response to virgin blogger

I agree with a lot of your points on how our government's spending habits are irresponsible and down right scary to be honest. Luckily many economists believe that our recession will end by the middle of 2010. Some of the spending is probably doing extremely good things for our country like pulling us out of a recession. Although the recession ending might be in large part to Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke instead of the massive amounts of money our government has been spending. The fact of the matter is that our country is spending out of our means and until our population as a whole adopts a new mentality and ideology we are in trouble. We as the voters are responsible because we are the people that put the government officials in office. We need to be the reason politicians are scared to sign off on a three trillion dollar spending spree for the country. We need to treat our government officials like they are our children and that they better get permission from their voters before they do anything to get grounded for. The spending needs to be regulated more than it currently is and we all need to do our part to help.

Why do we spend sooo much?

I was talking with my roommate yesterday and he was complaining about how it was the credit card company’s fault that he was in debt because “How could they expect a twenty four year old “kid” to be responsible enough to manage a credit card.” This blew me away. I’ve heard crazy talk like this from homeless people rambling on and on, but I didn’t realize that a lot of Americans have this type of mentality. Our own government seems to have this frivolous mentality of spend now without thinking of having to actually pay someone later. Our government might be old but they are, and have been, acting like a immature young adult with a credit card with no limit. Seriously my roommate spends out of his means but he has NOTHING on our government. The reason our government keeps spending like that is because of our ideology. If nobody monitors how much candy a kid is allowed to have the kid will eat until it is sick, that is what’s happen to our government and their spending habits. We as Americans need to change are frame of mind if we are ever going to be able to change the way the government operates. It is more than likely going to be my generation that needs to change because most of the population that is forty-five or older are set in their ways and they are who they are. We have the opportunity to change and learn more about what needs to happen, and hopefully my generation does a better job of regulating government spending than previous generations. If my roommate is any indicator we are probably headed for more of the same unfortunately.

Obama's budget plan increasing taxes

President Obama and his administration are spending a lot of money to get our country back on track. They realize that sometimes you have to spend money to make money and they are treating the economy like a business.
If a business runs out of capital there is no room for growth and this seems to be the plan President Obama is mirroring. The Obama administration is hoping to create 2.5 million jobs by 2011, which is double the amount of jobs that were lost in 2008. Obama’s initiative to create new jobs is very important to the administration and at the current moment they are taking necessary steps to obtain their goals. Unfortunately this isn’t an overnight process and sometimes the beginning of a plan might look bleak but our government has a plan. If spending money to make money is what it takes, then so be it.
The breakdown of the 3.6 trillion budget proposal shows how a large chunk of the money is going to create jobs for Americans. New energy jobs are getting a lot of money in the budget proposal as well as new construction and these two areas alone should help millions of Americans prosper from the governments spending. Stabilizing our economy is a top priority for our government and I feel confident that our President and his administration are taking every opportunity to make the lives of American citizens better.

In the United States, lack of information occurs all the time, but is overlooked because governmental manipulation of the media does not expose it. The people, who should be controlling the government, are instead controlled by faulty reporting based on government hearsay. Even in the beginning of American history, the government was not always completely honest with the people. To avoid a public uproar, presidents and their appointed administrations manage to steer the media away from scandals or horrific events that could influence public opinion.
For unrestrained government manipulation, the cabinet needs an “in” with the media. If a member of the governmental cabinet working on a secret project plan purposefully “leaks” information while acting for the President in a manipulation attempt, the media would believe it and cover it, which misinforms the public.
An example of government manipulation of the media is Clinton’s success in refocusing the public’s attention away from the United State’s engagement in a war on terrorism. The President’s personal life was exposed to the public. An affair with Monica Lewinsky began in 1995. It appeared to deflect the media from the unsuccessful bombings in Sudan to find Bin Laden. The media had a top story, covering the affair, so without air time dedicated to war reports and investigations, the war flew under the radar gun. The sex scandal became more important than world affairs. Unfortunately for Clinton, although the affair lessened the coverage of the war, many do not condone sex scandals. The Republican Party in 2000, used the scandal to their benefit in 2000, and created a moral campaign with President Bush, a born-again Christian, as their candidate.
There are many examples that clearly indicate how the media has swayed, molded, and manipulated public opinion. In fact, what is amazing is that the media’s view blends into actually becoming public opinion. Water-cooler chatter often times is merely mimicking or parroting the previous nights coloring of the news, with little or no analysis by the general public. Obviously, government manipulation of the media is quite dangerous, as the general public may not have the necessary time or skill level to differentiate between fact and fiction. This issue is of great concern in a democracy where voter knowledge is quite important to the outcome of elections and future leadership of our country. The news media presents these slanted and often-erroneous viewpoints, and the presenters of the information pay handsomely for airtime. To allow the media to unilaterally or arbitrarily inform the public with what should air and what should not, is an even more detrimental solution. This solution could actually curtail the right of free speech to factions of our society that are not in the inner political circle of wealth.

Stage 4

On the blog site called the Daily Kos there was a post by Devilstower on March 27th, 2009 that was aimed at the news media in this country. The title of Devilstower’s post was “An Open Letter to the News Media.” The author went on to address the fact that Republican officials have been stating outrageous fallacies on American news media shows. Republican officials have made such claims as “the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression” without any comment from the news hosts. The author, Devilstower, expresses his frustrations about the news media and how they constantly let the Republican officials make these comments and don’t challenge the credibility of their statements. I completely agree with Devilstower’s argument and I am also frustrated by the lack of accountability that news reporters display by not stopping politicians when they say outlandish things. The media has an obligation to the American public to get accurate information across. When hosts of news shows don’t combat false statements by politicians they aren’t fulfilling their duty to the public. The author of the post, although I agree with their argument, doesn’t provide enough information to where I can proclaim them as a credible source. The author doesn’t list an example of a Republican official saying anything untruthful and although I have heard some crazy quotes from Republicans in the past I haven’t heard them say the quotes that he has in his post. Although the author of the post doesn’t have immaculate credibility I agree with their argument and I think that the news media does need to fulfill their duty as new reporters and not politician puppets.