Where The Rubber Meets The Road

As Bob Hope and Bing Crosby might have sang, had
1). they gone there, and
2). there was an actual road to it,
we’re off on the road to Jamaica.

Then, of course, ol’ Bing would have slapped you around a little.

See you all after I find out just how authentic this Jamaican Jerk is. In the meantime, you can play spot-the-tag-that-doesn’t-belong. Hint: it’s not “Blurb”.

Pardon my harping on the subject, but, oh, how the profiteers of our symptom-treatment-for-blood-money wail at the prospect of a so-called “public option”.

The Lewin Group, cited beyond reason and out of context by the henchmen of the opposing industries, is a wholly owned arm of the private insurance engine.

And right now, that arm is flailing madly, trying to distract the public from what everyone knows and has known for a long time now: that despite unprecedented (in scale) attempts by private insurance companies and pharma giants to indoctrinate the public with the privatized-is-best dogma, three-quarters of U.S. citizens have continued to demand a national health care plan.

For decades.

It begs the question, since the propagandists are well aware of this. So, who is all this noise aimed at? Because they’ve failed repeatedly to sway the public in the past, the message they’re sending now can’t be intended for us.

Sometimes, it’s instructive to ask these little questions…

Much as I am loathe to take cues from Bill Maher, he had a point recently that spoke to my last entry regarding the ubiquitous “What’s wrong with making money?” dodge.

Put simply, not everything should make a profit.

The news, for example.

As Ben Bagdikan pointed out in The Media Monopoly, in 1983, over 90% of all media (movies, television, radio, magazines, books, newspapers, the recording industry, photo agencies, etc) was in the hands of about 50 corporations.

As of 2004, that number has dropped. To five. Five multinational corporations controlling what we see, hear, read – information itself. That should be enough to make the point, but just to be sure, let’s take a quick look at what passes for news in 2009.

The current headlines are full to brimming with Michael Jackson, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and an assortment of entertainment and sensationalist stories that have similar weight to the preceding two. What’s going on with health care? Who cares? The real burning question is what was Steve McNair’s girlfriend thinking?
Contrast this with the news from just thirty or so years ago.

When networks ran to the bottom line and sold themselves to “parent” companies (one of my favorite euphemisms), those companies put a stop to news for the sake of news. See, before then, the entertainment divisions of the networks carried the financial burdens of the news, as well as advertising. But the news – in order to remain the news – was beholden to nobody. At least, not financially. Fast forward to the takeovers, and the parent companies demanded that the news make a profit – something unheard of before then, unless you count “yellow journalism” like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Of course, news for profit changes everything.
The dissemination of information for the purpose of informing is the news. The dissemination of information for money (or other, less overt gain) is propaganda.

The evolution is well documented and easily grasped. The so-called news now has less actual news in it than the average in-house company newsletter. The rest is fluff, sensationalism, “gotcha” stories, and demagoguery.

A simple piece of evidence, then I’m off to enjoy my weekend: A large majority of voters who cast their ballot for George W. Bush believed that he supported the Kyoto Protocol. What’s wrong with making money? That.

I hear it all too often: “What’s wrong with making money?!?”

Of course, this little bit of misdirection is usually delivered in an angry tone by someone who is oblivious to the nonsensical non sequitur it is. Whenever the argument is made that perhaps those who have benefited greatly from the past 30 years of deregulation, massive decrease in taxation, massive public subsidy, criminal refusal to enforce laws protecting labor, the environment, public interest – you get the idea; you’ll be treated to a rousing chorus of that dogmatic propaganda line so inextricably driven into the public consciousness:

“What’s wrong with making money?”

As if (insert any of the following: a national health care plan, tax cuts or subsidies or services or any help whatsoever for the poor, returning taxes on the superwealthy to a minute fraction of their pre-Reaganomics levels, etc) has any effect on the Working Joe who so vigorously defends the very people who keep him poor and wretched – save possibly a positive one.

So, listen, Working Joe: There’s nothing wrong with you making money. But then, you are not a global corporate CEO with a multimillion dollar golden parachute, who feeds off the public trough.

Yes, that’s right, the public trough. You see, we pay taxes, and that money is funneled into research and development in the state/Pentagon system. This R&D eventually produces technological breakthroughs, which then the public again pays private institutions to apply in the marketplace (which, not incidentally, is full of even more subsidies, tax breaks, and protections, all at the expense of guess who), with all the profit channeled back into those private corporations, further enriching the superwealthy.

What’s wrong with making money? The wrong people are making it. You pay in, and someone else gets richer. Isn’t that your whole objection to welfare? Because that’s what it is: welfare for those who couldn’t possibly need it less.

Nobody’s asking for redistribution of wealth, class warfare, or any of the other buzz phrases kicked out by the monumental public “relations” machine that greases the gears of the monumental high-tech feudalism machine. At best, it’s a re-redistribution of wealth, where in the people (that means you) are allowed to reap a tiny measure of benefit for all the money they give to that fragile, teetering-on-the-edge, barely-making-ends-meet class known as The Top 1%.

Turn Faux News back on and get fed another line of propaganda; yours is getting old.

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of this sort of thing in my inbox (my comments in red):

MICROWORD CORPORATIONS: (It sounds close enough to “Microsoft”, doesn’t it? Sort of like how K-Mart has “Sanyo” so that stupid people will think they’re buying Sony)
CUSTOMER SERVICE, MADRID SPAIN (Won’t work. I’ve known too many Spaniards.)
REFERENCE NUMBER: SUN/ESP/E-6587
BATCH NUMBER: 2008/430/CA
LINK :http://www.microword.com/

OFFICIAL WINNING NOTIFICATION. (OFFICIAL CAPS LOCK KEY BROKEN)
We are pleased to inform you of the released results of the Sweepstakes Promotion organized by Microword Corporations (you can tell the “sweepstakes” is official, because they capitalized it),
in conjunction with the foundation for the promotion of software products (suddenly unofficial), held this May, 2009 here in Madrid,Spain (Oh, I remember now – from when I was there never).
Where your email address emerged (after much struggle and vetting, I assume) as one of the online winning emails, in the 3rd category and therefore attracted a cash
award of 450,000.00 (Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand Euros Only) (I guess I’m not the only one using side, parenthetical remarks, but I did just make very liberal use of the word “parenthetical”) and a Toshiba laptop (Holy shit!!!!! Fuck the Euros, I’m free at last!).

To begin your claim (venture into gullible stupidity, that is), file the release of your winning by contacting our Foreign Transfer Manager (you know, the dude who made all this shit up so as to take you fo a few thousand) via email or by telephone
below.

These are your (totally made up, bullshit) identification numbers:

Batch number……………..FRE/ESP/E-6587
Reff number………………2008/430/CA (“Reff”? Really?!? Is this some sophisticated European abbreviation I don’t know about?)

CONTACT EVENTS TRANSFER MANAGER Send your winning identification numbers (USE ALL CAPS AND NO PUNCTUATION)

Mr. Harrison Larson
Tel/ 0034-645-749-452
Fax/ 0034 911-817-496
Email:microwordinfo@yahoo.cl (WOW!!!!! What an awesome, globe-trotting, international software corporation you have, considering you have to use fucking yahoo email.)

You are therefore advised to send the following information to the (randomly capitalized) Foreign transfer manager to facilitate them and process the COURIER (another random caps lock failure) of your prize.

1. Full name………….. (Do I include all the extra periods?)
2. Sex………….. (Apparently Spain hasn’t received the “it’s gender, you pig” memo)
3. Country…………….
4. State…………. (Why not “province”? Aren’t there any stupid Canadians you can rip off?)
5. Contact Address……..
6. Telephone Number……. (867-5309)
7. Marital Status………
8. Occupation………….
9. Age………………..
10.Nest Of Kin………. (Are we birds? Spellcheck your scam letters, dipshit.)
11.Zip Code………….

This Email Lottery is sponsored by Microword Corporations and all the members of MSFT Word Resource Consortium Software Promotion Companies (Or, “MSFTRCSPC” for, uh, short…) including Intel Group, Toshiba and Dell Computers (Dude, yer gettin’ a ripoff letter!). This internet E-mail draw is held periodically and
is organized to encourage the use of the Internet and promote computer literacy worldwide (Or to enrich two or less Spanish dudes with too much free time).
Congratulations!! (Go Fuck Yourself!!)

Sincerely,
Mrs.Regina Smith (Smith?!? Are you shitting me? Is anybody in your Spanish company Spanish?)
Promotions Manager