News, Comments, Etc.

Although it is true "austerity" measures don't work, that doesn't mean the neoliberals won't stop trying to force these measures on the backs of the population.

These politicians are on the take from the financial elites who are bound by ideology, not facts.
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Columnist Bob Herbert follows Frank Rich in leaving the New York Times before the site goes pay-for-play on Monday.

I suspect this latest scheme is going to fail, just as the previous attempt, Times Select, failed.
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Miscellaneous Whatever

I don't know what I am going to do about the obituaries when the NYT goes pay-to-play on March 28.
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Obituaries to note:

Former secretary of state Warren Christopher, 85, after being ill with kidney and bladder cancer.

He was involved in Bush v. Gore:

Mr. Christopher was in overall charge of Mr. Gore’s Florida recount effort, although much of the legal strategy was devised by a team of lawyers led by David Boies, the prominent corporate lawyer, and Ronald A. Klain, Mr. Gore’s former chief of staff and a onetime partner of Mr. Christopher’s at O’Melveny & Myers.

Mr. Christopher came under criticism at the time, and later in “Recount,” the 2008 HBO dramatization of the Florida vote dispute, over his handling of the Florida episode. His detractors said he had showed a lack of legal and political aggressiveness against Mr. Bush’s legal team, led by James A. Baker III, another former secretary of state. The movie, in particular, portrayed Mr. Christopher as overly concerned with the niceties of the law while Mr. Baker was waging a bare-knuckled campaign on all fronts.

In other words, Christopher was honest and Baker was a crook.
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Country music star Ferlin Husky, 85, of undisclosed causes:

Mr. Husky had previously recorded an unvarnished take of “Gone,” featuring the pedal steel guitarist Speedy West, for Capitol Records in Hollywood in 1952. Released under the pseudonym Terry Preston at the urging of the label’s representatives, who insisted that Mr. Husky’s real name sounded like a fabrication, the single failed to chart. Four years later, performing under his given name and employing a smooth uptown arrangement, he rerecorded “Gone” for Capitol in Nashville. The single went on to spend 10 weeks at No. 1 on the country charts and climbed to No. 4 on the pop chart.

The Health Care Mess

According to the WSWS, hardly an objective source, Obama's "reform" attempts are hardly a giant leap forward towards true reform, and they target the New York Times' editorial on this issue:

Employing evasion and deception, the Times preys on the widespread discontent with the current state of the health care system to push for Obama’s proposals. It cites the immense burdens which the existing setup places on ordinary people to suggest that things will only get worse and the sole alternative is the cost-cutting overhaul proposed by Obama:

“Premiums and out-of-pocket spending for health care have been rising far faster than wages. Millions of people are ‘under-insured’—their policies don’t come close to covering their medical bills. Many postpone medical care or don’t fill prescriptions because they can’t afford to pay their share of the costs. And many declare personal bankruptcy because they are unable to pay big medical debts.”

This describes the failure of a health care system based on private profit. This—the central issue—the Times completely evades.

Instead, the newspaper shifts the blame onto the so-called “fee-for-service system.” The newspaper writes, “Virtually all experts blame the system for runaway health care costs because it pays doctors and hospitals for each service they perform.”

What experts? The newspaper does not say.

The editorial justifies Obama’s drive to do away with the fee-for-service system by replying to critics who fear that health care will be rationed to cut costs. “The truth is that health care is already rationed,” the Times writes, adding cynically, “No insurance, public or private, covers everything at any cost.”

The editorial in question is here.

The New York Times

can be counted on to have the best obituaries in the business, and while it doesn't have a full-blown one yet of Michael Jackson, there is this series of blog entries.

In this NYT appraisal of Farrah Fawcett's career, it is pointed out the late star wanted to be much more than some pretty face with the big hair.

Her obituary from the paper is here.

The Booming Economy

Frankly, I don't trust Paul Volcker as far as I can throw him. I remember when, during the Carter years, that people's standard of living (not the rich, of course) will have to decline.

You can bet your ass he wants the masses to pay for the screwups of the robber barons.

The WSWS is skeptical also:

The final question at the press conference came from a Chicago reporter who asked Obama about the actions of workers at a local factory who have begun an occupation to demand payment of vacation and severance pay following the sudden closure of the plant. Obama declared that the workers “were absolutely right,” and sought to portray himself as their advocate.

Another such gesture came from Vice President-elect Joseph Biden, who Friday appointed a liberal economist, Jared Bernstein, to the newly created position of chief economic adviser to the vice president. Bernstein is an expert in the field of income inequality and has long been associated with the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank financed by the AFL-CIO.

This appointment is another fig leaf, coming after complaints that Obama had filled the White House and cabinet with Wall Street figures like New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner, the incoming treasury secretary, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, head of Obama’s National Economic Council, and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who will be Obama’s top adviser in formulating an economic recovery plan.

Speaking of those workers at Chicago's Republic Windows and Doors, more power to them.

Note how skewed this country's values have become:

Some of the plant’s 250 workers stayed all night, all weekend, in what they were calling an occupation of the factory. Their sharpest criticisms were aimed at their former bosses, who they said gave them only three days’ notice of the closing, and the company’s creditors. But their anger stretched broadly to the government’s costly corporate bailout plans, which, they argued, had forgotten about regular workers.

“They want the poor person to stay down,” said Silvia Mazon, 47, a mother of two who worked as an assembler here for 13 years and said she had never before been the sort to march in protests or make a fuss. “We’re here, and we’re not going anywhere until we get what’s fair and what’s ours. They thought they would get rid of us easily, but if we have to be here for Christmas, it doesn’t matter.”

The workers, members of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, said they were owed vacation and severance pay and were not given the 60 days of notice generally required by federal law when companies make layoffs. Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, said her office was investigating, and representatives from her office interviewed workers at the plant on Sunday.

The WSWS offers this:

Although Republic has placed the blame for the closing solely on Bank of America’s decision to stop loaning the company money, management had known about the closure for at least a few weeks. Workers became suspicious as materials listed in the inventory were nowhere to be found. Others told of the company moving equipment and supplies out of the factory in the middle of the night with the lights off.
With the slump in the housing market, Republic saw its monthly sales fall from $4 million to $2.9 million over the last month alone. CEO Rich Gillman, in a letter to the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1110, notifying the union of the plant closure, stated, “Our continuing to stay in business will only result in losing more money.”

For their part, Bank of America, in a statement released to the local CBS new station, said, “Neither Bank of America nor any other third-party lender to the company has the right to control whether the company complies with applicable laws or honors its commitments to its employees.” Bank of America has been the beneficiary of at least $25 billion in government bailout money over the past several months, supposedly to free up the credit markets.

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Bankruptcy--Tribune Co.
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The New York Times isn't doing much better.
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Dow Chemical--5,000 jobs lost

Media Follies II

Drudge is claiming the New York Times has rejected a John McCain editorial. The reason is alleged to be McCain's editorial needs to "mirror" the Audacity of Hype's.

More Idiocy

from Obamamann about the NYT's stupid editorial about Hillary Clinton.

What is this shit about the PA primary being "inconclusive"? Ten percent, more or less, is decisive.






Edit: I forgot to mention Obamamann's mention of somebody taking Hillary Clinton out. Unbelievable sexism.

Jeremiah Wright

may want to keep a low profile if he wants his candidate to be president:

Out of a two-hour conversation with you about Barack’s spiritual journey
and my protesting to you that I had not shaped him nor formed him, that I
had not mentored him or made him the man he was, even though I would
love to take that credit, you did not print any of that. When I told
you, using one of your own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible as to
how God asked Moses, “What is that in your hand?,” that Barack was like
that when I met him. Barack had it “in his hand.” Barack had in his
grasp a uniqueness in terms of his spiritual development that one is
hard put to find in the 21st century, and you did not print that.

There's a hell of a lot more from where that came from.

More Campaign Notes.

Hillary Clinton insists her closing statement isn't a "swan song," much to the consternation of the corrupt national media.
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The NYT is trying to cover its ass over the McCain/Iseman "affair" story debacle.
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THIS

is why the New York Times decided to run the McCain "affair."

So it was inoculation all right, but for the Times!

THIS article is highly interesting. I hope Gene Lyons will comment on this.

Big snip:

The McCain investigation began in November, after Rutenberg, who covers the political media and advertising beat, got a tip. Within a few days, Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet assigned Thompson and Labaton to join the project and, later, conservative beat reporter David Kirkpatrick to chip in as well. Labaton brought his expertise with regulatory issues to the team, and Thompson had done investigative work: At The Washington Post in the 1990s she had edited Michael Isikoff's reporting on the Paula Jones scandal, and in 2003 she broke the story that Strom Thurmond had secretly fathered a child with his family's black maid. Having four reporters thrown on the story showed just what a potential blockbuster the paper believed it might have.

From the outset, the Times reporters encountered stiff resistance from the McCain camp. After working on the story for several weeks, Thompson learned that McCain had personally retained Bill Clinton's former attorney Bob Bennett to defend himself against the Times' questioning. At the same time, two McCain campaign advisers, Mark Salter and Charlie Black, vigorously pressed the Times reporters to drop the matter. And in early December, McCain himself called Keller to deny the allegations on the record.

In early December, according to sources with knowledge of the events, Thompson requested a meeting with Bennett to arrange access to the senator and to discuss why the Republican presidential candidate had sought out a criminal lawyer in the first place. Bennett agreed to meet, and on the afternoon of December 18, Labaton, Rutenberg, and Thompson arrived at his Washington office. During a one-hour meeting, according to sources, Bennett admonished the Times reporters to be fair to McCain, especially in light of the whisper campaign that had sundered his 2000 presidential bid in South Carolina. He told them that he would field any questions they had, and promised to provide answers to their queries. Of the reporters in the room, Bennett knew Labaton the best. In the 1990s, Labaton had covered the Whitewater investigation, and Bennett viewed him as a straight-shooting, accurate reporter who could be reasoned with. Rutenberg he knew less well, and Bennett was miffed that Rutenberg had been calling all over Washington asking probing questions about McCain and his dealings with Iseman. The rumors were bound to get out.

Even so, McCain is inoculated against these stories.

After Years and Years

of trashing Bill and Hillary Clinton and creating the mess which resulted in Clinton's impeachment, the NYT has the unmitigated gall to endorse Hillary Clinton for president.

It's almost as bad as the Las Vegas Review-Journal endorsing Obama.

The NYT

continues to peddle administration propaganda regarding Iraq.