Substance Not Sound Bytes
Abookamongstthemany
Posts: 8,209
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/substance-not-sound-bytes-by-ralph-nader/
Substance Not Sound Bytes by Ralph Nader
Posted on April 16, 2008 by dandelionsalad
Dandelion Salad
by Ralph Nader
Monday, April 14. 2008
In this year’s presidential campaign, the major media want you to focus on the candidates’ gaffes, their tactics toward one another’s gaffes, the flows of political gossip and four second sound bytes.
Over and over again this is the humdrum pattern. Is Obama an elitist because of what he said about small towns in Pennsylvania? Why do Hillary and Bill exaggerate? Will Bill’s mouth drag Hillary down? Will Barack’s pastor drag him down? What about the gender factor? The race factor? Will they figure?
Who has more experience on Day One? What is McCain’s wizardry over the reporters on the campaign trail? Can McCain project any human warmth? Which state must Hillary win and by what margin to continue in the race?
On the Sunday talk shows, it is the same couple dozen members of the opinion oligopoly. There is Bill Kristol bringing home the neocon bacon with dreary frequency. There is the James Carville/Mary Matalin spouse show featuring their squabbling over ideology.
Meanwhile the daily struggle of the American people, absorbing the results of the power abuses by the rich, powerful and corporate, continues outside this inbred force field of insipid coverage and commentary.
The people hear nothing regarding what McCain, Obama and Clinton will do about runaway drug, gasoline, and heating oil prices, not to mention what these Senators have already not done in these areas of public outcry.
Disintegration is everywhere. Public works are crumbling—schools, clinics, public transit, libraries, drinking water and sewage-treatment plants. Tax dollars are being used to destroy more of Iraq and to subsidize or bail out companies recklessly run by obscenely overpaid CEOs. Public deficits are soaring.
Corporate criminals laugh all the way to the bank and back. Eighty percent of the workers have been falling behind while the growth of the economy, until last October, made the rich richer and the hyper-rich go off the charts.
One of three workers lives on Wal-Mart wage levels. Nearly fifty million Americans are without health insurance. Eighteen thousand of these Americans die each year because they cannot afford health care, according to the Institute of Medicine. The recession deepens.
The corporate giants are abandoning millions of American workers as they move whole industries to dictatorial regimes abroad where political elites dictate wages, ban independent trade unions, and given sufficient grease, reduce other costs for these companies. Only American CEOs are not outsourced in this mad dash for greed and profits.
All our democratic institutions—courts, agencies, legislatures—are bypassed by “pull-down” autocratic trade treaties like the secretive World Trade Organization and NAFTA.
Wall Street operators seethe with reckless risks and then expect Washington to bail them out. Sure, why not? Washington is run by Wall Street executives on temporary job assignment in high government positions. The big corporations are big government.
Consumers are facing rapidly rising food prices, more home foreclosures, and rising rents. They have lost control over their money, as shown by the daily gouging by credit card companies, cell phone operators and the thousands of imposed fees, penalties, and charges, so well described in the new book Gotcha Capitalism by MSNBC reporter Bob Sullivan. Poverty increases.
Each year, about 58,000 Americans die from air pollution (EPA figures), and 100,000 patients lose their lives from medical negligence in hospitals and many more from hospital-induced infections. Have you heard any of the major campaigns pay any attention to these grim casualty levels?
Anxious workers feel shut out – they are disrespected, denied claims, arbitrarily laid off and just plain helpless on the shifting sands and seas of corporate globalization.
Fully 81 percent believe the country is going in the wrong directions. Almost as many believe corporations have too much control over their lives. And 61 percent polled say the major parties are failing.
Now turn on the television and radio coverage of the presidential campaign. How much of the above is reflected in the incessant distractions about tactics, gaffes and the fervid money-raising race?
Can the press and pundits ever be serious if the people do not grab hold of politics and make them become serious about their pleas, their plight and their revulsions? If voters want a concise mission statement, read the preamble to the Constitution, which starts “We the People…” not “We the Corporations….”
There is a responsibility attached to those words.
Substance Not Sound Bytes by Ralph Nader
Posted on April 16, 2008 by dandelionsalad
Dandelion Salad
by Ralph Nader
Monday, April 14. 2008
In this year’s presidential campaign, the major media want you to focus on the candidates’ gaffes, their tactics toward one another’s gaffes, the flows of political gossip and four second sound bytes.
Over and over again this is the humdrum pattern. Is Obama an elitist because of what he said about small towns in Pennsylvania? Why do Hillary and Bill exaggerate? Will Bill’s mouth drag Hillary down? Will Barack’s pastor drag him down? What about the gender factor? The race factor? Will they figure?
Who has more experience on Day One? What is McCain’s wizardry over the reporters on the campaign trail? Can McCain project any human warmth? Which state must Hillary win and by what margin to continue in the race?
On the Sunday talk shows, it is the same couple dozen members of the opinion oligopoly. There is Bill Kristol bringing home the neocon bacon with dreary frequency. There is the James Carville/Mary Matalin spouse show featuring their squabbling over ideology.
Meanwhile the daily struggle of the American people, absorbing the results of the power abuses by the rich, powerful and corporate, continues outside this inbred force field of insipid coverage and commentary.
The people hear nothing regarding what McCain, Obama and Clinton will do about runaway drug, gasoline, and heating oil prices, not to mention what these Senators have already not done in these areas of public outcry.
Disintegration is everywhere. Public works are crumbling—schools, clinics, public transit, libraries, drinking water and sewage-treatment plants. Tax dollars are being used to destroy more of Iraq and to subsidize or bail out companies recklessly run by obscenely overpaid CEOs. Public deficits are soaring.
Corporate criminals laugh all the way to the bank and back. Eighty percent of the workers have been falling behind while the growth of the economy, until last October, made the rich richer and the hyper-rich go off the charts.
One of three workers lives on Wal-Mart wage levels. Nearly fifty million Americans are without health insurance. Eighteen thousand of these Americans die each year because they cannot afford health care, according to the Institute of Medicine. The recession deepens.
The corporate giants are abandoning millions of American workers as they move whole industries to dictatorial regimes abroad where political elites dictate wages, ban independent trade unions, and given sufficient grease, reduce other costs for these companies. Only American CEOs are not outsourced in this mad dash for greed and profits.
All our democratic institutions—courts, agencies, legislatures—are bypassed by “pull-down” autocratic trade treaties like the secretive World Trade Organization and NAFTA.
Wall Street operators seethe with reckless risks and then expect Washington to bail them out. Sure, why not? Washington is run by Wall Street executives on temporary job assignment in high government positions. The big corporations are big government.
Consumers are facing rapidly rising food prices, more home foreclosures, and rising rents. They have lost control over their money, as shown by the daily gouging by credit card companies, cell phone operators and the thousands of imposed fees, penalties, and charges, so well described in the new book Gotcha Capitalism by MSNBC reporter Bob Sullivan. Poverty increases.
Each year, about 58,000 Americans die from air pollution (EPA figures), and 100,000 patients lose their lives from medical negligence in hospitals and many more from hospital-induced infections. Have you heard any of the major campaigns pay any attention to these grim casualty levels?
Anxious workers feel shut out – they are disrespected, denied claims, arbitrarily laid off and just plain helpless on the shifting sands and seas of corporate globalization.
Fully 81 percent believe the country is going in the wrong directions. Almost as many believe corporations have too much control over their lives. And 61 percent polled say the major parties are failing.
Now turn on the television and radio coverage of the presidential campaign. How much of the above is reflected in the incessant distractions about tactics, gaffes and the fervid money-raising race?
Can the press and pundits ever be serious if the people do not grab hold of politics and make them become serious about their pleas, their plight and their revulsions? If voters want a concise mission statement, read the preamble to the Constitution, which starts “We the People…” not “We the Corporations….”
There is a responsibility attached to those words.
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
It just frustrates me that he doesn't try harder. I'd like to feel comfortable voting for him again, but I just can't see how.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmgphotos/4731512142/" title="PJ Banner2 by Mister J Photography, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1135/4731512142_258f2d6ab4_b.jpg" width="630" height="112" alt="PJ Banner2" /></a>
i would suspect that doing that would cost a lot of money and take away from his consumer advocacy work ... but i could be wrong ...
having said that - not voting for him because of unknown reasons to his campaign timing seems like an excuse ... even if he ran a huge grassroots campaign - i doubt he could poll much higher then he is now ...
I agree... I'm not taking anything away from the fights that he has fought in his career... he has obviously done some great things for all of us, and his positions are ones in which a lot of people agree with.
After the late 90's/2000 election, when 3rd party candidates made a lot of noise (Nader & Ventura come to mind), that was the time to really step up and start a grassroots political movement. Instead, everything goes away (maybe in part to the hyper-patriotism after 9/11), and Nader only seems to really show up for presidential elections.
A third party candidate will never win the presidential election... sorry, but it's true. The way to change this country's political system is from the ground up, and no one group (or groups working together) seem to want to put in the effort or resources needed to do that. Once you start winning local and state elections, all of a sudden a run for a president doesn't seem like such a longshot. But people in this country are so ingrained in the two party system, that short of a revolution, change from the top just isn't going to happen.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
that kinda talk can get you bitch-slapped around here. trust me. i agree with you and have said similar things, and it was like i was suddenly a commie.
no offense to real commies.
"Obama's main opponent in this election on November 4th (was) not John McCain, it (was) ignorance."~Michael Moore
"i'm feeling kinda righteous right now. with my badass motherfuckin' ukulele!"
~ed, 8/7
Nader doesn't just go away in the years between elections...you only think he does because the media completely stops mentioning anything about him. And why would they bother covering him when he's out there giving their
corporate masters a hard time? It's always going to be a conflict of interest for the mainstream media to cover someone like Nader.
But that is all starting to change. I'm more hopeful now than ever. People are beginning to look for their news elsewhere and are starting to realize and speak out about the media's bias and lack of substance more and more. People are now looking to the internet for their information at an ever increasing rate. They don't want to deal with the commercials, the stories on celebrities and all the stories they aren't interested in. This gives 3rd parties an increasing chance at getting their message across and bloggers and networkers are spreading it around the net daily. On myspace alone, I've had so many people tell me how before they saw the things I've bulletined on Nader, they had only heard bad things and thought he was an asshole. But after listening to his speeches and reading about his history and where he stands now they really like him and even have a great admiration towards him now. So I believe this revolution you speak of is already underway and it has everything to do with the age of communications and technology expanding further and further every day. I'm proud to be a part of it and proud to be supporting someone I feel so good about backing this time.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
I know he doesn't actually quit working in the years in between, but what I was saying that if he is serious about turning around our government, he has to find a way to get the grassroots working. You see major candidates start years ahead of time in Iowa, doing a lot of door to door campaigning, developing local offices, and just getting out there. I'm not so sure that Nader does that enough. Also, he's no spring chicken, what happens to the movement when he is gone? There needs to be a charismatic leader to pick up where he leaves off.
And as far as people getting their news from other sources, that maybe true, but the vast majority of the people aren't digging any deeper... You look at Google searches and Yahoo news searches, and the top searched categories are still celebrity gossip, and whatever the story of the day is on the cable news networks. People are going different places, but the major news media is still setting the agenda.
That's why it has to be a ground-up change... Older voters are still going to vote for their party, and as younger voters get older, once they have their own families, etc., a lot of us get more complacent and apathetic to some huge change... we have a million other day-to-day things to worry about.
That goes back to your thread about what will it take to resist... I have a wife and a family, we juggle child care and other schedules, rising prices on gas and every other bills, and lack of free time, so when we do get a weekend off or some evenings off, we would much rather do fun "family" stuff, then worry about changing all of the wrongs with the world... Once our daily lives and freedoms get noticeable altered, only then will most people resist.
So, if you start getting third party candidates on local town boards, and city councils, then state government positions, and people see a difference, then we might see a reduction in the power of a two party system.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln