A Progressive Stimulus Package for America’s Future Sustainability

by Gary Null, PhD

There is no doubt that a stimulus package is direly needed during this global economic meltdown. But America needs much more than simply a budget that will induce economic recovery. She needs the minds of her citizens to be stimulated into a new way of thinking that will result in the reforming of the basic institutions overseeing our financial, health, political and social requirements. Consequently, we have solicited thoughts, critiques and comments from some of America’s most brilliant and progressive minds. These individuals see our nation and our governing financial and political bodies differently. They see beyond the limiting belief systems that empower these institutions as the sole arbiters of the critical decisions and policies affecting Americans.

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David Swanson: Manchurian Senators

People are doing journalism and the Washington Post is pissed. How to respond? Apparently the answer arrived at by Post editors is to just give up on any Americans who have been informing themselves and target those Americans who believe anything that super important people say. How else to explain an op-ed full of documented lies and published last Friday over the byline of two Democratic senators, Carl Levin and Jack Reed?

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Poll: Trust in Fox News in Sharp Decline; PBS is Most Trusted

PBS the most trusted name in news Raleigh, N.C.- As its affiliated Republican Party's fortunes rose in the last year, Fox News' have declined. In January 2010, PPP showed Fox as by far the news outlet most trusted by American voters. In this month's poll, Fox is still relied on by more than some other competitors but is far behind PBS, tested for the first time. PBS is the only group trusted by a majority and distrusted by fewer than 40%.

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The Media in America: Selling Views, Calling it News

America's journalists are not "newshounds." They are nothing more than salesclerks, hocking the products their employers want to sell. The pretty faces that now function as most television news anchors are no different than the pretty models used to sell other products. The American "free" press is comprised of nothing more than a number of retail outlets which sell stories slanted to please their target audiences. As such, they exist merely to sell snake oil.


Sometime in the 1960s, I took part in a university symposium along with three other faculty members—a political scientist, a historian, and a journalism professor. The topic was Freedom of the Press—Good or Bad.

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