Media Matters hypes diversions
While the health care reform debate was raging, Media Matter was sending out updates on Lou Dobbs’s nutty claims over Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The birth certificate claims were disproved by a Hawaii newspaper called the Honolulu Star-Bulletin:
No, you can’t obtain a “certificate of live birth” anymore.
The state Department of Health no longer issues copies of paper birth certificates as was done in the past, said spokeswoman Janice Okubo.
The department only issues “certifications” of live births, and that is the “official birth certificate” issued by the state of Hawaii, she said.
And, it’s only available in electronic form.
For this reason it is silly to carry on about this, but it is a useful diversion to distract from what the government is really up to. It’s silly for Lou Dobbs to carry on about it, but it’s just as silly for Media Matters to send out 24 email on the subject.
Media Matters then used the subject to discredit everything Lou Dobbs has reported:
How can we forget his preoccupation with conspiracy theories about purported government plans for a “North American Union” between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada? Or his promotion of the nutty conspiracy that Mexicans plan to reconquer the American Southwest?
People should keep in mind it was Democrat Marcy Kaptur who blew the whistle on George W. Bush’s North American Union otherwise known as the SPP. This is an expansion of Clinton’s NAFTA.
An actual Progressive organization called GlobalExchange.org put out a publication called The Right to Stay Home. The book examines how US foreign policy, and agencies the US contributes to like the IMF and World Bank have devastated Mexico. On page 12 they state:
It is the legal, or more accurately the “constitutional,” framework within which the continental political class is busy filling in more deals and agreements away from public scrutiny. The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) had two stated objectives. One was to integrate the military and policy functions in the “War on Terror.” The second was to further the neoliberal agenda with policies that would promote more continental deregulation and the privatization of natural resources, including Mexican oil and Canadian water.
So why would Media Matters want to divert people’s attention from the health care debate, and discredit information provided by a Democrat? Media Matters claims to be Progressive, but watching how they filter news, they appear to be neoliberal.
A real Progressive news site CommonDreams.org re-posted an article from the New York Times on Media Matters in 2004:
WASHINGTON: David Brock, the former right-wing journalist turned liberal, describes himself as once having been a rather large cog in the machinery of the conservative media.
Now Mr. Brock is starting a new endeavor built to combat the very sector of journalism that spawned him, with support from the same sorts of people (Democrats) about whom he once wrote so critically.
David Brock, in the research room of his K Street office in Washington, is starting a Web site to monitor the conservative media. (NYT Photo/Carol T. Powers)
With more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals, Mr. Brock will start a new Internet site this week that he says will monitor the conservative media and correct erroneous assertions in real time.
Mr. Brock’s project was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress, the policy group headed by John D. Podesta, the former Clinton chief of staff. And Mr. Brock said he hoped it could help provide fodder for fledgling liberal radio talk shows being started across the country, including those of the comedians Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo.
For Mr. Brock, 41, the project is yet another considerable step in his public evolution from conservative muckraker to liberal activist. That evolution began after Mr. Brock began publicly apologizing in the late 1990’s for reporting that brutally criticized Anita F. Hill and a report that Arkansas state troopers had helped Bill Clinton procure paramours when he was the governor of Arkansas, the veracity of which he is no longer sure.
Mr. Brock has also said that he knowingly lied in an article he wrote for The American Spectator in 1992 that raised doubts about the credibility of Ms. Hill. The article formed the basis for a later book about Ms. Hill, whose charges of harassment almost derailed Clarence Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court.
Can we truly believe Mr. Brock is a reformed man? Perhaps Mr. Brock found it easier to defend corporate interests from the other side.
The House recently passed the health care overhaul bill H.R. 3962 that is such a giveaway to health insurance companies, Dennis Kucinich would not vote for it. Kucinich stated:
“But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies — a bailout under a blue cross.
Michael Kieschnick President of CREDO Mobile: How the Blue Dogs Raised My Insurance Premium by 14%
Pelosi only put up for a vote legislation that simply called for negotiated rates.
Negotiated is code word for higher. Much higher.
So all across the country, insurance companies are raising their rates now. If they are going to negotiate, why not negotiate from a higher base?
Media Matters combats this problem with a well established propaganda technique. They didn’t deny the truth about the bill, they simply left out information they don’t want people to know and try to diverted people’s attention to something else.
Media Matters reported:
Fact: CBO estimated health bill would reduce federal budget deficit $109 billion through 2019
CBOfound that the health care reform bill that passed the House on November 7, the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962), “would yield a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $109 billion over the 2010-2019 period.” CBO also found that in the decade after 2019, “the legislation would slightly reduce federal budget deficits … relative to those projected under current law-with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between zero and one-quarter percent of GDP [gross domestic product].”
It’s not hard to see how the bill would save that much money, if it is requiring tax payers buy a corporate insurance policy. The health insurance companies are going to get $70 billion in new revenue. The Congressional Budget Office is happy because the money won’t come out of the Congressional Budget. Congress can claim taxes will not go up because people will have to buy the policies directly.
On October 21st 2007 Fox News sponsored a GOP debate in Florida. If you read blog posts, you’ve probably got the impression many people don’t trust Fox News. Robert Greenwald with Brave New Films even did a film called 