[ExI] sugar industry corruption

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Fri Sep 16 18:50:06 UTC 2016


All of what you said concerns me, especially the unnecessary sarcasm.  bill
w

On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 1:16 PM, Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Sep 16, 2016, at 10:47 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Well BillW, you know the cure for having not looked into it, ja?  So do we.
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
> Let's get our issue straight here.  Take the Freedom of Information Act
> Lyndon Johnson signed.  I see big problems with it re the press.  If the
> public, including the press, cannot access gov. actions then what good is
> the freedom of the press?
>
>
> Again, I have not looked into it in detail, but here is a problem:  the
> Bush administration, as have numerous others, I suppose, put the lid on
> sensitive information by declaring it a secret (just researching secrecy
> would take all my time for weeks, likely).  The press howled about the
> abuse but I never saw anything further about it (following such things is
> not exactly a hobby of mine, and some of you may know about it).
>
>
> Clearly, subsequent administrations of different political party, could
> reclassify such things as  would embarrass former gov. officials, and maybe
> that has been done.
>
>
> What other freedoms is the press missing?  What can we do about it?
>
>
> So you basically view everything in this area as fine, maybe with a few
> exceptions -- minor ones that can easily be seen as sort of accounting
> errors? Reporters being threatened, fined, or jailed is a tiny problem for
> freedom of the press? The fact that tv stations can lose their license is a
> minor matter, too, I guess. When one reporter is punished, what do think
> happens to the rest? Will they all be eager to go to court (you ever been
> to court? not a fun way to spend your day, is it?), pay a fine, or end up
> in a cage? Unlikely. It can have a chilling effect on others, especially
> when much of the public might side with the government.
>
> And government control of information -- not only classified stuff, but
> the press pooling* done with the first Persian Gulf War (under Bush the
> Elder) -- is nothing, right?
>
> It could be that RSF's evaluation method is questionable, that maybe the
> US doesn't rank as low as they believe. I like to believe some of this
> stuff overreports US malfeasance and underreports foreign ditto. That still
> wouldn't erase the very real issues -- issues actual libertarians should
> care about.
>
> Also, government classifying stuff as national security started long
> before Bush. It's a means of avoiding scrutiny. And this stuff goes on in
> similar fashion in other parts of government. I recall a municipal council
> meeting where the council went into 'executive session' to clear the public
> and reporter from the room. Who knows what they discussed, but the point
> seemed clear: they didn't want the public or the press to know about it.
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>   Sample my Kindle books via:
> http://author.to/DanUst
>
> * The Pentagon learned one lesson from the Vietnam War: Don't give the
> press a free hand to report on a conflict or you lose the ability to shape
> the narrative.
>
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>
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