Truth Has Fallen And Taken Liberty With It

Truth Has Fallen And Taken Liberty With It | By Paul Craig Roberts | 3-25-10

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today, Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded "anti-American," "anti-semite" or "conspiracy theorist."

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today, many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. "Free market economists" are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by "the New Economy," a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this "new economy" are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of "the New Economy."

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted "studies" that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the "studies."

The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies' role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

...

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these "performance awards" by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about "the Muslim threat," Wall Street, U.S. corporations and "free market" shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

...

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week's first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American "mainstream media."

For the last six years I have been banned from the "mainstream media." My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years, I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush's wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

...

With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington's greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the "war on terror," the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. ...

Bottled Water Industry Combats Anti-Green Perceptions With Pretend Journalism (VIDEO)

Bottled Water Industry Combats Anti-Green Perceptions With Pretend Journalism (VIDEO)

The bottled water industry, fighting back against accusations that they are a significant contributor to environmental degradation, has released this magical video of glorious greenwashing, redolent of the famous video news releases in which Karen Ryan pretended to a journalist while promoting the Bush White House's "No Child Left Behind" Act.

The New York Times's Sindya N. Bhanoo reports that this video, sent out by the International Bottled Water Association, is a direct response to Annie Leonard's The Story of Bottled Water (which you can read more about here). In the video, the IBWA touts the manufacturers of bottled water as "good stewards of the environment." It features blissed-out coffeehouse acoustic guitar music, bucolic scenes of nature and a pretend reporter from pretend outfit "BWM Reports" pretending to pose pretend questions in pretend journalistic settings. The unnamed interlocutor serves up softballs, and happily nods along, like the Liz Glover Of Corporate Evil. ...

Court lifts ban on media ownership restrictions

The Associated Press: Court lifts ban on media ownership restrictions

By JOELLE TESSLER (AP) – 16 hours ago

WASHINGTON — A federal court has at least temporarily lifted government rules that blocked media companies from owning a newspaper and a broadcast TV station in the same market.

The decision Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit lifts the Federal Communications Commission's "cross-ownership" ban.

That restriction had remained in effect under a stay issued by the court in 2003 as it has tried to sort out legal challenges to attempts by two previous FCC chairmen, Republicans Michael Powell and Kevin Martin, to relax the rules.

The decision comes as the current FCC, now under Democratic control, gears up for its next congressionally mandated review of its media ownership rules. Those rules, which the agency must review every four years, include the cross-ownership ban and limits on the number of television and radio stations that one company can own in a market.

In the meantime, some media companies already own newspapers and television stations in the same market because they were grandfathered in when the rules were first put into place in 1974.

The current court case began when Powell tried to lift the cross-ownership ban in large media markets and raise the caps on TV and radio station ownership. That effort drew legal challenges from public interest groups that said he had gone too far and from media companies that said he had not gone far enough.

The Third Circuit sent the matter back to FCC, telling it to rewrite the rules. And that led Powell's successor, Martin, to try to ease the cross-ownership ban in big media markets — drawing more legal challenges from both sides.

The court, however, held off on deciding those cases because the agency had said it wanted to reconsider Martin's actions. Yet the FCC has made no progress on that front and has instead punted the issue to the upcoming review of the media ownership rules. Tuesday's court decision allows Martin's relaxed rules on media ownership to take effect. ...

Economist's View: "The Misinformed Tea Party Movement"

Economist's View: "The Misinformed Tea Party Movement"

On March 16 the Tea Party crowd showed up for yet another demonstration on Capitol Hill... Curious about the factual knowledge these people have regarding the issues they are protesting,... David Frum enlisted some interns to interview as many Tea Partyers as possible on a couple of basic questions. ... (Survey results are here.)

The first question that was asked concerned the size of government. Tea Partyers were asked how much the federal government gets in taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product. According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009. ...

Tuesday's Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. ...

To follow up, Tea Partyers were asked how much they think a typical family making $50,000 per year pays in federal income taxes. The average response was $12,710, the median $10,000. In percentage terms this means a tax burden of between 20% and 25% of income. ...

According to calculations by the Joint Committee on Taxation, a congressional committee, tax filers with adjusted gross incomes between $40,000 and $50,000 have an average federal income tax burden of just 1.7%. ...

Even though the Tea Partyers were specifically asked about federal income taxes, it's possible that they were thinking about other federal taxes as well, such as payroll and excise taxes. According to the JCT, when all federal taxes are included, those earning between $40,000 and $50,000 have an average tax rate of 12.3%...

...

As noted earlier, federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president. ... In fact, 40% of Obama's stimulus package involved tax cuts. ... The Tax Policy Center ... estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. ... No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama's policies.

It's hard to explain this divergence between perception and reality. Perhaps ... they just assume that because a Democrat is president that taxes must have gone up, because that's what Republicans say that Democrats always do. ...

Tea Partiers menace Congressional Dems with name-calling: ‘Ni**er, Fag**t | Raw Story

Tea Partiers menace Congressional Dems with name-calling: ‘Ni**er, Fag**t | Raw Story

A swarm of health care protesters, many holding Tea Party signs, heckled members of Congress with racial epithets and abusive language as the House votes on health care reform.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a "faggot," causing the surrounding crowd toerupt in laughter. A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said a protester spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a leader of the civil rights movement, was called a "ni**er."

Although Frank shrugged off the incident, Clyburn was shocked and told reporters that he hadn't experienced such treatment since leading protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.

"It was absolutely shocking to me," Clyburn told the Huffington Post. "Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday... I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins... And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus." ...

Geraldo Criticizes Bret Baier For Obama Interview (AUDIO)

Geraldo Criticizes Bret Baier For Obama Interview (AUDIO)

Geraldo Rivera criticized Fox News host Bret Baier for his interruption-heavy interview of President Obama Wednesday.

Friday morning on radio program "Brian and the Judge," Geraldo — a Fox News host himself — said that Baier should have treated Obama with more respect.

"At a certain point, you gotta recognize...when the President seemed exasperated and frustrated and unable to complete a sentence, I thought at some point you gotta make a difference between the guy who's the senate whip or the house whip, or the assemblyman, the leader of the state senate," Geraldo said. "He's not a mayor, he's the President." ....

'Doc Fix' Memo FAKE? Health Care Memo Spread By Media, GOP Called 'Hoax'

'Doc Fix' Memo FAKE? Health Care Memo Spread By Media, GOP Called 'Hoax'

Democrats are charging that the GOP made up a fake messaging memo that purports to be from Democrats as a way to undermine the party's message at the last minute. The memo was circulated to reporters -- including this one -- by a spokesman to House Minority Leader John Boehner. Politico reported on the memo and posted a story which the Drudge Report featured prominently.

"The memo is a fake," said Kristie Greco, a spokesperson for Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.). "It's an under-handed and unethical attempt to distract from the health care debate. If opponents of health insurance reform had a credible policy alternative they wouldn't have to resort to nefarious games."

Several anonymous Democratic aides similarly told Talking Points Memo's Christina Bellantonithat the memo was a trick:

"We have checked with every Democratic office, no one has ever seen it. It did not come out of a Democratic office," the aide said, adding that media outlets printing the memo have not checked with leadership offices if the memo is authentic. A second Democratic leadership aide confirmed the memo was not sent by the Democrats. A third Democratic aide also said the memo is fake, citing the "draft" stamp and saying no one uses such things.

"If this were a Democratic communications person who wrote this, they should be fired, because this looks like Republican talking points," the third Democratic aide told TPMDC.

Politico has since pulled the memo, leaving Drudge to link instead to a page that reads "UPDATE: Democrats challenge authenticity of 'doc fix' memo."

The right-wing blog Big Government, however, still has it up as evidence that Democrats intend to mislead the American people about the cost of the bill. ....

Kennedy blasts ‘despicable’ US press over Afghanistan | Raw Story

Kennedy blasts ‘despicable’ US press over Afghanistan | Raw Story

Representative Patrick Kennedy denounced the "despicable" US media on Wednesday, charging it was snubbing a House debate on Afghanistan while lavishing attention on a congressional sex-scandal.

In an unusually angry outburst on the floor of the House of Representatives, Kennedy, the son of late Democratic icon Ted Kennedy, blamed reporters for the US public's cynicism and disengagement from public affairs.

"It's despicable, the national press corps right now," he thundered, taking aim at coverage of fellow Democrat Eric Massa, who resigned his House seat under an ethics cloud and allegations he sexually harassed male staffers.

"Cynicism is that there's one, two press people in this gallery. We're talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV! We're talking about war and peace, three billion dollars, 1,000 lives and no press! No press!" said Kennedy, pointing to media seats that overlook the House floor.

The US public is angry at Congress "because of the press. The press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance, and that's the laying of lives down" in the Afghan war, he said.

Krugman on ABC's This Week...disgusted! - Democratic Underground

Krugman on ABC's This Week...disgusted! - Democratic Underground: "Zazi guilty plea"

...

The last topic of conversation was introduced by Vargas this way:

"{O}]f course, this weekend, we have a brand-new White House social secretary appointed to replace Desiree Rogers, a close friend of the Obamas who is exiting after a bumpy tenure, I would say. Cokie, you spoke with her. She -- she was highly criticized after the Obamas' first state dinner in which she arrived, looking absolutely gorgeous, but in what some people later said was far too fancy a dress, but most importantly, that was the state dinner that was crashed by the Salahis, who walked in without an invitation when the social secretary's office didn't have people manning the security sites."

This led to a surprisingly long chat about Desiree Rogers.

Krugman sat silently while the discussion went on (and on), before eventually interjecting:

"Can I say that 20 million Americans unemployed, the fact that we're worrying about the status of the White House social secretary....

Donaldson responded, "Paul, welcome to Washington."

Look, I realize that not every discussion on a show like this is going to be substantive, sophisticated, and policy focused. Not every post I write for this site is going to highlight critically important issues, either. There's nothing wrong with including heavier and lighter subjects in the same public affairs forum.

But this panel discussion covered exactly four subjects this morning: health care reform, Charlie Rangel's ethics problem, David Paterson's latest troubles, and the fate of the former White House social secretary (and where she's from, what her clothes looked like, what her next job is likely to be, etc.), which hardly seems relevant to anyone who doesn't actually attend social events at the White House.

In this same discussion, there was nothing about the jobs bill that passed the Senate this week, nothing about the incredibly important Zazi guilty plea this week (and the fact that it makes Republican talking points look ridiculous), nothing about Jim Bunning single-handedly delaying unemployment insurance for those who need it.

I wonder, who was the target audience for the discussion of Desiree Rogers, who most Americans have never heard of, and whose White House position has nothing to do with public policy? The general public or the D.C. cocktail circuit crowd?

Krugman no doubt annoyed the show's producers by mentioning the inanity of the subject matter, but he's right to remind his colleagues of what matters. For Donaldson to "welcome" him "to Washington" was insulting -- to Krugman and the rest of us.

Daily Kos: Breaking: CNN's Stunning One-Sided Coverage of Health Care Summit

Daily Kos: Breaking: CNN's Stunning One-Sided Coverage of Health Care Summit

In a stunning display of one-sided coverage, during the first three hours of coverage of the Health Care Summit televised so far, CNN only interrupted, whether for commercial or comment, Democratic speakers.

Yes, I could have watched the first three hours on C-SPAN, but I was interested in the balance of coverage.

I was stunned.

In the first three hours televised so far, CNN interrupted:

1. Pres. Obama (D) for a Chantax / Pfizer commercial

2. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D) (entire speech) for a Liberator medical device ad as well as an ad by American Future Fund featuring a lipstick-wearing pig which advocated "Tell Congress Start Over and Get Health Care Right."

3. Pres. Obama (D) for ads (including an ad by the Oil and Gas Industry)

4. Sen. Max Baucus (D-sorta) for ads

5. Rep. Robert Andrews (D) (entire speech) for comment

6. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) for ads

7. Pres. Obama (D) for ads including another one by Pfizer

8. At this point, they did cut into the very tail end (couple seconds) of Rep. Charles Boustany's (R) comments but only to go to Rep. Anh Cao (R) for comment while not showing a couple moments of Pres. Obama (D) and several minutes of another Dem (didn't even see who he was!)

But oh, they came back straight away for Sen. McCain (R)!

9. Then they cut away from Kathleen Sebileus (D) for commentary which they then interrupted their own commentary in order to catch all of Eric Cantor's (R) comments.

10. Then they cut away for the entire Rep. Louise Slaughter (D) comments.

I could understand a slight imbalance, but a total, complete one-sided coverage needs to be called out.

A question I have: is this one-sided coverage 1) on purpose; 2) unintentional, an act of the subconscious. And if so, what does that say about their producer / director? It's an either/or proposition.

Not to mention that their "commentators" include Rep. Anh Cao (R), David Gergen (R), Dana Bash (R) and Ben Stein (R-asshat).

This is what America is watching. The Most Trusted Name in News?? Actually, at this rate, they should change their entire name from CNN to Fox Lite. ...

Majority of Americans think Iran has The Bomb - Allison Kilkenny - Unreported - True/Slant

Majority of Americans think Iran has The Bomb - Allison Kilkenny - Unreported - True/Slant

A whopping 71 percent of Americans believe that Iran currently has nuclear weapons,according to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey.

More than six in ten think the U.S. should take economic and diplomatic efforts to get Iran to shut down their nuclear program, with only a quarter calling for immediate military action.

I like this part: “with only a quarter calling for immediate military action.” I probably would have written something like, “HOLY SHIT! DID YOU HEAR 25 PERCENT OF THE COUNTRY WANTS TO BOMB IRAN RIGHT NOW??” But whatever. Blasé works too, I guess.

In reality, Iran doesn’t have The Bomb. They have a small amount of refined uranium (19.5%, cutely rounded up to 20% by NRO’s Mark Steyn), which is allowed under the treaty that they have signed. This is the refinement level for use in medical facilities and supplying electricity. There is little evidence they’re working on a nuclear warhead, which would require a much higher level of refinement, and the so-called evidence that exists is highly speculative. Additionally, their supreme leader/commander-in-chief continues to decry nukes as illegal in Islamic law.

Juan Cole reports that the IAEA is at least allowing for the possibility that documents allegedly found on a laptop some years ago –but discounted by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency as being of “dubious provenance and incompatible with other intelligence gathered in Iran — point to a nuclear weapons program that no one has been able to locate.”

The source of these charges was not identified, but many close observers believe it is Israel, a country that possesses nuclear weapons, supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and performs cross-border assassinations, and has long advocated two propaganda points: The 2007 NIE report on Iran is wrong, and Tehran is poised to build nukes. Meanwhile, some observers have concluded that the so-called laptop smoking gun is a forgery.

Of course, concocting forged documents to lead America into war is a familiar tradition. Supposed copiously documented evidence of Nigerian yellowcake uranium was the “evidence” used to lead the US into Iraq.

I agree with Cole when he says the IAEA has the right to be frustrated with Iran, which has certainly not been totally transparent. But frustration with the Iranian regime, which – for some reason — has been hesitant to openly share every detail about its refinement program with a country that is busily bombing or occupying four nearby countries, does not mean Iran has nuclear weapons.

The US intelligence community publicly stress that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. It’s important to repeat that message, especially when the US population is confused (a media-reinforced stupor that allowed them to be easily corralled into supporting the Iraq invasion). ...

The Lobbying-Media Complex

The Lobbying-Media Complex

...

A few hours later, the state's former governor, Tom Ridge, was on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, offering up his own recovery plan. There were "modest things" the White House might try, like cutting taxes or opening up credit for small businesses, but the real answer was for the president to "take his green agenda and blow it out of the box." The first step, Ridge explained, was to "create nuclear power plants." Combined with some waste coal and natural gas extraction, you would have an "innovation setter" that would "create jobs, create exports."

As Ridge counseled the administration to "put that package together," he sure seemed like an objective commentator. But what viewers weren't told was that since 2005, Ridge has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power company. As of March 2009, he also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock, according to SEC filings.

Moments earlier, retired general and "NBC Military Analyst" Barry McCaffrey told viewers that the war in Afghanistan would require an additional "three- to ten-year effort" and "a lot of money." Unmentioned was the fact that DynCorp paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone. The government had just granted DynCorp a five-year deal worth an estimated $5.9 billion to aid American forces in Afghanistan. The first year is locked in at $644 million, but the additional four options are subject to renewal, contingent on military needs and political realities.

In a single hour, two men with blatant, undisclosed conflicts of interest had appeared on MSNBC. The question is, was this an isolated oversight or business as usual? Evidence points to the latter. In 2003 The Nation exposed McCaffrey's financial ties to military contractors he had promoted on-air on several cable networks; in 2008 David Barstow wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for the New York Times about the Pentagon's use of former military officers--many lobbying or consulting for military contractors--to get their talking points on television in exchange for access to decision-makers; and in 2009 bloggers uncovered how ex-Newsweek writer Richard Wolffe had guest-hostedCountdown With Keith Olbermann while working at a large PR firm specializing in "strategies for managing corporate reputation."

These incidents represent only a fraction of the covert corporate influence peddling on cable news, a four-month investigation by The Nation has found. Since 2007 at least seventy-five registered lobbyists, public relations representatives and corporate officials--people paid by companies and trade groups to manage their public image and promote their financial and political interests--have appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Network with no disclosure of the corporate interests that had paid them. Many have been regulars on more than one of the cable networks, turning in dozens--and in some cases hundreds--of appearances.

For lobbyists, PR firms and corporate officials, going on cable television is a chance to promote clients and their interests on the most widely cited source of news in the United States. These appearances also generate good will and access to major players inside the Democratic and Republican parties. For their part, the cable networks, eager to fill time and afraid of upsetting the political elite, have often looked the other way. At times, the networks have even disregarded their own written ethics guidelines. Just about everyone involved is heavily invested in maintaining the current system, with the exception of the viewer.

...

According to its website, Whitman Insight Strategies has worked for AIG to "develop, test, launch, and enhance their consumer brand," and continues to assist the insurance giant "as it responds to ongoing marketplace developments." Whitman Strategies has also posted more than 100 clips of Bernard Whitman's television appearances on a YouTube account. During a September 18, 2008, Fox News appearance to discuss Sarah Palin, Whitman proceeded to lambaste John McCain for proposing to "let AIG fail," saying that this demonstrated "just how little he understands the global economy today."

On March 25, 2009, in the midst of a scandal over AIG's executive bonuses, Whitman appeared on Fox News again. "The American people were understandably outraged about AIG," he began. "Having said that, we need to move beyond anger, frustration and hysteria to really get down to the brass tacks of solving this economy," he advised the public. In neither instance was Whitman's ongoing work for AIG mentioned.

Another person with AIG ties is Ron Christie, now at the helm of his own consultancy. While working at Republican-leaning firm DC Navigators, now Navigators Global, from 2006 through September 2008, Christie was registered to lobby on behalf of the insurance giant, lobbying filings show. During that period, AIG shelled out $590,000 to DC Navigators.

...

Bigger players were on AIG's payroll, too: shortly after receiving its first bailout, in 2008, AIG hired

PR mega-firm Burson-Marsteller to handle "controversial issues." In April 2009, B-M hired former White House press secretary Dana Perino, already an established TV pundit. A month later she was picked up as a contributor to Fox News, where she has had occasion to discuss the economic meltdown.

This past July, for example, Perino joined a roundtable on Fox Business Network's Money for Breakfast, which briefly noted her affiliation with B-M but neglected to mention its link to AIG. When a fellow guest commented that AIG had been "highly regulated" before the crash, Perino pounced, suggesting that current financial reform efforts demonstrate how "Washington has a tendency to overreact in a crisis." When Gary Kalman of USPIRG suggested that regulations had, in fact, been rolled back for decades, Perino scoffed, "I don't think there are many business people who would actually agree with that."

(Whitman, Christie and Perino did not return requests for comment.)

...

anine Wedel, an anthropologist in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and author of the new book Shadow Elite, told me in a recent interview that while these influence peddlers are not necessarily unethical, they "elude accountability to governments, shareholders and voters--and threaten democracy."

"When there's a whole host of pundits on the airwaves touting the same agenda at the same time, you get a cumulative effect that shapes public opinion toward their agenda," she said. ...

...

At times, it begins to seem as though the problem is beyond fixing, an unfortunate but unavoidable reality of our media and political landscape, in which the lines between public service and corporate advancement are so blurred. It is clear that the pressure applied on the networks so far has not resulted in systemic change. Even in the aftermath of increasing scrutiny--particularly after David Barstow's Pulitzer Prize-winning exposés in the Times--General McCaffrey continues to appear on television without any caveats about his work for military contractors. As Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald has observed,none of the networks involved in the scandal have ever bothered to address Barstow's findings on air, and they noticeably omitted Barstow's name from coverage of the 2009 Pulitzers. "It's almost like a mysterious black hole that this issue, which is enormous, is getting no attention from the offenders themselves," the Society for Professional Journalists' ethics committee chair Andy Schotz told me recently. ....

Giuliani: No domestic terror attacks under Bush - Yahoo! News

Giuliani: No domestic terror attacks under Bush - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani set off a tempest about terrorism Friday with his claim that this nation "had no domestic attacks" under President George W. Bush.

Giuliani somehow neglected to mention the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as he was contrasting President Barack Obama's handling of terrorism with that of Bush in light of the failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound flight. The Sept. 11 attacks toppled New York's World Trade Center, killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania and earned Giuliani accolades as "America's mayor."

The Republican said of Obama on ABC's "Good Morning America" that "what he should be doing is following the right things that Bush did."

While saying he believes Obama "turned the corner" on understanding the nature of terrorism when he publicly declared the U.S. at war, Giuliani added that Obama has plenty of room to improve on terrorism.

"We had no domestic attacks under Bush," Giuliani said. "We've had one under Obama."

...

"I usually say we had no domestic attacks, no major domestic attack under President Bush since Sept. 11," he said. He said after all the warnings of more attacks that came immediately after Sept. 11, many were surprised that this country avoided another major terrorist attack.

Giuliani said: "I did omit the words 'since Sept. 11.' I apologize for that."

Shoe bomber Richard Reid tried to bring down a trans-Atlantic flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001 using similar methods to the Christmas Day attempt. In both cases, quick action by courageous passengers and crew members helped avoid catastrophe.

Concerning Friday's interview, GMA's George Stephanopoulos said he should have asked Giuliani what he meant.

"All of you who have pointed out that I should have pressed him on that misstatement in the moment are right," he wrote on his blog. "My mistake, my responsibility." ...

Newt Gingrich WRONG: Says British Shoe Bomber 'Richard Reid Was An American Citizen' (VIDEO)

Newt Gingrich WRONG: Says British Shoe Bomber 'Richard Reid Was An American Citizen' (VIDEO)

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, leveling harsh criticism against the Obama administration.

After Gingrich assailed the administration for reading Miranda Rights to Detroit undie bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Stewart drew a comparison to something that happened under George W. Bush.

"Didn't they do the same with Richard Reid, who was the shoe bomber?" he asked the Republican icon.

"Richard Reid was an American citizen," insisted Gingrich.

Reid is actually a British citizen of Jamaican descent.

...

At the end of the show, Stewart realized that Gingrich had falsely claimed the shoe bomber was an American citizen and noted that to his audience.

The relevant portion of the interview begins at the 2:15 mark. ...

Fox News Shuns Obama Q&A, MSNBC Gets Snitty When He Encourages Senators To Turn Off TV

Fox News Shuns Obama Q&A, MSNBC Gets Snitty When He Encourages Senators To Turn Off TV

President Obama this morning took his 2010 Question-And-Answer Tour to the Senate Democratic Caucus, a few days after his foray to the House GOP Retreat in Baltimore turned intomust-see TV.

Last time, Fox News was criticized for cutting away from the Q&A early, presumably because it was inadvertently televising one of those rare occurrences where the president was just straight up kicking the ass of his political opponents. Or, as Jon Stewart quipped, "We're going to cut away because this is against the narrative we present."

Well, score one for consistency, I guess? Because today, while Obama was meeting with Democrats, CNN carried the session live, MSNBC carried the session live (breaking away for a few minutes to comment on Obama's call for Democrats to stop watching the cable news, more on that later), and Fox...well they tended to other matters: ...

The Greatest Story Rarely Told - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

The Greatest Story Rarely Told - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com
...

On December 30, I posted the following Twitter riff: Check this diagram of the year’s news. Find climate? Climategate? Copenhagen? http://j.mp/noCO2news.

Transparency: The Biggest News Storie ...

good.is

Apture™

The diagram, drawn by compiling weekly news summaries from Journalism.org, contains not even a postage-stamp-size space for coverage of climate — or the environment as a whole, for that matter. While Joe Romm recently published a list of journalists who had moved furthest from what he considers excellence in climate coverage in 2009 (yours truly included), the absence of coverage didn’t make his cut.

[UPDATE, 1/14: Max Boykoff at the University of Colorado, has posted a chart showing a sharp spike in media coverage of climate change in late December. I've asked him if he can parse out how much was "Climategate" compared to the climate talks. I'll post an update if I hear more.]

The crew at Journalism.org, which is run by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, had already noted in a year-end wrapup that environmental coverage, including climate, was down somewhat from 2007 and 2008, representing 1.5 percent of overall coverage. (An important note: That analysis used data through Dec. 6, capturing the burst of news about the stolen climate files but missing the tumultuous climate talks in Copenhagen. Also, the weekly analysis for Dec. 14-20 showed a climate spike.) The picture has been very different online, with the same analysts noting sustained heat around climate on blogs.

There are many out there who blame the news media — either for ignoring global warming or mishandling it — for the failure of the public to engage in an energy revolution to limit climate risks. But my sense is such critics have inflated expectations of what media coverage, without a direct punch from nature, can accomplish. Mind you, media coverage of incremental, yet important, issues remains vital, to my mind; it’s just not sufficient (which is one reason I’m branching out). ...

Populism: Just Like Racism! - Matt Taibbi - Taibblog - True/Slant

Populism: Just Like Racism! - Matt Taibbi - Taibblog - True/Slant

It’s easy to see why politicians would be drawn to the populist pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by a complex web of factors, including global imbalances caused by the rise of China. But with the populist narrative, you can just blame Goldman Sachs.

via Op-Ed Columnist – The Populist Addiction – NYTimes.com.

Normally one would have to be in the grip of a narcissistic psychosis to think that a columnist for the New York Times has written an article for your personal benefit. But after his latest article in the Times, in which he compares the “populism” of people who “blame Goldman Sachs” with exactly the sort of racist elitism I ripped him for last week, I think David Brooks might be trying to talk to me.

...

This certainly has an effect on the content of news reporting, but perhaps even more importantly, it impacts the tone of news coverage, where outrages are covered without outrage, and stories that are not particularly “balanced” in reality — stories that for instance are quite plainly about one group of people screwing another group of people — become transformed into cool, “objective” news stories in which both the plainly bogus version of events and the real and infuriating version are given equal weight.

Brooks lays out the crux of his case his case in his first three grafs of his article:

Politics, some believe, is the organization of hatreds. The people who try to divide society on the basis of ethnicity we call racists. The people who try to divide it on the basis of religion we call sectarians. The people who try to divide it on the basis of social class we call either populists or elitists.

These two attitudes — populism and elitism — seem different, but they’re really mirror images of one another. They both assume a country fundamentally divided. They both describe politics as a class struggle between the enlightened and the corrupt, the pure and the betrayers.

Both attitudes will always be with us, but these days populism is in vogue. The Republicans have their populists. Sarah Palin has been known to divide the country between the real Americans and the cultural elites. And the Democrats have their populists. Since the defeat in Massachusetts, many Democrats have apparently decided that their party has to mimic the rhetoric of John Edwards’s presidential campaign. They’ve taken to dividing the country into two supposedly separate groups — real Americans who live on Main Street and the insidious interests of Wall Street.

Now, there’s bullshit all up and down this lede. The first lie he tells involves describing everyone who is a critic of Wall Street as a populist. It’s sort of a syllogism he’s getting into here:

All people who criticize Wall Street are populists.

All populists think of themselves as enlightened and pure, and are primarily interested in dividing society, the same way racists do.

Therefore, all people who criticize Wall Street are primarily interested in dividing society, just like racists.

This is obnoxious on so many levels it’s almost difficult to know where to start. As for the populism label, let me quote the Alison Porchnik character from Annie Hall (Woody’s first wife, in the movie): “I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.”

Brooks here is trying to say that by criticizing, say, Goldman Sachs for mass thievery — criticizing a bank for selling billions of dollars worth of worthless subprime mortgage-backed securities mismarked as investment grade deals, for getting the taxpayer to pay them 100 cents on the dollar for their billions in crap investments with AIG, for forcing hundreds of millions of people to pay inflated gas and food prices when they manipulated the commodities market and helped push oil to a preposterous $149 a barrel, and for paying massive bonuses after receiving billions upon billions in public support even beyond the TARP — that in criticizing the bank for doing these things, people like me are primarily interested in being divisive and “organizing hatreds.”

He is also saying that by making these criticisms, people like me are by implication making statements about our own moral purity and enlightenment relative to others. He goes on:

It’s easy to see why politicians would be drawn to the populist pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by a complex web of factors, including global imbalances caused by the rise of China. But with the populist narrative, you can just blame Goldman Sachs.

Second, it absolves voters of responsibility for their problems. Over the past few years, many investment bankers behaved like idiots, but so did average Americans, racking up unprecedented levels of personal debt. With the populist narrative, you can accuse the former and absolve the latter.

Stuff like this makes me want to scream. If I’m writing about a bank that took a half-billion worth of mortgages where the average amount of equity in the home was less than 1%, and where 58% of the mortgages had no documentation, and then sold those mortgage-backed securities as investment-grade opportunities to pensions and other suckers — and then bet against the same kind of stuff they were enthusiastically selling to other people — is Brooks seriously suggesting that I also have to point out that the Chinese economy was doing well at the time? ...