good retirement nest-egg started. Right now, they’re wondering if Social Security will be around when they retire as they will be working the rest of their lives just to pay for their medical.

In order to get coverage for Sally, Tom left his job and went to work at a government agency where he could take advantage of a health-coverage co-op. The insurance is still shockingly expensive and even though Tom is making less money, at least they have the feeling that they’re secure in their health coverage.

Recently, Tom has been complaining of recurring headaches. He has a spot at the top of his brain’s right hemisphere that causes excruciating pain from time to time. Tom exercises regularly and is quite fit. His blood pressure is great and has no problems with his vision.

So, what is Tom going to do about his headaches? He knows that if he goes to a doctor and nothing shows up, and some time down the road he finds he has a tumor or aneurysm he knows that any new insurance covering them would immediately drop him just like they did Sally.

Would Tom and Sally say they were happy with their current insurance. Probably yes.  Should they be happy with their current condition. Of course not, but at least Sally is covered and if Tom has to go to the hospital now, at least he is covered.

Are you happy with your coverage? Would your insurer drop you like they did Sally if you come down with an expensive ailment? It’s obvious the only solution to this problem that all Americans face is to take the insane profits out of the Medical Industry, and the only way to do that is with a national health care.

Now, sure, we’ve all heard the propaganda put out by the insanely profitable health care industry how it would be just terrible if we went that route. After all, someone somewhere came to America to get an operation that their national health care didn’t cover.  Someone somewhere. Sounds like deceptive propaganda to me. After all, why would the industry not fight to keep their insane profits? They could spend billions on deceptive ads every year and still make insane profits, and that’s just what they plan to do.

The organization started and intent on helping women and couples deal with family planning issues is under unrelenting attacks by the “Forced Pregnancy” arm of the Conservative Radicals. Without our help, another pillar of our free, informed society will fall, women will be lied to by the Heritage Foundation and their liars and America will suffer for generations to come.

Can you spare $20? $100? Do you have 10 minutes to write a letter or make a phone call? They need our help. Here is their statement:

Family Planning is under attack in Washoe County.
Nevada women need your help.

The Washoe County Board of County Commissioners and the Washoe County Board of Health have scheduled meetings to discuss the process for distributing Title X funding (America’s family planning funding for low-income women). When Planned Parenthood Mar Monte received a two-year grant to run Street Smart, a program for HIV/AIDS outreach for youth in our area, several commissioners raised questions about the Health Department budget and grant program. There is a chance they may recommend the Title X funds not be accepted by the County.

Take action now! One minute of your time will make a big difference - please write an email to the County Commissioners and the Department of Health to show your support of Title X funding and access to family planning.

Use one or more of these points in your message:

• Washoe County should not refuse to take Title X funds.
• I value family planning and comprehensive sex education and outreach as the best way to protect women, family and teen health.
• Preventing unplanned pregnancies saves Nevada taxpayers - every dollar spent saves $4 in Medicaid costs for pregnancy and newborn health care.

Washoe County Commissioners:

Bonnie Weber, District 5	bweber@washoecounty.us
Jim Galloway, District 1	rlencioni@washoecounty.us
David Humke, District 2	dhumke@washoecounty.us
Robert Larkin, District 4	rlarkin@washoecounty.us
Kitty Jung, District 3	kjung@washoecounty.us

Washoe County District Health Department:

sbfisher@washoecounty.us

Report Back: Email renopa@ppmarmonte.org with “I took action” in the subject line to let us know that you sent your email in!

In addition, the Washoe County Board of Health is proposing to cut family planning funding 90% over a three-year period. This means the county may no longer provide family planning services or the Teen Health Mall program. If this happens about 700 women a year will go without family planning services - this is in addition to the 44,000 in Washoe County who already can’t access family planning they need for breast and cervical cancer screening, sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment and affordable birth control.

Other ways you can take action:

• Call the County Commissioner’s office at (775) 328-2005 to voice your opinion. Call the Washoe District of Health’s office at (775) 328-2400.
• Go to the joint meeting on 2/26: Commission and Board of Health at 1pm, Commissioners Chambers in Bldg A, 1009 E Ninth St, Reno NV 89502.
• Go to the Board of Health meeting 2/28: The Board of Health meets at 1pm, Health Department, South Auditorium, 1009 E Ninth St, Reno, NV 89502.

P.S. Thank you for your support! Learn more about Title X.

by David Schlecht

So, we’re not supposed to talk about this, but the Class Wars are in full swing and our side is losing. Soon, if the Republicans get their way, there will only be two classes of Americans, the Haves (yes, the Republican BASE) and the Have-nots (yes, this will eventually be everyone else). But, don’t be afraid to talk about it. That’s just what the top 1% want. Be afraid to talk about how you’re losing your income and benefits and how the top 1% keep getting richer and richer off the sweat of our labor.

The ultra rich are taking over our government and for the past 25 years have been getting their pet laws passed, and for the most part, the rest of us just went along with it. What, with the billions of dollars spent on lobbying and on factious advertising, we were all behind the “Free Trade Agreements”. Why wasn’t there anyone from our side standing up and saying, “Hey, that’ll ship millions of our jobs over seas.” But, no, all we heard was how nice it would be to be able to buy Wal-Mart products from China’s slave labor.

The ultra-rich are calling the shots and doing their best to make sure we’re doing with less while they do with “all”. It’s time to stand up and get money out of our election process and get the lobbying leeches out of our government.

It’s time to re-instate the old tax on Aristocracy. It’s time to cut the taxes on the working people and activate the 95% tax on the blood suckers. Keep the playing fields level.

by David Schlecht

It’s rare for media reform issues to make the front page… but they did today.

This morning, the New York Times revealed that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is rushing through a plan to rewrite media ownership rules, letting the biggest media companies control even more local outlets. And he’s doing it without giving the public a chance to respond. The rules could take effect as early as December.

<Link>

by David Schlecht

My thanks to the gentle readers who have correctly noticed that many of the authors on this site condemn groups when they really should be focusing on the specific cases.

It’s not right to condemn all Republicans as morons, or all Nevadans as trailer trash or all conservative media as corporate corrupt or all  conservatives as immoral. Though many of the blog posts demonstrate these principles giving obvious examples, it’s not always correct to condemn the whole group for what the vast majority do.  I’m sure that out of the remaining 26%ers not more than 99.999% are immoral. The last two or three are just stupid. Hence, it’s not fair to blame the poor stupid for being immoral.

Just like you can say that the vast majority of Liberal blogs are accurate and offer plenty of evidence of their statements, there are one or two that don’t. Now we don’t want to be blamed for all being like the one or two, and we all know that not all the Conservative blogs will lie to show just that.  Two or three are just plain stupid.

Hence, I suggest that we all try to do a better job of exposing exactly what is so evident rather than assuming that the readers have the same knowledge foundation that you have.

Okay, enough comedy. There are some good Republicans out there just like there are some bad Liberals. Let’s stick to the specifics rather than generalities.

by David Schlecht

Dear gentle readers. Thanks for all the feedback on this site.

Due to popular demand, and due to the number of distinct authors contributing to this blog, you will now see By Lines showing who writes each article. I admit, it’s been rather confusing who we’re reading.

Who wrote the article? The mystery is now solved.

This will also make it easier to search on a particular author.

Hi All,

In case you’re wondering why the postings have been so light this week — I’m out of the area until Friday. But, oh, there’s so much to cover. Al beat me to a response to a Krattenmaker about the bad old securlarists.

14 more of our soldiers have died today, in Iraq. “IT’S NOT A QUAGMIRE!” My heart goes out to the families and friends.

1) Minorities Find Themselves in Crosshairs of Cutbacks
As newsrooms across the country trim their staffs amid shrinking
budgets, many say diversity has become the unintended victim.
Seniority policies dictate that recently hired minority staffers
are some of the first to get the ax.
Yuxing Zheng, Asian American Journalists Association
( Link )

2) Radio Since 1996 - Fewer Owners, Higher Rates, Fewer
Listeners
According to the media ownership studies released by the FCC,
there are fewer radio group owners than there were right after
passage of the 1996 Telecom Act; and radio listening continues
to trend down. At the same time, ad rates have nearly doubled.
Radio World
( Link )

3) Where Do the Candidates Stand on Media Consolidation?
Because the mainstream media has an inherent bias against
reporting media consolidation issues, there is not a lot of
coverage in the papers or on television. But the candidates have
stated their positions on media consolidation and Net
Neutrality.
The Seminal

4) Media Consolidation Gets Addressed at YearlyKos Convention
Media consolidation has come up again as a primary question
during the presidential forum at the YearlyKos conference. Sens.
Dodd (D-Conn.) and Clinton (D-N.Y.) and former Alaska Sen.
Gravel give their views.
Jennifer L. Pozner, WIMN’s Voices
( Link )

5) Sen. Chris Dodd Slams Media Consolidation
Presidential candidate Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) received cheers
at the Presidential Leadership Forum at YearlyKos when he talked
about his views on media consolidation. (Video 1:51)
YearlyKos Convention
( Link )

ACT NOW! Tell the FCC to Stop Big Media
Visit http://action.freepress.net/ct/e7xr_Ks1DahR/

We’ve all heard the phrase, power corrupts. However, it’s easy to forget exactly how corruptible it is.

I’ve witnessed a marked increase in the amount of power corrupting our local governments.

Has anyone complained about all the cameras pointing in every direction on every street corner in America. Some poor fool probably thought this would be good to help protect our citizens, but never spent a moment considering how extremely dangerous this is to our privacy and safety.

All it takes is a suspicion that you’re working for the Evil Terrorists and you will disappear forever. What if you’re car is seen in the proximity of suspicious events? With the license-plate recognition software available and in use, today, your police can track every move you make in your vehicle.

You have no way to know that this information isn’t being abused, or sold. We need to demand to be informed what this information is being used for and if it’s really necessary.
Throughout America, there has also been a notable increase in the number of unmarked police cars. A hidden and covert police force is not in our best interest. Sure, each force needs a few unmarked cars, but to avoid a Police State, we need to be able to watch and restrict the powers of our police forces.

There are many similar examples all around us every day. We need to stop and take notice, and write letters to the police chief, and the newspaper, expressing our concerns over this encroachment on our privacy and our loss of control over the power of our local police force.