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.

Sock Puppet Reporting

NPR is back treating the Bush-Snow Iraq-as-South Korea nonsense as if it were a reasonable approach to ending the Iraq disaster. Flattening history and complexity, Liane Hansen opens up with this salvo:

"There are thousands of US troops in South Korea. They’re guarding against an invasion from North Korea, as they’ve done for fifty years. The deployment has worked. This past week President Bush said the troops helped achieve an objective for all of us, and today the far east is peaceful."

It is worth noting how subtly dishonest this intro is. First, it portrays the US role as solely protective - nothing about the long years of propping up South Korean dictators and protecting US business investments from invasions of labor and human rights activists. And it simply declares that "It has worked" and that "the far east is peaceful." And as in Iraq, the opinions of the people who actually live there don't count for squat (see this Angus-Reid study or this RAND report).

Then we get to Tom Bowman who turns to Tony Snow sound clips, Secretary of Defense Gates, Brookings Institute hack Michael O'Hanlon, American Enterprise Institute rightist Fred Kagan, and former Pentagon official James Miller. No surprise that there is no serious dissent from the US project of staying in Iraq forever. Bowman himself declares that American troops would be

"training the Iraqi forces, serving as a stabilizing presence, and guarding against possible troublesome neighbors – especially Iran."

Reread it and weep: a stabilizing presence...troubling neighbors. Amazing!

Wonk Coup

(Image from Democracy Cell Project )

Just about everything wrong with Guy Raz' report yesterday from the pro-war, far right American Enterprise Institute (AEI), I've already noted about a previous Raz report from the AEI.

Yesterday on ATC Raz opens with distracting banalities about the "roast beef wraps and chocolate chip cookie bars" at the AEI presentation that promotes sending thousands more US troops to Iraq. Keep in mind that this plan will undoubtedly kill tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of more Iraqis and thousands more US troops, but Raz describes this occasion as "Washington’s version of an LA movie premier…"

Raz has this to say: "AEI isn’t just another Washington wonk factory, it’s become – and I don’t say this lightly – a kind of unofficial policy shop of the Bush White House." He also should have said that AEI is a favorite "go-to" think tank of NPR News. Raz does mention that a MoveOn.org protest was occurring and lets its director say, "Washington policy makers who listen to AEI are a heroin addict going back to the needle.” Raz then explains this by stating, "The needle he’s talking about here is the idea that Iraq can be won." That's not exactly right, I think he's using the metaphor to characterize the fact that policy makers (and NPR too) keep going back to AEI even though their theories and policies on Iraq and the Middle East have been proven to be completely wrong and morally bankrupt.

The story that NPR should be covering is the stunning truth that a small group of right-wing extremists housed at the AEI think tank is running the foreign policy of the US government in opposition to both the expressed and polled will of the populace. Now that would be a story.

Mojo Economics

This morning NPR cheers about how great Wall Street is. First Jim Zarroli tells us "If nothing else 2006 will be remembered as the year when the stock market regained its mojo, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average finally broke out of its post 9/11 stupor and began setting records again. On Wall Street these days there is optimism to spare."

Then Renee Montagne follows with a piece to remind us that "the impact of that stock market mojo that Jim just mentioned is champagne corks popping well ahead of New Year’s Eve." Montagne then brings on yet another right-wing analyst, James Glassman of the far right American Enterprise Institute (an NPR favorite), the National Review, and the rightist-freee market web site TechCentralStation.com to talk about the bloated bonuses of investment company CEO's. Glassman states, "It would be nice if perhaps the people wouldn’t take so much money and distribute it back to the shareholders or more back to the employees, but 'Hey this is Wall Street.'"

So for those of you who with jobs who worry about health insurance premiums eating up any salary increases you might have, for those of you with no health insurance, for those of you with jobs that don't pay a decent wage, for those of you with no jobs, and for those of you concerned about the squandering of our national wealth on war--calm down, and remember "Hey, this is Wall Street!"

Dead on Arrival

Imagine that a small group of extremists infiltrated the US government and guided it into a war of aggression based on false intelligence manufactured by this group. Imagine that the war turned out to be a complete fiasco creating a ruined country and a vast training ground for terrorists, killing over half a million people, and costing nearly half a trillion dollars. Now imagine that NPR uncovers the fact that this same group of extremists was being consulted by the President for advice on how to continue the war even though a majority of voters had just rejected the war in a national election--that would be quite a scoop!

That's exactly the story that NPR broadcast this morning, but not as a scandal uncovered. Instead Guy Raz presents the new war plans of the far right American Enterprise Institute as something rational and legitimate; he tells us that we, as Americans, "have to give it one more try." This is the same AEI at the heart of the entire Iraq-Middle East War Project referred to above.

Raz gives ample airtime to Frederick Kagan and Eliot Cohen of the AEI as if they and the AEI had nothing to do with the disaster unfolding in Iraq. In their rejection of the Iraq Study Group recommendations, he tells us that it was "dead on arrival in Kagan’s view." This is followed by Eliot Cohen stating, "the truth of the matter is I think the study group is pretty much dead on arrival." I hate to break it to Raz, but what is dead on arrival is his integrity as a reporter.

Least Common Denominator Sort of Thinking

I have to swallow my pride and thank Michael O'Hanlon (click on the O'Hanlon label at the bottom of this post for more) for the title to this post! It well describes the range of coverage offered on ATC Thursday regarding the Iraq Study Group's anticipated call for some type of withdrawal of some US forces from Iraq.

Let's just look at some of the individuals and think tanks that NPR seeks out to "educate" us. In a piece from Jackie Northam we hear from the following:

• Michael Vickers, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. (His profile at CSBA states "Mr. Vickers is currently a senior adviser to the Secretary of Defense for the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review. From 1973 to 1986, Mr. Vickers served as an Army Special Forces Officer and CIA Operations Officer, with extensive operational and combat experience in Central America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Central Asia.")
• Retired Army Major General Robert Scales
• Anthony Cordesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies

Not a single source from outside the pro-military, pro-US foreign policy establishment.

As if this were not enough, NPR finishes its bludgeoning by having Robert Siegel host an analysis from "American Enterprise Institute resident fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht and Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow in foreign policy studies at Brookings Institution.

Needless to say, except for the title of this post, there was nothing in these two features that significantly questioned or challenged overall US goals and strategies in Iraq - instead there was only narrow debate about tactics and operations.

Think Tank

Here's a fascinating little list of people to bring on the air for a news report:

James Dobbins from the RAND Corporation
Bruce Hoffman, from the RAND Corporation
Ryan Henry from the Department of Defense
James Townsend from the Department of Defense
Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute and the Pentagon.

These are the "experts" that Jackie Northam trots out for a piece that is supposedly going to offer listeners out here in the "absorption field" a critique of the US counter-terrorism strategy. The story is introduced by Liane Hansen saying, "The Bush Administration has made combating terrorism one of its highest priorities..." and conlcudes by noting that our biggest problem is a lack of a success in the "propaganda battle"!

I wondered if this story broke some kind of a record for how many Pentagon hacks NPR can squeeze into a single news segment; it surely came close. It's sad that NPR can dip into these "think tanks" and pass it off as informed analysis.

Flush!

That Elusive Victory

NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday finds some "interesting" guests for its listeners--especially when Scott Simon is at the helm. Today he interviews Frederick Kagan, an extreme right thinktanker (from the American Enterprise Institute). Kagan blithely tells us that the US can defeat the Iraq insurgency and obtain victory with about 25,000 more US troops on the ground in Iraq and with a more comprehensive counterinsurgency program. The only "successful" counterinsurgency operation he sites is in Tal Afar (the "success" of which is questionable according to a Reuter's reporter who went there). In a stunning statement Kagan says that a key to victory in Iraq is to "establish security in the Sunni areas." Yes that would be great if one could also stop the Shiite death squads operating out of the Interior ministry, keep the US military from slaughtering civilians, keep Shiite militias in the south from fighting each other, keep the Kurds from going independent, keep Turkey out of the Kurdish north...etc., etc. What is really disturbing about this report is that even if you originally believed in the Bush project for Iraq, the reality on the ground suggests that any hope that the US could establish "security" is long gone--much less any neocon pipedream of acheiving "victory."