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Public Service Announcement on the Media (Original Post) Octafish May 2015 OP
Then there are centrists ... GeorgeGist May 2015 #1
You might enjoy Stanislaw Lem, who describes the process... Octafish May 2015 #2

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
2. You might enjoy Stanislaw Lem, who describes the process...
Tue May 5, 2015, 10:26 AM
May 2015
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

In the far future, a man is sent to meet another man somewhere in the seventh generation now-underground Pentagon (or is it the Other Side's Pentagon?). The guy finds a world where everyone is paranoid the person they're with is working for the Other Side or is a snitch for Our Side...

In our time, the process was set forth by the Chamber of Commerce lawyer whom BFEE crook Nixon appointed to SCROTUS:



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/



And thus the nation's watchdogs were magically transformed into lapdogs and we stopped seeing fewer "journalists" comfort the afflicted and none in the mainstream afflict the comfortable.
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