I used to wonder why so many people are uninformed...

[End Of The Road]

I'm currently unemployed and I've been using some of my free time to casually research a few issues that interest me politically. I say "casually" because I'm doing it with internet sources, which all too often lack any semblance of scholarly rigor, but hey, that's what a lot of people use to form their opinions, so it's relevant to my topic.

It has been a daunting experience.

One example: The Texas Budget Deficit. I live here, and I don't trust Rick Perry, Tom Craddick, Warren Chisum and the rest of the crazies in the state legislature not to spin the numbers to suit their evil Republican agenda. Show me the numbers, an impartial analysis, and let me form my own opinion. I spent a couple of hours yesterday on this and got nowhere. I couldn't even get the 2009 financials from the comptroller's office to load on my computer (which could have been a problem on my end). The point is, my efforts yesterday to be more informed on this topic were for naught, and it took a good chunk of time. Today, God took pity on me. An article has appeared in the Texas Tribune that answers a number of my questions.

Another example: Education reform. I'm not a teacher or public school administrator, so there was a lot I had to learn about this in order to form an opinion. It took a lot of time and thought, and the big eye-opener for me here was how much I had been influenced by propaganda, without realizing it! Shit - I hate it when that happens. But in order to "catch up" on the education issue, I had to go back to 1983 and "Nation at Risk", and then read the critiques of that and how the numbers were skewed, and how alternate analyses were virtually squelched, and then slowly work my way from 1983 to today. Here my point is: how many folks with jobs and families, who truly want to be more informed, have time for this? Will they be taken in by some of the same propaganda that slowed me down? I may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but I do have an MA, so I'm not the dimmest one either.

Other current issue close to my heart: the Tom Delay trial. It is evident that the newspaper reporters have little knowledge of the Texas Ethics Commission's so-called rules. I used to do the Ethics Commission reporting for a small PAC, and although Tom Delay is guilty of a lot of bad shit and deserves to spend life in prison for SOMETHING, I find the money-laundering charges a bit specious.

Some people say we've got information overload. I think a lot of it is BS overload. I miss Walter Cronkite.

Thanks for letting me vent.

[DireStrike]

1. It is a monumental task to find good information!

Mealy-mouthed summaries abound, but nobody seems interested in making real information available.

[T Wolf]

2. The people cannot be trusted to draw their own conclusions. Everything must be intepreted for them

and condensed down to soundbite length for regurgitation.

If you could see the facts, you might come to the wrong conclusion. That cannot be allowed.

[FarPoint]

3. Free media access has really been

compromised by big business for the soul purpose of repeating the same misleading information...primary goals are to mislead, mis-inform, manipulate the listener/viewer or reader, to instill fear and hatred into the consumer....Especially to promote hate as their needed response to the information given by the lying messenger....

[Newest Reality]

5. +1000

[BrklynLiberal]

4. The "librul" media treats the public like mushrooms:Keeps them in the dark and feeds them bullshit

It takes some initiative, curiosity and determination to find one's way out from under the mountain of crap that is laid out every day.

[MrsCorleone]

6. You're welcome for the very satisfying vent.

Sadly, for the country, most folks don't have the time and/or energy to figure out what's really going on, so the majority, I'm afraid, have no real clue of issues that affect them directly.

It also takes a fair amount of intellectual curiosity to motivate one to begin digging, and the most relevant info is often buried so deep.