Today was another day in which a number of news articles caught my eye. They warrant additional context, especially the connections between some of them.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been working behind the scenes to talk with what the corporate media likes to term “centrist”/”moderate” Democratic Senators regarding health care. He will continue to try to convince CorporateDems to vote to allow debate on the Senate health bill. What’s the center position between corporatist lackeys and principled public servants anyway? Another very popular Washington buzzterm came into play: Salazar is involved because he was involved in several bipartisan agreements while a Senator. He was at the forefront of what I term the Gaggle of Gangs in the Senate – joining with other “centrists” to keep the filibuster around but ensure Democrats wouldn’t use it while in the minority. Which is part of the reason why Salazar is being sent back to work on his former colleagues: the Cons are threatening to filibuster the health bill (though Democrats won’t actually force them to carry one out) and -gasp- Democrats might join them. That’s the answer to “How did that bipartisanship end up working out”. Whatever happened to the Cons’ “Upper-down-vote!” they couldn’t get enough of? One person of concern is Sen. Lieberman, the man who campaigned for Sen. John McCain in last year’s presidential election and is doing everything he can to keep himself in the news this year. Salazar was “mentored” by Lieberman when he joined the Senate, so I’m sure Lieberman can be convinced to play nice – aren’t you? Oh, and after watering down the bill with nonsense to appease “centrist” Republicans, where are their votes to move to debate? MIA? Why did we negotiate with them exactly? They’re not going to vote for the final bill.
As usual, you had to wait until they found a photograph of the guy to figure out if he was white or not. As usual, a mentally ill American citizen killed and maimed innocent people before killing himself. And until America realizes there’s a problem, it will do nothing to fix it.
My condolences to the families who have lost loved ones in this senseless act of terrorism.
The lede of this article caught my attention, as it was designed to do: Is the press giving the president a free pass? I hate giving something like this even the slightest amount of extra attention, but I started reading the article and had my worst fears confirmed: this numbskull is indeed creating a strawman that he then proceeds to beat down. Is it a common circumstance that media employees more often than not just can’t adhere to journalistic standards that are taught in school? Take a look at the first two paragraphs, absurd as they are:
The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment, but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America.
Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest. They come from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals if not always his means. The leaderless and confused Republicans don’t provide effective opposition. And the press—on domestic, if not foreign, policy—has so far largely abdicated its role as skeptical observer.
Robert Samuelson’s internal clock is off by eight years or so. What negative media coverage did Bush receive in the first few months of his presidency, even as he vacationed away over half of the time period between his inauguration and 9/11? What negative media coverage did Bush receive in his insane desire to invade and occupy a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with 9/11? What negative media coverage did Bush receive for what ended up being hundreds of scandals, at one time showing up once a week in the middle of his occupancy of the White House? No, the media gave Bush more free passes than any president in our history – and for good reason: the Cons spent decades prior to his presidency beating the media into submission. Am I among the few that remember hearing and reading that questioning the president was equivalent to treason? The corporate media did more than its fair share to spread that meme.
Going further, what checks did Bush have when Congress was being “run” by the Cons? Rules were manipulated so that Democrats couldn’t offer any honest opposition (not that they would have, had they had the rules in their favor anyway – they’re as cowed as the media is). Democrats couldn’t hold hearings thanks to the Cons’ attempts to enact their permanent majority. Bills thousands of pages long were offered and debate on them was stifled to near nothing. Votes on bills were held in the middle of the night and over weekends when Democrats had left for the day, unaware of what the Cons were doing. Where was the media check on Con extravagence? Democrats are doing nothing close to that now – they’re offering up unprecedented transparency into government machinations. What check on power should be exercised is, of course, left to the reader’s imagination. There is no way Mr. Samuelson would actually investigate possible alternatives and offer them up for consideration – that would take actual effort.
The Cons are slowing down every piece of legislation and presidential nominee they can – this after years of screaming for up-or-down votes and getting the corporate media to beat that silly talking point over every Democrats’ head they could find. Where is the media calling for swift passage of critically needed legislation now? Is President Obama stocking the White House press with paid-off prostitutes posing as credentialed press like President Bush did? No. A thousand other examples could easily be found to further make my point.
Note also that Samuelson doesn’t provide key numbers from the poll he cites, such as negative articles about Bush in his first few months. Do the numbers contradict Samuelson’s strawman? We don’t know because he witholds the information from us. During his whine fest, he neglects to mention that Obama publicly discussed all the changes he wanted to make as President. Unlike Bush, he didn’t campaign for one stance and do the opposite once in office. The American people had a darn good idea of what Obama would do if elected and yet they still elected him by overwhelming margins, even in states that strongly voted for Bush. I’m missing the conspiracy that Samuelson is trying to create. Perhaps he doesn’t like the policies being proposed by Obama and the Democratic-led Congress. Fine, then he should write a column as such.
George Bush and eight years of complete Con control of all three branches of government proved beyond a doubt that Conservative policies don’t work and Americans decided in the past few elections they had had more than enough of them. Where was the critical media when those policies were failing? No, it was only when they had failed quite spectacularly that even the barest minimum of a critical media was born. Even then, a lot of “news” reports and even more editorial space was wasted by wondering what the cause of the our ills could be – too many disasters couldn’t have been forseen, after all.
Samuelson would do his readers a greater service if he reported that the Sunday talk shows on network television, for instance, continue to stack their guest list with Cons and not Democrats. During the eight years of Bush’s failed presidency, liberals were consistently outnumbered on the same talk shows. Now that the balance of power has shifted in Washington, the media hasn’t similary shifted its reliance on the same know-nothings that helped create or intensify every crisis we face today. That doesn’t sound compliant or reverent. The lack of this point or anything similar in Samuelson’s piece is glaring evidence of his bias.
Anything that would delay a program to bring 1 million plug-in hybrids to the market gets attention by the corporate media. This MSNBC article does what hundreds preceding it has done: it casts such an effort in a very negative light, relying on every pro-fossil fuel talking point to disparage plug-in vehicle technologies. It’s more than unfortunate that corporate media outlets continue to parrot talking points rather than engage in some real journalism.
Here is the secondary lede, word for word:
Technology still to expensive and automakers haven’t committed to plan
Well, that’s that then. Except it isn’t. I’ll start by pointing out that the corporate media’s overwhelming journalistic integrity over that of say, bloggers, doesn’t quite explain why simple spelling errors aren’t caught. What they meant to say was the technology is still too expensive. Unless ‘still’ and ‘expensive’ became verbs since I went to grammar school.
In any event, the article goes into a tiny bit of detail on how much battery technology would add to the price of a car. What it doesn’t do is report on any battery technology advancements that have been made in the past few years. Is it enough to drive down the price of large-scale battery technology? Well, it won’t happen tomorrow, obviously. But interestingly, that lede hides a lot of harm that the automakers have purposefully done to ensure battery technology remains expensive.
How many battery technology patents does GM and Ford hold? More than a few. They’ve held them for years (in some cases decades) now. Why haven’t they employed them in a larger-scale effort? Because their executives saw no reason to allow cars to be weaned off of fossil fuels. While sitting on those patents, those same automakers also spent millions on lobbying to ensure that fuel economy standards remained the lowest in the industrialized world. Those two things didn’t happen in two separate vacuum chambers. There were part of a coordinated and idiotic business strategy that most people recognize has failed spectacularly.
Battery technologies that will allow sub-15 minute recharges are being researched and developed. Battery technologies that push the maximum range of a vehicle are being researched and developed. Where are this information and more in this pro-failed-industry article? Nowhere to be found. It will take a President who isn’t beholden to fossil fuel corporations to change the heavyweight auto manufacturer’s way of doing business. Without that effort, the so-called Big 3 will (would have already) fail(ed). There are plenty of start-up companies out there who are looking to expand the marketplace of plug-in hybrid vehicles.
The article notes that it took 8 years to get 1 million hybrids on U.S. roads. The article fails to note that during that time, gasoline never got higher than $2 per gallon. Energy realists recognize that sub-$2 gas will become a rarity in the near future. Prices are more likely to remain higher in the future as the scarcity of oil becomes more apparent. If it costs $4 per gallon (or more), auto manufacturers won’t be able to make plug-in hybrids fast enough to satisfy demand, as Toyota and Honda discovered last year with their respective hybrid brands.
Is 1 million plug-in hybrids by 2015 an audacious goal? Absolutely, it is. That was one reason to set it. Even if it isn’t explicity reached, moving down that path will become a critical factor in our efforts to deal with climate change, national security and our economy. The demand is there – it has been present for a long while. The outdated major auto manufacturers have prevented sustainable progress toward Obama’s (Americans’) goal for many years. It’s no wonder they’re failing. Other companies will step in to meet that demand eventually. And it will happen despite the corporate media’s attempts to sabotage it.
The money comes from the city’s half-cent sales tax, collected especially for economic development projects that bring new revenue into the Pueblo area.
A 1/2 cent sales tax, in just this one instance, will create 140 high paying jobs in Pueblo. That tax and those jobs are an investment in the community of Pueblo. Cons would rather see that tax go away, and with it, this expansion and those jobs.
Ascent Solar announced it is moving its headquarters and manufacturing from Littleton to Thornton last Tuesday. While the move will occur within Colorado, it will allow for expansion of thin-film solar photovoltaic panel manufacturing. That expansion will generate up to 300 more good paying jobs. Ascent will initially be able to produce panels that can generate 25 megawatts of energy per year. By 2011, they expect to be able to manufacture 100 megawatts of solar energy producing panels per year.
An ongoing story in Colorado’s New Energy Economy, under Gov. Ritter’s leadership and vision, is that of Vestas Wind Systems. Due to active outreach, Vestas decided to build a wind blade manufacturing plant near Winsor, CO. The location is near railroad infrastructure, allowing delivery of wind blades to other areas around the country where wind farms are being constructed. Due to further outreach by Gov. Ritter, Vestas decided to expand operations. Along the way, Hexcel Corp. decided to build a new plant near the Vestas facilities.
Danish Crown Prince Frederik said Wednesday that expanding a country’s renewable energy sources and recovering from a recession don’t have to be mutually exclusive. “Denmark is economically competitive not in spite of these efforts, but because of them,” he said at a Brighton plant groundbreaking for Danish wind-turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems.
Did you read that, Colorado Cons? Denmark is economically competitive because they’ve invested in renewable energy sources. It really shouldn’t be that shocking, but these kinds of events and statements need increased publicity to deliver their positive message.
The Post article has some important numbers:
The prince, his wife, Crown Princess Mary, and Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter attended the ceremony for two parts plants by Vestas, which already has a blade-making plant in Windsor, about 50 miles north of Denver. More than 200 people work there and 650 are expected at full employment.
The company also is planning a 400-employee factory in Pueblo to build towers that support the turbines, which it has said would be the world’s largest such factory.
The two plants will employ about 1,350 people at full operation, expected next year. Ole Borup Jakobsen, president of Vestas Blades, said the plants’ annual production eventually will reach 2,000 blades and 1,400 nacelles, which are housings for the turbine’s generator, transformer and gearbox.
State officials said Vestas is spending about $290 million to build the two plants. The company will also locate an employee training and development division and a technology and production engineering office in Brighton.
I’ll add all this up: 650 + 400 + 1350 = 2,400 good paying Colorado jobs. Those Colorado jobs will help generate renewable energy, which will reduce greenhouse gas pollution, which does cost us money – it just hasn’t been properly accounted for in the past. $290 million spent in a state that is in a recession. That’s not chump change. That’s real money that will help provide a needed boost. This article doesn’t go into how many more jobs will be created at the training or engineering offices. It also doesn’t (because it can’t) provide information on other renewable energy companies moving operations to Colorado, employing more people and benefiting the state, just like Hexcel has done. How many other companies will follow suit? I look forward to finding out.
I will point out that the Cons are nowhere to be seen nor heard. Gov. Ritter and many others are hard at work creating real jobs in Colorado at a time when we need them most. These jobs will lay the foundation for the green-powered energy revolution that will come about. Beholden to their failed ideology, the Cons are failing to be “bipartisan” or “moderate” in this case (among others). I’ll remember that as the 2010 Governor race heats up. We’re sure to hear the Cons complain about how partisan and extreme Democrats have been. The corporate media will of course fail to point out the projection and hypocrisy of those comments, but I won’t. Where is uber-Con Dick Wadhams? Where is the “moderate” Scott McInnis? Why are the Cons missing in this story and why isn’t the corporate media pointing it out?
The article uses one of the corporate media’s favorite methods of relaying information: he said, she said. In this case, its the Cons accusing the Obama administration of being a Chicago tough-guy by considering putting his energy and health care policies in a bill that cannot be filibustered. The post’s Lori Montgomery misidentifies how the Senate actually works by writing the method would allow Democrats to pass the bill with only 51 votes instead of the usual 60. Apparently our school system has been failing to educate us longer than I thought. There is no “usual 60″ votes needed to pass a bill in the U.S. Senate. It requires only 51 unless someone threatens to filibuster it. There is a cloture vote to determine if consideration of the bill should continue or not – that’s the only vote that requires 60 or Senators.
Lori doesn’t share this vital information with her readers until later in her article. Indeed, she wrecks her journalistic credibility by purposefully withholding the information for that long. She does mention that Reagan, Clinton and the Boy King used the tactic to pass some of their own measures. Interestingly, I don’t recall the post taking Bush to task for not being the uniter he promised to be on the 2000 campaign trail. But they are all too willing to allow the Con talking point against Obama to pass by unchallenged – as if that were the news instead of the underlying procedural details.
Moreover, the acceptance of Con talking points completely ignores what the President said just yesterday. If Republicans have solutions, they need to present them. Standing on the sidelines and criticizing and obstructing everything isn’t what they’re there to do. Lori doesn’t put these things into perspective. The Cons are supposed to be there to work with Democrats to implement solutions. But today’s Cons haven’t believed in true bipartisanship for years. Their concept of bipartisanship is passing their policies without negotiation. That’s why they’re in the severe minority they find themselves in: they’re a whining, regional, out-of-touch group of people. Only a tiny fraction of the American public support their backwards policies.
Democrats like Sen. Lincoln and Sen. Baucus were abused when they were in the minority just a few short years ago. Today, they’re all too willing to allow the Cons more influence than the American people want them to have. What Democratic policies got through the Senate while Bush was in the White House and the Cons ran Congress, especially energy and health care policies? None. The fossil fuel industry took over our energy policy, resulting in record high oil and gas prices last year. The for-profit health management and pharmaceutical industry took over our health policy, resulting in double-digit price increases year after year after year. The American people do not want the fossil fuel or for-profit health industries in control of our energy or health care policies anymore. Allowing the Cons to control even a small measure of the procedure is cowardly and pathetic.
As I wrote above, the Cons are not interested in finding a middle ground. They haven’t been interested for as long as I can remember. They want to continue their way of running things – that’s why they’re called conservatives. There won’t be any progress if Democrats solicit Con input. Our energy and health care policies are in desperate need of complete overhauls. Senate Democrats are dragging their feet, being too willing to water down the necessary changes just so the corporate media won’t spread the name-calling the Cons rely on. It’s a sad state of affairs.
What makes it worse is the corporate media’s handling of the news. When groups opposed Bush’s strong-arm tactics, which would crush Obama’s any day (remember late night and weekend votes the Cons scheduled without notice, ensuring a lack of Democratic resistence – the post obviously doesn’t), the washington post treated them with derision. MSNBC didn’t regularly front-page articles from media sources that had a legitimate problem with the Bush administration. Journalistic standards indeed.
Most progressives knew what an Obama Presidency would look like: just like the Clinton Presidency, the corporate media would constantly assault the President and his policies. Such an exercise didn’t take place in the Bush presidency until he and his gang of thugs had effectively wrecked every aspect of the country and it was too late to actually do their jobs. This time around? No time like the present, apparently.
MSNBC has a post up from two washington post “reporters”, Michael D. Shear and Paul Kane. Actually, the corporate media does have one theme they have effectively carried over into the new Presidency: they make stuff up out of whole cloth. The article, AIG’s turmoil depletes Obama’s political captial is filled with plenty of b.s. These intrepid washington post propagandists are hard at work pushing right-wing talking points about how Obama is somehow responsible for every piece of bad economic news we’ve seen in the past year (the parts Bill Clinton isn’t responsible for, of course).
President Obama’s apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious political agenda.
There has been no sharp blow to the administration. President Obama was not and is not responsible for the outrageous executive bonuses at AIG. That can effectively be put at the feet of president Bush’s Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve last year. They decided to conduct the biggest bank heist in American history by giving away billions of American taxpayer dollars to corporations that were irresponsibly gambling with mortgages and other financial instruments. Bush’s gang engineered that giveaway – Obama and his people had nothing to do with it.
There is no threat to public or congressional support for his agenda. Every poll conducted since November, when Obama won the 2008 Presidential race, has shown a clear difference in support for Obama’s policies and the Cons’ constant naysaying. Over 60% of Americans support what Obama is doing and what his plans are – that hasn’t changed. Around 30% of Americans support Cons’ obstructionism and negativism. You can’t point to support for their policies because they don’t have any. They aren’t offering alternative solutions. They’re only saying that the Democrats’ solutions won’t work. That’s why they lost so big in November’s elections.
Until those things change, there will be no threat to Obama’s agenda. He was elected to make changes to every policy area. So far, he’s succeeded.
But the washington post propagandists can’t say these things: their corporate overlords want a different message spread. So they use language like “sharp blow”, “threatening”, “swamping efforts”, “blowback”, “struggled” and “grasped”. Does anyone remember a washington post article using this kind of language with regard to Bush’s policies? Of course they didn’t. It didn’t fit into their pre-conceived agenda. Where are the articles about how resolute and strong Obama is to standing by his principles? They won’t be found at the washington post, that much is obvious.
The most surprising development in this story is that the Cons are trying to catch the populist wave sweeping the nation. I guess some of them have realized they’re the responsible parties to this economic disaster. They’re the ones who are struggling and grasping: for political viability.
The way this is being covered by the washington post is indicative of why the corporate media is failing: too many Americans realize that their reporting isn’t reflective of the reality they’re experiencing. The same reality that is affecting their families and neighbors in the same way and the corporate media’s lies and propaganda becomes more ridiculous to watch by the day.
As much as I detest AIG handing out millions in bonuses to executives who ran their corporation into the ground with my tax dollars, I’m not aware of a viable solution to halt or reverse them. Perhaps the strongest argument I’ve heard so far is this: the government controls a majority share of AIG. The government needs to exercise the control over the corporation that comes as a privilege of that ownership. At the least, these clowns should be immediately fired. AIG’s pathetic excuse that it couldn’t maintain the “best” in the business won’t work. These executives competed to see who could be the worst in the country – there is no place for them at AIG any longer. This is especially true when their actions since mid-September 2008 is examined: all the lavish trips and spa treatments and bonuses are beyond insulting to the American people. Not only should these clowns be fired, they should be prosecuted for defrauding taxpayers. They need to either use those billions as they were intended – to insure securities – or they need to give them back and let the corporation finish failing.
I’m sick to death of the excessive corporate greed that has run this country for too long. I’m nearly as sick of the joke of a media that refuses to cover the facts of this evolving disaster. Both deserve what they get.
I consistently bring up the corporate media in many of my discussions. The newspaper portion of the corporate media has been in decline for three decades now. While many members of that community don’t fully grasp why that is, many in the new media do. A high-profile, recent case provides additional evidence of one contributing factor to newspapers’ decline. About two weeks ago, George Will wrote a column that tried to reinforce cliamte change denier talking points. He did so by incorrectly citing scientific data to support his fallacious theories. The organizations which produced that data informed not only Will, but the Washington Post, of his inaccuracies. After this, the Washington Post’s senior editors and ombudsman defended Will’s column as being factually correct. Now – George Will can have whatever opinion he wants and has the right to communicate that opinion. But George Will does not have the moral right to perpetrate falsehoods, especially after being appropriately corrected.
How did George Will respond? By writing a second piece that reasserted every lie he wrote the first time around. As Climate Progress’ Joe Romm wrote,
And in what seems to be Alice-in-Wonderland journalism, a senior editor at the Washington Post now asserts it is perfectly reasonable for a non-scientist Post writer to reinterpret a prestigious source’s scientific data to support his or her conclusion — after those sources have repeatedly stated that their data is consistent with the exact opposite conclusion and without telling readers of that disagreement. And not only did Will do that multiple times in his first piece — the Post still let him do it again after he was called on it by multiple writers…
This blatant lack of journalistic integrity would be astounding – if it didn’t occur all the time. I’m not saying that it should be ignored. To the contrary, I will continue to point out how the corporate media is not fulfilling its duties to the American public at every turn I choose. It is exactly this lack of integrity that has been and will continue to be the downfall of that media. Organizations like the Washington Post have destroyed every bit of credibility they might once have had. I cannot imagine how they came to be proud to be a right-wing talking-point propaganda rag.
I haven’t posted anything about the most recent unemployment numbers, but was reminded this morning why I need to. The most cited figure from February was 8.1% – a 25-year high. That sounds impressive and all, but as I’ve written about in the past, it doesn’t reflect the reality workers are facing. The number was just tossed out on a CNN morning show where the speaker said, “At least 92% of us do have jobs – that’s good news!” No, no it’s not. That quote gets at the heart of why the oft-cited number should be different. The real unemployment number went all the way up to 14.8% last month. That means only ~85% of Americans that want a job actually have one. The 8.1% number only counts people who are available for work and actively looked for a job in the prior four weeks. If they still don’t have a job after four weeks, they’re still unemployed. It’s disingenuous, at best, that the corporate media pushes the lower number down our collective throats every month. It’s not a stretch to say they do it quite purposefully for this reason: outraged workers demand real changes; irriated workers don’t rock the boat. When 1 out of 5 Americans are unemployed, will more of us figure that out?
The first question I had when I heard about the Alabama massacre this morning was what ethnicity was the man? Recent mass killings have been perpetrated mainly by middle-aged white men, but I haven’t heard about that side of things from the corporate media. I’ve only done a quick search on this situation and haven’t found an explicit answer. That works out to be pretty definitive to me: if the shooter was non-white, you know that information would be found in the opening sentence, if not the headline. I’ll keep watch and update or correct this hypothesis as more information (like a picture) becomes available. [Update]: It’s as I suspected. He wasn’t a minority. What are we going to do about these psychopathic, mass-mudering white people with assault rifles? Talk about a menace to society…
With the economy in free-fall since last September, most Americans’ focus has been on this issue to the exclusion of everything else. As such, wouldn’t it be prudent for the media outlets in America to provide analysis of the problem and different solutions by … economists? Note that I don’t have a a lot of respect for economists these days in general. For one, their forecasts aren’t held to the same standards as weather forecasts when validating them. When was the last time someone else at the water cooler took their local economist to task for missing their unemployment forecast by hundreds of thousands of people or retail sales by hundreds of millions of dollars? You haven’t because economists aren’t held accountable to the public. But beyond that rant, the American people might benefit from having different economic views presented to them.
My ire at this situation is non-partisan. I hold Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow in much higher regard than I do Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly. Yet even KO and Maddow only had a single economist on their shows in two weeks’ time. That is unacceptable. Talking heads and pundits are shown to the public. Just as in the physical sciences, economists need to engage the public more often. Our public discourse would benefit from it. Our pressure to develop intelligent policies would also then benefit from it.
