“An empire remains powerful so long as its subjects rejoice in it.”
~ Titus Livius

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  1. Will so many of the Empires Subjects rejoice? Social Security is now touchable! Business week on line May 13th

    Once Medicare is brought under control, Obama plans to attack Social Security, Geithner said. “This President will work to build a bipartisan consensus to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security,” he said. “The President explicitly rejects the notion that Social Security is an untouchable politically and instead believes there is opportunity for a new consensus on Social Security reform.”
    http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/may2009/db20090512_408285.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_top+story

  3. Or

    AMY GOODMAN: We begin our show today with New York Times reporter David Barstow. He recently won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for exposing how dozens of retired generals working as radio and television analysts had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to military contractors that benefited from policies they defended.

    Barstow uncovered Pentagon documents that repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration themes and messages to millions of Americans in the form of their own opinions.

    The so-called analysts were given hundreds of classified Pentagon briefings, provided with Pentagon-approved talking points and given free trips to Iraq and other sites paid for by the Pentagon.

    “Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse—an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.”

    The officials appeared on all the main cable news channels—Fox News, CNN and MSNBC—as well as the three nightly network news broadcasts.

    …AMY GOODMAN: I think what’s so interesting about this story is not only what the Pentagon has done; it’s the lack of reporting on this by the networks. Of course, you know, that is your subject here, how the networks use them. How many times have you been invited on the networks—you just won the Pulitzer Prize for this investigation—to explain this story of the networks’ use of these pundits?

    DAVID BARSTOW: You know, to be honest with you, I haven’t received many invitations—in fact, any invitations—to appear on any of the main network or cable programs. I can’t say I’m hugely shocked by that.

    On the other hand, while there’s been kind of deafening silence, as you put it, on the network side of this, the stories have had—sparked an enormous debate in the blogosphere. And to this day, I continue to get regular phone calls from not just in this country but around the world, where other democracies are confronting similar kinds of issues about the control of their media and the influence of their media by the government.

    So it’s been an interesting experience to see the sort of two reactions, one being silence from the networks and the cable programs, and the other being this really lively debate in the blogosphere.

    For the entire interview,

    http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/8/pentagons_pundits_ny_times_reporter_david

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