Daily Archives: January 15, 2010

2010 Election, Economy, Media, Organized Labor, Politics

As Not Seen On CSPAN

Labor union leaders from the SEIU, AFL-CIO, and the UAW met in Washington yesterday to (one could only guess) threaten to withhold support for Democrats in the 2010 election if the President went through with his wanting to levy a tax on people who have a good health insurance policy.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats stand within days if not hours of striking final deals on historic health care legislation after key labor unions won concessions and pledged their support.

What we could not see is the smoke and mirrors accounting they are applying to mask the cost to appease big labor. Taxing those policies was supposed to be part of paying for this plan. Absent that, there’s  more snake-oil on the health insurance menu.

Unfortunately, we could not see this ‘negotiation’ in action like the President said when he was a candidate. We couldn’t see who was representing who, like the President promised he would do, and on this very subject. The negotiations weren’t on either of the two CSPAN channels I get. Did you see it?

link: Health talks in overdrive with Obama pushing

Media, Politics

A Mind-numb Robot And CNN

After the Brown-Coakley debate last week, Martha Coakley went to Washington to attend fundraisers by fat cat lobbyists from the health care industry.  While republican challenger Scott Brown’s campaign received over a million dollars from Americans giving under $80 each.

Forget what that picture looks like, because CNN didn’t bother to mention that Brown seems to have real grassroots support. But lets recall that it was a large number of small contributors that financed the Obama campaign, in addition to big contributions from big labor, big law, and Wall St..

No, the story here is  CNN carrying the water for Coakley, Democrats, and Obamacare in the way they present this story.

Massachusetts Republicans wasted little time Wednesday criticizing Democrat Martha Coakley for attending a fundraiser one week before Bay State voters elect a successor to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.

CNN is incapable of reporting what Coakley is doing. Instead, they report it as something Republicans are accusing her of doing.  Somehow, they can’t find a way to criticize her on their own. Something they would have no hesitation or reservation in doing if she were an R instead of a D.

When the media watchdog becomes a mind-numb robot by circling the wagons around hypocrisy, to help a political candidate, it’s safe to say that the media watchdog has died.

Link: CNN:Republicans criticize Coakley for attending DC fundraiser