The System Cannot Be Saved

It was painful to watch an albeit under the weather Jon Stewart try to explain to Rachel Maddow his motive behind the DC rally. For while the discussion centered on the cable news media the elephant in room was as invisible as it had been to the 200,000 Daily Show fans gathered in Washington to 'Rally for Sanity' and rebuke Glenn Beck. For while Rachel, incisive intellect that she is, wrings her hands at Stewart's suggestion that she and Bill O'Reilly are ethically equivalent, she is forced to pretend that the problem that divides us is something other than the slow but incontrovertible death of American capitalism.

Put simply. Enslaved to the global financiers our system has grown to opaque and complex to be competently managed. By defending capital while placing the burden of profits on the working stiff our late stage capitalism has devoured its head.

As macroeconomist, Mancur Olson explains in “Power and Prosperity” 'A society that does not shift resources from the losing activities to those that generate a social surplus is irrational, since it is throwing away useful resources in a way that ruins economic performance without the least assurance that it is helping individuals with low incomes. A rational and humane society, then, will confine its distributional transfers to poor and unfortunate individuals.”

The Tea Party faithful are correct to blame our corporate government but their remedy is naive. Contrary to Washington's supposed wisdom, it is not limiting handouts to the poor that defines a free and dynamic economy but limiting rents that flow to the privileged. And the public though confused understands, as did Henry Ford, that a working economy necessarily means putting the power to purchase not in the hands of the investor but the worker. And so does China.

The British economist Samah El-Shahat, writing in August 2009 stated:

"China hasn't allowed its banking sector to become so powerful, so influential and so big that it can call the shots or highjack the bailout. In simple terms, the government preferred to answer to its people and put their interests first before that of any vested interest or group. And that is why Chinese banks are lending to the people and their businesses in record numbers."

In the US and UK, by contrast:

"[B]anks have captured all the money from the taxpayers and the cheap money from quantitative easing from central banks. They are using it to shore up and clean up their balance sheets rather than lend it to the people. The money has been hijacked by the banks and our governments are doing absolutely nothing about that. In fact, they have been complicit in allowing this to happen."

Why, you might ask? Because while we have the surplus labor, thanks to our regressive tax rates which essentially guarantee a woeful commitment to public education we lack the skills to nimbly adapt or attract foreign capital.

Bread and Circuses

She was called a cafe philosopher, the Anna Kournikova of TV news, a "slut" out to murder innocent Jewish children. Ultimately, after winning an AP award for her reporting and an Emmy for her work at NBC news, Ashley Banfield was fired. Not for her refined blond looks or signature glasses. Ashley was fired for violating the essence of modern mainstream reporting: she had the nerve to ask tough questions and tell us the truth.

And we are all the worse for it.

There was glee in many hearts including mine when MSNBC hired the brilliantly outspoken Rachel Maddow to follow the Keith Olbermann's righteous fulminations. But in hindsight I realize NBC's move was brilliant in its cynicism. You see for all their eloquence and devastating dissections of the neo-con agenda, Keith and Rachel are not reporters. They may provide critical analysis and underreported stories but in the end their work can be also dismissed as opinion, a sop to the left eager for an entertaining alternative to the kooky and far-better-fed right.

Ashley Banfield lost her career because she wanted to be something more than a pretty face and corporate mouthpiece. No doubt her colleagues at NBC took a furtive glance at their 6 figure paychecks and buried her shoes.

"the Fox effect is very concerning to me. I'm a journalist. Fox has taken so many viewers away from CNN and MSNBC because of their agenda and because of their targeting the market of cable news viewership, that I'm afraid there's not a really big place in cable for news. Cable is for entertainment, as it's turning out, but not news.

I'm hoping that I will have a future in news in cable, but not the way some cable news operators wrap themselves in the American flag and patriotism and go after a certain target demographic, which is very lucrative. You can already see the effects, you can already see the big hires on other networks, right wing hires to chase after this effect, and you can already see that flag waving in the corners of those cable news stations where they have exciting American music to go along with their war coverage.

Well, all of this has to do with what you've seen on Fox and its successes. So I do urge you to be very discerning as you continue to watch the development of cable news, and it is changing like lightning. Be very discerning because it behooves you like it never did before to watch with a grain of salt and to choose responsibly, and to demand what you should know."

--Ashley Banfield, speaking at Kansas State University in 2003

Amen, girl! Those of us fighting to stay awake still miss you.