Molly Ivins has passed away. We’ve lost one of the sharpest voices in political journalism, an erudite and empassioned observer. The CNN report is here. I’ve followed Molly’s words on and off for the better part of two decades and I have found her cool judgment and sound reasoning cause…
The following remarks were delivered by Bernie Sanders to the National Conference for Media Reform. Sanders is the junior United States Senator from Vermont. He is an independent, but caucuses with the Democrats. Amy Goodman describes Sanders’ speech as an “alternative State of the Union.”
The full text to Sanders’ speech can be found here. Video of his presentation can be found here. Here are excerpts of Sanders’ speech to the NCMR in Memphis:
…[W]e will not succeed unless you are there, unless there is a strong grassroots media, which demands fundamental changes in media today and the end of corporate control over our media. We’ve got to work together on that.
Now, you are going to hear from a lot of folks who know more about the details of the media than I do, but what I do know a lot about is how media impacts the political process, what media means for those of us who day after day struggle with the major issues facing our country and a goal of trying to improve the quality of life for all of our people.
And I want to spend just a minute in telling you what I suspect most of you already know. If you are concerned, as been said, about healthcare, if you are concerned about foreign policy and Iraq, if you are concerned about the economy, if you are concerned about global warming, you are kidding yourselves if you are not concerned about corporate control over the
There is a risk to knowing more than a little history (or religion or politics). Learning more than the popularized cartoon version of traditional history lessons has a way of contaminating comforting myths. See here and here. Take, for example, the story of William Clark of Lewis and Clark. Everyone…
Here, courtesy of DemocracyNow.org, it the written text of Bill Moyers' plenary speech during the Nation Conference for Media Reform. Where is the movement headed? Read this part of Moyers' speech: SO I'M BACK WHERE I STARTED WITH YOU, AND WHERE THIS MOVEMENT IS HEADED. The greatest challenge to the…
I’ve written before about how banking laws are for sale (some would say I’ve ranted before). In that post I discussed payday lending. I often hear that payday lending is not predatory and that such lenders must be offering a service, else why would people borrow money at 300%, 400%, 500% or even more?
I also hear people blame the victims of payday lending. Others say the borrowers are at fault for borrowing money at horrible interest rates. Even borrowers hold themselves at fault. When (if) they get out of the trap (and make no mistake, it is a trap with a cycle of borrowing the same money repeatedly, because the costs are so high people have great difficulty paying the debt without borrowing to do so) they still blame themselves for getting into it.
Many borrowers blame themselves for being stupid or taking the ‘easy way’ out. One person I know, when faced with the choice of becoming homeless or getting some money, said she thought the loan was an answer to prayer. “As I prayed for help,” she said, “an ad for payday loans came on tv. I thought God was answering my prayer.” Hundreds and hundreds of dollars later in interest, she thinks it was the devil.