The varieties of job destruction amplified by an outright attack on our most creative: you covered the waterfront on this one. There is simply no integrity left in the process of governance. It is all a gravy train for "neo-finance" - making money by manipulating the system without ever lifting a hand or taking an idea to product then to market.
The Liberals have always been a distant third party in the UK since the days of David Lloyd George. The UK's 'first past the post' electoral system favours the two major parties and at the last election the electorate stale mated the election so that is why there is an uneasy coalition. Coalitions historically have a short life in Britain.
What is likely to happen, if Labour plays it correctly, is that the coalition collapses in on its own contradictions and Labour wins a majority at the next election especially if they are seen to be going after Murdoch as he is a reviled figure.
Also the Conservatives are enacting policies that are extremely divisive and have threatened the Health Service, screwed up Britain's Defences and no one really wants Murdoch to own B Skye B outright as it is seen as a 'mates' deal with Murdoch. Cameron is really an overgrown public school boy that has never had a real job - the Conservative Tony Blair - vacuous and self serving (must be a trait of politicians).
Murdoch reminds me of one of the fictional villains in the Sherlock Holmes stories, a man who blackmailed high society figures and was finally brought down by one of the victims. In Murdoch's case it was a low society figure - Milly Dowler - who from the grave seems to extract revenge for Murdoch's crimes. In her case it was the fact that having tapped into Milly Dowler's Twitter account, News of the World editors proceeded to add false tweets to the record, giving the impression she was still alive, and stringing the public along in order to sell yet more papers.
Murdoch has had what appears from the outside to be a bizarre stranglehold over politicians in the US, the UK, and his home country of Australia. His papers are credited with vaulting Margaret Thatcher to the throne, and then eventually turning on the Conservatives in favor of Tony Blair. You wonder, though, if there is more to his power than just using his papers to swing voter opinion - it looks like he may know much more about the personal lives of politicians than the public realizes, and that his editors are not afraid to use that information. After all, in an information age, information is power, and Murdoch has always craved power, not just wealth.
To obtain power without wealth is, in the long run, a business model sure to fail, and Murdoch's problem is he has a love affair with print media, which is a dying business. He therefore makes some of his properties profitable by breaking the law in order to get information that constitutes "scoops", especially anything to do with the personal lives of politicians, royalty, and celebrities. In periodic lulls in the flow of illicit information about these people, he creates celebrities out of thin air, such as Milly Dowler and her friends and her hapless parents. Anything to keep sales figures up.
In the US, he traffics in lies, distortions, straw men arguments, ad hominem attacks on liberals, and other unprofessional devices to nurture a frightened and credulous audience for demagogues like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and the late Glenn Beck. He teams up with a culture of like-minded figures in talk radio and right-wing think tanks, and legal vultures like Nancy Grace, to constantly stoke the public's anxiety, and he has deliberately contributed, if not been the primary creator of, the red-blue political and cultural divide that is destroying the political center in the US. Politicians spend endless hours bemoaning the lack of bipartisanship, but they never point their fingers at Murdoch and people like him (Roger Ailes) who have created this destructive form of politics.
The hatred of liberals and liberalism has been a fixture of the right-wing media for almost 30 years, coinciding with the time Murdoch began to build his empire. This hatred continues to infest the ordinary public discourse - you can see it manifest itself every day in political chat rooms, or the comments section on any media blogs. It won't stop until men like Murdoch and Ailes and others who control media outlets, including US talk radio, put a stop to it, which means abandoning their most potent tool for dragging in audience, selling advertising, and selling books by right-wing "authors" like Ann Coulter.
The significance of the News of the World scandal is that, for the first time, the UK public has broken free of the manipulation, and looked at it from a different angle, realizing they have been duped in order to feed the pocketbooks of men like Murdoch, and indirectly their political tools like Cameron. Whether this will ever happen to the US public remains to be seen, but it would probably take some "liberal" being hounded to death literally by FOX News for people who are addicted to this network to shake free for just a moment from the hatred and lies they are fed daily. Perhaps the destruction of political civility will become so severe that both left and right will realize the country is going to continue to sink if the media manipulators are not stopped. A third option is for the Republican Party leaders to decide they are tired of being owned by Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, and their like. We are beginning to see stirrings of this among men like John McCain and Orrin Hatch, who realize that the Tea Party is a creature of Roger Ailes and the Koch Brothers, and it is threatening their own careers in Congress and their entire party because it is dragging the Republicans into a fantasy land of birther conspiracies and lunatic fringe politics.
Meanwhile, back to Rupert Murdoch's business model, he seems to have pushed his money-making machines like NOTW and FOX News to the limit, while losing hundreds of millions of dollars on his respectable print franchises like the WSJ and the Times of London. Hence the desire to branch out into the rentier businesses like B Sky B cable. He's now given up NOTW, though he will probably merely recreate the franchise at The Sun, perhaps without the illegal wiretaps to get scoops and make up stories. His wife Wendy and son Lachlan loathe Roger Ailes and have pressured him for years to jettison FOX News. Maybe he will be forced to sell that property if it starts to deteriorate now that the public or the Republican Party may decide it has had enough of being manipulated.
If so, let us hope Rupert Murdoch lives many more years so that he can watch his empire disintegrate, going down in flames with the global economy and the political structure that allowed him to thrive in the first place.
July 8 (Bloomberg-see video at link) -- Alex DeGroote, a media analyst at Panmure Gordon & Co., talks about the outlook for News Corp.'s 7.8 billion-pound ($12.5 billion) takeover bid for British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc. He speaks with Andrea Catherwood on Bloomberg Television's "Last Word." (Source: Bloomberg)(Bloomberg)
The regulatory decision to allow Murdoch to acquire 61% of BSkyB is based on this criteria: Is the purchaser "a fit and proper person" to acquire the media property.
DeGroote said that the deal was 80-90% likely to be approved before the snooping scandal. He handicapped it at 50% and that was 48 hours ago.
Opposition to the deal is cresting with Ed Miliband, Labor Party leader, introducing a legislative motion to stop the deal until all criminal investigations of News Corporation are complete. That would effectively kill the deal. Miliband will urge MPs to halt BSkyB takeover (July 9):
Rupert Murdoch's ambition to expand his media empire still further could be killed off by MPs this week after Labour announced plans for a Commons vote to thwart his bid for BSkyB.
The move comes amid a mood of continuing public uproar over the phone-hacking scandal, which is now threatening to destabilise David Cameron's government.
-------
Of note, the DeGroote interview raised an interesting point. If Murdoch is denied the takeover of BSkyB, would't that raise questions about his status as a "fit and proper" owner in other British Comonwealth nations? DeGroote isn't a politician or screen writer. He's just laying out the factors that will influence this deal and News Corporation as a media property.
If there are challenges in other nations plus a focused attack on Murdoch in the United States, we will find out if this idol has feet of clay.
The UK specter is more identifiable. Ours hasn't taken form yet that I can see but it's there. That must be disconcerting to The Money Party.
The Liberal Democrats are less than thrilled with leader Nick Clegg, author of the deal with Cameron. With The Independent vouching for the veracity of the charge that Cameron's handler, Rebekah Brooks, personally authorized electronic snooping on a family whose child was murdered and the survivors of lost soldiers, it should be fairly clear that Cameron is not acceptable as the leader of the nation.
At that point, Clegg can bring down the government He would be a tarnished candidate but the party might be open to something truly substantial. Maybe Labour could re-animate with someone with credentials that are pro people.
Any shake up over there will be a lesson here. Both parties are working hard right now, I suspect, to hedge against any real expression of the people's will.
If there were an uproar, they'd never cover it. When Bush was inaugurated in 2001, there were 50,000 pissed off protesters all over DC. We never heard about it but, nevertheless, they were there. Can't upset the storyline. Might really screw things up, particularly if your a collection of total control freaks like The Money Party.
Reminds me of when Wesley Clark said that the Iraq War was ultimately a coverup for a 'failure of command' during 9/11. That dwarfs any 9/1 conspiracy theory. One party screws up, gets replaced but never investigated. Why? Because the other party is about to do something similarly catastrophic. I'll give it to Bush, however. He went further than any president in facilitating the outright destruction of the nation. I'm in awe.
Where do these guys come from is right. Some sci-fi novel where androids are produced in varying sizes and styles but all operate the same. I wasn't aware of the bike ad. Good grief! Now they don't even pretend to like us!
Britain faces an "unprecedented and escalating" housing crisis, charities warned yesterday, with middle-class families at greater risk of homelessness than at any point in the past century.
Geoff Hawkins, chief executive of the housing charity Chapter 1, said the problem was no longer confined to the stereotype of rough sleepers rehabilitating from lifelong addictions, but now includes victims of recession who do not qualify for appropriate help
Rather than muddy the clear waters, I'll just repeat one of yours that everyone needs to keep in mind:
Medicare will hurt women the most. Medicare is under attack, but not to clean up the rolls, instead just cutting benefits to the most poor and vulnerable. Robert Oak
This is who we're dealing with, those in power; they pick on the "most poor and vulnerable." Not a recommending quality.
What does it take for "the elect" to understand what an emergency looks like?
It is clear that the plan is to just let this happen, roll on forever. I wonder where The Money Party boys think all of those people will go? Maybe that's the next step - off-shoring people. Remember Katrina? Use a disaster as the opportunity to move 200,000 people elsewhere, take away their vote, and make it nearly impossible for them to return home.
My allusion to Murdoch having to bail himself out of jail is fanciful and wishful thinking at the most. However, he has a life sentence. He will spend the rest of his days watching his empire crumble quickly or slowly just when he had the BIG deal lined up - BSkhB.
He had one son as the heir apparent, a son who warned him. He send the first packing and brought in the second who presided over the end of the family franchise. This is epic and tragic and well deserved. Murdoch is one of the greatest nihilists of all time.
While we at this site posted many a time Obama's real votes, policy positions, economic advisers, all pointed to the disaster we have today, i.e. we knew he had no intention of reforming any trade deal and it's turned out to be worst than one could imagine...
McCain would have done the same thing on Mexican trucks.
The real problem is we do not have control or choice in our government.
We need real representation and the entire thing, esp. in the Presidential, is all sewn up by corporations and their agendas.
We don't have a prayer, left, right, extreme, moderate.
We all need to wake up, but i think its to late. The teamsters new this was coming before obamas election. They were told by many and even ooida(Owner-Operator,Independent Drivers Association) has warned them. And they still helped him get into office. These plans were drawn up a long time. Even before Bill Clinton was in office. Knowing that it was him that signed N.A.F.T.A (North Americas Future Traded Away) into law. This is all in works for The New World Order. Thats why they built the super highway between Canada and Mexico, with a huge port somewhere in Kansas. And when thats up in running, no more unions at the ports. Everything will be shipped into Mexico. So for the teamsters sake and everybody who voted these clowns in. YOU ALL GOT YOUR JUST DESERTS
I think 90k is wishful thinking frankly. I believe they are taking the current labor participation rate to come to this conclusion. I think that's crap for it leaves out the many who dropped out of the count.
It is true that non-institutional population growth seems to have decreased in slope as of recent, but the participation rate should be really at least 2007 levels to calculate the number of jobs per month.
See the graph of labor participation rate and how far it has dropped. Sorry I think that's abby normal.
If one adds up the number of people not in the labor force with the number of jobs needed to keep up with population growth, it's over 14 million.
Just do not think an artificially low labor participation rate is useful here.
I respect Dean Baker greatly, he's almost always right, but on this one, I think it's wishful thinking.
Now, if one took out the illegals and the guest workers, maybe. ;)
The varieties of job destruction amplified by an outright attack on our most creative: you covered the waterfront on this one. There is simply no integrity left in the process of governance. It is all a gravy train for "neo-finance" - making money by manipulating the system without ever lifting a hand or taking an idea to product then to market.
obama should be ashamed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi,
The Liberals have always been a distant third party in the UK since the days of David Lloyd George. The UK's 'first past the post' electoral system favours the two major parties and at the last election the electorate stale mated the election so that is why there is an uneasy coalition. Coalitions historically have a short life in Britain.
What is likely to happen, if Labour plays it correctly, is that the coalition collapses in on its own contradictions and Labour wins a majority at the next election especially if they are seen to be going after Murdoch as he is a reviled figure.
Also the Conservatives are enacting policies that are extremely divisive and have threatened the Health Service, screwed up Britain's Defences and no one really wants Murdoch to own B Skye B outright as it is seen as a 'mates' deal with Murdoch. Cameron is really an overgrown public school boy that has never had a real job - the Conservative Tony Blair - vacuous and self serving (must be a trait of politicians).
Murdoch reminds me of one of the fictional villains in the Sherlock Holmes stories, a man who blackmailed high society figures and was finally brought down by one of the victims. In Murdoch's case it was a low society figure - Milly Dowler - who from the grave seems to extract revenge for Murdoch's crimes. In her case it was the fact that having tapped into Milly Dowler's Twitter account, News of the World editors proceeded to add false tweets to the record, giving the impression she was still alive, and stringing the public along in order to sell yet more papers.
Murdoch has had what appears from the outside to be a bizarre stranglehold over politicians in the US, the UK, and his home country of Australia. His papers are credited with vaulting Margaret Thatcher to the throne, and then eventually turning on the Conservatives in favor of Tony Blair. You wonder, though, if there is more to his power than just using his papers to swing voter opinion - it looks like he may know much more about the personal lives of politicians than the public realizes, and that his editors are not afraid to use that information. After all, in an information age, information is power, and Murdoch has always craved power, not just wealth.
To obtain power without wealth is, in the long run, a business model sure to fail, and Murdoch's problem is he has a love affair with print media, which is a dying business. He therefore makes some of his properties profitable by breaking the law in order to get information that constitutes "scoops", especially anything to do with the personal lives of politicians, royalty, and celebrities. In periodic lulls in the flow of illicit information about these people, he creates celebrities out of thin air, such as Milly Dowler and her friends and her hapless parents. Anything to keep sales figures up.
In the US, he traffics in lies, distortions, straw men arguments, ad hominem attacks on liberals, and other unprofessional devices to nurture a frightened and credulous audience for demagogues like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and the late Glenn Beck. He teams up with a culture of like-minded figures in talk radio and right-wing think tanks, and legal vultures like Nancy Grace, to constantly stoke the public's anxiety, and he has deliberately contributed, if not been the primary creator of, the red-blue political and cultural divide that is destroying the political center in the US. Politicians spend endless hours bemoaning the lack of bipartisanship, but they never point their fingers at Murdoch and people like him (Roger Ailes) who have created this destructive form of politics.
The hatred of liberals and liberalism has been a fixture of the right-wing media for almost 30 years, coinciding with the time Murdoch began to build his empire. This hatred continues to infest the ordinary public discourse - you can see it manifest itself every day in political chat rooms, or the comments section on any media blogs. It won't stop until men like Murdoch and Ailes and others who control media outlets, including US talk radio, put a stop to it, which means abandoning their most potent tool for dragging in audience, selling advertising, and selling books by right-wing "authors" like Ann Coulter.
The significance of the News of the World scandal is that, for the first time, the UK public has broken free of the manipulation, and looked at it from a different angle, realizing they have been duped in order to feed the pocketbooks of men like Murdoch, and indirectly their political tools like Cameron. Whether this will ever happen to the US public remains to be seen, but it would probably take some "liberal" being hounded to death literally by FOX News for people who are addicted to this network to shake free for just a moment from the hatred and lies they are fed daily. Perhaps the destruction of political civility will become so severe that both left and right will realize the country is going to continue to sink if the media manipulators are not stopped. A third option is for the Republican Party leaders to decide they are tired of being owned by Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, and their like. We are beginning to see stirrings of this among men like John McCain and Orrin Hatch, who realize that the Tea Party is a creature of Roger Ailes and the Koch Brothers, and it is threatening their own careers in Congress and their entire party because it is dragging the Republicans into a fantasy land of birther conspiracies and lunatic fringe politics.
Meanwhile, back to Rupert Murdoch's business model, he seems to have pushed his money-making machines like NOTW and FOX News to the limit, while losing hundreds of millions of dollars on his respectable print franchises like the WSJ and the Times of London. Hence the desire to branch out into the rentier businesses like B Sky B cable. He's now given up NOTW, though he will probably merely recreate the franchise at The Sun, perhaps without the illegal wiretaps to get scoops and make up stories. His wife Wendy and son Lachlan loathe Roger Ailes and have pressured him for years to jettison FOX News. Maybe he will be forced to sell that property if it starts to deteriorate now that the public or the Republican Party may decide it has had enough of being manipulated.
If so, let us hope Rupert Murdoch lives many more years so that he can watch his empire disintegrate, going down in flames with the global economy and the political structure that allowed him to thrive in the first place.
The regulatory decision to allow Murdoch to acquire 61% of BSkyB is based on this criteria: Is the purchaser "a fit and proper person" to acquire the media property.
DeGroote said that the deal was 80-90% likely to be approved before the snooping scandal. He handicapped it at 50% and that was 48 hours ago.
Opposition to the deal is cresting with Ed Miliband, Labor Party leader, introducing a legislative motion to stop the deal until all criminal investigations of News Corporation are complete. That would effectively kill the deal. Miliband will urge MPs to halt BSkyB takeover (July 9):
Rupert Murdoch's ambition to expand his media empire still further could be killed off by MPs this week after Labour announced plans for a Commons vote to thwart his bid for BSkyB.
The move comes amid a mood of continuing public uproar over the phone-hacking scandal, which is now threatening to destabilise David Cameron's government.
-------
Of note, the DeGroote interview raised an interesting point. If Murdoch is denied the takeover of BSkyB, would't that raise questions about his status as a "fit and proper" owner in other British Comonwealth nations? DeGroote isn't a politician or screen writer. He's just laying out the factors that will influence this deal and News Corporation as a media property.
If there are challenges in other nations plus a focused attack on Murdoch in the United States, we will find out if this idol has feet of clay.
The UK specter is more identifiable. Ours hasn't taken form yet that I can see but it's there. That must be disconcerting to The Money Party.
The Liberal Democrats are less than thrilled with leader Nick Clegg, author of the deal with Cameron. With The Independent vouching for the veracity of the charge that Cameron's handler, Rebekah Brooks, personally authorized electronic snooping on a family whose child was murdered and the survivors of lost soldiers, it should be fairly clear that Cameron is not acceptable as the leader of the nation.
At that point, Clegg can bring down the government He would be a tarnished candidate but the party might be open to something truly substantial. Maybe Labour could re-animate with someone with credentials that are pro people.
Any shake up over there will be a lesson here. Both parties are working hard right now, I suspect, to hedge against any real expression of the people's will.
If there were an uproar, they'd never cover it. When Bush was inaugurated in 2001, there were 50,000 pissed off protesters all over DC. We never heard about it but, nevertheless, they were there. Can't upset the storyline. Might really screw things up, particularly if your a collection of total control freaks like The Money Party.
Reminds me of when Wesley Clark said that the Iraq War was ultimately a coverup for a 'failure of command' during 9/11. That dwarfs any 9/1 conspiracy theory. One party screws up, gets replaced but never investigated. Why? Because the other party is about to do something similarly catastrophic. I'll give it to Bush, however. He went further than any president in facilitating the outright destruction of the nation. I'm in awe.
Where do these guys come from is right. Some sci-fi novel where androids are produced in varying sizes and styles but all operate the same. I wasn't aware of the bike ad. Good grief! Now they don't even pretend to like us!
It's the small print conspiracy again;)
The UK, like the US, has a system where the candidate with the most votes (whether a majority or not) wins the election.
The UK's old Liberal Party is gone, but a third party thrives in the Liberal Democrats.
A viable third party is hardly a panacea, but it does have the potential to change the old two-party system equation.
In the USA, a specter haunts the power brokers of the Money Party -- the specter of the Reform Party.
While Rupert, Rebekah, and PM David have their roll in the hay of non stop scrutiny, so to speak, we see this:
Middle classes are Britain's new homeless
By Kunal Dutta - TheIndependent July 10
Britain faces an "unprecedented and escalating" housing crisis, charities warned yesterday, with middle-class families at greater risk of homelessness than at any point in the past century.
Geoff Hawkins, chief executive of the housing charity Chapter 1, said the problem was no longer confined to the stereotype of rough sleepers rehabilitating from lifelong addictions, but now includes victims of recession who do not qualify for appropriate help
There is a saying among attorneys practicing criminal law (don't you love that term?), "You can beat the charge, but you can never beat the rap."
Rather than muddy the clear waters, I'll just repeat one of yours that everyone needs to keep in mind:
This is who we're dealing with, those in power; they pick on the "most poor and vulnerable." Not a recommending quality.
Great post.
What does it take for "the elect" to understand what an emergency looks like?
It is clear that the plan is to just let this happen, roll on forever. I wonder where The Money Party boys think all of those people will go? Maybe that's the next step - off-shoring people. Remember Katrina? Use a disaster as the opportunity to move 200,000 people elsewhere, take away their vote, and make it nearly impossible for them to return home.
Dire is exactly right.
Les Hinton not lee hinton (you named him lee in a few places in the article)
My allusion to Murdoch having to bail himself out of jail is fanciful and wishful thinking at the most. However, he has a life sentence. He will spend the rest of his days watching his empire crumble quickly or slowly just when he had the BIG deal lined up - BSkhB.
He had one son as the heir apparent, a son who warned him. He send the first packing and brought in the second who presided over the end of the family franchise. This is epic and tragic and well deserved. Murdoch is one of the greatest nihilists of all time.
While we at this site posted many a time Obama's real votes, policy positions, economic advisers, all pointed to the disaster we have today, i.e. we knew he had no intention of reforming any trade deal and it's turned out to be worst than one could imagine...
McCain would have done the same thing on Mexican trucks.
The real problem is we do not have control or choice in our government.
We need real representation and the entire thing, esp. in the Presidential, is all sewn up by corporations and their agendas.
We don't have a prayer, left, right, extreme, moderate.
We all need to wake up, but i think its to late. The teamsters new this was coming before obamas election. They were told by many and even ooida(Owner-Operator,Independent Drivers Association) has warned them. And they still helped him get into office. These plans were drawn up a long time. Even before Bill Clinton was in office. Knowing that it was him that signed N.A.F.T.A (North Americas Future Traded Away) into law. This is all in works for The New World Order. Thats why they built the super highway between Canada and Mexico, with a huge port somewhere in Kansas. And when thats up in running, no more unions at the ports. Everything will be shipped into Mexico. So for the teamsters sake and everybody who voted these clowns in. YOU ALL GOT YOUR JUST DESERTS
This is very low 90k jobs to keep up with population growth and this is one of those numbers that changes and has a host of assumptions to calculate.
I think 90k is wishful thinking frankly. I believe they are taking the current labor participation rate to come to this conclusion. I think that's crap for it leaves out the many who dropped out of the count.
It is true that non-institutional population growth seems to have decreased in slope as of recent, but the participation rate should be really at least 2007 levels to calculate the number of jobs per month.
See the graph of labor participation rate and how far it has dropped. Sorry I think that's abby normal.
If one adds up the number of people not in the labor force with the number of jobs needed to keep up with population growth, it's over 14 million.
Just do not think an artificially low labor participation rate is useful here.
I respect Dean Baker greatly, he's almost always right, but on this one, I think it's wishful thinking.
Now, if one took out the illegals and the guest workers, maybe. ;)
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