Rush & Newt Are Winning, and Adam Davidson is still holding down the fort for the bellicose right over at NPR. 

As a follow up to my May 15th post, I wanted to point out that NPR's Ombudswoman Alicia C. Shepard has written a complete dressing-down of Adam Davidson's malpractice (I mean interview) committed on Elizabeth Warren ("Planet Money Meltdown").

Many listeners said they were deeply disappointed in Davidson. Some threatened to never donate again to NPR. Others have demanded that Davidson be sanctioned or fired. It's not necessary. He is contrite. He knows how unprofessionally he behaved. And NPR supervisors probably will be watching his work more carefully in the future.

Planet Money is far too valuable a resource for explaining today's strange and hard-to-fathom financial information to let one botched interview derail it. But judging by the volume of criticism, it will take some time for Davidson to earn back the trust and respect initially (and deservedly) showered on him.

It is nice to see NPR kinda apologize for him, but I'm not feeling like he deserves much benefit of the doubt going forward.  And, IMO, Planet Money is unlistenable with him around.

In fact, his non-apology needs an apology as well.  In this follow-up post-mortem that Shepard links to, Davidson never apologizes.  Instead, he attacks Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi for picking an "obvious partisan" (paraphrase) like Liz Warren for the TARP overseer post in the first place.  Honestly, this follow up interview sounds to me like Davidson thinks family economics & personal finance is still merely a "trivial, woman's issue" (my words).  Warren's "pet issue" (his words) that should remain in her academic work where it belongs, not on Wall Street - where all the men are oh-so-serious, apparently.  (Aside: Dave Ramsey is a huge conservative.  His Achilles heel is that he can't help himself from spouting FauxNews talking points, but he is 1000% in Warren's camp.  Family economic health is bi-partisan.)

Clearly, IMHO, Planet Money can't rehabilitate itself with Davidson still spitting his Andrew Ross Sorkin-like, CEO brown-nosing, Reaganomics stock phrases.

This whole episode illustrates E.J. Dionne's brilliant Op/Ed today.  It's the anatomy of how the business right dominates the public discussion, and silences intelligent people for "appearing liberal".  I don't think they succeeded in this case, but Davidson was trying to radicalize Professor Warren's image.

I took a break from ripping on the Young Cons Anthem on youtube to read some NPR.  All of a sudden I see this headline: 

All Aren't Happy With Health Insurance For All
by Karen Brown

OK, fine, I think this is a counterpoint piece to Universal Health Care, because NPR is afraid of appearing biased by reporting on reality.  A typical insurance industry / GOP news plant.  But then I noticed that this content was provided to NPR (!) directly from a group called Kaiser Health News.  They provide this disclosure at the end:

Karen Brown is a reporter for member station WFCR in Amherst, Mass. This story was produced through a collaboration between NPR and Kaiser Health News. KHN is an editorially independent news service and is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization. Neither KFF nor KHN is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

WTF?!  I'm calling bull$hit.  That's like starting a MacDonald's Foundation to Cure Obesity or the FoxNews Trust to Fight Illiteracy.

In what universe is this appropriate work by NPR?  If they don't have the budget to provide new reporting and original content, remain silent.  Silence should always win against corporate infiltration.

I'm not saying Massachusetts' plan isn't totally screwed up (Universal Single Payer on a national level is the only solution), but this seems to be a think tank bamboozlement.

I'm 100% open to be proven wrong.  Is Kaiser Health News legitimate?