The Fighting Moderates
By
PAUL KRUGMAN
"The Republicans know the America they want, and they are not afraid to use
any means to get there," Howard Dean said in accepting the chairmanship of
the
Democratic National Committee. "But there is something that this
administration and the Republican Party are very afraid of. It is that we
may actually
begin fighting for what we believe."
Those words tell us what the selection of Mr. Dean means. It doesn't
represent a turn to the left: Mr. Dean is squarely in the center of his
party on issues
like health care and national defense. Instead, Mr. Dean's political
rejuvenation reflects the new ascendancy within the party of fighting
moderates, the
Democrats who believe that they must defend their principles aggressively
against the right-wing radicals who have taken over Congress and the White
House.
It was always absurd to call Mr. Dean a left-winger. Just ask the real
left-wingers. During his presidential campaign, an article in the muckraking
newsletter
CounterPunch denounced him as a "Clintonesque Republicrat," someone who, as
governor, tried "to balance the budget, even though Vermont is a state in
which
a balanced budget is not required."
Even on Iraq, many moderates, including moderate Republicans, quietly shared
Mr. Dean's misgivings - which have been fully vindicated - about the march
to war.
But Mr. Dean, of course, wasn't quiet. He frankly questioned the Bush
administration's motives and honesty at a time when most Democrats believed
that the
prudent thing was to play along with the war party.
We'll never know whether Democrats would have done better over the past four
years if they had taken a stronger stand against the right. But it's clear
that the time for that sort of caution is past.
For one thing, there's no more room for illusions. In 2001 it was possible
for some Democrats to convince themselves that President Bush's tax cuts
were
consistent with an agenda that was only moderately conservative. In 2002 it
was possible for some Democrats to convince themselves that the push for war
with Iraq was really about eliminating weapons of mass destruction.
But in 2005 it takes an act of willful blindness not to see that the Bush
plan for Social Security is intended, in essence, to dismantle the most
important
achievement of the New Deal. The Republicans themselves say so: the push for
privatization is following the playbook laid out in a 1983 Cato Journal
article
titled "A 'Leninist' Strategy," and in a White House memo declaring that
"for the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can
win
- and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical
landscape of the country."
By refusing to be bullied into false bipartisanship on Social Security,
Democrats have already scored a significant tactical victory. Just two
months ago,
TV pundits were ridiculing Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, for
denying that Social Security faces a crisis, and for rejecting outright the
idea
of diverting payroll taxes into private accounts. But now the Bush
administration itself has dropped the crisis language, and admitted that
private accounts
would do nothing to improve the system's finances.
By standing firm against Mr. Bush's attempt to stampede the country into
dismantling its most important social insurance program, Democrats like Mr.
Reid,
Nancy Pelosi, Dick Durbin and Barbara Boxer have, at a minimum, broken the
administration's momentum, and quite possibly doomed its plan. The more time
the news media spend examining the details of privatization, the worse it
looks. And those Democrats have also given their party a demonstration of
what
it means to be an effective opposition.
In fact, by taking on Social Security, Mr. Bush gave the Democrats a chance
to remember what they stand for, and why. Here's my favorite version, from
another
fighting moderate, Eliot Spitzer: "As President Bush embraces the ownership
society and tries to claim that he is the one that is making it possible for
the middle class to succeed and save and invest - well, I say to myself, no,
that's not right; it is the Democratic Party historically that created the
middle class."
For a while, Mr. Dean will be the public face of the Democrats, and the
Republicans will try to portray him as the leftist he isn't. But Deanism
isn't about
turning to the left: it's about making a stand.
Copyright 2005
Posted by Miriam V.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Economy's Growing, but Where Are the New Jobs?
A Call To Action
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-econ15feb15,0,5291036.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Economy's Growing, but Where Are the New Jobs?
Firms are expanding without hiring. Some analysts wonder if this change is permanent.
By Nicholas Riccardi
Times Staff Writer
February 15, 2005
Carlton Guthrie sees bright times ahead. After weathering the 2001 recession, his manufacturing company has made enough money to pay off some debt and position itself to expand.
But he's not planning to add jobs.
"I don't see us hiring anytime soon," said Guthrie, co-chairman of Detroit Chassis, which makes chassis for motor homes. "I see a tremendous amount of room for us becoming more efficient."
Guthrie's ability to expand his business without enlarging the payroll — a feat achieved by many executives across the nation — helps explain why job creation continues to be sluggish even while the economy appears to be booming.
The U.S. economy grew at a brisk 4.4% clip last year, but it was not until last month that the number of jobs recovered to the levels of early 2001. The Labor Department pegs the unemployment rate at 5.2%, the lowest in four years, but the share of people who have stopped hunting for work is the largest it has been since 1988. Today's job growth is more than twice as slow as it was after the 1990-91 recession, and slower than during any recovery since World War II, analysts say.
The discrepancy is fueling a growing debate about whether such low employment growth is a harbinger of a world in which businesses can rake in increasing profits without much of it trickling down to workers.
"Until now, this recovery has been all about businesses," said economist Mark Zandi of Economy.com, an economic research firm in West Chester, Pa. "Businesses are in about as good a financial shape as I've seen them."
Instead of aggressively adding workers, corporations have been buying labor-saving equipment, banking cash, distributing record dividends, buying back stock or undertaking ambitious mergers that often lead to job losses.
There is a wide range of reasons for these choices. Manufacturers such as Guthrie are pinched by price competition and required to continually cut costs. Other executives are wary about expanding payrolls in a time of ballooning healthcare premiums. Companies are cautious about bloating their staffs, remembering the excesses of the late 1990s. And shipping jobs out of the country still seems cheaper than paying American salaries.
The high level of corporate profits and cash leads many analysts to forecast that more jobs will be created down the road. History shows, they argue, that excess cash is eventually spent, creating opportunities for workers. The last time the country fretted about a so-called jobless recovery was during the early 1990s — just before an avalanche of employment stemming from the tech boom.
Another factor that could soon lead to more job growth: slowing gains in productivity. Companies have squeezed just about all they can out of existing workers through labor-saving technology and efficient management practices, analysts say.
Skeptics point to the fact that wages remain relatively flat, growing slower last year than the rate of inflation — translating into a cut in take-home pay for many workers. That stagnation indicates to skeptics that the traditional business cycle — in which growth leads to a tight labor market that bids up wages — may be a thing of the past.
"The big question is: Has there been some structural change, in that what we're seeing in the rearview mirror doesn't apply to what's in front of us?" asked Jared Bernstein of the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Drew Brosseau, managing director of investment company S.G. Cowen, thinks he has an answer: Money is increasingly being invested in high-technology sectors that do not require as many people as do old-fashioned factory jobs.
"A lot of the information industries that are drivers of growth these days are not as person-intensive as manufacturing," Brosseau said.
Even though it is a manufacturer, Detroit Chassis also has become less person-intensive.
After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the recreational vehicle market collapsed. With orders plummeting, Detroit Chassis co-Chairman Guthrie laid off about 50 workers and cut salaries by 30% across the board — including management.
Guthrie has since revamped the way his plant assembles RV frames to squeeze every ounce of efficiency out of his staff, boosting output by about 30%.
Sales now have improved enough for him to bring pay levels back to where they were before the terrorist attacks. And he's retired about 30% of his company's $8-million debt.
"We're doing well," he said.
Now, Guthrie said, workers are finding new efficiencies every day. In return, he's not cutting jobs but redeploying employees to new ventures, such as creating safety products for RVs and trucks. "We're running at warp speed right now," he said.
But those endeavors will not require more employees quite yet, Guthrie said. He said he could hire more people by the end of the year if the ventures do well, but, for now, improvements in technology and organization will allow him to make new products with the same staff.
Guthrie's not alone.
Businesses have increased productivity mightily in the last three years, with gains of 4% or more annually — the highest since World War II, economists say. That, coupled with consumer demand, has allowed companies to turn profits without adding many jobs.
To see how businesses hold back hiring, analysts say, just look in their bank accounts.
Corporations are sitting on $4.7 trillion in liquid assets, according to a survey by Treasury Strategies, a Chicago-based company that studies business liquidity. That's well above the $3.6 trillion of 1999 but down slightly from the $5-trillion high of 2003.
However, as much as 30% of the money and cash equivalents is invested in instruments that will mature in one year or more — a sign that cash will remain stashed away awhile longer, said Tony Carfan of Treasury Strategies.
"There is a lot of cash out there," said David Huether, chief economist of the National Assn. of Manufacturers. "Profits have picked up a bit, but I think that firms still are a little conservative in terms of expanding plants and equipment."
Not all businesses are reluctant to add jobs. W.W. Grainger Inc., a retailer of manufacturing products based in Lake Forest, Ill., is expanding its sales force. It added 800 jobs last year.
But Jim Ryan, the company's group president, said that was atypical. "We're still seeing some conservatism in the economy," he said.
Such conservatism, analysts say, could push workers to rein in their spending. Because consumer spending has driven the current economic expansion, any pullback could increase the risk of "a deceleration of economic activity," said John Lonski, chief economist at credit rating firm Moody's Investors Service.
Lonski, however, said he didn't see that happening. He contended that businesses' aversion to hiring could lead to an unexpected labor shortage this year. And businesses still have all that cash.
"It's difficult to be gloomy about employment prospects," Lonski said, "when we're in a virtual ocean of liquidity."
But that liquidity can go to places other than the labor market.
For years, Microsoft Corp. was growing so quickly and making so much money that its cash piled up. In December, the software giant released a chunk of the money — $32.6 billion in dividend payments to its shareholders, a sum so immense that it drove up the nation's personal income that month.
Brosseau of S.G. Cowen, who follows the company, said it wouldn't make sense for Microsoft to pour that cash into hiring more programmers.
"It doesn't matter how much money they spend on Windows; you can only create a new version of Windows so fast," Brosseau said. "The PC industry is now, arguably, 25 years old and has matured to the point where you shouldn't be expecting that to be a growth industry anymore."
Brosseau said Microsoft was expanding into new areas and investing more in its workforce than other technology firms. Microsoft is planning to hire 6,000 to 7,000 workers this year — more U.S. workers than it has added in the last two years combined.
Microsoft and other cash-rich companies also are snapping up other companies, setting off a surge in mergers and acquisitions — and resultant job cuts.
SBC Communications Inc. last month agreed to purchase AT&T Corp., and 13,000 jobs are expected to be lost. Oracle Corp. paid $11 billion to buy PeopleSoft Inc. in December and has dropped an estimated 5,000 employees.
One of them was Sharon Marsh. The 44-year-old Dublin, Calif., resident was PeopleSoft's manager of corporate meeting services. But since last month, she's been pounding the pavement looking for work.
"There's not that many options out there for me," she said.
Initially, Marsh tried shopping as therapy, and she's going to movies and lunching with old friends — the sort of consumer activity that helps businesses make money. But she said the realities of unemployment would change all that.
"Now I'm going to stop this, live frugally," Marsh said, "because you don't know what's going to happen."
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
TMS Reprints
Article licensing and reprint options
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-econ15feb15,0,5291036.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Economy's Growing, but Where Are the New Jobs?
Firms are expanding without hiring. Some analysts wonder if this change is permanent.
By Nicholas Riccardi
Times Staff Writer
February 15, 2005
Carlton Guthrie sees bright times ahead. After weathering the 2001 recession, his manufacturing company has made enough money to pay off some debt and position itself to expand.
But he's not planning to add jobs.
"I don't see us hiring anytime soon," said Guthrie, co-chairman of Detroit Chassis, which makes chassis for motor homes. "I see a tremendous amount of room for us becoming more efficient."
Guthrie's ability to expand his business without enlarging the payroll — a feat achieved by many executives across the nation — helps explain why job creation continues to be sluggish even while the economy appears to be booming.
The U.S. economy grew at a brisk 4.4% clip last year, but it was not until last month that the number of jobs recovered to the levels of early 2001. The Labor Department pegs the unemployment rate at 5.2%, the lowest in four years, but the share of people who have stopped hunting for work is the largest it has been since 1988. Today's job growth is more than twice as slow as it was after the 1990-91 recession, and slower than during any recovery since World War II, analysts say.
The discrepancy is fueling a growing debate about whether such low employment growth is a harbinger of a world in which businesses can rake in increasing profits without much of it trickling down to workers.
"Until now, this recovery has been all about businesses," said economist Mark Zandi of Economy.com, an economic research firm in West Chester, Pa. "Businesses are in about as good a financial shape as I've seen them."
Instead of aggressively adding workers, corporations have been buying labor-saving equipment, banking cash, distributing record dividends, buying back stock or undertaking ambitious mergers that often lead to job losses.
There is a wide range of reasons for these choices. Manufacturers such as Guthrie are pinched by price competition and required to continually cut costs. Other executives are wary about expanding payrolls in a time of ballooning healthcare premiums. Companies are cautious about bloating their staffs, remembering the excesses of the late 1990s. And shipping jobs out of the country still seems cheaper than paying American salaries.
The high level of corporate profits and cash leads many analysts to forecast that more jobs will be created down the road. History shows, they argue, that excess cash is eventually spent, creating opportunities for workers. The last time the country fretted about a so-called jobless recovery was during the early 1990s — just before an avalanche of employment stemming from the tech boom.
Another factor that could soon lead to more job growth: slowing gains in productivity. Companies have squeezed just about all they can out of existing workers through labor-saving technology and efficient management practices, analysts say.
Skeptics point to the fact that wages remain relatively flat, growing slower last year than the rate of inflation — translating into a cut in take-home pay for many workers. That stagnation indicates to skeptics that the traditional business cycle — in which growth leads to a tight labor market that bids up wages — may be a thing of the past.
"The big question is: Has there been some structural change, in that what we're seeing in the rearview mirror doesn't apply to what's in front of us?" asked Jared Bernstein of the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Drew Brosseau, managing director of investment company S.G. Cowen, thinks he has an answer: Money is increasingly being invested in high-technology sectors that do not require as many people as do old-fashioned factory jobs.
"A lot of the information industries that are drivers of growth these days are not as person-intensive as manufacturing," Brosseau said.
Even though it is a manufacturer, Detroit Chassis also has become less person-intensive.
After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the recreational vehicle market collapsed. With orders plummeting, Detroit Chassis co-Chairman Guthrie laid off about 50 workers and cut salaries by 30% across the board — including management.
Guthrie has since revamped the way his plant assembles RV frames to squeeze every ounce of efficiency out of his staff, boosting output by about 30%.
Sales now have improved enough for him to bring pay levels back to where they were before the terrorist attacks. And he's retired about 30% of his company's $8-million debt.
"We're doing well," he said.
Now, Guthrie said, workers are finding new efficiencies every day. In return, he's not cutting jobs but redeploying employees to new ventures, such as creating safety products for RVs and trucks. "We're running at warp speed right now," he said.
But those endeavors will not require more employees quite yet, Guthrie said. He said he could hire more people by the end of the year if the ventures do well, but, for now, improvements in technology and organization will allow him to make new products with the same staff.
Guthrie's not alone.
Businesses have increased productivity mightily in the last three years, with gains of 4% or more annually — the highest since World War II, economists say. That, coupled with consumer demand, has allowed companies to turn profits without adding many jobs.
To see how businesses hold back hiring, analysts say, just look in their bank accounts.
Corporations are sitting on $4.7 trillion in liquid assets, according to a survey by Treasury Strategies, a Chicago-based company that studies business liquidity. That's well above the $3.6 trillion of 1999 but down slightly from the $5-trillion high of 2003.
However, as much as 30% of the money and cash equivalents is invested in instruments that will mature in one year or more — a sign that cash will remain stashed away awhile longer, said Tony Carfan of Treasury Strategies.
"There is a lot of cash out there," said David Huether, chief economist of the National Assn. of Manufacturers. "Profits have picked up a bit, but I think that firms still are a little conservative in terms of expanding plants and equipment."
Not all businesses are reluctant to add jobs. W.W. Grainger Inc., a retailer of manufacturing products based in Lake Forest, Ill., is expanding its sales force. It added 800 jobs last year.
But Jim Ryan, the company's group president, said that was atypical. "We're still seeing some conservatism in the economy," he said.
Such conservatism, analysts say, could push workers to rein in their spending. Because consumer spending has driven the current economic expansion, any pullback could increase the risk of "a deceleration of economic activity," said John Lonski, chief economist at credit rating firm Moody's Investors Service.
Lonski, however, said he didn't see that happening. He contended that businesses' aversion to hiring could lead to an unexpected labor shortage this year. And businesses still have all that cash.
"It's difficult to be gloomy about employment prospects," Lonski said, "when we're in a virtual ocean of liquidity."
But that liquidity can go to places other than the labor market.
For years, Microsoft Corp. was growing so quickly and making so much money that its cash piled up. In December, the software giant released a chunk of the money — $32.6 billion in dividend payments to its shareholders, a sum so immense that it drove up the nation's personal income that month.
Brosseau of S.G. Cowen, who follows the company, said it wouldn't make sense for Microsoft to pour that cash into hiring more programmers.
"It doesn't matter how much money they spend on Windows; you can only create a new version of Windows so fast," Brosseau said. "The PC industry is now, arguably, 25 years old and has matured to the point where you shouldn't be expecting that to be a growth industry anymore."
Brosseau said Microsoft was expanding into new areas and investing more in its workforce than other technology firms. Microsoft is planning to hire 6,000 to 7,000 workers this year — more U.S. workers than it has added in the last two years combined.
Microsoft and other cash-rich companies also are snapping up other companies, setting off a surge in mergers and acquisitions — and resultant job cuts.
SBC Communications Inc. last month agreed to purchase AT&T Corp., and 13,000 jobs are expected to be lost. Oracle Corp. paid $11 billion to buy PeopleSoft Inc. in December and has dropped an estimated 5,000 employees.
One of them was Sharon Marsh. The 44-year-old Dublin, Calif., resident was PeopleSoft's manager of corporate meeting services. But since last month, she's been pounding the pavement looking for work.
"There's not that many options out there for me," she said.
Initially, Marsh tried shopping as therapy, and she's going to movies and lunching with old friends — the sort of consumer activity that helps businesses make money. But she said the realities of unemployment would change all that.
"Now I'm going to stop this, live frugally," Marsh said, "because you don't know what's going to happen."
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
TMS Reprints
Article licensing and reprint options
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
Fwd: Fw: An Australian View of Dubya
In a message dated 2/11/2005 3:48:16 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, miriam@panix.com writes:
>From the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
>
>by Mike Carlton
>
> George Bush's second inaugural extravaganza was
> every bit as repugnant as I had expected, a vulgar orgy of
triumphalism
>probably unmatched since Napoleon crowned himself emperor of the French
>in Notre Dame in 1804.
>
> The little Corsican corporal had a few decent
>victories to his escutcheon. Lodi, Marengo, that sort of thing. Not so
>this strutting Texan mountebank, with his chimpanzee smirk and his
>born-again banalities delivered in that constipated syntax that sounds
>the way cold cheeseburgers look, and his grinning plastic wife, and his
>scheming junta of neo-con spivs, shamans, flatterers and armchair
>warmongers, and his sinuous evasions and his brazen lies, and his
>sleight of hand theft from the American poor, and his rape of the
>environment, and his lethal conviction that the world must submit to
>his Pax Americana or be bombed into charcoal.
>
> Difficult to know what was more repellent: the
>estimated $US40 million cost of this jamboree (most of it stumped up by
>Republican fat-cats buying future presidential favours), or the sheer
>crassness of its excess when American boys are dying in the quagmire of
>Bush's very own Iraq war.
>
> Other wartime presidents sought restraint. Abraham
>Lincoln's second inaugural address in 1865 - "with malice toward none,
>with charity for all" - is the shortest ever. And he had prettymuch won
>the Civil War by that time.
>
> In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt opened his
>fourth-term speech with the "wish that the form of this inauguration be
>simple and its words brief". He spoke for a couple of eloquent
>minutes, then went off to a light lunch, his wartime victory almost
>complete as well.
>
> But restraint is not a Dubya word. Learning
>nothing, the dumbest and nastiest president since the scandalous Warren
>Harding died in 1923, Bush is now intent on expanding the Iraq war to
>neighbouring Iran.
>
> Condoleezza Rice did admit to the US Senate this
>week that there had been some "not so good" decisions. But the more I
>see of her gleaming teeth and her fibreglass helmet of hair and her
>perky confidence, the more I am convinced that back in the '60s she
>used to be Cindy Birdsong, up there beside Diana Ross as one of the
>Supremes of Motown fame. I don't think it's a good idea to let her make
>a comeback as Secretary of State.
>
> The war in Iran is under way already, if we believe Seymour
>Hersh, the distinguished investigative writer for The New Yorker
>magazine.
>
> Hersh reported this week that clandestine US
>special forces have been on the ground there, targeting nuclear
>facilities to be bombed whenever Bush feels the time is ripe.
>
> "The immediate goals of the attacks would be to
>destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran's ability to go nuclear,"
>he wrote, quoting reliable intelligence sources.
>
> "But there are other, equally purposeful, motives
>at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the
>Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on
>Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious
>leadership."
>
> Naturally, Pentagon flacks rushed out to deny all.
>But then they did that when Hersh broke the story of the My Lai
>massacre in Vietnam in 1968, and again when he revealed the torture of
>Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A tussle for the truth between Hersh and
>the Pentagon is no contest.
>
> What terrifies me most is the people planning this new
>war. The CIA professionals have been frozen out: too weak and wimpy for
>the Bushies.
>
> The Defence Secretary, the incompetent Donald
>Rumsfeld, has seized control, aided by two Pentagon under-secretaries.
>One is Douglas Feith, a mad-eyed Zionist largely responsible for the
>post-invasion collapse of order in Iraq, a civilian bureaucrat
>memorably described by the former Centcom commander, General Tommy
>Franks, as "the f---ing stupidest guy on the face of the Earth".
>
> The other is army Lieutenant General William G.
>(Jerry) Boykin, whose name also rings a bell. Jerry is a born-again
>Christian evangelical, a three-star bigot who, in his spare time,
>stumps the country in full uniform, preaching that America's enemy is
>Satan, Allah is a false idol, and that George Bush has been ordained by
>the Lord to rout evil.
>
> "He's in the White House because God put him there
>for a time such as this," Jerry told a prayer meetin' in Oregon just a
>while back.
>
> Be very afraid.
>
> (c) 2005 The Sydney Morning Herald
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." --James Madison
Contribute at: http://call2action.blogspot.com/
Contribute at: http://call2action.blogspot.com/
Fwd: We can do it: 500,000 against Social Security cuts
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." --James Madison
Contribute at: http://call2action.blogspot.com/
Contribute at: http://call2action.blogspot.com/
untitled
>From the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
>
>by Mike Carlton
>
> George Bush's second inaugural extravaganza was
> every bit as repugnant as I had expected, a vulgar orgy of
triumphalism
>probably unmatched since Napoleon crowned himself emperor of the French
>in Notre Dame in 1804.
>
> The little Corsican corporal had a few decent
>victories to his escutcheon. Lodi, Marengo, that sort of thing. Not so
>this strutting Texan mountebank, with his chimpanzee smirk and his
>born-again banalities delivered in that constipated syntax that sounds
>the way cold cheeseburgers look, and his grinning plastic wife, and his
>scheming junta of neo-con spivs, shamans, flatterers and armchair
>warmongers, and his sinuous evasions and his brazen lies, and his
>sleight of hand theft from the American poor, and his rape of the
>environment, and his lethal conviction that the world must submit to
>his Pax Americana or be bombed into charcoal.
>
> Difficult to know what was more repellent: the
>estimated $US40 million cost of this jamboree (most of it stumped up by
>Republican fat-cats buying future presidential favours), or the sheer
>crassness of its excess when American boys are dying in the quagmire of
>Bush's very own Iraq war.
>
> Other wartime presidents sought restraint. Abraham
>Lincoln's second inaugural address in 1865 - "with malice toward none,
>with charity for all" - is the shortest ever. And he had prettymuch won
>the Civil War by that time.
>
> In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt opened his
>fourth-term speech with the "wish that the form of this inauguration be
>simple and its words brief". He spoke for a couple of eloquent
>minutes, then went off to a light lunch, his wartime victory almost
>complete as well.
>
> But restraint is not a Dubya word. Learning
>nothing, the dumbest and nastiest president since the scandalous Warren
>Harding died in 1923, Bush is now intent on expanding the Iraq war to
>neighbouring Iran.
>
> Condoleezza Rice did admit to the US Senate this
>week that there had been some "not so good" decisions. But the more I
>see of her gleaming teeth and her fibreglass helmet of hair and her
>perky confidence, the more I am convinced that back in the '60s she
>used to be Cindy Birdsong, up there beside Diana Ross as one of the
>Supremes of Motown fame. I don't think it's a good idea to let her make
>a comeback as Secretary of State.
>
> The war in Iran is under way already, if we believe Seymour
>Hersh, the distinguished investigative writer for The New Yorker
>magazine.
>
> Hersh reported this week that clandestine US
>special forces have been on the ground there, targeting nuclear
>facilities to be bombed whenever Bush feels the time is ripe.
>
> "The immediate goals of the attacks would be to
>destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran's ability to go nuclear,"
>he wrote, quoting reliable intelligence sources.
>
> "But there are other, equally purposeful, motives
>at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the
>Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on
>Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious
>leadership."
>
> Naturally, Pentagon flacks rushed out to deny all.
>But then they did that when Hersh broke the story of the My Lai
>massacre in Vietnam in 1968, and again when he revealed the torture of
>Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A tussle for the truth between Hersh and
>the Pentagon is no contest.
>
> What terrifies me most is the people planning this new
>war. The CIA professionals have been frozen out: too weak and wimpy for
>the Bushies.
>
> The Defence Secretary, the incompetent Donald
>Rumsfeld, has seized control, aided by two Pentagon under-secretaries.
>One is Douglas Feith, a mad-eyed Zionist largely responsible for the
>post-invasion collapse of order in Iraq, a civilian bureaucrat
>memorably described by the former Centcom commander, General Tommy
>Franks, as "the f---ing stupidest guy on the face of the Earth".
>
> The other is army Lieutenant General William G.
>(Jerry) Boykin, whose name also rings a bell. Jerry is a born-again
>Christian evangelical, a three-star bigot who, in his spare time,
>stumps the country in full uniform, preaching that America's enemy is
>Satan, Allah is a false idol, and that George Bush has been ordained by
>the Lord to rout evil.
>
> "He's in the White House because God put him there
>for a time such as this," Jerry told a prayer meetin' in Oregon just a
>while back.
>
> Be very afraid.
>
> (c) 2005 The Sydney Morning Herald
>
>by Mike Carlton
>
> George Bush's second inaugural extravaganza was
> every bit as repugnant as I had expected, a vulgar orgy of
triumphalism
>probably unmatched since Napoleon crowned himself emperor of the French
>in Notre Dame in 1804.
>
> The little Corsican corporal had a few decent
>victories to his escutcheon. Lodi, Marengo, that sort of thing. Not so
>this strutting Texan mountebank, with his chimpanzee smirk and his
>born-again banalities delivered in that constipated syntax that sounds
>the way cold cheeseburgers look, and his grinning plastic wife, and his
>scheming junta of neo-con spivs, shamans, flatterers and armchair
>warmongers, and his sinuous evasions and his brazen lies, and his
>sleight of hand theft from the American poor, and his rape of the
>environment, and his lethal conviction that the world must submit to
>his Pax Americana or be bombed into charcoal.
>
> Difficult to know what was more repellent: the
>estimated $US40 million cost of this jamboree (most of it stumped up by
>Republican fat-cats buying future presidential favours), or the sheer
>crassness of its excess when American boys are dying in the quagmire of
>Bush's very own Iraq war.
>
> Other wartime presidents sought restraint. Abraham
>Lincoln's second inaugural address in 1865 - "with malice toward none,
>with charity for all" - is the shortest ever. And he had prettymuch won
>the Civil War by that time.
>
> In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt opened his
>fourth-term speech with the "wish that the form of this inauguration be
>simple and its words brief". He spoke for a couple of eloquent
>minutes, then went off to a light lunch, his wartime victory almost
>complete as well.
>
> But restraint is not a Dubya word. Learning
>nothing, the dumbest and nastiest president since the scandalous Warren
>Harding died in 1923, Bush is now intent on expanding the Iraq war to
>neighbouring Iran.
>
> Condoleezza Rice did admit to the US Senate this
>week that there had been some "not so good" decisions. But the more I
>see of her gleaming teeth and her fibreglass helmet of hair and her
>perky confidence, the more I am convinced that back in the '60s she
>used to be Cindy Birdsong, up there beside Diana Ross as one of the
>Supremes of Motown fame. I don't think it's a good idea to let her make
>a comeback as Secretary of State.
>
> The war in Iran is under way already, if we believe Seymour
>Hersh, the distinguished investigative writer for The New Yorker
>magazine.
>
> Hersh reported this week that clandestine US
>special forces have been on the ground there, targeting nuclear
>facilities to be bombed whenever Bush feels the time is ripe.
>
> "The immediate goals of the attacks would be to
>destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran's ability to go nuclear,"
>he wrote, quoting reliable intelligence sources.
>
> "But there are other, equally purposeful, motives
>at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the
>Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on
>Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious
>leadership."
>
> Naturally, Pentagon flacks rushed out to deny all.
>But then they did that when Hersh broke the story of the My Lai
>massacre in Vietnam in 1968, and again when he revealed the torture of
>Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A tussle for the truth between Hersh and
>the Pentagon is no contest.
>
> What terrifies me most is the people planning this new
>war. The CIA professionals have been frozen out: too weak and wimpy for
>the Bushies.
>
> The Defence Secretary, the incompetent Donald
>Rumsfeld, has seized control, aided by two Pentagon under-secretaries.
>One is Douglas Feith, a mad-eyed Zionist largely responsible for the
>post-invasion collapse of order in Iraq, a civilian bureaucrat
>memorably described by the former Centcom commander, General Tommy
>Franks, as "the f---ing stupidest guy on the face of the Earth".
>
> The other is army Lieutenant General William G.
>(Jerry) Boykin, whose name also rings a bell. Jerry is a born-again
>Christian evangelical, a three-star bigot who, in his spare time,
>stumps the country in full uniform, preaching that America's enemy is
>Satan, Allah is a false idol, and that George Bush has been ordained by
>the Lord to rout evil.
>
> "He's in the White House because God put him there
>for a time such as this," Jerry told a prayer meetin' in Oregon just a
>while back.
>
> Be very afraid.
>
> (c) 2005 The Sydney Morning Herald
untitled
>From the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
>
>by Mike Carlton
>
> George Bush's second inaugural extravaganza was
> every bit as repugnant as I had expected, a vulgar orgy of
triumphalism
>probably unmatched since Napoleon crowned himself emperor of the French
>in Notre Dame in 1804.
>
> The little Corsican corporal had a few decent
>victories to his escutcheon. Lodi, Marengo, that sort of thing. Not so
>this strutting Texan mountebank, with his chimpanzee smirk and his
>born-again banalities delivered in that constipated syntax that sounds
>the way cold cheeseburgers look, and his grinning plastic wife, and his
>scheming junta of neo-con spivs, shamans, flatterers and armchair
>warmongers, and his sinuous evasions and his brazen lies, and his
>sleight of hand theft from the American poor, and his rape of the
>environment, and his lethal conviction that the world must submit to
>his Pax Americana or be bombed into charcoal.
>
> Difficult to know what was more repellent: the
>estimated $US40 million cost of this jamboree (most of it stumped up by
>Republican fat-cats buying future presidential favours), or the sheer
>crassness of its excess when American boys are dying in the quagmire of
>Bush's very own Iraq war.
>
> Other wartime presidents sought restraint. Abraham
>Lincoln's second inaugural address in 1865 - "with malice toward none,
>with charity for all" - is the shortest ever. And he had prettymuch won
>the Civil War by that time.
>
> In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt opened his
>fourth-term speech with the "wish that the form of this inauguration be
>simple and its words brief". He spoke for a couple of eloquent
>minutes, then went off to a light lunch, his wartime victory almost
>complete as well.
>
> But restraint is not a Dubya word. Learning
>nothing, the dumbest and nastiest president since the scandalous Warren
>Harding died in 1923, Bush is now intent on expanding the Iraq war to
>neighbouring Iran.
>
> Condoleezza Rice did admit to the US Senate this
>week that there had been some "not so good" decisions. But the more I
>see of her gleaming teeth and her fibreglass helmet of hair and her
>perky confidence, the more I am convinced that back in the '60s she
>used to be Cindy Birdsong, up there beside Diana Ross as one of the
>Supremes of Motown fame. I don't think it's a good idea to let her make
>a comeback as Secretary of State.
>
> The war in Iran is under way already, if we believe Seymour
>Hersh, the distinguished investigative writer for The New Yorker
>magazine.
>
> Hersh reported this week that clandestine US
>special forces have been on the ground there, targeting nuclear
>facilities to be bombed whenever Bush feels the time is ripe.
>
> "The immediate goals of the attacks would be to
>destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran's ability to go nuclear,"
>he wrote, quoting reliable intelligence sources.
>
> "But there are other, equally purposeful, motives
>at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the
>Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on
>Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious
>leadership."
>
> Naturally, Pentagon flacks rushed out to deny all.
>But then they did that when Hersh broke the story of the My Lai
>massacre in Vietnam in 1968, and again when he revealed the torture of
>Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A tussle for the truth between Hersh and
>the Pentagon is no contest.
>
> What terrifies me most is the people planning this new
>war. The CIA professionals have been frozen out: too weak and wimpy for
>the Bushies.
>
> The Defence Secretary, the incompetent Donald
>Rumsfeld, has seized control, aided by two Pentagon under-secretaries.
>One is Douglas Feith, a mad-eyed Zionist largely responsible for the
>post-invasion collapse of order in Iraq, a civilian bureaucrat
>memorably described by the former Centcom commander, General Tommy
>Franks, as "the f---ing stupidest guy on the face of the Earth".
>
> The other is army Lieutenant General William G.
>(Jerry) Boykin, whose name also rings a bell. Jerry is a born-again
>Christian evangelical, a three-star bigot who, in his spare time,
>stumps the country in full uniform, preaching that America's enemy is
>Satan, Allah is a false idol, and that George Bush has been ordained by
>the Lord to rout evil.
>
> "He's in the White House because God put him there
>for a time such as this," Jerry told a prayer meetin' in Oregon just a
>while back.
>
> Be very afraid.
>
> (c) 2005 The Sydney Morning Herald
Posted by Miriam V 2/11
>
>by Mike Carlton
>
> George Bush's second inaugural extravaganza was
> every bit as repugnant as I had expected, a vulgar orgy of
triumphalism
>probably unmatched since Napoleon crowned himself emperor of the French
>in Notre Dame in 1804.
>
> The little Corsican corporal had a few decent
>victories to his escutcheon. Lodi, Marengo, that sort of thing. Not so
>this strutting Texan mountebank, with his chimpanzee smirk and his
>born-again banalities delivered in that constipated syntax that sounds
>the way cold cheeseburgers look, and his grinning plastic wife, and his
>scheming junta of neo-con spivs, shamans, flatterers and armchair
>warmongers, and his sinuous evasions and his brazen lies, and his
>sleight of hand theft from the American poor, and his rape of the
>environment, and his lethal conviction that the world must submit to
>his Pax Americana or be bombed into charcoal.
>
> Difficult to know what was more repellent: the
>estimated $US40 million cost of this jamboree (most of it stumped up by
>Republican fat-cats buying future presidential favours), or the sheer
>crassness of its excess when American boys are dying in the quagmire of
>Bush's very own Iraq war.
>
> Other wartime presidents sought restraint. Abraham
>Lincoln's second inaugural address in 1865 - "with malice toward none,
>with charity for all" - is the shortest ever. And he had prettymuch won
>the Civil War by that time.
>
> In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt opened his
>fourth-term speech with the "wish that the form of this inauguration be
>simple and its words brief". He spoke for a couple of eloquent
>minutes, then went off to a light lunch, his wartime victory almost
>complete as well.
>
> But restraint is not a Dubya word. Learning
>nothing, the dumbest and nastiest president since the scandalous Warren
>Harding died in 1923, Bush is now intent on expanding the Iraq war to
>neighbouring Iran.
>
> Condoleezza Rice did admit to the US Senate this
>week that there had been some "not so good" decisions. But the more I
>see of her gleaming teeth and her fibreglass helmet of hair and her
>perky confidence, the more I am convinced that back in the '60s she
>used to be Cindy Birdsong, up there beside Diana Ross as one of the
>Supremes of Motown fame. I don't think it's a good idea to let her make
>a comeback as Secretary of State.
>
> The war in Iran is under way already, if we believe Seymour
>Hersh, the distinguished investigative writer for The New Yorker
>magazine.
>
> Hersh reported this week that clandestine US
>special forces have been on the ground there, targeting nuclear
>facilities to be bombed whenever Bush feels the time is ripe.
>
> "The immediate goals of the attacks would be to
>destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran's ability to go nuclear,"
>he wrote, quoting reliable intelligence sources.
>
> "But there are other, equally purposeful, motives
>at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the
>Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on
>Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious
>leadership."
>
> Naturally, Pentagon flacks rushed out to deny all.
>But then they did that when Hersh broke the story of the My Lai
>massacre in Vietnam in 1968, and again when he revealed the torture of
>Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A tussle for the truth between Hersh and
>the Pentagon is no contest.
>
> What terrifies me most is the people planning this new
>war. The CIA professionals have been frozen out: too weak and wimpy for
>the Bushies.
>
> The Defence Secretary, the incompetent Donald
>Rumsfeld, has seized control, aided by two Pentagon under-secretaries.
>One is Douglas Feith, a mad-eyed Zionist largely responsible for the
>post-invasion collapse of order in Iraq, a civilian bureaucrat
>memorably described by the former Centcom commander, General Tommy
>Franks, as "the f---ing stupidest guy on the face of the Earth".
>
> The other is army Lieutenant General William G.
>(Jerry) Boykin, whose name also rings a bell. Jerry is a born-again
>Christian evangelical, a three-star bigot who, in his spare time,
>stumps the country in full uniform, preaching that America's enemy is
>Satan, Allah is a false idol, and that George Bush has been ordained by
>the Lord to rout evil.
>
> "He's in the White House because God put him there
>for a time such as this," Jerry told a prayer meetin' in Oregon just a
>while back.
>
> Be very afraid.
>
> (c) 2005 The Sydney Morning Herald
Posted by Miriam V 2/11
Saturday, February 12, 2005
'01 Memo to Rice Warned of Qaeda and Offered Plan
A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 12, 2005
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 - A strategy document outlining proposals for eliminating the threat from Al Qaeda, given to Condoleezza Rice as she assumed the post of national security adviser in January 2001, warned that the terror network had cells in the United States and 40 other countries and sought unconventional weapons, according to a declassified version of the document.
The 13-page proposal presented to Dr. Rice by her top counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, laid out ways to step up the fight against Al Qaeda, focusing on Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan. The ideas included giving "massive support" to anti-Taliban groups "to keep Islamic extremist fighters tied down"; destroying terrorist training camps "while classes are in session" and then sending in teams to gather intelligence on terrorist cells; deploying armed drone aircraft against known terrorists; more aggressively tracking Qaeda money; and accelerating the F.B.I.'s translation and analysis of material from surveillance of terrorism suspects in American cities.
Mr. Clarke was seeking a high-level meeting to decide on a plan of action. Dr. Rice and other administration officials have said that Mr. Clarke's ideas did not constitute an adequate plan, but they took them into consideration as they worked toward a more effective strategy against the terrorist threat.
The proposal and an accompanying three-page memorandum given to Dr. Rice by Mr. Clarke on Jan. 25, 2001, were discussed and quoted in brief by the independent commission studying the Sept. 11 attacks and in news reports and books last year. They were obtained by the private National Security Archive, which published the full versions, with minor deletions at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, on its Web site late Thursday.
Under the heading "the next three to five years," Mr. Clarke spelled out a series of steps building on groundwork that he said had already been laid, adding that "success can only be achieved if the pace and resource levels of the programs continue to grow as planned."
He said the C.I.A. had "prepared a program" focused on eliminating Afghanistan as a haven for Al Qaeda.
It would feature "massive support" to anti-Taliban groups like the Northern Alliance and the destruction of training camps occupied by terrorists. "We would need to have special teams ready for covert entry into destroyed camps to acquire intelligence for locating terrorist cells outside Afghanistan," he wrote, saying that this would either require Special Operations troops or some other "liaison force capable of conducting activity on-the-ground inside Afghanistan." Predator drones, some of which could be armed, would support those forces, he wrote.
Some of what he proposed in the way of support for the Northern Alliance or for Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan to the north, was deleted from the document before it was declassified. But some of the actions he proposed were not intended to be kept secret, like "overt U.S. military action" aimed at the command and control of Al Qaeda and the Taliban's military.
The previously secret documents were at the heart of a fiercely partisan debate over Mr. Clarke's contention, in a book and in public statements, that the Bush administration had ignored his warnings of the imminent danger posed by Mr. bin Laden and his terrorist organization.
The shorter memorandum was written in response to a request for "major presidential policy reviews" worthy of a meeting of "principals," the president's top foreign policy advisers. It began: "We urgently need such a Principals level review on the al Qida network." The word "urgently" was italicized and underscored; the "al Qida" spelling was used in both documents.
"We would make a major error if we underestimated the challenge al Qida poses," the memorandum said.
The principals' meeting on Al Qaeda took place, but not until Sept. 4, 2001, a week before the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The longer document was titled "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat From the Jihadist Networks of al Qida: Status and Prospects." It included a detailed description of the network, saying it was "well financed, has trained tens of thousands of jihadists, and has a cell structure in over 40 nations. It also is actively seeking to develop and acquire weapons of mass destruction."
The strategy paper recounted past Qaeda plots against Americans abroad and at home and said an informant had reported "that an extensive network of al Qida 'sleeper' agents currently exists in the U.S." After reviewing steps taken since 1996 to combat Al Qaeda, the document listed further actions required to make the network "not a serious threat" within three to five years.
Dr. Rice, now the secretary of state, and other administration officials have asserted that the documents did not amount to a full plan for taking on the terrorist network.
"No Al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration," Dr. Rice wrote in an op-ed article for The Washington Post last March. She wrote that Mr. Clarke and his team "suggested several ideas, some of which had been around since 1998 but had not been adopted."
Mr. Clarke had served in high-level government posts since the Reagan administration and stayed on from the Clinton administration. He resigned in February 2003 and last year published a memoir, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror." (Mr. Clarke began writing a column on security matters for The New York Times Magazine this month.)
Nearly nine months before the Sept. 11 attacks, the papers described the danger posed by the bin Laden network and sought to focus the attention of the new administration on what to do about it. But the texts are unlikely to resolve the debate over whether they should have led to more urgent action by the administration.
"I think Condi Rice has at least an arguable case that it's short of a plan," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a security analyst at the Brookings Institution.
Mr. O'Hanlon called Mr. Clarke's memorandums a set of "very dry data points. There's not a heightened sense of, 'Now our homeland is at risk.' "
But Matthew Levitt, who was an F.B.I. counterterrorism analyst in 2001, disagreed. He called the 13-page strategy memorandum "a pretty disturbing document."
Mr. Levitt, now director of terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that whether the document constitutes a "plan," as Mr. Clarke averred and Dr. Rice denied, is "a semantic debate." But he said the experience of reading the original documents for the first time Friday left him with a strong impression of the danger Al Qaeda posed.
"I think it makes the threat look pretty urgent," Mr. Levitt said. "I look at this and I see something that to my mind requires immediate attention."
Asked about the documents at a press briefing on Friday, Richard A. Boucher, the spokesman for the State Department, declined to expand on Dr. Rice's previous comments on the administration's response to Mr. Clarke's warnings.
"The fact that now the memo or letter has been released has - just provides you more information, but I think she's really already discussed all these matters pretty thoroughly," Mr. Boucher said.
Mr. Clarke did not respond to a request for comment.
The two papers were declassified by the National Security Council on April 7, one day before Dr. Rice testified before the 9/11 commission, but were not released publicly until the National Security Archive filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
February 12, 2005
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 - A strategy document outlining proposals for eliminating the threat from Al Qaeda, given to Condoleezza Rice as she assumed the post of national security adviser in January 2001, warned that the terror network had cells in the United States and 40 other countries and sought unconventional weapons, according to a declassified version of the document.
The 13-page proposal presented to Dr. Rice by her top counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, laid out ways to step up the fight against Al Qaeda, focusing on Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan. The ideas included giving "massive support" to anti-Taliban groups "to keep Islamic extremist fighters tied down"; destroying terrorist training camps "while classes are in session" and then sending in teams to gather intelligence on terrorist cells; deploying armed drone aircraft against known terrorists; more aggressively tracking Qaeda money; and accelerating the F.B.I.'s translation and analysis of material from surveillance of terrorism suspects in American cities.
Mr. Clarke was seeking a high-level meeting to decide on a plan of action. Dr. Rice and other administration officials have said that Mr. Clarke's ideas did not constitute an adequate plan, but they took them into consideration as they worked toward a more effective strategy against the terrorist threat.
The proposal and an accompanying three-page memorandum given to Dr. Rice by Mr. Clarke on Jan. 25, 2001, were discussed and quoted in brief by the independent commission studying the Sept. 11 attacks and in news reports and books last year. They were obtained by the private National Security Archive, which published the full versions, with minor deletions at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, on its Web site late Thursday.
Under the heading "the next three to five years," Mr. Clarke spelled out a series of steps building on groundwork that he said had already been laid, adding that "success can only be achieved if the pace and resource levels of the programs continue to grow as planned."
He said the C.I.A. had "prepared a program" focused on eliminating Afghanistan as a haven for Al Qaeda.
It would feature "massive support" to anti-Taliban groups like the Northern Alliance and the destruction of training camps occupied by terrorists. "We would need to have special teams ready for covert entry into destroyed camps to acquire intelligence for locating terrorist cells outside Afghanistan," he wrote, saying that this would either require Special Operations troops or some other "liaison force capable of conducting activity on-the-ground inside Afghanistan." Predator drones, some of which could be armed, would support those forces, he wrote.
Some of what he proposed in the way of support for the Northern Alliance or for Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan to the north, was deleted from the document before it was declassified. But some of the actions he proposed were not intended to be kept secret, like "overt U.S. military action" aimed at the command and control of Al Qaeda and the Taliban's military.
The previously secret documents were at the heart of a fiercely partisan debate over Mr. Clarke's contention, in a book and in public statements, that the Bush administration had ignored his warnings of the imminent danger posed by Mr. bin Laden and his terrorist organization.
The shorter memorandum was written in response to a request for "major presidential policy reviews" worthy of a meeting of "principals," the president's top foreign policy advisers. It began: "We urgently need such a Principals level review on the al Qida network." The word "urgently" was italicized and underscored; the "al Qida" spelling was used in both documents.
"We would make a major error if we underestimated the challenge al Qida poses," the memorandum said.
The principals' meeting on Al Qaeda took place, but not until Sept. 4, 2001, a week before the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The longer document was titled "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat From the Jihadist Networks of al Qida: Status and Prospects." It included a detailed description of the network, saying it was "well financed, has trained tens of thousands of jihadists, and has a cell structure in over 40 nations. It also is actively seeking to develop and acquire weapons of mass destruction."
The strategy paper recounted past Qaeda plots against Americans abroad and at home and said an informant had reported "that an extensive network of al Qida 'sleeper' agents currently exists in the U.S." After reviewing steps taken since 1996 to combat Al Qaeda, the document listed further actions required to make the network "not a serious threat" within three to five years.
Dr. Rice, now the secretary of state, and other administration officials have asserted that the documents did not amount to a full plan for taking on the terrorist network.
"No Al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration," Dr. Rice wrote in an op-ed article for The Washington Post last March. She wrote that Mr. Clarke and his team "suggested several ideas, some of which had been around since 1998 but had not been adopted."
Mr. Clarke had served in high-level government posts since the Reagan administration and stayed on from the Clinton administration. He resigned in February 2003 and last year published a memoir, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror." (Mr. Clarke began writing a column on security matters for The New York Times Magazine this month.)
Nearly nine months before the Sept. 11 attacks, the papers described the danger posed by the bin Laden network and sought to focus the attention of the new administration on what to do about it. But the texts are unlikely to resolve the debate over whether they should have led to more urgent action by the administration.
"I think Condi Rice has at least an arguable case that it's short of a plan," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a security analyst at the Brookings Institution.
Mr. O'Hanlon called Mr. Clarke's memorandums a set of "very dry data points. There's not a heightened sense of, 'Now our homeland is at risk.' "
But Matthew Levitt, who was an F.B.I. counterterrorism analyst in 2001, disagreed. He called the 13-page strategy memorandum "a pretty disturbing document."
Mr. Levitt, now director of terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that whether the document constitutes a "plan," as Mr. Clarke averred and Dr. Rice denied, is "a semantic debate." But he said the experience of reading the original documents for the first time Friday left him with a strong impression of the danger Al Qaeda posed.
"I think it makes the threat look pretty urgent," Mr. Levitt said. "I look at this and I see something that to my mind requires immediate attention."
Asked about the documents at a press briefing on Friday, Richard A. Boucher, the spokesman for the State Department, declined to expand on Dr. Rice's previous comments on the administration's response to Mr. Clarke's warnings.
"The fact that now the memo or letter has been released has - just provides you more information, but I think she's really already discussed all these matters pretty thoroughly," Mr. Boucher said.
Mr. Clarke did not respond to a request for comment.
The two papers were declassified by the National Security Council on April 7, one day before Dr. Rice testified before the 9/11 commission, but were not released publicly until the National Security Archive filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Friday, February 11, 2005
Bush's Class-War Budget
A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 11, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. And it offers the Democrats an opportunity, if they're willing to take it.
First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families.
And the budget really does shower largesse on millionaires even as it punishes the needy. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities informs us that even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions - originally put in place under the first President George Bush - that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households.
More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars; 97 percent would go to people with incomes exceeding $200,000.
It so happens that the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income is about the same as the number of people who would have their food stamps cut off under the Bush proposal. But it costs a lot more to give a millionaire a break than to put food on a low-income family's table: eliminating limits on deductions and exemptions would give taxpayers with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of more than $19,000.
It's like that all the way through. On one side, the budget calls for program cuts that are small change compared with the budget deficit, yet will harm hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans. On the other side, it calls for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and for new tax breaks for the affluent in the form of tax-sheltered accounts and more liberal rules for deductions.
The question is whether the relentless mean-spiritedness of this budget finally awakens the public to the true cost of Mr. Bush's tax policy.
Until now, the administration has been able to get away with the pretense that it can offset the revenue loss from tax cuts with benign spending restraint. That's because until now, "restraint" was an abstract concept, not tied to specific actions, making it seem as if spending cuts would hurt only a few special interest groups.
But here we are with the first demonstration of restraint in action, and look what's on the chopping block, selected for big cuts: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health insurance for children and aid to law enforcement. (Yes, Mr. Bush proposes to cut farm subsidies, which are truly wasteful. Let's see how much political capital he spends on that proposal.)
Until now, the administration has also been able to pretend that the budget deficit isn't an important issue so the role of tax cuts in causing that deficit can be ignored. But Mr. Bush has at last conceded that the deficit is indeed a major problem.
Why shouldn't the affluent, who have done so well from Mr. Bush's policies, pay part of the price of dealing with that problem?
Here's a comparison: the Bush budget proposal would cut domestic discretionary spending, adjusted for inflation, by 16 percent over the next five years. That would mean savage cuts in education, health care, veterans' benefits and environmental protection. Yet these cuts would save only about $66 billion per year, about one-sixth of the budget deficit.
On the other side, a rollback of Mr. Bush's cuts in tax rates for high-income brackets, on capital gains and on dividend income would yield more than $120 billion per year in extra revenue - eliminating almost a third of the budget deficit - yet have hardly any effect on middle-income families. (Estimates from the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution show that such a rollback would cost families with incomes between $25,000 and $80,000 an average of $156.)
Why, then, shouldn't a rollback of high-end tax cuts be on the table?
Democrats have surprised the Bush administration, and themselves, by effectively pushing back against Mr. Bush's attempt to dismantle Social Security. It's time for them to broaden their opposition, and push back against Mr. Bush's tax policy.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
February 11, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. And it offers the Democrats an opportunity, if they're willing to take it.
First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families.
And the budget really does shower largesse on millionaires even as it punishes the needy. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities informs us that even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions - originally put in place under the first President George Bush - that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households.
More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars; 97 percent would go to people with incomes exceeding $200,000.
It so happens that the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income is about the same as the number of people who would have their food stamps cut off under the Bush proposal. But it costs a lot more to give a millionaire a break than to put food on a low-income family's table: eliminating limits on deductions and exemptions would give taxpayers with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of more than $19,000.
It's like that all the way through. On one side, the budget calls for program cuts that are small change compared with the budget deficit, yet will harm hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans. On the other side, it calls for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and for new tax breaks for the affluent in the form of tax-sheltered accounts and more liberal rules for deductions.
The question is whether the relentless mean-spiritedness of this budget finally awakens the public to the true cost of Mr. Bush's tax policy.
Until now, the administration has been able to get away with the pretense that it can offset the revenue loss from tax cuts with benign spending restraint. That's because until now, "restraint" was an abstract concept, not tied to specific actions, making it seem as if spending cuts would hurt only a few special interest groups.
But here we are with the first demonstration of restraint in action, and look what's on the chopping block, selected for big cuts: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health insurance for children and aid to law enforcement. (Yes, Mr. Bush proposes to cut farm subsidies, which are truly wasteful. Let's see how much political capital he spends on that proposal.)
Until now, the administration has also been able to pretend that the budget deficit isn't an important issue so the role of tax cuts in causing that deficit can be ignored. But Mr. Bush has at last conceded that the deficit is indeed a major problem.
Why shouldn't the affluent, who have done so well from Mr. Bush's policies, pay part of the price of dealing with that problem?
Here's a comparison: the Bush budget proposal would cut domestic discretionary spending, adjusted for inflation, by 16 percent over the next five years. That would mean savage cuts in education, health care, veterans' benefits and environmental protection. Yet these cuts would save only about $66 billion per year, about one-sixth of the budget deficit.
On the other side, a rollback of Mr. Bush's cuts in tax rates for high-income brackets, on capital gains and on dividend income would yield more than $120 billion per year in extra revenue - eliminating almost a third of the budget deficit - yet have hardly any effect on middle-income families. (Estimates from the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution show that such a rollback would cost families with incomes between $25,000 and $80,000 an average of $156.)
Why, then, shouldn't a rollback of high-end tax cuts be on the table?
Democrats have surprised the Bush administration, and themselves, by effectively pushing back against Mr. Bush's attempt to dismantle Social Security. It's time for them to broaden their opposition, and push back against Mr. Bush's tax policy.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Thursday, February 10, 2005
9/11 panel: FAA warned about al-Qaida
A Call To Action
BY SYLVIA ADCOCK AND DEBORAH BARFIELD BERRY
STAFF WRITERS
February 10, 2005, 7:20 PM EST
In the months before Sept. 11, the Federal Aviation Administration told some of the nation's largest airports that if a terrorist wanted to hijack a plane to commit suicide in a "spectacular explosion," it would likely be a hijacking on U.S. soil rather than overseas.
The vivid description is contained in a newly released report from the 9/11 Commission that gives a clearer-than-ever picture of what FAA officials knew about terrorist threats before the attacks of 2001. The unclassified version of the report -- which contains numerous blacked-out sentences and paragraphs -- was made available Thursday by the National Archives. The bulk of the commission's report was published in book form last year and became a best-seller.
The report took five months to release because of "classification issues," the White House said, including deletion of references to any existing security measures.
"Civil aviation seems to have been lulled into a false sense of security," the commission wrote, a lapse particularly surprising given the FAA's own intelligence assesment about growing terrorist threats.
Top Transportation Department officials apparently felt the government had "won the battle on hijacking," the commission said. So despite the new warnings that terrorists had an increased interest in hijackings, the FAA's security directives in the summer of 2001 did not address checkpoint screening to keep weapons off planes or the security of cockpits.
The commission was clear on one point: It found no evidence that the FAA had any information that terrorists planned to hijack airplanes in the United States and use them as weapons.
The agency "received numerous threat assessments from the U.S. intelligence community in the Spring and Summer of 2001," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said in a statement Thursday. "However, the FAA received no specific information before 9/11 about terrorist means or methods directed at aviation in the U.S. that would have indicated specific countermeasures."
Lee Hamilton, former vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, said in an interview that because the FAA did not provide a direct warning about the new threats, "what you have here is a pattern, which was a pattern of complacency."
He noted that in 2001 it had been more than a decade since the last airline hijacking in the United States, and much of the FAA's focus was on congestion and flight delays, not security. There was "so little attention paid by the FAA, or anyone else for that, matter including the executive branch and Congress," Hamilton said. "We all got it wrong."
The report says that for two months in the spring of 2001, the FAA's office of civil aviation held classified briefings for 19 of nation's largest airports -- including Newark, Logan in Boston, and Dulles outside Washington, the departure points for the four hijacked planes. During those briefings, FAA officials discussed the growing threat from Osama bin Laden and a renewed interest in hijackings. In the briefings, security officials noted that a hijacking on U.S. soil would result in a greater number of American hostages but would be more difficult for terrorists to carry out. "We don't rule it out," the agency said of a domestic hijacking.
The FAA also conducted 27 briefings for airlines between May 1, 2001 and Sept. 11, 2001 -- but each briefing addressed hijacking threats overseas.
The report notes that the more than half of the FAA's daily intelligence summaries in the five months prior to Sept. 11, 2001, mentioned bin Laden. Of those, five mentioned hijacking and two mentioned suicide attacks, but not connected to aviation.
The FAA's intelligence reports were based primarily on reporting from the U.S. intelligence community. One top FAA security official complained to the commission that intelligence officials were not focused on domestic threats. "You guys can tell us what's happening on a street in Kabul but you can't tell us what's going on in Atlanta," the official said.
Pilots said Thursday that none of the information gathered by the FAA filtered down to them. "Not one word," said Dave Machett, a Boeing 737 pilot who is president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, a grassroots organization. "The flight crews were kept completely in the dark about this growing threat."
The revelations Thursday upset some families of 9/11 victims. said she was angry to learn that federal aviation officials had been warned about possible hijackings.
"If they knew about it, why the hell didn't they do something?" said Elaine Moccia of Hauppauge, whose husband, Frank died in Tower Two.
Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.
BY SYLVIA ADCOCK AND DEBORAH BARFIELD BERRY
STAFF WRITERS
February 10, 2005, 7:20 PM EST
In the months before Sept. 11, the Federal Aviation Administration told some of the nation's largest airports that if a terrorist wanted to hijack a plane to commit suicide in a "spectacular explosion," it would likely be a hijacking on U.S. soil rather than overseas.
The vivid description is contained in a newly released report from the 9/11 Commission that gives a clearer-than-ever picture of what FAA officials knew about terrorist threats before the attacks of 2001. The unclassified version of the report -- which contains numerous blacked-out sentences and paragraphs -- was made available Thursday by the National Archives. The bulk of the commission's report was published in book form last year and became a best-seller.
The report took five months to release because of "classification issues," the White House said, including deletion of references to any existing security measures.
"Civil aviation seems to have been lulled into a false sense of security," the commission wrote, a lapse particularly surprising given the FAA's own intelligence assesment about growing terrorist threats.
Top Transportation Department officials apparently felt the government had "won the battle on hijacking," the commission said. So despite the new warnings that terrorists had an increased interest in hijackings, the FAA's security directives in the summer of 2001 did not address checkpoint screening to keep weapons off planes or the security of cockpits.
The commission was clear on one point: It found no evidence that the FAA had any information that terrorists planned to hijack airplanes in the United States and use them as weapons.
The agency "received numerous threat assessments from the U.S. intelligence community in the Spring and Summer of 2001," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said in a statement Thursday. "However, the FAA received no specific information before 9/11 about terrorist means or methods directed at aviation in the U.S. that would have indicated specific countermeasures."
Lee Hamilton, former vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, said in an interview that because the FAA did not provide a direct warning about the new threats, "what you have here is a pattern, which was a pattern of complacency."
He noted that in 2001 it had been more than a decade since the last airline hijacking in the United States, and much of the FAA's focus was on congestion and flight delays, not security. There was "so little attention paid by the FAA, or anyone else for that, matter including the executive branch and Congress," Hamilton said. "We all got it wrong."
The report says that for two months in the spring of 2001, the FAA's office of civil aviation held classified briefings for 19 of nation's largest airports -- including Newark, Logan in Boston, and Dulles outside Washington, the departure points for the four hijacked planes. During those briefings, FAA officials discussed the growing threat from Osama bin Laden and a renewed interest in hijackings. In the briefings, security officials noted that a hijacking on U.S. soil would result in a greater number of American hostages but would be more difficult for terrorists to carry out. "We don't rule it out," the agency said of a domestic hijacking.
The FAA also conducted 27 briefings for airlines between May 1, 2001 and Sept. 11, 2001 -- but each briefing addressed hijacking threats overseas.
The report notes that the more than half of the FAA's daily intelligence summaries in the five months prior to Sept. 11, 2001, mentioned bin Laden. Of those, five mentioned hijacking and two mentioned suicide attacks, but not connected to aviation.
The FAA's intelligence reports were based primarily on reporting from the U.S. intelligence community. One top FAA security official complained to the commission that intelligence officials were not focused on domestic threats. "You guys can tell us what's happening on a street in Kabul but you can't tell us what's going on in Atlanta," the official said.
Pilots said Thursday that none of the information gathered by the FAA filtered down to them. "Not one word," said Dave Machett, a Boeing 737 pilot who is president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, a grassroots organization. "The flight crews were kept completely in the dark about this growing threat."
The revelations Thursday upset some families of 9/11 victims. said she was angry to learn that federal aviation officials had been warned about possible hijackings.
"If they knew about it, why the hell didn't they do something?" said Elaine Moccia of Hauppauge, whose husband, Frank died in Tower Two.
Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.
Monday, February 07, 2005
The Right-Wing Express
A Call To Action
AlterNet
By Don Hazen, AlterNet
Posted on February 7, 2005, Printed on February 7, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21192/
Consider that the conservative political movement, which now has a hammerlock on every aspect of federal government, has a media message machine fed by more than 80 large non-profit organizations – let's call them the Big 80 – funded by a gaggle of right-wing family foundations and wealthy individuals to the tune of $400 million a year.
And the Big 80 groups are just the "non-partisan" 501(c)(3) groups. These do not include groups like the NRA, the anti-gay and anti-abortion groups, nor do they include the political action committees (PACs) or the "527" groups (so named for the section of the tax code they fall under), like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which so effectively slammed John Kerry's campaign in 2004.
To get their message out, the conservatives have a powerful media empire, which churns out and amplifies the message of the day - or the week - through a wide network of outlets and individuals, including Fox News, talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Oliver North, Ann Coulter, as well as religious broadcasters like Pat Robertson and his 700 Club. On the web, it starts with TownHall.com
Fueling the conservative message machine with a steady flow of cash is a large group of wealthy individuals, including many who serve on the boards of the Big 80.
Rob Stein has brilliantly documented all of the above in "The Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix," a PowerPoint presentation he has taken on the road across the country, preaching to progressives about the lessons that can be learned and the challenges that need to be overcome.
In the face of all the conservatives have assembled, Stein is nevertheless still optimistic, in part based on what he saw as promising, unprecedented levels of collaboration among progressives leading up to the 2004 election. But he emphasizes, there is much to do. "We, of course, continue to have far more challenges than answers or enduring capacities," Stein says. "Indeed, everything that happened in 2003-2004 can best be described as a 'stirring,' not a solution. We have miles to go before we have built a strategic, coordinated, disciplined and well-financed community of local, regional and national organizations, which collectively can mobilize a majority progressive constituency."
However, "progressives should not emulate what conservatives have done," says Stein, a former activist and chief of staff under Ron Brown at the Commerce Department in the Clinton administration. "Conservatives have built remarkably successful institutions and strategic alliances in the 20th century that presumably are consistent with their values and, we know, are effective in promoting their beliefs.
"Progressives have different values, this is the 21st century, the conservative infrastructure is in place and will continue to grow, and so we have to do it all differently," Stein adds. "We must build from both the ground up and from the top down. We must be technologically sophisticated and new media, narrowcast-savvy. We must build institutions capable of great flexibility to deal with the rapid pace of change in the world. We need a new generation of leaders able to integrate the local/global complexity of the world to manage our institutions in 2010, 2020 and beyond."
Since he left the Commerce Department, Stein worked at the Democratic National Committee, and has been a venture capitalist, specializing in women-owned businesses. His PowerPoint message is particularly aimed at educating people with power, influence and money - the high net worth individuals who can provide the backing to build a progressive infrastructure. After two stunning electoral defeats and the virtual Republican dominance in Washington these days, Stein's message has acquired a new urgency.
Stein says he woke up the day after Election Day in 2002 and realized "we have a one-party state in this country." He decided to figure out how it all happened - how conservatives, despite a healthy majority of Americans opposed to their platform and positions, managed to build an infrastructure and a message machine that is so effective and pervasive.
It Didn't Happen Overnight
The story of the conservative rise that Stein portrays begins back in the early 1970s, when there was panic among conservatives, especially in corporate boardrooms, that capitalism was under serious attack, and something drastic had to be done about it. The National Chamber of Commerce asked Lewis Powell, a former head of the American Bar Association and member of 11 corporate boards, to write a blueprint of what had to be done. The result, says Stein, is one the most prescient documents of our time. The memo lays out the framework, the goals and the ingredients for the conservative revolution that has gained momentum and power ever since. Two months after penning the memo, then-President Richard M. Nixon appointed Powell, a Democrat, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Powell told the conservatives that they needed to confront liberalism everywhere and needed a "scale of financing only available through a joint effort" focused on an array of principles including less government, lower taxes, deregulation and challenging the left agenda everywhere. The conservative right, starting with seed money from the Coors Brewing family and Richard Mellon Scaife's publishing enterprise, moved forward to implement virtually every element of the Powell memo. It is a story of how the conservatives – in spite of political differences, ego, and competing priorities – were able to cooperate and develop a methodology that drives their issues and values relentlessly.
Starting with just a handful or groups, including the Heritage Foundation, in the early '70s, the conservatives built a new generation of organizations – think tanks, media monitors, legal groups, networking organizations, all driven by the same over-arching values of free enterprise, individual freedoms and limited government.
Stein describes how the message machine works. If Rush Limbaugh wants something on vouchers – it's immediately in his hands; if Fox News' Bill O'Reilly needs a guest to talk about the "death tax," he's got him from one of the think tanks. Stein estimates that 36,000 conservatives have been trained on values, issues, leadership, use of media and agenda development. These are not the elected officials, but rather the cadre of the conservative network. Stein figures that the core leaders of the Big 80 groups he studied are about 2,000 people who make between $75,000 and $200,000 and have all been trained in the Leadership Institute.
The wealthy conservative families that have been the early bread and butter of the movement and continue their support are relatively well known at this point, including Scaife from Pittsburgh, Lynde and Harry Bradley from Milwaukee, Joseph Coors from Colorado; and Smith Richardson from North Carolina. Important networking goes on at the Philanthropy Roundtable, where groups are showcased.
But the key today to keeping the message machine fed is what Stein calls the "investment banking matrix," which includes key conservatives like Grover Norquist, Paul Weyerich, and Irving Kristol, who raise, direct, and motivate. Stein estimates there are about 200 key people who invest an average of $250,000 a year and about 135 of them also serve on the boards of the Big 80 groups
"Each of these groups are 'mission critical,' and they are strategic, coordinated, motivated and disciplined," says Stein, adding that the investment bankers monitor them closely.
And contrary to popular belief among progressives, the conservatives who are part of that machine are of various stripes – far right, neo-conservative, libertarian, evangelical, etc. – but what makes them so successful is they form strategic alliances around common issues they support.
Then there is the conservative media machine, which operated at full power to get George W. Bush re-elected in 2004. Conservatives and their allies were able to magnify their message through a network of right-leaning TV and radio channels, including Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel, which provided Bush and Co. with a 24/7 campaign infomercial - for free. Here was a news network with more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined, constantly repeating, often verbatim, the messages out of the White house and the Bush campaign.
More help for Bush came from the far-less known religious broadcasters. "Under the radar screen, the Christian Church community has created a formidable electronic media infrastructure and now plays a major role influencing public opinion," says Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. The religious media are producing and distributing "news," commentary and cultural guides, and their reach and influence are undeniable.
As veteran investigative reporter Robert Parry argues, Bush's electoral victory proved that the conservatives have achieved dominance over the flow of information to the American people - so much so that even a well-run Democratic campaign stands virtually no chance for national success without major changes in the media system. "The outcome of Election 2004 highlights perhaps the greatest failure of the Democratic/liberal side in American politics: a refusal to invest in the development of a comparable system for distributing information that can counter the Right's potent media infrastructure," according to Parry. "Democrats and liberals have refused to learn from the lessons of the Republican/conservative success."
The Road Ahead
Now, for the audience hearing Stein's presentation – in the face of such devastating information, and the power of the conservative juggernaut – one might expect that paralysis and depression would set in among the listeners. But in fact the opposite has been happening. The problem is being named. It is visible, concrete, it makes people angry and then determined to act.
And, says Stein, there are "very important lessons" to be learned from the conservative experience over the past 40 years. For starters, progressives must learn to find common ground and set aside some differences they may have. "A movement is built upon 'marriages of convenience' among disparate, but inter-related, strains of a broad coalition which is able to agree upon some core values," Stein believes. "It is okay for there to be disagreement within the family; not everyone will be equally interested in the same set of issues."
Citing the example of the Apollo Alliance, Stein says progressive groups "must develop well-managed, highly effective, issue-focused strategic alliances which transcend their institutional egos and their competitive instincts."
Stein sees reason for hope, citing the progressive momentum and energy evident during the 2004 presidential campaign in groups like the Center for American Progress, AmericaVotes, America Coming Together (ACT) and the Campaign for America's Future.
"However one evaluates the actual performance of these initiatives – and obviously they all have strengths and weaknesses – they represent a new breed of collaborative enterprise," says Stein. "AirAmerica, Democracy Radio, and Media Matters are also important new beginnings. And this is all happening because a highly energized, more strategic community of high net worth individuals made significant new financial commitments to all of these enterprises. This is exceedingly hopeful."
But Stein is a realist as well and believes change will not happen overnight.
"Our major obstacles are atomization, balkanization and minimalization of our grassroots and national groups, our donors and our political operations," Stein adds. "We have very few effective strategic alliances among existing organizations (more this time electorally than ever before); very few organizations with the scale necessary to make a major impact; too few passionately progressive, politically motivated individual donors who know one another and work together; lack of long-term strategic thinking; lack of appropriate and necessary coordination and discipline; to name a few."
Nevertheless, the progressive community has a major asset base, in part developed during the 2004 election – with a good number of donors – at least 50 of whom have given in the $1-10 million level, and a small gaggle of billionaires. The devastating impact of Stein's PowerPoint, in an ironic way, is a good sign, because it gives people, especially donors, a handle on what is needed to move forward.
"A movement must have a diversified funding base of small, medium and large donors," Stein says. "The large donors must have the following attributes: be passionately progressive, intellectually curious, want to be operationally involved in the organizations they fund, willing to work and learn together as a community of donors, be willing to write very large checks every year to the groups they fund, and encourage their family and friends to also invest."
There are a lot of eyes on Stein as he moves forward to build a deeper, more dependable funding base for progressive infrastructure. Stein's effort is called the Democracy Alliance. He describes it as a network of high net worth individuals committed to promoting progressive ideals by investing in strategic, long-term local, regional and national capacity building.
One donor who sits on the board of a progressive foundation and has heard the Stein rap is worried that the "top down" nature of things so painfully obvious in the 2004 election could be perpetuated by Stein and other funding efforts like those of billionaires like George Soros and Peter Lewis. "It is so important to get resources down to the grass roots," says the donor, who wished to remain anonymous. "One of the major failings of these big donors meeting with each other and deciding where all the money should go is they reinforce each other. Where is the fresh thinking? They think one big idea should get all the money or one or two leaders should be the gatekeepers. That is not going to work. Putting all that money in the ACT basket certainly didn't do the trick in the past election, nor will giving it all to Podesta and Center for American Progress help build progressive infrastructure at the local level where it is needed, particularly outside of the Democratic party."
To his credit, Stein says quite clearly that "top down" and "bottom up" together are essential for future progressive success. Only time will tell whether he and his donors are prepared to let go of some of the controls, really get the money out of Washington, and let some roots grow at the local level.
This article is a version of material that will appear in the forthcoming book by AlterNet, "Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics," edited by Don Hazen and Lakshmi Chaudhry. It will be available in April, published by Chelsea Green Publishing.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21192/
AlterNet
By Don Hazen, AlterNet
Posted on February 7, 2005, Printed on February 7, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21192/
Consider that the conservative political movement, which now has a hammerlock on every aspect of federal government, has a media message machine fed by more than 80 large non-profit organizations – let's call them the Big 80 – funded by a gaggle of right-wing family foundations and wealthy individuals to the tune of $400 million a year.
And the Big 80 groups are just the "non-partisan" 501(c)(3) groups. These do not include groups like the NRA, the anti-gay and anti-abortion groups, nor do they include the political action committees (PACs) or the "527" groups (so named for the section of the tax code they fall under), like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which so effectively slammed John Kerry's campaign in 2004.
To get their message out, the conservatives have a powerful media empire, which churns out and amplifies the message of the day - or the week - through a wide network of outlets and individuals, including Fox News, talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Oliver North, Ann Coulter, as well as religious broadcasters like Pat Robertson and his 700 Club. On the web, it starts with TownHall.com
Fueling the conservative message machine with a steady flow of cash is a large group of wealthy individuals, including many who serve on the boards of the Big 80.
Rob Stein has brilliantly documented all of the above in "The Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix," a PowerPoint presentation he has taken on the road across the country, preaching to progressives about the lessons that can be learned and the challenges that need to be overcome.
In the face of all the conservatives have assembled, Stein is nevertheless still optimistic, in part based on what he saw as promising, unprecedented levels of collaboration among progressives leading up to the 2004 election. But he emphasizes, there is much to do. "We, of course, continue to have far more challenges than answers or enduring capacities," Stein says. "Indeed, everything that happened in 2003-2004 can best be described as a 'stirring,' not a solution. We have miles to go before we have built a strategic, coordinated, disciplined and well-financed community of local, regional and national organizations, which collectively can mobilize a majority progressive constituency."
However, "progressives should not emulate what conservatives have done," says Stein, a former activist and chief of staff under Ron Brown at the Commerce Department in the Clinton administration. "Conservatives have built remarkably successful institutions and strategic alliances in the 20th century that presumably are consistent with their values and, we know, are effective in promoting their beliefs.
"Progressives have different values, this is the 21st century, the conservative infrastructure is in place and will continue to grow, and so we have to do it all differently," Stein adds. "We must build from both the ground up and from the top down. We must be technologically sophisticated and new media, narrowcast-savvy. We must build institutions capable of great flexibility to deal with the rapid pace of change in the world. We need a new generation of leaders able to integrate the local/global complexity of the world to manage our institutions in 2010, 2020 and beyond."
Since he left the Commerce Department, Stein worked at the Democratic National Committee, and has been a venture capitalist, specializing in women-owned businesses. His PowerPoint message is particularly aimed at educating people with power, influence and money - the high net worth individuals who can provide the backing to build a progressive infrastructure. After two stunning electoral defeats and the virtual Republican dominance in Washington these days, Stein's message has acquired a new urgency.
Stein says he woke up the day after Election Day in 2002 and realized "we have a one-party state in this country." He decided to figure out how it all happened - how conservatives, despite a healthy majority of Americans opposed to their platform and positions, managed to build an infrastructure and a message machine that is so effective and pervasive.
It Didn't Happen Overnight
The story of the conservative rise that Stein portrays begins back in the early 1970s, when there was panic among conservatives, especially in corporate boardrooms, that capitalism was under serious attack, and something drastic had to be done about it. The National Chamber of Commerce asked Lewis Powell, a former head of the American Bar Association and member of 11 corporate boards, to write a blueprint of what had to be done. The result, says Stein, is one the most prescient documents of our time. The memo lays out the framework, the goals and the ingredients for the conservative revolution that has gained momentum and power ever since. Two months after penning the memo, then-President Richard M. Nixon appointed Powell, a Democrat, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Powell told the conservatives that they needed to confront liberalism everywhere and needed a "scale of financing only available through a joint effort" focused on an array of principles including less government, lower taxes, deregulation and challenging the left agenda everywhere. The conservative right, starting with seed money from the Coors Brewing family and Richard Mellon Scaife's publishing enterprise, moved forward to implement virtually every element of the Powell memo. It is a story of how the conservatives – in spite of political differences, ego, and competing priorities – were able to cooperate and develop a methodology that drives their issues and values relentlessly.
Starting with just a handful or groups, including the Heritage Foundation, in the early '70s, the conservatives built a new generation of organizations – think tanks, media monitors, legal groups, networking organizations, all driven by the same over-arching values of free enterprise, individual freedoms and limited government.
Stein describes how the message machine works. If Rush Limbaugh wants something on vouchers – it's immediately in his hands; if Fox News' Bill O'Reilly needs a guest to talk about the "death tax," he's got him from one of the think tanks. Stein estimates that 36,000 conservatives have been trained on values, issues, leadership, use of media and agenda development. These are not the elected officials, but rather the cadre of the conservative network. Stein figures that the core leaders of the Big 80 groups he studied are about 2,000 people who make between $75,000 and $200,000 and have all been trained in the Leadership Institute.
The wealthy conservative families that have been the early bread and butter of the movement and continue their support are relatively well known at this point, including Scaife from Pittsburgh, Lynde and Harry Bradley from Milwaukee, Joseph Coors from Colorado; and Smith Richardson from North Carolina. Important networking goes on at the Philanthropy Roundtable, where groups are showcased.
But the key today to keeping the message machine fed is what Stein calls the "investment banking matrix," which includes key conservatives like Grover Norquist, Paul Weyerich, and Irving Kristol, who raise, direct, and motivate. Stein estimates there are about 200 key people who invest an average of $250,000 a year and about 135 of them also serve on the boards of the Big 80 groups
"Each of these groups are 'mission critical,' and they are strategic, coordinated, motivated and disciplined," says Stein, adding that the investment bankers monitor them closely.
And contrary to popular belief among progressives, the conservatives who are part of that machine are of various stripes – far right, neo-conservative, libertarian, evangelical, etc. – but what makes them so successful is they form strategic alliances around common issues they support.
Then there is the conservative media machine, which operated at full power to get George W. Bush re-elected in 2004. Conservatives and their allies were able to magnify their message through a network of right-leaning TV and radio channels, including Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel, which provided Bush and Co. with a 24/7 campaign infomercial - for free. Here was a news network with more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined, constantly repeating, often verbatim, the messages out of the White house and the Bush campaign.
More help for Bush came from the far-less known religious broadcasters. "Under the radar screen, the Christian Church community has created a formidable electronic media infrastructure and now plays a major role influencing public opinion," says Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. The religious media are producing and distributing "news," commentary and cultural guides, and their reach and influence are undeniable.
As veteran investigative reporter Robert Parry argues, Bush's electoral victory proved that the conservatives have achieved dominance over the flow of information to the American people - so much so that even a well-run Democratic campaign stands virtually no chance for national success without major changes in the media system. "The outcome of Election 2004 highlights perhaps the greatest failure of the Democratic/liberal side in American politics: a refusal to invest in the development of a comparable system for distributing information that can counter the Right's potent media infrastructure," according to Parry. "Democrats and liberals have refused to learn from the lessons of the Republican/conservative success."
The Road Ahead
Now, for the audience hearing Stein's presentation – in the face of such devastating information, and the power of the conservative juggernaut – one might expect that paralysis and depression would set in among the listeners. But in fact the opposite has been happening. The problem is being named. It is visible, concrete, it makes people angry and then determined to act.
And, says Stein, there are "very important lessons" to be learned from the conservative experience over the past 40 years. For starters, progressives must learn to find common ground and set aside some differences they may have. "A movement is built upon 'marriages of convenience' among disparate, but inter-related, strains of a broad coalition which is able to agree upon some core values," Stein believes. "It is okay for there to be disagreement within the family; not everyone will be equally interested in the same set of issues."
Citing the example of the Apollo Alliance, Stein says progressive groups "must develop well-managed, highly effective, issue-focused strategic alliances which transcend their institutional egos and their competitive instincts."
Stein sees reason for hope, citing the progressive momentum and energy evident during the 2004 presidential campaign in groups like the Center for American Progress, AmericaVotes, America Coming Together (ACT) and the Campaign for America's Future.
"However one evaluates the actual performance of these initiatives – and obviously they all have strengths and weaknesses – they represent a new breed of collaborative enterprise," says Stein. "AirAmerica, Democracy Radio, and Media Matters are also important new beginnings. And this is all happening because a highly energized, more strategic community of high net worth individuals made significant new financial commitments to all of these enterprises. This is exceedingly hopeful."
But Stein is a realist as well and believes change will not happen overnight.
"Our major obstacles are atomization, balkanization and minimalization of our grassroots and national groups, our donors and our political operations," Stein adds. "We have very few effective strategic alliances among existing organizations (more this time electorally than ever before); very few organizations with the scale necessary to make a major impact; too few passionately progressive, politically motivated individual donors who know one another and work together; lack of long-term strategic thinking; lack of appropriate and necessary coordination and discipline; to name a few."
Nevertheless, the progressive community has a major asset base, in part developed during the 2004 election – with a good number of donors – at least 50 of whom have given in the $1-10 million level, and a small gaggle of billionaires. The devastating impact of Stein's PowerPoint, in an ironic way, is a good sign, because it gives people, especially donors, a handle on what is needed to move forward.
"A movement must have a diversified funding base of small, medium and large donors," Stein says. "The large donors must have the following attributes: be passionately progressive, intellectually curious, want to be operationally involved in the organizations they fund, willing to work and learn together as a community of donors, be willing to write very large checks every year to the groups they fund, and encourage their family and friends to also invest."
There are a lot of eyes on Stein as he moves forward to build a deeper, more dependable funding base for progressive infrastructure. Stein's effort is called the Democracy Alliance. He describes it as a network of high net worth individuals committed to promoting progressive ideals by investing in strategic, long-term local, regional and national capacity building.
One donor who sits on the board of a progressive foundation and has heard the Stein rap is worried that the "top down" nature of things so painfully obvious in the 2004 election could be perpetuated by Stein and other funding efforts like those of billionaires like George Soros and Peter Lewis. "It is so important to get resources down to the grass roots," says the donor, who wished to remain anonymous. "One of the major failings of these big donors meeting with each other and deciding where all the money should go is they reinforce each other. Where is the fresh thinking? They think one big idea should get all the money or one or two leaders should be the gatekeepers. That is not going to work. Putting all that money in the ACT basket certainly didn't do the trick in the past election, nor will giving it all to Podesta and Center for American Progress help build progressive infrastructure at the local level where it is needed, particularly outside of the Democratic party."
To his credit, Stein says quite clearly that "top down" and "bottom up" together are essential for future progressive success. Only time will tell whether he and his donors are prepared to let go of some of the controls, really get the money out of Washington, and let some roots grow at the local level.
This article is a version of material that will appear in the forthcoming book by AlterNet, "Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics," edited by Don Hazen and Lakshmi Chaudhry. It will be available in April, published by Chelsea Green Publishing.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21192/
Sunday, February 06, 2005
The Year of Living Indecently
A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 6, 2005
FRANK RICH
LET us be grateful that Janet Jackson did not bare both breasts.
On the first anniversary of the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction that shook the world, it's clear that just one was big enough to wreak havoc. The ensuing Washington indecency crusade has unleashed a wave of self-censorship on American television unrivaled since the McCarthy era, with everyone from the dying D-Day heroes in "Saving Private Ryan" to cuddly animated animals on daytime television getting the ax. Even NBC's presentation of the Olympics last summer, in which actors donned body suits to simulate "nude" ancient Greek statues, is currently under federal investigation.
Public television is now so fearful of crossing its government patrons that it is flirting with self-immolation. Having disowned lesbians in the children's show "Postcards From Buster" and stripped suspect language from "Prime Suspect" on "Masterpiece Theater," PBS is editing its Feb. 23 broadcast of "Dirty War," the HBO-BBC film about a terrorist attack, to remove a glimpse of female nudity in a scene depicting nuclear detoxification. Next thing you know they'll be snipping lascivious flesh out of a documentary about Auschwitz.
This repressive cultural environment was officially ratified on Nov. 2, when Ms. Jackson's breast pulled off its greatest coup of all: the re-election of President Bush. Or so it was decreed by the media horde that retroactively declared "moral values" the campaign's decisive issue and the Super Bowl the blue states' Waterloo. The political bosses of "family" organizations, well aware that TV's collective wisdom becomes reality whether true or not, have been emboldened ever since. They are spending their political capital like drunken sailors, redoubling their demands that the Bush administration marginalize gay people, stamp out sex education and turn pop culture into a continuous loop of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm."
With Sunday's Super Bowl, their crusade has scored a touchdown. MTV has been replaced as halftime producer by Don Mischer, the go-to guy for a guaranteed snoozefest; his credits include the Tony Awards, the Kennedy Center Honors and the 2004 Democratic National Convention at which the balloons failed to drop. (His subsequent cursing was heard on CNN, but escaped government sanction because no Republicans were watching.) Fox Sports Net has changed the title of its signature program "Best Damn Sports Show Period" to "Best Darn Super Bowl Road Show Period." The commercials, too, will "be careful" and in "good taste," according to the head of marketing for Anheuser-Busch. Fox, which recently pixilated the bottom of a cartoon toddler in a rerun of the series "Family Guy," now has someone on full-time rear-end alert: it rejected a comic spot for Airborne, a cold remedy, showing the backside of the 84-year-old Mickey Rooney as he leaves a sauna.
This might all be laughable were the government not expanding its role as cultural cop. But it is. The departures of Michael Powell, the Savonarola of the Federal Communications Commission, and John Ashcroft, whose parallel right-breast fixation was stimulated by a statue in the Justice Department, are red herrings. "Thank God he's gone, but God help us with what's next," said Howard Stern upon learning of Mr. Powell's imminent exit. He's right. After all, L. Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council condemned Mr. Powell for "four years of failed leadership" in fighting indecency. (Mr. Powell's commission had the temerity to actually reject some Parents Television Council jeremiads, which are distinguished by their inordinate obsession with the penis.) Mr. Bozell, whose organization has been second to none in increasing the number of annual indecency complaints from 111 in 2000 to a million-plus last year, is angling for a tougher successor and may well get one.
His wish has in effect been granted even before Mr. Powell's chair is filled. The second Bush term began with the installation of a powerful new government censor in another big job, Secretary of Education. Margaret Spellings hadn't even been officially sworn into the cabinet when she took on "Postcards From Buster," threatening PBS with decreased financing because one episode had the show's eponymous animated rabbit hobnobbing with actual lesbian moms while visiting Vermont to learn how maple syrup is made. Though Buster had in previous installments visited Muslims, Mormons, Orthodox Jews and Pentecostal Christians, gay couples (even when not identified as such on camera) are verboten to our new Secretary of Education. "Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode," Ms. Spellings wrote in her threatening letter to Pat Mitchell, the C.E.O. of PBS.
The letter, as it happened, was unnecessary: Public broadcasting says that it had decreed on its own only a few hours earlier that it would not distribute the offending show - the most alarming example yet of just how cowardly it has become and how chilling the Janet Jackson effect has been. (Since then, some two dozen member stations out of a total of 349 have rebeled and decided to broadcast the episode anyway.) But the story won't end with this one incident. Ms. Spellings' threats against PBS are only the latest chapter in a continuing saga at an education department that increasingly resembles an authoritarian government's ministry of information.
A month before the election, The Los Angeles Times reported on its front page that the department had quietly destroyed more than 300,000 copies of "a booklet designed for parents to help their children learn history" after Lynne Cheney, who has no official government role, complained about its contents. The booklet burning occurred under the watch of Rod Paige, the education secretary who, we would later learn, was simultaneously complicit in another sub rosa exercise in heavy-handed government information management: the payment of $240,000 in taxpayers' funds to Armstrong Williams, a talking head and columnist, to plug Bush administration policies on radio and TV.
Mr. Paige fled his post last month without adequately explaining what he knew about these scandals. Enter Ms. Spellings, previously a White House aide who by some accounts had been a shadow administrator of the education department during Mr. Paige's out-to-lunch tenure. With all the other troubles in public education, why would she focus on a single episode of a single children's program on her second day in the job? We don't yet know. But her act was nothing if not ideologically synergistic with still another freshly uncovered Bush propaganda effort. Just as Ms. Spellings busted Buster, two more syndicated columnists copped to receiving taxpayers' dollars, this time siphoned through the Department of Health and Human Services, to help craft propaganda for a Bush "healthy marriage initiative" that disdains same-sex couples as fervently as Ms. Spellings did in her letter to PBS.
What makes this story more insidious still is the glaring reality that the most prominent Republican lesbians in America are Mary Cheney, a former gay and lesbian marketing liaison for Coors beer, and her partner, Heather Poe, who appeared as a couple in public and on TV during the presidential campaign. That Ms. Spellings would gratuitously go after this specific "lifestyle" right after taking office is so provocative it smells like payback specifically pitched at those "pro-family" watchdogs who snarled at the mention of Ms. Cheney's sexual orientation during the campaign whether it was by John Kerry or anyone else. Surely Ms. Spellings doesn't believe in discrimination against nontraditional families: by her own account, she was a single mother who had to park her 13-year-old and 8-year-old children in Austin when she first went to work at the White House. Then again, President Bush went on record last month as saying that "studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is being raised by a man and a woman" (even though, as The New York Times reported, "there is no scientific evidence that children raised by gay couples do any worse").
That our government is now both intimidating PBS and awarding public money to pundits to enforce "moral values" agendas demonizing certain families is the ugliest fallout of the campaign against indecency. That campaign cannot really banish salaciousness from pop culture, a rank impossibility in a market economy where red and blue customers are united in their infatuation with "Desperate Housewives." But it can create public policy that discriminates against anyone on the hit list of moral values zealots. Inane as it may seem that Ms. Spellings is conducting a witch hunt against Buster or that James Dobson has taken aim at SpongeBob SquarePants, there's a method to their seeming idiocy: the cartoon surrogates are deliberately chosen to camouflage the harshness of their assault on nonanimated, flesh-and-blood people.
This, too, has its antecedent in the McCarthy era. In his novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," Michael Chabon was extrapolating from actual history when one of his heroes, a gay comic book artist, is hauled before Congress to testify about pairing up "strapping young fellows in tight trousers" as superheroes. A Senate committee of the time did investigate the comics. Its guiding force was the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham's fear-mongering 1954 tome "Seduction of the Innocent," which posited that Batman and Robin could corrupt children by inducing a "wish dream of two homosexuals living together." The decency cops of that day, exemplified by closeted gay right-wingers like J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn, escalated a culture war into one with human costs by conflating homosexuality with the criminality of treason.
One big difference between that America and ours is that the culture industry, public broadcasting not included, has gained much more power since then. Should Sunday's Super Bowl falter in the ratings, its creators will lure that missing audience back next year with wardrobe malfunctions that haven't even been invented yet.
But gay parents whose "lifestyle" is vilified by a cabinet officer don't have that power. They're vulnerable even in a state like Vermont that respects their civil rights. "I feel sick about it," Karen Pike of Hinesburg, Vt., told The Burlington Free Press, after learning that PBS had orphaned the "Buster" episode showing her, her partner and their three children. "I understand they get public funding, but they should be the one station we feel confident in, in knowing that what we see there represents our country."
No one had told her that some stories are no longer welcome. You have to wonder if anyone has told Mary Cheney: Focus on the Family could not have been pleased to read last week's New York Post report that she has hired Bill Clinton's high-powered literary dealmaker to peddle her own story as a book.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
February 6, 2005
FRANK RICH
LET us be grateful that Janet Jackson did not bare both breasts.
On the first anniversary of the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction that shook the world, it's clear that just one was big enough to wreak havoc. The ensuing Washington indecency crusade has unleashed a wave of self-censorship on American television unrivaled since the McCarthy era, with everyone from the dying D-Day heroes in "Saving Private Ryan" to cuddly animated animals on daytime television getting the ax. Even NBC's presentation of the Olympics last summer, in which actors donned body suits to simulate "nude" ancient Greek statues, is currently under federal investigation.
Public television is now so fearful of crossing its government patrons that it is flirting with self-immolation. Having disowned lesbians in the children's show "Postcards From Buster" and stripped suspect language from "Prime Suspect" on "Masterpiece Theater," PBS is editing its Feb. 23 broadcast of "Dirty War," the HBO-BBC film about a terrorist attack, to remove a glimpse of female nudity in a scene depicting nuclear detoxification. Next thing you know they'll be snipping lascivious flesh out of a documentary about Auschwitz.
This repressive cultural environment was officially ratified on Nov. 2, when Ms. Jackson's breast pulled off its greatest coup of all: the re-election of President Bush. Or so it was decreed by the media horde that retroactively declared "moral values" the campaign's decisive issue and the Super Bowl the blue states' Waterloo. The political bosses of "family" organizations, well aware that TV's collective wisdom becomes reality whether true or not, have been emboldened ever since. They are spending their political capital like drunken sailors, redoubling their demands that the Bush administration marginalize gay people, stamp out sex education and turn pop culture into a continuous loop of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm."
With Sunday's Super Bowl, their crusade has scored a touchdown. MTV has been replaced as halftime producer by Don Mischer, the go-to guy for a guaranteed snoozefest; his credits include the Tony Awards, the Kennedy Center Honors and the 2004 Democratic National Convention at which the balloons failed to drop. (His subsequent cursing was heard on CNN, but escaped government sanction because no Republicans were watching.) Fox Sports Net has changed the title of its signature program "Best Damn Sports Show Period" to "Best Darn Super Bowl Road Show Period." The commercials, too, will "be careful" and in "good taste," according to the head of marketing for Anheuser-Busch. Fox, which recently pixilated the bottom of a cartoon toddler in a rerun of the series "Family Guy," now has someone on full-time rear-end alert: it rejected a comic spot for Airborne, a cold remedy, showing the backside of the 84-year-old Mickey Rooney as he leaves a sauna.
This might all be laughable were the government not expanding its role as cultural cop. But it is. The departures of Michael Powell, the Savonarola of the Federal Communications Commission, and John Ashcroft, whose parallel right-breast fixation was stimulated by a statue in the Justice Department, are red herrings. "Thank God he's gone, but God help us with what's next," said Howard Stern upon learning of Mr. Powell's imminent exit. He's right. After all, L. Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council condemned Mr. Powell for "four years of failed leadership" in fighting indecency. (Mr. Powell's commission had the temerity to actually reject some Parents Television Council jeremiads, which are distinguished by their inordinate obsession with the penis.) Mr. Bozell, whose organization has been second to none in increasing the number of annual indecency complaints from 111 in 2000 to a million-plus last year, is angling for a tougher successor and may well get one.
His wish has in effect been granted even before Mr. Powell's chair is filled. The second Bush term began with the installation of a powerful new government censor in another big job, Secretary of Education. Margaret Spellings hadn't even been officially sworn into the cabinet when she took on "Postcards From Buster," threatening PBS with decreased financing because one episode had the show's eponymous animated rabbit hobnobbing with actual lesbian moms while visiting Vermont to learn how maple syrup is made. Though Buster had in previous installments visited Muslims, Mormons, Orthodox Jews and Pentecostal Christians, gay couples (even when not identified as such on camera) are verboten to our new Secretary of Education. "Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode," Ms. Spellings wrote in her threatening letter to Pat Mitchell, the C.E.O. of PBS.
The letter, as it happened, was unnecessary: Public broadcasting says that it had decreed on its own only a few hours earlier that it would not distribute the offending show - the most alarming example yet of just how cowardly it has become and how chilling the Janet Jackson effect has been. (Since then, some two dozen member stations out of a total of 349 have rebeled and decided to broadcast the episode anyway.) But the story won't end with this one incident. Ms. Spellings' threats against PBS are only the latest chapter in a continuing saga at an education department that increasingly resembles an authoritarian government's ministry of information.
A month before the election, The Los Angeles Times reported on its front page that the department had quietly destroyed more than 300,000 copies of "a booklet designed for parents to help their children learn history" after Lynne Cheney, who has no official government role, complained about its contents. The booklet burning occurred under the watch of Rod Paige, the education secretary who, we would later learn, was simultaneously complicit in another sub rosa exercise in heavy-handed government information management: the payment of $240,000 in taxpayers' funds to Armstrong Williams, a talking head and columnist, to plug Bush administration policies on radio and TV.
Mr. Paige fled his post last month without adequately explaining what he knew about these scandals. Enter Ms. Spellings, previously a White House aide who by some accounts had been a shadow administrator of the education department during Mr. Paige's out-to-lunch tenure. With all the other troubles in public education, why would she focus on a single episode of a single children's program on her second day in the job? We don't yet know. But her act was nothing if not ideologically synergistic with still another freshly uncovered Bush propaganda effort. Just as Ms. Spellings busted Buster, two more syndicated columnists copped to receiving taxpayers' dollars, this time siphoned through the Department of Health and Human Services, to help craft propaganda for a Bush "healthy marriage initiative" that disdains same-sex couples as fervently as Ms. Spellings did in her letter to PBS.
What makes this story more insidious still is the glaring reality that the most prominent Republican lesbians in America are Mary Cheney, a former gay and lesbian marketing liaison for Coors beer, and her partner, Heather Poe, who appeared as a couple in public and on TV during the presidential campaign. That Ms. Spellings would gratuitously go after this specific "lifestyle" right after taking office is so provocative it smells like payback specifically pitched at those "pro-family" watchdogs who snarled at the mention of Ms. Cheney's sexual orientation during the campaign whether it was by John Kerry or anyone else. Surely Ms. Spellings doesn't believe in discrimination against nontraditional families: by her own account, she was a single mother who had to park her 13-year-old and 8-year-old children in Austin when she first went to work at the White House. Then again, President Bush went on record last month as saying that "studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is being raised by a man and a woman" (even though, as The New York Times reported, "there is no scientific evidence that children raised by gay couples do any worse").
That our government is now both intimidating PBS and awarding public money to pundits to enforce "moral values" agendas demonizing certain families is the ugliest fallout of the campaign against indecency. That campaign cannot really banish salaciousness from pop culture, a rank impossibility in a market economy where red and blue customers are united in their infatuation with "Desperate Housewives." But it can create public policy that discriminates against anyone on the hit list of moral values zealots. Inane as it may seem that Ms. Spellings is conducting a witch hunt against Buster or that James Dobson has taken aim at SpongeBob SquarePants, there's a method to their seeming idiocy: the cartoon surrogates are deliberately chosen to camouflage the harshness of their assault on nonanimated, flesh-and-blood people.
This, too, has its antecedent in the McCarthy era. In his novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," Michael Chabon was extrapolating from actual history when one of his heroes, a gay comic book artist, is hauled before Congress to testify about pairing up "strapping young fellows in tight trousers" as superheroes. A Senate committee of the time did investigate the comics. Its guiding force was the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham's fear-mongering 1954 tome "Seduction of the Innocent," which posited that Batman and Robin could corrupt children by inducing a "wish dream of two homosexuals living together." The decency cops of that day, exemplified by closeted gay right-wingers like J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn, escalated a culture war into one with human costs by conflating homosexuality with the criminality of treason.
One big difference between that America and ours is that the culture industry, public broadcasting not included, has gained much more power since then. Should Sunday's Super Bowl falter in the ratings, its creators will lure that missing audience back next year with wardrobe malfunctions that haven't even been invented yet.
But gay parents whose "lifestyle" is vilified by a cabinet officer don't have that power. They're vulnerable even in a state like Vermont that respects their civil rights. "I feel sick about it," Karen Pike of Hinesburg, Vt., told The Burlington Free Press, after learning that PBS had orphaned the "Buster" episode showing her, her partner and their three children. "I understand they get public funding, but they should be the one station we feel confident in, in knowing that what we see there represents our country."
No one had told her that some stories are no longer welcome. You have to wonder if anyone has told Mary Cheney: Focus on the Family could not have been pleased to read last week's New York Post report that she has hired Bill Clinton's high-powered literary dealmaker to peddle her own story as a book.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Friday, February 04, 2005
Gambling With Your Retirement
A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 4, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By PAUL KRUGMAN
A few weeks ago I tried to explain the logic of Bush-style Social Security privatization: it is, in effect, as if your financial adviser told you that you wouldn't have enough money when you retire - but you shouldn't save more. Instead, you should borrow a lot of money, buy stocks and hope for capital gains.
Before President Bush's big speech, a background briefing by a "senior administration official" made it clear that the plan calls for exactly the "borrow, speculate and hope" strategy I described - not just for the system as a whole, but for each individual.
Here's the money quote: "In return for the opportunity to get the benefits from the personal account, the person forgoes a certain amount of benefits from the traditional system. Now, the way that election is structured, the person comes out ahead if their personal account exceeds a 3 percent rate of return" - after inflation - "which is the rate of return that the trust fund bonds receive. So, basically, the net effect on an individual's benefits would be zero if his personal account earned a 3 percent rate of return."
Translation: If you put part of your payroll taxes into a personal account, your future benefits will be reduced by an amount equivalent to the amount you would have had to repay if you had borrowed the money at a real interest rate of 3 percent.
Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution got it exactly right: "It's not a nest egg. It's a loan."
For years, privatizers - including Mr. Bush - have claimed that people would do better with private accounts than with traditional Social Security even if they played it safe and invested in U.S. government bonds (which yield 3 percent after inflation).
But the official at the briefing made it clear that his boss was fibbing: if you invested your private account in government bonds, you would face benefit cuts equal in value to your investment, so you would be no better off than under the current system.
The only way to get ahead would be to invest in risky assets like stocks, and hope for higher yields. But if the investment went wrong and you earned less than 3 percent after inflation, your benefit cuts would leave you poorer than if you had never opened that private account.
So people are expected to take a loan from the government and use it to buy stocks, and if that turns out to have been a mistake - well, too bad.
Experts usually tell people to plan for their retirement by investing in a mix of stocks and bonds. They disapprove strongly of speculation on margin: borrowing to buy stocks. Yet Mr. Bush wants tens of millions of Americans to do exactly that.
Meanwhile, what does any of this have to do with the ostensible purpose of the whole thing: saving Social Security?
Here's the senior official again: "In a long-term sense, the personal accounts would have a net neutral effect on the fiscal situation of Social Security." The government would have to borrow huge sums up front to create the personal accounts - $4.5 trillion in the first two decades - but it would supposedly make up for all that borrowing with offsetting cuts in account holders' benefits many decades later.
Color me skeptical: will retirees with private accounts that performed badly really be forced to repay their loans in full? Even if they are, private accounts will at best have a "net neutral effect" - that is, they will do nothing to improve Social Security's finances. Mr. Bush says the system faces a crisis; what does he propose to do about it?
The answer, presumably, is that his plan will also involve major benefit cuts over and above those associated with private accounts. And it's true that you can improve Social Security's finances with privatization, as long as you also slash benefits - just as you can kill a flock of sheep with witchcraft, provided you also feed them arsenic. (Thanks, M. Voltaire.)
Do you believe that we should replace America's most successful government program with a system in which workers engage in speculation that no financial adviser would recommend? Do you believe that we should do this even though it will do nothing to improve the program's finances? If so, George Bush has a deal for you.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
February 4, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By PAUL KRUGMAN
A few weeks ago I tried to explain the logic of Bush-style Social Security privatization: it is, in effect, as if your financial adviser told you that you wouldn't have enough money when you retire - but you shouldn't save more. Instead, you should borrow a lot of money, buy stocks and hope for capital gains.
Before President Bush's big speech, a background briefing by a "senior administration official" made it clear that the plan calls for exactly the "borrow, speculate and hope" strategy I described - not just for the system as a whole, but for each individual.
Here's the money quote: "In return for the opportunity to get the benefits from the personal account, the person forgoes a certain amount of benefits from the traditional system. Now, the way that election is structured, the person comes out ahead if their personal account exceeds a 3 percent rate of return" - after inflation - "which is the rate of return that the trust fund bonds receive. So, basically, the net effect on an individual's benefits would be zero if his personal account earned a 3 percent rate of return."
Translation: If you put part of your payroll taxes into a personal account, your future benefits will be reduced by an amount equivalent to the amount you would have had to repay if you had borrowed the money at a real interest rate of 3 percent.
Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution got it exactly right: "It's not a nest egg. It's a loan."
For years, privatizers - including Mr. Bush - have claimed that people would do better with private accounts than with traditional Social Security even if they played it safe and invested in U.S. government bonds (which yield 3 percent after inflation).
But the official at the briefing made it clear that his boss was fibbing: if you invested your private account in government bonds, you would face benefit cuts equal in value to your investment, so you would be no better off than under the current system.
The only way to get ahead would be to invest in risky assets like stocks, and hope for higher yields. But if the investment went wrong and you earned less than 3 percent after inflation, your benefit cuts would leave you poorer than if you had never opened that private account.
So people are expected to take a loan from the government and use it to buy stocks, and if that turns out to have been a mistake - well, too bad.
Experts usually tell people to plan for their retirement by investing in a mix of stocks and bonds. They disapprove strongly of speculation on margin: borrowing to buy stocks. Yet Mr. Bush wants tens of millions of Americans to do exactly that.
Meanwhile, what does any of this have to do with the ostensible purpose of the whole thing: saving Social Security?
Here's the senior official again: "In a long-term sense, the personal accounts would have a net neutral effect on the fiscal situation of Social Security." The government would have to borrow huge sums up front to create the personal accounts - $4.5 trillion in the first two decades - but it would supposedly make up for all that borrowing with offsetting cuts in account holders' benefits many decades later.
Color me skeptical: will retirees with private accounts that performed badly really be forced to repay their loans in full? Even if they are, private accounts will at best have a "net neutral effect" - that is, they will do nothing to improve Social Security's finances. Mr. Bush says the system faces a crisis; what does he propose to do about it?
The answer, presumably, is that his plan will also involve major benefit cuts over and above those associated with private accounts. And it's true that you can improve Social Security's finances with privatization, as long as you also slash benefits - just as you can kill a flock of sheep with witchcraft, provided you also feed them arsenic. (Thanks, M. Voltaire.)
Do you believe that we should replace America's most successful government program with a system in which workers engage in speculation that no financial adviser would recommend? Do you believe that we should do this even though it will do nothing to improve the program's finances? If so, George Bush has a deal for you.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Fw: Bush's State of the Union: Social Security
----- Original Message -----
From: "FactCheck.org"
To:
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 1:58 AM
Subject: Bush's State of the Union: Social Security
Bush's State of the Union: Social Security "Bankruptcy?"
Summary
In his State of the Union Address, President Bush said again that the Social
Security system is headed for "bankruptcy," a term that could give the wrong
idea. Actually, even if it goes "bankrupt" a few decades from now, the
system would still be able to pay about three-quarters of the benefits now
promised.
Bush also made his proposed private Social Security accounts sound like a
sure thing, which they are not. He said they "will" grow fast enough to
provide a better return than the present system. History suggests that will
be so, but nobody can predict what stock and bond markets will do in the
future.
Bush left out any mention of what workers would have to give up to get those
private acounts -- a proportional reduction or offset in guaranteed Social
Security retirement benefits. He also glossed over the fact that money in
private accounts would be "owned" by workers only in a very limited sense --
under strict conditions which the President referred to as "guidelines."
Many retirees, and possibly the vast majority, wouldn't be able to touch
their Social Security nest egg directly, even after retirement, because the
government would take some or all of it back and convert it to a stream of
payments guaranteed for life.
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Wednesday, February 02, 2005
The GOP Media Machine Churns On
A Call To Action
AlterNet
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on February 2, 2005, Printed on February 2, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21149/
Sometime after 2009, when historians pick through the wreckage left behind by George W. Bush's administration, they will have to come to grips with the role played by the professional conservative media infrastructure.
Indeed, it will be hard to comprehend how Bush got two terms as President of the United States, ran up a massive debt, and misled the country into at least one disastrous war – without taking into account the extraordinary influence of the conservative media, from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, from the Washington Times to the Weekly Standard.
Recently, it's been revealed, too, that the Bush administration paid conservative pundits Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher while they promoted White House policies. Even fellow conservatives have criticized those payments, but the truth is that the ethical line separating conservative "journalism" from government propaganda has long since been wiped away.
For years now, there's been little meaningful distinction between the Republican Party and the conservative media machine.
In 1982, for instance, South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon established the Washington Times as little more than a propaganda organ for the Reagan-Bush administration. In 1994, radio talk show host Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the new Republican House majority.
The blurring of any ethical distinctions also can be found in documents from the 1980s when the Reagan-Bush administration began collaborating secretly with conservative media tycoons to promote propaganda strategies aimed at the American people.
In 1983, a plan, hatched by CIA Director William J. Casey, called for raising private money to sell the administration's Central American policies to the American public through an outreach program designed to look independent but which was secretly managed by Reagan-Bush officials.
The project was implemented by a CIA propaganda veteran, Walter Raymond Jr., who had been moved to the National Security Council staff and put in charge of a "perception management" campaign that had both international and domestic objectives.
In one initiative, Raymond arranged to have Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch chip in money for ostensibly private groups that would back Reagan-Bush policies. According to a memo dated Aug. 9, 1983, Raymond reported that "via Murdock [sic], may be able to draw down added funds." (For details, see Parry's Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.)
Besides avoiding congressional oversight, privately funded activities gave the impression that an independent group was embracing the administration's policies on their merits. Without knowing that the money had been arranged by the government, the public would be more inclined to believe these assessments than the word of a government spokesman.
"The work done within the administration has to, by definition, be at arms length," Raymond wrote in an Aug. 29, 1983, memo.
In foreign countries, the CIA often uses similar techniques to create what intelligence operatives call "the Mighty Wurlitzer," a propaganda organ playing the desired notes in a carefully scripted harmony. Only this time, the target audience was the American people.
Journalists As Domestic Propaganda Machines
In the 1980s, there were also propaganda operations directly comparable to the payments to Williams and Gallagher.
In a May 13, 1985, memo, which surfaced during the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan-Bush official Jonathan Miller boasted about what he called "white propaganda" successes. As an example, he cited the Wall Street Journal's publication of a pro-administration opinion piece on Nicaragua that had been written by a government consultant, history professor John Guilmartin, Jr.
"Officially, this office had no role in its preparation," wrote Miller, who worked out of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy. "The work of our operation is ensured by our office's keeping a low profile."
At the time, a Reagan-Bush National Security Council official told me that the administration's domestic propaganda campaign was modeled after CIA psychological operations abroad where information is manipulated to bring a population into line with a desired political position.
"They were trying to manipulate [U.S.] public opinion – using the tools of Walt Raymond's tradecraft which he learned from his career in the CIA covert operations shop," the official said.
Another administration official offered a similar description to the Miami Herald's Alfonso Chardy. "If you look at it as a whole, the Office of Public Diplomacy was carrying out a huge psychological operation, the kind the military conduct to influence the population in denied or enemy territory," the official said.
After disclosure of these "perception management" schemes, a legal opinion by the congressional General Accounting Office concluded that the administration's secret operation amounted to "prohibited covert propaganda activities designed to influence the media and the public to support the administration's Latin American policies."
Conservative Echo Chamber
But these ad hoc propaganda tactics of the 1980s didn't go away.
With the investment of billions of dollars over the next two decades, the strategy grew into the permanent conservative media machine that we know today, a vast echo chamber to amplify conservative messages on TV, in newspapers, through magazines, over talk radio, with book publishing and via the internet.
This media machine gives conservatives and Republicans a huge political advantage both during elections and between elections. It has even changed how Americans perceive the world and what information they rely on to make decisions.
The clout of this conservative media machine explains why millions of viewers to Rupert Murdoch's Fox News believe "facts" that aren't facts, such as their stubborn beliefs that the Bush administration did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was collaborating with al-Qaeda in the Sept. 11 attacks.
These days, a large number of Americans are fed a steady diet of conservative propaganda disguised as information – and millions more are influenced by the conservative messages that pervade TV, radio and print.
But the influence doesn't stop there. Since the 1980s, this conservative media machine – often in collaboration with Republican politicians – has targeted and pressured mainstream journalists who discover information that conflicts with the propaganda.
Many independent-minded mainstream reporters have seen their careers damaged or destroyed after being denounced as "liberal" or "anti-American." Other journalists have protected themselves by tilting their reporting to the right or avoiding many controversial stories altogether.
So, in 2002-2003, for instance, the major news media largely acquiesced to – rather than challenged – the Bush administration's false claims about Iraqi WMDs.
When some mainstream reporters, such as The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, did produce skeptical WMD stories, the articles were killed or buried deep inside the papers where they got little attention. By contrast, editors at The Washington Post and The New York Times trumpeted the administration's WMD charges on their front pages.
New Rationales
In the weeks after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the conservative news media continued to hype every false alarm suggesting that WMDs had been found, possibly explaining why so many Americans think WMD was discovered.
Whenever that would happen, even at a small outlet like Consortiumnews.com, we would get e-mails from conservative readers demanding that we apologize to President Bush for doubting his word.
Surely at large news organizations like The New York Times and The Washington Post, the stakes were much higher. If WMD caches had been found, any reporter who had displayed any skepticism before the Iraq invasion would have been pilloried by the right-wing media and its legions of angry e-mail writers.
Those future historians gazing back on the Bush administration should not underestimate this fear factor in explaining why so few journalists at the major news outlets were willing to take the chance.
It's also true that while career death awaited any journalist who questioned the WMD case – if stockpiles had been found – journalists have not suffered any serious consequences for buying into the Bush administration's false claims. Most right-wing commentators simply have shifted their war rationales and continued to berate critics of Bush's war policies.
The Game
Rather than face up to any responsibility for the deaths of more than 1,400 U.S. soldiers and the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis, the propaganda game has just moved on.
Indeed, listening to the continued angry rhetoric on Fox News or right-wing talk radio, a listener would get the impression that these very well-paid, mostly white men were part of some persecuted minority, not a group of privileged individuals wielding extraordinary power.
By now, the huge investment of money in this conservative media machine may mean that even if conservative "journalists" did reach an honest conclusion that their behavior was damaging the United States, they would be hard pressed to change course.
That's because like any large bureaucracy, the conservative media machine has taken on a life of its own.
Thousands of conservative "journalists" are dependent on its perpetuation for their livelihoods. There are mortgages to pay and school tuitions due. It's much easier just to continue doing the job and keeping the assembly lines of propaganda humming, rather than trying to shut the operation down or dramatically change the product.
In that way, the conservative "journalists" are like workers in a factory that's polluting a river which flows through the neighboring countryside. If the pollution is stopped, they fear they will lose their jobs. So it's in their interest to fight environmental controls, keep the factory running and leave it to someone else to clean up the mess.
Dirty Money
Another aspect of the conservative media corruption can be found in where some of the right-wing money originates.
The evidence is clear, for instance, that the wealth of one major conservative media tycoon – Rev. Sun Myung Moon – traces back to money illicitly laundered into the United States and possibly even to operatives connected to organized crime.
In the late 1970s, a congressional investigation, headed by Rep. Donald Fraser, discovered that Moon was a South Korean intelligence operative whose operations were financed from secretive bank accounts in Japan. Investigators also uncovered Moon's close ties to the Japanese yakuza crime syndicate which runs drugs, gambling and prostitution rings in Asia.
Moon also associated with right-wing South American leaders implicated in cocaine trafficking. In 1980, Moon's organization aided Bolivia's "Cocaine Coup" conspirators who overthrew a left-of-center government and seized dictatorial power. The violent coup installed drug-tainted military officers at the head of Bolivia's government, giving the putsch the nickname the "Cocaine Coup."
U.S. government evidence about Moon's money-laundering activities led to his conviction for tax fraud in 1982. But in that same year, flush with seemingly unlimited supplies of cash, Moon established the Washington Times as a reliable booster of Reagan-Bush policies.
Since then, the theocrat, who considers himself the new Messiah, has become a political untouchable in Washington. Both President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush made special pronouncements about how valuable they considered Moon's newspaper.
After leaving office, George H.W. Bush gave paid speeches on behalf of Moon's front groups. Though the exact amount of Moon's payments to Bush has never been revealed, one former Unification Church official told me the Moon organization had budgeted $10 million for the ex-president.
Confusion
So, Armstrong Williams might be understandably confused by the furor over his $241,000 grant from Bush's Education Department to promote the "no children left behind" program. The same may be true of columnist Maggie Gallagher who touted Bush's pro-marriage policies while on a $21,500 contract from the Department of Health and Human Services.
After all, many of their conservative colleagues have taken buckets full of money from Moon's bottomless well of cash.
Amid this moral confusion on the right – as the U.S. national treasury is drained, the dollar sinks to record lows and American soldiers die in a war launched for a fake reason – it's getting harder and harder to notice any bright ethical lines.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21149/
AlterNet
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on February 2, 2005, Printed on February 2, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21149/
Sometime after 2009, when historians pick through the wreckage left behind by George W. Bush's administration, they will have to come to grips with the role played by the professional conservative media infrastructure.
Indeed, it will be hard to comprehend how Bush got two terms as President of the United States, ran up a massive debt, and misled the country into at least one disastrous war – without taking into account the extraordinary influence of the conservative media, from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, from the Washington Times to the Weekly Standard.
Recently, it's been revealed, too, that the Bush administration paid conservative pundits Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher while they promoted White House policies. Even fellow conservatives have criticized those payments, but the truth is that the ethical line separating conservative "journalism" from government propaganda has long since been wiped away.
For years now, there's been little meaningful distinction between the Republican Party and the conservative media machine.
In 1982, for instance, South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon established the Washington Times as little more than a propaganda organ for the Reagan-Bush administration. In 1994, radio talk show host Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the new Republican House majority.
The blurring of any ethical distinctions also can be found in documents from the 1980s when the Reagan-Bush administration began collaborating secretly with conservative media tycoons to promote propaganda strategies aimed at the American people.
In 1983, a plan, hatched by CIA Director William J. Casey, called for raising private money to sell the administration's Central American policies to the American public through an outreach program designed to look independent but which was secretly managed by Reagan-Bush officials.
The project was implemented by a CIA propaganda veteran, Walter Raymond Jr., who had been moved to the National Security Council staff and put in charge of a "perception management" campaign that had both international and domestic objectives.
In one initiative, Raymond arranged to have Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch chip in money for ostensibly private groups that would back Reagan-Bush policies. According to a memo dated Aug. 9, 1983, Raymond reported that "via Murdock [sic], may be able to draw down added funds." (For details, see Parry's Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.)
Besides avoiding congressional oversight, privately funded activities gave the impression that an independent group was embracing the administration's policies on their merits. Without knowing that the money had been arranged by the government, the public would be more inclined to believe these assessments than the word of a government spokesman.
"The work done within the administration has to, by definition, be at arms length," Raymond wrote in an Aug. 29, 1983, memo.
In foreign countries, the CIA often uses similar techniques to create what intelligence operatives call "the Mighty Wurlitzer," a propaganda organ playing the desired notes in a carefully scripted harmony. Only this time, the target audience was the American people.
Journalists As Domestic Propaganda Machines
In the 1980s, there were also propaganda operations directly comparable to the payments to Williams and Gallagher.
In a May 13, 1985, memo, which surfaced during the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan-Bush official Jonathan Miller boasted about what he called "white propaganda" successes. As an example, he cited the Wall Street Journal's publication of a pro-administration opinion piece on Nicaragua that had been written by a government consultant, history professor John Guilmartin, Jr.
"Officially, this office had no role in its preparation," wrote Miller, who worked out of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy. "The work of our operation is ensured by our office's keeping a low profile."
At the time, a Reagan-Bush National Security Council official told me that the administration's domestic propaganda campaign was modeled after CIA psychological operations abroad where information is manipulated to bring a population into line with a desired political position.
"They were trying to manipulate [U.S.] public opinion – using the tools of Walt Raymond's tradecraft which he learned from his career in the CIA covert operations shop," the official said.
Another administration official offered a similar description to the Miami Herald's Alfonso Chardy. "If you look at it as a whole, the Office of Public Diplomacy was carrying out a huge psychological operation, the kind the military conduct to influence the population in denied or enemy territory," the official said.
After disclosure of these "perception management" schemes, a legal opinion by the congressional General Accounting Office concluded that the administration's secret operation amounted to "prohibited covert propaganda activities designed to influence the media and the public to support the administration's Latin American policies."
Conservative Echo Chamber
But these ad hoc propaganda tactics of the 1980s didn't go away.
With the investment of billions of dollars over the next two decades, the strategy grew into the permanent conservative media machine that we know today, a vast echo chamber to amplify conservative messages on TV, in newspapers, through magazines, over talk radio, with book publishing and via the internet.
This media machine gives conservatives and Republicans a huge political advantage both during elections and between elections. It has even changed how Americans perceive the world and what information they rely on to make decisions.
The clout of this conservative media machine explains why millions of viewers to Rupert Murdoch's Fox News believe "facts" that aren't facts, such as their stubborn beliefs that the Bush administration did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was collaborating with al-Qaeda in the Sept. 11 attacks.
These days, a large number of Americans are fed a steady diet of conservative propaganda disguised as information – and millions more are influenced by the conservative messages that pervade TV, radio and print.
But the influence doesn't stop there. Since the 1980s, this conservative media machine – often in collaboration with Republican politicians – has targeted and pressured mainstream journalists who discover information that conflicts with the propaganda.
Many independent-minded mainstream reporters have seen their careers damaged or destroyed after being denounced as "liberal" or "anti-American." Other journalists have protected themselves by tilting their reporting to the right or avoiding many controversial stories altogether.
So, in 2002-2003, for instance, the major news media largely acquiesced to – rather than challenged – the Bush administration's false claims about Iraqi WMDs.
When some mainstream reporters, such as The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, did produce skeptical WMD stories, the articles were killed or buried deep inside the papers where they got little attention. By contrast, editors at The Washington Post and The New York Times trumpeted the administration's WMD charges on their front pages.
New Rationales
In the weeks after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the conservative news media continued to hype every false alarm suggesting that WMDs had been found, possibly explaining why so many Americans think WMD was discovered.
Whenever that would happen, even at a small outlet like Consortiumnews.com, we would get e-mails from conservative readers demanding that we apologize to President Bush for doubting his word.
Surely at large news organizations like The New York Times and The Washington Post, the stakes were much higher. If WMD caches had been found, any reporter who had displayed any skepticism before the Iraq invasion would have been pilloried by the right-wing media and its legions of angry e-mail writers.
Those future historians gazing back on the Bush administration should not underestimate this fear factor in explaining why so few journalists at the major news outlets were willing to take the chance.
It's also true that while career death awaited any journalist who questioned the WMD case – if stockpiles had been found – journalists have not suffered any serious consequences for buying into the Bush administration's false claims. Most right-wing commentators simply have shifted their war rationales and continued to berate critics of Bush's war policies.
The Game
Rather than face up to any responsibility for the deaths of more than 1,400 U.S. soldiers and the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis, the propaganda game has just moved on.
Indeed, listening to the continued angry rhetoric on Fox News or right-wing talk radio, a listener would get the impression that these very well-paid, mostly white men were part of some persecuted minority, not a group of privileged individuals wielding extraordinary power.
By now, the huge investment of money in this conservative media machine may mean that even if conservative "journalists" did reach an honest conclusion that their behavior was damaging the United States, they would be hard pressed to change course.
That's because like any large bureaucracy, the conservative media machine has taken on a life of its own.
Thousands of conservative "journalists" are dependent on its perpetuation for their livelihoods. There are mortgages to pay and school tuitions due. It's much easier just to continue doing the job and keeping the assembly lines of propaganda humming, rather than trying to shut the operation down or dramatically change the product.
In that way, the conservative "journalists" are like workers in a factory that's polluting a river which flows through the neighboring countryside. If the pollution is stopped, they fear they will lose their jobs. So it's in their interest to fight environmental controls, keep the factory running and leave it to someone else to clean up the mess.
Dirty Money
Another aspect of the conservative media corruption can be found in where some of the right-wing money originates.
The evidence is clear, for instance, that the wealth of one major conservative media tycoon – Rev. Sun Myung Moon – traces back to money illicitly laundered into the United States and possibly even to operatives connected to organized crime.
In the late 1970s, a congressional investigation, headed by Rep. Donald Fraser, discovered that Moon was a South Korean intelligence operative whose operations were financed from secretive bank accounts in Japan. Investigators also uncovered Moon's close ties to the Japanese yakuza crime syndicate which runs drugs, gambling and prostitution rings in Asia.
Moon also associated with right-wing South American leaders implicated in cocaine trafficking. In 1980, Moon's organization aided Bolivia's "Cocaine Coup" conspirators who overthrew a left-of-center government and seized dictatorial power. The violent coup installed drug-tainted military officers at the head of Bolivia's government, giving the putsch the nickname the "Cocaine Coup."
U.S. government evidence about Moon's money-laundering activities led to his conviction for tax fraud in 1982. But in that same year, flush with seemingly unlimited supplies of cash, Moon established the Washington Times as a reliable booster of Reagan-Bush policies.
Since then, the theocrat, who considers himself the new Messiah, has become a political untouchable in Washington. Both President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush made special pronouncements about how valuable they considered Moon's newspaper.
After leaving office, George H.W. Bush gave paid speeches on behalf of Moon's front groups. Though the exact amount of Moon's payments to Bush has never been revealed, one former Unification Church official told me the Moon organization had budgeted $10 million for the ex-president.
Confusion
So, Armstrong Williams might be understandably confused by the furor over his $241,000 grant from Bush's Education Department to promote the "no children left behind" program. The same may be true of columnist Maggie Gallagher who touted Bush's pro-marriage policies while on a $21,500 contract from the Department of Health and Human Services.
After all, many of their conservative colleagues have taken buckets full of money from Moon's bottomless well of cash.
Amid this moral confusion on the right – as the U.S. national treasury is drained, the dollar sinks to record lows and American soldiers die in a war launched for a fake reason – it's getting harder and harder to notice any bright ethical lines.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21149/
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