Itz News to Me

Gleen Greenwald has a post up about how the corporate chiefs got together to put an end to the on-air O’Reilly-Olbermann feud.

Naturally this has him up in arms about corporate censorship of the news. But Greenwald intentionally avoids the huge elephant in the room: GE’s use of its media networks to push its corporate interests. If I asked you to name the cable network best known for its sycophantic coverage of the Obama administration, which one would you choose? MSNBC, of course. And which network recently hosted an entire day of basically sitting on Obama’s lap and asking him to tell them a story? NBC.

Who owns both of these networks? GE.

So it’s pretty safe to say that GE is uniquely pro-Obama. But why? Obama’s anti-business policies and regularly scheduled class warfare against CEOs wasn’t exactly a closely-held secret to anyone who actually did their pre-election homework, and there’s no way GE didn’t do its homework before going all in for Obama. So then what could explain the obvious bias?

How about GE’s wind turbines powering Obama’s energy plan?
How about GE’s healthymagination being the backbone of ObamaCare?
How about the bailout of GE’s finance arm?
How about Obama killing a proposed competitor to its Joint Strike Fighter engine?

How many other ways is GE in bed with the Obama administration? I found these in about 10 minutes of Googling. How much could an actual news organization with dedicated reporters actually dedicated to finding out the truth uncover?

Their TV audience is dwindling quickly on both networks, and GE knows it. Why not go out with a bang and use their control of those networks to promote its other lines of business? And if that means getting in bed with the Obama administration in order to corruptly obtain highly lucrative government contracts, why not?

Especially when pundits like Gleen Greenwald are so eager to look the other way so long as GE keeps pimping for Barack Obama…

Tags: Barack Obama, Business, Corruption, Democrats, GE, glenn greenwald, Government Spending, Media Bias, Politics

Popularity: 22%

Kevin Hassett over at Bloomberg is speculating that Obama’s strategy is to effectively bankrupt American businesses so that he can nationalize them. It’s one of those theories that six months ago people would have dismissed as a kooky conspiracy theory, but with the track that the Democratic Congress and Obama are taking it’s seemingly more plausible every day.

Tags: Business, Democrats, Economics, Leftists, Socialism

Popularity: 11%

For all the scorn and blame that has been heaped on mortgage brokers during the last year, realtors have surprisingly escaped getting their fair share of the blame for the recent unrealistic run-up in real estate prices. I have long contended that they, in fact, are the number one reason that prices ran up as far and as fast as they did. Now they want to put the blame on lenders and brokers and the buyers, but never nor at any time on the real estate agents who are still spending every minute of every hour trying to convince people that *NOW* is the time to buy a house.

Forget the fact that they know prices are declining and will likely continue to do so over the next couple of years. Forget the fact that they know their buyers can’t afford the house they’re showing them. Forget the fact that even in a tough market that they’re unwilling to reduce their commission rates. And that’s where we come to the reason for today’s rant: the monopolistic behavior of the NAR.

You would think that the same market forces which affect most other markets in this country would affect real estate as well, but you would be wrong. Because of the near-monopoly that the NAR and its members exercise over the listing services, those who might compete with them are effectively shut out of the market. They have to pay higher prices for access to the listings, if they’re allowed access at all. Now, a light may be breaking into the darkness, as the NAR has been forced into a settlement with the Department of Justice to allow internet-based agencies to have fair access to those listings.

Given their history of manipulative behavior, I would bet that they’re still going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into compliance with the agreement over and over again. But it’s a start. Once we can break the NAR strangehold on real estate, we might once again see some rationality in the marketplace.

Tags: Business, Consumer News, Economics, Legal, Real Estate

Popularity: 18%