Year: 2010

Tea’d-up Republicans spout falsehoods and absurdities through mouths full of shoe.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Here’s a multiple choice question that would fit into any SAT or GRE test:

Which one of these verbal miscues does not belong?

  1. Sarah Palin confuses the California city of Eureka with Eureka College in Illinois.
  2. David Vitter, Senator from Louisiana running for reelection, suggests that an appropriate group should go to court over the false accusation that President Obama has refused to produce a birth certificate.
  3. Tom Corbett, Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, says that large numbers of people have refused to return to jobs because they prefer to remain on unemployment.
  4. Sharron Angle, Tea Republican candidate for Senator from Nevada against Harry Reid, reasons that rape and incest are part of god’s plan as part of her opposition to all abortion rights.  
  5. Rand Paul, Tea Republican candidate for Senator from Kentucky, says that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a bad thing.

It’s Sarah Palin’s nonsense that doesn’t belong for two reasons, one nonessential and one very important for understanding how right-wing candidates use the news media. The nonessential first: Sarah’s the only one not running for office.

Now for the profound difference: All Sarah did was to make another one of her factual misstatements, demonstrating once again that she is a “know-nothing.”  The others all make inaccurate or inflammatory statements that are myths believed by their hardcore ultra-right constituency, e.g., there are people, goaded by the Vitters and Becks of the world, who inaccurately believe that President Obama was not born in the United States and there is a hardcore group of people who think that a 12-year-old girl raped by her father should not have access to an abortion. 

To most people and to the mainstream news media, these are shocking views.  The news media likes to report on them, but definitely tilts the coverage towards those who condemn these outrageous statements. 

But the core loves these messages because they believe them, even (or perhaps especially) those that are racist or dismissive of the poor and those who have lost jobs and homes in the recession.

I don’t believe the approach of playing to the basest instincts of the hardcore right-wing works, and so far, the facts back me up.  We know that after their remarks, Paul and Angle both dropped precipitously in the polls.  Corbett has already backtracked on his harsh comments on the unemployed after a hailstorm of criticism across the state of Pennsylvania.  And let’s not forget that Virginia Senator George Allen Jr. snatched defeat from the jaws of reelection victory by calling someone from the Indian subcontinent who questioned him at an event a “macaca.”

When politicians make these outrageously racist or in other ways absurd statements, it produces two negative effects:

  • It turns “centrists” against the candidate and makes them reconsider the other side.
  • It awakens some part of the eligible voters from the other side who were not previously likely to vote.  This second effect is particularly dangerous to the T-R’s (Tea Republicans) because the big lesson of the 2008 and 2009 elections was that when groups who vote in low numbers such as minorities and people under 30 have a reason to vote as they did for Barack Obama in 2008 then the Democrats prevail.    But when these voters stay home, as they did when Martha Coakley ran to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate, then the Democrat loses.

Another example of the news media turning discussions of important issues into a fight between personalities.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

I know I’m not the first to point out the proclivity of the mass media to turn discussions of important issues into fights between people.  Instead of discussing the issues in a rational way or seeking to sift the truth from the obfuscation, the media prefers to focus attention on polls, slips-of-the-tongue, gotcha’s, false accusations and personal matters.

But could they trivialize the important issue of preserving and strengthening Social Security?  From the viewpoint of this left-leaning liberal, the current Social Security battle is between those who want to tweak what is a very financially strong system to make it stronger versus those who want to address the federal deficit by having the federal government default on the loans it has borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund.

But New York Times reporter, Robert Pear has found a way to turn it into a battle between two personalities, Stephen C. Goss, Social Security’s chief actuary who has worked for the Social Security Administration (SSA) for 37 years, and Michael J. Astrue, the Bush II-appointed Social Security Commissioner.

Keep in mind that the news impetus for his article in this past Sunday’s Times is the fact that two Congressional committees begin hearings on Social Security this week.  In the article, Pear raises none of the issues that may be under discussion at these hearings.

Instead, Pear’s lengthy article:

  • Quotes a number of Democratic Senators and Congresspeople on how great an actuary Goss is and the need for the Chief Actuary to be independent
  • Details examples of past tensions between the two men, all about power struggles and bad performance reviews
  • Reprints a “nice-nice” comment from SSA’s spokesperson.

But nowhere in the article is there any discussion of what opinions these men hold.  Let me repeat: But nowhere in the article is there any discussion of what opinions these men hold.

The entire article boils down to a personality squabble, and not the important policy differences that must exist between a man who has worked all his life to keep Social Security solvent and a political appointment by an avowed enemy of Social Security.

Pear is able to share an example of an actuary and a political appointee clashing over an issue, but its six years old and concerns a different actuary, the one whom a Bush II administration official threatened to fire if he provided Democrats with his cost estimates for the new prescription drug benefit.

Despite an easy-to-access public record, Pear is unable or unwilling to come up with the substantive differences between the men and talks only of the struggle itself.  I spent about 30 seconds on the Internet to discover in the recent past Goss has said such things as Social Security is solvent for at least 25 years and that in its projections, Social Security could comfortably raise the estimated rate of return for the money it loans the federal government.  Another quick search revealed that since becoming Commissioner Astrue has rarely missed an opportunity to say something negative about the future of Social Security.  For example, when the first baby boomer applied for Social Security, he said, “We are already feeling enormous pressure from baby boomers being in their peak disability years …”  

Now why would Pear not discuss the issues from the point of view of these apparent adversaries and instead of  focusing on the fact of their disagreement alone?  It’s hard to come to any other conclusion other than the obvious:  Pear wants to move the story of Social Security away from issues and to the same old dreary personality battles that pock election and legislative coverage.

It’s called trivialization of the news and if there were an award for it, I would certainly nominate this article for 2010.

Columnist shows us how to indoctrinate children in the ideology of spendthrift consumerism.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

I want to begin with a big bravo to Robert Reich and Nation Magazine for the special July 19/26 double issue on the growing inequality of wealth in the United States and how it is ruining the nation economically, a subject that I have dealt with extensively in this blog lately, including on June 14 and June 15.  I urge all my readers to get a copy of this issue of The Nation, which besides an essay by Reich, includes articles by Dean Baker, Jeff Mandrick, Katherine Newman & David Pedula, Orlando Patterson and Matt Yglesias.  Anyone with a little extra cash should consider subscribing to The Nation, which consistently serves as an accurate and thought-provoking alternative to mainstream and right-wing media.

Speaking of wealth, last Saturday’s New York Times had another exercise in indoctrination masquerading as an advice article, this one by Ron Lieber in his regular column, “Your Money.”

Lieber attempts to answer the question, “Daddy, are we rich?” and other queries that children and teens sometimes ask about the family financial situation.  I want to look at three ways that Lieber subtly infuses his article with the mindless consumerist, keep-up-with-the-Jones values that have so many Americans jonesing on commercial transactions as the only source of satisfaction and the primary means of interacting with the world. 

Lieber’s first trick is one I have written about often: selection of experts.  Lieber quotes four experts, all financial consultants. 

But wait a second.  When a child asks a money question, one of two dynamics is in play:

  • An opportunity to transmit basic family values, which may differ a little, a lot or not at all from the prevailing values of society and the community in which the family lives

OR

  • The necessity to deal with a family trauma (loss of job, for example).

It seems to me that a financial consultant has no standing as an expert in these situations.  Lieber should have instead asked those experts who could provide some help dealing with the emotional issues that really frame most complicated questions asked by children, in other words, a child or family psychologist. 

Child and family psychologists have both the training and the experience to advise parents on how to speak to children about difficult or complicated subjects.  Financial consultants might help in training children about financial matters, e.g., the importance of saving or why not paying off a credit card at the end of the month leads to spending more than you need to on the things you buy.  But the putative subject was not financial education, but communication on how financial issues affect the family.  That’s a job for a psychologist. 

Another of Lieber’s propaganda maneuvers involves his choice of examples, which all assume completely consumerist values.  Here are some examples, after each of which I will provide some interpretive comment in all caps:

  • “My wife handled it better, noting that if we had spent money on a second home, our daughter wouldn’t have been able to go to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival this year or on a beach vacation.”  BUT WHATEVER WE DO, IT WILL INVOLVE CONSUMPTION.
  • “They may just be worried about running out of money or wondering why you don’t live in a mansion.”  THE ONE EXAMPLE OF A CHILD ASKING WHY THE FAMILY HAS MORE THAN A HOMELESS PERSON IS BURIED AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE (SEE BELOW).
  • “…says he believes that most questions about salary spring from the schoolyard. ‘There is so much comparison going on there…Who is best looking? Who is most popular? And money just plugs right into that system.  Who has the richest parents?’”  THAT’S ONLY IF THE PARENTS HAVE EITHER TRAINED THE TEEN TO BUY INTO CONSUMERIST JONESING OR ALLOWED IT TO HAPPEN BY JUST GOING ALONG.
  • “This may not work as well for teenagers, who care mostly about whether they have as much stuff as their friends.” AGAIN, IF THAT’S HOW THE TEEN HAS BEEN RAISED.  

Lieber does consider voluntary simplicity (although he doesn’t call it that), the way of life in which you live on less and don’t consider buying things and experiences as the sole goal of life and the sole way of measuring and manifesting all emotions.  But he begins this alternative only in the last one-eighth of the article. 

This placement is the third way that Lieber enforces consumerist values.  By mentioning the one example of a family that embraced voluntary simplicity by selling their large house and buying a smaller one, Lieber moves the article slightly towards having some balance, but only if you read to the end.  In the case of the print edition, that means going to another page; online it means scrolling all the way down the page, in some cases after linking from the first paragraph tease to the full story.  And the one example of voluntary simplicity comes after the section on how to tell kids that they will have to do without something they are used to having because the family has to cut back since “mom lost her job.” 

The theory of montage states that the order in which you place information will color how it is perceived so much that this ordering creates a meaning beyond the information itself.  By placing the one example of non-consumer values after advice on what a consumer might say to children when the money runs low, the writer creates the hidden implication that there is a causal relationship between the two that in fact does not have to exist in the real world.

By using these three rhetorical tricks—selection of experts, coloring of quotes and positioning of information—Lieber is able to reinforce the prevailing value system that has sent so many Americans down the road to financial ruin and is taxing the Earth’s resources.

A news story about the expiration of tax cuts becomes a platform for the usual right-wing cant.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Myths take root as belief only after constant repetition over years.  In the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s we believed that government could solve many problems, often with the help of the private sector.  Anti-tax sentiment was low, and school districts had no problem raising taxes if need be to support quality public schools.  In the 70’s, majorities were against capital punishment and in favor of stricter gun control laws. 

All that has changed (and to my mind, for the worse), but it took years of hammering home some basic messages to turn the public on each of these positions, years of engraining these messages into the minds of the public. 

To state the obvious, one of the major vehicles for indoctrinating the public is the mass media.  Yesterday’s lead story running under the masthead on page one of the Pittsburgh/Greensburg Tribune-Review is a casebook example of how reporters color stories so that what is presented as objective using the tools of objective reporting is really a piece of propaganda.

The headline mouths a distortion: “Americans may be slammed by shocking tax hike.” Now when Congress passed tax cuts and tax breaks in 2001 and 2003, it wrote into the law that these cuts and breaks would expire after 2010.  To call the expiration of these temporary measures a tax hike is a misnomer.

BTW, I do not question that the expiration of these measures will shock many taxpayers when it hits their pay stubs, because many Americans just don’t routinely follow the news media or keep up with law changes that affect them. 

The writer builds his article on three types of information:

  • Details of the temporary measures that will expire, such as child tax credits,  capital gains tax reductions and the temporary phase out of the inheritance tax (which The writer calls the “death tax,” even though it is not a tax on the act of dying but on the estates of only the very wealthiest citizens once they have died).
  • Quotes from experts at think tanks and associations.  The experts give factual statements with no analysis, but all of them are associated with think tanks that are known to be right wing.  By virtue of having their experts state part of the factual basis of the article, the right-wing think tanks gain credibility.  In a sense, by disengaging them from their typical biased opinion or distorted analysis, the writer “mainstreams” them.
  • Other quotes from other people that begin in the bottom two-thirds of the article.  It is in these quotes that the writer presents virtually all of the right-wing’s decades-old talking points, even when they don’t make sense. 

This chart presents the quotes in caps and small and what the major message is in caps:

Quote/Person Message
“I’m surprised…Obama’s plan was not to raise taxes. He’s said many things and done the opposite.”/Local citizen  THE DEMOCRAT (Obama) IS BAD
“We’re already overwhelmingly overtaxed.”/Small business owner  TAXES ARE TOO HIGH
“Tax breaks are not the problem and should be frozen in place….The rate of spending today is out of control…It’s unsustainable and … it’s going to bankrupt the country.”/Prominent business executive  THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS TOO MUCH
“Someone needs to announce where we’re going and how we’re going to get there…People won’t like to hear it, but they’re better off hearing it rather than speculating.”/Political economist GOVERNMENT (the someone) IS NOT DOING ITS JOB

The writer could have just as easily taken a leftist approach and quoted some experts talking about the need to close the deficit while funding important government programs, or experts saying that we have historically low taxes for any industrialized country after about 1900.  Or, he could have taken an even-handed approach and centered the discussion on what experts are saying about specific tax cuts set to expire, alternating the view of those in favor of extending the temporary cuts and those against it.

My point is that every day now for years, we have been bombarded by these right-wing ideas, not just in the wing-nut media, but in the mainstream news media as well.  Even when the media gets the facts right, as this article mostly does, the underlying assumptions that are conveyed are the same talking points that Ronald Reagan had on the note cards at which he kept glancing in his debates with President Carter in the 1980 presidential election.

The constant beating of these messages into all of us has moved this country to the right.  Sadly, this movement has been correlated with a disintegration of our strong fiscal position, a net transfer of wealth up the economic ladder, a decline in our basic infrastructure, an erosion of civil liberties and a loss of esteem in the rest of the world.

Parade reveals what July 4th means to its publishers: an opportunity to promote mindless celebrity culture.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

There’s no question that Parade, the largest circulation publication in the United States, is going to put July 4th front and center in an issue stuffed into newspapers for Independence Day delivery and use it as a platform for mouthing the most depoliticized platitudes about honoring our country.

But what Parade did this year is quite surprising, because its coverage of the country’s birth by declaration is so devoid of traditional patriotic and militaristic homilies that it transforms the holiday into a mere summer diversion.

The cover and three of the four articles in the issue dated July 4th are about Independence Day.  The cover features two pre-teen girls dressed in the kind of flag costumes and body paint that would have had right-wingers yelling ”damn commie hippy” back in the 60’s when I was their age.  The three articles are 1) a story about a town that has had an Independence Day parade since 1785; 2) an encomium to safe fireworks; and 3) a page of blurbs by famous people on “What July 4th Means to Me….”  The point of the other long article in the issue is to glorify immigrants who came from Ireland in an earlier age. 

Notice that in the July 4th features there is nothing substantive on our founders, nothing on sacrifice for country, shared values, the long road to freedom that started in 1776 and is ongoing, or even the current arguments about the relevancy of the ideas of the late 17th century to today’s post-Industrial society.  

I want to pay particular attention to the article titled “What July 4th Means to Me…” The secondary headline limits what the celebrities say to “Celebrities share their favorite holiday memories.”

And that’s just about all they do:  Seven actors, all of whom have their photo showing and an imageless Buzz Aldrin (second human to walk on the moon) tell us what they used to do on July 4th as kids.  All but three give nothing but memories of a celebration that could be for any summer holiday, or even just a summer family picnic.  The five whose published statements make it seem as if they believe July 4th is just that three-day holiday that kicks off the sunshine season include four actors in faddish hot entertainments directed at teens and young adults, two from “The Twilight Saga,” one from “Glee” and one from “Gossip Girl;” the other is the aging actress Doris Roberts who has played supporting roles in situation comedies for decades.

The three celebrities who in their memories provide at least some comment on what the holiday means beyond “fun in the sun” represent left, center and right political views, but in ways that either conceal the opinion or drain it of all controversy.  Interestingly enough, the three tepid views are presented in a diagonal, from lower right for the “right-wing” view to upper left for the “left-wing” view, with the centrist in the middle:

  • Buzz Aldrin (lower right), astronaut, ends his memory of fireworks with “Our country is a guardian of liberty and freedom,” a vaguely militaristic and slightly right-wing statement because it is one of the excuses we always use when going to war, even a war over resources or geopolitical maneuvering.
  • Jimmy Smits (center), actor, mentions that “Dad and mom were very mindful of passing down the fact that coming to this country was an opportunity…”  It’s certainly a pro-immigration statement, but like the story on discovering Irish roots, non-threatening since Jimmy’s family comes from Puerto Rico, a long-time U.S. possession whose residents are considered citizens.  Virtually everyone living in the United States is the descendant of immigrants, and I think the centrist view is that’s okay, as long as your family has been here awhile.
  • Josh Brolin (upper left), actor, references A People’s History of the United States, lefty Howard Zinn’s wonderful history of the U.S. from the perspective or the poor, minorities and women. “It made me feel a sense of patriotism…” Brolin gushes.  Well done, Josh, to bring this important historian’s most accessible work to the millions who peruse Parade.  It is the only moment of real content in Parade’s coverage of the 4th.  As a statement from the left, however, it is as innocuous and as easy-to-miss as what Smits and Aldrin said, so plays into one of the ideological messages in the subtext.

What then does Parade communicate in the ideological subtext of this article and its broader coverage of the 2010 version of its July 4th coverage?  Two ideas, I think:

One of Parade’s hidden messages is that the only truly newsworthy celebrities are (white) actors.  It’s amazing that not even an athlete or pop musician makes the list, although I imagine that Kevin McHale of “Glee” does something musical.  What if instead of all these actors, the celebrity list included one or two elected officials (or the first lady or even Michelle’s mom), a scientist or two, a chief executive officer of a technology company, a classical or jazz musician and a popular literary writer such as Don DeLillo or Michael Chabon?  Maybe even add an unknown like someone who just won a “teacher of the year” award.  The selection of experts to use is one of the most important ideologically-tinged decisions that any writer or editor makes.  Parade could have made the statement that great novelists, scientists, economists and elected officials are celebrities to revere and follow.  Instead it chose to state that only the opinions of mass culture actors are important.

Parade’s second hidden message is that the current purpose of the July 4th holiday is neither to commemorate, celebrate nor debate shared values, but to have a good time at a barbecue and see a parade and some cool fireworks.  We have no way of knowing everything the celebrities said to Parade’s writer(s); the only statements that make the story describe the fun that was had by all.  

None of the articles focus on things you can buy on and for the holiday, so Parade doesn’t wallow explicitly in mindless consumption.  But its message nevertheless supports the mindless consumer culture by focusing on hedonistic fun that somehow gains undefined higher meaning because it occurs collectively in the family or community.  All meaning is once again embodied entirely in the hedonistic fun—in other words, in consumption and consumption alone.    

In the past, Parade has taken the patriotic or issues route in its celebration of Independence Day.  For example, I remember one cover from more than 10 years ago in which then-First Lady Hillary Clinton earnestly and proudly saluted a flag with two fine upstanding white young people.  That this year’s coverage is so devoid of real content only reflects the current news media trend towards triviality and away from serving as a forum for discussing issues or increasing knowledge.  Someone might argue that at least there isn’t any war-mongering or militaristic propaganda, but in a real sense, all Parade has done has been to replace one set of myths and manipulations with another.

Vampire is the perfect symbol for late-stage Age of Reagan in which politics of selfishness dominates all society.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

I didn’t see it coming, but now that it’s here, it makes perfect sense.  I’m talking about the new vampire craze that has invaded popular fiction and movies, especially but not only for teenagers and young adults. 

The vampire—that human creature who stays alive by sucking the blood of other humans—is the perfect image for an age when selfishness reigns as the underlying ideology.  I call it the Age of Reagan because it was under Ronald Reagan’s leadership that the country began its turn towards selfishness.  Reagan expressed it best with his oft-told joke with the punch line, “I don’t have to run faster than the bear, just faster than you.” 

The idea of every person for him/herself alone is the basis of current free market economic theory.  It also serves as a major ideological underpinning of consumer journalism, advertising and even movies and TV entertainment.  Over the last year, I’ve written about how the politics of selfishness has guided advertising campaigns, survey methodologies, political statements, movies and consumer journalism.  I’ve been meaning to do some other small studies in this area.  For example, it seems that an inordinate number of ads are based on selfishness, for example, all the TV commercials in which cartoonish buffoons or savvy “chicks” hide the cereal, candy bar or pizza bread sticks from loved ones or friends.  And doesn’t it seem that situation comedies today teem with completely selfish and self-centered characters.  In fact, selfishness seems to be one of the central core themes of comedy today.  

Let’s get to the vampires now.  As is well documented in hundreds of studies, since about 1980 there has been a net transfer of wealth up the economic ladder from poor and middle class to wealthy.  Here are some of the most salient facts, all taken from William Domhoff’s studies:

  • The top 1% now owns 34% of all the wealth in the United States (last available recent numbers), compared to only 20.5% in 1979, for a gain of almost 69% in the past 30 years!
  • Income of the top 1% was only 12.8% of total income in 1982 and today  it’s about 21.3%—a gain of two-thirds!
  • The chief executive officers and presidents of companies now make many more times the money than their average full-time worker does.  In 1980, CEOs made about 42 times what the average worked was paid; the latest numbers are 344 to 1!  By the way, in Europe, it’s only 25 to 1.

I think it’s reasonable to say that all ideology and philosophy aside, the past 30 years that have been dominated by Ronald Reagan’s political and economic ideas have seen the rich taking more of the pie and leaving less for everyone else.  The rich have gotten richer to some extent by taking it from others.  One of the most profoundly dramatic and startling images of such a transfer of wealth is to call it blood-sucking.

We see and hear examples of symbolic blood-sucking every day: sub-prime mortgage sellers and consumer finance companies getting unsavvy consumers into bad deals; company layoffs followed by announcements of massive salaries to their CEOs;  warranties at exorbitant prices for equipment that never goes bad; parents gaming the process for getting into college by essentially using money to hoist their children above others who can’t afford SAT tutors, special summer camps and professional writers to compose admissions essays.  Kids and young adults (and everyone else for that matter) see all this selfishness and channel it into what appeals to them in their entertainment. 

It’s very hard not to be influenced by the ideology of an age, especially when it is pounded into you by the news media and mass culture on a daily basis.  A dominant ideology infects everything, including our entertainment.  What could be more natural to a teen raised today than to be fascinated by people who survive and thrive by drinking the blood of others?  To my mind, vampirism is the perfect literary symbol of our current selfish society.  I expect vampires to be a major and dominant image in mass culture for several more years.

The new war on public workers is just the latest phase in the right’s jihad against unions.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

In an article titled “War on Public Workers” in this week’s Nation, Amy Traub connects a lot of recent blips on the news media screen to draw a picture of what she accurately calls a new class war against government employees. 

Traub does an excellent job of citing some of the usual suspects such as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, the editor of U.S. News & World Report, the Wall Street Journal’s Paul Gigot, the Heritage Foundation and Reason Magazine and their calls for cutting the salaries and pensions of state workers or loosening the stranglehold that public unions supposedly have on state and local governments. 

Traub demonstrates that, as she says, “the lavish lifestyle of public workers is a myth,” but notes that by “attacking public workers, they can demonize ‘big labor’ and ‘big government’ at the same time, while deflecting attention from the more logical target of Middle America’s rage: the irresponsible Wall Street traders, whose risky, high-profit business practices brought down the economy, and the lax regulators who let them get away with it.”

We all get angry when we hear executives get hundreds of millions, destroy the company and the employees end up with partial or no pensions.  In the case of public employees, the people getting rich, or richer, because of underfunding pension needs are those who have paid less in taxes over the years.  Now that’s all of us, but remember that tax cuts everywhere during the last 30 years have primarily helped the wealthy.

Several days after Traub’s article appeared, Roger Lowenstein made the “let’s go after the public unions” argument in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine.  His topic is the pension funding shortfall faced by an alarming number of states and municipalities.  He admits that shortfall is the fault of the employers—in this case, government—for overestimating how much money the pension fund investments would make and underestimating how much they would have to put into the funds every year to keep them solvent.  Yet Lowenstein wants the workers to pay the price of the employers’ folly.  For example, he says: “…legislatures need to push the boundaries of reform. That will mean challenging the unions and their political might.” 

And now the front page of this morning’s Times holds a story by Steven Greenberg about four elected Democrats, two in New Jersey and one each in California and New York, who are trying or talking about trying to reduce the pensions, benefits or salaries of public unions.  The story is pretty much an encomium to the personal courage these politicians are supposedly showing.  The article quotes Gary N. Chaison, a professor at Clark University, saying that some Democrats now consider it a “badge of honor” to fight the unions. 

But quoting Chaison is an example of expert selection to prove a point.  Chaison’s thin body of academic work focuses on what happens when unions merge, yet, as his Wikipedia article points out, he is frequently quoted in the news media because he always says something pessimistic about the future of unions.  In other words, he says what the writers and editors want readers and viewers to know.  

I wanted to put Traub’s discussion of the class war of wealthy right-wing interests against public workers into the 30-year war that the right wing has waged against unions in general, starting as so many of these Conservative movements have done, with Ronald Reagan.  Although once president of a union, as a politician and elected official, Reagan did all he could to make it more difficult for unions to organize and to shrink the power of unions in politics and the economy. 

Here are some high points in the 30-year history of anti-unionism by the Republican Party, certain businesses and the right wing chatter-pros at think tanks, academic journals, business associations and the wing-nut media:

  • Reagan’s breaking of the air traffic controller’s union.
  • Reagan’s reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board and other regulatory agencies, which then began to make decisions and promulgate new regulations that made it harder for unions to organize.
  • The charter school movement, which while declaring itself a movement to return control to parents really has had the breaking of teachers’ unions as its primary goal from the very beginning.
  • The news media’s war on baseball since free agency and the ascension of the strong players’ union.  Notice how year in and year out, football (with its very weak union) can do no wrong, whereas everything even a little negative about baseball gets blown out of proportion.  For example, the media has never made a fuss about the ubiquitous presence of steroids and other performance enhancers in football, while crucifying baseball in general and every baseball player ever discovered to have taken performance enhancing drugs. 
  • The decision of the Obama Administration, unlike the Clinton Administration after 12 years of Republican rule, not to roll back 8 years of Bush II’s phase of the war on unions.  His Secretary of State, for example, embraces charter schools.  

The war on public workers so vividly described by Traub, is the latest chapter in the wider war on the union movement.

The question, of course, is why the right-wing is so obsessed with crushing unions?  The ideological pureness of unregulated free market thinking aside, I think its part of the bigger 30-year class war declared by Reagan and his followers against anyone who isn’t wealthy.  One thing that virtually every item on Reagan’s domestic agenda had in common was that they all tended to transfer wealth up the economic ladder from poor and middle class to the wealthy.  Think of it—lower taxes, smaller government, more government services performed by private contractors, fewer unionized workers.  Whatever other impact each may have had, they all took and still take money from the poor and middle class and give it to the wealthy.

Why does the U.S. keep getting into wars with no real objective, or an objective that’s just pie-in-the-sky?

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Thomas Friedman hit the nail directly on the head yesterday in his regular New York Times column, when he wrote:

“…when taking America surging deeper into war in Afghanistan, President Obama has to be able to answer the most simple questions at a gut level: Do our interests merit such an escalation and do I have the allies to achieve victory? President Obama never had good answers for these questions, but he went ahead anyway. The ugly truth is that no one in the Obama White House wanted this Afghan surge. The only reason they proceeded was because no one knew how to get out of it — or had the courage to pull the plug. That is not a sufficient reason to take the country deeper into war in the most inhospitable terrain in the world.”

No one knew how to get out of it.  The unstated assumption that I think most of us would share is that no one knew how to leave Afghanistan without getting bludgeoned by the right wing media that now sets the terms of debate in the mainstream news media.  Right-wingers would shout out their typical litany of incendiary catch-phrases: Weak on defense!  Couldn’t do what was needed! Put America’s security at risk!  In fact I think the reason that President Obama escalated the Afghanistan War was so he wouldn’t take heat for drawing down Iraqi troops.  Escalate in Afghanistan while leaving Iraq was his plan even as a candidate.  And I believe his plan was a typical Clintonian triangulation to defend in advance against right wing criticism. (BTW, the firing of McChrystal probably won’t raise the ire of the wing-nuts because President Obama replaced him with their sweet little darling, General David Petraus.)

But I think it’s just a little too easy to attribute the Administration’s hesitation to pull its stakes from a sinkhole of an unwinnable war to fear that it would take a scorching from the right.  Remember, our president takes a scorching from the right whatever he does, because Rush, Sean, Glenn, Anne and the others are subjective partisans who just don’t like the man. 

Let’s go back to the war which served as dress pattern for our current Iraq-Afghan fiasco: Viet Nam.  I’m currently in the middle of reading John Prados’ masterful new history, Viet Nam: History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975.  Prados describes in accurate detail how Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson all had innumerable opportunities to pull out of Viet Nam.  Each time the rational evidence suggested that we had nothing to gain by remaining and that remaining would necessitate committing more money and more soldiers to Viet Nam.  And in each case, all three presidents forged ahead, sometimes after making noises about pulling out. 

During the 10-year period between 1954 and 1964 in which three successive U.S. presidents decided again and again to escalate our presence to Viet Nam, the right wing was at its low point in American politics.  The McCarthy era had scared a lot of average middle class folk, elected officials and even corporate executives.  The country was rapidly moving to the left on a wide range of social issues such as civil rights, women’s rights and nuclear disarmament.  Additionally, the media was much smaller and far from 24/7 since there was neither cable TV nor Internet nor cell phones.  And while there were many Republican newspapers, a lot of these were progressive Republicans, sometimes called Rockefeller Republicans.  Yes, the core of what would become the new Republican party of whites living in the sunbelt and the rural and suburban north was coalescing, but the various groups in the Republican party Ronald Regan built had not connected and they did not have any powerful news media on their side to shout out their views.

Here’s my point: In an environment ideal for pulling out without suffering any political consequences, Eisenhower did not, Kennedy did not, and Johnson did not.  More than 50,000 Americans died, we wasted a lot of money and lost the respect of the world. (The differences in Iraq and Afghanistan are that the war started sooner and that it has killed fewer of our side while wasting more money.)

Now some would call it a collective hubris, an inability of our country to admit we are ever wrong.  But in the case of Viet Nam, for the longest time, maybe 8 years, that admission could have come in the dark shadow of the public’s lack of awareness about the war.  In the case of our current wars, President Obama had a mandate to repudiate the policies of the Bush Administration and the opportunity to say, it was his war and it was a mistake, so we’re pulling out with all diligent speed.

The similarity I see is the great role that companies that receive military contracts play in the politics of the United States.  Although one was perhaps the most big-hearted and caring President we have ever had and the other the archetype of the uncaring and mean business operator, LBJ and Dick Cheney share one thing in common—both were beholden financially to Halliburton, although in Johnson’s day it was called Brown & Root.  For a full discussion of LBJ’s ties to Cheney’s future employer, check out Robert Caro’s definitive biography of LBJ.

Add to the military contractors multinational businesses that have always relied on U.S. governments to use our military to protect their interests, agricultural companies, airplane manufacturers, mining and metals companies and weapons makers.

President Dwight Eisenhower called it the military-industrial complex.  But even though he warned us about it in his farewell address to the nation in 1961, Eisenhower really didn’t feel he could do much to stop its natural flow, and the result was Viet Nam.

Doesn’t that sound a lot like our current president?  Doesn’t Obama seem keenly aware of our problems, including but not limited to the disasters we have created with our military adventurism, but he believes he is limited in what he can do, so he triangulates again and again. 

Leadership style is another thing Eisenhower and Obama have in common: both set a broad goal and then watch Congress hash it out.  Both prefer to lead by finding and then reinforcing the consensus.

I have read people compare Barack Obama at various times to FDR, Lincoln and Jimmy Carter, but to me, he’s looking a lot like Ike, but without the advantages of a post-war boom and a strong Senate Majority Leader named LBJ.

How an inequitable distribution of salaries leads to gaming the educational system by parents and colleges.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Two articles in yesterday’s New York Times reveal how attempts to “game the system” have corrupted both college and the process of getting into college. 

On page one of The New York Times, Catherine Rampell tells us of 10 law schools which recently have uniformly added additional points to every student’s grade point average.  For example, Loyola Law School in L.A. is giving all recent students a boost of one-third of a point.  The goal, to state the obvious, is to make the graduates more attractive in the job market.

But it’s clearly a corruption of the system that has grave ramifications in the real world.  Let’s start with what lawyers do.  The core task of the lawyer is to construct an argument or contract based on documents and articles that he or she has analyzed. Sometimes if you’re a litigator, you have to make an oral presentation of what you’ve done.  That sounds just like school work.  In other words, how you do in school really does predict how you are going to do as a lawyer.  Furthermore, because of uniform bar standards, the courses and curricula of most law schools are very, very similar, meaning that an A from Loyola is pretty much comparable to an A at Michigan, that is, if everyone is playing by the same rules and grading the same way.

By the way, not every profession or job is as linked to performance in school as the legal profession is (or engineering, to name another one).  In fact, to excel in school requires only a handful of the many diverse skills and natural talents that people can possess.  More on this point after looking at the other article in yesterday’s Times.

In the local section, Sharon Otterman reports that the New York City Department of Education is thinking about changing how it tests for its gifted programs because so many parents are gaming the test by putting their kids through extensive preparation.

I wonder what these parents think they accomplish by pushing their kids beyond their natural capabilities instead of understanding those capabilities and nurturing the real talent that I believe that every child possesses.  Trying to game the system to help your child advance academically has been going on for about two decades now, and every year it seems to trickle down to more families.  They’re called “helicopter parents” and are the ones who hire consultants to get their kids into the “right” kindergartens, hold their kids back a year, have their kids take one course in summer school to have a lighter load during the high school year, put their kids through rigorous SAT training and hire people to write their kids’ college application form essays.

What will these children do when they are adults in the real world left to their own devices, at least those that don’t go into the family business or have trust fund money? (And if they are set up for life, why bother in the first place?)

Why are both colleges and parents corrupting the system for what they think is the benefit of the young people in their care?  It comes down to the pursuit of money and respect, but then again, in America, all we respect is money, so it comes down to the Benjamins (and the Grants and Jacksons, and even the Washingtons!)

Start with the thought process of the helicopter parent: If I can get Emma into a good kindergarten, she’ll go to a good elementary school, get into a gifted high school, attend an Ivy League college and get a job at a major law, finance, publishing, architecture, accounting, PR or consulting firm and have an enormous income, or maybe make the connections to get in on the ground floor of a major business venture or do her residency in a top-flight teaching hospital.  In any case, she’ll have a big fat salary. Which mostly won’t happen if Little Emma becomes a school teacher, physical therapist, electrician, appliance repair person, computer or design technician, social worker or a plumber.  These professions, some of which do require someone to get a good education, are all interesting and needed by society, but in today’s world they don’t pay all that much money, making more parents want to push their kids into high-paying professions. 

In other words, if the differences in salaries between professionals, business owners and executives and everyone else weren’t so great in the United States, then parents and schools would not feel the need to act in a corrupt and dishonorable manner.  The parents, children and schools contributing to this corruption believe, and wrongly I think, that the purpose of college is nothing more than to purchase a certification that enables you to get the job you want. 

The article on law schools raising GPAs mention that other universities are paying students to take non-paid internships in the public and nonprofit sector, while others are paying law firms to try out their students.  Both seem admirably practical and can be roughly construed as kinds of “work-study” aid.  Both help their students get a leg up in the job market without doing anything to lower academic standards.  Bravo to these schools for trying to help students in an ethical and fair manner.

Tony Hayward set to enter the galaxy of mythic archetypes as a cross between Bozo the Clown and Henry Clay Frick

Posted on by Marc Jampole

I think virtually everyone outside the Joe Barton family would agree that Tony Hayward has failed as the operational leader of BP during the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. 

From the media reports, it seems as if “Wayward Hayward” eats three square meals of “fillet of foot” every day.  Watching Mr. BP commit faux pas after faux pas for weeks on end has left me wondering if “foot in mouth disease” is fatal.  When I close my eyes and slowly chant the words “Tony Hayward,” I now get a vivid image—almost an hallucination—of Clarabelle honking the horn of a tricycle too small for him, scurrying herky-jerky among tightly packed rigs in an oil field.

All joking aside, from the standpoint of a public relations professional, Hayward has failed miserably as a corporate spokesperson because he did not represent the company in much of what he said.

Let’s start with some basic PR theory.  In the current world of easy litigation and clashing special interest groups, one of the primary job responsibilities of chief executive officers is to represent the company.  If the CEO does it well, like Lee Iacocca, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell, it can help a company enormously. 

Representing the company means talking to the news media and appearing at public meetings.  CEOs of even mid-sized companies generally have a communications staff which has as one of its key responsibilities making sure that the CEO has all the facts in hand he or she needs to represent the company to the news media or public.  The CEO is not a sales executive, but always has sales numbers.  The CEO is not a HR person, but always knows how many people the company just laid off or hired.  The CEO doesn’t do research, but knows what the next products to be commercialized are.  The CEO knows all this because other company employees tell the PR department, which churns it into easy-to-understand bullet points.

When a CEO speaks in a crisis situation, he represents the company, not himself.  But too often with the news media, and especially in front of Congress, Hayward answers were clearly from him and about him, and not from and about the company that pays him millions a year to be its most visible leader.  Time and time again, he would plead ignorance about matters that someone at BP surely knew something about.  He would say he didn’t know about the engineering, instead of saying “My engineers in the field are telling me….”  It made him look stupid and made BP look stupid for putting him in charge.

We may never know why the BP PR mavens and mavenesses advised BP and Hayward to keep it personal, but it may have been a trick to avoid revealing a lot of damaging information.  As it is, most news media have reported that BP cut corners to drill the well that burst.  There have also been reports that BP took shortcuts that led to two other less damaging accidents within the past few years. Even BP’s fellow oil companies ran a bus over it a few dozen times when it came to the subject of safety precautions for deep water drilling.  In short, it’s very possible that BP knows more but that what it knows is very damaging, and so it decided that the best way not to reveal what it knows was to pretend that Hayward was speaking for himself and just didn’t and doesn’t know enough.

It was a mistake, but I bet BP’s lawyers figured that the less it said, the less likely it would be sued, and that it was going to get a slew of bad publicity no matter what it said.  No excuse to throw gasoline on a fire, if you ask me.

Classic PR theory dictates that in a crisis, an organization tells everyone what went wrong as soon as possible and tell what it’s doing to fix it and why it won’t happen again. That often means firing the people who made the mistakes, and BP probably should have fired the people who took the shortcuts drilling the well and then announce a new set of standards to avoid the chance of a repeat.  Of course, it’s too early to say, but in BP’s case, that might have meant firing most of the senior management team.