This past week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) appeared at Sean Hannity’s Freedom Tour in Texas. Standing on-stage with the Fox News host, Perry awarded Hannity a certificate declaring him to be “an honorary Texan.” In accepting the award, Hannity incoherently told the audience, “I promise you, as of Monday morning, we’re back on the mission. We’re going to stop this move towards America and socialism. I promise you with all my heart.” Watch it:
Hannity presumably misspoke about ending “this move towards America.” Or perhaps, he was speaking in code to Gov. Perry’s core constituency who wants to secede from the Union.
Violence in Afghanistan has been on the uptick lately as July became the deadliest month for U.S. and coalition forces since the war began in late 2001. And just yesterday, insurgents there killed 9 U.S. and NATO troops in roadside bomb and sniper attacks.
This morning on Fox & Friends, host Steve Doocy and guest host Peter Johnson marked the occasion by making the story about Fox News, declaring that the network was the only one covering the rising violence in Afghanistan and suggesting media bias because of all the media focus the Iraq war had once received:
JOHNSON: July was the deadliest month for U.S. forces since the war began but no one is talking about it really. When President Bush was in office, the Iraq war was front page news!
DOOCY: Absolutely. Why the difference in the coverage between Iraq and Afghanistan? [...] We are still at war and that’s why you know we cover it here on Fox but I don’t see it any place else.
Moreover, their cries of media bias further ring hollow as Fox News’s coverage of the Iraq war was not only limited, but lacking in accuracy. A Project for Excellence in Journalism study released in May 2007 found that of the three major cable news outlets, Fox covered the height of the Iraq war the least. Even when they were covering it, the network ran absurd stories, such as this one asking if the Iraq civil war could be “a good thing.”
Another study found that in the months leading up to the Iraq war through September 2003, viewers primarily watching Fox News were “significantly more likely to have misperceptions” about the war as compared to CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, NPR, PBS, and major newspapers.
If Fox News hosts are going to make media bias claims, they could at least try a quick Google search first.
Initially perplexed about “these people who tweeted” on “the @wonkroom twitter feed,” Durbin quickly recovered and said that he would “reluctantly” support a bill that did not include a public health insurance option. “We have the reality of 60 votes in the Senate and two Senators who are sick,” Durbin explained. “Senator Byrd, who may be able to return. We hope he can. Senator Kennedy, we hope he can return. Without them, we need at least two, maybe three Republicans to support our effort and there seems to be universal opposition to a public option among all Republican Senators.”
Watch it:
Byrd was released from the hospital in June, after suffering from a staph infection and recurring fevers, and is recuperating at home. Kennedy, who last appeared in Congress in April is still undergoing treatment for a brain tumor. Meanwhile at least four Democratic senators — Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) — have hinted that they won’t support a public option.
The coal industry’s top front group has admitted to hiring Bonner & Associates to block clean energy reform. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a public-relations juggernaut funded by electric utilities, mining corporations, and other coal interests to derail mandatory limits on global warming pollution, “acknowledged” paying for Bonner’s “outreach” fraud “” the forging of letters from civil rights organizations opposing the American Clean Energy and Security Act:
The group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity acknowledged this afternoon that it had contracted Bonner & Associates earlier to perform “limited outreach,” but the advocacy group denounced the firm’s actions.
ACCCE’s choice of Bonner comes a little surprise, as Bonner has built a reputation as one of the most effective and amoral Astroturf companies inside the Beltway, having generated “grassroots” campaigns on behalf of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.
True story: My dad and I tried to track down an original copy of my birth certificate last fall and it couldn’t be done. For all I can prove, I was born in Kenya:
Republicans have worked hard to stall and kill health care reform while not trying to appear callous to the health care needs of Americans. This strategy was outlined by GOP consultant Alex Castellanos in a well-publicized memo. But earlier today, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) failed to stick to the talking points. On MSNBC, King declared most Americans don’t view reform as “a major issue”:
KING: This is not a major issue among the American people. I think the last poll showed 14 percent see health care reform as being a major issue. …I think this is a metaphor of the president having gone too far, too fast, and really not living up to his campaign promises of governing from the center. But we have to avoid acting as if we won this battle. Right now the voters are turning somewhat against Barack Obama. It doesn’t mean they are coming toward us. We have to play this, I believe, very effectively but not be going for the kill.”
Watch it:
King was referring to a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last week that showed health care is the third highest priority for the public, behind job creation (38 percent) and the deficit (17 percent). But as HuffPost’s Sam Stein notes, “Being the third highest ‘top priority’ is hardly synonymous with being a minor issue.” When NBC/WSJ tallied the respondent’s first and second priorities, “health care shot up to a tie for second place, at 32 percent.” In addition, Time Magazine and Gallup found that more than 70 percent of the public wants health care reform.
The coal industry’s top front group has admitted to hiring Bonner & Associates to block clean energy reform. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a public-relations juggernaut funded by electric utilities, mining corporations, and other coal interests to derail mandatory limits on global warming pollution, “acknowledged” paying for Bonner’s “outreach” fraud — the forging of letters from civil rights organizations opposing the American Clean Energy and Security Act:
The group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity acknowledged this afternoon that it had contracted Bonner & Associates earlier to perform “limited outreach,” but the advocacy group denounced the firm’s actions.
ACCCE’s choice of Bonner comes a little surprise, as Bonner has built a reputation as one of the most effective and amoral Astroturf companies inside the Beltway, having generated “grassroots” campaigns on behalf of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.
ACCCE’s official response, from President Stephen Miller, explains that Bonner and Associates was a subcontractor to the Hawthorn Group, the PR firm that has boasted about its ability to gin up fake grassroots fervor for “clean coal”:
We are outraged at the conduct of Bonner and Associates. Bonner and Associates was hired by the Hawthorn Group – our primary grassroots contractor – to do limited outreach earlier this year on H.R. 2454. Based upon the information we have, it is clear that an employee of Bonner’s firm failed to demonstrate the integrity we demand of all our contractors and subcontractors. As a result, these egregious actions led to falsified letters being sent to Members of Congress.
“ACCCE has always maintained high ethical and professional standards. In this case, the standards and practices that we require for grassroots advocacy outreach were not adhered to by Bonner and Associates. In this sense, the community groups involved, the Members of Congress who received the fraudulent letters, as well as ACCCE, were all victimized by this misconduct.
“ACCCE has initiated an extensive review to gather all relevant facts pertaining to this situation. Additionally, we are evaluating all possible measures – including potential legal action – as a part of our commitment to ensure that high ethical standards are followed when conducting outreach to community groups, elected officials, and other members of the public.
“Over the past ten years, ACCCE’s public outreach program, as managed by the Hawthorn Group, has enabled more than 100,000 constituents to legitimately communicate with their elected and appointed officials on behalf of energy and environmental policies that sustain economic growth. We are proud of this work, and will continue to promote policies that will advance environmental progress, greater energy security, and economic prosperity in the United States.
Because of Bonner and Associates’ misconduct, we apologize to the community groups and the Members of Congress involved. There is no place for this type of deception. We applaud efforts to ensure that everyone involved in the public policy dialogue lives up to the highest ethical standards.”
Update
,At NRDC’s Switchboard, Pete Altman wonders about $10.5 million that ACCCE initially reported as lobbying expenditures in the second quarter of this year.
Update
,At the Institute for Southern Studies’ Facing South, Sue Sturgis reminds us that ACCCE was caught last year engaging in deceptive tactics, claiming in an Astroturf campaign against climate legislation that it was an environmental organization not associated with utilities.
We are rich enough. Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries, and in some cases appears to be damaging health. If Britain were instead to concentrate on making its citizens’ incomes as equal as those of people in Japan and Scandinavia, we could each have seven extra weeks’ holiday a year, we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we’d trust each other more.
Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett don’t soft-soap their message. It is brave to write a book arguing that economies should stop growing when millions of jobs are being lost, though they may be pushing at an open door in public consciousness. We know there is something wrong, and this book goes a long way towards explaining what and why.
Long-term readers will recognize that I’m a longtime booster of all-things Scandinavian, and it’s actually as a big fan of Nordic countries that I have my doubts about this argument. The crux of the matter is that the Scandinavian countries are not poor. They’re not even close. These are some of the richest countries on earth. After all, good health and high levels are trust are not only consequences of equality, they’re causes of growth. Likewise, it strikes me as unlikely that Denmark would stick with its egalitarian social model if it entered a prolonged period of declining real living standards. The lesson of Scandinavia isn’t that other countries should abandon growth in the quest for equality, it’s that if you can manage to build an effective public sector that people have confidence in, that will pay off in terms of both growth and equality.
The other issues to consider here have to do with the interconnected nature of global life. If we sealed the border and kicked all the immigrants out, measured inequality in the United States would plummet. But real living standards for the remaining poor people would only increase modestly and real living standards for the exiled used-to-be-immigrants would decline drastically. This sort of thing is not sound policy even if the egalitarian result has some desirable aspects. Similarly, economic growth in China and India is unquestionably leading to large increases in human welfare and it will be very hard for poor countries to grow unless rich countries also grow so we can buy stuff from them.
The one dimension along which there really is a clear growth-related tradeoff that we probably ought to think about more is work vs leisure. A country will have more measured output if people work longer hours, but the welfare impacts of this are not always clear, and it’s important to distinguish between countries where average income is low because the workers are unproductive and countries where average income is low because people don’t spend much time on the job. Koreans and Dutch people work radically different hours in a way that has to be considered when you’re asking who’s better off.
In the latest issue of National Journal Magazine, Peter Stone reported that, during the upcoming August recess, House and Senate members “are sure to be blasted with letters, e-mails, and visits from large and small bankers, mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and other financial services players riled up” about the movement to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA).
The AFSA did commission outside polling to test the most-effective messages to use against the legislation and in mid-July presented the results at a Hill meeting that drew about a dozen lobbyists as well as aides to Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., the ranking member on the Financial Services Committee. Many of the same lobbyists held a follow-up meeting with Bachus’s aides on July 27, according to a lobbyist involved in the fight, who adds that Republicans are “helping to coordinate stakeholder opposition to the more onerous parts of the legislation.”
Much like lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are “pursuing an aggressive strategy to create an image of mass public opposition to health care and clean energy reform,” the financial services industry is trying to whip up public dissent against the CFPA.
Super-lobbyist Kurt Pfotenhauer, the former top lobbyist for right-wing corporate polluter Koch Industries and the current CEO and top lobbyist of the American Land Title Association, said that “a lot of groups are planning grassroots activities during the recess because you often win or lose big legislative issues in August.” AFSA is reportedly “hitting up many trade groups for donations of $15,000 apiece for the coordinated lobbying effort.”
And just like in the health care debate, the lobbyists are being cheered on by the GOP. Bachus, for his part, has raised almost $4 million in his career from the finance, insurance, and real estate sector, far outstripping what he’s raised from any other industry.
The financial services lobby is counting on the public buying the argument that the new agency will provide only an onerous new layer of regulation or that banking regulation and consumer protection are in a holy alliance that should not be broken apart. Neither of these arguments hold much water though, and pale in comparison to the necessity of giving consumers some voice in a regulatory regime that focuses almost exclusively on whether banks are viable, even if that viability is due to ripping off consumers.
Last week, ThinkProgress reported that a DC-based lobbying firm was caught forging letters to Rep. Tom Periello (D-VA) in opposition to the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill. The company, Bonner & Associates, has a decades-long history of “astroturfing” –- misrepresenting corporate-backed policy as a real grassroots movement. ThinkProgress just received a letter indicating that more anti-clean energy letter forgeries may be out there.
Joseph Richardson received a letter from Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) in reply to a letter that he never sent:
Richardson never wrote such a letter, and he never would. Calling himself a “vocal member” of the North Dakota Alliance for Renewable Energy, Richardson told ThinkProgress that he is an ACES supporter and even wrote a letter to Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) calling on the congressman to support clean energy reform.
The forged letter was likely a result of astroturfing. Conrad’s letter was delivered to an out-of-date address that Richardson hadn’t used for months. According to Richardson, Conrad’s office is currently in the process of tracking down the original letter they received. See the full letter Senator Conrad’s office sent to Richardson.
This latest news joins an evolving series of dishonest tactics from opponents of clean energy reform. On Friday, a former Bonner & Associates employee told Talking Points Memo that extreme managerial pressure at Bonner is par for the course, and inevitably leads to these desperate measures. According to the article:
[The former employee] portray[ed] Bonner and Associates as a place where ethical missteps were far from rare. “They just got caught this time,” he said.
,A spokesperson from Sen. Conrad’s office just contacted Think Progress stating that this incident was a result of a miscategorized correspondence, not a forged letter.
According to the spokesperson, Conrad’s staff tracked down an email late tonight from Mr. Richardson. The Senate office mistakenly categorized Richardson’s email as opposing clean energy reform. As a result, he received an incorrect form letter in response.
When Think Progress first contacted Mr. Richardson, he indicated that he had never sent a letter regarding ACES, but according to Senator Conrad’s office, he now takes ownership over the original correspondence. Think Progress has requested a copy of the original email from the Senate office and will post it if it becomes available.
The coal industry’s top front group has admitted to hiring Bonner & Associates to block clean energy reform. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a 
When not paying for Astroturf fraud, ACCCE was the 
