Deregulation, my question to Presidential Candidates 2008.

[EGarrett]

If I ever have a way to submit a question to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Giuliani, McCain and whoever else, this is it.

One of the things Bush did that troubled me was deregulating the economy to the point that huge companies started eating each other up like Pac-Man. Now, they control both news/media outlets and commercial businesses...and they EDIT the information from their news outlets so that it never criticizes their businesses.

I had to read a Sports Guy column on ESPN a couple months ago where he mentioned that a paragraph he had written criticizing a Disney/ABC TV show had been EDITED out of his column by his parent company. From there, it's not much of a slippery slope to assume that companies stopping their news from criticizing their product can then stop the news from criticizing people they're friendly with, and so on...

Does that scare you? It scares me. What can be done about it? Do we have to force these companies to sell off their news outlets? Or put some strict anti-censorship laws in place? The First Amendment and the Journalistic standards are QUICKLY eroding here...

[Katana]

What did Bush do that deregulated the economy?

Keep in mind that I'm not arguing against your point. I share similar concerns, but I'm interested in what he did that contributed to this particular problem. Again, I'm not questioning what you said. I'm just looking for more information.

[Darth Rotor]

Does that scare you? It scares me. What can be done about it? Do we have to force these companies to sell off their news outlets? Or put some strict anti-censorship laws in place? The First Amendment and the Journalistic standards are QUICKLY eroding here...
I share you concern. It seems to me that a combination of Congressional and Executive action would be needed to counter this trend, but getting it enacted would be darned hard.

DR

[ponderingturtle]

What did Bush do that deregulated the economy?


I can't think of anything really. Sure the republicans where championing how deregulation would solve everything, but most of the changes where enacted during Clinton I think.