Big money distorts reality by dominating both sides of every debate.(Heartland Inst/Think Progress)

[stockholmer]

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.se/2012/05/warning-corporate-lobbyist-at-work.html

Like a tentacle of a sea monster breaking the surface of the water, a recent news story starring a "libertarian" think-tank's billboard comparing "climate change" proponents to Theodore Kaczynski (also known as the Unabomber) represents but a small part of a much larger beast. Like in any movie script, the billboard put up by the Heartland Institute is designed to play the role of the villain. Heroically riding in to fight this villain is "Think Progress," a so-called "progressive" project maintained by the Center for American Progress. To the average, poorly informed observer, it appears as if an increasingly heated debate over man's impact on the environment is unfolding, framed by a vitriolic "denier" camp reduced to name-calling, with a dignified progressive camp refusing to move from its foundation of "reason" and "science."

In reality we are watching two think-tanks funded, backed, and involved with the very same handful of corporations. Both the Heartland Institute and the Center for American Progress are funded by Wall Street and together they create a false paradigm with which to trap unassuming millions while sidelining real issues, problems, and their solutions.

Think Progress itself exposes the Heartland Institute as funded by major corporations including Amgen, Bayer, Comcast, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly & Company, Microsoft, PepsiCo, General Motors, Pfizer, and Time Warner Cable. It then berates these corporations for their support for the Heartland Institute in a more recent article of theirs titled, "Heartland Institute Compares Climate Science Believers And Reporters To Mass ‘Murderers And Madmen’." The US Chamber of Commerce is also listed as a contributor to the Heartland Institute in a .pdf provided by Think Progress.

What Think Progress doesn't tell readers is that these very same corporations are recipients of their own John Podesta's lobbying services - because indeed Think Progress and its umbrella organization, the Center for American Progress is chaired by John Podesta, co-founder of the Podesta Group - a notorious corporate lobbying firm involved with some of the most dubious characters and corporations on Earth. Amongst Podesta's clients are the above mentioned Amgen and General Motors, as well as BAE Systems, General Dynamics, General Electric, Raytheon, British Petroleum, Lockheed Martin, and many others.

snip

Meet the founder of the United Nations Foundation, depopulation and climate change enthusiast Ted Turner previously of Time Warner. Turner peddles Malthusian talking-points on national TV attempting to link overpopulation with global warming. And while Turner is no longer with Time Warner, its subsidiary Time Inc is still a corporate partner of the UN Foundation while Time Warner itself is listed as a supporter of the Heartland Institute - guilty of "climate denial." The Fortune 500 is replete with examples of corporations playing both sides of the climate debate.

snip

[ProSense]

1. Wait

you're comparing Think Progress to a RW organization? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heartland_Institute

What next: Rachel Maddow is the same as Erick Erickson?

Current is Fox?

DU is FR?

What utter bullshit.

[Luminous Animal]

2. You don't think that corporate dominance of both left and right institutions taint

the debate?

[ProSense]

5. Sure,

"You don't think that corporate dominance of both left and right institutions taint the debate?"

...I really think we have to question who is telling the truth: climate change advocates or deniers.

I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in between, right?

In fact, why the hell are we so down on ALEC and Heartland's other funders: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heartland_Institute#Funding

They could have a point.

This debate is about as absurd as trying to claim that we don't know who is telling the truth, Obama or Romney, about saving the auto industry because they both have donors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_American_Progress#Funding

The author of the piece is a conspiracy nut.

[Luminous Animal]

7. The author of the OP is offering up an analysis of of how narrowly the issue is debated...

because of influence of corporations.

It not just a matter of what is the truth (though important) but how much depth liberal institutions will explore the solutions.

By the same corporations funding a vicious debate moderated by professional lobbyists in their employ, the corporate-financier elite ensure that the public is herded into a matrix of false choices where both real problems and their solutions are non-issues and instead an endless circular debate mired in infinite minutia is conducted. Regardless of which public opinion prevails regarding anthropogenic global warming, the corporate-financier oligarchs have institutions and legislation in place to capitalize, be it big-oil or carbon-credit trading big-banks.

[Cleita]

3. Blogger is suspect considering his ties to Prison Planet.

I don't think he's a reliable source.

[FSogol]

4. Unrec. More both parties are the same BS.

I give your post 2 pukes:

[stockholmer]

6. much, much too often they are 2 sides, same coin, perhaps you might read some Chomsky, etc

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.

- Carrol Quigley (Bill Clinton's and a tremendous amount of other power players mentor at Georgetown University), Tragedy and Hope (1966)

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http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1992----02.htm


Excerpts from Questions On Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 1992

QUESTION: You write in Manufacturing Consent that it's the primary function of the mass media in the United States to mobilize public support for the special interests that dominate the government and the private sector. What are those interests?

CHOMSKY: Well, if you want to understand the way any society works, ours or any other, the first place to look is who is in a position to make the decisions that determine the way the society functions. Societies differ, but in ours, the major decisions over what happens in the society -- decisions over investment and production and distribution and so on -- are in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of major corporations and conglomerates and investment firms. They are also the ones who staff the major executive positions in the government. They're the ones who own the media and they're the ones who have to be in a position to make the decisions. They have an overwhelmingly dominant role in the way life happens. You know, what's done in the society. Within the economic system, by law and in principle, they dominate. The control over resources and the need to satisfy their interests imposes very sharp constraints on the political system and on the ideological system.

QUESTION: When we talk about manufacturing of consent, whose consent is being manufactured?

CHOMSKY: To start with, there are two different groups, we can get into more detail, but at the first level of approximation, there's two targets for propaganda. One is what's sometimes called the political class. There's maybe twenty percent of the population which is relatively educated, more or less articulate, plays some kind of role in decision-making. They're supposed to sort of participate in social life -- either as managers, or cultural managers like teachers and writers and so on. They're supposed to vote, they're supposed to play some role in the way economic and political and cultural life goes on. Now their consent is crucial. So that's one group that has to be deeply indoctrinated. Then there's maybe eighty percent of the population whose main function is to follow orders and not think, and not to pay attention to anything -- and they're the ones who usually pay the costs.

QUESTION: ... You outlined a model -- filters that propaganda is sent through, on its way to the public. Can you briefly outline those?

CHOMSKY: It's basically an institutional analysis of the major media, what we call a propaganda model. We're talking primarily about the national media, those media that sort of set a general agenda that others more or less adhere to, to the extent that they even pay much attention to national or international affairs. Now the elite media are sort of the agenda-setting media. That means The New York Times, The Washington Post, the major television channels, and so on. They set the general framework. Local media more or less adapt to their structure. And they do this in all sorts of ways: by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns, by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within certain limits. They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict -- in order to serve the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society.

The New York Times is certainly the most important newspaper in the United States, and one could argue the most important newspaper in the world. The New York Times plays an enormous role in shaping the perception of the current world on the part of the politically active, educated classes. Also The New York Times has a special role, and I believe its editors probably feel that they bear a heavy burden, in the sense that The New York Times creates history. That is, history is what appears in The New York Times archives; the place where people will go to find out what happened is The New York Times. Therefore it's extremely important if history is going to be shaped in an appropriate way, that certain things appear, certain things not appear, certain questions be asked, other questions be ignored, and that issues be framed in a particular fashion. Now in whose interests is history being so shaped? Well, I think that's not very difficult to answer.

Now, to eliminate confusion, all of this has nothing to do with liberal or conservative bias. According to the propaganda model, both liberal and conservative wings of the media -- whatever those terms are supposed to mean -- fall within the same framework of assumptions. In fact, if the system functions well, it ought to have a liberal bias, or at least appear to. Because if it appears to have a liberal bias, that will serve to bound thought even more effectively.

snip

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Power, Propaganda, and Purpose in American Democracy

http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2012/01/18/power-propaganda-and-purpose-in-american-democracy/

One central facet to the development of the modern institutional society under which we live and are dominated today, was the redefining of the concept of ‘democracy’ that took place in the early 20th century. This immensely important discussion took place among the educated, elite intellectual class in the United States at that time, and the consequences of which were profound for the development of not only American society and democracy, but for the globalization that followed after World War II. The central theme that emerged was that in the age of ‘mass democracy’, where people came to be known as “the public,” the concept of ‘democracy’ was redefined to be a system of government and social organization which was to be managed by an intellectual elite, largely concerned with “the engineering of consent” of the masses in order to allow elite-management of society to continue unhindered.

The socio-economic and political situation of the United States had, throughout the 19th century, rapidly changed. Official slavery was ended after the Civil War and the wage-slave method of labour was introduced on a much wider scale; that is, the approach at which people are no longer property themselves, but rather lend their labour at minimal hourly wages, a difference equated with rental slavery versus owned slavery. While the system of labour had itself changed, the living conditions of the labourers did not improve a great deal. With Industrialization also came increased urbanization, poverty, and thus, social unrest. The 19th Century in the United States was one of near-constant labour unrest, social upheaval and a rapidly growing wealth divide. And it was not simply the lower labouring classes that were experiencing the harsh rigors of a modern industrial life. One social critic of the era, writing in 1873, discussed the situation of the middle class in America:

Very few among them are saving money. Many of them are in debt; and all they can earn for years, is, in many cases, mortgaged to pay such debt… [We see] the unmistakable signs of their incessant anxiety and struggles to get on in life, and to obtain in addition to a mere subsistence, a standing in society… The poverty of the great middle classes consists in the fact that they have only barely enough to cover up their poverty… their poverty is felt, mentally and socially, through their sense of dependence and pride. They must work constantly, and with an angry sense of the limited opportunities for a career at their command.[1]

As immigrants from Europe and Asia flooded America, a growing sense of racism emerged among the faltering middle class. This situation created enormous tension and unease among middle and working class Americans, and indeed, the industrialists who ruled over them. Yet many in the middle class viewed the lower class, which was increasingly rebellious, as well as the immigrant labourers – also quite militant – as a threat to their own standing in society. Instead of focusing primarily on the need for reorganization at the top of the social structure, they looked to the masses – the working people – as the greatest source of instability. Their approach was in attempting to preserve – or construct – a system beneficial to their own particular interests. Since the middle class survived on the backs of the workers, it was not in their interest as a class to support radical workers movements and revolutionary philosophies. Thus, while criticizing those at the top, the call came for ‘reform’, not revolution; for passive pluralism not democratic populism; for amelioration, not anarchy.


snip


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Read some Gabriel Kolko to start to see the nexus of big banks/business and government:

What you have is an artificially constructed choice called either 'deregulation' by the so-called right-wing, OR 'government oversight' by the so-called left-wing. Both are false paradigms. The last thing the systemic controllers want is a 'level playing field'.

The problem with the US experiment is not big government per se, it is big government that has morphed in all areas over the last 100 years into nothing more than an enforcement mechanism for the systemic controllers. Agencies that should be for the public good are simple the tools of the elite designed to to crush all competition from small and mid-size firms.

This started in the USA during the so-called Progressive Era under Theodore Roosevelt, wherein huge monopolies like Standard Oil, etc, utilized a 'don't throw me in the briar patch' argument to get the force of government into regulating business practices (regulations that many times in the 100 years since they have written, then had a bought and paid for Congress pass). Far from creating a free market, this quashed their rivals in so many cases, and made it exceedingly hard for small entrepreneurs to compete.

The US Animal ID act is a perfect example, wherein a small sized chicken farmer has to pay exorbitant licensing fees per chicken, thus forcing them out of business, whilst monstrously huge consortiums like Tyson, etc, simply are allowed to buy one large bulk license that covers millions of birds.

Check out New Left historian Gabriel Kolko, who in his book "The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916."

In it, he lays out a case for the rise of modern corporatist system during the Progressive Era. This in turn, allows for the violation of an anti-fascistic principle – No socialization of losses and privatization of gains (ie the confluence of big business and big government in mutual reinforcement).

http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Gabriel-Kolk...

http://www.4shared.com/document/Psy6aMNF/Gabriel_Kolko_-_The_Triumph_Of.html


Kolko was soon joined by other New Left historians such as William Appleman Williams in challenging the reigning "corporate liberal" orthodoxy. Rather than "the people" being behind these "progressive reforms," it was the very elite business interests themselves responsible, in an attempt to cartelize, centralize and control what was impossible due to the dynamics of a competitive and decentralized economy.

.............in advancing the corporate liberalism idea whereby the old Progressive historiography of the "interests" versus the "people" was reinterpreted as a collaboration of interests aiming towards stabilizing competition . According to Grob and Billias, "Kolko believed that large-scale units turned to government regulation precisely because of their inefficiency" and that the "Progressive movement - far from being antibusiness - was actually a movement that defined the general welfare in terms of the well-being of business" .

Kolko, in particular, broke new ground with his critical history of the Progressive Era. He discovered that free enterprise and competition were vibrant and expanding during the first two decades of the twentieth century; meanwhile, corporations reacted to the free market by turning to government to protect their inherent inefficiency from the discipline of market conditions. This behavior is known as corporatism, but Kolko dubbed it "political capitalism." Kolko's thesis "that businessmen favored government regulation because they feared competition and desired to forge a government-business coalition" is one that is echoed by many observers today . Former Harvard professor Paul H. Weaver uncovered the same inefficient and bureaucratic behavior from corporations during his stint at Ford Motor Corporation (see Weaver's The Suicidal Corporation)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kolko
http://users.crocker.com/~acacia/kolko.html
http://miltenoff.tripod.com/Kolko.html
http://www.stateofnature.org/liberalElitesAnd.html

-----------------------------------------------

Here are some links for left libertarianism, anarcho-socialism, and other concepts that are common place here in the EU, but alien to most in the US :

Peter Vallentyne http://philpapers.org/s/Peter%20Vallentyne (left libertarian),

Michael Otsuka http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctymio (left libertarian), even much of Noam Chomsky (he has called his libertarian socialism an anarchist philosophy)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are, rather, forced upon parliaments from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. Just as the employers always try to nullify every concession they had made to labor as soon as opportunity offered, as soon as any signs of weakness were observable in the workers' organizations, so governments also are always inclined to restrict or to abrogate completely rights and freedoms that have been achieved if they imagine that the people will put up no resistance.

Even in those countries where such things as freedom of the press, right of assembly, right of combination, and the like have long existed, governments are constantly trying to restrict those rights or to reinterpret them by juridical hair-splitting. Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace .

Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution."


– Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory & Practice, 1947

---------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.iwa-ait.org /

http://www.iww.org /

http://workersolidarity.org /



Other links to left forms of democratic workplaces and social structuring:


"The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm" by David Ellerman

http://www.ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Books/demofirm.doc



"Libertarianism Without Inequality" by Michael Otsuka (free PDF)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/49042780/Libertarianism-without-inequality


Why Left-Libertarianism Is Not Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant: A Reply to Fried

PETER VALLENTYNE,
HILLEL STEINER, AND
MICHAEL OTSUKA
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctymio/leftlibP&PA.pdf



http://newpol.org /

New Politics, published since 1986 as a semi-annual, follows in the tradition established in its first series (1961-1978) as an independent socialist forum for dialogue and debate on the left. It is committed to the advancement of the peace and anti-intervention movements. It stands in opposition to all forms of imperialism, and is uncompromising in its defense of feminism and affirmative action. In our pages there is broad coverage of labor and social movements, the international scene, as well as emphasis on cultural and intellectual history.

Above all, New Politics insists on the centrality of democracy to socialism and on the need to rely on mass movements from below for progressive social transformation.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


One variant of contemporary left-libertarianism affirms the classical liberal and libertarian idea of self-ownership, while rooting a robust version of economic egalitarianism in this idea. It combines the conventional libertarian idea of self-ownership with unconventional views regarding the ownership of land and natural resources (e.g. those of Henry George), residual claimancy vis-à-vis the firm, or both.

http://praxeology.net/all-left.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism


Here are some more new left scholars that do not fall into the camp of easy-labeling

Hillel Steiner http://philpapers.org/profile/2771

Philippe Van Parijs http://www.uclouvain.be/en-11688.html

David Ellerman http://philpapers.org/s/David%20Ellerman

Antonio Negri http://www.egs.edu/faculty/antonio-negri/biography /

Autonomism http://www.autonomism.com/autonomism /

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


"A government that can at pleasure accuse, shoot, and hang men, as traitors, for the one general offence of refusing to surrender themselves and their property unreservedly to its arbitrary will, can practice any and all special and particular oppressions it pleases. The result -- and a natural one -- has been that we have had governments, State and national, devoted to nearly every grade and species of crime that governments have ever practised upon their victims; and these crimes have culminated in a war that has cost a million of lives; a war carried on, upon one side, for chattel slavery, and on the other for political slavery; upon neither for liberty, justice, or truth. And these crimes have been committed, and this war waged, by men, and the descendants of men, who, less than a hundred years ago, said that all men were equal, and could owe neither service to individuals, nor allegiance to governments, except with their own consent."

Lysander Spooner

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[ProSense]

8. You're quoting

Chomsky from 1992 to discredit Think Progress?

You know, I get that you're trying to prove mass propaganda, but equating the Heartland Institute and its funders to Think Progress is like equating Current TV to Rupert Murdoch's empire. Thinks Progress doesn't have near the influence and reach of either. Also, your premise relies heavily on the influence of money, but it doesn't take into account that Think Progress isn't out there distorting the facts.

Can you show where Think Progress distorted the facts in a similar fashion to Heartland on global warming?

From your second link:

Andrew Gavin Marshall
I am a 24 year old independent researcher and writer based out of Montreal, Canada. I have written dozens of articles, essays, and reports online and in print on a wide array of social, economic, and political issues, always from a highly critical perspective. My writing can be found on my blog, www.andrewgavinmarshall.com. I am Project Manager of The People's Book Project (www.thepeoplesbookproject.com), an initiative through which I am attempting to write a comprehensive book on the institutions and ideas of power in our world, and what we can do about it.

Really? That's your source?