BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Saturday, April 26, 2003
The varieties of stealing.
Reader JP points out a logical inconsistency in yesterday's New
York Times story on the
IRS crackdown aimed at poor
and working-class families who benefit from the earned-income tax
credit. It is an inconsistency that Media
Log blushingly confesses to
having missed entirely.
The Times story noted that
tax-credit fraud costs the government less than $10 billion a year,
whereas corporate tax shelters cost more than $50 billion. But as JP
notes, those who are wrongly collecting the earned-income tax credit
are engaged in criminal activity, whereas corporate tax shelters are
perfectly legal.
Of course, if poor people had the
lobbying muscle of corporations, cheating on the earned-income tax
credit would be enshrined in the tax code as a positive good. Like
the
old Bob Dylan line says,
"Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make
you king."
posted at 10:08 AM |
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Friday, April 25, 2003
Then again, they probably didn't
vote for Bush. Mary Williams Walsh has a
truly sickening story on
the front page of today's New York Times. George W. Bush's IRS
is cracking down on the earned-income tax credit, or EITC, the
principal means by which the Clinton administration helped low-income
working families.
It seems that there may be some
fraud going on, and no, fraud isn't good. But Walsh shows that the
IRS is demanding a level of proof that almost no one will be able to
comply with.
Meanwhile, the most mind-blowing
detail comes near the end of her story:
An I.R.S. briefing paper
... states that in 1999 the Treasury lost $8.5 billion to $9.9
billion by paying earned-income tax credits to filers who should
not have received them. A separate analysis, by two Treasury
Department specialists, says subsequent measures may have reduced
these erroneous payments by $2 billion.
By comparison, corporations
managed to sidestep as much as $54 billion in 1998, by hiding
about $155 billion in profits in tax shelters, according to a
study by a Harvard economist, Mihir A. Desai.
Guess which type of fraud the
Bushies are more pissed off about? As my father used to say, it is
enough to gag a maggot.
posted at 9:16 AM |
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Hard drives and hard times.
Boston Globe columnist Steve Bailey offers
"a
little perspective" on the
state budget crisis this morning, noting:
[O]ne of the
safest jobs to have through this recession has been a government
job. Just 0.7 percent of federal, state, and local jobs in
Massachusetts -- 3,000 people in all -- have been cut in the same
period, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Massachusetts technology giant EMC Corp. alone has cut more than
twice that many jobs worldwide over the last two years.
That's fine, but Bailey omits the
difference between EMC's getting rid of workers (fewer hard drives
for customers who don't want them anyway) and cities and towns
getting rid of teachers (do I have to point out the
obvious?).
Jill
Stein, the Green Party for
governor last year, released a statement yesterday saying that a good
chunk of the deficit could be closed by "raising over $2 billion in
additional state revenues by closing loopholes and making the current
tax system fairer."
Stein isn't specific, but what
she's saying is actually pretty well known. The '90s were a time of
huge tax giveaways in Massachusetts, mainly to the affluent and to
the business community.
In fact, the website of the
Massachusetts
Coalition for Healthy Communities,
the organization that Stein now heads, is loaded with ideas to bring
in more money and to make the tax system fairer.
I don't know how many of these are
good ideas, but it looks like a worthwhile place to
start.
posted at 9:16 AM |
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Thursday, April 24, 2003
Berlin to Media Log: Bush still
stinks! Boston University journalism professor Michael Berlin is
unhappy with Media Log's ever-so-slight deviation from
its
usual anti-Bushism:
Dan
--
Of course you
are right that it does matter if no weapons of mass destruction
are found in Iraq.
I am troubled,
however, by your "however."
I do not think
that President Bush should get any credit whatever for ending
human-rights violations, since that was not at all his purpose; it
was a "collateral" dividend.
The reason he
should not get credit is that he lied to the world and, more
importantly to us, the American people, in offering justification
for an invasion that killed 130-plus Americans and far more
innocent Iraqis and (given the American track record in
nation-building in Afghanistan, Haiti, and beyond) offers no
certainty that the people of Iraq would be better off 10 years
down the road, if factional fighting or a rigid Islamic autocracy
were to emerge from the present vacuum.
I needn't even
reach for my previous argument against invasion -- that even if
Iraq had WMD, there was no indication that it would use them
against us or give them to terror groups to use against us, and
that human-rights violations, in themselves, cannot legitimize the
unilateral exercise of military power against a regime unless they
are of the scale that prompted President Bartlett to act to stop a
Rwanda-style massacre, on West Wing. (Would Bush have
intervened? We know that Clinton didn't.)
Retrospectively,
I will say that if human-rights violations alone could justify
such an invasion, there would be half a dozen candidates for
invasion with a claim equal to that of Saddam Hussein, including
"friendly" nations such as Indonesia and possibly Pakistan. I too
believe that people can live best under a democracy, but a
government that unilaterally decides which autocracies must be
overthrown by force is not one I would take pride in; there is too
much danger of arrogance and misuse of power.
If no WMD are
found, Bush's claims (and Colin Powell's too) to the contrary will
surely cost them dearly in the world. I only hope that it costs
them dearly with the American people and, in itself, without other
considerations being necessary, makes it impossible for them to
win a second term in office.
Mike
Berlin makes some
splendid points, but I guess my view of Bush just isn't quite as
cynical as his. I think Samantha Power got Bush exactly right when
she told me -- in part of an interview for this week's Phoenix
that, unfortunately, didn't make the cut -- that she believes the
president is committed to liberalization and reform in places like
Iraq, but lacks consistency. Said Power:
The
cynical way of viewing Goerge Bush's behavior is that he doesn't
have any commitment to [those principles], and he's just
invoking them. I don't think that's true. I think he is committed
to these principles, but he just doesn't want to apply them very
many places. You may say that's the same as not having the
principles in the first place, but you know, whatever. That's the
way it is.
This doesn't
absolve Bush, of course, but I think it does explain him. I have no
doubt that he's thrilled at the scenes of liberation playing out in
Iraq, and has probably by now convinced himself that that's why we
went in in the first place.
However, he lacks
the imagination, on the one hand, to understand how much damage we
caused to Iraq and to ourselves in the process and, on the other
hand, how many other terrible places are crying out for liberation as
well -- not just his pet bugaboos, Syria and Iraq, but, as Berlin
notes, "friendly" regimes as well.
posted at 11:33 AM |
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Stay tuned. I'll be on
The David Brudnoy Show tonight from 8 to 9 p.m. on WBZ Radio
(AM 1030). The topics will be this week's cover story in the
Phoenix ("Waging
Post-Warfare"), media
coverage of the war in Iraq, and whatever else is on David's
mind.
posted at 10:45 AM |
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Local zero. Rick Santorum's
hometown papers don't appear too worked up about his grotesque
homophobic remarks to the
Associated Press.
The dominant Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, having run a story and excerpts from the interview
yesterday, is silent today, save for a
critical letter to the editor.
The rival Tribune-Review, despite being owned by right-wing
financier Richard Mellon Scaife, has a
mild but anti-Santorum column
today by Dimitri Vassilaros.
Neither paper has run an editorial
on the matter yet.
Couldn't check the statewide
Philadelphia Inquirer or the tabloid Philadelphia Daily
News, as their websites appeared to be down this
morning.
But you can't help but get the
feeling that this is going to fizzle pretty quickly. This culture
simply doesn't put gay-bashing on the same plane as racism. Too
bad.
posted at 8:38 AM |
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More on the horrors of Iraq.
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby doesn't seem to think it
matters whether we find weapons
of mass destruction in
Iraq. I disagree -- after all, that was our most prominently stated
purpose for going to war.
However, there's no question that
we put a halt to one of the most gut-wrenching humanitarian crises
in the world: the torture and murder performed routinely by the
regime of Saddam Hussein and his sons, especially Uday.
Three more horrifying reports on
the particulars, in the current Newsweek,
and in today's New
York Times and
Boston
Globe.
Even if George W. Bush's adventure
comes to a bad end; even if his intentions were less than pure going
in; he has to get at least some credit for putting an end to such
evil.
posted at 8:37 AM |
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Surreality show. If O.J.
feels like killing someone, does the camera
crew have to stop
rolling?
posted at 8:37 AM |
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New in this week's
Phoenix. I interview eight
foreign-policy experts on
what will and should happen next in Iraq and with the US position in
the world. Offering their thoughts are Samantha Power, Fareed Zakaria,
Paul Berman, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Lawrence Kaplan, Jessica Tuchman
Mathews, Joseph Nye, and Katrina vanden Heuvel.
Also, I take a look at the annual
Jefferson
Muzzle Awards, in which
Attorney General John Ashcroft leads the pack in suppressing the
First Amendment and expanding government secrecy.
posted at 8:37 AM |
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Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Bestiality, homophobia, and Rick
Santorum. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania's disgracefully homophobic
junior senator, lives in the Pittsburgh suburb of Penn Hills,
according to his
Senate biography.
The local weekly, the
Penn
Hills Star, has not yet
had a chance to react to his outburst comparing and contrasting
homosexuality to pedophilia, bigamy, polygamy, and bestiality. (Why
is it that the right-wing Republican gay-bashers always turn out to
be lugging around a mind full of depravity?)
But the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette is certainly a worthwhile read this morning. It
includes long excerpts of Santorum's
so-called thoughts,
expressed in an interview with the Associated Press. ("That's not to
pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog,
or whatever the case may be." Woof!) The Post-Gazette also
publishes a story by politics editor James O'Toole on the angry
reaction that Santorum's hate
speech
generated.
The rival Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review runs just a
wire story that gets little
play on the
paper's home page.
Apparently nothing on the editorial pages or from the columnists,
either. Is the Trib really that slow off the mark, or is this
a reflection of the sensibilities of its zillionaire right-wing
owner, Richard Mellon Scaife?
The pillars of more or less
respectable conservative opinion, the Wall Street Journal
editorial page, the Weekly Standard, and National
Review, appear to be silent this morning; their pundits are no
doubt trying to figure out how to defend the indefensible.
No such problem at the right-wing
site NewsMax.com, which shortly after midnight today posted
a
hysterical rant under the
headline "KKK-FJB Democrats Attack Santorum for Gay Comment." The
"KKK" is a reference to Senator Robert Byrd's former membership in
the Ku Klux Klan; "FJB" is an acronym for something that Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton supposedly once said, and I'm sorry, you're
just going to have to read the damn thing to find out what it
means.
Tellingly, NewsMax quotes
Santorum's milder comment about "bigamy," "polygamy," "incest," and
"adultery," but leaves out what he said about kids and dogs. Even the
wing-nuts understand how toxic this is.
posted at 9:20 AM |
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Forbidden souvenirs. You may
have already seen this -- Romenesko
has it up -- but if you
haven't, check
it out. Boston
Herald reporter Jules Crittenden just can't keep his name out of
the paper.
posted at 9:20 AM |
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Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Amphibious landing. If it
weren't for that weenie Colin Powell, we could have already taken
over the rest of the world by now. And Newt Gingrich is ready to do
something about it.
Huh? At this late date, the very
phrase "Newt Gingrich" might suggest that this is a joke. But the
Newtster has managed to embed himself within a Pentagon advisory
committee, and -- according to this
truly scary Washington Post
story by Glenn Kessler --
he's taken up the cudgel on behalf of those who think Powell is too
influential and Donald Rumsfeld just isn't powerful
enough.
In the event that George W. Bush
sides with Gingrich, hit "Eject."
posted at 8:58 AM |
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Quote of the day. Media Log
thought about nominating the Reverend James Allen, an
African-American minister who told the Boston Globe's Andrea
Estes that the loss of free golf privileges at Franklin Park for a
group of black ministers was, well, you know, "a
racial thing,"
maybe.
But then I read down and found this
gem from another minister who's suddenly facing the anguish of
pay-to-play, the Reverend Brian Gearin:
It would have been nice.
But I believe God is in control. If it was meant to be, it would
have happened. If you believe God is in control of everything,
you're able to take the good with the bad.
Yes, indeed, God works in
mysterious ways.
posted at 8:57 AM |
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Anatomy of a non-scoop.
Slate's Jack
Shafer has a smart take on
Judith Miller's non-news
in yesterday's New York Times that an Iraqi scientist she
couldn't interview had told American officials about weapons of mass
destruction that she couldn't identify.
No follow-up in today's
Times, either.
posted at 8:57 AM |
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Monday, April 21, 2003
Face to face (sort of) with
Eason Jordan. CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan and I
appeared on CNN's Reliable Sources yesterday. We didn't debate
each other directly -- rather, host Howard Kurtz interviewed Jordan
in studio, and then asked me to comment from my perch in Boston. You
can read the transcript here.
I thought Jordan's most interesting
comments involved what he called the "hypocrisy" of other media in
condemning CNN's dealings with the regime of Saddam Hussein while
keeping quiet about their own dealings. At one point Jordan
said:
There were many
journalists who knew stories like this. I encourage you and
everyone to read the New York Times today. John Burns has a
diary, a Baghdad diary in the New York Times that is
fascinating, it's very compelling, and it's all true about what
compromises journalists had to make in Baghdad in order to stay
there and not to put innocent lives at risk.
Burns's front-page "Baghdad
Diary" in Sunday's
Times, headlined "Last Days of a Brutal Regime," is indeed
"fascinating" and "compelling," the sort of gripping account that he
(and the Washington Post's Anthony Shadid) have justly become
known for during the war in Iraq.
Among other things, Burns reveals
that he spent the final days of the regime skulking around stairwells
and staying in other reporters' hotel rooms to prevent the
authorities from following through on a threat to haul him away,
never to be seen again.
Here's the section of Burns's piece
that Jordan was talking about:
A tacit understanding,
accepted by many visiting journalists, was that there were aspects
of Mr. Hussein's Iraq that could be mentioned only obliquely.
First among these was the personality of Mr. Hussein himself, and
the fact that he was widely despised and feared by Iraqis,
something that was obvious to any visitor ready to listen to the
furtive whispers in which this hatred was commonly
expressed.
The terror that was the most
pervasive aspect of society under Mr. Hussein was another topic
that was largely taboo. Every interview conducted by television
reporters, and most print journalists, was monitored; any Iraqi
voicing an opinion other than those approved by the state would be
vulnerable to arrest, torture and execution. But these were facts
rarely mentioned by many reporters.
Some reporters bought expensive
gifts for senior ministry officials, submitted copies of their
stories to show they were friendly to Iraq, or invited key
officials like Uday al-Ta'ee, director general of information, for
dinners at the expensive restaurants favored by Mr. Hussein's
elite.
On the editorial page of today's
Times, Ethan Bronner writes with considerable sophistication
and nuance about the
terrible conflicts that journalists
face in covering a regime
such as Saddam's. Bronner writes of the Jordan affair:
The controversy has
highlighted an uncomfortable reality. Covering totalitarian states
forces a journalist to act in compromising ways. Anyone who has
reported from such countries knows that it is one of the most
challenging tasks a journalist faces, involving daily calculations
over access, honesty, freedom of movement and fear of reprisal.
Some governments assume a foreign journalist is a spy. The way
they treat you forces you to act like one.
Bronner seemingly defends Jordan in
writing: "It's easy to say Mr. Jordan and CNN made the wrong choice.
It certainly allows for a comforting moral clarity." Yet he also
follows that by saying, "And it may be that they stepped over a line
in pandering to Iraqi officials." Earlier in the piece Bronner
asserts: "Mr. Jordan's confession did not inspire
confidence."
Bronner, I think, gets at the heart
of the problem. Yes, media insiders understand that compromises must
be made in order to cover the news in a horrible place such as Iraq.
(Something they could and should do a much better job of explaining
to the public they are supposedly serving.)
But Eason Jordan, in his 13 trips
to Iraq, did far more than decide what to cover and what to set aside
for another day. By his own account, he was dragged against his will
into life-and-death decision-making. I'm glad he's decided to come
clean, but he still hasn't convinced me that he did the right thing
in not ordering CNN to pull out of Iraq.
posted at 10:09 AM |
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More smoke; gun TK? The
Times' Judith Miller today reports what may be the existence
of the
smoking gun. Her
lead:
A scientist who claims to
have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a
decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed
chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before
the war began, members of the team said.
Further down, though, Miller
writes:
Under the terms of her
accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this
reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his
home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the
scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a
check by military officials.
Those officials asked that
details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted. They said
they feared that such information could jeopardize the scientist's
safety by identifying the part of the weapons program where he
worked.
The facts that Miller reports may
turn out to be true. But based on the sketchy, censored details that
she has to offer today, why was this story published on the front
page? For that matter, why was it published at all?
posted at 10:09 AM |
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From Boston to Baghdad.
Boston Globe columnist Adrian
Walker and Boston
Herald columnist Cosmo
Macero (fee required) both
love the irony of Big Dig overlord Bechtel's decamping for Iraq.
Walker's conclusion: "The accounting on the Big Dig is a costly
public disgrace. But that's already history. For Bechtel, it's on to
Baghdad."
posted at 10:08 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
