ThinkProgress Logo

Media

UPDATED: Before Bush Donor Takeover Of MSNBC, Network Selectively Applies Rules To Suspend Olbermann

By Lee Fang on Nov 5, 2010 at 6:56 pm

UPDATED: We have been notified that Comcast has not yet officially taken over MSNBC/NBC Universal. Although Comcast has tentatively finalized a deal to purchase a majority stake in NBC, Comcast awaits final approval of the takeover from the Justice Department and from the Federal Communications Commission. A statement from Comcast reads: “The joint venture between Comcast and GE has not yet received regulatory approval. Comcast is not in any way involved with decisions made currently by NBC News.” However, once Comcast gains final approval from federal regulators to move forward, Comcast COO Steve Burke, a Bush fundraiser, will be placed at the helm of MSNBC and other NBC companies. Our original post inaccurately asserted that Comcast’s Burke was involved in the decision to fire Olbermann. We apologize for the error.

Earlier today, MSNBC declared that it would be suspending progressive host Keith Olbermann because he violated NBC’s ethics rules by donating to three Democratic candidates for Congress. As many bloggers have noted, conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough has donated to Republican candidates for Congress while promoting the same candidate on air, but has never been disciplined. Moreover, Gawker notes that MSNBC has been exempt from the formal NBC ethics rules for years. It is still a mystery why MSNBC selectively applied NBC’s ethics rules to Olbermann. However, it important to realize that MSNBC has undergone a fundamental change in leadership in the last two months.

Late last year, Comcast — the nation’s largest cable provider and second largest Internet service provider — inked a deal taking over NBC Universal, the parent company of MSNBC. Comcast moved swiftly to reshuffle MSNBC’s top staff. On September 26th of this year, Comcast announced perhaps the most dramatic shift, replacing longtime MSNBC chief Jeff Zucker with Comcast executive Steve Burke [Updated: The shift from Zucker to Burke has not taken place yet -- Burke will preside over MSNBC once the Comcast merger is complete. We have been informed that no Comcast officials are currently involved in the decisions of NBC or MSNBC.]. Burke has given generous amounts to both parties — providing cash to outgoing Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) as well as to Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and other top Republicans. But as Public Citizen has noted, Burke has deep ties to the Republican Party. Public Citizen’s report reveals that Burke served as a key fundraiser to President George Bush, and even served on Bush’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology:

Comcast – the country’s largest provider of cable TV and broadband Internet services – has increased its political giving along with its mergers and acquisitions. CEO Brian Roberts was a co-chairman of the host committee at the 2000 Republican Convention. Comcast Cable President Stephen Burke has raised at least $200,000 for Bush’s re-election campaign. [...] Comcast’s political giving has increased along with its mergers and acquisitions. The company was a “platinum sponsor” at the 2000 GOP convention, and Roberts was a co-chairman of the host committee at the Philadelphia event. Burke was appointed to the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology in 2002.

Why would Comcast be interested in silencing progressive voices? Historically, Comcast has boosted its profits by buying up various telecommunication and media content companies — instead of providing faster Internet or better services (overall, American broadband services are far slower than in many industrialized nations). Many of these mergers, as Public Citizen and Free Press have reported, have been allowed by regulators because of Comcast’s considerable political muscle. Comcast’s latest regulatory battle has been to oppose Net Neutrality — a rule allowing a free and open Internet — because the company would prefer to have customers pay for preferred online content.

Olbermann has been a strong voice in favor of a free and open Internet. Republicans, on the other hand, have supported the telecommunication industry’s push to radically change the Internet so corporate content producers have the upper hand over start-ups like blogs, independent media, small businesses, etc. As Reuters has reported, the incoming Republican Congress has signaled that it will vigorously side with companies like Comcast against an open Internet.

It is not clear why MSNBC has selectively suspended Olbermann indefinitely without pay — but the move showcases the limits of the corporate media. While modern technology has created a seeming multitude of entertainment and television choices, the reality of corporate media consolidation has resulted in fewer investigative news options and less voices in the media with a critical perspective on powerful business interests. Olbermann has stood out as a voice for working people in a media universe dominated by “reality television” and business lobbyists posing as political pundits. It is unfortunate that Comcast and MSNBC have chosen to suspend him. [Update: Comcast has no formal control over MSNBC yet, but will once the merger is complete in the coming months.]

Update

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts tacitly acknowledged that he would be open to interfering with the editorial content of MSNBC shows and with hosts like Keith Olbermann:

Comcast is in line to acquire control of NBC Universal, once regulators sign off on the $30 billion deal. Mr. Chernin asked Mr. Roberts how he planned to handle daily editorial control of such an immense news operation. “Are you saying that you’ll never interfere?” he asked. Mr. Roberts blanched slightly at the question, which included a hypothetical situation that had Keith Olbermann, an MSNBC host, attacking a couple of Republican congressmen just as the approvals were being finished. “Let’s have that conversation in six months or 12 months,” Mr. Roberts said.


Update

,Media Matter’s Eric Hananoki notes that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough gave a local Alabama Republican candidate $5,000 as recently as this year, and CNBC host Larry Kudlow donated $1,000 to Republican Chris Shays in May of 2009. Indeed, Kudlow also serves on the Leadership Council to the Club for Growth, a group that has donated over $2 million to Republican candidates this year. Do NBC ethics rules apply to Scarborough, Pat Buchanan, Kudlow, or other conservatives working for the media company? As Greg Sargent reported, a close reading of the NBC ethics rules suggest that the political donation standards do not even apply to opinionated hosts like Olbermann.


Update

[/up

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 5, 2010 at 6:21 pm

Where do we go now?

— Insurers plan to undermine allegedly budget-busting Affordable Care Act by hiking spending and cutting taxes.

— David Brooks doesn’t know much about where the midwest is.

— Dana Goldstein on performance pay for teachers.

— Really hard to say what performance pay for the fish and wildlife service would look like.

— Rick Perry wants states to opt-out of Social Security.

Citizens Here and Abroad, “Stranger”.

Security

Sponsor Of SB-1070 Russell Pearce Tells Undocumented Students ‘I Don’t Make The Law’

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Nov 5, 2010 at 6:20 pm

Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), the sponsor of SB-1070 who was recently elected state Senate president, has pushed and authored a series of other lesser-known immigration laws in his state. One of those was Proposition 300 — a referendum approved by Arizona voters in November 2006 which forces undocumented Arizonans to pay out-of-state tuition and bars them from receiving financial aid.

Recently, two undocumented students confronted Pearce and asked him if he believed they should be punished for the sins of their fathers. In response, Pearce — a lawmaker — told the students that he “doesn’t make the law”:

DREAMer: What do you think about you should not be punished for the sins of your father? — Because it wasn’t our choice to come here…

PEARCE: I understand, but blame your father. I agree with you. Shame on him.

DREAMer: Okay, do you believe that we should not be punished for that though?

PEARCE: Well, that’s not the issue. I don’t make the law. I will enforce the law. It’s illegal under federal law. All it is is a codification of the law. I will enforce it.

DREAMer: But the 14th amendment — that is the law, and you want it to change…

PEARCE: No it’s not! You can pervert the Constitution all you like. Doesn’t work well. I’m not gonna listen to this garbage.

Watch it:

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio often defends his draconian immigration tactics by pointing out that he doesn’t “make” the laws. However, Pearce does. His bills don’t codify federal law, but rather redefine the laws themselves. It’s true that Section 505 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) prohibits states from “providing a postsecondary education benefit to an alien not lawfully present unless any citizen or national is eligible for such benefit.” However, it doesn’t bar states from providing in-state tuition to undocumented students — a practice that the state of California implements. Pearce also erroneously claimed that “it’s illegal [for undocumented immigrants] to attend higher ed under federal law.”

Pearce is trying to “reinterpret” the 14th amendment to prevent the American-born children of undocumented immigrants from receiving U.S citizenship upon birth. As part of this new legislative project, Pearce has also toyed with the idea of charging undocumented children tuition if they receive a public elementary or high school education in Arizona. This proposal is clearly in conflict with federal law and the Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision, which determined that all children, regardless of immigration status, are guaranteed access to public education from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Besides the fact the Pearce does make the law, his response is also interesting in relation to his faith. Pearce is a “devout Mormon.” Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that the “sins of parents cannot be answered upon the heads of their children.” The Book of Mormon also states that “little children” are “not capable of committing sin.”

Yet the laws that Pearce authors cast a wide net that seeks to punish undocumented men, women, and children alike. SB-1070 begins with the proclamation that “attrition through enforcement” is “the public policy of all state and local government.” In other words, the law’s purpose is to make life so miserable for all undocumented immigrants that they choose to self-deport. Meanwhile, the federal government has a policy of focusing its limited resources on pursuing undocumented immigrants who are violent criminals.

You can watch the full video here.

Politics

Stimulus Bashing Governors Issue Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars In Stimulus Funded Bonds

By Pat Garofalo on Nov 5, 2010 at 5:58 pm

Govs. Haley Barbour (R-MS) and Bobby Jindal (R-LA)

Last month, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), a frequent critic of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e. the stimulus), announced that he was going to take advantage of a stimulus program to get suspended infrastructure projects in his state back on line. That program — the Build America Bonds program — has the federal government pick up 35 percent of the interest on bonds that states issue to fund transportation, infrastructure, and school construction projects.

And Christie is evidently not the only stimulus-critic who feels no guilt about building up his state courtesy of the Recovery Act. Today, the Treasury Department released a full list of Build America Bond projects, as issuances under the program surpassed $150 billion, and look who’s on the list:

– Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX): Perry said that, when it came to the stimulus, “this was pretty simple for us…We can take care of ourselves.” But he used $2 billion in Build America Bonds for highway improvements and another $182 million for “public improvements.”

– Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS): “A lot of this is just crazy,” Barbour said of the stimulus. “I’m better off not to get it.” But that didn’t stop him from using $98 million in Build America Bonds for recreational facility improvements.

– Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN): “It hasn’t worked,” Daniels said of the stimulus. “You have to be a blind zealot to say that this thing has done any good.” The Indiana Financial Authority issued $192 million in Build America Bonds, while the Indiana Bond Bank issued another $54 million.

– Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA): Jindal has called the Recovery Act “a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus that has not stimulated.” Louisiana has issued $181 million in Build America Bonds for highway improvements.

These totals leave out the slew of local school districts and local governments in these states that also took advantage of the Build America Bonds program to make critical investments in state infrastructure. As The American Prospect’s Tim Fernholz explained, Build America Bonds “is one of the most successful programs of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, spurring productive investment, job creation, and creating a more progressive and democratic method of local finance.”

Of course, stimulus hypocrisy is nothing new for the GOP; ThinkProgress has identified 114 Republicans who voted against the Recovery Act, while touting its benefits back home.

Cross-posted at The Wonk Room.

Yglesias

Recapitalization Through Profit

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 5, 2010 at 5:31 pm

(cc photo by MJTR)

Imagine you’re a public official faced with the problem of a several important banks becoming undercapitalized due to investment losses on, for example, backed securities. What’s more, there are several other important banks that, though not currently undercapitalized, are close enough to the line that a generalized “panic” about the banking sector will push them under. You’re in a scenario, in other words, when you don’t dare allow even a single bank fail lest it cause a nearly universal failure of your banks.

You have basically two choices in this scenario. One choice is that you force the banks in question to accept capital injections from the public sector. This will “bail out” the bank and save it as an institution. It’s also obviously better for the bank’s owners than the alternative of letting the bank fail. But for the owners it’s also not ideal since it means the value of their shares is being diluted. Indeed, if raising extra capital were a bailout of the shareholders they would have avoided this problem long ago by simply raising capital from private investors. But their reluctance to do this has helped bring us to the crisis point. They’d rather get public equity than fail, but they’d rather avoid getting public equity.

A different option is to refuse to give “the banks” extra money. Instead you perform stress tests and proclaim that the banks are secure, implicitly signaling the existence of government guarantee of their operations. You have the Federal Reserve start paying interest on banks’ excess reserves, giving them a zero risk profitable investment parking cash with the Fed. Then you hunker down and wait for the regulatory forbearance to allow the profit-making process to generate sufficient capital to resolve the situation.

The downside of the second option is that it takes much longer to work, needlessly prolonging the massive suffering throughout the country. Another downside of the second option is that it undermines the effective of loose monetary policy, needlessly prolonging the massive suffering throughout the country. A third downside of the second option is that it’s wildly more favorable to the people who owned the banks, in a way that creates a massive problem of injustice. The upside, however, is that you don’t need to ask congress for additional bailout money. And, indeed, the public at large will regard this option as superior to a soft-on-bankers “bailout.” But at the very same time the bankers themselves will recognize that forbearance is actually a much softer policy than the unpopular “bailout” alternative.

Economy

Stimulus Bashing Governors Issue Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars In Stimulus Funded Bonds

By Pat Garofalo on Nov 5, 2010 at 5:20 pm

Govs. Haley Barbour (R-MS) and Bobby Jindal (R-LA)

Last month, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), a frequent critic of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e. the stimulus), announced that he was going to take advantage of a stimulus program to get suspended infrastructure projects in his state back on line. That program — the Build America Bonds program — has the federal government pick up 35 percent of the interest on bonds that states issue to fund transportation, infrastructure, and school construction projects.

And Christie is evidently not the only stimulus-critic who feels no guilt about building up his state courtesy of the Recovery Act. Today, the Treasury Department released a full list of Build America Bond projects, as issuances under the program surpassed $150 billion, and look who’s on the list:

– Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX): Perry said that, when it came to the stimulus, “this was pretty simple for us…We can take care of ourselves.” But he used $2 billion in Build America Bonds for highway improvements and another $182 million for “public improvements.”

– Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS): “A lot of this is just crazy,” Barbour said of the stimulus. “I’m better off not to get it.” But that didn’t stop him from using $98 million in Build America Bonds for recreational facility improvements.

– Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN): “It hasn’t worked,” Daniels said of the stimulus. “You have to be a blind zealot to say that this thing has done any good.” The Indiana Financial Authority issued $192 million in Build America Bonds, while the Indiana Bond Bank issued another $54 million.

– Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA): Jindal has called the Recovery Act “a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus that has not stimulated.” Louisiana has issued $181 million in Build America Bonds for highway improvements.

These totals leave out the slew of local school districts and local governments in these states that also took advantage of the Build America Bonds program to make critical investments in state infrastructure. As The American Prospect’s Tim Fernholz explained, Build America Bonds “is one of the most successful programs of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, spurring productive investment, job creation, and creating a more progressive and democratic method of local finance.”

Of course, stimulus hypocrisy is nothing new for the GOP: ThinkProgress has identified 114 Republicans who voted against the Recovery Act, while touting its benefits back home.

Economy

Shareholders Demand To Know If The Chamber of Commerce Is Using Their Money To Buy Elections

By George Zornick on Nov 5, 2010 at 4:44 pm

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as ThinkProgress has repeatedly noted, does not disclose the donors to its aggressive political activities. Insiders have revealed certain contributions — like the lobbyists who revealed that health insurance companies pumped money into ads to defeat health care reform — and reporters can sometimes use tax filings and other public records to deduce some contributions, but the Chamber by and large remains a black box — unnamed corporate money comes in, and political attack ads come out.

The Chamber’s finances are so opaque, in fact, that shareholders in companies that are known to contribute to the Chamber don’t actually know if their money is being used to attack political candidates. But following an election season where the Chamber contributed $32.1 million to defeating mostly Democratic candidates — with a high degree of success — some shareholders are demanding disclosure. Walden Asset Management in Boston and Domini Social Investments in New York said this week they filed resolutions calling for independent directors to review political spending at Pfizer and Pepsi, along with IBM and Accenture.

If accepted, the resolutions will be voted on by shareholders next spring, though they would still be non-binding. Pepsi said it will review the resolution, but a spokesman praised the Chamber as “an effective advocate of business.” A Pfizer spokesman said it will consider the resolution and that it “takes seriously all shareholder concerns.” Accenture says it believes their money doesn’t go towards political activities, and IBM would not comment.

Experts say that in the post-Citizens United environment, and with bills to force disclosure dying in Congress, more and more shareholders may begin demanding to know where their money is going:

Shareholders are likely to introduce more such measures as similar legislation stalls in Washington, said Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard University law school professor who studies corporate governance.

In a forthcoming paper, Bebchuk himself and co-writer Robert Jackson of Columbia University argue that shareholders should be given the chance to vote directly on political contributions and that companies ought to be required to disclose their spending to intermediaries.

Currently, when it comes to such support, “the interests of (company) directors and executives may significantly diverge from those of shareholders,” they write.

Shareholders are increasingly demanding corporate responsibility and disclosure from business entities beyond the Chamber, when the government isn’t able to force it. In October, some shareholders in News Corporation rebelled over donations to the Republican Governor’s Association. Shareholders in Valero Energy, Tesoro and Occidental Petroleum — which contributed $8 million on behalf of Proposition 23, a California ballot initiative that would have repealed the state’s global warming rule –also demanded to know if their money was being used in that effort.

Health

Former Obama Health Policy Advisor: Republicans Will Shut Down The Government Over Health Reform

By Igor Volsky on Nov 5, 2010 at 4:30 pm

A former senior health care advisor to President Barack Obama and a prominent advocate of the Affordable Care Act predicted that Republicans will shut down the federal government in their efforts to de-fund the health care law. Speaking at a Harvard School of Public Health forum, David Cutler — a Professor of Applied Economics at that university — predicted a stalmate with little chance of resolution, given the new Republican majority in the House:

CUTLER: We are likely to have an immense stalemate and I would not be surprised if we shut down the federal government over funding of discretionary health care early next year, the debt ceiling limit, the physicians’ payments. There will be about 10 opportunities to shut down the government. If we’re not going to shut them down, each time we’ll have to compromise and that strikes me as somewhat unlikely. [...]

We will go through a burning bridge, I’m not quite sure of the right analogy, in the next few months. We will either have have or come increasingly close to having a government shut down and we will probably not have any agreement on how to move forward on health care, except with the idea that maybe the 2012 elections will settle a little bit more and that’s in part because there are no wise men, I think on the Republican side who are willing to meet anyone half way.

Watch it:

The forum focused on the Impact of the “2010 Elections on U.S. Healthcare Reform,” but also delved deeply into policy specifics about cost control mechanisms and the policy specifics in the Affordable Care Act. Another panelist, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former McCain campaign advisor and CBO director, predicted that Republicans will “unwind” the bill through the discretionary spending process. “It will slow down the implementation and in that way put it on a timetable to coincide with the 2012 election… that’s when this whole point will be resolved,” he said.

Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested that Republicans would not shut down the government over the issue, telling CNN’s John King, “we’re not talking about shutting down the government. What we’re doing here is talking about responding to the American people’s desire that this bill not become law.”

Yglesias

Bilingual Polling

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 5, 2010 at 4:29 pm

Most discussion of potential sampling error problems with polling that I’ve heard in recent cycles has focused on cell phone only households. Time and again, however, pollsters seem to be able to adjust for this correctly. Joshua Tucker rounds up some research on a different potential source of error—monolingual polling in a country where many people primarily speak Spanish. This could account for the way polls seem to have systematically overrated Republican performance in Nevada, Colorado, and California.

Yglesias

Time to Scrap the Filibuster

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 5, 2010 at 4:27 pm

Tim Fernholz argues persuasively that January would be an excellent time for the 53 Senate Democrats and Vice President Joe Biden to come together to eliminate the filibuster and return the senate to a majority rules dynamic.

I entirely agree. There’s obviously some sentiment that the wake of an electoral defeat is a bad time to push the envelop on something like this. But I disagree. The fact that John Boehner is going to be Speaker of the House means that nobody is going to feel that the filibuster is the only thing standing between them and Barack Obama’s socialist gulag. Instead the practical import of the filibuster is that it will prevent executive branch nominees from being confirmed in a timely manner. That’s much lower stakes, and it’s an issue where the President will have a clear upper hand vis-à-vis the unpopular Senate Republicans.

Older

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up