Economy

Fox Nation Scare Tactics: Armed IRS Agents To Enforce Obamacare

Posted by on March 23, 2010 at 3:53 pm. 16 Comments :

Fox Nation IRS ArmyIn a fit of psychotic bluster, the folks at Fox Nation have posted an article with a headline that was manufactured from whole cloth. There is nothing in their reporting, or the column to which they linked, that remotely implied the message in this headline:

“IRS Hiring Thousands of Armed Tax Agents to Enforce Obamacare.”

The source for the Fox Nationalists is a column in Tucker Carlson’s right-wing Daily Caller. You might expect that Fox could rely on Carlson to support their hallucinatory journalism. After all, Carlson is a Fox News employee. But the article in the Caller, while misleading on it’s own, doesn’t go anywhere near the Fox misinterpretation.

The Caller’s headline was somewhat less dishonest: “IRS looking to hire thousands of tax agents to enforce health care laws.” It does not make a declaration of fact that agents are actually being hired, only that the IRS is looking into it. But more importantly, there is no mention of these agents being armed. In all likelihood, any new hires are going to be accountants with calculators, not mercenaries with machine guns. That, however, didn’t stop the Caller from posting an accompanying photo of heavily armed soldiers in combat gear who have nothing whatsoever to do with the story. And, of course, Fox Nation re-posted the same photo.

The Caller’s article is filled with falsehoods. Anyone who actually bothers to read the article will notice that there is no substantiation of its claim that Democrats are working with the IRS to hire new agents. The only confirmation comes from Republicans supplying their own speculation as to staffing requirements.

It is fair to assume that expanding efforts to collect revenue would require additional personnel. However, the article notes that the new hiring is aimed at collecting taxes unrelated to the health care bill. So are Republicans and the Fox Nationalists taking the position that tax cheats should not be pursued or held accountable? Should law abiding Americans have to shoulder the burden for these deadbeats? Yes, that’s exactly their position. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee even issued a report that criticized the administration for proposing $8 billion to fund tax compliance measures. It seems to me that an $8 billion allocation to recover an estimated $300 billion in delinquent taxes is a pretty good return on investment and an effective way to reduce budget deficits.

The content of the article in the Caller is misleading in many respects, but the Fox Nation version is delusional. It states flatly that the IRS is hiring “armed” tax agents. It states flatly that these new agents will be dispatched to “enforce Obamacare.” Neither of those statements are substantiated and they aren’t even in the linked article. Yet the Fox Nationalists post the photo of soldiers in combat attire, weapons at the ready, deployed in a search and destroy posture.

The obvious intent of Fox is to frighten their congregation of Psycho-chicken Littles into believing that the “revenuers” are advancing on them to take their money and send them to FEMA camps where they will be forced to have abortions and marry gay socialists.

After struggling for fourteen months to derail the President’s agenda, and failing, Fox is upping the ante. They want people to be so afraid that they will fortify their bunkers, stockpile weapons, hoard rations, buy gold (brought to you by Glenn Beck), and prepare for Armageddon. And the way they advance that goal is by disseminating lies like this story from the scare-meisters at Fox Nation.

Boob BombsUpdate: Fox News continues to pour on the fear mongering. They are now reprising a story originally posted at Fox Nation almost two months: Boob Bombs! Terrorists Could Use Explosives in Breast Implants to Crash Planes.

Back in February the story was sourced to the ultra-wingnut WorldNetDaily web site. This time Fox is sourcing it to The Sun, Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloid, but, hilariously, the article quotes “terrorist expert Joseph Farah.” In fact, Farah is no terrorist expert, he is the publisher of WorldNetDaily. The propaganda comes full circle.

It seems that they are just going to repeat this story every few months until either people are sufficiently terrified of titties, or until Al Qaeda decides to give it a try. I maintain my position that this could have a devastating impact on air travel. As I said in February:

We would need to start including Scarlett Johansson in our profiling criteria. And because the same explosive devices could be inserted in the buttocks, Jennifer Lopez would have to be added to the no-fly list.

Update II: All of this is reminiscent of the hysteria Glenn Beck tried to trump up over what he said was a civilian national security force that Obama was supposedly amassing to assault him and his congregation. As it turns out it was just an initiative to expand the peace corps and similar organizations.

[Also…] FactChect.org debunked the claim of IRS hiring thousands of agents.

Stay scared America.

Thar’s Gold In Glenn Beck’s Shills

Posted by on December 14, 2009 at 12:58 pm. 1 Comments :

To accuse Glenn Beck of being a greedy, capitalist, manipulative, profiteering, hustler would probably be received as a compliment by him. He spreads the marketing on pretty thick with TV, radio, magazines, books, movies, and personal appearances. And all of these self-aggrandizing ventures are hawked shamelessly on his multiple media platforms.

Recently, however, Beck has come under fire for his promotion of products and services offered by his advertisers. This sort of hucksterism is problematic because it makes it impossible to tell if the product endorsements are genuine or if they are payoffs to keep the advertiser happy. That obvious conflict of interest seems to escape Beck. What’s worse, shilling for products in this manner can result in the spokesperson deliberately misleading his audience in order to create or enhance the market for a product.

And that is precisely what Beck is being accused of doing on behalf of his gold advertisers. During the course of his programs on radio and TV, Beck is painting a picture of America, and the world, as teetering on the ledge of catastrophe. He insists that the economy is in freefall and the dollar is collapsing. He has even floated conspiracy theories about the dollar being replaced by a new world currency. All of these frightful predictions are encouragements to his gullible disciples to protect their assets by converting them to gold.

Now, even Beck’s employer, Fox News, has registered some concern about Beck’s relationship with his sponsors. Joel Cheatwood, Senior Vice President of Development at Fox, says that the network’s legal department asked Beck’s representatives for clarification about his work for Goldline International. The response was that Beck is not a paid spokesman. That’s fortunate because Fox’s official policy on the matter is that…

“Fox News prohibits any on-air talent from endorsing products or serving as a product spokesperson.”

So how do they explain this:

Glenn Beck for GoldlineThe Goldline web site has prominently featured Beck endorsing their products. The footnote referenced on the ad identified Beck explicitly as a “paid spokesman.” However, it no longer does so. The designation was recently changed to read “radio sponsor.” And concurrent with that, both Goldline and Fox are now claiming that Beck was never a paid spokesman in the first place. It was all just a big misunderstanding. Never mind the fact that Beck has appeared in specially produced videos touting Goldline.

The doomsday gold rush is a staple for Beck’s media empire. At least four of his current advertisers are gold dealers (Goldline, Superior Gold Group, Investment Rarities, and Rosland Capital). Granted, Beck is having a hard time attracting advertisers since he called President Obama a racist. The remaining ads are almost all for conservative publications or products and services exploiting one crisis or another. And this is not just a Beck phenomena. Goldline and other gold traders are also pitched by such financial wizards as Mark Levin, Dennis Miller, Fred Thompson, Laura Ingraham, Lars Larson, Michael Smerconish, Monica Crowley, and G. Gordon Liddy.

If the world doesn’t come to an end soon, Beck’s viewers are going to be very disappointed – and poor. Gold prices have cratered in the past month, losing more than $100.00 per ounce. And the worst thing that can happen from the perspective of Beck, and those who foolishly took his investment advice, is for the economy to recover. And therein lies the problem with regard to conflict of interest.

In order for Beck and his coterie to prosper, the economy must not. Beck has a financial stake in the nation’s economic affairs turning south. He also has a personal stake in that he does not want to be seen as having been wrong about his dire predictions. So his programs’ advertising, his investment portfolio, and his reputation all require that our country fail. Could that have something to with Beck’s relentless barrage of lectures about how the country is going to hell and it is time to build an Ark? Could it have something to do with his rallying cry for God, guns, and of course, gold?

Could it? Could be.

Glenn Beck’s Sermon On Shared Sacrifice Will Make You Sick

Posted by on November 25, 2009 at 12:47 pm. 2 Comments :

There’s no doubt about it. The United States economy is still reeling from the effects of one of the worst recessions in its history. It is piling up massive debt and struggling to produce even modest growth and job creation. At the same time it is embroiled in two wars overseas that are costly on matters both fiscal and fatal.

In response, Congressman David Obey floated a proposal that a new tax on high income earners be imposed to cover the costs associated with any escalation of activities in Afghanistan. This sensible suggestion is an attempt to restore responsibility to wartime economics. If the nation is going to engage in an expensive adventure that puts its citizens lives at risk, it ought to be willing to ask those who remain at home to chip in and insure that the military and personal needs of our soldiers are met. It’s called shared sacrifice.

From Glenn Beck’s perspective, however, this is just another political maneuver by Democrats to hasten the socialistic utopia Beck imagines they are plotting. He insists that it is a continuance of President Obama’s campaign to redistribute the wealth. In a way, Beck is right. It is an initiative to redistribute wealth from chickenhawks like Beck to soldiers on the battlefield. And Beck will have none of that.

In his patented drool-dripping diction, Beck commences reasonably enough by declaring that war “should qualify as a shared sacrifice.” But then he veers into irrational demands that strain any effort to understand.

“What sacrifice are you willing to share? Shave your armpits, sign up for a tour of duty and share the sacrifice.”

Is he directing this exclusively to women? Or are all recruits expected to shave under their arms these days? It may be best to set that aside for the time being and focus, not on armpits, but on Beck’s call to arms. What is notable about Beck berating others to enlist is that he never did so. Not in his youth, nor for the current wars in which he claims to believe. Beck was 37 years old in 2001. He could have signed up after 9/11, and during any of the five years thereafter. But apparently shared sacrifice was secondary to seeking radio stardom.

Beck is not only opposed to sharing sacrifices by spreading the costs of war to all citizens, he believes that the sacrifice Americans ought to be making is in the area of their own well being. He argues that domestic initiatives like health care should be curtailed in favor of war funding. And his specific approach to this theory is particularly grotesque – and false:

“I don’t see Americans dying in the streets as they’re waiting in line to the hospital because they’ve been shot in Detroit. They get in to a hospital. You know where I do see them dying? Afghanistan. Nobody died because they didn’t have health care. Nobody!”

I’m quite certain that Beck is telling the truth when he says that he doesn’t “see Americans dying in the streets.” He certainly wouldn’t see them in the streets of his gated community in Connecticut. A media celebrity who earns tens of millions of dollars every year is not likely to encounter many shooting victims in urban Detroit. But even more egregious is his claim that nobody has died because they didn’t have health care. It would not have taken much research to discover this report published by Harvard Medical School just a little over a month ago:

Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance
“We’re losing more Americans every day because of inaction … than drunk driving and homicide combined,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.

Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.

Glenn Beck is a wealthy, well-insured, elitist who has never served in the military. Yet he is comfortable lecturing everyone else on what it means to share sacrifice. He is content to allow thousands of Americans to die here at home – ten times the number every year than have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in eight years – so that he doesn’t have to pay a little more of his millions in taxes. And then he has the gall to belittle others for failing to show due consideration for the troops.

An equally disturbing aspect of this is that, in pursuit of his greedy selfishness, Beck will deliberately misinform his legions of deluded disciples about the facts related to health insurance deficiencies and abuses. With his proclivity for purposeful deception he joins his Fox colleague, Bill O’Reilly, who still insists that there are no homeless veterans.

The only lessons to be learned from Beck’s sermon on shared sacrifice are sadistic, shameless, self-serving, specious, and quite literally sickening.

The Fox Frame: Obama’s Stock Market Voodoo

Posted by on October 14, 2009 at 6:36 pm. 8 Comments :

After months of turmoil, the stock market has clawed its way back to levels that haven’t been seen for a year. Passing the 10,000 mark would ordinarily be perceived as good news by most market analysts and millions of investors, many of whom are relying on market performance for their future security and retirement.

But Fox News, the network that celebrates America losing the Olympics, and laments the President being honored with a Nobel Peace Prize, sees things differently.

Last March, Fox News was the first to report that a declining Dow was unambiguously the fault of Obama, who had been in office for a little more than a month.

Fox declared the declines “Obama’s Bear Market.” They illustrated their coverage with colorful charts highlighting the foreboding financial trends that were about to sink all future hopes of America.

Unfortunately for Fox, later the same month the market began what would become an unprecedented turnaround. It would rise 21% in 16 days – a feat that has not been recorded in modern stock market history

Undaunted, Fox came up with a unique explanation for why Wall Street would suddenly seem to be reacting positively to a Muslim, communist, alien president. It was the Tea Parties:

“Call it a tea party rally. Wall Street’s sure partying, up six weeks in a row. The bulls came out about the same time these guys started to shout.”

In April the market continued its winning ways. This led Fox News to seek a new excuse for good fortune that was clearly driving them nuts. I mean, nothing positive could possibly be attributed to this president, so there must be another explanation. They hit on the notion of a bear market rally, which they then turned into a persistent talking point.

And capping off the Fox News campaign to deny Obama any credit for the still advancing market, having now risen about 40% in seven months, Fox has raised the stakes and brought in their “A” game. They are now, in all seriousness, proposing that what we are seeing here are the effects of the Bush recovery.

The same folks who were insisting that Obama was responsible for every negative occurrence – from suicide bombings in Islamabad to pimples on teenagers – from the day after his illegitimate inauguration, now assert that Bush, from whom financial duties were stripped when the economy went south in August of 2008, that Bush somehow deserves recognition for his role in the market comeback.

To summarize, if something bad happens it doesn’t matter how early in his term it is, Obama is the owner and the cause of it. If something good happens it wouldn’t matter if it were the middle of his second term, he is merely a lucky bystander. It was probably something Reagan did thirty years ago.

Are even Fox News viewers stupid enough to fall for this? Please tell me they aren’t.

Fox News Is Heavily Invested In A Bear Market Rally

Posted by on March 27, 2009 at 1:23 pm. 2 Comments :

From March 10, 2009 to March 26, 2009, the Dow Jones has advanced 1,377 points. That’s a 21% increase in 16 days – a feat that has not been recorded in modern stock market history. Yet despite the right-wing howling over weak market performance since President Obama’s inauguration two months ago, there has been no subsequent praise for the more positive turn taking place. To the contrary, the right’s biggest megaphone is broadcasting failure on a daily basis. These are all recent quotes from Fox News:

  • Sheppard Smith: We’ve been in what I guess a lot of people figure is a bear market rally, though nobody really knows, it sort of feels like a bear market rally to most of the experts. I don’t know. But that’s what they’re saying.
  • Tobin Smith: By definition, this is a bear market rally.
  • Damon Vickers: We could have a rally that could take us up to 8,000. It wouldn’t change the fact that we were still in a bear market and that the trend was still down.
  • Peter McKay: The stock market bear market rally resumed on Tuesday.
  • Gary B. Smith: My primary concern is that the markets rose straight up this past week. Often, this is what we see in a bear market rally.
  • Neil Cavuto: What if, playing the other side of that coin, the market is telling us something of substance here, and that this does represent more than just that presumed – presumed bear market rally?

Note to Cavuto: You and your network are the biggest promoters of the bear market presumptions. When Obama spoke gloomily about very real dark days for the economy, Fox berated him for his negativity and implied that such talk would lead to even worse times. Now that there has been bona fide cause for optimism, it is Fox who is gloomy and negative. This is really just their way of joining in with the crowd that is hoping for Obama to fail. Fox News is heavily invested in failure.

What’s Up With CNBC?

Posted by on March 12, 2009 at 11:50 am. 2 Comments :

The cable news wars have been raging for years. But for the most part the combatants have been confined to the big three: Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. Headline News and CNBC have been regarded as niche players that weren’t really on the front lines.

All of a sudden CNBC has become the most talked about cable news network, just as the nation has inaugurated a new president and tries to weather a fierce economic storm. Much of the attention is couched in ridicule. Rick Santelli’s rant, that cast a bunch of elite commodities traders as emblematic of average Americans, was only taken seriously by the likes of Michele Malkin and her mush-brained followers. Jim Cramer was exposed as the clown that he is by a much better and more professional clown, Jon Stewart.

The backwash of this publicity parade is a boost for CNBC’s ratings and visibility. But why is it happening now?

CNBC has long been a friend to the business community. Its reporting rarely alerted viewers to imminent crises (like the the one we are enduring now) or corporate malfeasance (like Enron and Madoff). The anchors were openly chummy with CEOs, whom they courted for access, and some, like Larry Kudlow, were overtly partisan. CNBC elevated the art of bloviating by introducing the Octo-Pundit, where as many as eight self-styled experts yelled at each other from their respective video cages.

But with a lineup like Fox News and current events that favored their niche, they still needed a little extra push to get the recognition they felt they deserved. So along comes Santelli and Cramer and a concerted effort to expand their conservative profile.

Despite the blathering of Bill O’Reilly, the NBC News division has never been left wing. MSNBC was once the cable home of Michael Savage, Oliver North, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and it still features Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan. The rise of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow occurred strictly because of their success, not ideology. Nevertheless, in the past NBC has demonstrated its cowardice in the face of criticism. They are the network that canceled their own number one rated program, Phil Donahue, for fear of being tagged anti-war.

By ramping up the rightist rhetoric on CNBC, NBC News is attempting to harvest popular outrage from both ends of the political field. They can continue to throw liberals a bone with their primetime MSNBC schedule, while cozying up to their natural right wing allies on the business-oriented CNBC. And neither network will have its programming muddied with ideological balance. As an ancillary benefit, NBC will try to tamp down the criticism they receive from the right by pointing to their new heroes of ham-handed conservatism.

In the end, CNBC just hopes to siphon a few viewers away from Fox News, and to smother the new born Fox Business Network in its crib. Unfortunately, the way they have chosen to do that is to emulate the Fox model which is focused on aggressive conservatism, and hysterical, paranoid personalities. That won’t work for CNBC in the long run because Fox viewers are too cult driven. They won’t abandon the comfort of that with which they are familiar for a subsidiary of that which their Fox masters have convinced them is evil.

Now, more than ever, CNBC needs to concentrate on providing responsible financial journalism. By making themselves truly indispensable in the field for which they claim expertise, they will be far more likely to succeed and to serve the interests of their viewers.

Neil Cavuto Admits He Is An Obnoxious Jerk

Posted by on March 8, 2009 at 12:22 pm. 5 Comments :

For some time, I’ve been meaning to write about the odious on-air personality of Neil Cavuto. While people focus much of their attention on gargantuan egomaniacs like Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, Cavuto is every bit their equal as a dishonest and unctuous jackass. But while I have been mulling over the best way to illustrate the repugnance of this pundit, Cavuto has saved me the trouble by proudly confessing his character flaws.

Last Friday Cavuto closed his program with a segment that featured letters from viewers complaining about his proclivity for interrupting. This annoying behavior is exhibited so frequently and conspicuously that I considered creating a new drinking game that called for a shot each time Cavuto interrupted someone. However, I immediately abandoned the idea because I didn’t want to be responsible for thousands of deaths by alcohol poisoning.

It seems that it was not just me that noticed Cavuto’s inability to keep his mouth shut after asking a question. His viewers must have written in in such numbers that he was forced to address the matter on air. And in a typical display of pundit Narcissism, Cavuto not only defended his incivility, he praised himself for it. He actually believes his impudence is performing a public service. How else could he say…

“God knows you’ve heard the stump speech so I demand they get off the stump. Sure, it jolts them. And clearly, you. But I am out not to be mean. I am out simply to get answers.”

Cavuto’s method of getting answers is to provide them himself. His guests become superfluous as he obviously prefers his own answers to the ones a guest might offer. His contention that he is merely attempting to short circuit a stump speech is plainly false. He doesn’t even give his guest enough time to discern whether or not the answer is substantive. By the time the guest has uttered, “Well Neil, the reason for that is…” Cavuto has already cut him off. His interruptions never compel a guest to be more responsive or clear. In fact, he interrupts almost exclusively to argue with the guest. That’s not seeking clarity, it’s browbeating. He is forcing his opinions down the throats of his viewers, and many of them resent it:

Email from Kevin: “News flash, pumpkin head, it’s not about you. It’s about the guest. Listen, you might learn. Doubt it, but you might.”

Sorry Kevin, but Cavuto is not going to listen. He has thrown down the gauntlet and refuses to waste his precious time allowing people with views different than his own to get a word in edgewise. As he said himself: “Not here. Not me. Not ever.” And although he shamelessly spews rightist propaganda, he will be the sole arbiter of what constitutes a talking point from the other side. He will nip it in the bud for fear that an honest argument or a good idea might actually make it through to his unsuspecting audience.

Along with hosting a daily program on Fox News that is ostensibly about the economy, he is the managing editor of the Fox Business Network. In this role he reports the business news of the day and conducts interviews on both financial and political subjects. His brazen partisanship belies the oft repeated excuse of Fox News CEO, Roger Ailes, that it is only the primetime shows that dabble in opinion. That nonsense simply can’t account for the self-righteous opining of Glenn Beck, Steve Doocy, Bill Sammon, Megyn Kelly, et al, all day long.

At times like these, when millions of Americans are so anxious about their jobs, homes, retirement, etc., financial news attracts a greater measure of interest than usual. The last thing any of us needs is another bloviating bully dispensing bullshit packaged as news. But that’s all we get from Fox, and Neil Cavuto is the very model of a modern major malfunction in the media.

Fox News Fires Up Financial Fear

Posted by on March 6, 2009 at 3:01 pm. 2 Comments :

It’s been going on for months. Conservatives have been pointing their fat finger of blame at Barack Obama. Somehow, perhaps by mystical Voodoo spells, Obama managed to cause a global economic collapse even before he was elected President. Earlier this week, Rush Limbaugh declared that…

“Barack Obama has been the controlling political authority on the economy for six months.”

Sean Hannity places Obama’s omnipotent dominance back even further, to May 2008. Never mind that in the first half of 2008, Republicans were insisting that the economy was in swell shape thanks to the financial acumen of their beloved George W. Bush. But all of that must now be swept aside because a new culprit must be found guilty of having soured what everyone now concedes is a disastrous economic meltdown.

To further that end, Fox News conducted a poll (pdf) to ascertain the mood of the public and their views on the leadership of the new President. Unfortunately for Fox, the poll revealed that broad majorities of the people support Obama and his policies. Democrats and Independents are distinctly separating themselves from Republicans, who are the lonely naysayers of the nation.

One question in particular stood out as I was studying the results:

Do you think all the doom and gloom talk and constant focus on the economy is actually making the economy worse, or is the talk not making much of a difference?

Making
economy worse		 Not making
a difference
Total 55% 38%
Democrats 44% 47%
Republicans 69% 28%
Independents 57% 36%

You’ve got to hand it to Fox, the domain of doom and gloom, for asking a question about “all the doom and gloom talk.” Their incessant chatter bemoaning the Obama administration and agenda is the core of their programming. No wonder Republicans in the poll are so far removed from other respondents. It is well documented that Fox has a disproportionately large majority of Republican viewers. But if Fox is truly interested in an inquiry into economic gloominess, they need look no further than themselves and their own on-air propaganda spewers:

Rupert Murdoch: …the downturn is more severe and likely longer-lasting than previously thought.

Bill O’Reilly: …our financial system is rigged and Americans should be very wary about buying stocks in this environment.

Glenn Beck: Be wary of anyone who says you should just leave your money in the stock market, because they are proving themselves incapable of seeing a real worst-case scenario.

And for good measure, Rush Limbaugh: The market is plunging. Investors are shorting it. They’re not putting money in the market. The economy is getting worse. This is being done on purpose, I believe, just as they are trying to sink the stock market.

Add to this list the names of Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Steve Doocy, Bill Sammon, Megyn Kelly, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Karl Rove, etc. Virtually every Fox News contributor is contributing to the doom and gloom. And what’s more, the hard times ahead are all the fault of Obama, who has only been president for six weeks.

At a deeper level, it needs to be noted that the main thesis that these pundits peddle is simply wrong by any objective standard. They are promulgating the falsehood that Wall Street is an indicator of the nation’s economic health. It’s not! The stock market is a facility within which to assign value to shares of corporations and commodities. That value is the result of traders negotiating with one another with the purpose of generating profits for themselves. Anyone who tells you that the price of a stock at any given moment is an actual representation of a company’s worth is a liar. The only thing it represents is what a broker was able to get for that stock at that moment. If you have any doubt, just consider whether you believe that General Motors is actually worth less than $1 billion today, but was worth over $9 billion just six months ago – with the same products, the same people, and the same plants.

Wall Street isn’t tanking because of some random chatter in Washington, DC. If that were possible than Fox News is more at fault than Obama. Stocks are declining for the reason they always decline: dismal corporate earnings, collapsing markets domestically and internationally, and four million Americans unemployed and not consuming.

So let’s get this straight once and for all. The interests of Wall Street are unique and distinct from the public interest. The manic volatility of the Dow Jones index is no more an indicator of the state of the national economy than an eBay auction for a Hummel figurine. And Obama didn’t cause the decline on Wall Street by articulating a vision for improving the real fundamentals of the economy – productivity, consumption, and jobs. Progress in those areas is what will lead to the recovery that Wall Street needs.

Bill O’Reilly Can’t Get No Respect

Posted by on February 17, 2009 at 12:43 pm. 2 Comments :

In a segment preposterously misnamed “Reality Check,” Bill O’Reilly has once again tread on territory that only highlights his hypocrisy and dishonesty.

For months O’Reilly has berated General Electric and its CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, for the poor performance of the stock. O’Reilly, with an undisguised disgust, asserts that Immelt is a “despicable human being” who should not be running any business due to his incompetence. But O’Reilly conveniently neglects to mention that News Corp, the parent of his employer, Fox News, has performed even worse in the stock market, presumably placing Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes lower on the scale of competence than Immelt. We already know they are more despicable.

Yesterday, O’Reilly attacked GE and Immelt again, citing a Barron’s article with the results of their survey of the 100 Most Respected Companies in the World. The article noted that GE had slipped from its top 10 position in each of the last four years (#1 in 2005), to #43 this year. O’Reilly summarizes saying…

“In short, Barron’s is saying Immelt is a disaster. But the fact that man has remained in his position for eight years says our financial system is rigged and Americans should be very wary about buying stocks in this environment.”

Actually, Barron’s isn’t saying anything. It is a survey of the opinions of money managers, most of whom have been severely burned by the recent market collapse. Even so, if Immelt is a disaster for placing his company at #43 out of 100 companies worldwide (not bad, really), what does that make Murdoch and Ailes for not making the list at all? It certainly makes O’Reilly a propagator of misinformation for failing to tell the whole story.

Perhaps worse than O’Reilly’s faulty reporting is his admonition that Americans “be very wary about buying stocks.” Not that that isn’t always safe advice, but O’Reilly is associating it with what he calls a “rigged” system. He is using fear to dissuade the folks from investing in an already troubled market. The problem here is not whether his financial analysis is sound, it is his hypocrisy. He often assails others for bad-mouthing America, which he asserts will do harm to the nation. But he doesn’t have any problem with his own rhetorical assault, which if heeded, could worsen or prolong our current economic crisis.

Why does Bill O’Reilly hate America? Maybe because most of the country has no respect for him whatsoever.

Update: Immelt has declined to take bonuses for 2008 due to the performance of the company. I wonder if Murdoch or Ailes will do the same.

Who Wants To Be Bipartisan?

Posted by on February 14, 2009 at 1:53 pm. 1 Comments :

Who Wants To Be BipartisanFor the past week, Congress has been embroiled in a debate over solutions to the nation’s current economic crisis. Hundreds of proposals for the Stimulus Bill have been considered, from tax cuts to infrastructure spending to mortgage relief to banking reform. But to hear the media tell it, the most pressing issue in Washington was whether the administration could achieve the fabled goal of bipartisanship.

But who really wants to be bipartisan?

The short answer to that question is “the losers.” The minority in Congress wants desperately to wield some measure of influence over legislation and policy. The problem for them is that they didn’t earn it at the ballot box. The American people, in overwhelming numbers, elected Democrats to Congress and the White House. They could have voted for Republicans but, after listening to both sides, expressed a distinct preference for Democratic candidates and solutions. Consequently, the pursuit of bipartisanship by Democrats is an outright betrayal of the will of the people.

The idiocy of elevating bipartisanship as a goal unto itself is a fabrication conceived by Republicans and the right-wing dominated press. It is a battlefield that the minority party prefers because they can control it. All they have to do is enforce party discipline, instruct their members to vote against the majority, and then claim to be the victims of a partisan process that they themselves contrived.

The media goes along with this deceit for reasons of their own. For one, it produces the sort of drama they relish for boosting ratings. For another, they use it to defend themselves from false right-wing criticisms that they are a liberal leaning institution (though they never seem bothered by liberals who complain that they lean to the right). So in pursuit of controversy, reporters re-frame the debate from the substance of the bill to a manufactured desire for unity – a confounding unity of programs of the popularly elected majority with those of the recently rejected minority.

Throughout this process, it should be noted, the definition of bipartisanship has congealed into a rather useless, and perhaps harmful, mush. To be productively bipartisan would be to incorporate ideas from both sides. But what has evolved is more of a stew wherein everything is blended together until it is unrecognizable and ineffective. It’s as if a disagreement over whether to order some Japanese take-out or a bucket of chicken resulted in picking up some Kentucky Fried Sushi. Mmmm. That’s what Congress is doing and it’s going to make a lot of people sick.

Compromise, in and of itself, is not necessarily a desirable goal. Especially if one side is intent only on sabotaging the other. After all of the concessions that Democrats made on the Stimulus Bill, in the hopes of appealing to Republicans, the Republicans still stiffed Democrats, providing only three votes. Nonetheless, Republicans succeeded in diluting the bill, increasing the odds that it will fail – a result they favor as it would help them politically, albeit at the expense of millions of suffering citizens. This is both unconscionably uncaring and an affront to democracy. Americans are entitled to the government they elected, not one that is held hostage by parliamentary shenanigans.

To be sure, Barack Obama and his administration contributed to the frenzied discussion of bipartisanship. It has been a priority for them that goes back to the campaign. But they seem to have learned their lesson, as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel admitted that the White House placed an over-emphasis on process and may have neglected reinforcing the message. Message discipline is more important than ever in the modern media environment that will pervert and distort events and intentions if left to their own devices.

The self-serving maneuvering of Republicans, however, is almost never reported by the media. So when a bill is passed with a massive majority (House: 246-183; Senate: 60-38), the media still describes it as a “Bipartisan Bust,” rather than an historic legislative victory. Every headline that says that the bill was passed along party lines fails to to make clear that one party just happens to far outnumber the other due to the voters preference.

The negative framing of these stories is purposefully at odds with the public who continue to support the Democratic program. Americans deserve more from the press. We deserve reporting that addresses issues substantively, rather than trivialized by shallow, political, pseudo-analysis. It is long past time for the press to honestly portray bipartisanship as nothing more than a partisan tactic to delay and obstruct the will of the people.