Josh Block

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent reports today that PPI and the Truman Project “are privately considering a formal break with Block”:

PPI head Will Marshall privately told Block that the think tank would sever ties with Block if he didn’t retract the charges detailed in Salon, according to a source familiar with the discussions. Block subsequently offered Politico a statement on the charges, claiming he had never accused people at CAP in particular of anti-Semitism, but not walking back or apologizing for the gist of what was reported in the Salon piece. It’s still unclear how PPI — which declined to comment — will proceed at this point.

Meanwhile, at Truman, top officials privately debated via email whether to cut ties with Block after the Salon story broke, a source says. They had already been unhappy with Block’s attacks on critics of Israel, and the Salon piece exacerbated tensions, I’m told.

“Personal attacks have no place in our community,” Truman spokesman Dave Solimini tells me. “That agreement is unbreakable. The trust built among members of the truman community is the issue here. Personal attacks on members of our community, like calling them anti-Semitic, would cross that line.”

As Sargent notes, ThinkProgress reported last week that Block’s third professional association had already criticized Block’s smears of CAP. “Impugning motives of people at the Center [for American Progress] and impugning [that] those motives are driven by anti-Semitism is, in my opinion, wrong,” Block’s business partner and former special counsel to President Bill Clinton Lanny Davis said.

Josh Block

People can make up their own minds, and I’m happy to defend anything I’ve written, but there are few particularly misleading items in the now-public document that I’d like to address.

Josh writes that I “seem ideologically and personally committed to mainstreaming the idea that Israel is a strategic drag on the United States.” As evidence, he cites a June 2010 post in which I note recent statements from Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former Israeli Mossad Chief Meir Dagan warning of Israel becoming a strategic burden on the United States. Here’s the quote from me he uses:

Like Cordesman (for whom, full disclosure, I interned years ago) I’ve always been skeptical of claims about the strategic benefits of the U.S.-Israel partnership. As Cordesman writes, “At the best of times,” Israel “provides some intelligence, some minor advances in military technology, and a potential source of stabilizing military power.”

And here’s the rest:

But I’m also a strong believer in the moral and ethical basis of the U.S.-Israel relationship, in support for Israel as a fellow democracy — an imperfect one, sure, just as the U.S. was and still is in many ways — and as a country that shares many of our values, and holds enormous spiritual significance for many Americans.

Whether one supports or opposes the current U.S.-Israel relationship, on whatever basis, the fact is that the U.S. is deeply implicated in what Israel does. But supporting the relationship on the basis of values means recognizing that the U.S. has a unique responsibility to work toward halting Israel’s violations of those values, most obviously its four decade-old occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and creation of illegal settlements throughout occupied territory, rather than providing diplomatic cover for them. One can quibble with the manner in which President Obama has pursued the settlement issue, but the fact that he has made it such a central element of his approach to Israel shows how seriously he takes the relationship, and how he understands the threat that the settlements represent to Israel’s future. Though no two countries’ interests are perfectly aligned, I think that U.S. and Israeli interests in resolving the conflict, seeing Israel integrated into the region (and allowing the region to benefit from Israel’s vibrant culture and enormous economic accomplishments) are about as closely aligned as such interests get.

On the question of “linkage” – the manner in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is linked to other challenges in the Middle East – Josh writes, “CAP’s Middle East people are committed to the idea that Israel is at the core of Middle East instability…CAP constantly pushes the talking point that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the cause rather than the symptom of Middle East pathologies.” Here’s what I actually wrote in the December 2010 Foreign Policy piece Josh cites:

Basically, the “linkage” argument holds that continued irresolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hinders America’s ability to achieve its national security goals in the region, both by serving as a driver of extremism and a source of anti-American sentiment. […]

It is of course true that hostility toward Israel and its U.S. patron will not simply dissipate upon the end of Israel’s occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state — the completeness of that de-occupation, and the contours of that state, matter greatly. There are also problems and pathologies in the Middle East that have nothing to do with Israelis or Palestinians. Securing a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will, however, make addressing some of those problems easier, by sealing up one well of resentment from which demagogues and extremists have for decades drawn freely and profitably.

“We don’t have to like it or even believe it makes sense,” wrote Ken Pollack, director of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, in his book A Path Out of the Desert, “but linkage is a reality and one we are not likely to be able to change in the near term.”

One reason this is particularly interesting is Josh and I discussed this in some detail while sitting together in the press section at the Herzliya Conference in Israel last February. I explained to him my view of linkage in nearly exactly the same terms as above, and explained why his interpretation of linkage is not one I agree with. Yet for some reason he chose to disregard that conversation, and characterize my views differently.

Another interesting thing about the Herzliya conference: In speeches there, Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and former national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones all offered variations of the linkage argument. Dennis Ross has done, too, along with many others. Josh may strongly disagree with it, but it is by no means a fringe analysis.

As for Josh’s outrageous anti-Semitism smear, I’m not going to bother responding, because I’m quite confident Josh knows that it isn’t true. I will offer a note, however, on what Josh refers to as my “unprofessional rhetoric” on Twitter. I will admit that in my tweets I do occasionally engage in a level of snark that some might reasonably call unprofessional. So do many, many others. But I hereby commit myself to being more judicious about the deployment of said snark, and to treating these important issues with the seriousness that they deserve.

Cross-posted from Middle East Progress.

Jennifer Rubin

Block is a self-identified Democratic activist whose pro-Israel credentials are well known. He’s actively worked for years to elect scores of Democrats. Of course he wants the anti-Israel left to be exposed. Of course he wants pro-Israel Democrats on record as distancing themselves from the CAP-housed bloggers who peddle in anti-Israel attacks and out-and-out anti-Semitic hate speech.

Again, Rubin offered no proof of these charges. But she promoted Block’s claim that “the European Union’s accepted definition of anti-Semitic hate speech applies to much of the CAP bloggers’ rhetoric, such as holding Israel to a dual standard while demonizing the Jewish state.” The “accepted definition” she links to is an undated EU Military Committee “working definition of antisemitism,” but Rubin presented no direct quotes from any ThinkProgress posts that meet any of the criteria the EU document listed.

We categorically reject these accusations. We don’t endorse the term “Israel firsters” or demonize the Jewish state on ThinkProgress. We are not anti-Semitic and this blog regularly promotes a strong relationship with Israel. Further, there is no anti-Semitic or anti-Israel “hate speech” written anywhere on this blog. We would never condone such language or beliefs, and in fact, we have made efforts to fight individuals who do engage in anti-Semitic discourse. For example, earlier this year, we reported that Jewish groups were “deeply concerned” that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin had used the anti-Semitic term “blood libel” to describe criticism by her detractors.

Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton criticized Rubin last month for promoting a “brand of incendiary rhetoric [that] has gained too much purchase on the landscape of American politics.” Pexton added that the rhetoric Rubin promotes “pollutes our discourse and erodes the soil on which reasonable solutions and compromises can be built, whether at home or in the Middle East.”

The Washington Post should issue a correction to Rubin’s post. Please email, or tweet, politely asking that the Post correct Rubin’s article.

Block’s message as reported by Politico was made even more strongly in his email sent out to the right-wing journalist listserv. He wrote, “These are the words of anti-Semites, not Democratic political players,” adding, “This kind of anti-Israel sentiment is so fringe it’s support by CAP is outrageous.” Ironically, Block’s own personal business and political interests find him frequently on the fringes of the Democratic party and mainstream political dialogue in Washington.

Last year, upon his departure from AIPAC as a spokesperson for the organization, Block told Ben Smith: “There is an important debate taking place inside the Democratic Party and the progressive movement, and I’m relishing my return to the political, as well as the policy, conversation, politics with Israel-centric policies.” But when not pushing a hard-line on U.S.-Israel policy within the Democratic party, Block partners with Lanny Davis — who represented business interests backing the 2009 coup in Honduras — in a joint lobbying practice.

Block’s firm has proven itself as one of the go-to lobby shops in Washington for human rights abusers such as Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo and the the new Honduran government.

Block’s firm’s willingness to represent unpopular interests in Washington, for the right price, is further exemplified by their status as registered lobbyists for Agility DGS, a company suspended from government contracts after it was accused of defrauding the U.S. government as a contractor in Iraq.

Block’s business acumen and pursuit of the next payday raises the question of whose account Block was working on when he compiled the opposition research document on CAP and Media Matters bloggers.

Josh Block

Salon’s Justin Elliott reports today that Block sent out an email to a neoconservative journalist list-serv called “The Freedom Community” urging members to read and “amplify” Politico’s story, promoting it because in his view it shows that CAP bloggers are “anti-Israel” and vilify “pro-Israel Americans, Jews, Members of Congress, and pretty much anyone who thinks Iran with nuke is a problem, or supports a strong US-Israe [sic] relationship.” He said of our writing, “These are the words of anti-Semites, not Democratic political players.” Block also said in the email — without offering any evidence — that we engage in “hate speech.” (CAP and its affiliated bloggers are pro-Israel, support a strong U.S.-Israeli relationship, believe Iran with a nuclear weapon is a serious problem and do not vilify Jews). While it’s unclear who is on this list-serv, Jen Rubin at the Washington Post, Commentary and the Weekly Standard amplified the Politico article shortly after it was published.

Block also accompanied his email with an extensive 3,000 word opposition research document against ThinkProgress bloggers — which appears to have been completed on Nov. 8 — that contains a number of ad-hominem attacks against us without any evidence backing up those attacks. Instead, Block simply links to dozens of previous posts this blog has written on the Middle East. Some examples:

The CAP writers are not above smearing Democratic politicians and mainstream journalists for being Israel-firsters, for carrying AIPAC’s water, etc. But the personal attacks speak to personal unprofessionalism and borderline libel, while the substantive stuff exposes how far out of the mainstream CAP’s work has actually gotten.

Across everything, there’s a weird combination of sneering recklessness and smug childishness that underlies a lot of their rhetoric. On the recklessness side, there’s a degree to which they really don’t know how shrill they sound and how far off the reservation they’ve strayed. It’s almost as if, in talking to each other, it’s now just natural to talk about Jewish money in politics, about treasonous politicians, etc.

And on Twitter today, Ben Smith acknowledged that he accepted this research document before his article was published yesterday:

Salon’s Elliott notes that Block is a go-to for reporters looking for a right-wing view on the Middle East and that he now is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and also a partner in a lobbying and PR firm, Davis-Block. “It’s not clear,” Elliott adds, “whether Block is shopping the oppo trove on progressive bloggers as a personal project or as part of work for a client.”

An article published today by Politico’s Ben Smith charges that Center for American Progress bloggers are at the heart of an “Israel rift” in the “Democratic ranks.” While we welcome the discussion, the article misrepresents our views by cherrypicking a few posts from over 300 we’ve written this year on Iran and the Middle East. In the process, Smith makes a number of mistakes. We take this as an opportunity to clarify our positions on Iran and call attention to the article’s errors.

Our view in favor of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the consensus view of administrations of both parties dating back to President Clinton. Our position is based on our strong belief that it is in the national security interests of the United States to achieve a resolution to this conflict. Politico relies on sources who claim our work is “anti-Israel” and “borderline anti-Semitic.” We categorically reject and are offended by the idea that any of our work is anti-Semitic, unless one believes the Middle East peace plan itself and ensuring Israel’s long term security by securing its neighborhood is anti-Semitic.

Iran’s nuclear program is a strong point of concern for us, the U.S., and its allies. CAP’s view is that the multilateral sanctions framework engineered by the Obama administration is an important tool in pressuring Iran to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) requirements. While we take nothing off the table, we do not believe there is any evidence that a military strike would achieve those goals, a view shared by America’s top military officials. Furthermore, we will continue to push back against the overheated rhetoric that regularly throws around calls for full scale war with Iran because such activity has an impact in the real world. Indeed, it is our belief that conservative sabre rattling not only undermines American diplomacy but also emboldens hardliners in Iran and strengthens their push for nuclear weapons.

Therefore, the best policy to weaken Iran’s push for nuclear weapons rests on diplomacy — not a military strategy. So we believe it is critically important for assertions made on policy towards Iran and elsewhere in the region be subject to careful scrutiny with the goal of ensuring that U.S. policy will be as effective as possible in limiting threats posed by Iran.

Politico also misrepresents a number of our writings on Iran. The article states:

ThinkProgress National Security reporter Eli Clifton took issue with a Quinnipiac University poll that made reference to Iran’s “nuclear program.” The belief that such a program exists undergirds the Obama administration’s drive for sanctions, and was recently bolstered by a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which wrote of “increasing” concerns, though not definitive evidence.

It is a widely accepted fact that Iran has a nuclear program but Eli’s post on the Quinnipiac poll took issue with the pollsters’ reference to the existence of “Iran’s nuclear weapons program” in polling questions. The pollsters’ assumption that a nuclear weapons program exists, a determination that neither the IAEA nor the White House has made, may have impacted the poll’s outcome. Politico, by conflating the Iranian “nuclear program” and alleged “nuclear weapons program,” is making the same mistake we were trying to highlight.

The article also asserts:

ThinkProgress also scrambled to call into question an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi diplomats in the United States.

This we find very odd. Practically the entire U.S. foreign policy establishment reacted with skepticism to the bizarre and amateurish details of this plot. Eli’s post pointed to the leap to judgment made by a number of hawkish think tanks using the allegations to justify military action against Iran. Urging policymakers to wait for the conclusion of the investigation is not “call[ing] into question” the details of the plot. It is an observation that the rule of law should be respected and that all suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

And in the very next paragraph after quoting Eli’s post on the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, Politico gave the false impression that we were blaming the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for the rush to judgment:

The villain: AIPAC. “It would appear that AIPAC is now using the same escalating measures against Iran that were used before the invasion of Iraq,” Clifton wrote in August.

AIPAC is not mentioned in Eli’s post about the assassination plot nor have we suggested that AIPAC bears any responsibility for rush to judgment on the plot, nor the right-wing calls to attack Iran because of it.

Politico’s article inaccurately portrays our positions as: anti-Israel; denying the seriousness of the charges in the alleged assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador; and denying the existence of an Iranian nuclear program. None of these positions are reflected in any posts by CAP bloggers.

But long before then, it mischaracterizes progressives and the complaint that we made.  The piece opens:

Liberals and environmental activists desperately trying to change the narrative away from Solyndra are simultaneously working to throw the White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton under the bus with another energy trouble spot.

The Nation, The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Grist, Climate Progress and Media Matters have run editorials and articles in recent weeks bemoaning the “out of proportion” Solyndra coverage and drawing attention to the State Department’s pending review of the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline that would connect Canada’s Tar Sands to the Gulf Coast.

Uhh, no.  I’m going to repost the full debunking of this spin by Dave Roberts at Grist below, but here is his dead-on key point:

The whole point of the critique has been to expose the fact that another group of people, a group unremittingly hostile to Obama and clean energy, are desperately trying to focus the narrative on Solyndra — and they’re succeeding!

… Republican talking points are delivered as first-order news. Liberal talking points are wrapped in meta-news about liberals and their talking points. It makes liberals sound defensive and manipulative, and it’s condescending as sh*t.

Indeed, maybe my opening sentence should have been “Politico desperately trying to defend its excessive coverage of Solyndra.”

When cable news was criticized for excessive coverage of the Royal wedding, many used that opportunity to just do another Royal Wedding story — on whether the coverage was excessive.  Crafty folks, those media mavens.

UPDATE:  Daily Kos has a good analysis of how Politico’s coverage is skewed toward treating Solyndra — but not Keyston XL — as a scandal.

The Politico quoted me correctly later on, but missed the point — the coverage actually was (and still is)  disproportionate:

The liberal blog Climate Progress — run by the Center for American Progress — earlier this month dubbed Solyndra “the royal wedding of energy stories.”

It counted 190 mentions of Solyndra from Aug. 31 to Sept. 23 spanning 10 hours of coverage on the major television networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC — while in the same time period, the Keystone XL pipeline didn’t get a single mention on the networks.

I do media criticism on Climate Progress.  My point was that the coverage was, in fact, excessive, as with the Royal Wedding:

So Pew Research found that the media over-reported the Royal Wedding but under-reported rising gas/oil prices.  Darn you Pew Research for desperately trying to change the narrative to things the public actually care about!

Here is what the inimitable Dave Roberts has to say on the subject:

Politico doesn’t quite get it: The real problem with Solyndra media coverage

Apparently, enough people have been kvetching about the media’s coverage of Solyndra that Politico felt obligated to do a story on the complaints. I appreciate that the paper gave its critics, including me, space to make our case, but reporter Darren Samuelsohn has characterized my views and aims in ways I do not entirely agree with, so I want to clarify a few things.

It's nice -- you should visit sometime.

I, for one, am not “desperately trying to change the narrative away from Solyndra.” The whole point of the critique has been to expose the fact that another group of people, a group unremittingly hostile to Obama and clean energy, are desperately trying to focus the narrative on Solyndra — and they’re succeeding!

This is a Politico perennial. When Republicans tried to manipulate media narratives about the Solyndra bankruptcy, they were dutifully quoted in stories with headlines like, “Republicans Call Solyndra Biggest Deal Ever.” When liberals and environmentalists objected, they got stories like, “Liberals Try to Make Media Stop Calling Solyndra Biggest Deal Ever.” Republican talking points are delivered as first-order news. Liberal talking points are wrapped in meta-news about liberals and their talking points. It makes liberals sound defensive and manipulative, and it’s condescending as sh*t.

Anyway, the point of the criticism has been that the insider press has given Solyndra a level of coverage that wildly exceeds any reasonable assessment of its significance. And it has created an atmosphere of scandal that wildly exceeds any actual, proven wrongdoing or lawbreaking (of which, as I keep pointing out, there is still none). The press has done this in response to a Republican PR push that would seem grossly manipulative if its targets didn’t seem so eager to go along with it.

Samuelsohn also writes that I and my fellow critics are “working to throw the White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton under the bus with another energy trouble spot,” meaning the Keystone XL pipeline. That is just … no.

First of all, I mentioned the Keystone XL controversy in passing in one of the many posts I’ve written about Solyndra coverage, but my main point has always been that the coverage has been flawed on its own terms, not that the Solyndra collapse is inferior to some other, better scandal.

Second of all, insofar as I and others are concerned about Keystone XL, it has to do with the enormous stakes for the real world, not just for whether the White House or Hillary Clinton win the next few news cycles. This is what’s so frustrating about Politico and the culture of insider political news: They treat everything as though it’s a melodrama unfolding in Washington, D.C., pitting people and alliances against one another in an eternal Machiavellian pissing match.

But there is a real world. Solyndra and Keystone XL are real things in it, not just dueling narratives. And by any conceivable metric — energy, money, pollution, corruption — Keystone XL is a much more significant phenomenon. Solyndra was a bum loan that will be forgotten within a year as the solar industry continues its explosive growth. Keystone XL is a huge, dirty, expensive pipeline that would run down the middle of the country; it’s being pushed through via a rigged process; and its consequences for our energy system and our climate will last for decades. Considering those stakes, why would I or anyone else give a damn about who is “under the bus” in D.C. this week?

A perfect example of this insider mentality popped up today in National Journal (which unfortunately seems to be trying to match Politico hype-for-hype these days). In a story about how the Senate has not had its own flurry of Solyndra hearings to match the (duplicative) flurry of Solyndra hearings in the House, we get a Republican flack complaining about how Senate Dems aren’t taking up the issue:

“We had seven hearings on the [BP] oil spill within two months,” said Robert Dillon, spokesman for Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “That’s the difference of what they’re doing on Solyndra and what they did for Deepwater Horizon.”

Can you imagine the perspective from which this comparison makes sense? The BP oil spill was the country’s biggest environmental disaster ever, with 11 dead rig workers, legitimate charges of criminal negligence, and a whole regional economy disrupted. Solyndra was a relatively small company that got a single government loan and went bankrupt. Yet for Dillon, this is a tit-for-tat, a game. You got your hearings, we should get our hearings.

I’ve spent time in Washington, D.C., so I’m somewhat familiar with the bizarre, distorting bubble effect that comes with staying there too long. But when you’ve come to the point that you’re making facile comparisons between the Deepwater Horizon spill and the Solyndra bankruptcy, when you’re seeing them both through the lens of which party is scoring points on the other, you need to take a f’ing vacation.

And if you’re a reporter who’s taking that comparison seriously, dutifully writing a story on it, you have lost your goddamn perspective.

That’s the real complaint about Solyndra coverage and the real complaint about the self-referential Beltway media cycle — not only that it is driven and shaped by conservatives, but that it has completely lost touch with the real world.

– Dave Roberts, Grist

Protester with 'hashtag' symbol

The ad, which was largely ripped off from a pseudonymous Israeli neocon blog (whose author proclaims to be a “friend” of ECI’s executive-director-in-title-only Noah Pollak), portrayed anti-Semitic sentiments in videos of two people — one of them an admitted petty thief and apparent camera-hungry provocateur — and a photograph of a sign-holder. And other websites posted a woman expressing anti-Semitic sentiments on a Reason video apparently at L.A.’s protest. That’s four people out of hundreds of thousands worldwide that have participated in 99 Percent protests. The “few Jew-baiters,” wrote Michelle Goldberg, “are marginal, particularly compared to the large numbers of Jewish activists taking part.” She wrote that ECI’s accusation was “dishonest and deceptive.” It’s worse: If it weren’t such a serious subject — Marc Tracy calls the accusation “highly irresponsible” — labeling the whole movement as “anti-Semitic” would be laughable. Dan Sieradski of Occupy Judaism, which is seeking to rally Jewish supporters to the 99 Percent movement, dismissed the “couple of jerks and idiots” and noted that a thousand people turned out for high holiday services organized for the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Despite the seriousness of the charge — and the consequences of deploying it frivolously — it’s difficult not to snicker at the continuing far-right attacks on the 99 Percent Movement as anti-Semitic. Commentary launched a factually-challenged attack on New York’s Occupy Wall Street protest movement. And Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government site said that staunch Israel supporter Rep. Steve israel (D-NY) supported an “anti-Israel/anti-Semitic” cause.

But the most ridiculous attack, by far, came from the far-right Pajamas Media website. A writer going by the name “Zombie” — whose put up some of the most raucously funny attacks on the 99 Percent Movement (“Commies and Kooks,” etc.) — had a doozy of a post on Monday.

Organizers at Denver’s 99 Percent Movement rally had taped a hashtag symbol — the pound sign which is now used in Twitter to tag a word — on their shirts. The mark was supposed to make the organizers easy to identify in a crowd, but Zombie saw a much more nefarious force at play: National Socialism!

Take a look at the pictures:

At Pajamas Media, Zombie wrote:

Don’t these people see an echo of the swastika in their new power symbol? Don’t they realize that the early Nazi Party was (among other things, obviously) also overtly anti-capitalist?… Don’t they know that the early Nazis tried to garner sympathy with street rallies and marches?

When informed in the comment section of the post that the symbol was merely a Twitter symbol — and not a “bizarre neo-swastika” — Zombie continued to insist the 99 Movement has Nazi tendencies:

As a commenter notes, the symbol may have derived originally from the Twitter “hashtag,” but that in no way diminishes its creepiness. It may “just” be a rotated hashtag, but that doesn’t lessen its significance as a power symbol. The swastika, after all, was “just” a Buddhist good luck marking before the Nazis adopted it and started using it to indicate something else.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the mainstream media’s self-appointed final arbiter of who is and isn’t a Nazi and what is and isn’t anti-Semitic, has proclaimed that “Occupy Wall Street Is not anti-Semitic.” The mainstream media should take heed of his judgment and let the meme die, leaving it to the far-right symbologists and conspiracy theorists.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) didn't disclose his conflicts of interest.

Defense spending is not the reason for our more than $14 trillion in national debt. Nor should it be identified as a primary revenue source to relieve the nation’s fiscal troubles. There is indeed room for efficiency — but cutting for the sake of cutting is a dangerous proposition.

It is plainly untrue to say that the Defense Department isn’t a major driver of our deficit. After all, defense spending makes up the bulk of the government’s discretionary budget.

While there is nothing wrong with Politico publishing a piece advocating against cutting the defense budget, the paper did make a major omission by failing to include a crucial fact: Hunter’s top campaign contributors all come from the defense industry. As campaign finance data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics shows, half of the top 20 corporate contributors to his campaign are defense contractors:

Politico and all other media outlets should disclose these conflicts of interest when discussing this issue. ThinkProgress asked Politico to comment, but we have yet to receive a response.

In fact, Democrats who voted against clean energy were more than three times as likely to lose their seats than those who voted for it:

— Out of the 211 Democrats who voted for ACES, only 41 either lost or retired and saw their seats go Republican. Thus 81 percent of Democrats voting for the climate bill won their races.

– Of the 44 Democrats who voted against ACES, 28 lost, retired and lost the seat to Republicans, or in the case of Parker Griffith, flipped parties and lost the Republican primary. That means 64 percent of Democrats voting against the climate bill lost their seat.

– Of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill, only one was punished by the voters — Rep. Mike Castle (DE-AL), who lost his U.S. Senate primary to eventual loser Christine O’Donnell. Reps. Mary Bono Mack (CA-45), Dave Reichert (WA-8), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Chris Smith (NJ-4), and Leonard Lance (NJ-7) were re-elected. Rep. Mark Kirk (IL-10) was elected to the U.S. Senate and Rep. John McHugh (NY-23) became Secretary of the Army.

By contrast, the fight against big oil’s Proposition 23 to kill California’s climate legislation buoyed Democrats Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Barbara Boxer to victory, helping to activate a broad coalition of progressive voters to come to the polls.

Indeed, Cheney has been using Politico as his print version of Fox News. In May, Politico’s Allen was leaked an “exclusive” preview of Cheney’s attacks on Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo. Again in October, Allen “broke news” that Cheney was attacking Obama’s Afghanistan policy. And just last week, Allen again reported a Cheney attack on Obama’s handling of the Christmas Day terrorist incident that was released “in a statement to Politico.”

Does Cheney “have a thing with Politico?” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked Politico’s Jonathan Martin today on Hardball. “He uses you like he’d use Drudge or somebody,” Matthews charged. A stunned Martin had no response for why Cheney has been so willing to give Politico “exclusives.” “You’d have to ask the Vice President, Chris,” Martin responded, “I’m not sure.” Matthews kept pressing the issue:

MATTHEWS: I mean, he’s got his own news conduit.

MARTIN: You know, we aggressively report on both sides.

MATTHEWS: It’s not reporting. He feeds you this stuff. … I do like Politico. He’s feeding you guys this crap. [...]

What’s he call up and say? “I got a hot one for you, Jon. Can you take — what’s your email address?” Is that what he does?

Watch it:

While Scott Rasmussen, the firm’s president, contends that he has no ax to grind — his bio notes that he has been “an independent pollster for more than a decade” and “has never been a campaign pollster or consultant for candidates seeking office” — his opponents on the left insist he is the hand that feeds conservative talkers a daily trove of negative numbers that provides grist for attacks on Obama and the Democratic Party.

According to the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity, Rasmussen has been a paid consultant for the RNC and President Bush’s 2004 campaign. The RNC paid Rasmussen $95,500 between 2003 and 2004 for items listed as “survey,” “survey cost” and “voter data.” Bush’s campaign paid Rasmussen $45,500 for “survey research.”

Despite Cheney’s well-known and worn-out attacks on Obama, Politico’s Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei secured an interview with the former vice president in order to inform their readers today of the shocking revelation that Cheney thinks Obama is projecting “weakness” on Afghanistan. The paper’s top reporters sat down with Cheney for a 90-minute interview and transcribed Cheney’s attacks without challenge, criticism, or rebuttal:

Cheney said the president’s “agonizing” about Afghanistan strategy “has consequences for your forces in the field.” [...]

“Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they’ve been asked to do?” [...]

“Here’s a guy without much experience, who campaigned against much of what we put in place … and who now travels around the world apologizing,” Cheney said. “I think our adversaries — especially when that’s preceded by a deep bow … — see that as a sign of weakness.”

Of course, not much of what Cheney said is news. He’s been the GOP’s lead attack dog on Obama since the White House decided to release memos earlier this year detailing the Bush administration’s authorization of torture.

This passage in the Politico article best captures the passive, obedient approach that Allen and VandeHei took with Cheney:

Cheney rejected any suggestion that Obama had to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan because the one employed by the previous administration failed.

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating.

Allen and VandeHei didn’t elaborate either. Did they press Cheney to explain? If not, why not? If they had, they should have come to the same conclusion former Republican senator Rick Santorum came to recently. “Let’s be very clear,” Santorum said, the Bush administration did not give the generals “the resources they need to accomplish the mission.”

Instead of playing Dick Cheney ghostwriters, perhaps Allen and VandeHei can take a lesson from McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay on how to fact check his baseless smears.

Just Another Shrill Harpy (Wikimedia)

I used to think that US Senate Barbara Boxer was an experienced legislator with a solid progressive record on the issues. But then I read this Politico article in which various anonymous people criticize her “abrasive personal style” and “outspoken partisan liberal” demeanor. Big trouble! And then I got to thinking, I recall having read similar critiques of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. And Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate and now as Secretary of State has been subjected to similar criticism. Nancy Pelosi, too.

You’ve really got to wonder what the deal is with the Democratic Party that every woman who comes forward into a position of power and influence is a shrill, castrating harridan. I mean, what are Democrats thinking? What poor judgment! Doesn’t everyone know that politics is a business in which the only people who get ahead are soft-spoken sweethearts like Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer? Somehow male politicians have managed to figure this out. What’s stopping the women?

But since the group is actively advertising on Politico’s website, the publication’s uncritical treatment of the Swift Boat Health Attack Group raises certain ethical concerns. While the paper did publish an Editor’s Note revealing that “Conservatives for Patients’ Rights purchased advertising space on POLITICO.com for this campaign” at the bottom of one article, its latest profile does not inform readers of the potential conflict of interest.

Today’s piece by Carrie Budoff Brown describes Scott as “a conservative health care champion” and cheerfully reports that Conservatives for Patients Rights will soon release a documentary “illustrating what he describes as the perils of public health care in Great Britain and Canada” that will ‘most likely’ make it “into TV ads” (and future Politico stories, to be sure).

Brown dives into Scott’s fantasy world without so much as informing the reader that the Democratic health care plans have only limited resemblance to the British or Canadian systems. She clearly defines Scott in his own terms — as a crusader for “choice, competition, accountability and personal responsibility” and helps Scott conflate health care reform with the problems of Great Britain’s system by reporting that Scott’s aides are circulating an article in which Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized for conditions at a government-owned hospital (again, without explaining how conditions at a British hospital relate to current reform proposals).

The irony of all this is striking, and it strikes Brown over the head. The Wonk Room has previously reported that as a hospital executive, Scott limited “choice” and “competition” by buying up “hospitals by the bucketful” and routinely placed profits ahead of “accountability” or quality of care. During Scott’s tenure at Columbia/HCA, his cost cutting methods threatened patient care and safety:

- Susan Marks, a technician at one of Scott’s hospitals, was forced to monitor 72 heart monitors by herself. Marks explained, “I have to. I’ve been told you either do it, or there’s the door.” [ABC News, 9/26/97]

- Scott downsized nursing staffs, created conditions where “babies were attended as infrequently as every three hours. Once, the only nurse caring for seven ill infants was so busy she failed to hear an alarm when a baby stopped breathing. A parent dashed to the baby and stimulated breathing, the state report said.” [New York Times, 5/11/97]

- Hospital workers in Florida complained, “gloves come in only one size, and rip easily.” In addition, California employees protested “filthy conditions,” and being “stretched to the limit” as Scott’s company slashed “the ratio of nurses to patients.” [Money Driven Medicine, pg. 119]

But Brown seems taken in by Scott’s “soft-spoken” style and in the vanilla-flavored interview that follows the write up, she asks him where Democrats could concede on the public health plan option, playfully presses him to identify his donors and pitches an open-ended question about his background as a hospital executive.

By any measure, Scott’s multi-million dollar investment in online advertising is legitimizing his group and their criticisms. And Politico is helping in more ways than one.

Maybe it’s just me, but it does seem to me that if Politico wants to run an article hyping a dubious poll indicating that a majority of the public favors starting a war with North Korea that they might want to devote some coverage to the issue of the possible consequences of such a war.

After all, insofar as people do favor such a step, it’s almost certainly because they don’t understand what it might entail. But a war could easily involve the deaths of millions of people and the destruction of one of the world’s largest cities. South Korea, with American assistance, would undoubtedly prevail in such a conflict but the price paid in blood would be extremely high and the impact on the global economy could be extremely grave. Meanwhile, the world would be left with the very thorny question of what to do with the post-war DPRK. In some very narrow sense of what a “politico” might care about, these issues don’t matter. But even in pretty crass political terms, public opinion would clearly be much more impacted by reaction to the actual consequences of military action than to whatever kind of weird push polling Rasmussen wants to do.

Ezra’s main point is that coverage that’s utterly trivial and that poisons public understanding of crucial issues that effect the lives of billions of people is rewarded by the market, and that Politico does a good of delivering on coverage that’s utterly trivial and that poisons public understanding of crucial issues that effect the lives of billions of people. This is true, but it seems more like a rationalization for bad behavior than a reason to do it. These are hard times for the journalism business, but that doesn’t mean that people in the media should stop holding each other to any kind of reasonable standards of quality and responsibility. I don’t think the existence of a market economy should be seen as giving everyone ethical carte blanche to totally ignore the welfare of their fellow citizens when going about their business.