...the Ryan proposal trumpets the results of an economic projection from the Heritage Foundation, which claims that the plan’s tax cuts would set off a gigantic boom. Indeed, the foundation initially predicted that the G.O.P. plan would bring the unemployment rate down to 2.8 percent — a number we haven’t achieved since the Korean War. After widespread jeering, the unemployment projection vanished from the Heritage Foundation’s Web site...If this is supposed to be seriousness from the Republicans, I'd hate to see what the pundits considered not serious. This reflects badly on both the Republicans and on the pundits who have lauded Ryan for his "courage" in presenting this piece of garbage.
[...]
the original voodoo proposition — the claim that lower taxes mean higher revenue — is still very much there. The Heritage Foundation projection has large tax cuts actually increasing revenue by almost $600 billion over the next 10 years.
A more sober assessment from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tells a different story. It finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.
[...]
Mr. Ryan and his colleagues are assuming drastic cuts in nonhealth spending without explaining how that is supposed to happen. How drastic? According to the budget office, which analyzed the plan using assumptions dictated by House Republicans, the proposal calls for spending on items other than Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — but including defense — to fall from 12 percent of G.D.P. last year to 6 percent of G.D.P. in 2022, and just 3.5 percent of G.D.P. in the long run.
That last number is less than we currently spend on defense alone; it’s not much bigger than federal spending when Calvin Coolidge was president, and the United States, among other things, had only a tiny military establishment. How could such a drastic shrinking of government take place without crippling essential public functions? The plan doesn’t say.
[...]
then there’s the much-ballyhooed proposal to abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers that can be used to buy private health insurance.
The point here is that privatizing Medicare does nothing, in itself, to limit health-care costs. In fact, it almost surely raises them by adding a layer of middlemen. Yet the House plan assumes that we can cut health-care spending as a percentage of G.D.P. despite an aging population and rising health care costs.
The only way that can happen is if those vouchers are worth much less than the cost of health insurance. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2030 the value of a voucher would cover only a third of the cost of a private insurance policy equivalent to Medicare as we know it. So the plan would deprive many and probably most seniors of adequate health care.
And that neither should nor will happen. Mr. Ryan and his colleagues can write down whatever numbers they like, but seniors vote. And when they find that their health-care vouchers are grossly inadequate, they’ll demand and get bigger vouchers — wiping out the plan’s supposed savings.
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Friday, April 08, 2011
Krugman starts on Ryan's budget proposal
Paul Ryan's plan is "...voodoo economics, with an extra dose of fantasy, and a large helping of mean-spiritedness." That's how Paul Krugman describes the fantasy budget document that Paul Ryan offered to American voters this week. Some details from his column:
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Bill Moyers describes the problems of informing the public about political and business corruption
Bill Moyers has published an article that says a great deal about the reason why America's government is no longer working. Here is a key paragraph:
Only amazing efforts by governments around the world and handouts of lrge sums of taxpayer money to the very banks that caused the problem saved the world economy from the second Great Depression. We still call the residue of that period the Great Recession and we will not recover for years.
Wall Street and the American corporations do not want that story told. Go back and look at the list of four highlighted items above. All of them are in play, especially propaganda and the strange amnesia of the public.
Go read Moyer's entire article. As usual it is both very good and highly entertainikng.
The late scholar Cleanth Brooks of Yale thought there were three great enemies of democracy. He called them "The Bastard Muses":Bill Moyers goes on to describe some instances in which he helped expose corruption in politics, but one item in the story is especially memorable. It involves exposing wrong-doing by corporations.The poet Czeslaw Milosz identified another enemy of democracy when, upon accepting the Noble Prize for Literature, he said "Our planet that gets smaller every year, with its fantastic proliferation of mass media, is witnessing a process that escapes definition, characterized by a refusal to remember." Memory is crucial to democracy; historical amnesia, its nemesis.
- Propaganda, which pleads sometimes unscrupulously, for a special cause at the expense of the total truth;
- sentimentality, which works up emotional responses unwarranted by, and in excess of, the occasion; and
- pornography, which focuses upon one powerful human drive at the expense of the total human personality.
Against these tendencies it is an uphill fight to stay the course of factual broadcasting. We have to keep reassuring ourselves and one another that it matters and we have to join forces to defend and safeguard our independence. I learned this early on.
[Formatting added by the editor of WTF-o]
But shining the spotlight on political corruption is nothing compared to what can happen if you raise questions about corporate power in Washington, as my colleague Marty Koughan and I discovered when we produced a program for David Fanning and "Frontline" on pesticides and food. Marty had learned that industry was attempting behind closed doors to dilute the findings of the American Academy of Sciences study on the effects of pesticide residues on children. Before we finished the documentary, the industry somehow purloined a copy of our draft script - we still aren't certain how - and mounted a sophisticated and expensive campaign to discredit our program before it aired. Television reviewers and editorial pages of key newspapers were flooded with propaganda. Some public television managers were so unnerved by the blitz of misleading information about a film they had not yet broadcast that they actually protested to PBS with letters that had been prepared by the industry.This is really a long way from the ideal of representative democracy we were taught about in civics. This is the corporations working to take control of America and simply do whatever they want to do in the name of increased profit. It is the story we all know of Wall Street which, in its greed, sold mortgage backed securities with essentially fake financial insurance that made the securities seem like a sure route to wealth for the investors. Instead they were the destruction of the Wall Street banks and the world economy. For a while in the fall of 2008 Wall Street was literally dead.
Here's what most perplexed us: the American Cancer Society - an organization that in no way figured in our story - sent to its 3,000 local chapters a "critique" of the unfinished documentary claiming, wrongly, that it exaggerated the dangers of pesticides in food. We were puzzled. Why was the American Cancer Society taking the unusual step of criticizing a documentary that it had not seen, that had not aired and that did not claim what the Society alleged? An enterprising reporter named Sheila Kaplan later looked into those questions for the journal Legal Times. It turns out that the Porter Novelli public relations firm, which had worked for several chemical companies, also did pro bono work for the American Cancer Society. Kaplan found that the firm was able to cash in some of the goodwill from that "charitable" work to persuade the compliant communications staff at the Society to distribute some harsh talking point about the documentary before it aired - talking points that had been supplied by, but not attributed to, Porter Novelli. Legal Times headlined the story "Porter Novelli Plays All Sides." A familiar Washington game.
Others also used the American Cancer Society's good name in efforts to tarnish the journalism before it aired, none more invidiously than the right-wing polemicist Reed Irvine, who pumped his sludge through an organization with the Orwellian name Accuracy in Media. He attacked our work as "junk science on PBS" and demanded Congress pull the plug on public broadcasting. Fortunately, PBS once again stood firm. The documentary aired, the journalism held up and the publicity liberated the National Academy of Sciences to release the study that the industry had tried to cripple.
Only amazing efforts by governments around the world and handouts of lrge sums of taxpayer money to the very banks that caused the problem saved the world economy from the second Great Depression. We still call the residue of that period the Great Recession and we will not recover for years.
Wall Street and the American corporations do not want that story told. Go back and look at the list of four highlighted items above. All of them are in play, especially propaganda and the strange amnesia of the public.
Go read Moyer's entire article. As usual it is both very good and highly entertainikng.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Bartiromo demonstrates how conservatives fail to contribute to the healthcare discussion
CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo demonstrates the combination of partisanship and ignorance that ideological conservatives have brought to the discussion of the American health care system.
Here's how Steve Benen describes her ignorance:
The absence of an organized American health care system fails a sizable percentage of the American public by not letting them get the health care they need. It has damaged the American economy and made it less competitive in international trade. And it has done all of this while costing a great deal more per person than does the next most expensive national health care system in the industrialized world. And what do the American ideological conservatives offer to improve the American health care system?
A combination of "head in the sand" refusal to even address the problems of the overall system and reflexive obstructionism trying to prevent others from working on the problem. That's what. Nothing else. The conservative ideology is even more bankrupt than is the American health care system.
Here's how Steve Benen describes her ignorance:
She thinks a public option would undermine quality care, but she doesn't know why. She thinks Medicare somehow offers sub-standard care, but she doesn't know why. She thinks 44 year olds who like Medicare should sign up for it, unaware of eligibility restrictions. She thinks Weiner should choose to opt into Medicare, while simultaneously arguing argument against giving American consumers the choice of a public option.This is not thought. It is pure reflexive obstructionism.
The absence of an organized American health care system fails a sizable percentage of the American public by not letting them get the health care they need. It has damaged the American economy and made it less competitive in international trade. And it has done all of this while costing a great deal more per person than does the next most expensive national health care system in the industrialized world. And what do the American ideological conservatives offer to improve the American health care system?
A combination of "head in the sand" refusal to even address the problems of the overall system and reflexive obstructionism trying to prevent others from working on the problem. That's what. Nothing else. The conservative ideology is even more bankrupt than is the American health care system.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The fingerprints on the Republican "death panel" fear tactic
The Republicans are in an all-out battle to prevent the Democrats from passing health care reform, and since they have no rational reasons for opposing it, they are spreading as much fear as the media will bear. The most recent is the line that the health care reform includes what they call "death panels." Talking Points Memo traces the development of that meme in the media.
Notice that it starts with a lie told by the whacked out loon Betsy McCaughey. Then it is picked up by House Minority Leader John Boehner. Then Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) presented the meme on the House floor. Then Sarah Palin posted the idea on her Facebook page and spread the label "death panel." Then Newt Gingrich appeared on ABC's "This Week" and pushed the meme even further.
Next Senator Johnny Isakson reversed his previous position on end of life counselling and put out a statement distancing himself from it. Sen. Grassley (R-IA) worked to spread teh fear when he told a Republican town hall crowd, "You have every right to fear....a government-run plan to decide when to pull the plug on Grandma." This was the same day RNC Chairman Michael Steele told Neil Cavuto that panels were going to be imposed to make life-and-death decisions. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) added to the story with more of the "pull the plug on grandma" rhetoric to a local Oklahoma TV station.
Of course, nothing the Republicans lie about is complete unless Rush Limbaugh bloviates about it. He has been all over the "death panels" fear-mongering. Rep. Broun (R-GA) who is also an MD sent a letter to the American Conservative Union making the statement which he cannot support: "When mama falls and breaks her hip, she'll just lie in her bed in pain until she dies with pneumonia because her needed surgery is not cost efficient."
John McCain must have been concerned that he was being left out, because he rather belatedly echoed the by now full-throated Republican fear-mongering lie. So did the NRO writer Jonah Goldberg.
Several common things run through this. First, this is fact-free fear-mongering spread throught the mass media. Second, the Republican Party is pushing it. They completely avoid talking about the problems Americans have with the failed health care system, and they offer no solutions. This is pure obstructionism.
Steve Benen explains what happens next.
Notice that it starts with a lie told by the whacked out loon Betsy McCaughey. Then it is picked up by House Minority Leader John Boehner. Then Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) presented the meme on the House floor. Then Sarah Palin posted the idea on her Facebook page and spread the label "death panel." Then Newt Gingrich appeared on ABC's "This Week" and pushed the meme even further.
Next Senator Johnny Isakson reversed his previous position on end of life counselling and put out a statement distancing himself from it. Sen. Grassley (R-IA) worked to spread teh fear when he told a Republican town hall crowd, "You have every right to fear....a government-run plan to decide when to pull the plug on Grandma." This was the same day RNC Chairman Michael Steele told Neil Cavuto that panels were going to be imposed to make life-and-death decisions. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) added to the story with more of the "pull the plug on grandma" rhetoric to a local Oklahoma TV station.
Of course, nothing the Republicans lie about is complete unless Rush Limbaugh bloviates about it. He has been all over the "death panels" fear-mongering. Rep. Broun (R-GA) who is also an MD sent a letter to the American Conservative Union making the statement which he cannot support: "When mama falls and breaks her hip, she'll just lie in her bed in pain until she dies with pneumonia because her needed surgery is not cost efficient."
John McCain must have been concerned that he was being left out, because he rather belatedly echoed the by now full-throated Republican fear-mongering lie. So did the NRO writer Jonah Goldberg.
Several common things run through this. First, this is fact-free fear-mongering spread throught the mass media. Second, the Republican Party is pushing it. They completely avoid talking about the problems Americans have with the failed health care system, and they offer no solutions. This is pure obstructionism.
Steve Benen explains what happens next.
The right's "death panel" attack was thoroughly and completely debunked. It didn't matter -- lots of Americans believed the lie anyway. It has, however, started to lose some of its salience, which means it's time for the new health care reform lie.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Here's what's wrong with the American media
Once upon a time the TV networks provided a public service. They also were highly profitable. What happened to them? The Reagan Revolution and deregulation happened to them. Here is an analysis by TexasTom at Daily Kos:
until the eighties, only one of the major TV networks was a publicly traded corporation. CBS and ABC were both privately held, and (especially in the case of CBS) were owned and managed by people who had a sense of the public obligation associated with their networks. Today, all the networks are part of large, publicly traded corporations who see their news departments as another profit center...and that's about it. For Time-Warner, CNN isn't about making a fair profit by serving it's audience...it's just about the profit, period. The same thing can be said at the other networks. Over on the newspaper side, it seems that the few newspapers that didn't become part of large publicly traded groups are the ones that seem to be weathering the current recession -- probably because they aren't having to cut staff just to meet debt service payments.
The evidence that we're seeing in recent years is that news media as publicly traded corporations doesn't seem to be a winning bet.
The second point, of course, is deregulation. In the sixties, an activist FCC actually refused to allow the sale of the ABC network to a multinational conglomerate (ITT) on the basis that such an ownership change would not serve the public interest. Note that the argument that ABC was unprofitable and needed the infusion of cash from the conglomerate did not sway the FCC. The FCC also imposed limits on the amount of advertising that stations could run (that's why infomercials didn't appear on TV until the eighties), requirements for some "public service" programming, ownership restrictions, and much, much more. Note that the broadcasting business was extremely profitable (especially for major and medium market television stations) during this era of heavy regulation.
Starting in the eighties, the era of deregulation began. Throughout the eighties and nineties, rules were eliminated and ownership limits were relaxed. We're all familiar with the results -- the almost total demise of actual news reporting by any radio stations (even so-called "news" stations are really mostly opinion and talk anymore), and the steady concentration of ownership. The latter means that while we have the illusion of more choice, the reality is that we have less choice because all those different channels are controlled by the same companies.
Strangely enough, all that deregulation has resulted in a less profitable broadcasting business. Once again, the conservative mantra of deregulation seems to be wrong...
One reason why that deregulation has been such a disaster for the broadcast industry is the rise of cable and satellite TV. Back in the seventies, much of the left saw the then new cable TV industry as being the salvation of television. No more would the "lowest common denominator" rule the dial. Unfortunately, those folks never saw the rise of E!, VH1, Bravo, A&E, and the multitude of other channels that are essentially devoted to mind-numbing trash. How did they end up being so wrong about cable?
Unfortunately, the rise of cable coincided with the era of deregulation. The result is that the cable industry was never adequately regulated, and the result was a level of ownership concentration that makes the broadcast business look diffused by comparison. Big companies bulked up by buying a whole bunch of cable networks and forcing cable systems (and, later, satellite services) to carry all of them on the lowest tier. Viewers were forced to buy on an "all or nothing" basis, which prevents those viewers from being able to easily vote against channels that they see as worthless by cancelling their payments for those particular channels. It's all structured to maximize corporate profits, of course -- and it does so very effectively. Public service of any sort is not even a consideration.
Monday, August 17, 2009
The cable news networks viewers have interesting demographics
Daily Kos Commissioned and reported the results of a nationwide poll of who watches the three major cable news networks, MSNBC, CNN and FOX. The results tell us a lot about modern America. Here is their analysis:
The fact that the South is FOX territory tends to confirm my own belief that the conflict between what are politically labelled conservatives and liberals is actually a culture clash between rural traditionalists and urban modernists. These two cultures are socialized differently and in fact even think differently.
It's clear from the political clashes between them that the two groups consider very different issues to be of greatest priority for America, and the way each group treats government is an outgrowth of those different ways of thinking and different priorities. I find it no surprise, for example, that the rural traditionalists are also exclusionists - thus the immigration issue, and the modernists support diversity.
Traditionalists are not fact based. They think in terms of what the traditional authorities tell them is true. They will not be swayed by facts, no matter how obvious. I'd suspect that FOX News has made themselves into one of those authorities, along with Church leaders and high level political authorities like the President. This latter is probably why putting a liberal Democrat 0r worse, an African American, into the position of President is considered the equivalent to lese majeste or worse. That's why electing Clinton over George H. W. Bush, a member of an old-line upper class family, was so emotionally upsetting to so many conservatives. Clinton's enemies had to redeem the Presidency from his presence.
No, I can't prove this, but it fits. It explains a pattern of facts that I have not seen otherwise adequately explained.
Addendum 9/30/2009
I stated above that traditionalists are not fact based, but that I cannot prove it. A group of researchers, however, describe what they call Motivated Reasoning which is exactly what I was talking about.
Traditionalists have an emotional need to be "right" and so they reject facts that show they are not. Motivated Reasoning describes how they go about rejecting those facts they find uncomfortable. But where do they get the mistaken ideas they consider "right?" FOX News and the other Murdoch propaganda outlets as well as such right-wing propaganda organizations as Regent University, Liberty University, the Discovery Institute, the Heritage Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the CATO Institute and others.
Cable news networks have a level of influence that far exceeds their audience, since their actual audience is actually quite small. Most people simple don't watch cable news networks, but the ones that do are generally influentials.The fact that the audiences are small but consist of influentials suggests that watching cable news is something done by the more well-to-do upper class groups of people. The fact that the audiences are small confirms that the mass news media on cable TV has broken down into niche markets. So this is a report on an upper class (probably upper middle) consisting of influentials and it's also a report on which media outlets cater to the different categories in that class.
Republicans watch Fox News and nothing else, Democrats split between MSNBC and CNN, and Independents watch nothing. MSNBC, in particular, depends on Democrats for the vast majority of its audience. One would think they'd realize this and get rid of Joe Scarborough to boost its morning ratings.
The South, unlike the rest of the country, appears to have their TV dials stuck on "FOX NEWS". Except for the youth, that is. 82 percent of 18-29-year-old respondents never watched FNC.
We then asked, "When it comes to accuracy and trustworthiness as a source of news would you say that [Media Org] is extremely reliable, reliable, unreliable, or extremely unreliable?"
Combining "extremely reliable" and "reliable", and "unreliable" and "extremely unreliable", Fox News clocked in at 35-41. Republicans (and the South) obviously think they're the word of god, while Democrats think it's shit.
CNN came in at 44-34. For Republicans, it was 20-61. They actually believe all that crap about the "Communist News Network". CNN garnered good numbers from Democrats (56-20) and Independents (48-30). Again, the South (28-53) was at odds with the rest of the country, which generally gave the network high marks for accuracy and trustworthiness.
As for MSNBC, Democrats gave it the highest marks (37-7), followed by Independents (24-16). Republicans, of course, think the network is crap -- 6-31. MSNBC was easily the least-recognized network of the bunch, with 60 percent of respondents unable to give an opinion. That "not sure" number was only 22 percent for CNN, and 24 percent for FNC.
The fact that the South is FOX territory tends to confirm my own belief that the conflict between what are politically labelled conservatives and liberals is actually a culture clash between rural traditionalists and urban modernists. These two cultures are socialized differently and in fact even think differently.
It's clear from the political clashes between them that the two groups consider very different issues to be of greatest priority for America, and the way each group treats government is an outgrowth of those different ways of thinking and different priorities. I find it no surprise, for example, that the rural traditionalists are also exclusionists - thus the immigration issue, and the modernists support diversity.
Traditionalists are not fact based. They think in terms of what the traditional authorities tell them is true. They will not be swayed by facts, no matter how obvious. I'd suspect that FOX News has made themselves into one of those authorities, along with Church leaders and high level political authorities like the President. This latter is probably why putting a liberal Democrat 0r worse, an African American, into the position of President is considered the equivalent to lese majeste or worse. That's why electing Clinton over George H. W. Bush, a member of an old-line upper class family, was so emotionally upsetting to so many conservatives. Clinton's enemies had to redeem the Presidency from his presence.
No, I can't prove this, but it fits. It explains a pattern of facts that I have not seen otherwise adequately explained.
Addendum 9/30/2009
I stated above that traditionalists are not fact based, but that I cannot prove it. A group of researchers, however, describe what they call Motivated Reasoning which is exactly what I was talking about.
Traditionalists have an emotional need to be "right" and so they reject facts that show they are not. Motivated Reasoning describes how they go about rejecting those facts they find uncomfortable. But where do they get the mistaken ideas they consider "right?" FOX News and the other Murdoch propaganda outlets as well as such right-wing propaganda organizations as Regent University, Liberty University, the Discovery Institute, the Heritage Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the CATO Institute and others.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
The latest take on the curiosity that is Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin is a rather sad, empty and unimaginative person of little importance. Personally she does not matter much to me. But right now she is representative of some real American problems, like why America's education system is falling behind that of so many competing industrial nations (education doesn't matter enough for public funding) and why we turn out Lawyers and financial MBA's instead of scientists and production engineers (The top career rewards aren't as big and its a lot harder to learn to be an competent engineer or scientist than it appears to be to become a celebrity.) But let me just start with Sarah. Why did she resign so suddenly out of the blue?
Josh Marshall has posted the best explanation I have yet seen for Palin's strange and rather shocking resignation as Governor of Alaska. It makes a great deal of sense to me. She is a grifter, and the grift has finished. She is getting out of town while the getting is good. So now we can wait for the announcements of her money-making opportunities. She won't keep such deals from the Paparazzi (in this case mostly political and business reporters) because that kind of publicity is what she needs to extend her celebrity. She'll tell the Paparazzi because she needs them as much as they need her. Her reason for feeding the frenzy will be that the Paparazzi will extend her celebrity and keep her bankable. That dynamic between the celebrity and the press is the core of the entire celebrity culture as well as being the business model of the such journals as supermarket tabloids, People magazine, and the business publications Forbes, Fortune and the Wall Street Journal [*].
My read is that Palin has a single overriding motivation and that is ambition. She has a single major asset for her ambition to ride which is her celebrity status, the result of a lifetime spent chasing celebrity with no apparent significant interest in anything else. That's been her career. Her single asset has reached its apogee and was suddenly sliding away (stolen by her "enemies") so she has taken this opportunity to renew it. She will sacrifice anything to feed her ambition, including honor and the respect that can be earned by living up to your commitments. She has just proven that by her resignation.
Why do I care enough to blog about her? Two reasons. First, like the entire Pop Music scene, she seems to be emblematic of America's long celebrity obsession fueled by greed and the power of publicity experts to milk the public through the developing new forms of mass communications being created since the 1960's. That trend is run by grifters like Sarah Palin. It is a trend that runs counter to the great strengths America has always demonstrated as a solid, hard-working middle class productive nation with a culture centered on the strengths of well-trained and experienced journeyman workers.
The creation of the barely out of her teens Britney Spears is a symptom of the disaster of that celebrity culture. But the celebrity culture to which Sarah Palin now belongs is not isolated in society. It has broader implications. It has meant that America as a society and as an economy has failed to provide adequate rewards to the very many extremely capable people who might be induced to become engineers in college and learn new ways to invent and manufacture improved products. Instead, the best and the brightest are becoming lawyers and MBA's in the hopes of somehow suddenly getting rich by cashing in on a celebrity event of some kind. America's economic rewards are being redirected to celebrity status rather than to production of real goods and services of real value [**].
The second reason is that Sarah Palin's case is a cautionary tale of the utter vacuousness of the modern Republican Party. Their interest is in gaining power, nothing else. John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, not because she was best qualified if as President he died she would take over and run the country, but because he simply could not be elected to the office that fed his personal ambition and his feeling that he deserved to become the next President. He bought into Palin's celebrity to feed his own unbridled and undisciplined ambition. McCain is the son of American Naval Royalty, and he deserved the job of President more than anyone else by right of birth.
McCain is a conservative in part because it is an excellent justification for laziness. He resists working for his rewards because he feels he is entitled to them by right of birth. He is angry that so many people don't just hand them over because of who he is. Give such individuals a social problem to solve that does not involve their own interest directly and their solution is "Ignore it. If there is someone else with a good idea, skills and some idea how to get rewarded for it, they will solve the problem and we don't have to do any damned thing about it. "They call that the "free market" solution. What it really results in is a statement of "Let someone else do it, I don't want to think about it because I've already got mine. What? You want me to do hard work?"
So what we have is a toxic and unproductive celebrity culture that is taking over America, together with a political party representing and built on that culture that is made up of people who offer an economic ideology that advances that toxic culture. They are in it, like Palin, solely for their own personal benefit. Sarah Palin is just one more example of that culture, together with her national political mentor, Senator John McCain. The results of that culture, both in the failure of America to remain economically competitive against so many other industrial nations and in the clear emptiness and nastiness of the conservatives running the modern Republican Party are very clear.
So tell me. Why should we care about the sad spectacle that Sarah Palin is making of herself? Should I add Governor Mark Sanford?
[*]An interesting side note. I was told by the journalism prof of a public relations course I took that the articles in the Wall Street Journal that had no byline were simply public relations articles written by the company that were their subject. No real independent reporter was involved in writing them. Such an idea gives a very interesting view of such Wall Street Journal news articles.
[**]In a world that is populated by too many people to feed and in which half the worlds population exists on less than a dollar a day, the idea that the national economy that is using up as much as a quarter of the world's resources is using them to create celebrities for export is an ethical issue I will leave you to ponder. It is clearly one that the American conservatives and the free marketers wash their hands of.
Josh Marshall has posted the best explanation I have yet seen for Palin's strange and rather shocking resignation as Governor of Alaska. It makes a great deal of sense to me. She is a grifter, and the grift has finished. She is getting out of town while the getting is good. So now we can wait for the announcements of her money-making opportunities. She won't keep such deals from the Paparazzi (in this case mostly political and business reporters) because that kind of publicity is what she needs to extend her celebrity. She'll tell the Paparazzi because she needs them as much as they need her. Her reason for feeding the frenzy will be that the Paparazzi will extend her celebrity and keep her bankable. That dynamic between the celebrity and the press is the core of the entire celebrity culture as well as being the business model of the such journals as supermarket tabloids, People magazine, and the business publications Forbes, Fortune and the Wall Street Journal [*].
My read is that Palin has a single overriding motivation and that is ambition. She has a single major asset for her ambition to ride which is her celebrity status, the result of a lifetime spent chasing celebrity with no apparent significant interest in anything else. That's been her career. Her single asset has reached its apogee and was suddenly sliding away (stolen by her "enemies") so she has taken this opportunity to renew it. She will sacrifice anything to feed her ambition, including honor and the respect that can be earned by living up to your commitments. She has just proven that by her resignation.
Why do I care enough to blog about her? Two reasons. First, like the entire Pop Music scene, she seems to be emblematic of America's long celebrity obsession fueled by greed and the power of publicity experts to milk the public through the developing new forms of mass communications being created since the 1960's. That trend is run by grifters like Sarah Palin. It is a trend that runs counter to the great strengths America has always demonstrated as a solid, hard-working middle class productive nation with a culture centered on the strengths of well-trained and experienced journeyman workers.
The creation of the barely out of her teens Britney Spears is a symptom of the disaster of that celebrity culture. But the celebrity culture to which Sarah Palin now belongs is not isolated in society. It has broader implications. It has meant that America as a society and as an economy has failed to provide adequate rewards to the very many extremely capable people who might be induced to become engineers in college and learn new ways to invent and manufacture improved products. Instead, the best and the brightest are becoming lawyers and MBA's in the hopes of somehow suddenly getting rich by cashing in on a celebrity event of some kind. America's economic rewards are being redirected to celebrity status rather than to production of real goods and services of real value [**].
The second reason is that Sarah Palin's case is a cautionary tale of the utter vacuousness of the modern Republican Party. Their interest is in gaining power, nothing else. John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, not because she was best qualified if as President he died she would take over and run the country, but because he simply could not be elected to the office that fed his personal ambition and his feeling that he deserved to become the next President. He bought into Palin's celebrity to feed his own unbridled and undisciplined ambition. McCain is the son of American Naval Royalty, and he deserved the job of President more than anyone else by right of birth.
McCain is a conservative in part because it is an excellent justification for laziness. He resists working for his rewards because he feels he is entitled to them by right of birth. He is angry that so many people don't just hand them over because of who he is. Give such individuals a social problem to solve that does not involve their own interest directly and their solution is "Ignore it. If there is someone else with a good idea, skills and some idea how to get rewarded for it, they will solve the problem and we don't have to do any damned thing about it. "They call that the "free market" solution. What it really results in is a statement of "Let someone else do it, I don't want to think about it because I've already got mine. What? You want me to do hard work?"
So what we have is a toxic and unproductive celebrity culture that is taking over America, together with a political party representing and built on that culture that is made up of people who offer an economic ideology that advances that toxic culture. They are in it, like Palin, solely for their own personal benefit. Sarah Palin is just one more example of that culture, together with her national political mentor, Senator John McCain. The results of that culture, both in the failure of America to remain economically competitive against so many other industrial nations and in the clear emptiness and nastiness of the conservatives running the modern Republican Party are very clear.
So tell me. Why should we care about the sad spectacle that Sarah Palin is making of herself? Should I add Governor Mark Sanford?
[*]An interesting side note. I was told by the journalism prof of a public relations course I took that the articles in the Wall Street Journal that had no byline were simply public relations articles written by the company that were their subject. No real independent reporter was involved in writing them. Such an idea gives a very interesting view of such Wall Street Journal news articles.
[**]In a world that is populated by too many people to feed and in which half the worlds population exists on less than a dollar a day, the idea that the national economy that is using up as much as a quarter of the world's resources is using them to create celebrities for export is an ethical issue I will leave you to ponder. It is clearly one that the American conservatives and the free marketers wash their hands of.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Here's why the Washington D.C. press corps never talks realistically about the American health care system
If you have ever wondered why the Washington Post, New York Times and major TV networks never discuss singly payer (the only health system that provides universal health care at a reasonable cost) Bob Somerby, editor of the Daily Howler explains with the example of newsperson Margaret Carlson. Keep in mind that Lily Weymouth is the current CEO of the Washington Post, Washington D.C.'s hometown newspaper who recently was prepared to organize dinner salons that lobbyists were to pay $25,000 to $50,000 each to attend and meet with top Washington Post editorial staff and other Washington insiders.
In 2003, the grasping climber Margaret Carlson explained the process with remarkable candor in the 26-page autobiographical chapter which drove her semi-book, Anyone Can Grow Up (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/18/03). In that chapter, Carlson described the gruesome process by which she attained social standing inside DC’s elite. In her inspiring up-from-steerage tale, she—the child of working-class, Irish Catholic parents—ends up sitting at the right hand of Post publisher Katharine Graham!If you suspect that the major media such as the Washington Post and the TV networks have a very restricted set of views they will permit to be published or discussed, It's true. Margaret Carlson's story explains why. Top pundits and editors get high social status in Washington D.C. if they go along with the prevailing D.C. wisdom and avoid discussing subjects or points of view that the major corporations (advertisers and big time lobbyists) don't want discussed. That's why single payer health insurance, the only system that is both efficient and capable of lowering the overall costs of health care in America, is off limits for discussion and serous consideration. So are most liberal positions these days. The full range of subjects that can be discusses range from very middle of the road to far right wing excluding clear extremism and racism.George Stephanopolus did not parachute in from the Clinton White House and enter the TV hierarchy at the top without understanding these rules. That he took over the Sunday ABC TV news show only shows how well he has met the demands of his masters.
What a story! It all began when Michael Kinsley took her to a soiree—at the home of Weymouth’s grand-mother:
CARLSON (page 22): My friends didn’t change from year to year, but their jobs did. It was Michael Kinsley...who first took me to dinner at the big, intimidating mansion of Katharine Graham, the reigning queen of Washington and publisher of The Washington Post. Every few weeks, when Henry Kissinger or Barbara Walters was stuck on the tarmac at LaGuardia, I would get a late call asking if I’d like to fill in. Following the Meg Greenfield rule—call anytime before the main course—I always said yes. Eventually, I would go as me. Like the rings on a tree, my evenings with Graham charted my evolution from rookie journalist to old timer.
“I always said yes,” this classic climber wrote. But when social climbers like the young Carlson agree to say yes, they are typically saying yes to more than a set of dinner invitations. They are also saying yes to the constellation of political views which guarantee them a continuing seat at such Very High Tables.
They’re saying yes to what The Group believes. They’re saying no to everything else.
Today, Carlson is one of the biggest fools in Washington. (She’s also a regular, simpering guest on our biggest “progressive” TV show! Surely, the gods rock with laughter.) But in her very valuable book, she gave us a very valuable look at the desire of these social/career climbers—the desire to gain acceptance at The Highest Washington Tables. But darlings! To gain acceptable at those tables, there are certain things you mustn’t say— mustn’t believe, contemplate or even discuss. Over the past fifteen years, one of the things you couldn’t discuss was this remarkable set of data—perhaps the most remarkable data-set we know of in the world:
Total health expenditures per capita, 2003
United States $5711
Australia $2886
Austria $2958
Belgium $3044
Canada $2998
Denmark $2743
Finland $2104
France $3048
Germany $2983
Ireland $2466
Italy $2314
Japan $2249
Netherlands $2909
Norway $3769
Sweden $2745
United Kingdom $2317
Those are astonishing data. Over the past fifteen years, they’ve almost never been discussed. Everyone but Krugman understands—you simply mustn’t discuss them. Long ago, Kinsley took Carlson to Graham’s house. Last week, he wrote a column in which those data, though highly relevant, simply never appeared.
That dinner at Lally Weymouth’s house wouldn’t have been about giving Kaiser Permanente access to Connolly. If anything, that dinner would have been about giving Weymouth access to her own reporters and editors—giving her the chance to show them where the lines have been drawn. On the national level, Rep. Jim Cooper is not well-known or highly visible. But he played a leading role in defeating Clinton’s health plan—and there he is in Kurtz’s report as Weymouth’s lone confirmed guest!
At dinners like this, Washington’s sprawling collection of climbers learn what they’re allowed to think/discuss. And the pay-offs for consent are huge, as Carlson explained in her book. The heart-warming end to her Climber’s Tale involved her daughter’s wedding. By now, a reigning queen was simply “Kay” in this uplifting tale:
CARLSON (continuing directly from above): One day Mrs. Graham complained that she’d never been asked to my house. A few months later, I was giving a going-away party for Kinsley, who’d been wooed to be editor of Slate.com by Microsoft’s Bill Gates. It seemed the perfect occasion to hide behind. She came, she tossed salad, she scooped ice cream. She became a fixture at my house.
[...]
When Courtney decided to get married in 2000, Kay asked if she would get married in her garden, and that began a wedding my mother would have been proud of. I didn’t make Courtney’s wedding dress, as my mother (and I) had made mine. She preferred one by Vera Wang, proving there can be progress from one generation to another.
A generation of climbers got the message. Their daughters could get that Vera Wang too—if they were careful never to mention the actual shape of world health care.
At such salons, consent gets manufactured within a grasping pseudo-elite. A Kaiser was going to pick up the tab. Was the grand-daughter of a “reigning queen” going to sketch her land’s boundaries?
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Bob Gates exploring not enforcing "Don't Ask Don't Tell" at times
Obama is getting a bad rap from the media and the homosexual community on "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT.) Should he abrogate the Rule of Law to prevent injustice to homosexuals who serve honorably in the military? The media and the homosexual community think so. They want immediate results because people are getting hurt and the security of America is being damaged by the injustices daily. The Obama administration is saying that Congressional action is required.
CNN News has a wire story that Secretary of Defense Bob Gates is exploring "...Obama Administration plans to selectively enforce the “don’t ask don’t tell” ban on gays in the military so that some gays could serve."
Here's what Bob Gates says he is doing:
But Obama is a Constitutional Law lawyer, he is very intelligent and capable, and he is simply not a person to take extreme actions on his own except in extreme situations. That's a major reason we elected him President after this last eight years. In spite of the personal injustices currently still being perpetuated on homosexuals in the military who have for one reason or another been accused or exposed as exemplified by Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, this is not a broad "extreme situation" that requires immediate Presidential action that violates the law. Obama is going to apply the Rule of Law, unlike the previous administration. He's right. Congressional action is required.
What Bob Gates is describing is the only set of executive branch actions that can alleviate any of the injustices prior to Congressional action, unless the courts provide an injunction stopping the current enforcement of DADT. The legal backing for such an injunction is either absent or supports the banning of homosexuals, so court action is not on the horizon. This is the best possible action possible prior to the necessary action by Congress. So Congress is where everyone should focus their wrath.
Media? Are you listening? Grow up and get it right. There's nothing complicated about this.
This one of my "Rule of Law" posts. The Rule of Law, together with the U.S. Constitution, are core to what it means to be "an American."I don't think we Americans can relegate the enforcement of the Rule of Law to the legal profession alone. The rest of us have to understand it and recognize when it is not being applied.
CNN News has a wire story that Secretary of Defense Bob Gates is exploring "...Obama Administration plans to selectively enforce the “don’t ask don’t tell” ban on gays in the military so that some gays could serve."
Here's what Bob Gates says he is doing:
“What we have is a law — be it a policy or a regulation — and as I discovered when I got into it, it’s a very prescriptive law. It doesn’t leave much to the imagination for a lot of flexibility. And so one of the things we’re looking at — is there flexibility in how we apply this law.”President Obama is catching a lot of flak for not unilaterally taking Presidential action to overturn or refuse to enforce the existing law that requires the Pentagon to discharge homosexuals when they surface or are exposed in the military. If it were a right-wing subject, George Bush showed he was not bound by law that the Congress has passed and the President has signed in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution. The misuse of signing statements was just one method the Bush administration got around enforcing law they did not like.
The secretary appears to be proposing interim measures. “If somebody is outed by a third party … does that force us to take an action? And I don’t know the answer to that, and I don’t want to pretend to. But that’s the kind of thing we’re looking at to see if there’s at least a more humane way to apply the law until the law gets changed.”
But Obama is a Constitutional Law lawyer, he is very intelligent and capable, and he is simply not a person to take extreme actions on his own except in extreme situations. That's a major reason we elected him President after this last eight years. In spite of the personal injustices currently still being perpetuated on homosexuals in the military who have for one reason or another been accused or exposed as exemplified by Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, this is not a broad "extreme situation" that requires immediate Presidential action that violates the law. Obama is going to apply the Rule of Law, unlike the previous administration. He's right. Congressional action is required.
What Bob Gates is describing is the only set of executive branch actions that can alleviate any of the injustices prior to Congressional action, unless the courts provide an injunction stopping the current enforcement of DADT. The legal backing for such an injunction is either absent or supports the banning of homosexuals, so court action is not on the horizon. This is the best possible action possible prior to the necessary action by Congress. So Congress is where everyone should focus their wrath.
Media? Are you listening? Grow up and get it right. There's nothing complicated about this.
This one of my "Rule of Law" posts. The Rule of Law, together with the U.S. Constitution, are core to what it means to be "an American."I don't think we Americans can relegate the enforcement of the Rule of Law to the legal profession alone. The rest of us have to understand it and recognize when it is not being applied.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
The uselessness of what passes for broadcast news
Jon Taplin wrote Signal To Noise Ratio. It starts:
I am online looking for information, insight and some degree of understanding of the communities I live in, but what I am getting is useless "news." What passes for broadcast "news" today is in fact faux news designed to fill an ever-expanding and inadequately indexed (useless?) news hole. That total news hole is already much larger than anything that will ever be useful to me. The concept of "signal-to-noise" ratio on the broadcast media is the perfect catalyst for understanding. My surprise is that there appears to be such a massive distinction between what passes for "news" and actual useful and informative "information."
My utter disgust at the crap provided by useless "reality" shows that do nothing but offer a cheap product for the business organizations that broadcast uninformative and useless data is high. They are time-wasters intended to deliver ignorant passive and frightened consumers who know nothing except how to buy - buy -buy to advertisers. It saddens me that so many people actually waste their valuable time searching for some form of entertainment in the crap that is broadcast on TV. That's not surprising, though, in a society in which most people are trained to function as ignorant and isolated economic consumers rather than as intelligent actors working in a community of similar people.
The result of the insight is that spending a lot of time attempting to "consume" what is in fact faux news and entertainment is a fool's errand. It is a trap designed for passive and ignorant consumers who provide markets for big businesses. People need community with a lot of organized, useful information, with education and perhaps even insight than they need to simply be consumers of goods and services someone else produces. Broadcast news had the opportunity to provide people with a lot of what they needed, and it abdicated that opportunity because entertainment and faux news presented greater financial profit and political power.
Maybe we really don't need all that broadcasting power. All we really need is some good editors and investigative reporters and scientists working diligently at explaining what is really happening. If so, we damned sure aren't getting it. The existing conceptual "free and unregulated market" as distorted by power-hungry individuals and religious leaders* certainly isn't providing what we need.
* An explanation of my views of how the concepts of an economic free market distorts reality by ignoring the effects of power because the economic effects can be roughly measured mathematically to some extent reliably while power effects cannot will be available upon request if time permits.
Even though most of my time is spent writing a book, I've been wondering why I'm blogging less, reading blogs less, watching less cable news and listening to less talk radio and more music. I've come to the conclusion that the whole mediasphere signal-to-noise ratio has been out of whack since the election in November. 2008 was such an historic year for news with a groundbreaking election contest vying for attention with a once in a generation economic collapse. For the managers of media outlets to try to sustain that intensity and interest level past mid November was a fools errand. But that doesn't mean they didn't try.I get an interesting insight from Taplin's article.
[...]
Maybe we don't need four hundred channels of TV. Maybe we don't need 346 million blogs. Maybe the careful (and expensive) editing of the New York Times and The New Yorker actually count for something.
I am online looking for information, insight and some degree of understanding of the communities I live in, but what I am getting is useless "news." What passes for broadcast "news" today is in fact faux news designed to fill an ever-expanding and inadequately indexed (useless?) news hole. That total news hole is already much larger than anything that will ever be useful to me. The concept of "signal-to-noise" ratio on the broadcast media is the perfect catalyst for understanding. My surprise is that there appears to be such a massive distinction between what passes for "news" and actual useful and informative "information."
My utter disgust at the crap provided by useless "reality" shows that do nothing but offer a cheap product for the business organizations that broadcast uninformative and useless data is high. They are time-wasters intended to deliver ignorant passive and frightened consumers who know nothing except how to buy - buy -buy to advertisers. It saddens me that so many people actually waste their valuable time searching for some form of entertainment in the crap that is broadcast on TV. That's not surprising, though, in a society in which most people are trained to function as ignorant and isolated economic consumers rather than as intelligent actors working in a community of similar people.
The result of the insight is that spending a lot of time attempting to "consume" what is in fact faux news and entertainment is a fool's errand. It is a trap designed for passive and ignorant consumers who provide markets for big businesses. People need community with a lot of organized, useful information, with education and perhaps even insight than they need to simply be consumers of goods and services someone else produces. Broadcast news had the opportunity to provide people with a lot of what they needed, and it abdicated that opportunity because entertainment and faux news presented greater financial profit and political power.
Maybe we really don't need all that broadcasting power. All we really need is some good editors and investigative reporters and scientists working diligently at explaining what is really happening. If so, we damned sure aren't getting it. The existing conceptual "free and unregulated market" as distorted by power-hungry individuals and religious leaders* certainly isn't providing what we need.
* An explanation of my views of how the concepts of an economic free market distorts reality by ignoring the effects of power because the economic effects can be roughly measured mathematically to some extent reliably while power effects cannot will be available upon request if time permits.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Welcome to the conservative Republican fantasy world
Steve Benen caught a beautiful example of conservative Republican fantasy.
About 300,000 people who came out to locations literally next door to their homes nation-wide. BIG turnout! Right. And "Freedom" is a word that has whatever meaning the speaker wants it to mean, often not the same meaning twice from the same person.
The public has spotted the scam the conservatives have been pulling, and only the most extreme hard cases even bother to come to their events now. Conservatism as we have known it since Reagan is toast, and the most extreme conservatives are blinding themselves, much like tobacco executives blind themselves to the dangers of smoking because their income depends on it and because those who do smoke are deeply addicted to the weed. Conservative leaders are similarly addicted to the perks of their leadership positions and most of them have no place to go if they lose that.
This afternoon, Sanchez was interviewing Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), arguably the chamber's most conservative member, about the shrinking Republican Party, and whether the GOP's hard-right agenda is driving away mainstream voters. "Quite the opposite," DeMint said. "We're seeing across the country right now that the biggest tent of all is the tent of freedom."Right. DeMint and his similar extreme conservatives are the same people who really don't realize that Steven Colbert is laughing at them.
"What the hell does that mean?" Sanchez asked. "The 'biggest tent' is 'freedom'? Freedom? You've got to do better than that!"
In response, DeMint argued that Americans are actually embracing the Republican message: "Americans who are normally not even political are coming out to 'Tea Parties' and protesting." This, DeMint suggested, is proof of the Republican message connecting with the electorate.
He wasn't kidding. The future of the GOP is Tea Baggers and the tent of freedom. It sounds like the message you might read in a greeting card written by Joe the Plumber.
About 300,000 people who came out to locations literally next door to their homes nation-wide. BIG turnout! Right. And "Freedom" is a word that has whatever meaning the speaker wants it to mean, often not the same meaning twice from the same person.
The public has spotted the scam the conservatives have been pulling, and only the most extreme hard cases even bother to come to their events now. Conservatism as we have known it since Reagan is toast, and the most extreme conservatives are blinding themselves, much like tobacco executives blind themselves to the dangers of smoking because their income depends on it and because those who do smoke are deeply addicted to the weed. Conservative leaders are similarly addicted to the perks of their leadership positions and most of them have no place to go if they lose that.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
An uninformed mob is practicing McCarthy-style guilt by association, abetted by a failure to report on the AIG Bonuses.
Guilt by association without any shred of evidence is as wrong coming from the online Progressive netroots community as it was from "Tail gunner" Joe McCarthy or is today from Rush Limbaugh and effectively the whole damned House Congressional delegation. It is especially prevalent in the TV so-called news community and in most talk radio, left or right. I find it suffuses everything in discussion on Talking points Memo, too. Something that surprises and saddens me. It's time for it to stop, and for a little real reporting on AIG as it is today along with a lot more logic to begin to appear in the discussions of AIG and the totally mischaracterized "bonus issue!"
I consider myself part of the Progressive online community, a member who generally but not always supports the positions of the Democratic Party because nothing I have seen from Conservatives is either rational or useful. My key issue is the critical need in this nation for universal healthcare, but my training has been in economics, business, military and mostly political history. When Edward Liddy testified to Congress on the AIG mess, I was initially ready to come down on AIG Chairman Liddy as though he were another overpaid over privileged Tobacco Executive selling poison and refusing to admit wrongdoing because it would hurt his pocket book. Instead, I saw a capable, quiet rational man who had come out of retirement to try to deal with the disaster created at and through AIG by others. As Liddy tried to make his explanation to the posturing, uncomprehending louts on the Hearing committee I found that it was Congress that deserves opprobrium. No one listened to Liddy when he told them that the individuals responsible for the Credit default Swaps mess were gone.
Yet I saw, and still see, no evidence that he was lying. Nor can I see that he had any reason to. He was retired, for Christ's sake. He is getting $1 a year for taking the abuse.
I have also watched the distrusting online Progressive community attacking Chairman Edward Liddy as untruthful and untrustworthy with great vigor, and when I earlier posted a TPM cafe blog to defend his testimony it was ignored in favor of Liddy-bashing. Yet,
I saw and still see no evidence to support the assumption that Chairman Liddy was not telling the complete truth in his Congressional testimony.
I see nothing but incomprehension, anger and distrust either online or in the media. When do we get a little real reporting into what the Executives at AIGFP really do, and what they were actually involved in the Credit Default Swap fiasco? Has anyone bothered to actually report on what the bonuses were supposed to reward the recipients for doing? Every piece of (limited) information I have seen says they were NOT BEING REWARDED FOR SALES. AIGFP is not selling product any more, and hasn't since January 2008 at least. I have written AIG's Public Relations department and gotten no response. Probably they are in a bunker mentality and trust no one now. I don't blame them.
The same kinds of questions applies to the executives like Jake DeSantis who remain at AIGFP and are helping to wind it down by maintaining the investments that are the only asset of that organization. I see no evidence that those individuals had anything at all to do with creating those assets. I don't even see anyone bothering to try to report on the current AIGFP. Everyone there now is just assumed to be Evil! They are being punished simply for working in the same office as Joe Cossano and his Michael Milken acolytes as they took their poisonous work to AIG and trashed a great insurance company.
Now one of them, Jake DeSantis, has gotten tired of being bashed for stuff others did and being demonized as the American public and the general media are doing to all individuals from AIG who carry or carried the job title "Executive." He has resigned from AIG and the New York Times has published his letter yesterday. It is very much worth reading. Here is the beginning:
I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.He accuses government officials of persecuting him, and he is right. But I have listened to radio and TV "news" personalities stating the common wisdom of the media as though it were reporting doing exactly the same thing.After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.
I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.
When does the mob back off and let someone speak of reality? Is there still any reporting function going on in America? I have seen no evidence of it. Just blowhards on TV and people spewing what they seem to think is their rightful anger on line. Even the NPR reporters speak only gossip from the reporting community - a community which has now sunk into uselessness.
I was used to much better when major newspapers existed and TV was just an admitted provider of headlines and images instead of claiming to report news. Our society lost a lot when CBS fired its last newsman, Dan Rather, abandoned the news business and replaced him with an over aged entertainer who still has no clue regarding what news is or should be.
It’s time to stop kicking people for associating with failure. Someone do some real reporting, or tell me how to get the information out of AIG. I used to delegate that kind of work to reporters, but I guess there are none any more.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Bonus? Pah! They're balloon payments of delayed compensation!
This is my latest iteration explaining the so-called "Bonuses" to people looking for a cause to get upset over. I got it basically from Chairman Liddy's explanation of the bonuses to the grandstanding Congressman.
Those payments are not what the media thinks they are. The contracts were written in Jan 2008 to give to the technician managers of the bundles of CDO's that remained after firing Joe Cassano and shutting down his financial products division because of the losses that had occurred in the CDO's AIG was managing.
AIG had massive investment in the remaining CDO's. The current investment is still $1.6 trillion dollars. They have a fixed termination date and don't pay off until that date, and have to be managed on a daily basis every day until that final date. Each bundle of CDO's has to be hedged against changes in default risk as the risks in the market change. The technicians, the bundle managers understand both the hedging markets and the particular structure of the given CDO bundle they are managing. Replacement bundle managers simply cannot be trained and trusted not to cause a default of the CDO which loses the entire investment AIG has in it AND triggers massive default penalties. It is critical that each manager remain on the job until the last day of the bundle he manages.
However, AIG has shut down the FP unit. After the bundle expires, there is NO JOB for them at AIG. AIG is reverting to being an insurance company and has been since January 2008. Only, they have to recover the investment in each CDO bundle without it going into default, which can only be done after the Bundle final expiration date has passes. Then those managers are out of jobs.
How do you stop the managers from finding new jobs and moving on now, instead of at the end of the life of the bundle they are managing? Keeping those managers on the job for the life of the investment is crucial to the recovery of the funds invested in those CDOs by AIG, and that is crucial to AIG actually repaying the taxpayer bailout funds. The alternative is a series of defaults in which the investment funds are lost, AIG is destroyed, and the world banking system is seriously threatened at the very least. Imagine the economic consequences of that. That will be avoided if those managers remain at their jobs until the contracts expire and the investment in each intensively managed bundle of CDOs is recovered with the expected profit. Thus the contingent final payments, contingent on the contracted individuals working until the end of the bundle they are each managing.
Those payments should be called deferred compensation with a balloon payment contingent upon completing the job to the final expiration. They don't get the pay until the job is finished. Which explains the 13 bundle managers who have left AIG before getting paid. They had to finish the job to get paid, and after that, the job was over. But since they had fulfilled the terms of the contract, they were owed the promised money.
The $175 billion in taxpayer money will be repaid with a significant profit if the bundles don't go into default. It is WORTH taxpayer money to pay those bonuses if it keeps the managers protection OUR investment funds and keeping them out of default. Those "Bonuses are a mere pittance compared to what will be lost if the managers leave early. You want the managers to collect that money. I want those managers to collect that money. That means they finished successfully and WE GET THE BAILOUT MONEY BACK - with interest. Probably a big profit. Certainly a profit more than large enough to cover the so-called "Bonuses. "
Sadly, the incompetent financial media is looking for a story to sensationalize, so they misread (intentionally?) what the so-called "Bonus" payments are for. Certainlythey aren't reporting on it. They are disseminating assumptions, not facts. The media consist of essentially incompetent "reporters" and shills selling investment products. It's a frigging game to the media. Jon Bennet Ramsey is gone, there hasn't been a murdered white girl to sensationalize for months, and OJ Simpson has gone to prison after all, so they have latched on to this. They have nothing else to pile on to. The Republicans are egging them on because they, too, are incompetent, losing as politicians, and they are generally venal. Republicans are aiding and abetting in large part because they are almost universally negative-talking assholes.
Oh, and the managers are back-office administrative technicians. They supported the sales turkeys after the sales people sold the products. Period. The managers do not sell product, nor do they generate revenue. AIG fired all those sales people in January 2008 when they started to shut the FP division down. The sales people were the decision makers who created those products that turned out to be so toxic. The bundle managers manage nothing except their own staff who are responsible for on-going monitoring of the existing contract bundles. They were not responsible for the creation of the CDOs that have been so generally toxic so widely. They just manage the investments to keep them profitable until they can be liquidated.
Bonus payments? Forget it folks. There's simply no real story there.
The real problem is that the media is creating one of its patented circuses over this subject, so the actual subject very quickly got lost right from the get-go. There has been NO REPORTING! None. Zilch.
Especially there has been no reporting from the so-called financial news.
The Obama people, from Barack on down, are waiting the wild-assed journalists out. No real response, no counters, no nothing. Anything they do will just prolong the journalistic idiocy, so they are quietly letting the furor die out on its own.
It is driving the so-called journalists nuts. Watch the fun and enjoy their frustration. I keep hoping for some real journalism to break out and for someone to ask some real questions, but I don't consider it at all likely. This is the TV age. We get images instead of questions with real answers based on real evidence.
Even the bloggers are caught up in the furor. The right-wing bloggers always have, and the left wing bloggers are used to going after the idiots of the Bush administration.
It's going to be a while before the Obama people bring the TV personalities to heel, but it's happening. Just watch and enjoy the show.
Those payments are not what the media thinks they are. The contracts were written in Jan 2008 to give to the technician managers of the bundles of CDO's that remained after firing Joe Cassano and shutting down his financial products division because of the losses that had occurred in the CDO's AIG was managing.
AIG had massive investment in the remaining CDO's. The current investment is still $1.6 trillion dollars. They have a fixed termination date and don't pay off until that date, and have to be managed on a daily basis every day until that final date. Each bundle of CDO's has to be hedged against changes in default risk as the risks in the market change. The technicians, the bundle managers understand both the hedging markets and the particular structure of the given CDO bundle they are managing. Replacement bundle managers simply cannot be trained and trusted not to cause a default of the CDO which loses the entire investment AIG has in it AND triggers massive default penalties. It is critical that each manager remain on the job until the last day of the bundle he manages.
However, AIG has shut down the FP unit. After the bundle expires, there is NO JOB for them at AIG. AIG is reverting to being an insurance company and has been since January 2008. Only, they have to recover the investment in each CDO bundle without it going into default, which can only be done after the Bundle final expiration date has passes. Then those managers are out of jobs.
How do you stop the managers from finding new jobs and moving on now, instead of at the end of the life of the bundle they are managing? Keeping those managers on the job for the life of the investment is crucial to the recovery of the funds invested in those CDOs by AIG, and that is crucial to AIG actually repaying the taxpayer bailout funds. The alternative is a series of defaults in which the investment funds are lost, AIG is destroyed, and the world banking system is seriously threatened at the very least. Imagine the economic consequences of that. That will be avoided if those managers remain at their jobs until the contracts expire and the investment in each intensively managed bundle of CDOs is recovered with the expected profit. Thus the contingent final payments, contingent on the contracted individuals working until the end of the bundle they are each managing.
Those payments should be called deferred compensation with a balloon payment contingent upon completing the job to the final expiration. They don't get the pay until the job is finished. Which explains the 13 bundle managers who have left AIG before getting paid. They had to finish the job to get paid, and after that, the job was over. But since they had fulfilled the terms of the contract, they were owed the promised money.
The $175 billion in taxpayer money will be repaid with a significant profit if the bundles don't go into default. It is WORTH taxpayer money to pay those bonuses if it keeps the managers protection OUR investment funds and keeping them out of default. Those "Bonuses are a mere pittance compared to what will be lost if the managers leave early. You want the managers to collect that money. I want those managers to collect that money. That means they finished successfully and WE GET THE BAILOUT MONEY BACK - with interest. Probably a big profit. Certainly a profit more than large enough to cover the so-called "Bonuses. "
Sadly, the incompetent financial media is looking for a story to sensationalize, so they misread (intentionally?) what the so-called "Bonus" payments are for. Certainlythey aren't reporting on it. They are disseminating assumptions, not facts. The media consist of essentially incompetent "reporters" and shills selling investment products. It's a frigging game to the media. Jon Bennet Ramsey is gone, there hasn't been a murdered white girl to sensationalize for months, and OJ Simpson has gone to prison after all, so they have latched on to this. They have nothing else to pile on to. The Republicans are egging them on because they, too, are incompetent, losing as politicians, and they are generally venal. Republicans are aiding and abetting in large part because they are almost universally negative-talking assholes.
Oh, and the managers are back-office administrative technicians. They supported the sales turkeys after the sales people sold the products. Period. The managers do not sell product, nor do they generate revenue. AIG fired all those sales people in January 2008 when they started to shut the FP division down. The sales people were the decision makers who created those products that turned out to be so toxic. The bundle managers manage nothing except their own staff who are responsible for on-going monitoring of the existing contract bundles. They were not responsible for the creation of the CDOs that have been so generally toxic so widely. They just manage the investments to keep them profitable until they can be liquidated.
Bonus payments? Forget it folks. There's simply no real story there.
The real problem is that the media is creating one of its patented circuses over this subject, so the actual subject very quickly got lost right from the get-go. There has been NO REPORTING! None. Zilch.
Especially there has been no reporting from the so-called financial news.
The Obama people, from Barack on down, are waiting the wild-assed journalists out. No real response, no counters, no nothing. Anything they do will just prolong the journalistic idiocy, so they are quietly letting the furor die out on its own.
It is driving the so-called journalists nuts. Watch the fun and enjoy their frustration. I keep hoping for some real journalism to break out and for someone to ask some real questions, but I don't consider it at all likely. This is the TV age. We get images instead of questions with real answers based on real evidence.
Even the bloggers are caught up in the furor. The right-wing bloggers always have, and the left wing bloggers are used to going after the idiots of the Bush administration.
It's going to be a while before the Obama people bring the TV personalities to heel, but it's happening. Just watch and enjoy the show.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Provincial Washington media misses real story of the stimulus bill
Obama is set to sign a massive stimulus bill Monday, which is a major accomplishment any President could be proud of. The fact that Obama got it through Congress only three weeks after he was inaugurated President is nothing short of Amazing. The media generally, however, wants to discuss only the fact that not a single House Republican and all but three Senate Republicans voted against the bill. Somehow the Washington, D.C. media has its priorities all screwed up. Their priority is not the economic disaster that is rapidly engulfing America and the world. Their priority is to report on the failed efforts of Obama, three weeks into his Presidency, to get the Republicans to vote for his bills.
Barack recognizes that even in the face of his stunning achievement of muscling the massive stimulus bill through the legislative meat-grinder and delay-machine we call Congress, he may have made some errors in how he spoke and set expectations inside the beltway.
From Steve Benen:Then Steve concludes:So essentially, the beltway media failed to generally get the real story and to put it into some perspective. [Not completely. The links from this article go to the Washington Post and the New York Times, but not many others followed their lead. That sure isn't where the TV so-called news out of D.C. went. They set the agenda for the national news (after they get it from Drudge.) This was largely a missed story.
Obama was not elected because he was going to draw the Republican Party into a large national unity in the face of the immediate and growing economic crisis. He was elected because he promised to deal with that crisis, and the Republicans for reasons of ideology and incompetence, refused to do so under George W. Bush.
Face it. Bush went on vacation for at least the last two months of his Presidency, delegating the economic crisis (which he has never understood, seemed to never take seriously, and clearly did not care about) to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his Treasury secretary Henry Paulson. Obama was elected to do what no one has ever successfully done before, alleviate and possibly reverse quickly the worst financial disaster to hit America since the Great Depression.
He promised to try also to raise the partisan tone of Washington, but except to Washingtonians and perhaps to those who want favors from powerful men in Washington, the partisan tone is a feature of the landscape in that city. That partisan tone is part of the nature of the Republican Party, and it is an essential part of their efforts to maintain and possibly regain power. They represent people who feel that the nation overall is going the wrong way, even now, and to expect them to somehow do that without personal animosity to those who stand in the way of their efforts to change the core nature of America is frankly unrealistic.
Barack seems to have realized that he cannot deal with the conservatives as a national group the same way as he did in the Senate with many of their representatives. OK. So he performed an amazing feat getting the stimulus bill through, and along the way he has learned that he has to change the way he manages the media narrative. That's the real story. For the first time since early 2007 when CountryWide announced that it was having an extremely high rate of mortgage defaults, the government has finally taken cognizance of the economic crisis and started to do something.
The passage of the stimulus bill and the events surrounding it seem to have come to a very good conclusion right now in the early days of the Obama administration, yet the media whines that the Republicans voted against it so somehow Obama has failed. You really have to wonder just how provincial the Washington, D.C media is to have so totally missed the main story here.
Barack recognizes that even in the face of his stunning achievement of muscling the massive stimulus bill through the legislative meat-grinder and delay-machine we call Congress, he may have made some errors in how he spoke and set expectations inside the beltway.
From Steve Benen:
On Thursday night, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel suggested the White House had overdone their initial outreach to Republicans, telling reporters Obama's aides got "ahead of ourselves" when it came to striving for bipartisan comity.
Yesterday, White House staffers were signaling that they wouldn't repeat this in the future.Advisers concluded that they allowed the measure of bipartisanship to be defined as winning Republican votes rather than bringing civility to the debate, distracting attention from what have otherwise been major legislative victories. Although Mr. Obama vowed to keep reaching out to Republicans, advisers now believe the environment will probably not change in coming months.
Rather than forging broad consensus with Republicans, the Obama advisers said they would have to narrow their ambitions and look for discrete areas where they might build temporary coalitions based on regional interests rather than party, as on energy legislation. They said they would also turn to Republican governors for support -- a tactic that showed promise during the debate over the economic package -- even if they found few Republican allies in Washington. [...]
I don't doubt that President Obama will continue to have a dialog with congressional Republicans. He'll keep them apprised of his intentions; he'll hear them out when they have complaints; and he'll maintain a respectful tone. But after the stimulus fight, the president, I suspect, has "learned a lesson" about how to engage a party that has philosophical, practical, and strategic goals that are wholly at odds with his own.
Obama was not elected because he was going to draw the Republican Party into a large national unity in the face of the immediate and growing economic crisis. He was elected because he promised to deal with that crisis, and the Republicans for reasons of ideology and incompetence, refused to do so under George W. Bush.
Face it. Bush went on vacation for at least the last two months of his Presidency, delegating the economic crisis (which he has never understood, seemed to never take seriously, and clearly did not care about) to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his Treasury secretary Henry Paulson. Obama was elected to do what no one has ever successfully done before, alleviate and possibly reverse quickly the worst financial disaster to hit America since the Great Depression.
He promised to try also to raise the partisan tone of Washington, but except to Washingtonians and perhaps to those who want favors from powerful men in Washington, the partisan tone is a feature of the landscape in that city. That partisan tone is part of the nature of the Republican Party, and it is an essential part of their efforts to maintain and possibly regain power. They represent people who feel that the nation overall is going the wrong way, even now, and to expect them to somehow do that without personal animosity to those who stand in the way of their efforts to change the core nature of America is frankly unrealistic.
Barack seems to have realized that he cannot deal with the conservatives as a national group the same way as he did in the Senate with many of their representatives. OK. So he performed an amazing feat getting the stimulus bill through, and along the way he has learned that he has to change the way he manages the media narrative. That's the real story. For the first time since early 2007 when CountryWide announced that it was having an extremely high rate of mortgage defaults, the government has finally taken cognizance of the economic crisis and started to do something.
The passage of the stimulus bill and the events surrounding it seem to have come to a very good conclusion right now in the early days of the Obama administration, yet the media whines that the Republicans voted against it so somehow Obama has failed. You really have to wonder just how provincial the Washington, D.C media is to have so totally missed the main story here.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Why is Obama caving to the Republicans so much?
I think that Obama is playing a subtle PR game on the Republican Congressional leaders and their followers and on the American public at the same time. He is attempting to differentiate himself positively from the Bush technique of writing a totally partisan bill, even larding it up with poison pills that the Democrats are forced to vote against and then cramming it through Congress in brute force (Rovian) style. The Obama's game includes caving on some issues that don't effect his poll standing, but holding relatively firm on the core of what he needs. The fact that so many liberals are clearly upset by his surrenders helps him achieve this by suckering in the conservatively biased media. The result is that he is getting the most publicly popular things he needs while the Republicans in Congress are painting themselves into a corner and looking ridiculous doing it. That it is a long-term game. It's a long term strategy.
Obama has the polls in his favor and he has just been elected as a direct rejection of George Bush. The estimated 1.8 million crowd that went to Washington for the inauguration sent a signal that the Republicans could not have missed, although the media appears to have missed it. The media has had to put Obama's inauguration crowds into the memory hole. But he also has to get health care through, and I seriously doubt that Obama has given up on his promise to do that this year. He needs to husband his power to accomplish that.
The Congressional Republicans are coming out of this stimulus vote looking very bad, while Limbaugh and the right wing talk jocks are coming off looking desperate. The talk show host's control of the Republican Congressional party is also being laid bare to the public. Again, this is something the media has to bury in the memory hole.
I don't think Obama ever thought the Republicans in Congress were going to be reasonable. They can't. While they are from red states and congressional districts and seem to have life time sinecures, that is only as long as they toe the line with their constituencies in the Republican Party. If any of them actually start cooperating with Obama, they will face the wrath of Limbaugh, et al. now and a primary challenge next year. As for the next general election, Obama's Internet-based social and political organizations (which have become part of the DNC) are going to be putting pressure on them from their home districts and states. If the Republicans who are targeted that way survive a primary challenge, they will face much stronger Democratic opposition in the next general election. They don't dare cooperate with Obama and breal with their leadership and the Talk Show hosts, or they becoem more vulnerable to losing their seat in Congress. It'd s s two-pronged attack that depends on Obama's base of supporters.
I'm pretty sure that team Obama has taken lessons from what happened to Bill Clinton in 1994. Obama really doesn't want to lose his Democratic Party majorities in Congress. The team is going to need those majorities when the depression gets much worse. It is quite clear now that it will, a fact that the Congressional Republicans and talk show hosts are depending on to rebuild Republican Congressional power.
Through all this, of course, we can expect the media to continue to attack the Obama administration because that's what they are trained and organized to do. Obama is going to also have to avoid the media sniping while letting them look so partisan that they cease to be as effective as they were against Gore and Kerry. Generally the media conservative bias will be an even longer term problem for Obama, but he got elected without them. He can deal with them.
That's my best guess regarding "What Obama thinks." He is still holding his cards close to his chest, and we'll have to discern his thinking from his behavior and his results. So far he has done well.
Obama has the polls in his favor and he has just been elected as a direct rejection of George Bush. The estimated 1.8 million crowd that went to Washington for the inauguration sent a signal that the Republicans could not have missed, although the media appears to have missed it. The media has had to put Obama's inauguration crowds into the memory hole. But he also has to get health care through, and I seriously doubt that Obama has given up on his promise to do that this year. He needs to husband his power to accomplish that.
The Congressional Republicans are coming out of this stimulus vote looking very bad, while Limbaugh and the right wing talk jocks are coming off looking desperate. The talk show host's control of the Republican Congressional party is also being laid bare to the public. Again, this is something the media has to bury in the memory hole.
I don't think Obama ever thought the Republicans in Congress were going to be reasonable. They can't. While they are from red states and congressional districts and seem to have life time sinecures, that is only as long as they toe the line with their constituencies in the Republican Party. If any of them actually start cooperating with Obama, they will face the wrath of Limbaugh, et al. now and a primary challenge next year. As for the next general election, Obama's Internet-based social and political organizations (which have become part of the DNC) are going to be putting pressure on them from their home districts and states. If the Republicans who are targeted that way survive a primary challenge, they will face much stronger Democratic opposition in the next general election. They don't dare cooperate with Obama and breal with their leadership and the Talk Show hosts, or they becoem more vulnerable to losing their seat in Congress. It'd s s two-pronged attack that depends on Obama's base of supporters.
I'm pretty sure that team Obama has taken lessons from what happened to Bill Clinton in 1994. Obama really doesn't want to lose his Democratic Party majorities in Congress. The team is going to need those majorities when the depression gets much worse. It is quite clear now that it will, a fact that the Congressional Republicans and talk show hosts are depending on to rebuild Republican Congressional power.
Through all this, of course, we can expect the media to continue to attack the Obama administration because that's what they are trained and organized to do. Obama is going to also have to avoid the media sniping while letting them look so partisan that they cease to be as effective as they were against Gore and Kerry. Generally the media conservative bias will be an even longer term problem for Obama, but he got elected without them. He can deal with them.
That's my best guess regarding "What Obama thinks." He is still holding his cards close to his chest, and we'll have to discern his thinking from his behavior and his results. So far he has done well.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Why is the Washington media establishment predominantly Republican?
When you look at the news judgment of the media centered in Washington, D.C. it is obvious from what they consider to be important news that their judgment is essentially Republican. Josh Marshall points that out this morning.
I wonder why?
Is it just that the owners, managers, pundits, columnists and editors are all paid like Republicans want to be? Or is it that the set of Washington, D.C. news sources they have wanted inside leaks from over the last thirty years have been almost all Republican?
I wonder why?
Is it just that the owners, managers, pundits, columnists and editors are all paid like Republicans want to be? Or is it that the set of Washington, D.C. news sources they have wanted inside leaks from over the last thirty years have been almost all Republican?
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Good gag
- Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, AKA Joe the Plumber, was closely related to Charles Keating, the disgraced former savings and loan chief.
- Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.
Except ... neither Martin Eisenstadt nor the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy exist. They are a year-long hoax, pumping fake news items like the two above into the news media and the blogosphere.
The story is in the New York Times.
You've got to admire a good hoax on the media like this one.
Addendum 8:24 pm
This is interesting. Steve Benen points out:
An MSNBC report credited Martin Eisenstadt, who doesn't exist, as the original source of the Palin/Africa claim. The hoax, however, is the bogus source validating the story, not the Palin/Africa story itself.We mustn't credit Palin with more education that she has demonstrated.
The original reporting on the Palin/Africa story came from Fox News' Carl Cameron, who reported last week on the McCain campaign's apparent frustration with Palin's ignorance. Cameron cited campaign aides as his source. Later, Palin said her comments about Africa had been "taken out of context."
Saturday, November 08, 2008
The election is over. Now the media will try to redefine what it means
Barack Obama has run for President and won by the biggest margin since 1964. As the Republicans repeatedly told us, Obama was the third most liberal member of Senate, his running mate Joe Biden was the most liberal, and the third Senator in the top three is the avowed Socialist Bernie Sanders.
This of course proves that America remains a "center-right" nation. Just ask the media. Jamison Foser presents us some of the warped logic that the top members of the media use to come to that nonsensical conclusion. Go read his article, with the names of the luminaries who make the ridiculous claims.
well?
What are you waiting for? Click that link and read.
This of course proves that America remains a "center-right" nation. Just ask the media. Jamison Foser presents us some of the warped logic that the top members of the media use to come to that nonsensical conclusion. Go read his article, with the names of the luminaries who make the ridiculous claims.
well?
What are you waiting for? Click that link and read.
Friday, November 07, 2008
What makes Republicans afraid of the media?
This is an interesting observation from an exit pollster.
The list is almost endless. I can really see many such people preferring not to talk to pollsters for fear that their opinions will be misrepresented, altered in the report or even laughed at. Most Republicans who believe such things that seem strange to mainstream individuals are not combative people any more than most of us are, so they believe what they believe and prefer not to expose it to others they don't know.
That's my best guess, anyway. As I say, the observation is quite interesting.
Since like forever, people have been wondering why exit polls are so fucked up that they underrepresent Republicans by a little under two percent. Why are Republicans "reluctant?" [Snip]I can see that. Take social conservatives. They are often faith-based religious extremists who ignore and oppose things that most of the mainstream considered settled fact. Evolution is an example. Every time they tell what they really believe they take flack from those with mainstream beliefs. The financial conservatives believe in things like destroying Social Security to improve the economy. They face the same reaction. The Libertarians are highly faith-based, though to tell them that will be to start an argument. And NeoCons simply completely disbelieve in most diplomacy. Troops cause real changes, diplomacy is useless because your enemies will not do what you want/demand unless you hold a gun to their head.
It is very simply because Republicans don't trust the media. When people in my precinct saw network logos on my badge, they refused to participate, in a few cases after they had initially agreed to do so. One even suspected I would change his answers.
Republicans have weird beliefs which lead them to behave strangely. It's an ancient story. But in this case, we don't need an elaborate apparatus of behavioral science to tell us why Republicans won't submit their precious opinions to news orgs: they're afraid they'll be made to seem foolish.
The list is almost endless. I can really see many such people preferring not to talk to pollsters for fear that their opinions will be misrepresented, altered in the report or even laughed at. Most Republicans who believe such things that seem strange to mainstream individuals are not combative people any more than most of us are, so they believe what they believe and prefer not to expose it to others they don't know.
That's my best guess, anyway. As I say, the observation is quite interesting.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Ruth Marcus on media and the "symmetry of sin."
Ruth Marcus now feels free to write about the failed media efforts to achieve balance by simply quoting each side of the election.
So at last she acknowledges it? Does anyone still care?
So at last she acknowledges it? Does anyone still care?
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