A Worthy Task For Youtube Techies [Archive] - Ron Paul Forums / Liberty Forest

Captain Shays

01-30-2008, 11:50 PM

Back in 1998 when Clinton was planning to invade Yugoslovia I watched the CSPAN debates relative to the invasion. At that time I had never heard of Ron Paul but my position on foreign policy was already exactly what it is today-non-interventionist.

What struck me in my outrage over the consideration of even medling in their affairs and overthrowing a sovereign government was when John McCain got up and nearly pounded the platform in his zeal to send 300,000 troops over there complete with multiple tank divisions, artillary divisions and support personel.

We all know how wrong he was.

If someone could find that speech he made it would make a great commercial and great Youtube video to show just how much of a crazy mad man he is.

I don't know about you guys, but I will do just about anything to prevent Insane McCain from becoming my president.

So please help us find this CSPAN segment and turn it into a Youtube vid. Your country needs you.

Captain Shays

01-31-2008, 12:27 PM

How do media corporations win friends and influence people in our nation's capital? As we noted in our media study, Off the Record, they do it the old-fashioned way, by using the time-honored techniques with which business interests routinely reap billions of dollars worth of subsidies, tax breaks, contracts and other favors. The media lobby vigorously. They give large donations to political campaigns. They take politicians and their staffs on junkets.
Lobbying. From 1996 to 2000, the 50 largest media companies and four of their trade associations spent $111.3 million to lobby Congress and the executive branch of the government. The number of registered, media-related lobbyists increased from 234 in 1996, the year the historic Telecommunication Act became law, to 284 lobbyists in 1999. And that year, the amount of money spent on lobbyists was $31.4 million, up 26.4 percent from the $24.8 million spent in 1996. By way of comparison, in 1998, when media firms spent $28.5 million lobbying, securities and investment firms spent $28 million, labor unions spent $23.7 million, and lawyers spent $19.1 million. The media wasn't the biggest lobbying interest (airlines spent $38.6 million, defense contractors $48.7 million, and electric utilities spent $63.7 million). But unlike the media, none of those interests has the power to determine what subjects are covered in the local paper or on the evening news.

Campaign contributions. From 1993 to June 30, 2000, media corporations gave $75 million in campaign contributions to candidates for federal office and to the two major political parties, according to an analysis of data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics. In the 2000 presidential election, Vice President Al Gore took in $1.16 million and Texas Gov. George W. Bush received $1.07 million from media interests.

The sitting member of Congress with the biggest haul in media money—including his presidential campaign—is incoming Senate Commerce Committee chairman McCain, who collected more than $685,000 between 1993 and mid-2000. Overall, the amount of campaign cash from the media industry is skyrocketing every election cycle, which is typical of political giving in general. For example, media corporations gave $18.9 million in 1997-1998, a 61 percent increase over the previous, 1993-1994 mid-term election cycle.

We found that no media corporation lavished more money on lobbyists or political campaigns than Time Warner. The media giant spent nearly $4.1 million for lobbying in 1999, and from 1993 to 2000, contributed $4.6 million to congressional and presidential candidates and the two political parties. The second heaviest media spender in Washington was Disney, which paid $3.3 million for lobbying and just under $4.1 million in political donations during the same periods of time. This is not a subject either company was eager to discuss. The Center's calls to Gerald Levin, the then-chairman of Time Warner, and to Michael Eisner, chairman of Disney, were not returned. Nor would the CEOs of the other big media political spenders answer our questions: Liberty Media (formerly Tele-Communications, Inc.) chairman John Malone, Viacom's Sumner Redstone, then-Seagram CEO Edgar Bronfman, Ralph Roberts, chairman of the board of Comcast Corp., DreamWorks SKG's part-owner David Geffen, and News Corp., Ltd.'s chairman Rupert Murdoch.

Junkets. From 1997 to 2000, media companies took 118 members of Congress and their senior staff on 315 trips to meet with lobbyists and company executives to discuss legislation and the policy preferences of the industry. Lawmakers and their staffs have traveled near and far, to events as close as Alexandria, Va., and as far away as Taiwan. They've spoken at anniversaries of news organizations, gone fact-finding in Cape Town, South Africa, and toured movie studios. The cumulative cost of the trips was more than $455,000. The top three sponsors of these all-expense-paid jaunts were News Corp., the National Association of Broadcasters and the National Cable Television Association. No member of Congress traveled more frequently on the media industry's nickel than Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican. He and his senior staff were taken on 42 trips—one out of eight junkets the industry has lavished on Congress. In December 1999, Tauzin left with his wife, Cecile, on a six-day, $18,910 trip to Paris, sponsored by Time Warner and Instinet Corp., a subsidiary of the Reuters Group PLC, ostensibly for a conference there on e-commerce. The records don't show where they stayed in Paris, but I have a feeling it wasn't Le Holiday Inn.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/telecom/report.aspx?aid=96