If no one goes on Fox, and if no one watches Fox -- except of course the preterite Coulter community -- then ultimately Fox will change its slant. That at least is what marketplace economics would dictate. Of course Rupert Murdoch could wake up one morning and just issue the ukase that instantly modified the Fox bias.
The papers are noting that the Nevada Democrats have pulled out of a presidential debate scheduled for Reno because its "co-host" is Fox News. The trigger was a Roger Ailes speech March 8 (the clip in its full splendor is here) in which that propaganda bureau's CEO, with his usual subtlety, cracked this joke:
And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said: "Why can't we catch this guy?"
Good for Harry Reid for blowing the whistle on Rupert Murdoch's Feh Unbalanced network. But there's another angle that's escaped the notice it deserves: Ailes delivered himself of this crackerjack moment of rich American mirth as he accepted the Radio-Television News Directors Association and Foundation's First Amendment Leadership Award.
One reason unions have very little corruption is that they are some of the most financially transparent institutions in the country, far more than corporations or even other non-profit organizations. Unions have to disclose the salaries of EVERY individual employee and disbursements to every person or organization they do business with. (Go to the DOL's Internet Disclosure page for more)
Corporations, on the other hand, don't even have to disclose details of taxes they pay to the government, much less what they pay their employees or the details of who they do business with. Over at Progressive States, we profiled one state, Montana, which is trying to bring some transparency to corporations by forcing them to disclose core details about their corporate income tax payments.
On one level, I agree with Ed that talking about "frames" can be overdone in the progressive blogosphere. Being substantively right is the key-- and being consistent in that advocacy of the right thing -- is more key that saying or avoiding a clever phrase. On the other hand, when a phrase is not based in reality, repeating it is a deep insult to allies -- the point I was making.
But frankly, calls for unity during particular struggles or campaigns has little to do with blogging concerns about "frames" but is endemic in every political movement. It's always a balance between pragmatic needs for unity in struggle, including language, versus the need to maintain a healthy space for internal debate.
The young man in charge of checking people’s identification cards as you enter the University of California, Berkeley library noticed my faculty card. He stopped me.
“Say professor,” he said, “could I ask you a question?” I looked at his serious face. His eyes were deep brown, his skin even darker. His smile was warm and appealing. “Sure,” I answered, knowing that I was early for a two-hour library class to teach my students how to do electronic research.
“Do you think this country is ready for a black or a woman?” He asked as if he really cared, so I took his question seriously. “I don’t really know,” I answered honestly, “because Americans tend to lie to pollsters in public and vote differently in private.”
The young man in change of checking people’s identification cards as you enter the University of California, Berkeley library noticed my faculty card. He stopped me.
“Say professor,” he said, “could I ask you a question?” I looked at his serious face. His eyes were deep brown, his skin even darker. His smile was warm and appealing. “Sure,” I answered, knowing that I was early for a two-hour library class to teach my students how to do electronic research.
“Do you think this country is ready for a black or a woman?” He asked as if he really cared, so I took his question seriously. “I don’t really know,” I answered honestly, “because Americans tend to lie to pollsters in public and vote differently in private.”
The young man in change of checking people’s identification cards as you enter the University of California, Berkeley library noticed my faculty card. He stopped me.
“Say professor,” he said, “could I ask you a question?” I looked at his serious face. His eyes were deep brown, his skin even darker. His smile was warm and appealing. “Sure,” I answered, knowing that I was early for a two-hour library class to teach my students how to do electronic research.
“Do you think this country is ready for a black or a woman?” He asked as if he really cared, so I took his question seriously. “I don’t really know,” I answered honestly, “because Americans tend to lie to pollsters in public and vote differently in private.”
March 8, International Women's Day, brings a slew of news on women's lives and struggles around the world, most of it bad, and this year is no exception. The World Health Organization notes that one in five women is a victim of sexual violence by the age of 15, and that half a million women die each year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth -- a number that has barely changed in 20 years. The UN Security council has passed a non-binding resolution condemning violence against women in armed conflict, and called for women to be included in peace making, while Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon gave a speech deploring women's low status around the globe. Big whoop.
Pulitzer Prize nominees were announced today. Warren Reports hometown newspaper the Boston Globe was nominated for its excellent series Debtors' Hell. It's certainly worth a read.
(Cross-posted from NewDonkey.com)
Nathan Newman's post, "Rightwing Frame: Union Bosses," raises an important and little-discussed issue.
One of my serious pet peeves about the blogosphere is the widespread abuse of a legitimate but limited principle: in intra-progressive debates, one should make some effort to avoid the use of language and lines of argument that reinforce "the other side's" attacks on progressives generally.
Here's another story about yesterday's Senate hearing on credit card practices. With the spotlight again on Senator Levin (and rightfully so), it can be seen from the article that the industry is starting to give ground on some of their practices. Granted, these are certainly baby steps, but every movement needs to start somewhere, and those of us who finally have an ear in Congress are just beginning the fight.
I realize from the comments on my post yesterday that small successes are often greeted with cynicism when they follow such lengthy periods of negative experience. This is the first time in many years, however, that consumers have had any voice at all; let's take that as encouragement and rachet up our efforts. We can't conquer the industry overnight, or perhaps at all, but let's take a lesson from the lenders -- when a vulnerability is exposed, attack it that much harder.
With that in mind, I turn attention to the Consumer Affairs article, which includes Sen. Levin's statements regarding the practice of "trailing interest." This is the practice of charging interest on an entire balance -- both the paid an unpaid portions -- so long as even a small fraction of the balance is not paid in full during the initial billing period. Carrying over a balance of even a few dollars can lead to finance charges being assessed on thousands of dollars of charges that were paid off immediately. It's yet another example of the credit industry unfairly squeezing money out of customers who think they are using their cards in a harmless manner.
Ed Kilgore, commenting insightfully at his NewDonkey blog about TNR’s Alan Wolfe-Peter Berkowitz debate over political polarization, joins Wolfe and Berkowitz in neglecting what may be the most important factor in setting in motion today’s vitriolic climate: the incendiary personalities of the right’s key original funders. Those individuals were Richard Mellon Scaife (who famously called a Columbia Journalism Review reporter “a f—king Communist c—t,” ugly, and with terrible teeth), William Simon (who ran the Olin Foundation during its heyday and was nicknamed “William the Terrible” for his temper), Michael Joyce (a combustible hothead who ran the Bradley Foundation for much of that same period before finally alienating his board), and Joseph Coors (said by his brother to be “a little bit right of Attila the Hun”).
The deluge of commentary on Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential prospects has forced me finally to break my long silence about the man. Somebody’s gotta say it: He shouldn’t be president, not because he’s too “liberal” or “conservative,” or because his positions on social issues have been heterodox, or because he seems tone-deaf on race, or because his family life has been messy, or because he’s sometimes been as crass an opportunist as almost every other politician of note. Rudy Giuliani shouldn’t be president for reasons more profoundly troubling. Maybe you had to be with him at the start of his electoral career to see them clearly.
Throughout the fall, 1993 New York mayoral campaigns, I tried harder than any other columnist I know of to convince left-liberal friends and everyone else that Giuliani would win and probably should.
In the last few weeks, we've seen a sea change in media coverage in this country. For once, it was the war that pushed Britney Spears' latest stupidity out of the news cycle - and not the other way around.
Inevitably, when you mention unions, comments start flying about "corruption" and the "mafia", another corporate talking point. Now, when I say "myth", I don't mean that there aren't individually corrupt union leaders or even whole unions that have had serious corruption problems at points in time, just that it's a myth that corruption is systematic throughout the union movement or that it's a serious issue in terms of overall union finances, even in the handful of unions with some corruption problems.
A refresher on the facts from some old posts:
But my favorite example is from the most notorious example of union corruption cited by anti-labor folks-- the Teamsters pension fund:
In a previous post, I talked about offshoring and the challenges it poses to the American workforce. What if someone were to take offshoring seriously and rethink our educational system with that in mind? What would they come up with? That’s exactly what the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce has done in their recent report, Tough Choices or Tough Times. The New Skills Commission’s members are a who’s who of education policy – New York City Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Clinton Education Secretary Richard Riley, Bush Secretary of Education Rod Paige, and prominent labor, business, and public leaders – making the innovations in the report particularly noteworthy.
When I recently laid out a communitarian approach to increase organ donations by drawing on new moral appeals, I was subject to a barrage of ad hominem attacks.
Under most conditions I would shrug my shoulders and move on. I have been in public life for many years and have seen people savaged quite regularly. I guess it is a price you pay for not sticking to footnoting in the stacks. However in this case this mode of communication concerns two matters that one should not allow to go by the wayside: first of all, the barrage of personal attacks distracts attention from the issue that should be studied. Namely how to increase organ donations best?
I agree that the Nevada Fox-sponsored debate for Dem Presidential candidates was a terrible idea and it's fine to slam the local union leaders for supporting it. But I hate to the core when folks like Kos use the term "local union bosses", as if elected union leaders are the same as management bosses who get to tell their workers what to do.
It's one of the most persistent rightwing frames, creating an equivalence between union representatives of working people and those who boss them around without democratic accountability. Criticizing union leaders is fine and even needed, but using rightwing frames like the phrase "union bosses" should be avoided.
Following up on Professor Warren's recent post, today's news includes even more hope that political winds are shifting in favor of the consumer. Today in Washington, Senate hearings included testimony from an Ohio man whose $3,200 credit card debt swelled to $10,700 through interest and fees. While executives of three major banks defended the practices of their industry, the Senate pushed back. My favorite quote from the story is as follows:
Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the panel's senior Republican, said high interest rates on credit cards, "hefty fees and crippling penalties impede more and more hard-working families from pursuing their American dream."
The problem is worsened by the "impenetrable" language of credit card disclosures provided to consumers, he said.
Muisic to my ears. Have the Republicans finally realized that this is not only a critical issue, but one that will resonate with voters who are becoming less and less distracted by political smokescreens aimed at side-stepping domestic policy debates?
The front-page headline is damning: "In ’05 Investing, Obama Took Same Path as Donors." The story, by Mike McIntire and Christopher Drew, is awfully gosh-darned important. It's on the same front page as the Libby verdict and "Questions About Cheney Remain." This is big.
The story? Well, here's the lede:
Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.
Sounds like they nailed him dead to rights. But hold on for the fourth graf:
Guilty! Four out of five. Now what? Let's see. Will Scooter Libby be a hot date on Sadie Hawkins day once he's in the pen? He took such delight in screwing political foes, perceived and real, that he is about to discover an ancient Indian truth--Karma can be a bitch.
Then there is the civil suit Joe and Val filed against Dick Cheney, Scooter, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage and others (John Does one thru nine) for damages. If that case is allowed to move forward Joe and Val will become leaders in philanthropy akin to Warren Buffet because they will win a shit pot of money. They are not in it for the money, but by God they deserve a heaping big reward for the vile lies and smears they have endured since Cheney and his gang attacked them for daring to tell the truth about one of the White House lies behind the case for attacking Iraq. Beyond the personal damage the White House gang also ended Valerie's covert career and also did lasting damage to an extensive intelligence network. The details of that story will never be told in order to minimize the harm already done.
Although Patrick Fitzgerald indicated he has no plans to file further charges in this case, there is still work for Congress to do. At a minimum, charges of impeachment against Dick Cheney should be introduced.
Senator Chuck Hagel has not announced his intention to run for the Republican presidential nomination. He hasn't even announced an exploratory committee.
But he does have a lot of folks checking in with him for his views because they know he might run and just by entering the race, his brand of centrist independence -- particularly on foreign policy and national security issues -- would affect both Democratic and Republican candidates gunning to move into the White House.
In a much-reported piece that appeared in Esquire today, Hagel actually mentions the possibility of impeachment of President Bush. This is far from political likelihood, but it's pretty intriguing positioning.
Just a quick look at the Washington Post homepage says it all-three stories, one after another: the Libby convictions, the growing scandal at Walter Reed (and the additional problems of funding and adequate care for veterans at VA hospitals across the country), the juicy tidbits about the political maneuvering to force out federal prosecutors across the country, and of course, the endless and tragic war in Iraq.
There are bad news days but this is really something! There is so much scandal and mismanagement that the Dems will have to tread both heavily and softly at the same time to show that they have the nation's interest at heart, that they aren't simply opportunistically beating a White House that is way down....
The spell of the Enlightenment so profoundly distracts many Western opinion makers that the worldwide rise of religion is either ignored or it is viewed as major threat rather than an important source for the re-moralization of society. True, many observers have noted, especially after September 11, that the rise of a religiously ferocious Islam is not limited to the Arab world, but is very much in evidence in all Muslim nations from Indonesia to Turkey. But few have paid mind to the importance of the crowded churches in former communist countries in Eastern Europe and Russia; to the many scores of millions who are finding religion in China; and to the rapidly growing followings of a variety of religious denominations, cults and sects all over the world.
A standard argument against allowing card check recognition of unions under the Employee Free Choice Act is that somehow union "harassment" will "force" employees to sign cards recognizing the union-- as opposed to the threats and intimidation used by employers during standard NLRB elections.
The equivalence of "harassment" between union and management showed up in comments on my last union post, but it's a delusional rhetorical equivalence.
As you get older, you do not get better. Sorry to break it to you. I am not talking physically; that's obvious enough. I mean in the capacity for moral reasoning. The unfortunate problem is that the valid ideals you learn while young become obstacles to professional, financial, and social advancement. You have to make compromises in order to progress, and you come to believe the justifications you devise along the way. This gives rise to unclear thinking. The better you do, the more muddle-headed you must become.
Joe Klein has done very well.
We all know that, for better or worse, appeals to support our troops these days are as politically expedient and ceremonial as ever. The Washington Post’s intrepid reporting on the “squalid living conditions for some outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] and bureaucratic problems that prevented many from getting the care they need” has shed light on the Bush administration’s own unevenly choreographed “support” for soldiers during a time of war.
Now, however, the Bush administration’s own cynical use of the “support the troops” mantra is in full bloom for all of us to see. Last week, the administration, through Army Secretary Francis Harvey, fired Major General George Weightman from his leadership post at the flagship military hospital in less than two weeks after the Post’s probing series of stories were published.
That headline is one counterintuitive implication of Drum Major Institute's updated "Principles for an Immigration Policy to Strengthen and Expand the American Middle Class: 2007 Edition." This is hardly rocket science-- even if it goes against the conventional wisdom -- but OF COURSE employers are increasing the hiring of undocumented immigrants: they work cheap, they can't enforce labor rights, and if they cause trouble, they can be deported.
The less that immigrant workers are paid, the more native workers wages are under threat. And higher wages for them mean more goods bought and a stronger local economy.
As Derek wrote a few days ago, a New York Times/CBS poll reveals that a majority of Americans believe that the government should guarantee health insurance for all. This poll also found a solid majority willing to pay higher taxes for universal health insurance. A story in today’s NYT links middle class insecurity to the rising tide of working families finding themselves without health insurance.
In a page right out of Professor Warren's book, the New York Times today reports that, "Solidly middle-class people are one of the fastest growing subgroups of uninsured Americans." The source? The nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute, who released a new report showing that "more than one-third of the uninsured ... have family incomes of $40,000 or more" and "more than two-thirds of the uninsured are in households with at least one full-time worker."
For the sake of politics, this sort of data is important. Health insurance is not an us-versus-them sort of issue. Rather, it strikes squarely at the center of the electorate.
The NYT story highlights two other aspects of the problem:
I raised this question in the New York Times on February 25th in reference to a book review. In view of the venomous reaction from those who promote trade in human organs, please note the respect with which I treat those I differ with and the fact that I raised issues, and not attacked persons.
Remember a while back when it came out that firefighters in Washington, D.C. were given the choice between getting an abortion and getting fired? Now there another reproductive rights angle to work/family conflict.
In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, Sharon Lerner documents that countries with family friendly public policies -- surprise -- have more children. Seems logical. Sweden, where families can count on affordable, high quality child care, where families have over a year of paid leave (if I remember correctly) as well as the right to work part-time until the youngest child is six, families have more children than they do in European countries with few family friendly benefits, where the assumption still is that, when children are born, the mother will stay home.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced legislation on Thursday that would allow shareholders to vote on executive pay. H.R. 1257 would complement new executive pay disclosure requirements that the SEC adopted last year.
I've long been skeptical about the I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine culture of boards of directors and corporate executives. (After all, how can anyone really defend $210 million severance packages for mediocre CEO's?) So hopefully this legislation will help bring things down to Earth a little. But will shareholders be able to act collectively here and exert real influence? Is there a better or additional approach for taking this on?
"veterans' advocates and their allies in Congress [say the] system...is vastly unprepared and under funded to handle the onslaught of 1.5 million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who are returning home, an estimated one in five of them with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. One in three Iraq war veterans is seeking mental health services, according to a report by an Army panel of experts last year."
Stephen Krasner, Director of Policy Planning at the Department of State and one of Condi Rice's mentors, will be departing his position within a month and returning to his tenured faculty position at Stanford University.
While Krasner the realist plans to depart, however, a neoconservative -- Eliot Cohen -- is moving into the Secretary's suite as her Counselor.
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 David Sirota: Wither the Autocratic Progressives? |
 Jared Bernstein: Uprisings: Bottom Up and Top Down |
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