Archive for Media

Solving the Too Many Democrats to Debate Issue

January 9, 2019 Democrats, Media, Politics, Values No comments

I believe we need to think outside of the whole debate format box and move to a Democratic Candidates Forum or a limited series of live-event television specials called The Democrats Make Their Case. Such specials would:

    · Change the adversarial candidate vs. candidate competition, where candidates denigrate each other’s ideas, into a choose your favorite Democrat approach.
    · Provide a format where each candidate is given equal time to explain his or her vision.
    · Unify all Democrats around branding that is empathetic, inclusive, hopeful, diverse, and focused on improving life for working people, protecting the planet, and making peace, as opposed to the Republican brand of fear, hate, division, greed, cruelty, and institutionalized corporate corruption that short-circuits American democracy.

The consistent branding and unified positive outlook of the Democratic candidates will stand in stark contrast to all Republicans.

Here is a potential example of the format.

    · The event would be hosted by one or more prominent, celebrity Democrats—movie, television, or music stars. Two or three journalists sit on a panel.

    · To begin, the host(s) introduce(s) pre-packaged films (different for each event) that lay-out the issues Americans face and promote the brand vision for solving them.

    · Then, each candidate, chosen by random draw, is then given 5 minutes (or an equal amount of time based on the length of the program and the number of candidates) to make an opening statement.

    · After each candidate has completed an opening statement, a host spins a wheel with ~30 numbers on it. The numbers correlate with a question and the journalist who submitted the question. That journalist selects one candidate to answer the question.

    · Each candidate is given the same number of turns to speak. They may wait for their own question or respond to a question asked of another candidate or, by pressing a button, comment on what that candidate said or providing a different view. Candidates may also ask to respond if they feel another candidate has said something that needs to be rebutted. However, every time a candidate speaks, it counts as 1 turn.

    · Enforcing the equal turn rule will enforce the brand unity between the candidates and give each an even chance to be evaluated by the audience.

    · Optionally, there could be an app developed that will allow the hosts to moderate a home voting process that allows the audience to select the candidate who “won” the event. App users must identify their political party or ideology before voting.

This example, or something similar, would create a new level of excitement and allow the Democrats to demonstrate a level of sophistication that would bring something new to the race.

TRUMP. WTF

January 22, 2017 Media, Politics, Republicans No comments

President Trump. WTF. This flamboyant, amoral, narcissistic, ethically-challenged real estate developer came to national political prominence by promoting an obvious lie about Obama’s birth certificate. This cynical, strategic lie was done to get support from people who are uncomfortable with all of the recent demographic shifts toward diversity. (These people are commonly characterized as racists. But it’s more complicated.)

Somehow, Trump positioned himself as a man of the people who was going to fix all the inequities affecting a broad swatch of blue-collar voters. He blamed Muslims, Mexicans and other immigrants. He promised impossible things.

It worked. His voters saw him as a man who had achieved the American dream and whose success and celebrity meant that he knew how to bring their jobs back. So desperate to change the direction of their fortunes, they voted for a self-announced womanizer who didn’t always honor his business agreements.

During his inauguration, and in the two days since, he and his team have shown that they will do battle with the press to establish a “biased press” narrative to provide cover for their lies. (On today’s Meet the Press Kellyanne Conway called Press Secretary Spicer’s lies about the size of the inaugural crowd “alternative facts.”) The way the Trump Administration speaks reminds me of the description of the authoritarian leaders in the books I was assigned in high school: George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Aldous Huxley’s 1994.

But most glaringly, Trump’s rhetoric about helping the people hurt most by current economic trends doesn’t match the policy prescriptions of his newly appointed cabinet or the Republican Congress. Does no one realize that what Trump voters want, except for the crack down on immigrants, is the opposite of what the Trump Administration and the Republican Congress plan to deliver? Cuts to their health insurance, Social Security and Medicare are not what his supporters voted for.

As a progressive, I believe the way forward is to communicate why our values are better for Trump voters (minus the racists). We need to make sure that we don’t demonize Trump voters, but rather find ways to reach them with better ideas. One of the reasons they voted for Trump is that he addressed them directly and gave them respect. Yes, he spoke to their fears and anger, but he paid attention to them. Hillary did not successfully communicate that she cared about them.

Trump and the Republicans will do most of the work for us in causing Trump voters to pay attention to our message. It will become clear very early on that the White House and Congress are both incompetent and incapable of producing the promised results. So let’s keep pointing out Trump’s lies, even though they will be pretty obvious. But more importantly, let’s reach out with respect to Trump voters and help them recognize the value to their lives of what we propose for the future.

The 99

October 8, 2011 Economics, Emotional Energy, Energy, Media, Politics, Republicans, Values, Wealth No comments

I am very hopeful that the folks occupying Wall Street and the Build the American Dream movement are getting some traction. George Carlin had it right. It would be great if he were still around during these crazy political times.  In the clip, he gives us the reason why the other 99% are starting to make noise: it’s the behavior of “the owners” and those who work to keep them in power.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q&feature=player_embedded

But the owners are only doing what we define as success in this society. As long as success is about amassing a personal fortune and controlling everything to protect and increase that fortune and not about the explicit contribution that was made to the greater good–reducing poverty, subjugation, war and the destruction of the environment–we will continue to worship and want to be like the rich.

Now the right wing in this country will say that by following your dream and becoming wealthy your are helping everyone. You are bringing value to the world and creating jobs. And this is not untrue.  But it is only one side of the coin. Like electrical regulators that control the flow of electricity so that power stays within a narrow bandwidth that is usable by all, the human energy and power that flows to and is stored by the wealthy needs to be regulated. Because when too much of the economic energy that drives society is tied up in too few hands a different sort of energy builds.

The stored energy of anger and frustration is finally being targeted at the real source of our increasing economic hardship, the disproportionate amount of economic energy currently being sequestered for the exclusive use of the top 1% .

The current flow of energy is unstable. Hopefully the new energy being generated by the other 99 will result in a more equitable distribution of power.

Thanks to my Facebook friends for finding the clip.

George Orwell Was Off by 27 Years

July 19, 2011 Economics, Media, Politics, Republicans, Values, Wealth No comments

I am truly frightened by the debate on the debt ceiling. Today, every single Republican I saw on television said “Where is the President’s plan? He has no plan.” That was obviously a message directive from the Republican Ministry of Truth. (In Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth was anything but.) The goal of the “talking point” is to lay blame for the economic catastrophe they have already caused and the one they are flirting with now at Obama’s feet. The fact that Obama didn’t issue a specific document entitled The President’s Plan to Cut the Deficit doesn’t mean he wasn’t working diligently to promote a plan. What do they call the weeks of negotiations headed by Joe Biden to cut a deal that the Republicans walked away from?

Our dismal news media, which is unable to separate rationality from idiocy, would have us believe that uncompromising tea party politicians have coherent economic principles. They do not. Since they speak only about “unnecessary spending” and protecting so-called job creators, it is obvious to me that they are completely willing to precipitate a new economic catastrophe in order to blame Obama and gain the presidency in 2012.

That’s why I am afraid and why I am considering taking my savings out of the bank and keeping it in cash in case there is a run on the banks. Bad things are possible when those who control the fate of others are completely detached from reality. Whether out of cunning or an irrational ideology, many Republicans see it as in their interest to oppose everything Obama does, no matter how reasonable.

In the media, we routinely have to put up with the conventional wisdom that voters will blame Obama if the jobs’ picture doesn’t improve. Republicans crashed the economy due to run-away, unregulated financial speculation and yet it’s Obama’s fault there are no jobs. Taxes are at the lowest level in years, were lowered under Bush, and still the economy tanked and fails to recover. But the Republican answer is still lower taxes and the media treats this as a rational idea.

There was a Republican on with Chuck Todd (MSNBC) this morning. I didn’t catch his name but he said something like this: “When businesses are in trouble they lay people off and close divisions. After the cuts investors see that the company took the right action and is ready to grow again. This is what we need to do in our economy.” This statement shows that Republicans can’t tell the difference between a business, whose purpose is profits, and the government. They believe some citizens must suffer so the books can be balanced and the economy can start to grow again. But cutting jobs in the overall economy does not produce a more profitable economy in the same way that cutting jobs increases corporate profits. It produces greater unemployment and a longer, deeper economic downturn.

For more on the Republican use of Orwellian opposite-speak, see: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011072815/ignorance-index-iv-job-killing-de-regulation.

The Government is Not a Business

June 27, 2011 Economics, Media, Politics, Republicans, Values, Wealth No comments

Have we forgotten whose policies caused the plunge?

In the graphic above, lifted from ABC’s “This Week” with Christiane Amanpour, the yellow line shows how much deeper the current recession is than all previous recessions, at least since 1980. So because the economy is not healing fast enough, we should turn its management back to the people whose policies caused the crash in the first place? Look doctor, my loved one isn’t getting better as fast as I would like. So I think I’m going to go back to the doctor who administered the poison. You know, because whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working. Maybe that other doctor will be good this time.

This reasoning seems to be treated as perfectly logical in the lame stream media. That’s right, I’m using Sarah Palin’s phrase, but for the complete opposite reason. The lame stream media seems to accept the Republican spin that reducing the deficit is the most important step we can take to create jobs. Why? It’s clearly bullshit. Yes we need to cut the deficit, but to even pretend that this will somehow revive the economy is ludicrous. Cutting is cutting. You can’t cut programs without cutting jobs.

What does a CEO do when he needs to get the company back on solid footing? He cuts jobs. He lays people off. He reduces spending to improve the bottom line and get profits back up. Fine. This restoration of the company’s fiscal health doesn’t create jobs, it costs jobs.

The policies the Republicans are trying to put through are not about jobs. They are about deficit reduction, which is essentially restoring the country to a fiscal balance. They seem to view government as a big corporation that is not in good fiscal health and themselves as CEOs who will cut spending and restore the company to the black. They clearly care more about fiscal responsibility, i.e. profits, than they do about the well-being people. This is about the ideology, or rather mythology, of personal freedom. When people are free from government regulations and programs that take money from the worthy workers and wealthy job-creators and give it to the undeserving lazy poor then everything will be in balance and a growing economy will be magically restored.

Not only is this ideology totally wrong, with no possible way of creating growth, it will exacerbate the destabilizing disparity of more money going to fewer and fewer super rich overlords. This is fascism and it’s where Republican policies have been and will continue taking us.

At this moment in time, as the Republicans petulantly refuse to consider any discussion of closing loopholes on their large corporate puppet masters, it seems as if many of these zealots truly believe in the righteousness of their cause and are willing to crash the global economy in the name of fiscal balance. This is shear madness. And yet the “free press” pretends that it’s a legitimate approach. How can one not be pessimistic when clear stupidity passes for a valid economic option and when people are so deluded and mislead that they will seriously consider returning the patient to the care of the poisoner?