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Perception is Reality
This morning on C-Span Washington Journal, Walter
Isaacson of the Aspen Institute was on the program to talk
about his article in Time magazine titled "How
to Save Your Newspaper". The Newspaper
industry is collapsing and the heavy hitters are
coming out to try and save it.
"During
the past
few
months,
the crisis
in
journalism
has
reached
meltdown
proportions.
It is now
possible
to
contemplate
a time
when some
major
cities
will no
longer
have a
newspaper
and when
magazines
and
network-news
operations
will
employ no
more than
a handful
of
reporters.
There is,
however, a
striking
and
somewhat
odd fact
about this
crisis.
Newspapers
have more
readers
than ever.
Their
content,
as well as
that of
newsmagazines
and other
producers
of
traditional
journalism,
is more
popular
than ever
— even (in
fact,
especially)
among
young
people.
The
problem is
that fewer
of these
consumers
are
paying..."
Something that Isaacson said made my heart leap with joy
so I fired off an email to C-Span hoping that they would
read it - at least off air if not on air. They did
read it - on air. Here is what I wrote:
Mr. Isaacson,
You made my day. You said online
advertising revenues went up and up and
then dropped off and now newspapers are
in trouble. It's a joke Mr. Isaacson.
The newspapers have just experienced the
"pump and dump" with ad revenues. And
I'm going to enjoy every single minute
of watching the decline because when my
industry - IT industry experienced the
same thing... the newspapers all
supported the corporations perpetrating
the scam. When the same thing happened
with Nurses' salaries, newspapers played
right along. Now it's their turn for
"creative destruction" by fraud.
What a great day.
Thanks,
Vicky Davis
Twin Falls
He only read part of it ending before the part about
newspapers supporting the corporations perpetrating the scam
but that's ok. He read enough of it to get the gist
which was to identify the "pump and dump" as something going
beyond the Wall Street stock fraud. The "Pump" is the
use of the media by Public Relations (PR) people to create a
perception and the "Dump" comes when the game is over.
The way it works is that PR people hired for the purpose of
creating a certain perception create "News", it's hyped in
the media - both broadcast and print. The game is over
when objective is achieved whatever the objective
happens to be.
I became aware of the strategy when I was researching the
outsourcing of Information Technology (IT) jobs to India.
The propaganda promoted by the media was that there was a
shortage of IT professionals which was pretty damn odd
because I couldn't get any responses to my resume even
though I was willing to relocate anywhere and I had 20 years
of solid experience behind me. Then I found out about
Harris Miller of the Information Technology Association of
America (ITAA). Miller was the inspiration
for the 'Benedict Arnold' section of my website (speakers
on). If you click on the picture of Miller,
you'll find this in his
profile:
Harris Miller is an immigration lobbyist who made
his name in labor arbitrage when his firm,
Immigration Services Associates was hired in the
1980’s as a consultant/lobbyist for the
National Council of Agricultural Employers.
In 1982, the Council raised a million dollars for
the campaign of George Deukmejian. “Between 1983
and 1990, Deukmejian began shutting down
enforcement of the state's historic farm labor
law. According to the UFW: “Thousands of farm
workers lose their UFW contracts. Many are fired
and blacklisted”.[1]
During that period, Miller used a strategy of
propaganda to create the image of ‘shortages’,
which he then used as evidence to lobby for the
increased supply of imported migrant farm
workers. He supplied the media with stories
"fields full of crops, just lying there, rotting
in the sun because of the 'crisis' of a 'shortage'
of farm workers."[2]
He then used that as evidence to lobby lawmakers
to allow massive importation of temporary farm
workers from Mexico to ‘save the crops’ thereby
breaking the United Farm Workers Union.
In 1995, Harris Miller became president of the
Information Technology Association of America (ITAA).
Since that time, he has honed his strategy of
‘shortage’ and lobbying for remedies. With the
big money backing of the Information Technology
corporations - (400, 11,000 or 26,000 members
depending on who he is talking to), he not only
helped flood our labor markets with foreign
workers, he used a massive media propaganda
campaign to create the image of a
shortage while at the same time, he was
working proactively to export our high tech sector
to India.
Not content to simply use the lobbying power of the ITAA,
other organizations were spun off for the purpose of selling
the idea that there were shortages and to give cover to
Congress using the illusion of 'numbers'. One such
spin off for lobbying and PR supplied propaganda is
Compete America. Even though the newspapers
pretend there is a Chinese Wall between their editorial page
and their news page, it's simply not true and everybody
knows it - most of all the reporters who write stories for the
paper know it. They know who signs their paychecks (or
who used to sign their paychecks... hehehehe what goes
around - comes around).
Customer Service jobs, telephone technical support,
writing software are all classified as a 'service jobs'
because they involve a person engaged in an activity classed
as services. Knowledge/Service jobs - including what I
did for a living were roughly 65% of our economy prior to
the Internet going public. These jobs were among the
best, high paying jobs in this country. When the
Internet became available to the public and Harris Miller
perpetuated his "shortages" scam to justify the export of
those jobs, it was the torpedo to our economy that started
the collapse. And the "journalism" profession that
Isaacson would like to save is complicit in the collapse
because of their dishonesty in the News Department and it is
sweet justice to see that their industry is collapsing too -
victims of the same game they played against the working
people in this country. They were suckered by
manufactured perception perpetrated by Google and Yahoo that
there was going to be big money - coming is small amounts -
for internet advertising. George Soros is the master
of this strategy - create a bubble by manipulation of
perception - and then pop it.
The biggest misperception in this country today is in the
nature of automation - computer systems. What computer
systems do is to enable the centralization of control and
with the centralization of control, comes the power to
control and the power to kill off competitors to that
control. That might seem counterintuitive because
there are what? 50 or 100 million PC's in this
country? Where is the centralization of control?
Microsoft and Apple to a lesser extent. And by
virtue of the Internet which has become the economic
circulation system of the country (and the world because of
the global network) CISCO systems which manufacturers the
Internet infrastructure. And in transportation of
packages and mail - Fed Ex and UPS (DHL recently bit the
dust). Automation is creating a few giants who are
destroying everybody else. What the Internet did was to turn our
country into one big organization - all receiving
"nourishment" from the Internet circulatory system - but
only the biggest will survive when all is said and done
because of the centralization of control and the
corresponding power that comes with it.
In the past week or so, I've written a quite a bit about
Buckminster Fuller and to a lesser degree - about the
Futurists who were predicting the future based on the
anticipated technological gains and how they would change
the world. In one of the things I read or videos I
watched, someone - and I do think it was Fuller, said that
because of automation, only 10% of the people employed at
that time (mid 1960's) would have jobs because of the
automation - centralization - fewer and fewer people able to
control more and more resources. And he was right.
And the collapse of our economic system is the manifestation
of it. The "winners" at the automation game are
like giant leeches on our collective body and they are
sucking the life out of it and our extremities are dying.
And because of their power to control, they won't do a thing
to stop it - rather they will hasten the demise -
increasing their own power. Despite my glee at
watching the death of the faux News industry, it breaks my
heart to see what's coming and to not be able to do anything
about it.
Vicky Davis
March 1, 2009
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