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Climate Progress

In a stunning journalistic lapse, the NY Times gives credulous coverage to Swift Boat smearer Marc Morano, the Jayson Blair of global warming

By Joe Romm on Apr 9, 2009 at 10:56 pm

Please email the NYT at nytnews@nytimes.com about this egregious piece and/or email its public editor at public@nytimes.com to explain you are “concerned about the paper’s journalistic integrity.”

Apparently the NYT felt a Magazine cover story pushing the pseudoscience of Freeman Dyson was not enough free publicity for the dwindling minority desperately trying to persuade humanity not to act in time to save itself from catastrophic climate impacts.

In a second inexplicable lapse in journalistic judgment, the paper of record has decided to promote the new disinformation campaign of the least credible global warming denier in the country — Swift Boat smearer Marc Morano, a man whose record of making stuff up would make disgraced former NYT reporter Jayson Blair cringe.

Yes, I know, I just promised “this blog will be a Morano-free zone” (see “Memo to media, blogosphere: Swift boat smearer Marc Morano has no credibility. He is unquotable and uncitable“).  But I was talking about ignoring his blog, since I assumed no serious reporter would flack Morano and his new disinformation-pushing website.  Who would have guessed that a NYT reporter, Leslie Kaufman, would want to smear her own reputation with a remarkably credulous profile of the Swift Boat smearer, “Dissenter on Warming Expands His Campaign“?

Here is how Kaufman writes of Morano’s background, including the Swift Boat smear:

Read more

Politics

Fox military analyst/consultant for F-22 contractor shills for F-22 while discussing pirates.

By Ali Frick on Apr 9, 2009 at 7:42 pm

Last year, the New York Times revealed that numerous cable news “military analysts” never disclosed their ties to military contractors. Yesterday, Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney appeared on Fox News to discuss the Somali pirates situation, and managed to use it as an opportunity to shill for the F-22:

McINERNEY: I’d put F-22s and combat air patrol out there, two of them, with tankers. … The reason I’d put the F-22s is because they can go 1.6 to mach 2, and they have a very quick reaction time and a 20 millimeter canon.

Gawker flagged the appearance and noted that McInerney, conveniently, worked as a consultant to Northrop Grumman, a major contractor for the F-22. Watch it:

“It doesn’t take an Air Force general to see how bizarre McInerney’s military reasoning is,” Gawker’s Ryan Tate writes, noting that the F-22 — an exceedingly expensive fighter jet designed for air combat — could do nothing to solve the current problem.

Health

The Free Market Does Not Work In Health Care

By Igor Volsky on Apr 9, 2009 at 6:40 pm

scroogemcduck.jpgThe recent trickle of so-called consumer-driven health care “principles and recommendations” are a preview of the likely Republican alternative to comprehensive health care reform. Earlier this month, the Health Policy Consensus Group, headed by the conservative Galen Institute, published “a vision for consumer-driven health care reform” and today, Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review pens a New York Times editorial in which he explains that the quest for “universal coverage” is “misguided.” Policy makers should focus on giving Americans “more control” of their coverage instead:

The existing tax break for employer-provided insurance could be replaced with a tax credit that applies to insurance purchased either inside or outside the workplace….Insurance would be more affordable, especially for people who cannot get it through an employer…More important, people would own their insurance policies and thus be able to take them from job to job.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) proposed a similar plan during the campaign, but he never convinced Americans to abandon their employer-provided insurance for the promise of cheaper coverage in the individual market. Part of the problem rests in the fallacy of the theory and the other is the burden of experience. After all, Americans are routinely denied coverage in the unregulated individual health insurance market and small businesses are “frequently finding health policies too expensive and are dropping coverage, sending even more people shopping for insurance.” Healthy Americans who do find coverage enroll in bare-bone plans that offer little substantive protection.

As the Miami Herald recently reported, insurers deny coverage for patients with “diabetes, hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, quadriplegia, Parkinson’s disease and AIDS/HIV.” Moreover, “some insurers will automatically reject applicants who are using certain prescription drugs. Wellpoint denies anyone who within the past year has taken Abilify and Zyprexa for mental disorders as well as Neupogen, which is used to treat the side effects of chemotherapy. Vista lists the anticoagulant Warfarin and the pain medication Oxycontin. Both companies list insulin.”

And why not? Competition without meaningful regulations incentivizes companies to only offer insurance to the healthiest Americans. How else could they beat the insurer across the street? Offering coverage to sicker Americans would attract a sicker pool of enrollees and serve as a competitive disadvantage. In fact, free market health care fits the definition of a failed market. A market fails if:

1. Monopoly — occurs if a single buyer or seller can exert significant influence over prices or output: In health care, “insurer and hospital markets are increasingly dominated by large insurers and provider systems.” “The increased concentration has made it difficult for the nation to reap the benefits usually associated with competitive markets.”

2. Negative Externalities — occur if the market does not take into account the impact of an economic activity on outsiders: In the ‘wild west’ environment of the individual health market place, companies leave the sickest patients without coverage. Health care costs increase for everyone when patients are forced to forgo early and appropriate care or visit the emergency room once a condition becomes unbearable.

3. Asymmetric Information — occurs when one party has more or better information than the other party: Americans looking for coverage in the individual market have no way of comparing different policies or rarely know what the plans actually cover.

Conservative health proposals double-down on this broken marketplace. They: 1) eliminate the employer tax exemption for health benefits, 2) provide everyone with a refundable tax credit to go out and purchase individual coverage, and 3) loosen the already lax insurer regulations. The results are predictable. Not only will Americans with pre-existing conditions go without coverage — or, at best, be offered very expensive plans — but as healthy Americans with bare-bones policies fall ill, they’ll discover that their insurer has little enthusiasm for paying claims.

Climate Progress

Climate Equity Alliance establishes principles for green economic reform

By Climate Guest Blogger on Apr 9, 2009 at 6:29 pm

[Brad Johnson's post is reprinted from Wonk Room.]

As corporate lobbyists and conservative politicians strive to maintain a pollution-based economy, a new progressive alliance has formed to fight back.

The Climate Equity Alliance is calling for policies to ensure that energy legislation reaches President Obama’s desk benefiting people instead of polluters. The green economy legislation introduced in draft form by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) “” sets national standards for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and global warming pollution “” but leaves open whether polluters will be subsidized to achieve those standards.

Today, more than two dozen organizations from the research, advocacy, faith-based, labor and civil rights communities came together as the Climate Equity Alliance. Alliance members include the Center for American Progress, Green for All, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Service Employees International Union. Their principles recognize that clean energy legislation needs to be sustainable, honest, and fair:

Read more

Media

Post Reporter Says It’s Not His Job to Check the Accuracy of People He’s Quoting

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 9, 2009 at 6:13 pm

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You rarely see the kind of full-throated defense of journalism-as-stenography that The Washington Post‘s Paul Kane offers up here:

New York, N.Y.: Paul, do you care to defend yourself against this criticism from Media Matters?

“In an April 9 article about Democrats’ legislative priorities, The Washington Post wrote, ‘Democrats are sure to incite Republicans if they adopt a shortcut that would allow them to pass major health-care and education bills with just 51 votes in the Senate, where Democrats are two seats shy of the filibuster-proof margin of 60 seats. The rule, known as ‘reconciliation,’ would fuel GOP charges that (President) Obama has ditched bipartisanship.’ The article, by Paul Kane and Shailagh Murray, then quoted Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) saying, ‘If they exercise that tool, it’s going to be infinitely more difficult to bridge the partisan divide.’ However, Kane and Murray did not mention that congressional Republicans — including Snowe herself — voted to allow the use of the budget reconciliation process to pass major Bush administration initiatives. Indeed, Murray herself noted in an April 1 article that ‘(a)dvocates defend reconciliation as a legitimate tool used more often by Republicans in recent years, most notably to pass President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.’ ”

Paul Kane: I’m sorry, what’s to defend?

Someone tell Media Matters to get over themselves and their overblown ego of righteousness. We reported what Olympia Snowe said. That’s what she said. That’s what Republicans are saying. I really don’t know what you want of us. We are not opinion writers whose job is to play some sorta gotcha game with lawmakers.

This is fairly simple. What we want is that if you’re going to quote someone saying something dishonest, you report the fact that they’re lying. Or if in this case you’re quoting someone who’s arguably being hypocritical, you inform readers of the broader context. Surely a person assessing the merits of a Republican argument that majority voting in the Senate is pernicious would want to know that when Republicans were in the majority they saw things differently. The crux of the “debate” over reconciliation is that whichever party happens to be in the majority at any given time is inclined to take an expansive view of the circumstances under which it should be used. It’s not possible for Post readers to understand what’s happening absent that context.

This isn’t a matter of “gotcha games,” it’s crucial. Otherwise, operating by Kane standards you could do an entire article that consisted of accurately quoting people who are lying, and wind up badly misinforming your readers.

Politics

Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests

By Lee Fang on Apr 9, 2009 at 6:02 pm

Yesterday, Think Progress reported on Republican lawmakers planning to speak at anti-Obama “tea party” protests taking place nationwide on April 15. Last night, Eric Odom of the DontGo website — one of the organizers of the protests — wrote a blog post stressing that these protests are displays of “regular American[s] in protest of government spending and extreme taxation,” rather than something affiliated with a political party or special interest agenda.

Today on Fox News — which has actively been promoting the protests — Glenn Beck pushed the tea party talking points, similarly claiming that the protests aren’t “coordinated” and are fully organized by “regular” people. Watch it:

Despite these attempts to make the “movement” appear organic, the principle organizers of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works. The two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests:

– Freedom Works staffers coordinate conference calls among protesters, contacting conservative activists to give them “sign ideas, sample press releases, and a map of events around the country.”

– Freedom Works staffers apparently moved to “take over” the planning of local events in Florida.

– Freedom Works provides how-to guides for delivering a “clear message” to the public and media.

– Freedom Works has several domain addresses — some of them made to look like they were set up by amateurs — to promote the protests.

– Americans for Prosperity is writing press releases and planning the events in New Jersey, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, and several other states.

This type of corporate ‘astroturfing‘ is nothing new to either organization. While working to promote Social Security privatization, Freedom Works was caught planting one of its operatives as a “single mom” to ask questions to President Bush in a town hall on the subject. Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed Freedom Works for similarly building “amateur-looking” websites to promote the lobbying interests of Dick Armey, the former Republican Majority Leader who now leads Freedom Works and is a lobbyist for the firm DLA Piper.

Americans for Prosperity is run by Tim Phillips, who was Ralph Reed’s former partner in the lobbying firm Century Strategies. The group is funded by Koch family foundations — a family whose wealth is derived from the oil industry. Indeed Americans for Prosperity has coordinated pro-drilling ‘grassroots‘ events around the country.

Update

This afternoon, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, leader of the corporate-funded American Solutions for Winning the Futures (ASWF), blasted an e-mail to his supporters with a reminder to attend the protests, along with a “Toolkit” of talking points. Gingrich’s ASWF is funded by polluters and helped orchestrate the “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign last summer. ASWF has been an official “partner” in the tea party effort since at least March.

Economy

Will The Administration’s Bank Plan Undermine Its Housing Plan?

By Pat Garofalo on Apr 9, 2009 at 5:45 pm

ap090324011411.jpgCAP’s Michael Ettlinger, Andrew Jakabovics, and David Min have put together a set of recommendations for improving Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s public-private investment fund (PPIP), which aims to clear banks of their toxic assets. They raise one question, in particular, that definitely needs to be addressed: Will investors who purchase mortgage-backed assets have any responsibility to participate in the administration’s mortgage modification program?:

Of specific concern is that the administration’s new mortgage modification program could be undercut by the PPIP’s Legacy Loans Program. The administration’s new Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, requires participating loan servicers — including all future recipients of funding from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program approved by Congress late last year…to work with at-risk homeowners to modify their loans in cases where modification preserves more value for the mortgages in the lenders’ portfolio than proceeding to foreclosure. Under the LLP, however, many of those loans are destined to be sold to investors who currently are under no such obligation to make mortgage modifications.

This really needs to be sorted out. One potential solution is to simply have the loan purchasers “play by the rules” of the modification program, and receive the same benefits for successful modifications. That sounds reasonable, as it would be a shame if the bank plan stepped all over the administration’s extensive efforts to halt foreclosures.

Yglesias

Marque and Reprisal

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 9, 2009 at 5:42 pm

744px_pirate_flag_of_rack_rackhamsvg_1.png

Tim Fernholtz observes that the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which I’m mostly familiar with from its work in the booming field of climate change denialism, has put out an innovative approach to the pirate situation—more pirates:

Washington, D.C., April 9, 2009— News that Somali pirates had seized an American ship and, after being repelled, held her captain hostage drew a response from analysts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute: the United States should consider authorizing private parties to attack pirate ships under little used instruments called “letters of marque and reprisal.” [...]

“The world has changed a lot since nations last made significant use of letters of marquee and reprisal. If Congress were to decide to issue them, it would certainly have to revisit the concept,” said CEI Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer. “It’s the type of free-market solution to a real problem that Congress should consider but hasn’t in any serious way.” Lehrer added.

This seems to me to be a complete misunderstanding of how such letters work. You could imagine a situation in which, say, Venezuela decided it was pissed off at Saudi Arabia. Venezuela might start issuing “letters of marque and reprisal”—basically licenses to pirate—to private citizens interests in seizing Saudi oil tankers. If people took Venezuela up on the offer, this would probably reduce the volume of Saudi oil exports, thus simultaneously hurting Saudi Arabia and helping Venezuela by boosting the price of their own exports. Of course the Venezuelans would be opening themselves up to a global military response—war for oil and so forth. The point here, though, is that Saudi ships are full of valuable stuff, namely oil. Nobody in their right mind would want authorization to try to seize control of Somali pirate boats. They’re tiny and worthless. All of Somalia is desperately poor. Nobody wants to rob them.

Security

Is The Obama Administration Walking Back Its Commitment To Reinstating The Assault Weapons Ban?

By Ali Frick on Apr 9, 2009 at 5:13 pm

In light of last week’s high-profile shooting sprees in which 16 people were killed, reporter Helen Thomas asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs whether the Obama administration would push to reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban that Republicans allowed to expire in 2004. Gibbs refused to endorse the ban, saying only that Obama would focus on enforcing existing laws:

THOMAS: Is the president concerned about the epidemic of killings by guns and is he willing to move towards reinstating the ban on assault weapons?

GIBBS: Obviously, we, while we were overseas last week, were surprised and shocked at the news at what had happened in New York. … That’s one of the reasons that increased money to hire more police officers as in the Recovery Act. I was asked specifically about assault weapons. I think the president would — the president believes there are other strategies we can take to enforce the laws that are already on our books.

Watch it:

The Obama administration seems to be clearly walking back its previous position relating to assault weapons. In an interview with CBS News’ Katie Couric that aired last night, Attorney General Eric Holder refused to endorse the assault weapons ban, saying, “I look forward to working with the NRA to come up with ways in which we can use common sense approaches to reduce the level of violence that we see in our streets.”

Yet just weeks ago, at the end of February, Holder said that one of the “gun-related changes” the administration would pursue “would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons.” And during the presidential campaign, Obama said making the Assault Weapons Ban permanent was part of an integral strategy to defeating urban violence. “From South Central L.A. to Newark, New Jersey, there’s an epidemic of violence that’s sickening the soul of this nation,” Obama said in June 2007. “The violence is unacceptable and it’s got to stop.”

In fact, in the “Urban Policy” section currently on the White House website, the Obama administration affirms its support of reinstating the Assault Weapons Ban:

· Address Gun Violence in Cities: … Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

In the wake of news-grabbing gun violence, why is the Obama administration now backing off its repeated pledge to ban the most dangerous weapons that Obama previously said “belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets“?

Culture

A Better Way for the Olympics

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 9, 2009 at 4:54 pm

409484853_04d0192fcd_1.jpg

This article about Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics seems like as good a time as any to reiterate the idea that the International Olympic Committee should fix a permanent location for the Games. Presumably in Greece, but really just about anywhere would do.

Even though competition is always fierce for the hosting honors, the reality is that cities only very rarely manage to reap the financial windfall that Olympics-boosters advertise. But if you actually got to reuse a given facility across three or four or five Games before it needed serious repair/replacement then mounting the event would be much more economical. Besides which, a fixed location would be more in the spirit of the original Olympics which were non-rotating.

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