We're way beyond the slippery slope. We're heading to the abyss. Rob Reiner

[calimary]

30. And did I say MESSAGING?????

Look what just popped up on my phone’s newsfeed:

Most Americans Don’t Realize Robert Mueller’s Investigation Has Uncovered Crimes
https://apple.news/A_t2RmsfWTR2h3r9QQqi-qg

It’s a report about how a majority -repeat: a MAJORITY of Americans have no idea that the Mueller investigation has already produced results INCLUDING multiple indictments AND guilty pleas. No idea. Never heard of such a thing. W. T. F. ?????

We HAVE TO ask “why not?” WHY is this so?

And unfortunately, we have a partial answer. The bad guys have built media empires. Big ones. They’ve spent years - decades - building this. Since the late 80s when Reagan did away with the ownership restrictions, in the last year or so of his administration. A feeding frenzy followed almost immediately. This was at a time many referred to as the “Go-go 80s” when the regulatory reins were lifted off big business and corporate America and this freakin’ ORGY of buying and selling radio and local television properties.

Remember the original Oliver Stone movie “Wall Street” - and its madly popular buzz phrase “greed... is GOOD.” ? That film was released on December 11, 1987. We were into Reagan’s final year in office. Wall Street traders and young hotshots and high-rollers and widely-admired risk-takers and other assorted self-proclaimed “masters of the universe were envied and damn near worshipped! Unfettered Capitalism was our state-sponsored religion. And profit was god.

And there was this rampage of mergers and acquisitions as corporations sought to buy up as many media properties as possible, often at ridiculously inflated prices, they were leveraged up the ting-yang and the “owners” plunged deeply into debt, just knowing that things were just permanently gonna grow, Grow? GROW!!! And for the mom-‘n’-pop local stations whose owners saw an obscenely big profit if one of these big boys swooped in and offered more money than they’d ever imagined before, they eagerly cashed out.