Ralph welcomes back public interest advocate Donald Cohen to discuss the long history of corporate propaganda covering for corporate greed, and his new book Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America
I'm 100% behind your message, but I suggest that "vaccine against propaganda" might not be the right way to convey it. Some of the most successful corporate propaganda has gone toward convincing us that vaccines are inherently "safe and effective". The COVID vaccines have more victims than the Sacklers.
I’ve been reading a book entitled “The Great Taking” written by David Roger’s Webb
This book is about taking collateral (all of it), the end game xof the current globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle.
It has been promised that there will be no taxpayer bailout this time as if that is a good thing. Why? Simply because this will allow the banks to be closed rather than nationalized. Then all deposits and assets will be taken by the “protector class” of secured creditors. This is where it’s going. It’s a hybrid war!
I’m putting this out to you Ralph to read and do a commentary on it asap. As if the geopolitical shenanigans .. life , death , enslavement etc is what has been bestowed upon us is the greatest horror; this book gives the details of why and how . Please read and comment. Shocked to the bone! This book is available in pdf for free.
I’m glad that the topic of PACER is mentioned in this episode. There was some talk about Congress making PACER free to use as part of the 2023 omnibus appropriations bill, but I don’t think anything came from that unless I missed something. I know there were conflicting reports from the Congressional Budget Office about PACER reforms.
Anyway, there is absolutely no reason, aside from public macroeconomic ignorance, for there to be fees associated with downloading documents from PACER. The CBO’s point about the lack of fees adding to the national deficit is nothing but an austerity scare tactic used to keep the people away from accessing their Judiciary’s work. The assumption that the deficit is of concern is an incorrect assumption pushed by the likes of Milton Friedman and now parroted by many progressives for some odd reason. The assumption that the Judiciary will be underfunded without PACER fees is also blarney. All Congress has to do is increase appropriations for the Judiciary. This does not involve ‘taxpayer money’. To tie this in to Donald Cohen’s discussion, this is nothing but corporate BS.
On a somewhat related note, there has been talk about the open-access publishing of higher education research in recent years. This is especially true with federally-funded research. Many academics are wanting to publish via open-access publishing, but there are barriers put up by the private publishing companies who want to maintain a monopoly on research that is often federally or state-funded. Certainly with federally-funded research, the federal government should have an operation that allows for academics to have the production costs, peer-review costs, and other publication costs covered publicly and then the public should have immediate access to this research online without cost. As it is, access to public research can be very restricted unless someone has access to a university library. Of course, the university libraries are having to pay a lot of money to access research which was publicly funded! This is a very undemocratic process. Research should be funded for the public good and, thus, it should be available to the public without restrictions put into place by an unnecessarily privatized publishing system.
Regarding David’s point about nationalizing industries, I think the idea of nationalizing industries has become a one-sided narrative. Nationalization is often only presented as government taking over failed corporations. I don’t think nationalization should be confined to ‘saving’ failed businesses. Rather, it can just as easily be used as an engine towards public goals such as creating royalty-free development research for healthcare, green energy, and so forth. This helps steer and support private and public industry domestically, but this intellectual property can be transferred to the developing world so that those countries can manufacturer their own medication and green technology. This helps serve global environmental and health needs.
That said, tight regulation of industry is absolutely necessary and the auto industry is an example of that. Fuel economy standards for cars largely ignored trucks and SUVs and so the industry started marketing overpriced, oversized cars in those segments which completely defeated the intent of improving fuel efficiency. I’ve read reports that due to the SUVification of the last decade or so, the average fuel economy of a new automobile today is lower than a decade ago! Scandalous! These new SUVs and trucks also have poor visibility and have been linked to increasing auto-pedestrian collisions.
Weak regulation is absolutely to blame here and corporate BS is certainly a factor in why there is a lack of regulation. The industry claims nobody wants the more fuel efficient styles of cars people were buying a decade ago, but the industry spent a lot more money marketing SUVs and trucks (convincing people, for example, that they need an SUV to drive their pets around aimlessly) and, in many cases, the manufacturers just outright discontinued regular cars in favor of SUVs even though the regular cars were still selling in fairly large numbers. In the case of GM and many others, the new SUVs are foreign made, even if they are expensive, when the cheaper sedans they replaced were more likely to be US-made. Ford and Chrysler no longer sell fuel efficient sedans. GM only has one model, the Malibu, and it is the only lower-priced car or SUV assembled in the US (at a UAW plant in Kansas). However, I fully expect this model to be discontinued since GM has largely ignored the Malibu for years and it’ll probably be replaced by a foreign-made SUV which is less fuel efficient and more expensive to buy. Yes, corporate BS, but this could have been prevented by regulation.
If you offer enough money you will find someone that will say whatever corporate bullshit you want them to say.
Sometimes that person will believe what they are saying but often it is obvious they know they are spewing bullshit.
One example of the obvious bullshit was back when passing Obamacare was being debated.
There were several pundits from the conservative think tanks that did not want a public option in Obamacare making the argument that a public option would take away choices for citizens and they wanted to preserve choice in health care insurance.
They explained that the free market of the private insurance industry with several insurance companies for citizens to choose from that the competition would keep prices down.
Then they said that if citizens were able to SELECT a public option that polls showed more than 60% of citizens would SELECT the public option leaving not enough of a market share for the private insurance industry to have enough of a market share to support several insurance companies taking away the ability for citizens to have a choice.
Yet they were never asked (even on Washington Journal) how you SELECT a public option without making a choice.
Many truths as usual from Ralph and his team. Ralph and Chris Hedges are 2 of the very few subscriptions I take. In UK just one: Tess Lawrie, founder of the World Council for Health. Between your exposure of the effects of corporate greed and the WCH's exposure of current appalling medical practice we all have a better chance of getting closer to a decent unexploited, healthy life. Dr Jo East Anglia.
Yes, I know what this implies historically; the worst currents of which seem to be resurfacing. The evangelical right isn't actually concerned with Jewish people per se or for the continued existence of Israel. They only care about their fantasy version of End Times, where the Jews are expected to follow the religious script projected on them. Add to that the tunnel vision of the neocons, who now predominate in the State Department, and the possibilities for disaster expand exponentially.
Israel came to be in part because it was obvious that the rest of the world didn't care about the horrific genocide Jews suffered. It is understandable why "never again." But that is not carte blanche for any and all violence in the name of survival. A large percentage of Israeli and American Jews are appalled at Netanyahu's policies, especially when justifying the slaughter of children. Obviously, then, it is not only fine to criticize the current government of Israel and U.S. government support for it, but our right to do so. Maybe even our duty.
However, I draw the line at what is becoming common among dogmatic leftists--de facto antisemitism. There is a long thread of comments on Chris Hedges' post "The Horror, The Horror." I had to call out "What's the difference between a Jew and a Proud Boy? A Jew is more violent." So like Reagan on redwoods, seen one, seen 'em all. This nastiness, overt Naziness, glosses over the fact it is precise about which Southerners or white people or right wingers are wrong, yet condemns all Jews, no nuance required. It's the type of "joke" that accepts persecution of all Jews; same old scapegoat but for new reasons.
Folks have also stopped trusting liberal media and the government, for good reason. Of course right wing media is also crap. The current role of all corporate media, conservative and liberal, is as corporate propaganda. Which is functionally garbage, making people stupid.
Christianne Northrop was the most trusted voice in women’s health until she reported on the disastrous pandemic response in 2020. Now she’s de-platformed.
Joseph Mercola was America’s favorite alternative doctor until he started talking about the COVID vaccines. Now he’s a quack.
Meryl Nass was a country doctor in Maine who had an expertise in bioweapons that was respected in government reports and Congressional testimony. After she spoke out about COVID, the Maine Medical Board took her license away.
Naomi Wolf was a trusted academic voice in American feminism until she started publishing about vaccine side effects. Now she’s a a kook.
Vera Sharav was a Holocaust survivor and well-regarded writer on medical freedom. Then she published “Never Again is Now”, calling the COVID vaccines a “second Holocaust”. She’s an anti-semite.
Peter McCullough was one of the most highly respected academic cardiologists in the world, with hundreds of peer-reviewed publications. He lost his job at Baylor Medical College for speaking out about COVID.
In the early ‘90s, Robert Malone developed and patented the mRNA technology that is the basis of the COVID vaccines. Beginning in 2021, he told us that the mRNA technology is inherently unsafe, and should never have been used in vaccines. Last month, the Nobel Prize was awarded to two of his associates who followed in his footsteps, and not a word was said about Dr Malone’s pioneering role.
Harvey Risch, Geert vanden Bosche, David Katz, John Ioannidis, Aseem Malhotra, and Michael Yeadon were all highly-respected professionals with expertise in the epidemiology of vaccines until their careers were trashed because they spoke out against the COVID vaccines.
Everyone who has spoken the truth about the COVID vaccines has paid with their careers. Everyone who has supported the narrative of the health establishment has been rewarded.
Twice as many people died of "Covid" in 2021 compared to 2020, but it has nothing to do with the vaccines.
In the trial data that Pfizer submitted to FDA, more people died in the vaccine arm than in the placebo arm, but it had nothing to do with the vaccine.
Absenteeism at work and disability claims rose dramatically in 2021 and stayed up through the present, but it has nothing to do with the vaccines.
There are 50 times as many reports to VAERS in 2021 than in any previous year, but it has nothing to do with the vaccines.
Fertility is down and miscarriages are up in America and much of Europe, but it has nothing to do with the vaccines.
People are dying on soccer fields. Celebrities are canceling their tours. People in their 20s are getting heart attacks. Embalmers are reporting rubbery blood clots in the veins of people who died.
You can download data from the CDC's VAERS website, https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html, as I have done, to confirm that about 3 times as many people have died from the COVID vaccines compared to the entire 30 year history of vaccine deaths before COVID. Data is summarized conveniently at OpenVAERS.com, and I have personally checked that their presentation matches what I download directly from CDC.
I'm 100% behind your message, but I suggest that "vaccine against propaganda" might not be the right way to convey it. Some of the most successful corporate propaganda has gone toward convincing us that vaccines are inherently "safe and effective". The COVID vaccines have more victims than the Sacklers.
I’ve been reading a book entitled “The Great Taking” written by David Roger’s Webb
This book is about taking collateral (all of it), the end game xof the current globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle.
It has been promised that there will be no taxpayer bailout this time as if that is a good thing. Why? Simply because this will allow the banks to be closed rather than nationalized. Then all deposits and assets will be taken by the “protector class” of secured creditors. This is where it’s going. It’s a hybrid war!
I’m putting this out to you Ralph to read and do a commentary on it asap. As if the geopolitical shenanigans .. life , death , enslavement etc is what has been bestowed upon us is the greatest horror; this book gives the details of why and how . Please read and comment. Shocked to the bone! This book is available in pdf for free.
I’m glad that the topic of PACER is mentioned in this episode. There was some talk about Congress making PACER free to use as part of the 2023 omnibus appropriations bill, but I don’t think anything came from that unless I missed something. I know there were conflicting reports from the Congressional Budget Office about PACER reforms.
Anyway, there is absolutely no reason, aside from public macroeconomic ignorance, for there to be fees associated with downloading documents from PACER. The CBO’s point about the lack of fees adding to the national deficit is nothing but an austerity scare tactic used to keep the people away from accessing their Judiciary’s work. The assumption that the deficit is of concern is an incorrect assumption pushed by the likes of Milton Friedman and now parroted by many progressives for some odd reason. The assumption that the Judiciary will be underfunded without PACER fees is also blarney. All Congress has to do is increase appropriations for the Judiciary. This does not involve ‘taxpayer money’. To tie this in to Donald Cohen’s discussion, this is nothing but corporate BS.
On a somewhat related note, there has been talk about the open-access publishing of higher education research in recent years. This is especially true with federally-funded research. Many academics are wanting to publish via open-access publishing, but there are barriers put up by the private publishing companies who want to maintain a monopoly on research that is often federally or state-funded. Certainly with federally-funded research, the federal government should have an operation that allows for academics to have the production costs, peer-review costs, and other publication costs covered publicly and then the public should have immediate access to this research online without cost. As it is, access to public research can be very restricted unless someone has access to a university library. Of course, the university libraries are having to pay a lot of money to access research which was publicly funded! This is a very undemocratic process. Research should be funded for the public good and, thus, it should be available to the public without restrictions put into place by an unnecessarily privatized publishing system.
Regarding David’s point about nationalizing industries, I think the idea of nationalizing industries has become a one-sided narrative. Nationalization is often only presented as government taking over failed corporations. I don’t think nationalization should be confined to ‘saving’ failed businesses. Rather, it can just as easily be used as an engine towards public goals such as creating royalty-free development research for healthcare, green energy, and so forth. This helps steer and support private and public industry domestically, but this intellectual property can be transferred to the developing world so that those countries can manufacturer their own medication and green technology. This helps serve global environmental and health needs.
That said, tight regulation of industry is absolutely necessary and the auto industry is an example of that. Fuel economy standards for cars largely ignored trucks and SUVs and so the industry started marketing overpriced, oversized cars in those segments which completely defeated the intent of improving fuel efficiency. I’ve read reports that due to the SUVification of the last decade or so, the average fuel economy of a new automobile today is lower than a decade ago! Scandalous! These new SUVs and trucks also have poor visibility and have been linked to increasing auto-pedestrian collisions.
Weak regulation is absolutely to blame here and corporate BS is certainly a factor in why there is a lack of regulation. The industry claims nobody wants the more fuel efficient styles of cars people were buying a decade ago, but the industry spent a lot more money marketing SUVs and trucks (convincing people, for example, that they need an SUV to drive their pets around aimlessly) and, in many cases, the manufacturers just outright discontinued regular cars in favor of SUVs even though the regular cars were still selling in fairly large numbers. In the case of GM and many others, the new SUVs are foreign made, even if they are expensive, when the cheaper sedans they replaced were more likely to be US-made. Ford and Chrysler no longer sell fuel efficient sedans. GM only has one model, the Malibu, and it is the only lower-priced car or SUV assembled in the US (at a UAW plant in Kansas). However, I fully expect this model to be discontinued since GM has largely ignored the Malibu for years and it’ll probably be replaced by a foreign-made SUV which is less fuel efficient and more expensive to buy. Yes, corporate BS, but this could have been prevented by regulation.
If you offer enough money you will find someone that will say whatever corporate bullshit you want them to say.
Sometimes that person will believe what they are saying but often it is obvious they know they are spewing bullshit.
One example of the obvious bullshit was back when passing Obamacare was being debated.
There were several pundits from the conservative think tanks that did not want a public option in Obamacare making the argument that a public option would take away choices for citizens and they wanted to preserve choice in health care insurance.
They explained that the free market of the private insurance industry with several insurance companies for citizens to choose from that the competition would keep prices down.
Then they said that if citizens were able to SELECT a public option that polls showed more than 60% of citizens would SELECT the public option leaving not enough of a market share for the private insurance industry to have enough of a market share to support several insurance companies taking away the ability for citizens to have a choice.
Yet they were never asked (even on Washington Journal) how you SELECT a public option without making a choice.
Many truths as usual from Ralph and his team. Ralph and Chris Hedges are 2 of the very few subscriptions I take. In UK just one: Tess Lawrie, founder of the World Council for Health. Between your exposure of the effects of corporate greed and the WCH's exposure of current appalling medical practice we all have a better chance of getting closer to a decent unexploited, healthy life. Dr Jo East Anglia.
The Jewish Question
Yes, I know what this implies historically; the worst currents of which seem to be resurfacing. The evangelical right isn't actually concerned with Jewish people per se or for the continued existence of Israel. They only care about their fantasy version of End Times, where the Jews are expected to follow the religious script projected on them. Add to that the tunnel vision of the neocons, who now predominate in the State Department, and the possibilities for disaster expand exponentially.
Israel came to be in part because it was obvious that the rest of the world didn't care about the horrific genocide Jews suffered. It is understandable why "never again." But that is not carte blanche for any and all violence in the name of survival. A large percentage of Israeli and American Jews are appalled at Netanyahu's policies, especially when justifying the slaughter of children. Obviously, then, it is not only fine to criticize the current government of Israel and U.S. government support for it, but our right to do so. Maybe even our duty.
However, I draw the line at what is becoming common among dogmatic leftists--de facto antisemitism. There is a long thread of comments on Chris Hedges' post "The Horror, The Horror." I had to call out "What's the difference between a Jew and a Proud Boy? A Jew is more violent." So like Reagan on redwoods, seen one, seen 'em all. This nastiness, overt Naziness, glosses over the fact it is precise about which Southerners or white people or right wingers are wrong, yet condemns all Jews, no nuance required. It's the type of "joke" that accepts persecution of all Jews; same old scapegoat but for new reasons.
Ralph often talks about shareholders not having a say. Here's someone he might want to interview soon. This is his episode on big banks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGIMDFauu2s&list=TLPQMjQwMjIwMjRKIrasZc6o0Q&index=5&ab_channel=CountEverything
Folks have also stopped trusting liberal media and the government, for good reason. Of course right wing media is also crap. The current role of all corporate media, conservative and liberal, is as corporate propaganda. Which is functionally garbage, making people stupid.
Christianne Northrop was the most trusted voice in women’s health until she reported on the disastrous pandemic response in 2020. Now she’s de-platformed.
Joseph Mercola was America’s favorite alternative doctor until he started talking about the COVID vaccines. Now he’s a quack.
Meryl Nass was a country doctor in Maine who had an expertise in bioweapons that was respected in government reports and Congressional testimony. After she spoke out about COVID, the Maine Medical Board took her license away.
Naomi Wolf was a trusted academic voice in American feminism until she started publishing about vaccine side effects. Now she’s a a kook.
Vera Sharav was a Holocaust survivor and well-regarded writer on medical freedom. Then she published “Never Again is Now”, calling the COVID vaccines a “second Holocaust”. She’s an anti-semite.
Peter McCullough was one of the most highly respected academic cardiologists in the world, with hundreds of peer-reviewed publications. He lost his job at Baylor Medical College for speaking out about COVID.
In the early ‘90s, Robert Malone developed and patented the mRNA technology that is the basis of the COVID vaccines. Beginning in 2021, he told us that the mRNA technology is inherently unsafe, and should never have been used in vaccines. Last month, the Nobel Prize was awarded to two of his associates who followed in his footsteps, and not a word was said about Dr Malone’s pioneering role.
Harvey Risch, Geert vanden Bosche, David Katz, John Ioannidis, Aseem Malhotra, and Michael Yeadon were all highly-respected professionals with expertise in the epidemiology of vaccines until their careers were trashed because they spoke out against the COVID vaccines.
Everyone who has spoken the truth about the COVID vaccines has paid with their careers. Everyone who has supported the narrative of the health establishment has been rewarded.
Twice as many people died of "Covid" in 2021 compared to 2020, but it has nothing to do with the vaccines.
In the trial data that Pfizer submitted to FDA, more people died in the vaccine arm than in the placebo arm, but it had nothing to do with the vaccine.
Absenteeism at work and disability claims rose dramatically in 2021 and stayed up through the present, but it has nothing to do with the vaccines.
There are 50 times as many reports to VAERS in 2021 than in any previous year, but it has nothing to do with the vaccines.
Fertility is down and miscarriages are up in America and much of Europe, but it has nothing to do with the vaccines.
People are dying on soccer fields. Celebrities are canceling their tours. People in their 20s are getting heart attacks. Embalmers are reporting rubbery blood clots in the veins of people who died.
But it has nothing to do with the vaccines.
You can download data from the CDC's VAERS website, https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html, as I have done, to confirm that about 3 times as many people have died from the COVID vaccines compared to the entire 30 year history of vaccine deaths before COVID. Data is summarized conveniently at OpenVAERS.com, and I have personally checked that their presentation matches what I download directly from CDC.