The Media's Bias Isn't Liberal: It's Corporate

Agreed.
You'll notice that except where some controversy boosts their ratings, most corporations are notoriously bland, avoiding at all costs even the suggestion that they have any opinion on most social matters.
Can you imagine GM endorsing gay marriage?
Or IBM opposing it?
They assert these matters are outside their sphere of endeavor. In essence that's true, but the real point is to offend no one. They want you docile and happy, your face stuffed with their junk food, their shoddy, slave produced crap in your house, their politicians ordering you about.
And you, happy to comply, because what's good for corporate America is good for the world.

They want you docile and happy, your face stuffed with their junk food, their shoddy, slave produced crap in your house, their politicians ordering you about.
And you, happy to comply, because what's good for corporate America is good for the world.

Yes, I heard there was a pharmaceutical company developing a pill to make it so that material goods actually do make you happy. It should be bigger than Viagra.

It's called aspertame, part of the Chemical Weapons division in WWII and slid through regulatory loophole by Rummy and his cronies running out the statute of limitations on the lawsuit to stop it. Interesting history these folks have going back to the darkest deals in the ugliest holes. Rense has a great short history of aspertame.

Ah yessss, aspertame, that chemical soup that makes you want to kill yourself. My congressman, Bart Stupak, believes his son was an aspertame suicide, and he's been gathering info for years on this.

How is it that some people know their congressmen?

Do you want the real answer, or can I be a snarky partisan about it? How about both!! *grinning*

Real: I've been a political junky for several years now, and have often written to Bart Stupak (and received personally-written replies from him) on a number of different issues. He also regularly sends a newsletter out to his constituents in which he explains to us what issues he is currently working on. I've also been to his House of Rep. website and read about all of the issues he is and has been dealing with. Also, he's the only US congressman in the entire Upper Peninsula, and this area is basically wilderness and small towns, and he's a "local", so it's not hard to know all about him if you live here.

Snarky: It's because he's a Democrat. ;)

PS: If you liked the snarky answer better, I think it's worth a vote. ;)

PS: If you liked the snarky answer better, I think it's worth a vote. ;)

How about both!

lower taxes [on corporations] yields higher taxes, as a percentage, on the paycheck-earning individuals, and lower taxes, both as a percentage and nominally, on the majority share stake-holders of the corporations

Corporations are owned by many thousands of individuals though, so effectively your taxes on corporations are taxes on individuals. If you have an IRA or a 401k or an account at etrade or something you're probably one of those individuals. Since things like dividends receive their own separate tax, most corporate income that makes it back to a shareholder is actually taxed twice. (Corporate income tax, then the dividend tax.) If there's going to be a second level tax in between me and what my company earned for me, it makes sense that the first tax would be lower to offset that.

what's good for GM is not good for the GM employee.

That may be true for some individual decisions, but its not true over all. There are 3 major stakeholders for any public company: Employees, shareholders, and customers. Management's job is to balance those 3 stakeholders. Dangle a carrot to shareholders, then find a carrot for employees, all the while make sure your customers are happy. Any company that cant achieve a good balance here fails pretty quickly. That means that whats good for GM in the long run really is good for GMs employees, GMs customers, and GMs shareholders.

providing for the common defense does not necessarily equal obscene profits for defense contractors...

I just looked it up, Northrop Grumman's profit margin is about 5%. Compare that to say, Apple at 13%. It doesn't seem obscene to me. Now if we could just find a way to stop entering into pointless wars we could probably drive that number even lower. =]

health-care for citizens does not equal profits for insurance companies.

Here I can agree with you. The government should pick up this responsibility. Any time the population thinks of a service as an entitlement that you can't be denied, the government really needs to run it. We've hit that point with health care, its no longer acceptable to deny people care because they aren't profitable.

hey ... yeah i know how it is all supposed to be, and what the media has told you.

Corporations are owned by many thousands of individuals though...

that made me chuckle ... so it is good for those thousands, not the 300 million citizens of the USA.
just joking, but, you are reciting the theory of trickle down economics, not actual reality. sure, you have $100 in GM or whatever through a mutual fund or whatever, but do those tax cuts really materially help you, or the CEO of GM with his 10 million dollar pay package (which you theoretically approved) and his $100 million share of GM stock. Do taxpayer funded interstates promote your safety, or selling more cars, and more gas? Your share of taxes paid for bridges and roads will never really benefit you financially -- but they are sweet policies for for GM and Exxon. So you are paying for the roads with your dollars and your health, and GM and Exxon benefit...

health-care for citizens does not equal profits for insurance companies.

Here I can agree with you. The government should pick up this responsibility.

uh-ohh, somebody agreed with me. (and you should be frightened of sounding like a filthy socialist, only concerned about humans ;-) but wait, if you cut out the insurance companies we will all perish because our 401k accounts will go to zero!
[later, take care]

Actually, management's job is to maximize profit for the shareholders, and nothing else.

Of course thats true, but how do they go about doing it? Not by making themselves less competitive to their customers, or by chasing off all their employees. You have to balance the stakeholders in the company beyond the owners to maximize profits. Companies don't only compete on price, they compete for employees and for the cash to expand. It forces them to look at all three stakeholders seriously, not just the shareholders.

Unless, for example, the cost of settling suits over faulty vehicles out of court is less than recalling the faulty vehicles,

The cost of settling suits, and the cost of losing your customer base. The cost of losing your customer base is what you incur when you neglect them as a stakeholder. Lawsuits weren't the only repercussion from all the crappy American cars built in the 80s, and don't think those executives aren't still regretting it.

or streamlining the company means downsizing 30% of the workforce.

I never said every decision is balanced, only that the net of the decisions needs to be balanced. Sometimes companies have to shrink to be competitive. Thats a good indication that they've been neglecting their other stakeholders: ie: owners and customers.

that made me chuckle ... so it is good for those thousands, not the 300 million citizens of the USA.

48.2% of US households own equities (see page 14, warning its a PDF) , thats hardly an elite group of millionaires.

You are reciting the theory of trickle down economics

Trickle down economics is when you give tax breaks to the rich assuming they'll spend more. I'm not talking about that at all. I'm talking about how US companies ultimately are owned by individuals. Taxing the companies is taxing the people, its just doing it at a different point in the chain.

Your share of taxes paid for bridges and roads will never really benefit you financially

Wha? Are you saying we'd be better off without roads and bridges? I don't follow.

Don't forget all the crappy cars built in the 90s and the 00s, either (SUV rollover, whee!). It's not as though the car industry suddenly found a conscience

I agree they didn't, and thats why they're teetering into bankruptcy. Visit Detroit these days, its a pretty dismal place.

Tobacco causing cancer and being addictive (despite PR shills saying otherwise) is the most classic example of systemic corporate dishonesty

I have no problems with that. For every company you can find thats being evil, you can find one being good. I never said companies are morally great. They're morally average, just like the average citizen. Some will be good, some will be bad, most will be in the middle.

In any case I was trying to talk about their taxes, not their goodness. As long as theres an additional tax for companies to provide their earnings to their owners, then their income tax rates should be lower. When it comes down to it if you don't reasonably reward people for taking risks and starting companies, then people wont do that and those employees you're so concerned about wont get jobs in the first place.

They're amoral.

The leaders might be moral or immoral, but that's up in the air, except for the fact that morality costs money and the expressed purpose of a company is to make money.

One idea to fix this, I suppose, would be to make every neighborhood, town or city into a corporation, and then the goal of corporations would cease to be to make money, but rather to attract citizens, and that would mean that the traits that are beneficial to leadership rather than unscrupulous cunning and greed would be wise rule. I don't believe that's ever been tried.

Eh. I don't believe in dystopias. :-)

The book looks interesting. I guess it's more or less an argument against my dreams of anarcho-syndacism? I think the general idea behind what I said, though, is that people would much rather form their own corporation in their own little area than be part of some multinational one. I mean, except when America was still accepting new states, in order to make larger ones everyone has had to be conquered or otherwise forced into joining a greater conglomerate. People like things local.

They just don't like working, particularly not when they don't see any real gain from it.

Eh. I don't believe in dystopias.

Clearly, you don't get the same newspaper I do.

I don't read newspapers.

But that's neither here nor there. I thought that a dystopia thought it was perfect, but actually sucked and had no one fighting against it. I don't think anything today qualifies.

I thought that a dystopia thought it was perfect, but actually sucked

I think that describes our society perfectly, and not just in terms of politics, ideology and economics. It comes down to cultural mores and perceived value. The sickness is not the symptom. It lies much deeper. Connect the dots between....@!$%#! I have to go play for my "room-o-drunks." We'll continue this later.

I guess you have a point.

But we don't believe it is perfect. I think a lot of people don't think it is perfect.