Just to take the pressure off Ripper & Raider, who seem to have been pulling a lot of the weight recently, let me hereby volunteer to re-post a lot of what has been discussed lately, with a view to keeping the discussion going over the next few days. 


For those out of the loop, what has been proposed is the formation of a new grassroots action center, with a view to trying to fight back against MSM bias and misinformation. As I see it, this would be broken down into two parts - a 'campaign' in the traditional media sense, and grassroots action. The 'campaign' would consist of getting a brand (distinct from, but with the help of a lot of the media watchdog groups already out there), communicating with local campaigns, local media, pushing our message through viral emails, youtube, class action lawsuits (?).... the list goes on. As for the grassroots action, based on the reports of Ripper McCord, it seems that the insistence of individual citizens (rather than a single, centralized group) on making complaints in response to every single piece of distortion by the media could make a big difference. A 'clearing-house' website has been proposed, essentially a list of MSM inaccuracies from the previous 24 - 48 hours, and a list of telephone numbers and email-addresses for volunteers to contact and complain. It has also been proposed that some sort of rota were worked out to ensure that at least a central team of dedicated people were making sure they made the calls at any one time, so as to keep the pressure up. 


During the course of the previous thread, the focus seemed to be on getting people on the 'next level' to get behind this project. So far, there's been no word from Josh Marshall. We seem to have had some productive discussions with Media Matters on providing support of some form, and others have mentioned ProPublica, Crooks & Liars, FactCheck.org, fair.org and so on. We've also had mention of a host of higher-profile bloggers and journalists interested in MSM accountability and journalistic integrity - from Dan Rather to Greg Mitchell, Al Giordano, Jed, and so on. 


The current micro-project is to create a spreadsheet of all the existing websites and organizations that offer similar critique of the MSM, and to detail how/if each of them encourage or allow for grassroots or netroots action. This is an ongoing project on Google Docs. More information for getting involved is available from CarolBG, who is doing the spreadsheet, or Ripper, who has set up a temporary email address. Send your name, alias and email to eddiestinkypants@att.net to get in the loop. 

As ever, please rec so we can keep the discussion going.  And as ever, please keep suggestions and support coming. We're looking for names of people or websites that might be relevant, or just for campaign ideas. 


Disclaimer: this isn't *my* project, nor is it uniquely raider's or ripper's.... it seems to be something that has grown organically over the last week or so. A testament to the organizing power of the blogosphere!

Links to all previous discussions are below, but I'm fairly awful at formatting my posts, so I expect they won't work. 

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/07/can-our-voices-be-heard-how-do.php

 

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/07/followup-our-voice-and-the-med.php

 

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/07/our-ammunition-countermeasures.php

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/07/sudden-citizens-action-against.php

I've sent this in to the folks at TPM, but in case it doesn't make it as far as Josh's blog, then here's a summary of the latest shocker from the MSM. 

The offending article can be found here:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/09/preston.mccain/index.html


If you log in to the CNN Politics main page, the headline reads, 

"Analysis: McCain is no Bush, campaign says."

First off the bat, it seems pretty hard to be offering so-called "analysis", if your headline is a quote from the campaign itself. When you go into the piece, the headline changes to: "Analysis: McCain's camp highlights differences with Bush". This, again, is inaccurate, since the piece contains reference to only ONE SINGLE difference - their different treatment of the media. Even on this "difference", the piece fails to "analyze", never once suggesting that perhaps McCain's "being in the middle of the media scrum" is a technique designed to schmooze (and generate water-carrying articles like this one...!)


The rest of the article discusses nothing at all related to so-called 'differences' between McCain and Bush. It just has a few process stories about McCain's financing compared to Obama's.

This is something that annoys me whenever it comes up in political dialogue, but when that dialogue involves a BBC correspondent deferring to a Politico.com analyst, it drives me up the wall.

In a discussion of today's Supreme Court ruling, someone at Politico commented (and I'm paraphrasing), "the only Americans likely to have any interest in gun control are those living in Urban areas... but that's a relatively small minority." The reporter didn't call him out on this slight inaccuracy. 

Just for future reference, those of us living in urban areas account for about 75% of the population. That's some minority. 

Let me begin with an anecdote from last year. It was some time in the middle of September, and I was working at the Center for Constitutional Rights as a Communications Intern. My girlfriend and I had long had a plan to try to go see Obama speak - perhaps in an intimate town-hall in New Hampshire. But the news came up in our inboxes that he was doing a rally in downtown DC, so we arranged to take the day to drive down, go to the rally, and then head back to the city late at night. 

It was an amazing rally - a beautiful summer's evening, the setting sun glimmering across the glass buildings surrounding the packed parking lot on H & 11th, and we had a really good spot at the rally, on the podium at the back. The rally was uplifting, moving, emotional, and bought us both close to tears on occasion. This was back when he was using the closing riff with "Fired Up!" "Ready to go!", and ending his speech with, "Let's go change the world!". Needless to say, we left feeling pretty fired up. 

But then, the next morning, I went back to work at the CCR, and looked at the things I was working on: Guantanamo Detainees, NSA Illegal Wiretapping, Rendition, Torture, Corporate Exploitation.... it was one of the most depressing contrasts I've ever experienced. 

And I think it goes a long way to explain what a lot of netroots activists are feeling right now over the FISA/Obama business. This is a depressing time in our national politics, because we have come together as a party, won the nomination, set our sights on the White House......... and yet.... Bush 43 is still in there. No matter how many times we utter the phrase, "lame duck", the reality is that we are still living under the dark days of the Bush Presidency, and the campaign going on right now is still occurring under the specter of that Presidency. While we feel so close to going and changing the world, it is difficult to remind ourselves that we haven't quite got there yet.

There's going to be a lot that we're going to have to swallow over the next few months, but we need to remember that the Obama movement has never just been about one faction - the liberal online faction - of the Democratic Party (even if the MSM want to paint us all as latte liberals and college professors...). This movement is about everyone. Everyone.  And so while here in the blogosphere it would be easy to think that the only thing that Obama has done in the last few days has been to 'cave' on FISA, we need to remember that he's also been pushing his college tuition tax credit plan, which would dramatically improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of middle class families, he's been driving home his economic message in the Midwest where thousands of jobs have been lost, and he's convened a National Security Advisory panel to help formulate the nuts and bolts of a Foreign Policy which will seek to bring an end to the cowboy destruction we've seen wreaked around the world these last seven and a half years. There's six months left. Let's not lose sight of the goal. 

I suspect that few will be jumping to offer criticisms of MSNBC or Tim Russert at this time. But let me say that while many of us in the blogosphere are often quick to label the Mainstream Media ineffective or inadequate, I have always felt that NBC, and Russert in particular, showed at the very least a glimmer of the sort of reporting that should be expected in the dark times of the Bush era, and the corresponding attitudes towards freedom of speech and dissent. 

In the words of Edward Murrow, and more recently, Keith Olbermann: Good Night, and Good Luck. 

When Prime Minister Gordon Brown had his first meeting with Bush on coming into office, the change from the friendly tone of the Blair-Bush relationship to a noticeably cordial Brown-Bush entente was extremely pronounced. Brown's arrival at Camp David had been preceded by numerous members of his new administration speaking on the record about the failures of U.S. foreign policy, the election of his deputy (Harman) - a strong opponent of U.S. techniques of rendition, torture and so on, all signaling what many had suspected all along: that Brown had never supported the War, or the Bush agenda, but was dragged into it by his predecessor. 
But what was most noticeable about the meeting was that in all official dialogue on the podium, while Bush spoke frequently about the "War on Terror", Brown never used the phrase. He didn't even refer to it by its former name, the "War against Terrorism". Instead, he said exactly what he meant, and spoke of the contemporary issue of a global threat of extremism, and a need for renewed efforts to bring about stability and peace in all parts of the world. 
This difference in language, I think, was very important. It is not enough to simply oppose the policies of the Bush Administration, to elect a President Obama, but then to continue using the GOP rhetoric and their frames of reference. If we do this, then we will never win the argument. If we really want to convince people about the right way to win the "war on terror", then the first step is to stop referring to it by that name. 
By referring to the global threat of extremism and the search for stability and peace, we let people know that the issue has more to do with international political actions than it does to do with military power. I, for one, hereby reject and denounce the phrase "War on Terror", and encourage everyone at TPM to join me in trying to avoid using it in future. I hope you'll recommend this, and help spread the word.  Thanks.

Just to quickly ask: given the resolution of the Florida/Michigan situation, has the finishing line been moved from 2025 up to something else? What number should we be keeping our eyes on?

Pretty much the first thing I wrote on TPM was a critique of FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, available here. In summary, I noted the FAFSA equation is worked out backwards (based on how much money is available), and not "forwards" (based on the ability of families to pay - which is how FAFSA advertises itself). 

But this post isn't about FAFSA - it's about the more fundamental question of how we pay for our college education. I have experience of the university system both in the US and the UK, and let me state right here that neither one is effective in the least. While many will be familiar with the flaws of the systems, let me spell it out in black and white:

In the United States, families are paying far too much for college. They can't afford it. Students are taking on loans that they have no chance of paying off, they're torn between the "unpaid internship" - which is designed to give them better employment prospects in the long run, and the "summer job" - which is designed to pay the bills for next week's grocery shopping. The debt runs, in some cases, into the hundreds of thousands. The hardship on the average family is unimaginable, and all the while our "elite" institutions - the ivy league, the private university club - are dominated, basically, by the very wealthy. 

These problems I'll assume are familiar to most readers. Let me take a little more time to elaborate on the problems of the British system. 

Over in the UK, students seemingly have a far more attractive option: a flat rate of £3000 ($6000) per year for any educational institution (there is no such thing as a "private" university). The education is government-subsidized, and the pressure on families is far lower. BUT (and this is an astonishingly large but) - Universities are under-funded. And I don't mean this in the way that many Americans may view their universities as "underfunded". I mean insufficient housing, low security, high crime, buildings falling down, educational standards dropping, and falling staff salaries - right from the very bottom to the very top. In the UK, even the "elite" institutions are closing departments, laying off staff, and unable to provide accommodation for roughly 75% of their students. Meanwhile, the US has around 70-75% of high school graduates going on to college, compared with only 40% in the UK.

The reason for this underfunding is simple. Just because the average family is paying £3,000 for an education, doesn't mean that the actual *cost* of that education is any different than it is in the United States. An undergraduate education in the US can cost anywhere up to $50,000 per year, and the same is true in the UK. If you're doing an expensive course, like, say, Medicine (which is an undergraduate option in the UK), at a high quality institution like, say, Imperial London, then there's a high chance that your degree actually does cost £25,000. So who is paying the outstanding £22,000? In theory, the Government pays. But as the budget has gotten tighter, and as the number of students has gone up - this money simply has not been available. It is an archaic form of paying for education, which comes from the 1920s (when University was totally free for everyone), based on the concept that a very, very small percentage of the population would get a college education. 

Based on a US-oriented mindset, the assumption for many will be that if the Government isn't paying the shortfall, then the universities will have to subsidize it out of their own endowment.  Let me be clear: the word "endowment" is a punch-line in the UK. By way of a fairly simplistic comparison, Oxford has an endowment of $6bn. Harvard has an endowment of $36bn. The majority of Harvard's endowment is liquid (or at least easily accessible), while Oxford has an endowment locked up in land. The difference is vast. Suffice it to say that, when all is worked out, and when the shortfall in payments is taken into account, and when the government doesn't pay any more... Universities in the UK are grossly underfunded. 

The most significant manifestation of this underfunding is accommodation. All across the country, universities simply do not posses the requisite number of dorms to house all of their students. In the majority of cases, they will be able to offer housing to Freshmen, and very occasionally they will have spare rooms for around 10% of the Senior year. This of course means that the average student must spend two or three years renting privately. The student housing market in the UK is the equivalent to the student loans market in the US: it is predatory, competitive, and vastly overpriced, and comes with the bonus of badly maintained buildings with limited flexibility. 

The second problem with underfunding is security. Security on campus universities in the US is usually very good - they are secluded and for the most part isolated from crime. And for those universities which are located in cities, there is in most cases a strong presence. Take a look at my avatar. I'm perfectly aware that Columbia has a fleet of SUVs and Ford Crown Victorias patrolling 24/7/365 - and memory tells me the same is true of Harvard, Georgetown, AU, GWU, JH, etc. I've seen similar (albeit less beefy) contingents around other NYC schools, and always - always a presence on the doors of buildings. 

British Universities have no security. Zero. The result is very high crime rates around student areas, which (see above) tend to be run-down, bad locks on doors, etc. The number of rapes, assaults, and burglary cases is astonishing. 

This underfunding manifests itself in a variety of other ways, as mentioned: department closures, staff wages falling, limited research options - right down to the minutiae of limited library opening hours.

But for now, let me elaborate what I feel is the solution. 

The most important thing is to keep the progressive pay scale that exists in the American system. Socializing and creating a flat-rate simply doesn't work, and leads precisely to the shortfall that we see in the UK. If there's someone with an annual salary of £2.5m, I'm damned certain I want them paying the full price of their kids' education, and not draining the limited Government resources from all the rest of us. This would help make up much of the shortfall in funding. Meanwhile, for the ordinary person, the progressive pay scale must be truly progressive. It must calculate an ability to pay realistically, and not backwards, as my previous post suggested was the case. It must take into account mortgages and healthcare bills and second or third children, and then it must give us generous leeway to the tune of several thousand dollars. 

British Universities need to learn to curb their addiction to government money, too. For too long, the "big five" have had a stranglehold over Downing Street, able to extort the final pennies out of a cash-strapped treasury, to the detriment of their own students. Universities need to be given strong incentive to raise their own money through endowment (I would propose a sliding mandate, in which universities must raise £1 for every £2 of government spending, moving to £1 raised for every £1 spent, and eventually (in some cases) becoming £2 raised for every £1 spent)

This much the UK has to learn from the US framework. Meanwhile, the US should adopt, like the UK, an entirely centralized student loans system based on "pay while you earn", not "pay while you learn". Under this system, students can opt to defer all (or part) payment of their tuition until they are earning. On top of this "tuition fees loan", there is the "maintenance loan", which effectively pays for living costs (if we ignore the minor problem of overpriced, high-demand, bad-quality accommodation). For those who decide to live at home, and save money, this maintenance loan can be a useful tool in paying your way through an unpaid internship, which would otherwise be financially impossible, given the time-opportunity cost of sacrificing the potential wages from a paid summer job. Both of these loans accrue interest AT the rate of inflation. After graduation, there is a 12-month grace period, following which the rate increases, but remains TIED to the rate of inflation. None of these loans need to be paid off until the student is earning a minimum of £16,000 per year ($32,000). Following this, the amount they need to pay is dependent on their salary. If they reach retirement age without ever having earned more than this base amount, then all debt is automatically written off.

Let me conclude by offering some reasons for writing this. I am too often faced with a yearning by Americans for "socialized" and "cheap" education, and the dreamy aspirations by Brits for "wealthy" universities. I write to foster an appreciation on both sides of the pond that the grass isn't greener - it just grows in different directions. Both countries are facing a crisis in their education systems right now, and I believe that through an amelioration of the two systems, a better deal can be reached for all. 

If you enjoyed reading with this, or have an opinion of any sort, then I'd appreciate a "recommend" click: I'd like to get feedback from as many people as possible. Thanks!

I'm feeling the allure of the shady name - "Five Twenty-Seven", which makes it sound like some sort of torture procedure, or possibly a soviet-style euphemism for assassination. 

So let's all get together and set up our own 527. I'm not sure exactly what we'd do after we've set it up, but from what I've heard, it seems like we'd be having a whole lot more fun. 

Obama is going to appear on NBC's Meet The Press for the full hour this Sunday. To my mind, this is a good idea: much of the problem with the Wright issue is that the pundits keep on hashing and re-hashing it. When you talk direct to the pundits it tends to tamp that down just a little. Hopefully this Sunday will be a 'till-they-drop' exhaustion of the issue. Obama tends to do well in these high-profile one-on-one interviews, too. 

Also, this may be heresy, but of all the Sunday Shows, and of all the pundits out there, I still have respect for Tim Russert (SHOCK HORROR! Respect for someone in the MSM!) ...My basis for this is that he at least tends to ask pertinent and relevant questions, and can sort the bullshit from the fact. Plus his questioning style of always referring to quotations gives him a (hilarious) aura of being almost manically devoted to "truth", which I suppose is at least better than the wild pontificating of ABC/Fox, et al.

I am in need of cheering up, and reading the news isn't doing the job these days. So, in the spirit of the Rev. Wright controversy, I am proposing to the good-humored readers of TPM, a sideshow/distraction in keeping with the ABC Debate tradition: Try taking the remarks in this blog out of context.

Go on. I dare you. Take me (or us) so far out of context, you'll prove Derrida's "there is nothing outside of the text" wrong. Turn me into a far-left communist radical terrorist extremist palestinian freedom fighter set on converting the world into an international Islamic caliphate with socialized medicine for all. Redact, Edit, Misinterpret and Re-phrase my remarks as necessary. Enjoy, and if you have it in your heart to brighten the Wright-ridden recommended list, then help spread the misunderstanding to more people by clicking the over-jovial:

Recommend This! (0 people and counting are interested)

Wright. Bitter. Tuzla. Blue-Collar. Pennsylvania. Superdelegates. Wright. Bill Clinton. Gaffe #1. Flag-Pin. Gaffe #2. And did I mention Wright?


One thing that we're finding hard to see is that ALL of the above will be entirely washed away once Obama is the nominee. I don't mean for a minute to say that they won't come back: many of them will. But things will change. Hugely.

The media is right now facing an inevitable fatigue in the Democratic Nomination. This hasn't always been the case: they liked the continued fighting through March, and the Ohio and Texas showdown was gold for them. But they're getting bored. You can see it in the speed of the media cycles. This "resurgence" of the Wright issue was over by midday. Drudge was running (still is) the piece on Obama having the lead from Senators. Then the poll came out saying that CLINTON polls better among independents - which is unheard of. 

What is happening is that the campaign, and the media coverage of it, is becoming erratic. The campaigns, the blogs, the MSM pundits, the news editors: we're all becoming so obsessively introspective (and I'm guilty of this too) with our own family fight, that we just can't see how BIG a story it will be when Obama - finally, and for good - slays Goliath. It will be huge news. Imagine something that is so enormous that when you're right up close to it, you can't see it. With a build-up that has gone on four times as long as it should have, this will be an event so seismic, so tectonic, that it will completely change the game. 

Here's how. First of all, Wright, Flag Pins, Bitter, Superdelegates & co will be shelved, at least for a few months. The media will realize that they've been pretty bored with the whole Obama-Clinton farrago over the last five or six months, and they'll suddenly see that there's a whole new contest for them to cover: Obama-McCain. And since Obama has faced much of the heat recently, even the McCain-ass-licking McSame-lovin' MSM will *finally* get around to changing their focus - if only because a different face on their screens will boost ratings and keep the goldfish-like attention span of their viewers hanging on for just a few more cycles. 

Aside from the media change, the polls will change. Any General Election poll right now is meaningless, and we all know why. My instinct, and most will probably agree, is that Obama will shoot up by 5 to 10 points against McCain with Clinton out of the picture. 

So the moral is this: don't worry about Wright. In fact, embrace his cock-ups. We're in a beautiful situation right now - 99% sure that Obama is the nominee, but still acting like we're competing for the nomination. What this means is that we can talk ad infinitum about our "weak spots", since it will all be long-forgotten as soon as the game-changing, monumental, big-as-the-earth-itself news breaks that Clinton has been defeated.

Apologies if I'm repeating something that has already become common knowledge, but I haven't seen this before. This seems like a viable criticism of McCain that has potential for gaining wider traction in the Media. It's the kind of sound-bite ready, headline-grabbing stuff that even the MSM loves. As a further bonus, it ties in nicely with our more general criticism of McCain/Bush foreign policy, which has fundamentally chosen the wrong battleground against "terror". 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFr7vBq8Two

There's been much chatter over the course of this campaign about the Mark Penn theory of microtrends. It is widely assumed that with the growth of the Obama phenomenon, and the death of the Penn Strategy for Clinton, Penn was wrong: Macrotrends aren't over - they're just getting going again.  Penn argued that, "there is no One America any more... we are flying apart at record pace." Obama's campaign seems to have turned that idea on its head.

However, given the recent "deadlock" in the primary process (perceived or otherwise), there's been an increased opportunity to analyze the breakdowns and internals of polling and primary results. 

So my question is this: has Mark Penn been in any way proven right? I'm not talking about his attack strategy, but more specifically his data-driven, research-based targeting of subgroups. 

My take on it is this: Microtrends are "real". They're here, and they're growing and diversifying and subdividing with each passing minute. But Penn simply underestimated the extent to which these small trends would be able to fit into a larger macro-pattern, and the extent to which all of these microtrends could be linked by a couple of common factors: newness and change - whether you're left-handed and need a customized device, a health-freak and want to cut your hydrogenated oils, a blogger looking for somewhere different to read and share news, or a Starbucks customer who likes their latte with every conceivable add-on - there is one linking factor: they all want something NEW, and something DIFFERENT. 

This, in my opinion, has been the single major oversight of Penn's theory.

What has happened to Paul Krugman?

His latest sneering output in today's Times is yet another re-hashing of the same point he has been making throughout the election campaign: Barack Obama is a jerk with no substance. 

I don't really feel the need to defend Obama here - I'm sure that most readers have run through the counter-arguments in their minds just as many times as Krugman has repeated them (I still read his column regularly, hoping that he might.... somehow.... offer something new). 

But what I do feel the need to respond to is the constant nonsense that comes out of the Clinton campaign about "universal healthcare". For some reason, those supporting Clinton seem to think that they have the right to use this term when describing their candidate's positions. 

They should stop, and now. Universal Healthcare describes a system whereby anyone can get any care they need, any time, without any impediments. There is really only one way to do this: single payer. Not a mandate, not lower costs, not 'medicare for all', not a decade-long war with drug companies - but a National Health Service. The reason I know this is because I have a life on both sides of the Atlantic, and, in short, I get all my treatment and drugs in London, and quite frankly can't be bothered with insurance in the U.S. If something went dreadfully wrong, then I have travel insurance which would pay for transport back to a nice clean NHS hospital in London. But I realize that I'm in the minority with this privilege. 

Can we please just admit that both of the candidate's healthcare plans suck? Based on the mandate in Massachusetts, and I'm remembering some figures very roughly here - but only 30% of the uninsured got covered under the new plan. Of that 30%, 80% were eligible for medicaid anyway, and now face copayments under the new plan. Deduct that 80% of the newly insured, and you have a situation whereby about 8% of people who could have got healthcare, but didn't, are now getting it under the new plan. The rest are all worse off since they face either co-payments or just a fine. 

Obama's plan is equally pathetic: it is just, at the end of the day, a piecemeal reform of a system which is fundamentally broken. Fundamentally, meaning that only a complete replacement of the current mess which is our healthcare system will suffice to sort out the problem. 

The only reason - and I really mean, the only reason - I support Obama's healthcare plan over Clinton's, is that I foresee his as leaving room to maneuver. Here's my worry: Clinton's plan gets passed, and we still have 20 or 30 million people uninsured. Then we try and legislate further to help those people, and the GOP turn around and say, "Ah-ha! But you already have *universal* healthcare! What can this next plan be if it isn't just Socialism??" And thus, healthcare improvements are dead. 

My point is merely this: if you are confident enough to label something "universal healthcare", then you'd better be pretty damned sure that it does what it says - otherwise you are going to face hell in trying to institute any further reforms. 

What Clinton is proposing is not universal healthcare. It's not even universal coverage. It's a plan designed to increase coverage - nothing more. 

Will Krugman please wake up and realize that, given his devotion to the Clintons, it is pretty rich to call the rest of us "cult-like". I support Obama. I agree with him on many issues. But I like to think that I have the originality to disagree with him too. It would be nice to see the same qualities in the commentators of such a prestigious newspaper.