Those of Us Who Know - by RFK Jr.

[welshTerrier2]

i'll just say this ... if RFK Jr. ever decided to run for President, the Democratic Party would come back to life ...

this one's really long ... and it's also not long enough for those who just can't get enough of hearing the truth ...

source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0916-27.htm

Title: Those of Us Who Know That America’s Worth Fighting for Have to Take It Back Now from Those Who Don’t

The White House has used all kinds of ingenious machinations to try to conceal its radical agenda from the American people including Orwellian rhetoric. When they want to destroy the forests, they call it the Healthy Forest Act. When they wanted to destroy the air, they called it the Clear Skies Bill. But most insidiously, they have put polluters in charge of virtually all the agencies that are supposed to protect Americans from pollution. <skip>

There is nothing wrong with having business people in government. It’s a good thing if you’re objective is to recruit competence and expertise but in all of these cases these individuals as I show in my book, have entered government service not to benefit the public interest but rather to subvert the very laws they’re now charged with enforcing in order to enrich the president’s corporate pay masters. They have imposed enormous diminution in quality of life in this country. <skip>

Today as a result of the abolishment of that doctrine (i.e. the Fairness Doctrine), six giant multi-national corporations now control all 14,000 radio stations in our country, almost all 6,000 TV stations and 80 percent of our newspapers, all of our billboards and now most of the Internet information services, so you have six guys who are dictating what Americans have as information and what we see as news. The news departments have become corporate profit centers, they no longer have any obligation to benefit the public interests, their only obligation is to their shareholders and they fulfill that obligation by increasing viewer ship. <skip>

And 80 percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don’t know what’s going on .

[mcscajun]

1. Best line of the week award.

"...80 percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don’t know what’s going on."

That's how you know how successful the * propaganda is.

[yurbud]

7. 80% of elected Democrats are Republicans who couldn't win if they

flew their true colors.

Bev Harris said something that's crucial to understanding and fixing our political system: we have three parties, democrat, republican, and chamber of commerce. The third uses whichever of the other two is likely to win. Whenever possible, they buy both to cover their bets.

All the cultural stuff is frosting on the cake to them to attract the rubes. That stuff costs them nothing anyway. They keep their eye on the real ball--money.

[brentspeak]

9. Bev Harris is a scam artist

She's even been banned from DU.

[yurbud]

10. does that make the statement untrue?

[Vinnie From Indy]

14. No, even crazy people swerve into the truth now and again. n/t

[bvar22]

15. She may be a scam artist,

but she DID do more than anyone else here to make the public aware of the problems with BBV.

[Martin Eden]

2. This is a MUST READ.

President Bush appointed as head of the Forest Service a timber industry lobbyist, Mark Rey, probably the most rapacious in history. He put in charge of public lands a mining industry lobbyist, Steven Griles, who believes that public lands are unconstitutional. He put in charge of the air division of the EPA, Jeffrey Holmstead, a utility lobbyist who has represented nothing but the worst air polluters in America. As head of Superfund, a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund. The second in command of EPA is a Monsanto lobbyist.

The New York Times reported a couple of weeks ago we all read that as second in command of CEQ which is in the White House directly advising the president of environmental policy, he put a lobbyist of the American Petroleum Institute whose only job was to read all of the science from all the different federal agencies to make sure they didn’t say anything critical, to excise any critical statements about the oil industry.

He was there to lie to the American public, to protect one of the big corporate contributors to this White House. This is true throughout all of the agencies that are supposed to protect Americans from pollution, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce which regulates fisheries, the Department of the Interior, EPA of course, and the relevant divisions of the Justice Department. The same thing, all these agencies and sub secretariats, it is the polluters who are now running these agencies.

There is nothing wrong with having business people in government. It’s a good thing if you’re objective is to recruit competence and expertise but in all of these cases these individuals as I show in my book, have entered government service not to benefit the public interest but rather to subvert the very laws they’re now charged with enforcing in order to enrich the president’s corporate pay masters.

[OneBlueSky]

3. "if RFK, Jr. ever decided to run for President . . .

the Democratic Party would come back to life"

realistically, the nomination is his if he wants it . . . even Hillary would have to step aside if he decided to run . . . and he is the ONLY potential candidate who could bring back a lot of voters who currently fancy themselves "conservative," but who strongly supported his father . . .

from what I've read, RFK Jr. doesn't want to run for anything because he needs to devote his time and energy to his family . . . the other reality that is inescapable is that, as a candidate for president, he would be extremely vulnerable . . . and he can't take the chance that his children could be left fatherless . . .

the only way he might possibly run would be if a massive "Draft Bobby" movement were mounted, probably beginning on the net . . . the only argument that might actually bring this about is that we are ALL his family, and we are NOW leaderless . . .

RFK Jr. knows whats happening to this country, and he's one of the few who is willing to stand up and tell the truth . . . since people like this who are actually electable are EXTREMELLY rare, maybe our time and energy should be devoted to covincing him to run, and run hard . . . every other "viable" candidate is currently in office and, therefore, beholden to one corporation or another (and most to more than one) . . .

and to raising enough money to provide him with 24-hour security -- and, with Paul Wellstone in mind, his own plane and pilot . . .

kicked and STRONGLY recommended . . .

[Totally Committed]

5. I support Wes Clark, but if for some reason, Wes did not decide to run,

this is a man I could definitely support for President. He is among a very few I can say that about.

May he have a long and healthy life, whatever he decides to do about politics.

TC

[Totally Committed]

4. RFK, Jr. is fast becoming as much a National Treasure as

his father or uncles. This article is another in a series he has written in the last couple of years that have really "got it". He's a great thinker and an unwaivering Liberal.

Thanks for posting it!

TC

[yurbud]

6. how would we protect him from the "lone gunman" who...

only seems to show up when the left has an effective leader?

[Glenda]

8. Has anyone here read his book: Crimes Against Nature?

What did you think?

[Martin Eden]

12. Yes, and I'd highly recommend it

The theme of the book is very similar to this speech, but thre's lots more.

[Glenda]

22. Thanks! I just ordered it through inter-library loan

Can't wait to get it!

:)

[fortyfeetunder]

11. If one is not horrified by this speech...

they are not paying attention!

Not only a must read, but e-mail to friends, and snail mail to those who don't have computers!

[Paradise]

13. Thanks wT2, and thanks to the Kennedys... n/t

[bvar22]

16. Intresting "re-framing" of "Free Markets".

Industry wants us to believe that a "Free Market" is one that is free from governmental regulation".

Kennedy says that "Governmental Regulation and Oversight" is NECESSARY to keep the market FREE!

"A corporation does not want democracy. It does not want free markets, it wants profits and the best way for them to get profits is to use our campaign finance system which is just a system of legalized bribery to get their stakes, their hooks into a public official and then use that public official to dismantle the market place to give them a competitive advantage and then to privatize the common, to steal the commonwealth, to liquidate public assets for cash, to plunder, to steal from the rest of us.
And that doesn’t mean corporations are a bad thing. It just means they’re amoral and we have to recognize that and not let them into the political process."---RFK,Jr


The Democratic Party is a BIG TENT, but there is NO ROOM for those who advance the agenda of THE RICH (Corporate Owners) at the EXPENSE of LABOR and the POOR.

[RJRoss]

17. I read that whole speech last night

and was amazed and disgusted and saddened at the direction our country has turned under this administration.

The line about American children not being able to go fishing with their parents, taking their catch home and cooking it and eating it, BECAUSE SOMEBODY GAVE A POLITICIAN MONEY is heartbreaking. Kennedy distilled the situation into an easily understood mini-drama.

The repealing of the Fairness Doctrine seems to be one of the most damaging-to-our-democracy acts ANY President has inflicted upon this nation.

[baby_bear]

20. Why didn't Clinton reinstate the Fairness Doctrine?

I have never heard this discussed - i.e., his not doing this - so I don't know. Does anyone have an idea? Could he not have readily reinstated it? Or would it have needed Congressional concurrence?

b_b

On edit, I found some information myself:

Immediately after the Reagan administration succeeded in killing the doctrine, Congress voted 3–1 in order to restore it. Reagan vetoed the bill, and the Republican right was successful in preventing an override. Congress began work on the bill again during the Bush I administration, but the threat of another presidential veto caused the bill to die on the vine. During his campaign in 1992, Bill Clinton promised to sign the bill once it was presented to him, but after the Republican take over of congress in 1995, a new bill never materialized, and Clinton never submitted his own. Bill Clinton failed to demonstrate the foresight that should have predicted the devastating effect that corporate concentration, coupled with limiting public access would have on his own administration.

from http://www.onlinejournal.com/archive/08-03-01_Higdon.pdf

Very interesting article.


Here's another one.
http://fairnessdoctrine.com/salon/
<snip>
Today, there are indications that bipartisan support for the Fairness Doctrine lives on, albeit outside Congress. In a poll conducted last April by Garin Hart Yang Research, and commissioned by the liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America, an overwhelming majority of voters -- 77 percent -- favored restoring rules requiring fairness and balance on the public airwaves. What's more, 74 percent of conservatives, and 71 percent of Republicans, agreed that television and radio should be required to present issues in a balanced way.

</snip>

[corkhead]

18. Two great lines I will be using myself:

"80 percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don’t know what’s going on "

and

"Those of Us Who Know That America’s Worth Fighting for Have to Take It Back Now from Those Who Don’t"


:headbang:

[LibertyorDeath]

19. He is Brilliant & if the 80 percent of Republicans that are Dem's

don't wake up to what's going on right now then America
is done....finished.... destined to become an obscenely polluted & fascist shadow of what it once was.

Recommended

[baby_bear]

21. He refers to PIPA

The Program on International Policy Attitudes is a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland.

http://www.pipa.org/

Very interesting site to visit.

<snip>
An overwhelming majority of Americans supports the US agreeing to limit greenhouse gas emissions in concert with other members of the G8 Summit. The new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll asked, if, at the G8 Summit, “the leaders of these other countries are willing to act to limit the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, President Bush should or should not be willing to act to limit such gases in the US?” Eighty-six percent said that he should. Eighty-one percent of Republicans supported this as well as 89% of Democrats.

Virtually all respondents—94%—said the US should limit its greenhouse gases at least as much as the other developed countries do on average. Nearly half—44%—think the US should do more than average.

</snip>

b_b

good one to bookmark

[CrispyQ]

23. Kicked, bookmarked & nominated

Thanks for the link!