Sunday, August 02, 2009

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.
Posted by Mytwords at 12:49 AM
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12 comments:

Curly said...

Liane Hansen hosted an exquisitely balanced look at how Americans view health care reform. The guests were the editor of an Amarillo TX paper, (who was honest enough to volunteer that his readership had gone 80/20 for McCain) and on the other hand, the editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer. (Who mentioned that Cincinnati had just voted Democratic for the first time in decades.)
Not surprisingly, they talked about how much public opposition there is to reform.
So for their next segment they'll have editors from Berkeley and Madison papers, right?

8/2/09, 10:19 AM
The Boss of You said...

Heard that editor interview. Outraged by that. Came here to complain. Glad someone beat me to it.

8/2/09, 10:44 AM
The Boss of You said...

And, oh, btw, cooking shows are popular in Pakistan.

8/2/09, 11:01 AM
larry, dfh said...

As a change of pace, let me praise the Patti Smith show: 'Bob Dylan, Blowing in the Wind' which aired on whyy Saturday night. The irony of a largely pro-war network airing a blantantly anti-war piece was not lost on me. I actually wonder if npr had heard the show before airing

8/2/09, 11:29 AM
Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...

Meaningful health care reform is dead.

NPR is just playing jass-Taps over the corpse.

8/2/09, 11:35 AM
Mytwords said...

Re: Health Care

Hey, according to NPR health guru Julie Rovner, "The problem with health care is that it’s so big and so complicated that the public is never really going to understand all the moving parts of this."

I first heard this bit of condescending stupidity on FAIR's Counterspin. The Columbia Journalism Review also dinged Rovner for this remark. It was made on a Wed. 7/22 Diane Rehm show.

8/2/09, 1:39 PM
Anonymous said...

Hey, according to NPR health guru Julie Rovner, "The problem with health care is that it’s so big and so complicated that the public is never really going to understand all the moving parts of this."


Funny, I would swear that she was referring to "The problem with NPR..."

perhaps she misspoke.

8/2/09, 4:19 PM
Anonymous said...

According to NPR's John Ydstie, "The global financial storm has swept away millions of jobs and destroyed trillions of dollars in wealth, spawning calls for economic reform. The crisis originated in the United States — the result of careless lending, exotic financial products and lax regulation.

Yes, of course:

Careless lending -- as in "who cares whether they have a job, collateral, or credit. Give Joe Shmoe the $500,000 loan."

Exotic financial products -- as in "Bets on bets on bets on bets on bets that Joe (and sally, and Virginia and Bob and John and Jake) Schmoe will pay back their loan"

and

Lax regulation -- as in, "Anything goes"


No fraud involved here. Not at all.

Nobody has even made the suggestion.


...except bank fraud expert and former S&L scandal investigator William Black, who has said there was massive fraud at the core of the financial meltdown.

as he says in an interview with Bill Moyershere

BILL MOYERS: I was taken with your candor at the conference here in New York to hear you say that this crisis we're going through, this economic and financial meltdown is driven by fraud. What's your definition of fraud?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, "I create trust in you, and then I betray that trust, and get you to give me something of value." And as a result, there's no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's what we have.



and Cenk Uygur here

Cenk Uygur: Would you suggest that some of these top bankers in the country be arrested for fraud?


William K. Black: You obviously have to make the ... do the investigation, but yes, there would be plentiful numbers of the top executives that we would find committed these kinds of frauds. They certainly have institutions that follow a pattern that only makes sense if you're engaged in accounting fraud."

//end William Black quotes

But then what would a bank fraud expert with a PhD in economics like William Black know?

Especially compared to an NPR economic "expert" (BS in English literature with a minor in speech communications) like John Ydstie?

It's hard to say whether the people on NPR are dishonest or just stupid (or perhaps both).

8/2/09, 9:22 PM
Anonymous said...

Here are the "take home lessons" from Ydsties piece (linked to above)

"Just look at President Obama's agenda, he says, and you see government being very assertive."

"It's in some real sense un-American [to have government involvement in business]; it's not the way we do things in the United States,"

"We now have in America a bigger socialist sector, if you want to call it that, than we've had in a very long time — maybe ever."

"Given what the administration is contemplating on health care, the environment and other initiatives, Rogoff estimates taxes could rise by 25 to 50 percent."

" there's no question that higher taxes would slow U.S. growth and raise unemployment closer to European levels."

"While Rogoff says he might personally tolerate that in exchange for European-style social benefits, it's not clear that most Americans would.

8/2/09, 9:59 PM
George said...

Is Jim DeMint the new NPR poster boy?

8/3/09, 6:17 AM
Anonymous said...

The Future of Capitalism on NPR couldn't find a single real "socialist" to discuss the issue.

I guess Planet Money was too tired from pimping for donations.

edk

ps: Larry The real failure of NPR is found in the very few things they do right or well. The exceptions prove the rule.

8/3/09, 8:56 AM
Anonymous said...

"(Reuters) - Bank of America Corp was charged by the SEC on Monday with making "materially false and misleading statements" in the Merrill Lynch acquisition, court documents said."

well, well, well.

FRAUD IN THE BANKING INDUSTRY

Imagine that.

I seriously doubt NPR's economics 'expert' (translation: "English Lit major with a minor in Speech communications") John Ydstie can.

he's too busy bashing "Obama socialism" [sic]

8/3/09, 12:28 PM

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