Tag Archives ⇒ propaganda

The inside story of The Jersey Shutdown, 2017

July 7, 2017
· Martin Kelley

The Chris Christie beach memes are fun­ny of course but I talked to more than a few local res­i­dents who won­dered what the state shut­down was about. The Star Ledger has gone deep and inter­viewed the play­ers to find out just what hap­pened ear­li­er this week:

When it end­ed ear­ly on the fourth day, New Jer­sey had been treat­ed to a remark­able polit­i­cal spec­ta­cle, even by Tren­ton stan­dards, com­plete with duel­ing press con­fer­ences, nasty back­room shout­ing match­es, and even pro­pa­gan­da posters.  Some of it played out pub­licly — very pub­licly. What did­n’t is told here, the inside sto­ry of what caused — and what final­ly set­tled — the New Jer­sey gov­ern­ment shut­down of 2017.

It’s espe­cial­ly depress­ing to read the kind of horse trad­ing that was going on behind the scenes: oth­er mea­sures float­ed to end the stand­off. It was a game to see which con­stituen­cy the politi­cians might all be able to agree to screw over. I pre­sume this is nor­mal Tren­ton pol­i­tics but it’s not good gov­ern­ing and the ram­i­fi­ca­tions are felt through­out the state.

Read: The inside story of The Jersey Shutdown, 2017

Is dairy overrated?

July 7, 2012
· Martin Kelley

None oth­er than the NYTimes’s Mark Bittman sounds like a veg­an polemi­cist:

Most humans nev­er tast­ed fresh milk from any source oth­er than their moth­er for almost all of human his­to­ry, and fresh cow’s milk could not be rou­tine­ly avail­able to urban­ites with­out indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment not only sup­ports the milk indus­try by spend­ing more mon­ey on dairy than any oth­er item in the school lunch pro­gram, but by con­tribut­ing free pro­pa­gan­da as well as sub­si­dies amount­ing to well over $4 bil­lion in the last 10 years.

These aren’t new argu­ments, but Bittman presents them well, cit­ing his own expe­ri­ences. And of course it makes a dif­fer­ence that he’s a charm­ing, high pro­file Times columnist.

The empty promise of supporting the troops

November 14, 2003
· Martin Kelley

More on the “myth that is ‘Pri­vate Jes­si­ca’ ”:www​.guardian​.co​.uk/​i​r​a​q​/​S​t​o​r​y​/​0​,​2​7​6​3​,​1​0​8​1​2​0​7​,​0​0​.​h​tml, a media cre­ation born of pro­pa­gan­da and racism. I feel sad for the real Jes­si­ca Lynch caught up in all this. else­where Paul Krug­man point out how the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion isn’t “sup­port­ing the troops”:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/opinion/11KRUG.html, “But I also sus­pect that a gov­ern­ment of, by and for the eco­nom­ic elite is hav­ing trou­ble over­com­ing its basic lack of empa­thy with the working-class men and women who make up our armed forces.”