"Pitchfork Moment"

The Bush Administration's proposed emergency loan package for the financial industry disenfranchises the American people, who are putting up the loan.

It's not just that Bush's Wall Street cronies Bernanke and Paulson are presenting the current crisis their policies--along with Alan Greenspan's--hatched, as a do or die moment for western civilization.

The worst feature is the "shock-doctrinesque" Treasury coup by Paulson, aided and abetted by Congress. Glen Greenwald refers to it as a "pitchfork moment--an episode that understandably would send people into the streets in mass outrage ..."

Why?

He explains,

What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism -- where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded.

It's elegantly simple. The three key provisions: (1) The Treasury Secretary is authorized to buy up to $700 billion of any mortgage-related assets (so he can just transfer that amount to any corporations in exchange for their worthless or severely crippled "assets") [Sec. 6]; (2) The ceiling on the national debt is raised to $11.3 trillion to accommodate this scheme [Sec. 10]; and (3) best of all: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency" [Sec. 8].

Put another way, this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes.

The one problem is, you'll never hear or read anything about those points in the commercial media.

Conversion Cover Story

On Tuesday, September 9, the city of Wilmington, NC held an experimental switchover from analog to digital broadcasting. There were some minor problems, but not a lot of details about them in the press.

According to Bruce Dixon, however, Associate Editor of Black Agenda Report, the real problem with the conversion is something the commercial media, the Congress and the FCC aren't talking about.

According to Dixon, "When I put a microphone in Kevin Martin's face and asked him why none of the new channels were being made available to the public, he said, 'That's a good question. I'd like to hear more from the public about that.'"

Unfortunately, Martin is unlikely to hear much from the the public about this on his upcoming tour. Dixon calls it, the FCC's We're Not Listening Tour.

The tour is supposed to provide the public with a forum to give meaningful input to the Commissioners about the upcoming digital conversion.

Anchorage, Alaska
8/27/2008

Fairbanks, Alaska
8/28/2008

Baltimore, Maryland
9/8/2008

San Francisco, California
9/11/2008

Austin, Texas
9/18/2008

Houston, Texas
9/17/2008

Memphis, Tennessee
9/19/2008

New York, New York
9/27/2008

Boise, Idaho
9/29/2008

Atlanta, Georgia
9/29/2008

Missoula, Montana
9/30/2008

Helena, Montana
10/1/2008

Bozeman, Montana
10/2/2008

Billings, Montana
10/3/2008

Nashville, Tennessee
10/7/2008

Charlotte, North Carolina
10/16/2008

Denver, Colorado
10/16/2008

Seattle, Washington
10/20/2008

Spokane, Washington
10/21/2008

Yakima, Washington
10/22/2008

Portland, Oregon
10/23/2008

Chicago, Illinois
11/20/2008

Phoenix, Arizona
12/29/2008

The complete list of 80 cities to be visited by the FCC between now and February is here.

In an interview on Media-Monitors (7:30 pm MNN ch. 56 Sept. 18, 2008), Dixon describes what citizen-activists need to do to use this opportunity to wrest some of the intiative away from the big networks and their affiliates in the upcoming digital channel giveaway.

People need to get their questions ready and show up at the FCC hearing when it comes to their town.

We will post the relevant sections of the 1996 Telecommunications Act here as soon as we can extract them from the legislation text.

Update to CNN

FAIR now has an Action Alert out on the CNN coverage of last Friday's hearing.

Host Campbell Brown:
Campbell@cnn.com

CNN President Jonathan Klein:
212-275-8263


My further response to CNN:

After watching and reviewing the coverage of last Friday's (July 25) Judiciary Subcommittee on the The Constitution's hearings on abuses of Executive Power, I feel compelled to complain about the poor quality of the coverage.

Before introducing the story, Anchor Brown and reporter Hill both joked about the hearing's irrelevance and "stagecraft." However, none of the 35 charges of criminal acts documented in the Articles of Impeachment precipitating the hearing were mentioned.

They include knowingly ordering torture of innocent detainees, innumerable First Amendment violations including unlawful warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, mass murder of Iraqi civilians, neglect of American citizens in need of Federal Emergency Management Assistance after Hurricaine Katrina, conspiracy to profit from war and energy market manipulation, among many others.

These seem to me to be far from a laughing matter.

I'm sorry CNN has fallen so far as to mock the American people, our Congress, Constitution and Justice System, and our right to know -- objectively -- what our elected officials are doing in our name.

I hope CNN will try to do better next time.

Fair& David Swanson

[Go to video]

My reply to CNN:

The Brown & Hill report on last Friday's congressional hearings on the limits of executive power was disturbing in its dismissive tone.

It disregarded the question of whether or not the evidence for impeachment bears any legal basis.

The commentators laughed and disregarded the six hour hearing as "kabuki theater" without covering its substance or trying to inform the American public about the 35 charges.

Both comentators stated that the hearings represented a "waste of taxpayer money" without explaining why they believed the substance of the hearings were so unwarranted.

They openly sided with the Republican opposition and implied that it wasn't worth the Republicans' time to show up at the hearings.

They then showed President Bush kissing a baby and declared him to be "undisturbed" by the hearings.

Such baseless, partisan and contemptuous broadcasting is far from news. Brown and Hill are not journalists but talking points puppets who repeat what their bosses in the CNN corporate offices want them to say.

Members of the public, ordinary working people, citizens without special statusl, means, or access to the media have worked for years to have a hearing like last Friday's.

It occurred in spite of the effort by CNN, Fox, MSNBC and ABC to tell the public that it doesn't matter if the President and his Administration commit felonies and shred the Constitution.

Ha ha ha. Just a laughing matter, according to CNN's anchors.

CNN needs to issue a formal apology to the American people for the disservice they performed last Friday, and continue to perform by deliberately misreporting the news.

The Upcoming Elections

Chomsky in the (foreign) media (again.)

No, the public is the same, it's been saying the same for decades, but the public is irrelevant, is understood to be irrelevant. What matters is a few big interests looking after themselves and that's exactly what the public sees.

Read more

Looking Forward To Hanging Up Dirty Laundry

Bill Moyers did a film called, Buying the War.

The transcript is available online.

Big Media Are Bad For Democracy

The segment of the Thursday, July 3rd episode will wind up focusing on the Big Media issue as led by Stop Big Media. We want to encourage as many viewers as we can to pick up the phone, call their Congressperson, and weigh in to say NO to the FCCs ruling expanding cross-ownership rights.

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