Protestors in Venezuela were blocked on twitter from posting images of the protests.
PBS, which is supposed to be free from corporate influence, is now under fire for airing an anti-Pension series sponsored by John Arnold. David Sirota’s article on it here.
In recent years, Arnold has been using massive contributions to politicians, Super PACs, ballot initiative efforts, think tanks and local front groups to finance a nationwide political campaign aimed at slashing public employees’ retirement benefits. His foundation which backs his efforts employs top Republican political operatives, including the former chief of staff to GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (TX). According to its own promotional materials, the Arnold Foundation is pushing lawmakers in states across the country “to stop promising a (retirement) benefit” to public employees.
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…both PBS’s “Pension Peril” correspondent and the AP reporter did not mention that according to budget data, pension shortfalls in Illinois are far smaller than the amount the state is spending on expensive taxpayer subsidies to corporations.
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The state is just choosing to spend that money on huge subsidies to corporations like Sears and Google rather than paying its bills or making its required pension payments.
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See…the money is there…but it’s going into the pockets of the 1%, see? Note the $4 billion per year in subsidies in New York! OMG talk about greedy, greedy, greedy!
And here we have the smoking gun of executives knowing who was funding it and refusing to disclose it:
“We were sitting in a meeting talking about another issue and (PBS officials) were drawing examples of how they were working with other campaigns, and one of their executives said they’ve got a series called pension peril coming up talking about the threat of pensions at the state and local level,” said the source. “I asked who was funding that project, and the executive said that at this point they are not disclosing who their funders are, and everybody sitting around the room kind of paused.”
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Link to Jane Meyer’s article in the New Yorker here.
In 1997, he [David Koch] began serving as a trustee of Boston’s public-broadcasting operation, WGBH, and in 2006 he joined the board of New York’s public-television outlet, WNET. Recent news reports have suggested that the Koch brothers are considering buying eight daily newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, one of the country’s largest media empires, raising concerns that its publications—which include the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times—might slant news coverage to serve the interests of their new owners, either through executive mandates or through self-censorship. Clarence Page, a liberal Tribune columnist, recently said that the Kochs appeared intent on using a media company “as a vehicle for their political voice.”
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$50 for Christmas bonus? Are you kidding me? So much for trickle down economics, eh?
Meyer’s piece brings up the ABC News story on Disney hiring pedophiles being cancelled…because Disney owns ABC. If I recall correctly, the reporter of the story was asked if he was crazy for investigating it….
Even more depressing is the upcoming PBS pieces by Chitester on the “evils of the welfare system” I can hardly wait. What a bully this guy is…pick on the ones who are least likely to fight back. Creep.
Eagle 