Talking of CEO's the following is what I "mined" from google and opensecrets.org
Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street are money management institutions, that represent many, many investors including other institution, and the major media.
The Chairman and CEO of Blackrock is ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Fink
In 2022 Larry Fink contributed to Republicans and Democrats, but mostly to Mike Crapo, R-ID
In 2024 Black Rock has spent
$542,592 in contributions and $1,300,000 in lobbying
OTE: The organization itself did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate family members. Organizations themselves cannot contribute to candidates and party committees. Totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.
The biggest recipient was Hakeem Jeffries, followed by Jon Tester,DNC, Nikki Haley, Sherrod Brown, Mark Warner and Kamala Harris (in order) then Steele, Bryan, Chrissy Houlahan and Jared Gordon.
Chairman and CEO of Vanguard is Salim Ramji, a Blackrock veteran.
Salim Ramji, when with Black Rock contributed ,mostly to Black Rock Funds Service Group which then contribured evenly to Republicans and Democrats in 2022 and 2024
Vanguard has contributed over $639,000 to Federal candidates 2019-2020
$346,000 to Democrats $292,000 to Republicans. Not known is their contributions since 2020
In 2024, State Street has spent $89,323 in contributions and $690,000 in lobbying
$10,000 to Kamala Harris, $3,000 to Donald Trump
The most current records at Opensecrets.org for Ronald Logue are 2002, in that year he contributed $35 to Ronald Reich, which was the smallest contribution. He made
Ronald P O’Hanley has donated to both the RNC and DNC, fairly equally, but most of his donations are to Republican candidates.
Iwould be interested in 2022 and 2024 stats for most these corporations and individuals.
I've already post who owns who of CNN, CBS, ABC and MSNBC/NBC
All are owned by other corporations and to get to the real owners, I had to google who owns that corporation. For instance NBC is owned by NBCUniversal (as is MSNBC), which is owned by ComCast, which is owned by private and institutional investors, like Blackrock and Vanguard.
The largest private shareholder of ComCast and it's Chairman and CEO is Brian L. Roberts.
CBS is owned by Paramount Global which is owned by National Amusements which is owned by Sumner and Shari Redstone.
ABC is owned by the Disney Company, which is owned by Vanguard,Blackrock and individuals the top individual investor is also Chairman of the Board and CEO Robert Iger.
Christ Licht is the CEO of CNN
Almin Karamehmedovic is the President of ABC News
Wendy McMahon, is President and CEO of CBS News
Rashida Jones is President of MSNBC
Bear in mind that the Presidents and CEO's of this programs were hired by the ceo and board of directors of the parent organization to produce a product that is approved by the parent organizations board of directors.
If you have time for a really deep dive, then google members of the board of directors of parent organizations and see who they are, who they represent, and on what other boards they sit.
Tis worthy of a Masters thesis.
Show me who signs your paycheck and I will tell you what opinions you hold.
Thank you, Mr. Farrar, for all of that data. So if it's been obvious for a long time that politicians of all stripes, and increasingly the courts, have sold out to the oligarchy, what's less obvious to many is the degree to which "big media" has been subsumed by those same players. Players in a gargantuan zero sum global game of monopoly. It sickens me to think the only way to salvage humanity will be a near total reset, as in cataclism, perhaps in the form of an asteroid. But this, I fear is what it's come down to.
We are of a like mind LeMoine, if the species survives a cataclysm, it will start all over again with the same nonsense.
There are those that make the case,that the species has undergone other cataclysms, and the evidence is in the massive stone works. Works that we can't duplicate today with our technology and machines.
It is the meek, the few mountain dwellers, who survive such cataclysms, and they start all over again, doing what we inevitably do, fighting,killing, oppressing and dominating each other.
When it comes to human nature and human activity, there is nothing new under the sun, except maybe the technology, the tools. And maybe those aren't new, just rediscovered.
Not so much on Thom Hartmanns substack, except one Trump Putin troll who masquerades as a D.O. and a Jew., but on Robert Reich's they have been showing up, increasingly as we get closer to the election, and I made it a mission to expose therm,and is apparently working. a number of them have left as they were getting no where.
They are at the core, cowards, who thrive on getting a rise out of people and all it takes to save ourselves from their rot is for each of us to do our part in preventing the "triumph of evil" by doing something and I applaud you being one of the "good men" doing something.
This just came across my feeds and it is so deeply troubling on 3 major counts.
First that they are comfortable in being transparent in their goals since push back is almost negligible second it is not being treated as the 5 alarm fire which it is and third they threw out the window freedom of speech which is their touchstone.
(pinocchio is my edit)
"An influential conservative think tank has asked the NASA to disclose what employees are discussing internally about billionaire Elon Musk and pinocchio, according to federal records reviewed by Reuters.
The effort, involving scores of Freedom of Information requests filed by the Heritage Foundation, is part of that organization's ongoing push to help pinocchio weed out uncooperative civil servants if he is reelected to the White House in November, one of its executives told Reuters.
It is also meant to determine, in the conservative group's view, whether agencies like NASA are thwarting progress for private companies like SpaceX, Musk's rocket and satellite venture.
"Since Sept. 3, according to records reviewed by Reuters, the Heritage Foundation has filed at least 192 open records requests with NASA.
The filings include requests for employee communications that reference either of the two men or Musk companies, including carmaker Tesla and SpaceX, a business that has earned more than $11.8 billion in contract work with the space agency
In an interview, Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation's investigative unit, argued that NASA and other regulators obstruct innovation because they are distracted by cultural and identity politics.Instead of cool things in space," Howell said, NASA is "doing all this woke stuff on the ground."
Never mind taxpayers money is not play money for the massive fragile egos of the men who need penis shaped rockets to prove their manhood
This is scary as hell. Talk of fascism. There is so much at stake, not in just this election, because these evil men are not going away, even if they lose, they will just pour millions more into destroying any semblance of democracy at the state level, they already have the red states,so will be working on blue states, and not just states. They have a map of the important (determinant) counties and districts within each state. Actually it is the voting districts within the counties, that will be targeted.
The American Fascist movement has deep roots in America.
Until now it was fringe, so no one was paying attention and by the time America woke up to its impending menace it has tentacles strangling the very efforts to oust it.
As the abolitionist Wendell Phillips said
"Eternal vigilance is the price of democracy"
and I say America has lost its' vigilance.
This is rather long and I have had to chop it u into smaller segments for the post to be accepted
but the problems are huge and sound bites cannot fix things.
The good news is a majority of Americans are now aware the danger they are in.
The bad news is they may have woken up too late.
The good news is pinocchio lost by 3 million votes in 2016 (it was as high as 6 million until Comey put his thumb on the scale)
and he lost by 7 million votes in 2020
The bad new is the fascists have upped the assault on voters and access to voting
again we may be too late to make the millions of votes for Harris actually get counted.
The good news is Americans are no so scared of what will happen if Republicans gain power
that they are mobilizing in the millions and prominent Republicans have endorsed Harris
and if America doges a bullet again and not only Harris becomes the president but gets a supermajority there is hope that this fear translates into major overhaul of the laws which have been eroding the rights of Americans to be heard.
Starting with the electoral college to reflect the actual vote
as well as overhauling the Supreme court, enshrining body autonomy for women
and cleaning up the gerrymandering messes throughout the US .
he UK "first-past-the-post" comes to mind as a method of voting which clears up the messy American version.
Supreme court
Making them accountable to the same ethics laws for the lower courts and term limits.
Electoral college
Getting rid of it is too difficult as it needs a constitutional amendment to do that
but it can be reformed.
700 times they tried and no law as passed.
Hopefully this real time personal sense of fear motivates them.
2019
"This spring, numerous candidates for president expressed support for either abolishing or changing the Electoral College, which ultimately picks the U.S. president. The National Archives reports that over the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College – without any becoming law.
In part, that is because the Electoral College is constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. But the Constitution and the courts have allowed the states some leeway to make changes to how their Electoral College representatives are chosen."
Somehow the survival of News shows has to stop being dependent as to how entertaining they are and how if it bleeds it leads and if it is not bleeding then make it bleed
Bringing back the "Fairness doctrine " would be a good start.
However I have no idea and know of no mechanism by which to reform the media.
The media was doing it's job, until Reagan instructed the FEC to ignore the Fairness Doctrine, and then Bill Clinton abolished it with the telecommunications act of 1996.
Now news is folded into an infotainment division, and it's primary purpose (beside by making this country a corporocracy is to provide a postive rate of return for investors.
The only way to reverse that is for a progressive Congress and Executive to make law, and the came would be needed to solve the problem of the Supreme Court, and minority/women's rights.
A good place to start is restoring the Fairness Doctrine
It is only a start
But it is better than nothing
Then they absolutely have to pass laws which makes social media platforms responsible for what they post.
Plenty of forums already do this so it is not impossible as the fascist platforms ascertain.
Social media platforms are not passive receivers of information they are master manipulators in procuring the most eyes, clicks and attention.
Thus they must be responsible for the act of manipulating the platforms for maximum clicks which are always the far right hatred, fascist and fascist leaning posts.
The EU consists of
28 countries
24 official languages
200 spoken languages
87 Ethnic groups
8 different parliamentary groups
30 non-attached
40% with tertiary education
84% with upper secondary level of education
and they get sh*&t done
RESULT
European Union policymakers and lawmakers clinched a deal on Friday on the world's first comprehensive set of rules regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in tools such as ChatGPT and in biometric surveillance.
The European Union (EU) has adopted a series of rules to protect the rights of social media users.
"We avoid inflammatory, insulting or offensive language. Please show respect to fellow users and the fundamental principles we all share. We say no to racism, no to xenophobia, and no to discrimination based on religion, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, and so on."
And because of classism that never went away but only underground, we have the highest rate of violent crimes, gun deaths, maternity mortality, child birth deaths. deaths from disease, lowest health care outcomes from among all of the developed nations in the world.
Something to be proud of thanks to the corpocracy and billionaires and old and new class of elites.
Humans are a self renewing resource. A resource is that which is consumed in the act of production. Think of that when you think of Human Resource management.
Our democratic habits have been killed off by an internet kleptocracy that profits from disinformation, polarization, and rage. Here’s how to fix that.
How to fix America's love affair with their bad boys, creating cults around the baddest of the bad.
Steve Jobs who's mission in life was to "destroy the competition"
Not to build the best company in the world.
No it was to "Destroy the competition"
Which ties into the Musk cult , the pinocchio cult and all of its' sibling cults.
This love affair with bad boys is embedded deep withing the culture as it is in the heroes in their action films and in their constant reference to everything being a war.
War on poverty
War on cancer
War on Obesity
War on drugs
War on idleness
War on oil-prices
War on terror
War on Covid,
War on Violence
Cola wars
The video game wars
Reality ( show) wars
Whale Wars,"
"Cup Cake Wars,"
"Blackboard Wars"
and three different "Storage Wars"
no fewer than 17 reality shows with “wars” in their titles.
They depict so-called wars waged over whiskers, parking spots and cupcakes.
Ratings wars
Politics is rife with war analogies.
"key battleground"
politicians readily engage in the dramatization of their roles,
with various reference to "bunkers"
from where "embattled" leaders launch "campaigns"
to "defend their territory"
or "mount offensives"
to raid opponents' policies
aided by backbench "troops".
the launch of "battles", "fights", "offensives"
or "rearguard actions",
and a fire of "warning shots" or "opening salvoes".
And so on and so on
Hopefully a better education system and a return to the former glory days of upward mobility which America lost over the decades and now ranks 27th, will mitigate Americans tendency to make cults out of bad boys who are their proxies for sticking it to the man revenge fantasies for no longer having access to upward mobility.
Countries with highest social mobility ranking
Interestingly, the top five nations boasting the highest social mobility—Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland—all hail from the Nordic region and thrive under the welfare-state model. This system, blending free-market capitalism with significant wealth redistribution, ensures free public services like education and healthcare, along with substantial pension payments for retirees.
Again another comment I agree with. You are doing an excellent job, I hope it is more than just I that is reading your comments.
How about that, the countries with the most upward mobility, happen to be the "socialist" countries
Hopefully a better education system and a return to the former glory days of upward mobility which America lost over the decades and now ranks 27th, will mitigate Americans tendency to make cults out of bad boys who are their proxies for sticking it to the man revenge fantasies for no longer having access to upward mobility.
Alas our educational system is under siege (a war analogy), and our nation is in fact being dumbed down.
The only literacy requirements for the ruling class are that people know their ABC's and basic math.
Southwest Airlines sends their planes to El Salvador for scheduled maintenance. The people who work on the planes, cannot read or speak English,much less Spanish, The tech manuals are kept in the office.
The workers are taught how to perform one or two simple tasks.
Just like workers in a textile factory, There is a button holer, and all they know is how to sew button holes., and that is what they do all day, for all of their working lives.
NOTE: Organizations themselves cannot contribute to candidates and party committees. Figures on this page include contributions and spending by affiliates.
However the Vanguard PAC is another question: The Vanguard PAC has contributed as I said above. It is not know their contributions in 2022 and 2024
Fabulous read
I would just add
Following are donors to pinocchio
CNN CEO
ABC CEO
CBS CEO
NBC CEO
MSNBC CEO
NY Times CEO
Other
Wall Street Journal Owner Rupert Murdoch
New Your Post Owner Murdoch
Reagan fast tracked citizenship to Murdoch so he could own American media outlets
to help his "administration’s ‘public perception’ program aimed at winning support for an aggressive policy of ‘regime change’ in Central America."
https://johnmenadue.com/how-reagan-and-us-agencies-made-murdoch-a-king/
Regan scrapped the Fairness Doctrine
"requiring broadcasters to devote some of their airtime
to discussing controversial matters of public interest,
and to air contrasting views regarding those matters."
It takes a village of enablers.
Thank you for the eye-opener, Miru. I didn't realize it is that bad.
Talking of CEO's the following is what I "mined" from google and opensecrets.org
Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street are money management institutions, that represent many, many investors including other institution, and the major media.
The Chairman and CEO of Blackrock is ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Fink
In 2022 Larry Fink contributed to Republicans and Democrats, but mostly to Mike Crapo, R-ID
In 2024 Black Rock has spent
$542,592 in contributions and $1,300,000 in lobbying
OTE: The organization itself did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate family members. Organizations themselves cannot contribute to candidates and party committees. Totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.
The biggest recipient was Hakeem Jeffries, followed by Jon Tester,DNC, Nikki Haley, Sherrod Brown, Mark Warner and Kamala Harris (in order) then Steele, Bryan, Chrissy Houlahan and Jared Gordon.
Chairman and CEO of Vanguard is Salim Ramji, a Blackrock veteran.
Salim Ramji, when with Black Rock contributed ,mostly to Black Rock Funds Service Group which then contribured evenly to Republicans and Democrats in 2022 and 2024
Vanguard has contributed over $639,000 to Federal candidates 2019-2020
$346,000 to Democrats $292,000 to Republicans. Not known is their contributions since 2020
The Chairman of State StreetGroup is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Logue , the CEO of State Street,works for the Board of Directors and is Ronald P.O’Hanley
In 2024, State Street has spent $89,323 in contributions and $690,000 in lobbying
$10,000 to Kamala Harris, $3,000 to Donald Trump
The most current records at Opensecrets.org for Ronald Logue are 2002, in that year he contributed $35 to Ronald Reich, which was the smallest contribution. He made
Ronald P O’Hanley has donated to both the RNC and DNC, fairly equally, but most of his donations are to Republican candidates.
Iwould be interested in 2022 and 2024 stats for most these corporations and individuals.
I've already post who owns who of CNN, CBS, ABC and MSNBC/NBC
All are owned by other corporations and to get to the real owners, I had to google who owns that corporation. For instance NBC is owned by NBCUniversal (as is MSNBC), which is owned by ComCast, which is owned by private and institutional investors, like Blackrock and Vanguard.
The largest private shareholder of ComCast and it's Chairman and CEO is Brian L. Roberts.
CBS is owned by Paramount Global which is owned by National Amusements which is owned by Sumner and Shari Redstone.
ABC is owned by the Disney Company, which is owned by Vanguard,Blackrock and individuals the top individual investor is also Chairman of the Board and CEO Robert Iger.
Christ Licht is the CEO of CNN
Almin Karamehmedovic is the President of ABC News
Wendy McMahon, is President and CEO of CBS News
Rashida Jones is President of MSNBC
Bear in mind that the Presidents and CEO's of this programs were hired by the ceo and board of directors of the parent organization to produce a product that is approved by the parent organizations board of directors.
If you have time for a really deep dive, then google members of the board of directors of parent organizations and see who they are, who they represent, and on what other boards they sit.
Tis worthy of a Masters thesis.
Show me who signs your paycheck and I will tell you what opinions you hold.
Thank you, Mr. Farrar, for all of that data. So if it's been obvious for a long time that politicians of all stripes, and increasingly the courts, have sold out to the oligarchy, what's less obvious to many is the degree to which "big media" has been subsumed by those same players. Players in a gargantuan zero sum global game of monopoly. It sickens me to think the only way to salvage humanity will be a near total reset, as in cataclism, perhaps in the form of an asteroid. But this, I fear is what it's come down to.
We are of a like mind LeMoine, if the species survives a cataclysm, it will start all over again with the same nonsense.
There are those that make the case,that the species has undergone other cataclysms, and the evidence is in the massive stone works. Works that we can't duplicate today with our technology and machines.
It is the meek, the few mountain dwellers, who survive such cataclysms, and they start all over again, doing what we inevitably do, fighting,killing, oppressing and dominating each other.
When it comes to human nature and human activity, there is nothing new under the sun, except maybe the technology, the tools. And maybe those aren't new, just rediscovered.
Thank you for that
As Charlie Munger said
"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome"
You might also be interested in the following.
Spoiler alert it is cringe worthy and quite sickening to read.
Top business execs more polarized than nation as whole
New research examines partisan shift, notes it may pose risks for shareholders
Liz Mineo
"Nearly 70 percent of America’s top executives
are affiliated with the Republican Party
and 31 percent with the Democrats, according to the recent paper "
"The Political Polarization of Corporate America,"
written by Elisabeth Kempf, associate professor of business administration
at Harvard Business School, Vyacheslav Fos of Boston College,
and Margarita Tsoutsoura of Cornell University.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/08/top-business-execs-more-polarized-than-nation-as-whole/
AND
Column: How comment section trolls took over the Republican Party
Jonah Goldberg May 2, 2023·4 min read
In economics, Gresham’s law on currency markets holds that “bad money drives out good.”
"That principle also applies to the comment sections on online sites."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/column-section-trolls-took-over-101000217.html
Thanks for the needed comment and links.
Not so much on Thom Hartmanns substack, except one Trump Putin troll who masquerades as a D.O. and a Jew., but on Robert Reich's they have been showing up, increasingly as we get closer to the election, and I made it a mission to expose therm,and is apparently working. a number of them have left as they were getting no where.
I am glad that you can chase away the trolls
They are at the core, cowards, who thrive on getting a rise out of people and all it takes to save ourselves from their rot is for each of us to do our part in preventing the "triumph of evil" by doing something and I applaud you being one of the "good men" doing something.
This just came across my feeds and it is so deeply troubling on 3 major counts.
First that they are comfortable in being transparent in their goals since push back is almost negligible second it is not being treated as the 5 alarm fire which it is and third they threw out the window freedom of speech which is their touchstone.
(pinocchio is my edit)
"An influential conservative think tank has asked the NASA to disclose what employees are discussing internally about billionaire Elon Musk and pinocchio, according to federal records reviewed by Reuters.
The effort, involving scores of Freedom of Information requests filed by the Heritage Foundation, is part of that organization's ongoing push to help pinocchio weed out uncooperative civil servants if he is reelected to the White House in November, one of its executives told Reuters.
It is also meant to determine, in the conservative group's view, whether agencies like NASA are thwarting progress for private companies like SpaceX, Musk's rocket and satellite venture.
"Since Sept. 3, according to records reviewed by Reuters, the Heritage Foundation has filed at least 192 open records requests with NASA.
The filings include requests for employee communications that reference either of the two men or Musk companies, including carmaker Tesla and SpaceX, a business that has earned more than $11.8 billion in contract work with the space agency
In an interview, Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation's investigative unit, argued that NASA and other regulators obstruct innovation because they are distracted by cultural and identity politics.Instead of cool things in space," Howell said, NASA is "doing all this woke stuff on the ground."
Never mind taxpayers money is not play money for the massive fragile egos of the men who need penis shaped rockets to prove their manhood
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-conservative-think-tank-targeting-164705626.html
Shades of the Nazi “Malicious Attacks” decree that required Germans to turn in anyone who spoke against the party, its leaders, or the government.
If it walks like a duck.
This is scary as hell. Talk of fascism. There is so much at stake, not in just this election, because these evil men are not going away, even if they lose, they will just pour millions more into destroying any semblance of democracy at the state level, they already have the red states,so will be working on blue states, and not just states. They have a map of the important (determinant) counties and districts within each state. Actually it is the voting districts within the counties, that will be targeted.
My sentiments exactly.
The American Fascist movement has deep roots in America.
Until now it was fringe, so no one was paying attention and by the time America woke up to its impending menace it has tentacles strangling the very efforts to oust it.
As the abolitionist Wendell Phillips said
"Eternal vigilance is the price of democracy"
and I say America has lost its' vigilance.
This is rather long and I have had to chop it u into smaller segments for the post to be accepted
but the problems are huge and sound bites cannot fix things.
The good news is a majority of Americans are now aware the danger they are in.
The bad news is they may have woken up too late.
The good news is pinocchio lost by 3 million votes in 2016 (it was as high as 6 million until Comey put his thumb on the scale)
and he lost by 7 million votes in 2020
The bad new is the fascists have upped the assault on voters and access to voting
again we may be too late to make the millions of votes for Harris actually get counted.
The good news is Americans are no so scared of what will happen if Republicans gain power
that they are mobilizing in the millions and prominent Republicans have endorsed Harris
and if America doges a bullet again and not only Harris becomes the president but gets a supermajority there is hope that this fear translates into major overhaul of the laws which have been eroding the rights of Americans to be heard.
Starting with the electoral college to reflect the actual vote
as well as overhauling the Supreme court, enshrining body autonomy for women
and cleaning up the gerrymandering messes throughout the US .
he UK "first-past-the-post" comes to mind as a method of voting which clears up the messy American version.
Supreme court
Making them accountable to the same ethics laws for the lower courts and term limits.
Electoral college
Getting rid of it is too difficult as it needs a constitutional amendment to do that
but it can be reformed.
700 times they tried and no law as passed.
Hopefully this real time personal sense of fear motivates them.
2019
"This spring, numerous candidates for president expressed support for either abolishing or changing the Electoral College, which ultimately picks the U.S. president. The National Archives reports that over the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College – without any becoming law.
In part, that is because the Electoral College is constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment. But the Constitution and the courts have allowed the states some leeway to make changes to how their Electoral College representatives are chosen."
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/publications/youraba/2019/october-2019/q--the-electoral-college--is-it-open-for-interpretation-by-the-c/
The more difficult parts are the ones which the Republicans have been destroying a million paper cuts at a time, and the culture itself.
There have been millions of ways Republicans have made the poor poorer, less educated and how they keep adding to the ranks of the poor.
The culture itself can be a bit schizoid
From the American which tends to wait until there is a crises before it comes to its senses.
As Churchill said
“Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
To the hedonistic version
“ Nothing conceivable is so petty ,
so insipid, so crowded with Paltry interests
in one word so anti-poetic as the life of a man in the United States”
“In America suicide is rare,
but one is sure that madness is more common than everywhere else.
It is a strange thing to see with what sort of feverish ardor
Americans pursue well-being and how they show themselves
constantly tormented by a vague fear
of not having chosen the shortest route that can lead to it.
The inhabitant of the United States attaches himself to the goods of this world
as if he were assured of not dying, and he rushes so precipitately
to grasp those that pass within his reach
that one would say he fears at each instant he will cease to live
before he has enjoyed them.
He grasps them all but without clutching them,
and he soon allows them to escape from his hands
so as to run after new enjoyments.”
“The American Republic will endure
until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public
with the public's money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
Former Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France
1831
Tocqueville
Former Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/465.Alexis_de_Tocqueville
Somehow the survival of News shows has to stop being dependent as to how entertaining they are and how if it bleeds it leads and if it is not bleeding then make it bleed
Bringing back the "Fairness doctrine " would be a good start.
I agree with your comments.
However I have no idea and know of no mechanism by which to reform the media.
The media was doing it's job, until Reagan instructed the FEC to ignore the Fairness Doctrine, and then Bill Clinton abolished it with the telecommunications act of 1996.
Now news is folded into an infotainment division, and it's primary purpose (beside by making this country a corporocracy is to provide a postive rate of return for investors.
The only way to reverse that is for a progressive Congress and Executive to make law, and the came would be needed to solve the problem of the Supreme Court, and minority/women's rights.
A good place to start is restoring the Fairness Doctrine
It is only a start
But it is better than nothing
Then they absolutely have to pass laws which makes social media platforms responsible for what they post.
Plenty of forums already do this so it is not impossible as the fascist platforms ascertain.
Social media platforms are not passive receivers of information they are master manipulators in procuring the most eyes, clicks and attention.
Thus they must be responsible for the act of manipulating the platforms for maximum clicks which are always the far right hatred, fascist and fascist leaning posts.
The EU consists of
28 countries
24 official languages
200 spoken languages
87 Ethnic groups
8 different parliamentary groups
30 non-attached
40% with tertiary education
84% with upper secondary level of education
and they get sh*&t done
RESULT
European Union policymakers and lawmakers clinched a deal on Friday on the world's first comprehensive set of rules regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in tools such as ChatGPT and in biometric surveillance.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/what-are-europes-landmark-ai-regulations-2023-12-09/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Technology-Roundup&utm_term=121023&user_email=42e713ddd9b0f37bdd4ef38bcbddbf5a2d0e3339e8a793233f8f7f5f6208fbb5
The European Union (EU) has adopted a series of rules to protect the rights of social media users.
"We avoid inflammatory, insulting or offensive language. Please show respect to fellow users and the fundamental principles we all share. We say no to racism, no to xenophobia, and no to discrimination based on religion, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, and so on."
https://epthinktank.eu/2024/06/28/regulating-social-media-what-is-the-european-union-doing-to-protect-social-media-users/
Of course laws have to have teeth and the EU does just that
Puts teeth into their laws.
Remember we have laws against murder, incest and drunk driving but it never eliminates all of the murders, incest and drunk driving law breakers.
But because the law is there there will be consequences.
And fix the public education system so people exit high school literate and numeric.
Nationally, over 20% of adult Americans have a literacy proficiency at or below Level 1.
18% are functionally illiterate
defined as the inability to read and comprehend relatively short texts or understand basic vocabulary
And because of classism that never went away but only underground, we have the highest rate of violent crimes, gun deaths, maternity mortality, child birth deaths. deaths from disease, lowest health care outcomes from among all of the developed nations in the world.
Something to be proud of thanks to the corpocracy and billionaires and old and new class of elites.
Humans are a self renewing resource. A resource is that which is consumed in the act of production. Think of that when you think of Human Resource management.
PART 3
America has to keep vigilant and nip in the bud the thousand of daily paper cuts created by the fascist dark underbelly
Kansas
The right to vote is mentioned 5 times in the constitution.
Meanwhile, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that voting is not a fundamental right.
Here’s what that means
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-kansas-supreme-court-ruled-that-voting-is-not-a-fundamental-right-heres-what-that-means
You might be interested in the following
Our democratic habits have been killed off by an internet kleptocracy that profits from disinformation, polarization, and rage. Here’s how to fix that.
By Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/the-internet-doesnt-have-to-be-awful/618079/
AND
Zero-sum thinking is destroying America
We need to resist the temptation of thinking that someone else’s success comes at our expense.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/03/politics-trump-biden-trade-immigration/
By Eduardo Porter
September 3, 2024 at 7:30 a.m. EDT
AND
The Real Secret to pinocchio’s Success
How does his popularity grow despite mounting criminal charges? I finally understood what it was all about.
T. J. Brearton
ILLUMINATION
T. J. Brearton
https://medium.com/illumination/the-real-secret-to-donald-trumps-success-45008e2231c1
AND
The Republicans have acclimated the American public
to ghastly behavior from elected officials and candidates for high office.
The result is lasting damage to our political system
no matter what happens in Georgia or in the 2024 races.
Herschel Walker Is the New Normal
Too many of us have simply gotten used to the corrosion of our public life.
By Tom Nichols
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/herschel-walker-is-the-new-normal/672377/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20221206&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily
AND
HOW AMERICA ENDS
A tectonic demographic shift is under way. Can the country hold together?
By Yoni Appelbaum
DECEMBER 2019 ISSUE
SHARE
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/how-america-ends/600757/
AND
The Real Roots of American Rage
The untold story of how anger became the dominant emotion in our politics and personal lives—and what we can do about it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/charles-duhigg-american-anger/576424/
By Charles Duhigg
AND
POLITICS
THE MAN WHO BROKE POLITICS
The man who broke politics
Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport,
wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Potus45 rise.
Now he’s reveling in his achievements.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/
By McKay Coppins
AND
What a Collapse Would Look Like
The Atlantic’s writers offer a detailed warning about the future.
By Tom Nichols
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/12/trump-reelection-2024-second-term/676237/?utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_source=newsletter&utm
PART 2
How to fix America's love affair with their bad boys, creating cults around the baddest of the bad.
Steve Jobs who's mission in life was to "destroy the competition"
Not to build the best company in the world.
No it was to "Destroy the competition"
Which ties into the Musk cult , the pinocchio cult and all of its' sibling cults.
This love affair with bad boys is embedded deep withing the culture as it is in the heroes in their action films and in their constant reference to everything being a war.
War on poverty
War on cancer
War on Obesity
War on drugs
War on idleness
War on oil-prices
War on terror
War on Covid,
War on Violence
Cola wars
The video game wars
Reality ( show) wars
Whale Wars,"
"Cup Cake Wars,"
"Blackboard Wars"
and three different "Storage Wars"
no fewer than 17 reality shows with “wars” in their titles.
They depict so-called wars waged over whiskers, parking spots and cupcakes.
Ratings wars
Politics is rife with war analogies.
"key battleground"
politicians readily engage in the dramatization of their roles,
with various reference to "bunkers"
from where "embattled" leaders launch "campaigns"
to "defend their territory"
or "mount offensives"
to raid opponents' policies
aided by backbench "troops".
the launch of "battles", "fights", "offensives"
or "rearguard actions",
and a fire of "warning shots" or "opening salvoes".
And so on and so on
Hopefully a better education system and a return to the former glory days of upward mobility which America lost over the decades and now ranks 27th, will mitigate Americans tendency to make cults out of bad boys who are their proxies for sticking it to the man revenge fantasies for no longer having access to upward mobility.
Countries with highest social mobility ranking
Interestingly, the top five nations boasting the highest social mobility—Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland—all hail from the Nordic region and thrive under the welfare-state model. This system, blending free-market capitalism with significant wealth redistribution, ensures free public services like education and healthcare, along with substantial pension payments for retirees.
https://www.catalystplanet.com/travel-and-social-action-stories/the-global-social-ladder-the-best-and-worst-countries-for-social-mobility
AND
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
AND
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/these-are-the-10-countries-with-the-best-social-mobility/#:~:text=in%20some%20countries.-,Denmark%20ranks%20top%20of%20the%20World%20Economic%20Forum's%20new%20Global,everyone%20the%20chance%20to%20succeed.
Again another comment I agree with. You are doing an excellent job, I hope it is more than just I that is reading your comments.
How about that, the countries with the most upward mobility, happen to be the "socialist" countries
Hopefully a better education system and a return to the former glory days of upward mobility which America lost over the decades and now ranks 27th, will mitigate Americans tendency to make cults out of bad boys who are their proxies for sticking it to the man revenge fantasies for no longer having access to upward mobility.
Alas our educational system is under siege (a war analogy), and our nation is in fact being dumbed down.
The only literacy requirements for the ruling class are that people know their ABC's and basic math.
Southwest Airlines sends their planes to El Salvador for scheduled maintenance. The people who work on the planes, cannot read or speak English,much less Spanish, The tech manuals are kept in the office.
The workers are taught how to perform one or two simple tasks.
Just like workers in a textile factory, There is a button holer, and all they know is how to sew button holes., and that is what they do all day, for all of their working lives.
Vanguard employees donated mostly to Democrats.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/vanguard-group/summary?id=D000022305
NOTE: Organizations themselves cannot contribute to candidates and party committees. Figures on this page include contributions and spending by affiliates.
However the Vanguard PAC is another question: The Vanguard PAC has contributed as I said above. It is not know their contributions in 2022 and 2024
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/vanguard-group/summary?id=D000022305