15 things everyone would know if there were a liberal media

[Veilex]

1. Where the jobs went.

Outsourcing (or offshoring) is a bigger contributor to unemployment in the U.S. than laziness.

Since 2000, U.S. multinationals have cut 2.9 million jobs here while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg as multinational corporations account for only about 20% of the labor force.

When was the last time you saw a front-page headline about outsourcing?

2. Upward wealth redistribution and/or inequality.

In 2010, 20% of the people held approximately 88% of the net worth in the U.S. The top 1% alone held 35% of all net worth.

The bottom 80% of people held only 12% of net worth in 2010. In 1983, the bottom 80% held 18% of net worth.

These statistics are not Democrat or Republican. They are widely available to reporters. Why aren't they discussed in the "liberal" media?

3. ALEC.

If there was a corporate organization that drafted laws and then passed them on to legislators to implement, wouldn't you think the "liberal" media would report on them?

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is such an organization. Need legislation drafted? No need to go through a lobbyist to reach state legislatures anymore. Just contact ALEC. Among other things, ALEC is responsible for:
Stand Your Ground laws
Voter ID laws
Right to Work laws
Privatizing schools
Health savings account bills which benefit health care companies
Tobacco industry legislation

Many legislators don’t even change the proposals handed to them by this group of corporations. They simply take the corporate bills and bring them to the legislative floor.

This is the primary reason for so much similar bad legislation in different states.

Hello ... "liberal media" ... over here!!!

They're meeting in Chicago this weekend. Maybe the "liberal media" will send some reporters.

*snip*

More at the link:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/07/1229087/-15-things-everyone-would-know-if-there-were-a-liberal-media?detail=facebook_sf

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. The difference between the liberal media and Santa Clause is...

nothing.

[maddiemom]

25. WTF? Explain.

[stopwastingmymoney]

30. Both are imaginary nt

[Ron Obvious]

2. +1

From the article:

6. U.S. health care costs are the highest in the world.

The expenditure per person in the U.S. is $8,233. Norway is second with $5,388.
Total amount of GDP spent on health care is also the highest of any country in the world at 17.6 percent. The next closest country is the Netherlands at 12%.

The Netherlands went to an all private (mandatory) insurance model for healthcare a few years ago, and their healthcare costs have risen faster than surrounding countries because of it, although they're still a lot lower than we can only dream of here owing to regulations.

Privatisation and deregulation just don't work in certain parts of the economy such as healthcare and education, because they just don't fit the market model. I don't know how many times we have to learn that lesson.

[Utopian Leftist]

29. Very good point.

Part of the reason why we are being forced to re-learn this lesson is that the lowest common denominator is not capable of understanding such a complex issue, especially when so much propaganda exists from the other side, which sounds utterly threatening to them. The "right" in this country has an amazing CON ability to disguise their horseshit as sanity. And the citizens here honestly do lack the attention span of gnats when it comes to politics. They think that if they vote, then they shouldn't have to be bothered to think about politics any other time. ARGH! (And wouldn't it be nice for all of us, if we weren't forced to become experts in economics, ourselves?)

[GoneFishin]

42. They are free to make up any CON that works because they are not constrained by the truth

or facts. That's their key to success. Facts and truth are so tricky and complicated, and rarely fit neatly on a bumper sticker.

[guillaumeb]

3. I would add one thing to the list

The massive waste in war spending is never discussed, nor is the actual, amount of war spending revealed.
The link below is an eye opener for most people:
https://www.warresisters.org/militaryspending

Much war spending is hidden in other areas. Money spent on the VA, the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, and much NASA money is actually war spending.

Plus the military is the largest consumer of petroleum products:
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-02-26/us-military-oil-consumption

and also:
http://www.dailyenergyreport.com/how-much-energy-does-the-u-s-military-consume-an-update/

[spooky3]

8. +1 This is a HUGE part of the budget

[JonLP24]

9. I was over there in 2006-2007

I was far from the only one that noticed that massive amounts of oil being used. All bases, even in the Disneyland of military bases Arif Jan, power most of their lights & and a lot of other things with generators not to mention the miles we drove. I did long haul supply convoys, we used up A LOT of gas also though this was more of Humvee thing (we occasionally had to stop so the gun trucks can refill) also made sure to have gas cans filled up. Like I said, I wasn't the only one to notice all the gas being used.

Regarding defense spending though the massive bribe industry regarding contractor contracts was just so massive. Some Majors & a Colonel got their hands dirty a lot of it happened in the base--Arif Jan while I was there but I had no idea that was going on at-the-time. A Major talked his wife into moving to Kuwait because of how much more money she'd make than she would as a school teacher stateside. Soon enough people delivered "suitcases full of cash" at her hotel room though unlike Private Contractors they don't have a criminal justice system within their organization or a pesky independent CID.

The thing that bothers me the most regarding defense spending is the money being saved rather than the wasteful corruption though the money saved is argurably far more corrupt. Certainly violates every US law labor but there is so much distancing themselves from accountability & responsibility & since our Gulf allies already build their economies with imported migrant labor -- there were Saudi contractors being subcontracted under subcontractor of Halliburton.

http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=6348

The only time I ever saw a TCN on the corporate media was when Obama was being served food. It is one thing to do this, another to not acknowledge them or thank them when the military hands out medals over accomplishments & they did most of the work. Built the bases, they were often at the gas pumps as well not to mention they were more of them in our 25-30 truck convoys driving fiberglass Mercedes Benz semis for $300 a month.

[guillaumeb]

11. The son of a friend of mine was making over $150,000 yearly as a truck driver.

I am thinking that you made a tiny bit less in your assignment. Plus the fact that so many personnel in that area were contractors making far more than uniformed personnel is rarely mentioned. And the sheer numbers of contractor personnel is never mentioned when discussing bodies in country.

All part of the deception necessary when making the point that "military spending is at a bare bones level".

[JonLP24]

16. Though I made well over 10x the amount the TCN truck drivers were making

& lived at the bottom pole overall



How much the contractors make in comparison to troops was often mentioned but TCN abuse is pretty much never mentioned. I salute CorpWatch & Al-Jazeera for reporting on this long term. I heard about the difference in pay outrage even before I got there but it honestly doesn't bother me because people are imported with a lot of "bait-and-switch" & recruiting fees & the taking of passports when they arrive. I've seen someone chaptered out for shoplighting (TVs, high value electronics) from the PX saw him at a post-deploying or out-deploying or whatever it was called sometime after Navy Customs which was the first station basically holding a clipboard manning a station making more money than the Company Commander but that didn't bother me nearly as much as foreign labor being used & abused.

[guillaumeb]

17. great additional point about abuse of foreign labor

and a nice picture of the luxury accommodations.

[JonLP24]

20. I should mention

I seen the KBR trucks at various bases, can't remember the one base I'm thinking of with heavy KBR presence -- but I don't know what they did or what they delivered but I know they didn't go with us. One time I do remember a mission brief leaving southbound from CSC Scania which was almost always the only stop after Kuwait that there was KBR convoy that was hijacked & kidnapped so I don't think more than a few travel together and mostly unprotected (no gun trucks) but they do have armor but for what its worth, the armor on the M915A2 looked much safer. With the KBR trucks, it appeared they went for a more cosmetic appeal. Certainly nice trucks.

[erronis]

15. Thanks for bringing this up. The graft within the US/contractors is worse than what was "lost"

Having spent a bit of time around the DC beltway I heard many stories about get-rich schemes involving serving in Iraq.

Of course the LibertyU wet-behind-the-ears religious "administrators" that were sent into Iraq during the early years do handle finances didn't help. Nor did the seasoned military that saw many chances to supplement their retirement funds.

So much thievery, so much mendaciousness. All driven by a dimwitted plan to liberate the oil fields - a plan that shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks. So much mayhem, murder, and hatred as a result.

Thanks, Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush/Rice/etc. Live on in infamy.

[newthinking]

26. This. War spending is purpously non transparent and split. If people realized the real % we spend

they would demand it be reduced and it would also kill off arguments that we can't afford social security, etc.



https://www.warresisters.org/federalpiechart

[guillaumeb]

32. absolutely

and Democratic and GOP Presidents both lie about it.

[stage left]

4. K&R

The liberal media exists only in the minds of right wingers.

[appalachiablue]

7. +1

[Thinkingabout]

5. These issues are important to Democrats and we have to step up and vote to change

state houses from Republican to Democrat. Gerrymandering is decided by the ruling party in the state houses. As in Texas the crook Tom Delay drew the lines, put republicans in districts filled with Republican registered voters and it is amazing how the district lines are drawn. We have to get out and vote, encourage other like thinking people to go and vote. We can't complain about the angry old white men who vote for ruining this country when 36% of eligible voters turns out to vote. The angry old white men wants Democrats to stay from voting, we are allowing those angry old white men to be in charge, we can change this.

[11 Bravo]

6. If there was a "liberal" media, Iran-Contra would have ...

torpedoed the entire Reagan Presidency; and he, Poppy Bush, and a shit load of other senior administration officials would have gone to fucking prison!

[JonLP24]

13. There are so many scandals

I recommend this article not just because of the article but the many sources linked in the article -- http://pando.com/2014/10/26/the-biggest-cia-drug-money-scandal-you-never-read/

The Reagan worship is baffling when I can't think of any administration with more known corruption. Bush was pretty bad, certainly put a lot of effort in hiding stuff. Bombed Al-Jazeera twice wanted to bomb them a third (no lie, a whistle-blower who was later prosecuted in Britain by Britain revealed this from a meeting though according to him Tony Blair & Colin Powell talked him out of it) over what though? That scared of the truth? Half the country won't care or will justify it because it relates to foreigners.

It will take a lot of sunlight to reveal the depth of the Bush administration corruption.

[druidity33]

41. one of those links... fascinating.

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/better_than_bourne_who_really_killed_nick_deak/

so many connections... it boggles.

[Enthusiast]

14. Exactly.

[FairWinds]

10. There are many more . .

An actual liberal media would report the outright sabotage
of the Postal Service and Social Security by the GOP.

A liberal media would report the role of Saudi in the creation
of ISIS and violent Islamic radicalism (much of it through the
madrasses they fund - extremism follows soon thereafter).

A liberal media would report on the Congressional Progressive
Budget Proposal.

A liberal media would report on the TPP.

One could go on . .

Veterans For Peace

[erronis]

18. Amazing that we are still allowed a voice on the RW owned networks!

Wonder if they are only forwarding our traffic to our known friends so no one will be able to detect the garden wall.

Wonder when the garden wall will become more concrete with razor wire at the top.

BTW - has anyone else noticed a very quiet hiatus in the voices from without the wall? The ones that told us we were crazy? (King of Hearts?, Cuckoo's Nest?)

[Enthusiast]

12. Duh.................Kicked and recommended a whole bunch!

The fact that this is seldom mentioned speak VOLUMES.

Our side has no voice...........zero voice. And often politicians "on our side" that have a chance to speak out remain silent. WTF!?

[midnight]

19. kick. Great facts.

[BeanMusical]

21. The Earth is NOT 6000 years old...

And it's not flat.

[Botany]

22. Ohio 2004 John Kerry won this state but votes were switched, people were kept from voting,

phone lines were hacked, some people inside the Ohio Dem party and the Kerry campaign were
working for bush/Cheney, the vote was shipped to Tennessee to a bank of computers that were
under the control of the repugs and Rove, and exit polls showed Kerry winning the state. A CNN
exit poll 1:05 AM the day after the election showed 49 to 47% of the male vote went to Kerry and
51 to 47% of the female vote went to Kerry. (rough #s from my memory)


The mainstream media knows all these facts but will never touch that story.

We would also know that Repugs cheat w/electronic voting systems and voter suppression techniques.

[heaven05]

23. very important OP

liberal media? No. Non racist institutions and systems? No. It's corporate money, money, money. That's the 'god' of this country. Always has been. Thank You for this!!

[calimary]

24. Gotta kick this.

Helps further the argument we can make when our weird-ass paranoiac uncle starts spewing about the ALLEGED "librul media" - which actually does not exist. There is no such thing. And I'd say MSNBC too, and ask - if this is liberal media, WHAT THE HELL is joe scarborough doing on there - with a Monday-through-Friday show? HOSTING a Monday-through-Friday show. And WHAT THE HELL is chuck todd doing hosting "Meet the Press"?

IF MSNBC qualified as "librul media," wouldn't they be at it 24/7/365? Oh, what's that? You say that's precisely what they do? Seriously? Then explain "Caught on Camera" all weekend. Explain "Lockup" all weekend. There's no political slant to that all-weekend-long programming. We don't have "librul media" on the weekends on MSNBC. We don't even have "liberal media" on the weekends on MSNBC. We don't have SQUAT on the weekends on MSNBC after about 11am or noon both Saturdays and Sundays (Pacific time) but cheap-ass alleged documentaries that are just cheap-ass film/video clip services slapped together for cheap, for titillation purposes only. Hell, we don't even have Lawrence O'Donnell on Friday nights. He's on only Mondays through Thursdays and that's that. Compared and contrasted directly against Pox Noise, we barely even fill the schedule. And much of it during the week is a slew of mere reruns of shows that ran earlier in East Coast prime time. I DON'T CALL THAT A 24/7/365 "liberal network."

[whereisjustice]

27. Almost 800,000 H1Bs in the US right now. That is probably an under count.

How H-1B Visas Are Screwing Tech Workers

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h1b-visas-hurt-tech-workers

[V0ltairesGh0st]

28. Good Article ...

I have an older one always refer back to from Daily KOS ... some of you might know it. I think it needs updating, maybe users here can contribute. All the sources cited are excellent.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/23/1204303/-How-to-Debunk-the-Liberal-Media-Myth

Excerpt:

If the media are so liberal, where are all the Union-friendly news shows? I see lots of pro-big business & pro-investor shows. Where are the shows for worker interests? And, other than MSNBC, where are the pro-Union guests? I see lots of guests making the pro-corporate, anti-union arguments. Where are all the union defenders in the "liberal" media?
http://fair.org/...

If the media are so liberal, why do they keep focusing on debt/deficit/austerity and not the arguments against austerity that all the liberal economists are making?

If the media are so liberal, why did they ignore the 2011 Tar Sands protests in DC and the hundreds of arrested protesters, including a renowned NASA scientist?

If the media are so liberal, why have they completely ignored the controversy surrounding the drilling of the Alberta Tar Sands?

If the media are so liberal, why did they parrot Bush's link between Iraq & 9/11, and his claim that Iraq still had WMD's, while ignoring the many experts who could disprove these claims?

If the media are so liberal, why did they cheerlead us into the Iraq war, while censoring those who opposed it?

If the media are so liberal, why did they virtually ignore the largest anti-war protest in the history of mankind on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2003, but have since given plenty of mostly uncritical coverage of much smaller Tea Party protests?
Here’s a typical CNN segment on the Tea Party. It’s 3+ minutes of free promotion w/o any criticism:
http://www.youtube.com/...

If the media are so liberal, why did they give so much free publicity to Paul Ryan's "brave", "heroic" budget plan,
http://www.fair.org/...
...while they ignored the Progressive Caucus's People's Budget?
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/...

If the media are so liberal, why did even Bush's own press secretary think the media was too deferential to him?
http://www.salon.com/...

If the media are so liberal, why did they run the fake ACORN voter fraud stories & the faked ACORN video stings, then virtually ignore it when ACORN was vindicated and proven innocent of both?
http://www.factcheck.org/...
http://mediamatters.org/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.fair.org/...
http://mediamatters.org/...
http://www.bradblog.com/...
http://www.bradblog.com/...

If the media are so liberal, then why do the "liberal" TV stations gladly air tons of liberal-bashing campaign ads by right-wing groups?

If the media are so liberal, why do they keep covering-up for Wall Street and hiding the rampant criminality there?
http://www.alternet.org/...

If the media are so liberal, why was their coverage of right-winger Margaret Thatcher's controversial legacy so fawning and one-sided?
http://www.fair.org/...
http://www.fair.org/...

If the media are so liberal, why did they ignore proven and admitted GOP election fraud?
http://www.alternet.org/...
http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/...
http://www.salon.com/...
http://www.bradblog.com/...

If the media are so liberal, why is there a virtual news blackout of the Trans-Pacific Partnership controversy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/...

If the media are so liberal, why did they virtually ignore the biggest climate change rally in US history on Februray 17?
http://fair.org/...
Since then, I've seen plenty of right-wing guests on the news urging Obama to approve Keystone and criticizing him for delaying it (even just this morning on MSNBC, with zero argument from the host!), but nobody to explain why there's a huge movement against it.

If the media are so liberal, why did they constantly demonize leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, even promoting anti-Chavez disinfo?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
http://itsoureconomy.us/...
http://truth-out.org/...

If the media are so liberal, why do they treat far-right views as mainstream?
http://www.alternet.org/...

If the media are so liberal, why was coverage of Occupy Wall Street mostly hostile or dismissive?
(Find me ANY example where CNN treated the Tea Party this harshly:
http://www.youtube.com/... )
From Henry A. Giroux: "Missing from both the dominant media and state and national politics was any attempt to critically engage the issues the protesters were raising, not to mention any attempt to dialogue with them over their strategies, tactics, and political concerns."
I could go on and on...

And if you try to argue that all my sources above are themselves "liberally biased", you'd just be proving my point. If the truly liberal alternative media are the only ones pointing these things out, then obviously the mainstream corporate media isn't very liberal, is it?

[chknltl]

31. Knr

[niyad]

33. k and r

[blkmusclmachine]

34. ,

,

[Cha]

35. Kick

[valerief]

36. BIG K&R

[WillyT]

37. Huge K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[TryTwoFour]

38. LOVE it.

PERFECT title to go with content. Wish it would run at top of Yahoo and Google news (which won't happen) for just one day so all the people who need these facts directly in face could not avoid it.

[ND-Dem]

40. kr. though in fairness, they're discussed here & media is the original source. they don't get

big *play* in the media, but they're not ignored totally.

[smirkymonkey]

43. K&R! Bravo!

The idea of a liberal media is a complete joke. Great post!