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What 'Controlling the Media' Really Means
The same media whining over criticisms of Fox was happy to be bullied and controlled by the Bush administration.
Hypocrisy is far too common a feature of our political culture to comprehensively chronicle, particularly when there is a change of party control and each side starts doing exactly that to which they spent the last several years vociferously objecting; see here for a vivid example of that dynamic, from a new Pew poll released today:
The belief that the press should keep political leaders from doing things that should not be done often depends on who those political leaders are, or more specifically, which party controls the White House. Currently, in the midst of the Obama administration, two-thirds of Republicans (65%) support the so-called "watchdog role" for the press, compared with 55% of Democrats. But last year, while Bush was still in office, only 44% of Republicans felt it was good that press criticism keeps political leaders honest, and Democrats were much more pro watchdog (71% supported press criticism). This partisan pattern has existed since the question was first asked by Pew Research in 1985.
With hypocrisy that pervasive, who could ever hope to take note of all of it? Still, the complaints from America's Right -- and especially former Bush officials -- that the Obama administration is attempting to "control the media," all because the White House criticizes Fox News, is in a class of hypocrisy all by itself. That those petulant complaints are being amplified by a virtually unanimous press corps -- "it's Nixonian!" is their leading group-think cliché -- makes it all the more intolerable.
John Cole itemizes just some of the measures adopted by the Bush White House to manipulate, control, punish and bully the very few media outlets which were ever hostile to it -- each of those Bush measures, standing alone, is infinitely more invasive and threatening than the mild and perfectly appropriate criticisms of Fox coming from the Obama White House. Indeed, the Bush White House did exactly the same thing with NBC as the Obama White House is doing with Fox, and virtually all of the media stars who today are so righteously lamenting the "attacks on Fox" said nothing. Worse, the very same Bush official who this week said it was "like what dictators do" for the Obama White House to criticize Fox -- Dana Perino -- herself stood at the White House podium a mere two years ago and did exactly that to NBC News.
But the Bush administration did far worse to media outlets than merely criticize them. They explicitly threatened to prosecute New York Times journalists -- to criminally prosecute them -- for reporting on Bush's illegal spying program aimed at American citizens. They imprisoned numerous foreign journalists covering their various wars. The administration's obsessive and unprecedented secrecy -- Dick Cheney refused to disclose even the most basic information about his whereabouts, his meetings, or even the number of staff members he had -- was the ultimate form of media control. And what was the Pentagon's embedding process other than an attempt to control media coverage and ensure favorable reporting? One will search in vain for much media protests about any of that.
But it was the Bush Pentagon's "military analyst"/domestic propaganda program that was, far and away, the most egregious case in a long, long time of a White House attempting to control media content and political coverage in the United States. And with very rare exception, not a single television network or cable news program ever even mentioned any of that -- despite David Barstow's having won the Pulitzer Prize for uncovering it -- because all their networks were implicated by it. To see how extreme a form of "media control" that was, just look at what the Bush Pentagon itself said it was doing.
As part of that propaganda program, the Bush DOD -- as they put it -- "develop[ed] a core group from within our media analyst list of those that we can count on to carry our water." They then fed those water-carriers with exclusive, secret tips about what the Government was doing, to ensure that TV programs would be forced to rely only on pro-Bush sources -- armed with "exclusives" -- while ignoring their critics. Here's how the Director of DoD Press Operations explained that tactic it in a memo to key Rumsfeld aides, including Larry DiRita, the top Pentagon spokesman:
By providing them with key and valuable information, they become the key go to guys for the networks and it begins to weed out the less reliably friendly analysts by the networks themselves . . . .
The Bush Pentagon had a program "to weed out the less reliably friendly analysts" from appearing on television networks. That would ensure not only that on-air pundits were "carrying water" for the Bush White House, but also that the networks' story choices and coverage of military matters would be shaped by those same water-carriers, since the networks' military analysts "have a huge amount of influence on what stories the network decides to cover proactively with regard to the military. . . . " It's hardly possible to imagine a more blatant effort to "control the media" than that. There is nothing the Obama White House has done regarding the media that even comes close.
Whatever else is true, Fox has taken on a political role that is very rare, at least in modern times, for a large American news organization. Its news coverage is not merely biased or opinionated; there'd be nothing unusual about that. Instead, it is a major participant -- the leading participant -- in organizing, promoting and fueling protests, including street protests, against the government. Fox has undertaken a role typically played by media outlets in, say, Venezuela or various unstable, under-developed countries -- sponsoring rather than reporting on protests against the government -- and it is difficult to recall any recent example that is similar.
Fox has every right to do that, but the pretense that it is a news orgainzation is ludicrous -- transparently so -- and there isn't anything remotely wrong with the Obama White House saying so. Even those with high tolerance levels for blatant double standards should have a very hard time watching Bush officials of all people -- along with their media-star allies -- whine about criticisms of Fox coming from the White House, when the prior eight years were marked by an administration that attempted to dominate and control media coverage more than any in modern history, along with a media that seemed perfectly content, even happy, to be controlled.
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81 Comments so far
Show AllIsn't that precisely why they're bitching about what the White House is doing now--because all the major networks are and always were far more sympathetic to the Bush agenda than they are to Obama's, however it much it closely parallels the previous one? (Indeed, it's virtually identical, but that isn't the issue for the rabid fascists at Fox.) They were fine with being almost totally controlled and manipulated by Bush and Cheney's mad dogs, because they nearly unanimously supported the Iraq invasion and all the consequent war crimes, along with Bush's invasions into the privacy and Constitutional rights of Americans. In contrast, they deplore and rail against the present White House's mild efforts to criticize Fox's blatant Republican bias because they share Fox's core values. Hypocrisy is their daily bread. They could no more function non-hypocritically than the US mililtary could function if it decided to completely disarm and start holding seminars on Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Ephraim,
You seem to contradict yourself here. But your use of "they" is so presumptuous and vague I am not able to understand your contention(s). I read this 3 times and it is possible that I lack the necessary reading skills to understand, but it also seems possible that your premise will not stand if made clear. "You can't have it both ways" seems to apply here. Does partisanship exist insofar as the media is concerned, or dosn't it?
It's "presumptuous" to use the word "they"? And I wasn't aware it would even be vague that I was alluding to corporate media, the major networks Greenwald is calling hypocritical for *their* outrage over the White House's mild reproaching of Fox News. What is it I'm trying to "have both ways"? Of course the media is partisan, which is what I clearly suggested. Both Fox and the other networks are sounding boards primarily for the right, even if Fox is nothing else but that. The other networks pose as if they're more fair and balanced, giving the "other side" more airtime, but invariably it's the center-right's views they juxtapose with the far right, never any real progressive or left opinion. I guess I'm confused over what you found so "vague" or how I seemed to be saying the media is both partisan and non-partisan, or whatever.
Ephraim,
I'm sorry, but I did not know that the "center-rights views", which THEY "juxtapose with the far right", made "rabid fascists" out of each group because THEY are "virtually identical" while also "juxtaposed" and "partisan". But I did admit that my reading skills may be at fault. Lately, I have been seeing presumption and contradiction where maybe something else may exist.
I don't know about your reading skills but it does seem you have a talent for making word salad out of most anything written, if this is any indication. The "rabid fascists" I referred to are at Fox News, as the sentence clearly indicates. The "virtually identical" parties are the Bush and Obama administrations. How this is confusing to you only you can understand.
Word salad, indeed. He reminds me of some clever wordsmiths who know the score but love to dance around the issues in order draw a cloak around the actual problem and therby ensuring or delaying ay posible open discussion of valid solutions. The trick is to always, always keep the problem from being properly defined. If that fails, claim that everybody is at fault so blame cannot be ascribed to the oligarchy. Finally, if that too fails, attack the messanger of truth by calling them out as a member of the looney fringe. It's tiresome.
One statement he made that really got my attention was the "There is nothing conspiratorial about a corporatocracy". What a hoot. Conspiracy and corporatocracy are practically synonyms!
R.L. Love Et tu, Brute?
AGG,
"messanger of truth"? Please identify
AGG,
If your Latin translates to my believing that spoiled children benefit from spankings, yes, I agree. And if my translation of your Latin seems a little inaccurate, it is more on target than your translations regarding English.
Ephraim,
I must again say that I am sorry, I thought the complete generalization: "all the major networks", might carry over to the next sentence. You did say that "rabid fascists" are at "Fox News" and I simply did not recognize the power of your punctuation. If you have read some the replies I have gotten on this thread you might better understand my confusion. I wish I had more time to chat but I must go and explain why I don't think a substantial portion of humanity must die.
And dont forget the Bush Cheney Military actively targetting non-embedded journaists in Iraq, resulting in numerous deaths
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
I am shocked!
65%-44%=19%
71%-55%=16%
Only 27% hypocrites! I would have guessed a higher percentage.
Yer math is off - but yer joke is still funny.
As usual, Glenn Greenwald is right on the mark.
Among other things they have forgotten and/or not been aware of, American voters seem never to have noticed how totally obsessed with secrecy the Bush administration was.
Jim Shea
It's okay if the media controls the government, but not the people.
Absent from this article, and at 4 so far, from the comments, is any discussion of class interest and how it affects what gets written about, or with what slant. The dialog is thus impoverished---along with the bottom 95% of us.
If you feel the dialog is impoverished, you are perfectly free to enrich it.
Well, this isn't quite a socialist or Marxist news site. Maybe Socialist Worker covers things from that angle more often.
Jethro,
If our media is viewed as a supply and demand issue there is a revealing effect that is not popular on this site. Many participants here perfer the "tiny oligarchy" theory. This theory denies the influence of stockholders as voters, and as consumers.
In the 1920s the investment class was 2% of the adult population, by the mid 1980s that had increased to 25%. By 2007, it was 50%, although this is in part due to the replacement of retirement accounts with of course the 401(k). Simply put, this is a corporatocracy, not an oligarchy, and rather than a "tiny" power base, it is a new type of society that is ruled by class tyranny which depends on its large size to maintain power through democratic means. This in large part made possible by the "framework" of our Democracy. It seems that a great many Americans do not understand that the founding fathers designed this government so as to favor the interests of an elite class in a specific part of the country (New England). A class that now includes corporations due to their having a de facto "personhood". A status much the same as that of the founding fathers although greatly strenthened by attaching the economic interests of more than a hundred million stockholders to outcomes. This without even considering the other stakeholders, foreign and domestic.
So impoverished, yes of course, but also delusional, and dependent on the denial of some rather obvious facts. (good point)
And with hedge fund managers controlling the largest shares of stocks in most large corporations, I assume we're back to the "tiny oligarchy" theory?
zmann,
If your money were managed, would you not have a common interest with the manager? I totally agree with the "I assume" part of your reply. You are assuming that the top 30 or 40 percent of U.S. society (by wealth), is not satisfied with the status quo, and that investers are powerless to pull their money out of funds. You also seem to be advocating a theory that links to Chris Hedges. A writer who does not know the difference between a tariff and "subsidies or taxes". A fact which does not however restrain him from making authoritive remarks on economic issues : "Globalization has obliterated the ability of many poor countries to protect food staples such as corn, rice, beans and wheat with subsidies or taxes on imported staples". To make matters worse, it is cotton, not "beans", that is significantly subsidized in the U.S.. And it is the subsidies of ALL of the developed nations combined that do the harm to poor nations. So this statement is uninformed on essentially every level, as is the "tiny" oligarchy theory. The very word oligarchy means: "power in the hands of a few people", so what does "tiny" mean?
I believe, sir, that you are being too harsh and abrasive with Zmann. He isn't giving a dissertation on the evils of globalization and gamed comparative advantages in so-called advanced economies. So the word "tiny" is redundant since the word "oligarchy" includes it within itself. Picky, picky.
For your information, when the Federal Government phased out CSRS, the old defined benefit pensions and replaced them with FDRS in 1983, the new employees had NO CHOICE in the matter. They COULD NOT withdraw their funds invested in stocks and could not manage them either. The same applies to many huge pension funds (California's fund comes to mind). True, individual 401Ks have a lot of flexibility but that too was gamed (Enron employes were coerced to by Enron stock in their 401Ks). The managers have gamed the system. They make suckers out of people with pensions and charge their two and 20 fees up front. If you want to chide folks here for some ignorance in economics or language skills, that's up to you. However, I wish you, being an obviously well informed and erudite individual, would direct your energies at helping to patiently inform people how they are being fucked on a daily basis. You know it's happening. Shed some light on it.
AGG,
It is cute that so many here are so quick to defend their pals. It is confusing though because so often there are misunderstandings. Your point for example about "tiny" is so simular to my point that I don't understand what you mean. I don't think of "tiny" and "oligarchy" as having so much a redundant relationship, to me, the term "tiny oligarchy" is more juvenile than redundant. But your position and mine are simular enough to confuse me as to what you are getting at.
As for 401(k) holders not being able to withdraw their funds, I cleary stated, in the same sentence, that those who are able to withdraw their funds represent the "top 20 or 30 percent of society (by wealth)". These people are not of course 401(k) people.
As for me directing my "energies at helping to patiently inform people", that is what I thought I was doing. It should seem pretty obvious that I am not trying to make friends. If I seem less than patient to you, maybe your emotions are playing tricks on you. Could it be that you need to stop jumping to conclusions, and maybe read more carefully what others have taken the time to write?
It's possible that my frustration in what I perceive to be attempts on your part at clouding the issue of responsibility for criminal behavior in our country has clouded my judgement. This isn't about me, though. This is about fraud and murder and how the media pushes it with their propaganda from war to Wall street.
I agree with you about:
1) commodity subsidies on cotton, sugar and the like.
2) first world countries causing untold misery on third world countries.
3) some public responsibility in the USA for these practices.
4) most people doen't know this country was founded on behalf of an oligarchy.
I disagree with you about:
1) the process whereby these cruel practices have been made palatable to the citizens.
2) the conspiratorial nature or not of the corporatocracy (I say CONSPIRACY!).
3) the power of media manipulation to cause the average citizen to act against his best interests.
4) MENS REA being part and parcel of our ruling class plans and programs( I say it is!).
AGG,
What you disagree with me about confuses me. On number one, I am in no way defending the media here if that is what you are suggesting.
On number two, you seem not to be recognizing that the word "corporatocracy" is the combination of the words "corporation" and "democracy".
this does not preclude conspiracy entirely although it is not inherent.
On number three, I agree.
I don't know what MENS REA means?
Thanks man, but don't worry about it. I've been treated far worse by some people on here than being slightly talked down to for not knowing jack about how stocks work (which I don't).
zmann,
I write fiction and I am much more objective in my writing style than you and others here are used to. I am blunt but I am trying not to talk down to anyone here. I get irritated sometimes though because so many people on this site are so quick to confuse the conversations with nonsense and distorted facts. This conversation for example had nothing to do with "how stocks work", or how corporations function, or anything of that nature. But the conversation went there anyway. Be careful though about reading your emotions into other people's comments. I am not emotional about any of this and I have no ill will toward you.
I know you weren't insulting me, but you were a little confusing in your long and, to me, slightly off-topic response with a reference to and sort of attack on Chris Hedges.
That's cool. As to stocks, one week at investopedia and you'll have a working lnowledge. The scams all have catchy names like "pump and dump, short and distort, parking, naked shorting", etc. It's simply all about buying low and selling high with leverage (borrowed money).
As to R.L. Love, he says he doesn't know what Mens Rea means when all of us have google search engines and can instantly find out. Next he'll say he doesn't know what a search engine is. He also defined corporatocracy as a corporation + democracy. He needs to go back to school. The "cracy" part of demo-cracy reffers to a government structure (e.g. a theo-cracy is a government based on God as the ruler). Hence when you take the demos(the people) out of demo-cracy and replace it with "corporato-cracy", you have rule by a CEO and a board of directors (The exact same structure that Soviet Russia used - premier = CEO, central committee = board of directors). In other words, a corporatocracy is an oligarchy, like you said.
One thing is true though, R. L. Love does write good fiction. He had me convinced he was educated for a while there.
I see this conversation got carried way beyond my very limited understanding of how stocks work.
I am not advocating anything, except using that phrase in quotation marks simply because you used it.
However, I do know that an individual investor that doesn't work high up in the financial sector has in practice quite limited rights and little to no say in how the company they have invested in is run. It is my understanding that for the most part, shareholder resolutions in major corporations are non-binding. Their money can quickly be siphoned out by some corporate officers deciding to go crazy with accounting, show record profits for a couple quarters, and make bank just before the company collapses and loses all its value.
How many people at Enron decided to deceive everybody with fake accounting? How many people at Moody's and other ratings agencies decided to give the sub-prime mortgage-backed derivatives the highest possible ratings? How many people at Goldman Sachs/U.S. Treasury Department (basically the same thing for a few years now) decided to give all that money to AIG, allowing Goldman Sachs the full insured value of its losses? A Goddamned "tiny oligarchy", for sure.
Although a money manager shares some commonality of interest with clients, their interest differs significantly:
- the manager's exposure to risk is different, generally much lower.
- withdrawing money from managed investment is almost never a good move for the manager, though it often is for the client
Certainly those who invest in managed stock can pull funds. However, doing so involves knowing when to pull funds from what. That's a full time job - for the money manager.
They cannot pull funds in the sense that they cannot know when to do so. Ultimately, people pay for money management on the assumption that what they pay to predation will be less than what they might lose to ignorance. That probably results in greater earnings more often than not, but it does not always.
A large part of the manager's work is to get people to invest. They therefore exaggerate the practical control the client has over funds by equating it with the options the client might have if informed. Particularly, they will paint the market and the mutual benefits of investment in a good light.
..
Different people probably define "tiny" differently, and I won't answer for colleagues. But I would point to the grand majority of media outlets funneling into about 22 corporations as of a few years ago and call that tiny. I'd call 90% of the wealth in less than 10% of the population (you-all might update me) tiny.
You have a strong point here, though. If I may articulate what I suspect is a sister observation, tiny minorities only retain power through the complicity of larger social classes.
However, the descriptive phrase holds in that centralized decisions are made based on profit/loss and general benefits not to the larger group, but to the tiny majority. More distributed decisions may be made differently (like, "Oh, here's a command; I had better obey to keep my job" or "King W will win; I had best stick with the winner."
Well said. When they started pushing 401Ks back in the 70s and eliminating defined benefit pensions, they literally were forcing people into the stock market. To say that 50% or more of the working populace is now a part of the stock market culture is disngenuous. It ain't so.
This is about propaganda and it's use to defraud and kill people, as well as marginalize honest journalists who don't "play ball", not hypocricy or profits.
AGG,
Disingenuous is to distort context so as to accuse someone else of being "disingenuous". (Not to mention the hypocricy)
I qualified thus: "By 2007, it was 50%, although this in part due to the replacement of retirement accounts by the 401(k)."
All right. I retract and apologize for the use of the adjective "disengenuous".
I still believe, however, that the issue is not bean counting. Granted, many of us were swayed with views of stock market riches. But that's the "everybody does it so it's okay" argument. It doesn't hold water because what occurred involved gaming and rigging to defraud stockholders. In conspiracy law, you cannot charge someone with conspiracy who is a victim of said conspiracy. Fraud victims are not, by any stretch of the imagination, co-conspirators. This was a conspiracy to defraud stockholders. Sure, they used the free market bullshit to get us there but so what? Think about it.
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement. There is no limit on the number participating in the conspiracy, For the purposes of concurrence, the actus reus is a continuing one and parties may join the plot later and incur joint liability and conspiracy can be charged where the co-conspirators have been acquitted or cannot be traced. Finally, repentance by one or more parties does not affect liability but may reduce their sentence.
AGG,
There is nothing conspiratorial about a Corporatocracy, that is the point. Class tyranny exists as the result of complacency. And of course apathy and many other factors play a role. The population only needs to go along for whatever reasons; and yet, it is obvious that economic interests play more of a role than any other factor. Our circumstances are systemic, not conspiratorial.
I respect your opinion but I maintain that our circumstances are systemic AND conspiratorial. This is not a chicken or egg argument. It is common practice among well educated people to sniff at the rabble for contributing to said rabbles' misery through apathy and laziness. The ongoing class warfare that keeps the rabble busier than cats covering up shit just to make a living, ensures propagandized, jingoistic education and encourages a "don't think about it" mind set is all born of conspiratorial elite thinking. You don't want to talk about these issues. Don't tell me you by into this "blame the victim stuff".
Are you one of those people (deep ecologists) that would solve our "problems" by killing off 80% of the world population? I have been accused of being misanthropic, but I've never advocated the outright killing of people to make other people live a better life. Finally, yes, we are all in this together and all are partly to blame but only the top 1% are criminally (fraud and conspiracy) responsible.
AGG,
There is just too much presumption in your comment to warrant a reply. A person can take only so much nonsense.
85 percent of all stocks are owned by 10 percent of the people. Nor is this stock evenly divided amongst that 10 percent. 1 percent of tTHOSE people own 70 percent of that stock.
It quite meaningless in real terms that the remainder of some 15 percent, is owned by 50 percent of Americans. The stake the remainder have is really meaningless in the way of defining policy.
Just break it down in the simplest terms. 1 person owns 85 percent of a company and 9 people own 1.4 percent each. A person pulling 1.4 percent of his stock from said company will hardly make any impact. Indeed the person with 85 percent is like as not all to eager to see that happen.
So it quite correct to suggest that those people owning the 15 percent of stock between them can be VERY unhappy with how the Company is run and it quite correct to state they really have NO say in how the company is run.
It is disingenous to throw out the number of 50 percent of Americans owning stock" without giving the percentages owned.
Corporations are not run by minority shareholders.
GwNorth,
None of what you have said here applies. It matters not how much, or what say what percent has in whatever company. If you go to the poorest nation on earth, and then to the poorest nation's poorest village, there will be those with conservative views in regards to the status quo. But not because of how much they have, but because of what they have in relation to those in the village.
A simple way to understand this is to take the historical view: revolutions happen when the poverty rate reaches about 90%. The U.S. poverty rate is about 15% (?), although poverty in the U.S. is not poverty by international standards.
Of course it matters. We all have a vested interest in how each of our countries run. But YOUR one vote hardly means you are a player and able to influence policy in any meaningful way.
This is even more pronounced inside a Corporation where it not one man one vote, but one SHARE one vote.
The fact that 50% americans own shares is a meaningless statistic. Nothing changes because of that. The same people who drove the US into depression in the 1920's do so today. It IS that tiny Oligarchy.
Your comparing the 2 percent of Americans to 10 percent today as having some sort of influence (Turning Oligarchy into Corporatcracy) is flawed. That extra 8 percent has no more say in what happens then that very wealthy group of people who acted as bank managers etc in the 1920's or for that matter the Hangers on at the Court in The Czars Palace.
There one small segment of persons that were the TRUE powers pulling the levers of power. It did not matter in Czarist Russia whether there were 50 titled nobles or 200. Most have NO real POWER. Their power can be stripped away at the whim of another meaning they are merely adjuncts of that other or DEAD.
GwNorth,
Have you noticed here that theories are nearly always completly based on unsupported claims. Your case rests solely on the premise that everything other than what you say is wrong, and yet you never support your alternatives. If 2% is the same as 10% to you, then you should hold on to what you need to believe. If you are unable to understand the differences between this country and Czarist Russsia I would prefer that you stop wasting my time.
You do a better job then I do of wasting your time. Indeed any time you waste is your doing not mine.
You pulled a statistic out of the air and then attached a MEANING to it which you offered no meaningful evidence for.
GwNorth,
I posed that statistic as hypothetical. It was only offered for the sake of simplification, and I suppose you are offended because that simplification exposed how foolish your previous argument is. There is nothing dishonest about that. And that is a far cry from your standard of declaring what is so because the standards here allow that. Take your substance free arguments out into the real world sometime. How do you suppose that "Czarist Russia" business might go over in educated circles, backed up by all of your nothingness.
My position is not "foolish" at all . It reflective of the facts. In 1929 1 percent of Americans controlled some 40 percent of the Wealth in the United States. This included real Estate, Stocks Bonds and any other asset.
Today the top 1 percent of Americans control OVER 40 percent of all wealth.It has become even more concentrated.
Just because some greater number of Americans own more stocks does not mean that the Situation has changed. The MIX of what a group owns might have changed but that is because the economy has changed/evolved and little more. Their piece of the pie is no greater they are just taking a different piece. This hardly translates into them being more "Bought into the system" which you seem to suggest the case.
You MISS the Czar comparison because you refused to see it. I was not stating Czarist Russia was the same as the USA. I was stating that in Czarist Russia that same tiny Oligarchy controlled the bulk of the wealth and power. Read LAND as "Stocks". In 1861 far less a percentage of Russians owned LAND then after the reforms of 1861 and 1905. Those reforms created far more land owners but it did NOT TRANSLATE into more Russians buying into the System of Tsarism. These new small landowners became enemies of Tsarism in many cases and helped spark the revolution.
Meaning just because they became landholders, it did not translate into them becoming Stakeholders and more likely to preserve the system. It did not translate into more power. They demanded a fairer share of power and wealth and rose up in revolt.
As to statements lacking substance and your "educated circles" what a an arrogant and pompous statement. Who declared YOU the Judge of what a substantive statement is is? Rather self serving dont you think?
>>posed that statistic as hypothetical. It was only offered for the sake of simplification, and I suppose you are offended because that simplification exposed how foolish your previous argument is
You posted "that" statistic of of Americans owning stock before I made my first post on the matter so how in the world could I have made a previous arguement?
R. L. Love is here first to semanticize, distract, obfuscate, quibble, and bait...
and then belittle, attack, misdirect, stretch out, never acknowledge, always rebut, and take up space...
As if to prevent us from using this space to clarify, learn, develop, understand...
webwalk
See my reply to GwNorth
GwNorth and others,
GwNorth (GW) begins with the contention that the wealth in this country has become more concentrated than it was in 1929. He contends that the top 1% had 40% of all wealth as opposed to the current top 1% having "more" than 40%, (this should not to be confused with saying "about" or something that simply rounds off). To make matters even more vague GW ignores the fact that the population has tripled in size. But of course without knowing what "more than 40%" actually is, I am put in a position with the choice of ignoring what he seems to think of as "substantive", or trying to explain what it means to support claims with integrity. Or I can show that for wealth to have concentrated as the population tripled in size the group at the bottom the economic spectrum would need to have less by percentage. But in 1929 (before crash) 71% of the population lived below the poverty line and now that number is in the mid-teens. So, as anyone with any understanding of the history of the U.S. economy knows, wealth has expanded in every direction, which is of course the opposite of concentrating. The mistake that GW made here is that he failed to consider real economic growth, and population growth, and economic growth has outpaced population growth by about 1% per year for the period in question(amoritized). Now it may seem that I am the one who is being vague here, and I am somewhat, but that has to do with accepted norms: It is widely accepted that water is wet so no support is needed if that claim is made. But the further one deviates from that accepted norm, the more explaining needed. And what I said above about the expansion of the economy is completly accepted. That is one of the strenths of capitalism which is indisputable. So no explaining needed.
So, here is where this accepted norm stuff gets interesting, GW accused me of pulling stats out of "thin air". That makes me think that he is talking about a hypothetical stat I had used in my preceeding reply. And I thought that because the stats that he claims are being pulled from thin air are so widely accepted that it did not occur to me that it was the stats regarding the growth of the investment class, stats which I had used in my original comment, that he disputed the validity of. So GW is guilty of a combination of ignorance and presumption here. Because, on the one hand he is implying knowledge of a subject while on the other hand he is unaware of widely known and accepted facts. I hope the reader here can recognize that his lack of specific information then caused my assumption. And there is no dispute regarding the basic growth of the investment class, and I made it clear that I know that some of this growth is due to 401(k)s. So what is a person to do? Someone else had already called my use of these stats "disingenuous" and then later, once I had explained, he apoligized. So must I also assume that GW does not read the other replies, which are attached to my same comment?
GW assummed that wealth must concentrate as a dynamic of the redistribution of wealth. That is the opposite of an accepted norm, it is in fact a falsehood in this case. Wealth can of course can concentrate but anyone with any understanding of the historical period in play here knows that every accepted indicator says otherwise. An interesting fact that fits here is that about 80% of the average income in this country, during this same period, was spent on staple goods, now that number is about 35%(my PC is in the shop. I have exact figures and my geek just called to say it is fixed. Memory will have to suffice here though). Anyway, even considering the massive shift of wealth over the past 30 years this is complicated due to productivity gains. The reason being in part expressed in the numbers above having to do with less and less of income percentages required for staples, which of course means more disposable income. These have been eclipsed by health-care costs but that is beside the point. That point being that I know, that most of you know very little about these subjects, and if more were understood about these subjects, my comments would be something other than what they have been. If anyone thinks I have some devious agenda here, that is delusional thinking. And for those who think I am over-complicating things, I have this: a stakeholder can be an employee of a company, or a stakeholder can be a customer of a company, so a shareholder is also a stakeholder, although he must own stock to be a shareholder. Anyone who exists in a nation is therefore a stakeholder in that nation's fate, in other words. But GW states: "...just because they became landholders, it did not translate into to them becoming stakeholders..." So the problems here are not on a complicated level, and I do not mean to focus too much on GW, he is at least above average here. But for someone who does not know the difference between stakeholders and stockholders, a mistake I have seen made at least 2 or 3 times in my brief time here, along with many other such blunders, is hard to reconcile with unsupported opinions of knowing what is best for our nation, and for humanity. It is difficult to express just how pretentuous this is, and to use terms like "sheeple" as if to imply superiority (not GW), this is pretentuous on steriods. I know this critisism does not apply to everyone but before being so critical of me, perhaps a little self-inspection is in order.
GwNorth,
"You MISS the Czar comparison because you refused to see it."
Oh, he sees it all right; he just thinks he's being clever by being selective about what he argues about. The condescending button pushing (describing prose as "foolish", etc.) is a typical PR tactic to get our dander up and distract us. An old instructor in a boxing class once told me, "If you want to beat your oponent, make him mad. It destroys his ability to concentrate on your weakness and makes him over act defending his weak points". I know that you are aware of this but I am posting it so that others reading can see how this deadly PR game is played.
R. L. Love is the embodyment of MENS REA right here. No court of law will convict someone of a conspiracy unless mens rea is integral to the modus operandi of the accused. Mens Rea (malice and aforethought) is difficult to prove. But this is not a court of law. This guy is an obfuscator, period.
Thanks for ripping his arguments to shreds. Well done
GwNorth,
I thought of a better way to strengthen my premise. Let us pretend that your "10% of the people" own all of the stocks. That is 10% more of the population than the founding fathers had in terms of franchised support. And corporate "personhood" is the concentration of that power. Remember that in the 1920s the investment class was only 2% of the adult population. But at 2% they had the bulk of power and influence.
Foxy News rates itself as a fair and balanced news organization with sayings like: "we report you decide". That is what I take issue with. If they want to spread their punic, vitriolic, miasma fine, but do not call yourself a "fair and balanced news organization.You may utterly detest this network and find Fox News abhorrent and people like Glenn Beck puerile, but they have a right to say it, but please change your name to the Fox National Enquirer!
I think you've defamed the National Enquirer. The NE has never been anything other than honest about its lunatic nature, I've always enjoyed reading their headlines in the checkout line at the supermarket; Alien babies, pregnant men, hybrid human-crocodile offspring, etc. You just can't compare the whackyness of the NE - Mad Magazine for adults - and the propaganda arm of the plutocrats which is Faux News. I've never been able to stomach any of the Fox Headlines with the same degree of amused tolerance.