The 4th Estate now apparently thinks non-partisan means not slanted.  This misunderstanding has resulted in passively listening to and allowing liars a platform to promote the world is flat.  But the press cannot objectively create informed public opinion without objectively pointing out the lies and calling out the liars in the moment.

How is it possible to be non partisan about the truth?

To provide two sides to every issue, no matter how wrong one side may be, creates confusion – not objective information.  To take the side of the truth by calling attention to lies is not slanted or negative, but objective.

The 4^th Estate was given the clear responsibility and obligation to objectively create informed public opinion by our Founding Fathers as they considered a free press essential to protect our freedom as a part of our Republic’s system of checks and balances. And this is why the free speech of the Fourth Estate was protected in the Bill of Rights.

Murrow and Walter are dead, and Dan Rather is off the air.  Remember Murrow ended McCarthyism; Cronkite started the conversation to get out of Viet Nam without General Westmoreland at the “round table” to give the “other side.” And Dan Rather, decades after being carried from the floor of a political presidential convention was carried (“kicking and screaming,” to quote Rather) from the floor of the convention, relentlessly questioned George Bush Sr. about having surreptitiously sold arms to Iran Contras and accused Bush of lying on the air.  And during the second Romney – Obama debate, Candy Crowley committed the grievous error of “fact checking” in real time as Romney lied about the fact that Obama characterized what happened in Libya, as “terrorism.” Boy was fox upset, and few rushed to Candy’s defense, when she was only doing what a good reporter should do.

Today the most implausible lies are given life by the New 4^th Estate:  Obama stole from Medicare; Obama can’t get the economy moving – never countering the gross misrepresentation by objectively informing Americans that Obama is dealing with a Depression caused by thirty years of deregulating sociopathic greed (by Democrats and Republicans – a terrific non partisan response to Wall Street and Big Corporate lobbyists);  the Romney/Ryan adoption of fallacious economic theories/ruses from the robber baron era of Social Darwinism; the deficit resulting from the Bush tax cuts which starved the government for revenue and the unwarranted wars coupled with a mountain of financial malfeasance which combined to form the 2^nd worst economy since 1776.

The defenders of the “job creators” are Republicans who have voted in lockstep against proposals that would help their fellow Americans today by providing Government funding to create jobs.  These job creators have shipped jobs offshore and parked profits there as well to avoid/evade taxation.

How often has the media/press aggressively and objectively questioned a Republican about all the Republican votes against all the Democratic proposals for Government to step up to the line and invest in job creating strategies – while so many successful CEOs and Corporations in the private sector are hoarding profits and net worth offshore while Americans suffer financial tragedy on shore.

Where is the fierce objectivity of the media to apply relentless pressure to expose the underlying prejudice to get rid of Obama? This is clearly evidenced by the Tea Party led Republicans who vote against Government spending (investing in America) which would spur a more substantive recovery. The expressed objective of the Republicans is to keep the Depression going to make it easier to defeat Obama, (the black man in the “white house”).

Where have all the muckrakers gone? – Long time passing, long time passing:

42b. Muckrakers

Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1905 to expose labor abuses in the meat packing industry. But it was food, not labor, that most concerned the public. Sinclair’s horrific descriptions of the industry led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, not to labor legislation.

The pen is sometimes mightier than the sword…..

Collectively called muckrakers, a brave cadre of reporters exposed injustices so grave they made the blood of the average American run cold.  For more click on above link.

Muckrakers helped form the soul and conscience of America.  People of great integrity had the dedication and courage to fight against social injustice like: Lincoln Steffens, “The Shame of the Cities;” Ida Tarbell vs. Standard Oil; Thomas Lawson, “Frenzied Finance;” John Spargo, “The Bitter Cry of the Children;” David Philips, “The Treason of the Senate;” and Upton Sinclair, “The Jungle.  And they were protected by the Bill of Rights.

In 2012 an inveterate liar who funded businesses to ship jobs offshore is running to be president on the mantra that He knows how to create jobs, and contends he will add 12,000,000 jobs. Like he did by tanking Bain’s hugely leveraged companies and lots of jobs/lives when sucking out massive dividends and management bonuses, as he shipped jobs offshore where he hid and hoarded his “filthy lucre” – profits. And this is the same guy who wants to lower taxes for the richest “job creators.”  Where are the muckrakers when you need them.

The media/press should, at every turn of the screw, objectively point out that trickle down is gush up – which has only created more wealth for the top.  There is not one shard of evidence to support the job creator myth, yet we have all heard Republican strategists as well as all the Republicans in the House and Senate promote the job creator myth while a member of the media sat there in polite silence – in front of their confused under informed (badly informed) and gullible audience.

This particular Chameleon picked a running mate, a religious zealot who thinks there are two kinds of rape, who did not know Ayn Rand was an atheist.  And does not know or accept that supply side laissez faire economic notions (“theory”) – lies, caused the Great Depression and this one. Ryan and Romney apparently do not know the Chicago School of Economics has now denounced the theories promoted by the morally bankrupt Greenspan who, as Chairman of the Fed, was the leading cheerleader for deregulating greed. Coincidently, Greenspan was leading highly paid consultant to Wall Street.  Regrettably, Ryan attended the same school that I did, Miami University, where we both obtained degrees in economics. However, he was there when the Chicago School’s theories had become accepted due to all the money in support of totally unfettered free markets by Wall Street and the Corporations who finally realized their fantasy, with the Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court that declared Corporations were people. (Just like Romney has.)  Too bad the court gave Multi National Corporations more rights than people, because people cannot give unlimited dollars to political campaigns, and they can’t live forever or go bankrupt as successfully.

When I graduated in 1964 – Miami’s Econ Department did not teach “supply side” – but taught that laissez faire and the maximization of profit theory caused the Great Depression. Further I learned, along with students of economics everywhere, if the private sector is not doing what it must to grow the economy and monetary as well as fiscal policy have been exhausted, then it is up to “Gov Spending” to fill the void.

So the Romney/Ryan trickle down/supply side plan to make the rich richer is exactly what we do not need. And the media/press should have relentlessly provided this objective information as partisans fighting for the truth against the liars who specialize in propaganda to feed their voracious greed.

It is time to remember that Thomas Jefferson believed: The role of government is to protect the public good, which does not only extend to the military.

This is not an argument that Obama and the Democrats are perfect, but there is enough empirical evidence to realize that the “partisan stalemate” in Washington has nothing to do with Republican ideology from 1950.  But everything to do with  infinitely greedy sociopath narcissists like the Koch Bros who started and funded the Tea Party; therefore support and encourage a huge preponderance of the ingrained ignorance and racism in our country today.

We need a more enlightened 4^th Estate, a 4^th Estate with the guts to once again objectively create informed public opinion.  Not just by showing two sides and letting the uninformed make up their own minds, but by making certain that lies are exposed, and proper accurate and objective analysis is the rule.  The 4^th Estate formerly was the public partisan fighting to expose truth.

So now there is the 5^th Estate – the new muckraker on the block.

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