Freedom of Speech and How It Can Be Improved

First, let me say that I strongly support freedom of speech and believe that it has to be absolute as far as someone being able to state their mind in public or in private.  There will always be voices like Glenn Beck’s  that are offensive to the majority of people, but we must allow their speech in order to protect speech for everyone.  However, the idea of freedom of speech has been abused by the misrepresentation of information and because of that, I am in favor of a labeling requirement.  My argument will span how free speech is misused in selling both political agendas and everyday products because they are both key to how we live our lives in the 21st century.  They directly effect how our country is being run and our quality of life.

The concept of freedom of speech includes the idea that everyone has the right speak their mind and  to listen to the opinions of their choosing no matter who is providing them.  It does not prevent that freedom simply by labeling the content accurately.  When we go to the store, something that is poisonous for human consumption has to be obviously labeled as poison so that the consumer knows that they are buying poison.  It doesn’t prevent someone from buying it.  It simply makes them aware of the danger. 

In modern media, social poison is being sold as news with no labeling requirements of any kind.  I simply believe that information should be labeled as to its basic nature for the benefit of the consumer.  Movies, television and games are rated to help protect children from seeing inappropriate media.  Would it be so bad for opinions to require a disclaimer that it is explicitly an opinion and that news must go back to the system where reporting required both sides of a story with verifiable facts in order to earn the label of news?  Would it be wrong for a lobbyist or employee of an industry to have to admit their financial ties to it while telling you to support their agenda?  When a commercial comes on the TV in support of a political agenda, isn’t the knowledge of who is paying for that message and why they are paying for it key to understanding the bias of the message so you can make a reasonable decision as to whether or not you should believe the message?  Would it be bad to always know who is paying for an ad when it is for an industry agenda instead of a specific product?

Do we want to live in a society where we have to pretend that news is an honest representation of fact?  A world where we can be told up is down and if we don’t go out of our way to verify it, we make fools of ourselves when we discuss issues with people who know the facts.  A world where we can be mislead into voting for issues and people who want to do things that are against the public welfare.  A world where public servants can lie to us to push the agenda of the special interests who are lining their pockets rather than pushing an agenda that benefits the people who voted for them.  A world where special interests can create fake public rage to try and popularize their unpopular agenda.  A world where truth in advertising is being replaced by tricks and illusions in order to sell products at any cost.

Let me show you a couple specific examples of what has been happening and how it effects our society and daily life.  The first will look at current political messaging and the second will address product messaging.

When someone tells you that lowering taxes on the rich creates jobs and that taking away tax breaks for oil companies will cost consumers more money, they are not basing those claims on any historical fact, they are basing their claims on an ideology which they have been encouraged to present by the special interests who profit from that agenda, yet they are allowed to portray their opinion as a realistic view of the facts with no representation of their sponsorship. 

They know that you fear job losses and increased prices.  They rely on your fear causing you to act irrationally in support of their greed based agenda.  Our economic history clearly shows that our economy prospered the most when the top earners and corporations had to pay more taxes than they do now.  From 1930 to 1980 when tax rates were at their highest levels for the rich and corporations, there was a steady increase in available jobs and a steady increase in the standard of living for average Americans.  They say that their current tax rate of 35% is 10% higher than the average American pays, but they don’t tell you that they already pay an average of 17%, 8% less than the average American through tax loopholes. 

They also scream about redistribution of wealth, but when they redistribute it upwards they claim it is for the good of society even though every shred of fact says they are wrong.  In the 1890s, the 1920s, and during the last 30 years, special interests pushed their agendas into place and destroyed our economy by creating a massive imbalance of wealth.  When the top 400 people own more wealth than the bottom half of the population, 155,000,000 people, and all of the people with wealth avoid paying taxes, how can you expect a balanced budget?  It is completely disingenuous to scream about balancing the budget while lowering taxes for the rich.  Another example of manufactured rage to get people to support the gutting of necessary social services.



Anyone who runs a business knows that you can cut expenses to help balance a budget, but without considering revenue in the equation, your business will fail.  When millionaire politicians who get the majority of their funding from corporate interests and other rich people say that new taxes for the rich “are off the table”, isn’t it obvious that they are NOT thinking of what is best for America, but rather what is best for their backers and themselves?  When Rush tells his audience that taxing the rich is wrong while personally saving millions of dollars per year on taxes, should you really trust him?  Wouldn’t it be nice to know who has contributed to a politician or sponsored a pundit when they make claims about an agenda?  Don’t we deserve to know who is pulling their strings?  If they are not doing anything wrong, then they should have nothing to hide.  Take a look at this graph and ask yourself if the policies they have pushed since 1980 have helped balance our budget.



Now take a look at the real value of stimulus types to our economy and ask yourself, “are tax cuts the best thing for the economy and are entitlements really bad for the economy?” 



When you give money to rich people, they accumulate it.  When you give money to average people, they spend it immediately on the things they need to live like mortgages, auto expenses, food and clothes which helps the economy.  They always preach supply and demand, but their tax policies do not promote demand so they actually hurt suppliers a.k.a. businesses, especially the small and medium businesses that provide 80% of American jobs.  Big businesses are multi-national and can find new customers in other countries where the middle classes are growing like ours used to do so they don’t care if they lose American customers.  They can squeeze every dime out of us and move on.  When profit is the ONLY incentive, people get left behind.

Now lets look at product marketing.  When the latest “corn sugar” ad states that our body cannot tell one form of sugar from another, the ad contains truth and falsehoods at the same time.  They know that there has to be enough truth to not be sued for an outright lie, but they also know they can twist your mind with gimmicks and imagery without being forced to admit it.  Whereas some forms of sugar fall into the same category, sweeteners are not all digested alike and some can cause immediate and long term health issues.  Recent studies show that our current epidemics of diabetes, heart disease and many other health issues are being caused at least in large part by our mass consumption of sugar.  Studies have shown that over 9 teaspoons of sugar a day for the average man is definitely bad for your health.  A single can of Coke has 10 teaspoons!  The average American now consumes 240 pounds of sugar a year and we wonder why we have a health care expense problem?!

They know health conscious people know that sugar is bad so they try to bring them back by saying that they have reformulated their soda so it is all natural now.  Natural is good, but only when the thing that is natural is good for you in the first place, but their objective is for you to forget that long enough to buy a soda.  If that doesn’t work, they tell you that people who recommend against drinking soda are “taking away your rights” when all they are doing is suggesting a healthier behavior.  When we try to tax soda to help pay for the increased health care costs that it is creating, they place ads that tell people it is unfair to increase costs for average families, yet it is no different than the tax on cigarettes that helps pay for the 400,000 people who die each year from smoking them.  We get really angry when terrorists kill 3,000 people.  Shouldn’t we get angrier when they kill 400,000 people a year and make 150,000,000 people sick from eating too much sugar?

We have made great strides in understanding the human psyche.  Like all information, this can be used for positive changes in society, but it can also be misused to manipulate people for the sake of profit.  In politics, it is used to get people to vote against their own best interests.  In advertising, it is used to get you to buy products that may have no real benefit to you or may actually hurt you like cigarettes and sugar.  They tap into your base desires and fears in order to manipulate you.  If you don’t consider the underlying reason for a message and perform a cost / benefit analysis, you basically become their puppet.  When you get sick from eating bad food, do they tell you not to eat it?  No, they offer you a remedy that they can also profit from selling to you.  If you listen to your body, it tells you when something is wrong. 

Sometimes there is a valid health problem, but most of the time, modern Americans create their own health problems by eating behaviors based completely on taste instead of health.  The irony is that eating well does not have to taste bad and makes you feel better all of the time, whereas eating unhealthful foods may give some immediate pleasure to your palate, but usually leaves you feeling bad and acting accordingly.  When you eat sugary foods, you experience an energy roller coaster because of the initial boost to blood sugar and then a sudden reduction of it, which often encourages you to eat more sugar to compensate for the crash! 

If you have ever crashed in the middle of the day, you know what I am talking about.  This can also occur from eating very fatty meals.  The fat enters your bloodstream and slows the blood flow preventing oxygen from reaching your cells which makes you feel tired.  When you eat healthy food, that doesn’t happen.  Also, when you get tired from eating bad food, you are far more prone to negative behavior because it tends to also make you irritable.  Ever snap at someone for no good reason when you are tired?  What you eat directly effects your quality of life, how you behave and how people view you.  Marketing that is not forced to warn you when a product in unhealthy contributes to a decreased quality of life.  If we forced honesty in advertising, the market would shift towards offering healthier products which would in turn create a better quality of life.  Is that such a bad idea?  Is it really taking away freedom when it is simply giving you more good choices? 

I want everyone to be able to enjoy free speech, but it is not truly free when we don’t know if they are giving facts or opinions and when we don’t know why they are speaking and who, if anyone, is paying them to speak. Free speech is an illusion when messaging is controlled, and we are not privy to who is controlling it or why.   Wouldn’t we all be better decision makers and have a higher quality of life if we really new who was behind the messages, why they were promoting those messages and what the potential dangers are if we buy their messaging?  Are you really free when your life is controlled by someone else’s concepts of how you should look, eat and vote?  I relish freedom.  I believe that you must take responsibility for your life including the information that you choose to believe to be truly free.  There is no greater freedom then knowing the truth and being strong enough to question life rather than blindly running through it.  Like the old saying goes, “The truth will set you free!”

Good journeys my friends!  -Dave S.

© 2011 David Stein

How We Define Ourselves and Politics

Democracy is based on the concept of collective bargaining, the idea that two sides of an issue can come to together to discuss compromises that can remove obstacles to resolving problems.  No one point-of-view has all of the answers so exchanging ideas gives us a better chance of finding reasonable resolutions to important issues.  Collective bargaining does not exist when one side says that we must do it "my way or no way".  Honest political negotiation cannot exist when politicians owe more to special interests than they do to their constituents.  The "Citizens United" case is not honest in name and did more to hurt our democracy than anything else that I have seen in my lifetime.  This case had nothing to do with citizens, it had everything to do with corporate power in Washington.  Our founders did not intend corporations to be treated as citizens or they would not have created two sets of laws, one with protections meant for individuals to preserve freedom for the people and one that was meant to keep corporate greed from destroying what they helped build.  We cannot have these enormously powerful institutions buying our representatives and expect to have a "government for the people by the people."

When I was young, there was genuine discussion between conservatives and liberals that often resulted in laws that moved our country forward.  Although some semblance of discussion still exists, the overriding behavior in congress and in the electorate is to be blindly partisan now.  Whereas Americans should be Americans first and Republicans and Democrats second, we rarely see this today.  Once regulations that kept anyone from having too much control of the media were removed, the media began to create political stereotypes that demonize the other side and do not hold true if you take the time to actually look.  Conservatives are not all gun toting war mongers and liberals are not all drugged out lazy hippies.  If you are a Republican, Democrats are not your enemy, and if you are a Democrat, Republicans are not your enemy.  Our mutual enemies are the forces that wish to replace our democracy with Plutocracy or Oligarchy.

These forces have existed throughout human history.  There always have been and always will be people who crave power and think their ideas are the best even when dis-proven because their egos cannot accept any semblance of failure.  This points to the fact that anyone who needs to be in control feels that way because of cracks in their self-esteem.  True self-confidence only exists in people who don't need to control or be controlled.  Real leaders don't need to keep subordinates constantly under their thumb.  Instead they encourage them to reach their potential so that they can add as much positive productivity as possible to every situation that they face.

When politicians act like they know best even when a vast majority of the electorate disagrees with them, they are no longer leading.  Leaders listen and seek compromise that moves the issue forward to try and resolve it for the common good.  No resolution will ever please everybody, but they can please the majority when those in power listen to the people and engage in thoughtful discussion about the issues.  One must always take into account the messaging around an issue as sometimes the messaging misleads people to support the wrong side of an issue, the side that ultimately works against their own welfare.  Most people are unaware how easily they can be conned into supporting a point-of-view that ultimately hurts them.  This is most often accomplished via fear.  Politicians know your fears are the key to motivating you.  The only way to stop being a puppet is to realize your own fears and not let them control your behaviors and your thoughts.  We are in an age where politicians are often "snake oil salesmen" trying to push a corporate agenda that is bad for the common man.  They make relentless claims that regulating business is bad for you.  The long term repetition of these claims works as a form of brain washing.  Even a lie feels like truth when it is repeated enough times.  Only you can make the effort to find truth as no one is going to do it for you.  To find truth, you must be honest with yourself and determine what beliefs that you have are based on verified fact and what you believe blindly based on your biases.  Once you know what you believe blindly, you must endeavor to find facts if you don't want to be someone's fool.  We must examine both sides of an issue honestly to find honest answers.  Extremists live at the beck and call of their puppet-masters.  If you don't want to be a puppet, then you should seek knowledge and rational compromise on issues and not support politicians who aren't working for the people.

This may be a defining moment for the United States.  Are we going to allow ourselves to continue returning to the very system that we hated so much that we had a revolution against it?  The original Tea Party had as much to do with the monopolistic control of commodities by large British corporations as it had to do with taxes.  We wanted control of our commodities.  We took it.  Now we are giving it away to big banks and big businesses that have only one loyalty, money and the people who control it.  If you can be honest with yourself about those who follow the politics of greed and work to replace them with real representation, we can remove the road blocks that keep us from fixing the real problems in America.  We need to remove the cancer that is corporate money in Washington by changing to publicly financed elections based on debates over a short period of time before an election.  If politicians are only accountable to us, then they are likely to start listening to us again.

When you are sick, you can focus on taking drugs that cover up your symptoms and stay sick, or you can work towards finding a cure for your illness and therefore permanently remove the symptoms.  Our Democracy is very ill.  We need to focus on a cure instead of attacking each other like we are the symptoms.

Long Live the American Dream!  -Dave S.

"You must be the change that you want to see in the world." -Gandhi

 © 2011 David Stein