Scalia, Alito and Roberts etal aren't even trying to understand!

Alito: 'Simply Not True'

In "The First Amendment Often Protects Bribes More Than Speech!!" I reviewed how the current Supreme Court interpretation of the First amendment has become so distorted that it is doing the opposite of what it should be doing by any reasonable interpretation.

The fact that they even chose to hear this particular case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission oral arguments, while declining to hear other cases that might make the first amendment apply to all people equally implies their own intentions. A closer look at their arguments might imply even more. The following are a few excerpts from oral arguments. They're followed up by a few comments that weren't raised by a, well, lessor known, um, Supreme Court Justice, sort of.

In all fairness these are taken out of context and it might be better if you read them in their proper context, assuming you haven't already; however if you do you might agree that most of it was a waste of time and they don't seem to be trying to address the most important issues.

JUSTICE SCALIA: …… , I ask myself, why would -- why would members of Congress want to hurt their political parties? And I answer -- I answer to myself -
(Laughter.) .....

JUSTICE SCALIA: And that does not -- that does not evoke any gratitude on the part of the people? I mean, if gratitude is corruption, you know, don't those independent expenditures evoke gratitude? And is -- is not the evil of big money -- 3.2 million, an individual can give that to an independent PAC and spend it, right? ......

JUSTICE ALITO: What troubles me about your -- what troubles me about your argument, General Verrilli, and about the district court's opinion is that what I see are wild hypotheticals that are not obviously plausible or -- and lack, certainly lack any empirical support.

Now, you've -- you've chosen to use the same hypothetical the district court used about the $3.5 million contribution that would be -- that could be given by a coordinate -- which involves all of the House candidates and all of the Senate candidates in a particular year getting together with all of the -- all of the parties' national party committees, plus all of the State party committees, and then -- and that's how you get up to the $3.5 million figure; isn't that right?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Yes.

JUSTICE ALITO: Now, how -- how realistic is that? How realistic is it that all of the State party committees, for example, are going to get money and they're all going to transfer it to one candidate? For 49 of them, it's going to be a candidate who is not in their own State. And there are virtually no instances of State party committees contributing to candidates from another State.

And the other part of it that seems dubious on its face is that all of the party -- all of the candidates for the House and the Senate of a particular party are going to get together and they are going to transfer money to one candidate. There really -- you cited in your brief the example -- best examples, I take it, of -- of contributions from some candidates to other candidates. They are very small. Isn't that true?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Yes. But I think there are two -- Justice Alito, I think that, with all due respect, I think the point Your Honor is making confuses two different ways in which these laws combat the risk of corruption. .......

JUSTICE ALITO: Unless the money is transferred to -- you have to get it from the person who wants to corrupt to the person who is going to be corrupted. And unless the money can make it from A to B, I don't see where the quid pro quo argument is.

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, I think that the -- I think that the way these joint fundraising committees work is you hand over a single check to a candidate who solicits it. Now, it could be any candidate who sets up a joint fundraising committee, says give to me and give to the rest of my team. And that's -- so the handing over the check to that candidate is a -- seems to me creates a significant risk of indebtedness on the par of that candidate, even though a lot of the money is flowing through to others.

In addition, the party leaders are often going to be the ones who solicit those contributions, and they're going to have a particular indebtedness to candidates because, of course, their power, their authority depends on the party retaining or -- or gaining a majority in the legislature, and so they're going to feel a particular sense of indebtedness, that this person is helping not only them, but everybody -­ ......

JUSTICE SCALIA: And -- and what about newspapers that -- that spend a lot of money in endorsing candidates and promoting their candidacy. suppose, you know, you -- you have to put in that money, too. That is money that is directed to political speech.

When you add all that -- add -- when you add all that up, I don't think 3.5 million is a heck of a lot of money - ……

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: No, but that wouldn't -- doesn't normally get you very far on the First Amendment. You could not have a rule that says the -- the Post or the New York Times can only endorse nine candidates - …..

JUSTICE ALITO: I just don't understand that. You mean at the time when the person sends the money to this hypothetical joint fundraising committee there is a corruption problem immediately, even though -- what if they just took the money and they burned it? That would be a corruption problem there? ……

JUSTICE ALITO: When does the corruption - yes. When does the corruption occur? It occurs when it's transferred to -- to the person who has power and want -- and they want to corrupt. …… Complete McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission oral arguments PDF

As indicated in the previous post and some of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli's or Stephen Breyer's comments raise a few legitimate issues but even they don't do nearly as good a job addressing the simple points that could have been made. This often appears to be something that they handle more as a joke, as indicated when everyone laughs at Antonin Scalia's bad jokes.

These Supreme Court Justices seem to be bending over backwards to avoid understanding anything that they don't want to understand. They seem to make it clear that those with money should have unlimited amounts of free speech while those that don't buy up speech should be relegated to speaking only in Siberian free speech zones!

If they wanted to they could easily have made a much better case like, well, the following Justice from my imagination; I had to use my imagination since none of the people from the political system are even trying.

Justice I-actually-try: Anyone that takes a relatively quick look at the speech that is coming from the commercial media might see that it is controlled by a relatively small percentage of the public and that they only present the views of those that can afford to pay for it.

It wouldn't be hard to cite a relatively small set of examples that would indicate that paid speech is drowning out more sincere speech and the claim that "money equals speech" and should be protected is a major part of the reason for this problem.

The commercial media is full of propaganda ads from the oil companies that is now "protected free speech." Some of these ads, like the ones promoting clean coal or safe technologies for fracturing to get natural gas might give people the impression that the oil companies are leaders in the environmental movement. Much more reliable reports about the dangers of these energy sources rarely get any media attention except for those that take the time to look for other sources.

Protesters who try to draw more attention to this are routinely arrested on trivial charges like trespassing.

Many retailers or other corporations, including Wal-Mart and insurance companies, also promote an enormous amount of propaganda telling the public about how good they are for society. Wal-Mart's ads about how fresh their fruit is because it is bought locally, how happy their employees are with their benefits, and how efficient their distribution system is are typical examples. Much less expensive and more accurate investigation that checks the facts routinely indicates these ads are all distortions if not outright lies; but very few people hear about that.

Once again protestors who try to tell the public the truth are routinely arrested on trivial charges like trespassing.

The money for these ads, whether it is for the oil companies, Wal-Mart or insurance companies is a business expense. This expense has to be passed on to consumers if they want to make a profit. If this wasn't the case then where would the money come from for these deceptive propaganda pieces?

The honorable Justice Scalia once wrote, "Indeed, to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy. We should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate." (Citizens United, Appellant v. Federal Election Commission)

I refer to him as honorable because it is polite in a civilized society to talk that way, not necessarily because I think he has done anything honorable or that this statement is all that honorable; it is similar to when we call elder statesmen honorable even when they're promoting wars based on lies. It is apparently dishonorable or impolite to point this out but that is besides the point.

The honorable Justice Scalia fails to mention the fact that consumers, workers and the rest of society all contribute to the activities that make corporations successful but the decisions about their speech is made by only a small minority of people that control the corporations without consideration for anyone else.

If consumers asked gas stations, department stores, or insurance companies to deduct the portion of their bills that goes towards speech they don't agree with, due to the fact that it is false or supports a political agenda they disagree with, would corporations be obliged to either do so or allow them the option of influencing corporate speech?

If they tried to make such a request would they be told they had to either pay full price including the portion that goes towards speech or go without?

If the consumer responded to this by speaking out would they be arrested for trivial reasons like trespassing?

The honorable Justice Scalia also said, "I assume that a law that only—only prohibits the speech of 2 percent of the country is okay." the country is okay," in a somewhat sarcastic manner that was corrected quickly by Ms. Murphy. Clearly the honorable Justice Scalia doesn't seem to think that the top "2 percent" should have any interference in their right to free speech as long as it is paid for; but the vast majority of the public shouldn't have nearly as much protection even though the cost of this speech is passed on to them one way or another.

As it stands the top one percent or less have most if not all control of speech that has the capacity to reach the entire nation. At the same time the majority of the public only have a right to speak where a small number of people can listen and if they attempt to partially reduce this inequality they run the risk of being thrown in jail for trespassing or disorderly conduct.

Would the honorable Justice Scalia "assume that a law that only—only prohibits the speech of 98 percent of the country is okay?"

To the best of my knowledge there is no such law; however the way the current system is implemented they manage to get the same results in practice.

If we tried we could find cases to hear that would attempt to reduce this inequality instead of searching for cases that will help increase it.

We have previously made statements about laws that Congress could pass to address problems when a judicial interpretation wasn't adequate; we could do it again so that it could draw more attention to this problem if we wanted to.

It wouldn't be hard to come up with something better if we actually tried to do our job.

Even the Justices and Solicitor General that did make some constructive comments didn't do nearly as good a job as they could have if they simply tried to. They're often much more concerned about being polite to those that are corrupting the system than they are to addressing the problems and they often come up with more complicated cases to make their points whether it is to improve the system or to hide the fact that they're doing the opposite; more often they do the later and this is made partially easier by the bad job those defending it do.

That doesn't even take into consideration what the honorable Justice Thomas had to say as indicated in the following quotes:

Justice Thomas:

Oops I forgot he rarely ever speaks at all, and this was indicated once again. However he can almost always be counted on to vote with his constituents, which doesn't seem to include the public. The same seem to go for the so-called liberal Supreme Court Justices who all supported Monsanto along with the conservatives.




Ironically when the honorable Justice Roberts said "To the extent the State of the Union has denigrated into a political pep rally, I'm not sure why we're there," he was right although his politics are as bad if not worse than Obama's.

The Very Troubling Partisanship of John Roberts

The First Amendment Often Protects Bribes More Than Speech!!

The First Amendment, as now interpreted by the government or the Supreme Court, has turned into a pathetic joke; which often provides much more protection for virtual bribes, which it was never intended to protect, than for speech, which is supposed to be protected.

The vast majority of us have our right to free speech protected as long as we only speak where few if anyone is listening; which a relatively small percentage of the public buys up almost all the air time that can get messages across to a much larger audience. this means that there is one standard for low profile speech while high profile speech is virtually monopolized by an elite ruling class that controls which candidates get coverage in the commercial media and what political information we receive about them.

Antonin Scalia may have made it clear in another of his recent statements how even he thinks speech should be protected as described in the following excerpt from Democracy now:

AMY GOODMAN: During the oral arguments, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, quote, "By having these limits you are promoting democratic participation, then the little people will count some, and you won’t have the super-affluent as the speakers that will control the elections." Justice Antonin Scalia responded somewhat sarcastically by saying, quote, "I assume that a law that only—only prohibits the speech of 2 percent of the country is okay." That was Scalia.

BURT NEUBORNE: And that’s the—that’s the gulf that divides the court on these cases. Justice Ginsburg thinks that we should use campaign finance reform to advance equality, so that everybody has a roughly equal political influence. Scalia says, "Look, if you’re rich, you’re entitled to have as much influence as you can buy." And that’s now been the collision, and the Scalia side has won five-to-four consistently in recent years.

AMY GOODMAN: At a rally outside the Supreme Court Tuesday, Senator Bernie Sanders said unlimited private spending undermines U.S. democracy.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: The bottom line here is that if we do not want to move this nation to an oligarchic form of society, where a handful of billionaires can determine the outcome of these elections, then it is imperative not only that we overturn Citizens United, but that we put a lid on how much people can contribute in elections. Freedom of speech, in my view, does not mean the freedom to buy the United States government.

Complete article

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This was taken partially out of context; if you review the original Scalia made his comment before Ginsburg. The following comments from Justice Stephen Breyer haven't received as much attention although perhaps they should have.

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There are apparently, from the Internet, 200 people in the United States who would like to give $117,000 or more. We're telling them: You can't; you can't support your beliefs. That is a First Amendment negative.

But that tends to be justified on the other side by the First Amendment positive, because if the average person thinks that what he says exercising his First Amendment rights just can't have an impact through public opinion upon his representative, he says: What is the point of the First Amendment? And that's a First Amendment point. All right. So that's basic, I think.

Now, once that's so, Congress has leeway. And you are saying, and I have seen all over the place, that that's why we don't want those 200 people to spend more than 117- or 120,000 because the average person thinks the election is -- after the election all the actions are affected by the pocketbook and not by the merits of the First Amendment arguments. McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission oral arguments PDF

This basic concept isn't mentioned nearly as often in the mainstream media as it could or should be. Instead they treat it as if everyone knows it but when they make their decisions they seem to ignore it. They could easily acknowledge that there is an obvious bias in the way they're setting up the system. The public airwaves are supposed to belong to everyone, and the Cable and Satellite industries are dependent on the government regulation to enable them to have a reliable medium. The Satellite industry goes one step further, since it is benefiting from technology made available from work done by NASA at government expense, yet they're under no obligation to give more access to free speech to a large percentage of the public. All this speech must be bought and paid for and the media profits off of corporate welfare they get in return for nothing.

In return for the regulatory benefits and investments from NASA they could be required to give air time to alternative candidates and views that aren't paid for in order to even the playing field.

This isn't even discussed in a high profile manner. Nor do those without political power and money for lawyers have the opportunity to get their views before the public or the Supreme Court, unlike Shaun McCutcheon, who wants to increase his advantage over the rest of us.

Antonin Scalia's comments may have been interpreted as sarcastic by some but his interpretation of the first amendment clearly seems to apply to that "2 percent" even if it is used to drown out the other 98%. With the commercial media consolidated into six conglomerates that have a common economic ideology they can maintain an overwhelming amount of control of the mass speech in this country and the vast majority of us have little or no opportunity to get our views across.

To the best of my knowledge Antonin Scalia had few if any objections when Adbusters attempted to buy "uncommercials" and the networks refused to air them, as i ahve previously reported, 'Adbusters also attempted to buy time on ABC, NBC, and CBS for a spot declaring the day after Thanksgiving, "Buy Nothing Day." None of the major networks would run the ad. Richard Gitter, NBC's vice president of advertising standards and program compliance, says that NBC doesn't air controversial ads. Gitter continued with more candor, "this action was taken in self-interest. It was a spot telling people, in effect, to ignore our advertisers" (Oldenburg).'

Antonin Scalia didn't have any objections either when alternative candidates attempted to participate in the presidential debates but the Commission on Presidential Debates decided that only those that they approved could be allowed to get their views across. The most important debates for the elections were blatantly censored so that only those with political power would have a chance to be heard by the vast majority of the public, enabling the Mass Media to portray alternative candidates, as "non-viable." If they weren't actually "viable" it is only because they were censored by the Mass Media who only covers those that buy up enough time to be considered "viable." (This was covered more in past blogs about the debates including, Occupy the Commission on Presidential Debates!! and Could alternative debates be a game changer?)

What this essentially means is that in order for candidates to be "viable" they're required to collect enough bribes, thinly disguised as campaign contributions, to buy up air time from the commercial media, which makes an enormous profit by selling propaganda to at least partially rig elections.

Oil companies have their propaganda running almost non-stop on the commercial media while the reports of many of the disasters that are caused by the oil companies get less coverage and they’re routinely treated as isolated incidents. At the same time when protesters try to draw more attention to them they’re routinely arrested on flimsy charges like trespassing. These disasters are costing hundreds if not thousands or millions of lives; yet instead of investigating the oil companies for negligent mass murder they protect their rights to free speech and suppress the rights of their critics.

Monsanto and the Pharmaceutical companies are practically using the population of the United States as human research subjects, or guinea pigs, but instead of requiring them to disclose all their activities they pass laws making them trade secrets and protect their rights to free speech while suppressing the speech of their critics.

These companies all pass their advertising and lobbying expenses on to their customers; but they don’t pass on any influence to their customers; nor do their customers have the same rights to free speech. The same goes with the cost of lobbying against single payer health care. Insurance companies take money collected from customers premiums and instead of spending some of it on the coverage it was intended for they spend it on commercials lobbying against the best interest of the customer, while discussions of Single Payer are kept out of the commercial media.

If Antonin Scalia and many of the other people from corporate America, including Shaun McCutcheon have their way then a small number of people will be able to buy up the vast majority of information that many members of the public use to make their decisions. Technically votes might not be for sale but the speech that influences those votes are, which can come close to creating the same results.

What many people may not have even noticed is that while they’re debating rules about which circumstances people would be allowed to donate they avoid any discussion about who controls the election process, which is essentially a job interview for our elected officials.

The people that are supposedly hiring these elected officials are the members of the general public.

When a corporation hires someone they have control of the interview process. It would be perfectly reasonable for members of the public to assume that when they are the ones that hire their own elected officials they should have some control over the interview process.

Recent rulings including Citizen’s United, and perhaps, now McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, have given a small percentage of the public almost complete control of the debate and campaign process; while candidates that gain support at the grass roots level by addressing many of the most important issues hardly get any coverage and are treated as “fringe candidates” that don’t have a chance. The only candidates that are what they portray as “viable” are those that sell out the best interest of the vast majority of us.

Both Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Lenin made statements like, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth;” this is one of the most basic principles of basic propaganda; and it is clear that corporate America is doing this on a scale that is as large as either Lenin or Hitler ever did. They repeat over and over that candidates should control the interview process and no one ever suggest to the majority of the public that since they’re the ones that are supposedly hiring these elected officials that they should have their fair share of control over the interview process.

The current system clearly puts the control of the interview process in the hands of those that buy up all the speech.

Setting up a system where the public has more control of what questions are asked of the candidates and the public has opportunities to hear from all candidates, not just those approved by the corporate contributors, might take some experimenting but if the refuse to even discuss it they can keep the control of the system in the hands of the most corrupt!

Supreme Court weighs limits on campaign donations



Big Oil claims the right to bribe under the First Amendment. Taking the Fifth is more appropriate.

"I tell you they're gifts."

"Did the congressman also give you a gift of a similar value, perhaps like many of us exchange Christmas gifts?"

"I'm sure he did although I don't recall."

"If these 'gifts' were recorded would they show a pattern where much higher value 'gifts' are given to Congressmen that just happen to benefit the donors while the return 'gifts' tend to be of little or no value unless beneficial legislation is considered which would dramatically dwarf the value of the 'gifts' from the donor, at taxpayers expense?"

"Huh, I don't understand the question."

"Take your time and think about it; you might figure it out."

Additional information on the subject is available in the following pages:

First Amendment Violation Silences the Press These 20 Senators Have Committed Treason!



Lobbyist Bribes Congress -"I Paid a Bribe"

Bill Gates’ AstroTurf in Education (Privatisation for Profit) Recruits More Lobbyists, Necessitates More Bribes

Big Oil Uses The Money They Stole From Us To Bribe Our Reps To Defeat A Bill To Curb Their Avarice



Six Billion Reportedly Spent on Election Campaign



Kick them all out!

Alternative Media is an Absolute Necessity!!

By now most people that have been paying close attention to the traditional media and made some attempt to look at other sources know that the traditional media is controlled by corporate interests and they’re financed by commercials that create a strong bias not to expose the corruption of those that advertise with them. Many people already realize that the corporate media has consolidated into a small number of corporations that control the vast majority of traditional media that can get their points of view across to the vast majority of the public while few if any other organizations have this opportunity.

However the insidious thing about propaganda is that if it isn’t repeated over and over again people often forget it; and even if some of us don’t forget it there are still plenty of people that don’t think about it and become complacent and for them it is too easy to begin to go along with the program as the corporations want them to. In fact for most people they’ve been doing this all their lives and accepting the truth as presented to them by the corporate media. On top of that most people continue voting for the two parties that dominate the system without considering others that are much more likely to represent their interests. The corporate media has been using their control of the press to restrict the choices the vast majority of us choose from when we vote for higher office and they rarely if ever even try to do a good job covering any given issue.

To put it bluntly the corporate media is hardly even pretending that they don’t sell the news and allow their financiers to heavily influence their coverage.

In most cases the primary objective of the corporate media isn’t to inform the public, although they still make occasional claims that it is; it is to sell products and maximize profits for the advertisers and the corporate media. It wouldn’t take much to come up with a long list of subjects and how they don’t even come close to covering them properly. And in many cases the impact of the corrupt coverage can be and perhaps already is devastating to the majority of the public.

Then once more people recognized how incompetent the corporate media is it would also be important to ensure that they know where to find alternative media outlets (extensive list included) and determine how to sort through the good ones from the bad ones by starting with and understanding the basics on any given subject. And on top of that more people have to become accustomed to seeking out these media outlets at least until the traditional media is reformed by a sincere grass roots effort, assuming it ever is.

One of the clearest examples of how the corporate media may be distorting the coverage of an important subject may be the environment. Anyone that watches the corporate media long enough will see an enormous amount of public relation commercials for the energy companies presenting them as good for the economy and indicating that they’re becoming much more protective of the environment thanks to new technology. Many people that don’t think things through may come to the conclusion that the oil companies are the biggest protectors of the environment. Anyone that does think things through might quickly realize that if they spent all the money they currently use for all this advertising on actual protection of the environment instead of telling us how much good they’re doing then they would be much more environmentally friendly. Once people realize that it won’t take much research to find out that practically everything they try to tell us on their public relation advertisements are distortions if not outright lies. Furthermore it won’t take much to find out just how much damage is being done to the environment around the world that the corporate media isn’t telling the public about.

Clearly, whether it’s the enormous amount of advertising dollars they receive from the energy companies; the fact that they may have many of the same stock holders on the boards of the media and the energy companies or for some other reason the corporate media isn’t doing more than a token amount of coverage on the enormous amount of damage being done to the environment. Even the more liberal stations like MSNBC aren’t covering it nearly as well as they could and should and the damage is already enormous for a large percentage of the population of the planet, including many that are already dying because of the damage.

The coverage of war hasn’t been any better. They could have easily exposed the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and widely reported it to the public before the war but instead they did the opposite, reporting all the Bush administrations lies about Saddam Hussein without checking any facts even though many of them could have been easily disproved. In fact this is typical of the reasons that have been used to go to war. If you go back through history and review them after the fact then it will be clear that we have rarely if ever gone to war based on accurate facts and they could have been exposed, in most if not all cases by the traditional press before the fact but instead they provide the propaganda to enable the government to get the support of the public when it goes to war. With Vietnam it was a false gulf of Tonkin incident along with an enormous amount of other activities that were exposed in the Pentagon papers; in both Iran and Iraq as well as many other wars we have supported the tyrants that we wound up fighting or we have supported the tyrants that were overthrown by new regimes that had much more support from the local population.

This clearly means that contrary to the propaganda about America being the great defender of democracy they may be the greatest threat to democracy. At least that is the way many people in the countries that we’re influencing think of it.

The press does little or nothing to address the social aspects surrounding violent crime including efforts to report on the root causes of violence and domestic abuse that often starts at an early age with abuse in the home and escalates from there. There is an enormous amount of research done in a variety of methods to indicate that people who are abused at an early age are much more likely to become violent later in life either as a bully, an abusive husband, or participant in violent crime including mass murder and serial killing.

Instead of reporting on these root causes in a manner that could inform the public about how crime could be dramatically reduced they report it in a manner that is designed to increase ratings and make appeals to emotions, encouraging people to be more concerned with what they call “justice” or punishment instead of finding out how to solve these problems in the most effective way possible. This often leads them to present crime as something that is viewed on TV for entertainment purposes rather than problems that should be solved.

This is also done with war; both of these subjects is often used to increase ratings and enable them to sell more advertising time; which means that instead of using the media as a way to educate the public about crime it is being used for profitable purposes that wouldn’t earn as much money if they solved problems in the most effective way possible.

This is crime profiteering and war profiteering by those that pretend to inform the public about how to address these problems in the most effective way possible.

The corporate media doesn’t do much if anything to report on economic inequality; or at least they don’t do it in a fair way that explains to the public how difficult it is for many people that are raised in poor areas to get ahead. These people have little or no chance to get a college degree and the jobs that are available to them don’t pay enough to live a life that most middle class people would consider reasonable. However there is an enormous amount of propaganda about how anyone can get ahead in America that is repeated over and over again.

Occasionally they cite a small number of examples where people do get ahead but they don’t do much to explain how this one or two people got ahead while most other people don’t have a chance; and in many cases, especially in politics, that person has help from people within the system that provide this help only to those that go along with the approved ideology.

The mainstream media doesn’t do much if anything to expose sweat shops or other reports about people that are being badly abused in the global economy. This was done much more in the nineties when this type of reporting was increasing for a while but then the press consolidated even more at the end of the nineties and after 9/11 they found more to focus on and they rarely ever cover it as often as they were for a small amount of time. Nor do they report on many other tactics that were previously reported on occasion like the use of slotting fees to buy space in store shelves at grocery stores that drives up the cost of consumer goods or price fixing like when they investigated Archer Daniels with the help of whistle blower Mark Whitacre.

The corporate world has consolidated into a small number of companies in any given field so the concept of them having to compete with each other is no longer reasonably accurate. The true nature of the “free enterprise system” as it is currently practiced clearly means that the majority of the working force has to compete with people all around the world but the corporations that control the largest institutions don’t really have to compete against each other since they’ve come to the conclusion that it is no longer profitable to provide real competition to each other. Instead they pretend to compete with different advertising slogans but they no longer have incentive to do their best to improve the quality of merchandise for the consumer since they no longer have other options to buy from.

Yet this isn’t mentioned at all in the corporate press.

Nor do they cover the possibility that we could implement a single payer system that provides universal health care properly if they cover it at all. Instead they provide an enormous amount of coverage for the Affordable Care Act and the Republican alternative or lack of alternative. On one occasion recently when Mitch McConnell was asked about the lack of health care for so many people he said "That is not the issue, The question is how to go step by step to improve the American health care system. It is already the finest health care system in the world." (Mitch McConnell On 30 Million Uninsured: 'That Is Not The Issue') the corporate media spends an enormous amount of time and money trying to convince us that we have a good system or when they can’t do that, which is more often than not now, they try to confuse the issue as much as possible. They even use money from the premiums that people pay for their health care to pay for all these deceptive ads leaving that much less money available for actual health care or as Dr. David Himmelstein explains “The money for these commercials came from health care interests that collect fees from American patients. We experienced this before in Massachusetts. We ran a ballot initiative for universal health care in 2000 and the insurance industry spent $5 million on it, including the insurance company I am insured by. They used my premiums to smear an idea that 70 percent in Massachusetts, according to polls, favored before this smear campaign. Universal health care was narrowly defeated.” (Chris Hedges "This Isn’t Reform, It’s Robbery")

This is standard procedure in any given industry that has consolidated control and wants preferential treatment from the government. They take a portion of the money they collect and use it for lobbying, campaign contributions and when necessary public relations campaigns to spread misinformation and convince as many people as possible to vote against their own best interests. The expense of this propaganda is passed on to consumers but not the influence.

Thanks to a series of decisions including Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United the Supreme Court has essentially declared that the truth as it is presented in the corporate media is for sale.

In the long run it would be difficult for them to continue to get away with this if the public isn’t too complacent or distracted. Research into marketing to children may go a long way to explain why many people are so complacent and much less savvy when it comes to recognizing deceptive sales pitches. Many people within the corporate world recognized that their advertisings were becoming less effective as the public learned to recognize them for the lies that they really are. The marketing industry recognized that the most effective manner to counter this is to start marketing to children at a younger and younger age and keep marketing to them throughout life. They even market heavily to children in schools and preschool.

This is the way an effective propaganda works and that is essentially what marketing to children has become.

There have been numerous studies about how this has impacted children and their ability to learn and develop critical thinking skills and they have clearly indicated that children that have been subjected to advertising from an early age and where it has been part of their school curriculum have developed much lower critical thinking skills that enable them to recognize advertisements that are deceptive as well as deceptive reporting on wars and political activities. A sample of this researched has been published by Susan Linn author of “Consuming Kids” (excerpts) and Roy Fox author of “Harvesting Minds; and there is more research available in libraries and on the internet for those that know where to look for it.

However there is no reporting on it in the traditional press that many people rely on for their news.

If the majority of the public understood how they were being manipulated by advertising they would be much less likely to fall for it and if they realized the cost of these ads are being passed on to them they might demand equal time since they have to pay for it in higher consumer costs. Therefore the corporate media doesn’t do any reporting on it if they can avoid it and if they can’t they provide an enormous amount of propaganda to bury the legitimate concerns and confuse the issue. This usually involves the claim that people like Susan Linn are calling for the censorship of the media ignoring the fact that the media is completely censoring their opposition. Only a small percentage of the public has any chance to get any air time on the corporate media the rest are completely censored especially if they have opposing views to the elites that control the political system and the mass media.

This is all the more reason why we need to rely on more alternative media outlets.

The corporate media doesn’t even report on things that presumably wouldn’t be controversial or have much impact on their profits, in most cases, like science and astronomy. They fail to mention many of the basics on this like the fact that mars can’t have water due to the fact that their environment is too thin or the fact that a binary system can’t support advanced life due to inconsistent environment that won’t allow evolution. This might be because it interferes with their ability to provide dramatic coverage of Science fiction stories; however it also establishes a pattern of behavior so that whenever science interferes with the agenda of the corporations they can confuse the issue and present their own version. This has been obvious when it comes to Climate Change, escalation of violence, marketing to children psychology and many other subjects that have been controlled by a small number of people that now control the corporate press for their own agenda.

One of the most important issues that the corporate press has been doing an incredibly incompetent or corrupt job covering is of course political coverage which has turned into a farce. This is supposed to be a democracy where people vote for candidates that represent their interests; but in order for people to do that they have to have access to information about the candidates that are running and they have to have to have an opportunity to participate in the interview process. This has never been done as well as it could have been done but it was previously done much better than it is now. Since then the corporate press has taken over the interview process and they have consolidated their control and now use it to provide coverage only for those that suit their agenda.

It wasn’t always this way even at the presidential level. The League of Women Voters used to sponsor debates but they refused to “help perpetrate a fraud” in 1988 when the two traditional candidates negotiated a deal that would exclude third party candidates or make it very difficult for them to qualify. Since then the debates have been organized by Commission on Presidential Debates and they’ve been sponsored by a large number of corporations that create a major conflict of interest.

This essentially means that when it comes to the highest office in the land the corporations that have a major conflict of interest have almost complete control of the information that we receive about political candidates. Or at least they have in the past but there is good reason to believe that their propaganda machine is already breaking down and there are many more people that are learning how corrupt the corporate media has become. A recent article at the Centre for Research on Globalization clearly indicates that many more people are relying on alternative media outlets; however many of them may benefit from additional access to new outlets and many others may still not know how to navigate the new media outlets to sort out all the propaganda being provided by the corporations.

This was also demonstrated with the lack of coverage of many of the protest movements that have been going on over the past few years. The corporate press provided an enormous amount of coverage for the Tea Party before they started protesting in 2009; however a closer look at it clearly indicated that it was supported by many of the same establishment politicians including dick Army; and they promote policies that clearly have support by the corporations; which seems to indicate that this is partially an Astroturf organization that was formed with some grass roots support that was encouraged by demagogues that study how to manipulate crowds and it was given coverage by the corporate media for this reason. When they lost a large portion of their support the corporate media continued to present them as a grass roots organization while ignoring real grass roots organizations. This was especially obvious when the Occupy Wall Street movement began almost a year ago and there was no coverage of it until after it began and they have been downplaying it since then. The Occupy Wall Street first published online plans for this protest no later than July 2011 when they posted the first two blog posts on their site. This clearly indicates that if the corporate media wanted to know about this protest and report on it then they could have and would have. This is the same thing that happened when the Egyptian revolution began and the media acted as if they were surprised; on one occasion they even asked one of the protesters why they didn’t report on it earlier and the protester was clearly surprised by the question and said he didn’t know and that they had been trying to get the attention of the traditional media for months. And there have been many other protest movements that have been going on with little or no reporting in the national press but it has been reported on alternative media outlets and many people have been taking notice of this.

Clearly the claims that the “Revolution will not be Televised” have been for the most part true. The corporations have been trying to do their best to minimize the coverage of it and distort it when they couldn’t but it is becoming too obvious for all but the most sheltered people not to see it now.

In the long run we clearly need major Media Reform that enables a much larger percentage of the public to have an opportunity to influence the coverage that is provided to the majority. The handing over control of the air waves to the corporate press with little or no obligation to serve the best interest of the public is blatantly corrupt. Mark Crispin Miller has claimed that this is the most important issue of our time since this issue impacts all other issues and how we think about them. If this is true then I would like to add that early childhood upbringing and how children are taught is a close second or it is a tie. This is because there are still many people that don’t recognize how they’re being manipulated and when they recognize the manipulation from the corporate press in many cases they start believing many other sources that are just as corrupt or in some cases they go to sources that are also controlled by the same corporations that control the press only they’re disguised as alternative media outlets.

In fact Mark Crispin Miller has reported on some of the right wing people that fall for these scams but he hasn’t covered that aspect of it. This has been covered better by some other academic researchers including Alice Miller (no relation) who has studied how violence at an early age escalates into more violence later in life and how it also impacts authoritarianism. An abusive upbringing where children are told what to think under intimidating circumstances also makes people more susceptible to propaganda later in life like advertising; and as indicated that isn’t much later in life anymore. It appears that as many of this authoritarian upbringing has been reduced the advertising to children from an early age and TV saturation has been increasing so they may, to some degree, be replacing one form of indoctrination. This clearly should at or near the list of things that should be covered with a reformed media or in alternative media outlets.

Another good argument could be made to claim that the environment or war is the most important issue or tied with media reform; however if they were considered top priority and it didn’t include media reform they wouldn’t be able to educate the public about that issue and they would fail to fix it properly so even if Media reform isn’t the sole top priority it is one of the leading issues and can’t be ignored if we’re going to address many or any of the most important issues we have to deal with.

In fact the system is set up to give an enormous amount of preferential treatment to these corporations despite the fact that they have an enormous conflict of interest that anyone would recognize if they did a minimal amount of reporting on it.

There is plenty of additional information on this subject including many good books and organizations that study and try to reform the system; these aren’t being promoted by the corporate press, of course, since they would like to pretend they don’t exist. These books include "Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy," "Rich Media, Poor Democracy," and "The Problem of the Media" by Robert W. McChesney and "The Media Monopoly" by Ben H. Bagdikian.

The Third World Traveler has compiled a list of many of these organizations and books and provided many book excerpts among other things at Corporate Media's Threat to Democracy. This includes a list of many alternative media outlets and I have been building a list that is even longer and adding many other lists from other organizations for anyone that is interested at List of Alternative media outlets Wiki. This is intended to be a diverse set of media outlets including some that I disagree with as well as some that are almost certainly under the control of the same corporations providing outlets that they attempt to portray as independent. Attempts to weed out these would inevitably lead to excluding many good outlets as well and it is worth considering different points of view even when people disagree with them. In some cases like extreme right wing media outlets that promote bigotry it is still helpful for people that are not bigoted to be aware of them so they’re not taken by surprise so I haven’t excluded them; however I have included organizations that have attempted to refute them like Right Wing Watch. If you know of any worthy web pages that could be added to this list please let me know or just add them yourself; it is a Wiki; if you’re not familiar with it they provide advice at Wikipedia.

It would also be very helpful to make it as easy as possible for people to find out as much unbiased information about major candidates running for office and there are many organizations that have been working away to improve this without getting much if any attention from the corporate press. If enough people rely more on them and less on the corporate media that doesn’t provide unbiased information then we could dramatically improve our democratic system which will continue to be a farce without doing this or something similar.

There is no reason why we should wait for major reform since there are many things that can be done to advance reform already including trying to elect sincere candidates that haven’t been under the control of the corporations. There has already been an enormous amount of effort to inform many people about these candidates although the corporate media hasn’t been informing the public about it and they may have a much better chance than most people realize. The quality of the candidates that the corporate press have been presenting to the public has made this effort much easier to accomplish although it is difficult to know how successful it has been.

In the long run it would be important to fund a variety of organizations that are controlled by the public that could provide questionnaires to candidates like Project Vote Smart and carry out debates or other forms of interviews like the league of Woman Voters has done in the past and some other organizations are now doing again although the corporate press hasn’t been covering them. These organizations should be accountable to the public. People that donate to them should also be willing to keep them accountable and if we have public financing for these organizations then it wouldn’t be necessary for candidates to collect an enormous amount of campaign contributions to promote their campaign; instead they could fill out the job applications and go to a series of interviews that would be arranged during an sincere Election Reform process.

The candidates that the corporate press has presented as “viable” refuse to answer their questionnaires and participate in debates with grass roots candidates that gain their support directly from the people. They’re attempting to rig the system so that everyone believes that the only ones that have a chance are those that have been approved by the corporations and collected enormous amounts of bribes thinly disguised as campaign contributions.

If any potential employees behaved the way these candidates do then no employer for any other job would even consider hiring them including the same corporations that have bought these candidates.

Imagine if you were trying to hire someone and they refused to fill out a job application similar to the Project Vote Smart questionnaire and the applicant refused to fill it out and you asked them to show up for an interview but they said that instead of going to your interview they would stage their own that was rigged.

This is what candidates have been doing for a long time but there are a growing number of people that are no longer falling for it and with these large protest movements happening it provides an enormous opportunity to change things if we don’t fall for the corporate propaganda.

Project Vote Smart

Debate for alternative presidential candidates on YouTube also available at OS with links to their webpages for more information

On the Issues

The Center for Responsive Politics at Open Secrets.org

Election Candidates

The Political Guide

The time to let the corporations know that we’re not dumb enough to fall for it anymore is long overdue. Alternative candidates may have a much better chance than most people realize but even if they don’t and we accept the claim that we will be “throwing away our vote” if we don’t choose one of the candidates that have been bought and paid for they’ll think it worked and they can continue to buy candidates; if on the other hand there is an enormous amount of voter support for alternative candidates based on information gained from the alternative media then they’ll realize their scam isn’t going to work anymore!!