"Yet you miss the bigger picture too"

No, not really! E.g., I wrote:

"Society needs from the news business solid, useful, important information on government, foreign affairs, the economy, etc."

So, that ended with "etc."

What happened to Aaron and why are right in there.

And don't read, object, and respond too fast to miss my

"Thus my view is that this lack of information caused, say, for just a short list of a few little things, The Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, the wars in Viet Nam, The Great Recession, the devastation of the US 'rust belt', etc."

I'm not joking: For The Great Depression, that we were blowing a financial bubble based on thin margin from banks, a bubble that likely would burst (bubble bursting went back at least to the Dutch tulips) and wipe out the banking system should have been clear somewhere some months or years before October, 1929. With that information, we should have taken action to deflate the bubble slowly ("soft landing") and keep the banks from going bust. Next, the banks use 'fractional reserve banking' with a 'multiplier effect' that essentially creates money. So the bubble blowing creates too much money and causes inflation. Then when the bubble bursts, we get deflation. With a credit economy, tough to get out of deflation. We ruined lots of lives, killed lots of people in the US, during the deflation. We didn't get out of the deflation until we were willing to 'print' money again, i.e., when people started shooting at us 12 years later. With just decent information, not much more than the above, made authoritative and disseminated, we should have avoided most of the bubble bursting, all of The Great Depression, and likely WWII.

Now, move the clock forward to the housing bubble blowing and The Great Recession, same song, different verse. From 1929 to 2008, we didn't learn much. E.g., the 'news' had lots of 'stories' about house prices but next to nothing on the leverage at the banks and on Wall Street. So, when the bubble burst, we were well on the way to a second Great Depression. We were better at handling the problem than in the first Great Depression, but we still have fumbled for four years.

In the past four years the 'news' has just done their usual of light entertainment, emotionalism over rationalism, passion, pathos, and poignancy, people to 'identify' with in 'stories' about individual cases, with next to nothing, zip, zilch, zero, on the real causes and the real ways out. So, we have suffered massive unemployment, slow economic growth, and, no doubt, much higher rates of, let's look at the usual list, street crime, domestic violence, divorce, abortion, substance abuse, homelessness, clinical depression, suicide, little things like those. And, there's the devastation of the US 'rust belt' -- no excuse for that. We really can build cars in the US -- Honda, Toyota, BMW, etc. do it. Detroit could have, too.

Then coming at us like a runaway freight train is the high praise for 'free and open world trade'. Hmm. Guys, we don't have a 'world government' and, really, don't want one. Then 'free and open world trade' without a corresponding government promises significant economic instability, suffering, conflict, and maybe WWIII.

Then there is the reason given for 'free and open world trade', that in some work some other country is 'more productive' than the US so that we should 'trade' the results of where they are productive with where we are productive. I.e., all the textile workers in the US should get jobs in software. Instead we had to pay for the imported textiles and the 'safety net' for the US textile workers; many workers and their families were hurt as in the usual list above; the quality of the textile products went down; we wiped out some major US businesses; etc.

So, why'd we do that? Well, some importers make some money. But apparently the main issue was the US Foggy Bottom community that wanted to use access to the US markets as a 'carrot' to influence the foreign policies of some other countries. US voters were not informed about this 'swap'. Net, some foreign economies are going up, and our economy is going down.

Why, that is, what about the 'productivity' issue? That was always mostly a fraud. Sure, a big example is tin: We need some tin, and Indonesia has some. So, generally, in natural resources, trade is important. But in textiles? The textile workers over there have 10 fingers on each hand and can sew seams and buttons twice as fast? No. And they have less good infrastructure. The difference, instead, is foreign exchange rates.

Beyond the money, there is an issue of actual control of our country: Parts of the Mideast can pump oil for ballpark $1 a barrel and sell it for $100 a barrel. So, they get to dream of 'golden' cities and hire people to build them. Not so good but maybe okay so far -- we can set up Victoria's Secret stores there. But next they get to buy essentially all our country and, thus, control us. Bad.

And for what? Oil. But there's no need: Mostly it's about gasoline. But can make gasoline, and also get off a byproduct of some oxygen, from just coal, water, and some energy. For the energy, use whatever, wind, solar, if they are efficient, or coal or nuclear fission. I'd bet on the last as the most economic solution. South Africa does it. Hitler did it. It's doable. At one time there was an article in 'Scientific American' with an analysis that could make gasoline from Utah coal and put into a pipeline for 65 cents a gallon. Net, the US really should be largely or entirely 'energy independent' with relatively cheap energy. That we can do that, and how to do it, needs to get out so that we can come to a consensus and then do it. The 'news' didn't get that information out.

You mentioned the police. Okay. It's always dangerous to have a national police force, and in the US we tried to avoid doing that. Then the FBI was an exception. Now the Secret Service, another police force, does much more than look at counterfeiting and protect the president. Then we have the DEA busting down doors. And now we have the DHS with at least the Border Police. Net, we've got a lot of national police forces.

When a local police force messes up, the local people can get concerned and take action. So, local police forces are accountable. But if the DHS Border Police messes up, is that really going to swing a national election to clean up the DHS? Nope. So the DHS police force is not accountable. Bummer. Dangerous.

For more, long we let the states handle crime and sometimes didn't even pass federal laws against some major criminal acts. But now just ignoring the terms of service at a Web site can get the US DoJ all up on their hind legs, send in the FBI, and start talking felonies and years in jail. This national police force stuff is dangerous.

Finally, here's a pattern: People want 'security', see a problem or a threat and, then, can be talked into having the US Federal Government take action to solve the problem/threat from DC (now the third richest area in the country behind Silicon Valley and hedge fund CT). So, we keep getting a larger and larger Federal Government, and that's a threat to efficiency, freedom, and our whole country.

Net, as citizens, we need better information, and we need a 'news' industry that will provide it, maybe in addition to the traffic violations of L. Lohan, so that we can come to consensus based on good information and then authorize action.