Tonight, President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union address. A major theme of the speech will be jobs and the economy. Let's hope the president spares a few minutes for Wall Street reforms that might prevent a repeat of the economic collapse that we're slowly starting to recover from.
"Your employee Glenn Beck has repeatedly falsely accused Professor Frances Fox Piven of advocating violence. Mr. Beck has provoked emotional responses which have incited violent threats against Professor Piven. As a result Professor Piven has been subjected to numerous threats on her life, many posted on Mr. Beck's own website.
As President of Fox News we ask you to intervene and bring a stop to this. We ask you to order this campaign of misinformation to end. You can stop the reckless endangering of the safety of Professor Piven."
Not only has Beck falsely accused Piven of advocating violence, he's also blamed her for our economic woes:
GLENN BECK: Let me introduce you to the people who you would say are fundamentally responsible for the unsustainability and possible collapse of our economic system. There are really two people, I've been telling you for a while. There they are: Cloward and Piven, Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven.... They wrote about collapsing the economy and how they plan to do it in an article they co-authored in the 1960s, "Mobilizing the Poor: How It Could be Done?" six months later published in The Nation under the title "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty."
But, as Piven herself explained on Democracy Now:
FRANCES FOX PIVEN: .... That article didn't call for crashing anything, except the existing welfare system. It proposed that people on the left help poor people in the cities get their full benefits from welfare. Now, at the time, welfare was denying benefits to over half of the people that were eligible.
It is our purpose to advance a strategy which affords the basis for a convergence of civil rights organizations, militant anti-poverty groups and the poor. If this strategy were implemented, a political crisis would result that could lead to legislation for a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty.
The strategy is based on the fact that a vast discrepancy exists between the benefits to which people are entitled under public welfare programs and the sums which they actually receive.
Beck is so demented that he actually renewed his vicious lies about Piven in his mock "renunciation of violence":
GLENN BECK: .... I denounce violent threats and calls for the destruction of our system, regardless of their underlying ideology, whether they come from the Hutaree militia or Frances Fox Piven.
CCR explained the letter and their reasons for sending it in the following press release:
Last Friday, Democracy Now did an interview with activist-scholar Frances Fox Pivens, dealing with how she's been demonized by Glenn Beck for quite some time now-something that's been stepped up remarkably in the wake of the attempted assasination of Gabrielle Giffords, as Beck tries desperately to equate Pivens with adovocates of violence on the right. While it's really quite sinister, it's also incredibly silly, since the heart of Beck's case is a glue-sniffer-level misreading of things you can look up on the internet yourself, and see that there's no violence at all in her planning or intent. Here's a taste from the introductory part of the segment with Pivens, where Beck's smearing is aired at some length--though, typically, without very much in the way of substance:
JUAN GONZALEZ: While cable TV shows like Glenn Beck's are coming under increasing scrutiny in the wake of the Arizona shooting, Glenn Beck is pushing back against critics by increasingly targeting a 78-year-old professor named Frances Fox Piven. Beck has repeatedly accused her of advocating violence and of hatching a plan in 1966 to overthrow the system.
Here is what Beck said on his radio show days after the shooting in Arizona.
GLENN BECK: Are there and is there anybody calling for violence? Yes. Who are they? Well, show me the evidence that it's Rush Limbaugh. Show me the evidence that it is Sarah Palin. You go ahead and stack up that evidence that doesn't exist, and I will stack up the evidence against Frances Fox Piven.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Earlier this week, Glenn Beck called on congressional lawmakers to sign a pledge in which he denounces violence from all quarters but, in doing so, compares Piven to well-armed right-wing militia whose members stand accused of plotting the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
GLENN BECK: I denounce violence, regardless of ideological motivation. Have I lost you yet? Do you need your attorney? I denounce anyone from the left, the right or the middle who believes physical violence is the answer to whatever they feel is wrong with our country. I know it's getting dicey. Next, I denounce those who wish to tear down our system and rebuild it in their own image, whatever image that may be. Oh, it's so controversial! I denounce those from the left, the right or the middle who call for riots and violence as an opportunity to bring down and reconstruct our system. That's a trick there, because that sounds almost like the last one. You sensing the trap yet? Yeah, me neither. I denounce violent threats and calls for the destruction of our system, regardless of their underlying ideology, whether they come from the Hutaree militia or Frances Fox Piven.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Beck has also blamed the financial crisis on Frances Fox Piven and claims she's part of a leftist conspiracy that dates back to Woodrow Wilson.
The Republicans won control of the House and picked up seats in the Senate in the midterm election on nebulous promises to slash spending and reduce the size of the federal government. House Speaker John Boehner has pledged to reduce spending to 2008 levels, as per the GOP's campaign manifesto, known as the "Pledge to America."
The most popular trope to excuse the right of all rresponsibility for decades of demonizing, violent and eliminationist rhetoric: "Both sides do it!"
Not so much:
This has been out there for a very long time for everyone to see. A tremendous tolerance for violent rightwing rhetoric has been built up--particularly by so-called political "moderates", "centrists" and the "objective journalists" of the so-called "mainstream media". This is what they've all grown accustomed to--and devoted themselves to making other accustomed to as well.
Gosh, who knew someone would end up getting killed! After all, they only talked about it all the time! There were tell-tale signs at all the rallies. They were carrying guns to political events all across the country. And their political leaders were sending out very clear messages, with no one else reigning them in.
I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.
What Democratic Senate candidate has done that? If both sides do it, then there must be at least one. Who is it?
And Giffords' opponent holding "Get on Target for Victory in November" and "Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office[.] Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly".
What Democratic congressional candidate has done that? If both sides do it, then there must be at least one. Who is it?
All these incidents are only on the right. There is nothing like them on the left. That alone is enough to refute the absurd "both sides do it" narrative.
But it's only the beginning.
These are not isolated incidents. They are highpoints of a vastly repeating pattern, that has hundreds of thousands of violent rhetorical echoes that have been there to report on for at least three long years now. And they are a perfectly predictable repeat of what the militia movement and others did the last time we had a Democratic President.
The media needs to stop lying about this. Democrats themselves need to stop lying about this. Both sides don't do it -- just as both sides were not equally responsible for the Civil War. Conservatives have clear-cut history of violent treason in our country. And they've just recently started to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of it--even as they continue to lie, and claim that it wasn't about slavery. It's true now, like it was true 150 years ago: Both sides don't do it. And America deserves a media and a political leadership that's not afraid to simply state the truth.
(I was about to write a diary based on the "Insurrectionism Timeline" from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, when I received an email from Marta Evry with this diary, doing just what I had in mind. Be sure to look at the scores of items from the timeline on the flip, following Marta's introduction.
- promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
"Becking" (verb)To use violent metaphors or make thinly-veiled suggestions of violence against opponents, while maintaining plausible deniability against charges of incitement"
The Coalition To Stop Gun Violence has built an"insurrectionism timeline". It lists hundreds of incidents of right-wing speech and of acts of violence clearly incited by such speech.
The timeline pre-dates the election of President Barack Obama, beginning after June 26, 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court embraced the National Rifle Association's contention that the Second Amendment provides individuals with the right to take violent action against our government should it become "tyrannical."
The timeline also unintentionally chronicles the "Becking" of America, in which right-wing media personalities and lawmaker employ violent metaphors or thinly-veiled suggestions of violence to demonize their opponents.
Yet Palin's defenders, and some in the mainstream media, have tried to claim Democratic lawmakers and media personalities are equally to blame for the toxic political environment because a diarist on the liberal website, Daily Kos, posted that Giffords was "dead to him" after she cast a vote against Pelosi as House Minority Leader (the diaristlater apologizedfor the wording and took the post down).
Palin defenders have also quoted Obama as saying, "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight." during the 2008 campaign, and although I can find this quote plenty using Google, I can't it attributed directly to Obama.
Compare this to the dozens of incidents of right-wing "Becking" CTSGV has documented from the last two years listed below (and it's by no means an exhaustive list), and the violence that's resulted.
Our country is, in a word, well and truly "Becked".
As someone who has been involved somewhat in the punditry circuit (for lack of a better term), I have been asked by progressive friends what I think is needed for the Left to compete with the Right, not so much in the war of ideas, as idea distribution.
To begin with, we need people who can confidently promote progressive values on television and radio. While the last decade has seen the creation and expansion of progressive think tanks, Air America Radio (an incubator of such talent as Rachel Maddow and Sam Seder), and even primetime MSNBC's becoming a mini-progressive tv outpost, we still lack the funding of the Right, and the pipeline it creates.
A 24-hour conservative television station and talk radio both nationally and locally dominated by conservatives doesn't only get the message out and give cover to politicians and political ideas once considered slightly to the right of insane (make no mistake, they've used these and many print distribution channels to take Bircherism, or Hofstadter's "Paranoid Style," mainstream--something which was once looked at as absolute looniness by those who even controlled the Establishment on the Right).
It also has created everyone from Glenn Beck to Sean Hannity to Tucker Carlson (we can also thank The Weekly Standard and Swanson for this last honor, as in Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson). So we may not have that. Or Heritage Foundation Summer School (with balconies!) and, for the most part, the other think tanks that pay conservative "thinkers" real salaries just to think out loud during non-paid tv segments, in low-paying articles and columns, and to write books nobody buys--but reach the NY Times bestseller list because these think tanks bulk buy 20,000 of them the minute they come out.
But we are making progress in other areas. One project I'm involved with, The Progressive Talent Initiative, not only provides 3.5 days of media training including everything from performance critiques to messaging advice, but the relationship continues afterwards, as the program gives you a tune up when you need it and helps get you booked for appearances.
It is a great program, which I had the luck of attending, and now maybe it's your turn. If you're a political strategist, progressive activist, blogger, academic, non-profit dweller or the like, this could be a great program for you to earn the key messaging and media training skills the Left so critically needs. The training is free to participants so if you are selected, can take the time to participate and are eager and willing to be booked after the training, the PTI team will take care of everything else.
If this is something you've been thinking about, give it a shot, as we need progressives armed with not only the facts, but the ability to share them with persuadable audiences.
So what are you doing March 9th-12th? If you'd like to apply for media training, now's your chance. The training is limited to only 12 participants, so showcase your talents in your application for the review committee to see. Application is available here and is open until January 14. So get in the game my friends!
A Mike Lux Golden Oldie
From Mar 15, 2010. Original HERE I have done a lot of writing, in my blog posts and my book, about the historic differences between conservatives and progressives in political battles, but almost equally fascinating to me is that between conservative and progressive religious traditions. The exact same fault lines, most importantly in terms of individualism vs. community, play themselves out in theological debates which sound very much like our political debates- and indeed, a lot of the same people operate in both realms.
Glenn Beck and Jim Wallis got into this debate over the last few days, and because Jim actually knows something about the Bible, he easily won the debate. Beck's classic conspiracy-minded starting point- that because both Nazis and Communists have used the phrase "social justice", that any religion that uses the term must be bad too- has a similar logic to saying that if a really bad teacher said two plus two equals four, because he or she was a bad teacher it must be false. Or saying that if a politician you don't like says "God Bless America", then any politician who says that is terrible. But leaving aside Beck's incredibly stupid logic, the point he makes about "social justice" is in keeping with conservative ideology: it is all about a self-focused view of religion and politics that, like Beck's ideological hero Ayn Rand, proclaims selfishness as the ultimate virtue.
Conservative Christians manage to ignore the literally many hundreds of Biblical quotes about social justice by making Christianity a religion solely focused on one very selfish goal: whether they get into heaven or not. That's it, that is the entire goal and purpose and meaning of their faith. And because St. Paul argued that faith is more important than "works" (what you do good in the world), they think that believing a certain doctrine is the only thing that matters in terms of whether you make it into heaven or not. Since everything is about getting themselves to heaven, and the Earth will be destroyed soon in Armageddon anyway, nothing that happens here matters very much. The one thing that matters to their God is having more people worship Him, so they try to convert people, but all that other stuff Jesus and the Old Testament prophets and Moses and James and all those other folks in the Bible talked about in terms of kindness, mercy, forgiving debts, being your brother's keeper, helping the poor, and all that other liberal socialistic stuff just isn't much of a priority to them compared to: me getting to heaven, and (second most important) converting others to my God. These so-called "Christian" conservatives live in a state of paranoia that somewhere, somehow some dollar of their taxes might go to some undeserving poor person, ignoring the fact that Jesus' entire ministry was targeted to the "undeserving" poor.
Not all Christians think this way, of course. There is another kind of thinking about the Christian faith: one that actually takes what's written in the Bible (beyond the Book of Revelations) seriously. The Jewish Torah (for Christians, that's their Old Testament) and the Christian New Testament have a wide variety of ideas and voices in their pages. Written by scores of authors over a span of probably a couple thousand years, one of the things I love about the Bible is the wide range of beliefs and perspectives within it. A lot of fundamentalists are desperate to find ways to explain away the contradictions in the Bible, because they believe every word is inspired by God and it's all literally true, but in fact the authors of the Bible disagree on both the details of what actually happened and the interpretation and philosophy behind the events they write about. If you take the Bible seriously, you see the debates and differing perspectives. Some Biblical writers were more conservative in their thinking, and some were more progressive. But the most consistent and enduring theme that runs through virtually every book in the Bible is that we are expected to love and be kind to our neighbors, especially the poor, hurting, and oppressed of the earth.
From the God of Genesis punishing Cain for not being his brother's keeper to Nathan the prophet rebuking King David for taking from the poor; from the Psalms that over and over proclaim the need to help the poor, and condemn those who judges, government officials, and wealthy people who mistreat them, from the prophets like Isaiah and Amos who deride those who engage in ritual sacrifice while refusing to help the oppressed (Isaiah I: "Cease to do evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, help the oppressed, be just to the orphan, plead for the widow.") to Jesus very first sermon proclaiming that he had come to "bring good news to the poor" and "liberty to the captives"- virtually every book of the Bible demands justice and mercy and community.
People who take the Bible seriously and respect its words, as opposed to being obsessed with whether they personally will get into heaven by following a certain kind of dogma, understand that community and compassion are in fact far more central to it than any specific metaphysical belief system. And that is what the Pat Robertsons, Glenn Becks, Sarah Palins, and the other false prophets of conservatism don't understand.
When Barack Obama ran as a transformational candidate in 2008, few imagined that the transformation he was offering would be to that of a return to 19th Century America, characterized by extremes of wealth and poverty, with locally-funded poorhouses in place of federal programs like Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP. Even now, after two years of disappointment, to say the least, it's hard to imagine that's the sort of transformation Obama means to bring. But if you look past the rhetoric to the actions, perhaps that backwards transformation is not really so far-fetched.
In a stunning piece of long-form journalism, "The Poorhouse: Aunt Winnie, Glenn Beck, And The Politics Of The New Deal", Arthur Delaney and Ryan Grim of Huffington Post devote most of their attention to vividly describing the world of the poor in 19th Century America, generations before the New Deal brought America into the modern era. Poorhouses were places of extreme social control. In most states, families were not allowed there. Children of adults sent there were sent to orphanages or foster homes--or, if they were old enough, perhaps apprenticeships. They were dead-end institutions for people not regarded as capable or worthy of personal autonomy--second-class citizens viewed in the same demeaning light as slaves had been. It is little wonder, then, that most people, even on the edge of starvation, were reluctant to enter them, as demonstrated by the example that begins "The Poorhouse":
An employee of Associated Charities, a private organization dedicated to alleviating poverty in the District of Columbia, met an old black woman carrying a basket of cinders near the dump in Southeast D.C. on a bitterly cold day in December 1896.
The woman "could not give street and number, but could 'fotch' the agent to her place," according to a case study labeled "Aunt Winnie" in one of the organization's annual reports from near the turn of the century. "Old age, with a heavy load on top and a strong wind blowing, made the walk a trying one. At last the 8x10 cabin was reached. In it was a stove in many pieces held together with wire, a bedstead with rags for mattress and rags for covering. From the leaky roof the floor was wet through and through."
Aunt Winnie, the report said, had no income save the 50 cents she made every two weeks for taking in wash. In summertime she raised herbs and greens, but in winter she "suffered for food and fuel." Her children had all been sold away to slavery, and a nearby niece was too poor to offer any support. Her neighbors helped, providing money for the stove and cot, and a "colored friendly visitor was found to carry broth and other comforts to her." The neighborly charity wasn't enough to persuade the agent, who was essentially a private sector version of a social worker, that the old woman should be on her own.
"In the fall of '98 agent asked her to go into the almshouse, but she would not consent. During the storm in February '99, she was kept from perishing with a great effort. Every visit, and they were many, had to be made through snow up to the waist. It was during these visits that the promise was made that before another winter she would take refuge in an almshouse."
When the weather warmed, Aunt Winnie backed off her promise to go to the almshouse. The social worker started to play hardball.
I have more than a few Tea Party adherents in my family who, prior to this summer, used to make a habit of sending me every little headline about how cold and snowy it was and how those "facts" proved that global warming was a fallacy being undone with each snowflake drifting down to earth. Oddly enough, they never sent me a single headline this summer about how unbelievably hot it was in the Northeast. I guess while I was bobbing around the bayous Louisiana they were reading the World Meteorological Organization's Press Release No. 904 which came to the following conclusion: "The year 2010 is almost certain to rank in the top 3 warmest years since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850" and its byline: "2010 in the top three warmest years, 2001-2010, warmest 10-year period." Well now, as if by magic, the spate of cold weather and overly abundant snowfall gripping the Northern Hemisphere has set off a new round of debate, doubt and denial as it relates to the changing climate.
Global Warming is not a hot button issue with me and I believe that the related science is still in the process of being validated. That along with the fact that some of the findings have been manipulated for political purposes makes for a situation where the jury is still out with the final verdict still in the process of being formulated. Likewise the same holds true for most of the counterarguments. However, none of the aforementioned takes away from the fact that there are discernable changes in the climate that cannot be denied. There is little reason to doubt that there have been major changes in the climate in the last 50+ years. To deny that is to make an argument contrary to historical fact. At 57 I can remember winters that were much different than they are now, at least around the Northeast where I grew up. One of the great misconceptions surrounding the global warming debate hinges around snowfall and temperatures. There is nothing inconsistent with the general theory of global warming where some regions will grow colder with increased amounts of snow fall while others see their climate grow warmer. It hinges in part on the changes in the ocean current, the jet stream and the Central Asian snow pack. Moreover what the opponents of global warming fail to realize in pointing out the increase in snowfall this year and last is that the debate about climate is about trends, not a snapshot of a series of weather events within a given winter or within several winters. Focusing on short term events instead of long term trends serves to undermine an opponent's counter argument as it fails to account for the larger, longer term picture. It fails because climate is a long-term trend whereas weather is the short term manifestation of climate and to focus on a handful of weather events while ignoring the longer term trends is to invite a flaw into one's analysis. That flaw ultimately leads to misconstrued and faulty conclusions.
Judah Cohen of Atmospheric and Environmental Research has recently published findings that effectively debunk the idea that the increased snowfall in the Northern Hemisphere is inconsistent with the idea that the overall climate is warming. Quoting Dr. Cohen:" The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes... Annual cycles like El Niño/Southern Oscillation, solar variability and global ocean currents cannot account for recent winter cooling. And though it is well documented that the earth's frozen areas are in retreat, evidence of thinning Arctic sea ice does not explain why the world's major cities are having colder winters... As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two and a half decades, more moisture has become available to fall as snow over the continents. So the snow cover across Siberia in the fall has steadily increased. The sun's energy reflects off the bright white snow and escapes back out to space. As a result, the temperature cools. When snow cover is more abundant in Siberia, it creates an unusually large dome of cold air next to the mountains, and this amplifies the standing waves in the atmosphere...That is why the Eastern United States, Northern Europe and East Asia have experienced extraordinarily snowy and cold winters since the turn of this century." A further scientific elaboration on Dr. Cohen's model and an assessment of its accuracy can be found in a National Science Foundation Special Report entitled "Predicting Seasonal Weather, A Special Report."
Yet in contrast to the scientific findings that have been put forth from reputable organizations such as the National Science Foundation and Atmospheric and Environmental Research, a large element of the opposition's argument seems to hinge upon conspiracy theories, an anti-intellectual bias or the preaching's of that ever present claque of political entertainers who make their living on cable television masquerading as political analysts. Needless to say, it's definitely a hot button issue among the Tea Party crowd to deny the climate changes that have taken place. John M. Broder in an article entitled "Climate Change Doubt Is Tea Party Article of Faith" detailed the extent to which members of the Tea Party Movement are willing to accept anything but science in their efforts to dispute the scientific data contained in those reports that postulate that the world's climate is changing due to global warming. Quoting Broder: "Skepticism and outright denial of global warming are among the articles of faith of the Tea Party Movement... For some, it is a matter of religious conviction; for others, it is driven by distrust of those they call the elites. And for others still, efforts to address climate change are seen as a conspiracy to impose world government and a sweeping redistribution of wealth." Citing a New York Times / CBS poll conducted in October, Broder showed the degree to which members of the Tea Party Movement differ from the general public on the issue of global warming. Tea Party Movement supporters are considerably more skeptical when it comes to the existence and effects of global warming than the American public generally. The survey found that only 14 percent of Tea Party supporters said that the problem of global warming was here and now versus 49 percent of the public at large. More than half of Tea Party supporters said that "global warming would have no serious effect at any time in the future, while only 15 percent of other Americans share that view" and, "8 percent of Tea Party adherents volunteered that they did not believe global warming exists at all, while only 1 percent of other respondents agreed."
Broder links the sentiments of the Tea Party Movement's opposition to global warming theories with other groups that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. He points out that the fossil fuel industries have spent $500 million dollars since 2009 on lobbying against climate change legislation, that they have funded "lavishly financed institutes to produce anti-global-warming studies" and "waged a concerted campaign to raise doubts about the science of global warming", as well as "paid for Web sites to question the science." At the same time the anti global warming rhetoric has been a staple on the talks shows of America's preeminent political entertainers: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and of course, Sarah Palin. Promoting anti-global warming skepticism has been a core tenet of right wing groups like Americans for Prosperity, and the Tea Party cash cow, Freedom Works.
All this begs a number of questions: If there is such a compelling body of scientific knowledge that disproves the theory of global warming, then why not just stick with the science and forgo the political theatrics? Why spend millions of dollars on lobbying and public relations to discredit the theory of global warming by raising doubts when you could just produce objective hard science results that point to the contrary? Surely the advocates of global warming theory were set back last summer when it was found that several scientists in England had fiddled with scientific findings for political reasons. That having happened, wouldn't those who oppose global warming theory been better served by a counterargument based on facts at a time when their opponent's integrity was in question? Or, conversely is their counterargument better served by the image of doubters poking around among snowdrifts with their yardsticks in some unscientific attempt to dispute actual scientific findings? Why do the doubters engage in deflection by saying that the argument surrounding global warming is really Marxist wealth redistribution disguised as science when the scientific reports don't include any mention of politics and policy? Perhaps someone should clue these opponents in to the fact that we live in an age dominated by science and technology and that any disputing of hard science is not likely to come about via conspiracy theories, unsupported skepticism or Biblical quotes that address man's relationship with the natural world within which he exists.
Back on December 9th, in a post entitled "Fox Fair and Balanced" on Health Care Debate.....NOT!" I pointed out how the Fox News Network had deliberately tried to skew the national discussion on health care reform in such a way as to discredit the concept of a public option. Well just yesterday The Saint Petersburg Times' Pulitzer Prize winning affiliate, PolitiFact.com published:"PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: 'A Government Takeover of Health Care". This article pointed out how, when the facts are objectively analyzed, that for all of the rhetoric surrounding health care reform as being Socialist, it was in fact far from it .
Well with the health care debate behind us and with those facts on the table, the folks at PolitiFact's.com have detailed the inaccuracies of this conservative claim, labeling it the political lie of 2010. This falsehood was second only to Michele Bachmann's bizarrely absurd claim that Barack Obama's trip to India would cost 200 Million Dollars a day. Politifact.com deconstructs the logic behind the argument that "ObamaCare" represents a "government takeover of health care" with the following facts:
"Government takeover" conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees. But the law Congress passed, parts of which have already gone into effect, relies largely on the free market:
• Employers will continue to provide health insurance to the majority of Americans through private insurance companies.
• Contrary to the claim, more people will get private health coverage. The law sets up "exchanges" where private insurers will compete to provide coverage to people who don't have it.
• The government will not seize control of hospitals or nationalize doctors.
• The law does not include the public option, a government-run insurance plan that would have competed with private insurers.
• The law gives tax credits to people who have difficulty affording insurance, so they can buy their coverage from private providers on the exchange. But here too, the approach relies on a free market with regulations, not socialized medicine.
PolitiFact reporters have studied the 906-page bill and interviewed independent health care experts. We have concluded it is inaccurate to call the plan a government takeover because it relies largely on the existing system of health coverage provided by employers.
It's true that the law does significantly increase government regulation of health insurers. But it is, at its heart, a system that relies on private companies and the free market."
This very argument was raised last February when the renowned health care economist Uwe Reinhardt published an article entitled: "A Government Takeover of Health Care? Reinhardt came to the following conclusion: "A common refrain among critics of the health reform bills passed by the House and the Senate is that they constitute a "complete government takeover of 17 percent of the American economy."How could this be so? Start with the $950 billion price tag over the next decade for federal subsidies toward the purchase of private health insurance. Divide that amount by $34 trillion, the current projection for total national health spending over the next decade even in the absence of health reform. You will get 2.8 percent. Does that, then, constitute a government takeover of our health system?" Reinhardt concluded that the proposed reforms at the time, while certainly representing a major intrusion by the Federal Government into the health care process, were necessary as the system was "wasteful and unwieldy" and "would require substantial intrusion of government into the system, as evidently the system cannot correct itself."
Thus with the benefit of hindsight and with the 2010 elections where "ObamaCare" was certainly a topic of discussion now history, the question arises: To what extent have the American people been misled, if not outright bamboozled by the ultra right campaign against health care reform and it's conflating of that topic with the conjured up "specter of creeping Socialism?" To my mind the conservative attack on health care reform fits very neatly into a pattern of history that stretches all the way back to Theodore Roosevelt's first mention of the need for some type of national health care system. Since that time, health care reform has dovetailed neatly into more than one of the "red scares" that have accompanied this debate and that of progressive reform in general. Then like now, health care reform was seen as something that was tied to a decline of freedom in America and its replacement with that European import labeled "Socialism." Remember how Ronald Reagan once told us that the enactment of Medicare would bring about the decline of freedom in America and how we would all one day tell our grandchildren what it was once like to live in a free country? And just like then, these claims have now been proven by facts to be far fetched at best and fictitious at the very worst. Thus have those Americans who bought into this rhetoric of fiction and fear become nothing more than the "useful idiots' for those on the far right who have a vested interest in the status quo? Have they in so doing sacrificed their own best interests so as to avoid a "Socialist" threat that doesn't even exist in today's America? Or, have just so many Americans become fooled by the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh as to be unable to distinguish fact from fantasy and what does that say about the future of American Democracy?
The recent firing of Juan Williams by NPR for comments made on the Fox News and his affiliation with that network has created an interesting sidebar to this now all too familiar affair. The renewed scrutiny of NPR for its alleged liberal bias has resulted in an interesting byproduct. That byproduct is an increased level of attention now being paid to Fox, its parent the News Corp., and its wealthy conservative CEO, Rupert Murdoch.
The practice of allowing candidates to solicit campaign contributions while appearing on Fox News is a significant departure from what is generally considered television news broadcasting. Mr. Murdoch has abided this practice along with his own well-publicized million dollar contributions to Republican campaign organizations and other efforts to promote positions on the far right. That raises a fundamental question: Is Fox a legitimate news organization or has it morphed into something between a news organ and a political action operation even to the point of being considered a shill? A shill is defined as: "a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty." A political action committee is defined as:"a type of political committee organized to spend money for the election or defeat of a candidate." Mr. Murdoch has a record of promoting conservative ideas no matter what the cost. He has continued to prop up the conservative "The New York Post" in spite of its staggering losses to the tune of between $15 million to $30 million. According to Business Week magazine: "The Post has lost so much money for so long that it would have folded years ago if News Corp. applied the same profit-making rigor to the tabloid as it does to its other businesses." What then is the purpose of the continued support of a newspaper the commentary of which often resembles old-fashioned agitprop? There can only be one logical explanation and it's because the Post represents Mr. Murdoch's primary organ for presenting the conservative line in what is one of the bluest regions in the country and he is willing to spend whatever it takes to do so.
The argument that Fox News has become somewhat of a political operation is more than apparent when one examines the following evidence. Former Ohio Republican Congressman and now candidate for Governor, John Kasich, appearing during prime time on "Hannity" was given time to solicit campaign contributions while on the air saying:" If you have extra nickels or dimes, please send it our way." According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times this is not the first time Kasich has used an appearance on Fox to raise money for his campaign. Quoting Stelter: "The channel was the subject of an election complaint in Ohio because Mr. Kasich was able to ask for money and display his Web site address during an interview in August on "The O'Reilly Factor," Fox's biggest prime time talk show. Mr. Kasich used to host a weekend show on Fox, and Mr. Murdoch has called him a friend." Moreover Stelter points out that Fox employees have engaged in more direct political action both on and off the air: "Sometimes the most outspoken of the Fox hosts go out and raise money directly. Mr. Hannity has headlined several fund-raisers for Republicans this year. And just last week, Mr. Beck donated $10,000 to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce to defend it against criticism from President Obama - and challenged his radio listeners to donate as well." Beyond these various forms of political action is the fact that several likely candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination are presently on the Fox payroll or regularly appear on the network, including Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.
When you look across the political spectrum to Fox's chief rivals: MSNBC, CNN and NPR you see several object lessons in how competing news organizations have different values. Political action at MSNBC, for example, is much more constrained, to the point that there is very little deviation from what could considered legitimate news reporting and commentary. Again quoting Stelter: "All this political activity has spurred at least a little bit of hand-wringing at the channels. NBC News, which operates MSNBC, recently reiterated its rule that employees may not engage in political activity, but said it had carved out an exception for some MSNBC hosts." To date whatever exceptions exist at MSNBC, they are not even remotely close to the on the air solicitation of funds, public activities related to fund raising by network commentators or the employment of prospective presidential candidates on the network's payroll which is presently the case at Fox. At NPR political activity of any variety is virtually nonexistent. In the final analysis what we have witnessed at Fox News is the evolution of a news organization into something beyond what is commonly considered political reporting and commentary into something short of a political action committee, a sort of quasi-political news organ if you will. That said shouldn't the Fox News Network scrub the subtitle of "Fair and Balanced" from its headline banner seeing as it can no longer legitimately make that claim in light of the fundamental transformation that has taken place within the Fox organization?
Say what you will about the tea party but it has been remarkably effective at pushing select fringe candidates to electoral victories.
In late 2009, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone in Washington who would have believed that a Republican would soon fill the Senate seat held for decades by the late Ted Kennedy.
Brown -- a state senator at the time of his election -- was the first in what would become a long line of tea party endorsed candidates with rather colorful pasts.
When I joined Twitter in July 2006 I was the 3,365th person to sign up for the 140-character message streaming social network. Now, with more than 190 million users having taken the plunge, I guess you could call me an early adopter of sorts.
See, I've always believed that the Internet -- and by extension new online tools like Twitter -- have the ability to create change because it levels the political playing field tearing down walls that have traditionally separated the powerless and the powerful.
It turns out I may have been wrong -- at least when it comes to a certain half-termer from Alaska.
Americans to some degree and particularly those on the Right are now beset by a true conundrum. Is Barack Obama a Christian or a Muslim? According to the latest Pew Research polling: "nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009. Fully 43% say they do not know what Obama's religion is." Well, it's no wonder people are so confused, especially when two of the most prominent talking heads on the far right differ as to what is the actual religion of the President. If Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh aren't on the same page on this, how can we expect the lowliest schlep to know what's the truth?
In a recent anti-Obama rant, Mr. Limbaugh intoned: "Imam Hussein Obama is probably the best anti-American president we've ever had." Limbaugh has been at center stage in railing against the proposed "Ground Zero Mosque' while trying to somehow insinuate that Obama's defense of the constitutional right to religious freedom somehow proves that the President is an Islamic. Meanwhile just this past Sunday, in a follow up to his Lincoln Memorial Rally, Mr. Beck appeared with Chris Wallace of Fox News to proclaim that Obama is in fact not a racist after all, but a practicing Christian who just happens to be enamored with Liberation Theology. This brand of Christian thought is defined: "as a movement in Christian theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions." According to Beck himself: "he misunderstood Obama's philosophy and his theology...which is liberation theology... he didn't understand, really, his theology his viewpoints come from liberation theology. That's what I think as in -- at the gut level I was sensing. And I miscast it as racism. And really, what it is liberation theology." Thus, its now official, according to Glenn Beck, Barak Obama is legitimately some sort of Christian. Well fancy that, one of the most prominent forces in the American right has reaffirmed that the President is in fact a Christian while the other is still working overtime to convince Americans otherwise.
So what is really going on here? Is there a genuine question as to Barack Obama's faith or are we in fact looking at a garden variety witch hunt perpetrated from two different angles in a crass and unvarnished attempt to undermine a legitimately elected president through the propagation of falsehoods? Do Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh really believe what they are publicly saying or are they and their followers just unable to face up to the fact that their idea of what America should be just does not comport with what people voted for in 2008. Is that truth just too much to bear? And where is the leadership that we should be seeing from responsible and respectable Republicans in opposition to this political falderal and farce? Perhaps the leaders of the G.O.P. are just too cowed by the far right to stand up for political decency or perhaps they just don't have the requisite courage. In a recent op-ed on this very topic, Paul Krugman opined: "What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don't consider government by liberals - even very moderate liberals - legitimate. Obama's election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn't, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage. And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage...Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits. In the 1990s, Limbaugh used innuendo to feed anti-Clinton mythology, notably the insinuation that Hillary Clinton was complicit in the death of Vince Foster. Now, as we've just seen, he's doing his best to insinuate Obama is a Muslim. And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found." That said, it's more than evident that the time for the truly patriotic to stand up for political decency and honest debate is now and that's especially true for the leadership of the G.O.P. How can they legitimately ask for our votes when they allow this type of anti-democratic demagoguery to take place right under their noses and in plain view? Perhaps this is what you get from a political party that may be on its way out of business in the long run. Then again, maybe it's what you get when there is just a lack of courage in a party that has for so long prided itself as the repository of "real American values." At any rate every American voter has to ask himself this question: If the leaders of the Republican Party lack the courage to take on Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, where will they find the courage and stamina required to get us out of the Great Recession or face down Al Qaida or any other threat that will surely emerge in the brave new world of this new century? Failing that courage, do they really deserve our votes?
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