“Can Do” Nation ???

A good friend sent me the following this morning.  For me it does put things in perspective.

.

.

Putting things in perspective:

March 21st, 2010 to October 1st, 2013 is 3 years, 6 months, and 10 days.

December 7, 1941 to May 8, 1945 is 3 years, 5 months and 1 day.

What this means is that from the time we were attacked at Pearl Harbor to the day that Germany surrendered is not enough time for this progressive government to build a working webpage to sell its new health plans.  The mobilization of millions, building thousands of tanks, planes, jeeps, subs, cruisers, destroyers, torpedoes, millions upon millions of guns, bombs, ammo, etc., turning the tide in North Africa, Invading Italy, conduction the D-Day Invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and the Race to Berlin – all while fighting the Japanese in the Pacific were all done in this amount of time, but, our current government in a longer period of time can’t build a working webpage.

The Press Has Failed Us

By becoming cheerleaders for the left, our Press has failed in its critical role in our Democracy.

A democracy relies upon an educated and informed citizenry.   More on the failures of our education system later.

The combination of an educated and an informed public ensures that decisions made at the voting booth will be less emotion driven and more based on logic, reasoning, and a sense of community benefit.

Let’s look at some examples of cheerleading vs. reporting.

.

from freerepublic.com

Here in Oregon, our Obamacare plan is called Cover Oregon.  It has been a complete disaster.  I don’t believe the website has signed up any customers and only a few thousand have been able to place coverage using the manual application system.   One TV station (KATU-2-ABC) last week did its job and aired an exposé on Governor Kitzhaber showing all the information that he knew about the failures of Cover Oregon, well before the failures became public knowledge.  It showed letters written to the Governor by the state’s quality-assurance contractor, side-by-side with Kitzhaber saying to the press and the public that the latest reports showed that Cover Oregon was on schedule and doing well.  His lies and the State’s cover up of the failures were well documented.  The other media outlets in town chose to headline, “Kitzhaber Misled by Staff” and similar.  The Oregonian, the largest circulation paper in the State headlined, “Gov. John Kitzhaber Defends Cover Oregon, says “This Isn’t New Jersey.”  As recently as a week ago, over 4 months after the promised roll-out of Cover Oregon, Kitzhaber said, “It’s not elegant, but it’s working and it’s getting better and better every day.”  As of two weeks ago, it appeared that as many as 65,000 had made application via a manual paper based system requiring 400 additional state employees to do the processing.  Of those it looks like half have been approved but have chosen not to purchase a plan.  And, no one is predicting that the website will be functioning before March 31st when the Federal enrollment deadline arrives.

If you are in Oregon, you know that the media has done its best to make this issue go away.  They would not want anything to upset the status quo – if they can help keep democrats in office, they can continue to have significant influence in government.   It is a partnership.  For an interesting take on why the media supports and protects democrats, see this article.

Nationally, the IRS has clearly targeted 501 (c)(4) groups that lean to the right politically. I would love to hear any fact that disputes this.  Yet absolutely nothing is being done to fix this abuse of a government agency and the press continues to pass on the opportunity to examine this and inform us.  And now, Democrats in Congress are attempting to modify the rules on these organizations (501-c-4s) to make it harder for them to be politically active while not touching the special treatment given to Unions (501 -c-5s) or groups like the League of Women Voters (501-c-3s).  What have you heard about this obvious play to slant political fundraising in favor of left leaning organizations?  The very real possibility exists that there would be a Republican in the White House had the IRS not delayed the tax favored status of Tea Party groups and similar organizations.  In a well informed society, this would be a major issue and every news organization would be racing to lead the competition in revealing the latest information.  Read this if you still believe that the IRS targeting of conservative groups is a coincidence.

Without the news media to act as watchdogs how can the public be well informed about what goes on in government?  Is it possible to get “balanced coverage” of politics today?