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Cheney: Screw the Law

— By David Corn | Mon August 31, 2009 12:20 PM PST

Twice, Dick Cheney, as vice president of the United States, took an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Apparently, he did not take those words seriously, for on Sunday, he said that it was fine by him if government officials broke the law.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Cheney made news--once again--by attacking the Obama administration. He denounced Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to appoint a special prosecutor to examine possible CIA abuses of terrorism suspects. He decried Obama and the Democrats as soft on national security. He suggested that he had wanted to undertake military action against Iran before the Bush-Cheney administration ended, but that his "colleagues"--including President Bush--were not as gung-ho. All of this generated the predictable headlines and cable chatter.

But one short exchange between the former veep and host Chris Wallace did not receive the attention it merited. After Cheney defended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (aka torture), Wallace asked him about the alleged abuses mentioned in a CIA report recently released. Cheney insisted, "It was good policy." The host followed up:

Wallace: So even these cases where [CIA interrogators] went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it?

Cheney: I am.

Interrogators can break the particular rules and laws that govern their actions, and Cheney has no problem with that. (Wallace did not press him further on the matter.) This is a rather Jack Bauer-ish approach to the old Barry Goldwater line, "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Yet Cheney's taking it further: breaking the law to break terrorists is no problem.

Over the past several years, there has been a debate over how far the United States should go to defend itself against non-state actors who have expressed a desire to attack America with nuclear weapons. Decision-makers, policy wonks, and citizens have tried to figure out where to draw the appropriate lines. But Cheney is essentially saying, "To hell with that--even if there are lines, they don't matter."

Which means that for almost eight years, the United States had a vice president who did not believe in the rule of law. What a win for the terrorists.

You can follow David Corn's posts and media appearances via Twitter.

Politics + Current Affairs

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The Price of Truth

Sure, information wants to be free. Alas, it's not.

—By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

—Photo: Anne Hamersky; Front page photo courtesy of Robert Gillis

September/October 2009 Issue

IN OUR BUSINESS, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some expert waxing on about what ails journalism and how to fix it. Gratingly, many of those who tout prescriptions are the same people who let the patient get critical. And the new-media pundits whose analysis was fresh five years ago now feel like a Greek chorus that won't shut up after the curtain's down and the seats are empty. (Or, to retweet @theatavist, a.k.a. writer Evan Ratliff: "Maybe the future of journalism is just an endless vacillating din of banal bluster and whinging about the future of journalism.") We'll save you the agony; here's the Masterplots version:

1. In the first half of 2009, 123 TV news shows were canceled, 106 newspapers folded, 110 bureaus closed, 556 magazines died, and 12,000 journalists lost their jobs. These numbers are likely to get much worse.
2. The old model, where journalism was heavily subsidized by advertising, is over. The recession has made the divorce faster and more acrimonious, but the knives were already out. And online advertising is turning out to be a harsh mistress. Consider: Even as the NYTimes.com readership grew 7 percent last year, online ad sales began dropping. As for the big online-only shops, they either lose money, are subsidized by parent companies, or feed off venture capital.
3. Overpaid anchors; if it bleeds, it leads; papers that acted omniscient but practiced omission—the MSM's bad apples and bad practices, combined with industry upheaval and the stench of WMDgate, created a mood so toxic that even four years after Judy Miller's downfall, cheers seem to go up every time a reporter loses a job. That most journalists toil on for the public good—despite long hours, generally low pay, and a terribly bleak future—gets lost.
4. Love The Daily Show, HuffPost, All Things Considered, Kevin Drum? We do, too, but much of what you're consuming is built from reporting (read: going to places, talking to people, and digging through documents) done elsewhere. Or as Rachel Maddow said at her MoJo fundraiser in April, "Without the David Corns of the world, there is no show. [MoJo DC bureau chief] David Corn can do his job without me, but I can't do my job without him."
5. Reporting takes money. Duh. Yet we keep hearing that "journalism will survive the death of its institutions," so allow us to point out: not if that means the end of its resources. Indie bloggers, citizen journalists, pro-am reporting have dramatically expanded the public debate. But in the end, if there is 50 or 30 or 20 percent as much money being spent paying people to do consistent, reliable reporting, we'll have a corresponding reduction in consistent, reliable reporting. Not to mention fact-checking, editing, and presentation. (Want to see the first drafts of our investigative pieces? Trust us, no.)
6. Anyone who claims to know where to get the money should be locked in a room and forced to read blogger Jim Romenesko's entire death-of-media archives. Advertising? Less and less. Online subscriptions? Sure—but how many of the New York Times' remaining 550,000 daily print subscribers will pay the same $770 for a digital product? Bringing back paywalls? Expect it to happen, but whether it'll work...
7. So what about these big, nonprofit save-journalism projects we've heard so much about? We did a back-of-the-envelope tally of the marquee ones—ProPublica, HuffPost's I-team, Knight Foundation grants, etc. Including multiyear grants, and even padding the reported amounts substantially, we're talking $100 million. That's not even half what it takes to run the New York Times' news-gathering operation for a year. Part of the problem is that—take it from a nonprofit journalism shop with 34 years' experience—institutional funders for media are few, generally cautious, and (with some laudable exceptions) lacking in transparency. And as bad as it is for national operations, the problems become more pronounced for local muckrakers: Just try to raise money for investigative reporting from the Chamber of Commerce crowd.

So where does that leave us? All the honest pundits will give you the same answer: No &$#@ing idea. We may well end up with a society that simply doesn't have the quantity and quality of journalism we've enjoyed. Other countries don't; though those that run well also have functioning regulatory systems and raucous, diverse, parliamentary oppositions—not our two-party compromise machine.

But before we resign ourselves to whinging and vacillating, let's try to rewrite this tragedy. Many Mother Jones readers already help by writing checks beyond the price of a subscription; it's those checks­ that pay for our reporters and earn the attention of the Times and others who have spotlighted our reader-supported model as one promising avenue for journalism.

What it's going to take is for many more Americans to decide that quality reporting—be it on local school boards or Iraq or climate negotiations—is as vital to their lives as box scores and celebrity spats. As media theorist Clay Shirky recently wrote, "Journalism is about more than dissemination of news; it's about the creation of shared awareness," and ultimately the ability to act on that awareness. Because make no mistake: This is a zero-sum equation. Less journalism = less accountability. Corruption, nepotism, cronyism, and propaganda thrive when reporting dies. That's not a price we're prepared to pay.

Update: Clara breaks down the cost of a blockbuster investigation published by the New York Times Magazine and ProPublica here.

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Monika Bauerlein is editor-in-chief of Mother Jones. For more of her stories, click here.

Clara Jeffery is editor-in-chief of Mother Jones. For more of her stories, click here.

The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier

BuzzFlash Reviews

The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier (Paperback):

Thom Hartmann "Independent Thinker of the Month" Review Exclusively for BuzzFlash.com

By Richard Wilkinson

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

THOM HARTMANN'S INDEPENDENT THINKER REVIEW OF THE MONTH FOR BUZZFLASH:
August, 2009

Each month, BuzzFlash is privileged to have nationally syndicated progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann review a progressive book or DVD exclusively for BuzzFlash. See other progressive premiums at The BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace.

Thom Hartmann's Review -- Exclusively for BuzzFlash -- for August, 2009:

"The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier"

By Richard Wilkinson

Reviewed by Thom Hartmann

If the number of dog-eared pages thickening the upper corner of a book on my bookshelves is any indication of how important that book was to me (and it is), then “The Impact of Inequality” is one of the top ten books in my library (and it is).

Wilkinson has, quite simply, identified the One Single Issue That Drives Everything Else.

Obesity, cancer, infant mortality, homicide, gun violence, imprisonment ratios, depression, drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, venereal disease rates, use of prescription antidepressants, workplace satisfaction, trust of one’s neighbors – pick from the menu. ALL of them are driven by a single variable.

And that variable isn’t wealth. While America is the richest nation in the world with a median income of around $44,000/year, we’re way in the back of the pack in all the indices mentioned above. So is the second richest nation, Great Britain.

And it wasn’t that way in the period from 1940 to 1980.

The reason it is now, it turns out, is pretty straightforward. While most European and developed nations have a ratio of about 3:1 to 5:1 between the wealth of the poorest 20% of the populace and the richest 20%, the UK and US are running in the neighborhood of 8:1.

The more unequal a society is, the more problems it has. Regardless of how rich it is.

Conversely, the more equal a society is the better it does. Regardless of how poor it is (so long as they’re above a baseline survival threshold, which appears to run around $5000/year). Costa Rica, at around $7,000 a year, does better than the US or UK on all of the items on the list above – and more.

And it’s not just differences in these indices between nations: they also occur between states or provinces in nations. Wilkinson documents in his book how the most equal of the states of the US and provinces of Canada have the best outcomes in all the cases listed above, and the most unequal of the states have the worst outcomes. The relationship is absolutely definable, linear, and predictable.

Richard Wilkinson builds a powerful and irrefutable case in this book for a radical re-think of the role of wealth – and government and taxes – in society. Without this incredible piece of the puzzle, no other discussion of tax policy, industrial policy, educational policy, or rules of business can make serious sense.

“The Impact of Inequality” is one of the most important books you will ever read. And as a bonus, it’s also one of the most readable. I started it on a Friday afternoon, and was so stuck to it that I was finished by Sunday afternoon, complete with having made pages of notes and folded over and marked up at least sixty or seventy pages. Buy two or three copies, because this is a book you’ll want to share with everybody you know.

(Note: Wilkinson has published a sequel to “Impact” in the UK, titled “The Spirit Level,” which will become available in the US this winter. Its website is here. I ordered it via a British bookseller and read it cover-to-cover, but found it to be mostly a rehash and update of the contents/statistics/arguments of “Impact.” While “Spirit Level” will definitely be worth buying when it comes out, I recommend you not wait but get “Impact” now and familiarize yourself with what I predict will become the hottest topic of discussion in economic and political circles over the next few years.)

Thom Hartmann is a New York Times bestselling Project Censored Award winning author and host of a nationally syndicated progressive radio talk show. You can learn more about Thom Hartmann at his website and find out what stations broadcast his program. You can also listen to Thom over the Internet.

THOM HARTMANN'S INDEPENDENT THINKER REVIEW OF THE MONTH FOR BUZZFLASH

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Single Payer Health Care Action

Single Payer Scores

Filed under: News — russell @ 7:25 pm

Democrats in the House of Representatives will move this week to get the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to score HR 676 – the bill that will create a single payer national health insurance system.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has already promised an up or down vote on a single payer bill sponsored by Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-New York).

And House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) said on Friday that he will address the vote on single payer and the effort to get the CBO to score it at a town hall meeting on health care he is scheduled to attend in Waldorf, Maryland on Tuesday.

On Friday, Hoyer told a constituent, Dr. Carol Paris, that he would raise the single payer issue at his town hall meeting on Tuesday.

“Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has put single payer on the table,” Paris told Single Payer Action. “She has called for an up or down vote on the Weiner amendment when Congress convenes in the fall. I pointed that out to Congressman Hoyer, along with the fact that the Congressional leadership has just called to have HR 676 scored by the Congressional Budget Office.”

“So those two events – asking to have HR 676 scored, and calling for an up or down vote on the Weiner amendment – puts single payer on the table as an option in the ongoing health care debate,” Dr. Paris said.

“So, I asked Hoyer – given that, will you talk about single payer when you are speaking at the town hall meeting?” Paris said. “And he hemmed and hawed for a while. And then he did say that he would talk about it.”

Why does Dr. Paris believe that Hoyer is opposed to single payer?

“He continues to say that single payer is not politically feasible,” Dr. Paris said.

How do you translate that?

“He’s in the pockets of the private insurance industry,” Dr. Paris said. “And he’s going along with President Obama directive. But I also believe that this debate is not done. And I won’t hold him to his previous assertion that single payer is not politically feasible. I believe he can change his mind. Kathleen Sebelius can change her mind. And President Obama can change his mind. And that’s what I’m going to keep working toward – changing their minds.”

Mad as Hell Doctors for Single Payer Health Care

MAD AS HELL DOCTORS.com

This is not a campaign. In campaigns, there are spectators. This is a movement.

Everybody plays.

The Plan:

Mad Doctors Hit the Road

See The "Mad As Hell Minutes" from our Sequim, WA Town Hall:

"I'm not mad...I'm scared."

Mad as Hell

You CAN handle the Truth

There's no nice way to say it. The financial cost of health care is killing our citizens, hobbling our economy, crushing small business, and threatening the solvency of our government. In the meantime, the Health Care Industry is spending almost two million dollars a day lobbying Congress and manipulating public opinion to accept “reform” legislation that leaves a vicious, for-profit system intact. The "public option" is a trap. We need real reform that finds immediate savings, controls costs, and accomplishes the moral imperative of true Universal Access. A Single Payer plan is the only real path to a Health Care System that is socially, ethically and fiscally responsible. And yet, our elected officials refuse to even discuss the possibility of a Single Payer plan!

If that doesn't make you mad, we recommend checking your pulse.

The "public option" is doomed.

First: we will still have a dysfunctional health care system designed around insurance companies. Second: it will be impossible to cover everyone without raising taxes. The Obama administration is already saying it is acceptable to leave out 15 million people. Which 15 million? Will you be one of them? Who gets to decide? Third: in a "post-option" environment you can bet that the health insurance industry will manipulate the rules so that the sickest, most expensive patients will gravitate toward the public plan, which will cause it to fail. When it does, the opponents of real reform will point to the "public option" and scream: "See! Single Payer won't work!"

There is a time for compromise - this isn't one of them.

We are a small group of Oregon-Based doctors who care. We believe there is only one way to control costs, one way to remove profiteering from the system, one way to reclaim the care of our patients, and one way to be sure everyone is covered: we must replace our current pay-or-die system and with a comprehensive, publicly financed, privately delivered, Single Payer system that puts people first. Our moment to take a stand for Single Payer is NOW. We may not have another opportunity like this in our lifetime. Please support this unprecedented road trip to real health care reform.

Get Mad. Stay Mad.

Make History.

Read the Plan

Dignitaries at Mission Hill

Dignitaries at Mission Hill

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Senator Edward M. Kennedy touched many lives during his 77 years. At his funeral, a great number of celebrities and dignitaries came out to pay respect. Scroll through this gallery to see a few.

Actor Jack Nicholson sat in the pews.

Brian Snyder/AP Photo

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Victoria Reggie Kennedy is urged as appointee to represent Massachusetts

Political Notebook

Kennedy widow is urged as appointee

August 31, 2009

The widow of Senator Edward M. Kennedy should be considered as an interim appointee to represent Massachusetts in his place, two US senators said yesterday.

Senators Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, and Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, said on CNN’s “State of the Union’’ that they could support Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, as an interim senator if Massachusetts lawmakers allow a temporary appointment before a special election.

“Vicki ought to be considered,’’ Hatch said. “She’s a very brilliant lawyer. She’s a very solid individual. I have nothing but great respect for her.’’

Massachusetts law requires a special election be held within five months to fill a seat that comes open before the end of a term. The issue has taken on urgency for Democrats in Congress, who are struggling to pass health care legislation before the end of the year.

Kennedy has said she is reluctant to serve, but she may change her mind after talking with her children and others, Dodd said.