The Week Ahead: Hello, September

As summer winds down, I’m trying to get a bit more discipline into my days.  One of the things I want to do is get better at marking what’s happening each week, with an intent to, y’know, revisit the things happening.  I thought today sounded like a promising day to start, because I can really ease into it — because surprisingly little is happening, officially, this week.

Congress:
Out of session and, like me, mourning Ted Kennedy.  Most members are back home relaxing with family, friends, and the strangers they want to vote for them.  Some are holding town hall meetings this week.  If you’re in Arkansas, for instance, you can catch Democrat Senator Blanche Lincoln holding three town hall meetings this week.  She’s not been a big fan of a public option so far, and she faces re-election in 2010.  Should be an interesting show.  Check the official home pages of your senators and representative for a schedule of public events, usually listed under press releases.

Many members will also be firing up their pens — and those of their hard-working staff members — to pen “God Bless the Working Man” columns for the Sunday papers next week.  Keep an eye out — should be particularly interesting to hear from those who killed the Employee Free Choice Act this year.

The White House:
President Obama arrived home from vacation yesterday (best story about this is from The Borowitz Report: “Bush Questions Brevity of Obama’s Vacation“).  My question: Did he have to kick Joe Biden out of his chair?

The President has no public events scheduled today, and the lead story at the White House blog is Michelle Obama’s garden.  Joe Biden is meeting with General Ray Odierno today.  One does hope the president might stop by.

Expect a statement at some point on the California wildfires.

Other Events:
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick will hold a press conference at 3 p.m. Eastern to discuss Ted Kennedy’s vacant Senate seat.

Wildfires raging in California will likely draw comment from the Interior Secretary and, if my bet is correct, the exterior Secretary of Global Warming, Mr. Gore, about the necessity of better forestry planning and attention to the environment.

The report of outgoing commander of NATO and American forces General Stanley McChrystal will leak widely and kick up more discussion of whether a troop increase is necessary in Afghanistan.  Expect some Democrats to grab this as an issue that seems safer to take a position on than Health Care; expect many Republicans to think the same thing.

Somewhere, expect both Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke to order an expensive bottle of wine, perhaps to share, in celebration over the New York Times’s front page story about how the bank bailouts have made us a $4 billion profit.  With that kind of money, we could’ve bought Spider-Man.

A Lament For Ted Kennedy, Who Never Would Yield

You are born into a family that’s already on the way up.  You have eight brothers and sisters; you will survive seven of them.  Your life will careen between the charms and the perils of being the youngest: By the time you’re sixteen, you will lose a brother and a sister, one to war, one to a plane crash.  Another sister will be locked away following disastrous surgery.  Your family will always swirl around you, celebrate with you in good times, make things easier in bad times, and expect of you everything that their fallen sons cannot provide.

You are an unlikely achiever.  As a child and teenager, you bounce between schools and study only lightly, but you take football very seriously.  You get into Harvard on the strength of your name, and get expelled a year later.  Told — not for the last time — that you need to demonstrate good behavior before you can try again, you enlist in the Army.  It is your father’s influence — and probably his worry, having already lost his oldest son to war — that keeps you stationed safely in Paris while the Korean War flares.  You leave the military in 1953, after two years of service, honorably, Private First Class Edward M. Kennedy.

You try Harvard again.  You are moderately successful, a star on the football field and a mediocre but improving student.  Your mind is elsewhere: By 1956, your oldest living brother (and your godfather) is a senator from Massachusetts.  He publishes a book that year, Profiles in Courage, and narrowly misses becoming the nominee for Vice President; you head to the University of Virginia to start your apprenticeship in the law.  You are already talking about politics.

Still, you are the devil-may-care baby of a daring family.  Four times in law school, you are caught driving recklessly, once going 90 with your lights off down a residential street.  You keep your license, because the name on it is Kennedy.

You meet a girl, a college girl, a model.  Maybe she’s taken by your charisma; maybe you’re taken by her beauty.  You get engaged and married within a year, at your father’s urging.  Perhaps they think this will settle you down.  You come from a big family and your brothers are settled: Robert has five children already, and in 1957, Jack and Jackie have a baby girl.  You marry Joan Bennett in 1958, and maybe you are happy for a while, but nothing really changes.

In 1958, Jack needs a campaign manager for a foregone conclusion of a Senate race.  He has smarter, sharper aides to handle everything, but he gives you the campaign manager title.  You show a talent for connection with “regular folks,” with your handsome face and easy smile, your broad football shoulders, your hearty laugh.  Maybe they see in you what they don’t in your brother — an affable man who likes to sing when he drinks, a man with the flaws already floating to the surface.  You’re a Kennedy, but you’re human.  You’re a hand-shaker, a rough-and-tumble athlete, a man with a booming laugh.  You’re 26 and already a politician.

Graduation is as assured as John’s win in 1958, and in 1959 and 1960, you travel the country campaigning for your brother.  He’s going to be president.  You take charge of the Western states, and far from home you woo delegates through feats of athleticism and daring.  You ride a bucking bronco.  You work your heart out.

Jack wins.  He’s sworn in as the 35th president.  Robert — Robbie, to you — is made Attorney General.  And you take Jack’s Senate seat as your own, with your father’s blessing.  You bide your time — you’re only 28 — with an appointment as an Assistant District Attorney, until you turn 30 and can run for the seat yourself.  You beat a primary challenger who says you’re inheriting instead of earning the seat, and a Republican whose name is nearly as famous as your own.

What must you have thought, in 1962, when you were sworn into a job for which you were barely qualified?  Did you believe you’d earned it, or was it just something you wanted?  Were you proud?  Scared?  Did you have any idea that this would be both the beginning and the end for you, that this was as far as your star would ever rise?  How promising, and warm, and safe the world must have seemed that year, when you were settled at Jack’s desk — your desk — and the future was laid out before you, perfect, already formed, conquerable.  You must have had visions of a dynasty.  President Edward M. Kennedy.  Did you think it, even then?  Did you think it every day?

In 1963, you’re presiding over a dull, half-empty Senate when the word comes in: Your brother, the untouchable president, has been shot.  Robbie calls and gives you what must, at that moment, seem like the worst news you’ll ever hear: Jack is dead, killed in a car in Dallas.

This begins a wave of tragedy and accomplishment.  Your life will never even out.  You stand with your brother’s widow in the November cold of Washington, D.C.; seven months later, you are pulled from the wreckage of a plane crash by a fellow Senator and nearly die yourself.  You convalesce for a year; your wife campaigns in your absence and you’re re-elected, finally returning to the Senate in 1965, where you join your brother Robert, the new Senator from New York.

You put your head down and work.  You support the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and are key to the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, which equalizes immigration quotas by hemisphere instead of encouraging immigration only from wealthy Western hemisphere countries.  This eventually changes the ethnic make-up of the United States and allows thousands of people to reunite with their families in America.  You do this.  This is your legacy.

You make mistakes: you support expansion in Vietnam, then change your mind.  You tell your brother not to run for president, then change your mind.  You’re in California, campaigning for him, when he’s shot in Los Angeles; you make it to his bedside before he dies.

You are 34 and all of your brothers are dead.  You have three children of your own and thirteen nieces and nephews without a father.  You decline running in your brother’s place and, instead, go back to the Senate.  You take a leadership post, but your heart is elsewhere.  You know, now, it falls to you to run.

What are you thinking, that year?  How do you function?

The answer is, badly.  You make more mistakes: terrible mistakes.  You drive off a bridge with a woman in your car, and as has always been true, you escape.  You cheat death again.  She does not.  Maybe you are dazed, maybe you are terrified, maybe you are drunk, maybe you are all three — but you tell no one until morning, when it is far too late.  Nothing can be done to save her.  This night, this bridge, this woman — they will never leave you.  People will speak of Chappaquiddick in your obituaries.  You will be forgiven by the people of Massachusetts, but no one will ever forget.  No one ever should.

This is enough. For nearly anyone, this would be enough. The narrow escapes, the horrible haunting guilt of surviving, of perhaps causing, death — it would be enough. It would be a life done, a reason to quit.

But you are a Kennedy.  You survive.  You go back to the Senate; you go back to your family.  Your son loses a leg to cancer; your wife is hospitalized for alcoholism.  Twice, you turn down opportunities to run for president as a favored candidate.  You speak of spending time with your family.  You end the decade separated from your wife, isolated from your party, bereft, reckless, ineffectual.

In 1980 you run for president, and you really learn how to lose.  It is an important lesson.  You lose to a president you don’t respect, within a party that you love and must feel you deserve to be loved by.  Chappaquiddick makes this impossible.  Your over-developed sense of inevitability makes this impossible.  Your behavior, the person you are in private, makes this impossible.  You lose, and in losing, you are more elegant than you have been in years.

But really, you are a mess.  You and Joan divorce.  You drink.  You carouse.  You return to your college habits, recklessness and abandon.  Despite being an advocate for women on the Senate floor, you are, perhaps, something of a terror for them at the bar.  You become fodder for paparazzi.  You become something of a clown.

And then, as always, you rally.  You meet another woman, Victoria, and you soon become serious.  You marry.  You fight an actual battle for your usually safe Senate seat, and beat Mitt Romney by 11 points, the narrowest margin of your career.  Maybe this reminds you of what you are there for; maybe it is just time, after all these years, to settle down.

Now you come into your own.  You spend the 90s fighting the good fight, sitting at the head of the family table, seeing the country and the Kennedys through times good and bad.  You fight for better public education and all kinds of public health care.  You inspire a new generation simply because you’ve been at it for so long.

When the end comes, it is neither swift nor sudden.  You are, after years of recklessness, not felled by something from without, but by something within.  A brain tumor.  You defy the odds.  Again, your name — your wealth, your standing — provide you a softer cushion than most, better surgeons, better hospitals — but there is only so much they can do.  You live to see a new, young president sworn in, a man who might remind you of your brothers but also, perhaps, of yourself.  You live to see him start a fight you’ve always wanted to win, but you cannot hold on to see it ended.

You die in the company of your family.  You die after a summer of sailing and singing, after a year of watching the country turn back in your direction.  You die and the papers print your praises; you die and your enemies cheer.  You have lived long, and well, and fully, and deeply.  You have been loved and loathed and have deserved both, sometimes at the same time.

You will be missed, not just for your name, not just for the legacy that is retired as you are interred by your brothers, but for the actual good you have done.  You will be missed by those for whom you fought; you will be missed by those who looked to your leadership in the darkest days as a reminder that a better America is always worth fighting for.

It’s hard to say good-bye, because you are as much an idea as a man.  So I quote, as you did, Tennyson:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Thank you, sir, for never yielding.

Robert Novak Is Dead

One of the greatest obituaries I have ever read — and I have read a surprising number for someone my age — is still Hunter S. Thompson’s obituary for Richard Nixon.  Titled “He Was a Crook,” it begins:

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK DATE: MAY 1, 1994 FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER…. HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA…. BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

This is how I feel upon the passing of Robert Novak.  Not that he was a monster, necessarily — though that argument could be made — but that now is not the time to begin making apologies. Death seems always to be the moment when it becomes OK to gloss over the worst parts of a person’s life.  That’s unfair, not just to those affected by the worst parts of the dead man’s character, but also to the dead man himself.  Robert Novak did things.  He believed in them.  They were bad.  That should not be forgotten.

It hasn’t been, if the coverage is any clue.  Even the New York Times, admittedly a competitor to Novak’s Chicago Sun-Times, couldn’t resist a kick at the end of its obituary.  So — am I particularly heartless today?  No.  He had a family, and I’m sure they loved him, and I am sorry for their loss.  I’m also sure that, had we been acquainted, well, Mr. Thompson again said it best:

Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you.”

Robert Novak championed causes I don’t believe in.  He helmed political shows and created a style of punditry that helped make our cable TV discourse the shouting, deplorable mess it is today.  He outed a C.I.A. agent and he should have gone to jail. 

Slate makes a kinder case:

Although Novak’s incessant championing of supply-side economics and his conservative persona on CNN’s Crossfire and Capital Gang typecast him as purveyor of right-wing brain vomit, Novak’s politics were more nuanced than those of the average Fox News Channel commentator. He was a dove on both Iraq wars and expressed misgivings about the Afghanistan invasion. He supported liberal immigration, called for a global economy, and backed free trade. He gave Gerald Ford hell during his presidency, later calling him “ill equipped for the job” in his book, and he carved out a critical-of-Israel position that sharply deviated from the conservative line.

Bravo.  But who is worse — the man who supports a president because he deeply believes in his cause, or one who supports him in spite of major differences on issues like war and trade?  I think it is the man who sells his support for access.  I think it is the man who goes for the scoop over the truth.

I think it is Robert Novak.  Thompson:

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern — but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Adios, Mr. Novak.  Though you will be missed, it will not be by me.

Palin’s Death Panels: Crazy, True Belief, or Watching Torchwood?

So.  I really meant to come back and comment further on the meaningful news of the day, but, well, death panel.

Death panel?  DEATH PANEL!  Really, Sarah Palin?  Here’s what she posted today on noted news site Facebook (emphasis added):

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

^{“The Death Panel is coming!  Save me, Sarah Palin!”}

I have three theories about this.  The first is that Sarah Palin, with all of her copius free time of late, sat down and watched “Torchwood: Children of Earth” this week, as I did, but somehow missed the part where that’s all fiction.  I won’t post spoilers, but — if you’ve never seen any of Torchwood (and I hadn’t, prior to this five-hour mini-series), check it out from Netflix, then come back and let’s discuss.  (Seriously.  Message me.  I need to talk this one out.)

The second is that Sarah Palin truly believes this.  If that’s true, well, I’m glad she’s taking to the series of tubes, as they call the Internet in Alaska, to tell the world.  What troubles me is that she and thousands of her followers seem able only to forward messages like these to their closest associates, but are not able to direct these same energies toward searching out the veracity of the rumor itself.  For all of these people, and for those who love them despite getting their my-head-is-going-to-explode e-mails, I would like to introduce/remind you of two of the best inventions on the Internet: Let Me Google That For You and Snopes.  If you have crazy and/or conservative relatives, I cannot recommend bookmarking these two sites enough.  They provide quick, easy solutions to the problem of lack of thinking for oneself that seems to completely encapsulate the strategy of the GOP and their e-mail chains.

The last I’m stealing from someone else: “Maybe she’s just bat-shit crazy.”  Occum’s Razor does point me in this direction, because how far divorced from the reality of our current society must you be to believe that the current president is about to institute DEATH PANELS via a system designed to improve health care availability nationally.  Please, Mrs. Palin, point to a place on Earth with a government-managed health system where something like this has happened.  And if you’ve been using the BBC as your source, well, make sure it’s BBC News, not Drama, that you’re watching (and message me if you want to know the difference).

^{Run, kiddies!  Socialism is coming!}

Sotomayor Confirmed

That she passed the Senate hardly seems like news, since it’s Democrat-controlled; that she was made the nominee at all is still the story, and the best kind of story.

The worst part of this otherwise lovely story isn’t that 31 Republican senators voted against her.  They’re within their rights to do so, even if some of them opposed her for offensive reasons.  That’s on the people who elected them.

The worst part of the story is how the GOP, even knowing they were going to lose the vote, strove for absolute unity.  They used every trick available to them, and some insults that shouldn’t have been, not just to make her look bad, but to make it plain that anyone — any Republican — voting for her was not really one of them.  This is the stimulus bill all over again, but this time, there were defectors.  Good for them, I say.  Good for the nine brave Republicans who voted for Sotomayor: Senators Alexander (Tenn.), Bond (Mo.), Collins (Maine), Graham (S.C.), Gregg (N.H.), Lugar (Ind.), Martinez (Fla.), Snowe (Maine), and Voinovich (Ohio).

So what does it mean to defect?  Well, other than Lindsey Graham probably losing Most Favored Yes-Man status with John McCain, it could have some lasting election effects for a few of these folks, and for the Democrats who voted in favor, too.  The New York Times called the National Rifle Association to see whether they would be using the Sotomayor vote as a litmus test for their support of candidates — including Democrats — in the future.  The group’s spokesman apparently said they aren’t sure, but I find the question a bit preposterous.  The NRA wasn’t even a force in this debate until Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, asked them to make a vote for Sotomayor a black mark on a Senator’s “gun rights” record. 

Digby wondered why McConnell would pursue that strategy even knowing, as he did, that the Sotomayor vote was lost for Republicans.  I think he brought in the big guns — pun intended — not just to fight this nomination, but to prepare for the upcoming election.  More and more I believe that the 2010 election will be fought and decided on the question of party loyalty, and that guys like McConnell and Boehner are keeping very careful score.  A vote against Sotomayor might take some of these folks out of the good graces of the NRA, which might be enough to justify a primary opponent for someone like Kit Bond, who’s up for election in 2010.

I don’t want to see Bond win — but I really don’t want to see him lose to a Republican even less likely to join the logical side in a debate like this.  Yet I really think that the GOP might start eating its own in 2010 with votes just like this, a strategy that could rebuild their party into either a small, irrelevant band of miscreants or into a unified, fear-driven monster where everyone votes in perfect lockstep without the need for thought.  I find both possibilities terrifying.

What gives me hope is that these nine Republican senators and 59 of their Democrat colleagues (and probably Ted Kennedy, in spirit) voted the right way despite that pressure; even the Democrats who had something to lose in going against the NRA went so far as to say they don’t care.  What gives me hope is that Mitch McConnell brought in the big guns and still lost.  What gives me hope is the 68 that voted in favor.

Congratulations, Judge Sotomayor, and President Obama, and, well, to the rest of us.

No Surprise: Blackwater CEO Implicated In Murder

^{Erik Prince}

Jeremy Scahill reports at The Nation that the founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, has been implicated in silencing whistleblowers at his company by killing them:

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”

Nothing about Blackwater (now called XE) surprises me, and I’m very, very sad to find that out.  These statements came as part of sworn affidavits filed August 3, meaning the men who alleged this face perjury charges if what they say is proven untrue.  In the affadavit from John Doe #2 [.pdf via The Nation], this should-be-shocking line caught my attention (emphasis mine):

Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.  For example, Mr. Prince’s executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to “lay Hajiis out on cardboard.”  Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game.

Yes.  War was a game to these men, many of whom also didn’t pass necessary mental health screenings, according to JD#2, who also says Prince fired mental health professionals for giving bad reports.  John Doe #2 was, according to Scahill, a former Blackwater manager.  In his statement, he says that Mr. Prince and his associates have threatened to kill him since he left the company, and he offered his testimony even under that threat.  It’s probably no wonder that Prince and his top managers would want this man to keep quiet: among his charges are that Prince knew of and did nothing to halt the His associate, John Doe #1, may actually still be working for the company, and provided some supporting information, namely that he offers his testimony as a John Doe because he’s heard of others being killed in suspicious circumstances after cooperating against Mr. Prince.

John Doe #1 talks mostly about the kind of stuff that’s pretty well known about Blackwater, outlining a specific instance when civilians were shot at for no reason and the man responsible wasn’t punished, but rewarded, for that behavior.

The worst part is it should be the pattern of unjustified, terroristic violence that brings Blackwater down.  Instead, I fear that if Erik Prince ever sees jail time, it will be for that ultimate of attention grabbing crimes: killing an American.  If that is the charge that’s proven, and that’s the charge that sends him away, it will be a crime in and of itself, a discounting of the value of the hundreds of Iraqi lives lost through the culture of hatred he encouraged at his mercenary company.  And he shouldn’t be held solely accountable for that — those in the government who hired him, interacted with him, and took donations, advice, training, even transportation from him — they are all culpable, and should face investigation.

Does that seem extreme?  Could the Bush administration have known how wrong things would go with Blackwater?  I think they could — worse, I think they wanted Blackwater for exactly this kind of ruthlessness.  They wanted a crusade, and they hired a crusader.

The lesson of the past eight years was that the worst case scenario is possible.  When George W. Bush was sworn in, I was upset but not terrified.  That was partly ignorance, sure, but it was also fact-based optimism.  His father wasn’t the world’s greatest president, but he’d never seemed to be a threat to the very fabric that holds America together.  What I didn’t understand was that presidents often lack only opportunity for remaking the country in their ideal image.  George W. Bush got that opportunity on September 11, 2001, and this world, secured by Erik Prince’s army, is the what’s come from it.

More Public Broadcasting, Fewer Public Broadcaster Fights

I, too, am fascinated by the NYT’s tale of the détente organized between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann by their corporate overlords.  Glenn Greenwald has two of the best takes on why this is important and frightening, exposing in particular the danger of “GE’s silencing of Keith Olbermann” as “one of the most blatant examples yet of pernicious corporate control over America’s journalism.” I also found the Gawker pick-up of Greenwald’s piece about “The Secret Sleaze of Richard Wolffe” particularly telling — and particularly bizarre, coming from the increasingly corporate Gawker enterprise.

What’s interesting is that this isn’t a cut-and-dried case of censorship, at least not of the kind we usually scream about.  What’s forgotten within Greenwald’s screeds is that neither Olbermann nor O’Reilly began their campaigns against each other with the intent of actually revealing or making news.  O’Reilly isn’t running pieces about G.E. because he’s discovered new things about the company — he’s doing it to get at Olbermann.  Likewise, though I am on record as enjoying Keith Olbermann’s increasingly gimicky show, even I knew that the nightly attacks on O’Reilly weren’t really drawn from a desire to better inform the audience, but just from a desire to, well, preach to an already Bill O-hating choir about the dastardly methods of his closest competitor.  Both men found ways to trumpet themselves through the contest as the more honest, more reliable, and more popular alternative.  Both benefitted from ratings boosts.  This wasn’t a news fight — this was an ego fight, and all the better for news consumers if that part of it is ended.

That it’s been ended by corporate decree, however, is the worst case scenario.  O’Reilly should be free to report on G.E., just as Olbermann and his MSNBC colleagues shouldn’t be restricted from criticizing FOX coverage and commentary, which is often newsworthy.  What should have happened — and oh, how I wish it had — was that ratings would have eventually demanded a cessation to the hostilities, as viewers got fed up with the mutually assured promotion plan that the two shows seemed to have.  Yet we live in a country where fighting is still the most popular kind of drama to watch on TV.  If we think of these shows in terms of entertainment instead of news — which is often a perfectly fair frame for both — then it’s pretty easy to see that Bill O’Reilly fighting Keith Olbermann to the televised death would get ratings second only to Bill O’Reilly marrying Keith Olbermann in a sweeps-week surprise crossover.

Which frames this entire deal differently — why would networks willingly give up ratings?  I accept Greenwald’s position on this, that for G.E., the decision was based on a need to shore up their corporate reputation, and that FOX was reacting to Olbermann’s slowly rising ratings (and O’Reilly’s slightly declining numbers) in making their decision.  But what I wonder is if the ban won’t be lifted when both sides see that achieving a peaceful balance is actually counterproductive to their real goal: higher ratings and higher ad shares.

This brings me to a bit of hopeful news: PBS is looking forward to a funding increase from the government this year.  PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger told a gathering of TV critics that PBS is hopeful it will receive a $20 million raise this year to $450 million, after eight years of budget cuts under President Bush.  The AP says 15 percent of PBS’s budget comes from the government, meaning it raises 85 percent elsewhere, including from state governments and “from viewers like you”).  Here’s the beautiful part about PBS’s charter: it says explicitly (Sec. 438 (a)) that no:

department, agency, officer or employee of the United States [can] exercise any direction, supervision, or control over public telecommunications, or over the Corporation or any of its grantees or contractors, or over the charter or bylaws of the Corporation, or over the curriculum, program of instruction, or personnel of any educational institution, school system, or public telecommunications entity.

The same language appears again in Part C, barring the government from exercising any control over content or distribution, despite its financial contributions.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all news organizations had similar conventions behind them?

^{To start my own war of contentiousness within the media: There’s something delicious about linking to an AP story (that corporation of news that would rather no one linked to any of their content) when discussing PBS (that corporation open to all viewers), particularly when the AP story seems to have no original content.  I just couldn’t resist.}

Mr. Clinton Goes to North Korea: What a (Handy) Tool

Photo released by North Korean state media.

Current TV reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling are going to be pardoned by North Korean President Kim Jong-il, as many folks (including OS’er Kathy Riordan) have noted.  They were sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor.  This release (and it’s not yet confirmed whether they’ve already been released or are yet to be sent home) was arranged during a visit by former president Bill Clinton, and he’s getting the lion’s share of the credit for their release. 

I like Bill Clinton, too, but let’s take a breath before we name him Diplomat of the Century.  He was instrumental in winning amnesty for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, certainly — but as with any instrument, he was simply that: an instrument.  A tool.  I don’t mean that in the “dude, you’re a tool” way that’s so popular with les enfants de frat; I mean that Clinton was deployed the way that one deploys a hammer to a situation where there’s a nail sticking up. 

North Korea wanted a diplomat of a certain cachet to visit and make nice.  The former president/world traveler/husband of the Secretary of State was a perfect choice for this.  It’s the diplomatic equivalent of a Hallmark card: North Korea read it, flipped it over to the back, checked that the cost was appropriately high.  Since there’s a state-released photo of Clinton glaring in company with several glaring NK counterparts, including Kim Jong-Il, I’d say it was.  I expect that photo is being prepared for delivery to most of North Korea with captions like “Famous U.S. President Acquiesces to North Korean Superiority, Begs for Release of Criminals.”  Don’t forget, the State Department has recently switched from asking for the women to be released to asking for the women to be pardoned — admitting some culpability after earlier declaring the charges against them baseless.

I take this as a good sign, actually: North Korea demanding the ego-stroke of a visit and kow-towing from a top-level foreign dignitary is still North Korea seeking contact.  Yeah, it’s a pretty terrible way for them to arrange it — they basically demanded Clinton’s visit as ransom for two women’s lives.  Yet this is still, somehow, a step forward.  It’s North Korea playing on the world stage, even if it’s still likely at any moment they will pick up their game pieces (or possibly to snatch some of ours) and storm back home to sulk.

I’m glad the two women are being released, and I’m glad that Bill Clinton was the tool needed for the job.  What I’m really glad about, though, is the signal here that North Korea might be open to talking to the West more often.  Certainly, in this instance, the meeting happened completely on their terms and will likely be broadcast to their advantage, but once the talking stops, well… let’s hope it’s harder to stop.

Cash for Clunkers Could Use an Upgrade

Just before dashing off for their August break, Congress today tripled the total investment in the Cash for Clunkers program, adding $2 billion to the existing $1 billion that’s already been allocated and spent.  Cash for Clunkers is the program under which car owners can trade in a qualifying vehicle — one that gets 18 miles per gallon or less — for another, more efficient vehicle.  Improve the mileage by at least 4 mpg and you get $3,500 toward your new vehicle; raise it by 10, you get $4,500.

^{Credit: Flickr/mazdamiata/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0}

The program has apparently been a boon to car dealers, who’ve otherwise had a rough year.  Since buying used cars with better gas mileage also counts under the program, it’s a bit more inclusive than efforts to otherwise prop up the car sales industry, as the profits aren’t exclusively being seen by company dealerships.  The benefits seem obvious.  What could be the downside?

The downside so far is that the program isn’t well-organized, and so we may be pouring good money into creating nationwide headaches for dealerships.  There’s another way to look at this, though: what if we think about Cash for Clunkers as a pilot program, instead of a discrete single-time slush fund? 

Cash for Clunkers has been wildly popular so far, and it seems like a program that could benefit quite a wide swath of the population if it continues.  People can get more fuel efficient cars, which is better for the environment and better for the country, as we start needing less fuel from overseas.  The car dealerships make some sales, which means the people at the dealerships get to keep their jobs — and get to spend their paychecks in the community.  The auto industry gets the picture, that Americans are (slowly, yes, and perhaps not permanently) getting tired of driving gas hogs, and they continue (and perhaps accelerate) their race toward greener technology.

I’m a little afraid that, in the great governmental tradition, Cash for Clunkers will become either a a permanent program, unchanged except, probably, by increasing bureaucracy and internal inefficiency, or, worse, that it will become a one-off, one-time feel-good solution to a series of much larger problems.  Congress gives Cash for Clunkers more funding and congratulates itself for helping business and the environment; consumers buy a (sometimes only slightly) better car, and feel better about their own investment; and everybody quickly forgets that this is a start, not an end.

Why not consider Cash for Clunkers a pilot program in a larger package of government involvement in improving America’s motorpool?  For instance, what of the cars — as shown and noted extensively at No Cash for Clunkers — that are, by condition if not by model, no longer as efficient as they could be?  What if instead of $3,500 a person to buy a new vehicle, the government offered 30 or 40 percent vouchers toward repairs that make a vehicle more fuel efficient (pending government inspection)?  What if they offered a flat $3,500 for turning in a car and replacing it with a bicycle?  What if they handed out bus passes for free in the city, contingent upon the tickets being used for a certain number of trips every week? 

Cash for Clunkers got quick Congressional support because it’s being billed as an auto industry rescue plan as much as (and sometimes more than) an environmental program.  Every program above, however, could be billed the same way.  In this economy, job creation and retention are the magic bullets of legislation.  Democrats and Republicans voted for C4C today.  Maybe the same coalition could be swayed to make more major steps toward environmental protection in this, well, environment, if only the White House would work on framing the issue as one of long term economic protection instead of short-term economic intervention.