Sunday, January 09, 2005
Contesting Ohio: Stephanie Tubbs Jones’ and Barbara Boxer’s comments were on target and moving, the arguable highlights of the brief “debate” on Thursday. But hearing a few progressives intone that this was “historic” and then seeing the media’s relegating it to the back pages reminded me of the futility of it all, and so I “forgot” to note it.
And, shame on those senators who made speeches, but didn’t join Boxer in the voting, saying, in effect, ‘the election system is in trouble, but the election system worked’? [It was also again painful to hear their refrain as to “we’re not challenging the election results”, hoping that would enhance credibility. Yet, the Republicans still denounced them and the media pretty much meekly reported the event.]
Armstrong Williams and the Selling of Administration Policies: By now most know of the commentator who was on the take from the Administration. Yet, this is hardly new. We’ve heard repeated phony news stories that sold either the Medicare prescription policy or No Child Left Behind. It’s still another scandal that won’t get its due since the Republicans control all. Yet, even some Republican legislators and commentators are upset.
Armstrong Williams, a prominent conservative commentator who was a protégé of Senator Strom Thurmond and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, acknowledged yesterday that he was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote its initiatives on his syndicated television program and to other African-Americans in the news media.
The disclosure of the payment set off a storm of criticism from Democrats over the Bush administration's spending to promote its policies to the public. According to a copy of the contract provided by the department yesterday, Mr. Williams, who also runs a small public relations firm and until yesterday wrote a syndicated newspaper column, was required to broadcast two one-minute advertisements in which Education Secretary Rod Paige extolled the merits of its national standards program, No Child Left Behind.
But the arrangement, which started in late 2003 and was first reported yesterday by USA Today, also stipulated that a public relations firm hired by the department would "arrange for Mr. Williams to regularly comment on N.C.L.B. during the course of his broadcasts," that "Secretary Paige and other department officials shall have the option of appearing from time to time as studio guests," and that "Mr. Williams shall utilize his long-term working relationships with 'America's Black Forum' " - an African-American news program - "to encourage the producers to periodically address the No Child Left Behind Act."
The disclosure about the arrangement coincides with a decision by the Government Accountability Office that the administration had violated a law against unauthorized federal propaganda by distributing television news segments that promoted drug enforcement policies without identifying their origin. More than 300 news programs reaching more than 22 million households broadcast the segments. The accountability office made a similar ruling in May about news segments promoting Medicare policies, and the Drug Enforcement Agency stopped distributing the segments then.
In a statement, the Department of Education said yesterday that the deal was an appropriate part of its efforts to explain its policy to "minority parents." The statement said: "The contract paid to provide the straightforward distribution of information about the department's mission and N.C.L.B. - a permissible use of taxpayer funds."
John Gibbons, a spokesman for the department, said Mr. Williams was the only broadcaster or journalist paid to promote the policy. Mr. Williams and department officials said the department's payments to its public relations contractor, Ketchum, ran to $1 million.
House Democrats including the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, and Representative George Miller, senior minority member of the Education and Workforce Committee, both of California, released a letter to the president suggesting "a deliberate pattern of behavior by your administration to deceive the public and the media in an effort to further your policy objectives" and urging disclosure of "all past and ongoing efforts to engage in covert propaganda."
Note the following in the Times article, yet no examples are provided
But public relations executives said that the government distribution of prepared news segments without on-air disclosures of their origin was a bipartisan practice that predated the Bush administration.
"The Clinton administration was probably even more active than the Bush administration" in distributing news segments promoting its policies, said Laurence Moskowitz, chairman and chief executive of Medialink, a major producer of promotional news segments. After the Government Accountability Office decision last spring, he said, his firm began advising government clients to disclose each tape's nature in its script. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/national/08education.html?position=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
Ketchum is the company that was on the receiving end of the Bush administration’s largesse. http://www.ketchum.com/DisplayWebPage/0,1003,28,00.html
You can find references to them in previous articles, such as this past Fall in the Globe
The video and ratings documents emerged through a Freedom of Information Act request by People for the American Way, a liberal group that contends the department is spending public money on a political agenda. The group sought details on a $700,000 contract Ketchum received in 2003 from the Education Department.
One service the company provided was a video news release geared for television stations. The video includes a news story that features Education Secretary Rod Paige and promotes tutoring now offered under law.
The story ends with the voice of a woman saying, ''In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."
It does not identify the government as the source of the report. It also fails to make clear the person purporting to be a reporter was someone hired for the promotional video.
Those are the same features -- including the voice of Karen Ryan -- that were prominent in videos the Health and Human Services Department used to promote the Medicare law and were judged covert propaganda by the Government Accountability Office in May.
The Education Department's video uses ''the same exact mode of operation," said Nancy Keenan, education policy director at People for the American Way. The video encourages students to take advantage of tutoring and says that families give the idea an ''A-plus." http://www.boston.com/news/politics/advertising/articles/2004/10/11/bush_education_ads_eyed/
There was also the Medicare selling, noted above: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/politics/20medicare.html?ex=1105246800&en=1c4cc7e0718ea1f2&ei=5070
So, the media should ask who else the Administration has paid illegally. Helpfully, the prez of the People for the American Way called on the White House to disclose any public relations contracts that federal agencies have with news commentators. But, as always, there need to be more expressions of outrage.
Remember that “War on Terror”? Ah, the fear, the alerts. Since election day, all is quiet- no nervousness, no mushroom clouds, even bin Laden’s voice raised no ruckus. Frank Rich notes that the “war” is doing well on t.v. (“24”) and underscores how unserious the Administration is about this idée fixe.
In retrospect, Bernie Kerik's short-lived nomination as the new homeland security czar - "mind-blowing," as Mr. Clarke puts it - shows just how little concern there is. If homeland security were a top priority for the White House, someone would have discovered that the man selected to run the most sprawling new federal bureaucracy since the Defense Department in 1947 could not even manage his own personal finances, let alone his sex life. Were homeland security still a top priority for the country, the Kerik implosion might have whipped up some of the public outcry once sparked by the whistle-blowing F.B.I. agent Coleen Rowley (who quietly retired last month). But like duct tape and color-coded terror alerts before it, the Kerik nomination instead turned instantly into a Leno-Letterman gag that allowed us to dispel any lingering 9/11 fears with laughter. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/arts/09rich.html?pagewanted=2&oref=login
Upcoming Budget Cuts: The expectable, set up by creating the deficits in the first term. Gonna have to contest changes to Medicaid, not just Social Security.
In his budget request to Congress, President Bush will try to impose firm, enforceable limits on the growth of federal benefit programs, and the chairmen of the Senate and House Budget Committees say they strongly supported that effort.
Administration officials and Congressional aides said Mr. Bush would also seek cuts in housing assistance for low-income families, freezes or slight increases in most domestic programs, and larger increases for domestic security. The spending plan for 2006, like the appropriations enacted for this year, would give priority to military operations and domestic security over social welfare programs.
The new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, said he and other fiscal conservatives wanted to establish "enforcement mechanisms" to "put the brakes on the growth of entitlements," which pay benefits to millions of Americans according to formulas set by law.
"The White House also wants to address entitlement spending," Mr. Gregg said in an interview. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/politics/09budget1.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Iraq: Remember the Death Squads in Central America? I can be nostalgic, but this isn’t what I’d have in mind…
What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/
Ongoing Accidents / Casualties: Bombs and bullets killing civilians. So much for precision bombs, winning the hearts and minds. I only print this to not join the ‘crowd’ that is increasingly relegating the daily slaughter to the rear pages.
U.S. troops opened fire near a checkpoint after their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb, and a hospital official said Sunday at least eight people were killed in the second mistaken American attack in two days to have deadly results.
Desertions: via the British press
American Army soldiers are deserting and fleeing to Canada rather than fight in Iraq, rekindling memories of the thousands of draft-dodgers who flooded north to avoid service in Vietnam.
An estimated 5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion of Iraq, reflecting Washington's growing problems with troop morale. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/09/wus09.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/01/09/ixportal.html
Re-elected Bush at 49% approval. And 49% disapproval. Another reminder how beatable he was… http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm
-R
And, shame on those senators who made speeches, but didn’t join Boxer in the voting, saying, in effect, ‘the election system is in trouble, but the election system worked’? [It was also again painful to hear their refrain as to “we’re not challenging the election results”, hoping that would enhance credibility. Yet, the Republicans still denounced them and the media pretty much meekly reported the event.]
Armstrong Williams and the Selling of Administration Policies: By now most know of the commentator who was on the take from the Administration. Yet, this is hardly new. We’ve heard repeated phony news stories that sold either the Medicare prescription policy or No Child Left Behind. It’s still another scandal that won’t get its due since the Republicans control all. Yet, even some Republican legislators and commentators are upset.
Armstrong Williams, a prominent conservative commentator who was a protégé of Senator Strom Thurmond and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, acknowledged yesterday that he was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote its initiatives on his syndicated television program and to other African-Americans in the news media.
The disclosure of the payment set off a storm of criticism from Democrats over the Bush administration's spending to promote its policies to the public. According to a copy of the contract provided by the department yesterday, Mr. Williams, who also runs a small public relations firm and until yesterday wrote a syndicated newspaper column, was required to broadcast two one-minute advertisements in which Education Secretary Rod Paige extolled the merits of its national standards program, No Child Left Behind.
But the arrangement, which started in late 2003 and was first reported yesterday by USA Today, also stipulated that a public relations firm hired by the department would "arrange for Mr. Williams to regularly comment on N.C.L.B. during the course of his broadcasts," that "Secretary Paige and other department officials shall have the option of appearing from time to time as studio guests," and that "Mr. Williams shall utilize his long-term working relationships with 'America's Black Forum' " - an African-American news program - "to encourage the producers to periodically address the No Child Left Behind Act."
The disclosure about the arrangement coincides with a decision by the Government Accountability Office that the administration had violated a law against unauthorized federal propaganda by distributing television news segments that promoted drug enforcement policies without identifying their origin. More than 300 news programs reaching more than 22 million households broadcast the segments. The accountability office made a similar ruling in May about news segments promoting Medicare policies, and the Drug Enforcement Agency stopped distributing the segments then.
In a statement, the Department of Education said yesterday that the deal was an appropriate part of its efforts to explain its policy to "minority parents." The statement said: "The contract paid to provide the straightforward distribution of information about the department's mission and N.C.L.B. - a permissible use of taxpayer funds."
John Gibbons, a spokesman for the department, said Mr. Williams was the only broadcaster or journalist paid to promote the policy. Mr. Williams and department officials said the department's payments to its public relations contractor, Ketchum, ran to $1 million.
House Democrats including the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, and Representative George Miller, senior minority member of the Education and Workforce Committee, both of California, released a letter to the president suggesting "a deliberate pattern of behavior by your administration to deceive the public and the media in an effort to further your policy objectives" and urging disclosure of "all past and ongoing efforts to engage in covert propaganda."
Note the following in the Times article, yet no examples are provided
But public relations executives said that the government distribution of prepared news segments without on-air disclosures of their origin was a bipartisan practice that predated the Bush administration.
"The Clinton administration was probably even more active than the Bush administration" in distributing news segments promoting its policies, said Laurence Moskowitz, chairman and chief executive of Medialink, a major producer of promotional news segments. After the Government Accountability Office decision last spring, he said, his firm began advising government clients to disclose each tape's nature in its script. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/national/08education.html?position=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
Ketchum is the company that was on the receiving end of the Bush administration’s largesse. http://www.ketchum.com/DisplayWebPage/0,1003,28,00.html
You can find references to them in previous articles, such as this past Fall in the Globe
The video and ratings documents emerged through a Freedom of Information Act request by People for the American Way, a liberal group that contends the department is spending public money on a political agenda. The group sought details on a $700,000 contract Ketchum received in 2003 from the Education Department.
One service the company provided was a video news release geared for television stations. The video includes a news story that features Education Secretary Rod Paige and promotes tutoring now offered under law.
The story ends with the voice of a woman saying, ''In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."
It does not identify the government as the source of the report. It also fails to make clear the person purporting to be a reporter was someone hired for the promotional video.
Those are the same features -- including the voice of Karen Ryan -- that were prominent in videos the Health and Human Services Department used to promote the Medicare law and were judged covert propaganda by the Government Accountability Office in May.
The Education Department's video uses ''the same exact mode of operation," said Nancy Keenan, education policy director at People for the American Way. The video encourages students to take advantage of tutoring and says that families give the idea an ''A-plus." http://www.boston.com/news/politics/advertising/articles/2004/10/11/bush_education_ads_eyed/
There was also the Medicare selling, noted above: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/politics/20medicare.html?ex=1105246800&en=1c4cc7e0718ea1f2&ei=5070
So, the media should ask who else the Administration has paid illegally. Helpfully, the prez of the People for the American Way called on the White House to disclose any public relations contracts that federal agencies have with news commentators. But, as always, there need to be more expressions of outrage.
Remember that “War on Terror”? Ah, the fear, the alerts. Since election day, all is quiet- no nervousness, no mushroom clouds, even bin Laden’s voice raised no ruckus. Frank Rich notes that the “war” is doing well on t.v. (“24”) and underscores how unserious the Administration is about this idée fixe.
In retrospect, Bernie Kerik's short-lived nomination as the new homeland security czar - "mind-blowing," as Mr. Clarke puts it - shows just how little concern there is. If homeland security were a top priority for the White House, someone would have discovered that the man selected to run the most sprawling new federal bureaucracy since the Defense Department in 1947 could not even manage his own personal finances, let alone his sex life. Were homeland security still a top priority for the country, the Kerik implosion might have whipped up some of the public outcry once sparked by the whistle-blowing F.B.I. agent Coleen Rowley (who quietly retired last month). But like duct tape and color-coded terror alerts before it, the Kerik nomination instead turned instantly into a Leno-Letterman gag that allowed us to dispel any lingering 9/11 fears with laughter. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/arts/09rich.html?pagewanted=2&oref=login
Upcoming Budget Cuts: The expectable, set up by creating the deficits in the first term. Gonna have to contest changes to Medicaid, not just Social Security.
In his budget request to Congress, President Bush will try to impose firm, enforceable limits on the growth of federal benefit programs, and the chairmen of the Senate and House Budget Committees say they strongly supported that effort.
Administration officials and Congressional aides said Mr. Bush would also seek cuts in housing assistance for low-income families, freezes or slight increases in most domestic programs, and larger increases for domestic security. The spending plan for 2006, like the appropriations enacted for this year, would give priority to military operations and domestic security over social welfare programs.
The new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, said he and other fiscal conservatives wanted to establish "enforcement mechanisms" to "put the brakes on the growth of entitlements," which pay benefits to millions of Americans according to formulas set by law.
"The White House also wants to address entitlement spending," Mr. Gregg said in an interview. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/politics/09budget1.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Iraq: Remember the Death Squads in Central America? I can be nostalgic, but this isn’t what I’d have in mind…
What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/
Ongoing Accidents / Casualties: Bombs and bullets killing civilians. So much for precision bombs, winning the hearts and minds. I only print this to not join the ‘crowd’ that is increasingly relegating the daily slaughter to the rear pages.
U.S. troops opened fire near a checkpoint after their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb, and a hospital official said Sunday at least eight people were killed in the second mistaken American attack in two days to have deadly results.
Desertions: via the British press
American Army soldiers are deserting and fleeing to Canada rather than fight in Iraq, rekindling memories of the thousands of draft-dodgers who flooded north to avoid service in Vietnam.
An estimated 5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion of Iraq, reflecting Washington's growing problems with troop morale. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/09/wus09.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/01/09/ixportal.html
Re-elected Bush at 49% approval. And 49% disapproval. Another reminder how beatable he was… http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm
-R
