Party's Over Entitlement Freeloaders

(source of graphic)

Dean Baker has been calling NPR on its economic BS for a quite a while. One of his most pointed attacks against NPR (and the rest of the lovin'-the-rich-and-powerful media) has been to continually remind his readers that unless discussions of the so-called deficit crisis do not cover the $8 trillion housing bubble scam and the savvy criminals businessmen who created and benefited from said scam, then you are being sorely misinformed. This misinformation is not unintentional, but part of a sustained class warfare featuring attacks on middle and lower classes and an intentional downplaying (or downright ignoring) of the the real crises of unemployment, wage stagnation, and health care robbery (Yes we can, but....)

Did I say economic BS? Did I say misinformation? Brings to mind a certain radio news organization that stands for nothing, doesn't it?

Reader JayV of Blazing Indiscretions earlier in the week pointed out two stinging Dean Baker posts about economic rubbish on Thursday's Morning Edition featuring two Senate deficit squawkers. Baker pointed out that Senator Warner (and the interviewer Inskeep) are stupid when it comes to the basics about Social Security, and that the whole framing of the deficit crisis and its targeting of Social Security is...well...a bunch of crap. I would also add that the report was presented as the case of a Democrat and Republican willing to compromise...but the compromise was that the Democrat was willing to attack Social Security while the Republican was willing to lower income tax rates and reform deductions - some compromise!

If Saturday is any indication, NPR's Attack Entitlement's Posse shows no signs of letting up. In the morning, Scott Simon had a chummy talk with a freshman GOP representative who is a "fiscal and social conservative" and let him claim that his vote against a Pentagon-opposed jet engine "was Defense cuts first." He also let's him set the frame for slashing the budget by claiming: "We have a $1.3 trillion deficit for the year....What has to happen is we have to have a fundamental change in the trajectory of spending in Washington." Nothing from $300,000 a year Scottie about the government's trajectory of revenue when it comes to taxation of the rich or corporations.

If the morning seemed bad, Linda Worseheimer on ATC was, well, a lot worse. In a 10 minute hate-fest against entitlements, she featured NPR's favorite Catfood Queen, Maya MacGuineas who calmly explained that

"well, there's no question that all attention is on the budget now...the biggest parts of the problem are in the rest of the budget: mandatory spending or entitlements."

Apparently, Maya wasn't hitting the Elephant in the Room talking points hard enough, so Wertheimer pushed her,

"...that's the biggest deal isn't it: that not even the very excited budget cutters in the house have got to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid?"

To which Maya responded,

"That's the elephant in the room...they are very beloved and people look forward to their checks, but bottom line - they are unsustainable; they will bust the budget."

What does NPR do to balance this mugging of all those self-centered freeloaders "looking forward to their checks"? Wertheimer brings on far right Senator Tom Coburn...I'm not kidding. Just in case Sen. Coburn has an off-script decency moment, Wertheimer steers him along regarding budget cutting:

"I think there's sort of general agreement that not enough has been done...Let me ask you about the big entitlements. Do your think the Congress is anywhere near contemplating addressing those portions of federal spending..."

Coburn's not about to let that softball get by without hitting it out of the park:

"We have to get the fraud out of Medicare...we need to drive down health care costs and you're not going to do that with a centralized government operation on that. Everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice - and that means the wealthiest and those experiencing the safety net."

Wertheimer, near the end of the report mentions that Coburn was on the President's Catfood Commission and says,

"Your group did try to address the big entitlements, the elephants in the room...

Bipartisanship - GOP Style

NPR is persistent - I'll give 'em that. You might recall how after the November 2006 elections, NPR went on a campaign to convince the public that the vote was all about "bipartisanship" despite a complete lack of evidence indicating any such thing. They've come back to this non-issue several times since (in January of 2007 they dedicated a whole series to it).

Listening to ATC today, I thought I was having a Deja Vu moment. NPR's Brian Naylor was covering the meaningless conference in Oklahoma featuring "centrists" whining about partisanship. Didn't they just report on this yesterday? Same nonsense as yesterday, but today this interchange struck me:

Christine Todd Whitman: "The intent is to try to get the two existing major parties back to a place where they are functioning as they used to function - certainly from a partisan perspective, but in one that actually gets good policy enacted."
Brian Naylor: "And Whitman and Nunn agree that's something most voters want too."

Really? I don't think so. Where's one puny thread of evidence that voters want bipartisanship? Digby did a great post this past summer, revealing this bipartisan crap for what it is - a page right out of the Republican playbook. If I were a Republican strategist, I'd be on the phone thanking NPR for being such a loyal servant.

(image from Wikipedia)

Timing Is Everything

Yesterday a reader left this comment: "There is something really devious, oppressive, and Orwellian about NPR's ongoing "Crossing the Divide" series of reports(focused on the themes of 'bipartisanship and compromise'). And the timing is, of course, extremely suspect."

Yes, there is something exceedingly perverse about NPR's zeal for "bipartisanship" in the wake of the November 2006 elections. After five years of neocon triumphalism (think of Bush's swaggering "I've got capital" after the 2004 elections) and the accelerated gutting of Constitutional liberties and checks on executive power, the November elections offered a slim hope that the march of far right excesses might finally be checked. Instead of covering events, NPR jumped right in to construct the "issue" of bipartisanship, climaxing in this weeks really bizarre series of "crossing the divide." Here are a few of the lowpoints of this series:

• On Thursday ATC features drug addict hypocrite, homophobe, racist and sexist radio personality Rush Limbaugh noting mainly that he is "conservative" and not interested in bipartisanship.
• On Friday Morning Cokie Roberts puts a shine on the good ole' days when Congress was all male, all white, and "knew what a real enemy was — it was a dictator across the ocean, not a guy across the aisle." Not a peep about McCarthyism. Not a mention of the commitment to white supremacy--which her father, Hale Boggs, supported in 1956.
  
• Friday's ATC featured a piece on the wonderful compromise on slavery! This report lionized Senator Henry Clay known for the Missouri Compromise, crediting him with putting off the Civil War for decades (I wonder if slaves liked that!). It featured historian Robert Remini who says he believes that Clay could have kept the Civil War from occuring--hmmm.
• In a most unbipartisan swipe, NPR brings on the discredited bigot and rightist Dinesh D'Souza, who offers his sloppy thinking on Vietnam and Iraq. Not one word about D'Souza's sleazy history and latest extremist remarks.

Saving Bipartisanship on a Sinking Ship

Worried about health insurance, the rise of the surveillance state, climate devastation, the takeover of government by corporate money, the prospect of endless war, etc? Don't fret, because the real issue of the day is BIPARTISANSHIP.

After the November 2006 elections I posted on NPR's attempt to distort the significance of the results, and NPR is back at it with a vengance. Not only is NPR picking a non-issue to focus on, but they the coverage they give is telling.

This morning Mara Liasson presided over a laugher. Imagine seriously trying to pass off the center-right Brookings Institute as moderate left! That's exactly what Liasson does! It explains how NPR can consider itself balanced when the range of their ideology extends from the Brookings Institute to the Hoover Institute which is presented as the "moderate right." Given NPR's strangled ideological boundaries, I guess Reagan would be a centrist, George H. W. Bush would be left-of-center and Bill Clinton would be far-left!

And who else does Liasson talk to in this sorry piece? Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Tom Mann of the Brookings Institute.

Sadly NPR doesn't deal with the real bipartisan issues that people are concerned about. For those reality-based numbers you'll have to go elsewhere. Or you can always go to npr.org and read this nonsense: "As part of our Crossing the Divide series, Melissa Block brings together the far left and the far right for a conversation with members of Congress Carol Shea-Porter and Bill Sali." Far left! Honestly, they're not kidding...

Shape Shifting

NPR continues trying to shape the analysis of the 2006 elections by shifting its meaning to the right. NPR's line is that voters want a non-partisan get work done Congress (see my post above on the Invisible Issue). NPR's other line is that Democrats won because they ran on a more rightwing "centrist" platform. Today Andrea Seabrook interviews Jim Matheson (D-UT), co-chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of conservative Democrats, who NPR's website claims "helped bring the Democrats to power in last week's elections."

In the report Seabrook says, "politicians from both parties are vowing to work together to get things done" and "with moderate to conservative democrats picking up seats in the house…there is a least a chance of bipartisan cooperation." At one point in the interview Seabrook also asserts, "Leaders of both parties are to the far extremes of their parties. "

The problem with this is that instead of presenting these positions as two of several debated interpretations of the elections, NPR gives them as established fact. Notice that NPR gives no coverage to the role of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, no notice of centrist candidates who got defeated, and no notice of Internet leftists. Instead we get the boring Sunday pundit spin on this very interesting election.

The Invisible Issue

I've heard an odd conclusion on the news following Tuesday's dramatic elections. Several times NPR has talked about the message of voters to Congress and the President being "to work together" and "get things done." Funny, I've been looking at polls of issues that motivated voters on Tuesday and have yet to find one result indicating that ending gridlock or "bipartisanhip" was a key issue. (See CNN's and Gallup's pre-election polls and CNN's, Greenberg's and the Pew's post election polls.) The stand-out issues again and again are the Iraq war, corruption, and anti-Bush sentiment.

But on ATC yesterday I heard Melissa Block say "both Democrats and President Bush have been saying they got the message. They say they’re ready to work together to get things done for the American people. " Mara Liasson follows this up by talking about how successfully Clinton followed the demise of his party in 1994 by "triangulating and cutting deals with the Republican Congress." Questioning whether Democrats can be effective, she quotes Clinton's onetime chief of staff, "Panetta asks the same question of the Democrats, who he says have gotten used to throwing grenades from their position in the minority." I'm curious what "grenades" these are--the resolution on use of force against Iraq in 2002, the Patriot Act passage, the continued blank check for funding the Iraq War, the confirmation of Rice, Justice Roberts and Alito, and joint saber-rattling on Venezuela and Iran.

And this morning Daniel Schorr brings up this made-up issue of working together; he says, "the first mandate I think they [Democrats] have is that I think the public wants them very much to try to get together [with Bush and Republicans]….they [Bush and Democrats] feel a lot of pressure from around the country to stop all this nonsense and all the politics and get something done for a change."

This talk of bipartisanship and "working together" is especially odd, since turning over the House in dramatic fashion, and the Senate narrowly, suggests that voters want a Congress that will OPPOSE the President, not compromise with his policies. Of course people want to see action on ending the war in Iraq, improving wages, and ending corruption (getting things done)--but the message was clearly one rejecting the policies of Bush and his Republican allies.