The Big Hate

June 12, 2009

OP-ED COLUMNIST

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

Raise My Taxes

JUNE 15, 2009, 6:00 AM

Raise My Taxes

By NANCY FOLBRE

Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

We live in a country where the most visible support for raising taxes on the rich comes from … the rich. So much for the seeming dictates of economic rationality and the logic of class war.

The Wealth for the Common Good Web site features pictures of some of our most economically successful citizens calling for higher taxes on themselves.

Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, published an commentary in this paper calling for an increase in the top federal marginal tax rate to 50 percent on all income over $1 million per year. He insisted it would not reduce his incentive to work.

At the opposite end of the income spectrum, passionate opposition to the estate tax is expressed by men and women who face no risk of ever paying it. The progressive group Citizens for Tax Justice observes that the percentage of households with income under $30,000 complaining that federal income taxes are too high exceeds the percentage even paying federal income taxes.

Rush and Newt Are Winning

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Thursday, June 4, 2009 

 A media environment that tilts to the right is obscuring what President Obama stands for and closing off political options that should be part of the public discussion.

Yes, you read that correctly: If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don’t. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.

The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He’s the guy who nominates a “racist” to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America’s defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive governmenttakeover of the private economy. Steve Forbes, writing for his magazine, recently went so far as to compare Obama’s economic policies to those of Juan Peron’s Argentina.

Democrats are complicit in building up Gingrich and Limbaugh as the main spokesmen for the Republican Party, since Obama polls so much better than either of them. But the media play an independent role by regularly treating far-right views as mainstream positions and by largely ignoring critiques of Obama that come from elected officials on the left.

Distortion

Have Sotomayor’s critics actually read her Berkeley speech?

May 29, 2009 8:15 pm ET

SUMMARY: Numerous media figures have pointed to a sentence from a 2001 speech by Sonia Sotomayor to characterize her or her comments as being “racist” while ignoring the point of Sotomayor’s speech, which undercuts their criticisms.

Since President Obama announced the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, numerous media figures have pointed to a sentence from a speech she delivered in 2001 at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, to characterize her or her remark as being “racist.” But in singling out and criticizing her for the remark — “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life” — these media figures have ignored the point of Sotomayor’s speech, which undercuts their criticisms. Sotomayor made the comment in question while discussing the importance of diversity on the bench and the effect of background and personal experiences on judicial decision-making, a point made by such conservatives as Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

100 Days of Fox News Coverage of President Obama

Fox News At Work

Since January, Media Matters for America has documented numerous examples of conservatives in the media warning of socialism, fascism, communism, Nazism, McCarthyism, and Marxism, or using such language to describe President Obama or other Democrats.

Beck: “I was wrong. Our government is not marching down the road towards communism or socialism… they’re marching us to a brand of non-violent fascism… towards 1984″

April 1

Jonah Goldberg on auto bailout: “You can call it corporatism, you can call it socialism, you can call it fascism, what it is not is liberal democratic capitalism”

March 31

Beck: “The government is a heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state”

March 31

They Were Against It Before They Were For It

This week, Republican leaders have leapt to join the populist outcry against the bonuses that ailing insurance giant AIG has awarded its executives. But such rants against executive earnings mark a remarkable about-face for the right flank of the party, which condemned President Obama’s decision to set limits on executive pay just last month.

CNBC Thrives as Hosts Deliver News With Attitude

 

March 9, 200

By BRIAN STELTER and TIM ARANGO

Was last week the worst one in CNBC’s 20-year history — or the best?

The financial news network, a unit of NBC Universal, was savaged by “The Daily Show” in a viral video sensation. It was criticized for being too cozy with the corporations it covers. One of its stars,Jim Cramer, was ridiculed by the White House press secretary. And one of its reporters faced a new round of criticism for an on-air outburst about mortgage “losers.”

All the while, CNBC covered the incessant downward slide of the economy with special reports on particularly bad days for the markets. Mr. Cramer, the host of “Mad Money,” barely had time for his usual shuffleboard games at the Elk’s Lodge near his home.

The lodge “is a booyah-free zone,” he said, using his trademark exclamation. “I was not able to get away from the booyahs this week.”

Whether the attention is positive or negative, it is certain that this tumultuous financial season is CNBC’s reason for being. One month shy of its 20th anniversary, CNBC is being jokingly called “the recession network” within the halls of its headquarters in New Jersey.

Despite warnings from many economists that stimulus may be too small, network news rarely raised the issue

Summary: A Media Matters review of the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news programs from January 25 through February 15 found that of the 59 broadcasts that addressed the economic stimulus package and debate in Congress during the three-week period leading up to and immediately following its passage, only three of those broadcasts included discussion of whether that package was big enough, despite statements from many economists that it may not be.

A Media Matters for America review of the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news programs from January 25 through February 15 found that of the 59 broadcasts that addressed the economic stimulus package and debate in Congress during the three-week period leading up to and immediately following its passage, only three of those broadcasts — one on each network — included discussion of whether that package was big enough, despite statements from many economists that it may not be and may have to be followed by additional measures. Although the size of the stimulus package was referenced during at least 48 of the broadcasts that addressed it — with anchors and reporters, in many cases, characterizing the bill as “massive,” “enormous,” or “giant” — rarely was the concern raised that the package’s size may not have been adequate.

Bill Maher: New Rules Segment

This is one of the better New Rules segments I’ve seen from Maher in a while. He ends it with channeling Michael Moore with his criticism of insurance companies in this diatribe on the Republicans and their anti-government rhetoric and love of the private sector.

Maher:The thing is that endless variety only exists because Americans pay taxes to a government which maintains roads, irrigates fields, over sees the electrical grid and everything else but enables the modern American supermarket to carry forty seven varieties of frozen breakfast pastries.

Of course it’s easy to tear government down. Ronald Reagan used to say the nine most terrifying words in the English language were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. But that was before “I’m Sarah Palin, now show me the launch codes”.

You know the stimulus package was attacked as typical tax and spend, you know like repairing bridges is left wing stuff. Ooh there the liberals go again. Always wanting to get across the river.

Folks, the people are the government. The first responders who put out your fires. That’s your government. The ranger who shoos pedophiles out of the bathroom. The postman who delivers your porn. I mean how stupid is it when people say “Oh yeah that’s all we need. The federal government telling Detroit how to make cars, or Wells Fargo how to run a bank. You want them to look like the Post Office?”

Yeah. Actually. You mean..you mean the place that takes a note in my hand in L.A. on Monday and gives it to my sister in Jersey on Wednesday for forty two cents? Well let me be the first to say I would be thrilled if America’s health care system was anywhere near as functional as the Post Office.

The truth is, recent years have made me much more wary of government doing the opposite. Of stepping aside and letting unregulated private enterprise run things it is plainly too greedy to trust with, like Wall Street, like rebuilding Iraq. Like the way Republicans always frame the health care debate by saying health care decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats. Leaving out the fact that health decisions aren’t made by doctors, patients or bureaucrats. They’re made by insurance companies.

Insurance companies. Which are a lot like hospital gowns. Chances are your ass isn’t covered.