On the state of our dysfunctional political communications

On his most recent show, Bill Moyers discusses the heightened polarization in the political discourse with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who runs the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, including the sites FactCheck.org (which monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players) and FlackCheck.org (which tracks patterns of political deception). This is a high-quality discussion well worth watching. The starting point for the discussion was the defeat of Senator Lugar, who was accused by his more conservative opponent of working with Barack Obama to dismantle the world's stocks of aging nuclear weapons to make sure that they don't fall into the wrong hands. Cooperating with the enemy (in this case, a member of the opposing political party) has become a mortal sin. The result is, politically speaking, we cannot any longer talk with each other. Jamieson spreads the blame in many directions; this is not your typical polarized pundit who aims her arrows only at the other party. For instance, Factcheck.org has challenged Barack Obama's Life of Julia illustration as being based on "some false or dubious assumptions." According to Jamieson, the following questions should be the focus of our budget disputes and the upcoming election: "How do we afford this level of government, if we want to keep it? Do we want to keep it? How are we going to pay for it? If we're going to cut, where are we going to cut?" The campaigns of Obama and Romney are mostly devoid of economic facts, "depriving us of the common ground we need." She explains that if this trend continues, massive damage will be done to this country. What do you do to force these issues? The media needs to take charge: These questions regarding spending priorities need to be repeated endlessly at debates until they are actually answered. (min 12). Check out the simple questions that need to be asked, but usually aren't, and are never answered in political debates (last half of min 12):

That's what we need to do in the presidential debates. We're going to have them. When they don't answer the question, the next person up should forgo his or her question and ask the question again. And if the entire debate simply has to ask the question then let's ask, what about Simpson-Bowles don't you like, Mr. President? You know, Governor Romney? What about it do you like? Are you ready to advance-- to say that we should move the Social Security age to 70 in some kind of a phased-in structure?

Should we be doing means testing in some ways? What are your alternatives? When you say you're going to reform the tax code, is that an excuse for saying you're going to do nothing? How much money can you get out of the reforms that you were offering? And what are you going to eliminate and what are you going to cut? Right now we're playing this game. Right now you've got the Ryan budget proposal.

BILL MOYERS: Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Uh-huh. And to his credit, there is a proposal there. The first thing the Democrats did a response was to say, "Ha, we're going to assume he's cutting everything across the board." So they started pushing on the assumption that this good thing is going to be cut. This good thing, this good thing by “X” percent.

Congressman Ryan responds, "No, I'm going to get rid of some things entirely, and I'm going to preserve some things entirely. And I'm going to cut some things." That's actually the beginning of a productive exchange. Now the question is what for both sides? And let's get the public on board to accept that there's some things we take for granted now we're not going to have. There's some costs we're not now paying that we're going to have to pay. It's necessary to preserve our country.

Jamieson came to this discussion with ideas for improving our deplorable situation. I very much like this one:

I would like to see a proposal that Harvard floated a number of years ago, that we devote Sunday nights, from the beginning of the general election period through the election, to intensive discussions with presidential candidates about the serious issues of the day. I think you'd find an attentive audience for that. And I think the person who's elected would find that he was better able to govern if the public had had that opportunity. The public isn't stupid. The public actually is smart in some important ways.

Moyers asked whether our political system is close to collapsing "of its own absurdity." Jamieson doesn't mince her words (min 16):

We're close right now to having a campaign run on attack and irrelevant arguments that are highly deceptive and, as a result, make it extremely difficult to solve the problems facing the country, which is what all the concern about money and politics is well justified and why we ought to worry about trying to vigilantly hold the super PACs and the third-party advertisers accountable.

Now, what are the consequences of high level of attack? You don't have a reason to vote for someone. You're only being told why to vote against. Hence, no projection of what the alternatives are and no understanding of the trade-offs in government . . . We're going to have high level of attack; hence, no relevance to governance and votes against. And that we're going to have high level of deception; hence, people who feel betrayed once they see actual governance or who vote against a candidate they might otherwise support.

The problem with modern political advertising is not framed properly by the use of the phrase "negative advertising":

I don't like to use the word "negative" because it conflates legitimate and illegitimate attack and because negative to most people means duplicitous. [The big problem occurs] when there's a differential in spending and a high level of deception tied to a high level attack because now you have the worst possible consequences.

Continue ReadingOn the state of our dysfunctional political communications

Permanant war and meaningless chatter

What's on the table for this election season? Glenn Greenwald explains:

But like almost all of the most consequential and destructive policies — endless war, the Drug War, the sprawling and barbaric American prison state — the domestic Surveillance State expands with equal fervor under both Democratic and Republicans administrations, and opposing it thus affords no partisan gain and it is therefore entirely off the table of debate. In lieu of any dispute over these types of actually consequential government policies, we instead endure a series of trivial weekly scandals that numb the brain, distract attention, and produce acrimony as virulent and divisive as it is petty.
Greenwald pointed out that some mainstream writers are starting to take note of America's endless state of war and surveillance. For instance, the following excerpt is the writing of Fareed Zakaria:
Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror. Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for the intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feet – the equivalent of 22 U.S. Capitols or three Pentagons. The largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs is now the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people. The rise of this national security state has entailed a vast expansion in the government's powers that now touch every aspect of American life, even when seemingly unrelated to terrorism. Some 30,000 people, for example, are now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications within the United States.

Continue ReadingPermanant war and meaningless chatter

Proposed new federal law would invite thousands of paranoid strangers to secretly read your most private thoughts

Its sponsors call it the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act" (HR 3523), but its main function is to invite Big Brother into all aspects of what you assumed to be your private online existence. Perhaps you are thinking, "I have nothing to hide." Good for you, but what about the fact that this horrifically vague proposed law would force you to share all of your most private online communications with the hyper-paranoid geek-goons and geek-thugs of the NSA? Under CISPA, the Federal Government will have the right to look at that emotional email you just sent to your mother last week. The government, including many thousands of people with security clearances, will have access to the pin numbers and passwords for your bank accounts and investments. After all, you do use the Internet, and all they want is anything connected with or associated with the Internet. They want to know what your read and what you buy. It will be like they are sitting right next to you while you use your computer. CISPA is a blatant attempt to shred the Fourth Amendment, while offering offenders explicit immunity for their misconduct. Even if they use your private writings merely to show sympathy for the political goals of someone the U.S. is attacking with drones. You can read the bill here. Here's how Free Press sums up the main provisions in its call for action:

  • CISPA would allow companies and the government to bypass privacy protections and spy on your email traffic, comb through your text messages, filter your online content and even block access to popular websites.
  • CISPA would permit companies to give the government your Facebook data, Twitter history and cellphone contacts. It would also allow the government to search your email using the vaguest of justifications — and without any real legal oversight.
  • CISPA contains sweeping language that could be used as a blunt weapon to silence whistleblower websites like WikiLeaks and the news organizations that publish their revelations.
  • CISPA would create an environment in which we refrain from speaking freely online for fear that the National Security Agency — the same agency that has conducted "warrantless wiretapping" online for years — could come knocking.
The centerpiece of this bill is that federal agents will only read your private information for purposes of "national security." We've heard that word over and over and over for the past ten years. It has justified anything and everything for the federal government, including spying, maintaining secrets from the People who supposedly run this country, torture and endless war at a cost of billions of dollars per week. This bill invites the government to spy on every American for no damned good reason. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingProposed new federal law would invite thousands of paranoid strangers to secretly read your most private thoughts

“At least I can get accurate news on NPR.” Wrong.

For those of you who think that you are getting accurate U.S. foreign policy news stories on NPR, think again. NPR, like most other new outlets, has annointed itself a stenographer for the U.S. government. Glenn Greenwald proves this point beyond debate by dissecting a recent NPR store on Iran. It would all be laughable were the stakes not so serious. Here is an excerpt from Greenwald's story. I highly recommend following the link to his entire story:

This morning, Temple-Raston began her report by noting — without a molecule of skepticism or challenge — that Iran is accused (by the U.S. government, of course) of trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil (a plot traced to “the top ranks of the Iranian government”); there was no mention of the fact that this alleged plot was so ludicrous that it triggered intense mockery in most circles. She then informed us that Iran is also likely responsible for three recent, separate attacks on Israeli officials. These incidents, she and her extremely homogeneous group of experts from official Washington explained, are “red flags” about Iran’s intent to commit Terrorism — red flags consistent, she says, with Iran’s history of state-sponsored Terrorism involving assassinations of opposition leaders in Europe during the 1980s and the 1996 truck bombing of an American military dormitory in Saudi Arabia (note how attacks on purely military targets are “Terrorism” when Iran does it, as are the assassinations of its own citizens on foreign soil who are working for the overthrow of its government; but if you hold your breath waiting for NPR to label as Terrorism the U.S. assassination of its own citizens on foreign soil, or American and Israeli attacks on military targets, you are likely to expire quite quickly). All of this, Temple-Raston announces, shows that Iran is “back on the offensive.”

Continue Reading“At least I can get accurate news on NPR.” Wrong.

Barack Obama emulates George W. Bush, again.

Glenn Greenwald has just published this infuriating story. It starts with a big lie: the U.S. and the government of Yemen have a good laugh that a U.S. drone attack on Yemeni soil, killing 14 women and 21 children was a successful attack against "insurgents" and "militants" that did not involve the U.S. When a reporter exposes the U.S. involvement, a fact that has been corroborated by a Wikileaks cable release, he ends up in prison on trumped up charges. When he's about to be pardoned, Barack Obama intervenes. The reporter, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, has spent the past two years in prison, where he has been beaten and held in solitary confinement. This is all part of a highly coordinated war on whistle-blowers by the Obama Administration, a fact duly ignored by most media outlets, who serve as stenographers for the American military-industrial complex and its Commander in Chief:

So it is beyond dispute that the moving force behind the ongoing imprisonment of this Yemeni journalist is President Obama. And the fact that Shaye is in prison, rather than able to report, is of particular significance (and value to the U.S.) in light of the still escalating American attacks in that country. Over the past 3 days alone, American air assaults have killed 64 people in Yemen, while American media outlets — without anyone on the scene — dutifully report that those killed are “suspected Al Qaeda insurgents” and “militants.”
Should anyone trust the United States' claims about whether any dead people were "terrorists"? Greenwald says no (and see here).
It’s incredibly instructive to compare what we know (thanks to Shaye) actually happened in this Yemen strike to how The New York Times twice “reported” on it. I quoted above from these two NYT articles, but it’s just amazing to read them: over and over, the NYT assures its readers that this strike was carried out by Yemen (with U.S. assistance), that it killed scores of critical Al Qaeda leaders and other “militants,” that the strike likely killed “the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, and his deputy, Said Ali al-Shihri, who were believed to be at the meeting with Mr. Awlaki,” etc. How anyone, in light of this record of extreme inaccuracy, can trust the undocumented assertions of the U.S. Government or the American media over who is and is not a Terrorist or “militant” and who is killed by American drone strikes is simply mystifying.
There is much more to be considered in Greenwald's piece, all of it ignored by Obama apologists everywhere. And no, I'm not a Republican. I voted for Barack Obama, yet I find many of his actions disgraceful.

Continue ReadingBarack Obama emulates George W. Bush, again.