How can you tell if your news source is biased? How can you tell if you need to turn off your news TV or radio and find something more honest? I’ll give you some simple guidelines.

1. Is your news source coming from a multi million dollar corporation? Well then you can guarantee that it wouldn’t be in their best interest to get the poor and working class all up in arms about multi million corporations, now would it? This is the first and most obvious indication that something is wrong with your news.
2. Are your news casters paid more than $106,000 per year? If so, you can be sure it’s not in their interest to give you the truth about taxes on the wealthy now is it?
3. Does your news source clump Social Security expenses in as part of the general federal budget? If so, turn off your lying news right now. This is an obvious lie that has been disproven so many times it’s sad, but the liars keep repeating it.
4. Did your news have a piece on the thousands of picketers who marched in front of the Koch industries headquarters? No? Never heard of it? You know what that means. But I’ll bet you know about every single Tea Party gathering.
5. Does your news source explain how taxes on the rich have caused the budget deficit? No? Didn’t think so. Turn them off.
6. Does your news source explain how the rich, making more than $106,000, pay ZERO social security tax on every penny over that? No, I suppose not. I never hear any of them talking about that. Social Security would be in fat city if the rich just paid their fair share.
7. Does your news source explain how demand drives an economy and giving money to the fat cats is what’s caused this problem?

This is just a few of countless distortions and lies that come out of the major corporate news.

So, what can a person do to get the real news? Well, let’s start by turning off the corporate news and start looking for independent news and look for better alternatives. I’m not going to tell you what to listen to, you have to decide that on your own, but here are some great places to check out.

• The Thomm Hartmann radio/TV show. You can get it on the Web and on Dish TV. He has lots of great guests, liberals and conservatives, debating the issues.
• Think Progress is a great think tank that is current on all the goings on in politics.
• Daily Kos is a great website with lots of daily news.
• Democratic Underground is another great news source.
• The Nation has a great newspaper and online news source.
• Check out The Guardian and the BBC, two British news sources.
• You can even check out Al Jazeera for news not quite as biased as Fox.

You may have noticed, but I’m not giving you links. You can find these and more by doing a little googling. Get in the habit of doing some research and finding news sites that are actually good for you and good for America.

Hi,

When Congress can seriously debate cutting food aid to pregnant women and children while giving tax breaks to billionaires–and the only question the media asks is whether the cuts are big enough–we have a crisis. This week progressive faith leaders called for Americans to join an ongoing fast to protest the immoral budget cuts being debated in Washington.

I’m joining  the fast along with thousands of people including the leaders of many leading progressive organizations including MoveOn.org. Will you join too?

Thanks!

Tell everyone you know to sign up and get educated about what is going on and how to help save America.

Check out the Fight Back Teach-In.

Safe Level?

I’ve been hearing this term on our worthless American corporate news the past couple weeks and it makes my head want to explode. Either none of the news casters ever went to school or they forgot everything they learned. I also hear them say that the half-life is only some number of days.

To start with, the reason radiation causes cancer along with a whole host of other mutilations is because the nuclear atoms split apart and the components blast through the human body like a hot knife through butter. In the process of blasting through our cells, the electrons destroy parts of the DNA strands in our cells.

So, when the DNA gets mutilated, either the cell dies or it survives with the new defective DNA (mutation). The mutated cell no longer has the ability to self-regulate its growth so it begins to grow unrestrained. Now we have cancer.

So, how many electrons does it take to cause terminal cancer?

One!

One electron hitting the wrong place in a cell and you have cancer.

When scientists say a safe level, they mean statistically safe. In other words, if your chances of getting cancer from a disaster is only 1 in 100,000 then that’s pretty safe. But if there are 100,000 people living in the area, like in Japan, that means that at least one of those people will get cancer even though it’s considered “safe”. You can be that lucky one.

There is no safe level of radiation.

Half Life

The term half-life is the amount of time it takes for only half of the material to lose its radioactivity. This doesn’t mean it’s safe after that time, it means it’s only half as lethal. In other words, it’s still unsafe but it will now only kill half as many people.

Once it’s lost half of it’s poison, it takes another of those half-lives before it loses another half of it’s poison. In other words, it will become half as lethal with the passing of each half life. Using the example of radioactive iodine, the half life is 8 hours. That means that in a population of one million people, if the level of radiation was enough to kill half the population, after eight hours, it would still be strong enough to kill 250,000, and another eight hours later it would kill another 125,000.

Half life is not the end of the disaster, that’s only a fraction of the total time it will take to dissipate.

Remember, there is no safe level of radiation. That’s why we can have cancer even if we don’t get purposely irradiated.

And, even with a half life of eight hours, it can take a long time before the risk becomes low enough to forget.

Update -

Radioactive Iodine has a half-life of 8 days, not 8 hours.

We, at Just Say Why, offer our condolences to all those affected by this awful disaster while at the same time express hope that America can learn from your hardships.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to you.

For a good list of possible ways to help with the relief effort, go to Huffington Post.

By now most people have realized that when the press reports that the economy is strong or getting better, it mean nothing to them. The working conditions or unemployment problems for the average American are not reflected in the reports on the economy. Why is this?

The answer is simple. The media does not report on the state of labor in this country. The most you will see the press report on is the unemployment rate and doesn’t even care to investigate the real numbers.

So, why is the state of the economy so different than the state of labor? The GDP, or the amount of product produced, used to closely track the income levels. In other words, as we made more in America, both the workers and the rich got richer. Over the past 30 years this has changed. Now the workers pay goes down as the rich get richer.

That is why you will often see the stock market go up as the unemployment rates go up. The more they can squeeze the worker, the more the companies are worth, at least short term.

Of course, when the stock markets go down, wages usually go down as well, so the American worker never gets a break.

What’s the solution?

Germany has a wonderful solution. We should investigate it, but you will never hear about it in our news. In Germany, half of all board members in a corporation must be representatives of the workers. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? After all, the corporation would be  nothing without the workers. Shouldn’t they have some say in how things are run?

If you’re looking for good, quality, and reliable computer consulting, give them a call.

A tip of the hat to all our regular and occasional visitors. Your comments are what make this site. Thank you for coming by and chatting.

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to everyone.

I used to have a college professor who would often say, “you can’t get the right answers if you don’t ask the right questions”.  This couldn’t be more true than it is today with the Right-wing nuts trying to poison our information. When you hear people trying to defend a position using the wrong words, take notice. It generally means that their position is indefensible. It’s called framing. Let’s look at some examples:

From the previous post from Matthew, the MoneyRates quote uses the phrase, “tax burden“. Taxes aren’t a burden, they’re the price we gladly pay to live in a civil society. The nice thing about America’s constitution is we the people can decide we want to be more like Somalia and less like America by lowering our taxes. But, is that really what we want? When you hear “tax burden”, beware of the right wing spin.

Another simple example is the whole question of abortion. Nobody is pro-abortion. Period! Nobody is arguing for abortions. But one side is arguing that there are times when abortions should be protected. This is considered a choice. People want to be able to make a choice if it affects their lives and their health and the health of their family.  So the question is “choice”. The anti-choice crowd knows they lose the argument using the right words to they cheat and use the wrong words to purposely come up with a different answer. They say “pro-life”. Really? Everyone’s pro-life. Well, everyone but most of those who say they are. If you’re pro-life, you’re anti-death so you support free medical, and oppose the death penalty. If you say you’re pro-life to oppose abortion, you are not pro-life, you’re anti-choice.

How about the term “death tax”? Do you know anyone who has signed a check to pay for their taxes after they died? Nah, me neither. Why not? Because there’s no such thing. There is, however, a rich-brat tax. Rich brats who are set to inherit billions of dollars (contrary to the wishes of our founding fathers) have to pay a high income tax (inheritance tax) when they receive the money. That’s not a death tax, that’s a rich brat tax and it should be a progressive tax that goes up to 99% on anything over 100 times the lifetime income of an American worker (worker, not counting the CEOs). That is what our founding fathers envisioned.

The right wing are masters at changing the words so we come up with the wrong answers. Before you start discussing issues with your friends and family, make sure you start out using the right words or you will never come up with the right solutions.

What other words do you hear the right use to get the wrong answers?

Since the days of Reagan, the American Dream has been recalibrated. We once believed that the American Dream was to live in a society that is upward mobile. In other words, to live in a society where you aren’t limited in life based on what class you were born into.

The Reagan years recalibrated the American Dream into getting as rich as you can regardless of who you have to hurt or destroy to make it. Greed became God. Even today, you hear of people pursuing a commercial theocracy. We went from being a “We” society to a “Me” society.

What is the American Dream today? What is your definition of the American Dream?