Friday, March 04, 2005
Social Security: Administration in Strategic Retreat?
They know they’re in trouble, that they need for time for effective propagandizing and to re-tool their message.
Andy Kohut reports how badly it’s gone:
President George W. Bush is losing ground with the public in his efforts to build support for private retirement accounts in Social Security. Despite Bush's intensive campaign to promote the idea, the percentage of Americans who say they favor private accounts has tumbled to 46% in Pew's latest nationwide survey, down from 54% in December and 58% in September. Support has declined as the public has become increasingly aware of the president's plan. More than four-in-ten (43%) say they have heard a lot about the proposal, nearly double the number who said that in December (23%).
The new poll indicates that the Social Security debate is packing a powerful political punch. It finds that just 29% of Americans approve of the way that Bush is handling the issue. http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=238
The re-thinking includes “flexibility’:
Mr. Snow made it clear that Mr. Bush would prefer his approach, which is built on diverting a portion of a worker's payroll tax into a private investment account, and he predicted that the president's plan would win out in the end. And Mr. Snow cited what he said were shortcomings with the supplemental approach, which would require workers to make contributions into private accounts in addition to paying the existing payroll tax.
But his willingness to consider the alternative, known as an add-on account, suggested that the administration was intent on retaining as much flexibility as possible to overcome the political and substantive obstacles that have slowed Mr. Bush's drive to overhaul Social Security. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/politics/03social.html
The campaign: Bill Frist had to eat his words and now declare that Social Security will be addressed in the current year. That fits the announcement of a 2 month offensive- “60 Stops in 60 Days”, where, according to spokesman Scott McClellan, “we are going to be blanketing the country talking with the American people and educating them.” Treasury Secretary Snow adds that “the scope and scale goes way beyond anything we have done.” http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050303/1a_lede03.art.htm
Wow. More lies than pre-invasion? No surprise that Bush brought up bin Laden on Thursday. Almost surprising that he didn’t (thus far) claim that bin Laden and Saddam support the Social Security status quo, or that Social Security “reform” will aid the so-called “war on terror.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3841-2005Mar3.html
Greenspan: Say wha? Really- It’s absurd to treat this guy as anything other than a shill. On Thursday he tentatively endorsed a national consumption tax, one that wouldn’t replace the income tax, but still doing Bush’s bidding.
Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, warned today that federal budget deficits are "unsustainable" and urged Congress to consider both spending cuts and tax increases as possible solutions.
In his gloomiest assessment yet about the government's budget outlook, Mr. Greenspan warned that annual shortfalls were "unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/business/02cnd-deficit.html?hp&ex=1109826000&en=075a371257cc6533&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Yet, he then insisted that he preferred spending cuts to tax increases.
Good to see that on Thursday, Harry Reid showed spine.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan generally gets accolades for his public pronouncements. Yesterday he got a brickbat from Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who blasted Greenspan as "one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington."
Reid ripped Greenspan during an interview on CNN's "Inside Politics." He said the Fed chairman has given President Bush a pass on deficits that have built up in the past four years and should be challenging Republicans on their fiscal policies, rather than promoting Bush's plan to introduce personal accounts into Social Security. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5396-2005Mar3.html
Bankruptcy Bill: It’s awful and will pass; the Republican discipline is holding.
The proposed law, by preventing many debtors from seeking bankruptcy protection, would compel financially insolvent borrowers to continue trying to pay off the old debts almost indefinitely.
"Until now, the principle in this country has been that people's future human capital is their own," said David A. Moss, an economic historian at Harvard University. "If a person gets on a financial treadmill, they can declare bankruptcy and have what can't be paid discharged. But that would change with this bill.
Credit card companies have done wonderfully, despite their propaganda.
In the eight years since they began pressing for the tough bankruptcy bill being debated in the Senate, America's big credit card companies have effectively inoculated themselves from many of the problems that sparked their call for the measure.
By charging customers different interest rates depending on how likely they are to repay their debts and by adding substantial fees for an array of items such as late payments and foreign currency transactions, the major card companies have managed to keep their profits rising steadily even as personal bankruptcies have soared, industry figures show.
"The idea that companies are losing their shirts on bankruptcies is a lot of bull," said one industry analyst. "With these rates and fees, the card industry is a gravy train right now." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bankruptcy4mar04,0,7113947.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Peace and the Middle East: Bush was Right (?)
Very uncomfortable hearing a wide range of pundits and commentators crediting Bush, that even if the invasion was built on lies, still, look what it’s encouraged! Mildly supportive statements ranging from the NY Times to Jon Stewart and Bill Maher remind one that credit accrues to those in office. Then again, the Democrats are weak and journalism is all but non-existent.
More on what’s left of “journalism”- Eric Boehlert and Frank Rich:
For the last four years the persistent story line about the White House's relationship with the press has focused on the administration's discipline, denial of access, and ability to stay on message. The Bush administration, according to this account, is expert at managing information, using secrecy, carrots and sticks, and carefully crafted talking points to control the news.
But in the wake of revelations about the aggressive and unprecedented tactics employed by the White House to manipulate the news, that relatively benign interpretation is being reexamined. Recent headlines about paid-off pundits, video press releases disguised as news telecasts, and the remarkable press access granted to a right-wing pseudo-journalist working under a phony name, have led some to conclude that the White House is not simply aggressively managing the news, but is out to sabotage the press corps from within, to undermine the integrity and reputation of journalism itself.
The White House and its media allies, echoing a deep-rooted conservative antagonism toward the so-called liberal media, say they are simply countering its bias. But critics charge that the White House, along with partners like Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting, organizations whose allegiance to the Republican Party outweighs their commitment to journalism, is actually trying to permanently weaken the press. Its motivation, they say, is twofold. Weakening the press weakens an institution that's structurally an adversary of the White House. And if the press loses its credibility, that eliminates agreed-upon facts -- the commonly accepted information that is central to public debate.
"Republicans have a clear, agreed-upon plan how to diminish the mainstream press," says Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who was granted unique access inside the White House in 2002 to report on the administration's communication strategy. "For them, essentially the way to handle the press is the same as how to handle the federal government; you starve the beast. When it's in a weakened and undernourished condition, then you're able to effect a variety of subtle partisan and political attacks. Armstrong Williams and others are examples of that." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/03/02/media/print.html
What's missing from News is the news. On ABC, Peter Jennings devotes two hours of prime time to playing peek-a-boo with U.F.O. fanatics, a whorish stunt crafted to deliver ratings, not information. On NBC, Brian Williams is busy as all get-out, as every promo reminds us, "Reporting America's Story." That story just happens to be the relentless branding of Brian Williams as America's anchorman - a guy just too in love with Folks Like Us to waste his time looking closely at, say, anything happening in Washington.
In this environment, it's hard to know whom to root for. After the "60 Minutes" fiasco, Mr. Williams's boss, the NBC president Jeff Zucker, piously derided CBS for its screw-up, bragging of the reforms NBC News instituted after a producer staged a truck explosion for a "Dateline NBC" segment in 1992. "Nothing like that could have gotten through, at any level," Mr. Zucker said of the CBS National Guard story, "because of the safeguards we instituted more than a decade ago." Good for him, but it's not as if a lot else has gotten through either. When was the last time Stone Phillips delivered a scoop, with real or even fake documents, on "Dateline"? Or that NBC News pulled off an investigative coup as stunning as the "60 Minutes II" report on Abu Ghraib? That, poignantly enough, was Mr. Rather's last hurrah before he, too, and through every fault of his own, became a neutered newsman. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/arts/06rich.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Back to the Middle East:
A new narrative is spreading, that of a popular uprising against the status quo of oppressive regimes. It’s not pro-America, but at least is less focused on us as the problem. And, let’s remember that the ball started rolling when Ehud Barak withdrew the Israeli army from Lebanon almost 5 years ago. With the Israelis gone, the Syrian presence was no longer considered a balance to the Israelis and instead they became the foreign presence to be focused upon. And, again, the neocons and their Administration hadn’t talked up democratizing the Middle East until the other rationales for war/invasion were exposed as poppycock. They were more inclined to a friendly strongman type and only granted elections when they were demanded by Sistani.
But, hey, they grabbed onto the lingo and have run with it, and maybe it helps that they emphasize democracy and not repetitive invasions, axis of evil, etc.
What’s Happening, Iraq: TBI. Traumatic Brain Injury. USA Today focused on the proliferation of such, as body armor protects soldiers so that they survive, but suffer massive concussions. One survey of wounded at a Bethesda hospital found that 83% had symptoms of TBI. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
What’s Happening, Gannon: The Major Media continue to bury the story, so we have to depend on the smaller, the independent, the internet:
House Democrats say they will force a vote in the House Judiciary Committee to put the Republican majority on the record with regards to investigating discredited White House correspondent Jeff Gannon who allegedly had access to confidential information, including a memorandum naming CIA operative Valerie Plame, RAW STORY has learned.
The procedure, called a Resolution of Inquiry, will be directed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and departing Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, senior House aides say. Ridge has jurisdiction over the Secret Service, which is responsible for presidential security; Gonzales oversees the FBI, whose databases are used for criminal background checks.
The resolution requests all documents on how Gannon was personally cleared and repeatedly allowed access to the White House, aides tell RAW STORY. It also calls for any information the departments have on White House policies about how an applicant would go about getting clearance in general.
Among those supporting the resolution include ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), ranking Rules Committee Democrat Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and ranking Government Reform Committee Democrat Henry Waxman (D-CA). Other Judiciary Democrats are also expected to sign on. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=142
What’s Happening, Abuse: The incidents continue to roll in. But, it’s no longer “news”; it’s “old news” and, as with so many other transgressions and outrages, they will not be investigated by Congress.
The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is opposing a request by the panel's top Democrat to investigate possible misconduct by the C.I.A. in the treatment of terrorism suspects, Congressional officials said Tuesday.
The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, is insisting that any review be conducted only as part of the committee's standard oversight role, not a broader inquiry, an aide to Mr. Roberts said. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/politics/02intel.html
Oh, as to that evidence, there’s this report from the WaPost http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2576-2005Mar2.html and there was the ‘Brooklyn Abu Ghraib’ http://nydailynews.com/front/story/282716p-242172c.html
Armstrong Williams Gets A Radio Show Makes perfect sense to me
Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator embroiled in controversy after being paid to promote Bush administration policies, has signed a contract to be a co-host of a daily radio talk show in New York.
The three-hour show, "Drive Time Dialogue," will begin on March 15 on WWRL, 1600 AM. Broadcasting from a studio installed in his Capitol Hill offices, Mr. Williams will present the conservative point of view. He will be countered by Sam Greenfield, as the liberal voice, from New York.
Whether his tarred legitimacy as a journalist will affect his standing - for better or for worse - in a less rigorous radio format remains to be seen. "I think he's going to labor with a question mark about him, given this scandal," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
But, Mr. Kohut said: "In the realm of combative media it might even be a mark of distinction, who knows? This kind of political chat show is full of people with a lot of attitude and maybe even some baggage. It's not like he will be an anchor on CNN." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/arts/television/03arm.html
Republican Noise Machine There are examples every day. Really. A goodie from this week: Robert Novak distorts comments by Howard Dean, i.e. he didn’t say what Novak claims.
Howard Dean, the new leader of the DNC, has already bucked his party. According to a news report by Robert Novak, “Mad How” has admitted that Social Security is a problem that needs to be dealt with. Here’s the video from CNN’s Inside Politics (WMV file). Here’s the excerpt:
CNN‘S ROBERT NOVAK: ”[T]hey’ve got to really get Howard under control. He spoke at Cornell University last week, and the only paper that covered this was “The Cornell Daily” student paper, and he said, yes, Social Security has a big problem. Over the years it’s going to lose about 80 percent of the benefits. That, Judy, is not the Democratic line. The Democratic line is there is no problem.” http://www.socialsecuritychoice.org/archives/2005/03/the_first_step_1.php
They’re posted on the Republican National Committee web site, then they’re repeated by the CATO Institute and Rush Limbaugh. Eventually the RNC takes it off their site, but now millions know that the Screamer has purportedly yielded / assented on Social Security. They’re shameless.
The Public Speaks: Gallup Poll 1 in 4 say ‘nuke the terrorists’
More than one in four Americans would go so far as to utilize nuclear bombs if need be in the fight against terrorism, according to a national survey reported today by The Gallup Organization.
Gallup asked Americans whether they would be willing or not willing “to have the U.S. government do each of the following” and then listed an array of options.
For example, “assassinate known terrorists” drew the support of 65% of all adults. “Torture known terrorists if they know details about future terrorist attacks in the U.S.” won the backing of 39%. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?schema=&vnu_content_id=1000819252
Robert Reich on Wal-Mart and Us: For those who missed Monday’s op ed.
BOWING to intense pressure from neighborhood and labor groups, a real estate developer has just given up plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a mall in Queens, thereby blocking Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City. In the eyes of Wal-Mart's detractors, the Arkansas-based chain embodies the worst kind of economic exploitation: it pays its 1.2 million American workers an average of only $9.68 an hour, doesn't provide most of them with health insurance, keeps out unions, has a checkered history on labor law and turns main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers.
But isn't Wal-Mart really being punished for our sins? After all, it's not as if Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, and his successors created the world's largest retailer by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to shop there.
Instead, Wal-Mart has lured customers with low prices. "We expect our suppliers to drive the costs out of the supply chain," a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said. "It's good for us and good for them."
Wal-Mart may have perfected this technique, but you can find it almost everywhere these days. Corporations are in fierce competition to get and keep customers, so they pass the bulk of their cost cuts through to consumers as lower prices. Products are manufactured in China at a fraction of the cost of making them here, and American consumers get great deals. Back-office work, along with computer programming and data crunching, is "offshored" to India, so our dollars go even further.
Meanwhile, many of us pressure companies to give us even better bargains. I look on the Internet to find the lowest price I can and buy airline tickets, books, merchandise from just about anywhere with a click of a mouse. Don't you?
The fact is, today's economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers and communities. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/opinion/28reich.html?pagewanted=print&position=
-R
They know they’re in trouble, that they need for time for effective propagandizing and to re-tool their message.
Andy Kohut reports how badly it’s gone:
President George W. Bush is losing ground with the public in his efforts to build support for private retirement accounts in Social Security. Despite Bush's intensive campaign to promote the idea, the percentage of Americans who say they favor private accounts has tumbled to 46% in Pew's latest nationwide survey, down from 54% in December and 58% in September. Support has declined as the public has become increasingly aware of the president's plan. More than four-in-ten (43%) say they have heard a lot about the proposal, nearly double the number who said that in December (23%).
The new poll indicates that the Social Security debate is packing a powerful political punch. It finds that just 29% of Americans approve of the way that Bush is handling the issue. http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=238
The re-thinking includes “flexibility’:
Mr. Snow made it clear that Mr. Bush would prefer his approach, which is built on diverting a portion of a worker's payroll tax into a private investment account, and he predicted that the president's plan would win out in the end. And Mr. Snow cited what he said were shortcomings with the supplemental approach, which would require workers to make contributions into private accounts in addition to paying the existing payroll tax.
But his willingness to consider the alternative, known as an add-on account, suggested that the administration was intent on retaining as much flexibility as possible to overcome the political and substantive obstacles that have slowed Mr. Bush's drive to overhaul Social Security. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/politics/03social.html
The campaign: Bill Frist had to eat his words and now declare that Social Security will be addressed in the current year. That fits the announcement of a 2 month offensive- “60 Stops in 60 Days”, where, according to spokesman Scott McClellan, “we are going to be blanketing the country talking with the American people and educating them.” Treasury Secretary Snow adds that “the scope and scale goes way beyond anything we have done.” http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050303/1a_lede03.art.htm
Wow. More lies than pre-invasion? No surprise that Bush brought up bin Laden on Thursday. Almost surprising that he didn’t (thus far) claim that bin Laden and Saddam support the Social Security status quo, or that Social Security “reform” will aid the so-called “war on terror.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3841-2005Mar3.html
Greenspan: Say wha? Really- It’s absurd to treat this guy as anything other than a shill. On Thursday he tentatively endorsed a national consumption tax, one that wouldn’t replace the income tax, but still doing Bush’s bidding.
Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, warned today that federal budget deficits are "unsustainable" and urged Congress to consider both spending cuts and tax increases as possible solutions.
In his gloomiest assessment yet about the government's budget outlook, Mr. Greenspan warned that annual shortfalls were "unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/business/02cnd-deficit.html?hp&ex=1109826000&en=075a371257cc6533&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Yet, he then insisted that he preferred spending cuts to tax increases.
Good to see that on Thursday, Harry Reid showed spine.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan generally gets accolades for his public pronouncements. Yesterday he got a brickbat from Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who blasted Greenspan as "one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington."
Reid ripped Greenspan during an interview on CNN's "Inside Politics." He said the Fed chairman has given President Bush a pass on deficits that have built up in the past four years and should be challenging Republicans on their fiscal policies, rather than promoting Bush's plan to introduce personal accounts into Social Security. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5396-2005Mar3.html
Bankruptcy Bill: It’s awful and will pass; the Republican discipline is holding.
The proposed law, by preventing many debtors from seeking bankruptcy protection, would compel financially insolvent borrowers to continue trying to pay off the old debts almost indefinitely.
"Until now, the principle in this country has been that people's future human capital is their own," said David A. Moss, an economic historian at Harvard University. "If a person gets on a financial treadmill, they can declare bankruptcy and have what can't be paid discharged. But that would change with this bill.
Credit card companies have done wonderfully, despite their propaganda.
In the eight years since they began pressing for the tough bankruptcy bill being debated in the Senate, America's big credit card companies have effectively inoculated themselves from many of the problems that sparked their call for the measure.
By charging customers different interest rates depending on how likely they are to repay their debts and by adding substantial fees for an array of items such as late payments and foreign currency transactions, the major card companies have managed to keep their profits rising steadily even as personal bankruptcies have soared, industry figures show.
"The idea that companies are losing their shirts on bankruptcies is a lot of bull," said one industry analyst. "With these rates and fees, the card industry is a gravy train right now." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bankruptcy4mar04,0,7113947.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Peace and the Middle East: Bush was Right (?)
Very uncomfortable hearing a wide range of pundits and commentators crediting Bush, that even if the invasion was built on lies, still, look what it’s encouraged! Mildly supportive statements ranging from the NY Times to Jon Stewart and Bill Maher remind one that credit accrues to those in office. Then again, the Democrats are weak and journalism is all but non-existent.
More on what’s left of “journalism”- Eric Boehlert and Frank Rich:
For the last four years the persistent story line about the White House's relationship with the press has focused on the administration's discipline, denial of access, and ability to stay on message. The Bush administration, according to this account, is expert at managing information, using secrecy, carrots and sticks, and carefully crafted talking points to control the news.
But in the wake of revelations about the aggressive and unprecedented tactics employed by the White House to manipulate the news, that relatively benign interpretation is being reexamined. Recent headlines about paid-off pundits, video press releases disguised as news telecasts, and the remarkable press access granted to a right-wing pseudo-journalist working under a phony name, have led some to conclude that the White House is not simply aggressively managing the news, but is out to sabotage the press corps from within, to undermine the integrity and reputation of journalism itself.
The White House and its media allies, echoing a deep-rooted conservative antagonism toward the so-called liberal media, say they are simply countering its bias. But critics charge that the White House, along with partners like Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting, organizations whose allegiance to the Republican Party outweighs their commitment to journalism, is actually trying to permanently weaken the press. Its motivation, they say, is twofold. Weakening the press weakens an institution that's structurally an adversary of the White House. And if the press loses its credibility, that eliminates agreed-upon facts -- the commonly accepted information that is central to public debate.
"Republicans have a clear, agreed-upon plan how to diminish the mainstream press," says Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who was granted unique access inside the White House in 2002 to report on the administration's communication strategy. "For them, essentially the way to handle the press is the same as how to handle the federal government; you starve the beast. When it's in a weakened and undernourished condition, then you're able to effect a variety of subtle partisan and political attacks. Armstrong Williams and others are examples of that." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/03/02/media/print.html
What's missing from News is the news. On ABC, Peter Jennings devotes two hours of prime time to playing peek-a-boo with U.F.O. fanatics, a whorish stunt crafted to deliver ratings, not information. On NBC, Brian Williams is busy as all get-out, as every promo reminds us, "Reporting America's Story." That story just happens to be the relentless branding of Brian Williams as America's anchorman - a guy just too in love with Folks Like Us to waste his time looking closely at, say, anything happening in Washington.
In this environment, it's hard to know whom to root for. After the "60 Minutes" fiasco, Mr. Williams's boss, the NBC president Jeff Zucker, piously derided CBS for its screw-up, bragging of the reforms NBC News instituted after a producer staged a truck explosion for a "Dateline NBC" segment in 1992. "Nothing like that could have gotten through, at any level," Mr. Zucker said of the CBS National Guard story, "because of the safeguards we instituted more than a decade ago." Good for him, but it's not as if a lot else has gotten through either. When was the last time Stone Phillips delivered a scoop, with real or even fake documents, on "Dateline"? Or that NBC News pulled off an investigative coup as stunning as the "60 Minutes II" report on Abu Ghraib? That, poignantly enough, was Mr. Rather's last hurrah before he, too, and through every fault of his own, became a neutered newsman. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/arts/06rich.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Back to the Middle East:
A new narrative is spreading, that of a popular uprising against the status quo of oppressive regimes. It’s not pro-America, but at least is less focused on us as the problem. And, let’s remember that the ball started rolling when Ehud Barak withdrew the Israeli army from Lebanon almost 5 years ago. With the Israelis gone, the Syrian presence was no longer considered a balance to the Israelis and instead they became the foreign presence to be focused upon. And, again, the neocons and their Administration hadn’t talked up democratizing the Middle East until the other rationales for war/invasion were exposed as poppycock. They were more inclined to a friendly strongman type and only granted elections when they were demanded by Sistani.
But, hey, they grabbed onto the lingo and have run with it, and maybe it helps that they emphasize democracy and not repetitive invasions, axis of evil, etc.
What’s Happening, Iraq: TBI. Traumatic Brain Injury. USA Today focused on the proliferation of such, as body armor protects soldiers so that they survive, but suffer massive concussions. One survey of wounded at a Bethesda hospital found that 83% had symptoms of TBI. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
What’s Happening, Gannon: The Major Media continue to bury the story, so we have to depend on the smaller, the independent, the internet:
House Democrats say they will force a vote in the House Judiciary Committee to put the Republican majority on the record with regards to investigating discredited White House correspondent Jeff Gannon who allegedly had access to confidential information, including a memorandum naming CIA operative Valerie Plame, RAW STORY has learned.
The procedure, called a Resolution of Inquiry, will be directed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and departing Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, senior House aides say. Ridge has jurisdiction over the Secret Service, which is responsible for presidential security; Gonzales oversees the FBI, whose databases are used for criminal background checks.
The resolution requests all documents on how Gannon was personally cleared and repeatedly allowed access to the White House, aides tell RAW STORY. It also calls for any information the departments have on White House policies about how an applicant would go about getting clearance in general.
Among those supporting the resolution include ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), ranking Rules Committee Democrat Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and ranking Government Reform Committee Democrat Henry Waxman (D-CA). Other Judiciary Democrats are also expected to sign on. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=142
What’s Happening, Abuse: The incidents continue to roll in. But, it’s no longer “news”; it’s “old news” and, as with so many other transgressions and outrages, they will not be investigated by Congress.
The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is opposing a request by the panel's top Democrat to investigate possible misconduct by the C.I.A. in the treatment of terrorism suspects, Congressional officials said Tuesday.
The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, is insisting that any review be conducted only as part of the committee's standard oversight role, not a broader inquiry, an aide to Mr. Roberts said. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/politics/02intel.html
Oh, as to that evidence, there’s this report from the WaPost http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2576-2005Mar2.html and there was the ‘Brooklyn Abu Ghraib’ http://nydailynews.com/front/story/282716p-242172c.html
Armstrong Williams Gets A Radio Show Makes perfect sense to me
Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator embroiled in controversy after being paid to promote Bush administration policies, has signed a contract to be a co-host of a daily radio talk show in New York.
The three-hour show, "Drive Time Dialogue," will begin on March 15 on WWRL, 1600 AM. Broadcasting from a studio installed in his Capitol Hill offices, Mr. Williams will present the conservative point of view. He will be countered by Sam Greenfield, as the liberal voice, from New York.
Whether his tarred legitimacy as a journalist will affect his standing - for better or for worse - in a less rigorous radio format remains to be seen. "I think he's going to labor with a question mark about him, given this scandal," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
But, Mr. Kohut said: "In the realm of combative media it might even be a mark of distinction, who knows? This kind of political chat show is full of people with a lot of attitude and maybe even some baggage. It's not like he will be an anchor on CNN." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/arts/television/03arm.html
Republican Noise Machine There are examples every day. Really. A goodie from this week: Robert Novak distorts comments by Howard Dean, i.e. he didn’t say what Novak claims.
Howard Dean, the new leader of the DNC, has already bucked his party. According to a news report by Robert Novak, “Mad How” has admitted that Social Security is a problem that needs to be dealt with. Here’s the video from CNN’s Inside Politics (WMV file). Here’s the excerpt:
CNN‘S ROBERT NOVAK: ”[T]hey’ve got to really get Howard under control. He spoke at Cornell University last week, and the only paper that covered this was “The Cornell Daily” student paper, and he said, yes, Social Security has a big problem. Over the years it’s going to lose about 80 percent of the benefits. That, Judy, is not the Democratic line. The Democratic line is there is no problem.” http://www.socialsecuritychoice.org/archives/2005/03/the_first_step_1.php
They’re posted on the Republican National Committee web site, then they’re repeated by the CATO Institute and Rush Limbaugh. Eventually the RNC takes it off their site, but now millions know that the Screamer has purportedly yielded / assented on Social Security. They’re shameless.
The Public Speaks: Gallup Poll 1 in 4 say ‘nuke the terrorists’
More than one in four Americans would go so far as to utilize nuclear bombs if need be in the fight against terrorism, according to a national survey reported today by The Gallup Organization.
Gallup asked Americans whether they would be willing or not willing “to have the U.S. government do each of the following” and then listed an array of options.
For example, “assassinate known terrorists” drew the support of 65% of all adults. “Torture known terrorists if they know details about future terrorist attacks in the U.S.” won the backing of 39%. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?schema=&vnu_content_id=1000819252
Robert Reich on Wal-Mart and Us: For those who missed Monday’s op ed.
BOWING to intense pressure from neighborhood and labor groups, a real estate developer has just given up plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a mall in Queens, thereby blocking Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City. In the eyes of Wal-Mart's detractors, the Arkansas-based chain embodies the worst kind of economic exploitation: it pays its 1.2 million American workers an average of only $9.68 an hour, doesn't provide most of them with health insurance, keeps out unions, has a checkered history on labor law and turns main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers.
But isn't Wal-Mart really being punished for our sins? After all, it's not as if Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, and his successors created the world's largest retailer by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to shop there.
Instead, Wal-Mart has lured customers with low prices. "We expect our suppliers to drive the costs out of the supply chain," a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said. "It's good for us and good for them."
Wal-Mart may have perfected this technique, but you can find it almost everywhere these days. Corporations are in fierce competition to get and keep customers, so they pass the bulk of their cost cuts through to consumers as lower prices. Products are manufactured in China at a fraction of the cost of making them here, and American consumers get great deals. Back-office work, along with computer programming and data crunching, is "offshored" to India, so our dollars go even further.
Meanwhile, many of us pressure companies to give us even better bargains. I look on the Internet to find the lowest price I can and buy airline tickets, books, merchandise from just about anywhere with a click of a mouse. Don't you?
The fact is, today's economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers and communities. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/opinion/28reich.html?pagewanted=print&position=
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