Priorities

Robert Kennedy Jr. told Amy Goodman that the biggest environmental issues in America today are campaign finance and media consolidation.

Think about it. Corporations give money to elected officials to spend on campaign ads run on TV networks owned by those same corporations. The consent of the governed is manufactured with infotainment and propaganda broadcast on these same networks.

Lax congressional oversight and lack of antitrust enforcement have allowed giant corporations to play monopoly with the media. Most cities no longer have competing daily newspapers. A few corporations own most of the radio stations. An Australian billionaire owns a cable news network. A Korean cult leader owns a major daily newspaper in the nation’s capitol. And television networks, where most Americans look for news, now look to their news divisions to be profit centers, and market them like soap flakes in their quest for ratings and ad revenues.

When we manage to bust up these rackets, we can send our parliament of corporate whores home to “spend time with their families,” and “seek opportunity in the private sector.” Then we can get down to the business of cleaning up the planet we’ve been despoiling, see to the health and education of our people, and work for world peace instead of maintaining a state of perpetual warfare.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
Hell, Dennis Kucinich is polling 3%.