The FCC recently released hundreds of pages of their two-year long review of US media.  It amounts to the most substantial overview  in decades.

If you have not heard about it, you already understand some of the problems but including a focal point of the report, the increasingly neglected coverage of local news by an ever concentrated cadre of media owners. 

The report is quite a tome at 360 pages.  Because I'm still absorbing it, myself, in lieu of coverage, I'll refer you to "On The Media" audio reporting of the FCC's analysis, below, and the working group's index page for downloading "The Information Needs of Communities" in MS WOrd, PDF, or text format.

Originally posted 2010-05-01 00:10:33 -0400. Bumped and promoted. -- GH

I don't have any independent assessment of the conditions from which this email was supposed to have been taken.

But it's a repost of the complete email reportedly picked up by The Reformed Broker, Joshua Brown. It does sound like a "hideous little piece of class warfare," or what many pissed-off Americans would like to think they'd hear coming from a 'vulture capitalist'.

Did it really, I don't know?!

A Disgusting Little Email Making the Rounds on Wall Street

Press Release: WatchDog Groups Ask Attorney General Holder To Appoint An Independent Prosecutor To Investigate The Conduct, Policies And Actions Of Massey Energy CEO And U.S. Chamber of Commerce Director Don Blankenship



Blankenship Engaged In Pattern Of Criminal Racketeering From Obstruction Of Justice To Homicide

Sick of hearing about Tea Party Protests -- about Taxes going down?

Here's some "Protest News" that is worth knowing about ...

Oregon sues fund company for college savings losses
AP Executive Morning Briefing - April 14, 2009

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — State officials are seeking $36.2 million in damages from OppenheimerFunds Inc., which managed a fund responsible for steep losses in the Oregon College Savings Plan. Officials said in a statement Monday that risky, "hedge-fund like" investments cost the Oppenheimer Core Bond Fund 36 percent of its value last year — and 10 percent more so far this year.

(emphasis added)

originally posted 2009-04-12 21:29:02 -0500, bumped by carol

Elizabeth Warren was appointed chair of a newly created Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which is charged with keeping tabs on the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector - including Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

Warren however, has had some "Trouble" getting straight forward answers ... as she explained to the Boston Globe:

Keeping tabs on the bailout

By Elizabeth Warren -- April 12, 2009

    Elizabeth Warren: There's a major problem and a minor problem. The minor problem is documentation. I've spent four weeks now looking for someone who can give me the details of the stress test so that we can do an independent evaluation of whether the stress test is any good.

    We get: "someone will call [you] right back." Only the call doesn't come. The major problem is ...

While we'll take Any In Depth Reports about what already should have been common knowledge on Post Traumatic Stress I do have just a couple of minor irritations with an otherwise Stellar Report on the Treatments for PTSD in the Washington Times edition today. let me get them out of the way.

The report, called VA grapples with veterans' mental traumas, is a six page writeup of which one Audrey Hudson deserves alot of credit for reporting and apparently has done a few others this year as the previous link would show.

It starts out with the following:

If Free Markets are the supposed Engine of Growth,

Why do they always seem to lead to a "money grab",
a greedy "land rush", with the Tax payer ALWAYS picking up the Bill?

Why do the Rich, always manage to get richer?

While those who "play by the rules", just manage to get "pink slips" and foreclosure notices?

And an endless pile of Bills?

Originally posted 2008-09-13 12:33:46 -0500. Promoted. -- GH

Current law requires hospitals to satisfy the community benefit standard in order to qualify as tax-exempt charities under section 501(c)(3). The Hospital Compliance Project (the Project) was initiated in 2006 by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to study nonprofit hospitals and community benefit, as well as to determine how hospitals establish and report executive compensation. [IRS: Hospitals and Community Benefit - Interim Report (30 Jul '07)]

In the late '50's the criteria for maintaining tax exempt status included a requirement that hospitals serve any patient coming through the emergency room doors. Over the course of the past roughly 50 years that requirement has been steadily chipped away, leading hospitals to charges and counter-charges of - among other things - "patient dumping". From Atlanta:

"These other hospitals are [nonprofit] tax-exempt organizations, and both the state and federal government are giving them tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks,” he said. He declined to identify any hospital.

How did this happen? The easy way.

Media Reform Information Center

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S.
...

in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world's largest media corporation.