Election Ads Breed Apathy and Ignorance
(This article was submitted by Aquinas College student Joe Spaulding)
Post-structuralist philosopher Michael Foucault talked about how what he called the “repressive hypothesis” – the idea that the nature of power is purely repressive, and individuals can empower themselves by fighting whomever is in charge.
His book The History of Sexuality Vol. 1 was specific to government and individual power over sex, but he uses that specific example to show that the repressive hypothesis is pretty terrible at accurately describing the nature of power relations. He also argues that the public’s acceptance of the repressive hypothesis as a true concept, can be used to further control them. Because people think they have the ability to resist, they are actually easier to control.
During the over-bloated onslaught of inescapable campaign ads, the American public is set to fall victim to the perilous political trappings of the repressive hypothesis once again. There are a few reasons for this, as well as a few implications, but the good news is, as long as people are mindful and observant, they should be able to help keep real democracy alive in America.
Most people know campaign ads should not be taken at face value, and politicians should not be taken at their word, especially when they are running for office. If a person is particularly partisan, they might see through what they perceive as the lies in the ads of the opposition, while meeting the candidate they favor half-way with claims that might be stretching the truth.
As shown by the growing dissatisfaction with the two major political parties as well as the two party system itself, most people aren’t decisively partisan. Not being blinded by ideology, most people can tell that the ads for candidates from both parties for every office worth running ads for are filled with both boastful and insulting lies.
The truth is so blatantly distorted in political ads that it’s difficult not to immediately recognize the dishonesty and hypocrisy. People can watch an ad accusing candidates of caring more about workers in China than in the U.S., and they know that is not be true for virtually every person running for every office here. When someone like Republican candidate for governor Rick Snyder claims he “created thousands of jobs” in his ads, most people know he wasn’t personally and solely responsible for those thousands. If the politicians in the ads didn’t get to hold an office of power after the election, these ads would simply be a rhetorical spitting contest not far from the dozens.
Why do lies matter if everyone can see through them? Because recognizing a lie makes a person feel satisfied and intelligent, and individuals that are those things are less likely to suspect they are able to be deceived This, rationally enough, makes them much easier to deceive The nature of this particular deception is one of masking. The thinly veiled lies in political ads create the illusion that the differences between Democratic and Republican candidates are vast enough to distort the truth over. They provide the framework necessary to convince masses of voters that the only standard that matters in the ballot box is selecting the lesser of two evils.
Make no mistake, if Pat Miles and Justin Amash, or Rick Snyder and Virg Bernero were so different, they wouldn’t need to spend millions of dollars trying to convince you those differences are real between 30 Rock and The Office or during the 7th inning stretch of the National League Championship Series final game.
The other aspect of campaign ads that has deeper impacts than the ones that are initially obvious is their pervasiveness. Billboards can be seen on the way to work, radio ads can be heard on the same trip or on the job site itself, online ads are visible at home and work as well, and television ads are as common as televisions themselves. This provides a huge psychological disincentive to researching candidates on an individual’s own time. Why would people want to spend the precious few moments they have out of earshot and line-of-sight of political ads looking up politicians’ positions? When individuals have this sentiment, and it is combined with the idea that they have seen through the obvious lies in ads, they end up dually deceived. They think they understand the candidates well and are extremely disinclined to check if their understanding is less than accurate. Political ads simultaneously breed ignorance and the acceptance of ignorance.
The pervasiveness and thinly masked deception that come with the political ad season will once again have the effect of pacifying the American public into accepting the two party system, and keeping them further alienated from their government. The traditional media will continue to do little more than report on which candidate’s tidal wave of airtime is having the best effect in the polls. At the very least, unstoppable ads will convince many that they only have two options at the ballot box; this undemocratically disempowers Libertarian, Socialist, Green, and other parties’ candidates and their supporters.
There are structural barriers to overcoming this desecration of democracy, like our winner-take-all/non-proportional representation elections, but they have no chance of being overcome until individual citizens take it upon themselves to put up with the garbage of political ads, and do the research themselves.
The real-time access to information the internet provides gives people today the tools to better understand who is being elected to govern them. People need to not be content that they saw through an obvious lie on a prime-time 30 second spot. They need to dig deeper to see what candidates’ positions really are, but they also need to vote their conscience. The old “I don’t know anything about this third party candidate’s policies because the have no ads” excuse doesn’t fly in the online age.
Traditional partisan politics has resulted in watering down bills that the public needed to be robust, fights over cutting taxes for those that need it least, and inaction at times when action was necessary. Obviously, and importantly, people, once they have informed themselves, need to vote. Things probably won’t change a great deal with a single election, but change will become evident in every new election over time. As long as people continue to put in the effort despite disincentives, we can make both Michigan and America more democratic.
We could learn a few things from the French Resistance
(This article by Mike Whitney is re-posted from CounterPunch)
Thank God for France. While American liberals tremble at the idea of sending an angry e mail to congress for fear that their name will appear on the State Department’s list of terrorists, French workers are on the front lines choking on tear gas and fending off billyclubs in hand-to-hand combat with Sarkozy’s Gendarmerie. That’s because the French haven’t forgotten their class roots. When the government gets too big for its britches, people pour out onto to the streets and Paris becomes a warzone replete with overturned Mercedes Benzs, smashed storefront windows, and stacks of smoldering tires issuing pillars of black smoke. This is what democracy looks like when it hasn’t been emasculated by decades of propaganda and consumerism. Here’s a blurp from the trenches:
Headline:
“French Energy Sector Crippled by Nationwide Strike… French energy facilities are close to total disruption in the wake of nationwide strike against the raise of the retirement age…..France has been hit by numerous protests across the country against a controversial pension reform that would rise the retirement age to 62 from 60….On October 22 morning 80 protesters blockaded Grandpuits oil refinery outside Paris, key supplier for Charles de Gaulle and Orly international airport.” (The Financial)
Shut ’em down. Take note, Tea Party crybabies who moan about restoring “our freedoms” while stuffing the backyard bunker with seed corn and ammo. Glenn Beck won’t save you from the “mean old” gov’mint. Liberty isn’t free anymore. If you want it, get out of the barko-lounger and organize. The amount of freedom that any nation enjoys is directly proportionate to the amount of blood its people spilled fighting the state. No more, no less. The man who is willing to accept the blunt force of a cop’s truncheon on his back is infinitely more praiseworthy than the leftist/rightist scribe crooning from the bleachers. The state isn’t moved by lyrical editorials or prosaic manifestos. It responds to force alone, which is why it takes people who are willing to “throw themselves on the gears” of the apparatus and stop it from moving forward. Unfortunately, most of those people appear to live in France.
The resistance is steadily building in France. The budding rebellion is cropping up everywhere—“secondary schools, train stations, refineries and highways have been blockaded, there have been occupations of public buildings, workplaces, commercial centers, directed cuts of electricity, and ransacking of electoral institutions and town halls…” And the big unions are calling for more strikes, more agitation, more ferment.
For more than a week, transportation has been blocked across the France due to the protests by students and workers. Sarkozy’s popularity has plummeted. 65% of people surveyed don’t like the way the French president is handling the strikes. 79% of the people would like to see Sarkozy negotiate with the Union on terms and conditions, but he won’t budge. Thus, the cauldron continues to boil while the prospect of violence rises.
“STRIKE, BLOCKADE, SABOTAGE”
This is from an anonymous striker:
“In each city, these actions are intensifying the power struggle and demonstrate that many are no longer satisfied with the order imposed by the union leadership. In the Paris region, amongst the blockades of train stations and secondary schools, the strikes in the primary schools, the workers pickets in front of the factories, people create inter-professional meetings and collectives of struggle are founded to destroy categorical isolation and separation. Their starting point: self-organization to meet the need to take ownership over our struggles without the mediation of those who claim to speak for workers.
We decided Saturday to occupy the Opera Bastille. This was to disturb a presentation that was live on radio, to play the trouble makers in a place where the cultural merchandise circulates and to organize an assembly there. So we met with more than a thousand people at the “place de la nation”, with banners stating “the bosses understand only one language: Strike, blockade, sabotage.” (end of communique)
The action was met with predictable police violence and mass arrests.
The pension turmoil is not limited to France either. US pension funds are underfunded by nearly $3 trillion. Will US workers be as willing as their French counterparts to face the beatings (to defend “what’s theirs”) or will they throw up their hands and appeal to Obama for help?
There’s no question that Washington elites have joined with Wall Street to offload the massive debts from the financial meltdown onto workers and retirees. Nor is their any doubt that they will invoke (what Slavoj Zizek calls) a “permanent state of economic emergency” to justify their actions. That will allow them to move ahead with so-called “austerity measures” that are designed to impoverish workers and strip popular government programs of their funding. The trend towards “belt-tightening” merely masks the ongoing class war which is aimed at restoring a feudal system of royalty and serfs.
This is from an article by economist Mark Weisbrot:
“If the French want to keep the retirement age as is, there are plenty of ways to finance future pension costs without necessarily raising the retirement age. One of them, which has support among the French left – and which Sarkozy claims to support at the international level — would be a tax on financial transactions. Such a “speculation tax” could raise billions of dollars of revenue – as it currently does in the U.K. – while simultaneously discouraging speculative trading in financial assets and derivatives. The French unions and protesters are demanding that the government consider some of these more progressive alternatives.”
But the retirement age is not really the issue at all. This is about union busting and “putting people in their place.” It’s about “who will call-the-shots” and in whose interests will society be run.
The French are fighting back against this “oligarchy of racketeers” and the ripoff system they represent, while, namby-pamby Americans are neutralized by signing their umpteenth petition or venting their spleen at a Palin rally.
Vive la France. Vive la Résistance.
Moral Ground Town Hall Meeting 10/26
This Tuesday, October 26 there will be a town hall meeting in Grand Rapids with co-editors of a new book entitled, Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril.
Author’s Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael Nelson will be talking about their new book and inviting people to be part of the discussion of whether or not we have a moral obligation to fight in the struggle against ecological devastation.
The book includes essays from radical writers/activists such as Terry Tempest Williams, Bill McKibben, Barbara Kingsolver, Derrick Jensen, Wendell Berry, Wangari Mathai, Linda Hogan, Bell Hooks and Ursula LeGuin.
However, the book also includes essays from Thomas Friedman and Barak Obama, which on many levels seems to be counter to the messages of the other writers, particularly since Friedman and Obama are such strong defenders of the Capitalist system and are merely asking for reformist action with an economic system which inherently is ecologically destructive. This might be a useful question to pose to the authors when they are in town.
In a recent interview, Kathleen Dean Moore said that the whole “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Planet,” like changing light bulbs is just “technological tinkering.” “All of this kind of technological change is on the edges when what’s really needed is a cultural sea change. We really need to have a wave of sensibility and affirmation of our obligations.”
Moral Ground Town Hall Meeting
Tuesday, October 26 7pm
Spectrum Theater
160 Fountain St. NE, Grand Rapids
(Free Event)
Love Your Body Day event at GVSU
Yesterday, the GVSU Women Studies Center hosted an event in Allendale entitled Gleeks, Grenades and Girls with Curves: Pop Culture Images of the Body. Professor Jennifer Jameslyn gave a presentation on the importance of critically examining representation in popular media as part of Love Your Body Day.
Professor Jameslyn began by presenting some data from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) on representation in current network TV shows. Of the 587 main characters on 84 evening broadcast shows there are 565 Straight character, 14 Gay Men, 2 Lesbians and 7 Trans-gendered characters. A racial breakdown shows that 480 of the main characters are White, while only 72 are Black. For characters with disabilities there are a total of 6, 5 are men and all are White. Only one of these actors who plays a disabled person, is disabled in real life.
The presenter then talks about the importance of thinking critically about popular culture – whose bodies are represented, whose bodies are absent, whose stories are told and whose voices are silenced. Thinking critically about popular culture tells us something about ourselves and about societal norms.
The first example she critiques is the show Jersey Shore, which she says is a classic stereotype of Italian-Americans. Jersey Shore intentionally focuses on the bodies of the characters, both male and female.
One of the interesting aspects of the show is that the men do most of the cooking, they do the laundry and the cleaning, while the women tend to drink and fight. So while the show promotes strong stereotypes about male and female bodies it does subvert certain gender stereotypes in terms of what the characters do.
At the same time, Prof. Jameslyn says that despite some behaviors not being traditional gender norms, the show does perpetuate hyper-sexualized, heterosexual norms. For instance, the male characters will often talk about women in the show in negative ways, calling them hippos, grenades and whores, thus affirming hyper-sexualized norms about beauty.
The next show she talked about is the highly popular show Glee, which at one level has much more diversity than many other shows. However, the way they use race tends to reinforce racism and racialized norms. The show’s director does state that the show is designed to try to demonstrate that it is difficult for some people to fit in.
To illustrate the point about how the show sometimes trivializes racism she shows a clip of how one of the White students interacts with a Filipina exchange student that uses racism/White Supremacy in a comedic scene. The idea is to use racist depictions in order to make a point about racist depiction, but the presenter asks if this approach just ends up perpetuating racist stereotypes and attitudes.
Professor Jameslyn said that Glee is walking a fine line between doing comedy and perpetuating racist stereotypes. The show tends to do the same things with the down-syndrome characters, which are used more as extras with no real character development. However, there is one character in a wheelchair who is presented as a much more complex person. One show even has all the students in wheelchairs so that students would be more sensitive to the difficulties for people in wheelchairs. This episode ends with a musical performance with everyone singing and moving on stage in wheelchairs.
While many people may have viewed this episode as positive for bringing attention to those with disabilities, many individuals and organizations responded to this episode with strong critiques. One critique was that while this scene may have some positive elements they are still presented from an able-bodied point of view. The presenter points out that while the show spends lots of money to bring big name celebrities on the show they don’t spend the money to hire actors with disabilities, which would make a much stronger statement.
A third show she looked at is called Huge, which is based upon teenagers at a weight-loss camp. This show does a better job at showing more complex characters, characters which dig deeper with issues around body image and beauty. In this scene one of the main characters refuses to give into the idea that she should hate her body.
Even though the show is about people struggling with their weight it is more about identity and finding out who they are. In contrast to the show The Biggest Loser, Huge is not about celebrating people losing weight, but loving themselves for who they are. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled after 10 episodes.
The presenter ended by stating that consuming pop culture is an important thing to do. “It can connect you to people, but we really need to be thoughtful about what media we consume. These representations are not fixed commodities. We don’t have to accept the media created norms about representation. We can step outside of that through more conversation and by making our own media that tells other stories and sends other messages about representation.”
How Permanent Are America’s Afghan Bases?
(This article by Nick Turse is re-posted from Common Dreams.)
Some go by names steeped in military tradition like Leatherneck and Geronimo. Many sound fake-tough, like Ramrod, Lightning, Cobra, and Wolverine. Some display a local flavor, like Orgun-E, Howz-e-Madad, and Kunduz. All, however, have one thing in common: they are U.S. and allied forward operating bases, also known as FOBs. They are part of a base-building surge that has left the countryside of Afghanistan dotted with military posts, themselves expanding all the time, despite the drawdown of forces promised by President Obama beginning in July 2011.
The U.S. military does not count the exact number of FOBs it has built in Afghanistan, but forward operating bases and other facilities of similar or smaller size make up the bulk of U.S. outposts there. Of the hundreds of U.S. bases in the country, according to Gary Younger, a U.S. public affairs officer with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), 77% house units of battalion size (approximately 500 to 1,000 troops) or smaller; 20% are occupied by units smaller than a Brigade Combat Team (about 3,000 troops); and 3% are huge bases, occupied by units larger than a Brigade Combat Team, that generally boast large-scale military command-and-control capabilities and all the amenities of Anytown, USA. Younger tells TomDispatch that ISAF does not centrally track its base construction and up-grading work, nor the money spent on such projects.
However, Major General Kenneth S. Dowd — the Director of Logistics for U.S. Central Command for three years before leaving the post in June — offered this partial account of the ongoing Afghan base build-up in the September/October issue of Army Sustainment, the official logistics journal of the Army:
“Military construction projects scheduled for completion over the next 12 months will deliver 4 new runways, ramp space for 8 C−17 transports, and parking for 50 helicopters and 24 close air support and 26 intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. This represents roughly one-third of the airfield paving projects currently funded in the Afghanistan theater of operations. Additional minor construction plans called for the construction of over 12 new FOBs and expansion of 18 existing FOBs.”
If Dowd offered the barest sketch of some of the projects planned or underway, a TomDispatch analysis of little-noticed U.S. government records and publications, including U.S. Army and Army Corps of Engineers contracting documents and construction-bid solicitations issued over the last five months, fills in the picture. The documents reveal plans for large-scale, expensive Afghan base expansions of every sort and a military that is expecting to pursue its building boom without letup well into the future. These facts-on-the-ground indicate that, whatever timelines for phased withdrawal may be issued in Washington, the U.S. military is focused on building up, not drawing down, in Afghanistan.
Jobs on FOBs
A typical forward operating base set to undergo expansion is FOB Salerno, a post located near the Afghan city of Khost, not far from the Pakistani border. According to documents from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, plans are in the works for an expansion of that base’s fuel facilities. Estimated to cost $10 million to $25 million, these upgrades will increase fuel storage capacity to one million gallons to enhance land and air operations, and may not be completed for a year and a half; that is, until well into 2012.
In June, work was completed on a new, nearly $12 million runway at Forward Operating Base Shank, near the city of Puli Alam in Logar Province, south of Kabul. The base was formerly accessible only by road and helicopter, but its new 1.4-mile-long airstrip can now accommodate large Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Boeing C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft, enabling ever larger numbers of personnel to be deployed to the site.
Not surprisingly, government documents released in August show that FOB Shank is also set for a major boost in troop housing. Already home to approximately 4,500 military personnel, it will be adding a new two-story barracks, constructed of containerized housing units known as “relocatable buildings” or RLBs, to accommodate 1,100 more troops. Support facilities, access roads, parking areas, new utilities, and other infrastructure required to sustain the housing complex will also be installed for an estimated $5 million to $10 million. In addition, the Army Corps of Engineers just began seeking contractors to add 452,000 square feet of airfield parking space at the base. It’s meant for Special Operations Forces’ helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. New aircraft maintenance facilities and 80,000 square feet more of taxiways will also be built at the cost of another $10 million to $25 million.
Documents reveal that this sort of expansion is now going on at a remarkably rapid pace all over the country. For instance, major expansions of infrastructure to support helicopter operations, including increased apron space, taxiways, and tarmac for parking, servicing, loading, and unloading are planned for facilities like FOB Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan Province, FOB Dwyer, a Marine base in Helmand Province, and FOB Sharana, a Paktika Province base near the Pakistani border, where the Army also announced plans for the construction of an ammunition supply facility, with storage space for one million pounds of munitions, and related infrastructure.
In late August, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reported that construction was slated to begin on at least three $100 million base projects, including FOB Dwyer, that were not “expected to be completed until the latter half of 2011.” In addition to enhancing helicopter operations infrastructure, plans were also announced for the construction of a new, large-scale wastewater treatment facility at Dwyer, a project estimated to cost another $10 million to $25 million and, like so much of what is now being built by the U.S. military in the backlands of Afghanistan, it is not expected to be completed and put fully into use until well into the second half of 2011, if not later — that is, after President Obama’s theoretical due date for beginning to lessen the mission in that country.
And whenever you stumble upon a document indicating that work of a certain sort is taking place at one FOB, you can be sure that, sooner or later, you will find similar work at other FOBs. In this case, for example, FOB Frontenac in Kandahar Province and Tarin Kowt, north of Kandahar, are, like Dwyer, slated to receive new wastewater plants.
Much of this work may sound mundane, but the scale of it isn’t. Typical is another of the bases identified by Pincus, FOB Shindand in western Afghanistan, which is to receive, among other things, new security fencing, new guard towers, and new underground electrical lines. And that’s just to begin the list of enhancements at Shindand, including earthen berms for four 200,000-gallon “expeditionary fuel bladders and a concrete pad suitable for parking and operating fourteen R-11 refueling vehicles” — tanker trucks with a 6,000-gallon capacity — as well as new passenger processing and cargo handling facilities (an $18 million contract) and an expansion of helicopter facilities (another $25 million to $50 million).
Multiply this, FOB by FOB, the length and breadth of Afghanistan, and you have a building program fit for a long war.
Permanent Bases?
This building boom has hardly been confined to FOBs. Construction and expansion work at bases far larger than FOBs, including the mega-bases at Bagram and Kandahar, is ongoing, often at a startling pace. The Army, for example, has indicated it plans to build a 24,000 square-foot, $10-million command-and-control facility as well as a “Joint Defense Operations Center” with supporting amenities — from water storage tanks to outdoor landscaping — at Bagram Air Base. At bustling Kandahar Air Field, the military has offered contracts for a variety of upgrades, including a $28.5 million deal for the construction of an outdoor shelter for fighter aircraft, as well as new operations and maintenance facilities and more apron space, among a host of other improvements.
In June, Noah Shachtman of Wired.com’s Danger Room reported on the Army’s plans to expand its Special Operations headquarters at Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan and cited documents indicating that construction would include a “communications building, Tactical Operations Center, training facility, medical aid station, Vehicle Maintenance Facility… dining facility, laundry facility, and a kennel to support working dogs.” A contract for that work, worth $30 million, was awarded at the end of September.
Similarly, according to a recent article in the Marine Corps Times, Camp Leatherneck, which expanded in late 2009 from a 660-acre facility to 1,550 acres, or approximately 2.4 square miles, is slated to add three new gyms to the one already there, as well as a chapel complex with three separate buildings (one big enough to accommodate up to 200 people), a second mess hall (capable of serving 4,000 Marines at a time), a new PX housed in a big-top tent, with 10,000 square feet of sales space — the current base facility only has 3,000 square feet — and the installation of a $200 million runway that can accommodate C-5 cargo planes and 747 passenger jets.
Despite a pledge from the Obama administration to begin its troop drawdowns next July, this ongoing base-construction splurge, when put together with recent signals from the White House, civilians at the Pentagon, and top military commanders, including Afghan war chief General David Petraeus, suggests that the process may be drawn out over many years. During a recent interview with ABC News Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz, for instance, Petraeus affirmed the president’s July 2011 timeline, but added a crucial caveat. “It will be a pace that is determined by conditions,” he said.
Almost a decade into the Afghan War, he claimed, the U.S. military had “finally gotten the inputs right in Afghanistan.” Raddatz then asked if the “counterinsurgency clock” had just restarted — if, that is, it could be another nine or ten years to achieve success. “Yeah,” replied Petraeus, hastening to add that American soldiers killed there over the previous nine years had not simply died for nothing. “But it is just at this point that we feel that we do have the organizations that we learned in Iraq and from history are necessary for the conduct that this kind of campaign.”
The building boom occurring on U.S. bases across Afghanistan and the contracts for future construction being awarded at the moment seem to confirm that, whatever the White House has in mind, the military is operating on something closer to the Petraeus timeline. The new Special Operations base at Mazar-e-Sharif, to take but one of many examples, may not be completed and fully occupied for at least a year and a half. Other construction contracts, not yet even awarded, are expected to take a year or more to complete. And military timelines suggest that, if the Pentagon gets its way, American troop levels may not dip below the numbers present when Obama took office, approximately 36,000 troops, until 2016 or beyond.
At the moment, the American people are being offered one story about how the American war in Afghanistan is to proceed, while in Afghanistan their tax dollars are being invested in another trajectory entirely. The question is: How permanent are U.S. bases in Afghanistan? And if they are not meant to be used for a decade or more to come, why is the Pentagon still building as if they were?
Recently, the Army sought bids from contractors willing to supply power plants and supporting fuel systems at forward operating bases in Afghanistan for up to five years. Power plants, fuel systems, and the bases on which they are being built are facts on the ground. Such facts carry a weight of their own, and offer a window into U.S. designs in Afghanistan that may be at least as relevant as anything Barack Obama or his aides have been saying about draw-downs, deadlines, or future withdrawal plans.
If you want to ask hard questions about America’s Afghan War, start with those bases.
Yesterday, the Grand Rapids Press ran an Associated Press (AP) story about a group of state law from around the country who want to change the US Constitution say that children of undocumented immigrants who are born in the US can no longer get automatic citizenship.
The article cites Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce as one of the lawmakers pushing for a change to the US Constitution. In the article Pearce, who wrote Arizona’s anti-immigrant law that went into affect this year, says, “We’ve allowed the hijacking of the 14th Amendment.”
The article also cites a constitutional lawyer and a spokesperson with a pro-immigration group also from Arizona.
At the end of the story the AP reporters list the states that have lawmakers who are joining in on this effort – Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.
Among the Michigan lawmakers whom are in favor of changing the US Constitution so as to not grant automatic citizenship to child born in the US from undocumented immigrants is Rep. Dave Agema. This fact prompted Grand Rapids Press writer Troy Reimink to post a short piece on MLive yesterday in order to stimulate some discussion about the topic.
Reimink quotes Rep. Agema who says, “When you get a whole bunch of states on board with this, we’ll try to get the Congress to change the 14th Amendment back to what it should be.” However, the Press writer does not ask Agema what he means when he says changing the 14th Amendment back to what it was.
Reimink also does not provide any background on Agema as to why he would support such an effort. Agema is one of the state legislators who supported a Michigan version of the anti-immigration Arizona bill. Agema also favors making English the “official” language of Michigan and held a bogus public hearing on immigration in 2007.
In addition, Reimink links to a Washington Independent article which states that lawmakers working to change the 14th Amendment would, “receive help in crafting the legislation from Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legislative arm of the pro-enforcement Federation for American Immigration Reform.”
It is unfortunate that Reimink did not mention that this group would help craft this legislation, especially since they are one of the largest anti-immigration groups in the country. FAIR has also been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
Deals with the Devil
There’s a joke that’s been circulating in Canada for a few years now. A Canadian student is asked during a geography lesson if he’d like to live in the US. The child says no. Asked why, the child replies, “Because I’d be shot sitting on my front porch, and I wouldn’t be able to afford to go to the hospital.”
Maybe the Canadians find this joke hilarious because the United States health care “system” has made us a laughingstock in the global community. A recent report from BBC news recapped the fact that our “unregulated fee-for-service,” for-profit health care has increased in cost at twice the rate of health care in other countries, and at the same time is causing our lowered life expectancies.
When President Obama was campaigning for office, he claimed he was going to break the backs of the big insurance companies and create universal coverage in the United States. After a year-long political theater production, health care “reform” turned out to be this: Every American would be compelled by law to buy health care—apparently whether it was affordable or not. Abracadabra, universal coverage!
We can’t be surprised that Obama’s final twist was to offer massive concessions to the capitalists; after all, many of them fueled his campaign. And now, empowered by their behind-closed-doors bailout, everyone is working to find ways around the few tattered regulations that have gone into place. For example, 30 large employers were just given waivers from the law that required them, because of their size, to provide employee insurance. One of the exempted companies is McDonald’s.
So we can’t be surprised by the news published in the Grand Rapids Press on October 19: A number of Michigan hospitals allegedly made deals with Blue Cross Blue Shield in a price-fixing scam to eliminate competitors.
The Press article chose to give the story that local spin that Editor Paul Keep seems to feel is so vital. This made the text almost incomprehensible by burying the real lead to promote the Grand Rapids story angle. I had to access the Detroit Free Press in order read an article that clearly laid out the specifics of the deal.
“Millions of Michigan consumers have paid higher health insurance premiums over the last three years because Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan forced at least 70 hospitals statewide to charge its competitors more, according to a lawsuit filed Monday…” the Free Press stated.
Veteran reporter Patricia Anstett went on to explain that BCBS appeared to be crushing its competition with a price-fixing scheme. The Blues even offered to temporarily pay more for services if a hospital agreed to charge other insurance companies even higher rates. Even so, everything worked out for the Blues. One hospital in Royal Oak charged Blue Cross’s competitors about 25 percent more than it charged BCBS.
BCBS continually claims that since it’s the only insurer in the state that must accept all applicants—something that is supposed to change under the new Obama regulations—it is compelled to level the playing field in order to make ends meet. But the investigation showed that the company has raked in huge benefits.
Did the Blues then pass on its newfound wealth to patients? Of course not. The company added to its “reserve fund,” now standing at $3 billion. It contributed to political campaigns. It gave big raises to its top executives. Because that’s how the capitalists roll.
Meanwhile, the Free Press reported that one customer in Southfield, Michigan, has endured 25 percent worth of increases over the past five years for what he calls a “bare bones policy” that doesn’t really cover his needs.
As other industrialized countries in the world provide their citizens with health care that far exceeds ours and costs a great deal less, it looks like we’ll be enduring this continuing road show of corruption and greed for some time to come.
When even the President of the United States bows down to the Goliath health care industry, it’s clear the only hope is for working people to unite and break the death grip that the capitalist regime has on this country. Nothing less will allow us to enjoy the same care that other citizens of the world have as their right, not as a privilege of the rich. And Canadian humor aside, that’s no joke.
BP Campaign Cash: Still Toxic Six Months After Oil Spill
(This article is re-posted from OpenSecrets.org)
Money from the political action committee of beleaguered oil company BP largely remains a toxic asset in Washington following the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which started six months ago.
BP’s PAC did not write a single check to federal lawmakers in September, according to a Center for Responsive Politics review of campaign finance documents filed today. In fact, the PAC has not donated a dime to any federal lawmakers since May.
In May, BP’s political action committee wrote a $1,000 check to Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas), a member of the House Energy Committee, but Gonzalez never pocketed that contribution, as OpenSecrets Blog previously reported.
Instead, the PAC has focused its attention during the past several months on state-level candidates. Even then, some legislators and state-level politician seem to prefer Gonzalez’s approach of distancing themselves from the company.
Last month, the PAC wrote off contributions totaling $14,100 from 38 lawmakers in Indiana, according to OpenSecrets Blog’s review of campaign finance documents.
BP’s PAC had sent these politicians checks in June, as OpenSecrets Blog previously reported, but the candidates never cashed them. The PAC this month also reported writing off an August contribution of $750 to California Democratic state assemblywoman Norma Torres.
Nevertheless, during September, BP’s PAC donated $19,300 to three dozen state-level candidates, with 80 percent of that sum benefiting Republicans, according to the Center’s tally.
Transactions include $2,000 to Wyoming Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Mead, $1,000 to Ohio Republican House Minority Leader Bill Batchelder, $1,000 a piece to five New Mexico politicians and a variety of other, smaller contributions to candidates and lawmakers in Indiana, Ohio, Washington and Wyoming.
In September, more than 200 BP employees contributed to their employer’s PAC, mostly in small amounts, according to the Center’s analysis.
Overall, BP’s PAC raised about $19,400 in September and ended the month with about $311,200 cash on hand. This sum is about $200 less than the amounted it raised in August, and it represents the smallest amount the PAC has taken in since the oil spill last April.
Since January 2009, BP’s PAC has contributed $80,000 to federal politicians and committees, with 56 percent of that amount benefiting Republicans. The PAC’s top beneficiaries at the federal level this cycle have been the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who lost an August primary to the Tea Party-fueled Joe Miller, but who continues to wage a competitive write-in campaign as in independent. Both have received $5,000 from BP’s PAC.
BP’s actions became a national political issue after hundreds of millions of gallons of oil seeped into the ocean waters during the spill. In July, the well was capped, and last month, work on a relief well was completed and cement was pumped in to permanently plug it.
You can read more about the oil industry’s influence in federal politics in the 12-part OpenSecrets Blog series “Fueling Washington.”
Yesterday’s front page of the Grand Rapids Press had an interesting article that raises some interesting questions.
The article was about new research being done at the Van Andel Institute for a new chemical spray that has “potential to boost agricultural production.” The article goes on to say that the “researchers have discovered a way to activate the hormone with a biodegradable spray that not only could ease global food shortages but maybe keep your grass greener in the summer, too.”
First, since the article states that this new research could help ease global food shortages it is worth asking the question if indeed there are food shortages around the world. According to organizations like Food First, the issue is not so much a lack of food, but who has access to food. The global food crisis that began in 2008 had more to do with food policy and food prices than it did with food shortages.
The Food First reports do acknowledge that drought in some parts of the world has limited to global food reserves, but is spraying chemicals (organic or not) on a plant to make it more drought resistant is a questionable solution. Wouldn’t the more appropriate response be to find out what is causing drought in the first place?
According to many recent scientific reports the number one cause of drought worldwide is global warming. If global warming is the main cause of drought, which leads to potential food shortages, should entities like the Van Andel Institute be looking into ways to reduce carbon emissions?
Second, as was already mentioned one outcome of this kind of research might be to “keep your grass greener in the summer.” This kind of application of such research certainly raises all kinds of questions about the waste of funds and which companies might benefit economically from a chemical which makes your grass greener. Historically, this has been the case with the use of lab-tested chemicals or genetically modified plants, where most applications are driven by profits and not improving access to food for people around the world. The profit motive certainly is what motivated the so-called “Green Revolution” of the 1960s.
Third, what has worked in terms of high yields in food production and sustainable farming practices is not modern technology and genetic research, but traditional and localized methods. The world is full of examples of local farming practices that are not dependent on genetic research such as the Navdanya food project in India and the millions of small farmers who are part of Via Campesina. These farmers and organizations not only practice sustainable agricultural methods they work to influence food policies that take the power away from multinational corporations which control much of the world’s food supplies.
Lastly, one thing that is missing from the Press story on the Van Andel Institute research is an alternative perspective. With such a critical issue as global food shortages, genetic modification and chemicals used on food plants the Press should have sought out other voices for their opinion on this matter instead of publishing an article that presents the research as fact and in an extremely positive light.
(This article is re-posted from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.)
A multi-part FAIR exposé of PBS‘s most prominent news and public affairs programs demonstrates that public television is failing to live up to its mission to provide an alternative to commercial television, to give voice to those “who would otherwise go unheard” and help viewers to “see America whole, in all its diversity,” in the words of public TV’s founding document.
In a special November issue of studies and analyses of PBS‘s major public affairs shows, FAIR’s magazine Extra! shows that “public television” features guestlists strongly dominated by white, male and elite sources, who are far more likely to represent corporations and war makers than environmentalists or peace advocates. And both funding and ownership of these shows is increasingly corporate, further eroding the distinction between “public” and corporate television. There is precious little “public” left in “public television.”
FAIR undertook the examination following news last fall that PBS was canceling Now and that Bill Moyers was retiring from Bill Moyers Journal. PBS announced that it was replacing the two shows, which exemplified the public broadcasting mission, with Need to Know, a news magazine launched in May and anchored by two journalists from the corporate media world.
FAIR’s findings reveal: * Need to Know. FAIR’s study of the first three months of Need to Know‘s guestlist and segments finds that its “record so far provides little encouragement that it will ever serve as an adequate replacement for Now and the Bill Moyers Journal.”
The program’s heavily white (78 percent) and male (70 percent) guestlist failed to “break out of the narrow corporate media box.” Corporate representatives outnumbered activists 20 to 12. And black people appeared overwhelmingly on stories on drugs and prisons. * PBS NewsHour. If PBS‘s signature news show is any indication, the system is doing little to help us “see America whole, in all its diversity.”
— The NewsHour‘s guestlist was 80 percent male and 82 percent white, with a pronounced tilt toward elites who rarely “go unheard,” like current and former government and military officials, corporate representatives and journalists (74 percent). Since 2006, appearances by women of color actually decreased by a third, to only 4 percent of U.S. sources. – Women and people of color were far more likely to appear as “people on the street” providing brief, often reactive soundbites, than in more authoritative roles in live interviews. – Viewers were five times as likely to see guests representing corporations (10 percent vs. 2 percent) than representatives of public interest groups who might counterweigh such moneyed interests–labor, consumer and environmental organizations. – While Democratic guests outnumbered Republican guests nearly 2-to-1 in overall sources, Republicans dominated by more than 3-to-2 in the program’s longer format, live segments. (FAIR’s 2006 NewsHour study, which examined a period when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, showed Republican guests outnumbering Democrats in both categories: 2-to-1 among all sources, 3-to-2 in the longer live interviews.) – On segments about the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the most frequent story of the study period, viewers were four times as likely to see representatives hailing from the oil industry (13 percent of guests) as representatives of environmental concerns (3 percent). – On segments focusing on the Afghan War, though polls show consistent majorities of Americans have opposed the war for more than a year, not a single NewsHour guest represented an antiwar group or expressed antiwar views. Similarly, no representative of a human rights or humanitarian organization appeared on the NewsHour during the study period.
** The NewsHour, “public TV’s nightly newscast,” is actually privately owned. For-profit conglomerate Liberty Media has held a controlling stake in the NewsHour since 1994. The company is run by industry bigfoot John Malone, who has declared that “nobody wants to go out and invent something and invest hundreds of millions of dollars of risk capital for the public interest.” Public dollars still support the NewsHour, and former PBS president Ervin Duggan declared the show “ours and ours alone,” but Liberty CEO Greg Maffei refers to the program as “not our largest holding,” but “one we’re very proud of.”
And it’s not just the NewsHour. The Nightly Business Report was sold earlier this year by public station WPBT to a private company. The details of the deal–which shifts the most-watched daily business show on television into private hands–are mostly unknown.
** The Charlie Rose Show–a show produced outside the PBS system but widely carried on public television stations–boasts a remarkably narrow guestlist. FAIR found the most common guests (37 percent) were reporters from major media outlets, and corporate guests, well-known academics and government officials also made frequent appearances. Of the 132 guest appearances, just two represented the public interest voices that public television is supposed to highlight (equaling the number of celebrity chefs who appeared). Eighty-five percent of guests were male, and U.S. guests were 92 percent white.
** Washington Week, the longest-running public affairs show on public television, suffers from similar problems–which would seem to be by design, given the show’s inside-the-Beltway focus. In four months of programs (5-8/10), Washington Week presented 29 reporter guests; only one did not represent a corporate-owned outlet. Only four of 64 appearances by guests were by non-white panelists (6 percent), and the guestlist was 61 percent male.
For the full NewsHour and Need to Know reports, click on the links above. For all other content, please subscribe to Extra! today and receive the special PBS issue instantly.
