Beck is PURE propaganda!

[RadioRaheem84]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSlFzdH8Xj4

Unions are bad for business?

Free to choose work?

Business free to choose where to hire?

God, I hate this man. How can he get away with blatant corporate propaganda!

Does he not take into account that the stiff competition of Japanese and German automakers pushed the auto giants in Detroit to move production elsewhere forcing wages down. They chose to no co-operate with union and insisted on non unionized labor.

Productivity is up in non-unionized states but wages are low, so companies reap more profits and workers get the shaft.

Any more holes in Beck's arguments?

[Vampire Lobster]

breaking news

[Ocean Seal]

Any more holes in Beck's arguments?
:laugh:

Well in the first few seconds I heard him say that Detroit fell because of the unions when it was evident that the corporate types are the source of the waste. You don't need to be a communist to know that when one corporation uses 1 million dollars to renovate the offices of the executives, it isn't the workers or unions fault.

[WeAreReborn]

Any more holes in Beck's arguments?
Holes? To have a hole in argument means you have something solid. His argument is non existent he just spews shit. Yeah but what do you expect? He is the same as Bill O'Rielly and Hannity they are paid by corporate America to fill the heads of ignorant middle America with their nonsense.

[RadioRaheem84]

Well can I get some more points as to the state of unions in the States.

For instance, why did unions dwindle in the US? What was the corporations role in making this happen?

Also, what can one say about his assumptions that corporations have this intrinsic right to do as they please even if it involves screwing workers?

Someone dismantle his presuppositions.

This is my problem. I read so much Parenti, Chomsky and Zinn that I internalize their logic but when faced with propaganda like Beck's I become dumbfounded that people could harbor those views that and I am almost unable to answer them.

Why are unions bad? I can't even answer that question because I am so dumbfounded like a deer in headlights that people would even ask that.

Similar to the whole, why should I have to pay for someone else's healthcare?

How does one even begin to answer such a non-argument?

This is why we shouldn't brush off people like Beck. He literally internalizes shit leftover from the mainstream media and re-hashes it into super charged right wing shit that can barely be countered because it's so blatantly misleading. You have do dissect layers of assumptions to even get to the argument.

[Barry Lyndon]

Well, you can look at the fact that Sweden has probably the highest standard of living anywhere and its workforce is roughly 80% unionized, for starters......

This is just the Big Lie technique. Say things that are so audaciously false that even someone who can see through it is dumbfounded as to how to respond.

Don't reply with rhetoric. Just with facts, only the facts. That's what we have on our side.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

Even if he's right, why does it matter? It'd only mean that capitalism is incapable of providing jobs and a decent standard of living, and if that's the case it's pretty obvious that the problem is not workers trying to better their standard of living but the system that prevents this.


Productivity is up in non-unionized states but wages are low, so companies reap more profits and workers get the shaft.

I mean, that's really all that needs to be said.

[Thirsty Crow]

...Someone dismantle his presuppositions....

Comrade, I'll try to illustrate with an example.
I've been involved in the autonomous students' initiative fighting education cuts (and fighting for 100% public funding by means of eliminating all fees) and all sorts of people were opposed to our goal.
Now, one particular group is very similar to Mr. Beck. They hold their ground and think that their vision of society is the best. This is based on self interest. And there is no debating them, there is no "dismantling their presuppositions" since they openly accept consequences of such an elitist conception of society. You can only fight them, aggresively, and demolish them in public, by simple arguments which will lead to their open declaration of acceptance of this social phenomena we're talking about.

It is futile to try to understand how did they come up witrh these positions.
Unions are bad because they increase the cost of labour and give headaches to capitalists. And capitalists are the only social groud which can boost "progress". Beck's logic is simple as that, and he is right, in these circumstances only a tiny minority is given the power of wielding influence over society as a whole.

Don't let yourself be dragged into prolonged debate and don't ever forget that you are superior to these dumbufcks. Save your time and energy. Get in the debate, stab quickly and deadly, and leave. At least that's how I do it, maybe it won't fit you, but who knows...

[RadioRaheem84]

You're absolutely right, Menocchio.

I spend so much time debating here and reading about theories and economics from a left perspective that I forget about the rightist position and when it hits me straight in the face it leaves me like a deer in headlights.

That is why leftists that go on FOX NEWS, unless they're prepared, end looking pretty shabby because the framework is so fixed, the assumptions so ingrained, and the questions such non-arguments that it makes them appear to be talking an almost alien language.

Noam Chomsky alluded to this in Manufacturing Consent. That if he were to actually go on a mainstream news hour and discuss politics, that he would appear to be speaking in Martian by comparison to the other pundits. In the documentary to his book, there was an interview with a Senior State Planner who had no idea as to what Chomsky was talking about. What Chomsky said made no sense to him!

How do we even begin to engage in such blatant corporate propaganda?

I thought I was all ready after reading everything from David Harvey to Monthly Review from Marx to Michael Parenti. Yet, when confronted with FOX NEWS junk, I am left speechless and intimidated because of the presumptions used, the language employed and the intimidation to come up with an short sound-bite answer.

[Sosa]

In my experience, it takes a long time to "de-program" yourself from such propaganda especially if you're raised in such an environment. I'm fairly new to leftist ideology and politics and I catch myself sometimes thinking in this "fixed framework". I've been trying to read more leftist lit, and I'm not as well read as many members here, but when I started to read Chomsky, Zinn and some Marx it's like a lightbulb turned on.

[L.A.P.]

He might as well just say that worker's getting pay hurt the economy.

[GPDP]

Comrade, I'll try to illustrate with an example.
I've been involved in the autonomous students' initiative fighting education cuts (and fighting for 100% public funding by means of eliminating all fees) and all sorts of people were opposed to our goal.
Now, one particular group is very similar to Mr. Beck. They hold their ground and think that their vision of society is the best. This is based on self interest. And there is no debating them, there is no "dismantling their presuppositions" since they openly accept consequences of such an elitist conception of society. You can only fight them, aggresively, and demolish them in public, by simple arguments which will lead to their open declaration of acceptance of this social phenomena we're talking about.

It is futile to try to understand how did they come up witrh these positions.
Unions are bad because they increase the cost of labour and give headaches to capitalists. And capitalists are the only social groud which can boost "progress". Beck's logic is simple as that, and he is right, in these circumstances only a tiny minority is given the power of wielding influence over society as a whole.

Don't let yourself be dragged into prolonged debate and don't ever forget that you are superior to these dumbufcks. Save your time and energy. Get in the debate, stab quickly and deadly, and leave. At least that's how I do it, maybe it won't fit you, but who knows...

All of this is correct. I'd like to add, however, it is important we distinguish between right-wing sheep and right-wing apologists.

The sheep are those who are misguided, and adopt right-wing positions because they think it is in their self-interest, but in reality have been duped by constant reactionary propaganda. The apologists are those who are right-wing because it is in their self-interest to be so, and they know it.

The former can be persuaded, though as RadioRaheem says, you do have to struggle with all the presuppositions and other reactionary bullshit. You should not, however, bother trying to argue with the later, because their position is genuinely based on what will benefit them. So for example, it may be worthwhile trying to argue with Bible Belt Joe Schmoe, but it would be absolutely fruitless trying to argue with Sean Hannity. Joe Schmoe is anti-union because Fox News is anti-union, even though he is working class himself. Sean Hannity is anti-union because unions hurt capitalists and their shills. And let's not even get into how fruitless it would be to argue with actual capitalists like the Walton family.

Edit: I forgot to mention what to do about right-wing petit-bourgeois such as those that primarily make up the core base of the Tea Party. Ultimately, I think they are also a lost cause, since again, their interests compel them to adopt right-wing positions. Not to mention that as a class, they admire (or resent, depending on their mood) the big capitalists, and so wish to one day become one of them. So naturally, something like unions ultimately hurts such a prospect.

[Ocean Seal]

He might as well just say that worker's getting pay hurt the economy.
But our GDP depends on exploitation. Somewhere somehow there is a worker getting minimum wage. He is taking that money away from some entrepreneur capitalist who just wanted to buy a fourth home in Malibu. Now he has to choose between living in London, Paris, or Orlando. Maybe if the workers were a bit less organized, he could have his house in Malibu and he could have servants by the dozen. Without a minimum wage, see the rich man would have more. This is the point that our great leader is trying to make. Those cold-hearted workers, conspiring together against their bosses. Preventing the capitalists from posting record profits every quarter. Its enough to make any anarcho-capitalist sick to his stomach.

[yobbos1]

America is so delusional about it's historical need to exploit workers that it is mind-boggling. From slavery to the current idea that illegal immigrants are somehow necessary to do the jobs that Americans "won't do" the right has the general population so heavily propagandised that intelligent debate is non-existent in the current climate. As for auto workers bringing down the Big Three in Detroit; explain to me how the Japanese auto manufacturers survive when Japanese workers earn approximately 90-95% of the wages and benefits that the most fortunate of American unionized earn. Greed, privilege and incompetence at the management level brought down the American manufacturers. Glenn Beck is nothing more than a self serving fuck-wit preaching to the Tea-party choir.

[RadioRaheem84]

I've learned that for some people, especially high net worth individuals, that the interests they serve and protect are obviously the main thrusts to defend such obvious propaganda.

From their end it's no longer a matter of the mind of the heart. They're willfully engaging in such propaganda in order to maintain their status in the order as well having a moral cushion for what they know is a zero sum game.

Our target should be the working class. They're the ones that have totally shifted their reality to fit the social reality of one dominant class. They're the ones whose hearts can be changed. They're the ones that we can reach by reason alone sometimes.

I think that like Chomsky alluded to in his books when asked why he doesn't take on the big right wing pundits; it would be utterly pointless.

Perhaps engaging in some of the more intellectual minded that do not mind debate. But a Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh would be a huge waste of time.

[Comrade_Stalin]

He might as well just say that worker's getting pay hurt the economy.

He already said this. He point out that to decreased unemployment, we should lower workers wages. So in fact he did already point this out.

[RadioRaheem84]

Wait what? Beck said that? We should get paid even lower wages?

[Thirsty Crow]

Wait what? Beck said that? We should get paid even lower wages?
You can't go low enough, comrade.
Those lucky bastards abroad, enjoying the proseprity brought to them by our sweet sweatshops...so let's bring 'em down, thiose nasty wages.

Seriouskly, RR, why are you surprised? as GDPD said, this kind of people are very much aware of theuir own interest and they don't mind speaking their mind in public.

[RadioRaheem84]

It just scares me at how they can radically alter language in such a way as to meet certain private interests at the expense of the rest of us! The mainstream media is bad enough but the FOX NEWS crowd has internalized that logic and put in on steroids.

It's literally an alternative universe they've constructed for their fans. One that is very dangerous. If the liberal social reality was bad enough during the 'golden age of capitalism', imagine the world of the Tea Partier?

I know I am in disagreement with many of my comrades when I say this is fascism, but it is. Not the outright historical context of the world but something akin to it. I am in an online class right now that is studying Nazi Cinema and one of the readings we were assigned to correctly noted how the success of Nazi policies was fundamentally restructuring language and history to meet the Nazi Party's interests.

I am not saying that these guys are Nazis, but the methods they employ really are Nazi like.

[Comrade_Stalin]

Wait what? Beck said that? We should get paid even lower wages?

Fox News Presents Its Plan To Combat Unemployment: Cut The Minimum Wage

Here is the youtube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv5BI5Mv3cM

What it said in the drop box.
"1/9/10 Even though nearly everyone on the panel seemed in favor of cutting the minimum wage, they all seemed to acknowlege that nobody could really subsist on such earnings."

I can't force myselft to post the video on this site.

[RadioRaheem84]

Jesus! How can they be so blatant in their quest to turn this country into a third world nation?

Did you hear the last guy in the segment?

"Oh, they wouldn't just be living off of five bucks an hour. The wife can work to, as well as the teenagers!"

"Oh the plan to lower min. wage is "economically" sound, but politically disastrous".

Meaning he knows the unwashed masses will revolt over their crappy wages. Even though productivity is up, and the owners of these companies are raking in the dough, those pesky workers should lower their wages so the CEO can get a new Yacht.

This is a deliberate and conscious effort to restore class power. It is sickening.

FOX NEWS is corporate propaganda plain and simple.

[Comrade_Stalin]

Jesus! How can they be so blatant in their quest to turn this country into a third world nation?

Did you hear the last guy in the segment?

"Oh, they wouldn't just be living off of five bucks an hour. The wife can work to, as well as the teenagers!"

"Oh the plan to lower min. wage is "economically" sound, but politically disastrous".

Meaning he knows the unwashed masses will revolt over their crappy wages. Even though productivity is up, and the owners of these companies are raking in the dough, those pesky workers should lower their wages so the CEO can get a new Yacht.

This is a deliberate and conscious effort to restore class power. It is sickening.

FOX NEWS is corporate propaganda plain and simple.

Sorry I could find the right clip, were Beck supports this ideal. But as you can see Fox thinks that our lives are something to sell and buy, and for them we just cost too much. That why they wise to lower our wages.

Maybe someone out there will find that clip I was talking about. I can't seem to find it on youtube anymore.

[yobbos1]

Man, that was sickening. "Economically sound"!? Easy for them to say, they're not trying to eke out a living working 3 jobs at $4.00 an hour.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

As for auto workers bringing down the Big Three in Detroit; explain to me how the Japanese auto manufacturers survive when Japanese workers earn approximately 90-95% of the wages and benefits that the most fortunate of American unionized earn.

I don't know the figures behind this but it probably has something to do with the explosion in temporary workers with far less pay and benefits in Japan in the last couple decades.

[black magick hustla]

who9 gives a fuck. the paranoid right wing con is as old as the fucking pyramids. i dont get why ppl get so riled up by this obvious troll is obvious when the commander in chief terrorizes immigrants and turns brown children into craters. the whole social order is our enemy, whether wild right wing trolls or people who i consider worse, liberal politicians

[yobbos1]

I don't know the figures behind this but it probably has something to do with the explosion in temporary workers with far less pay and benefits in Japan in the last couple decades.
If true this is more of a worldwide phenomenon than I thought.

[Amphictyonis]

Well can I get some more points as to the state of unions in the States.

1.For instance, why did unions dwindle in the US? What was the corporations role in making this happen?

2.Also, what can one say about his assumptions that corporations have this intrinsic right to do as they please even if it involves screwing workers?

Someone dismantle his presuppositions.



1. Capital flight- what causes capital flight? Profits. Capitalism cannot be profitable with a grossly exploited production labor force. Those GREEDY western workers demanded an 8 hour work day, the abolition of child labor and a living wage! Bastards! But seriously, we in the west have been, since capital flight took place, more so victims of usury. We're still wage slaves but debt is killing western wage slaves while work is killing third world wage slaves . The whole thing is fukt. You already know the answers to these question :)

2.Didnt you know? The self interest of the human being called corporation is symbiotic in nature. The wealth of these corporate people 'trickles down' just as Reagan said. When 1% of the worlds population own and control 90% of the land wealth and resources this is a good thing. Hell, just work hard and study in school and you too can become a corporation. (my answer to 2 was obviously in jest ) :)

[Red Commissar]

But is this really new information for Beck's audience? AFAIK this conception has always been in the psyche of the American right, to blame everything on over-privileged and lazy unions and their members. As he always does Beck is preaching to the choir, which is why people watch him- they like it that someone is saying what they think. He's not necessarily teaching them anything new or damning.

[RadioRaheem84]

From a person I was debating on the subject:



Minimum wage is pricing many people out of entry level jobs that could get their foot in the door for something bigger.

It's why many jobs are going overseas. Not all jobs are worth what minimum wage demands you pay.


This idea though, that people will be forced to work for less is dubious. There is a lot to be said for more flexibility in what you can pay someone. It gives the employer more opportunities to create jobs and when there are more aggregate jobs to be had, it puts the employee in a better position to negotiate a better salary.



Minimum wage puts certain levels of jobs out of consideration and what happens in that case is that someone that does make minimum wage will have to take on the tasks that could've been taken on by an additional person(s). So, you have one person taking on the tasks of 2 or 3 people because those tasks do not justify a new minimum wage hire. I have had personal experiences of this matter in the past.

[Thirsty Crow]

From a person I was debating on the subject:

This idea though, that people will be forced to work for less is dubious. There is a lot to be said for more flexibility in what you can pay someone. It gives the employer more opportunities to create jobs and when there are more aggregate jobs to be had, it puts the employee in a better position to negotiate a better salary.
So, basically, this person reiterates the social positions of the capitalists and the working class. Here, he/she makes it pretty clear that he/she thinks it is normal that the capitalist is the privileged persona, making possible the social development by means of capital investment. Furthermore, considering the lack of any notion of this being problematic, it could be said that this person naturalizes something that is historical.
This leads us to a conclusion that this person functions as and apologist and ideologue (if we uphold the notion of "ideology" as "false consciousness"; and it is indeed false consciousness at work here if the proposition of naturalization holds) of the capitalist social formation.

Now, going to the "micro" level...
There is another problematic aspect here. Namely, the person presupposes that the employers' opportunity to create more jobs will result in capital investment which will create more jobs. But this is an unproven assumption, and even worse, there are clear tendencies that might work against this possibility:

1) outsourcing/capital flight - jobs may be created, but not within the nation-state borders, resulting in the practical support of the "super-exploitation" which is being faced by the poor and the working class in the Third World. Need I protest the dehumanization at work here, when capital is accumulated on the backs of abnormally exploited people, and then reinvested in its "country of origin"?

2) capital accumulation via financial markets - it seems to me that the realization of this option would not lead to a result which this person has envisioned...however, someone who knows more about economics may correct me

3) combination of the two + personal consumption - considering that the culture of late capitalism thrives on rampant consumptionism, it is logical to conclude that a portion of capital may be "allocated" to the attempts at expanding on one's own lifestyle

"Not all jobs are worth what MW demands you pay..."

Excuse me, what? Who determines the "worth" of a job?

[GPDP]

Indeed, those responses are full to the brim with pro-capitalist presuppositions (that's quickly becoming a favorite word when RadioRaheem is around, ain't it? :D). What you gotta do is point them out, and not give your opponent the benefit of setting the terms of the debate with "matter-of-fact" suppositions and canonizing them as the natural way of things.

[Victus Mortuum]

Unions are bad for business?

Business free to choose where to hire?

He is right on these two, in a sense. Understanding what he is saying here is FUNDAMENTAL to understanding how a member of the worker-class can be a conservative.

The truth is, most people take their political positions because that position is materially in their interest in some way. I'm sure that isn't something I have to explain here. It is also important to understand that the entirety of political and economic discussion in the U.S. assumes private ownership of corporations/the means of production and separate nation-states. That first concept in and of itself is relatively alien to most workers, let alone collective ownership. From this ground, both liberals and conservatives become representatives of various interests *within* the nation assuming private ownership of capital.

Conservatives advocate for the short-term material interests of the capitalists of the nation and the long-term material interests of the workers of the nation.

Liberals advocate for the short-term material interests of the workers of the nation and the long-term material interests of the capitalists of the nation.

Conservative:
This is because in the short term, capitalists in the nation want to make huge profits and to not be fettered in their choices of how to control the MoP they own. In the long term, workers in the nation want jobs to stay employed (for fear of becoming a member of the unemployed) and want to be free to be hired if they can find a job.

Liberal:
In the short term, workers in the nation want higher wages and better benefits and easier lives. In the long term, capitalists in the nation need workers to consume more of the product to limit overproduction, lowering their profits.

What is fundamental here is to understand the role unions and government aid to the worker-class play. When a country has more unions and aid (liberalism - legally lowered rate of exploitation), it is in the short term interests of capitalist profits to flee to a country where there are less unions and aid (conservativism - higher rate of exploitation). This fleeing makes the workers more acutely aware of their long-term interests, and makes them fall in line with the conservative politicians. As long as there are nations and as long as there is international capitalism, there will be long term fluctuating trends swinging between more liberal policies and more conservative policies (it is also in the short-term interests of international workers to work in the more liberal countries and not in the more conservative ones - so immigration policies fit perfectly into this trend).

It's all about the wrongly assumed framework from the first word that is spoken. Privately held corporations/MoP and nation-states are the problems that create this cycle. At least, this is a theory I've been developing. You must question these assumptions at the very beginning and not get sucked into arguing within the false framework/dichotomy.

[Fulanito de Tal]

I notice that a major factor behind U$ political news is the confusion between correlation and causation.

Fact
Black people (US) are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. (This is really true)

Scientific community's conclusion: Schizophrenia is influenced by environmental factors. One of them is stress. Black people endure more stress than Whites. Stress is ONE influential factor resulting in higher levels of schizophrenia diagnoses in the Black community.

Fox News' conclusion: Black people are crazy. Does that make me a racist? No! Look it up. It's a FACT. All Black people should be forced to take mandatory psychological evaluations. We (Whites) need to know who's crazy! (We're still racist)

Some how, many of the prominent theories are not mentioned. Also, it weird that butchering the culture of people stolen from Africa is not mentioned either. Fox News can prove anything as long as it uses spurious correlations.

Up next: Does eating ice cream make you drown? Our reporters investigate why drownings increase with ice cream sales. (This CORRELATION is also true, but probably because people independently do both more in the summer).

[Amphictyonis]

FOX NEWS is corporate propaganda plain and simple.
So is MSNBC. It's all a false dilemma wrapped around a red herring in a room full of mirrors built on pyramid (scheme)of cards. Keith Olberman and the other sycophants had me ready to implode during the Obamacare bullshit.

I think we'd be better off giving the liberal MEDIA outlets more (negative) attention than FOX News. Not with the goal of changing the MsM story line but showing the people that there's many of us who see the entire MEDIA structure as a problem. Forget picking a side. It's so obvious how the issues are framed and controlled by one perspective.

:)

o2z7LSKqg60

[RadioRaheem84]

This is true. FOX News is just a concentrated form of the mainstream media. It's on steroids.

The media always bias toward the establishment and corporate propaganda.

I just never thought right wing news would become mainstream. That is the strangest thing.

[CartCollector]

I thought posting this would be relevant. It really shows the perils of lowering the minimum wage, at least to those paid nearly that wage.
It's from here: http://www.nickthorkelson.com/neolibvhistory.htm

Also, there's other problems with the "minimum wage = unemployment" argument. For instance, if the minimum wage causes unemployment, does that mean there was no unemployment before the minimum wage? In the US, the first federal minimum wage law was created in 1938, so obviously there must have been no unemployment before then.
You can also use mainstream microeconomics if the other person accepts those arguments. For instance, a "price floor" only affects the market when the equilibrium price is below the floor, otherwise it has no effect. This means that for jobs with (equilibrium) wages above the minimum wage are unaffected by it.

[homo sapien]

The tea party has really made unemployment their message. Working class and middle class people are really hurting right now, and they look to their patriotic heroes on Fox News for solutions. People feel like they tried the "liberal" approach to Obama, and we still don't have jobs. So maybe there's something to this whole "big government, unions, immigrants and lazy poor people are the reasons there are no jobs" stuff. The sad thing is that if the economy turns around these people will think they were right. If it does not, then Fox will be there to tell them that the real problem is that Republicans were behaving like "RINOs" and still haven't slain the big bad government. Either way, this country is seriously screwed...:crying: