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The TV companies are dominated by "leaning left" liberals, and therefore their reporting is also left-leaning. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN.

Except that that's not true -- media leans right. The "liberal media" myth is a straight-up GOP propaganda ploy that's served them very well.

The bias that you will find is that big media is in big cities, and therefore often reflects a more urban worldview -- more likely to be anti-gun, for example, and more likely to be tolerant of diversity. (With the obvious exception of Fox, which has chosen to pitch their infotainment to the red state demographic.) But the media is as leftist as the corporations that own it -- i.e., not at all.

Look, another Slashdotter that can't figure out how to use Google.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/politics/campaign/06ohio.html?_r=1

http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/Ohio_s_Odd_Numbers.htm

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/08/0080696

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/995

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/2004votefraud.html?q=2004votefraud.html

http://www.jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html

This makes it mandatory for doctors to carry a heavy burden of insurance and that gets passed on to whoever is paying for the medical care.

Insurance is a very small part of the costs of healthcare. I've heard in the neighborhood of 3%. Look it up at http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/RisingCostOfMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.htm

Doctors over-perform tests and over-prescribe drugs because of fear they may be sued.

Citation needed. You could also sue someone for over-prescribing drugs. There's not a lot of dis-incentive to order expensive tests, and a lot of incentive to do so. My father was sick about a year ago. He went to the hospital in FL and they ordered several tests (an MRI for one), gave him some anti-biotics and sent him on his way. He didn't get much better, went to the doctor who gave him a different anti-biotic and ordered tests, and sent him on his way. He came back to MN for the summer, called his doctor HERE, and was very quickly diagnosed with hyperthyroid-ism, likely caused by a heart medication he was on. He's doing much better after being prescribed some thyroid lowering medication which he's slowly being weened off of.

The point being, the quality of doctors makes a huge difference. Doctors who don't know what the hell they're doing can order up tests that are unlikely to show much of anything. MRI's are very expensive, but the blood work to detect his hyper-thyroid was extremely cheap. If the FL doctor knew anything, he'd have ordered the thyroid test.

The rest of your post I largely agree with. I'm not sure there's really many hospitals that are actually for-profit. The one thing that might reduce costs of health insurance is the tax on the "Cadillac health plan". The backers of the bill say it's a way to pay for the new coverage, but I think the real reason they put it in was so employers would stop offering these health plans. One of the problems of these plans is since there's zero cost in going to the doctor (not even a minimal co-pay) it encourages people to over-use health care. That may wind up reducing costs by discouraging over-use of the system.

Tort reform is a straw man argument. It's like me complaining that the streets have two many potholes so you pass a law that requires 17 inch tires. It doesn't address the problem, it's just a sneaky way to jam someone's agenda into the national debate.

Slate article
supporting information

The liberal media myth is tired, old, and ridiculous. There are 5 corporations that own the media, and those corporations and their CEOs contribute waaay more money to republicans than they do to democrats. Combine this with Republicans=Neocons and Democrats=Moderates, with no real left, and NO ONE in the media is actually liberal. If you want to read or watch something that is actually liberal, you need to look at common dreams or alter news. Those are liberal news sources...which in no way means they aren't accurate. So do a bit or research, and please, stop repeating talking points that are patently false and easily debunked.

Like a proper little Darwin

Like a proper little Darwin

Please show me the statistics that prove there's all these "bogus malpractice claims". Sure, it's gonna happen on occasion but from what I've read on the subject this argument is blown way out of proportion.

See the following link for more info:

http://www.makethemaccountable.com/myth/RisingCost OfMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.htm

I've got it on good authority that the only Iraqis getting killed are the ones that hate freedom . And remember, freedom is messy .

--

Hmmm... Those places, along with the everglades may not have too many people, but they seem pretty few and far between compared with what I'm used to. I've got doubts about how "wide open" they are too. Also, how far can you actually see in those places?

From http://www.makethemaccountable.com/podvin/media/04 0201_TheScream.htm

2/1/04
By David Podvin

On December 1, 2003, Howard Dean was ahead by twenty points in the polls when he appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews and said, "We're going to break up the giant media enterprises." This pronouncement went far beyond the governor's previous public musings about possibly re-regulating the communications industry, and amounted to a declaration of war on the corporations that administer the flow of information in the United States.

It was an extraordinarily noble and dangerous thing to do: when he advocated a truly free press, Dr. Dean was provoking the corrupt media conglomerates that control what most Americans see and hear and read, and thereby control what most Americans think.

The media giants quickly responded by crushing his high-flying campaign with the greatest of ease. This time, they didn't even have to invent a scandal in order to achieve the desired result; merely by chanting the word "unelectable" at maximum volume, the mainstream media maneuvered Democratic voters into switching their support to someone who poses no threat to the status quo.

John Kerry is a member in good standing of the feeble Daschle/Biden/Feinstein wing of the Democratic Party, a group of politicians whose disagreements with the mercantile elite tend to be merely rhetorical. Any doubts about Kerry's level of commitment to his stated progressive beliefs were conclusively answered in 1994 when he proclaimed himself "delighted" with the Republican takeover of Congress. The media oligarchy knows that a general election race between Kerry and George W. Bush will insure a continuation of its monopoly, regardless of who wins.

The news cartel had always been hostile to Dean; independent surveys revealed that he had received the most negative coverage of any candidate except Dennis Kucinich (the only other contender who strongly favors mandatory media divestment). But after his statement on Hardball, reporting about Dean abruptly came to an end and was replaced by supposition. The existing conjecture in political circles about his ability to win was transformed into a thunderous media mantra that drowned out all other issues

By mid-December, the news divisions of the four major television networks were reporting as fact that Dean was unelectable. The print media echoed the theme; on December 17, the Washington Post printed a front-page story that posited Dean could not win the presidency. The Post quickly followed up with an onslaught of articles and editorials reasserting that claim. Before the month was over, Dean's lack of electability had been highlighted in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and every other major paper in the United States.

As 2004 began, Time and Newsweek simultaneously ran cover stories emphasizing that Dean was unelectable. In the weeks before the Iowa caucus, the ongoing topic of discussion on the political panel shows was that Dean was unelectable. National talk radio shows repeatedly stressed that Dean was unelectable. The corporate Internet declared that Dean was unelectable. And the mainstream media continued with the storyline that Dean was unelectable right up until Iowans attended their caucuses. Iowa Democrats could not watch a television or listen to a radio or read a newspaper or go online without learning that Howard Dean was unelectable.

It was the classic Big Lie. Through the power of repetition, the corporate media - which has been wrong about who would win the popular vote in two of the last three presidential elections - inculcated the public with the message that Dean could not win. Pollster John Zogby wrote, "Howard Dean was the man of the year, but that was 2003. In 2004, electability has become the issue and John Kerry has benefited."

The unexamined

Evidence? Sure. This should get you started. Plenty of references there too, if you want to verify everything is factually correct.

And yeah, Dean can't beat Bush, but the reason isn't because Dean's a "piss and moaner"...it's because most Americans believe Bush about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

It's hard to convince people that their relatives are being shot at in some foreign country over something that doesn't exist. Luckily, after a few more years of no evidence, even the strongest believers will be shaken.

Move on - helps busy people be effective citizens.

Make them Accountable - Make Media and Politicians Accountable.

Fallout Shelter - News and Views from the shelter.

Citizens for Legitimate Government - Undo the Coup - opinion and discussion.

Petition to Senate to investigate "Oddities" of 9/11 - by Lori R. Price.

Education for Peace in Iraq Center - Speakers & projects.

War Resisters' League - promoting peace.

American Friends Service Committee - Quakers for peace.

Black Radical Congress - Election reform and voting rights.

Z-Net - Activist Community.

Not everyone agrees with that.

A college political science professor once made a statement that stuck with me - "the U.S. system of government is intentionally designed to impede the popular will."