That military general on your television is not your protector. If he cared for national security, he would take issue with the mass poverty in the United States, not the “looming” threats to the Homeland. But personal aggrandizement takes precedent over country for these betrayers and others pundits who are given the authority to speak on national television every single day.
Also, MSNBC's health experts are not providing solutions to the health care crisis, and CNN's financial analysts don't know what this guy knows. Thankfully, whatever they say falls on deaf ears, because the majority of people are awake and believe the federal government is a direct threat to their rights.
Below, Sebastian Jones of The Nation reports on the unmentioned connection between the media racket and pundits employed by corporate firms who appear daily on television and help maintain a false consensus on life and death issues.The Nation:
The Media-Lobbying Complex
By SEBASTIAN JONESPresident Obama spent most of December 4 touring Allentown, Pennsylvania, meeting with local workers and discussing the economic crisis. A few hours later, the state's former governor, Tom Ridge, was on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, offering up his own recovery plan. There were "modest things" the White House might try, like cutting taxes or opening up credit for small businesses, but the real answer was for the president to "take his green agenda and blow it out of the box." The first step, Ridge explained, was to "create nuclear power plants." Combined with some waste coal and natural gas extraction, you would have an "innovation setter" that would "create jobs, create exports."
As Ridge counseled the administration to "put that package together," he sure seemed like an objective commentator. But what viewers weren't told was that since 2005, Ridge has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power company. As of March 2009, he also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock, according to SEC filings.
Moments earlier, retired general and "NBC Military Analyst" Barry McCaffrey told viewers that the war in Afghanistan would require an additional "three- to ten-year effort" and "a lot of money." Unmentioned was the fact that DynCorp paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone. The government had just granted DynCorp a five-year deal worth an estimated $5.9 billion to aid American forces in Afghanistan. The first year is locked in at $644 million, but the additional four options are subject to renewal, contingent on military needs and political realities.
Democracy Now!
“The Media-Lobbying Complex”: Investigation Exposes Undisclosed Corporate Ties of Network Political Pundits
Part I
Part II
