The Media are Corrupt by Design - The Powell Manifesto
Ignoring what really happened is SOP for our Presstitutes. Remember Florida?
Here's how much of the nation's press were magically transformed from watchdogs into lapdogs:
The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)
The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971
Introduction
In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. [font color="red"]Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.”[/font color]
Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.
Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building — a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)
So did Powell’s political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. [font color="red"]Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment “right” for corporations to influence ballot questions.[/font color] On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.
CONTINUED...
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
This story continues through today, where we have Chief Justice John Roberts shepherding corporate friendly law through the court, let alone appointing nothing but BFEE-friendly pukes to the FISA Court, and the press working mightily to move on to the next shiny object. Of course, Congress and the Administration do their bit to advance the interests of Corporate America, Wall Street, and War Inc, unchecked by public awareness.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Business Roundtable President and former Michigan Gov. John Engler speaks during a news conference that is part of a 'Day of Action for Immigration Reform' at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce July 9, 2014 in Washington, DC. According to a Partnership for a New American Economy survey supported by the business leaders, 86-percent of those polled want Congress to undertake immigration reform and 70-percent said they would vote for a presidential candidate from a party that is viewed as supporting immigration reform.
(July 8, 2014 - Source: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)
Business Roundtable is one way the right can pool billionaire's resources even more effectively than the 99-percent, which is comparably dirt poor.
Before there was Chris Christy, there was Gov. John Engler. He coulda been veep, but for Cheney.
Which renders the first word false...because we all know theories are wrong.
Then they make a buck off it.
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
The Newspaper of War
by Howard Friel
Published on Tuesday, May 13, 2014 by Common Dreams
Many years ago, Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnam, Communist China, and Soviet Russia were saying one thing about what had happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in early August 1964, while President Johnson and top administration officials were all saying the exact opposite. How should the Times have responded to that situation, assuming a commitment to an independent press and an informed citizenry?
Ten years earlier, in July 1954, the governments of Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China all signed the Final Declaration of the Geneva Accord on Vietnam, which formally concluded France’s U.S.-supported colonial war in Vietnam. The United States refused to sign, and thereafter proceeded to undermine the most important stipulation of the accord – that elections to unify the northern and southern zones of Vietnam take place in 1956. By what journalistic criteria should the New York Times have covered this refusal by the Eisenhower administration to sign and comply with the Geneva Accord on Vietnam, which opened the door to the twenty-year American military campaign in Vietnam?
When Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, and Rice claimed in 2001-2003 that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, including an active nuclear weapons program, and when Saddam Hussein denied those claims, what journalistic standard did the Times apply in its response to those conflicting claims?
Journalism schools should teach a course focused on questions like these, given that over the past sixty years the Times and every other mainstream news organization has repeatedly flunked such tests, in each instance aiding the government’s efforts in its illegal interventions and wars.
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/13-0
This is the "paper of record" that gave us Judith Miller and aluminum tubes, while failing to mention word that George W Bush's illegal domestic spying operation until after Selection 2004. I also want to emphasize this paper has done all it can to keep up the fiction that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot President John F. Kennedy, who had ordered withdrawal of the U.S. from Vietnam. In addition, this is an important read for those interested in seeing how Corporate McPravda exclusively serves the warmongers and not the People, as intended by the nation's Founders in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
While Brent and Co. were quick to focus on typeface and other sideshows, they or anyone else never demonstrated the documents were false. What they accomplished was to tarnish in the public mind Rather, CBS and their reporting, which was factual: George W Bush received preferential treatment to get into the Texas Air National Guard and spent a good portion of his time AWOL.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/25/1085393/-Dan-Rather-got-it-right-George-W-Bush-DID-go-AWOL#
Sadly, CBS Corp. failed to stand behind its reporter and the story and where it led: to W's career as a wash-out in the TANG, grounded for refusing to take a physical when drug testing became SOP along with his fellow officer, James R. Bath, who would later become the US business agent of the bin Laden family.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5446102
influence prospective jurors with their anti plaintiff bent. The www.westvirginiarecord.com was the 1st. They wanted to put them in what they called "judicial hellholes." The www.southeasttexasrecord.com is the one in my area. For the first year they didn't even sell ads until they realized that no one was taking it seriously. They hid the fact that they were the owners of the papers.
The Chamber realized that they could get more bang for the buck in state and local elections that the national DNC all but forgot. They were able to stack the deck and run many of the state legislatures. Even today the national Democratic organizations ignore local elections that the Chamber and other RW groups do not.
The Chamber is also very active in the litigation of corporate interests, filing Amicus (Latin for "friend of the Court"
briefs in protecting the confidentiality of Fracking chemicals and supporting British Petroleum against the victims of the Gulf oil spill. There papers of late have spoken out against the Class Settlement, probably because it has already screwed most of the victims and now BP wants the remains thrown out so they won't have to pay the Plaintiff's Steering Committee (PSC) the $600,000,000 "Common Benefit Fund" (bribe to get them to agree to the shitty deal in the first place)! BP had convinced the PSC to sell out most of the victims for this money, but only if the settlement went through to the end. The Chamber supports a foreign corporation over Americans, they cannot stoop any lower!
influence prospective jurors with their anti plaintiff bent. The www.westvirginiarecord.com was the 1st. They wanted to put them in what they called "judicial hellholes." The www.southeasttexasrecord.com is the one in my area. For the first year they didn't even sell ads until they realized that no one was taking it seriously. They hid the fact that they were the owners of the papers.
The Chamber realized that they could get more bang for the buck in state and local elections that the national DNC all but forgot. They were able to stack the deck and run many of the state legislatures. Even today the national Democratic organizations ignore local elections that the Chamber and other RW groups do not.
The Chamber is also very active in the litigation of corporate interests, filing Amicus (Latin for "friend of the Court" briefs in protecting the confidentiality of Fracking chemicals and supporting British Petroleum against the victims of the Gulf oil spill. There papers of late have spoken out against the Class Settlement, probably because it has already screwed most of the victims and now BP wants the remains thrown out so they won't have to pay the Plaintiff's Steering Committee (PSC) the $600,000,000 "Common Benefit Fund" (bribe to get them to agree to the shitty deal in the first place)! BP had convinced the PSC to sell out most of the victims for this money, but only if the settlement went through to the end. The Chamber supports a foreign corporation over Americans, they cannot stoop any lower!
