TONIGHT: THE BIG NO WIN SPEECH ON IRAQ

Financial Times: Obama struggles to convince voters

On Tuesday night (THATS TONIGHT, FOLKS DS) Barack Obama will give a rare prime-time address from the Oval Office on the end of the US combat mission in Iraq. But if polls are to be believed – and all of them have been saying the same thing for months – the president would get as much attention if he delivered a lecture on the merits of stamp-collecting.

With just nine weeks to go before the US midterm elections, the economy is monopolizing the minds of voters. Were they to be held today, disaffection over the economy would hand Republicans control of the House of Representatives and come close to giving them control of the Senate.

According to Gallup earlier this month, only 4 per cent of voters rate “wars in general”, which include Iraq, Afghanistan and terrorism, as their most important concern. The economy, jobs and the deficit were cited by almost two-thirds of those polled. Mr Obama’s problem is that there appears to be almost nothing he can say or do between now and November 2 that would convince Americans a better economic future is around the corner.

As readers know, I have been writing about, talking about, pulling out what hair remains on this issue for what seems like YEARS—trying to motivate a response. Wasn’t it obvious that this would become THE issue? Wasn’t it obvious that the Democrats could go down as a result of the economy? Talk to me. Are we going to stand by and let whatever commiitment to change just fade away?

Yes the wars are self-defeating exercises. Yes, we are losing. It is still ABU–all about us, our troops, our contractors, our bound to fail policies. READ MOBY DICK, and you will get a sense of the obsession to chase the whale that grabs people in power and won’t let go it. Otherse see it, but we can’t. We won’t. The post mortems are already being written!

NOTE: The day after Glenn Beck tried to play Dr. King at the Lincoln Memorial, I went to the Bronx Museum of the Arts to see a brilliant exhibit of civil rights photos, including pictures of Dr. King, not just sermonizing but acting, leading the march from Selma to Montgomery.

If you need any more evidence of the difference between the two events, read this CNN commentary, ‘Why King’s march transformed America,’ by Charles Euchner, who has written a new book that is a definitive people’s history of the march, ‘Nobody Turn Me Around,’ depicting the landmark 1963 march was more than just four words and his radio interview with NPR on the background of the leadership.

And now my weekly commentary: Media Complicity in Financial Crimes

Q: Why are media outlets doing such a bad job covering Wall Street?
A: Could it be, because they are owned by Wall Street?

When you connect the dots in your writing or look for deeper explanations behind the decisions of policymakers, market makers and media-makers, it’s easy to be dismissed as a conspiracy nut.

But forgive me for believing that those who serve interests have more clout than those that just speak out on issues. There are hidden relationships that sometimes predetermine what stories get media attention and which do not.

I have a current film out, Plunder the Crime of our Time, taking on big media companies to task for what passes as coverage of the financial crisis. I have been asking why they weren’t paying attention, didn’t warn us about it, or investigate too deeply into how it happened.

When I discovered that dodgy lenders and credit card companies pumped more than $3 billion into media advertising, which inflated the housing bubble between 2002 and 2007, I thought I had my answer.

Based on my own experience inside news networks, I could see that networks investigating their own advertisers in a tough economic climate was not exactly high on their agenda. It happens, but rarely.

Yet, even I, as savvy as I thought I was, missed an important link which was hidden in plain sight — who owns the very media institutions I was railing against?

Guess what: many owners are the very financial institutions that should have been exposed. Media is a business tied into other businesses and driven by interlocking directorates by a not-so-invisible umbilical chord.

It took a colleague, Barry James Dyke, author of ‘The Pirates of Manhattan,’ [click here for his video collection of the plundering] to give me a little guided online tour into this reality via Yahoo’s finance page. It’s easy to access but usually only used by investors, not investigative journalists like me.

I am not a stranger to corporate media ownership issues. Our Mediachannel even did a chart, some years back, showing how a handful of media giants owned most of the channels on broadcast and cable outlets.

What we didn’t do, then, is what Barry Dyke was showing me how to discover: who owns those same companies.

It’s all there, clearly available in easy to read charts to help you see how their stock is performing. On the left side of the chart, there is a section to click on entitled, “ownership.”

In the flash of a click, a display of ownership appears of the company I used to work for: ABC News. This information is mandated by laws designed to insure accountability and protect investors.

The first category is “Major Direct Holders.” At the top of the list is a former ABC News executive, Robert A. Iger who owns 850,790 shares [Eight Hundred Fifty Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety]. Under him are other biggies who were given or helped to buy stock, allegedly to incentivize them. These holdings complement and add to their already generous salaries.

In truth, it’s all a form of looting of the shareholder value. Often these execs have more clout than the boards of directors they theoretically report to. Sometimes, it only takes a small percentage of shares to wield control. Together these insiders and what are called, 5% owners, own 7% of Disney, but exert disproportionate influence.

The next category on the chart is Institutional and Mutual Fund owners. They control 68%. And who are they? Fidelity, State Street Corporation, JP Morgan Chase and Company, Price T Rowe Associates, etc. etc.

The next category is “Top Mutual Fund holders” with the Fidelity Contra Fund owning $1.2 B [$1,200,000,000.00] in holdings; more than 36 million shares. In all, 1095, institutions own shares. But a few are more equal than others. The role that these largely unaccountable mutual funds play is rarely examined. Just listing their holdings doesn’t explore their influence.

Some mutual funds get an added benefit — access to employee retirement withholdings. So, they are not just funding Disney, but being funded by Disney with a guaranteed income stream even though the Funds, often, do not perform well.

Explains Barry Dyke: “It’s about control. Mutual fund companies get other people’s money through payroll deductions on their 401[k]s, and those fund companies, and the funds they control, own large stakes in companies like Disney.

Through lobbying, essentially with the Pension Protection Act of 2006, employers are exempt from liability-fiduciary responsibility as long as they use a mutual fund; a target date mutual fund more specifically. Employers are exempt from liability, mutual fund companies are exempt from liability from the get-go, and do a lousy job of looking out for shareholders.”

What he means here is their returns have been relatively low—and many have blown up. Forcing employees to invest with them is hardly fair if they are losing money.

Back on our list, there follows, “insider transactions.” Some of the information is considered N/A—not available.

Why is that?

I was at ABC News, and available, when Disney swooped in to buy the company in 1995 for $19 billion. It had been for sale for $11 billion just two years earlier. The deal was the largest media merger in history, to that point, and the second largest sum of money ever paid for a U.S. company.

Back in 1940, Walt Disney had first sold stock to lower the debt. The newer Disney took on billions in debt to finance its deals. Where did the money come from?

Why, no surprise, the very Wall Street banks and financial institutions they work with. Call it synergy, or call it collusion, but not the kind that leads to better programming or media responsibility.

The final phase-out of ABC occurred at a final shareholders meeting I attended in a New York TV studio on January 4, 1996. I wrote about it in my book, ‘The More You Watch, The Less You Know,’ noting that the vote to sell the company to the “Mouse House” (and, in the process, enrich its shareholders) passed by a vote of 121,000,000 to 437,000. It was only after the deal was done that questions from the floor were permitted.

So much for corporate democracy! I managed to get a question in –called on as “the man in the back of the room.” It annoyed my bosses.

I asked the former Chairman of Capital Cities, the first company to acquire ABC and then ABC’s departing leader, if he was “concerned” about what the merger would mean for our democracy. [One of Cap Cities’ founders and principals was the nefarious Iran-Contra conspirator William Casey who became Ronald Reagan’s secretive and sneaky CIA Director.]

There was no concern about my concern. My question was ridiculed and dismissed by Chairman Tom Murphy who said, “Am I concerned. No, I am not concerned.” Murphy had earlier told Charlie Rose that he enjoyed winning. He was asked what that meant to him.

“Making money” was his response. “Whoever makes the most wins. That’s how we keep score.”

In sharp contrast, media historian Robert McChesney was concerned, very concerned, writing later: “A specter now haunts the world; a global commercial media system dominated by a small number of super powerful, mostly U.S. based transnational media corporations. It is a system that works to advance the cause of the global market and promote commercial values, while denigrating journalism and culture not conducive to the immediate bottom line or long-run corporate interests. It is a disaster for anything but the most superficial notion of democracy — a democracy where, to paraphrase John Jay’s maxim, “those who own the world ought to govern it.”

Disney went on to acquire more stations. Their network now includes 200 affiliated stations, reaching nearly 100% of all U. S. television and 277 radio outlets, at last count. And they publish books, magazines, and financial and medical services information. The journalism they offer has noticeably declined as they slashed the number of employees in the News Division.

Just one recent and small example: towards the end of August, ABC News reported on new credit card rules, dryly reciting the new disclosures mandated in the new “reform” law. They did not mention that nothing was done to cap interest rates or, as the Wall Street Journal reported the next day, “the banks and credit card companies had jacked up the rates despite the flagging economy and the fact they can borrow money at record low rates.”

Why was that? Could it have anything to do with the interests of those who own Disney, ABC’s parent company?

You tell me. [Disney, by-the-by, offered its own credit card.] It also censored stories on pedophiles at Disneyland.

Media companies always insist no one tells them what to do, with Fox News perhaps the most glaring and candid exception, considering Rupert Murdoch’s ideological leash.

Yet, even as the ‘Nets cover the money in politics that buys laws and rents politicians, they insist no one ever influences their coverage decisions — not investors, not advertisers, and certainly, not viewers.

President Obama, it is said, did Wall Street’s bidding because of all the money they shmeared on his campaign. But do the companies that own and control media companies, with billions at stake, have any say in “what does” and “does not” get on the air?

Never!

News Dissector Danny Schechter made Plunder the Crime of our Time, a DVD and wrote a companion book, The Crime Of Our Time, which investigates the financial crisis as a crime story.

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FRANK RICH: THE BILLIONAIRES BANKROLLING THE TEA PARTY


New Yorker: The Koch Brothers Against Obama

Hedge Fund Managers Backing Repugs

IGNORED BY MOST NEWS OUTLETS: MARCH FOR JOBS IN DETROIT

Thousands of people in downtown Detroit made their way from Jefferson Avenue to Grand Circus Park in what was billed as a march to rebuild America for jobs, justice and peace.

DEMOCRATS.COM: BOYCOTT BECK ADVERTISERS CAMPAIGN

AP: TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY

“Neither Democrats nor Republicans can afford to ignore the antiestablishment fervor displayed Saturday during Beck’s rally that took on the tone of an evangelical revival.

“Billed as a nonpolitical event, it nevertheless was a clarifying moment for those curious as to what clout an anti-Washington sentiment could have on midterm congressional elections in November. The gathering was advertised as an opportunity to honor American troops. But it also illustrated voters’ exasperation — and provided additional evidence that Democrats in power — as well as some incumbent Republicans — may pay the price when voters go to the polls.”

Daily Beast: He also stuck back at what he sees as a divided America: “There is growing hatred in the country. We must be better than what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.” But Beck can’t profit from fear and division all week during his radio show and then try to denounce them one Saturday, writes The Daily Beast’s John Avlon. If he wants to get the “poison of hatred” out of the country, he’ll first have to apply the standard to his own televangelism as well

NY POST: RELIGION USED TO MASK POLITRICKS

Economy Caught in Depression, Not Recession … Positive gross domestic product readings and other mildly hopeful signs are masking an ugly truth: The US economy is in a 1930s-style Depression, Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg said Tuesday. Writing in his daily briefing to investors, Rosenberg said the Great Depression also had its high points, with a series of positive GDP reports and sharp stock market gains. But then as now, those signs of recovery were unsustainable and only provided a false sense of stability, said Rosenberg. Rosenberg calls current economic conditions “a depression, and not just some garden-variety recession,” and notes that any good news both during the initial 1929-33 recession and the one that began in 2008 triggered “euphoric response.” – CNBC

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TUNE IN HERE TO THE PODCAST OF THIS WEEK’S NEWS DISSECTOR RADIO HOUR Special Guests: Greg Palast, Driftglass, Aaron Krowne and Dissectrix Cherie Welch

Download this episode (right click and save)

ECONOMY BLUES

FRIDAY MORNING: Washington Post Finds a Shred of A Silver Lining

The Commerce Department slashed its estimate for U.S. GDP growth in the second quarter from a 2.4 percent annual rate to 1.6 percent.

While the numbers pointed to a grim outlook for the economy, they were better than the annualized rate of 1.4 percent that economists had forecast.

Two weeks ago, I challenged the idea that the economy was in “recovery.”

This morning, Paul Krugman devastates the notion, too, in the NY Times.

Bloomberg: Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who predicted the global financial crisis, said U.S. growth will be “well below” 1 percent in the third quarter and put the odds of a renewed recession at 40 percent.

REASSURING RESPONSE TODAY BY BEN BERNANKE OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK

WP: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledges that the pace of the country’s economic growth “recently appears somewhat less vigorous” than expected, but that it is on track to continue growing.

He said the central bank would only take new action if conditions worsen further.

• New WIKILEAK leaked: Does The US “Export Terrorism?” via Al Jazeera: Wikileaks Posts Classified CIA Memo

The whistle blower organization Wikileaks has released a classified CIA document asking what would happen if foreign countries began to view the US as an “exporter of terrorism.” [More here →]

I did not see this new Wikileak in the NY Times. It was in the Washington Post. The Times carried more on sex charge against the founder of Wikileaks in Sweden,

• NY Times: Key Karzai Aide in Graft Inquiry Is Linked to C.I.A.

The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.

Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does inexchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both. [More here →]

• Mossad in America By Philip Giraldi – Former CIA Officer

Israeli intelligence steps up its activity in the U.S. – and gets away with it.

• BIRTHDAYS: Heard yesterday from Tiana Thi Thanh Nga, director of the path breaking documentary, “From Hollywood to Hanoi.” She is in the Vietnamese capital and was invited to attend the 100th birthday party of General Giap, who defeated the US and South Vietnamese armies in 1975. He outlived them all. He is their living link with Ho Chi Minh.

Yesterday was also the anniversary of the death of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy.

• REMEMBERING THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON

We are approaching the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington on August 28.

“The march was initiated by A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, president of the Negro American Labor Council, and vice president of the AFL-CIO. Randolph had planned a similar march in 1941. The threat of the earlier march had convinced President Roosevelt to establish the Committee on Fair Employment Practice and bar discriminatory hiring in the defense industry. Randolph said “I pledge my heart, and my mind, and my body, to the achievement of social peace through social justice.” The 1963 march was an important part of the rapidly expanding Civil Rights Movement. In the political sense, the march was organized by a coalition of organizations and their leaders including: Randolph, James Farmer (president of the Congress of Racial Equality), John Lewis (president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Martin Luther King, Jr. (president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference), Roy Wilkins (president of the NAACP), Whitney Young (president of the National Urban League).”

This year, Glenn Beck pre-empted any anniversary celebration by legally appropriating the space for his own rally in which he no doubt wants to co-opt the occasion for his own agenda, one that, had he lived, Dr. King would be at odds with.

There will be a confrontation, to be sure, another war of words especially by those offended by the “insensitivity” of this use of the “Hallowed Ground” of the Lincoln Memorial. Rev. Al Sharpton knows a media moment when he sees one. (Jesse Jackson will be marching with the UAW in Detroit for jobs.)

Already, radio host, Randi Rhodes tells us, the Tea Partiers are bring prepared for the realities of the town some call Chocolate City:

“Good news for xenophobes who would like to get out more—a tea party blogger has put together a handy guide to Washington, DC for visitors who are coming for Glenn Beck’s rally this weekend. It covers the basics—inexpensive places to eat, and how to avoid black people, Arabs, and other minorities. Really. It’s kind of a Frommer’s guide for racists. The guide warns attendees about which subway lines and neighborhoods to avoid. It doesn’t specify why they should be avoided, but I don’t think it’s because of pricey restaurants. Classic. So Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers have stolen the Lincoln Memorial for the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. And they mark the occasion with a handy-dandy guide to avoiding black people. Hey Tea Partiers, you don’t have to worry about avoiding black people. Just go out in your crazy colonial outfits, and the black people will avoid you. But then so will any sane person.

This guide basically confines visitors to the area around the National Mall and all the monuments. So, if a person follows these directions, they will probably only run into white people—extremely white people, as in “carved out of marble.” And, they won’t see any minorities, unless you count Franklin D. Roosevelt in his wheelchair. Tea Partiers are warned that “Most taxi drivers and many waiters/waitresses (especially in local coffee shops like the Bread and Chocolate chain) are immigrants, frequently from east Africa or Arab countries.” So don’t be shocked when your waitress isn’t Flo from Mel’s Diner. And do people really have to be alerted that taxi drivers may be immigrants? I don’t think there’s been a white guy taxi driver since Travis Bickle. I’ll stick with the immigrants, thank you.”

I was a youth organizer for that 1963 March and remember it as key point in my own politicalization. I suggest you read Charles Euchner’s excellent new book, Nobody Turn Me Around, about the meaning of the march.

Two yeas ago, just before Obama’s inauguration, I wrote about his claim, if any, on the King Heritage a question worth revisiting as the Beckian bastardization of the anniversary approaches.

That blog, written in the winter of 2008, a marker in my own thinking, as well. I was hopeful then. I am less so now.

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