Just read an interesting piece on morons.org. The story talks about the fact that the Bush Administration … wait… I have a sidenote.
“Bush Administration”. I wish I could simply say “Bush” here, but I have no idea whether or not he was directly aware of what I’m about to talk about, but the fact that his ignorance essentially admonishes him really chaps my ass.
In a discussion w/ my very-conservative brother last week, we were talking about the federal response to Katrina, and he remarked that it was unfair of the “liberal media” to be so hard on Bush when there’s not much he can do about things. Infuriated, I shot back that that was bullshit — having seen Harry Connick, Jr and even the Manning brothers (Peyton and Ely) helping by actually moving food and supplies off of aircraft, he could have done a LOT more than he’d done. He didn’t even stop his vacation until three days later, FFS! His point was that it should be FEMA taking the heat, and i retorted w/ the fact that, as ex-military officers, we BOTH know damn well that a commander is responsible for everything his unit does and FAILS to do.
So, fuck it.
Bush spread propaganda, and he used our tax money to do it.
WAKE THE FUCK UP, AMERICA.
morons.org – Bush Administration Propaganda Ruled Illegal:
The Government Accountability Office has ruled that payments made to commentators by the Bush administration to promote its agenda were an inappropriate and illegal use of funds…You might recall that some time ago it was revealed the Bush administration payed commentators Armstrong Williams and Karen Ryan to produce propaganda favorable to the administration’s initiatives, like the “No Child Left Behind” act and the Medicare prescription drug plan. These bits of “news” produced by the administration did not disclose that the government was the source of the propaganda, and so the bipartisan Government Accountability Office has ruled that they violated federal law banning the use of tax dollars to disseminate propaganda.
The investigation into the misappropriation of taxpayer dollars for a partisan propaganda campaign was requested by Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA). Kennedy slammed the Bush administration’s misuse of funds saying “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 GAO concluded, “The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual. The essential fact of attribution is missing.”
The GAO’s findings carry with them no associated penalty, but the findings will be reported to Congress and the White House, where they will probably be summarily ignored; after all, both institutions are dominated by the Republicans, who were the same people responsible for producing and paying for the propaganda in the first place.