enlarge If I could pick one idea to purge from the American psyche, it would be the idea that rich people are special, magical wealth leprechauns who must be allowed to pursue their interests without hindrance lest the entire economy collapse. The reason this elitist Randroid idea is particularly noxious is because it results in things like this being taken seriously: If mark-to-market accounting is to blame for the current financial crisis, then the National Weather Service is to blame for Hurricane Katrina; if it hadn’t told us the hurricane hit New Orleans, the city would never have flooded. This is the logic the bankers are using, and they are getting sympathetic ears in Congress. The bankers have gotten two members of Congress to introduce a bill to establish a new body that could suspend accounting rules for financial institutions. Edward L. Yingling, the president of the American Bankers Association, says the proposal addresses “systemic risks that accounting standards can have on the economy.” Steve Forbes, the publisher and erstwhile presidential candidate, goes even further. “Mark-to-market accounting is the principal reason why our financial system is in a meltdown,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. They say the problem, in short, is not that the banks acted irresponsibly in creating financial instruments that blew up, or in making loans that could never be repaid. It is that someone is forcing them to fess up. If only the banks could pretend the assets were valuable, then the system would be safe. Mark-to-market accounting isn’t a perfect way to keep books — in bubble times, for instance, it makes financial institutions look much financially stronger than they really are — but it beats what Forbes wants, which is the right to just make crap up. Lookit : But put aside for a moment the absurdity of trying to price assets in a disrupted or non-existent market, of not distinguishing between distress prices and “normal” prices. Regulatory capital by its definition should take the long view when it comes to valuation; day-to-day fluctuations shouldn’t matter. Assets should be kept on the books at the price they were obtained, as long as the assets haven’t actually been impaired. Ah, if only Milo Mindderbinder had thought of this when he was going bust from investing in all that chocolate-covered cotton! Instead of panicking and trying to unload it at bargain prices, he could have simply insisted that it was worth precisely what he’d originally paid for it and then the Syndicate would still be up and running! In all seriousness: Forbes’ argument is basically the same as the warblogger argument we heard back in 2004, namely that the Iraq war was going super-duper well but that Bush wasn’t getting credit for it because the wicked hippies weren’t clapping loudly enough. He’s basically saying that banks should have a right to create whatever bulls*** securities they want and price them however they want without ever having to account for whether they’re really worth anything. If you let them do this then pretty soon banks will be reporting record profits from their investments in magic beans. That doesn’t strike me as a very wise idea. Other news: D-Day reports that the Cuyahoga County Court actually believes in enforcing the rule of law and isn’t allowing lenders to use forged documents in foreclosure cases. He comments: Basically it makes it nearly impossible to do anything but use verifiable documents and signatures, without risking sanctions and the dismissal of the foreclosure case. As 4closure fraud , which first noticed the affidavit policy of the court, said, “This is all we ever asked for, the rule of law, that is already in place, be followed.” Courts are slowly but gradually codifying policies that put much greater burden on mortgage lenders and their counsels to actually follow the law. We’ve seen in recent years that the banks cannot be expected to do that. So something’s gotta give. Indeed it does. But for now let’s bask in a brief instance where major financial institutions are being forced to comply with the law. It’s sadly a rare occurrence these days. On the other hand, this is highly discouraging (my emphasis): The five largest loan servicers, including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., may be the first to settle with the 50 state attorneys general probing foreclosure practices, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said. The probe has since widened to include other mortgage practices, with attorneys general suggesting a potential resolution should include improving the loan modification process, barring foreclosures when people are modifying loans and creating a general fund to compensate homeowners who may have been victims of wrongful foreclosures. The group isn’t pursuing a criminal investigation , Miller said. “Our focus is to reform the servicing process and that’s inherently civil, not criminal,” he said. I have a real problem with this. One of the more astounding aspects of modern America is how often major financial institutions are busted for overtly criminal activity and how rarely any of them ever go to jail for it. Instead they pony up some “Oopsie!” cash, admit to no wrongdoing and call it a day. I may be old-fashioned but I’d really like to imprison the people who forged foreclosure documents, who committed perjury in foreclosure affidavits and who needlessly caused God-knows-how-many people senseless grief and agony. You get three extra days to file your taxes, you lucky duckies! Be sure to enjoy your recently-renewed income tax cut, as well as your soon-to-be-implemented payroll tax cut. Socialism sure is cheap nowadays, donchathink? And finally, here’s an interesting piece on Goldman’s recent investment in Facebook (or is that Squidbook now?). The piece basically asks whether Facebook can issue shares as it plans to do without having to go public. I’m no expert but if Facebook wanted to find a firm that could help them arrange a legally questionable equity issuance, they probably picked the right one.
Continue reading …Post Office (Remember It?) Releases Stamps Honouring Dead Designers Doing Dead Products
January 5, 2011 No Comment
Credit US Post Office. Click to enlarge Just as I said when the Eames stamps came out a few years ago, when I mail my posts to Ben in the linotype department I am so going to use these new stamps honouring America’s great designers of the streamline age. But what is fascinating is what they were actually designing, and how few of the objects are actually in … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Our national media elite reviewed 2010 with great sorrow for how America has besmirched itself in the eyes of the world with its “seething hatred” of Muslims. CBS anchor Katie Couric announced on her Internet show that there wasn't enough evaluation of“this bigotry toward 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide” which was “so misdirected, and so wrong — and so disappointing.” Couric even embarrassed herself by suggesting “Maybe we need a Muslim version of The Cosby Show.” A ridiculous idea – unless it were to run every night instead of Couric’s lame half-hour “news” report. While Katie crinkles her face that anyone could march peacefully to oppose a mega-mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, here’s what does not upset Couric or her colleagues: Christians getting slaughtered and maimed in the Middle East by radical Islamists during the Christmas season. That story rates barely a media eyebrow lift. read more
Continue reading …Nope, despite what Iowa AG Tom Miller promised in this video, we’re not seeing any criminal prosecutions of these thieves. But at least these state AGs are more likely to force some real reforms into the foreclosure process: The 50 state attorneys general probing U.S. foreclosure practices will first settle with the five largest loan servicers, including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said. No settlements have been reached yet, Miller said in a telephone interview today. The other three are Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Ally Financial Inc., said Miller, the leader of the 50-state investigation. The five have 59 percent of the market, Miller said. “What we’re looking at is five separate agreements with the five largest servicers,” Miller said. “We’re still a ways away” from reaching agreements, he said. “We’re working very hard to figure out what should be in the settlement.” All 50 U.S. states are investigating whether banks and loan servicers used false documents and signatures to justify hundreds of thousands of foreclosures. The probe, announced Oct. 13, came after JPMorgan and Ally Financial’s GMAC mortgage unit said they would stop repossessions in 23 states where courts supervise home seizures, and Bank of America, the largest U.S. lender, froze foreclosures nationwide. The group isn’t pursuing a criminal investigation, Miller said. “Our focus is to reform the servicing process and that’s inherently civil, not criminal,” he said. In an interview last week, Miller said the group might consider matters including whether servicers are charging borrowers appropriate fees. “We hear stories far too often of it taking months before servicers get back to people, or they lose documents and that they don’t modify a loan when it makes sense,” Miller said last week. The 50-state group “offers one of the most promising avenues to increasing loan modification and servicer accountability that we have seen so far,” said Paul Leonard, California director for the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending in Durham, North Carolina. He said the group would act more independently than Congress or federal regulators because of the influence of industry lobbyists in Washington.
Continue reading …Why Won’t Republicans Attack Texas For Their Financial Crisis? Because It Doesn’t Fit The Narrative.
January 4, 2011 No CommentVia TPM, a good question : When we hear about states in financial crisis, how come the Republicans never mention Texas? But there’s one state, which is fairly high up on the list of troubled states that nobody is talking about, and there’s a reason for it. The state is Texas. This month the state’s part-time legislature goes back into session, and the state is starting at potentially a $25 billion deficit on a two-year budget of around $95 billion. That’s enormous. And there’s not much fat to cut. The whole budget is basically education and healthcare spending. Cutting everything else wouldn’t do the trick. And though raising this kind of money would be easy on an economy of $1.2 trillion, the new GOP mega-majority in Congress is firmly against raising any revenue. So the bi-ennial legislature, which convenes this month, faces some hard cuts. Some in the Texas GDP have advocated dropping Medicaid altogether to save money. So why haven’t we heard more about Texas, one of the most important economy’s in America? Well, it’s because it doesn’t fit the script. It’s a pro-business, lean-spending, no-union state. You can’t fit it into a nice storyline, so it’s ignored. But if you want to make comparisons between US states and ailing European countries, think of Texas as being like America’s Ireland. Ireland was once praised as a model for economic growth: conservatives loved it for its pro-business, anti-tax, low-spending strategy, and hailed it as the way forward for all of Europe. Then it blew up. This is the sleeper state budget crisis of 2011, and it will be praised for doing great, right up until the moment before it blows up .
Continue reading …Right-wingers don’t seem to ‘get it’: Bashing Latinos makes Tea Parties happy — and is long-term political suicide
January 4, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media This weekend, Fox News’ Julie Banderas featured a segment discussing the way Republicans are gearing up to get nasty and nativist on immigration this coming year — particularly in state legislatures where a batch of anti-14th Amendment “anchor baby” laws are about to come bubbling up . She invited on Bob Dane, spokesman for the nativist hate group FAIR, and Frank Sharry of America’s Voice, who pointed out that Republicans are slitting their own throats politically by taking this route. Banderas: Bob, what do you make of that? Frank just pointed out that the Republican, they have leaned right — very hard to the right, in fact, on the illegal immigration issue — is this going to drive Hispanics into the hands of the Democrats? Dane: No. You know, look, one of the things the Republicans are going to have to keep in mind, now that they’ve got the responsibility of the leadership mantle in the House, is they’ve got to demonstrate to the American public on the immigration issue that they ‘get it’. That Americans have had it with the cost and impact of illegal immigration. And Republicans are going to have to be careful that they do not revert to the soft-on-enforcement and teasing-around-with-amnesty policies of ’06 and ’08 that led to their own demise. Hmmmm. Maybe Dane has different sets of election results than I do. But the numbers don’t lie: In 2008, Latinos provided Barack Obama with the bulk of his electoral muscle. In 2010, they turned back the Tea Party tide in the Senate. And indeed, in the ensuing months since those elections, Republicans continue to do their damnedest to push Latinos into voting Democratic for the foreseeable future . But Dane made it clear — especially in declaring that “amnesty is off the table” — that the right-wing nativist faction now controlling the Republican is only interested in deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants. They have no interest in working out a system under which they can get right with the law. Which means that absolutely NOTHING will get done in terms of addressing immigration reform — including the ongoing reality that the American economy generates hundreds of thousands of unskilled-labor jobs every year and yet only provides 5,000 green cards to cover them . President Obama should take note too: Even though his administration has been objectively tougher about enforcing immigration laws than any preceding, the right-wing nativists will ALWAYS claim that he has been lax on enforcement. Maybe he should just give that particular malfunctioning strategy a break — and put his shoulder to the wheel in getting real reform done. It may never pass this House, but Democrats still control the Senate and can set the stage for an immigration debate there. Obama could and should become a real leader in that debate — because Americans really do want something done. And deportation isn’t it.
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enlarge Jon Cohn notes that the GOP’s game of chicken on whether to raise the debt ceiling is pretty goddamn insane : And the alternative—failing to increase the debt ceiling? What precise effects would that have? This isn’t my area of expertise, but my colleague Alex Hart knows a thing or two about it. Here’s what he wrote last week: Recent history provides a sense of just how scary this would be. “The reason the markets calmed down [during the financial crisis] is that we took [the banks’] toxic assets and handed the financial institutions Treasurys,” says Kevin Hassett, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “If we’re in a default situation, the Treasurys themselves are the toxic assets, and it’s not clear what we can hand anybody to calm them down.” The sad thing is, Graham seems to grasp this: In the same interview, he notes that default could be catastrophic. But that’s not stopping him from making his demands. And that’s particularly disheartening, since he is supposed to be one of the more reasonable members of the Republican Senate caucus. And this is precisely why the Democrats should (but certainly won’t) call the GOP’s bluff on the debt ceiling. Look, the Masters of the Universe have parked a lot of cash in treasuries over the past few years since t-bills are traditionally one of the safest investments around during times of extreme uncertainty. If the GOP puts the United States into serious risk of defaulting, the Masters of the Universe stand to lose a lot of money as the treasuries they’ve purchased become as toxic as Greek or Irish debt. This is why the GOP’s Wall Street overlords will never, repeat never, tolerate them playing around seriously with raising the debt ceiling and it’s why the GOP will cave if Obama and the Democrats stick to their guns (which they won’t, incidentally, as many of them actually will welcome the GOP giving them political cover to slash Social Security and other key programs). But would the GOPers really risk losing countless sums of money for their masters if they created a sovereign debt crisis? Sorta doubt it. And it’s worth letting them try simply to watch them slink away in defeat. Onto more economic news! Felix Salmon depressingly notes how Larry Summers will likely be replaced by yet another rich person with strong ties to Wall Street: From today’s WaPo report it seems that the shortlist to replace Larry Summers at the NEC has been whittled down to three men — Gene Sperling, Roger Altman, and Richard Levin. [T]hey’re all multi-millionaires with close ties to Wall Street. None more than Altman, of course, who has his own bank. But Levin is on the board of American Express, which paid him $181,362 in 2009, and where he has shares and “share equivalent units” worth $539,000. Which might not be a huge sum compared to the $1.5 million or so that he’s earning at Yale, but is still more than enough to make him a denizen of Wall Street rather than Main Street. Finally there’s Sperling, who in some ways is the worst of the three when it comes to grubbing money from Wall Street. The other two have well-defined and easily-understood jobs; Sperling, by contrast, signed up with the Harry Walker Agency and started giving speeches to anybody with cash, including not only Citigroup but even Allen Stanford. He also wrote a monthly 900-word column for Bloomberg for $137,500 a year, which works out at about $13 per word. Then he started “advising” Goldman Sachs on its charitable giving, which advice came very expensively indeed: Goldman Sachs paid Sperling $887,727 for advice on its charitable giving. That made the bank his highest-paying employer. Even Geithner’s chief of staff Patterson, who was a full-time lobbyist at the firm, did not make as much as Sperling did on a part-time basis. Patterson reported earning $637,492 from Goldman Sachs [in 2008]. Well, peachy. If there’s one thing America needs, it’s a another person who used to be on Goldman’s payroll making key economic policy recommendations. Brad DeLong gives it the old college try and insists that Sperling is actually a liberal, but to me this isn’t even about standard left-right ideology anymore but about whether people have bought into the idea that the Great Wall Street Casino is a sustainable economic model. Sperling could be a perfectly nice guy who really wants to help people get affordable health care and good education, but as long as he thinks Wall Street’s Ponziconomy is the best way to generate wealth in this country, he should have no business influencing national economic policy. On a more positive note, there has been some legit good economic news over the last couple of weeks. Initial jobless claims dipped below 400,000 for the first time since 2008 last week and we got word yesterday that manufacturing is picking up steam : Manufacturing activity expanded for a 17th month in a row in December, rising to the highest level in seven months, a purchasing managers’ group said Monday. The Institute for Supply Management’s index for manufacturing activity ticked up to 57 in December. That’s the highest reading since May and up from 56.6 in November. The reading came in slightly lower than the 57.3 level expected by a Briefing.com consensus of economists. Any reading of more than 50 indicates expansion in the sector, and the index has remained above this mark for 17 consecutive months. For the first time in forever, you can see real-life green shoots for the economy. Of course, several things could quickly derail any recovery this year (see: refusing to raise the debt ceiling) so let’s keep our fingers crossed. And for what it’s worth, the fake economy is also doing well right now, with the Dow closing in on 11,700. This doesn’t mean anything to the millions of people who can’t find a job, but the media seem to think it’s the most important economic metric EV-ARRRR so there you go. What else is happening, peeps?
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There’s no nicer place in America, as demonstrated by this photo juxtaposition of the president signing the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill. Related Entries January 3, 2011 So Much for Bipartisanship January 3, 2011 Celebrating the New GOP Majority
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A glance at The New York Times this morning (downloaded to my iPad in Rome) and it’s evident we’re already inhabiting a Matrix world. A threat by Julian Assange on Nov. 29 to “take down” a major American bank and reveal an “ecosystem of corruption” plucked from an unnamed executive’s hard drive, has set off a massive internal investigation by a team of five to 20 top Bank of America staffers who fear that the missing hard drive may be from one of their own. With its stock price falling, the bank has also hired consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton to join in the inquiry. Meanwhile, of course, the world’s media are still feeding off the hundreds of thousands of classified Pentagon and State Department documents, and new revelations continue each day. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune may have doubled after a massive new investment of $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor that values Facebook at … $50 billion. Social buying site Groupon recently turned down a $6 billion takeover bid from Google. And e-book sales will surge to $1 billion in 2011, headed for $3 billion by 2015. As for traditional booksellers such as Borders, they’re shutting down brick and mortar stores in an attempt to survive. We’re on an IT roller coaster. And what lies beyond the next curve? Who knows? Who just five years ago could have predicted the mammoth presence of Facebook and WikiLeaks and Kindle? As this new year begins, you can either rail against it all—or hold on—and enjoy the ride. Barry M. Lando, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia, spent 25 years as an award-winning investigative producer with “60 Minutes.” He has produced numerous articles, a documentary and a book, “Web of Deceit,” about Iraq. Lando is finishing a novel, “The Shomer Dossier.” Related Entries January 3, 2011 So Much for Bipartisanship January 3, 2011 Celebrating the New GOP Majority
Continue reading …Huckabee and Hannity proclaim Tea Party’s origins without mentioning Fox News’ role
January 3, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Mike Huckabee featured a canned interview with Sean Hannity on his show this weekend as part of a year-end retrospective in which they discussed the Tea Party. The amusing part came when they discussed Teh Awesome Power of the Tea Parties, which Hannity identified with the American people themselves. Both of them argued vehemently against the notion that the Tea Parties were mere corporate Astroturf. Completely absent from the discussion, naturally, was any mention whatsoever of the role played by Fox News. And while the role of astroturfers like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity in fact was indispensable, none of them came close wielding the sheer energizing and organizing power that having a national “news” network openly propagandize for a movement can bring. As John and I explain in Over the Cliff: How Obama’s Election Drove the American Right Insane (pp. 121-127): It costs advertisers thousands of dollars to air a single thirty-second commercial on a few cable stations for a week, even in relatively cheap rural markets. To advertise nationally on Fox News – the ratings leader in cable news – costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions if the ads air often enough and in prime-time programs. So what Fox News offered up the organizers of the tea parties — and the conservative movement opposing Obama’s presidency — was something you couldn’t measure in dollars and cents, because not only did Fox air a steady onslaught of “tea party” promotional ads, they embraced the outright promotion of the events in their news broadcasts and on their “opinion shows.” Their on-air personalities as well as their websites took an active role day after day and night after night promoting and urging the Fox audience to join in the tea party protests. Media Matters, a non-profit organization that tracks the conservative media documented 63 instances where Fox News anchors and guests openly promoted the tea parties and discussed them as a legitimate news event. Initially, there was a lull; there was only passing mention of the tea parties on Fox again for the two weeks after Van Susteren’s show. Then, on March 16, three Fox anchors – Glenn Beck, Bret Baier, and Bill O’Reilly – featured segments discussing the tea parties, again in glowing terms. O’Reilly told his audience that “big government spending protests are taking place all over the country. The latest in Cincinnati, where about 5,000 folks showed up, showed their displeasure with the Obama’s administration money strategy. These gatherings are being dubbed tea parties.” But it was Beck in particular who most avidly embraced the tea parties, making them his own pet cause. Some of this had to do with the ease with which the tea-party themes – an embrace of small-government philosophy, with an anti-tax and pro-gun fervor thrown in for emphasis – melded with the populist themes Beck was already exploring in depth on his show. On March 13, he had hosted a special one-hour program themed “You Are Not Alone” that was most notable for some of Beck’s most maudlin crying jags, including his oft-lampooned sob, “I just love my country – and I fear for it!” The show – like Beck’s later Tea Party promotions – featured broadcasts from specially gathered audiences in locations around the country who wanted to join Beck’s cause of “standing up to big government”. Its purpose was to launch Beck’s “912 Project” – named dually after Beck’s wish to bring the country back to “where we all were on the day after 9/11,” as well as the “9 Principles and 12 Values” Beck espoused, drawn from a 1972 book titled The 5,000-Year Leap, by far-right conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen, which Beck promoted on his show and website. After March 16 – when Beck noted the tea parties mostly in passing – the tea-party themes began to meld seamlessly with Beck’s “912 Project”. On March 18, Beck remarked: “People are starting to get angry. These tea parties are starting to really take off.” On March 20, Beck began making the connection explicit. Once again denouncing the Missouri law-enforcement report on right-wing extremism, he connected the “extremists” described therein to the tea partiers: But if you’re concerned about the government, you’re considered dangerous now in America. More than 160,000 Americans have already signed up to be part of our 9/12 Project, “912project.com,” since we launched it a week ago — 163,000 people have signed up. Who are these people? They’re people just like you that are just concerned about our government and they’re concerned about our country. You know, are they militia members? Yes. Yes, sure they are, along with all the other people that are now on the tea parties nationwide. There is one here in Orlando, Florida. Tomorrow is supposed to be huge. He mentioned the Orlando tea party warmly on March 23 as well, and then on March 24, Beck hosted two of the event’s tea-party organizers, Lisa Feroli and Shelley Ferguson, saying: “I have been telling you for weeks that you’ve got to stand up. And a lot of people around the country are doing these tea party things. But please, make them about principles, not about the parties. Make them about the principles.” Beck continued promoting the show each night through the rest of March. On his April 2 program, he announced that he would be hosting a special tea-party broadcast on April 15: “Tax Day, two weeks away. All right. More Americans are fed up with the nonsense in Washington both left and right. They are holding tea parties on April 15th. In this show, I can now announce that we’re going to have our program live from the only place in America where I think it really, really makes sense – the Alamo. Plant your flag, America. It’s in San Antonio, Texas. We will see you there on Tax Day!” Beck was only leading the way for the other Fox anchors. A few days later, on April 6, he announced that not only would he be hosting his San Antonio “Tax Day tea party” on the 15th, but so would Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren, who planned to do similar broadcasts from respective tea parties in Sacramento, Atlanta, and Washington the same day. Fox was planning to flood the airwaves with tea-party protests. Beck was prolific in promoting the tea parties. Between March 16 and April 14, Beck urgently implored his audiences to take part in the Tax Day protests a total of 17 times (out of a total of 21 shows). One of the more piquant episodes came when he hired a motivational speaker and sometime actor named Bob Basso to dress up in colonial costume and pretend to be Thomas Paine, embarking on a tea-party-loving rant: The time for talk is over. Enough is enough. Your democracy has deteriorated to government of the government, by the government, and for the government. On April 15, that despicable arrogance will be soundly challenged for the whole world to see. Our friends will applaud it. Our enemies will fear it. In an unprecedented moment of citizen response not seen since December 7, 1941, millions of your fellow Americans will bring their anger and determination into the streets. … Your complacency will only aid and abet our national suicide. Remember, they wouldn’t dare bomb Pearl Harbor, but they did. They wouldn’t dare drive two planes into the World Trade Center, but they did. They wouldn’t dare pilot a plane through the most sophisticated air defenses in the world and crash into the Pentagon, but they did. They wouldn’t dare pass the largest spending bill in history, in open defiance of the will of the people, but they did! Beck’s fellow Fox hosts did their best to keep pace. Sean Hannity featured segments on the tea parties a total of 13 times between March 12 and April 14, while Neil Cavuto’s afternoon business-oriented show featured a total of ten segments devoted to the protests during that same time. Nor were the “opinion shows” the only ones to do so: Another 15 or so tea-party promotional segments ran those weeks on such “news” shows as Fox and Friends, America’s Newsroom , and Special Report with Bret Baier. Fairly typical was a March 23 broadcast in which America’s Newsroom anchor Bill Hemmer directed people to a list of tea party events on FoxNews.com and promised to “add to [the list] when we get more information from the New American Tea Party.” Likewise, on the March 25 edition of Special Report, host Bret Baier said that the tea parties are “protests of wasteful government spending in general and of President Obama’s stimulus package and his budget in particular.” Another America’s Newsroom broadcast on April 6, Fox contributor Andrea Tantaros described the protests: “People are fighting against Barack Obama’s radical shift to turn us into Europe.” Fox News also aired on-screen text stating that the “Tea Parties Are Anti-Stimulus Demonstrations.” Despite the obvious anti-Obama bent of all these protests, Beck and other Fox hosts worked hard to present the tea parties as “non-partisan,” bringing on guests who were either disappointed Democrats or conservatives still angry with the Republican Party too. Yet the nonstop drumbeat around the protests made clear that they were primarily in response to Obama administration policies. The March 24 segment of America’s Newsroom promoting the tea parties was a classic instance of this. In it, Hemmer interviewed a man named Lloyd Marcus who was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color, who told Hemmer that he previously “was on a 40-city ‘Stop Obama’ tour”. Marcus’ wrote a song, posted on FoxNews.com, which made clear that this was about Obama: Mr. President! Your stimulus is sure to bust. It’s just a socialistic scheme, The only thing it will do Is kill the American Dream. You wanna take from achievers Somehow you think that’s fair. And redistribute to those folks Who won’t get out of their easy chair. We’re havin’ a tea party across this land. If you love this country, Come on and join our band. We’re standin’ up for freedom and liberty, ‘Cause patriots have shown us freedom ain’t free. So when they call you a racist cause you disagree, It’s just another of their dirty tricks to silence you and me. Indeed, Fox News’ website was rich with tea-party promotion, as were its affiliated sites like the new FoxNation site, which tried to act as a sort of “information central” for the tea parties, with numerous links discussing and promoting the protests. One link, titled “Find a Tea Party!”, directed readers to a Google Maps page for “2009 Tea Parties.” Another link to you to a YouTube video headlined, “The Trillion Dollar Tea Party Video!”, which featured Tampa Bay Area Tea Party organizers explaining why viewers should “join your local tea party.” For those who couldn’t make it, Fox News announced that viewers could also attend “a virtual tax day tea party” at FoxNation instead. Sean Hannity’s website at Fox featured a graphic with links to a message board discussion: “This thread is for the sole purpose of getting the word out about organized tea party events around the country. If you know of a planned event, please post the information here.” Hannity’s producers wrote a blog post on his site proclaiming, “Get your Tea Party Tees at CAFE PRESS and wear them on April 15!” There were also “some helpful links” to AtlantaTeaParty.net and TaxDayTeaParty.com. Then there were the promotional ads. In the 10 days leading up to the April 15 protests, Media Matters reported that Fox News aired 107 ads promoting them. At times, Fox tried to deny that this deluge of glowingly sympathetic “reports” and barrage of commercials on the tea parties actually constituted promotion of the event. On the morning of the protests April 15, Fox and Friends broadcast, host Steve Doocy told his audience that “Fox is not sponsoring any of them, but we have been covering them.” This was a peculiar (not to mention disingenuous) remark, considering that Fox had repeatedly run onscreen graphics describing the events at which its anchors were to appear as “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.” Of course, this history will never be aired on Fox — especially now that Rupert Murdoch denies promoting the Tea Parties.
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