Originally Posted By Sport Goofy <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NISx3g-MGQ&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...embedded</a> This was the talking point making the rounds at Fox News during the most recent news cycle. That's right, our economy will jump by leaps and bounds if we just put our minimum wage workers further below the poverty level! We'll ward off a deflationary spiral associated with economic depressions by lowering wages! We'll increase the American standard of living by putting less money in the pockets of American workers!
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Social Darwinism Social Darwinism Social Darwinism Social Darwinism "Hey dimwits! These pundits do not give a flying F about you! They only care about themselves and their big fat multi-million dollar contracts to spew this crap! They are obscenely wealthy because you fools made them that way by watching them!" When will the Fox News viewers finally wake the F up!!
Originally Posted By mawnck >>When will the Fox News viewers finally wake the F up!!<< That was my question, and I wish I had the answer. It's frustrating to know that so many people in my country can be so gullible so consistently.
Originally Posted By DAR <<They are obscenely wealthy because you fools made them that way by watching them!">> Last time I checked nobody from the other networks was seen pan handling.
Originally Posted By fkurucz <<That's right, our economy will jump by leaps and bounds if we just put our minimum wage workers further below the poverty level!>> And let this be proof that they really hate the middle class and will do everything within their power to turn our nation into a 3rd world cesspool. Mr. Potter is not a fictional character. Welcome to Potterville.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>Last time I checked nobody from the other networks was seen pan handling.<< No, but do you see the Fox "theme of the day" from those clips? On show after show, newscast after newscast, it was "coverage" of the idea of lowering the minimum wage. And almost all of it attributed to "some experts say" and "one school of thought is." In other words, this was their talking point that day and they trotted it out again and again.
Originally Posted By DAR Well nobody is being forced to watch, believe it or not people have the power to change the channel, that they chose not to is their own fault.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Nobody is ever forced to do anything, short of obeying laws. Problem is, expert psychologists and psychiatrists are tapped by these guys to discover which limbic systems buttons they can push, in order to gin up the fear and keep these uneducated viewers hooked on their message. All of this is calculated and planned and based on neuropsychology. You can bank on that. All of this is possible, thanks to Reagan tossing the Fairness Doctrine out the window. That's precisely why Fox News and other conservative pundits are allowed to spew these rightwing talking points without accountability. If you lied to your customers, DAR, with the same frequency and fallacy as Fox News, you'd probably be in jail right now for fraud.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << Well nobody is being forced to watch, believe it or not people have the power to change the channel, that they chose not to is their own fault. >> I don't have the power to change the channel at work, where Fox News is broadcast exclusively on every TV in the public areas. I don't have the power to change the channel at my gym, where Fox News is broadcast on about 1/3 of the TV screens there. When I suggest to "the management" that we change the channel on these TVs to something less partisan, I get accused of being unpatriotic for not supporting the Fox talking points of the day. It's pretty disgusting.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>All of this is possible, thanks to Reagan tossing the Fairness Doctrine out the window.<< The Fairness Doctrine only applied to broadcast. It would torpedo the S. S. Rush, but Fox News could continue blithely onward. All of this is actually possible because Rupert Murdoch got around the FCC rules governing foreign ownership of television stations. Seems the Reaganites heard he was planning a conservative propaganda cable network. >>His 1985 purchase of the Metromedia television stations required him to become an American citizen to comply with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) restrictions on foreign ownership of U.S. television stations; many felt he received inordinately preferential treatment by the Reagan administration in expediting the citizenship process. His FOX television network was able to avoid complying with the FCC's Financial Interest and Syndication (FinSyn) rules, first, by airing fewer hours of programming than was required to define FOX as a "network," and later, by receiving a temporary FCC waiver of the rules--an action the other three broadcast networks vigorously opposed. Also, Murdoch was the specific target of a 1988 effort by Senator Edward Kennedy--at the time, a frequent target of Murdoch's Boston Herald newspaper--to revoke another FCC waiver, one that waived cross-ownership restrictions that would have prevented Murdoch from owning both newspapers and television stations in New York and Boston. The end result of Kennedy's efforts was that Murdoch eventually sold the New York Post (he later would receive a new waiver that allowed him to reacquire the struggling paper in 1993), and put Boston's WFXT-TV into an independent trust. << <a href="http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=murdochrupe" target="_blank">http://www.museum.tv/eotvsecti...dochrupe</a>
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << The Fairness Doctrine only applied to broadcast. >> Which is why you see Fox News on cable TV. The absence of standards for cable television is really what brings us to this outcome, and it extends far beyond politics or news. Just watch a few seconds of MTV's new reality series, "Jersey Shore," and you'll see what we get when there are no standards for TV. Fox News operates on the same principles as MTV and reality TV.
Originally Posted By DAR <<I don't have the power to change the channel at work, where Fox News is broadcast exclusively on every TV in the public areas>> Then wouldn't the best course of action be to just ignore it. <<I don't have the power to change the channel at my gym, where Fox News is broadcast on about 1/3 of the TV screens there. When I suggest to "the management" that we change the channel on these TVs to something less partisan, I get accused of being unpatriotic for not supporting the Fox talking points of the day. It's pretty disgusting.>> The way I look at it you have two options, bring some headphones and listen to some music or go to another gym. You're the customer and if you're not happy with the service you have the right to leave.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << Then wouldn't the best course of action be to just ignore it. >> For me, maybe, but what about the rest of the workplace. Is everyone else attuned to how corrupt this "news" organization is? << The way I look at it you have two options, bring some headphones and listen to some music or go to another gym. You're the customer and if you're not happy with the service you have the right to leave. >> Since my gym is free, I'll suffer through the images on the TVs before paying to go somewhere else. Since no one pays a fee at my gym, they don't really respond to the idea that patrons are "customers."
Originally Posted By DAR Put it this way if it's Fox News you have a good chance of looking at an attractive woman, their female news anchors are generally easy on the eyes.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy I go to the gym at 5. All I get to look at is Glenn Beck. Not so easy on the eyes (or ears).
Originally Posted By dshyates FOX News and the Right-Wing noise machine is the modern day Leni Riefenstahl. And I believe is a real threat. I feel it is as important to not ignore their movement as it was to not ignore the progression of the Third Reich. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...the_Will</a>
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones The minimum wage is not an effective instrument at combating poverty. It largely benefits teenagers (the ones who keep their jobs after a minimum wage increase, that is) and has a minimal effect on working families. I don't think that lowering the minimum wage would have much effect on anything but decreasing teenage unemployment, which has been around 25% in recent months.
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones <a href="http://www.gastongazette.com/articles/minimum-41591-span-victims.html" target="_blank">http://www.gastongazette.com/a...ims.html</a> Even worse, black teenage unemployment is 50% (some of the wage differential is probably due to skill-differences between white teens and black teens, though that in itself was caused by discrimination but not on the part of the employers but society, and some of it could probably be explained by pure discrimination by employers). Lowing the minimum wage would encourage firms to hire low-productivity, low skilled youth so that they can actually learn some job skills, rather than sit around doing nothing. This guy makes a good point: "The little bit of money a kid could earn after school and on the weekends is not nearly as important as the other benefits from early work experiences. Any kind of job, paying any wage, teaches a youngster that he must be on time, respect supervisors and develop good work habits. Plus there's the self-esteem and pride that comes from being at least financially semi-independent. Early work experiences benefit any kid but are far more important for kids from broken homes, who reside in crime-ridden neighborhoods and attend rotten schools. If they are to learn anything that will make them a more valuable employee in the future, it will have to come from work; they won't learn it at home or in the schools."
