How The Game Is Now Played (We’re Way Beyond “Rigged”)

A Tightly Knit Circle Of Corporate Corruption And Abuse Of The Public Interest

One of my favorite writers on media, Caitlin Johnstone, wrote an excellent piece today about the propaganda function of US media:

• Western News Media Exist To Administer Propaganda

To support her argument, she used an example of the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR), outlining the relationships between military defense contractors on the CFR Board, lobbying, Pentagon budgets, CFR research and Report topics, and propaganda in support of wars that create demand for military weapons spending to boost the profits of the weapons manufacturers on the CFR Board.

A Tightly Knit Circle Of Corporate Corruption And Abuse Of The Public Interest.

I submitted the following comment on Caitlin’s piece regarding issues I’ve often written about here and offered up an example that closely followed her CFR example:

It’s not just the war profiteers that engage the self interested propaganda game you outline here.

Case in point: The NJ Audubon Society (publicly considered wealthy birders) are led by a former Exxon Mobil corporate scientist named Alex Ireland. Mr. Ireland appeared in a recent press release issued by the NJ Department of Environmental Protection announcing a sweetheart settlement deal with corporate chemical giant polluter BASF at a massive 1000+ acre toxic waste site in Toms River NJ that is known to have been the cause of a childhood cancer cluster where scores of children died of rare cancers. Mr. Ireland profusely praised this settlement in terms of its benefits to the local community (it involved creation of a small “nature park”). Mr. Ireland’s quote was widely printed by the media. Two days before the deal was announced publicly, despite keeping the community in the dark, the DEP Commissioner met secretly with the environmental community (including NJ Audubon) to request their public support for the deal, which they agreed to do.

Immediately after the deal was announced, the local government passed a Resolution and the Mayor spoke publicly to condemn the dirty deal. Residents were outraged about it and blasted the NJ DEP at a public session held AFTER the deal was negotiated behind their back and executed without their knowledge or input.

Now here’s the cherry on top: BASF has been a longtime “major donor” to NJ Audubon, a fact that is in NJA annual financial reports and not hard to find out, but never reported by media. Curiously, just prior to this BASF deal, NJ Audubon received an “anonymous” (in other words, dark money) “gift” of $6 MILLION, which they openly bragged about as the largest in their organization’s history.

So there it all is: 1) revolving door; 2) propaganda; 3) regulatory capture; 4) undisclosed and unreported gross conflicts of interest; 5) dark money; 6) lapdog corporate media; 7) self serving schemes between corporations, so called non-profit public interest groups, and government (conspiracies); 8) secret government; 9) mutually reinforcing funding; and 10) corporate poisoning of people and violations of environmental laws that goes unpunished.

And this is just one example – the same organization NJA formed a partnership with Donald Trump at his Bedminster NJ golf course for which Trump got media praise and corporate tax credits (and preferential treatment – the personal intervention of DEP Commissioner Martin – and lax enforcement by the Christie DEP for significant violations of water allocation regulations and permits.)

And none of this is an anomaly – it’s how even the environmental groups now play the game.

Wow.