My movie list, as promised

[steve74baywin]

I believe they should all be approached with a healthy amount of skepticism but not because of how or where they meet but because of known outcomes.

Beautiful, yes, yes, there known outcomes is exactly why so many of us our saying what we are saying.. Stop fearing some of these vids and you will see how ugly there known outcomes are.

[Velokid1]

Let's not quibble about whether something can correctly be called a conspiracy or not. Every one of you is saying the same thing, whether you use hocus pocus Art Bell-hyped terminology or straightforward, transparent language.

This is a fine read I came across yesterday. As always, Bill Moyer can say it far better than any of us can:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/ ... ip_so.html

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: Some Choice Words For "The Select Few"

If you want to know what really matters in Washington, don't go to Capitol Hill for one of those hearings, or pay attention to those staged White House "town meetings.” They’re just for show. What really happens – the serious business of Washington – happens in the shadows, out of sight, off the record. Only occasionally – and usually only because someone high up stumbles -- do we get a glimpse of just how pervasive the corruption has become.

Case in point: Katharine Weymouth, the publisher of THE WASHINGTON POST – one of the most powerful people in DC – invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform with some of her reporters and editors covering the story.

But CEO’s and lobbyists from the health care industry were invited, too, provided they forked over $25,000 a head – or up to a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy get-togethers. And what is the inducement offered? Nothing less, the invitation read, than “an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will get it done.”

The invitation reminds the CEO’s and lobbyists that they will be buying access to “those powerful few in business and policy making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues…

"Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No." The invitation promises this private, intimate and off-the-record dinner is an extension “of THE WASHINGTON POST brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard.”

Let that sink in. In this case, the “stakeholders” in health care reform do not include the rabble – the folks across the country who actually need quality health care but can’t afford it. If any of them showed up at the kitchen door on the night of this little soiree, the bouncer would drop kick them beyond the Beltway.



No, before you can cross the threshold to reach “the select few who will actually get it done,” you must first cross the palm of some outstretched hand. The WASHINGTON POST dinner was canceled after a copy of the invite was leaked to the Web site Politico.com, by a health care lobbyist, of all people. The paper said it was a misunderstanding – the document was a draft that had been mailed out prematurely by its marketing department. There’s noblesse oblige for you – blame it on the hired help.

In any case, it was enough to give us a glimpse into how things really work in Washington – a clear insight into why there is such a great disconnect between democracy and government today, between Washington and the rest of the country.

According to one poll after another, a majority of Americans not only want a public option in health care, they also think that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power over policy, that money in politics is the root of all evil, that working families and poor communities need and deserve public support if the market system fails to generate shared prosperity.

But when the insiders in Washington have finished tearing worthy intentions apart and devouring flesh from bone, none of these reforms happen. “Oh,” they say, “it’s all about compromise. All in the nature of the give-and-take-negotiating of a representative democracy.”

That, people, is bull – the basic nutrient of Washington’s high and mighty.

It’s not about compromise. It’s not about what the public wants. It’s about money – the golden ticket to “the select few who actually get it done.”

When Congress passed the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, "the select few” made sure it no longer contained the cramdown provision that would have allowed judges to readjust mortgages. The one provision that would have helped homeowners the most was removed in favor of an industry that pours hundreds of millions into political campaigns.

So, too, with a bill designed to protect us from terrorist attacks on chemical plants. With “the select few” dictating marching orders, hundreds of factories are being exempted from measures that would make them spend money to prevent the release of toxic clouds that could kill hundreds of thousands.

Everyone knows the credit ratings agencies were co-conspirators with Wall Street in the shameful wilding that brought on the financial meltdown. But when the Obama administration came up with new reforms to prevent another crisis, the credit ratings agencies were given a pass. They’d been excused by “the select few who actually get it done.”

And by the time an energy bill emerged from the House of Representatives the other day, “the select few who actually get it done” had given away billions of dollars worth of emission permits and offsets. As THE NEW YORK TIMES reported, while the legislation worked its way to the House floor, “it grew fat with compromises, carve-outs, concessions and out-and-out gifts,” expanding from 648 pages to 1400 as it spread its largesse among big oil and gas, utility companies and agribusiness.

This week, the public interest groups Common Cause and the Center for Responsive Politics reported that, “According to lobby disclosure reports, 34 energy companies registered in the first quarter of 2009 to lobby Congress around the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. This group of companies spent a total of $23.7 million – or $260,000 a day – lobbying members of Congress in January, February and March.

“Many of these same companies also made large contributions to the members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over the legislation and held a hearing this week on the proposed ‘cap and trade’ system energy companies are fighting. Data shows oil and gas companies, mining companies and electric utilities combined have given more than $2 million just to the 19 members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee since 2007, the start of the last full election cycle.”

It's happening to health care as well. Even the pro-business magazine THE ECONOMIST says America has the worst system in the developed world, controlled by executives who are not held to account and investors whose primary goal is raising share price and increasing profit – while wasting $450 billion dollars in redundant administrative costs and leaving nearly 50 million uninsured.

Enter "the select few who actually get it done." Three out of four of the big health care firms lobbying on Capitol Hill have former members of Congress or government staff members on the payroll – more than 350 of them – and they’re all fighting hard to prevent a public plan, at a rate in excess of $1.4 million a day.

Health care policy has become insider heaven. Even Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House health reform director, served on the boards of several major health care corporations.

President Obama has pushed hard for a public option but many fear he’s wavering, and just this week his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel – the insider del tutti insiders – indicated that a public plan just might be negotiable, ready for reengineering, no doubt, by “the select few who actually get it done.”

That’s how it works. And it works that way because we let it. The game goes on and the insiders keep dealing themselves winning hands. Nothing will change – nothing – until the money lenders are tossed out of the temple, the ATM’s are wrested from the marble halls, and we tear down the sign they’ve placed on government – the one that reads, “For Sale.”

[RussellK]

Let's not quibble about whether something can correctly be called a conspiracy or not. Every one of you is saying the same thing, whether you use hocus pocus Art Bell-hyped terminology or straightforward, transparent language.

Greg I don't think we're saying the same thing at all. Some folks believe in conspiracies - I don't and see them as a distraction.

[Velokid1]

So then, what's the difference between a Conspiracy (as seen on Art Bell) and a select group of powerful people meeting in private and conspiring to cut all others out of their decision making?

I think they're the same thing.

Or are you just saying that it isn't a Conspiracy (Art Bell type) if it isn't actually kept secret? Or... if they're not all that inconspicuous about their conspiring, then it isn't a conspiracy.

[RussellK]

So then, what's the difference between a Conspiracy (as seen on Art Bell) and a select group of powerful people meeting in private and conspiring to cut all others out of their decision making?

I think they're the same thing.

Or are you just saying that it isn't a Conspiracy (Art Bell type) if it isn't actually kept secret? Or... if they're not all that inconspicuous about their conspiring, then it isn't a conspiracy.

I had to look up who Art Bell is but the last one fits fairly well. I think well intentioned people get so caught up in the secrecy part and all the intrigue they miss where their focus should be and thats on what is actually transpiring. I'll say it again. The rich and powerful do not need a conspiracy to fleece you.

[chitwnvw]

We all agree then "rich and powerful" = "evil and bad" to the rest of us.

Correct?

[RussellK]

We all agree then "rich and powerful" = "evil and bad" to the rest of us.

Correct?

No. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with having wealth or power.

[chitwnvw]

I disagree.

[Velokid1]

So then, what's the difference between a Conspiracy (as seen on Art Bell) and a select group of powerful people meeting in private and conspiring to cut all others out of their decision making?

I think they're the same thing.

Or are you just saying that it isn't a Conspiracy (Art Bell type) if it isn't actually kept secret? Or... if they're not all that inconspicuous about their conspiring, then it isn't a conspiracy.

I had to look up who Art Bell is but the last one fits fairly well. I think well intentioned people get so caught up in the secrecy part and all the intrigue they miss where their focus should be and thats on what is actually transpiring. I'll say it again. The rich and powerful do not need a conspiracy to fleece you.

See, I think you are the one who said it yourself: many of the conspiracy theories (more accurately, incorrect theories of conspiracy) rely on one condition that can only rarely exist, and that is a corporation, WH administration, etc. doing something in anything other than a very clumsy way. They have already shown that they SUCK at hiding what they're doing. They are bumbling idiots, just like the rest of us. They are no more well-organized than Roy who owns the Radio Shack down on the square.

But they still try to hide it, strive for secrecy. Absolutely. And trying to conceal their conspiracies is still naughty, even when they aren't successful at it.

[Amskeptic]

But they still try to hide it, strive for secrecy. Absolutely. And trying to conceal their conspiracies is still naughty, even when they aren't successful at it.

The Washington Post sponsored Pay To Play Dinner Debacle was as clarion clear of a warning as any. . . yet we the people are distracted and apathetic and are just as likely to rationalize that this is just the way it is, but it is a warning. True Conspiracists would have no trouble rustling up tin hat conspiracies to debunk all conspiracies. That is their cover.

As the truth of the competition between the Few of the Haves and the Hordes of the Have Nots becomes more apparent, we will be treated to ever more shrill denunciations from the Poodles of the Rich. They will breathlessly accuse their opponents of the very things they practice.

. . . sort of like the Republican gasbag senators who are lecturing Sotomayor on the finer points of jurisprudence (she has more experience than any of the five white men on the Supreme Court), and who are warning her against "activism" as though miraculously, the white men of the Supreme Court have never actively twisted decisions in favor of corporations who pay women 67 cents on the dollar, or throw elections to their guy. Or, here's Rush Limbaugh, and I quote: "She doesn't have any intellectual depth. She's got a - she's an angry woman, she's a bigot. She's a racist."
Honestly. There is a difference here.

Oy oy oy bring out your near-dead truths. Hypocrisy Reigns, that's with a capital "R".
Colin

[steve74baywin]

Statism is Dead
I like this guys ways of stating things.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGIgOIFdnMQ
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EJ9VyjC ... 7DDFA9C7DB
Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P772Eb63 ... B&index=12

There are more I found out.

Well anyways.....Above is the latest vid's I was hoping some would watch....The other one is a few months old.

[steve74baywin]

It took me a bit to find this post, it wouldn't pull up when searching.
I wanted to find the video on the hijacking of the education system.

Good vid on some peoples plans to effect the education system.
Interview with Norman Dodd, Congressional Investigator
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8cC21jB9EE

[steve74baywin]

Here is a good vid I watched the other day.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 3746597344#


The New Atlantis

[steve74baywin]

I think this guy has many good vids. I'm going to post his youtube Channel.
Often he mentions the power of Fear and Love, two opposite emotions.

http://www.youtube.com/user/aodscarecrow

[steve74baywin]

I tossed around where to post this one.
It came across my computer this am, it's timing is good for
1)Again, Raw Milk thread
2) It is good for the Ron Paul thread, as it's description is "When you hear Ron Paul say that he stands for the Philosophy of Liberty, this is what he means."
3)It also could have went in the "basis for my gov belief thread.
But I figured I'd put here

The Philosophy of Liberty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I