Asides

Counter the Koch billions and protect social security. Create an echo chamber of truth and share this video with your friends and family.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFymBUsoNWY]

Documents and interviews unearthed in recent months by Brave New Foundation researchers illustrate a $28.4 million Koch business that has manufactured 297 commentaries, 200 reports, 56 studies and six books distorting Social Security’s effectiveness and purpose.
Together, the publications reveal a vast cottage industry comprised of Koch brothers’ spokespeople, front groups, think tanks, academics and elected officials, which have built a self-sustaining echo chamber to transform fringe ideas into popular mainstream public policy arguments.
The Koch brothers’ echo chamber has successfully written the messaging for the AARP, a traditional defender of Social Security for all generations, which recently opened the door to cutting benefits.
The Koch echo chamber begins with think tanks like the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Reason Foundation, which owe their founding and achievements to Koch backing. These think tanks take their $28.4 million in Koch funding and produce hundreds of position papers distorting the long-term health of Social Security.
The authors of these hundreds of self-described policy studies, newsletters, commentaries and books are then paraded through television, print and online news media. Their distorted message is amplified through shows like Hannity, with its 3.3 million viewers per episode, or CNBC’s Kudlow Report and its roughly 300,000 viewers per episode night after night after night.
Eventually, elected officials react to the Koch echo chamber and typically shift their position for reelection or the next campaign.
The investigation revealed Koch-supported policy fixes, and specific language repeated across each document, such as raising the retirement age or eliminating cost of living adjustments for Social Security dependents and beneficiaries.
These Koch ideas percolate through the echo chamber and into the mainstream. The frequency and repetition of the arguments supplant more popular policy recommendations like scrapping the Social Security tax cap, which would free individuals earning more than $106,800 annually to pay taxes on all of their wages, like everyone else.
“The Koch brothers job is to do everything they can to dismember government in general,” Sen. Bernie Sanders says in this video. “If you can destroy Social Security, you will have gone a long way forward in that effort.”
 
The Koch echo chamber has been so effective that AARP, a traditional advocate and defender of Social Security, has repositioned its policy to open the door to cut Social Security benefits for dependents and beneficiaries.


The echo chamber, coupled with AARP’s shift toward cutting Social Security, pushes the argument further toward the Koch brothers’ goals. Influential opinion-shapers in venerable news outlets will react and have already begun to referee disputes on new ‘middle ground’ that has, over time and through the actions of AARP and the Koch echo chamber, grown tolerant of the Koch brothers’ talking points.
“The Koch brothers fund organizations, and you have economists and political scientists working there and they are very, very good at getting on television,” Sanders said. “They are very effective in getting their positions out into the media.”
That’s further personified by the Koch brothers’ lobbying. Koch Industries spent $857,000 on lobbyists in 2004, one year before George W. Bush tried and failed to privatize Social Security. They also donated $104,660 to his campaign. The attacks on Social Security needed more time to stew in the echo chamber before they could be mainstream, and given the increase in lobbyists, they have risen dramatically. AARP’s shift is more proof of the Kochs’ achievements.
In the first two years of the Obama administration, the brothers have spent $20 million on lobbying, according to the Center for Public Integrity. And they’ve diversified their donations to a slew of Republican opinion leaders and strategic Democrats who oppose revenue increases like Sen. Ben Nelson and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And, with AARP’s action, the Koch echo chamber has broken ground on a new political terrain favorable to their ideological and financial goals.
Almost overnight, a historic and popular service, like Social Security, faces extinction. But behind this outcome, the Koch echo chamber has been churning for years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/koch-brothers-social-security-_b_882057.html

re: First Ladies Initiative for Online Safety
My reaction to this announcement is First Ladies / Smirch Ladies. The FOSI board, comprises representatives from the Corporate Technology masters of the universe slice of life,  to those  committed to making money, getting funded and setting  policy.
Above all they want to make sure the FCC will not regulate them in any way.
“The Commission Should Not Mandate a Technology Standard”
Current members include: AOL, AT&T, Bluecoat, British Telecom, Comcast, CompTIA, France Telecom, Google, GSM Association, Kingston Communications, Loopt, Microsoft, Mpower Media, MySpace, NCTA, Ning, Nominum, Privo, RuleSpace, Sentinel, Sprint, StreamShield, Symantec, Telefonica, Telmex, The Wireless Foundation, Verizon, Yahoo and Motion Picture Association of America
2008 FOSI Conference Exhibitors included:
AT&T, Blue Coat, Comcast, Common Sense Media, Confoki, Connect Safely, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Google, iKeepSafe, Microsoft, MPAA, Netsmartz, New Net Device, Optenet, Privo, Sprint, Symantec, Verizon, Web Wise Kids, the Wireless Foundation, and Womble Carlyle.
Adam Thierer of the Progress & Freedom Foundation
is the former director of telecommunications studies at the Cato Institute. Thierer conducts research on how government regulations are … . .xxx….” of course he doesn’t want  greedy corporations to be regulated.
In 1986, David Koch helped found the Citizens for a Sound Economy, and has given over $21 million to the Cato Institute.

And we all know how David Koch is all about protecting children and families from greedy corporations, don’t we. Just look him up. Learn How Lobbyists buy Politicians Query the Lobbying Database
FOSI’s  Smirch Schmadies CEO, Stephen Balkam is also a member of the ISTTF Task Force. He believes The Commission (FCC) should not, however, mandate any one technology because there is no one-size-fits-all solution that will work for all families.
Great! Corporations defeat  FCC regulators. Why bother even having an FCC!!
Stephen C. Balkam CEO Family Online Safety Institute was the Prior founder and CEO of the Internet Content Rating Association and the Recreational Software Advisory Council, where he led the creation of the world’s leading content description system for digital content.  He’s an English Talking Head, for Huffington and anywhere else.
The MPAA knows how to protect children and the public from things they don’t want you to know about or see, just like china!
See This Film Is Not Yet Rated 2005 Kirby Dick’s provocative documentary.
Oh yes, we are being handled by these people.
Kimberly A. Scardino
Jennifer A. Hanley
Family Online Safety Institute
815 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Suite 220
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 775-0131
sb*****@**si.org
ks*******@**si.org
jh*****@**si.org
This is not about children, but protecting the corporate “special interests”.
No matter how many poorly designed websites and webpages are produced by all these corporations it isn’t going to help parents and other civilians when they are merely red herrings used to stop regulators.
http://ecfsdocs.fcc.gov/filings/2009/04/16/5515358382.html
and
http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view.action?id=6520213449
Facebook has now integrated a facial recognition system. You can take a photo of any kid now, and find out who it is,  if they are on facebook. Doesn’t this make you catch your breath?  Don’t you think this should be regulated?
No problem right?
Hey FIOS, Smirch Smadies, Kimberly, Jennifer, Stephen, why regulate facebook?
A group of nonprofits that lobby have sent President Barack Obama a letter requesting changes in the year-old executive order restricting lobbyists from jobs in the administration.
Corporations aren’t going to protect you. Your best bet is to look to independents for help, like Bill Belsey of Bullying.org or the Educational CyberPlayGround. The trusted folks that have been on this list for years and years. Make sure this is the info you share with your admins / teachers / parents and friends.
Protect Your Kids and Protect Yourself cause the Smirch Ladies, FOSI, The Freedom Foundation (free to spy on you)  FOSI Conference Exhibitors, and the other lobbyiests aren’t  going to .
good luck to us all,
Educational CyberPlayGround
www.edu-cyberpg.com
fyi
FLAVOR OF THE MONTH GONE: Upon the recent decision of FOSI’s Board of Directors, the ICRA labeling engine has been discontinued. While all current labels will continue to work with Internet content filters, the ICRA label generator, ICRA tools and Webmaster support will no longer be available.
First Ladies Initiative for Online Safety
Date: Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:24 am ((PDT))
First Ladies Initiative for Online Safety (FLIOS) The First Ladies Initiative for Online Safety is a project of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), an international nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Internet safer for children and their families.
http://www.fosi.org/initiatives/first-ladies-initiative-for-online-safety.html