Election Nite 2010: Catch the action with Breitbart on ABC

ABC News is reaching out to Andrew Breitbart.

For anyone unfamiliar with who that is, he’s the right-wing blogger that got Shirley Sherrod fired with misleading, edited video. He made her appear to be a racist, so she lost her job.

Once upon a time he was a researcher for Arianna Huffington. For sometime now, however, he’s been less a journalist than a sort of impresario. He promotes and manages staged acts of journalistic theater that are gauged to generate distrust and nihilism about the media and politics.

According a statement by Andrew Morse, an ABC executive producer, “He (Breitbart) has been invited as one of several guests, from a variety of political persuasions to engage with a live studio audience that will be closely following the election results.”

In the same statement, which Mr. Morse released in order to placate his own outraged staff, he pointed out that Breitbart “is not being paid by ABC news. He has not been asked to analyze the results of the election.”

I’m sorry Mr. Morse, but that is just, not, good enough.

Decisions like this are apt to make observers wonder if ABC News has been taken-over, in secret, by skeptical philosophers for whom the possibility of truth is ultimately a false proposition.

I say this, because Andrew Breitbart is an unapologetic, serial fabricator. By his own admission, he holds conventional journalism and journalistic standards in utter contempt.

An example: On September 21^st of 2009, out of perverse curiosity, I read one of his habitual rants against the credibility of “mainstream media.” I was amazed. In the blog, he bragged about a sort of collaboration with Glenn Beck. Together they used the Acorn under-cover, fake-hooker video scandal to undermine the credibility of major news outlets like ABC that refused, at first, to report the deceptively edited video “sting” as hard news.

“Thus was born the multimedia, multi-platform strategy designed to force the reluctant hands of ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post,” he crowed.

In the blog, Breitbart admitted that he had coached, the “activist” who made the video, put it on YouTube, told Beck and Fox about the “viral” clip, and come up with the plan to have Fox start reporting “a mainstream media cover-up” within 24 hours of the video appearing on the web. Then he bragged about his strategic sagacity on his blog.

Given this open antipathy towards the “mainstream media,” one has to wonder why he’s been given an opportunity to gain a wider audience by a news organization that has been the target of his manipulation and ridicule?

Is ABC News foolhardy, sleazy or clueless? Is the editorial staff unable to recognize the difference between passionate conservative advocacy and the calculated, strategic deception of Andrew Breitbart?

The unfortunate probability is that they have come to a decision that Breitbart’s likely contribution to conflict, drama and ratings is all that matters. There are just too many experienced editors in that newsroom for Breitbart’s inclusion to have been an oversight.

So now...If that is the way ABC intends to roll, I've got a pitch for Andrew Morse, Andrew Breitbart and any ABC executives that might be reading.

Why not double-down on spicy and innovative, political content?

My idea is for ABC to import a group of unemployed pot smoking teens to camp-out in a camera-ready Washington squat... The teens would have sex, fight, make-up and go on road trips to political rallies to rumble with Tea Partiers. I would call it “Real World: Liberal Activists.”

Think about it Andrew and Andrew, it’s genius… Political coverage might finally make money, and a new, lucrative, reality TV genre would come into being! It could even freshen up ABC’s stale weekday line-up!

Don't worry if a few wholly-invented, negative stereotypes get smuggled into the national discourse...that's actually the best part, because it would probably help ABC sell space for tons of secretly funded political ads!

It's time to get paid ABC, after all, it's only entertainment.

Shouldn't members of the Supreme Court at least pretend to avoid hobnobbing with interested parties?

Remember the days, before the Internet, cable news cycles, grassroots movements conceived in the boardrooms of PR firms and propaganda machines masquerading as think tanks? Now it seems like a distant mythical time of simplicity. It is probably the case that the past often seems less unsettled, less scary than the present, because it’s possible to know how it ended . All the same, when I was a teenager in the 80s, major institutions like the press and the government did at least appear to have standards of decorum and ethics, that seem absent today.

My father was an architect and I remember him telling me once, that he could not accept a job, because for some reason it would have caused the appearance of impropriety. In the 80s architecture jobs were few and far between, so foregoing a job for an abstract notion that had vaguely to do with his firm's image must have sucked.

But back in the day, people did things like that once in a while. Sometimes they even cared about the dignity of institutions where they worked. What a difference 20 years can make.

The New York Times reports that two of the richest men in America, the Koch brothers have been holding massive strategy sessions for the ultra-wealthy, and sympathetic media like Fox News and politicos like Jim DeMint. The gatherings are based on the need to "review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.” By threatening policies they mean public healthcare, campaign finance disclosures and limitations, banking reform, consumer protection, environmental protection etc. etc.

That the Koch brothers are holding these strategy sessions should not surprise anyone familiar with their past. They founded the Cato Institute which champions the “economic theory” that when taxes are lowered, the government magically receives more money from taxpayers. Their massive fortunes come from logging, oil, mining, and fertilizers, which are probably the four most environmentally damaging industries in existence. Is it surprising that they equate liberty with debunking the myth of global warming?

This doesn't bug me so much. The Koch brothers are free to use their many billions of dollars to throw as many ultra-posh, ultra-conservative soirées as they choose. More power to ‘em.

The thing that’s sad for this country is that some of the attendees of their right-wing shindigs are members of the Supreme Court of the United States: Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Recently the Supreme Court ruled that the bulk of existing campaign-finance legislation is unconstitutional. Suddenly enormous, anonymous piles of cash can go straight into the service of "strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it."

One of the organizations that may further these strategies with the help of huge piles of secret funding is called “Liberty Central.”

Liberty Central’s website asks the websurfer if they are "ready to restore the greatness of America" and promises to connect them “with grassroots conservative and libertarian organizations."

Because of the Supreme Court's ruling on campaign finance we’ll never know who gave the money to start up liberty Central, which the Washington Post reports was mostly a single donation of $500,000.

We do, however, know who the leader of this intrepid group of libertarians is. It is Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas.

Given their shared views on things like polluter's rights and corporate freedom of speech, one wonders if liberty Central might not be looking towards the Koch Brothers for a little tiny fraction of those billions of dollars that they spend on conservative causes.

In another era a judge whose wife's business would be materially affected by a ruling before the court might have recused himself, but not these days. Clarence Thomas was content to sit on the bench and vote with fervor to allow his wife to take in as many anonymous donations as possible.

Nor does he seem to feel that it demeans the dignity of the court to attend formal partisan gatherings, that are centered on strategies for wealthy private institutions to change government policy.

But that's the era we live in, an era when many of those in power advocate for and benefit from lowering the barriers to conflict of interest in business and government.

Linda McMahon, Small Business and Federal Office

One thing that all politicians seem to stand up for is small business.

Lately, because of unemployment, the importance of small business is invoked by all sides in the tug-of-war over control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Glib political platitudes are mildly annoying, in general. But small businesses really do supply the majority of jobs. They are often the foundations that perpetuate communities. I’ve spent most of my adult life building, owning and running small businesses, so this particular empty rhetoric annoys me more than most.

That is why I would like every voter to know, and I will state, without fear of contradiction, that there is nothing less relevant, nothing more unimportant to a small business than a federal election.

The most famous small-business activist in the last election, Joe the plumber was after all a fake small businessman.

No matter what a candidate for federal office may tell you, their election will have nothing whatsoever to do with the success or failure of small businesses…except, perhaps, contractors specializing in federal contracts.

That's why I was so amused to hear Linda McMahon, who runs a very large, multi-national business, claim that a desire to help small business was partly behind her decision to run for the Senate.

"I think the best way that you can... incentivize small businesses so that they can grow is to keep money in their pocket... I think you keep money in the pocket of small businesses and entrepreneurs by reducing the tax burden," she said recently.

That's a lovely sentiment, but as far as small businesses are concerned it is local governments, state and municipal governments, that regulate, tax, penalize, zone and strangle small businesses. The federal government has almost nothing to do with it.

So if Linda McMahon wants to help small businesses, she should run for her local city council or, better yet, the zoning board. Because the real regulatory barriers to entry for start-up business are almost all local.

When I raised the capital for and opened my businesses, which happened to be bars, the single greatest expense beyond real estate was the local lawyers and expediters, who helped me navigate the local codes, which were numerous and onerous.

I had to pay these men almost half of my remaining budget, just to tell me what I was allowed to do. New York State dictated where I could be located and how I could purchase liquor, so that it could conveniently tax me at a rate upwards of 30% on every single drink I sold.

The city mandated what types of appliances I could buy, the size and location of my bathrooms, which contractors I was allowed to use, what hours I was allowed to remain open, what type of lighting fixtures were permissible, the fabric on furniture, the finish on the bar… almost every detail was a matter of concern for the City of New York.

And then there were the fines. I once paid $500 and spent 5 hours in court for the crime of failing to post a sign behind the bar that would've informed the bartenders that it's against the law to spit while serving drinks. These types of experiences occurred every couple of months, at random, until my heart-rate rose instinctively every time I received a piece of correspondence from a city or state agency.

So as anyone with a real neighborhood business can tell you, a compassionate fire chief or councilman can do a lot more to ease the burdens on small business than any US Senator.

Linda McMahon may be able to spend $50 million, to defeat Richard Blumenthal, but, as a senator, she won’t be able to do anything to really help small businesses.

A typical conversation about News

I have a friend who regularly appears on MSNBC, CNN, NPR, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and in the Times and the Wall Street Journal. He runs an economic think-tank and a small hedge fund. I'll call him Skipper, because I like that word, and I shouldn't write his name and it's annoying to keep writing My friend.

The other day, I met him before his work out, at a place called Joe’s, the science of coffee that sells very strong Coffee.

He began the conversation by saying that “the fourth estate (a.k.a. the press) is history.”

He was feeling cynical because he’d taken time to prepare for an interview about the latest jobs report and at the last minute the show had called it off because “there wasn’t enough ‘news’ in the report.”

He admitted that the number had not represented a dramatic shift, but said that beneath the surface there was actually newsworthy stuff, for example: the greatest number of jobs eliminated in the last month (some 50,000) were teaching jobs.

“So if a certain fact doesn’t fit into the ‘trend’ they were putting together as a narrative they don’t bother to report it,” he complained, gulping his coffee.

The next exhibit in his case against the integrity of journalism was his own father, a professor of physics. His father is from southern India, generally a democrat and tends towards the view that the global distribution of wealth is “not really fair.”

His father shocked him by saying “The other day I discovered that Clinton never really had budget surpluses… it was all accounting tricks.”

Skipper, who is acutely aware of Clinton’s budget surpluses, asked his father how he had come to this conclusion.

“Oh, I saw it on some news report,” his father had said.

Relaying the story, Skipper got really annoyed. “In a country that fires teachers to balance budgets, where a physicist who cares about politics, can’t even tell when a lie presented as news is false, what hope is there for a well informed public?” Skip wondered out loud.

“Clinton raised taxes very slightly, bought fewer aircraft carriers, happened to be in office during a rally in the stock market and was able to balance the budget. It isn’t rocket science to understand that, but somehow the press can’t manage to make a simple fact clear,” he vented and took another huge slurp of his Ethiopian-Sumatran blend.

Because he was frustrated, he didn’t realize at first that he was complaining as much about the people who watch the news as the people who report it.

Eventually, he modified his mild rant to target unsophisticated viewers and his point morphed into a sort of tree falling in the forest analogy.

“If economic reality is reported to a person who doesn’t understand economics (i.e. the average American voter) was it really reported?”

His frustration inspired him to continue asking absurd circular questions:

“If reality is complex, and America is busy firing teachers, what is the point of reporting reality?”

“If two journalist’s call each other liars and one is telling the truth, how does the average American tell the difference?”

Skipper was by now very amped on coffee. It’s a part of his workout regime to get his heart rate up. As he jogged off towards the gym he left me with following advise:

“Dude, why don’t you try this headline? Jobs report reveals- reality too complex. Americans unable to pay attention in class, fire 50,000 teachers last month.”

There is no point to this story, there is undoubtedly nothing that can change the fact that most Americans form opinions based on gut feeling and occasional TV watching.

Neo con man: Joe Lieberman and the next war

“Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States.” - Joe Lieberman

In the end not one of those threats turned out to be current or credible.

It’s absurd to be surprised, by an easily observable pattern. If a person exhibits a characteristic, they are likely to repeat it. For example: don’t leave an alcoholic alone in a liquor store.

That’s why it’s so sad that the filibuster made Joe Lieberman indispensable to democrats in this last session of Congress… He should never have been left in charge of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.

He was strangely determined, misguided and wrong on the facts when it came to security issues last time around and that promotion has allowed him to amplify the effects of those repeatable characteristics. Through the bully pulpit of his committee chairmanship, Lieberman has been adamant in attempting to revive the lot of the Neo-cons and their desire for constant conflict.

As far as Lieberman is concerned it is time to get ready to invade Iran.

Despite the fact that the country is already out of money from our last ill-conceived, poorly executed and ultimately murderous military expedition, he’s been on tour sowing the seeds for another bout of armed adventurism.

At the Council on Foreign Relations last week, he shared pearls of wisdom gathered on a Middle-East walkabout.

I have been struck as I have traveled in the region in recent months by what seems to me to be a heightened uneasiness about the future of American power there. Behind closed doors, one hears an unmistakable uncertainty about our resolve and staying power.

God forfend that American military virility be perceived as lacking staying power.

To prevent that, Lieberman believes we must again show the Muslim world just exactly how assertive the United States can be.

It is time to retire our ambiguous mantra about all options remaining on the table. It is time for our message to our friends and enemies in the region to become clearer: namely, that we will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability…with military force if we absolutely must.

I understand that Lieberman has a profound concern or the welfare of Israel, but is there really any evidence that Israel is safer post Iraq invasion? Is peace and stability really what a reasonable person would foresee as the result of a third US military invasion in the middle east?

No, it isn’t desirable for a despotic and dishonest regime like the theocracy of Iran to have fissionable materials, but is a financially exhausted, recession prone, culturally and politically fragmented United States really perpetually responsible for stability and security on the other side of the planet?

I think most Americans feel that deficits and unemployment are the real threats right now.

It’s time to focus on America’s decrepit infrastructure, profoundly diminished middle-class, and failing social safety net, and give regime change a rest.