Jon Our Steward

Two weeks ago Fox News (or Faux News as I like to call it) showed video clips of a “teabagger” protest outside of the capitol in Washington D.C. against healthcare reform. The anchors remarked happily about how great number of people in attendance. Any casual viewer wouldn’t have given the coverage so much as a second thought—so thankfully there was a sharp, trusted news source that caught the problem with Fox’s coverage.

The first clip aired showed a protest happening on clear-skied fall day, autumn in full swing. The second clip, rolled as if it were a continuation of the first, just from a different pan and angle, was of a large group of people, carrying signs on a grey, cloudy, summer day with trees in full green foliage. These clips were of two different protests, pointed out the trusted news anchor; the first of the anti-health care reform rally, and the second from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 rally that had taken place months earlier.

So whose careful eye caught the “mistake” (and I use that term loosely)? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t CNN, or even MSNBC. It was a source that Americans have come to trust just as much, if not more, than Brian Williams, Dan Rather, Anderson Cooper, Charlie Gibson, and their respective networks. In Jon they trust, and rightly so. It was Jon Stewart, the man whose show kept me sane during the Bush Administration, and who keeps me hopeful today.

There are two stories here. The first is that Fox distorts, manipulates, and sometimes just plain old lies in their “news” coverage. The second is that in a nation that champions a free press, it is a fake news comedy show that often displays more integrity, grit, and willingness to pursue the truth and hold public figures accountable for their words than the mainstream media.

It was Stewart, after all, who succinctly broke down the Fox strategy with helpful video clips: the opinion wing—that’s Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity—makes outrageous claims and accusations, founded neither in reality nor fact, and then the following day Fox News reports on these rumors and conspiracies as, “some say…” but never mentioning that those who “say” are Fox personalities and they said it the previous night during their Fox shows.

But beyond the humorous, if sad, moments of catching Faux News with its pants around its ankles, Stewart and his Daily Show have become indispensible not for sophomoric humor, but for what has become its fight for political and media accountability and rationality.

As is becoming more and more the case, while the mainstream media jockey for ratings with up to the minute coverage of balloon boy type incidents, Stewart remains the stalwart inquisitor who not only holds people to their words, but to hold them to reason as well. Where the rest of the news media has decided that they will report (barely), and you will decide, a fake news comedy show has the courage to state that while there may be two sides to every story sometimes one side is true and one side is not. That sometimes one side makes sense, and the other is insanity.

Some of Stewart’s best moments come from his stinging social critique and stern, but fair, questioning of guests that far outpaces the lackadaisical loquacity they are often allowed on CNN, a network more apt to fact check Saturday Night Live than a US Senator—anyone who has seen his “leave it there” montage will know exactly what I mean. But more often, his best moments come from the hypocrisy and inconsistency of his “victims” themselves. Woe to you if you are the subject of a Daily Show video montage, because like Joe Lieberman, you will rue that footage from 2006 when you supported universal health care that will be run side-by-side with current footage of you opposing it.

Though he spares no ridicule for those who provoke it, for the most part Stewart is congenial with his guests…he has to keep them coming back after all. But being congenial does not mean he throws them softballs. I said stern but fair, and that is exactly what he has been to the likes of Bill Kristol, whom he trapped into admitting that the government can in fact provide the highest quality health care (to members of the military). Kristol tried to work his way out of this corner by saying that while yes the government did a good job, it was far too expensive, and undeserved, to be lavished on ordinary Americans in the same way. Tried. It didn’t go over too well with the audience.

“Hey man, did you see The Daily Show last night?” has perhaps become the most common refrain among liberals. Personally, I think he has the best job in the world; one that I wish I had but am glad that he is doing. There’s an unspoken recognition that Jon’s got our backs. That when we want to just tear our hair out (like I do now with Obama’s decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan), all we have to do is wait until 10:00. Politicians will keep making fools of themselves, and a mess of the country, and The Daily Show will keep turning our despair into wary laughter.

As much by his own effectiveness as by news media incompetency, Stewart has made The Daily Show a significant force in American political culture. Over the summer, the Huffington Post joked that a government release of torture documents had been timed to coincide with a Daily Show hiatus, noting that Sarah Palin had resigned on the first day of a Daily Show vacation as well.

It was a joke, but in a lot of ways it makes sense. If I were a politician or the government releasing potentially embarrassing information, I would be sure to steer clear of wrath and ridicule from Stewart and his correspondents.

To The Democrats, If Anyone Is Listening

Will the Democrats ever get it? Tuesday’s election was not a referendum on the Obama Administration, but it was a referendum on the prevailing wisdom of the Democratic Party and it’s candidates. To me it is mind-numbingly obvious: when Democrats try to flee that “D” next to their names, when they run to the center and center right, they fail and fail big. Only 24% of Americans identify as Republicans. 24%. Americans do not want to choose between a Republican and a Republican-lite, yet the Blue Dogs and conservadems just seem incapable of understanding this plain fact.

Creigh Deeds managed to pretty much say everything for me. He failed to run as a progressive, and he failed to win Virginia. By the end of his campaign, Deeds was running ads attacking Obama’s clean energy agenda. Instead of defending his past record on the environment, and fighting back against his opponent’s lies and misrepresentation of climate legislation, Deeds joined him. Instead of campaigning on a pro-labor platform, Deeds took support form the SEIU for granted and opposed the Employee Free Choice Act. Instead of calling out his opponent on healthcare reform, he argued against the public option and voiced a preference for “opting out” were he to become governor of Virginia.

And what happened? Obama voters stayed home. Although Obama carried Virginia with 52% last fall, this year only 43% of those who showed up at the polls voted for him[1]. Faced with the prospect of having a Republican who would do his best to fight change, or a Democrat who would do almost as good a job fighting change, I am tempted to say that they actually made the right choice. If you are going to elect an obstructionist who is not on board with a progressive platform, it’s better to just let him be from the opposition party, rather than a Blue Dog who will just cause problems from within.

The Democrats don’t even seem to have ears enough to hear that prominent Republicans want them to do exactly what they are now attempting to do—move to the right and abandon the progressive agenda that America gave them the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate to enact. Hours after their victory in Virginia, the NRCC immediately stated that the election results were a warning shot fired across the bow of the Democratic Party. Republican Rep. Eric Cantor publicly concurred, commenting that moderate Democrats and Blue Dogs should take it into account when deciding what to do about health care reform.

Well obviously we should listen to the NRCC and Eric Cantor—they only have Democrats’ best interests at heart…duhhh.

But that’s exactly what Blue Dogs like Sen. Blanche Lincoln are doing—urging the party’s leaders to delay legislation on health care reform and climate change until after the 2010 midterm elections. The Democrats have always been their own worst enemy. They were not willing to have the backbone to stand up to the Bush Administration when they were in the minority, and now that they are in the majority, it appears they are still suffering from their spineless-syndrome.

Let’s look at another election, one that hasn’t happened yet. Harry Reid’s reelection in Nevada. Polling done by Research 2000 for DailyKos shows Senate Majority leader Reid trailing to two no-name candidates: Danny Tarkanian, a former college basketball player and real estate agent leads him 45-40, and Sue Lowden, head of the state GOP leads him 44-41. Surely this is a sign that health care reform is hurting Democrats’ chances on the ballot, right? Wrong. In Nevada, the creation of a “government administered health insurance option” (as it was polled) enjoys a 12-point margin of support, including 80% of Democrats and 50% of Independents. Harry Reid’s seemingly utter ineffectiveness, as a Senate Majority leader is why no-name candidates are beating him in the polls—and that stems from his unwillingness to commit to strong legislation and stop bending over backwards in the hopes of a completely meaningless vote from Olympia Snowe.

Some will fault me for advocating that the Democratic Party play to its base by citing the demise of the republican Party as a result of its doing just that. In the last year, we have seen the Republican Party increasingly marginalized into mere regional relevancy. Polling from, Research 2000/DailyKos, the only polls to break data down geographical, show this. Not only is there no Republican represenative from all of New England, but the party’s favorable/unfavorable ratings from the Northeast, South, Midwest, and West are as follows:

Northeast: Fav – 6%, Unfav – 89%

South: Fav – 48%, Unfav – 37%

Midwest: Fav – 10%, Unfav – 78%

West: Fav – 12%, Unfav – 77%

*(poll from September 18, 2009)

The Republican Party has become the party of conservatives in the Southern United States. End of story. So why, whyyyyyyy are the Democrats refusing to see this reality???

To the Democratic Party if any of you are listening: Voters elected you because you ran on a progressive platform. Obama ran much farther to the left than the conservative elements of the party would have cautioned and he won because he did. If you want to lose the 2010 elections, then go ahead and don’t do anything meaningful with your control of government. Unexcited Obama voters and progressives will stay home on election night just like they did in Virginia and change will finally come to Washington—you will be out of power and the republicans will be back in power.

The Republican Party has become the party of no. Don’t let yourselves become the party of “not yet.”

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[1] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104/ap_on_el_gu/us_election_obama_voters

Support Innovation and Equality of Opportunity; Maintain Net Neutrality

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all information and Web sites are created equal … That’s the basic premise of net neutrality, which echoes our Constitution and Declaration of Independence in holding that the transmission of data over the Internet should be equal, regardless of the content or origination of that data.

This is more or less the way the Internet operates today; data from Google is transmitted just as quickly as data from an obscure and infinitely less influential Web site. Call it the equality of opportunity for information to reach your computer. Or for you libertarians out there, the freedom of an individual to access whatever Web sites and information he pleases.

However, just because this is the way the Internet operates today does not necessarily mean it will be the way the Internet operates next year. At least, not if opponents of net neutrality get their way and are successful in defeating legislation before Congress, which would put this status-quo way of operating into law and establish regulations. In August, Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey introduced the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009,” having twice been unsuccessful at pushing net neutrality as an amendment rather than a stand-alone bill. The act would forbid Internet service providers (ISPs) to “block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair or degrade” access to lawful content from a lawful application or device.

The absence of net neutrality would be tantamount to phone companies controlling whom you can call and throttling the call quality to certain numbers at their discretion. It would mean that companies like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner would be able to actively discriminate against competitors and serve their content at faster speeds or even prevent you from accessing or viewing certain information. Sound too far-fetched? It shouldn’t, because it has already begun to happen. Earlier this year, in July, AT&T blocked the message boards of the popular site 4chan.org.

Regulation is even more important in the absence of competition, and in many areas of the United States, consumer choice is generally limited to one or two ISPs: the local cable or telephone providers. It doesn’t take a lot of work to guess that the two aforementioned industries are not the biggest fans of net neutrality, but the movement is not without powerful backers. Basically, the camps are split into service providers and content providers, with Ebay, Amazon, Vonage, Microsoft and Google all supporters of net neutrality legislation.

Google’s “Guide To Net Neutrality For Internet Users” reads, “Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content.” Fundamentally, net neutrality is also about innovation. In an industry where today’s most prominent Web sites and companies started out as small, nearly unknown pet projects, granting large established players the keys to a new gate in front of the Internet would stifle the next generation of content and web 3.0, whatever that turns out to be.

But as with most things in our political system, money talks, and the telecoms and cable companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have been talking a lot with hundreds of millions of dollars. To be exact, $334 million since 2007. It’s irritating that a bunch of old guys on Capitol Hill who probably still use VCRs and think the Internet is “a series of tubes” (thank you, Ted Stevens) have power over the future of it, but it’s even more irritating when the same bunch of old guys have their hands stuck in the money jars of corporations more concerned about their own power and control of content than about innovation and consumer freedom.

Representatives and Senators from both parties have received large amounts of money from the telecom and cable companies. In fact, 70 Democrats from the House of Representatives cosigned a letter to the Federal Communications Comission (FCC) arguing against net neutrality regulation. In the Senate, 20 prominent Republicans are staunchly opposed to keeping the Internet open and equal. John McCain holds the privilege of being the number one recipient of donations from the telecom and cable industry--nearly $2 million.

However, for once, money doesn’t seem to be all that matters on Capitol Hill: Markey himself is one of the top recipients of donations from opponents of net neutrality, at $370,000. And the Obama administration, also a large recipient of donations, has lined up in support of net neutrality. Julius Genachowski, FCC Chairman, speaking with Wired magazine on Sept. 21 states his position quite clearly: “The Internet’s creators didn’t want the network architecture, or any single entity, to pick winners and losers. The principles that will protect the open Internet are an essential step to maximize investment and innovation in the network and on the edge of it by establishing rules of the road that incentivize competition, empower entrepreneurs and grow the economic pie to the benefit of all.”

For the sake of streaming video, offensive 4chan forum posting, lolcats and the creator of the next Facebook, let’s hope net neutrality scores a resounding victory with the passage of Markey’s bill. But regardless, I doubt anyone will be torrenting the CSPAN coverage.

This was originally published in the Opinion section of The Amherst Student.

Healthcare Hullaballoo

So most of my recent posts have been about health care, but I promise after this I will branch back out and write on some different topics. I just want to conclude my health care binge with an article I wrote for The Indicator, a campus magazine. It was originally published in the September 24 issue of The Indicator.


Michael Moore’s SiCKO begins with stories about a woman whose post-car accident ambulance ride was denied by her insurer because it wasn’t preapproved, and about a young girl in need of cochlear implants, but who only received one because apparently a cochlear implant for the right ear was OK, but for the left ear it was an “experimental procedure.” We are all familiar with the health care horror stories, the tragic bankruptcies and preventable deaths that have befallen both the insured and the uninsured alike. There are few serious people who will dispute that the health care system in the United States is in need of urgent attention. The more serious among us know that this predicament calls for more than just reform; we need a health care transplant, if you will.

As Barack Obama finally stated in his address to Congress on September 9, the United States remains the only industrialized democracy that does not provide access to medical care to all of its citizens. Even without providing every citizen with care, an enormous amount of money is infused into the healthcare system. We spend far more per person ($6096 in 2007 dollars) and as a percentage of GDP (16%) on health care than any other country in the world. Yet the United States currently ranks 33rd in infant mortality rates, and came in at 37 in the last WHO ranking of world health care systems. Spending twice as much per capita as the next closest nation (Germany) without better results to show for it demands an explanation. Allocating such funds without even managing to cover all of our citizens is completely inexcusable—a kind of inefficiency I would think most fiscal conservatives would also reject.

A likely explanation lies in the fact that whereas German insurers are non-profits that don’t compete, American insurers advertise, pay stock dividends, rack up corporate profits and generously compensate their executives. Indeed, a good 30% of US health care expenditure is insurer overhead costs. This makes sense logically: If health care is treated as a commodity in a market based system, then the goal is profit. If there were no profit from health care, no private insurers would exist. And that is exactly the point of the European systems in question. These systems treat health care as more than a commodity to be enjoyed by the wealthy—they recognize that health care is a basic human right to be afforded to all peoples regardless of economic means.

Health care is different from, say, the computer market. In that market, companies make money by building the best computers they can in order to attract consumers to buy their product. In the health care market, where it is difficult to switch providers, or even to buy insurance in the first place, profit is not made by providing the best care possible, it is made by denying expensive, but often necessary, claims and procedures. Let me repeat myself: Neither you nor your doctor is currently in charge of your health care. A corporate bureaucrat with a mandate to keep costs low by denying your health care claims is in charge of your health care. It astonishes me that anyone could look at the system we have now and claim to be afraid of government rationing of care. We already have health care rationing, and the government is not doing it. We have rationing by economic means, and then by the profit motive. I am far more worried about Blue Cross/Blue Shield being unwilling to pay for an “experimental procedure” should I ever need one than I would be about enrolling in a public insurance option.

Health care reforms alone will be a welcome, necessary measure, but they are bound only to increase health care costs in the absence of a public option. Insurance companies will not take a hit to their profits by having to cover those with preexisting conditions and eliminating lifetime and annual coverage caps. They will just increase premiums to make up for these added costs. We need a competitive insurer, one motivated by providing patients with the care they need, not denying as much of it as they can to generate the largest profit possible. By fulfilling this criterion, the public option can keep the got-profit industry in check.

So why has President Obama strayed from his campaign stance that if he were designing a system from scratch, he would choose a single-payer system? There is an undercurrent in American politics of reticence to admit when the United States is not the world’s best, and to search for “uniquely American” solutions to American problems. I believe that such sentiment is ultimately destructive, because it prevents us from finding the best solutions to our problems, when such solutions may come from the example of another country’s example. Thus far, nobody in the administration or the Congress has been willing to look to Europe for the solution to the health care conundrum. It is no sign of weakness to admit to America’s faults and to admit to others’ successes. Were I leading the push for health care reform, I would make it a priority to attempt to combine the best parts of our peer nations health care systems into a bill. We often boast of being the world’s cultural melting pot, so why is it not also acceptable to be the melting pot for ideas?

I am not naïve enough to believe that we would ever achieve single-payer health care in this country, but anyone who has ever bargained for anything knows that you never open a negotiation with a compromise—and that’s what the public option was supposed to be: the compromise. Had the President at least made it look like he were capable of generating significant support for a single-payer push, the backlash of lies, hate-speech and paranoia would have been burned out against it, and the public option would look like a magnanimous compromise deal.

However, before the opening shots were fired on the health care debate, there was already a casualty: bipartisanship. Bipartisanship was dead, but the Democrats failed to realize it, and that has been the main problem. Republicans like Kent Conrad publicly proclaimed that they wanted to “break” Obama on health care, but the Democratic Party has mostly willfully ignored such claims. It should be obvious that the Republican Party does not want a strong, successful public option. Such a new government program would be more than just a partisan political victory—it would be an ideological victory, proving that government is not always the problem, and can even be the solution when the private market fails. Yet the Democrats have seemed willing to risk the success of health care reform by watering down potential bills in an attempt to garner one or two unnecessary Republican votes. In fact, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on September 16 that the Republican Party would not support the bill authored by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), a bill that was purposely watered down and dispensed with the public option in hopes of engendering Republican support. Clearly the Republican Party is not interested in meaningful health care reform, and it’s not too difficult to figure out why.

A successfully implemented public option would push the ailing Republican Party even further into obscurity for the next two decades. In fact, the best thing that could happen for the Republicans politically is for Obama to fail and fail big. Why else would the far right be so dead-set against a public option? Either government is inept and inefficient as they claim, in which case no one would have an incentive to join the public plan because it would be neither cheaper nor provide better care, or the public option is something that will actually work to insure the uninsured and drive down costs and regulate moral hazard in the insurance industry by competing against the profit motive. It’s the second scenario that provides the right wing with the incentive to vigorously oppose it.

The polling data supports my hypothesis: Obama’s approval ratings have dropped, but the Republicans’ approval ratings have not risen. They have stayed relatively stable, hovering near 24% throughout the summer. If Americans truly did not want a public option, and did not want the Democrats to pass a bill on their own or through reconciliation, then the Republicans approval ratings should have risen with their increased opposition to health care reform. Furthermore, nearly every poll shows large majority support for a public option. Even in red Arkansas, 55% support a public option, and national support among doctors is at 73%. Thus the fall in Obama’s approval ratings is most likely to be attributed to disaffected progressives and liberals who want the president to take a stronger, more inspiring stand for the real change he promised in his campaign.

Unfortunately, Obama has failed to make health care a moral crusade. It should be a moral issue for the right-to-life camp; it should be a moral issue for humanitarians; and it should be a moral issue for anyone who cares about their fellow Americans. He has thus far failed to inspire and to mobilize his millions of followers in support of a clear, coherent plan. That’s partly because he has not expressed such a specific plan but only a set of vague goals. Every few weeks Americans hear Obama waffling back and forth in support of the public option. That is not what America needs. Obama’s support is waiting to rise up, whenever he finally decides to stand up for himself. He has let the extreme right wing take control of the debate for far too long; it’s pathetic that the death panel rumors are so pervasive that he had to denounce them to the joint session of Congress.

The message that needs to come forcefully from the administration is that health care is a matter of human decency, and it America has been remiss in its moral duty for far too long. They should also make clear that the public option is non-negotiable, and they should make it the centerpiece of the “Edward Kennedy Memorial Heal America Act.” Then, by reconciliation if need be, the Democrats should pass that bill and challenge opponents to go ahead and vote against it. When universal health care is as successful and beloved as Medicare and Social Security, the naysayers will be held accountable, and the Democrats will enjoy the secondary political benefits of success. But both conservative and liberal Americans will enjoy the primary benefits of better, more efficient and more equitable health care accessible by all.

Obama The Orator

Last night we saw a flashback to the Obama of last fall. The campaign Obama. The one that could inspire a movement and achieve a great victory. Too bad it was months too late, but as they say, I guess it's better late than never. The right wing and extremists have controlled the healthcare debate for far too long. It's truly pathetic that Obama had to call out the "death panel" lies in his speech at all...

But I still don't think it was enough. He still hasn't made healthcare into the moral crusade that it needs to be. Healthcare is a basic human right. He skirted around the edge of that when he mentioned (finally) that we are the only advanced democracy in the world that does not provide healthcare to its citizens. But that's where the focus should be. If its all about markets and competition, and economics, and budgets, then there is room to fail. Moral crusades do not fail. Moral crusades shift cultural understandings, they shift political spectrums.

Make it a moral crusade, and then make the Republicans stand against it. Make them get up and say that not everyone deserves to be treated when they are sick or injured. Make them get up and say to their constituents that their lives have a monetary value and nothing more. And make them get up and vote against the strongest possible healthcare bill and then face the consequences of it in the next election. Poll after poll shows that while the Democrats approval ratings are sliding, the Republicans' ratings have remained very, very low, with no movement. Clearly they are not scoring political points for obstructing healthcare, but the Democrats are losing points for continuing to pander to them in a misguided spirit of bipartisanship. Americans did not vote for bipartisanship last November; they voted for change.

Healthcare may not be a make or break issue for the Democrats and the Obama administration--they won't slide away into obscurity . But the Republicans might. If heathcare passes in spite of their attempts to kill it, and then it becomes as successful a program as Social Security and Medicare, it will be the death knell for the Republican Party for the next two decades. And that's also the kind of long-term thinking we need right now.

Updates to the Website

You may notice that if you highlight any words or sentences, a little box pops up with some different options. Welcome to the FinderFox widget that I just added to the site. It allows you to tweet a quote or look up unfamiliar terms. Of course, copy/paste functionality works just as it normally does.

Let me know if you like/dislike the new feature.

Ridiculousness and Whatnot

The stuff coming out of the extreme right wing lately is just nuts. Forget about the loud, sometimes borderline violent, interruptions of town hall meetings--that pales in comparison to the people who have been bringing their guns along to angrily denounce the President at his town hall meetings. And not just handguns, but assault rifles as well.

It's even more outrageous when you remember that two anti-war demonstrators were arrested for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts to one of Dubya's speaking events back in 2004.

What if anti-Bush protesters had shown up with guns? Can you imagine the outrage we would have heard from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh about how they were unpatriotic, anti-American, domestic terrorists, crazy liberals, etc. etc.?? They would probably have been promptly shipped off to Guantanamo. The hypocrisy is just absolutely stunning.

And unfortunately, the Obama administration continues to be completely inept at selling healthcare reform. For the last time, stop with the bipartisan nonsense: the Republicans want, need, Obama to fail. Because if healthcare reform succeeds, then it will be the ultimate repudiation of conservative governing ideologies. Forget the Republicans, who have nothing to gain from your success, and just push through a strong public option already! Because if you just have more regulation about taking people with preexisting conditions, and eliminating lifetime coverage caps, it will backfire because insurance companies will make up their losses by just raising premiums even more. There MUST be a strong public option, and not some network of co-ops that can be easily co-opted by the insurance industry.

Obama did a terrible job of answering this college student's challenge. The kid wanted to know how private corporations could compete with a public option which isn't concerned about making a profit. Instead of selling out the public option as he did, this should have been Obama's response:

"Healthcare is a human right, not a commodity. The rest of the industrialized and post-industrial world recognizes this, we need to as well. It's not about making a profit, it's about providing care, treating disease, healing the sick. Those goals are at odds with profit. Insurers don't make money by providing payment and care, they make money by denyign it, and America deserves better."