![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/quotes_7a.gif)
Biased Media • 7 Things About The Mainstream Media That They Do Not Want Yo
7 Things About The Mainstream Media That They Do Not Want You To Know
By Michael, on May 20th, 2013
Have you ever wondered who controls the mainstream media? In America today, we are more "connected" than ever. The average American watches 153 hours of television a month, and we also spend countless hours watching movies, playing video games, listening to music, reading books and surfing the Internet. If someone could control the production of all of that media, that would make them immensely powerful. They would literally be in a position to tell people what to think. Well, what if I told you that there are just six enormous media conglomerates that combine to produce about 90 percent of all the media that Americans consume. Would that alarm you? It should alarm you. The truth is that our attitudes, opinions and beliefs are greatly shaped by what we allow into our minds. After all, they don’t call it "programming" for no reason. Even those of us that realize that we are connected to "the matrix" probably greatly underestimate the tremendous influence that the media has over us. We live at a time when it is absolutely imperative to think for ourselves, but most Americans are being absolutely overwhelmed with information and seem more than content to let others do their thinking for them. Sadly, this is greatly contributing to the downfall of our society.
And of course the mainstream media desperately does not want you to look at "the man behind the curtain". They just want you to stay plugged into the "programming" that they are feeding you without asking any questions.
Fortunately, a growing minority of Americans are waking up and are starting to reject the mainstream media. An increasing number of people are beginning to recognize that the mainstream media is the mouthpiece of the establishment and that it is promoting the agenda of the establishment.
So why is the mainstream media so bad? The following are 7 things about the mainstream media that they do not want you to know…
#1 The Mainstream Media Has Very Deep Ties To The Establishment
Did you know that the president of CBS and the president of ABC both have brothers that are top officials in the Obama administration?
The big news networks have developed an almost incestuous relationship with the federal government in recent years. But of course the same could be said of the relationship that the media has with the big corporations that own stock in their parent companies and that advertise on their networks.
This is one of the reasons why we very rarely ever see any hard hitting stories on the big networks anymore. The flow of information through the corporate-dominated media is very tightly controlled, and there are a lot of gatekeepers that make sure that the "wrong stories" don’t get put out to the public. As a result, many of the "big stories" that have come out in recent years were originally broken by the alternative media.
#2 The Mainstream Media Gets Things Wrong Very Frequently
Even prominent members of the mainstream media admit that this is the case. For example, during a recent speech at Quinnipiac University CBS anchor Scott Pelley confessed that journalists in the mainstream media "are getting big stories wrong, over and over again"…
"Let me take the first arrow: During our coverage of Newtown, I sat on my set and I reported that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. And that her son had attacked her classroom. It’s a hell of a story, but it was dead wrong. Now, I was the managing editor, I made the decision to go ahead with that and I did, and that’s what I said, and I was absolutely wrong. So let me just take the first arrow here."
#3 The American Public Does Not Consider The Media To Be Very Trustworthy
Trust in the mainstream media has definitely been slipping. In fact, a Gallup poll taken last year found that distrust of the media had reached an all-time high. According to that poll, 60 percent of Americans "have little or no trust" that the media is reporting the news accurately.
A separate Rasmussen Reports survey found that only 6 percent of all Americans consider the news media to be "very trustworthy".
Hopefully this trend will accelerate and a lot more people will stop trusting the media blindly.
#4 The Mainstream Media And The Politicians That They Worship Hate The Fact That They Cannot Control Internet News Sites
In the old days, the mainstream media had a virtual monopoly on the news. But these days, anyone with an Internet connection can put up a news site, and this is driving the establishment absolutely bonkers.
For example, Barack Obama is known to have a great dislike for the alternative media. The following is from a recent WND article…
NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd says President Obama was making it “clear” at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend how he feels about the rise of Internet news sites like Politico, Buzzfeed and … well, WND.
“He hates it.”
Appearing on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning following Saturday night’s media, politics and celebrity soiree, Todd explained the president’s disdain for independent online news sources was showing during his speech.
“It did seem … I thought his pot shots, joke-wise, and then the serious stuff about the Internet, the rise of the Internet media and social media and all that stuff – he hates it, OK? He hates this part of the media,” Todd said. “He really thinks that the, sort of, the buzzification – this isn’t just about Buzzfeed or Politico and all this stuff – he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I think he was just trying to make that clear last night.”
#5 The Mainstream Media Is Extremely Liberal
When it comes to politics, the mainstream media is far more liberal than the general population is.
For example, one survey found that 41 percent of American voters believe that the average reporter is more liberal than they are, while only 18 percent believe that the average reporter is more conservative than they are.
A very disturbing UCLA study on media bias discovered that the vast majority of media outlets are "left of center"…
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
And even MSNBC has confirmed the liberal bias of the media. According to MSNBC, mainstream journalists are far more likely to donate their own money to Democrats than they are to Republicans…
MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
#6 Six Mammoth Media Corporations Produce About 90 Percent Of The Media That Americans Consume
As I mentioned at the top of this article, there are six giant media behemoths that control almost all of the media that we consume. These corporate giants own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, video game makers, music labels and even many of our favorite websites.
The media ownership chart posted below originally comes from a previous article that I authored entitled "Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read", but it has been updated to reflect some of the latest information. The power that these companies have is so vast that it is hard to put into words…
Time Warner
CNN
Home Box Office (HBO)
Time Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
CW Network (partial ownership)
TMZ
New Line Cinema
Time Warner Cable
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
TBS
TNT
America Online
MapQuest
Moviefone
Castle Rock
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
DC Comics
People Magazine
Walt Disney
ABC Television Network
Disney Publishing
ESPN Inc.
Disney Channel
The History Channel
SOAPnet
A&E
Lifetime
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Buena Vista Theatrical Productions
Buena Vista Records
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
277 Radio Stations
Buena Vista Games
Hyperion Books
Viacom
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Black Entertainment Television (BET)
Comedy Central
Country Music Television (CMT)
Logo
MTV
MTV Canada
MTV2
Nick Magazine
Nick at Nite
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
Noggin
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
VH1
News Corporation
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Fox Television Stations
The New York Post
TV Guide
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Beliefnet
Fox Business Network
Fox Kids Europe
Fox News Channel
Fox Sports Net
Fox Television Network
FX
My Network TV
MySpace
News Limited News
Phoenix InfoNews Channel
Phoenix Movies Channel
Sky PerfecTV
Speed Channel
STAR TV India
STAR TV Taiwan
STAR World
Times Higher Education Supplement Magazine
Times Literary Supplement Magazine
Times of London
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
20th Century Fox International
20th Century Fox Studios
20th Century Fox Television
BSkyB
DIRECTV
The Wall Street Journal
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Interactive Media
FOXTEL
HarperCollins Publishers
The National Geographic Channel
National Rugby League
News Interactive
News Outdoor
Radio Veronica
ReganBooks
Sky Italia
Sky Radio Denmark
Sky Radio Germany
Sky Radio Netherlands
STAR
Zondervan
CBS Corporation
CBS News
CBS Sports
CBS Television Network
CNET
Showtime
TV.com
CBS Radio Inc. (130 stations)
CBS Consumer Products
CBS Outdoor
CW Network (50% ownership)
Infinity Broadcasting
Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books, Scribner)
Westwood One Radio Network
Comcast
NBC
Bravo
CNBC
NBC News
MSNBC
NBC Sports
NBC Television Network
Oxygen
SciFi Magazine
Syfy (Sci Fi Channel)
Telemundo
USA Network
Weather Channel
Focus Features
NBC Universal Television Distribution
NBC Universal Television Studio
Paxson Communications (partial ownership)
Hulu
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Pictures
Universal Studio Home Video
#7 The American People Are Absolutely Addicted To The Mainstream Media
In a previous article about the media, I noted that the average American watches 153 hours of television a month.
When you allow that much information to be downloaded into your brain, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you think.
Americans are more "connected" than they ever have been before. This is especially true of our kids. They are constantly on one sort of electronic device or another. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article by Daniel Taylor…
According to a 2010 LA Times report, young people spend on average 53 hours a week watching TV, playing video games, and sitting at the computer.
Facebook users spend about 15 hours a month on the social networking site.
People are walking – and driving – blindly while texting, sometimes walking into fountains and even falling off cliffs.
If that Los Angeles Times report is true, that means that our young people are spending more than 200 hours a month connected to the media.
But we are only awake for about 480 hours a month.
When it comes to influencing the American people, nobody has more power than the big media companies do.
And until we can break this sick addiction to the mainstream media and get people to start thinking for themselves, we will never see widespread changes in our society. As long as people are being "programmed" by the mainstream media, they will continue to express the opinions, attitudes and beliefs that have been downloaded into their minds.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch … ou-to-know
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Mon May 20, 2013 4:31 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
7 Things About The Mainstream Media That They Do Not Want You To Know
Have you ever wondered who controls the mainstream media? In America today, we are more “connected” than ever. The average American watches 153 hours of television a month, and we also spend countless hours watching movies, playing video games, listening to music, reading books and surfing the Internet. If someone could control the production of all of that media, that would make them immensely powerful. They would literally be in a position to tell people what to think. Well, what if I told you that there are just six enormous media conglomerates that combine to produce about 90 percent of all the media that Americans consume. Would that alarm you? It should alarm you. The truth is that our attitudes, opinions and beliefs are greatly shaped by what we allow into our minds. After all, they don’t call it “programming” for no reason. Even those of us that realize that we are connected to “the matrix” probably greatly underestimate the tremendous influence that the media has over us. We live at a time when it is absolutely imperative to think for ourselves, but most Americans are being absolutely overwhelmed with information and seem more than content to let others do their thinking for them. Sadly, this is greatly contributing to the downfall of our society.
And of course the mainstream media desperately does not want you to look at “the man behind the curtain”. They just want you to stay plugged into the “programming” that they are feeding you without asking any questions.
Fortunately, a growing minority of Americans are waking up and are starting to reject the mainstream media. An increasing number of people are beginning to recognize that the mainstream media is the mouthpiece of the establishment and that it is promoting the agenda of the establishment.
So why is the mainstream media so bad? The following are 7 things about the mainstream media that they do not want you to know…
#1 The Mainstream Media Has Very Deep Ties To The Establishment
Did you know that the president of CBS and the president of ABC both have brothers that are top officials in the Obama administration?
The big news networks have developed an almost incestuous relationship with the federal government in recent years. But of course the same could be said of the relationship that the media has with the big corporations that own stock in their parent companies and that advertise on their networks.
This is one of the reasons why we very rarely ever see any hard hitting stories on the big networks anymore. The flow of information through the corporate-dominated media is very tightly controlled, and there are a lot of gatekeepers that make sure that the “wrong stories” don’t get put out to the public. As a result, many of the “big stories” that have come out in recent years were originally broken by the alternative media.
#2 The Mainstream Media Gets Things Wrong Very Frequently
Even prominent members of the mainstream media admit that this is the case. For example, during a recent speech at Quinnipiac University CBS anchor Scott Pelley confessed that journalists in the mainstream media “are getting big stories wrong, over and over again”…
“Let me take the first arrow: During our coverage of Newtown, I sat on my set and I reported that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. And that her son had attacked her classroom. It’s a hell of a story, but it was dead wrong. Now, I was the managing editor, I made the decision to go ahead with that and I did, and that’s what I said, and I was absolutely wrong. So let me just take the first arrow here.”
#3 The American Public Does Not Consider The Media To Be Very Trustworthy
Trust in the mainstream media has definitely been slipping. In fact, a Gallup poll taken last year found that distrust of the media had reached an all-time high. According to that poll, 60 percent of Americans “have little or no trust” that the media is reporting the news accurately.
A separate Rasmussen Reports survey found that only 6 percent of all Americans consider the news media to be “very trustworthy”.
Hopefully this trend will accelerate and a lot more people will stop trusting the media blindly.
#4 The Mainstream Media And The Politicians That They Worship Hate The Fact That They Cannot Control Internet News Sites
In the old days, the mainstream media had a virtual monopoly on the news. But these days, anyone with an Internet connection can put up a news site, and this is driving the establishment absolutely bonkers.
For example, Barack Obama is known to have a great dislike for the alternative media. The following is from a recent WND article…
NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd says President Obama was making it “clear” at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend how he feels about the rise of Internet news sites like Politico, Buzzfeed and … well, WND.
“He hates it.”
Appearing on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning following Saturday night’s media, politics and celebrity soiree, Todd explained the president’s disdain for independent online news sources was showing during his speech.
“It did seem … I thought his pot shots, joke-wise, and then the serious stuff about the Internet, the rise of the Internet media and social media and all that stuff – he hates it, OK? He hates this part of the media,” Todd said. “He really thinks that the, sort of, the buzzification – this isn’t just about Buzzfeed or Politico and all this stuff – he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I think he was just trying to make that clear last night.”
#5 The Mainstream Media Is Extremely Liberal
When it comes to politics, the mainstream media is far more liberal than the general population is.
For example, one survey found that 41 percent of American voters believe that the average reporter is more liberal than they are, while only 18 percent believe that the average reporter is more conservative than they are.
A very disturbing UCLA study on media bias discovered that the vast majority of media outlets are “left of center”…
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
And even MSNBC has confirmed the liberal bias of the media. According to MSNBC, mainstream journalists are far more likely to donate their own money to Democrats than they are to Republicans…
MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
#6 Six Mammoth Media Corporations Produce About 90 Percent Of The Media That Americans Consume
As I mentioned at the top of this article, there are six giant media behemoths that control almost all of the media that we consume. These corporate giants own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, video game makers, music labels and even many of our favorite websites.
The media ownership chart posted below originally comes from a previous article that I authored entitled “Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read“, but it has been updated to reflect some of the latest information. The power that these companies have is so vast that it is hard to put into words…
Time Warner
CNN
Home Box Office (HBO)
Time Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
CW Network (partial ownership)
TMZ
New Line Cinema
Time Warner Cable
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
TBS
TNT
America Online
MapQuest
Moviefone
Castle Rock
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
DC Comics
People Magazine
Walt Disney
ABC Television Network
Disney Publishing
ESPN Inc.
Disney Channel
The History Channel
SOAPnet
A&E
Lifetime
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Buena Vista Theatrical Productions
Buena Vista Records
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
277 Radio Stations
Buena Vista Games
Hyperion Books
Viacom
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Black Entertainment Television (BET)
Comedy Central
Country Music Television (CMT)
Logo
MTV
MTV Canada
MTV2
Nick Magazine
Nick at Nite
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
Noggin
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
VH1
News Corporation
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Fox Television Stations
The New York Post
TV Guide
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Beliefnet
Fox Business Network
Fox Kids Europe
Fox News Channel
Fox Sports Net
Fox Television Network
FX
My Network TV
MySpace
News Limited News
Phoenix InfoNews Channel
Phoenix Movies Channel
Sky PerfecTV
Speed Channel
STAR TV India
STAR TV Taiwan
STAR World
Times Higher Education Supplement Magazine
Times Literary Supplement Magazine
Times of London
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
20th Century Fox International
20th Century Fox Studios
20th Century Fox Television
BSkyB
DIRECTV
The Wall Street Journal
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Interactive Media
FOXTEL
HarperCollins Publishers
The National Geographic Channel
National Rugby League
News Interactive
News Outdoor
Radio Veronica
ReganBooks
Sky Italia
Sky Radio Denmark
Sky Radio Germany
Sky Radio Netherlands
STAR
Zondervan
CBS Corporation
CBS News
CBS Sports
CBS Television Network
CNET
Showtime
TV.com
CBS Radio Inc. (130 stations)
CBS Consumer Products
CBS Outdoor
CW Network (50% ownership)
Infinity Broadcasting
Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books, Scribner)
Westwood One Radio Network
Comcast
NBC
Bravo
CNBC
NBC News
MSNBC
NBC Sports
NBC Television Network
Oxygen
SciFi Magazine
Syfy (Sci Fi Channel)
Telemundo
USA Network
Weather Channel
Focus Features
NBC Universal Television Distribution
NBC Universal Television Studio
Paxson Communications (partial ownership)
Hulu
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Pictures
Universal Studio Home Video
#7 The American People Are Absolutely Addicted To The Mainstream Media
In a previous article about the media, I noted that the average American watches 153 hours of television a month.
When you allow that much information to be downloaded into your brain, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you think.
Americans are more “connected” than they ever have been before. This is especially true of our kids. They are constantly on one sort of electronic device or another. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article by Daniel Taylor…
According to a 2010 LA Times report, young people spend on average 53 hours a week watching TV, playing video games, and sitting at the computer.
Facebook users spend about 15 hours a month on the social networking site.
People are walking – and driving – blindly while texting, sometimes walking into fountains and even falling off cliffs.
If that Los Angeles Times report is true, that means that our young people are spending more than 200 hours a month connected to the media.
But we are only awake for about 480 hours a month.
When it comes to influencing the American people, nobody has more power than the big media companies do.
And until we can break this sick addiction to the mainstream media and get people to start thinking for themselves, we will never see widespread changes in our society. As long as people are being “programmed” by the mainstream media, they will continue to express the opinions, attitudes and beliefs that have been downloaded into their minds.
Please share this article with as many people as you can. It is crucial that we wake as many people up as possible while we still can.
View full post on The Economic Collapse
Biased Media • Eric Holder Recuses Himself From Leak Investigation
BREAKING: Eric Holder Recuses Himself From Leak Investigation
Katie Pavlich | May 14, 2013
Attorney General Eric Holder has recused himself from the Associated Press leak investigation. He will officially announce his recusal at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. Fox News is reporting his recusal comes partially because Holder has testified about potential national security leaks surrounding a May 7, 2012 Associated Press story.
Yesterday, the Associated Press revealed the Department of Justice had been secretly monitoring both the personal and work phones of numerous AP editors and reporters. DOJ responded to these revelations by releasing the following statement.
We take seriously our obligations to follow all applicable laws, federal regulations, and Department of Justice policies when issuing subpoenas for phone records of media organizations. Those regulations require us to make every reasonable effort to obtain information through alternative means before even considering a subpoena for the phone records of a member of the media. We must notify the media organization in advance unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation. Because we value the freedom of the press, we are always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the public interest in the free flow of information and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of our criminal laws.://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/05/14/breaking-eric-holder-recuses-himself-from-leak-investigation-n1594600
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Tue May 14, 2013 10:57 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Biased Media • Washington Post suffers 85% earnings drop
Washington Post suffers 85% earnings drop
50 By MACKENZIE WEINGER | 5/3/13 12:00 PM EDT
The Washington Post Co. on Friday reported bad news for its newspaper division, with revenue totaling $127.3 million for the first quarter of this year — down four percent from 2012 — and an operating loss of $34.5 million.
Overall, the company posted a profit of just $4.7 million, an 85 percent drop in earnings from the net income of $31 million for the first quarter of last year.
In the newspaper division, daily and Sunday circulation at the Post dropped 7.2 and 7.7 percent, respectively, compared to 2012. Average daily circulation totaled 457,100 copies, with Sundays at 659,500. The report also noted that in January of this year, the Post increased the paper’s price for daily home delivery and daily and Sunday single copies. And print advertising revenue at the Post in the first quarter of 2013 dropped 8 percent to $48.6 million, down from $52.7 million in the first quarter of 2012.
As for online — primarily washingtonpost.com and Slate — the company had better news to report. Revenue generated by the company’s online publishing increased 8 percent to $25.8 million for the first quarter of 2013, compared to $23.9 million for the first quarter of 2012. The company also posted a 16 percent increase in online display advertising, although online classified advertising revenue on washingtonpost.com fell 6 percent for the first quarter of 2013.
The company, meanwhile, has announced plans for a paywall this summer.
For this year’s first quarter, the company noted much of the $34.5 million in operating losses come from pension, early retirement and severance expenses. In the first quarter of 2012, the company’s newspaper division lost $20.6 million, for comparison.
Newsprint expense was down 12 percent for the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of 2012 “due to a decline in newsprint consumption.”
Overall, the company reported an 85 percent drop in net income for the first quarter, with revenue up slightly compared to last year — $959.1 million to 2012’s first quarter of $955.5 million.
“The Company reported operating income of $23.1 million in the first quarter of 2013, compared to operating income of $21.3 million in the first quarter of 2012,” the press release stated. “Revenues increased at the television broadcasting and cable television divisions, offset by declines at the education and newspaper publishing divisions. Operating results improved at the education, television broadcasting and cable television divisions, offset by a decline at the newspaper publishing division.”
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/201 … html?hp=f2
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Fri May 03, 2013 12:30 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
How to Engage with Cato on Social Media
Zach Graves
In case you haven’t been following what the Cato Institute has been doing lately on social media, here’s an accessible list of all of Cato’s current projects across different social media platforms:
- Cato Institute - 160,100 fans
- Libertarianism.org - 68,100 fans
- Downsizing the Federal Government – 29,200 fans
- Cato in Spanish: Instituto Cato - 7,900 fans
- National Police Misconduct Reporting Project – 4,100 fans
- Cato On Campus – 3,600 fans
- Overlawyered - 2,300 fans
- Center for Educational Freedom – 2,000 fans
- Cato Unbound – 700 fans
- Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) – 166,400 followers
- Libertarianism.org (@Libertarianism) – 23,300 followers
- Overlawyered (@Overlawyered) – 6,900 followers
- National Police Misconduct Reporting Project (@NPMRP) – 6,900 followers
- Cato in Spanish: Instituto Cato (@ElCatoEnCorto) – 5,200 followers
- Cato Foreign & Defense Policy (@CatoFP) – 4,800 followers
- Downsizing the Federal Government (@DownsizeTheFeds) – 3,800 followers
- Cato On Campus (@CatoOnCampus) – 3,000 followers
- Cato Unbound (@CatoUnbound) – 800 followers
- Center for Educational Freedom (@CatoCEF) – 600 followers
- Cato events & live streams (@CatoEvents) – 600 followers
- Cato media department press twitter and staff list
- Also follow the 54 Cato policy experts on twitter
YouTube
- Cato Institute – 21,000 subscribers
- Libertarianism.org - 4,700 subscribers
Google+
- Cato Institute – 7,500 +1s
- Libertarianism.org – 1,300 +1s
- Cato Institute - 700 followers
P.S.: Today is my last day leading social media and digital outreach efforts at Cato. Congratulations to my successor, Kat Murti, who will be taking Cato into the future and helping grow Cato’s social media following to new heights.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Biased Media • Chaos engulfs Boston as mainstream media can’t get its cover
Interesting photos found here.
http://www.naturalnews.com/039961_Bosto … z2QqDMRlgi
Statistics: Posted by Tonibug — Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:34 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Making Sense of Drug Violence in Mexico with Big Data, New Media, and Technology
Juan Carlos Hidalgo
Yesterday we hosted a very interesting event with Google Ideas about the use of new media and technology information in Mexico’s war on drugs. You can watch the whole thing in the video below.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest casualties from the bloodshed that besets Mexico is freedom of the press. Drug cartels have targeted traditional media outlets such as TV stations and newspapers for their coverage of the violence. Mexico is now the most dangerous country to be a journalist. However, a blackout of information about the extent of violence has been avoided because of activity on Facebook pages, blogs, Twitter accounts, and YouTube channels.
Our event highlighted the work of two Mexican researchers on this topic. Andrés Monroy-Hernández from Microsoft Research presented the findings of his paper “The New War Correspondents: The Rise of Civic Media Curation in Urban Warfare” which shows how Twitter has replaced traditional media in several Mexican cities as the primary source of information about drug violence. Also, we had Javier Osorio, a Ph.D. candidate from Notre Dame University, who has built original software that tracks the patterns of drug violence in Mexico using computerized textual annotation and geospatial analysis.
Our third panelist was Karla Zabludovsky, a reporter from the New York Times’ Mexico City Bureau, who talked about the increasing dangers faced by journalists in Mexico and the challenges that new media represent in covering the war on drugs in that country.
Even though Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s new president, has focused the narrative of his presidency on economic reform, the war on drugs continues to wreak havoc in Mexico. Just in the first two months of the year over 2,000 people have been killed by organized crime.
At the Cato Institute we closely keep track of developments in Mexico and we have published plenty of material on the issue, including:
- The Fire Next Door: Mexico’s Drug Violence and the Danger to America, by Ted Galen Carpenter
- “Time for an Alternative to Mexico’s Drug War,” Jorge Castañeda
- “Mexico Is Still Bleeding,” by Ted Galen Carpenter
- “Undermining Mexico’s Dangerous Drug Cartels,” by Ted Galen Carpenter
Watch the full event:
And for those who speak the language of Cervantes, here’s a ten minute interview that Karla Zabludovsky and I did on CNN en Español about the Cato event.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Biased Media • MEDIA BULLY FIVE GUYS ENTREPRENEUR FOR TELLING TRUTH ABOUT O
MEDIA BULLY FIVE GUYS ENTREPRENEUR FOR TELLING TRUTH ABOUT OBAMACARE
by LARRY O’CONNOR 13 Mar 2013, 5:16 AM PDT
When Mike Ruffer, an eight franchise owner of the Five Guys hamburger chain revealed this week that the economic impact of Obamacare would force him to raise the price of the popular burgers, he received national attention including a segment on The Rush Limbaugh Show.
Did you see the story, one of the franchise owners for that hamburger chain, Five Guys hamburger chain or whatever (paraphrasing), "We’re gonna have to get rid of a whole bunch of employees, get down to mostly part-timers. We can’t afford Obamacare. We can’t stay in business with it. The prices are gonna go up. The consumer’s are gonna pay for it. That’s the only way my employees can have health care, is if I raise the price of the food here and the customers pay for it." And he’s worried the customers aren’t gonna have any money, nobody is, because of the budget situation and the economy.
When a business owner sticks his neck out and criticizes big government policies like Obamacare, you can count on the media to try to bully him into silence.
Matt Yglesias at Slate.com called Ruffer a liar because, you know, Yglesias knows the hamburger business better than the North Carolina entrepreneur:
This is self-refuting nonsense. The only situation in which it would make sense for Ruffer to raise prices is if price increases will on net lead to higher revenue. And if price increases will lead to higher revenue (which they might) then it makes sense for Ruffer to raise prices no matter what happens with Obamacare.
Yglesias then negates his own argument for the sake of demonizing all corporations who dare to make profits with their businesses: (emphasis mine)
In fact, Ruffer himself articulates the truth later which is that Obamacare is going to reduce his profits by about one-eighth and he (and any investors in his business) will eat the loss. With corporate profits as a share of the economy at an all-time high, nobody’s going to cry for him either.
Center for American Progress, John Podesta’s team of bullies, basically called Ruffer a dead-beat for denying his employees "basic health care":
As the Examiner explicitly states, Ruffer is actively trying to “escape” the health reform law, and has had his mind made up about it for a while. That’s become an increasingly common position among large employers — particularly in the service industry, where large restaurant chains have been threatening to cut workers’ benefits by shifting costs onto them, cut back on wages, cut back on hours, or raise their products’ prices. Ruffer has, by his own admission, considered every single one of those options. But that isn’t a reflection of the reform law itself — it’s a reflection of companies’ desire to protect their own bottom line by having their low-wage employees go uninsured or obtain coverage through Medicaid, rather than provide them with basic benefits.
Center for American Progress goes on to claim that companies who have gone public with the problems implementing Obamacare suffer due to the bad publicity they receive. They point to Olive Garden as an example:
The negative press led the company to reverse course on its threat to shift employees to part-time status to avoid covering them under Obamacare. The latest report on Darden’s earnings prove that was a good move, since the restaurants did take a turn for the worse as a result of their bad publicity. Its net income fell 37 percent:
The claim that criticizing Obamacare hurts your bottom line due to bad publicity is a self-fulfilling prophesy, as Center for American Progress is one of the driving forces trying to drum up that bad publicity by trying to bully skittish CEOs who don’t want any bad publicity ever for anything.
The report on Olive Garden points to a Huffington Post article titled Darden Restaurants Profit Plunges 37 Percent After Bad Publicity Over Attempt To Skirt Obamacare. Ironically, Huffington Post also weighed in on the Five Guys story, thus showing the chain of information flow from liberal think tank to liberal media outlets and back again.
The clear lesson to businesses like Five Guys, or Olive Garden, or Papa John’s, or Wendy’s, or Whole Foods is obvious: If you dare criticize Obamacare, the media will out you, bully you and shame you into silence. Forget about the news. Forget about the truth. The White House can not be criticized.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism … -Five-Guys
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:49 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
American • The Chart That Proves That The Mainstream Media Is Lying To
The Chart That Proves That The Mainstream Media Is Lying To You About Unemployment
By Michael, on March 10th, 2013
The mainstream media is absolutely giddy that the U.S. unemployment rate has hit a "four-year low" of 7.7 percent. But is unemployment in the United States actually going down? After all, you would think that it should be. The Obama administration has "borrowed" more than 6 trillion dollars from future generations of Americans, interest rates have been pushed to all-time lows, and the Federal Reserve has been wildly printing more money in a desperate attempt to "stimulate" the economy. So have those efforts been successful? Well, according to the mainstream media, the U.S. unemployment rate is falling steadily. Headlines all over the nation boldly declared that "236,000 jobs" were added to the economy in February, but what they didn’t tell you was that the number of Americans "not in the labor force" rose by 296,000. And that is how they are getting the unemployment rate to go down – by pretending that huge numbers of unemployed Americans don’t want jobs. Sadly, as you will see below, the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that have a job is just 0.1% higher than it was exactly three years ago. And we have not even come close to getting back to where we were before the last economic crisis. For example, more than 146 million Americans were employed back in 2007. But today, only 142.2 million Americans have a job even though our population has grown steadily since then. So where in the world is this "economic recovery" that they keep talking about?
At this point, the "unemployment rate" has become so meaningless that it really isn’t even worth paying much attention to. If you really want to know what the employment picture looks like in the United States, you need to look at the employment-population ratio.
As Wikipedia tells us, many economists consider the employment-population ratio to be far superior to other measurements of employment…
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development defines the employment rate as the employment-to-population ratio. The employment-population ratio is many American economist’s favorite gauge of the American jobs picture. According to Paul Ashworth, chief North American economist for Capital Economics, "The employment population ratio is the best measure of labor market conditions." This is a statistical ratio that measures the proportion of the country’s working-age population (ages 15 to 64 in most OECD countries) that is employed. This includes people that have stopped looking for work.
A chart of the employment-population ratio in the United States over the past several years is posted below…
As you can see, the percentage of Americans with a job fell from about 63 percent to below 59 percent during the last economic crisis. Since that time, it has not risen back above 59 percent. This is the first time in the post-World War II era that we have not seen the employment rate bounce back following a recession. At this point, the employment-population ratio has been below 59 percent for 42 months in a row.
Yes, we should be thankful that things have stabilized, but as you can see there has been no recovery. The percentage of Americans with a job is essentially exactly where it was three years ago. Despite the trillions of dollars that the U.S. government has borrowed, and despite the reckless money printing that the Federal Reserve has been doing, the employment situation in the U.S. has not turned around.
Data for the employment-population ratio from the beginning of 2008 is posted below…
2008-01-01 62.9
2008-02-01 62.8
2008-03-01 62.7
2008-04-01 62.7
2008-05-01 62.5
2008-06-01 62.4
2008-07-01 62.2
2008-08-01 62.0
2008-09-01 61.9
2008-10-01 61.7
2008-11-01 61.4
2008-12-01 61.0
2009-01-01 60.6
2009-02-01 60.3
2009-03-01 59.9
2009-04-01 59.8
2009-05-01 59.6
2009-06-01 59.4
2009-07-01 59.3
2009-08-01 59.1
2009-09-01 58.7
2009-10-01 58.5
2009-11-01 58.6
2009-12-01 58.3
2010-01-01 58.5
2010-02-01 58.5
2010-03-01 58.5
2010-04-01 58.7
2010-05-01 58.6
2010-06-01 58.5
2010-07-01 58.5
2010-08-01 58.5
2010-09-01 58.5
2010-10-01 58.3
2010-11-01 58.2
2010-12-01 58.3
2011-01-01 58.3
2011-02-01 58.4
2011-03-01 58.4
2011-04-01 58.4
2011-05-01 58.4
2011-06-01 58.2
2011-07-01 58.2
2011-08-01 58.3
2011-09-01 58.4
2011-10-01 58.4
2011-11-01 58.5
2011-12-01 58.6
2012-01-01 58.5
2012-02-01 58.6
2012-03-01 58.5
2012-04-01 58.5
2012-05-01 58.6
2012-06-01 58.6
2012-07-01 58.5
2012-08-01 58.4
2012-09-01 58.7
2012-10-01 58.7
2012-11-01 58.7
2012-12-01 58.6
2013-01-01 58.6
2013-02-01 58.6
So is there anyone out there that still wants to insist that the employment picture in the United States is getting significantly better?
Anyone that wants to claim that "unemployment is going down" should at least wait until the unemployment-population ratio gets back up to 59 percent. Otherwise they just look foolish.
Yes, the Dow is at an all-time high right now. But a bubble is always the biggest right before it bursts.
Most Americans understand that the Dow has been pumped up with all of the funny money that the Fed has been printing. Most Americans understand that the stock market really does not accurately reflect the health of the U.S. economy as a whole.
Just consider these numbers…
-The number of homeless people sleeping in homeless shelters in New York City has increased by 19 percent over the past year.
-The number of Americans on food stamps has risen from 32 million to 47 million while Barack Obama has been in the White House.
-According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either "poor" or "low income" at this point.
-Median household income in the United States has fallen for four consecutive years.
No, the truth is that everything is most definitely not fine.
If everything is fine, then why did the Federal Reserve inject another 100 billion dollars into foreign banks during the last full week of February?
The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve are desperately trying to prop up the entire global economy. Unfortunately, the global financial system has been built on a foundation of sand and the tide is coming in.
Back in 2008, a derivatives crisis was one of the primary causes of the worst financial panic since the Great Depression.
So did we learn our lesson?
No, the boys on Wall Street are back at it again as a recent article by Jim Armitage described…
Historically, stock markets, being driven by humans, have tended to have a similar length memory of catastrophes, before making the same dumb mistakes again.
But it hasn’t even been five years since derivatives (on that occasion based on daft mortgages) blew up the world, and yet these exotic creatures have already returned. With a vengeance.
Research from Thomson Reuters declared that banks were creating more derivatives known as asset-backed securities than at any time since before the Lehman Brothers crash. Of those, 22 percent were made up of – and forgive me the alphabet soup here – CDOs and CLOs. The very type of derivatives that exploded last time. At this stage last year, only 6 percent fell into those categories.
In other words, banks are creating more of the riskiest types of the riskiest products.
At some point, we will have another derivatives crisis even worse than the last one.
When that happens, financial markets all over the globe will crash, economic activity will grind to a standstill and unemployment will go skyrocketing once again.
But as you saw above, we have never even come close to recovering from the last crisis.
So you can believe the mind-numbing propaganda that the mainstream media is trying to feed you if you want. Unfortunately, the reality of the matter is that we have not recovered from the last major economic crisis, and another one is rapidly approaching.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch … employment
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sun Mar 10, 2013 10:21 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com