WCGreen
WCGreen's JournalLet me get this straight...
Doesn't every candidate for national office offer "stuff" to those they want to win over before the vote?
What is a "Platform" but a collection of wishes and desires gleemed to build a base from those who support the candidate?
But since Barack Obama dares to turn his head away, slightly, I might add, from those self-proclaimed captians of coapitalism he is doing something dastardly and dishonest and, number one with a bullet, Un-American, and so he is villified and pilloried in the eyes of Wall Street and K Street and their toadies in the national media.
Let me explain how Rush got to be so powerful on the AM radio dial and why it is highly
unlikely to happen again...
Back in the 1980's, the law of the land restricted the number of radio and television stations one person or company could own in any given market. It was called Duopoly and that kept the local airwaves competitive.
But when cable TV moved into the picture, everything changed.
Suddenly, the small businesses in these small and medium sized markets could now afford to advertise on Cable. Am radio which was a way to make a decent living for the owner/operator, lost a ton of ad money to the cable companies.
Rush, or whoever was working with him at the time, saw an opportunity to get his show off a few stations and into hundreds by offering all these struggling mom and pop radio stations a chance to stay in the business. His EIB network worked like this, they would syndicate for free and allow the local station to place a certain amount of ads during his show.
Rush had several national accounts from places like Snapple which was struggling to get a toehold in the US soft drink industry. So he would make his money off of the national accounts.
At the local level, the owner could run those three hours without having to pay a DJ. They hired kids who wanted to be in radio to stay in the booth so that if anything happened with the signal, they could switch over to live radio.
Everybody wins in this scenario. Rush makes money and increases his reach with little to no cost. The local owner doesn't have to pay an on air talent and the local advertisers liked the idea of being on a national radio show even though the signal was beamed in.
By the end of the 80's, Rush had built such a large following that he could go into the larger markets and sell his show to the struggling AM radio stations.
That's how it started and Rush pushed to make it a one shot deal by lobbying to get rid of those restrictions on market ownership percentages and poof, all those mom and pop radio station were quickly snapped up by companies like Clear Channel.
That is why this kind of stuff cannot happen again. Large media conglomerations own most of those AM radio stations across the country and the only way to get programming on to those stations is to go through the big corps.
Now I am sure there are hundreds of little radio stations out there in small to medium sized markets that are still hanging on, but that means you would have to go to each and everyone and try and sell your format.
No one has done that because it is a monumental task to first ID the stations and then convince a local business person who probably belongs to the local Chamber of Commerce to put progressive talk shows on their station.
Good luck with that.
To me, I think continuing to build a presence on the web is the way to go because that is where our core market resides and it is a lot cheaper to break into.
One key historical item that Republicans love to ignore...
is that the US economy didn't really get going until the Rockefeller and Morgan trusts were busted.
It was when all that competition was let loose on a country begging to work, begging for the dream that they believed when they sailed into the New York City harbor, that was when the dream was acknowledged and set loose to create the US domination of the 20th century and all that brought with it that the United States gelled into modern times.
That, to me, is the exceptional part of our country. The belief that laws should and would reach high when they had to in order to serve the greater good. It is in these times of exceptional actions are taken that proves the myth of American Exceptionalism.
The right will have it that this country of ours was always exceptional and that we were destined to be blessed by this myth. It wasn't. Not when Slavery was allowed to continue, not when half of the population had no say in how they were governed, not when everyone was left on their own to thrive, survive or waste away without a thought to it. That wasn't exceptionalism it was brutal survival of the fittest which sets us smack in the middle of animal kingdom.
Until we embraced equality as reality and not a myth that the United States became and Exceptional entity.
As a tax preparer, soon to be retired, I have done a bunch of business tax returns over the
last 25 years.
I worked for people who employed three people and I have worked with a company that had over 100 people working for that company. Every one of these people proclaimed to be a small business person. And they were proud that they took the initiative to go out and create something.
What I would like to know is this; what does Mitt Romney and the other Republicans see when they look out at American capitalism? Do they even see these small business owners? I believe they do no. They look out at the vastness of American Enterprise and see companies worth $250 million and having hundreds of employees as examples of Small Business. To these owners, yea they would have to kick in some money in order to have a healthy company working for them, but they certainly are not small business owners now.
But the real Small Businesspeople out there, the mom and pop shops that still flourish outside the cavernous malls, the guys and gals in their basements or garages trying to come up with something, the small maid companies that clean the houses of the well-to-do, the Electrician the Plumber the guy who cuts your grass. These are the back bone of American Small Businesses and know that when they owe tax they did something right, maybe wrong because they didn't structure things right (that's when I come in), but they are creating wealth and making America a better place.
Now I am sure Romney looks at Bain Capital as a small business but we all know that is far from those who want to serve their customers and maybe make a good living out on their own. No one in their right mind would look at Bain Capital and view it as a thing of good. Sure they squeeze inefficiencies out of the market place but at what cost.
Let's resolve to continue to help the guys and gals with a few dozen employees and raise a middle finger to those who prey on business like a Vampire.
They could have spent twice as much and still lost....
There is a point of diminishing returns on any investment and I think it was reached in this election.
The reason the turnout was lower is because so many people were repelled by the sewer that political advertising has become. Plain and simple.
The people who are out there who aren't wired in like we are here don't pay attention as much as we do. With the news media as it is, no one really trust anything that is put on any news. It's all opinion and slant and that is why the ratings for news has dropped dangerously.
We have in ill informed population swayed by emotions and other wise disengaged from the process.
Welcome to the beginnings of Idiocracy.
We are all going to have to come to grips that we will be a minority until 2020...
The democrats always seem to drop the ball in the first off year after the census. We need to NATIONALIZE the party so when redistricting comes around again we have some control of the process.
The GOP has TONS of money to spend on local and statewide races that we basically let alone.
Here in Ohio, the Democrats lost any control of the redistricting process in the late 80's and have never even been close again.
We cannot change this country until we make our party a National Party in all ways, not just the President.
Remember that quip Norquist made about the president means nothing except a signature and then get out of the way?
There is some hard truth to that.
Steve Kornacki has a great idea to let the whole kit and rebuttal expire...
We are talking about tax cuts about to expire on December 31st.
First of all, the 2% FICA cut is what would hurt the most for the majority of working class people, but it is necessary to let this expire since it will affect SSI viability in the long run.
If all the tax rates are left to rise to Prue-Bush levels, then the President and the Democrats in Congress can offer sane rate reform and lay it all on the GOP.
It's also time to get rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax that is creeping way down into middle class income levels because it is NOT adjusted for inflation.
Make it simple, increase revenues and also stop making certain investment income more important by treated that income more favorably than wages via charges less tax on investment income. This is the main reason Wall Street went wild and crashed.
By the way, isn't Ann Colter one of the biggest takers because she really provides nothing and depends on government to make all of her money?
Plaid Adder said it best in her wonderful post bidding Rove Adieu but it isn't the whole
story and why we can all rejoice...
Of course, Rove is a man who woke up yesterday morning knowing that his future was toast, that he would no longer be relevant after spending $104 million dollars of OPM, (Other People's Money.) He truly is a turd blossom of his own making.
To me it is more than the sheer change of the voting population to be the blame for the defeat.
Another underlying cause of the GOP's demise is the end of network news controlling the message.
President Obama went young, not just 20 year olds, but also those of us who have embraced the wonderful tableau that the internet offers. The people listening to talk radio are living in past. The people who depend on that talk radio universe that includes Fox News and Newspapers, reinforces the message that the future is frightening
Most of the people I know of a certain age share information by depending on information gleamed from as many sources as possible. To pidgin hole people into a news and opinion cocoon results in an uninformed constituency. And that is so last century.
I know I am making sweeping generalizations but they are based on the hard fact that ratings for all the news networks, all the traditional news outlets combined fall far short to the percentage of people watching, reading or listening to news those same traditional outlets just 20 years ago.
People under 50 are finding news and information in so many different ways unconceivable just 15 years ago. Just look at DU. Ask yourself this, how many so-called "alternative" sources are cited here on any given day? When I was 30, you had to go to a large metropolitan library to access the wealth of information that is literally a click of the mouse away.
What we have been seeing is the slow death spiral of traditional conservatism, the 1964 Barry Goldwater john Birch society echo chamber that is so frightened and threatened by change that they embraced a neat, safe cocoon of fiction to get them through the day.
Now it isn't all Hunky Dory. There is a plethora of misinformation that is indeed a threat to reality. However, education teaches us how to seek out the truth, rely on facts and so interact with society as a whole as an informed and, this is just as important, discerning manner. Why do you think there is such a concerted effort on the right to destroy traditional education.
This election is a wake up to the fact deniers out there. The message is simple, embrace the bullshit and you will be left behind and not by the Rapture but by reality.
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Gender: MaleCurrent location: Cleveland Ohio
Member since: 2003 before July 6th
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