George Rebane
Two articles worth reading highlight the near-Orwellian state of communication and popular understanding in our nation. The first by Michael Boskin titled ‘Our Next President and the Perfect Economic Storm’ will appear in tomorrow’s (23oct08) WSJ. It starts –
With their economies in recession and a credit crunch steepening the slide, policy makers around the world race to contain the damage. Calls for expansion of government spending, taxes and regulation, even for radical revision of our economic system, an end to capitalism, are rampant.
And most of the country’s electorate will make up its mind on the non-investigative reports of the MSM. All this while we stand at yet another historical gateway to socialism while the world economy trembles.
The second piece is ‘Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?’ by Orson Card which starts –
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
The facts are there and could be rebutted in detail by any reporter with access to the Internet. Instead, almost the entire journalistic profession stonewalls this history or simply presents the lies of one party. Even our own beloved Onion might put itself in line for the Pulitzer with a journalist worth the profession’s code of ethics – simply confirm or rebut the salient history of the last ten years (as presented by Card and a few others) using the easily available .gov websites. Our country's future is worth the effort.
[update - Fellow blogger Russ Steele on NC Media Watch previously covered another aspect of Card's article which was pointed out to me by my ever vigilant wife. Apparently I did not connect the dots, but then, Russ is a hard man to get ahead of in such matters, especially when we often labor in the same vineyard.]
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