Of media and money

Speaking of Katrina, as we near the TWO YEAR anniversary of the storm... where has all the money gone? (Long time passing?)

I'm just dying to know where all of that money raised by the two ex-presidents has gone. I just don't see the results. They raised MILLIONS. Where is the money?

The Federal government alone supposedly allocated $116 billion in recovery aid (a pittance to what is spent in Iraq every time we blink our eyes.) But for some reason, the languishing residents of the Gulf Coast just haven't seen it. And they're starting to wonder if that check was lost in the mail:

The fact that, two years later, most federal Katrina funds remain bottled up in bureaucracy is especially shocking considering that the amounts Washington allocated come nowhere near the anticipated costs of Gulf rebuilding.

For example, the $3.4 billion FEMA has available to recover local public infrastructure would only cover about one-eighth of the damage suffered in Louisiana alone. But this money is spread across five states - Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas - and covers damage from three 2005 hurricanes, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

Congress has acted on some of the money holdups, like changing a requirement in the Stafford Act that mandates local governments pay 10 percent of rebuilding projects up front before receiving federal aid. The Bush administration had refused to waive the rule - like it did for New York after 9/11 - grounding countless projects. The effect of the rule was particularly devastating in the hardest-hit places like Mississippi's Hancock County, where communities lost most of their tax base after the storms.

Oh yeah -- I remember that kind of 'help' after 9/11. The 'help' we received from the SBA cost us our house. Thank you by the way, Federal government... I don't believe I ever told you how happy I was with the way that turned out. Of course, we were lucky compared with the people of New Orleans. They obviously didn't have houses to put up as collateral, so you just blew them off -- worse even than the storm itself.

But back to the presidents. There is never any mention at all, ever, of where that money went. Ever.

And looking at the region, its obvious that money isn't being spent there by anyone, save the manpower invested by organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and others like them.

But money?

Federal contracts for rebuilding and recovery have also been marked by scandal, fraud and abuse. An August 2006 study by the office of Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., identified 19 contracts worth $8.75 billion that experienced "significant overcharges, wasteful spending or mismanagement."

Halliburton to the rescue! (Or not.)

"Where did it go?" says Tanya Harris of ACORN in New Orleans when asked about the $116 billion. "Tell me. Where did it go?"

Maybe it found a home with the money miraculously lost in the sands of Iraq...

Bill Moyers Journal: Tough talk on impeachment

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | Impeachment Panel Excerpt | PBS


Every time I think I have seen 'the best Bill Moyers Journal ever,' he raises the bar in his next weekly installment. Last night's discussion of impeachment was so far above the setting of any previous bar that it is in a category all it's own: must see TV.

If you watch nothing else this week, nothing else at all... make sure you watch this. Every American should see it; every school should show it to every American gradeschooler and especially high school student. Every congressman and senator should watch and learn.

Impeachment: Cure for Constitutional Crisis



This discussion is about the heart and soul of our democracy, the balance between the three (not four) branches of our Federal government, about why Dick Cheney's idea of a 'unitary presidency' is destroying our Constitution and stealing our freedom as Americans. It should also serve as a dire warning. If we don't restore the executive branch to the limits and boundaries established (for our protection) by our forefathers, we will live forever, from here on, under dictatorship.

Moyers spoke at length with constitutional expert Bruce Fein, and John Nichols from 'The Nation' magazine on the merits of impeaching Dick Cheney and George Bush. I have included a YouTube video (above,) but the entire show can be seen on Bill Moyers web site, and the entire transcript as well as supporting documents are also available online.

Why Impeachment of Cheney/Bush Is NOT Something to Fear



I encourage you to watch the entire show, whether on television or via the web. Yes, it is that important.

Rich, White Republicans can't go to jail...!

Ah, the screams of injustice from the ruling class. The double standard isn't working this time... how can this be? Amidst death threats and a barrage of angry letters from the rich, white Republican establishment, Judge Reggie B. Walton is sending Scooter off to jail, right on schedule.

"Unfair!" the Republicans screamed.

Yes, Libby was found guilty on four felony accounts... but come on, he's our buddy! He's a 'good guy!' And he's one of us... you can't lock us up, like common criminals! (Shades of Paris Hilton here?)

BILL MOYERS: Attempting to trash critics of the war, Libby and his pals in high places - including his boss Dick Cheney - outed a covert CIA agent. Libby then lied to cover their tracks. He kicked sand in the eyes of truth, to throw investigators off the trail. Said the Chief Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald: "Libby lied about nearly everything that mattered." The jury agreed and found him guilty on four felony counts. The judge - Reggie B. Walton - a no-nonsense lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key type appointed to the bench by none other than George W. Bush - called the evidence ‘overwhelming' and threw the book at Libby. You would have thought their man had been ordered to Guantanamo, so intense was the reaction from his defenders. They flooded the judge's chambers with letters of support for their comrade and took to the airwaves in a campaign to free Scooter Libby.

Alas, poor Scooter, a 'casualty' of partisan politics. Never mind that he lied and obstructed justice. These rules don't apply in the Beltway, I mean do they really?

BILL MOYERS: One beltway insider is quoted saying the neo-cons are "weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness" of Libby's sentence. And there's the rub. None seem the least weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness of sentencing soldiers to repeated and longer tours of duty in a war induced by deception. It was left to the hawkish academic Fouad Ajami to state it baldly, as he pleaded on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal for Bush to pardon Libby. For believing "in the nobility of this war," wrote Ajami, Scooter Libby had himself become a "casualty" -- a fallen soldier the president dare not leave behind on the beltway battlefield. Not a word in the entire article about the real fallen soldiers. The honest-to-god dead and dying and wounded. Not a word about the chaos or the cost. All the beltway warriors can muster is a plea of mercy for one of their own who lied to cover their tracks.

In the end, it is the loss of their double standard that seems most troubling to the Washington establishment. But as one honest conservative, former Governor of Virginia James Gilmore put it rather bluntly: "If the public believes there's one law for a certain group of people in high places and another law for regular people, then you will destroy the law and destroy the system."

I wish I believed this wasn't their intention.

I like the ones the media hates

Because of the reason the media doesn't like them: they speak the truth.

They don't have huge, corporate bank accounts, fancy jets and lobbyists following them around. They aren't spinning, aren't smirking, aren't hedging; they are taking chances, actually listening, taking action and working for change... not just flying around giving careful speeches and posing for photo ops.

Instead of worrying about making a costly mistake, they are listening to our anger, and spending time connecting with us. They are in the mix, fighting our battles when no one else will listen. Dennis Kucinich stood up and warned Congress -- and us -- that the war would drag on and on if we allowed our government to privatize Iraqi oil. He also brought impeachment charges against Cheney. The man actually understands the Constitution, history and the law.

Meanwhile Chris Dodd is trying to restore our Constitution, apparently with no real hope that his party will do anything at all to punish Bush and Cheney. And Dodd obviously 'gets' the media circus.

I'd love to see these guys in a real debate, with a real moderator. Perhaps on PBS. Perhaps with Katrina van Heuvel or Bill Moyers or Amy Goodman, or Dan Rather or Ted Koppel -- even Bill Maher or Jon Stewart would ask better questions than these mainstream morons. And Stephen Colbert... imagine if he were moderating the Republicans! I'd pay to see that...

The corporate media is now so self-righteous and so smug: like those snobby rich kids that pushed you around in school, anointed 'cool' (i.e. rich) kids, and dissed the rest. Heaven help the smart kid in glasses who actually does his homework. Think back on how they dissed Al Gore, and swooned all over George W. Bush. They told us Bush was such a 'fun guy' and Gore was boring and 'too smart'. They had the gall to actually say, and I will never forget this: that it didn't really matter who was elected anyway. As if it was only American Idol, and not our democracy at stake.

Their debates are shallow and ridiculous, their questions lame, their sensationalism premature, and their ability to judge real character, completely flawed. I like Edwards a lot more now that they are attacking them. Knowing Hillary has Murdoch in her pocket, I refuse to listen when she moves her lips. I don't own any Hillary stock. I won't be receiving dividends.

Calling out the media

The further you get from power, the closer you get to truth. - Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers uttered this brilliant comment during an interview with Amy Goodwin on "Democracy Now," when discussing his latest double-barrel blast of the news media's coverage of the buildup to the war in Iraq. In his documentary 'Buying the War,' Moyers takes just about everyone to task for failing to ask the basic questions anyone would expect of a real news reporter: is my source credible? Does he or she have an ulterior motive? Can I dig deeper and find a differing story?

Investigative reporting is dying out in this country. The corporations who now own us don't like it; or perhaps they fear it. How can they be sure we won't turn the microscope on them one day?

Greg Palast, an American who writes for the BBC, recently reported:

I’ve been through this before, too many times. Take this investigative report, also buried in the U.S.: Back in December 2000, I received two computer disks from the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Analysis of the data, plus documents that fell my way, indicated that Harris’ office had purged thousands of African Americans from Florida’s voter rolls as “felons.” Florida now admits that many of these voters were not in fact felons. Nevertheless, the blacklisting helped cost Al Gore the White House.

I reported on the phony felon purge in Britain’s Guardian and Observer and on the BBC while Gore was still in the race, while the count was still on.

Yet the story of the Florida purge never appeared in the U.S. daily papers or on television. Until months later, that is, after the Supreme Court had decided the election, when it was picked up by the Washington Post and others.

U.S. papers delayed the story until the U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued a report saying our Guardian/BBC story was correct: Innocents lost their vote. At that point, protected by the official imprimatur, American editors felt it safe enough to venture out with the story. But by then, George W. Bush could read it from his chair in the Oval Office.

Not only has investigative reporting disappeared, thanks to the dominance of the 'sound bite,' and general laziness (my opinion,) but basic journalistic standards seem to have been tossed to the wayside. I'm talking about injecting thought into writing... not simply writing down whatever comes out of the mouth of the source you are 'interviewing,' typing it up and handing it in. And this assumes there are actually interviews taking place. From watching that fake news conference Bush staged before the Iraq war, one has to wonder if the journalists are asking questions or the administration is simply feeding propaganda.

This isn't journalism - any tape recorder is capable of this much. Are there no trained journalists working in the business these days? Are they now operating under a smothering, corporate gag order? My alma mater seems to still be turning them out every year... so where are they going, and why aren't they checking their facts before rushing the story? Is the competition to be first on a story so fierce - and the standards for accuracy now so lax - that its no longer fiscally productive to spend time verifying your 'news' is actually true?

Thank God Moyers is back. Many reputable newspapers are finally returning to real news coverage (and even investigative work) in print, but this is not the case on television. Many of us are driven to Jon Stewart for our 'spoonful of sugar' - and a drop of actual news we won't find on network news. We're all desperate for an alternative to the blowdried, shiny-eyed talking heads on the network news channels.

I think most Americans are now aware that the 'news' they are getting on TV isn't really news at all, but only the sensationalism du jour. Those who want real news now turn to the BBC, Democracy Now, or a variety of alternative news sources on the web... and of course, Jon Stewart and hero Stephen Colbert, of White House Correspondents Dinner fame.

Stewart had a hilarious - if maddening - bit on how the television media was actually patting themselves on the back for their coverage of the VT shootings. If I hadn't been laughing at Stewart's delivery, I would have been throwing up. These being the same blathering TV media idiots that I referred to as 'ghouls' while still trying to get real information during the crisis, as it unfolded 'live' on television. That they actually took the time to gloat afterwards over their blatantly sensationalist coverage is sickening - but not surprising. I suppose by ghoul standards, they did a ghoulishly good job.



Now we have Bill Moyers again! With a little luck - and perhaps a little American common sense thrown into the mix - people will simply stop watching network news and find the news where it is: just about anywhere else on cable.