by Jade LaFemme

Created on: October 26, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

The current economic crises that lead to the $700 billion dollar "bail-out bill" was a result of the Bush Administration as well as Congress's lack of responsibility when it came to spending taxpayer's money. Not only has the Republican Party been reckless with this country's money, but the Democrats have been as well. However, from what I have seen in recent news articles, no one seems to want to take any personal accountability for this mess. Why would they? Who would want to admit to being partially responsible to the great economic crash of the new millennium? The U.S. economy, in my opinion, has reached this point due to a few factors: Big Media, complete lack of universal health care, and Wall Street's negligent handling of our stock markets.

This country is a democracy. A successful democracy must have fair, unbiased journalism as its major source of sustenance in order to thrive properly. We do not have fair, unbiased journalism in this country. Our media is for the most part run by six extraordinarily powerful corporations: General Electric, Time Warner, Walt Disney, News Corp., CBS, and Viacom. These six corporations control what this country reads in newspapers, what we watch on television, what we listen to on the radio and during Pod-casts, and they do it at absolutely no cost to themselves. How can a true democracy exist if we have monopolies pushing their own agendas and spewing out nothing but "junk journalism" (celebrity gossip) and "if it bleeds, it will lead" stories (only having the most violent news stories lead on the evening news and in newspapers)? The crisis in Rwanda, a virtual genocide of an entire tribe of people was completely unbeknown to our nation until four years after it happened. In my eyes, there is no excuse for that.

We can loosen Big Media's stranglehold on independent businesses and communities by writing to our respective state representatives, and encourage them to co-sponsor H.J. Res. 79, which will ultimately disapprove the FCC's vote to remove the "newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban" that keeps one company from owning not just the local broadcast station in a community, but the local newspaper as well. It would also help immensely if we fight to keep female and minority ownership of local businesses rising.

Another reason why we are in these hard financial times is because of the fact that many Americans are in severe debt due to lack of health insurance. In 2001, a survey from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

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