Sage of Springfield

Worker compensation

2011-05-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

Currently, if you get injured on the job you can't sue your employer, but your employer must pay a premium for worker compensation claims, like an insurance policy, or maybe it is an insurance policy.

What would happen if the worker compensation law was completely repealed and re-written?

Some companies believe that it should stay the same, but other businesses say the premiums are too high. Who would believe the premiums are too high for worker compensation claims? Usually businesses that have a higher frequency of worker compensation claims, and must pay a higher rate because they present a greater burden on the fund.

Some businesses are new and perhaps have trouble financing their start-up so they feel that worker compensation should be cheaper for them because they are a very low risk and they feel that what they currently pay for worker compensation premiums is unfair.

Somewhere in the middle there is the business that is making a profit and doesn't see a problem with the current worker compensation premium because, frankly, they just can't see the burden from way up where they are.

Then there are lawyers who, if the worker compensation law was completely repealed, would make a huge profit because they would have jury trials, and juries typically award massive punitive damages in Illinois. This would be delicious for lawyers and the injured employees who could afford the risk of litigation, but this would be terrifying to businesses, and with current pressure from the recent sales tax increase, the added pressure of repealing the entire worker compensation law would be the final nail in the coffin for commerce in Illinois.

There may be new guidelines drawn up for assessing labor risk, and from the categories of labor risk, worker compensation insurance plans can be tailored.

Risk in the workplace typically involves impact from falls, strains from lifting or stooping, repetitive motion injuries, exposure to toxins, lacerations from equipment, infections from contact with liquid or airborne agents, deteriorating health from sedentary work activity. Some atypical risk involves a higher likelihood of victimization, such as delivering pizza, driving a taxi, working nights at a convenience store, bar. There may be others.

Someone suggested putting a cap on medical treatment costs for worker compensation. Some people I surveyed thought that was a great idea, but the doctors would need to start driving cheaper cars. Doctors are saddled with medical school loan debt and malpractice insurance premiums.

I hope nobody suggested government subsidies, that would be hypocrisy.

Political Morality

2011-04-21T01:44:00.000-07:00

My father once said "we must always respect the office of the President of the United States, no matter what!" Did his generation grow up believing that buildings, business suits and uniforms controlled the minds of those who wore them, forcing them to act in ways that maintained the integrity of clothing and architecture?

Back when there were very few channels of mass communication, and major corporations could control one hundred percent of the message, very few people could or would present a dissenting opinion on anything. Most people who didn't really pay attention to history or human behavior were very susceptible to the belief that integrity was sewn or nailed into the fabric of official attire or architecture.

I was taught in public school that voters were "We the people" and voting was the power in the United states. Did everyone assumed that since we could choose, we had control over our society? When I was young I didn't really think much about how politicians got on the ballot, or that politicians needed huge quantities of money to run for office so they pandered to the wealthy, spoke with obscure gilded rhetoric and made the same never-kept campaign promises that got their predecessors elected.

I wonder if there were some rare idealists who were elected and really worked hard to balance our society for equitable prosperity? There certainly are some who appear to try.

These days with digital social networks, I just assume the worst from politicians. Nepotism, cronyism, financial reciprocity, basic corruption, etc. Since politicians pretty much assume that we now expect this of them, they are free to act openly loyal only to their campaign contributors. Since it's now out in the open, who cares? What can you do about it anyway, change the laws?

Campaign finance reforms? Term limits? Sorry folks, its too late. The drawbridge on the castle was pulled up long, long ago. We really have no choice but to prepare ourselves for a sociopathic, predatory political structure that does not regulate an already shark-infested "free" market system which plunders resources and hoards money.

We must approach everything with the notion that self-preservation supersedes equity in everything, that our primitive reptilian brains are still in control, and our lately evolved cerebral cortices allow us to be duped into believing promises, claims and dreams.

Trust, integrity, honesty and righteousness are fictions and faith is foolish. The herd that slows down for its weakest members is soon extinct. Convincing a herd that it's the right thing to do is a triumphant strategy. Honesty is an allegation safely made in the realm of the gullible.

If everyone assumes that bias is impossible to erase and impartiality is a myth, we can all safely practice healthy skepticism and take the precautions necessary to properly navigate what was once considered "risky" endeavors, such as investing in the stock market, applying for loans, or choosing a college.

If you insist on going through the motions of voting just to keep that machine alive, at least you should do some research about your candidate first, and take precautions to protect your assets.

Justice is so expensive that it serves only the adjudicators. Health care is so expensive that it takes quality out of the life it saves. Politics is so expensive we can only choose candidates propped up by the wealthy. Ultimately we all become slaves.

Universities facing "unprecedented budget challenges" need to look in the mirror.

2011-04-12T18:12:00.000-07:00

Did the university shoot itself in the foot?
Is it not self-sufficient? Is enrollment down below a benchmark that was supposed to trigger a special budget review, but did not?

Does it have contractors who are locked in for extended periods with cost-overruns?

Through one-time donations, did the university over-construct infrastructure that now requires unforseen massive annual infusions of funds to maintain?

In an effort to draw more students, did the university defer its core curriculum value system to teaching for popular high-paying jobs, despite the transient nature and out-sourcing risk of those career choices?

Why does the university have a competitive extra-curricular sports program? Doe it cost more than it's worth?

What kind of recruiters show up at job fairs hosted by the university? Are they Fortune 500, or minimum-wage paying part-time employers and insurance business pyramid schemers?

Is the university forced to recruit from great distances, and pay exorbitant six-digit salaries to high-level staffers, while maintaining a majority of professors as "Associate?"

What is the success rate of the university graduates? Does anyone know? Is it public information?

Perhaps universities facing "unprecedented budget challenges" are facing them for a reason.

White Flight Revenge

2011-01-26T01:40:00.000-08:00

Way back when integration became law and then busing was enforced throughout the land, there was a great exodus from the Springfield area of terrified white people.

I'm not saying all of them are racists, well maybe, who knows? They moved far, far out of Springfield because of integration, otherwise they would have simply become part of the urban sprawl within the city proper. The irony is that a lot of them still work for the city of Springfield, and every time someone brings up the topic of residency requirement they all get their panties in a bunch.

Really, the worst kind of racists besides the violent ones are the Limousine Liberals who wear their alleged guilt on their sleeves as they decry the foul odor of the open sewers on 13th street, then quickly exit to Rochester, Chatham, Panther Creek, Spaulding, Riverton, and as far away as Jacksonville.

If everyone who worked for the city actually lived in the city, having "flesh in the game" they would have an incentive to do more than just the bare minimum.

Some people in Springfield are pleased to see the costs going up in surrounding communities. There's a feeling of vindication about those who abandoned Springfield paying more for services: Chatham hikes water, sewer rates - Springfield, IL - The State Journal-Register

Coffey for Mayor of Springfield

2010-12-21T21:13:00.000-08:00

Broker: the adjective.

2010-12-19T14:10:00.000-08:00

We know what a broker is, right? According to some dictionaries online, broker is a noun for someone who manages transactions between two parties. Broke, however, is an adjective commonly related to the term bankrupt.

Illinois may serve to usher in the word broker as an adjective. Could it be used in a sentence?
"Illinois is now even broker."

It's highly likely that this phrase is already in use among the voters who keep reelecting the people who are driving the state of Illinois into the ground. Already, in conjunction with the word better they use worser , and logically therefore best-est and worst-est.

Illinois is spending more money than it can take in and it has been doing so for decades, and now comes another veteran of the Illinois State Representatives and Senate to serve as Treasurer.

You might think nobody cares, but that's only because you don't hear from people who do care, because they're being blocked from the main-stream media due to their inability to pay for advertising.

Television stations, radio stations and newspaper are expensive, and only the very rich who know how to make money just for themselves and have nothing but contempt for you can afford those venues from which to spread their lies and siren songs.

You might think that smart people who have the money to spend on advertising are the only people worth having in political office, but you would be stupid, because smart people who have money to spend on advertising are working for themselves, not you, that's why they have so much money to blow away on stupid television commercials.

Wikileaks

2010-11-29T07:11:00.000-08:00

Remember when Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld had a press conference about the release of photographs from Abu Ghraib prison? He was enraged about cameras being allowed into the prison. Now the government is all upset over the Wikileaks.org memos.

The arrogance is astonishing. The next press conference you go to, here's a nicely prepared question for the President of the United States:

Sir. Sharing information has become very important for national security since the 9/11, but because of the leaks happening with photos from prisons at Iraq and now memos being leaked by Wickileaks.org, rather than trying to suppress that information, is there a plan to deal with the behaviors depicted in those photos and memos so they won't be so embarrassing when they are leaked in the future?

Really, being upset because you were caught rather than being ashamed of what you did is the behavior typical of a psychopath.

U.S. Congress earmark ban vote on Tuesday.

2010-11-15T17:19:00.000-08:00

Why should we ban earmarks? Remember the Bridge to Nowhere? It was a huge infrastructure project that would have cost the state of Alaska billions of dollars to maintain into the future, on its own.

That's right. That's why states are going broke. A congressman had the bright idea to get a one-time cash windfall for a huge project in his own district, but the cash for the long-term maintenance of that project is coming from where? Take a wild guess.

Okay, it will come out of the state's own coffers going forward.

That's why we need to stop all federal earmarks that don't support the long-term maintenance of projects in congressional districts, which is most likely all of them.

Yet another explanation for states going into debt.

Rules of Subjective Reality

2010-10-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

1. The instinct for self-preservation always supersedes collective philosophies, impartiality, equity, constitutions, rules and laws.

Sports teams regularly gain as many points ahead of their opponent as possible. A team is considered relatively better when the point spread is wider, rather than playing confidently one point ahead throughout the competition.

Political districts are regularly manipulated to control votes. Illinois regularly redraws districts, reinforcing an advantagous position for the incumbent party.

While Marxism and Keynesian economics seems ideal, the application of Marxism under the leadership of Lennin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc., resulted in elite political party hierarchies with privileges at the top and starvation at the bottom.

The allegations that the western market is "free" is discounted by the existence of a patent system of engineering and design restrictions, and possession of resources by a handful of organizations.

An economic myth

2010-09-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

I was listening to Fritz Pfister on WMAY this morning. He has several times blamed the recession on the government regulation and taxation. This is a standard mantra of right-wing anti-government conservatives who miss the good old days of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and the great Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

The recession is the result of supressed wages and increased prices over the years, remedied by easy access to credit cards, sub-prime adjustible rate mortgage loans falsified by unscrupulous lenders.

The minimum payments on credit cards finally became larger than the low income "middle class" could handle. People just can't buy any more on credit. The reality of their (our) income finally hit a wall.

But get this. The wall would have come into view much later if a Republican was elected. Instead, businesses punished their employees for voting for Barack Obama. The massive layoffs began right after the election.

Now the right-wingers are blaming government again, because businesses don't have consumers. Businesses don't have consumers because they overprice their products (based on a now extinct credit-liquid economy) rather than pricing their products based on a real income (without credit) economy.

It's the "free" market's own fault for allowing itself to be structured around an unsustainable credit-supported economy.

CNN falsely framing Phoenix economy around immigration issue.

2010-07-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

For two years now, since the housing bubble burst across the nation and particularly in Phoenix where, according to Realty Trac, 1 in 5 housing units is in forclosure (1), The economy has suffered greatly due to the sub-prime mortgage disaster. However, CNN thinks we, the viewing audience has a very short memory.

Phoenix Arizona Forclosures. www.RealtyTrac.com

The new immigration law is only just taking effect, partially at best, but CNN has pinned the economy on Arizona Law SB 1070 which was only just signed into law on April 23, 2010, years after the Arizona economy tanked due to the housing crisis.

CNN published a story online titled "Specter of Arizona immigration law slowly drains economy." The article pins the economy on the new law rather than the already existing real estate crisis in a classic "post-hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy of argumentation.

Honestly, the law doesn't mandate that police officers stand by the entrance of every restaurant that is supplied by the seafood distribution center and check papers. Honestly, are there going to be police officers posted in real estate offices to check the papers of everyone who buys a new house or signs a lease or rental agreement?

Apology to Congressman Joe Wilson

2010-06-23T23:08:00.001-07:00

I was with everyone else when Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina yelled out "You Lie!" during President Barack Obama's speech before a joint session of congress. I think it was a state of the union address, but I'm not anymore willing to waste the effort to verify exactly what address it was or when. It just doesn't matter anymore. Gitmo is still open, extraordinary rendition is still going on, and U.S. citizens are being officially targeted for assassination by our government. Judging from that, Total Information Awareness was probably dusted off and reinstated, warrantless wiretapping may be rampant, and who knows what else. In any case, I don't believe that any of the campaign promises have been fulfilled yet. I'm still waiting for change.

I must apologize to Joe Wilson because I was too quick to cast aspersions on his reaction during the event. I think everyone else should apologize as well because his reaction was prophetic.

The social class system

2010-05-08T10:16:00.001-07:00

I used to think that there was a social class system whereby people distinguish themselves from others by displaying their wealth in the form of extravagant possessions. During and before the industrial revolution people of wealth were highly visible and respected as individuals of great capability.

Jump forward a few generations and now we have a string of generations clinging onto the coattails of their rich ancestors, the children of the kings of industry were raised with a permanent safety net and free keys to the top offices and penthouses. They may know how to go through some of the motions, but industry has devolved from being about the product and the consumer, to being about nothing but making the biggest profit possible, at the expense of quality and the labor force, which by the way, are the consumers. Corporations are driven into the ground, squeezed of every penny, then dismantled.

Now we are finding that performance by those thought to be professionals is falling short at nearly every level of government, from the local coroner, state legislators that cannot balance a budget, as far up as the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Are we wondering how the heck they got there? Not really because we just take for granted that someone who has enough money to get on a political ballot and send mass mailings is somehow qualified to lead. We almost had a pawn broker for a lieutenant governor.

Politics has degraded to nothing more than a sport. The winner gets to the playoffs by getting the office and then keeping it. Beyond that there doesn't appear to be any real value of politics portrayed in the mass media. The grand prize is retirement with a huge pension.

The Prom? Really?

2010-04-27T07:04:00.001-07:00

According to Answers.com, the prom is alleged to be "an important lesson in social skills, especially in a theoretically classless society that valued behavior over breeding."[1] There appears to be nothing stated in the article that restricts proms to those who have dates, however, the inclusion of young boys and girls without dates often results in emotional scars. Boys and girls who are left out of the prom because they cannot match the wealth, beauty, and/or social connections, may be left to wonder forever what their lives may be like today had they attended.

The prom seems to set the boundary between the "haves and the have-nots," emboldening a class system based on emblems and rituals, but in reality it serves the major fashion industries to acquire that which from a fool is frequently parted, money.

1. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_the_tradition_of_high_school_proms_start

The Wedge of Wage-Gap

2010-03-04T05:30:00.000-08:00

Illinois,government,state,working,job

The goal of working in government is the betterment of the society for which that government is established. Sounds magnanimous, but it seems the goal of working for the state has become money and personal family security.

Western society is organized in a structure based on the human needs structure, or Abraham Maslow's "Need Hierarchy"

5. Peak Experiences
4. Self-Actualization
3. Psychological needs
2. Safety needs
1. Basic survival needs

How these levels of needs are described is debatable, but the key ingredient of these needs is Judgement. People on upper levels of the structure are very judgemental about people on the lower levels of this structure.

The fundamental indicator of the structure is wealth, and humans love to display their position on the need hierarchy by enveloping themselves in symbols, i.e. homes, cars, boats, jewelry, etc.

Humans choose to affiliate only with people of similar status. When they surround themselves with people of similar status, they think less and less about the rest of their society.

Every time you go to a party, don't you see state workers huddled together in the corner discussing their managers, and darting their eyes about looking for their critics from the private sector?

Here is the problem:

The government has become dynastic. Only the rich are capable of winning office, and only people who know someone on the inside can get a state job.

The salaries and wages of state officials and workers is three times outpaced by outsiders to such a degree that the state has become disconnected from its purpose.

The point of government is the betterment of society as a whole for which it was originally established, but the wedge of wage-gap has isolated government into a sub-culture of insiders living in fear of criticism from the private sector.

The people in government have lost their way. They should be motivated to better the lives of society as a whole instead of entering the the gates of the castle and raising the drawbridge, then tossing leftovers to the peasants below.

How is this done? Simply by mandating that salaries in government reflect the average salaries of their society as a whole.

Such a mandate will motivate government to improve itself by improving the lives of it's constituents.

Currently however, government chooses to claim a budget shortfall and cut certain programs so that the overlords can keep their rich salaries.

The Language of the Weak

2010-02-06T15:22:00.000-08:00

1. Use of the word “Retarded”
The use of the word “retarded” long ago meant “not fully developed” and today serves no useful purpose in science as it is too general a statement. The word is so imprecise that its only redeeming value is the rapid discredit of those who use it.

In other words, anyone who uses the word “retarded” in any capacity has symptoms of a generally disreputable lexicon. Such persons more frequently use expletives to fill voids that would otherwise contain more accurate and acceptable messages.

New Government - Hynes keeps his counties

2010-02-04T13:23:00.000-08:00

When I get the election results, I'll draw up some boundaries and carve up the state between Hynes and Quinn. Hynes won Sangamon county so he can keep it as far as I'm concerned.

End of Democracy

2010-01-22T05:41:00.001-08:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Are Illinois and the rest of the states in a headlock?

2010-01-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

The United Feudal States of AFSCME.

Most of us know a headlock when we see one. One wrestler has his bulging vein-popped arm around another wrestler's head which darkens to a beet red color before he flops to the mat unconscious.

This morning I saw an ad in the paper for an at-home job opportunity taking flower orders for 1800Flowers.com. Instead of signing up right away, I went to www.RipOffReport.com and searched the name “1800Flowers.”

I was shocked at the results. There were thirteen complaints posted that included the business. Most reports were categorized under credit card fraud, bait-and-switch, mail-order service, etc. So I stopped right there, then shared the information at Facebook and Digg.

I was curious about what other businesses I might find in Springfield, Illinois so I searched Rip Off Report again and found 88 posts. One of which was the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, (AFSCME).

I didn’t really think much of it at first, but upon reading the entire report, I have no choice but to arrive at the conclusion that the United States of America is ruled by AFSCME. No matter who gets elected, it doesn’t change the makeup of AFSCME. AFSCME appears to operate with absolute impunity in the U.S. and not even International Human Rights organizations will go near them.

The victim describes how he fought all the way to the Supreme Court to no avail, was unheard by Illinois legislators, unheard by U.S. senators and congressmen, and met with shrugging shoulders at the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Labor Relations Board.

I am compelled to present the document in its entirety below because there is the risk that it will be removed from RipOffReport.com, either by coercion or by malicious internet attacks against the site itself.

So here it is:

Report: American Federation Of State County And Municipal Employees, Council 31,AFL-CIO

Reported By: (River Grove Illinois)

American Federation Of State County And Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO Council 31,AFL-CIO AFSCME, Council 31 took my Union fees for 7 years, then allowed City Colleges to fire me when I exposed ghost student grades corruption, the AFSCME used my fees to hire a law firm to sustain my firing -instead of protecting my job. Springfield Illinois

*Consumer Comment... afscme is a corrupt organization

American Federation Of State County And Municipal Employees, Council 31,AFL-CIO

615 S. Second St., P.O.Box 2328,

Springfield Illinois 62705-2328

U.S.A.

Phone: 217-788-2800

Submitted: Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Last posting: Monday, November 23, 2009

I was teaching Adult Education

at City Colleges ffrom 1981 to 1998. In 1991 we voted to become part of the union American Federation of State County and Municioal Employees (AFSCME, Council 31) for job protection. The classes were free to students, paid by the State of Illinois, and the Illinois of Public Aid (PA) required foreign student receiving assistance to attend English as a Second Language classes to obtain skills and find jobs. But many students tried to beat the system by register for the PA required classes, and after the morning roll call to answer "Present," then they got up and left saying: "Sorry, teacher

, I have to go to work." But when they left, I changed the attendance roster to "Absent", and when at the end of the month they brought me a PA form to verify their attendance, I marked all absences, and the PA cut their assistance and food stamps

. Those students were cheating PA by getting assistance and work for cash! And I didn't want to be part of their schemes because I would legally liable for falsifying student reports to help them commit welfare fraud. On March 11, 1998, I notified by U.S. Certified Mail the Illinois Department of Public Aid of the scheme going on at City Colleges with the consent of the Union.

The Union asked me to recant the PA letter of fraud, because the "Present" grades need for the class funding, and, if it was cut off, the teachers will lose jobs, and the Union will lose their fees. [Copy of original letter to Illinois Public Aid available] The City Colleges and AFSCME were furious, and harassed me in various ways.

Then AFSCME and the City Colleges of Chicago used their clout and tried to scrap a Bill (SB1750) pending before the Illinois House Committee. I then sent letters on May 1, 1998 to each member of that Committee, and urged them to pass the law which -if pass "will establish accountability that will get rid of many educational parasites," on quote. (Copy of that original letter is available).

On June 10, 1998, the Chicago Tribune headlined: "Students get A's for nothing," confirming that the fraud I had reported to Public Aid was also going on at The West Side Institute, and the City Colleges of Chicago campus.

(Copy of that Tribune headline is available)

Ten days later, on June 20, 1998, I was fired by City Colleges of Chicago. The AFSCME filed a grievance for wrongful job termination with City Colleges of Chicago, but it was a smokescreen. And when I contested the case in courts by myself - the Union had cancelled the fake arbitration set up- the Union hired a law firm who joined another law firm hired by the City Colleges

of Chicago and both fought me all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court. There was no way that an individual like me, no matter my high education, could fight the flood of motions by 2 law firms and win a case.

A Union, using the fees of a member to hire a law firm to secure the firing of a whistleblower member for exposing fraud may seem to be unheard in history. But it happened more often, and it just swept under the rug.

In 2001 I started working for the State of Illinois, and AFSCME with hefty political contributions to both Democrats and Republicans has secured control of representation of all State employees. Worse yet, I had to pay monthly fees to the Union that used my prior fees to prosecute my prior employment. Under a "Fair Share Law," the Union took fees from my paycheck without my consent. That was a violation of my U.S. Constitutional Rights, 5th Amendment, because I was forced against my will to finance my own prosecution. But there was no way out.

The AFSCME used its clout to make the "Fair Share" law foolproof by allowing in the law only a provision for a non-member to "Challenge" the Union fees by arbitration.

The arbitration request is made to the Union -not the State- and the Union can ignore it without any penalty. Six years and six requests for arbitration to the Union were never processed.

Upon further research, I found that forcing a person to belong to an organization and paying dues violates 3 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But unfortunately, the U.S. is not a party of the Protocol of Civil and Political Rights, and that is why the Intenational Human Rights Commission has no rights to Guantanamo detainees.

On an inquiry to the International Human Rights Commission I was told that I could not file a complaint against the U.S. for allowing "forcible memberships" by Unions.

Also the National labor Relations Board, and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice told me they have no jurisdiction. And a letter to U.S. Senator John McCain for congressional hearings on the AFSCME's prosecution of a whistleblower, got no response.

In a true democracy, Unions shall not be able to extract fees against the will of laborers, then use those fees as political financing for politicians [their charter says that fees are not used for political contributions, if anybody can believe that] to customize laws that benefit the Union management against the interest of their members. Exposure is needed in that comfy relationship between politicians and unions that has become an anathema to every honest citizen in the United States. The late Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, who never accepted money as political contribution, told NBC's Tom Brokaw in an interview: "People come to Washington with money and buy legislation." And in a true democracy, nobody shall be able to empty the pockets of other people against their will, then use that money to prosecute them and mess their lives LEGALLY!!!!

AND WRITTEN IRREFUTABLE DOCUMENTAION IS AVAILABLE!

Nikos xxxxx

River Grove, Illinois

U.S.A.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/civil-rights-violators/american-federation/american-federation-of-state-c-acf63.htm

Great Expectations

2009-12-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

Some people have idealized expectations about other people, that people normally help one-another to maintain a stable civilization. Other people have no illusions about human nature’s tendency for survival behavior and expect deception edging toward brutality. Other people have nothing but contempt for everyone else and feel entitled to respect without first earning it. They become angry when strangers don’t fawn and flatter them.

Liberals typically expect people to conform to social rules that govern polite society, such as equality, fairness, honesty, and charity. When they discover this not to be the case, they try to find ways to enforce polite behavior through anti-discrimination laws, government transparency, product labels, taxes for social programs and other methods of behavioral engineering.

Conservatives have no illusions about human behavior. To them, if you choose to engage in behavior without first learning every possible negative outcome and covering your own bases, then it’s your own fault for walking into the situation uninformed.

It’s up to you to pull yourself up by your own “boot straps” and it’s up to your parents to teach you all about it. This is the foundation of a self-regulating free market society; another way of saying “survival of the fittest” or “natural selection.”

Some will even go as far as praising and glorifying unwise behavior, such as buying things you don’t need, a house too expensive, or having more children than you can afford. They will prey upon the weakness of liberal delusional expectations of proper behavior, just to get more ignorant people into situations that will drain the resources of the liberals.

Is it fair to associate liberals and conservatives to these kinds of behaviors? It’s probably too much of a generalization to do so because there are so many people who claim to be one or the other, yet they contradict their claims with inconsistent behavior. One might assign the terms “social” and “anti-social” but which is which?

Which is more dangerous? Being taught to behave in a polite and charitable manner, and being taught to expect that everyone else will behave the same way, or is more dangerous to be taught never to expect human behavior to evolve beyond the bare minimum requirements that keep them from prison?

Do we have a right to punish those who take advantage of the ignorant, punish the system that nurtured ignorant choices, or punish the ignorant?

Those who take advantage of the ignorant are they who sell people what they don’t need; charge hidden fees and lock people into never-ending debt.

The system that nurtures ignorance is an education system that values sports more than academics and values labor skills more than real science, entrepreneurship and self-sustainability. A commercial media system that provides vicarious entertainment that distorts values and pacifies the public.

The ignorant are they who were born of ignorant parents and raised without being taught to survive on their own without the help of the state, church or employer; they who are unprepared when they lost their job which they believed would carry them to retirement and beyond; they who bore children as teenagers and were themselves born to unwed teenage mothers.

The chain of responsibility ends with the ignorant who must now find their way out of their situation, but goes backwards to their parents, then to their working class education system.

Unfortunately, our governments would rather cut the social programs and libraries, and not interfere with an education system that produces a surplus of workers that keeps private sector wages down; while government salaries and wages continue to climb despite the state having a bond rating that is second worst in the nation behind California.

Fear the Silence Part IV: Political Parties should Confess their Machiavellianism

2009-11-07T13:17:00.000-08:00

If you have not read Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, I highly recommend it. It spells out the proper way to behave politically to maintain the appearance of benevolence as a leader while by necessity ruling as a tyrant.

One quote of Machiavelli is a reminder that ideals can only be achieved in rhetoric. The goal of a decent equitable civilization can never be achieved due to the realism of human behavior.

Many men have imagined republics and principalities that never really existed at all. Yet the way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what is for what should be pursues his downfall rather than his preservation; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good. (1)

This is why politics only appears to be competitive and divisive. It maintains the illusion of choice, as suggested by Machiavelli himself.

Among Machiavelli’s suggestions are the following:
• It is better to be feared than loved.
• Keep up the illusion of being reliable at keeping your word.
• Keep the nobility satisfied in order to prevent conspiracies.
• Keep your subjects occupied so they have no chance to rebel (conquering lands or employed at skilled trades – oops! Too many of us are out of work. Smell revolution yet?).
• Being overly generous will only cause greed for more.

Machiavelli had his own version of the Golden Rule: “The offenses one does to a man should be such that one does not fear revenge for it.” Of course this means either don’t do anything, or do it in such a way that will afford no retribution. This is the realistic human behavior golden rule that most people live by.

This philosophy used to belong to the Democrats of the South. Why Machiavellianism easily shifted parties is simple. There really never was a difference between the parties. One party seems to be more honest than the other. A few Republicans finally openly admitted to Machiavellian behavior.

Dennis Miller is openly conservative and said on many occasions that it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and people need to toughen up and get theirs (what ever it is) before someone else does.

Why would you be loyal to a party that exploits the masses to get the golden ticket to government service benefits? You don’t really have a choice.

I never read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, but I get the idea that the free market should be allowed to self-regulate. This is the mantra of conservatives. They had everyone convinced that markets could self-regulate from the birth of the Industrial Revolution all the way up until 2008 when one leading conservative economist finally admitted to a U.S. Congressional subcommittee hearing that the idea was “fundamentally flawed.”

For years, a Congressional hearing with Alan Greenspan was a marquee event. Lawmakers doted on him as an economic sage. Markets jumped up or down depending on what he said. Politicians in both parties wanted the maestro on their side. But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending. (2)

The rest of the Republicans should not wait as long as Greenspan to confess the true Machiavellian nature of the free market system, to themselves as well as everyone else. If they hurry up and acknowledge the truth like Dennis Miller and Alan Greenspan, there’s a slim chance they might get a few more supporters.

Democrats won’t admit to Machiavellianism. They have hope and dream silage to keep the masses from rebelling. They are going to get elected, then patronize their “nobility” just like the Republicans. The masses get screwed either way.

The “nobility” in our case are the industrial complexes of Banking, Finance, Military, Energy, Railroad, Automotive, Telecommunication, Medicine, Agriculture, Insurance, a few multinational retailers and other corporations "too large to fail."

I would suggest that the entire system be crushed by everyone not paying taxes, but it looks like enough of us are unemployed or poor that our tax refunds will do enough damage. What the hell. They can’t afford to put us in prison anymore anyway.

--------

1. Wikipedia – Partial Summary of Machiavelli’s The Prince
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince ]

2. New York Times October 24, 2008 -- Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html ]

Fear the Silence Part 3: You can take your ball and go home, we have our own.

2009-11-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

The election in Afghanistan may serve as an example for the rest of us, depending on one potential outcome.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah was until recently running against Hamid Karzai for the presidency of Afghanistan. The first round of elections were allegedly riddled with fraud in favor of Karzai, and Abdullah decided to not even bother running through the second round because, according to the BBC [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8336388.stm ], Karzai rejected Abdullah’s demand for replacing the election judges from the first round.

Just because Abdullah’s not running in the election doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be followed. Especially if Karzai’s administration really is rampant with corruption as reported by the Associated Press [http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jWS-iq74Txky__OmsJk0qHgUdJgQD9BMTNBO0 ]

A coup d’état is usually a power grab by a group of people, but what if that trophy stinks? What if the rules for that game have been distorted to benefit certain players and uninvited guests?

Dr. Abdulllah can walk away from the established system and build his own powerbase in a manner similar to Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth global warming movement that ultimately helped shift the hearts and minds of a whole new generation away from rampant capitalistic consumerism. (Of course GW Bush and friends were equally helpful at pushing).

Unfortunately, once the election of Barack Obama happened, too many old cronies from past administrations came out of the woodwork. The tentacles of Wall Street wind their way throughout Washington, What a cliché. We get fooled again and again.

Too many voters are falling for the same lines again and again.

• “I’ll clean up [__name city, state or government office__] “
• “I promise no nation building.”
• “I’ll cut taxes.”
• “I won’t raise taxes.”
• “No new taxes”
• “I’ll cut waste, fraud and abuse.”
• “abortion, gay marriage, family values.”
• “___________________________________”

They keep getting elected. That’s what they are good at, getting elected. It’s obvious that most of them see their new position as the finish line. After all, they have all the career staff they need to keep the old machine running the status quo, and they can bring onboard their family and friends who helped get them there.

What can those of us who get run over, left behind, used and then tossed away like disposable razors do about it?

We can build our own machine; start our own game.

We can vote with our wallets, any other suggestions?

Send them to sageofspringfield@gmail.com

Fear the silence - part II: Go Time

2009-10-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

Saying is over, time for doing.

We have all commented online at newspaper’s web site and message boards, complaining about everything. We call people names; we point accusatory fingers and write about the bad behaviors of powerful people. We even come up with ideas and suggest needed changes. Do they listen? No.

Did you hear the latest political campaign rhetoric? The candidates are once again running on the same messages of “cleaning up corruption and waste” that the last candidates ran on and ultimately failed to complete. How many campaign cycles have we been through hearing that same message?

What can we do about it?

Ralph Nader’s been talking about this for decades. Nobody takes him or any other independent political candidate seriously for the simple reason that none have moved outside the box and simply created an entire functional government structure that can be manned at a moment’s notice. A future candidate will need to have his complete cabinet in advance of his run for office. Not just the politicians, but the entire bureaucracy must be replaced, all the way from the bottom up.

This is going to require a massive and complete shift in loyalty by law enforcement and military personnel away from the current industrial plutocracy, back to a real democratic form of government. No, a republic is a plutocracy.

You’re not going to get any businesses to support such a radical change because they are the real power behind the curtain of politics. Washington D.C. is merely an illusory Emerald City with the Wizard pulling the levers and puppet strings all the way from Wall Street.

How many times have you heard that old cliché? Everyone knows it but nobody knows what to do about it. The banks have a strangle-hold on small businesses and consumer credit card holders.

The strangle-hold is only effective as long as people value the extra car, the S.U.V., the boat in the driveway, the extra thousand feet of storage space in the house, the finished basement, the riding mower, caring about monthly or weekly fashion updates, etc.

How do you crush the system? Stop spending. Seems impossible? Try these links for helpful hints:

http://myyearwithoutspending.blogspot.com/
http://fruwiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.stopspendingmoney.net/
https://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd

Consumer spending isn’t enough. The government is more completely owned by the industrial complexes of Military, Legal, Medical, Energy, Food, Insurance, and Mass Media. All of theses have always been subsidized by taxes and reinforced by Patent regulations that suppress innovation and technological progress that might compete with them. We never heard much about this before the Internet allowed freedom of speech to expand around the world.

All of the aforementioned industrial complexes operate through Lobbyists in D.C. and often literally write our legislation. Do you need evidence? Just Google this: “legislation written by lobbyists”

Find out which legislators have been caught doing favors of one kind or another for lobbyists, and scratch them off your list. The best we can do right now is colossal non-cooperation.

Complaining and protesting has failed. Freedom of speech is only good for attracting the attention of those who can make you disappear. If things get worse for us because we speak up, we can act in silence and go underground.

The High Price of Free Speech

2009-10-21T08:13:00.001-07:00

Tuesday night I went to Capital City Bar and Grill to watch the film “Shouting Fire: Stories from edge of free speech.”

It was a good film. It taught me to open my eyes, clench my fists, and shut my mouth. There were numerous incidents where free speech was used to make the public render a verdict at election polls. There were more incidents where free speech got people into trouble.

After the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, freedom of the press was used to vilify, condemn, or persecute anyone who pointed out the reasons for the attack, anyone remotely associated with Islam and anyone who dared question the validity of the War in Iraq.

The film discussed the USA Patriot Act and demonstrated how free speech is being used as a tool against the public.

It was suggested that the goal of the ACLU is to defend any speech no matter how offensive. Free speech should be defended as long as it’s truthful. Deliberately deceptive speech on the other hand should be criminalized.

The McCarthy hearings were a small part of the film. I got an overall impression that Senator Joseph McCarthy’s mistake was using free speech to bring his concerns to the court of public opinion. He and J. Edgar Hoover both believed they could bring the public to their side with their ideas.

Speech has a funny way of working against you while you are in power, no matter the message. The glorious leaders of our society have taken a Machiavellian approach and promoted freedom of speech for the rest of us, while they themselves quietly go about listening and watching for the malcontents.

Theses mistakes have been remedied by government agents quietly infiltrating protest groups.

Peaceful anti-war protesters are regularly blocked from parading, moments after they arrive. Agents who infiltrate protest groups try to provoke the groups into actions that allow police to stop the groups and have members arrested.

Typically the first members of the group to be arrested are the infiltrating provocateurs. Their arrest is handled with such drama, shock and awe, that the arrest is intended to frighten other protesters into disbanding or surrendering.

Without free speech of our enemies we will never know who they are. This has become the mantra of the government. Defenders of free speech are provoking people into exposing themselves as dissidents.

My friends, public speech is no longer effective. Free speech is bait for a trap. We are done with speech. Nobody is paying attention.

Do not fear the clamoring throng, fear the silence.

Good Service

2009-10-16T13:02:00.001-07:00

I was cleaning off my dresser this morning and I found an old receipt from County Market folded around another piece of paper. The receipt was from last week some time. The message with the receipt said:

“Did you receive excellent service from the cashier? If so, please turn this note in to the customer service desk. Cashier name: ___________...”

Wow. When I go to the grocery store I never really look at the receipt because I usually buy few items. I began to wonder if anybody else paid attention to the note when they got it. I’m sure some did but probably not most.

I began to wonder if someone’s employment was riding on that note. The cashier with the most notes turned in must have received some award or was spared expulsion, but what about the cashier with the least?

I imagine some manager got the idea from watching Survivor or some other reality program. The next phase might be a style change in uniform, like oversized tan cotton Gatsby style hats with matching overalls, accented with a lime and orange striped long-sleeve turtleneck shirt and white steel-toed patent-leather Boondockers.

And then what, pieces of flair? Well. How many ways can you vet your staff by humiliating them?

I’m sure the note was meant to be an incentive for employees to be more pleasant than usual. It would work well in the right context. There should be only a positive reward associated with the note and no punishment associated with it.

This means making sure the employees don’t have an opportunity to draw negative conclusions on their own about the incentive program. They should be notified that having the fewest notes turned in doesn’t mean they are the worst at customer service and will suffer for it. They should be told that most customers might not even look at the notes until they get home, if ever, and the program is actually more effective at gathering information about the customer’s habits than the employee’s behavior anyway.

Also, if you are going to post statistics on a board in the break-room about which employee is ahead of the game in this challenge, you’re really not doing the employees any favors, only fomenting animosity among them.

Don’t post the actual number of notes that were turned in for any employees. This way, when the prize is handed out, nobody will know who came in last place, including the person who actually came in last place.

Important Service Announcement

2009-10-08T14:13:00.000-07:00

This commercial advertisement was rejected by Fox News

Commercial Breakers from Douglas Haddow on Vimeo.

Radio Trash Talk

2009-09-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

The Illinois State Journal Register pounced on a comment made by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood when he criticized talk-radio "trash-talk." (full article)

The newspaper asked Springfield radio executive Kevan Kavanaugh of WMAY about the comment to which he responded saying he sees "nothing inappropriate about publicly discussing policy matters."

If this was a game show, the buzzer would be blaring and sign would drop down from the ceiling on a string. The sign says "OVER GENERALIZATION".

Logical error: Kavanaugh implied by this comment that LaHood was attacking all of talk-radio in general. Following this logic, one could infer by Kavaugh's statement that Ray LaHood was implying that all of talk-radio must be trash-talk by equating "trash-talk" with "publicly discussing policy matters."

In truth, LaHood was not being specific or general about his opinion of talk radio. Trash-talk is not conventionally associated as a general statement enveloping all of radio broadcasting. He would have to specifically say "All of talk-radio is trash-talk," which he did not.

• Trash-talk includes OVER-GENERALIZATIONS.

Another form of trash-talk is name-calling.

Name-calling can be calling something or someone stupid, crazy, way-out, far-left, far-right, fringe, unhinged, or saying that something stinks, sucks, or is described as generally terrible.

When you name-call, you are making a claim about someone or something. Every time you make such a claim, you must support your claim with Evidence.

For example, when Kirk Farah of WMAY doesn't like certain music, he tends to say that it sucks rather than saying he doesn't like it.

Because Kirk has the privilege of talking on the radio, he is regarded by most of his audience as an authority on whatever he talks about. Most of the listeners take him seriously simply because of this status.

If he said he didn't like it, that would be fine because most people understand that not everyone has the same personal tastes and such a statement does not need any supporting evidence, just an opinion will suffice in this case.

But, because he says certain types of music suck, Listeners may take him at his word and avoid that type of music. In rare cases, the listeners might never know that they actually like something because they were told that it sucked so they stay away from it.

Kirk has said on several occasions that MSNBC is "way-out there" without ever supporting this claim with any legitimate evidence.

• Name-calling without evidence is TRASH-TALK.

TRASH-TALK has another longer name. It's called a "Fallacy of Argumentation." You can read more about fallacies of argumentation at http://sageofspringfield.com/argument/home.html.

Dennis Miller

2009-09-11T05:52:00.001-07:00

Dennis Miller seems like a smart guy. Part of his humor is based on sarcasm. He's a real smooth talker and sometimes you get the impression that he draws upon the common sense from the middle-ground. But he said President Obama's speech on Health Care Reform was partisan, when in reality his speech was based on facts.

Living must be difficult when facts are partisan and the truth hurts so much you must block it out of your mind and scream "You Lie!" (Joe Wilson) or walk out in the middle of a joint session of congress while the President of the United States is giving a speech (John Shimkus).

What does it take to break you from your coma of denial? A total one hundred percent Democrat majority in every branch of government? You only have the Supreme Court as your last bastion of conservatism, but you complained forever that they legislate from the bench. Are you willing to flip-flop on that opinion?

It's time to wake up and piece together this nation as a truly stable civilized nation where people don't have to freeze to death in the streets or be denied insurance coverage. A nation where education is top priority.

Economic Recovery.

2009-09-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

ABC news radio reported that the economy is improving. The economy is measured by performing cost-profit analysis of industry.

Industry is doing just fine because they cut their labor costs. But labor also happens to be customers.

Prepare for the worst Christmas in U.S. History.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC asking people if they are for public health care abortion.

2009-09-03T16:44:00.000-07:00

Christ Matthews keeps asking people if they are for or against government subsidized abortion. Abortion is a medical procedure. Chris Matthews, last I heard, is not a doctor and does not have a uterus.

Medical procedures are nobody's business but the patient and her doctor. There is no room on the political table for abortion because politicians will never be able to enforce restricting abortions.

If the pro-lifers got their way and legislation passed to ban abortions, how much of a tax increase would they be willing to sacrifice in order to support an Anti-Abortion Czar, Anti-Abortion Taskforce, and an entire "War on Abortion?"

Maybe that's the real agenda. Not the morality of the movement, but the raking in of more tax dollars for yet another bloated bureaucracy that can be loaded with political patrons.

Net Neutrality Astroturf

2009-08-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

Angola and the U.S.

2009-08-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently visited Angola. Google Angola in the news, anyway, here are some interesting facts about Angola from the C.I.A. World Fact Book.

Interesting facts about Angola

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ao.html

GDP is 65.8% industry, 24.6% services, and 9.2% agriculture.

The labor force is 85% agriculture, and 15% industry and services.

70% of the population is below the poverty line.

The Angolan flag is designed to honor peasants and workers.

Really? Are they serious? With a poverty level like that you can't expect anyone to believe they are a socialist state as they appear to claim by their flag.

I thought it would be interesting to look at what the C.I.A. World Fact Book had on the United States, so I looked that up.

Interesting facts about the United States

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

The GDP of the United States is 1.2% agriculture, 19.6% industry, and 79.2% services.

The labor force of the United States is farming, forestry, and fishing 0.6%, manufacturing, extraction, transportation, and crafts 22.6%, managerial, professional, and technical 35.5%, sales and office 24.8%, other services 16.5%

Way back in 2004, 12% of the population was below the poverty line. Interestingly, if you look at the dates of the statistics, this is the oldest by far. The rest of the numbers are from 2007 and 2008.

Why was the statistic for the population below the poverty line neglected since 2004?

Cherry picking Statistics? There appears to be some GOP remnants hanging around at the C.I.A.

Defend the Truth at Town Hall Meetings!

2009-08-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

Actual itemized contents of the Health Care Reform Bill:

"Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!"

TRUTH: This is not an "audit," it's a study. Moreover, the bill states (pp. 22-23) that the report will "include any recommendations the Commissioner deems appropriate to ensure that the law does not provide incentives for small and mid-size employers to self-insure or create adverse selection in the risk pools of large group insurers and self-insured employers." This is almost directly the opposite of the email's claim.

"Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!"

TRUTH: Page 29 continues to define the "essential benefits package" and discusses limits on what Americans will have to spend on health care under this minimum standard. In no way does this section stipulate the rationing of care.

"Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)"

TRUTH: Page 30 begins to describe the Health Benefits Advisory Committee which establishes certain minimum standards for health insurance plans. In no way does this committee deny treatments and benefits to Americans with health insurance.

"Page 42: The 'Health Choices Commissioner' will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None."

TRUTH: Page 42 begins to describe the Health Choices Commissioner's duties. The idea that this person will decide what benefits Americans receive is patently false, given that most Americans will keep their current plans under reform, and Americans within the exchange will have the choice of purchasing many different kinds of health plans. Rather, the Commissioner will establish minimum standards to protect Americans.

"Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services."

TRUTH: Pages 50-51 contain a provision stating that discrimination will not be allowed in the provision of health care services. Nowhere does the bill state that non-US citizens will be provided free health care services. The bill prohibits federal dollars from being used for undocumented immigrants.

"Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard."

TRUTH: Page 58, in the context of a discussion of administrative standards, mentions that "determination of an individual's financial responsibility at the point of service and, to the extent possible, prior to service, including whether the individual is eligible for a specific service with a specific physician at a specific facility...may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card." In no way does the bill state that such a card would be national, or that it would be issued to every person, or that it would, in fact, be used at all.

"Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer."

TRUTH: Page 59 continues the discussion of administrative standards, and authorizes electronic transfers of money within the government. In no way does this provision grant the government access to individual bank accounts.

"Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)"

TRUTH: Here's what page 65 says: "Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall establish a temporary reinsurance program to provide reimbursement to assist participating employment-based plans with the cost of providing health benefits to retirees and to eligible spouses, surviving spouses and dependents of such retirees." No mention is made of unions or community organizations.

"Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange."

TRUTH: That's true! Plans have to have a minimum standard of benefits, bat can offer other plans as well. But that's fair, isn't it? Private insurers can continue to operate outside the exchange if they wish - should the government establish no standards for the exchange? In that case, how could reform end insurance industry abuses and help to control costs?

"Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)"

TRUTH: This section says is that if private health care plans want to operate in the Exchange, they must provide a basic benefit package.

"Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens"

TRUTH: Some American citizens are more comfortable speaking a language other than English, especially in a sensitive situation like a consultation with their doctor. This provision in no way opens the door for coverage of undocumented workers.

"Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan."

TRUTH: Page 95 makes no mention of ACORN and Americorps; all it says is that the Commissioner can conduct outreach to vulnerable populations, making them aware of their options.

"Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter."

TRUTH: People who are eligible for Medicaid will not have to face the burdens of paperwork and other bureaucratic struggles. Far from depriving people of choice, this measure will ensure coverage.

"Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No 'judicial review' is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed."

TRUTH: This section describes rate-setting under the public health insurance plan option, which will compete with private insurers, who can set their own rates. Because of inherent advantages like their established administrative and provider frameworks, private insurance companies will not be "crushed" by government competition.

"Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages."

TRUTH: The government will negotiate rates with providers under the public health insurance plan option. However, private insurers will continue to pay their own rates.

"Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives."

TRUTH: This is simply not true. Employers with more than 20 employees aren't even eligible to participate in the exchange, let alone the public plan, until several years after the exchange launches in 2013. Moreover, no employer will be forced to participate in the public plan.

"Page 146: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families."

TRUTH: Employers are required to pay some benefits for part-time employees on a basis proportional to what they pay for full-time employees. No language on this page or the next stipulates coverage for the families of part-time employees.

"Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll"

TRUTH: The payroll penalty applies to employers with payroll over $500,000 who do not provide insurance to their employees. The percentage for employers with payroll from $500,000 - $750,000 is 6%. Employers do not have to offer the public option to avoid this penalty, they can offer private insurance if they wish.

"Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll"

TRUTH: This is false, see above.

"Page 167: Any individual who doesn't' have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income."

TRUTH: Pages 167-173 detail what "acceptable health care" means (basically, insurance coverage) and also allow for many different kinds of exceptions to this rule.

"Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them)."

TRUTH: Non-resident aliens do not have to pay the penalty for not having health insurance, nor will the receive federal assistance, because they are not required to purchase health insurance. They are not exempted from individual taxes generally.

"Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records."

TRUTH: This is a gross overstatement. For the purposes of determining affordability credits for Americans who need financial assistance in purchasing health insurance, employees of the Health Choices Administration will have access to tax information that the federal government already keeps. As is clearly stated on page 196, "Return information... may be used by officers and employees of the Health Choices Administration or such State-based health insurance exchange, as the case may be, only for the purposes of, and to the extent necessary in, establishing and verifying the appropriate amount of any affordability credit described in subtitle C of title II of the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 and providing for the repayment of any such credit which was in excess of such appropriate amount.''

"Page 203: "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax." Yes, it really says that."

TRUTH: This quote is taken out of context, and is in fact referring to a calculation used in the bill. Full context of quote: "'(4) NOT TREATED AS TAX IMPOSED BY THIS CHAPTER FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES.-The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax imposed by this chapter for purposes of determining the amount of any credit under this chapter or for purposes of section 55.''

"Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected."

TRUTH: This section has nothing whatsoever to do with reducing services. It makes much needed changes to the way in which physician reimbursement is recalculated every year. The bill will, in fact, create much more opportunity for seniors and the poor to receive necessary care.

"Page 241: Doctors: no matter what specialty you have, you'll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)"

TRUTH: Page 241 does not say this. Nowhere does it say this. It does say that physicians will be grouped into certain categories regardless of specialty. These categories merely determine if the physician is engaged in primarily therapeutic or preventative care.

"Page 253: Government sets value of doctors' time, their professional judgment, etc."

TRUTH: There is no good response to this assertion as it appears to have been made up completely. The section deals with 'misvalued codes' meaning that the government is potentially not paying an acceptable rate for a specific service. This will allow the government to, for example, pay more for services that require more payment, such as high-overhead procedures. The author of these criticisms separately attacks the bill for paying the same rate to all doctors, then attacks again for paying different rates.

"Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries."

TRUTH: This section amends the Social Security Act to include productivity measures. There is no mandate or control of anything. This merely updates the way in which doctors and hospitals are paid through Medicare.

"Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs."

TRUTH: This is simply not true. This slightly amends existing guidelines for payments for medical equipment, in this case power-driven wheelchairs. This section introduces no 'regulations' that are not in the Social Security Act.

"Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!"

TRUTH: Overusage of the hot-button word "rationing" is a way to deflect attention away from the actual language of the bill and incite unjustified fear. This section only compares costs incurred by cancer hospitals to costs incurred by similar hospitals, and adjusts payments to reduce the possibility of fraud and abuse.

"Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions."

TRUTH: This is almost correct. The section is one of the first efforts at targeting excessive readmissions. Excessive readmissions are physically and emotionally damaging to patients, while simultaneously putting them, and the health care system, in far more financial risk than is necessary. The American Hospital Association recommended reduced payments for avoidable readmission in testimony to Congress.

"Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government."

TRUTH: This is patently false. The section is about possible methods that the Secretary of Health and Human services might consider in order to address the growing problem of patient readmission. This section does not, in any way, create a penalty, nor does it even mandate policy. It merely provides examples of recourses that might be considered.

"Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited from owning and investing in healthcare companies!"

TRUTH: This provision only limits Doctor's investments in health care facilities that they refer patients to The effort to limit self-referral has been ongoing for many years as an effort to reduce fraud and abuse. This is, essentially, the medical community equivalent of insider trading. Limiting this incentive works to put the patient's health above all other considerations. Doctors remain free to engage in investment opportunities in areas that don't create a significant conflict of interest.

"Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval."

TRUTH: This section regulates physicians' investment in hospitals to make sure that physicians are not unfairly benefiting from their power to refer patients to hospitals they have a stake in. The section does not prohibit hospital expansion.

"Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on 'community' input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN."

TRUTH: In the ongoing effort to demonize community-based groups such as ACORN, every instance of the word "community" has become associated with that group's efforts. In reality, this provision allows for anyone to provide input. This includes homeowners, religious leaders, neighborhood groups, and others. There are no payoffs. There is no money exchanged in any way.

"Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing."

TRUTH: This provision is included in order to allow the government to base payments on practices that work. Nowhere does it say health care will be rationed. The attempt to isolate what works and what does not work in Medicare Advantage plans only benefits the health care system in general.

"Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc."

TRUTH: The government can disqualify some Medicare Advantage Plans from receiving some additional payments, but only if those plans are not meeting necessary requirements.

"Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals."

TRUTH: This section only deals with how to handle special needs individuals who need to enroll outside of the open enrollment period. Almost every type of plan operates with open enrollment periods. This section does not create more restrictions.

"Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone)."

TRUTH: This section merely expands existing Telehealth programs, which supplement but do not replace other health coverage, and provide a vital resource to Americans in rural and remote areas.

"Page 425-430: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?; Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time; Government provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death; Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends; Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient's health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT; Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life."

TRUTH: All of these hysterical claims have been debunked elsewhere. HR3200 provides for the reimbursement of a voluntary session of end-of-life counseling with your physician once every five years. This in no way means the government will make decisions for patients or encourage doctor-assisted suicide. Counseling simply makes patients and their families aware of their options.

"Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN."

TRUTH: ACORN is not a Community-Based Medical Home.

"Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN."

TRUTH: This is clearly still referring to community health groups, not ACORN.

"Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage."

TRUTH: Covering marriage and family therapy, as many private insurance plans do, does not mean that the government "intervenes in your marriage." The types of individuals who are recognized as therapists are clearly defined on page 491; in brief, professionals only, not bureaucrats.

"Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services."

TRUTH: This section expands government coverage for mental health services under various government programs, and ensures that all mental health services will be offered by qualified professionals.

Source: evana - Health Care for America Now: http://www.healthcareforamericanow.org

Kirk's "Flying the American Flag" topic on WMAY this morning.

2009-07-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

I wish I was able to call in and talk about flying the American Flag. I'm a veteran.

I flew the American flag back when I had a house. I got my house through Veteran's benefits back in 1994. I was at the height of my career producing graphics and video for a cable advertising company. Then in June of 2001 I was laid off. The company was changing hands and they didn't need me anymore.

I found work at Lowes, but it didn't pay enough for me to be able to keep the house. I finally had to sell my house, move back to Springfield, Illinois and move in with my mother in 2003.

Ever since, I've never been able to trust any of my employers, and I've never been able to get a job that pays a living wage in this country.

If I ever land a job that pays enough for me to afford a house, I'll never fly the American Flag again.

Pay attention

2009-06-09T01:07:00.000-07:00

Watch this video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7886780711843120756

Women's health care is under attack in Illinois!

2009-05-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

On Monday, May 18, 2009, Illinois State Rep. David Reis introduced HR 417 which calls for the elimination of all state funding for Planned Parenthood of Illinois in order to help the State balance the budget.

This would mean that at minimum over 2,000 women would lose access to their annual exam and birth control supply. They wouldn't get Pap tests or breast exams. That means no early detection of cervical or breast cancer for these women!

These women will be at increased risk of unintended pregnancy - putting their health and futures in danger.

That's right! Rep. Reis wants to balance the budget on the backs of Illinois women!

An extreme anti-choice and anti-family planning member of the Illinois House, Rep. Reis says in his resolution that government "should focus on providing financial assistance for basic, vital healthcare needs to those who need it most . . ."

Pap tests and breast exams aren't "basic, vital healthcare"?

What is he thinking!?!

Stop this attack on women's health care today! Send an email to your state representative telling them to vote NO! on HR 417. Tell them that you support funding Planned Parenthood and the basic women's health care they provide.

Reposted from http://www.plannedparenthood.org

Republicans walking into a really big one this time!

2009-05-19T05:44:00.000-07:00

Republicans and the conservative talk-show sewing circle are all gabbing about Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi not speaking up about a CIA briefing that occurred in 2002 regarding torture.

In 2002 the Republicans had a 52.6% majority in the House of Representatives. Dennis Hastert was the Speaker of the House, Republicans chaired all the committees back then, so what does Nancy Pelosi have to do with any intelligence briefing that happened back then?

Nothing at all, but nobody is saying this little nugget of truth, because the Democrats are just standing by silently chuckling and smiling behind poker faces, watching the Republicans and talking heads waltz deafly and blindly on the railroad tracks of the Stupid Express.

The Serfs and Vassals Rage On and On. No Master To Hear Them. No Reward

2009-04-29T19:19:00.000-07:00

They dig into the smoldering ashes of their resources and scrape for fragments of legitimacy. Their lords have long since raised the castle gates and retired or sailed away to lands unreachable with their profits.

Yet the peasants remain loyal to the bitter end when the gnawing hunger in their bellies gives way to spinning grayness and then endless dark, never having been reciprocated for all the fawning and flattering hurled upon their Feudal lords.

The villages all plundered by the knights while the awe-struck sycophants stood aside, hoping with futility to be graciously invited into knighthood. The knights themselves slowly starve on the pittance awarded by their masters in the East.

Why would anyone want to be a Republican?

Shoe is now on the other foot. Waaa! F'n Waaa!

2009-04-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

The 2007 Federal Fiscal Budget meeting that aired on C-SPAN (3/29/06) provided a clear example of demonstrating the immediacy behaviors of committee members who were either actively listening; trying to listen but unconsciously distracted (using adapters); or clearly demonstrating contempt for a speaker by displaying signals of disinterest by overly dramatic use of adaptors (fidgeting, picking lint, swiveling their chairs from side to side, looking at the ceiling or other papers.

The 2007 Federal Budget meeting was dominated by Republicans by a 3 to 1 margin. Nearly all proposals from Democrats were voted against by Republican members with exception to amendments containing nothing more than a “Sense of the Congress.”

The Republican Party’s dominance by sheer numbers at the committee meeting created a situation of futility for the Democrats. The sense of absolute power in the room was demonstrated particularly by junior Republican congressmen who, while a Democrat was speaking, would lean back in their chairs, attend to lint on their sleeves, begin rocking from side to side, pick up a piece of paper and look at it, tap their pencils, look at the ceiling, lower their eyebrows and curl the corners of their mouths back in expressions that covey the message “here we go again.”

These behaviors are sometimes triggered by loud and/or condescending tones of voice, eyebrows lowered and wrinkled, arms akimbo, finger pointing, hand wringing, and salient rhetoric.

Now the shoe is on the other foot, and still, Democrats are trying to reach across the isle, and still, they draw back stumps.

Who is better? What could Republicans possibly expect from Democrats.

What does history teach you?

2009-03-22T09:28:00.000-07:00

All through elementary and high school, whenever I was taught about history, I always had to remember who did what and when. Do they still teach that? Is history and social studies all about remembering names of people, events, and the dates they occurred?

When you learn about Abraham Lincoln, are you taught about what he did? Does it make any difference in your life to learn about only the end results of historical facts? Not one stinking bit!

Do you know all of the books Abraham Lincoln read when he was growing up? Do you know anything about the education and upbringing of our country's founding fathers?

It is the framework of successful minds that must be learned, not the historical achievements of successful minds. Perhaps the reason is simply that all those people who did great things did so because they were rich enough already to have more free time on their hands than the rest of our ancestors who worked in factories.

Leahy’s Truth Commission

2009-03-04T18:47:00.000-08:00

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy has convened his Truth Commission. While President Obama publicly stated he wanted to look forward, behind the scenes his staff released dozens of executive memos from the Bush Administration that literally suggested ways to undermine the constitutional rights of American Citizens and the human rights of countless victims around the world.

The notion that the past is behind us is an idea to which very few people subscribe, but they who do are usually not the victims, but associates of the perpetrators. The perpetrators have the luxury of hiding their crimes beneath a blanket of national identity, obscured by the vast bureaucracy of our government.

When the Truth Commission exposes the constitutional violations and identifies those responsible for the pain and suffering of countless victims around the world and here at home, the rest of us will be able to walk in broad daylight knowing we won’t be the victims of retribution.

So, if you have a problem with Senator Leahy’s Truth Commission, please keep a maximum safe distance from the rest of us. Thank you.

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200903/030409a.html

Rush Limbaugh at CPAC

2009-02-28T14:46:00.000-08:00

I watched CNN and saw Rush Limbaugh speak at the CPAC
(Conservative Political Action Conference)

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't hear any mention of the words "labor," "worker" or "employee."

That explains why he talked about how New York has only forty thousand of it's richest citizens paying taxes on sixty percent of the city's budget, for a population of eight million.

The focus of Rush Limbaugh's speech was entirely on the top tier. The business owners.

I learned what one of the core values of conservatism is:

He DID mention "good old entrepreneurial hard work."

Everybody needs to be an entrepreneur! Schools need to teach the values of entrepreneurship! You need to be totally responsible for yourself and not depend on anyone else, that would be welfare.

Workers are a sunk cost. Businesses don't want to pay wages, payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, or health insurance, they don't want workers. Well, they still want workers, they just don't want to pay them anything.

It looks like Laborers are not an interest of the Republicans or Conservatives. This is why they lost.

Hey business owners.

2009-02-05T20:53:00.000-08:00

Having a hard time in today's economy?

Are you going out of business?

Not getting nearly as many customers as before?

Baffled by the sudden surge in the number of foreclosures and bankruptcies?

Wondering why people just don't seem to have the money to spend on your products anymore?

What happened to their money?

I'll let you in on a little secret. Nobody is mentioning this fact anywhere on the news media, and no politician will dare touch this topic. So far I have not heard President Obama mention this either, so I'm going to go out on a limb and break it to you as gently as possible.

Customers are also employees.

Yes, their money doesn't magically appear, they have to be paid by people like you.

Since people like you are not paying them, they can't buy your products.

So, what are you going to do about it? Cut costs?

Dell Computers moved a plant to Eastern Europe for cheaper labor, would any of their employees there be able to afford a Dell PC?

How long before nobody can afford them and decide to finally build their own PC by going to http://www.newegg.com

So ask your fellow entrepreneurs to start paying better wages so all of you can stay in business.

Geeeezzz! WTF!

The greatest disincentive

2009-01-18T13:46:00.000-08:00

The most salient symptom of our current economic strife is the housing crisis. The situation is blamed on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and sub-prime borrowers who suddenly were sapped with gas prices that triggered a cascade of overdue bills leading to foreclosure and bankruptcy.

The last seventy or so years led “free market” operators to hypothesize that consumers eventually forget the relative value of money. One could look at the saw-blade patterned increase in gasoline prices and compare that to short-term consumer trends, ten cents up, two cents down, twenty cents up, four cents down, three dollars up, seventy five cents down.

When the gas prices approached four dollars a gallon people appeared to permanently alter their spending habits. This may be happening, not because people stopped forgetting about the economic situation from months earlier, but because they no longer need to remember it. The Internet does that for all of us.

Another theory is not that everyone suddenly changed their consumption habits based on a single major event, but an accumulation of individuals experiencing temporary negative events, changed their behaviors enough to cause our economy to reach a tipping point.

The continuing cycle of unemployment and reemployment has kept the unemployment rate below double-digits, but that number only represents people still on the unemployment roles. It doesn’t represent the number of people that fell off the roles because their unemployment benefits have run out.

The unemployment rate also does not represent the number of people who struggled through unemployment and then found a job, then cut up their credit cards and vowed never again to use credit. I am one of those people.

It’s not that the unemployment rate has increased to the degree that negatively affects the economy; it’s that the total number of people who have temporarily experienced unemployment within a generation is larger than ever in history.

To my knowledge this kind of creeping influence has been ignored. It permanently changes consumer behavior. The so-called “free market” luxuriously inhaled and exhaled employees in a vast worker surplus, all the while failing to make the connection between employees and consumers.

95% guaranteed cynicism.

2009-01-10T16:46:00.000-08:00

How the ninety five percent guarantee works. You're being sold something that is 95% guaranteed to work.

You are 95% guaranteed to not know that what you are being sold doesn't work at all.

There is a five percent chance that you will find one other person for whom the product also did not work. There is a ninety five percent chance that you will not find every other person who purchased the product and for whom the product also never worked.

So, when someone guarantees anything to work ninety five percent of the time, expect it not to work, and don't expect to find anyone for whom it did.

The thrill is gone - so is the money.

2009-01-08T05:45:00.000-08:00

Well folks it looks like anybody whose spendin' money has done spennit, and anybody whose makin' money has done kep' it. Nobody's spendin' money 'cept on food-n-such.

Food banks have bare shelves, expensive items at the grocery store are rotting, but spaghetti and mac-n-cheese are flying off the shelves.

The money is gone. What are you going to do now? The business owners are going to cut their losses. The wholesalers are going to cut their losses, the manufacturers are going to have to cut their losses, the smelters are going to have to cut their losses, and the raw material miners and producers are going to have to cut their losses too.

What's to become of the land owners where the raw materials are located? They can take a vacation for the next five generations if they want.

There won't be anything left but the government that will have to force the people who have hoarded all the money over the generations to give it up and start the cycle all over again by giving out all the money to the masses.

The problem is that the same people who made all the money last time have left their businesses to their children who really didn't care or learn much about how to run daddy's business.

Now they are going to stomp their feet and have tantrums about taxes because they don't have the smarts to earn back the money they will be forced to give to the government.

The next generation of entrepreneurs is on the way in.

Congress hoodwinked by Treasury

2008-12-19T08:48:00.000-08:00

Once again this proves that the people we elect to office are capable of no more than just getting themselves elected. The public needs to get educated before they vote.

Intelligent Realty

2008-12-03T06:34:00.000-08:00

There once was a television program that featured a real estate agent showing a house to people on hidden camera. The act was to demonstrate how best to prepare one's own house for sale, but something else was demonstrated at the same time. Something which those of you studying Marketing or Behavioral Economics may want to heed.

There were two types of people who inspected the house for sale.

People who focused upon and liked or disliked the following:
1. The size and shape of the rooms.
2. The decorating, furniture, paint color, carpeting or wallpaper.

The characteristic of things that cannot be changed, and the characteristics of things that can or will easily be changed.

When people were complaining about the decor, the agent continued to show the house.

Since the decor can easily be changed, either the potential buyer is trying to hint to the agent that they already decided against the house, or the potential buyer doesn't know themselves that they already decided against the house.

Or the potential buyer is merely stalking into the lives of seller just to play the role of interloper, and is wasting the agent's time

I can't believe the potential buyer sincerely expects the decor to remain the same after the seller has moved out, or worse, they believe that the decor cannot be changed.

People who focus on room size and utilities, and ignore the decor are clearly still optimistic and especially realistic about the property.

This appeared to demonstrate that people have a variable perception or belief about how much they themselves can change their own environment, or how much control they believe they have in their day to day lives.

Using this tiny example, can you measure how much you believe you control your environment? What other examples are there?

War on Drugs

2008-11-29T14:52:00.000-08:00

Last Monday on C-SPAN, The Brookings Institute held a discussion panel on U.S. and Latin America Relations. On stage was the Former President of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo 1994-2000, who commented that America should continue the war on drugs.

It occurred to me that the actions of a bureaucracy are primarily for the sake of the bureaucracy's existence alone, which explains why there doesn't appear to be progress in the war on drugs, the war on terror, or the war on poverty.

Media controllers are getting more aggressive.

2008-11-13T07:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday after hearing that C-SPAN2 was moved off the basic cable line-up (furthering the vacuum of important government information for the public) I picked up my remote control and selected the option to automatically program my TV channels.

The TV cycles through the channels looking for a clean signal, then programs the channel into its memory. I noticed that Channel 15 for C-SPAN1 was one of the channels that was not programmed. The channel still exists, but my TV's programming option did not recognize it.

So both channels 14 and 15 disappear from the lineup. I have to go back and manually add channel 15 to my TV's memory. This is happening, coincidentally, during the senate hearings about the failing banking and finance industry.

I can easily make a conspiracy out of this issue linking corporate mentality to the suppression of public affairs information that every voter should see. They have been going after PBS for years because of Bill Moyers and programs like Frontline.

So double-check your TV's cable channels to make sure you are not missing the important channels upon which you need to make your next election decisions, and please bookmark http://www.cspan.org so you at least have internet access to unbiased coverage of government information.

Big Oil and Corn Growers

2008-11-12T22:26:00.000-08:00

I noticed a pattern. When the crops were being planted last spring and farmers needed to buy fuel and seed, gas prices were outrageously high. Now that farmers have the harvest in, prices have plummeted.

The price of gas and now the price of corn has dropped. A double whammy on farmers because they had to pay more for their fuel, and now they are getting paid less for their corn.

Is it typical for oil prices to consistently gouge agriculture like this?

What is news?

2008-11-10T20:56:00.000-08:00

What We Call the News | Funny Jokes at JibJab

LinkTV

2008-11-10T09:16:00.000-08:00

Searching through YouTube after the election I found a video produced by LinkTV.org that summed up how various media organizations around the world reported Barack Obama's election.

LinkTV's slogan is "TV Without Borders." I think it's worth a look so here's the link.

http://www.linktv.org

I added it permanently to the International Perspectives section of SageofSpringfield.com

Something is wrong

2008-11-05T07:32:00.000-08:00

Sangamon County voted 51% in favor of Barack Obama and 47% in favor of John McCain.

The actual vote count:
Obama: 51,176
McCain: 46,857
Nader: 662
Barr: 382

If Nader and Barr were not in the picture and McCain got all of those votes, McCain would still be down 3,275 votes in Sangamon County.

So why did Republicans dominate most of the local elections?

This does not smell right. 72 percent of Sangamon county population turned out to vote.

Since House and Senate districts extend beyond Sangamon County, we can easily conclude that the views expressed by Aaron Schock and John Shimkus don't necessarily reflect the opinions of the majority of us in Sangamon County. Phil Hare was totally unapposed, but Illinois congressional district 17 looks like a Reindeer doing a back-flip.

Just Imagine

2008-10-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

Just imagine what it would be like now if George W. Bush and the Republicans were allowed to privatize Social Security and Medicare.

Think about that when you go vote! What kind of economic disaster would it be if Social Security and Medicare recipients stopped getting their checks?

Electronic Voting FAIL!

2008-10-30T05:30:00.001-07:00

American News Project update

2008-10-23T06:52:00.000-07:00

I just posted a new video at sageofspringfield.com from American News Project, of an interview with Dan Rather and Jim Lehrer that.

The piece titled "The Gospel according to Lehrer and Rather" by Davin Hutchins confirms my suspicions about the news media.

Senator Durbin Under Attack

2008-10-18T05:04:00.000-07:00

The Far Right continues to suffer a seemingly endless series of back-firing attacks on Democrats. They tried to go after Barak Obama in ways that only stirred up John McCain's links to the Keating Five scandal, the Iran-Contra scandal, and others.

Now the NeoCons are trying to go after Senator Durbin for saying the words in this video which completely edited out the topic of his speech:

In a letter to the editor that was allowed to be published by the Illinois State Journal Register, a reader repeated the false assertion that Senator Durbin's statement was a general description about all the troops, instead of the few responsible for the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"Won’t forget Durbin comment about troops
I will never vote for a U.S. senator who compares our troops to the soldiers of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the Pol Pot regime.
Sen. Dick Durbin hopes that we will forget that he made these comparisons on the floor of the Senate, but we won’t. I personally remind people every chance that I get.

Please join me in voting against this man in November. He is not worthy of the position he currently holds. We need to fire him and replace him with a responsible person who respects our troops.

Don Day
Chatham"

--letter to the Editor. Illinois State Journal Register, October 17, 2008

Letters to the Editor are typical fodder for AM talk-radio personalities that exploit the suffering of listeners by making false villains and falsely blaming certain politicians for the favors of their opponents.

Letters like the one above will most likely be repeated by someone on the radio, then repeated by other conservative main-stream media outlets as alleged truth.

But this doesn't work anymore. It won't work against Senator Durbin, because we cannot forget what he was talking about.

Senator Durbin was talking about the few individuals responsible for Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse.

The Cost of Health Care

2008-10-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

Listening to all of the candidates and all of the pundits I keep hearing the same message regarding insurance and health care. They say they will find a way for us to afford health care, or they will find a way for us to get insurance for health care.

Nobody is asking the questions: "Why is health care so expensive?" or "Why should we need insurance to pay for health care?"

If you're going to want health care in the U.S. why get insurance? Why not just get a loan and buy an extra house or plot of land to invest in for the sole purpose of selling it if you need to pay medical bills?

What? They won't let you do that? Do they make you throw your money down a bottomless pit each month, forcing you to gamble on a chance that you will get sick? There's a fifty-fifty chance that you won't be covered anyway.

The real candidates for public office will have to guts to say "We are going after the Medical Industrial Complex." Everyone else is bogus.

We need congressional hearings about medical costs and those costs need to be justified. Everyone seems to be too terrified to confront this issue, or they are in the pockets of the big drug companies. Health care is not supposed to be part of capitalism.

There is a parallel between politics and medicine. In politics, the public elects candidates who are good at getting themselves elected, but consistently fail at doing the job for which they were elected. In medicine. The money and prestige appears to be the primary motivation behind the pursuit of such careers, overriding the intrinsic benefit of scientific inquiry and maintaining a healthy community.

Hospitals and clinics are absorbed into the fold of giant corporations. Urgent care clinics have the same atmosphere as auto repair shops. Instead of posters advertising tires and shock absorbers, these clinics have posters advertising pharmaceuticals.

The term "doctor" is no longer used in most documentation anymore. Now it's "health care provider" because for liability reasons, you may not see an actual doctor until it's almost too late.

Hospitals and clinics fail when they don't have patients. When people are healthy, pharmaceutical manufacturers lose on Wall Street.

In the end, the societal models in Dietrich Dorner's book "The Logic of Failure" indicate that universal health care might result in overpopulation, perhaps of the "wrong" kind.

Banking Baloon Smoke and Mirror Swindle

2008-10-06T10:23:00.001-07:00

The banking crisis arose from the extraction of uncontrolled bonuses, salaries, employee stock options, and expenditures on lobbying the government.

Now bankers want taxpayers to replace in the bank, money that was pocketed by these swindling financial market executives.

Meanwhile, President Bush said that it will be a while before the billions of dollars are doled out, and Wall Street is shuddering from withdrawal pains.

The whole Wall Street bailout is nothing but a gigantic swindle.

American News Project

2008-10-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

American News Project posted several reports about the banking crisis that supports some of what I wrote previously.

• Senator Byron Dorgan's uncanny ability to predict the future.
http://newsproject.org/node/135

• An economist eludes to the banking elites getting all of the gains from the bailout.
http://newsproject.org/node/136

• The actual faces of the Wall Street elites.
http://newsproject.org/node/122

• The end of free-market capitalism and the consequence of Ronald Reagan's philosophy that government is the problem. They finally get it.
http://newsproject.org/node/130

What do they mean by the Banking Industry?

2008-10-01T07:14:00.001-07:00

The media continue to make the generalization "banking industry" when in fact they are referring only to a few Wall Street giants. There are other banks, hundreds of other banks in the shadows of the those giant firms, waiting for the fall of the skyscraping ivory towers made out of rickety unstable timbers called "credit."

Credit is a crutch. After the last depression people bought only what they needed, and then only when they saved up enough money to make the purchase outright.

Credit allowed people to buy things immediately instead of saving up enough to make the purchase later. If you had to actually sit down and figure out how long it would take you to buy a car outright by saving up part of your wages, you and everyone else would be outraged.

Try it out. Get a calculator and go through your credit card statement and figure out how long it would take you to actually make those purchases outright by saving up the hard earned cash.

Money is flowing out of your town faster than everyone in your town can earn it. The money is almost gone.

Interest payments to Citibank and other Wall Street firms, the purchase of products not made in your own state, gasoline, fast-food franchises in your state paying for their supplies to companies in another state and dividends to their investors who live elsewhere, and lease payments made by shopping mall stores to the property owners in Australia or Saudi Arabia.

It was reported on National Public Radio (NPR) that Walmart is starting the Christmas shopping season very early this year because more shoppers at Walmart are living paycheck to paycheck.

So the biggest hole in this sinking ship is credit. I was lucky to get out of it in 2001. Taking the time to make a budget and save up to buy things instead of using credit takes getting used to but it is well worth it.

Bob Woodward has been compromised.

2008-09-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

Journalism as a whole has been compromised by a need for easy interviews with state officials who dispense information for their own benefit.

Money is Debt

2008-09-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

Demand that the Bailout Legislation Be Rejected

2008-09-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

We are witnessing a bankers' coup d’etat. In the name of saving the economy from a crisis created by their own greed and immense profits, the biggest bankers have taken a country and a people hostage.

“Give us your money and tear up what’s left of your Constitution or we will sink your economy,” is the message from Wall Street and the Bush Administration. “Give us the power and money we demand or you will be left jobless from a new economic depression."

Under the pretext of the banking crisis, the Bush Administration is changing the way this country operates. This is not simply taking trillions of dollars from the people and giving it to the richest bankers to do with as they see fit.

VoteNoBailout.org

Some Vets

2008-09-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

Obama's "change" doesn't include advisers.

2008-08-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

The same people are crawling out of the woodwork in Washington. Old staff members from the Clinton Administration are showing up as advisers to Barak Obama. Those people who partially contributed to the last "change" which was to a Republican Administration.

This is how you can tell we've all been hoodwinked again. Proof that we really do live under the rule of a plutocracy. A party leadership with short-reaching concern.

I'd like to think of myself as a Democrat, but when a new Democrat candidate promises change, then surrounds himself with members of an old Think Tank like the National Democratic Institute (A refrigerator for Democrat Washington insiders like Susan Rice, Anthony Lake, Gayle Smith, Gary Hart, Madeline Albright and Greg Craig ) I can reach no other conclusion than he's nothing but a marionette

We are being fooled again, or at least they are trying to fool us. We must put a stop to this.

C-SPAN Cherry-picks callers. No Surprise?

2008-08-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

Well of course you might expect a radio or television station to pick and choose which calls should go on the air. Simple enough. But I was watching as the Republican Vice President was revealed today, and I absolutely needed to call C-SPAN and covey my congratulations to the Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin for being picked for the VP spot.

I wanted to not only convey my congratulations for her, but also for Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska for "winning" (yes, quote-unquote winning) back his senate seat from six contenders, even after being indicted for corruption.

My call to C-SPAN never made it through. They never even got my call. Their phone banks were totally full. I don't believe it of course, they should be prepared for receiving massive quantities of phone calls, but I suspect they already have their callers selected, because they often get the same caller too many times and must remind them to "wait thirty days" before calling again.

I thought they were one of the few remaining legitimate television networks, but even they control absolutely everything about their programs, including who calls to make legitimate statements, or the actors who call in to make insane statements that make them appear to be receiving calls from "everyone."

The "No Experience" Argument

2008-08-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

Barak Obama doesn't have enough experience. Experience doing what? Ripping off America? Okay, (sigh) you'd rather have someone with experience ripping off America. C'mon people, smarten up.

The Fascists Have Won

2008-08-26T05:45:00.000-07:00

Auto Dealership Frauds and Scams

2008-08-20T06:58:00.000-07:00

One of the latest videos at American News Project featured an interview with the person running a website called StopAutoFraud.com

Since desperate times are creating desperate measures in the marketplace, I think it would be wise to check it out. There are some shocking tactics that are being used by car dealers, and one of them may soon become a U.S. Congressman from Florida.

Media Crashers

2008-08-17T05:58:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered the blog MediaCrashers

http://mediacrashers.blogspot.com

A theme and attitude after my own heart.

I added their link to
http://www.sageofspringfield.com

They posted this video: Awesome!

Georgian Missile Crisis = Cuban Missile Crisis

2008-08-14T06:05:00.001-07:00

History repeats itself.

U.S. President George W. Bush is playing the role of Nikita Khrushchev
Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili is playing the role of Fidel Castro
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is playing the role of John F. Kennedy

Watch this video. It's all there.

VOTE

2008-08-11T19:14:00.000-07:00

Is this what you want?

Political Emergency

2008-08-11T06:03:00.000-07:00

It looks like the election can't come soon enough. The only hope we have is that Congress can somehow block the Neocons from attacking Iran before the next president gets into office.

American News Project reporters are watching the activity at the American Enterprise Institute:

The Sunlight Foundation

2008-07-25T06:16:00.001-07:00

I just discovered [http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/] while watching C-SPAN this morning. Here is the main page information from the site. I highly recommend frequent visits. When I have time and if I remember, I'll add a link to my website.

Our goal through our grant-making, blogging, projects,and technical leadership, is to use the power of the Internet to shine a light on the interplay of money, lobbying, influence and government in Washington in ways never before possible.

When mass media is no longer attracting masses.

2008-07-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

Decades ago, Walter Cronkite had the eyes and ears of half the entire viewing public in the continental United States. The messages he carried reached enough of the voting public to alter the political landscape of the nation.

Now, the voting viewing audience is being segmented into ever smaller niches, usually into personal interest groups aimed at particular past-times such as riding motorcycles, skateboarding, World of WarCraft, baking, etc.

We can ignore the blogs and news posts that don't appeal to us, but they still might be important, and it's those few of us pessimists who collect and disseminate information we feel you might need.

We're the parents who say "eat your vegetables!" "Listen to public policy information, especially if it doesn't taste good!"

http://sageofspringfield.com

American News Project

2008-07-08T06:11:00.000-07:00

Another online independent news gathering and disseminating service goes after the big fish and asks the tough questions! If a news network rejects your story, bring it here, or to one of many listed at http://www.sageofspringfield.com

A reporter goes after Karl Rove:

Steven's take on News Media Behavior

2008-06-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

Steven Colbert explains the news media's behavior described in Scott McClellan's new book:

"What Happened" [http://www.amazon.com/What-Happened-Washingtons-Culture-Deception/dp/1586485563]

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=171036

The War on Science

2008-06-02T18:38:00.000-07:00

Intelligent Design appears to be an attempt to introduce a theory that softens the barrier between science and religion. But the main argument for science is that science could not classify any greater intelligence as a god. Perhaps aliens more intelligent than ourselves may exist in the universe, but we would not call them gods.

PBS thoroughly covers the attempt to introduce I.D. into a public school system.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/

Illinois Lottery Oddity

2008-05-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

I plugged into Microsoft Excel the Illinois lottery numbers from 1999 to 2006. Following is what was vetted out by Microsoft Excel as the most frequently picked of the individual numbers.

Lotto: 1, 11, 25, 31, 43, 51
Pick-3: 2, 6, 4
Pick-4: 8, 2, 9, 8
The Big Game: 1, 11, 27, 38, 47, 3, 0
Mega Millions: 1, 10, 27, 40, 52, 3

In all that time, the Pick 3 number combination appeared only three times, and the Pick 4 appeared twice. No other combination of most frequently picked individual numbers from any of the other games appeared during that entire time. Coincidence?

Food prices overseas falsely linked to Ethanol by news media

2008-05-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

In Haiti and other countries, years of importing U.S. grain at prices below the cost of growing it locally, forced local farmers out of business and the local farm land changed ownership.

Then, one day, oil prices went up, gas prices followed, and then the cost of shipping grain overseas went up.

Suddenly, there’s nobody to locally grow cheaper crops, and the land is no longer owned by farmers.

Massive propaganda is being put out by the oil companies to blame Ethanol for the cost of corn while people are mostly complaining about the cost of rice.

This is what years of donating food has done to other countries. It has forced people into a state of dependence by making it impossible for them to grow their own food, and now we are starving them.

John Oliver covers Fox News

2008-04-18T05:36:00.000-07:00

Will John Oliver's analysis of Fox News finally convince viewers?

News Reporters

2008-04-12T06:36:00.000-07:00

Bloggers are just as legitimate as "journalists."

The following is a summary of: Gans, Herbert J. The Famine in American Mass-Communication Research: Comments on Hirsch, Tuchman, and Gecas. The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 77, No. 4 (Jan., 1972), 697-705

The mass media Institutions
The mass media content
The mass media audience

1. News reporters do not have regular contact with their audience.

2. News reporters gather information based on their own value judgements.

3. News reporters need a quikly and easily applied set of methods to determine what data are to be gathered.

4. News reporters find only that which they can see and understand; that which coincides with their own beliefs.

5. News reporters work for a medium with a large heterogenous audience which they must not antagonize, offend, or confuse.

6. The same methods of gathering data continue to be used because they have traditionally withstood criticism.

Are the mass media under pressure to reflect audiences tastes in order to maintain a profitible operation? Or do the mass media simply decide the content from which the audience can choose?
A particular news medium attracts an audience who are either like-minded, or like-mided enough to tune out discordant elements through selective perception, or perhaps one uninterested and uninformed enough to leave it to the newscaster or editor to decide what is to be reported.

Most often, the news media recruit staff members whose basic values and assumptions about the world turn out to be fairly similar to the audience's, or an important part of it--which is why newsmen can so freely assume that the audience will agree with their judgments about what events are newsworthy.

Many media tend to reflect the values, or at least the wishes of their most conservative audience members who quickly protest when content becomes to controversial for them, although other media, particularly those which seek to attract younger audiences have recently begun to express the more controversial norms held my many young people.

The Real News

2008-04-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

There's a site called "TheRealNews.com" that is a totally donor and contributor supported internet news organization. I thought it would revolutionize journalism, but it appears that my internet service provider has put the brakes on it by blocking it from me.

If you can reach http://therealnewsjunkies.ning.com/
But you can't reach http://www.therealnews.com

then your service provider has censored it from you. You need to visit http://therealnewsjunkies.ning.com/ and notify them that your internet access is being censored.

John McCain Getting a Free Ride by the media?

2008-04-02T06:54:00.000-07:00

There's a group claiming that John McCain is getting a free ride by the mass media pundits who are trying to make drama out of Obama and Clinton.

It's called McCainsFreeRide.com

The Media on Barak Obama

2008-03-23T07:34:00.000-07:00

Tim Russert and guests on NBC's Meet The Press were discussing the possibility that Barak Obama might be stuck talking about race, as if they themselves and the rest of the news media were not responsible for forcing him to do so.

This is called the "invisible stir-stick" effect. The news media creates the controversies they discuss on Sunday morning news programs, by distorting the context of the information they gather.

Think about the story of the story. A short look at MediaMatters.org will be highly educational.

WikiLeaks: the Internet's Canary for the Coal Mine

2008-03-01T05:06:00.000-08:00

We will keep the Internet Honest. Our website has linked to www.wikileaks.org which was ordered blocked by U.S. courts because documents about banking in the Cayman Islands were leaked at that site.

Because WikiLeaks was temporarily shut down by U.S. courts via injunction, then reversed, this creates the currently most sensitive measure of how much freedom the Internet has.

Periodically check the WikiLeaks site. If you get a server error, that means the Internet may no longer be free, and free speech has been directly threatened. Respond with extreme prejudice.

Searching the Internet

2008-02-24T06:13:00.000-08:00

When you search the Internet these days, one usually uses information that is only a few days old, and information that comes only from main-stream sources under corporate control, such as television, radio, newspapers.

You no longer hear about ideas other than "democracy" and the idea of "democracy" has long been severely distorted from it's origins. One should search for ideas that have been removed from today's zeitgeist.

All ideas are a threat to the status-quo. Even some words have been removed from the dialogue of most broadcast and print media, such as "radical."

Search terms need to come from alternative sources besides the mainstream media. The corporate masters have discovered a treasure trove of alternative thinking still in existence, and here in Springfield, Illinois, they tried to stamp it out.

Two Springfield Public Library branches were saved by a thread last week. The public libarary is full of dangerous ideas, and those who currently control your lives don't want you to find the truth.

The truly threatening ideas lurk within the rows of dusty books with uncracked bindings. When you go to the library. Look for books that are old, yet are not threadbare and have very few check-out stamps.

Writers on Strike

2007-11-29T17:22:00.000-08:00

The Real News (TheRealNews.com) coverage of writers on strike to get a fair share of New Media.

Plumbing as a metaphor

2007-11-17T06:34:00.000-08:00

Not so recently there have been technological developments for toilets that reduces water usage.

Some people have even suggested reducing the volume of water in the toilet tank by displacing it with bricks or other sealed containers of water. Less water is used when the toilet is flushed.

It seems like a great idea, doesn't it? You use less water and lower your water bills (if you are connected to an urban utility company as a water source). In Rural areas, you might reduce wear on the water pump.

Unfortunately, the rest of the sewer system was engineered based on the physical behavior of an older standard volume of water. That volume was much larger, based on the physical properties of the waste being flushed.

Now, have we reduced our waste to match the equivelent reduction of water usage when we flush our toilets? What are the consequences of such a disparity?

More clogs. More expensive plumbing service calls. Service calls that are far more expensive than the cost actually saved by reducing water usage at the toilet, instead of the entire system.

*** The Metaphor ***

The plumbing as a metaphor shows us how short-sighted we are, but it also shows us how certain people or groups use our short-sightedness to their advantage.

• What other examples can you find of short-sightedness that self-defeats a good idea?

Teachers!

2007-10-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

Teachers!

That's Beside The Point!

2007-10-20T11:28:00.000-07:00

How often do you find yourself at least thinking about saying that to someone? Take the poll at the bottom of the blog and let's talk about it.

Wikipedia has almost unlimited descriptions of various types of arguments. Just go to wikipedia.com and search for "argumentum." I wanted to find the reason why some people are compelled to argue with me by using something that has either little or nothing to do with what I’m saying, or actually proves my point.

They tend to use “Yes, but” quite frequently and it annoys me. I want to be able to stop them and show them the error, but I pause for a moment and wonder what they are really trying to achieve.

Reductio Ad Absurdum [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum] states basically that “one assumes a claim for the sake of argument, derives an absurd or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original assumption must have been wrong as it led to an absurd result.

This appears to be close, but not quite there yet. In my situation, the person seems to grasp at notions related to the topic, and then through sheer vocal inflections, phrases it in opposition to the statement I just made.

I’ve heard this person in a conversation with someone else and it’s like they were on two different channels, talking past each other while trying to resolve the same issue. They both seemed to perceive that their own points were being understood.

Resolving the situation was really not the point of the conversation. The emotional dividend of acknowledgement, validation, and acceptance is usually the main course of any casual conversation regardless of its purpose.

Unfortunately, some people regard an educational conversation that contains valuable information needed for future reference, as an opportunity to try and make them selves feel validated, and they fail to retain the information, but instead, retain the emotional context of the moment.

They’ve made themselves feel better by arguing with you, even though they never successfully proved you wrong. The best thing to do in these situations is to simply go quietly into the night and leave them on their own path.

No junk allowed on AtomFilms.com

2007-10-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

I started an account and then uploaded a short Flash animation that was just something stupid that introduced a character I created called "Crabby Appleton."

It wouldn't go on the Internet right away because, (say with a sneer) they have to approve it first!

Well it was rejected. Not because it had anything offensive, they just said in an email to me that it doesn't serve their purposes. So obviously, they want something for their gain more than ours.

This is called "Gatekeeping" and it's reserved for the mass media, not the Internet. So Atom Films is too self-absorbed to allow novice animators to share their efforts. Besides, they put commercials in front of all of their videos and animations.

Atom Films

2007-10-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

Do you create Macromedia Flash animations and convert them to heavy mpeg or wmv file sizes for uploading to YouTube?

Atomfilms.com actually allows you register a free membership and upload swf files directly.

New news source added

2007-09-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

In our "Looking Askance" section, I added http://www.coanews.org/ which I recently discoverd at the tail end of a YouTube video about Internet Neutrality.

If you're reading this, then you should be confident enough to make up your own mind as to the credibility of the individual stories submitted to coanews.org. There were some submissions that didn't have sources, a date or even a by-line, but you can register and submit your own articles, so it's at least a potential outlet for yourself, and perhaps a somewhat different audience.

New Fables for the Twenty First Century

2007-09-20T05:12:00.000-07:00

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Give a man a fishing pole and teach him how to fish, feed him for a lifetime.

If he sells the fishing pole so he can eat for a week, too bad.

They know how we feel, now what?

2007-08-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

I'm talking about Bill Moyers, David Brancaccio, Lou Dobbs and all of those they parade before the camera to tell us how horrible our lives are and how much they feel sorry for us.

Until now it has given me a warm satisfying feeling knowing that others feel the way I do, but when it's repeated often enough, a phenomenon of Operant Conditioning occurs called "Extinction." The warm fuzzy feeling wears off because the situation does not improve as a result of being repeatedly exposed to the same stimuli.

The veneer has warn away from these social empathy programs because their messages have been ignored by our lawmakers. They appear to have served no other purpose but devices of attraction for the weak and the weary like myself, to finally at the end of the programs, discover their sponsors, and nothing more.

This is the extent of socially responsible public affairs television. Don't be fooled by public affairs programs, especially C-SPAN's Washington Journal, because it only caters to one's need to not feel alone in the world, and absolutely nothing more.

The one thing all of these programs have in common is that they provide no solutions, and they no longer embarrass our leaders into making good on their election campaign promises.

From now on I'll stick with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, and then switch to Adult Swim on Cartoon Network.

Avoid a Web of misinformation.

2007-08-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

Before you take the advice of any mainstream syndicated columnist, take a look at the publisher, then take a look at who owns the publisher.

The Columbia Journalism Review has a database of media ownership at its website.
http://www.cjr.org/resources/

You can google "Who owns CNN?" or "Who Owns ____." Then go to the link above and look at what else is owned by the parent company.