My son has an MBA and he told me they taught that food stamps puts money in the economy. I used a variation of what I said to explain it to him and he finally realized that when you connect all the dots, you can get a different picture.

Not all the people that are being mislead are the uneducated masses. There are a lot of smart people out there that haven't stopped to think everything through. I have surprised a lot of fairly smart people with things like this and the fact that no government employee pays REAL taxes or how the government has stolen half of the Social Security Trust Fund!

Sorry...only the coconut wireless here!

Whenever you steal other people's earned money to give to another person it takes from the economy because the person your money is being given to isn't EARNING anything they are just TAKING YOURS. Filtering it through gov entities multiplies the devaluing even more. If you're not earning your way, your stealing your way off the back of others' labor. Period. They get away with convincing morons that it helps the economy because morons don't ask for explanations they just nod and say "Oh..of course..." because it suits them to justify taking from others and aren't concerned whether it's really the truth or not...no consequences in for them.

That wasn't the approach.

What they showed was the abuse, and the lack of means testing that plagues the program. Any analysis of the return benefit for the taxes collected for the program, would have been 'not for prime time' in both interest, and/or too cerebral for the audience. Sad...but true.

The 'watch the shiny object' approach is the best way to get the most attention. You are not the average cable news watcher.

Sometimes you have to talk down to the masses....

I did not see it. Did they show how a dollar comes out of the economy and less than a dollar hits the treasury. They then take that and some more to put into a food stamp dollar. They then give it to someone who buys a dollars worth of food that is already in the economy. Upon eating the food, they have destroyed more than the dollar they took out of the economy. Each dollar of food stamps destroys more than a dollar so how can the put a dollar into the economy as the liberals keep claiming?

FOX News did a segment on food stamp abuse, starring a surfing 'dude'. Major media never used the segment. We have discussed this show in length here....

Don't blame the messenger for the lack of a concerned audience.

Not that I know of. Were you under that impression?

I do not have a trusted news source. I have not been able to engage anyone in a serious conversation. Even though I give them a step by step mathematically sound objection to what they are saying. Doesn't anyone in the Gulch have any connection with the media?

Are there some news sources you could share that are examples of what you would like to see more of? Have you checked out AlfonZo Rachel at PJTV.com? Is this what you are speaking of or is it more like The Objective Standard? Or, neither? I am with you and would like to have a trusted news source. TV would be the best as many people just don't take the time to surf the web looking for the truth.

I agree to a point. The question becomes, if there are a few among us that are in the media and we support them and give them ratings, will the others not take notice. No one appears willing to try something new (old).

The media will never do it because they are addicted to the concept of access to the 'inside story' and being the first on the block to know 'something'. They believe they have the right to shape opinion based on their perceived superiority of knowledge and rightness of cause. See Allen Drury's "Advise and Consent" series for an example of a media run amok.

The people who are hungry for facts on why things are going wrong do their own research. That journey is guite lengthy and not simple to decipher. It has taken me years to get a handle on it and I feel like I've just broken the surface. There are no quick quips that can be spoken to give full enlightenment of all issues we face. As Americans it is our responsibility to keep a watchful eye on our appointed officials and what's happening in our country. They work for us..it's our job to watch them. If people pay little or no attention to what laws are being passed, and why, or ask questions, where does the blame really lie?

A good defense is a better offense. If we take the offensive position and start debunking their ideas we will not have to resort to defense.

I am disappointed in FOX because no one there seems to be able to challenge the liberal statements with facts. I.E. the food stamp discussion I had here and others I have mentioned.
All I have seen of Ron Paul is that he has a "PLAN"! People are hungry for facts of why things are going wrong!
The Conservatives and the Republicans have become reactionary. They never challenge the liberals they just react to what they do. The Liberals know this and know what reaction they will get before they do anything!

A scene from the walking dead comes to mind....when the new comers show up at the prison and one of them showed his cards in some way that he was just waiting for an opportunity to slay them...the sheriff did not miss this queue and didn't hesitate to machete him right then and there. Threat gone. Also when Carl was approached by a teenager in the woods with a gun and Carl said, "Drop the gun!" and instead of dropping the gun the teenager acted like he was going to hand Carl the gun and Carl shot him and said, "I said to drop it." There are times when you don't hesitate once intent has been shown even if they're not charging you....yet.

I also should have said, excellent point, engineer. Hopefully, someone who has studied Objectivism more than I have will comment to this.

it is true in the book. I was using it as an argument for how Objectivism applies to self-defense.

partly you are disappointed by FOX because they are conservative. Breitbart as well. Ron Paul has just started a channel:
http://www.ronpaulchannel.com/subscribe-...

This speech is well after they have abdicated their ability to change the course by discussing the facts and the science behind the flaws in terms that people can understand.

We need to get people in the media that will do something about it. We need to support them and pull our support from those who won't. I have pulled back from the TV media because they don't get it, even the supposedly conservative FOXNEWS.

the threat of force constitutes force.

"To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival; to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man’s capacity to live.
Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason—as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no “right” to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.
To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place of proof, and death as the final argument—is to attempt to exist in defiance of reality. Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment; you threaten him with death if he does. You place him in a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life—and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling power, the winning argument in a society of men.
Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: “Your money or your life,” or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: “Your children’s education or your life,” the meaning of that ultimatum is: “Your mind or your life”—and neither is possible to man without the other." Galt's Speech

Aha! I found it.
Now, back to my point. Does 'fight with force with force' mean preemptive action, if needed? In "Virtue"(blast, I can't find the reference) AR (or the other fellow) was talking about dealing with thugs and other looters in a reactive manner. Is that the most efficacious method of survival? By the time you can react, you may be overrun by them and lost your chance for survival.

Don't know if was you or not. I know I have mentioned it several times.
Beginning pg 92-94, ACE books ed. published July 2006. An interesting treatise on 'value'.

not much lobster in Iowa. nope, not privileged hugely in a wealth way, but more in that academia/lawyer/judge way.

Tis true, but so much of the main-stream-media are very left slanted. That makes if very difficult, if not impossible, to get the word out to masses of folks. I agree with you that media could help.....very few are willing.