The media-government incest brothel

America was designed with a watchdog press that the founders believed would naturally allay itself with the citizens against government excess. Why? Because the press was composed of small, individual businesses, most often printers. That's why the founders specifically protected the press from the government by including it in the First Amendment.

Unfortunately, the founders failed to see several rather nasty developments:

The rise of media conglomerates, which absorbed most of the nation's once-independent voices (which has been encouraged by government);
Ongoing incest between the conglomeratized press corps and the government itself (the revolving door);
The infestation of the press by special-interest groups, including government itself.

A perfect example of this is Jon Leibowitz, a top federal regulator, and his wife, Ruth Marcus, a columnist for the Washington Post. Of course, they use different last names in real life. Now the federal regulator will be hosting a panel on the press' role in America. Bloomberg, to its great credit, had the decency to mention the relationship in its reporting on the upcoming conference.

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There is a reason that incest is verboten. The products of incest in the biological world eventually collapse the genome that bred them. Incest between public watchdogs and the government eventually collapses the public's trust in both institutions. Inevitably, this incestuous relationship develops into lies, financial and political corruption, and finally destruction of that which the watchdog was tasked with guarding in the first place.

In America's case, the watchdog press was tasked with guarding our personal liberties, to which the single biggest threat was, is and ever will be government's natural, over-reaching tendency to control every aspect of individual life.

Lest anyone should wonder what phase America has now reached with the offspring of this incest, it is the destruction of our personal liberties phase. Socialized health care enables the government to tag anything a "threat to health." Since they now pay for "health care" (by taking our money at gunpoint), they can and will pass laws regulating the particular behaviors bureaucrats find offensive. Since in the end all behavior affects health – no behavior will be immune from government control.

This is being sold to us as a means of controlling costs. (Never mind that the cost of higher education has increased at double the cost of health care over the past 10 years, yet receives nary a mention in the press.) Government alone can get away with "controlling costs" by withholding care. The decisions about who gets what care are made by – you guessed it – government bureaucrats. And the complaints about same are adjudicated by – you guessed it – government bureaucrats.

Thus it is that the "less productive," who are in reality those who have supported the system with their tax dollars over an entire lifetime, are given the unenviable task of dying quietly to insure they consume a minimum of resources, which must now pass to those groups favored by government (for the moment). The bottom line is death panels, and America seems to have finally realized it.

The incestuous relationship between the press and government is far, far more pervasive than most Americans imagine. Nor is it confined to the federal level (although Washington, D.C., is particularly conducive to such incest). During the years I lived in Seattle, the editorial page director for the Seattle Times was married to a top local government official. Of course, they used different last names. How very convenient. Was there a disclaimer printed on the editorial pages of the Times? No. Was there a mention in the Times' editorials pro or con about city or county government. No. Should there have been? That's up to you.

Put bluntly, the freedom genome is collapsing. The media ignore that which displeases governments of which they approve. That would be far left, socialist and communist governments – the ones that control every aspect of life for ordinary citizens – while the governing elite and the politically favored run rampant in a cesspool of corruption and self-indulgence, funded by the taxpayer.

There was and remains only one answer: Cut the money. And then cut it again. And again. And again. Let the worthless products of this media-government incest brothel in Washington, D.C., and other East Coast breeding grounds go out and find real jobs, where they must serve their fellow citizens to earn the reward of their daily bread. Then we will once again become the land of the free and the home of the brave.