Pretty Frickin' Much

[filkertom]

This sums up last week nicely.

Comments

Well, I'll tell you, *I* was pretty POd

[capplor.livejournal.com]

when I couldn't even FIND the story about the "warrentless wiretapping" being ruled illegal. Would not any rational analysis show that as MORE IMPORTANT than a questionable confession to a 10 year old murder?

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

Or as Ironic Times put it:

Arrest Finally Made in JonBenet Ramsey Case
Huge federal task force will now shift its attention to bin Laden.

Re: Well, I'll tell you, *I* was pretty POd

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Obviously you're not acquainted with the "QUICK LOOK OVER THERE" school of political expediency. ;) I've been saying it for awhile now: The corporate media are part of the enemy. They don't want us to know this stuff because they profit from us not knowing.

[pabsungenis.livejournal.com]

I'm with Mike Malloy. (http://www.mikemalloy.com) He's been known to mock the mainstream media by, in the middle of reading something seriously detrimental to the government or corporate interests, just start screaming "MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON, PARIS HILTON, PARIS HILTON!"

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

Eh. Not the strongest political cartoon I've ever seen, though I do understand its point.

Actually, I don't love its point, or at least the message it appears to convey on one level. I loathe the practice of making one life, or type of death, more important than another.

Is the media over-salivating over JonBenet Ramsey? Yes, and they have for 10 years. The media has a long, long, LONG history of such things. Are very important stories getting pushed aside? Yes, but by less important stories than the Ramsey case.

Still. I'm uncomfortable with the portrayal that one life is worth more than another--whether that's a 6-year-old who died 10 years ago or a soldier.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Okay, maybe you're missing the all-important matter of timing. The media got saturated with the JBR maybe-killer conveniently when [a] more shit hit the fan in Iraq and [b] the president was judged to be violating the shit out of the Constitution, neither of which saw much airplay because it was All JonBenet All The Time.

In other words, a possible break in a ten-year-old local news story overrode Dear Leader savaging the Constitution and The Other War In The Mideast.

Nobody's trying to say one death is more important than another... unless they're trying to distract you from something.

[fair-witness.livejournal.com]

I gotta admit, I'm one of those who didn't like the huge national fuss made over her when she was killed 10 years ago. Yeah, it's a little girl who died. That's an important story to her family, and on the local level. But a lot of little girls get killed every year, and right now a lot of not-so-little sons/daughters/brothers/sisters/parents are getting killed.

BTW, did you hear that the IRS is having to outsource some of its work? (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/business/20tax.html?ei=5090&en=b7fe197ea6058f49&ex=1313726400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1156172768-nfAJ8KLS0pAVN1CcKVg3fw) I thought this paragraph sums it up nicely:

The move, an initiative of the Bush administration, represents the first step in a broader plan to outsource the collection of smaller tax debts to private companies over time. Although I.R.S. officials acknowledge that this will be much more expensive than doing it internally, they say that Congress has forced their hand by refusing to let them hire more revenue officers, who could pull in a lot of easy-to-collect money.

I suppose I should be grateful the story made the NY Times at all.

[j-e-richards.livejournal.com]

I'm a former federal employee (and I thank the stars each day that it's former) from SSA. We started getting set up to fail several years (and administrations) ago. The insurance companies want to get their hands on managing the retirement and disability programs that are nice and easy and leave the federal drones the nasty stuff. It's easy to make fun of the federal workers, but at least we didn't have an ax to grind or agendas in administrating the programs. On a day to day basis SSA workers just felt lucky that we weren't IRS or EPA...

[fair-witness.livejournal.com]

I can only imagine what it's like. I'm in healthcare myself, and grateful for the job security I have, but I'm really concerned about the way our career civil servants are being treated these days, from the drones to management. Yes, you want to get rid of the deadwood in an organization--any organization. But too often these days it seems like corporations are being held up as intrinsically superior and more deadwood-free than the government. I just don't see that. My own employer is more sensible than most, but there are enough horror stories going around about American corporate culture to make me wary of outsourcing any government work to a corporation.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

When they talk about getting rid of the deadwood, I find myself wondering if they actually know the difference between deadwood and, say, bark. Or livewood. Or most of the frodding tree.

[rook543.livejournal.com]

Tom, I rarely agree with you on a number of things but I think we found something we both whole heartedly agree on!