Propaganda

I finally decided we need a thread for this topic, or at least a place for me to record the continuing revelations that are coming out every week...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004May19.html

Bush administration violated two federal laws through part of its publicity campaign to promote changes in Medicare intended to help older Americans afford prescription drugs, the investigative arm of Congress said yesterday.

The General Accounting Office concluded that the Department of Health and Human Services illegally spent federal money on what amounted to covert propaganda by producing videos about the Medicare changes that were made to look like news reports. Portions of the videos, which have been aired by 40 television stations around the country, do not make it clear that the announcers were paid by HHS and were not real reporters.

The finding adds fuel to partisan criticism of the new law, which creates drug coverage and a larger role for private health companies in Medicare, in the biggest expansion yet of the program that provides health insurance to 40 million elderly and disabled people.

For months, Democrats have been assailing the substance of the law, saying it provides too little help to Medicare patients and too much money to pharmaceutical and managed-care companies. And now that it is beginning to take effect, Democratic lawmakers complain about the way the administration is promoting it. They have also accused President Bush's aides of concealing the true cost of the legislation while it was being debated last year.

In this instance, however, the GAO's legal opinion was not prompted by Democratic complaints. GAO officials said yesterday that they had decided on their own to examine the legality of the videos, after receiving the tapes this spring from HHS as part of a separate review of advertisements the administration had produced about the Medicare law.

The 16-page legal opinion says that HHS's "video news releases" violated a statute that forbids the use of federal money for propaganda, as well as the Antideficiency Act, which covers the unauthorized use of federal funds.

The finding does not carry legal force, because the GAO acts as an adviser to Congress. House and Senate Democrats immediately vowed to try to extract a refund of the $44,000 that the administration had spent for the three videos, two in English and one in Spanish. And they made it clear they would use the finding to try to further discredit the law, which surveys suggest is opposed by most voters.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said he is preparing a bill that would require Bush's presidential campaign to reimburse the money.

Administration officials contended they had not erred with the videos, and they predicted that the GAO findings will have no effect on their efforts to implement the Medicare changes -- or on public sentiment. "That's an opinion of the GAO. We don't agree," said Bill Pierce, an HHS spokesman. Pierce said video news releases "are everywhere" in corporate public relations and in the public affairs work of federal agencies.

Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry (Mass.) called the videos "another example of how this White House has misrepresented its Medicare plan."

Two weeks ago, the Congressional Research Service concluded that the administration potentially violated the law in a related matter, in which the Medicare program's chief actuary has said he was threatened with firing a year ago if he shared with Congress cost estimates that the Medicare legislation would be a third more expensive than the $400 billion Bush said it would cost.

The House ethics panel, meanwhile, is investigating whether Republican leaders attempted to bribe or coerce a GOP House member to vote for the bill before it passed by a few votes before dawn after the longest roll call in House history.

The GAO objected to one part of the videos that were sent to TV stations this year. Each of the videos consists of three sections: video clips, information about the Medicare law and a segment called a "story package," which appears to be a news report. It is that last part that the GAO found illegal.

The English-language version of the story package concludes with a woman saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." The Spanish version has the same ending but shows a man who identifies himself as Alberto Garcia.

Pierce said the videos are not misleading because television stations know they had been produced by the government and because the stations are free to combine parts of the government-produced material with original reporting.

But the GAO decision said the story packages ran afoul of the law forbidding federal spending on covert propaganda because "in each news report, the content was attributed to an individual purporting to be a reporter but actually hired by an HHS subcontractor."

Posted previously:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/...s.ap/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/07/...t.ap/index.html

And a new twist, give legitimate press passes to the equivalent of Kabar with mod powers...

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=1267

White House-friendly reporter under scrutiny

By Charlie Savage and Alan Wirzbicki / Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has provided White House media credentials to a man who has virtually no journalistic background, asks softball questions to the president and his spokesman in the midst of contentious news conferences, and routinely reprints long passages verbatim from official press releases as original news articles on his website.

Jeff Gannon calls himself the White House correspondent for TalonNews.com, a website that says it is "committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news coverage to our readers." It is operated by a Texas-based Republican Party delegate and political activist who also runs GOPUSA.com, a website that touts itself as "bringing the conservative message to America."

Called on last week by President Bush at a press conference, Gannon attacked Democratic Senate leaders and called them "divorced from reality." During the presidential campaign, when called on by Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Gannon linked Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to Jane Fonda and questioned why anyone would dispute Bush's National Guard service.

Now, the question of how Gannon gets into White House press conferences is coming under intense scrutiny from critics who contend that Gannon is not a journalist but rather a White House tool to soften media coverage of Bush. The issue was raised by a media watchdog group and picked up by Internet bloggers, who linked Gannon's presence in White House briefings to recent controversies over whether the administration manipulates the flow of information to the public.

These include the disclosure that the Education Department secretly paid columnist Armstrong Williams to promote its education policy and the administration's practice of sending out video press releases about its policies that purport to be "news stories" by fake journalists.

McClellan said Gannon has not been issued -- nor requested -- a regular "hard pass" to the White House, and instead has come in for the past two years on daily passes. Daily passes, he said, may be issued to anyone who writes for an organization that publishes regularly and who is cleared to enter the building.

He said other reporters and political commentators from lesser-known newsletters and from across the political spectrum also attend briefings, though he could not recall any Internet bloggers. McClellan said it is not the White House's role to decide who is and who is not a real journalist and dismissed any notion of conspiracy.

Nonetheless, transcripts of White House briefings indicate that McClellan often calls on Gannon and that the press secretary -- and the president -- have found relief in a question from Gannon after critical lines of questioning from mainstream news organizations.

When Bush called on Gannon near the end of his nationally televised Jan. 26 news conference, he had just been questioned about Williams and the Education Department funds, an embarrassment to the administration. Gannon's question was different.

"Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the US economy," Gannon said. "[Minority Leader] Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you said you're going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

As it turned out, Reid had never talked about soup lines. That was a phrase attributed to him in satire by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show.

Last year, during the presidential campaign, Gannon's comments could be even more pointed. In a Feb. 10, 2004, briefing with McClellan, for example, Gannon rose to deliver the following:

"Since there have been so many questions about what the president was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting?"

David Brock, the former investigative journalist who made his name revealing aspects of former President Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs, said he was watching last week's press conference on television and the "soup lines" question sparked his interest because it "struck me as so extremely biased." Brock asked his media watchdog group, Media Matters for America, to look into Talon News.

It quickly discovered two things, he said. First, both Talon and the political organization GOP USA were run by a Texas Republican activist and party delegate named Bobby Eberle. Second, many of the reports Gannon filed for Talon News "appeared to be lifted verbatim from various White House and Republican political committee documents."

Eberle did not return phone calls yesterday, and Gannon declined to comment. He did reply to Brock's group on his personal blog: "In many cases I have liberally used the verbiage provided on key aspects of the issue because it is the precise expression of where the White House stands -- free of any 'spin.' It's the ultimate in journalistic honesty -- unvarnished and unfiltered. If only others would be as forthcoming."

I don't have time to read this now because I have to play video games, but here's a little Propaghandi to get the juices flowing.

HEAD? CHEST? OR FOOT?

Three choices. one bullet. one trigger. guess who gets to pull it.

One leader. a thousand slaves.

For every throne there’s a thousand graves.

You’re all the same. just part of their machine.

Perpetuate their dream.

They subsidize your nightclubs and they subsidize your malls.

They herd and brand the masses within painted prison walls.

’til your freedom of assembly becomes the missiles they create.

Or just mass delusion dancing to this music that you fucking hate.

But I’m not the same. I’m not part of your fucking machine.

I’ll jeopardize their dream.

I’d rather be imprisoned in a george orwell-ian world

Than your pacified society of happy boys and girls.

I’d rather know my enemies and let you know the same.

Whose windows to smash and whose tires to slash

And where to point the fucking blame.

One future. two choices. oppose them or let them destroy us.

Feb. 9, 2005 -- Marian Kester Coombs is a woman who believes America has become a "den of iniquity" thanks to "its efforts to accommodate minorities."

White men should "run, not walk" to wed "racially conscious" white women and avoid being out-bred by non-whites. Latinos are "rising to take this country away from those who made it," the "Euroamericans." Muslims are "human hyenas" who "smell blood" and are "closing in" on their "weakened prey," meaning "the white race." Blacks, Coombs sneers, are "saintly victims who can do no wrong." Black solidarity and non-white immigration are imposing "racial revolution and decomposition" in America.

...

M O R E

And the shit gets thick

and "Jeff Gannon" is a pseudonym! Yet he still got those daily passes....lobbing the softballs at Scotty at the press conferences, direct quotes from G.O.P. documents...

This guy has definitely been somewhat of a 'flavor of the month' in the smoking gun-type progressive sites

His credentials are questionable at best, having a journalistic background that is hardly comprehensive as far as educational experience.

Reppin TalonNews for fuck's sakes! that shit is miniscule...

"This would be the same "Jeff Gannon" who was subpoenaed in connection with the Plame investigation because he somehow obtained a copy of a purported State Dept. document which said that Ms. Plame had a hand in arranging the assignment to Niger for her husband (an allegation -- and document -- denied by the CIA). "

http://web.archive.org/web/20040213162508/...com/WHOisFP.htm

An old article:

Is Killing Part of Pentagon Press Policy?

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1843

A newer one:

Selling the Social Security Scare

A "fix" that won’t solve a "crisis" that doesn’t exist

Extra! January/February 2005

By Seth Ackerman

George W. Bush has announced that Social Security privatization will be one of the top priorities in his second term. Luckily for him, much of the media have already bought into the key premise on which his policy is based: the erroneous notion that Social Security is about to go bust.

Scaring the public about the solvency of Social Security has been a major goal of Wall Street financial services companies and their conservative think-tank allies, both of whom favor privatizing the system. A few years ago, William Shipman, a privatization advocate at State Street Global Advisors—one of the leading Wall Street companies that stand to benefit from the policy—described the difficult process of changing public opinion on Social Security (The Nation, 2/8/99):

First we had the question of whether or not the system is in serious trouble. That took a while. Then it was, should Social Security rely on the markets? That took a while, but there was an extraordinary shift about two years ago, and now everyone is talking about investing in the markets for Social Security.

Despite the dot-com crash of 2000, which should have made people more wary of entrusting Social Security to the stock market, recent coverage shows that Shipman had good reason to celebrate his success. Journalist after journalist has accepted the spurious idea that Social Security faces a crisis:

• A recent New York Times article (11/28/04) claimed that the program is "about to come under intense financial strain from the aging of the Baby Boom generation and the increase in life expectancies."

• USA Today (11/24/04), in explaining Bush’s rationale for privatization, referred unquestioningly to "Social Security's impending insolvency."

• The Washington Post (11/5/04) asserted that the program's financial situation "will force future tax rates up alarmingly unless preparations are made now."

• "No one would deny that Social Security is headed for a major crisis," declared NPR's Scott Simon (Weekend Edition, 12/4/04). "The crash in a sense has already begun because thanks to the Baby Boom, there are fewer Americans paying into the system."

All of these claims are simply wrong. The Social Security Administration predicts the program will be able to fully pay all promised benefits through 2042, when most Baby Boomers will be dead—even using pessimistic assumptions about future economic growth. Annual productivity growth is forecast by SSA at only 1.6 percent through 2078; in the years 1913–1990 (including the Great Depression), it grew by about 2.3 percent, a rate that would more than wipe out any future shortfall (2004 Social Security Trustees' Report; The World Economy, OECD, 2001).

Even if the economy grows as slowly as these pessimistic predictions suggest, Social Security will still be able to pay higher inflation-adjusted benefits after 2042 than at present, since future retirees are scheduled to receive much higher benefits than those of current recipients. And retaining full promised benefits—again, under pessimistic assumptions—would require a payroll-tax increase, decades from now, of less than 2 percentage points—a smaller increase than similar ones enacted in the 1950s, '60s and '80s ("Basic Facts on Social Security," Center for Economic and Policy Research, 11/04).

Even if Social Security did face a "crisis" that threatened to reduce benefits, Bush's plan doesn't represent a "fix" for that problem. While Bush pointedly promises no cuts only for retirees or near-retirees, his plan will result in a 30 percent cut in guaranteed benefits for today's 25-year-old workers—and private accounts would likely make up less than half the loss, according to calculations by the Center for Economic and Policy Research ("Basic Facts on Social Security," 11/04).

Yet journalists have repeatedly asserted that Bush's plan is intended to fix the projected benefit shortfall—even though it doesn't even claim to do that—and credited Bush with political bravery for proposing this non-solution to a non-problem. "Social Security has enough money now," said CNN's Kathleen Hays (11/4/04), "but if nothing changes, the government will start cutting benefits by 2042. That's why President Bush is charging ahead to touch what has long been known as the third rail of politics."

Likewise, Time’s Daniel Kadlec wrote (11/22/04): "In a bold admission, Bush warned that 'there are going to be costs.' No other president or candidate for the office has been willing to say it so plainly and then tackle the issue head on—even though Social Security's looming insolvency has been apparent for decades."

Conservatives have been pushing for Social Security privatization ever since the program was created. In 1964, Barry Goldwater proposed "that Social Security be made voluntary"—even though no one perceived a "crisis" in the system then (Perlstein, Before the Storm). Today, Bush has settled on a political strategy of claiming there is a Social Security "crisis" for which there is no evidence, and that his plan is the solution—even though it would endanger rather than secure workers' financial futures.

Here is one of those fox news distortions...

can I put this here?

http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6166981

http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/4274421...00408&qs=1;bp=t

The California Legislature's attorneys doubt the Schwarzenegger administration had the authority to put out a series of videos shaped as television news stories to promote its policies on worker meal breaks, teacher pay and nurse staffing levels.

Once again my friends...and what's really amazing is I don't read many lefty articles online. The majority of this is from CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/28/...nist/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Government Accountability Office plans to investigate payments from the Bush administration to syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher, a GAO spokeswoman confirmed Monday.

Bush does not "support" this practice, ahem...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/26/...dits/index.html

The group also released a investigative report prepared by Democratic committee staff that found the Bush administration spent more than $88 million on contracts with public relations agencies in 2004, a 128 percent increase from 2000.

"While not all public relations spending is illegal or inappropriate, this rapid rise in public relations contracts at a time of growing budget deficits raises questions about the priorities of the administration," the report said.

The report found that more than 40 percent of public relations contracts issued in 2004 -- worth $37 million -- were awarded "without full and open competition," compared with less than 20 percent of such contracts during the last year of the Clinton administration.

The report found that over the past four years a single agency, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spent more than $94 million on contracts with public relations agencies.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/27/94435/4810

Jeb Bush Pays Reporter $100,000

At the same time one of Florida's most visible television reporters brought the news to viewers around the state, he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars on the side from the government agencies he covered.

Mike Vasilinda, a 30-year veteran of the Tallahassee press corps, does public relations work and provides film editing services to more than a dozen state agencies.

His Tallahassee company, Mike Vasilinda Productions Inc., has earned more than $100,000 over the past four years through contracts with Gov. Jeb Bush's office, the Secretary of State, the Department of Education and other government entities that are routinely part of Vasilinda's stories.

.....

Meanwhile, the freelance reporter's stories continued to air on CNN and most Florida NBC stations, including WFLA-Channel 8 in Tampa.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll.../503260408/1060

I was at a bar and Fox news was on last night, but muted. Some author of some "the Millionaires brian" book was being interviewed. On the screen it had:

A Millionair thinks "I create my life"

A poor person thinks "My life happened to me"

and

"Poor people resent rich people"

"Rich people look up to rich people"

...I was laughing and looking around, no one seemed to notice. Poor people apparently aren't responcible and are selfishly jealous of those who are...

http://mediamatters.org/items/200504010002

NY Times distorted weight of "conservatives' anger" in Schiavo case

by linking the Schiavo case with future judicial nomination fights, Stohlberg set up the case as a conflict between conservatives -- angry at a federal judiciary run amok and prepared to push for like-minded judicial nominees -- and liberals defending a liberal judiciary. But these purportedly angry conservatives are angry with a conservative federal judiciary

Here's the story on the memo republicans passed around about using the Schiavo case for political gain:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7411079/

And this is an article about how now physicians can buy "physician of the year" from the republican party. You may vomit now:

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/print?id=643826

fucking crazy. what about that senator that threatened judges last week during a hearing totally unrelated?

Originally posted by casekonly@Apr 9 2005, 08:27 PM

fucking crazy. what about that senator that threatened judges last week during a hearing totally unrelated?

Quoted post

oh? i hadn't heard about that. could you elaborate please?

They are trying to impeach Justice Kennedy:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...8-2005Apr8.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...L&feed=rss.news

Talk about flagrant abuse of power....

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2489

The new CNN President Jonathan Klein offered another theory during an appearance on PBS's Charlie Rose Show on March 25: Progressives aren't angry enough. When Rose asked if there could ever be a successful progressive version of Fox News Channel, Klein thought not. He explained that while Fox was tapping into a brand of "mostly angry white men" conservatism, "a quote/unquote, 'progressive' or liberal network probably couldn't reach the same sort of an audience, because liberals tend to like to sample a lot of opinions. They pride themselves on that. And you know, they don't get too worked up about anything. And they're pretty morally relativistic. And so, you know, they allow for a lot of that stuff."

...and I'm fairly certain that threatening jesture was this, stated by one of the most fucked up and corrupt US public officials in recent history...how does this man survive?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0401-04.htm

Republican Leader Warns Judges: You Will Answer for This

Here's some more good news... The Bush administration is eliminating the 19 year old International Terrorism Report. Of course they say it's not for political reasons but critics are saying it is because terrorism has reached it's highest level since the report began in 1985.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11407689.htm

A third federal agency has admitted it paid a journalist to write favorable stories about its work.Documents released by the Agriculture Department show it paid a freelance writer $9,375 in 2003 to "research and write articles for hunting and fishing magazines describing the benefits of NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) programs."

more...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...ry_x.htm?csp=15

:shook:

Note the bolded sentance...why would the administration, that has denied knowledge or encouragement of paying reporters or otherwise misleading the public via the media be against such a requirement?

A key Senate committee chairman said yesterday that he would support a permanent requirement that federal agencies disclose to viewers the origin of prepackaged news stories they produce.

Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said there is widespread support in the Senate for ensuring that such video news releases, which are designed to resemble broadcast news stories, include a disclaimer in their scripts or audio revealing that they were prepared by a federal agency.

The Bush administration and the Government Accountability Office have been at odds over such prepackaged stories, which tout federal programs and have been aired without changes by some television stations. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, has contended that the government must reveal its role to avoid violating a federal ban on "covert propaganda." In the past year it has branded as illegal prepackaged news stories produced by the Department of Health and Human Services and by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Bush officials have said the burden of disclosure falls on the television stations.

MORE

Have they no shame?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050823/ap_on_...war_gravestones

August 23rd, 2005 3:34 pm

Troops' Gravestones Have Pentagon Slogans

By David Pace / Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Va. - Unlike earlier wars, nearly all Arlington National Cemetery gravestones for troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are inscribed with the slogan-like operation names the Pentagon selected to promote public support for the conflicts.

Families of fallen soldiers and Marines are being told they have the option to have the government-furnished headstones engraved with "Operation Enduring Freedom" or "Operation Iraqi Freedom" at no extra charge, whether they are buried in Arlington or elsewhere. A mock-up shown to many families includes the operation names.

The vast majority of military gravestones from other eras are inscribed with just the basic, required information: name, rank, military branch, date of death and, if applicable, the war and foreign country in which the person served.

Families are supposed to have final approval over what goes on the tombstones. That hasn't always happened.

Nadia and Robert McCaffrey, whose son Patrick was killed in Iraq in June 2004, said "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ended up on his government-supplied headstone in Oceanside, Calif., without family approval.

"I was a little taken aback," Robert McCaffrey said, describing his reaction when he first saw the operation name on Patrick's tombstone. "They certainly didn't ask my wife; they didn't ask me." He said Patrick's widow told him she had not been asked either.

"In one way, I feel it's taking advantage to a small degree," McCaffrey said. "Patrick did not want to be there, that is a definite fact."

The owner of the company that has been making gravestones for Arlington and other national cemeteries for nearly two decades is uncomfortable, too.

"It just seems a little brazen that that's put on stones," said Jeff Martell, owner of Granite Industries of Vermont. "It seems like it might be connected to politics."

The Department of Veterans Affairs says it isn't. "The headstone is not a PR purpose. It is to let the country know and the people that visit the cemetery know who served this country and made the country free for us," VA official Steve Muro said.

Since 1997, the government has been paying for virtually everything inscribed on the gravestones. Before that, families had to pay the gravestone makers separately for any inscription beyond the basics.

It wasn't until the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that the department instructed national cemetery directors and funeral homes across the country to advise families of fallen soldiers and Marines that they could have operation names like "Enduring Freedom" or "Iraqi Freedom" included on the headstones.

VA officials say neither the Pentagon nor White House exerted any pressure to get families to include the operation names. They say families always had the option of including information like battle or operation names, but didn't always know it.

"It's just the right thing to do and it always has been, but it hasn't always been followed," said Dave Schettler, director of the VA's memorial programs service.

VA officials say they don't know how many families of the nearly 2,000 soldiers and Marines who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan have opted to include the operation names.

At Arlington, the nation's most prestigious national cemetery, all but a few of the 193 gravestones of Iraq and Afghanistan dead carry the operation names. War casualties are also buried in many of the 121 other national cemeteries and numerous state and private graveyards.

The interment service supervisor at Arlington, Vicki Tanner, said cemetery representatives show families a mock-up of the headstone with "Operation Iraqi Freedom" or "Operation Enduring Freedom" already included, and ask their approval.

Former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam and headed the Veterans Administration under President Carter, called the practice "a little bit of glorified advertising."

"I think it's a little bit of gilding the lily," Cleland said, while insisting that he's not criticizing families who want that information included.

"Most of the headstones out there at Arlington and around the nation just say World War II or Korea or Vietnam, one simple statement," he said. "It's not, shall we say, a designated theme or a designated operation by somebody in the Pentagon. It is what it is. And I think there's power in simplicity."

The Pentagon in the late 1980s began selecting operation names with themes that would help generate public support for conflicts.

Gregory C. Sieminski, an Army officer writing in a 1995 Army War College publication, said the Pentagon decision to call the 1989 invasion of Panama "Operation Just Cause" initiated a trend of naming operations "with an eye toward shaping domestic and international perceptions about the activities they describe."

Mainline veterans groups are taking the change in stride. American Legion spokesman Donald Mooney said the organization hasn't heard any complaints from its members.

"I'm concerned that we do what the families want," said Bob Wallace, executive director of Veterans of Foreign Wars. "I don't think there's any critical motivation behind this."

it's awesome how orwellian things are on a daily basis..

i mean, panama was clearly justifiable.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/30/gao...a.ap/index.html

GAO: Education's illegal 'covert propaganda'

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Education Department engaged in illegal "covert propaganda" when it paid columnist Armstrong Williams to promote Bush administration policies and when it produced a video that seemed to be a news story, congressional investigators concluded Friday.

The Government Accountability Office said the public relations efforts violated the government's "publicity or propaganda prohibition" because the department did not clearly disclose its role to the public. The department was ordered to report the violations to Congress and the president.

The investigation was requested by Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, and Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, after it was revealed late last year that the department had hired Williams, a syndicated conservative columnist and TV personality, to promote Bush's "No Child Left Behind" law.

In light of the GAO findings, the senators immediately sent a letter to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings urging her to abide by the law, recover the misspent dollars and meet with them on Capitol Hill.

"The Bush administration took taxpayer funds that should have gone towards helping kids learn and diverted it to a political propaganda campaign," Lautenberg said in a statement. "The administration needs to return these funds to the treasury."

Kennedy added: "The taxpayer-funded propaganda campaign coming from the White House is another sign of the culture of corruption that pervades the White House and Republican leadership."

The PR effort unfolded before Spellings took the helm of the department early this year. Her spokeswoman, Susan Aspey, said, "Under Secretary Spellings' leadership, stringent processes have been instituted to ensure these types of missteps don't happen again."

"We've said for the past six months that this was stupid, wrong and ill-advised," Aspey said. "There's nothing in today's action that changes our opinion."

At issue was a $240,000 contract to have Williams, who is black, inform minorities about Bush's law by producing ads with then-Education Secretary Rod Paige. Williams also was to provide media time to Paige and to persuade other blacks in the media to talk about the law.

Nancie McPhail, Williams' chief of staff, said Friday he would have no comment until he had a chance to review the GAO findings. Williams previously has apologized and said that he "exercised poor judgment."

The GAO also looked at a broader Education Department contract with Ketchum, a public relations firm, to publicize the Bush education agenda. This effort included production of a "video news release" promoting the education law that looked and sounded like a news story.

At least one television station in New York used the package in 2003. It substituted its own reporter for the voiceover but followed the script and video the department provided. The department, in turn, put the text of the station's story on its Web site.

"Because the department's role in the production and distribution of the prepackaged news story is not revealed to the target audience, the prepackaged news story constitutes covert propaganda," the investigators wrote.

As part of its contract, Ketchum also rated various news stories and individual reporters on how favorable their education reporting was to Bush and the Republican Party. The GAO said this effort was part of a broader media analysis that was otherwise acceptable and required little added expense.

"Nevertheless, we caution that, if the department chooses to conduct media analyses in the future, it be more diligent in its efforts to ensure that such analyses be free from such explicit partisan content," the investigators wrote.

The GAO also notified the department that it should look into whether there was another violation of the propaganda ban when Ketchum arranged for the North American Precis Syndicate to write a newspaper article entitled "Parents want science classes that make the grade." The article appeared in numerous small papers around the country and did not disclose the department's role, the investigators said.

The video and reporter rankings came to light through a Freedom of Information Act request by People for the American Way, a liberal group that contended the department was using tax dollars to promote a political agenda.

Elliot Mincberg, the group's counsel, said the GAO findings "confirm the concern about the impropriety of what the Department of Education did." He said he hoped the findings would help deter any further violations from occurring throughout the government.

Aly Colon, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, said the GAO ruling could be seen as a victory for both the press and the government if it helps to reinforce a standard that "whatever information is presented to the public is done in the most transparent way possible."

Both sides benefit when the public is clear on where information is coming from, he said.

"The key element in any conversation is a sense of trust about the institution or the individual that's giving the information, as well as the conduit or the transmitters of it," he said.

In a related matter, the GAO also looked into a Health and Human Services Department contract with syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher to help promote a marriage initiative. The GAO said the Gallagher contract did not violate the propaganda ban "because the services provided were not covert, self-aggrandizing or purely partisan."

If I do a search for the word "propaganda" almopst every thread in crossfire comes up - yet no one contributes here. Even examples of media twists would be interesting to me. I wish this would get more attention here...bump

Originally posted by KING BLING@Feb 15 2005, 04:34 AM

 

Feb. 9, 2005 -- Marian Kester Coombs is a woman who believes America has become a "den of iniquity" thanks to "its efforts to accommodate minorities."

White men should "run, not walk" to wed "racially conscious" white women and avoid being out-bred by non-whites. Latinos are "rising to take this country away from those who made it," the "Euroamericans." Muslims are "human hyenas" who "smell blood" and are "closing in" on their "weakened prey," meaning "the white race." Blacks, Coombs sneers, are "saintly victims who can do no wrong." Black solidarity and non-white immigration are imposing "racial revolution and decomposition" in America.

 

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M O R E

Quoted post

Jesus fucking christ!

You have another link for this?

Originally posted by Shain Caw+Oct 13 2005, 02:08 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Shain Caw - Oct 13 2005, 02:08 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-KING BLING@Feb 15 2005, 04:34 AM

 

Feb. 9, 2005 -- Marian Kester Coombs is a woman who believes America has become a "den of iniquity" thanks to "its efforts to accommodate minorities."

White men should "run, not walk" to wed "racially conscious" white women and avoid being out-bred by non-whites. Latinos are "rising to take this country away from those who made it," the "Euroamericans." Muslims are "human hyenas" who "smell blood" and are "closing in" on their "weakened prey," meaning "the white race." Blacks, Coombs sneers, are "saintly victims who can do no wrong." Black solidarity and non-white immigration are imposing "racial revolution and decomposition" in America.

 

...

M O R E

Quoted post

Jesus fucking christ!

You have another link for this?

[/b]

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport...cle.jsp?aid=526

The Washington Times is relatively small (circulation 102,000) and money-losing (it's been estimated that its backer, the Unification Church, has spent more than $1 billion to keep it going over the past 22 years). But its influence cannot be measured in those statistics. President Reagan once described it as his favorite paper. The first President Bush said it "in my view brings sanity to Washington, D.C."

That influence may have reached a public peak this winter, when President George W. Bush invited its top leaders — including Coombs, Pruden, Hanner and others — to the White House for an exclusive, 40-minute interview. The resulting stories were spread across the front page of the Times' Jan. 12 edition.

Presumably the president, who on Feb. 8 denounced "the baggage of bigotry" and called racism "the central defect of our founding," knew little of the paper's record on race.