I just don't get people. I don't get why we don't stage some sort of agrarian revolt or something, march on Washington/Albany/Town Hall with torches and pitchforks and demand that our representatives, y'know, represent us.
Take the recent bankruptcy legislation. Congress is putting a tighter limit on bankruptcy filings, which basically means that it'll be harder for the little guy who lives paycheck to paycheck to recover if that one little problem, say a heart attack or a car accident or a roof that collapses, pushes him over the financial edge.
Take Congress' new bright idea, cutting food aid for poor people so they don't have to cut subsidies to big farm operations. (Sure, little Suzie might starve to death 'cause her mommy can't afford enough food on her minimum-wage income, but at least John McCorporateFarmer won't have to make any cutbacks.)
Take the fact that the Big Three networks' news operations are timid and nearly unwatchable at this point, because they're afraid to ask questions, analyze, investigate, for fear of possibly upsetting anyone at the headquarters of their corporate owners. With rules on media ownership relaxing further by the day, everything's run by a corporate conglomerate, and we wouldn't want to report anything that might make those CEOs fall out of favor with the government, right? It's sad but true that if you want good TV news, you have to turn to The Daily Show on Comedy Central -- it's the only TV news show out there these days that actually reports on the important news and pokes at it, too, raising questions when politicians' statements don't add up.
Take any number of government decisions made on a daily basis. The overwhelming majority of them are made to benefit either the lawmakers themselves or their supporters -- and I don't mean us, I mean the CEOs who donated big bucks to their campaigns. The tiny amount of legislation that's mean to actually benefit us usually only benefits a small number of us, a group whose votes somebody needs, so they get a few scraps at the expense of the rest of the regular people.
Watch any one politician and keep track of what he/she says, his/her stances and votes on the issues. Keep watching. You'll see them shift around quite a bit. One day, we're not negotiating with the North Koreans, and the next day, we want to talk with them again. One day, we're totally for the seperation of church and state, and the next day, we're touting the benefits of "faith-based" programs (spending state money on church programs -- unconstitutional much?). Anyone's allowed to change their mind once in a while, sure, but that's not what this is. This is pandering, pure and simple, just telling the people in a particular audience what they want to hear, just give 'em the ol' razzle-dazzle.
It's not just the other guy, either, the guy you don't like. Your own guy is screwing you, too. Bush is horrible this way, and so is Kerry. Pelosi, Frist, Clinton, McCain, Bruno, Silver, members of your local Town Board or City Council, all of them, they're all working for their friends and for their re-election, not for you.
Meanwhile, nobody notices. People get their news from the aforementioned over-corporate sources, which simply regurgitate what politicians tell them without thinking about it or analyzing it at all. They get their news in sound bites, in photo ops, in the ticker of Headline News and the headlines on partisan blogs.
I try to serve up the important news every day, to the best of my ability with the resources I have, but I don't fool myself into thinking that the readers actually pay attention to all of it. I used to be like that, too, after all -- look over the front page, skim the news pages, jump to the comics and Dear Abby, flip back to scan the sports cover. I know, too, that we don't have the kind of analysis we need on nation/world issues a lot of the time, but at a small paper, we're at the mercy of what the AP gives us for copy. Still, even with a small publication like ours, there's enough fodder for outrage, if you actually read the stuff on the wire pages and not just skim the headlines. We do our best to keep the good stuff in, even if we only have a few inches of space.
But seriously, even if you're not reading the paper, find another decent news outlet and pay attention to it. Watch The Daily Show every day. Read Google News and actually read it -- click on all of the top stories and read them all the way through, actually think about them for a minute. Or watch your CNN or CBS or Fox News, but be critical -- if they say lawmakers did X, question, why did they do that? Who does it benefit, and who does it hurt? If they say a measure will do X, will it really do that at all? Question, then find those answers.
If people would only pay some attention, treat it as their civic duty to actually think about what politicians are doing, they'd be appalled.
Take the recent bankruptcy legislation. Congress is putting a tighter limit on bankruptcy filings, which basically means that it'll be harder for the little guy who lives paycheck to paycheck to recover if that one little problem, say a heart attack or a car accident or a roof that collapses, pushes him over the financial edge.
Take Congress' new bright idea, cutting food aid for poor people so they don't have to cut subsidies to big farm operations. (Sure, little Suzie might starve to death 'cause her mommy can't afford enough food on her minimum-wage income, but at least John McCorporateFarmer won't have to make any cutbacks.)
Take the fact that the Big Three networks' news operations are timid and nearly unwatchable at this point, because they're afraid to ask questions, analyze, investigate, for fear of possibly upsetting anyone at the headquarters of their corporate owners. With rules on media ownership relaxing further by the day, everything's run by a corporate conglomerate, and we wouldn't want to report anything that might make those CEOs fall out of favor with the government, right? It's sad but true that if you want good TV news, you have to turn to The Daily Show on Comedy Central -- it's the only TV news show out there these days that actually reports on the important news and pokes at it, too, raising questions when politicians' statements don't add up.
Take any number of government decisions made on a daily basis. The overwhelming majority of them are made to benefit either the lawmakers themselves or their supporters -- and I don't mean us, I mean the CEOs who donated big bucks to their campaigns. The tiny amount of legislation that's mean to actually benefit us usually only benefits a small number of us, a group whose votes somebody needs, so they get a few scraps at the expense of the rest of the regular people.
Watch any one politician and keep track of what he/she says, his/her stances and votes on the issues. Keep watching. You'll see them shift around quite a bit. One day, we're not negotiating with the North Koreans, and the next day, we want to talk with them again. One day, we're totally for the seperation of church and state, and the next day, we're touting the benefits of "faith-based" programs (spending state money on church programs -- unconstitutional much?). Anyone's allowed to change their mind once in a while, sure, but that's not what this is. This is pandering, pure and simple, just telling the people in a particular audience what they want to hear, just give 'em the ol' razzle-dazzle.
It's not just the other guy, either, the guy you don't like. Your own guy is screwing you, too. Bush is horrible this way, and so is Kerry. Pelosi, Frist, Clinton, McCain, Bruno, Silver, members of your local Town Board or City Council, all of them, they're all working for their friends and for their re-election, not for you.
Meanwhile, nobody notices. People get their news from the aforementioned over-corporate sources, which simply regurgitate what politicians tell them without thinking about it or analyzing it at all. They get their news in sound bites, in photo ops, in the ticker of Headline News and the headlines on partisan blogs.
I try to serve up the important news every day, to the best of my ability with the resources I have, but I don't fool myself into thinking that the readers actually pay attention to all of it. I used to be like that, too, after all -- look over the front page, skim the news pages, jump to the comics and Dear Abby, flip back to scan the sports cover. I know, too, that we don't have the kind of analysis we need on nation/world issues a lot of the time, but at a small paper, we're at the mercy of what the AP gives us for copy. Still, even with a small publication like ours, there's enough fodder for outrage, if you actually read the stuff on the wire pages and not just skim the headlines. We do our best to keep the good stuff in, even if we only have a few inches of space.
But seriously, even if you're not reading the paper, find another decent news outlet and pay attention to it. Watch The Daily Show every day. Read Google News and actually read it -- click on all of the top stories and read them all the way through, actually think about them for a minute. Or watch your CNN or CBS or Fox News, but be critical -- if they say lawmakers did X, question, why did they do that? Who does it benefit, and who does it hurt? If they say a measure will do X, will it really do that at all? Question, then find those answers.
If people would only pay some attention, treat it as their civic duty to actually think about what politicians are doing, they'd be appalled.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}