Tweety Matthews isn’t immune from criticizing Obama. As I recall, he even voted for Bush in 2000.
Mika is irrelevant. Why she got the gig, I’ll never know.
Time Warner, CNN’s parent company, spent roughly $23 Billion in the last year available, 2013.
As I said, we have to identify the problem before we come up with solutions. The anti-Citizens United crowd, made up of generally very intelligent people, have done neither.
If the problem is that too few people are setting the nation’s agenda and electing our politicians, then the media is just as big a problem as the billionaires. I just don’t see how you can complain that Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Rachel Maddow, and Sheldon Adelson have too much influence, but only want to silence Sheldon Adelson.
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Fixed her hair, nice new boobs, and Zbigniew. Mika knows people who know people who are available for guest shots.
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Bill, Rush, Rachel, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc all put their name on their message. When you hear something from Fox News or CNN about Network Neutrality (for example), you have some context for understanding that they may have a dog in the hunt. When Adelson and the Kochs launder money through a myriad of organizations and then start producing stuff, that link gets lost and the possibility of backroom shenanigans goes up.
This is equally true of Soros even though I tend to like the people he supports. I still don’t want them beholden to him in ways that are hidden from analysis.
Okay, so as long as they directly approve their message, then we’re good? That’s something that can be done through legislation now and it wouldn’t be struck down by the court as long as Andy Stern also had to do it. Which Andy Stern doesn’t like, but we should all support that I’d imagine.
So am I to assume that it’s not so much about the money, but the secret money?
“Secret” money is the cherry atop the turd sundae, yes.
Okay, so if there’s still a problem even if we fix that, define what that problem is. Why is Adelson a threat to democracy, but not Hannity? Assuming both put their faces on their message?
When Rachel Maddow produces a pro-Obama segment, she do so with the expectation that it will lead to a Obama putting a specially tailored pro-Maddow tax cut onto his agenda. When journalists are shown to produce biased reporting primarily to promote their own self interest, it is a scandal. While with Billionaires, self interest is expected. As I said before I am much less concerned about the amount of political content that exists on the airwaves, than I am about the corruption that goes with it.
When Rachel Maddow produces a pro-Obama segment, she does so with the expectation that it will lead to Obama promoting policies that she wants promoted. That’s just as much “self-interest” as the “self-interest” of a billionaire trying to influence politicians to promote policies they want promoted.
And which group of selfish people is bigger? People who listen to Rachel Maddow and like what she says, or billionaires? Think carefully, now, Terr, this one is kinda important. Take your time.
When Rachel Maddow produces an anti-Chris Christie segment that include lies she, or her staff, have invented, she does so with the expectation that it will lead to the removal of an elected politician from office or to prevent that elected official from running for a higher office.
If people want to regulate the political influence of the Koch bros, or a Soros, then it seems that they should also want to regulate Maddow-type liars.
Okay, so having outsized influence on policy and politics is okay as long as it’s not in your self-interest, but just an ideological preference?
This shouldn’t be hard. Define the problem. This isn’t a new issue, you’d think that advocates for campaign finance reform would know what problem it is they were trying to solve. The politicians know what problem they are trying to solve: they want to protect incumbents from challengers.
What’s ironic about this line of thought is that it does make sense for smaller contributions ($50k for a $10 million contract, say), but at the levels of the Kochs and the Soroses, this doesn’t really make sense, especially if you give it all to one party.
If I give $900M to politicians, I need to see well over a billion dollars coming back to for it to make more sense than just investing that $900M in my already-profitable businesses, and I need to be sure I’ll be getting most of it back sooner rather than later (this is especially true if I am 80 years old). Koch Industries doesn’t do anything like that level of business with the federal government. It’s true that some of the industries they work in are heavily subsidized, but 1) neither party is going to eliminate those subsidies, and 2) the surest way to get one party to think about eliminating them is to start funding the other party. By betting all on one party, I’m running a huge risk – I could easily lose the election, and my money is a total loss. I could also see my sweetheart deal/friendly regulation wiped out in the next election.
If you look at the megacorporations that are most joined at the hip to government, and have the most to lose in contracts and regulation, they give to pols of both parties, and they do it off the front page. Generally, it’s not in the interest of* the company* to be too dependant on and linked to one party, given that they’ll be out of power half the time. This also goes for Soros and the biggest money Dems. Spending money on politics is smart business, which is why companies do it. But if you’re linking yourself closely to one party or the other, that’s ideology, not profit, which is why they do it with their own money.
Again, but it’s KNOWN self-interest. People who view the segment or see the policy know who was behind it and can account for that information. It’s a free market principle that more information leads to better decisions right? Why would you resist having more information available?
First of all, cite for Maddow lying during a piece on Christie? Second, Maddow (being an experienced journalist/commentator) would do so with the full expectation that she would be called out on the lies, have her reputation trashed, and be pilloried by her peers. Again and again and again, her name is attached to it. When the “America is Super-Duper Awesome” PAC puts out an ad, who paid for it? Who benefits from it? If it contains lies, who do we blame? We can sometimes find out, but not always.
Its not so bad as long as the the primary purpose isn’t to buy political favors. When Maddow gives her monologue her goal is to entice viewers. When Koch opens his pocketbook his goal is to entice legislators. The truth is I doubt that Christie worries very much about what Maddow says about him, Maddow viewers probably aren’t going to vote for him anyway. However I can guarantee he would sweat bullets if he found out that Koch had taken a particular liking to his opponent.
What is more important, the message or the messenger?
Invalid comparison. Substitute Limbaugh or National Review or Fox News for Maddow in the above statement and it would be a lot more valid, and lose the punch that you wanted it to have (and prove my point).
In regards to the Kochs, I’m not really sure that’s true. They have a history of being involved in the whole political process, not just “buying elections”. The same cannot be said for corporations like Exxon and GM, whose money goes solely to buy favor with politicians.
As with so many things, it ain’t that easy. The messenger is part of the message.
Now imagine two articles in a popular magazine (not peer reviewed): One says Soylent Green is bad for you and is signed by several MDs that you can look up and check their backgrounds. The other says it is completely safe (and furthermore tastes great) by an anonymous “expert”. Without any further research which one are you more likely to believe and why? How does that change if you find out that anonymous expert was entirely funded by Soylent Green, Inc.?
I loved you dodging the question about why more information isn’t better, by the way.