NPR’s Talk of the Nation devoted a segment on Tuesday afternoon to the question “What Happened to the Political Left?” For answers, host Neal Conan brought on the leftist professor Michael Kazin and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine. It didn’t get hilarious until Kazin made the claim that nowhere in Flyover Country — in Iowa or Nebraska, for example — can you hear a left-winger on the radio. Somehow they all forgot that NPR stations are taking our tax dollars and insuring these left-wing voices are on the radio, including Iowa Public Radio and Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET) Radio. Somehow, the network motto isn't “NPR: Where Leftist Hosts Talk to Leftist Guests About Where All the Leftists Went.” This is where the laugh track should begin: MICHAEL KAZIN: But I think one of the things I stress in – both in my book “American Dreamers” and also in the article in the [New York] Times last Sunday, is the kind of institutions that people on the left need to build are institutions which really get out to what we call ordinary Americans, average Americans. You know, I'm struck whenever I go to Iowa, Nebraska, that you turn on AM radio or even most FM radio, and you hear mostly evangelical stations, country stations and religious stations. I love country music, but, you know, you don't hear a left point of view there, and you don't have people who are, you know, left-wing activists who for the most part are really active in those areas. NEAL CONAN: Air America was not a great success. KAZIN: Nope. As he said these words, this leftist was being heard on hundreds of NPR stations in rural areas and small towns. Air America was not a great success in part because there was already a left-wing NPR station in many hundreds of cities. They had to raise capital. They couldn’t just tax the people and then smear some of the taxpayers footing the bill. There was also this hilarious exchange about how leftists don't spread a message to college students: CONAN: I was interested in your piece, Michael Kazin, when you wrote that the more conservative colleges are presenting a more coherent narrative to their students. KAZIN: Yeah, I'm not sure it's the job of universities or colleges to present a narrative to their students. You know, I teach at a fairly liberal Catholic college, Georgetown, and I don't feel like I want to organize my students to believe one certain thing or another, but it's clear that conservative Christian colleges especially believe in a certain point of view about the Bible, about morality generally, and also about politics. Neal Conan set it up this way, which studiously avoided the question of the leftist president sitting in the White House and how he’s performed: CONAN: The economy stinks. Unemployment hovers above nine percent, banks foreclose on more and more houses, the income gap continues to widen as the rich get richer, and too many in the middle class slip down the economic ladder. People are frustrated and angry, and nearly all the political energy comes from the right. The other side mounted protests in Wisconsin earlier this year, civil disobedience at the White House over the XL Pipeline, and rallies continue on Wall Street, but there's a difference between protests and a movement. Conservatives have shifted the middle, and they dominate the dialogue. What happened to the left? NPR should know better than to say conservatives dominate the dialogue. They certainly can’t get their “fair share” of air time on NPR.
Continue reading …NPR’s Talk of the Nation devoted a segment on Tuesday afternoon to the question “What Happened to the Political Left?” For answers, host Neal Conan brought on the leftist professor Michael Kazin and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine. It didn’t get hilarious until Kazin made the claim that nowhere in Flyover Country — in Iowa or Nebraska, for example — can you hear a left-winger on the radio. Somehow they all forgot that NPR stations are taking our tax dollars and insuring these left-wing voices are on the radio, including Iowa Public Radio and Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET) Radio. Somehow, the network motto isn't “NPR: Where Leftist Hosts Talk to Leftist Guests About Where All the Leftists Went.” This is where the laugh track should begin: MICHAEL KAZIN: But I think one of the things I stress in – both in my book “American Dreamers” and also in the article in the [New York] Times last Sunday, is the kind of institutions that people on the left need to build are institutions which really get out to what we call ordinary Americans, average Americans. You know, I'm struck whenever I go to Iowa, Nebraska, that you turn on AM radio or even most FM radio, and you hear mostly evangelical stations, country stations and religious stations. I love country music, but, you know, you don't hear a left point of view there, and you don't have people who are, you know, left-wing activists who for the most part are really active in those areas. NEAL CONAN: Air America was not a great success. KAZIN: Nope. As he said these words, this leftist was being heard on hundreds of NPR stations in rural areas and small towns. Air America was not a great success in part because there was already a left-wing NPR station in many hundreds of cities. They had to raise capital. They couldn’t just tax the people and then smear some of the taxpayers footing the bill. There was also this hilarious exchange about how leftists don't spread a message to college students: CONAN: I was interested in your piece, Michael Kazin, when you wrote that the more conservative colleges are presenting a more coherent narrative to their students. KAZIN: Yeah, I'm not sure it's the job of universities or colleges to present a narrative to their students. You know, I teach at a fairly liberal Catholic college, Georgetown, and I don't feel like I want to organize my students to believe one certain thing or another, but it's clear that conservative Christian colleges especially believe in a certain point of view about the Bible, about morality generally, and also about politics. Neal Conan set it up this way, which studiously avoided the question of the leftist president sitting in the White House and how he’s performed: CONAN: The economy stinks. Unemployment hovers above nine percent, banks foreclose on more and more houses, the income gap continues to widen as the rich get richer, and too many in the middle class slip down the economic ladder. People are frustrated and angry, and nearly all the political energy comes from the right. The other side mounted protests in Wisconsin earlier this year, civil disobedience at the White House over the XL Pipeline, and rallies continue on Wall Street, but there's a difference between protests and a movement. Conservatives have shifted the middle, and they dominate the dialogue. What happened to the left? NPR should know better than to say conservatives dominate the dialogue. They certainly can’t get their “fair share” of air time on NPR.
Continue reading …NYT Puzzler: Gov. Christie Not Really Bipartisan Because…A Dem Called Him a Bully?
September 29, 2011 No CommentDoes the New York Times fear a Chris Christie presidential run? On Thursday reporters Michael Shear (pictured above) and Richard Perez-Pena issued the New Jersey governor a pre-emptive reality check in response to his speech at the Reagan Presidential Library: “ Not All Buy Christie’s Assertions of Bipartisanship – New Jersey Governor’s Critics Say Acrimonious Dealings Accompany Accomplishments .” But the Times provided a lopsided portrait, either by leaving out the offensive things Christie’s opponents have said about him, or actually quoting Democrats insulting Christie as if that somehow proves Christie is offensive. If he runs for president, Chris Christie might highlight the themes he mentioned on Tuesday night in his speech at the Reagan Presidential Library, promising a new era of bipartisanship and compromise like the one he largely takes credit for achieving as governor of New Jersey. “Our bipartisan accomplishments in New Jersey have helped to set a tone that has taken hold across many other states,” Mr. Christie told a rapt audience in Simi Valley, Calif. “This is the only effective way to lead in America during these times.” Except that is not exactly how everyone sees it. …. Mr. Christie once said to reporters, of a state senator in her 70s who had criticized him, “Can you guys please take the bat out on her for once?” When another Democratic legislator seemed to question Mr. Christie’s parenting, he said “she should really be embarrassed at what a jerk she is.” After a tough budget battle in June, Stephen M. Sweeney, the Senate president and one of Mr. Christie’s allies in the Legislature, called him “a bully and a punk,” “mean-spirited,” “spoiled,” “vindictive” and “a cruel man,” adding, “I wanted to punch him in his head.” Not exactly the stuff of happy-go-lucky bipartisanship and easygoing compromise. How do Sweeney’s playground insults translate into proof of Christie’s nastiness, as opposed to the immaturity of Democrat Sweeney himself? Back in April, co-author Pena treated as a serious breach of decorum the relatively mild “bat” metaphor Christie used in front of reporters. The story’s text box: “The governor uses violent imagery while talking to reporters about a state senator.” Thursday's Times's story ignored how Christie’s opponents have said worse about him. In April 2010 local TV station WPIX reported on a memo released by a New Jersey teachers union that closed with a mock prayer: “Dear Lord…this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman Billy Mays….I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor.” Shear and Perez-Pena mentioned Christie's scuffles with unions without quoting anything said by the unions against Christie. Some of the most important pieces of legislation of his tenure have gotten through the Democratic Legislature with mostly Republican support, while most Democrats voted against them. And the unions, in particular, have bristled at the governor’s decision to single them out in his efforts to deal with the state’s finances. In town halls across New Jersey, Mr. Christie has been assailed by teachers who have accused him of attacking their profession and pushing through anti-union legislation by bullying Democratic legislators. In most of the town halls, Mr. Christie gave as good as he got. The Times made a strange concluding choice to challenge Christie: AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, who exploited the tenth anniversary of 9-11 with an offensive online essay , blaming Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, etc. for pushing “hate” in the wake of the tragedy. Richard L. Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in Washington, said: “There’s a major difference between talking about compromise and bipartisanship in a rhetorical speech and actually practicing it. Any worker in New Jersey who’s experienced Chris Christie’s idea of compromise, which panders to corporate interests and leaves working families behind, will tell you that it’s not working for them.”
Continue reading …Over at AmericaBlog Matt Browner Hamlin lays out in simple terms why liberals need to join #OcccupyWallStreet . Hamlin specifically zeroes in on a key passage of a must read Green Greenwald post pushing back against criticisms coming against these movement from certain mainstream progressive corners: But for those who believe that protests are only worthwhile if they translate into quantifiable impact: the lack of organizational sophistication or messaging efficacy on the part of the Wall Street protest is a reason to support it and get involved in it, not turn one’s nose up at it and join in the media demonization. That’s what one actually sympathetic to its messaging (rather than pretending to be in order more effectively to discredit it) would do. Anyone who looks at mostly young citizens marching in the street protesting the corruption of Wall Street and the harm it spawns, and decides that what is warranted is mockery and scorn rather than support, is either not seeing things clearly or is motivated by objectives other than the ones being presented. Seth D. Michaels from Working America’s “Main Street” blog also made similar arguments yesterday: What’s important about this protest, to my mind, is not the particular goals, tactics or supporters. While the protest itself has drawn criticism or indifference from many corners, it illuminates two important points. First, the financial sector in this country has been taking up a larger and larger share of the economy as the rest of us have fallen further and further behind. Second, the big banks and investment firms who helped cause the crisis and the recession haven’t been fully reined in or held accountable. That matters, and people around the country get it. We talk to thousands of Americans in their neighborhoods every week, and they understand the real-life effects of Wall Street’s outsized power: the failure of the economy to create good jobs at good wages, the powerful influence of corporations in our politics, the difficulty of keeping a roof over your family’s head. If you want to get an understanding of the broad scope of this movement, I would recommend reading up Sarah Jaffe’s piece yesterday describing how these protesters are fighting banksters greed and the surveillance state . Obviously I don’t expect the wankers in the DC media to get this. They are too busy slobbering all over former Wall Street lobbyist Chris Christie as “the people’s choice,” shamelessly begging him to run for the White House. Those guys are hopeless. However, I think it is also worth noting that this movement provides a great opportunity for progressive organizations, talkers … well to organize around. The amazing narrative being threaded by these protesters against Wall Street greed and corruption seems to be right in the wheelhouse of traditional progressive groups who have always spoken up against too much money in politics. Thankfully folks like Keith Olbermann and Sam Seder are taking note . Our own Kenneth Quinnell here at C&L has been all over the story as well. But we need more. As MBH noted in his post #OcccupyWallStreet is an expression of anger that represents “99 percent of citizenry,” who doesn’t get a seat at the table of high $$ fancy fundraisers in DC. It is a massive opportunity for the progressive organizations in DC to step up and join them. EDITOR’S NOTE: There are solidarity demonstrations this weekend…possibly one near you. Check out Facebook for more details .
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Continue reading …Sorry, but this trader’s banking confession was no prank | The Yes Men
September 29, 2011 No Comment
The Yes Men have been blamed for Alessio Rastani’s comments on the financial crisis. But sometimes truth outdoes satire This week, an insignificant market trader and self-proclaimed financial self-help guru, Alessio Rastani, rocketed to stardom after speaking frankly on the BBC about the collapsing market and his plans to make money from it. We Yes Men heard about it right away, because soon after the broadcast, people started emailing from all over the world to congratulate us on another prank well done. They couldn’t imagine that a real trader could possibly speak so candidly about the market, so they assumed Rastani was one of our posturings. He wasn’t. Rastani is small potatoes , but he’s a real trader. And he said nothing that would suggest otherwise; he simply described what he does, more honestly than a true insider would, but quite accurately. “Every night I dream of another recession,” Rastani said, and explained that it’s possible to make huge money from a big crisis even when millions of others lose their life savings, and worse. Well, duh. Don’t we all know that Goldman Sachs bet against the same housing market they were such a big player in, and made $1bn in profit when the sub-prime crisis rendered millions of Americans homeless? John Paulson, the manager whose hedge fund was betting for Goldman, could have honestly said exactly what Rastani said, but of course he knew better – possibly because unlike Rastani, Paulson’s firm had a major, immediate and provable impact, and there’s no telling how his millions of victims might have reacted. Unlike Rastani, true industry insiders like Paulson, Geithner et al remain silent about the way their system works, couching it all in technical jargon and full-on deceit. They’ve been doing it for decades, and, since Ronald Reagan’s day, with increasing consistency. Lately, it hasn’t been working so well. Something has been speaking in very plain language to millions of people. The crowds amassing in cities from New York to Athens to Paris are just the tip of the iceberg, just the most visible of all those who have long known, viscerally, that Rastani’s point of view is actually mainstream. Those people also know that, armed with truth and awareness, anything is possible. As Michael Moore pointed out to those occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, in America it’s just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together. And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won’t be able to do anything about it. Financial crisis Global recession Banking Goldman Sachs Hedge funds Financial sector The Yes Men guardian.co.uk
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Highlights of this day in history:Germany annexes Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland region; America returns to manned spaceflight for the first time since Challenger disaster; Pope John Paul the First is found dead in his Vatican apartment. (Sept. 29)
Continue reading …Bill O’Reilly Plays Nice On NPR About Obama, But Calls Press ‘A Bunch of Guttersnipes’
September 27, 2011 No Comment
Everyone was well-behaved when Fox's Bill O'Reilly came on NPR's Morning Edition Tuesday to promote his new book Killing Lincoln. NPR anchor Steve Inskeep was no hardball-throwing Terry Gross , and O'Reilly was wearing his pox-on-both-houses centrist hat and tried to say nice things about Obama. He denounced the media as a “bunch of guttersnipes,” but when Inskeep nudged him about whether he was also guilty of slamming people, O'Reilly insisted “I'm trying to do the right thing.” This sounded odd after all the NPR-Fox News crossfire in the wake of NPR firing Juan Williams over an interview on O'Reilly's show. But by far, the oddest part came when Inskeep tried to suggest our current “broken” politics could lead to another civil war and massive death. Speaking of Lincon's time, he said: “They tried to deal with it. They couldn't deal with it over time, and in the end, it led to a war and hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Do you wonder if the political system is breaking now?” Before that, the NPR anchor asked if the press in Lincoln's time might have been a bit overwrought: INSKEEP: What did you think when you went back and read the media in those days, you know, it would say that Lincoln's a dictator, that Grant's a drunk, that General Sherman is insane? Everybody was ripped up at one time or another. O'REILLY: Well, that's what the media is today. The media remarkably hasn't changed since Benjamin Franklin was – written “Poor Richard's Almanac.” The media is a bunch of guttersnipes and, you know, low – what can I tell you? I mean, look. I'm in the media. I've been doing it for 35 years. I know the media as well as anybody in the world knows it. And th ere are always going to be people who try to make money by slamming other people and by, you know, creating all kinds of stuff that doesn't really get us anywhere. INSKEEP: Do you think you add to that sometimes ? O'REILLY: You know, I try not to do it personally. I think that we bring a robust debate to the nation every night. I think we try to stay away from the personal stuff. We try to back up our opinions with facts. So, yeah. I mean, you can accuse me of anything you want, but, you know, I'm trying to do the right thing. INSKEEP: What do you think when you hear people complain about the quality, not just in the media, but of political discourse today, that it's departed from reality, for example? O'REILLY: Well, I mean, if it's departed from reality, then we have to isolate the people who are doing that. President Obama was right in his Arizona speech, that he said, look, you know, you can't enflame to the point where you hate each other. That's not what America is supposed to be. But what can he do? I don't see him, his rhetoric, he doesn't do that. I don't see personal attacks coming from Mr. Obama. But some of his acolytes, they just can't help themselves. And on the other side, there are people who just hate him, and everything he does is bad. And I criticize those people just as much. For his part, George W. Bush felt that the media's “first draft of history” on his time in office was far too angry and overwrought, casting him as a dictator who was far too stupid to earn two Ivy League degrees. Then came the weird new-civil-war stuff: INSKEEP: You're also writing, Bill O'Reilly, about a period in history where I think it's fair to say the political system broke. There was this great issue facing the country. They tried to deal with it. They couldn't deal with it over time, and in the end, it led to a war and hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Do you wonder if the political system is breaking now? O'REILLY: Well, I don't think it's breaking. I mean, I think we have a robust two-party system in the United States. We have a media that, while flawed and irresponsible in many levels, does keep an eye on what's going on, and that the people really get both sides of the story and most Americans overwhelmingly love their country. So I don't see any fracture along those lines. I do see that zealotry, probably, is way higher than it should be. Dishonesty in the media is almost at a scandalous level. But there's so much media now, with the PCs and all of that social network. There's so much, that I think Americans, if they really try and they think, they can get the real story. By the end, O'Reilly was almost sunny about everything: “I think Abraham Lincoln would be proud of his country today. He would certainly be proud that it elected a man like Barack Obama of mixed race, certainly Lincoln would be proud of that. And I don't see it as dire as some other people see it. I'm fairly optimistic that if we can get this economic stuff under control, America will make a stunning comeback.”
Continue reading …Rachel Maddow should never be put in charge of crowd control. Not until she learns to count. Maddow is clearly flummoxed by what actually constitutes a crowd, as can be seen in her commentary on audiences at Republican presidential debates. (video after page break) On her show Friday, for example, Maddow gamely tried to make the case that audience reactions at GOP debates have been unintentionally damning, starting with the response that followed Chris Wallace of Fox News putting a question to Ron Paul about drug legalization — WALLACE: You say marijuana, cocaine, even heroin should be legal if states want to permit it. PAUL: What you're inferring (sic) is, you know what, if we legalize heroin tomorrow, everybody's going to use heroin. How many people here would use heroin if it were legal? I put nobody would put the, oh yeah (sarcastically) I need the government to take care of me! I don't want to use heroin so I need these laws … (enthusiastic applause and cheering from audience) WALLACE:
Continue reading …Here’s one reason why the approval rating for Congress is low: media outlets insisting that anyone standing in the way of providing federal cash to flood victims – regardless of their private insurance policies – are heartless. An AP story by Michael Hill was headlined “The disaster-stricken cluck tongues at Congress.” AP and Hill were clearly too “compassionate” to ask the question whether people who failed to buy flood insurance or other kinds of private insurance get to lecture politicians about hitting up taxpayers for money. Hill savaged Congress by editorializing that victims had “paid perhaps the highest price for politics.” Hill even lined up people who've already taken tens of thousands from the government to bash Congress: On Monday, Congress advanced legislation to assure there would be no interruption in assistance through the new budget year, which begins Saturday. But that didn't do much to appease those who would have paid perhaps the highest price for politics. They're spreading the blame both among Republicans, who want cuts in other government spending, and Democrats, who are accused of using the GOP opposition to win political points. “They aren't looking so much at what is actually needed as what's good for their party, and that to me is wrong, wrong, wrong,” said Lawrence Sayah, a Waterbury resident whose home, ravaged by the floods wrought by the remnants of Hurricane Irene, is still stripped to the studs inside. Sayah already received $18,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, although he and his wife are appealing for more for repairs that will run more than three times that. He worried that an impasse could affect his appeal. Sayah wasn’t the only angry guy who’s already received a check from Washington: “You really wonder, what are they doing down there? What are they thinking?” said Skip Flanders, of Waterbury, who already got a $30,200 FEMA grant for his home. “They've certainly never been through it themselves to see what it's like to have your house and living somewhere else and not knowing how you're going to put it back together.” Didn’t Mr. Sayah or Mr. Flanders have flood insurance to handle this disaster? AP didn’t seem to ask. All the blame is supposed to be on Congress. You can’t blame the victim. But is Congress really doing the victimizing here? It was the same AP line for businessmen: “We're just waiting out Washington to make the move. It's our survival in this little town,” said Bill Briggs, whose factory making baseball bat blanks in upstate New York's Prattsville was destroyed by flooding wreaked by Irene. He was meeting Monday with his insurance man and a structural engineer to decide whether he could rebuild. But in the local media in upstate New York, you can hear a story of being under-insured: ” We're underinsured, like everyone else in town, and all we can do is pray for the best,” said Bill Briggs of Dimensional Hardwood….Briggs says his company has both flood and business insurance, but three weeks after Irene hit and he's still getting the runaround. Briggs said, “This insurance company's from Utah and has claims from South Carolina to Canada. When you call, they give you a number and when your number comes up, that's when they take care of you.” Anyone can sympathize with that. But AP is playing politics with this story just as much as any member of Congress. AP's reporter brought in the local liberal Senator for commentary in paragraph nine: Some Republicans had been pushing for expenses to be offset by cuts elsewhere. Democrats, like Sen. Patrick Leahy, who represent flood-stricken Vermont, countered that the same budgeting standards are not enforced when it comes to Afghanistan and Iraq. “Here you have Americans, and you say you can't help Americans in America with American dollars,” Leahy told The Associated Press. “It's ‘Alice in Wonderland.’” Where were the Republicans in this story? Sen. Mitch McConnell surfaced in paragraph 24 – the story’s very last paragraph. Everyone knows that many newspaper editors might slash the AP story to a smaller size, leaving the Republicans on the editing floor. In today’s Washington Post Express tabloid, the politicians from both sides were edited out, leaving only the victims to bash the “heartless” Congress.
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