Sunday Sermon [Category Five Hype]

¡Hola! Everybody…

Brazilian Day today! Did I mention I was invited by a friend to spend ten days in Rio earlier this summer? I had to turn it down because I had just gotten laid off and I needed to hold on to what little moolah I have (which is fast running out). It’s been my dream to visit Brazil; hopefully, I’ll get there before my dick stops working… LOL

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-=[ Style Over substance ]=-

The media and politicians enjoy a symbiotic relationship during possible impending disasters. The resultant perfect storm of hype over Irene runs the risk of making Americans even more likely to ignore warnings in the future.

 -- Howard Kurtz on coverage of Irene, a category 1 storm

This time last week, we were all assaulted with one of the largest, most destructive storms in decades. No, I’m not talking about hurricane Irene, I’m talking about the perfect storm of mostly misleading coverage about Irene.

You can certainly make a convincing point that Irene wasn’t overhyped, since the storm caused widespread flooding and power outages for more than 1 million customers. You can also make the case that more people might have died were it not for the heretofore extraordinary measures of evacuation orders and the media coverage that they received.

On the other hand, the nonstop TV hyping of worst-case scenarios even after more-responsible forecasters saw as early as Thursday that Irene would not be a major hurricane caused millions to expect something far, far worse. “The East Coast Katrina,” some on-air “journalists bleated. Watching the infotainment media one would have expected or the water wall from The Ten Commandments. Nothing like that showed up.

As Toby Harnden, reporter for the Telegraph, UK observed of a CNN reporter:

… it was a dramatic on-air moment, broadcasting live from Long Island, New York during a hurricane that also threatened Manhattan.

“We are in, right, no… the right eye wall, no doubt about that… there you see the surf,” he said breathlessly. “That tells a story right there.”

Stumbling and apparently buffeted by ferocious gusts, he took shelter next to a building. “This is our protection from the wind,” he explained. “It’s been truly remarkable to watch the power of the ocean here.”

The surf may have told a story but so too did the sight behind the reporter of people chatting and ambling along the sea front and just goofing around. There was a man in a t-shirt, a woman waving her arms and then walking backwards. Then someone on a bicycle glided past.

Across the screen, the “Breaking News: Irene Batters Long Island” caption was replaced by stern advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency: “Stay inside, stay safe.”

There’s a huge difference between informing the public and exploiting it for gain. Some cable anchors for example, were still reporting that Irene could strike New Jersey and New York as a major hurricane long after credible sources had reported the storm was weakening. Howard Kurtz (another media whore with whom I rarely agree) put it best when he said that this was Category 5 reporting on a Category 1 storm.

Some reporters even looked crestfallen as the Great Storm fizzled out into a mostly non-event. And it is true, as Nate Silver argues that the coverage of the storm in size was not extraordinary, but the coverage in tone certainly was. As with everything else, coverage of the storm was distorted in order to accentuate the sensational to the detriment of the public good.

One cable reporter from NY1, a local 24/7 news station, became visibly defensive when challenged by a viewer on the overhyped news reporting. He dismissed the notion that this type of coverage is motivated by financial gain, noting that the network had stopped airing commercials. For me, this was cynicism at its worst, and further undermines the credibility of already tarnished journalists. It was insulting, to say the least. 

Understanding the media reaction is simple: Irene was a big, inexpensive story capable of filling hours of air for pennies. The hurricane came to the media’s doorstep at a time when they’re all bargain-basement shopping for the cheapest crap an audience will watch. Yes, I’ve seen the reports about how millions worth of commercial time was pre-empted by storm coverage, but let’s not kid ourselves. The media outlets with the biggest audience numbers will use them to bump up their rate cards.

They'll make back the lost revenue and then some.

Corporate news is about, well, profits. But you’d have to be one dumb motherfucker to go along with that line of reasoning. The media, endowed as the “Fourth Estate” -- a vital part of our republic -- and the principle beneficiary of the First Amendment, has as its mandate the responsibility of informing the public and being a watchdog against abuses of power. When the media abdicates its civil responsibility, then we’re all fucked.

This type of media is detrimental to our quality of life and it erodes what little freedoms we could claim. In this way, is how a war criminal like Dick Cheney is allowed to break international and domestic laws and not just get away with it, but write books about breaking those laws and profiting from his crimes. Meanwhile, there’s a black or Latin@ youth rotting away in prison for stealing a bag of chips or six-pack of beer.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

How It's Done

¡Hola! Everybody…
I just had to repost the following from one of my contacts, 2 Political Junkies. I once had a public relations consultant tell me that about 70-80% of the “news: is actually publicity. This example shows how now the media is wholly corporate-owned:

From today's Sunday Pops at Richard Mellon Scaife's Tribune-Review:

More than 300 economists have signed a letter stating that failure to extend the Bush-era tax cuts will devastate growth. Obamanomics hasn't worked. What a novel idea -- return to fundamental economics. [Bold in original]

I know you're all chomping at the bit with some questions; What letter? Who sent it? Where can I see it?

Took a few seconds, but here's the letter. It's posted at the National Taxpayers Union website.

Guess who (c'mon, just frickin guess) is a huge financial supporter of the NTU?

That's right, Richard Mellon Scaife - owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

According to mediamatters, in fact, the Sarah Scaife Foundation offered up the single largest financial support of the NTU, with $1.23 million in support from 1991 to 2007. This does not count the $275,000 in support from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation from 1993 to 2003 or the

* $50,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2009.

* $75,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008.

By my calculations, that's $1.63 million in financial support over the years.

Considering the fact that Scaife is more than likely among those wealthy who'll see their taxes go back to up Clinton-era levels once the Bush-era tax cuts end, he stands to benefit personally if the tax policy positions suggested by those 300 economists are implemented.

His foundations supported the NTU, the NTU posted the letter saying the tax cuts should be extended, his paper lauded the letter as the right thing to do.

The circle jerk continues.

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And we’re swallowing it.

Love,

Eddie

Smacking the Goobers

¡Hola! Everybody...
I thought I’d start the week with a little truth-telling. For one, no matter what Faux News says, there were maybe 60-70 thousand protesters at Saturday’s “Million Moran^© March.” And that’s a generous estimate by the DC fire department. The parks dept., however, put the figure at a more realistic 30k. That’s it? After all the $$$ and the huge media plug, that’s all they could come up with? This is the fringe, my friends. BTW, I didn’t see too much color in that sea of white...

::arches eyebrow::

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-=[ Truth Telling ]=-

Free your mind, your ass will follow...

What better way to start the week than with some old-fashioned libruhl truthiness?

Neocons are here

::points right::

Reality is here

::points left::

and never the twain shall meet...

MYTH 1: There is no health care crisis and the health care system currently works fine; only a small number of uninsured people would benefit from reform.

The Rush dolts want you to believe that there isn’t a crisis in health care in this country. They will tell you that this is really about controlling people’s lives “socialism!”

REALITY: On top of the 40-million-plus of the uninsured are 25 million Americans who are underinsured. The crisis facing the underinsured is the same thing that people who have no insurance at all face: they go without treatment, medications, or do not see a doctor when sick. Both groups face a financial hardship due to medical debt.

Big Insurance restricts or denies coverage by canceling health insurance policies on the grounds that customers had undisclosed, pre-existing conditions. One study found that in one year, three major American insurance companies rescinded almost 20,000 policies -- saving themselves $300 million.

MYTH 2: Progressive health care reform proposals will cause the rationing medical treatment.

Sean “I was toilet trained at gunpoint” Hannity, of Faux News, blurted once, "We're gonna have a government rationing body that tells women with breast cancer, ‘You're dead.’ It's a death sentence!”

REALITY: Hello?!! Big Insurance already rations healthcare. In fact, they acknowledge it, restricting coverage of procedures and tests like MRIs and CAT scans, and denying coverage for pre-existing medical conditions.

Practicing physicians are forced to ration all the time. Basically, they get this paperwork that forces them to justify why they’re ordering test or procedure. Moreover, if the justification is deemed inadequate by a faceless admin, they will not pay for it. This is saying that the patient is going to have to pay for it on their own, which is the essence of rationing.

MYTH 3: Health care reform provides for euthanasia, a “death panel.”

REALITY: “Death panel” claims have been conclusively discredited by more than 40 media reports. For example, PolitiFact wrote: “We’ve looked at the inflammatory claims that the health care bill encourages euthanasia. It doesn’t. There’s certainly no ‘death board’ that determines the worthiness of individuals to receive care. ... [Palin] said that the Democratic plan will ration care and ‘my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.” Palin's statement,” reports PolitiFact, “sounds more like a science fiction movie than part of an actual bill before Congress.”

MYTH 4: Under the health care reform legislation you will be denied care, and it will be given to undocumented immigrants instead.

REALITY: Joe Wilson’s behavior on the house floor wasn’t just stupid; it was based on a lie -- his. If you’re going to be an asshole, you should at least have your facts right. The fact is that the house bill expressly requires that those “not lawfully present” may not receive subsidies to purchase insurance. Under the “Individual Affordability Credits” section of the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009:

MYTH 5: Health care reform would be funded by broad-based tax increases.

REALITY: The surtax in House bill applies only to income exceeding $350,000 per year for joint filers. The House health care legislation would establish a 1% tax on joint income exceeding $350,000 but not greater than $500,000 per year; a 1.5% tax on joint income exceeding $500,000 but not greater than $1 million per year; a 5.4% tax on joint income exceeding $1 million per year. Single filers would be subject to the 1% surtax starting at income exceeding $280,000 per year.

MYTH 6: The House Democrats' bill will raise income taxes on small businesses and subject all small businesses to an 8 percent payroll tax as a penalty for not providing insurance to employees.

A Wall Street Journal editorial actually stipulated that the health-care bill’s 5.4-percentage point income surtax would hit small business especially hard, killing jobs in the process.

REALITY: The House Ways and Means Committee stated that, “using the broadest definition of a small business owner (i.e., any individual with as little as $1 of small business income), that only 4.1% of all small business owners would be affected by the health care surcharge.”

Companies with annual payrolls of less than $250,000 would pay no penalty under the House bill. The House bill would establish a 2 percent payroll penalty for employers with combined payroll between $250,000 to $300,000 that don’t offer health insurance to employees; a 4 percent penalty for employers with $300,000 to $350,000 in payroll; a 6 percent penalty for employers with $350,000 to $400,000 in payroll; and an 8 percent penalty for companies with annual payrolls exceeding $400,000. Additionally, the bill actually establishes tax credits for small-business employers that do provide health care.

MYTH 7: Health care reform would add $1 trillion-plus to deficit.

By now, those of us that read or watch the news has that even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that none of the health plans pending on Capitol Hill would control long-term spending, and that ones with the elements Obama wants would add around $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years.

REALITY: is that the House bill would increase the federal budget deficit by $239 billion over 10 years -- not $1 trillion. In a July 17 cost estimate of the bill as introduced, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that it “reflects a projected 10-year cost of the bill's insurance coverage provisions of $1,042 billion, partly offset by net spending changes that CBO estimates would save $219 billion over the same period, and by revenue provisions that JCT estimates would increase federal revenues by about $583 billion over those 10 years.” CBO thus concluded the legislation “would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period.”

MYTH 8: Obama is pushing a single-payer system like Canada's or a nationalized health care system like the United Kingdom’s.

REALITY: Unfortunately, He is on record as preferring, “to build on the system that we have and fill some of these gaps.”

I believe this is a mistake because we will not be able to unshackle the stranglehold of the insurance giants and will instead create a giveaway to the same entities that are literally killing us. Still, creation of a not for profit insurance entity would add some much-needed competition to the de fact insurance monopolies.

MYTH 9: Health care reform proposals are socialist and will lead to socialized medicine.

REALITY: Conservatives have trotted out the “socialized medicine” smear for 75 years and it has never been true. In an Urban Institute analysis it states, “socialized medicine involves government financing and direct provision of health care services,” and therefore, recent progressive health-care reform proposals do not “fit this description.”

Media Matters for America found that, as far back as the 30s -- with respect to at least 16 different reform initiatives including President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s consideration of government health insurance when crafting the 1935 Social Security bill; President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 legislation establishing Medicare; and the health-care initiative by President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton in 1993 and 1994 -- conservatives have used the same fear tactics against those proposals by calling them “socialized medicine.”

It's what they’re good at -- using fear to cow the public.

MYTH 10: Medicare has failed, and so the government can't be trusted to “run health care.”

REALITY: Medicare costs have risen more slowly than private insurance. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote, "Since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% -- but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen 'only' as much as Medicare spending, they'd be 1/3 lower than they are.”

So there you have it. Next time a goober tries to pass off the Koo-Aid to ya, tell them, no thanks, you got the straight stuff.

Ya Betcha!

*wink*

Wealthcare: Shucking and Jiving for the Massa

¡Hola! Everybody...
OK! Let’s put aside the bullshit and get to some semblance of truth. We here in the US have the most cumbersome, expensive, and dysfunctional health care system in the free world. We pay more for much less and even countries like Cuba have better health outcomes than we do here in the good old USA.

Yet, we have the neocon Kool-Aid drinkers actually advocating against their own self-interest. Watch the video and check out getting the Canadian health care system right. This here is the undiluted truth, people. No Kool-Aid and sugar-free...

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-=[ Wealthcare ]=-

We’re all corporate cheerleaders.

I watch in utter amazement and embarrassment as some Americans go out of their way to advocate against their won self-interest. And like many others, I wonder how it all came to be... How did we all become shills for corporations? Then I heard about Doug Rushkoff's new book Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back, and it hit me. the corporate values of business, profit, and consumerism have so infected our lives that we are no longer can conceptualize life in any other way. We are victims of a dysfunctional societal relationship -- one that has come to seem so normal we are almost incapable of processing of how screwed up it really is.

If you are mugged, as Rushkoff was, your neighbors might be more concerned about property values than your health or safety.

The corporation is our new God -- I call it Korporate Kristianity -- my euphemism for fascism. Let’s take the current health care “debate.” corporations are spending $1.4 million a day to pay thousands of lobbyists to defeat any kind of health care reform. We have all heard the lies and misinformation: from “death panels” to rationing to utter disinformation about other national models. Specifically the Canadian and British models have been mercilessly trashed and misrepresented by a media that’s owned by a handful of (yup) corporations.

So, let’s start with our neighbors from the north in Canada. Let’s look at some of the myths being passed around by the gullible idiots on the right:

First? Numbers, as my friend Will likes to point out, don’t lie. If the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear winner. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends far less money on health care for better outcomes.

But let’s be clear: logic isn’t what is fueling this debate, if it was, we would’ve had a single payer option 15 years ago, when the insurance giants promised they would get their act together. Opponents of such a system cite Canada as the best example of what not to do, so it might prove useful to throw light on some myths about the Canadian system.

Canada's health care system is an unmanageable bureaucracy.

Wrong! The opposite is true: the U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

The Canadian system is more expensive than that of the U.S.

Bullshit! Ten percent of Canada’s GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. Essentially, the U.S. system is significantly more expensive than Canada’s. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.

What the American neocon corporate shills don’t realize is that such care costs about $45 billion per year, and someone has to pay it. This is why insurance premiums increase every year for insured patients while co-pays and deductibles also rise rapidly.

Canada's government decides who gets health care and when they get it.

This is the “I don’t want the gub’mint to tell me what to do” argument. While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.

There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don't get one no matter what your doctor thinks -- unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.

There are long waits for care, which compromise access to care.

Part of the neocon “rationing” scare tactic. There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists’ care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer. However, the wait has nothing to do with money, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. Moreover, fewer Canadians (11.3 percent) than Americans (14.4 percent) admit unmet health care needs.

Canadians are paying out of pocket to come to the U.S. for medical care.

I’ve seen too many neocon twats posting this lie on the internet; let me put it to rest. Most patients who come from Canada to the U.S. for health care are those whose costs are covered by the Canadian governments. If a Canadian goes outside of the country to get services that are deemed medically necessary, not experimental, and are not available at home for whatever reason (e.g., shortage or absence of high tech medical equipment; a longer wait for service than is medically prudent; or lack of physician expertise), the provincial government where you live fully funds your care. Those patients who do come to the U.S. for care and pay out of pocket are those who perceive their care to be more urgent than it likely is. In any case, I don’t see any empirical proof that there are throngs of Canadians fighting to come to our hospitals or moving here en masse to escape their horrible (free and guaranteed) health care system.

Canada’s is socialized medicine! The evil gub’mint runs hospitals and doctors work for the gub’mint.

No, goober, you’re incorrect. Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt says single-payer systems are not “socialized medicine” but “social insurance” systems because doctors work in the private sector while their pay comes from a public source. Most physicians in Canada are self-employed. They are not employees of the government nor are they accountable to the government. Doctors are accountable to their patients only. More than 90 percent of physicians in Canada are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Claims are submitted to a single provincial health care plan for reimbursement, whereas in the U.S., claims are submitted to a multitude of insurance providers. Moreover, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities rather than being part of or run by the government.

So, there you have it, the undiluted truth. It might you feel uncomfortable and doesn’t jibe with what your daddy told you, but as Will would say: the numbers don’t lie.

Love You Anyway,

Eddie

Monday Madness [Media Whores]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Vacation starts this Friday! I’m going to an intensive meditation retreat (one I missed when Mother Dear was visiting recently), and then maybe spend a few days in New Hampshire at someone’s cabin. I never thought of NH as a suitable vacation destination until a former girlfriend convinced me. It’s very beautiful.

I have a busy week up ahead!

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-=[ Media Whores ]=-

Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.

--Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786

I first caught wind of this stink here. If you check out today’s blog photo, you will find the following from Meet the Press’ David Gregory to the people who handle the hooker governor from SC. It reads:

“Look, you guys have a lot of pitches... I get it and I know this is a tough situation... Let me say just this is a place to have a wider conversation with some context about not just the personal but also the future for him and the party... This situation only exacerbates the issue of how the GOP recovers when another national leader suffers a setback like this. So coming on Meet the Press allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to... and then move on. You can see you have done your interview and then move on. Consider it.” [emphasis added]

This is beyond putrid and it takes away whatever sympathy I may have regarding the slow death of the corporate-owned news media. A man or woman attempting such behavior on a street corner would be arrested for prostitution and rightly so. I submit that journalists today are more concerned about maintaining “access” than actually serving as a watchdog against entrenched power. Rarely have I witnessed such blatant pandering and brown-nosing.

Simply put, Gregory was willing to trade access on his show in exchange for an opportunity to “frame the conversation how you really want to…and then move on.” To borrow the idiotic line by uber-neocon Grover Norquist regarding government: I want to shrink the MSM until we can “drown it in a bathtub.” These are not “news” organizations. They are infomercials for corporatist ideology.

Love,

Eddie