The Wall Street Journal puts three reporters to work on a 1300-word lead article for its weekend edition titled, “Bush, Democrats Spar on Stimulus.” And in all that controversy, those three did not find a way to use the word “permanent” even once.
The article had this sentence, “Market observers suggested Mr. Bush’s comments disappointed investors who were expecting more.” But it couldn’t bring itself to say that the more that’s needed is permanence.
The Kalamazoo Gazette thinks it’s just fine for the county to hire a lobbyist to get money out of the feds. No, really. It editorialized in favor of it in Tuesday’s paper. You can read the full thing here.
In a perfect world, lobbying would not be necessary. After all, we have two U.S. senators and several U.S. representatives who are elected to represent the interests of our state and region.
Commissioner David Maturen cast the lone dissenting vote. “I think we already have a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.,” Maturen said. “It’s called our congressman.”
In the ideal world, the congressman would go to jail if he tried lobbying administrative agencies on behalf of constituents. Such lobbying is not how things get done on the basis of merit. It’s how they get done on the basis of influence peddling.
But is it any better to have a paid lobbyist do it? Perhaps. But it’s still institutionalized corruption.
That’s true. But U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, a St. Joseph Republican whose district includes Kalamazoo County, can do only so much with a limited staff. Government, especially at the federal level, has become enormously complex.
Yes, the federal government has become enormously complex because it has its fingers in things that are not its proper business. If it didn’t have its greedy claws on all of those things, it could leave them to state and local entities, and we wouldn’t need these corrupt lobbyists to try to get things on our behalf.
And while lobbyists are perceived by many citizens as representing special-interest groups, many of these people have expertise that allows them to perform useful services. They assist and inform lawmakers by calling attention to the needs of communities large and small. They also serve as a pipeline for communicating local needs to the maze of federal government departments and bureaus.
That’s a damning indictment of the involvement of the feds in local issues. Of course they don’t know about local needs. That’s why the federal government should deal with national issues, not local ones.
Another advantage of a joint effort to obtain a regional lobbyist is the furthering of intergovernmental cooperation, which has been improving but still has a long way to go.
No doubt. So instead of the various governmental agencies being jealous of each others’ prerogatives, as they should be, we’re going to have institutionalized collusion. No wonder some people think it’s government vs the people.
We agree with Collard’s succinct remark regarding support for a lobbyist. “All too often,” he pointed out, “(federal) dollars are left on the table in Washington, and we certainly want our fair share.”
Federal dollars are being left on the table? I doubt it. I thought the government was running deficits. If money is being left on the table, why not use it to pay down the debt? But I don’t think that’s the case. I suspect that the Gazette didn’t do any fact-checking on this one.
And as county board member John Taylor pointed out, “…this is a great bang for our buck. You can’t get a lobbyist for $15,000.”
With many parties kicking in, the total investment in a lobbyist is not a major expense, especially considering that the effort could return millions of federal dollars here. We believe it’s worth a try.
If it’s a matter of getting our fair share of federal dollars, the way to do that is have the dollars stay in the states and communities in the first place. If, on the other hand, we’re trying to redress some imbalances, then it’s to be expected that some localities are not going to get “their fair share.” And it isn’t honest for the counties that can afford it to use their influence to beat out those who can’t afford lobbyists.
Here’s how it works. When the news media report on something that’s blindingly obvious, they say things like, “Opponents claim that night is darker than day.” Here’s an example from the Daily Telegraph, in an article about the Russian Nashi (sort of like a cross between the Hitler Sturmabteilung and the Hitler-Jugend, except their shirts are red rather than brown).
Less enamoured of the status quo are Russia’s opposition politicians, who claim that a series of Putin-imposed curbs have reduced the elections to a Soviet-era sham.
But when they want to beat the drums for their favorite bandwagon, they don’t use such a perjorative word as “claim.” Here are examples from that puff piece that the Boston Globe put out for Hillary Clinton, “Blue collar women see hope in Clinton.”
Even many working-class women who have spent their lives in traditional roles at home and work have been animated by Clinton’s effort to shatter what she has called “the highest, hardest glass ceiling.”
Not “they claim they have been animated.” Just a baldly stated, “have been animated.” Here’s another:
Analysts say she connects with working-class women emotionally by presenting an image as a fighter who has overcome obstacles in her life, and appeals to them politically by offering proposals that would help their pocketbooks.
Here they hide behind what some anonymous “analysts” say. These analysts may or may not exist, and if they do, we can assume there are a lot of other newsworthy words in addition to “analyst” to describe them.
It’s presented as a news story at the Boston Globe: “Blue collar women see hope in Clinton.” If you don’t believe me, look at the URL.
These are the same news people who are given special privileges in McCain-Feingold to keep campaigning after others are required to shut up.
One pro-speech-restriction blogger wrote thusly a few years ago:
The new line-drawing has a danger: it might encourage more corporations and unions to put on sham news programs or broadcast advertisements supporting or opposing a candidates for public office under the guise of sham advertising for a book or movie. For this reason, FEC regulations are only a temporary solution.
But what about when the major news media themselves put out sham news programs?
The headline on The Seattle Times article is:
Kerry accepts “swift boat” challenge
The punctuation is wrong. It should be:
Kerry “accepts” swift boat challenge
If Kerry had really accepted it, he would have provided evidence that the Swift Boaters lied. But he has not done that; therefore, that term should have been put in quotes.
And it’s cute the way that James Rainey, the writer of that article, is hedging. It suggests that Kerry is an embarrassment to the media/Democrats and they know it, but still they have to stand up for their guy. He writes:
Since the 2004 campaign, Kerry and other Democrats have come to label what they believe are unwarranted political attacks as “swift boating.”
You gotta love that term, “unwarranted.” That’s a loophole big enough to drive a slow boat through. According to dictionaries, the term can mean “incapable of being justified or explained.” Of course, if Kerry would release his military records, the attacks could either be explained or justified better. Or they could be refuted, and Pickens would have to cough up his million dollars.
The term can also mean “lacking justification or authorization.” I suspect (through process of elimination) that the latter is what Rainey means. The Swift Boaters weren’t authorized by the Democrat/Media/Celebrity machine to say nasty things about him; therefore, they should not have said those things.
I’ll bet George W. Bush didn’t know he was being a folksy character when he called reporter Adam Clymer a major league asshole.
And I’ll bet Dick Cheney didn’t know he was being a folksy vice president when he told Patrick Leahy to fuck himself.
But if they would read Reuters, they would know.
On Tuesday, [Chavez] said the king’s “arrogance” exposed that colonial attitudes toward South America have not died out.
But the folksy president also showed he had a sense of humor over the flap.
When a reporter asked him a series of questions about the raft of constitutional changes expected to be passed in next month’s plebiscite, he joked: “Why don’t you shut up?”
The media are now talking about how Bernard Kerik’s indictment may affect Giuliani’s campaign. Does this pose a danger to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, too, in that it will remind people that Giuliani is not the only one who associates with unsavory characters. Will we now see a lot more coverage of the Sandy Berger national security scandal?
For whatever reason, the Fox news article quoted below had nary a word to say about Sandy Berger.
The indictment of former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik on a long list of federal charges Friday could turn into a huge weapon for Republican presidential contenders trying to topple frontrunning candidate Rudy Giuliani. Kerik is much more than just a former associate of Giuliani.
It’s a sad state of affairs when the issue of freedom in other countries is seen as a Bush idiosyncracy. Back in the days when Liberals were liberal, it was a cause that almost everyone in the United States favored. But here is a headline and lead paragraph from an article in Monday’s WSJ:
Pakistan Crackdown Slows Bush’s Freedom March
President Bush’s vaunted “freedom agenda,” using U.S. aid, influence and example to advance political liberty around the globe, suffered one of its worst setbacks this weekend when Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan.
I suppose it’s hard for the average newspaper journalist to ever stop thinking about George Bush. And there are those who are going to think of every event in terms of whether it hurts or helps their partisan faction. But isn’t this crackdown also a blow to the freedom of the people of Pakistan? Shouldn’t that issue be just as important as whether it helps or hurts Bush?
And if it’s too hard to focus on the lives of people in other countries, there is also the fact that every loss of freedom elsewhere is a threat to our own freedoms in the United States, too.
It’s not all about Bush.
It has been years since I watched one of the so-called presidential debates. I prefer to save my energy so I can mock the ensuing media coverage. If they were really debates rather than panel discussions, it might be different.
So here’s my take on the latest Democrat “debate”, based on some headlines and lead paragraphs I’ve found from google news:
The candidates did make a slight move in the direction of real debates, by asking Hillary Clinton some tough questions. The media asked some tough questions, too.
The New York Times and its lapdogs call this process “piling on.”
I think we can take this to mean the New York Times does not share my taste for real debate. And we should not expect the New York Times to raise any difficult questions itself, at least not for certain candidates.
Did I get it right? Or do I need to read more carefully.
The following is the way I posted it over at the Conservative community on LiveJournal. Glad to see it’s getting a reaction.
Sex Scandal 8547, Campaign Finance Scandal 1391, National Security Scandal 126
I guess lying about sex IS the important issue, after all.
