Soundbites June 2015

Who Pays the Pundits?

Ed Rogers, lobbyist with a Washington Post column.

“Given the state of the world and the urgent problems facing us that directly affect our prospects for peace and prosperity, global warming shouldn’t even be in the top five on the list of problems our president should be worrying about,” said Republican operative Ed Rogers in his regular Washington Post column (4/20/15).

What’s more important than catastrophic climate change? Oh, the Ukraine crisis. The US “retreating from global leadership.” An “anemic” domestic economy. And a couple of other things that weren’t important enough to mention, but are still more important than global warming.

The Post‘s bio for Rogers notes that he “is the chairman of the lobbying and communications firm BGR Group,” but it doesn’t give a clue who his clients are—for instance, that his company has gotten at
least $2.7 million from fossil fuel companies like Chevron over the past four years. The paper should inform readers when there’s a connection between the views its pundits are espousing and the checks they’re cashing.

Hoodwinking in Action

In a New York Times article headlined “Why Americans Don’t Want to Soak the Rich” (4/17/15), correspondent Neil Irwin offered a couple of different answers depending on your ideology:

A New York Times graphic depicts raising taxes on the wealthy as incredibly complicated. (Richard Borge/New York Times)

Conservatives might say “Americans are seeking less redistribution because they have come to their senses,” while liberals might say “Americans have been hoodwinked by conservative politicians and media outlets.” Here’s a third option: Americans do want to “soak the rich,” if by “soaking” we mean “tax them more heavily.” Gallup has asked 17 times since 1992 whether upper-income people pay too much, too little or their fair share of federal taxes, and every time a majority has said they pay too little. Why doesn’t Irwin mention this? Maybe it’s because Carlos Slim, the billionaire who is the Times’ chief owner, has no desire to be “soaked.”

The Anti-Socialist Socialist

Pitching in on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s rebranding as a populist, New York Times reporter Amy Chozick (4/21/15) wrote:

It is easy to forget that for years, Mrs. Clinton weathered criticism that she was too liberal, the socialist foil to her husband’s centrist agenda. Economists in the Clinton administration referred to the first lady and her aides as “the Bolsheviks.”

Was First Lady Hillary Clinton really a “socialist foil” to her husband Bill? Depends which New York Times article by Amy Chozick you choose to believe.

It’s not clear who was calling Clinton–a corporate attorney who insisted “you can’t be a lawyer if you don’t represent banks” (New York Times, 3/17/92)–a “socialist.” The apparent source for the “Bolsheviks” reference, though, is another article co-written by Chozick (New York Times, 12/5/14) in which “White House economists” referred to “Mrs. Clinton’s healthcare team” as “the Bolsheviks.”

You may recall that Clinton’s healthcare idea was “managed competition,” a plan to force everyone into corporate HMOs. “I never seriously considered a single-payer system,” she later explained (New York Times, 3/27/08), because “most Americans…become very nervous about socialized medicine.”

‘Fact-Free’ Might Be an Improvement

In an editorial headlined “New Trade Deal Triggers Angry, Fact-Free Uproar,” USA Today (5/3/15) told readers that labor unions who opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have a “simplistic view” that “blame[s] trade, and trade agreements, for the decline in manufacturing jobs.” This “ignores the fact that manufacturing output has nearly doubled since the late 1990s,” the paper asserted, “showing that technology is the real job killer.”

Economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 5/5/15; FAIR.org, 5/5/15) pointed out that USA Today’s manufacturing figures are distorted, failing to correct for imported parts used in manufacturing or for inflation. The actual rise in manufacturing output since 1997 has not been nearly 100 percent, but a bit less than 41.0 percent—lower than the economy’s overall growth rate since then, which is 45.8 percent. (USA Today ran a correction after Baker and FAIR pointed out the error.)

‘Propaganda’ vs. ‘Public Diplomacy’

A classic example of the private sector “countering propaganda.”

“Turmoil at Voice of America Is Seen as Hurting US Ability to Counter Propaganda,” a New York Times headline (4/15/15) reported. But isn’t VOA itself a propaganda outlet? Not in the Times stylebook, apparently—the story by Ron Nixon called it “the government agency that is charged with presenting America’s viewpoint to the world,” conducting “America’s public diplomacy.” This is contrasted with the “sophisticated propaganda machines that have expanded the influence of countries like China and Russia and terrorist groups like the Islamic State.” The difference between “propaganda machines” and “public diplomacy” is never explained in the article, but the former appears to be what “they” do while the latter is what “we” do.

‘Credible Threats’—Now and Then

On Monday, the Baltimore Police Department announced there was a “credible threat” against law enforcement officers from three gangs: the Black Guerilla Family, the Bloods and the Crips. Authorities received information that the gangs “entered into a partnership to ‘take-out law enforcement officers.’”
—Newsweek (4/27/15)

Sheriff James G. Clark said Sunday he receives 40 to 50 telephone calls threatening his life after every nationally televised outbreak of racial violence in the Selma, Ala., Negro vote-registration drive.

“As far as I know practically all of them” have been from Negroes from all part of the United States, he said, some identifying themselves as member[s] of Negro extremist groups.
—AP (3/8/65)