PR Watch

I like the sarcasm, it helps. Source watch is https://www.prwatch.org/ So it's some kind of think-tank proxy war...

I would be for this but I'm afraid that once all the other programs are dismantled, food stamps, welfare etc, that the poor might end up getting less support than they did before. I try hard not to be cynical, but I wonder if this isn't a ruse to accomplish exactly that. I mean the US is known for being "frugal" when it comes to helping people. See the medical system for example, or the treatment that veterans get. Why the sudden surge in generosity, why the sudden desire to redistribute income? Weren't these anathema just recently, even to some democrats? Also the fact that it keeps coming up in the media makes me slightly suspicious. Why is this being promoted so much right now? I bet there are PR firms out there calling newspaper reporters and bloggers, to promote coverage of this idea on behalf of who knows which group or organization. [1] [1]: http://www.prwatch.org/

Better questions would be - why does one man need so much farmland? What is he going to do with it? How much more is he planning to buy? If he suddenly stops all farming on all farmlands that he buys, what would be the impact on the food supply? It is amazing that you're arguing in support of a billionaire with a monopolistic, predatory past. He might be doing good things today, but he is also a big supporter of companies like Monsanto. He also has the arrogance of influencing things his way using his money, even when a majority of people/voters don't agree with him. Here is an example : https://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13085/charitable-plutocracy-bill-… I do not know if you are arguing in good faith at this point. No single person, especially an unelected person, should have as much influence as Bill has. He is just one example. There are other super shitty examples. At least Bill is doing some good, there are other billionaires that are much, much worse.

Many startups may be worth "pretend" money, but many are worth real money. And even the ones that are worth "pretend" money create jobs, not just for engineers. > And I wish our culture stopped glamorizing startups for being worth a lot of pretend money, and instead valued them on how much they did to advance us as an equitable society. It is not the job of businesses to pursue social engineering goals like an equitable society. That is the job of government, and government needs money to do those things, which can come from taxing successful businesses. People who suggest that businesses ought to pursue social goals don't fully understand what would happen if they got what they wished for -- a world where social goods and services are privatized -- provided by unaccountable private companies instead of elected governments. For example, consider the state of public transit in Silicon Valley. There isn't much of it, and what there is sucks. So companies have started paying for their own bus routes, which are only open to their own employees. Taken together, those bus routes would comprise a very comprehensive public transit solution. But the general public can't use them. This is what happens when companies do the government's job. Consider also the backlash against Bill Gates' education initiatives in Seattle: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13085/charitable-plutocracy-bill-g… Besides, if we rely on corporations for social…

> People seem unable to make up their mind if AI is very dangerous or is it not. This is a propaganda tactic. For decades, tobacco companies claimed that there was no evidence that smoking was bad for one's health. Then, only after losing dozens of lawsuits did the propaganda switch to "but everyone knew for 100+ years that smoking was lethal". One can read about it by reading Trust Us, We're Experts, or Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, or the other books written by the authors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Us,_We%27re_Experts https://www.prwatch.org/tsigfy.html

cf. The American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC)[0] tactics[1] [0] https://alec.org/ [1] https://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/02/12385/how-alec-helps-big-telecom-…

The term dates to the late 1980s when it referred to propagandistic video and audio "news releases" generally created by or for corporate interests. That usage continued through to mid-to-late 2000s decade. It was applied to more general misinformation in the 2010s, before being 'undefined' by many of the promotors and beneficiaries of fake news. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news https://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary/ https://www.prwatch.org/fakenews2/execsummary

> Because they're pushing the progressive agenda I would say Shmidt's agenda is more neo-liberal than progressive. Not that I endorse it, but corporations pushing an agenda is not new[1] and not limited to the left[2][3], so not even conservative media will stand in their way either since that has been happening for a long time on the right. 1. http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/12/12338/shilling-profit-case-study-a… 2. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hobby-lobby-wins-contraceptive-ruling-s… 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_controvers…

Corporations generally don't do their own bombing and waterboarding, but they sure hire OTHERS to do their bombing and waterboarding for them. Cf Pepsi's role in the Chilean coup https://www.theguardian.com/business/1998/nov/08/observerbusiness.theo… or the United Fruit company's role in Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_massacre or Guatemala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobo_Árbenz And of course, in their regular operation, many companies routinely pollute the environment: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/05/10722/koch-industries-toxic-gifts-… Funny how libertarians never seem to consider dumping millions of lbs of poison into the environment an "initiation of force", but god forbid government raise taxes by one cent.

Let me reccomend "Toxic sludge is good for you". http://www.prwatch.org/tsigfy.html. Its a book about PR in the twentieth century. Basically the corporate elite has been hiring armies of secret and hidden agencies, front groups, lawyers PR people, ex-army agents etc. for decades. They smear , threaten, distort and ultimately change the publics perception of reality.

Watch out for signs that ISIS is hiring a PR firm (which is what Saudi Arabia did) to convince us that they're the good guys, and whomever they're fighting are the badder guys. http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

Tea party and Occupy are the same movement (anger at the ruling classes for screwing the general population) from different angles. Plenty of stupid signs from tea party rallies too: http://www.prwatch.org/files/images/Medicare.jpg In any sufficiently large group of people, you can find a few idiots (and they're usually the loudest ones). The interesting/important thing here is that regular people from both left and right are mad enough to turn off their TVs, go outside and protest - three things that Americans are not naturally inclined to do. Something is seriously brewing out there...

If lobbyists aren't visitors, then reporting their visits becomes painless. Just hire the lobbyists, as the Obama admin has done. Obama, pre-election: "I am running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over. They have not funded my campaign. They won't work in my White House." Obama admin, post-election: http://www.prwatch.org/node/8167

And Sourcewatch (AKA Center for Media and Democracy, AKA PRWatch) supports its union masters: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/02/10080/koch-denies-interest-no-bid-… What's your point?

Since we're playing that game, sourcewatch is published by prwatch. Some of their funders are listed at: http://www.prwatch.org/finances.html see also http://www.prwatch.org/pdfs/2008_990_Disclosure.PDF . What makes you think that those folks are on the up-and-up? Ad hominem doesn't just go one way....

"On a more serious note, the food industry has an immense amount of power in Washington and I think change in just a few years is highly optimistic," For sure. This is an industry that arranged so that they can sue you if you diss them. http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2009/11/burger-bashing-an… http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1997Q2/eat.html

Option 1 although good it probably won't fly well. The first step to cleaning up the existing mess it to stop rewarding doctors based on the number procedure they apply on a patient to cure them in medicare. That is probably the most insane healthcare practice and I don't think it is done anywhere else in the world. Once the doctors realize that these current practices are not sustainable they probably will come out with some novel ideas like this one http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4585.html. It doesn't really make sense to have only for profit health insurance companies, look the executive salaries (http://www.prwatch.org/node/8425#comment-4517). With the amount of money the US government is spending on healthcare it would make a lot of sense for us to have a single-payer system.

As a thought experiment, are we certain these documents came from Snowden? He has not digitally signed these releases. He himself may not know entirely what was in the archive, so he may not be certain if all the released documents originated from his dump. Even if he was aware of documents being incorrectly attributed to him, it may do his cause more harm than good to highlight this fact. It would be a legitimate option for the NSA to intentionally "leak" documents that simply describe their mission, causing a false spectacle. It will not hurt them much, given it's well within their mission parameters, but CAN hurt Snowden through public backlash. It would raise such questions as, "is Snowden still a whistleblower?" Such releases could hurt his credibility, or even flood the news with insignificant stories such that the truly important ones are lost in the shuffle. I am not certain this is what we're seeing, but neither would I be surprised if it were true. EDIT: There have been documents leaked about how the CIA and IC use character assassination to advance their causes. There have also been articles explicitly about the character assassination of Snowden: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/06/12522/glenn-greenwald-speaks-out http://www.securitycurrent.com/en/writers/richard-stiennon/the-charact…

It's not just the fluffy stories either: http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html From the section "Suffer the Little Children": "...the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."84 At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony."