Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann tell the media “a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality.”

Two leading political scholars — representing the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the centrist Brookings Institution – have published a must-read article, “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”

I’ll excerpt the piece by Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann at length for two reasons. First, the problem they describe in detail is the central reason the United States failed to act on climate change when it had the chance in 2009 and 2010, and the central reason this country is poised to abandon any hope of maintaining  leadership in what will certainly be the biggest job creating sector of this century — low-carbon technologies and strategies. Until it is fixed

Second, they issue some advice to the media on the dangers of false balance in a world where there isn’t actually balance between the two “sides.”

The article opens:

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s noat that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

Yes, false balance is “simply untenable” these days, when one side is so “far out.” This, of course, is  especially true in the case of the climate debate:

• WashPost stunner: “The GOPs climate-change denial may be its most harmful delusion.”
• National Journal: “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones”

The authors offer some specific advice to the media:

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by John Atcheson

The first thing to say about The Crash Course is that it is an impressive work of scholarship.  It is reminiscent of Guns, Germs and Steel in terms of the scope and breadth of knowledge brought to bear by the author in support of his thesis – which is basically that we’re headed for hard times unlike anything humanity has seen.

The second is that it contains a few fundamental flaws.

The third is that you should read it anyway.  His thesis is more than plausible; his research is meticulous; and no matter how much you think you know about sustainability, you will walk away from The Crash Course wiser, if sadder.

Martenson is an intellectual omnivore.  From peak oil to finance to economics, he bores deeply into his chosen topics – without being boring.

His lens on the future centers on the three E’s: Economics, Energy and Environment, viewed through the remorseless calculus of exponential growth.  Let’s look at each in turn, although it is important to understand that for Martenson, it is the confluence of forces between the three that make the future so challenging.

We’ll start with his take on economics. For Martenson, exponentially increasing debt is the defining economic reality. And indeed, his characterization of where we are today, projected into the future, paints a picture of inevitable collapse.

Compounding the debt conundrum is the fact that currency, which economists treat as if it were real, tangible wealth, is — as Martenson puts it — merely “… a claim on wealth.” In short, money is not wealth.  Worse, it can grow indefinitely in a finite world.  But if faith in currency erodes, then it can no longer serve as a surrogate for real wealth and the entire construct can — and will — collapse.  And Martenson believes that exponentially exploding debt makes the crash inevitable.

He also notes that the books have been cooked in ways that could further undermine faith in our currency. Take inflation, for example.  Since the late 1970’s, a series of changes in how we measure it – things like tossing out food and energy from the index, or economic subterfuges such as the “substitution effect,” “hedonics,” and adjusted weighting of goods and services  — have worked to systematically understate inflation.  Here’s Martenson on the effect of this economic legerdemain:

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A cyberbarrel of oil for your thoughts.

And how about crowd-sourcing some real pennies for cartoonist, Stephanie McMillan, who has given me permission to reprint her cartoons. Here’s the link to Paypal where you can donate to her if you like her cartoons.  CLICK HERE (then click where it says DONATE).

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