Wednesday, May 14, 2003

I need a drink But I’ll settle for a cartoon … or two 8:32:31 PM

Ignore that man behind the curtain… …what’s his name? Osama sumthin’? He’s just a symbol, a figurehead…   At least that what the Bushies tried to tell us…   Guess again 8:30:20 PM

Two much? Nope – can’t get enough of Krugman!   The China Syndrome By PAUL KRUGMAN   A funny thing happened during the Iraq war: many Americans turned to the BBC for their TV news. They were looking for an alternative point of view — something they couldn't find on domestic networks, which, in the words of the BBC's director general, "wrapped themselves in the American flag and substituted patriotism for impartiality."   Leave aside the rights and wrongs of the war itself, and consider the paradox. The BBC is owned by the British government, and one might have expected it to support that government's policies. In fact, however, it tried hard — too hard, its critics say — to stay impartial. America's TV networks are privately owned, yet they behaved like state-run media.…   A recent report by Stephen Labaton of The Times contained a nice illustration of the U.S. government's ability to reward media companies that do what it wants. The issue was a proposal by Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to relax regulations on media ownership. The proposal, formally presented yesterday, may be summarized as a plan to let the bigger fish eat more of the smaller fish. Big media companies will be allowed to have a larger share of the national market and own more TV stations in any given local market, and many restrictions on "cross-ownership" — owning radio stations, TV stations and newspapers in the same local market — will be lifted.   The plan's defects aside — it will further reduce the diversity of news available to most people — what struck me was the horse-trading involved. One media group wrote to Mr. Powell, dropping its opposition to part of his plan "in return for favorable commission action" on another matter. That was indiscreet, but you'd have to be very naïve not to imagine that there are a lot of implicit quid pro quos out there.   And the implicit trading surely extends to news content. Imagine a TV news executive considering whether to run a major story that might damage the Bush administration — say, a follow-up on Senator Bob Graham's charge that a Congressional report on Sept. 11 has been kept classified because it would raise embarrassing questions about the administration's performance. Surely it would occur to that executive that the administration could punish any network running that story.   Meanwhile, both the formal rules and the codes of ethics that formerly prevented blatant partisanship are gone or ignored. Neil Cavuto of Fox News is an anchor, not a commentator. Yet after Baghdad's fall he told "those who opposed the liberation of Iraq" — a large minority — that "you were sickening then; you are sickening now." Fair and balanced.   We don't have censorship in this country; it's still possible to find different points of view. But we do have a system in which the major media companies have strong incentives to present the news in a way that pleases the party in power, and no incentive not to.   Into the Sunset By PAUL KRUGMAN   Chutzpah, according to the classic definition, is when you murder your parents, then ask for sympathy because you're an orphan. But what do we call it if after you are placed with foster parents, you try the same thing all over again?   I ask this question in light of the tax-cut package the House is expected to pass today — a package that relies on exactly the same bait-and-switch tactics used to sell the 2001 tax cut. Since the scam involved in the 2001 tax cut remains one of the wonders of modern political economy, it is a measure of our leaders' contempt for the intelligence of the public — or maybe for the press — that they think they can use the same tricks a second time.…   The new tax cut plan echoes the 2001 scam in other ways. In 2001 a tax cut that delivered about 40 percent of its benefits to the richest 1 percent of families was marketed as a tax break for ordinary folks. The same is true this time. In fact, the extent to which the House bill favors the rich is breathtaking: the typical family would get a tax break of only $217 next year, but families with incomes above $1 million would get an average of $93,500 each. The center estimates that over the next decade, 27 percent of the tax cut — about the share that goes to the bottom 90 percent of the population — would go to these very high-income families, who comprise a mere 0.13 percent of the population.   Finally, as in 2001, we're being told that this tax cut will create lots of jobs. But why should we believe that? It's hard to find an independent economist who thinks that the Bush proposal would create the 1.4 million jobs claimed by the administration — and as I've explained in this column, even that many jobs would be a poor payoff for a tax cut that big.   And bear in mind that Bush-style tax cuts now have a track record. Of the 2.1 million jobs lost over the past two years, 1.7 million vanished after the passage of the 2001 tax cut.   Nonetheless, the odds are that this scam, like the scam of 2001, will succeed. The tax cut will be passed, and the budget will plunge even deeper into the red. And one day we'll realize that international investors are treating us like a banana republic — that they won't finance our trade deficit unless they are paid very high rates of interest (have I mentioned that the dollar has just fallen to a four-year low against the euro?) — and everyone will wonder why. 7:55:12 PM

Lyons – two for one day It’s Wednesday – which means it’s anything can happen day. We’ll start by catching up on Martin’s email.   Enjoy!   Gene Lyons May 14, 2003   Simply Truth: the Cardinal Tenet of Journalism   At the expense of giving an antagonist the benefit of the doubt, Joseph Lelyveld couldn't have known when he wrote his dismissive review of Sidney Blumenthal's book "The Clinton Wars," what a bad week it would be for condescending New York Times editors. Lelyveld retired as executive editor in 2001. According to the Time's front page apologia for the transgressions of plagiarist and fabulator Jayson Blair, he'd written a memo in 2000 warning that too many factual blunders were creeping into the newspaper.   It's tempting to say Lelyveld woke up at least 10 years too late. Except judging by his patronizing attitude toward Blumenthal in the New York Review of Books, he's still snoozing. Since one of the "The Clinton Wars'" major themes is how The Times and the national press madly pursued one absurd Clinton "psuedoscandal" after another until they finally caught the Big Creep with his pants down, sleepwalking was a professional necessity.   Caveat: Blumenthal is a personal friend; I'm a minor character in his book, which makes considerable use of Joe Conason's and my book "The Hunting of the President."   Although comical and sad, Jayson Blair's inventions did little real harm. Many journalists secretly love the ritual purging of hoaxers like him, Stephen Glass and Janet Cooke, the Washington Post reporter who made-up a in imaginary child heroin addict. It lets them display their dedication to what The Times expose calls "the cardinal tenet of journalism, which is simply truth."   Ah, simple truth. Crediting "The Hunting of the President," Blumenthal describes several absurdities in Times reporter Jeff Gerth's initial reporting of the Whitewater psuedoscandal, including his portrayal of Arkansas securities commissioner Beverly Bassett Schaffer as suspiciously forgetful about Jim McDougal's doomed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan. The story clearly implied that Schaffer, a Clinton appointee, had malingered while Clinton's business partner played financial games.   "In fact," Blumenthal writes "before [Gerth's] article appeared, she had given him a twenty page memo spelling out in detail what had actually happened--she had requested federal regulators to close the S & L--an account Gerth ignored." She'd urged the Feds in writing to shut Madison Guaranty down fourteen months before they acted. If Lelyveld ever knew that, he's not saying.   "Not many people will want to dive into the details of the Whitewater case again," writes Lelyveld. "But since I had a measure of responsibility for the appearance of the first story on the subject, I can't avoid quarreling with the depiction of the reporter that became standard in the Clinton camp and that is faithfully repeated by Blumenthal. Far from being a gullible tool of Clinton-haters with a casual relation to facts, Jeff Gerth is an estimable and painstaking investigative reporter who knows how to read legal papers and financial reports."   Interesting, then, as Blumenthal also shows, that the facts and conclusions in the 1995 Pillsbury Report--including every single document and cancelled check The Times had demanded to see--basically got ignored as Gerth and the press pack went whooping down false trails laid by Kenneth Starr's leak-o-matic prosecutors. Lelyveld is still kvetching about the Clinton's refusal to put the documents into Gerth's hands after he'd demonstrated his selectivity toward that elusive willow-the-wisp "simple truth."   Sophisticated reporters like Gerth know better than to make things up. But like Clinton, they also know what to leave out. In a "Clintonian" statement, apparent fidelity to literal fact masks an intention to mislead. To wit, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." (But I did let her...)" Well, we all know what he let her do.   Just so, Whitewater, which became the most elaborate shaggy-dog story in recent American history--weakening the White House and empowering Starr's partisan witch hunt--precisely because few "disturbing questions" about the Clintons' ill-fated real estate venture ever made sense. Exculpatory facts were routinely concealed. An editor with a fraction of Lelyveld's self-esteem should have known.   Alas, he still hasn't mastered the basics, falsely asserting that Jim McDougal "was at the helm of the biggest savings and loan association in the state when it became insolvent." In reality, Madison Guaranty was one of Arkansas's smaller S & L failures, roughly 1/15 the size of First Federal's $950 million cave-in. Nor was McDougal in charge. He'd been removed two and a half years before Madison's closure, partly at Bassett Schaffer's insistence.   Elsewhere, Lelyveld portrays Blumenthal as an equivocating "courtier" for failing to acknowledge aspects of the Lewinsky scandal hurtful to Clinton. In Salon.com, Conason quotes directly from "The Clinton Wars" to show that every item Lelyveld says Blumenthal ignored, Blumenthal dealt with, often pungently, including a tough passage in which he told both Clintons that the president's reckless actions "had given ammunition to his enemies and endangered everything he believed in."   Among the most formidable of those enemies was The New York Times.   Gene Lyons May 7, 2003   Welcome to the Virtual U.S.A.   George W. Bush's swaggering, cinematic landing aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln last week dramatized more than the end of the Iraq war and the beginning of Bush's 2004 campaign. It also represented the triumph of symbol over substance in American politics. The president's handlers appear to believe that a public giddy with TV images of U.S. military omnipotence can no longer distinguish between reality and make-believe.   Evidently, Bush will run as a one-man reunion of the Village People, the dreadful disco act. Having previously costumed himself as a Businessman (his ventures mostly failed), and Owner of the Texas Rangers (he had a one percent share), he's added Cowboy and Fighter Pilot to his repertoire. In reality, his Texas ranch was acquired in 1999; Bush's time in the saddle is limited to golf carts.   The Fighter Jock pose has more substance, as Bush did learn to fly F-102s during his foreshortened service in the Texas Air National Guard's renowned "Champagne Brigade" 30 years ago. The White House seemed to hint that the president himself would perform the landing aboard the Abraham Lincoln hundreds of miles at sea--far beyond helicopter range, Ari Fleischer assured the press.   That would have been a reckless stunt. Formally grounded for failure to take a required medical exam soon after completing his pilot's training, Bush hasn't flown a military aircraft since. As you'd think Junior's handlers wouldn't want to remind anybody, the Boston Globe pretty conclusively proved in May 2000 that Bush went AWOL for more than a year during 1972-73-arranging a transfer from the Texas to the Alabama Air National Guard, but never showing up for duty.   The commanding officer of the Alabama unit, Gen. William Turnipseed, unequivocally told the newspaper that Bush failed to report. Back in Texas, Walter Robinson wrote, "his two superior officers at Ellington Air Force Base could not perform his annual evaluation covering the year from May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973 because, they wrote, 'Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report.'"   Having falsely assured the press that his Guard enlistment involved no preferential treatment (former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes has since admitted making phone calls on Junior's behalf) Bush also claimed to have done light duty in Alabama, but could provide neither documentary evidence nor witnesses.   This is a dead giveaway. As somebody roughly Bush's age with no eminent connections, I could easily prove my whereabouts, job or institutional affiliations at any time since entering kindergarten. The conclusion is inescapable: Bush took a powder.   Speaking of powder, there's been considerable speculation, based on what he says and doesn't say that Junior took may have experimented with the drug known as "Peruvian marching powder" or cocaine. His failure to submit to a physical exam coincided with the Pentagon's decision to begin drug testing. He's denied using illegal drugs only since 1974, by which time he'd returned to Houston and been granted an honorable discharge.   Does it matter thirty years later? Not much, unless you consider the lying important. Many people did things 30 years ago they wouldn't want in the newspapers. Even so, national media's eagerness to protect Junior from his youthful folly approaches the pathological. Amply documented, the Globe article was all but ignored during the 2000 campaign by a Washington press clique obsessed with made-up tales about Al Gore "inventing the internet" and such.   So does it matter that the Abraham Lincoln was only 39 miles out to sea, and that the Navy admits turning the ship so as to afford President Fighter Jock a backdrop of open ocean instead of the San Diego skyline for his speech? Or, as Paul Krugman points out in the New York Times, that Bush's posturing in military garb breaks an American tradition dating back to the Revolutionary War? Presidents George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower never did. Real soldiers, they emphasized their civilian status as commander-in-chief.   Not so ex-Lt. Junior of the Champagne Brigade. Meanwhile, cable TV pundits swooned. Bob Somerby's dailyhowler.com lampoons the way Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball" gushed over Bush's rugged masculinity. Casting the presidency in purely cinematic terms, Matthews doubted that a Democratic "casting director" could match Junior: "Nobody looks right in the role Bush has set for the presidency--commander-in-chief, medium height, medium build, looks good in a jet pilot's costume--or uniform, rather--has a certain swagger, not too literary, certainly not too verbal, but a guy who speaks plainly and wins wars."   The enraptured Matthews specifically derided Sen. John Kerry, who won the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts in Vietnam, and George McGovern, whose heroic exploits as a WWII bomber pilot are documented in Stephen Ambrose's book "Wild Blue Yonder."   Reality sucks. Welcome to the Virtual U.S.A. 7:41:47 PM