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Between Fred Thompson and the American Enterprise Intstitute

Reporting this morning for the private health insurance lobby, NPR's Julie Rovner gets very, very basic:

"The health care cost debate pretty much comes down to this: 'You can't cut costs without hurting someone.'"

How's that for analysis. And to back it up we get a little Meet the Press sound-bite from Fred Thompson (yes him): "The only way to really save cost is to have rationing or it can be done by a cram down by the government and take it out of the hides of doctors hospitals."

Rovner's report mainly serves to highlight and promote the research of Elliott Fisher of the Dartmouth Institute. The big deal is that Fisher has found that some areas in the US with lower cost prices for health care have better outcomes. Funny thing is that on June 11, 2009 NPR featured this exact research. An interesting thing not mentioned on NPR is the chief "partners" of the Dartmouth Institute. On the list are

• Wellpoint Foundation
• Aetna Foundation
• United Health Foundation

I do smell a conflict of interest, eh?

Rovner fills out the report by going to a solid centrist - Len Nichols (no single payer, he) - of the New America Foundation (as far left as NPR dare venture) , and then the wrap up is provided by Joe Antos of the far right AEI who concludes that real change to health care is a cultural/behavioral issue more than a cost issue.

On the DL

Hello all. I want to let readers know that I'll be posting infrequently for the next week or so - and any posts will be very brief. Lately, my hands have been starting to show signs of carpal tunnel syndrome and so I'm going to take a bit of a break/summer vacation from the computer.

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NPR and the Pragmatic Police State

This morning NPR features "an exclusive first look at a legal proposal....a detailed plan for holding terrorism suspects without trial, and it comes from two experts outside of the government." Inspite of the two "experts" mentioned by David Greene, Ari Shapiro only interviews one of them, Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution.

According to Shapiro "Wittes occupies a relatively unique position in national security. He has studied and written books on pragmatic approaches to fighting terrorism." [Actually he has written only one book on terrorism - Law and the Long War.]

I don't have any problem with NPR interviewing Wittes. Unfortunately, he is an important fish in circles of state power in Washington, DC, though - not surprisingly - his ideas are not particularly fresh or inspiring, and he heartily supports for projections of US military and foreign policy hegemony. Consider the Publisher's Weekly and Booklist reviews of his book:

• PW: "Both a defense and critique of the Bush administration, the book argues in favor of many of the measures taken by the executive branch while condemning its failure to secure congressional cooperation and the necessary legal architecture to back policies that were bound to be unpopular."
• Booklist: "Wittes remains highly sympathetic to the administration’s aims, giving them the benefit of the doubt on matters that other critics of the administration have not. Ultimately, his hope is that innovative legal structures will be forthcoming and seen as legitimate in a way that current efforts are not."

As Wittes himself states in an article on the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, "we have no choice but to continue the war on terror in some form."

My problem with NPR's coverage of Wittes is that it is an endorsement of Wittes' viewpoint. In spite of his utter lack of credentials in the area of human rights, international, or Constitutional law and his rather conventional apologist approach to torture, he is a "expert" with "pragmatic approaches." As Glenn Greewald notes, Wittes can't even get the most basic Constitutional points correct when he argues for "legal" dictatorial powers for the President.

And what is the thinking behind Wittes' expert, pragmatic approaches? Consider this excerpt of the report:

(Shapiro) "So why push for indefinite detention at all? Well, Wittes says we already have it. People have been at Guantanamo for years. There are thousands more in Afghanistan...." (Wittes) "And so there's no question that we're detaining people outside of the criminal justice system. The question is what the rules are for those detentions and who makes those rules."

Look closely at the logic of this.

So why push to codify and legalize practice __________?
Because __________ is already being done!

All you have to do is put any debased government abuse of power in the blank - torture, rape, murder, rendition, illegal surveillance, etc. to see where this can lead. In Wittes' world (and NPR's by extension) the problem is not with the practice itself and a craven and complicit Congress that refuses its constitutional role of holding the executive office perpetrators accountable. Instead, the problem is that Congress has been slow to enact legislation to codify the practices. And according to Wittes, this reluctance to legislate away basic Constitutional values - and this is where he becomes a hero of the Weekly Standard security state devotees - opens up the possibilty of serious judicial oversight -OMG!

As Grumpy Demo points out on his blog - this is the kind of logic would please anyone who is hoping that our three branches of government would get "pragmatic" and realize that what we really need in the "war on terror" is a Unitary Benevolent Authoritarian Strong Man in the mold of Pinochet, Peron, or Castro.

Impromptu Shoulder Rub...Oooh La La!

(graphic from Truthdig)

According to Eric Westervelt:

"During the George W. Bush years Chancellor Merkl was often seen smiling and friendly with the president even when he surprised Merkl by giving her an impromtu shoulder rub....by all accounts the two leaders liked each other...there's been no such personal chumminess thus far between Merkl and President Obama."

This does say a lot about Westervelt's feelings for the "George W. Bush years."

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A Militant Funeral

NPR may struggle mightily with what to call torture - "the problem is that the word torture is loaded with political and social implications for several reasons, including the fact that torture is illegal under U.S. law and international treaties the United States has signed" - but when it comes to human beings killed by the US military, be they civilians or irregular forces, there's no hesitation: they are militants plain and simple.

This morning David Greene introduces another drone attack story by claiming that the "US has struck again at militants near the border with Afghanistan. The American airstrikes yesterday killed at least 45 militants...." Greene then turns things over to Julie McCarthy who says, "The details of the assault on the remote tribal area of South Waziristan - known as Pakistan's badlands - are still emerging, but local media report that dozens of militants were killed when three drone missiles were fired on Taliban fighters as they gathered for a funeral of fellow militants."

There are a few problems with Greene and McCarthy's reporting. Despite the heavy civilian toll of past drone attacks, Greene asserts as fact that "at least 45 militants" were killed. So where is the evidence? How does he know any of them were "militants." McCarthy notes that details "are still emerging," but that doesn't stop her from claiming that "local media report that dozens of militants were killed," that they were "Taliban fighters," and that it was a "funeral of fellow militants." So what local media is McCarthy referring to, and just how were the dead identified as "Taliban fighters"?

It's interesting to look at other reports of the same attack. According to the BBC

"At least 43 people have died in missile strikes by a US drone aircraft in a militant stronghold of Pakistan, a Taliban spokesman has told the BBC."

Pretty basic journalistic practice. "People" get killed, and the allegations are sourced. The Guardian goes even further noting that "one local security official, who could not be identified as he was not authorised to speak to media, said that more than 60 had died of whom 'half are civilians'." Civilians? What do you know, another detail that NPR somehow missed.

In addition to the factual vagaries of the report, Greene and McCarthy's casual attitude about unmanned killing machines and attacks on a funeral is really disturbing. So now it's acceptable military practice to bomb funerals? It's telling that when the word is torture NPR is concerned about "the fact that torture is illegal under U.S. law and international treaties," but when they are using language favorable to the US military there is no such concern.

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NPR Does Care About European Demonstrations - Sort Of

According to Renee Montagne, "Europeans are reacting with outrage over events in Iran...and demonstrators in major capitals have taken to the streets." Wow! European protests are so important that NPR quickly puts a reporter on the story and has her on the scene. Eleanor Beardsley checks in from the outskirts of Paris at one of the demonstrations, complete with ambient sounds of protesters and speakers.

Could it be that NPR is changing it's outlook on European public demonstrations? It seems like only yesterday that the record shattering February 15, 2003 demonstrations against the coming Iraq War rocked the globe and especially those "major capitals" Montagne is so keen on. But back then European demonstrations drew a yawn from NPR -

- picking up a mere mention during a Margot Adler report on the concurrent demonstration in New York and an explanation of why those meaningless protests wouldn't deter the Commander in Chief from doing his job.

So what gives? Why is NPR so interested in European street protests now? It must be the Iran factor (see post below), and the opportunity for Eleanor Beardsley to slip in these sly closing lines that would do Benjamin Netanyahu proud:

"Wayne White is a fellow with the Middle East Institute and a former director of Middle East intelligence at the State Department....says if the Iranian leaders discredit themselves in front of the eyes of the world, European nuclear negotiators are likely to be much more wary. He says that if they stole the election, they surely wouldn't hesitate to lie about The Bomb."

Faster Than You Can Say NSA

On Democracy Now!'s Monday headlines, Amy Goodman reported on the WSJ disclosure about Internet surveillance in Iran being aided by Siemen's and Nokia. Later that afternoon NPR had a far more detailed report on the same topic. All in all, nothing wrong with that - but I couldn't help thinking there was something familiar about the ominous technology described in the report:

"It involves the insertion of hardware into the flow of online data, allowing Tehran to search each and every digital packet of information for keywords."

Somewhere in my memory I could have sworn that there was another government somewhere that engaged in the unlawful surveillance of "the contents of all the electronic voice and data communications" passing through AT&T. Well, dang, if it wasn't my own government rooting around in our Internet and phone traffic! As the link to the ABC blog indicates, the story broke way back in May of 2006 and offered some startling and (dare I say) ominous details that seemed awfully similar to what the Iranian government is now doing. Given that this was in our own country and clearly was in violation of existing surveillance laws, surely NPR was on it right away. The source of the May 2006 story was whistleblower, Mark Klein. Let's see when NPR got around to bringing him on: November 7, 2007 - not bad, just under a year and a half!

There seems to be an interesting prioritizing system at work at NPR: if it's a story indicating criminal behavior by the US Government against its citizens - that goes in the Ho Hum We'll Get Around to it Eventually queue, but if the story reflects poorly on a State Department approved enemy, it zips right to the front of the line. However, if the story reflects really badly on Uncle Sam - as whistleblower Russell Tice's allegations do, that Get Around to it Eventually queue can actually end up being Never At All.

A Recommendation

If you haven't seen it, definitely head over to Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory blog to read his take-down of Alicia Shepard's defense of NPR's refusal to call torture torture. Then consider heading over to Shepard's disgraceful post and read and/or add to the slew of comments taking her to task for her Orwellian tour de force.

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Irony (and History) Is Dead at NPR

(graphic from Borev.net)

On Saturday's ATC Guy Raz held a friendly with John Negroponte to see what he thought about the US joining the UN Human Rights Council. Negroponte told Raz

• "No matter how repugnant some of these organizations or behaviors might be, we're probably better served in an international organization by participating..."
• "I think the leadership...are from countries that have good human rights records..."

Raz added his own skepticism noting that it barely approved monitors for Darfur and "it's already withdrawn human rights monitors from places like Cuba and Belarus. Can the council really be taken seriously if, as some have argued, many of it's decisions are simply political?"

Has Raz ever heard of irony, or for that matter Google? All one has to do it Google "Negroponte human rights" and voila! you get a whole assortment of interesting information about Negroponte's lifelong journey through the dark side. During the report Raz tells us that John Negroponte was "former US Ambassador to Iraq and UN, former director of National Intelligence, and most recently Deputy Secretary of State under the Bush Administration" but - dang! - he somehow failed to mention Negroponte's gig in Honduras from 1981 to 1985. That's odd because there's a lot of information out there about it. Let's see he's got his own special file at the National Security Archive, a nice long newspaper article in the Baltimore Sun, a virtual dossier of articles at In These Times, attention from The Nation and The Progressive, and even a film about his time there.

But really, who needs to know that Negroponte was running cover for an infamous Honduran death squad (Battalion 316) and paling around with death squad leader General Gustavo Alvarez when all he's on to talk about is the effectiveness of a UN human rights council? Besides that was so long ago, and after his tenure in Iraq there's no indication that the US had created death squads like the ones Negroponte helped operate in Honduras...or is there?

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And That Video?

On Tuesday I saw Glenn Greenwald's post about secrecy-creep in which he noted this report from McClatchy regarding the Pentagon's decision to suppress a report on the May 4th massacre of Afghan civilians in Farah. This passage in the McClatchy piece caught my eye:

U.S. officials also said they'd release a video that military officials said shows Taliban fighters attacking Afghan and U.S. forces and then running into a building. Shortly afterward, a U.S. aircraft dropped a bomb that destroyed the building.

Video...hmmm? That seemed awfully familiar - and then I remembered that I'd heard about it on NPR. Back on May 29th's Morning Edition - Steve Inskeep interviewed General Petraeus and actually asked him about the May 4th killings, which led to this interchange:

• Inskeep: "....U.S. military officers have said that there is video showing that in fact Taliban fighters were the targets. Have you seen that video?"
• Petraeus: "I have....there is indeed video from a B-1 Bomber that very clearly shows bombs hitting individuals who are the Taliban who are reacting to the movements of the Afghan and coalition forces on the ground."
• Inskeep: "How are they identifiable as Taliban? Men with guns? Men who had just been fighting with Afghan allies on the ground? What is it?
• Petraeus: "It's a combination of intelligence that is then confirmed by this actual video. But we'll lay this out when in fact this brigadier general briefs the press in Kabul, when he's done briefing President Karzai, our leaders in Washington and then returns to Afghanistan."
• Inskeep: "Are you going to release the video itself?"
• Petreaus: "We won't give it to you, but I believe that we will show it as part of the press briefing."
• Inskeep: "So, you're that confident that this video will prove your side of events that you're willing to publicize this?"
• Petraeus: "What it will prove, is that the targets of these different strikes were the Taliban. What it does not prove, is that there were not civilians killed. I think we agree, actually, that there were civilians killed in this incident along — again — with a substantial number of Taliban...."

That was May 29th, and the military quickly made Petraeus' claims a DefenseLink news item. But now it's mid-June and it seems the amazing video isn't so amazing after all. So now I'm just waiting for NPR to get Inskeep back on the phone to the good general and ask him, "Oh yeah, General, about that video....?

My guess is, I'll be waiting and waiting.

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NPR Does Health Care Right - Far Right That Is

A few days ago a reader (h/t to Masbrow) mentioned an interesting article by Felice Pace in CounterPunch. Pace does a little exploring with the NPR search engine to see how poor, old single payer fares there. He notes that "...stories mention single payer. [but] I can find no NPR news reports or other shows which actually focused on single payer or on the movement to achieve it."*** This prompts him to ask, "Why is NPR refusing to report on what 60% of US citizens and the majority of health professionals want?" To answer that question he did a little more digging at NPR and found that (as of 2006) NPR's financial health care was mighty dependent on some heavy hitters in insurance industry:

• $1 million+: Farmers Insurance Group of Companies, Prudential Financial
• $500,000 - $999,999: Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, Allstate Insurance Company, Northwestern Mutual Foundation
• $250,000 - $499,999: AARP, The Hartford Financial Services Group, UnumProvident
• $100,000 – $249,999: Liberty Mutual Insurance Company

Single payer may be off the table, but when money sets the table, public radio isn't so different from our trusty public servants.

***A slight correction: I found that by searching "Physicians for a National Health Program" there was one relatively recent (Dec. 24, 2008) report that focused on the single-payer plan; however, the whole point of that Christmas Eve coal-in-the-stocking from NPR was how single-payer is neither as popular nor realistic as supporters claim. It featured Baucus and Rep. Pete Stark poo-pooing single-payer and Rovner relying on one dud poll to claim that "while single-payer has won big majorities in many polls, in this one it came in dead last" (How's that for unbiased?).

Now that Obama and the Dem's sadly watered-down health care proposal is working its way through the bowels of Congress [and still facing attacks from the GOP, PhRMA, and insurance industry because of the public option] I thought it might be worthwhile to put NPR's most recent health care stories into perspective and see whose viewpoints (i.e. $$$) hold sway.

My poor little post of last Friday - noting how TWO features on Morning Edition flogged the public option - had barely seen the light of cyberspace when the next morning NPR felt obliged to give oft-consulted Karen Ignagni of AHIP ("enemy number one" of single payer) unchallenged airtime to denounce the public option with the help of Scott Simon. Instead of responding here - I dropped a comment (reprinted at the end of this post) on NPR's site.

Since then things have only gotten worse. On Sunday morning Rovner claimed that "the bill coming up this week is going to be the most left-leaning if you will...could provide subsidies to people earning up to 5 times the poverty level...so this may be the farthest to the left of all." With that salvo, is it any wonder that on Tuesday morning Steve Inskeep was all over Kathleen Sebelius with the Republican talking points about the public option and denouncing single-payer:

• "I want to understand this number because...Republicans have said, quoted a study, way over a hundred million Americans...so what's your number?"
• "Just the numbers you mention...this option, this public option, if it passes as you imagine is going to be vast."
• "....people in Congress are talking about putting some kind of limit on this public plan...what kind of limits are you prepared to expect..."
• "...would you accept a limit that would say this is just not going to be a national health insurance at some point in the future...?"
• "Can you say flat out it's just never going to be single-player health insurance....?"

This morning Inskeep was at it again in a chat with Juan Williams. After Williams claimed "what the government's doing may in fact drive up the cost of health care" and touted a CBO report alleging that the Dem/Obama plan would "cause some people to lose their insurance" - Inskeep played a clip of the Sebelius interview in which she calls the potential for single-payer insurance a "draconian scenario." He then asks Williams, "Has the White House found any effective way to prove a negative here; to say this is not going to become creeping socialism?" [I swear to God, I'm not making this stuff up.]

You might think I'm selectively picking only the anti-public plan stories or the anti-single player reports. If you can find any featuring a positive tilt on either the public-plan or single-player, let me know; when I searched NPR to see if even a few of the major proponents of progressive health care reform have been featured in the last two weeks, here's what I found:

• Progressive Democrats of America - nothing
• California Nurses Association -nada
• Physicians for a National Health Plan - zilch

Alas, seems that real health care reform at NPR is DOA...

[My comment left at NPR below Scott Simon's schmooze with Karen Ignani]:

Congratulations NPR - as a "public" news station you have done a great service by providing a voice to the voiceless: the health insurance industry which lacks the funds and connections to get it's message out. After yesterday's Republican slant on the public plan from Liasson, Rovner, and Inskeep - you showed a brave commitment to your mission statement ["'Fair' means that we present all important views on a subject."] by giving yet more airtime to the insurance lobby this morning.

Methinks it's time to tell your member stations to stop begging for support from the public (whose opinions don't seem to amount to much on NPR) and to just plug into the money stream from the insurance industry that you are so loyal to.

NPR Hearts IMF

Over on the sidebar you'll notice that I list Dean Baker's "Beat the Press" under General Media Critics. If you've never taken a gander a Baker's work - let me recommend it - especially today. He has a real smackdown of NPR's pathetic attempt at giving props to the IMF this morning.

Baker's merciless dissection of NPR's disinformation hinges on two major problems (lies?) with the story. One is a lie of omission - and one of commission.

On omission, Baker points out that though the NPR piece claims that IMF money is going to developing countries,

"The piece never mentions the fact that the bulk of the IMF lending at present is going to East European countries, not the developing world."

As for the making-crap-up department, Baker notes that NPR

"referred to a 'global savings glut' which it attributes to developing countries' fears that the IMF won't have enough resources to bail them out in a crisis, and therefore their need to self-insure. WRONG!!!!!!"

As he points out the reason for countries' savings was so these countries would never have to borrow from the insidious IMF which has a track record for ruining the economies it "helps." But instead of reading about it here, head on over to Baker's blog - you won't be sorry.

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