Open Letter from Harold Meyerson to Roger Ailes

reprinted here because I enjoyed it (and don't have time for a proper post today)...

To: Mr. Roger Ailes

President, Fox News

Dear Roger,

You should be sitting when you read this, because I'm writing to apologize.

In times past, I've had harsh words for Fox for its consistent misrepresentation of the news. In 2003, I cited a survey from the Program for International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the Knowledge Network that showed that 45 percent of Fox viewers believed that the United States had uncovered incontrovertible proof that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda had worked together; that we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and that a majority of peoples in other lands supported our war in Iraq. In case these bizarre misconceptions merely reflected the a priori beliefs of President Bush's supporters, PIPA further documented that Bush backers who got their news from other networks had a decidedly firmer grasp of the facts.

Now, I don't in any way retract my judgment that you guys were at the time and still are a constant source of right-wing fantasies. It's just that, at least in today's political environment, I'm no longer sure this is a bad thing.

The election has left the Republican Party reeling, its base shrunk to those Southern, Plains and Mountain West states where rural cultures still predominate. The party's smarter strategists are arguing that the worldviews of the social conservatives and free-market extremists who dominate the GOP are either irrelevant or ridiculous to voters in the middle of the political spectrum. "We can't be obsessed with issues that are not the issues that are important to American voters," Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida GOP, told the New York Times.

But Fox has won its viewership precisely by promoting such obsessions.

During the campaign just completed, you guys focused on Barack Obama's allegedly Muslim and alien roots and socialist ideology; meanwhile, in the real world, unemployment rose, foreclosures soared and Wall Street went flooey. Over the past eight years, you beat drums for such causes as state intervention in the Terri Schiavo case. You demonized undocumented immigrants (okay, CNN's Lou Dobbs gave you a run for your money on that one). You fed the Republican base with a steady diet of bile -- and now that bilious base is the biggest impediment to the Republicans' repositioning themselves so that they can win elections again.

Reach out to Latinos -- the inescapably growing segment of the American electorate that voted overwhelmingly for Obama after four years of GOP immigrant-bashing? Not if Fox viewers have anything to say about it. Not after you've drummed into their heads that the Latino immigrant population is some looming terrorist threat.

Modify that opposition to stem-cell research? Tone down the ridicule of people in public life who have advanced degrees? Call off the Republican war on science that kicks in whenever science runs counter to right-wing fundamentalism in religion or economics? Not if the Hannity faithful can help it.

You're not alone in reinforcing those beliefs that marginalize the Republican right, of course. You've got plenty of help from Rush and all the little Limbaughs who dominate talk radio. But together with your allies, you haul truckloads of troglodyte garbage to your flock.

And the way your flock sees it, the modifications that Republicans need to make to become competitive again in American politics -- acknowledging a need for state intervention to make the economy work, backing off the primitive religiosity, embracing a more tolerant pluralism -- amount to nothing less than heresy.

As an aide to Richard Nixon back in the day, Roger, you were around for the birth of the Southern strategy -- the policy to move all those disgruntled racist Southern whites into Republican ranks. But the party as Nixon would have recognized it ceased to exist after the Republicans captured Congress in 1994. Since then, the national Republican Party has been dominated by far-right Southern legislative leaders -- Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott -- and by George W. Bush. The past two elections, Republicans have grown weaker everywhere but the white rural South -- the region that remains the least educated and least diverse.

And rather than present these voters with a picture of a complex, changing world, you guys at Fox serve chiefly to reinforce their fears, to paint people who hold different viewpoints as alien and threatening.

In that sense, your work remains dangerous and disintegrative to the nation. But it is also, more narrowly, tactically, for now, a great gift to liberals and Democrats. You ensure the ongoing Palinization and marginalization -- electorally, the terms are synonymous -- of the Republican Party.

And to think that you're doing all this not on the Democratic National Committee's dime but on Rupert Murdoch's.

Cheers from your new fan,

Harold

meyersonh@washpost.com

Kashkari / Imhotep: Awaken not the cursed mummy!

This is Neel Kashkari:

(Yes, that's eye liner. Really makes his eyes pop, doesn't it?)

He's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. He's also a former Goldman Sachs executive, just like his boss, Henry Paulson. He gave a speech today at a conference full of financial executives, and afterwards wasn't thrilled about having to answer questions about the great benefits of robbing our children to heap many billions of more dollars on the failing insurance giant AIG.

This is Imhotep:

He was cursed and mummified alive in ancient Egypt, only to be awakened by treasure hunters in 1923. From the IMDB:

Now, with the ancient and quite agile high priest on the loose, the adventurers and scientists face not only a dangerous enemy, but also a massive threat to today's world: Imhotep wants to bring Ankh-su-namun back to life by using Evelyn's body, but he also wants to rid the world of the disbelieving crowd of democracy-supporters to be able to enforce his tyrannic dictatorship.

Damn! Don't you love it when life immitates art? (Not that "The Mummy" is "art", but still...)

Beni: Mr. Burns, Prince Imhotep thanks you for your hospitality.
Mr. Burns: No.
Beni: And for your eyes, and for your tongue.
Mr. Burns: Wha?
Beni: But I'm afraid more is needed. The prince must finish the job. And consummate the curse which you and your friends have brought down upon yourselves.

Remembering the Armistice

Today is Veterans Day, which once upon a time was known as Armistice Day. Veterans Day is a jumbled tribute to soldiers in general, of any war at any time. Armistice Day was more specifically a commemoration of the end of World War I, which claimed the lives of about 20 million people to violence and many million more to a global influenza pandemic. As bad as things are and have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even in Vietnam 40 years ago, it is difficult to imagine the scope of the horror of the War to End All Wars.

These days Veterans Day is observed more by politicians than by anyone else, who like to make a show of laying wreaths and displaying their patriotism. And a show is all it really is, as these same politicians provide no real, substantive support to the veterans they purport to admire.

In days of yore however, Armistice Day was something focused: a time for everyone to reflect on war's horrors and ponder what they might do to help prevent such massive catastrophes in the future. Back then, before the rise of the Third Reich, people really believed that such atrocities could never happen again. They couldn't imagine humanity surviving another conflict of that intensity and magnitude. They didn't want to. The shock of the enormity of the suffering and violence of that time altered humanity's perception of the world.

People in other countries still observe Armistice Day, and take its lessons seriously. In America, we changed the name, perhaps because perceiving war as a tragedy rather than a business opportunity would be a conflict of interest for the military-industrial complex, or perhaps because we are well-programmed to ignore suffering. With a simple name change, sadness becomes pride.

Trillions and Trillions...

Everyone's freaking the fuck out about Bush's "Neverending Pot 'o Gold" strategy for healing an ailing economy, and for good reason.  The bailout is no longer a gambit to unfreeze credit markets and buy up toxic mortgage securities, but an orgy of feeding by the world's largest financial institutions.  Not that any of us were stupid enough to believe that Bush was suddenly going to show a modicum of responsibility with American tax dollars, but there was hope that something useful would have come out of the plan.  Now we learn that the only thing useful happening is that America's wealthiest, best-represented and most comfortable citizens will be placed into an even higher echelon of plutocratic nirvana. 

Want to know where your money is going, America?  Too fucking bad, it's a secret!  But here's a few places to look when the torches and pitchforks get handed out:

• As intrepid RadicalHead reporter Dave notes, the Big Three auto companies might get a slice of the greasy, lardy pie that our betters are battling for.  But that would be on top of a 25 billion dollar bailout given to them two months ago. I guess 25 billion just doesn't go as far as it used to.
• Welfare queen/crack whore extraordinaire, AIG, continues to get truckloads of cash dumped off at its loading docks for no particular reason.  AIG has now broken the $100 billion mark, representing about 20% of the original 700 billion dollar bailout.  They're predicted to break $200 billion by next year.
• Bonuses!  Yay!  Everyone likes bonuses, right?  While the government pumps over a hundred billion into large investment firms and banks, they pump 70 billion right back out into the hands of the assholes who are ruining the companies.  The rationale?  You need those big bonuses to attract the top talent.  Imagine how much worse things would be without all of those brilliant minds.  The super-geniuses running the banks right now have probably prevented a $1 googolplex bailout.  And that would have totally sucked.

Angered at the bailout, Americans are turning to the tried-and-true response of Americans throughout history: hypocrisy.  What is this, some kind of socialist, commie haven for corporations?  Move over comrades, its our turn.  A "stimulus package" is an almost foregone conclusion at this point, the mechanics of which still boggle the mind: the US government will be giving checks made of taxpayer money to... tax payers?  Uh... thanks, me, for all of that money I gave you. 

I jest, of course.  We'll be borrowing the money from our good friends, the autocratic government of communist China.  At least it's thematically consistent.

Massive Sneaky Tax Cut While Everybody was Distracted

We're just now learning that over a month ago, the Treasury Dept "issued a five-sentence notice" that (ironically) nobody noticed, which overturned 22-year-old tax law passed by Congress in order to help banks. Not all banks. Just banks merging with other banks.

Please note that we're continuously told we must supply billions of taxpayers' dollars that we don't actually have to save companies that are "too big to fail", and that this "notice" helps banks become too big to fail.

Please also note that the article states that "senior executives from the banking industry told top Treasury officials at the beginning of the year that Section 382 was bad for businesses because it was preventing mergers". While noting that, bear in mind these are the same people who were saying all kinds of things were 'bad for business' (most notably regulations of various kinds) while in reality it was these executives themselves who turned out to be bad for business.

So suddenly it's more attractive than ever for big, sick banks to eat up smaller, sicker banks. Deja vu, anyone? Isn't this basically what happened when the Great Depression began?

The Bush Administration has repeatedly demonstrated over the last 8 years the need for a new English word that describes a phenomenon not limited to the Bush Administration but exemplified by it repeatedly and with perfection. The definition of this word, whatever it turns out to be, is something like, "a situation in which the outcome of the work or decisions of experts is self-evidently worse than it would have been had that work or decision-making been done by any average, rational, sentient non-experts." I know what you're thinking: there's already a word for that. But while SNAFU applies perfectly in this context, it's not specific or generic enough to encapsulate the concept I'm shooting for.

If you created a dart board with alternating 'yes'/'no' values instead of numerical scores, and made decisions by having a chimpanzee throw darts at it after asking yes/no questions aloud, you would be at least 50% more successful in everything you do than the Bush Administration. It takes a unique combination of belligerence, ignorance, and assertiveness to fuck things up as explosively and repeatedly as those guys.

Shadows and Sunlight

Why the Frizzle-Cracks Does GM Deserve a Bailout?

[Updated post posting]

Maybe it's because I'm getting old, but I remember a time when people thought a capitalist economy was a good idea. Now all we hear about is throwing public money at struggling companies that are for some inexplicable reason considered 'too big to fail'. Isn't one of the inherent strengths of a capitalist system that bad companies die and good ones survive? If companies like GM, Ford, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, etc. etc. make such awful decisions that they enter or teeter upon bankruptcy, then why should we give them money to keep doing what they've been doing, namely failing, and dragging us all down with them? To borrow from another form of transportation and quote the movie Airplane! , "they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into. I say let 'em crash."

Instead, we institute rules like this new model of kids' sports where nobody keeps score to avoid hard feelings. I don't understand the point of a game with no winners or losers any more than I understand the idea that GM can't be allowed to destroy itself. If you have a compelling argument, please share it with me. I'd love to have a lively debate on the topic, because I'm sure I would learn something. So many smart people are endorsing this approach that I feel like I must be misunderstanding something.

For example:

General Motors Corp Chief Executive Rick Wagoner's salary and other compensation rose 64 percent in 2007 to about $15.7 million, mainly due to option grants
...
GM, which reported a record $39 billion net loss in 2007, released the figures in a proxy statement on Friday afternoon that was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

So GM needs a handout? They pay their CEO 15.7 million dollars after they report record losses, and we are supposed to think that GM's survival is essential to our collective economic welfare?

Same goes for the rest of them. It's the same story, over and over. Enron accounting practices and Bush-like management decisions somehow catch up to you. Who'd've thunk?