A Republican 'Firewall" against Trump

We are beginning to see a plausible Republican “firewall” against Donald Trump. You’d expect to read about it in the New York Times, but the paper is too busy helping the Clinton campaign (Bernie can’t win, Bernie faces cool reception from Blacks, etc) to strike out editorially against a clear and present danger to the Republic: Donald Trump.

No, I first ran across the vision of a blueprint for blocking Trump in The Washington Post. In early December the Post Editorial board wrote:

“As Mr. Trump’s fellow Republican candidates now acknowledge, there is a real-world cost to a campaign that gains traction by spewing hatred, bigotry and rage. Criticizing Mr. Trump is no longer sufficient. It is time to say clearly he is anathema to the Republican Party, and to the nation.

The full editorial is HERE.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ending-the-gops-season-of-denial/2015/12/08/b8549424-9dd3-11e5-a3c5-c77f2cc5a43c_story.html?tid=a_inl

Then, yesterday (Feb. 21) Danielle Allen, a Post contributing columnist, gets down to cases urging those Republican candidates who have dropped out, or should drop out, to, as a “great act of public service” revoke their pledge to support whomever the Republican party nominates.

“Be bold,” she writes, “stand up and shout that you will not support Trump if he is your party’s nominee. Do it together. Hold one big mother of a news conference.”

She calls for the also-rans to endorse Marco Rubio, not because she does (she plans to vote for Hillary Clinton), but because Rubio is NOT Trump, whom she calls an opportunistic demagogue. Trump’s tactic of exploiting a divided nation are akin to Hitler’s, she says, citing Hannah Arendt’s book “Men in Dark Times.”

In closing, Allen calls on Sen. Ted Cruz to withdraw as well and to support Rubio. Addressing Cruz directly, she writes,  “You are drawing too close to Trump’s politics. You too should change course."

She points the finger at the non-Trump Republican candidates, saying, “You are the ones on whom this burden falls. No one else can do it.”

Her column can be read HERE:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/moment-of-truth-we-must-stop-trump/2016/02/21/0172e788-d8a7-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

The dilemma for anyone-but-Trump Republicans is clear. Should the Republican convention reject the billionaire bully, Trump no doubt would launch an independent campaign that would ensure victory for whomever the Democrats nominate. On the other hand, with Trump carrying the Republican banner into November, there’s no certainty either Clinton or Sanders would win (although the polls, for what they’re worth in this wacko year, suggest that Sanders has a better shot.)

So the Republicans have a choice: Do they want a wing-nut, unstable, racist Republican demagogue in the White House or one of those shifty, lefty Democrats?

The Neediest and The Greediest

Earlier this week a friend drew my attention to a New York Times Sunday edition story about the results of the paper’s end-of-the-year “Neediest Cases Fund” drive.

The friend’s adult child had a hand in raising $77,000 at her place of employment, the financial giant Citigroup.

The entire, laudable Times campaign effort raised nearly $6 million for the “neediest” in the New York City. The Times story, in addition to devoting four paragraphs to Citigroup’s contribution, detailed the plight of several served by the fund.

It happens that I read this heart-warming story just as I’ve been reading “The Price of Inequity,” by Joseph Stiglitz. It’s a book that sensitizes the reader to the underlying causes of poverty in our society. Among those causes is the political and financial clout of organizations like Citigroup.

So with Stiglitz's book and inequity on my mind, I thought that it might be instructive and add perspective to see what the CEO of Citigroup makes in a year.

Turns out in 2012, the last year for which figures are available, CEO Michael Corbat was compensated to the tune of $11.5 million. I think it fair to assume, given the bloated nature of executive compensation, that last year he topped $12 million (we'll know in the next few days).

Now go back to that the Neediest Cases Fund TOTAL of nearly $6 million. It is about half Corbat's entire compensation for one year. Makes one wonder that Corbat contributed to Citigroup’s $77,000.

Interestingly, the Times story didn’t include the comparison of Corbat’s compensation with Citigroup’s "Neediest" contribution or with the total amount of money raise by the Times campaign. (Could the omission have something to do with what top executives at the Times make?)

Such comparisons would provide insight into why the pressing needs of this nation’s neediest are going unmet,  and why the Times effort, as worthy as it is, represents a token effort. The real solution lies in addressing inequity, greed and concentrated political power, as Stiglitz points out.

Herbert hits the mark — again

For the second Saturday in a row, Bob Herbert of the New York Times, has hit the mark. This time the reader has to get to the bottom of his column to find the target, but there it is for all to see.

Among the many heartening things about the workers fighting back in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere is the spotlight that is being thrown on the contemptuous attitude of the corporate elite and their handmaidens in government toward ordinary working Americans: police officers and firefighters, teachers, truck drivers, janitors, health care aides, and so on. These are the people who do the daily grunt work of America. How dare we treat them with contempt.

It would be a mistake to think that this fight is solely about the right of public employees to collectively bargain. As important as that issue is, it’s just one skirmish in what’s shaping up as a long, bitter campaign to keep ordinary workers, whether union members or not, from being completely overwhelmed by the forces of unrestrained greed in this society (My emphasis. RS).

The predators at the top, billionaires and millionaires, are pitting ordinary workers against one another. So we’re left with the bizarre situation of unionized workers with a pension being resented by nonunion workers without one. The swells are in the background, having a good laugh.

As George Lakoff has observed, politics is all about "framing" the issue. As long as this is about Republican politicians versus Democratic unions, the real culprits remain invisible. Herbert is rightly using a much bigger frame and hoping that the political action fills it.

It may be wishful thinking.

When will the protest move from the state capitols and follow the money trail back to Wall Street, the offices of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the gated mansions of the super-rich?

When they are identified as the source of the problem.

What makes Herbert's columns so refreshing is that in very few places in the mainstream media do you see the issue framed as a symptom of a plutocracy. The reason should be clear: the media are owned by the plutocrats. When, and if, protesters direct their action against the real cause, rest assured the media will described those in the streets as "radicals waging class warfare."

Funny that all those protesters in the Middle East aren't also labeled "radicals waging class warfare." Instead they are "pro-Democracy forces." That's because they are over THERE and we are HERE, where the corporate boards are interlocked and the hefty media paychecks (from corporate advertisers and underwriters) get written and cashed.

"Information wars" in Washington DC

Our political culture has a “combat mentality.” It doesn’t exactly fit with our naive civics-class indoctrination from the 8th grade.

How bad are things in the world of politics?

Sometimes the “war” seeps out around the edges, as it did on Tuesday in a seemingly innocuous article about young Washington, D.C. aides hired to digest the news and present it to their bosses.

While news readers in technocratic departments seem to approach their jobs relatively dispassionately, Bobby Maldonado, 26, brings a different mentality to his job working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He's up at 4 a.m. to get a jump on events so that he can strategically analyze, arrange and present them to his big-business bosses at the Chamber.

You get a flavor for his, and the Chamber’s, perspective when you read how young Maldonado describes his job.

“The information wars are won before work....Our executives walk into meetings and they’re doing battles, whether it’s on health care or cap and trade, and information is power, and my job is to make sure they’re armed with the most powerful information.”

“Wars,” “battles,” “armed.”

Reading the story, you don’t get the feeling that Maldonado is some Glock-toting kook. But he's just another soldier — and aide to battlefield generals. His words fit the political culture of victors and vanquished. These folks are out for blood.

And the media amplify it. Of all the headlines that the Times could have put on a tepid story, the one they chose came from Maldonado’s quote. “Where News is Power, A Fight to be Well-armed.”

A different kind of bad news

Has this ever been a bad news day!

No, I’m not talking about just Iranian election results or more car bombs in Pakistan.

The bad news started with an Oregonian’s front-page story telling me that “more than 2 million households are in danger of seeing their major broadcast TV channels disappear into a fuzz of static when analog service ends Friday.”

Danger? Did I read “danger”?

What’s the danger? Suddenly 2 million people have to eat dinner together and converse. The real danger is that a reporter could write such non-sense. Try replacing “in danger of” with “will be inconvenienced by” or possibly “will be irked by.” I personally like "will be potentially enriched by."

Next it is on to my daily feed of Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. There I’m told that it is the birthday of Anne Frank and that her Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl has sold more than 25 million copies, and it is “the second-best-selling nonfiction book in history, after the Bible.”

The Bible non-fiction? It certainly has its much-heralded truths, but really, non-fiction?

Parting the Red Sea, the virgin birth, feeding the multitudes, walking on water? Suddenly overheated, mythological metaphor becomes "non-fiction," and no one blinks.

Not even Garrison Keillor.

So it’s now the end of the day and I finally get to New York Times columnist David Brooks. His subject is our stampeding American debt. He writes: “The ratio of debt-to-personal-disposable income was 55 percent in 1960.” He goes on to tell us that “it” (presumably this “ratio”) grew to 133 percent in 2007.

What ratio?

Here’s one of our brainiest columnists writing in one of the world’s most respected newspapers,and he doesn’t know the difference between ratio and percentage.

Worse, neither do his New York Times editors.

All three stories had news, all right. None of it reassuring.

Maybe the food additives and pollution are finally getting to us.

"Take nothing for granted"

I saw the headline at the top of the April 20 issue of The New York Times but couldn’t bring myself to read the story until a week later. I was steeling myself.

The story headlined “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand” is proof that in Eisenhower's farewell address, the president and former military commander got it only partly right when he warned of the military-industrial complex.

As several letter writers have noted, what we have is a military-industrial-media complex.

The story by David Barstow lays bare an entire cadre of retired military brass serving as media shills for the administration and the Iraq War. Since 2002, most of the "analysts" have mouthed the Bush administration's flawed and deceitful positions. It turns out they were in the employ of military contractors who reap billions from the war. In short, many of the allegedly objective analysts were trapped and compromised: speak out against the administration and the war (as in, tell the truth) and you and your clients or employer will suffer the consequences.

Eisenhower's warning and then some is all in the story:

Military — check.

Industrial — check.

Media — check.

The one thing it isn’t, is complex.

The other truism illustrated by the story is from the late, great Neil Postman: “The more you watch (TV); the less you know.” Actually, it’s worst than that. The more you watch, the more deceived you become.

I do not believe for a minute that the Bush Administration is the first to use PR smoke-and-mirrors techniques to deceive the public, to pay off military contractors and to send American soldiers to their deaths for unworthy causes.

But this story by David Barstow catalogs deceit heaped on deceit — in detail, thanks to the Times obtaining original documents through he Freedom of Information Act. Barstow reports that the ethically challenged TV networks allowed it all to happen, duping the public repeatedly. (Surprise, “fair and balanced” FOX was the worst of the lot.}

If there’s good news here it’s this: something must have gone wrong along the way, because the public, despite the lies and distortions, has seen through the scam. Seven in 10 want to get out of Iraq.

So much for bought-and-paid-for military authority figures.

The other thing that is happening is that TV network news operations are losing their viewers. Thanks to the lies and distortions of the “key influentials” and “message multipliers,” as the military analysts were called by their Bush administration handlers, the networks can expect to lose a whole lot more.

Three post-scripts.

• As the story appeared in the Times, much of the story was obliterated by some ham-handed page layout person and asleep-at-the-switch proofreaders. Someone forgot to use “text runaround” so that a graphic obscured blocks of text. Read this story on line.

• We’ve seen numerous military analysts on the PBS’s Lehrer NewsHour, but for some reason, the story fails to mention them and whether they too are tainted by ties to the arms industry and the administration. In a NewsHour broadcast segment about the Times story, correspondent Judy Woodruff said, “For the record, the NewsHour briefly put five military analysts on a retainer in 2003, but none of them attended Pentagon briefings while on retainer to the NewsHour.”

Significantly, what she did NOT say is whether the NewsHour analysts work for or consult the arms industry — a clear conflict of interest.

• Here are Eisenhower’s words as he left office:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Question: How can the public be “alert and knowledgeable” when the news media are duped by and compliant to the Military-Industrial Complex? Some networks, such as NBC, are even owned by huge defense contractors.

End the "bloody" political "warfare"

Of course it is the season of the political cliché. The best known and weariest is the “horse race.” Because it so dominates press coverage, it deprives the public of what it needs to know — namely candidates' stands on issues.

But give me the “horse race” anytime over the metaphor of the political “battle.” It’s everywhere and editors seem to thrive on the “jousts,” “attacks,” “taking hits” and “batterings” that their reporters and headline writers so thoughtlessly serve up too the public.

On the front page of today’s New York Times two stories shared a headline: “Two Political Warriors, Back on a Favorite Battleground.”

Bill Clinton and John McCain are “warriors,” but at one time or another all the candidates have been described as "battlers" or "victims" or "casualties" of political warfare. New Hampshire is the “battleground,” but it is only one of several s0-called “battleground states.”

The Press isn’t the only party to blame for the bloody, belligerent and brutal hyperbole. Politicians themselves have “attack ads” and “war rooms” etc.

Of the many harmful consequences of infusing politics with militaristic language, two stand out. First, the public wants to seek refuge from the political process. We become refugees from media coverage and many of us, statistics show, no longer vote at all. Small wonder.

Instead, we should, at the very least, become vocal conscientious objectors to such objectionable, demeaning language.

Second, the drumbeat of violent language drains meaning and significance from real war and institutionalizes and normalizes militaristic behavior. We come to expect some kind of war or military intervention every four years or so. Like the bare-knuckled election cycle, we have a war cycle. The arms industry thrives on it.

We, the public should demand that every editor and candidate in this country direct their charges to mothball the sad and destructive metaphor of war and fighting.

Instead, let's have a peaceful politics of sweet reason in which debate is, as it should be, constructive.

Wealth and well-being — in context

"He's got to be careful; everyone wants to be rich."

The "he" in question is John Edwards, who is proposing raising taxes on the super-rich.

The warning, as quoted in today's New York Times, comes from political science Prof. Dennis J. Goldford at Drake University.

I question the professor's statement. Not everyone wants to be rich. Most of us want to be happy, and we don't equate that with private jets or a chateau in the Bahamas.

I'd direct Professor Goldford to the Declaration of Independence and Jefferson's line about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." An earlier draft (and John Locke and Adam Smith) had "property" instead of "happiness" among the "inalienable rights," but Jefferson knew, and Edwards knows, that it's not all about big bucks.

In fact, psychologists are finding that wealth beyond a modestly adequate level doesn't equate with happiness, or even well being.

Think Paris Hilton. See, those jail house stories about Paris weren't just chewing gum journalism. All they needed was a little context.

The Times needed to provide context too, rather than let Professor Goldford's comment go unanswered in the story about Edward's plan. The money raised from the super-rich, by the way, would go to help reduce taxes on lower-income Americans. They don't necessarily want to be rich; they just want to be, well, happy, and Edwards knows it.

Let's save "what it means to be 'happy'" for another time, or for your own comments.

Plugs in the news?

We know how advertisers, concerned that TV viewers are TiVo-ing past commercials, have bought unavoidable "product placements" in programs themselves.

There's some sleaze to that to be sure, just as sold naming rights force us to utter commercial inanities like PGE Park or the Safeway Waterfront Blues Festival.

But what to make of what's going down in this front page story in Sunday's New York Times about George Bush's relationship with Mexican immigrants in Texas?

First, a little context. The story notes that the president, relatively liberal on the issue of amnesty for illegal immigrants, has met strong opposition from many of his Texas Republican backers. That has created strains, as described in this troubling sentence:

"It is visible on a grand scale, with ... this state's two Republican United States senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, breaking with Mr. Bush on immigration in recent months after having followed his lead with Rolex reliability for most of his term."

"With Rolex reliability"?

Hello?

Where did that little plug come from? Was someone asleep on the copy desk? Will the reporter, Jim Rutenberg, be getting a check, or a Rolex, in the mail? Is the Times cutting story placement deals with Rolex and others "sponsors"?

What can we expect next?

Is the president in Allstate-worthy good hands?

Is his policy as American as a Chevy Silverado?

In short, is business at the Times so bad that it is selling paid sponsorships in its news stories?

I don't think so, but at a time when media seem desperately willing to sell just about anything to the highest bidder, product name dropping in news stories does more than simply raise this reader's brows.

Business gets the best of the news

Last Thursday, both The New York Times and The Oregonian ran a story about a Kaiser Family Foundation study showing how TV targets kids with junk food ads that contribute to the alarming rise in childhood obesity.

Gosh, parents might want to know about the study. It serves as further incentive to get a handle on kids' TV and junk food consumption. (Hint: TV Turnoff Week is coming up April 23-29)

So where might they expect to find the story in the newspaper? In the Times' health section? In The Oregonian's "Living" section?

Fat chance.

Both papers put it in the business section. The Oregonian simply ran an AP story devoid of local reporting, although childhood nutrition is a hot issue in the state legislature and plenty of health experts here would happily comment on the Kaiser study.

The Times business-section story's headline fell under the "advertising" label. The story consisted of a back and forth between a Kaiser Family Foundation official and food and advertising industry "spokespeople." The industry mouthpieces dismissed the 2005 study as being "dated" and insisted that the food industry has been cleaning up its act. Kaiser countered that the study would serve as a "base-line" to measure any alleged industry reform.

If you want to see how "dated" the study is and whether there has been a change, check out the ads on the Saturday morning cartoon fare. (By the way, in Scandinavian countries, ALL TV advertising to children is prohibited. My own view is that ads aimed at kids are nothing less than predatory.)

At the very least, newspapers should put stories about TV stuffing harmful ads down the throats of our kids where the stories belong—in front of parents.

I learned a long time ago that much of the best "intelligence" on what is going on in this country is the exclusive domain of the business press. Pick up The Wall Street Journal or read trade publications and you'll see what I mean.

So Calvin Coolidge's adage, "The business of America is business," has a corollary: the real news of America is business news.

Adventures in news values

Here we go again with the game I like to play with my journalism students. It asks them to assess the comparative "news values" of an assortment of stories.

The game involves deciding which story deserves front-page news display.

I usually take the stories from the pages of current newspapers, although, alas, my GenWeb students rarely read newspapers, despite my urgings.

Sunday's New York Times offered an interesting array of stories for "news value" consideration. Here are headlines that went with five stories:

"For Girls, It's Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too"

"In a New Web World, Bar Codes May Talk With Your Cellphone"

"Ex-Aide Details A Loss of Faith In the President"

"25 Years After War, Wealth Transforms Falklands"

"Inspector Lists Computers With Atomic Secrets as Missing"

I should first tell you a bit more than the headlines reveal.

The first story is about the pressures on girls to succeed.

The "Ex-Aide" story is about an aide, Matthew Dowd, who was not all that close to the president. I mean, this guy was a Democrat until 1999.

The Falklands, lest we forget, are a small group of British-ruled islands off the coast of Argentina. Useful information: their chief export is frozen squid.

Finally those atomic secrets gone missing are secrets about nuclear weapons.

Okay, so what do you, Mister or Madam Editor? Which story is most worthy of the front page?

All four at the top of the list made it to prominence.

The story about the missing computers containing secrets about nuclear weapons ended up at the bottom of page 20. Hey, not a problem, especially now that we have the terrorists on the run, fighting them "over there," not here.

Who can doubt that newspapers are now in some kind of death spiral when the premier newspaper in the country buries a story that begins, "The office in charge of protecting American technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies is missing 20 desktop computers, at least 14 or which have been used for classified information, the Energy Department inspector general reported Friday."

Not that the story says "Friday," yet this was in Sunday's paper. Inquiring minds wonder what was going on with the planning of Saturday's edition of The Times.

And while the headline mentions "Atomic," the story doesn't include the word, which went out when the hydrogen bomb came in. Who knows what form "nuclear weapons" take these days—but they certainly aren't atomic.

One thing's for sure—whoever has those missing computers knows the answer.

As for the rest of us, we're still on the front page reading ""For Girls, It's Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too" and "25 Years After War, Wealth Transforms Falklands."