ABC‘s This Week (10/10/11) had a normally tilted panel on Sunday talking about, among other things, Occupy Wall Street. The show had three different types of conservatives (former Bush adviser Matthew Dowd, fixture George Will and columnist Peggy Noonan) along with Democratic pundit Donna Brazile.
But then host Christiane Amanpour actually interviewed someone involved with Occupy Wall Street—DailyKos blogger Jesse LaGreca. He is perhaps best know as the guy who was interviewed by Fox News Channel at the protest—and took the chance to bash Fox News Channel.
And he did media criticism on This Week too:
LAGRECA: I mean, the reality is, I’m the only working-class person you’re going to see on Sunday news, political news maybe ever. And I think that’s very indicative of the failures of our media to report on the news that matter most to working-class people.
AMANPOUR: We are trying our best, Jesse.
LAGRECA: And I thank you.
Points to the show for actually having him on, but is ABC really trying its best? That would be sad.
“Points to the show for actually having him on, but is ABC really trying its best? That would be sad.”
sad but true, as they say……..
I saw the interview.I loved when he said “a for -profit healthcare system does not work”.I think what he meant to say was this….A for- profit “anything” does not work.Redistribution of all the wealth is the proper way to go.
Well we have seen communism and socialism in action.We live in a capitalist country.If Mr Lagreca was honest as he wants others to be ;he would simply say he is against our system ,and be done with it.I am a little tired of anarchists who play at being voices for the tweaking of the system. They mean to trash it.
michael e. “They (anarchists!) mean to trash it (the system)”. If you hadn’t noticed the system has already been trashed! We finally realized we were in the toilet before President Obama came to the White House. As for pointing fingers, any system can become corrupt if the citizens are not paying attention – our capitalist system is profoundly corrupt. Our for-profit prisons are downright immoral. We threw the baby out with the bathwater during the brainwashing of the better-dead-than-red era. So, we’ve now seen capitalism “in action” haven’t we?
Jean as Churchill said about our way of living…”It is full of faults ,doubts,and problems.There is nothing better in the world”.Our system is the best in the world.Capitalism is freedom.We will weed out the corruption.Things were in the toilet when Obama came.Far worse now.Now is the time to reverse this nonsense and remember who we are.Things will get better and soon.Starting november next year.
“Capitalism is freedom” according to Micheal e. Really? REALLY??? What we HAVE is a corporate plutocracy that concentrates wealth and power in the hands of an ELITE, that STOLE much of their wealth, that SHIFTS their tax burden to everyone else, that has bought off Congress and hired an ARMY of lobbyist to dominate the political system so that NO ONE except the Corporate plutocracy has a voice.
Corporate Crime
Russel Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter, estimates that white collar crime costs the nation’s businesses and individuals at least $100 billion EACH YEAR. (A sum incidentally that is more than 10 times greater then the combined total from larcenies, robberies, burglaries, and auto thefts committed by individuals.) If you count other corporate underhandedness, such as monopolistic price fixing and the sale of faulty goods, the price tag jumps about $200 billion more. And the Justice Department estimates that â┚¬Ã…“taxpayers lose $10 to $20 billion when corporations violate federal regulations.â┚¬Ã‚ Corporate Crime is so commonplace according to Mokhiber, that roughly two thirds of the country’s 500 largest companies were involved in some form of illegal behavior over a 10-year period. Despite such lawlessness, the white-collar detectives at the FBI do not track corporate crime regularly. â┚¬Ã…“The government can tell the public whether burglary is up or down in Los Angeles for any given month, but it cannot say the same about insider trading, midnight dumping, consumer defrauding, or illegal polluting.â┚¬Ã‚ (Dollars & Sense – Nov. 1989)
Externalized Corporate Costs Borne by Society
Ralph Estes is a professor of business administration at American University. He holds a doctorate in business administration from Indiana University. He wrote a book not too long ago called the Tyranny of the Bottom Line in which he estimates that the amount of annual costs that corporations and other businesses externalize and that must be borne by customers, employees, and society is $2,618 billion (TWO TRILLION SIX HUNDRED and EIGHTEEN BILLION DOLLARS – in 1991dollars and then adjusted to 1994 dollars.) This figure does NOT include special tax breaks corporations get or the direct subsidies that they receive. Compared to total corporate profits in the order of Five Hundred and Fifteen Billion Dollars, the estimated societal COSTS of corporations are five and one half times the amount of their benefits.
Michael E thinks THIS is freedom. It’s socialism for the rich and the elite, and CRUSHING “capitalism” for the rest of us who get constantly and ROYALLY screwed by this systme that Michael e is in love with.
I wrote this BEFORE the economic meltdown:
The Global Picture
To quote David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World:
“Beginning with Adam Smith, market theory has been quite explicit that the
efficiency of the market’s self-organizing dynamic is a consequence of
small, locally owned enterprises competing in local markets on the basis of
price, quality, and service in response to customer-defined needs and
values. No buyer or seller may be large enough to influence the market
price individually.
By contrast, what we know as the global capitalist economy is dominated by
a few financial speculators and a handful of globe-spanning
megacorporations able to use their massive financial clout and media
out-reach to manipulate prices, determine what products will be available
to consumers, absorb or drive competitors from the market, and reshape the
values of popular culture to create demand for what the corporations choose
to offer.”
In understanding the nature of the structural changes that have occurred in the global economy, it is important to understand the shift that has occurred between the real economy and the speculative economy. In an article entitled â┚¬Ã…“From the Real Economy to the Speculative,â┚¬Ã‚ Bernard Lietaer explains the distinction between the real and speculative economy and the shift that has occurred:
â┚¬Ã…“In 1975, about 80 percent of foreign exchange transactions (where one national currency is exchanged for another) were to conduct business in the real economy. For instance, currencies change hands to import oil, export cars, buy corporations, invest in portfolios, or build factories. Real transactions actually produce or trade goods and services. The remaining 20 percent of transactions in 1975 were speculative, which means that the sole purpose was an expected profit from buying and selling currencies themselves, based on their changing valuesâ┚¬Ã‚¦
â┚¬Ã‚¦Today the real economy in foreign exchange transactions is down to 2.5 percent and 97.5 percent is now speculative.â┚¬Ã‚Â
This monstrosity of global speculation and currency trading has no allegiance to anything other than profit and the perverted thing is that market instability is how these vultures profit. As Litaer puts it:
â┚¬Ã…“Big fluctuations in the values of currencies allow for big profits to be made by trading them. Consider the following statements by leaders at opposite ends of the spectrum:
â┚¬Ã…“The biggest concern today is the growing constituency for instability.â┚¬Ã‚Â
– Paul Volcker, ex-governor of the Federal Reserve, in Changing Fortunes.
â┚¬Ã…“Instability is cumulative, so that the eventual breakdown of freely floating exchanges is ensured.â┚¬Ã‚Â
– George Soros, the largest currency speculator today, in The Alchemy of Finance.
They both agreed that there are many more people now who have an interest in profiting from instability; previously, they had an interest in stability. If you have an unstable system, it is just a question of when it will fly off the handle. It will blow apart at the moment when the U.S. dollar experiences a crisis. When the dollar crisis occurs, the world will have no system leftâ┚¬Ã‚¦
â┚¬Ã‚¦In the 1929 crash, the monetary system held. We had all kinds of other problems â┚¬“ unemployment, stock market crash, currency inflation in Germany â┚¬“ but there was a gold standard that held. Today, we have no gold standard to fall back on. So there is no precedent for a collapse of this nature. And this would be a truly global phenomenon. All currencies in the world are based on the dollar. So if you have a crisis on the dollar, you pull out the linchpin andâ┚¬Ã‚¦boom.â┚¬Ã‚Â
So much for Michael e and his simplistic bumper sticker nonsense.
Lawrence if what you are saying is the Dem party and Obama are tearing down the economy BECAUSE it benefits them , yeah I have heard that before(Im tweaking you).Don’t buy it anymore than I buy the claptrap ,and out takes from the financial flying circus of clowns, tools,and misquotes you proffered above.I know you believe.You really believe this stuff.You forgot skull and bones, and the Masons.Look there are massive real problems.But because you have an ideological ax to grind ,you are not able to see them in the proper light.And in fact never even mentioned them.Read Dr walter williams.Has some good books out.Very positive