Easy to ask; a real job to answer in fullness, in no small part because it is a constantly moving target. Here is a sample of the larger ones:

AOL/Time Warner: All CNN outlets, AOL, Time, Time-Warner Cable, Roadrunner content, Fortune, Business 2.0, Money.

General Electric: NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Canal de Noticias, TV Azteca, Telemundo, NBC Radio network, 14 TV stations. (GE is also a major defense contractor, of course.) Today's news brings word that they're buying all media operations of Vivendi, too.

Viacom: CBS Television, CBS Radio network, BET, Marketwatch.com, UPN, 184 Infiniti radio stations (including 7 in Boston, 5 in New York, 5 in Philly, 4 in Washington DC, 7 in Dallas and 4 in Austin), Westwood One, Simon and Schuster. They are also very big into exclusive advertising rights on buses, subways, trains and billboards in New York, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, and over 180 other cities.

Disney: US Weekly, Institutional Investor, ABC television (w/ 10 stations), ESPN, ABC News Productions, Inc., ABCNEWS.com, ABC Radio Network (with 50 stations.) Stake in Sid R. Bass oil and gas production. Also very big into the production of so-called "educational" films to primary and middle schools for free; these just happen to reflect favorably on Disney holdings, policies, and trademarks.

Liberty Media (a spinoff of AT&T): 18% of News Corporation, 66 newspapers, stakes or ownership of 70 radio and 14 TV stations in the US and Canada; 67% stake in MacNeil-Lehrer productions, Inc., 4% of Motorola, 19 million cable customers in Europe, largest cable operator in Japan.

News Corporation: Fox, Fox news, 33 television stations, NY Post, Weekly Standard, Primestar, News America New Media, News Interactive, vast international TV network and print media holdings, including 5 UK newspapers and 20 Aussie papers.

Hearst: 14 major-market newspapers, 28 TV stations, King Features Syndicate.

Sun Myung Moon, Unification Church [*]: News World Communications, Washington Times (laughably calling itself "America's Newspaper"; it has lost almost a billion dollars in the last decade), UPI, approximately 1400 conservative political action committees, several thousand small business church fronts.

Clear Channel: 1,225 radio and 39 television stations in the United States, equity interests in over 240 radio stations internationally, world's largest outdoor billboard company. Particularly noteworthy because C.O.B. L. Lowry Mays (a Bush Pioneer-level fund raiser) dictates news coverage from corporate HQ in San Antonio. Also uses his assets to organize so-called "support the troops" rallies whenever Bush is campaigning and collecting money, most recently in Portland. He's the guy who removed the Dixie Chicks from all Clear Channel playlists when he disagreed with their political sentiments.

Cox Enterprises, Inc: 4th largest cable provider, Cox cable content provider, 17 daily and 25 weekly newspapers (including the Austin American-Statesman), 78 radio stations, 15 TV stations.

Dow Jones and Co: Wall Street Journal, Barron's, SmartMoney, Dow Jones Newswires, 24 newspapers, WSJ Radio Network.

Gannet: largest US newspaper group; USA Today, 100 local papers, 22 TV stations, Gannet News Wire, 100 web sites in the US, 80 in the UK.

New York Times Company: NY Times, Boston Globe, 15 other newspapers, 8 TV stations, two radio stations, Times newswire, Times Syndication.

(Sources: Columbia Journalism Review (http://www.cjr.org/owners) and individual corporate websites of those listed. [*] News World Communications is apparently privately held and therefore has no obligation to report its activities, which are big enough to fill several books -- and have; do a web search for "Sun Myung Moon" to learn how big his operation is.)

"Small businesses play an important part in the United States economy. There are about 22.4 million non-farm firms in the U.S, according to 2001 data.  Small businesses represent more than 99 percent of all employers. They also employ 51 percent of private-sector workers, 51 percent of workers on public assistance, and 38 percent of workers in high-tech jobs. Small businesses account for nearly all of the self-employed, which comprise of 7 percent of the work force.

In addition, small businesses produce two-thirds to three-quarters of all the net new jobs. They also produce 51 percent of private sector output as well as represent 96 percent of all exporters of goods.  Small businesses play a role in federal contracting as well. Small businesses obtain 33.3 percent of federal prime and subcontract dollars."

(Source: http://www.house.gov/smbiz/facts)

Small business is the engine that runs this economy. It pioneers new technologies, and it creates new jobs. And while I am sure that there's a fine mix of the political spectrum in small business people, most of the small business owners that I know are political liberals.

Let's examine this tried-and-true recurrent bit of troop-rallying hoo-hah.

A so-called conservative without someone else's money to borrow and spend is powerless. Let's look at the facts, shall we?

• Nixon went off of the gold standard and started deficit-financing the Vietnam war when it became obvious that citizens would not take kindly to paying more taxes for an unpopular military action -- and therewith sent us into hyperinflation. (Remember your first mortgage? What were you paying, 16% interest? Remember those frantic Nixonian political pronouncements like "the rate of increase of inflation is decreasing?")
• Ford and Carter wouldn't and couldn't (respectively) clean up the mess in 6 1/2 years. (Ford made a bunch of little "WIN" buttons, though. Remember turning 'em upside-down and taping "rod" on to the end of the word?) Then the oil embargo got us into a dandy little recession, nipping inflation.
• Under Reagan/Bush, we went from the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation, and ran up breathtaking deficits; record deficits at the time. (But no longer...)
• Under Clinton, we balanced the budget and started to pay down the national debt with the surplus.
• Under GW Bush, we have squandered a $300 billion surplus, and we now have the largest single-year deficit in history. It'll be larger next year. And he wants still more tax cuts for his top-one-percent cronies.

The national debt, by the way, is $6,790,040,713,975.50 (as of this writing), and increasing at a rate of $1.69 billion a day. The interest expense on the national debt is the second largest expense in the federal budget, costing you $911.7 million a day. Excellent economic stewardship there by so-called conservatives. (http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm)

Running deficits, living on money stolen from everyone's grandchildren -- it's the self-styled conservative way. According to the CBO (http://www.cbo.gov), we will have a $401 billion deficit this year, a new record. We're on track for $480 billion next year. Interest rates are beginning to rise again -- good news for the money changers, of course --  and the economy has lost 3 million jobs since Bush was installed as president in a judicial coup d'etat. That's a real sterling group of people to worship on the subject of "those who take the initiative to create wealth."

Deficit spending and tax-cuts for the super rich: It's a wonderful method of transferring public funds into the private hands of cronies while bankrupting the government. So-called conservatives spend money like an insane rat in heat -- they just don't pay for it. They and theirs profit from it, and they leave future generations to clean up their messes while they walk away with the money. Shall we talk about how much you paid to bail out Savings and Loans after they were 'deregulated' and then looted by so-called conservatives 17 years ago? How about just the most conservative estimate of $123.8 billion dollars? How much of those stolen funds did you get to pocket? None? Durn, you must not be a crony. Bummer. (http://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/banking/2000dec/brv13n2_2.pdf)

And you, my free-market conservative friend, already pay $100 billion every year to subsidize businesses -- and that doesn't include the airline bailout. You might like this one: it's from your own Hoover Institute, albeit a bit dated. (http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/88/88a.html)

Ignoring the laughably one-sided phrase "productive conservatives" for the moment, you accidentally spoke a truism. By this, do you mean that so-called conservatives won't promote social equality if they are left to their own devices? I'd tend to agree with that reading of the sentence; it's generally historically accurate. So-called conservatives are masters of class-warfare. I think that it is safe to say that people who view life as a zero-sum state of economic warfare are generally less concerned with quality of life and the equality of opportunity for their fellow human beings.

But I know that this is not what you meant. So let's examine the bigger picture. You're equating so-called "conservatism" with "productivity", and you're implying (throughout your essay) that so-called conservatives are the only entrepreneurs and producers. Plainly absurd. You're also implying that liberals produce nothing and create no wealth. Also absurd.

By the way, I don't see Bill Gates working for $0.50 an hour somewhere in Asia producing Xboxes. There's some "production" for you to ponder.

"Need to be important?" How about concern for the nascent potential of our citizens? How about things like a livable wage, adequate and safe affordable housing, education, child care, food for children, a job to support a family, health care?

By your standards, you're in no position to accept on behalf of "those who take the initiative to create wealth and generate productivity." You are an employee, you are not an employer, nor did you create the company for which you work. I thank you for your kind acknowledgement of *my* efforts, though.

I've helped create probably 200 jobs over the course of my adult life, and I only count herein the companies in which I had a personal monetary investment as a sole proprietor, partner, or Subchapter S principal.

You're complaining awfully LOUDLY here. How many businesses have you started, and how many jobs have you created?

Incidentally, I can't imagine that you're very happy with George W. Bush's tax cuts, since you get about a 5% cut, while the wealthiest one per cent get about a 17% cut. (http://www.ctj.org) Or have you managed to sock away a few billion in investments since we last talked? (In dollars, those figures are more like 90% of the total to the top 1% wealthiest.)

In my opinion, a *true* conservative has a deep and proactive concern for the conservation of resources, definitely including human resources. In this common sense definition, I am a conservative. Your so-called "conservatives" are people who spend their time counting their pocket change, and moaning about how much they had to pay in taxes on the candy bar they just bought, while complaining about how the maker of the candy bar is being raped because he can only make a 20% after-tax profit.

If we can rephrase your statement, I'll happily go with "constitutional right to participate in the governance of their country," though. Sorry, but I am really tired of angry worker bees spouting the fallacious propaganda of their tribal leaders, telling me that I don't contribute to this economy. They know nothing of which they speak, and most of those screaming the loudest don't approach the amount of taxes that I've paid -- or the derivative economic benefit that I've created.

*Sigh*. Unfortunately, the word "conservative" has come to mean anything but conservation. In my opinion, today's so-called conservatives are all about exploitation, theft of public assets, unregulated capitalism, rank self-interest, short-term tactic over long-term strategy, and absence of oversight and regulation -- economic control and political power. They laughably argue that money is "free speech." We tried that in the late 1800's with 'laissez faire' economics. We tried it again in the late '20's. It didn't work. But that's another conversation.

Beg pardon?

The steel industry collapsed in the '70's and '80's because of (a) bad management, and (b) the dumping of foreign steel into our market after the so-called conservatives started to harp on "free" trade and "opened the market." Foreign entrepreneurs bought scrap steel here for pennies on the dollar, shipped it home to their country, reforged it, shipped it back, and sold it at a fraction of the virgin-forged market price. Because the steel industry was too blind to take environmentalist's advice on recycling. If management of that industry had taken some initiative, they would have prospered. All they had to do was pick up the trash, and they would've put foreign competition out of business. They would've had the same low-cost source material without the shipping costs. And moving to this production model is the only thing that saved what was left of the steel industry in this country - later on, after a decade of whining and government bail-outs for their incompetent business practices.

The current problem with the industry (according to the International Iron and Steel Institute) is excess production capacity. (http://www.steel.org/news/pr/2001/images/IISIPressRelease.pdf)

How many H1 visa computer engineers from South Asia are working for $17k a year at Dell Computer in Round Rock, TX? And how many former Dell employees are eating dog food because their unemployment insurance benefits have run out since they were discarded and replaced? Are you aware of the fact that when you call Dell tech support, you are talking to someone at a call center in Bangalore, India? Is this because Michael Dell can't afford to pay support personnel in North Austin his little $9.50 an hour anymore? I think not.

Hey, we're just cleaning up after so-called conservatives again. It's your crowd that does this stuff. And what would you rather have? Jobs, with the revenue and economic power that they create, or "displaced" homeless former co-workers dying of exposure in your front yard? Talk to the crony capitalists about your socio-economic issues -- they created them.

By the way, the U.S. just became the leader of the world in prison population. We've now beat out China and even Russia. 1 in every 143 people in this country is incarcerated. 55% of federal prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders. Your tax dollars at work. (http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aaprisonpop.htm and http://www.drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm)

And when so-called conservatives are confronted with things they can't control, they use every underhanded thing that they can possibly muster to change the game. Like impeaching a president, stealing elections, recalling a duly-elected governor, trying to re- and re- and redistrict a state to gerrymander themselves more power, lying to mount an illegal war, giving huge bidless contracts to their cronies (Bechtel got another $300 million just last week, to bring the current total of bidless contracts for Halliburton and its subsidiaries to $1.7 billion), illegally withholding transcripts of public meetings, stifling investigations, illegally outing covert national security assets, and a variety of other tactics. But that's for another conversation, too; a well documented one, I assure you.

Now let's talk about HOW your captains of industry are able to "create wealth." They use the infrastructure that was created with YOUR tax dollars. The highway system. The air traffic control system. Surface water impoundment and distribution. Traffic control and routing. Weight, measure, and process standardization. Telecommunications and telemetry. The water and wastewater system. Railroads. Mass transit. Satellite navigation and communications. Radio and television. Statistical information. Cable television distribution from uplink to wall socket. Hydroelectric, coal, gas, and nuclear power. The principles behind the computer that you're sitting in front of. Medical research, statistics, drugs, and technologies. The electrical distribution grid. The Internet. Shipping and tracking technologies. Weather prediction. Start-up loans. Geological, hydrological and oceanographic mapping. The education of the workforce. The development of all of these (and much, much more) were-or-are either heavily subsidized or completely funded with taxpayer money. All are managed, run, and regulated to varying degrees with your tax dollars.

I, for one, think that anyone turning a profit while utilizing these publicly-financed enabling technologies should be required to give back a significant portion of their profits to the taxpayers that made (and continue to make) it possible for them to do so.

Your so-called conservatives want to "privatize" these public assets, so that their cronies can own the *very infrastructure itself* and charge you for the use of what you have already developed and paid for.

Let me put it more plainly. Your heroes are taking their theft of public assets from retail to wholesale, right here and now, in broad daylight. Do you think that Enron's gaming of the system was a fluke? It was their *intention*, their business plan. From the moment that they started giving millions to the Republican party and ramming energy deregulation down the public's throat.

This is what the code words "deregulation" and "privatize" are all about; you can now put it into context. Whenever you hear those words, check your wallet and inventory your assets. You're about to get something that you own stolen from you and then rented back to you.

Perhaps it might be time for you to wake up to the true policies of so-called conservatives? California knows about it now. A stolen $27 billion later, bankruptcy, and they don't own their own power generation anymore. But they're "deregulated." And how about cable television, which was going to be cheaper and more competitive after deregulation? Prices are up by 50% or more. (http://uspirg.org/uspirgnewsroom.asp?id2=10534id3=USPIRGnewsroom)

*Chuckle.* They may come home to find that Texas is going to have a Democratic sweep next year. These are genuine Texan heroes; have you looked at public opinion lately? Even West Texas polls in the home turf of oil bidnessmen are running 60% against Tom Delay's shills in the Texas legislature.

Please: write to Governor GoodHair, and tell him to keep calling special sessions on redistricting! Please! Let's have 12 more; keep 'em going until the election! The democrats-in-exile can afford it; they've received hundreds of thousands in donations from all over the country in just the last couple of weeks to pay for their hotel bills. Meanwhile the infrastructure of this state is falling apart, and the school that your grandchildren go to is crumbling. Great governance there. You must be very proud of this sterling example of statesmanship on the part of the so-called conservative party, eh?

Guess what? I pay from the same tax tables. I'll keep paying too; and probably a bigger percentage of my gross income than you. Certainly, at this time, a much larger chunk of my discretionary income. Glad that you are, though. The miscreants and criminals that you're so vociferously defending are certainly not paying their share, nor do they give one whit about you or your concerns. If they did, they would have given you the benefit of more of their tax cut and they wouldn't be stealing your property under the guise of deregulation.

You can't even buy your way into getting their secretary's receptionist's personal assistant to accept your phone call. How can you even *think* that their actions have anything to do with a concern for you? They're too busy mortgaging your family for generations and pocketing the profits from the free money that they've stolen.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. corporate profits in 2002 were $787.2 billion dollars. (These are just corporations; non-incorporated business and single proprietorships don't factor in.) (http://www.bea.doc.gov/briefrm/tables/ebr7.htm)

Meanwhile, 3 billion human beings live on less than two dollars a day. The GDP of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world's countries) is less than the combined wealth of the world's three richest people. Nearly a billion people can't read a book or sign their names. Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific. One billion will go to bed hungry tonight. (http://www.globalissues.org)

While I was spending the 12 hours or so that it took me to do some basic research to address your absurd statements, 12,000 people in this world died of starvation -- 9000 of them children under the age of five. 4100 people died of AIDS in that same time period. (http://www.thehungersite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites and http://www.worldaidsday.org/facts)

Corporate profits in the just the U.S. were over a billion dollars in those 12 hours.

That, my friend, is an obscenity. But go ahead whoop it up with the 300 bucks (or whatever) that you got from Bush's tax cut; enjoy your job while some CEO figures out a way to move it to Asia, and scream about every tax dollar that you have to pay. You're allowed to; it is your right.

Note that I do not question your personal politics -- I unconditionally defend your right to express your opinion -- and as I told you in a private e-mail, I greatly admire your community service. You are obviously a deeply involved, heartfelt, and participatory citizen of this country. I salute that.

I do, however, question your "facts" and your regurgitation of the lies and the name-calling of the so-called "conservative" hate-radio mongers. And I absolutely repudiate the motives, values, and the legitimacy of the political party with which you affiliate yourself. I wonder if you realize that they do not affiliate themselves with you? They are documented liars and documented thieves, interested only in their own pocketbook and the perpetuation of their own power.

But it's all okay. These people are so blatantly, egregiously, criminally bad that another year and a half of this administration will probably guarantee a genuinely progressive government in this country for another 25 years. We are in a period of economic corruption even worse than Herbert Hoover's time, and you'll eventually see the same results. It's a good trade. Pun intended.

Here's some insider info from a card-carrying member of the vast left-wing conspiracy: We're going after corporate reform this time around. Foundational corporate reform. You heard it here first. (By the way, if a corporation is legally a "person," then isn't a corporate holding company guilty of slavery, which is banned under the 13th amendment?) (See http://www.poclad.org)

I hope that this gives you some food for thought, and I hope that it will spur you to think for yourself. Let's end with a couple of quotes:

Randy Kirchhof