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How about the government healing your kids?
Yeah. Good example. The government has been real successful at that. Just ask Barak Obama (with his kids in private school) and just about every other progressive politician in Washington (there are even plenty of public school superintendents who send their kids to private schools).
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
Well, don't bet too much of your money, cuz you'll lose it. I watch virtually zero TV "news".
Of course Jefferson "thought government had its uses" (but, that's akin to saying all of the Founding Fathers thought water was useful). It's one thing to say that Jefferson "thought government had its uses" and it's quite another thing to claim that Jefferson, therefore, supported (or would support) government-run media.
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
So where did you go to school?
[ed.]
Hang on, are you advocating privatised education?
I'm talking about the repulsive "new American" that has given you folks much to think about in your material nirvana, Sven.
There have been civilized moments in the past, as when the American jurist Oliver Wendel Holmes, "the Great Dissenter", differed from his conservative colleagues in that he willingly paid his taxes as the price for life in "civilized society". A Globe and Mail columnist who had just moved to Washington a couple of years back had to concede the above point after insisting that the conservatism of the Bush regime had flowed through American history. Know what he offered in reply?" Good rebuttal. (Though it was easy enough for Holmes--he inherited his wealth.)" You and John Ibbitson would get along like a house on fire, Sven. You probably never knew what "civilized society" looks like.Ah, what about Jefferson and government-sponsored media, George Victor?
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
I went to public school. But, what I did is nothing but anecdotal evidence.
But, back to government-sponsored media, why is it important to have government-sponsored news media? What content should it contain and who should control that? Must it present representative opinions from across the entire political spectrum in roughtly equal proportions?
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
Your evidence against public schools was an anecdote about Obama. My obvious post is obvious.
The fact that Obama's kids (and the kids of pretty much every Senator or member of Congress) go to a private school is not evidence of public schools being bad. But, it would be interesting to hear why they are sending their kids to private schools.
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
why?
The Democrats, in particular, boast about being "strong supporters of public education"...yet, for some reason, they don't want their own kids going to public schools. At best, their behavior is hypocritical. I'd like to know why they support public schools for poor people but not for people like themselves.
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
Because the BBC is ten times the news agency that CNN or Fox is.
Fidel, important questions remain, as I noted above: Why is it important to have government-sponsored news media? What content should it contain and who should control that? Must it present representative opinions from across the entire political spectrum in roughtly equal proportions?
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
The government should see that the CBC is adequately funded, then back off. No government should have a say in content, especially when it involves partisan politican considerations.
Why is it important for you to have General Electric as your news provider?
Fair and equal sounds good to me. I cant stand CBC as it is though. It's garbage. Our two stoogeocratic old line parties were instructed decades ago on how to scoop out our public institutions and prepare them for privatization at some point when people like me become so disgusted.
Otoh, we can have corporate sponsored news media or democracy, but we cant have both.
So, if the CBC became a government-funded right-wing bullhorn, that would be okay?
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
And we'd like the CBC to make mention of our obsolete electoral system a little more often, and maybe even give a little air time to the NDP once in a while, or at least as often as they interview our old line party stooges.
Oh.
Of course. Government funded news media is essential to democracy.
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
And who enforces that? The government, perhaps?
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632 __________________________________________________
The situation described by Jefferson is what you silly bastards experienced under Dubya and his weapons of mass destruction tales for eight bloody years. It is ignorance that you should be afraid of, not a media mandated to maintain independent opinion in a world of used car salesmen.
We did not go like sheep into Iraq partly because our media - led by the CBC , not the Mike Duffy and other "private" elements - were not in the pocket of the completely mendacious regime that you elected or that wanted to take power here.And you damn near followed up by electing the redneck answer to a hunter's dream, Sarah -theatre of the absurd - Palin.
Yours is a nation of frighteningly ignorant voters, Sven, sheep, and your appeals to freedom of thought are characteristically free of any evidence that might tarnish your grade-school theories. Your country began with some enormous intellects at the helm, but the Jacksonian element has held sway since you bought into Manifest Destiny.
I listend to the CBC today. What I learned, in the morning, is that the NDP elected a new leader who has her work cut out for her in rebranding and rebuilding a party of old, fat, white people. Oh, and I learnt not a thing about her. Who she is, what she represents, what her goals are. Nada. Just a fat, white and old NDP.
On the way home, I heard from a (surprise, surprise) business school MBA prof that the CAW has not sacrificed enough. I heard the same again just a little while later from the Ceeb business reporter. And interestingly, if I only took my news from the CBC, I think it would be forgivable if I belived the state of North American auto manufacturing was soley because of unions and that there is no connection to the wider economy and the collapsing US economy brought about through bankster mismanagement at the highest levels.
I know, I know. All we have to do is change the government ... In the meantime to the barricades to defend the publicly funded corporate voice.
FP:
Not at all. When you see a doctor that doctor represents you, and, hopefully, provides you with the best medical care of which he/she is capable. You enter a system, a health care system, which treats you as an individual. You are comparing apples and steel. They are completely different. The argument we are having is more like this: if you were a dyed in a wool Lutheran, would you subscribe to a magazine aimed primarily at atheists and would you positively respond to demands to help save it and its government funding? Why the hell not? Would you feel different if it was a federally chartered athiest magazine?
But news and information is the CBC's primary mandate. So you agree it does not meet its mandate but yet you want to continue funding it? That would explain corn farming ... (sorry, couldn't resist ...)
"the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public broadcaster, should provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains"
--CBC
So one out of three ain't bad? I mean, it can be entertaining. I lauged out loud, for example, when I heard the Ontario NDP is old, white, and fat. I thought, I live in an NDP stronghold!
And that proves that in your hurry to climb on your own soapbox, you didn't actually read all my posts because I have offered an alternative. The alternative is enforcing the mandate of the CRTC.
You are familiar with London and if you listen only to the CBC you might have missed the story that in cutting back, the A-Channel, London's only remaining local television station, is eliminating local news and information programming. It is within the mandate of the CRTC to ensure the A-Channel repsepcts the terms of its license and retains local programming.
And where is the CBC, Canada's broadcaster mandated to bring Canadian news and information to all Canadians in all regions? Gone. Gone from London since 1988, I believe.
So who serves local news in London and region if it is not enfoced by the CRTC? Badboy knows: NOBODY!!!
And the remedy is to have a government newspaper (or radio or television network)???
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
Ah! Sven is obviously concerned about corporate influence and lobbying in government, and that whether news media is public or privately owned and controlled, supranational corporate mindfuck tends to pervade and poison both types of wells for information. But these are existing flaws with our North American electoral systems and rules for governance. The original 13 US colonies certainly intended to break with European monarchy and rule by financier oligarchies. But in the end they failed, and now Wall Street has basically usurped governmental powers of resource allocation and regulating themselves. Caesar Augustus and Roman senators would have been green with envy of this setup today. And Canada's dysfunctional democracy is even less transparent, and Washington style lobbying in place in Ottawa since the Mulroney era. There was a time when rightwing think tanks and corporations were not so influential on American and Canadian governments and senates. That is no longer the case.
You are used to perverting the real situation, Sven. Twisting reality to suit your dumbed down situation. Look again at mandate. CBC is not a "guv'mint" media. And then look at the record of your media the past decade and more. The Jefferson quotation fits your situation exactly.
You wanted Jefferson?
Not really, eh? And I'm sure as shit not expecting you to actually speak to your own media situation in a country coming to be known for the extent of the material and intellectual poverty of its underclass.
Look at the nitpicking huffing and puffing from FMs post as he finds fault with that fearsome state media that you've created for us, and which is being reduced to failure by ideologues committed to end state involvement in almost all public services created since the ark - your position.
FM demands that we somehow require the CRTC to force the government of the day to re-instate the funding that's been taken from CBC for more than two decades. Impossible of course.
It all smacks of fatalism.
And watch Sven latch on to Fidel's post and do an end run.
And the federal minister responsible (Moore) has just announced that CBC will not receive support to make up for its advertising shortfall (surprise, surprise).
And watch the CBCs conservative-appointed administration go for ads on CBC radio.
Any takers?
Well, see, there you go. The complaint about US corporate media is very well established. The US doesn't need state media, it is said, because the corporate media does the job voluntarily. One obvious and plain example of that, for example, was the media's cheerleading role and lack of critical examinination of the government claims in the rush to the war against Iraq.
But how did public media fare? Well, not much better offering essentially the same stories lacking the same critical analysis but top heavy with generals and those who supported an invasion and the nonsense of WMDs.
So where was the critical analysis? In the global media readily available on the Internet.