TBV Feature: Taking our Country back in 2008 and beyond

As we celebrate our 50,000 plus hits here at TBV we will also be chiming in on key theme. What can we as Liberals, Progressives, and Leftists do to win our country back. My recommendations are somewhat different than my fellow voicers here at TBV. I do not look for salvation in the Democratic Party. Voting doesn't figure in my equation. I'm advocating a path of direct action

If we've learned anything in the last six or so years, I would hope we have learned just how important the media is to a functioning democracy. We watched as the major media paraded a host of generals and ex-pentagon officials before us all explaining just how necessary it was to invade Iraq. There was little or no mention of the millions of people around the world who opposed such a move.

It's not by accident that polls have shown 75% of the American public wrongly believing that Saddam Hussein had a part in the attacks on 9/11. The confusion, ignorance, and outright false views by the majority of our fellow citizens is simply evidence of the scale of our internal propaganda system. This misinformation is part of a deliberate campaign to keep us ignorant.

We must all take up the issue of democritizing our media and making it more accountable to the people rather than wealthy advertisers. Our medias first responsibility is to inform us. Entertainment should always come second. Please join the media reform movement.

I can't think of anything more important than instituting campaign finance reform on a large scale. We have the best democracy money can buy with multi-national corporations and wealthy families spending billions to win elections. An estimated $4 billion dollars was spent on the presidential election.

Think about that for a moment. Much of that money was spent on advertisement. That money is spent buying commercial time on our publicly owned airwaves. So now a Haliburton or a Wal-Mart donates millions of dollars the neo-cons need to get commericials out to misinform people. But those are our airwaves. We could essentially cut out the need for the wealthy to get involved at all by providing free access to airtime for debates and edifying comments. We could set aside a small amount of tax money to pay for campaigns and we could thus open up the playing field to a more diverse array of political parties.

My third strategy is simply to join the labor movement.

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