Information Terrorists Hijack our Airwaves

by Nomiki Konst

Attention Mainstream Media!  I have a challenge for you: “A Day Without the Tea Party.” I challenge cable networks and their hosts and pundits, for one day, to ignore the Tea Party movement and focus on issues that affect everyday people, also known as their audience.

Which of the following issues matter to you the most?

• The 989 billion tax dollars and 5,450 lives spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• America's growing homeless population due to the jobless rate.
• America's failing public school system.
• The OECD's recent report that shows the US has nearly doubled the average child poverty level of industrialized nations.
• Potential nuclear weapons in North Korea, Iran and Pakistan.

Inspired by Walter Shapiro's 60-hour cable newsathon diet for Politics Daily, I recently conducted a cable news experiment to find out what issues matter to the media. My roommate just purchased a fancy-schmancy television for our living room, so what better time to conduct my experiment? Full disclosure up front: I am not a scientist, nor a statistician, nor do I have a team of experts readily available for consult. But I do have DVR, timer and calculator apps on my iPhone.

My newsathon objective was to quantify the hours that the moderate and left leaning media were spending on the ever-so-hot Tea Partiers.

But no surprise, the Tea Party movement was the most popular topic of the week. Altogether, the Tea Partiers and their counterparts (like their self-appointed leader, Sarah Palin, the Birthers and the anti-government militia men) received over 25% of airtime. That's an average of 15 hours spent on an unofficial political party that has no official agenda, platform or spokesperson and is unrepresentative of most American people, let alone the audience of the cable news shows I watched.  Continued...

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Hollywood's Fix for America's Three and a Half Trillion-Dollar Lobbying Addiction

by Nomiki Konst

In 3rd century BC Rome, actors were considered equal to prostitutes. In 2010, actors and others in entertainment have evolved into a major force behind campaigns and progressive causes. Unfortunately, these efforts resulted in only token reform due to a greater problem in America.

The United States of America has a dirty little secret. We're addicted to a drug. A drug dealt everyday in the halls of Congress, on the streets of Washington and at the exclusive Georgetown soirees. That drug is corruption, pure and simple. And the dealers are lobbyists. The year 2009 was record breaking for the lobbying industry, mostly due to the health care debate, with total spending on all issues at more than $3.47 billion.

Last year, nearly $545 million was spent just on health care. It would sound fabulous if it actually went to caring for people's health. Except it was spent on health care industrylobbyists, whose expensive words and promises were thrown all around Washington. Not a penny was spent on the 56-year-old retired schoolteacher, Lorraine O'Malley's chemotherapy bill. Or 20-year-old college student John Bamberger's emergency appendectomy. Or Karen Toolin's medical costs after a terrible car accident following her layoff from a company she was loyal to for 23 years.

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the proposed health care plan will cost the United States $94 billion a year over ten years, will reduce the deficit by $138 billion over that time and extend coverage to 32 million more Americans.  

The PR agencies hired by the health care industry told conservative lawmakers that reform will put our country further into debt. Then the conservative lawmakers spewed this message to American people. Are we to presume that the same groups that spend $545 million on health care talk are concerned with the cost of this health care bill?  

Americans are so conditioned to hearing "billions and trillions of dollars" spent on "Operation This" and "Operation That" and the unfathomable amount of money we owe China, that when we hear about $545 million being wasted on words, it's easy to blink once and change the channel.  Continued...

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