Shields editorial nails "Free-Market" hypocrisy (PBS/WSJ)

OK, this is a little old, but it was such a pithy editorial I wanted to spread it around.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/21/shields.pbs/index.html

"...The Wall Street Journal editorial page has been a dependable and formidable champion for weaning public broadcasting from its federal dependency.

"Ironically, the conservative program that, according to the inspector general, then-Chairman Tomlinson improperly bullied onto the PBS schedule and pushed to fund so generously was "The Journal Editorial Report," a current-events program featuring members of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal.

...

"The Wall Street Journal editors program was not a brand new TV show. It had appeared, until it was cancelled in January 2003, on the cable business channel CNBC, which Dow Jones, the publisher of the Journal, owns jointly with NBC.

...

"Thus, a show that was the indirect offspring of Dow Jones, a publishing and financial juggernaut, is given a multimillion-dollar transfusion of taxpayer money and placed on the PBS Friday night schedule. Do you see any inconsistencies or contradictions in this saga of free-enterprise true-believers turning their backs on the genius of the marketplace and seeking and accepting a federal subsidy? It's enough to make you wonder if conservatives really do believe in the free market."

They are only interested in markets that they can control. That way it is easier to hide the ongoing loot-fest.

P.B.S. had been exhibiting way too much independence and journalistic integrity for their liking. They wanted to remake P.B.S. in to their corpwhorate owned MSM puppet show image to help dumb down the masses. Their is nothing that scares the neocon types more than an informed intelligent American Public.

If you understand that phrase to mean freedom for sale it makes alot more sense.

where regulations are heavy on military and intellectual property laws and against people (what is the name of the law that allows expropriation if someone wants to put up a strip mall on somebody else land?).

Having an army is a regulation. Property laws are regulations. But no laws on guns? To back up the military and recruits for the future.

One set of rules for them - another set for everybody else.

Did I mention that private health care is much less efficient that public?