Dylan Ratigan - MSNBC News: Icon in the Rough

By TRB

What is a progressive by today's standards? Incidentally, what are today's standards? Both of those questions could have been asked, and probably were at some point, on MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show. Ratigan is attempting to reshape news media into something other than the corporate lapdog it has become. As a print journalist, this kind of going against the grain would come as no surprise to me if another print journalist was involved. But to see this television journalist virtually "telling it like it is" is indeed a rare treat. Months ago, I wondered how long the network would let him get away with it. And yet he's still there, he's just as angry about the unnatural marriage between the U.S. government and big business, the outright and in-your-face corruption of Wall Street, Congress, investment houses, commercial banks, foreign trade and U.S.healthcare - all of which he sees as "rigged." Of course the biggest problem for him, for us and for his network is that he is right.

It does not happen often that a news program on television creates such a stir in our culture. One thinks of 60 Minutes, in the days when Mike Wallace was out there with a giant chip on his shoulder daring some nasty landlord on the lower East Side to throw the first punch, or Cronkite's broadcasts from Vietnam, where he essentially asked the yet-to-be-asked question, "What the hell are we doing here?" or the Washinton Post and the Watergate Scandal. Some will laugh at these comparisons. They will laugh because they haven't quite caught onto the importance of Ratigan's show. They will, though.

Dylan Ratigan is telling the truth about this awful system of government and big business and banks, who play horrendous games with us that are "rigged" for us to lose. And he is taking his show on the road in his "Steel on Wheels Tour." He will do anything to get the word out there. The "word" is hard for a lot of people to accept. The bankers are out to get you. The health care system is not designed to make you healthy; what it is doing is making billions for the insurance and drug companies, while degrading our system of health care. Foreign trade is also rigged against us with our own elected officials signing on to deals that export American jobs, Wall Street has moved into the White House. Taxes are rigged against those less able to pay them.

Large investment houses and banks were able to print billions of dollars at the Fed for months following the bailout. And no one can tell you where that money is or how it was spent. They can't even tell you how much money investment/gaming houses like Goldman Sachs printed. By law they are not even required to tell you. Your money, money you, your children and your children's children will eventually have to pay back, and they are not even required by law to tell you where it is, how much of it there was or how they spent it.

So Dylan Ratigan is telling the difficult-to-tell truth, when he is surrounded (on other networks and by some reporters on his own) by supposedly "objective" reporters who are putting the best possible spin on everything the government and financial community does. But a journalist's job is to be objective, to tell the truth. Many journalists don't do that anymore; they tell their truth, which is not the objective truth, but the world as they see it. At one point during his broadcast yesterday Chris Matthews, supposed journalist, was editorializing about how great it was that Obama had chosen a Wall Street banker to be his Chief of Staff. Imagine that. Wall Street, which has been bailed out with trillions of our tax dollars and money borrowed from China, Wall Street, whose investment houses created a lot of phony "financial products" and used them to steal from our elderly and retirement community, and Chris Matthews waxing poetic about how wonderful it will be to have Bill Daley former COO of J.P. Morgan in the White House. Daley worked on Wall Street during a time when just about every executive at his level knew of, or was personally involved in some kind of securities fraud. Is that objective reporting?

Calling him a "banker in the White House," Ratigan said "Wall Street influences or controls much of our government as it is, so you might as well put if out there."

Americans look at the corrupt system and they know we have to move on from it; we have to move forward. We have to progress, or get stuck in this quicksand of debt and deregulation coming at us from both the republican and the democrat. We need a third party. We already have a progressive party that is up and running, but something new is needed on the progressive side. We need a progressive party that will move forward at a pace both acceptable to conservatives and liberals. For years people have just assumed that a progressive is a liberal. But that is far from the truth. In many respects, Teddy Roosevelt was this nation's first true progressive. And he was a republican. The same might be said of Barry Goldwater, who was conservative, but could still move forward with caution. For a number of years, John McCain was looking like one of those rare conservative progressives, then he lost to Obama, got grumpy and he's now solidly right-wing.

The point is, a progressive party doesn't have to be a liberal party - just a political party that wants to move this country forward instead of stealing everything that isn't nailed down. Dylan Ratigan, who doesn't have much sympathy for republicans or democrats, and is constantly making that clear, is a progressive in the sense that he knows we have to move forward as a nation from this place. As written above, just yesterday Barack Obama hired a former Wall Street kingpin to be his Chief of Staff. Wall Street is more than likely still stealing from the average investor using financial "products" you haven't even heard about yet, and Obama goes to the thieves den when he needs a CoS. Obviously Obama doesn't get it.

The news media doesn't understand. Several days ago Ratigan said on the air, "Wall Street control of the 112th Congress is already in place." He has also said that the republicans are "going after the public sector." In this, I think he is correct.The republicans will always go for the weakest when they can get away with it. So far, public outcry has kept them from cutting Medicare and social security. But the time will come. Republicans now look back on the popped housing bubble and the foreclosures that are still going on, with the explanation that people just wanted bigger houses even though they really couldn't afford them. In other words, they are already blaming that mess on the victim, the homeowner. But no one will forget the eagerness of the banks to sell mortgage products to people who they knew could not afford them or Wall Street's joy in selling all this bad mortgage paper as triple AAA bonds to 401k and pension funds.

The other day on his show a regular guest of Ratigan's was talking about the progressive movement in America and how out of touch the President and the sitting Congress are with the voters. For example, he came prepared with polls by respected polling institutions showing that the overall majority of Americans wanted the "public option" in Obama health care. Never happened. Over 70 percent of the public favored getting rid of "don't ask - don 't tell" a year before the government acted. A full 80 percent of the nation was against the Supreme Court ruling that gave corporations as many rights as individual citizens. A clear majority of Americans believe the Defense Department should seriously cut back on costs.

It is surreal in its own way to watch these gleeful republicans and tea party types as they puff out their breasts and brag about how they plan to deregulate everything, maybe even get rid of some constitutional amendments. They obviously believe their own PR. Maybe they really do think their version of America represents the majority view. But something tells me they are not paying attention. This is a progressive nation. People here don't want to go backwards. We've been doing that ever since the finance moron, Rubin and scam-man, Clinton got rid of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932.

But there's still Ratigan out there keeping it real.Yesterday, when Obama announced his Wall Street choice for Chief of Staff, Ratigan just shook his head, looked straight into the camera and said, "If you were wondering who was funding Obama, wonder no more."