The Corporate Media’s Numbers Racket
By Lloyd Hart
Sunday Nov 23, 2003

The number of times the corporate media have published articles, radio and television news stories about and interviewed Gov. Howard Dean on his run for the presidency of the United States of America compared to the other candidates running in the Democratic party presidential nomination process is running at approximately 30% more in Governor Dean’s favor.  And of course without telling you, this is exactly how the corporate media have manufactured Dean’s lead and got you, by you I mean Dean’s supporters, to accept his lead in the polls.  

Doesn’t it make sense that if the corporate media chooses to cover one candidate over another that the candidate that they cover will be in your consciousness more and ones that are not reported on very much will not?  Eliciting comments like “ he hasn’t got a chance” or “he’s not getting his message out” or the way the corporate media does report on a possible Seabiscuit is to make him look the buffoon.  Don’t you in the least bit feel as though you’re being played by the corporate media monopolies controlled primarily by conservative elites that simply just wish to hold the onto a kind of modern feudal power. Dean supporters, you need to read Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” and then ask yourself the question: Will governor Howard Dean as president Dean allow the privatization of the Iraqi oil patch and be as complicit as president Bill Clinton was to the first Gulf War lie which allowed the elites to launch this most recent war for oil? Especially since Governor Dean is now saying, “Now that we’re in Iraq we can’t just cut and run.” (Which the Bush Regime calculated would come out of a Democrats mouth.) The answer to the question, is yes he will.

Considering Governor Dean’s very friendly corporate relations with IBM and other polluters and clear cutters in the state of Vermont it is important to examine all the facts before the corporate media shreds the candidate you have chosen to back.  Remember what the corporate media did to Governor Mike Dukakis when the veep Bush pointed his bony finger at Boston Harbor in ‘88 and in ‘92, what the Clintons did to Jerry Brown after Brown won the caucuses in Vermont. The corporate media played along with the Clintons hedging their bets, in painting Jerry Brown as some kind of pornographic party animal effectively taking Governor Jerry Brown out of contention for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.  In politics, feudal political strategy has a way of making history repeat itself.   

With General Franks putting out a lightly veiled threat this last week stating that “The U.S. Constitution would not survive a weapons of mass destruction attack” and that “ a military government would be more appropriate” to deal with the aftermath of the attack, and today having it confirmed that the FBI’s Cointelpro is most definitely back, we need to assess what it is we are fighting for in this next election. (Waite a minute, wasn’t anthrax sent to two key Democratic Party senators timed almost perfectly for the passage of the constitutional shredding, might as well call it a military government, Patriot Act and didn’t the Black Democrat Mayor of Philly find an FBI bug in his office.) Do we want a president that the generals and elites control or do we want a president controlled by the Constitution of the United States and an independent judiciary and most of all, an actual verifiable Democratic electoral process.

Once again I must reiterate that the Democratic Party has never been a presidential party. It has always been a congressional party for Congress is where the power is. The Democratic Party effectively controlled policy making in Congress for the better part of two centuries with or without control of the White House allowing social and environmental progress to occur where few thought it possible. But with statements like “Anybody but Bush” I believe that what we are setting up is an entrenched scenario that made a deeply frustrated Democratic supporter like Ralph Nader walk away from the Democratic Party in 2000.  The Democratic Party must shape a platform that builds a coalition of voting blocs social and environmental and strikes serious breaks from past elite appeasement policies on the drug war, free-trade, NAFTA, health-care and most of all, quality jobs for America’s largest in history generation. The offspring of the baby boom generation who are just now coming of age are accustomed to a lifestyle they will want to continue outside their parents’ homes.  Governor Dean’s platform does not deal in the least bit with any of these issues. And having lived in Vermont I can tell you we don’t want to end up with another inexperienced governor from a small state as president of the United States, the most powerful man in the so-called free world but yet completely lost in Washington, D.C., more enamored with being president than with the actual work inherent with being president.

The majority of support Dean is garnering is coming from middle-class baby boomers that have not yet realized that the baby boom generation now rules the World. I pray that the Dean supporters transcend the idea that it was much better to get the Clean Water Act passed and signed into law by Nixon in 1973 and reauthorized in 1987 overriding two Reagan vetoes than it was two get Carter or Mondale elected and to get the first Bush to raise taxes and to authorize public works projects like the “Big Dig” that saved the U.S. economy from complete collapse than it was to get Bill Clinton elected president.  I’m not saying forget about the presidency.  I am saying a real grassroots populist campaign begins with a deep broad based policy platform and not with the politics of a presidential candidate’s advisers who are simply in the business of running campaigns.

Governor Dean, where is the policy of the coalition you want to elect you the Democratic Party presidential nominee? Where is the FBI bug in your ointment Governor Dean? Instead of spying on other candidates campaigns write some real policy and not the fluff found on your web site.