And here, finally for tonight, I want to post a link to: the full Treglia video.
This is it, the full monty.
It’s about 2 hours long. Most of the juicy stuff happens after 20 and before 50 minutes.
Enjoy.
And pass it around.
Archive for March, 2005
So, here Sean Treglia and Pew respond to the charges in my recent column.
Let me start with Treglia’s response, posted on the USC Annenberg School for Communication Web site under the link to the video that started it all:
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following clarification was provided by Sean Treglia in response to questions from journalists who did not attend the WKC seminar. According to Treglia: “It is contrary to all of my experience at Pew and incorrect to suggest that the organization would attempt to deceive or mislead about its funding efforts. I regret that my comments have led to any confusion and want to be clear now that the grant making efforts of Pew in and around campaign finance were transparent and intended to be transparent at all times.”
This, quite simply, contradicts multiple statements from the tape. Such as:
“By law, the grantees always have to disclose. But I always encouraged the grantees never to mention Pew.”
“Having been on the Hill I knew that … if Congress thought this was a Pew effort, it’d be worthless. It’d be 20 million bucks thrown down the drain. So, in order, in essence, to convey the impression that this was something coming naturally from outside the Beltway, I felt it was best that Pew stay in the background.”
And those are just for starters. So, I really don’t think his response requires any further debunking. Which do you believe: his candid comments to a sympathetic room a year ago or his canned denial today?
And then, there’s Pew’s response:
Statement on Campaign Finance Reform
From Rebecca W. Rimel, President & CEO
The Pew Charitable TrustsAs part of its mission to serve the public interest, and to help increase public trust and confidence in U.S. elections, The Pew Charitable Trusts has invested over the last nine years in nonpartisan efforts to help reform the role money plays in campaigns. We are pleased that our involvement, along with that of many others, could play a positive role in helping to spark a national dialogue and ultimately, agreement on options for change.
Our campaign finance reform grants were focused on work that helped to inform the American public and its leaders about the impact of soft money, the lack of disclosure and the lax enforcement of laws. We joined with leading academic and nonprofit institutions across the ideological spectrum to document the scope of the issue and then supported them to make the resulting research broadly accessible to the public. Over the nine years, these grantees, among others, included The American Enterprise Institute, the League of Women Voters Education Fund, Brigham Young University, the Center for Responsive Politics, The George Washington University, and the University of Utah.
Any assertion that we tried to hide our support of campaign finance reform grantees is false. As we do with all of our work, we have fully disclosed our support for grantees working on campaign finance reform in a variety of forms over the last nine years, including in organizational publications and tax forms, as well as on our Web site, where a searchable database of grants has been available since 1998.
Most of this is pretty much canned, so let’s just look at the part at the end in bold.
Basically, this doesn’t address The Post’s charges. I never said they didn’t fill out the required tax forms. I said they followed the letter of the law (or, really, that’s what Treglia said), but within those boundaries set out to deceive Congress and the public.
That is the charge they need to respond to. And simply denying it is not a response, I’d say. When their former employee is on tape detailing their strategy at great length, they either have to prove that he was lying — or they need to acknowledge wrongdoing.
Still Campaign Finance, and Still Obscene, but a Little Different
Published by March 19th, 2005 in Misc. Miscellany. 0 CommentsI’m guessing these guys are actually pro-porn, which makes this report awesome:
Addicted to Porn: How Members of Congress Benefit from Pornography
Indecency and pornography have become hot button political issues over the past couple of years. Indeed, many Members of Congress have made “moral values” a platform on which to base political campaigns and consider themselves crusaders intent on protecting Americans from debauchery. As examples of our national moral decay, members have pointed to the baring of Janet Jackson’s breast during the 2003 Super Bowl half-time show, the Howard Stern radio show, and even the airing of “Saving Private Ryan.”
Yet while denouncing the decline in public morality, many of those same Members accept money from corporations that derive substantial profits from pornography. Although they do not advertise it, companies as diverse as Comcast and Marriott International make enormous amounts of money by selling pornography. Ironically, some of this money winds up in the political war chests of pornography’s most outspoken Congressional critics.
In the following report, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) reveals that some of the Members of Congress who publicly rail against the evils of pornography are only too happy to accept political contributions from those who derive income from the sale of pornography. These Members allege support for legislation penalizing obscenity one moment and fill their campaign coffers with pornography profits the next. It is this rank hypocrisy that this report exposes.
I think the report is more than a bit of a stretch, but any graph with “Total (Pornography) Contributions Received” has my attention.
This seems to be the George Will column that Treglia was referring to on the tape:
If you doubt that reformers advocate reform because they believe that acting “objectively” means coming to conclusions shared by the New York Times, read “Who’s Buying Campaign Finance Reform?” written by attorney Cleta Mitchell and published by the American Conservative Union Foundation. It reveals that since 1996, liberal foundations and soft money donors have contributed $73 million to the campaign for campaign finance reform. For example, George Soros, founder of drug legalization efforts and other liberal causes, has contributed $4.7 million, including more than $600,000 to Arizonans for Clean Elections — more than 71 percent of the funding of ACE.
Soros and seven other wealthy people founded and funded the Campaign for a Progressive Future. One of those people, Steven Kirsch, contributed $500,000 to campaign “reform” groups in 2000 — and $1.8 million against George W. Bush. Another reformer, Jerome Kohlberg, donated $100,000 to a group that ran ads saying “Let’s get the $100,000 checks out of politics.”
The column doesn’t mention Pew by name, but Pew figures big in the report Will based the column on.
And, by the way, here’s a link to that 2001 report, put together by the always knowledgeable and indefatigable Cleta Mitchell.
Show Us the Money!
Published by March 19th, 2005 in Misc. Speech and Misc. Self Promotion. 0 CommentsThere’s a way to fight back against the campaign-finance lobby’s attempt to regulate the Internet (and everything else), and I spell it out in my latest TCS piece:
Remember Jerry Maguire? Since it’s never too early for some mid-’90s nostalgia, I’ll remind you of four little words: Show me the money! Keep those four words on the tips of your tongues, because they may just save blogs from Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold.
Here’s how.
Everyone knows by now that the campaign-finance lobby has got online political speech in its crosshairs. Commissioner Brad Smith of the Federal Election Commission performed the public service of alerting the public to that fact earlier this month — specifically, he alerted us to the fact that the FEC has been forced by a court decision to write rules for what online speech does and does not fall under the restrictions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.
Since Smith made his comments, the “cleanies” have issued backtrack after backtrack and denial after denial, all of which, in the end, have boiled down to this: “Well, yes, but don’t worry…You can trust us.”
Well, no, we can’t.
So here’s how concerned citizens should respond: Show us the money!
Whole thing here.
I’ve got my own political cartoon… that’s hot.
It’s by Chris Muir, of Day by Day fame.
As Glenn Reynolds might say: Heh.
So, NPR’s campaign-finance “reporter,” Peter Overby, was the editor of Common Cause Magazine?
Wow. Talk about your unbiased news sources.
When’s NPR going to explain the $1.2 million it took from foundations lobbying for campaign-finance reform?
Now, for the documentation. I’m sure some people will say that the material in my piece fits too perfectly into the worldview of campaign-finance-reform opponents to be true.
Be assured, however, it is all real.
So, here, first of all, is a partial transcript of Treglia’s remarks (with three video clips linked at the bottom of the page) — posted at The Post’s Web site. (The entire video is about 2 hours long, hence the “partial.”)
Now, to satisfy the curious, I also want to provide as much of the actual video as possible.
I’ll see what I can do about providing people who ask with the whole thing. But, for now, here are some of the key clips, in chronological order, of the Treglia talk.
(I had to learn to split up movie files — and download lots of software — so, really, enjoy and disseminate. This is important stuff, and as many people as possible should see these videos.)
Download Treglia-massmovement1.wmv: Treglia explains how Pew set out to create the impression of a “mass movement” behind campaign-finance reform.
Download Treglia-later2.wmv: Treglia ominously mentions that current developments in campaign-finance (circa March 12, 2004) are part of a broader plan that he has knowledge of.
Download Treglia-business3.wmv: Treglia explains how some big businesses were brought into the coalition calling for campaign-finance reform.
Download Treglia-letterofthelaw4.wmv: Treglia explains how Pew “stayed within the letter, if not the spirit of the law.”
Download Treglia-worthless5.wmv: Treglia explains how Pew’s efforts would have been “worthless” if Congress fully understood its role in the push for McCain-Feingold.
Download Treglia-scare6.wmv: Treglia — in the best clip of the series — recounts how George Will almost blew the lid off the entire scam before McCain-Feingold was passed and how he gave Pew quite a “scare.”
Videos 1, 4 and 6 are available on The Post’s site as well. Videos 2, 3 and 5 are exclusively on MO.
Happy downloading and trading!
Collect ’em all!
So, my piece today in The Post goes into some detail regarding a talk given by Sean Treglia, a former program officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts, who — beyond all reason — decided to pull back the curtains of the campaign-finance-reform “movement” and expose it for what it is: a gigantic con.
I don’t want to over-hype this or anything, but this is the biggest story. Ever.
OK, maybe not ever.
But the revelations in a video I obtained (of Treglia giving a talk on March 12, 2004, at USC’s Annenberg School for Communications) should lead to a seismic change in the way campaign-finance reform is perceived by the public and by the media.
“I’m going to tell you a story that I’ve never told any reporter. And now that I’m several months away from Pew and we have campaign-finance reform, I can tell this story,” Treglia tells the friendly crowd — made up of apparently sympathetic “journalists,” some academics and some foundation types — before going into painful detail as to just how Pew hoodwinked Congress into accepting the “impression that a mass movement was afoot. That everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform.”
Anyway, the whole piece is here. Please read it. And if you’re a journalist, note the disdain with which Treglia regards you.
It’s warranted.
Or, more, only in The New York Times…
Unfortunately, I have been unable to get the folks at Political Money Line to make the report on the campaign-finance lobby available for free. Journalists, think tankers and interested citizens should call Kent Cooper at 202-237-2500 (he’s expecting your call) to be set up with a guest password to view the report.
It’s the best that can be done.
Eduwonk picks out an old post of mine on vouchers and issues a response.
The question here is whether Rotherham’s opposition to vouchers is ideological or pragmatic. Here’s what he has to say:
Issues of program efficacy aside, a big concern with a lot of voucher proposals is that they sever the link between democratic accountability and decision making and publicly funded education. That’s ideology, sure, and a debatable concern. But it’s not a trivial issue in terms of thinking about how to deliver education in a democratic society.
So, we have an answer: ideological.
Frankly — and here my own ideology comes into play — I don’t give a plague rat’s ass about “democratic accountability.” If you want democratic accountability, well, we’ve already got it. It’s called the public school system. It’s a sewer, at least for poor kids, and that’s why we’re even having this debate.
So, spare me the usual talk about how voucher schools are somehow less accountable than traditional public schools — it would be an impossibility.
Now, as for charter schools — which Rotherham calls a way “to square that circle and provide parents with more options while protecting the public interest” — my thinking has always been a bit mixed. I support them, and I’ve seen some amazing schools, but the movement seems a very fragile thing to me. It could become overregulated and unionized — and thus essentially worthless — in the blink of an eye. But if tended properly, it could remake public education. I support strong accountability measures within the charter-school movement, but only because it’s so fragile. It can’t afford any failures, politically.
Ideally, I’d like to see a healthy mixture of charters, vouchers and as few traditional public schools as possible (and, of course, private schools). In that context, choice would serve as its own accountability. It’s not democratic accountability. But we don’t have nice cars, refrigerators, computers and cheeseburgers because of democracy. We have them because of the market.
P.S.: The point from Eduwonk that perplexed me the most, and that moved me to write, was the idea that the Catholic schools’ trouble was an argument against vouchers. That these schools are having financial trouble, if anything, is an argument for why we need vouchers sooner rather than later (before the schools have all closed). It says nothing about the quality of the schools.
So, NPR’s first response to my reporting that they’ve accepted about $1.2 million from pro-campaign-finance-reform foundations to provide coverage of the issue has been to issue an off-point and inaccurate statement, as reported over at Tapscott’s Copy Desk.
NPR’s statement:
Peter Overby began reporting on money, power and influence in 1994, which was the year he first jointed NPR. NPR did receive support from two foundations to sustain this reporting, but I can assure you it was not in the same neighborhood, not even the same country, as the $1.2 million Sager reported.
…
Overby has had no contact with the two foundations and he hasn’t received any instructions or directions from them or anybody at NPR on how this issue should be reported. NPR reporters are all independent.
My column in no way focused in on Peter Overby, who does some of NPR’s campaign-finance-related reporting. But, even if I were just talking about him, their “not in the same neighborhood” comment would be laughable: Overby’s series had about $400,000 in liberal foundation money behind it, according to the Political Money Line report.
No chump change, that.
But, I was talking about all of the money NPR has accepted related to this issue. There were a number of grants involved — at least eight big ones unrelated to Overby. NPR is still looking into that, and should be getting back to me.
However, I’d say that even the Overby money — alone — is pretty damning. NPR, like The American Prospect, has a huge ethical lapse to explain here.
More to come…
To those asking about a link to the Political Money Line report, their site is here.
Unfortunately, the report is for the site’s subscribers only. There’s a number to call on the main page, and they might give you a password.
Maybe with enough requests they’ll just make it free.
(I’ll work on getting a free copy of the report made available on Monday. But it’s not something I ultimately can control.)
If Bloomberg Were Smart…
Published by March 11th, 2005 in Misc. Education and Misc. Self Promotion. 4 CommentsIf New York’s Mayor Bloomberg were smart, he’d be using the Catholic-school crisis in this city to his advantage — as I argue in a column today in The Post:
“People are really looking for somebody to do the right thing,” says state Sen. Martin Golden. Is Mike Bloomberg a canny enough politician to rise to the occasion?
Golden wants New York state to adopt a tuition-tax credit: Parents who pay parochial or private-school tuition could get a tax credit of $1,500 per child (up to $3,000 per family). The credit would be refundable, so a family with no tax liability would get a check for $1,500 per child. And it would be worth slightly less as families’ incomes rise above $40,000 — and stop at $100,000.
“Every child we give a credit and keep in a Catholic school is one more we keep out of an overcrowded, over-impacted public school,” Golden told The Post yesterday.
The families of more than 110,000 New York City Catholic-school students now pay twice to educate their children: Once to support the public schools, once for the schools their kids actually attend.
The politics here are simple. Poor families who find a way to pay for private schools are paying twice for their kids’ education when they can barely afford to pay once.
Prospect for Sale
Published by March 11th, 2005 in Misc. Speech and Misc. Self Promotion. 4 CommentsHere’s my latest on campaign-finance reform, from Tech Central Station:
In September of 2000, less than two years before the passage of McCain-Feingold, the liberal magazine The American Prospect put out a special issue devoted to campaign-finance reform. It was called, “Checkbook Democracy.” And it was bought and paid for with a $132,000 check from the liberal Carnegie Corporation of New York, which has spent millions of dollars promoting laws to restrict political speech — a fact the magazine never disclosed to its readers.
Welcome behind the curtains of the campaign-finance reform movement, where ideologues plot to restrict the speech of their fellow citizens while reserving a special free-speech zone for themselves.
Sounds paranoid? A little over the top?Consider a report just out from the folks over at Political Money Line, “Campaign Finance Reform Lobby: 1994 to 2004.” Ignored by the media to date, it details how the supposedly grass-roots campaign-finance reform movement has been funded over the last decade to the tune of $140 million. Of that $140 million, the vast majority ($123 million) came not from retirees scraping together their last nickels for the cause of democracy, nor from schoolchildren collecting deposits on cans plucked from dilapidated playgrounds.
No, the money came from just eight ultra-liberal foundations (including the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Institute), the same folks who fund: the Earth Action Network, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the Naderite Public Citizen Foundation and the Feminist Majority Foundation.
It’s really pretty remarkable, the part about the Prospect.
I know I’m a little campaign-finance obsessed today, but McCain-Feingold is my Martha Stewart and my Brad and Jen.
It’s even my reporting on the reporting on Martha.
If mushroom growers can’t be forced to pay for mushroom advertising they don’t like, how come you and I can be forced to give money to politicians we don’t like? That’s the question that Manhattan Libertarian Party is asking in a new lawsuit, and it’s a question I take up in my most recent column for Tech Central Station:
Unfortunately, the law isn’t that simple. Constitutional scholars I’ve consulted think the lawsuit’s a dead letter. The government speaks all the time, if you think about it. It tells you not to do drugs. It tells you not to litter. It tells you to keep your dog leashed. It funds public art and public television. It invites you to sign up for Medicaid.
So long as the government is advancing a legitimate government interest, it can spend your money on speech — whether you agree with it or not.
Proponents of public campaign financing, of course, would say that clean elections are a legitimate government interest.
The key, perhaps, would be to show that there’s no such thing as a clean election — or at least that politician welfare does nothing to further the cause.
It shouldn’t be a hard case to make in New York:
* In 2003, out of a 51-member City council, not one member who ran for reelection lost his or her seat. The cost to New Yorkers: $5 million spread around to 42 candidates and their consultants (sometimes family members).
* This year, New York’s City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, who’s running for mayor, pushed through an increase in the rate at which the city matched private donations. The rate went up to 6-to-1 from 5-to-1. In effect, Miller was able to use the power of his office to transfer taxpayer dollars directly into his own campaign coffers.
* New York City bans corporate contributions to candidates, which would presumably help Republicans, but it allows union contributions, which without a doubt help Democrats.
The list of abuses goes on and on.
The case probably can’t be won. But we can never stop fighting this self-perpetuating, self-aggrandizing movement to make politics itself a state function — regulated and subsidized and bought and paid for by the people already in power.
It’s a government of the politicians, by the politicians and for the politicians.
More on regulation of blogs here, from Democratic campaign-finance lawyer Robert Bauer. Bauer is one of the most knowledgeable and passionate opponents of the McCain-Feingold madness out there. So you don’t have to just take it from a right-wing nut like me that this stuff is pure evil.
Here’s a great passage, describing how the McCain-Feingold-diggers work (making it clear why even the most mild of regulations of political speech on the Internet cannot be taken lightly):
The history of campaign finance reform efforts is one of establishing beachheads from which to conduct further operations inland. The first piece of territory is claimed with the assurance that it is all that is needed to achieve the necessary security. Then, in short order, more territory is needed to protect the patch first acquired. Everything left untouched is a “loophole” through which dangerous “circumvention” is conducted. The first line drawn is moved repeatedly, if “incrementally,” widening until it achieves, to the eye of some observers, the circumference of a noose.
Indeed.
Here’s Rick Hasen on the McCain-blogging controversy. Hasen’s general view seems to be: Damned right you should regulate the Internet.
Of course, Hasen assures us, the regulation should be pretty mild and should just treat the Internet like all other media. “I expect that the FEC will propose only modest regulation, mostly to insure that, as under current law, campaigns and committees fully disclose amounts spent on political advertising to appear on websites,” says Hasen. Right. We all know how reasonable and “modest” the goals of the McCain-Feingold crowd are.
Hasen then writes:
Commissioner Smith suggests that a blogger’s placement of a hyperlink to a candidate’s home page might be considered coordination with that candidate, and that the action could therefore trigger coordination rules and valuation rules that could get the blogger in legal trouble for making an excessive in-kind contribution.
The FEC likely won’t go down this route, nor should it. It should create a safe harbor for activities like linking to a candidate web page, much like current law creates an exception to the in-kind contribution rule for donating the value of one’s time for a campaign as a volunteer. There’s not much corruptive potential in creating such a hyperlink, and the government has no good reason to discourage what looks like beneficial, grassroots political activity.
The average, uncompensated blogger therefore appears to have very little to worry about from FEC regulation, fearing neither disclosure requirements nor contribution limits for political activity. The same appears to go for private individuals who send e-mails to friends, or even to a listserv.
Of course, it is precisely when such questions begin being asked (“Can I be sued for linking to this?”) that freedom of speech begins to be circumscribed. After all, one of the most important arguments against our current campaign-finance laws (aside from the argument that they are unconstitutional on their face) is that it is not the restrictions on fundraising and spending themselves alone that chill speech — it is the atmosphere of pervasive regulation and litigation that undermines the First Amendment.
Also, Hasen bases all of his arguments on the presumption that the FEC will act moderately and reasonably. This is not a sound assumption — especially when a judge in D.C. is determined to overrule every non-extreme FEC decision and demand more extremism.
The contortions in this Fred Kaplan column on Slate are something to behold:
In just the past two months, free elections were held in Palestine and Iraq; a rigged election was overturned and an honest one re-held in Ukraine; the Egyptian president pledged to hold competitive elections soon, too; and a popular uprising against Syria’s occupation of Lebanon forced Beirut’s puppet government to resign—all this, amid President Bush’s proclamation that the main aim of American foreign policy is to advance the cause of global freedom.
It’s a huge stretch to view these uprisings as a seamless wave of democracy; but it would go too far in the other direction to see them as strictly discrete events, each unrelated to the other. The evidence suggests that we’re seeing at least a stream of wavelets; that the participants in one country have been inspired to take action, at least in part, by the example of participants in other countries. And therefore, the inference can be drawn, still others, elsewhere, might be inspired to take similar actions, or make similar demands, in the weeks and months ahead.
Finally, while it’s absurd to think that Bush set the upheavals of ‘05 in motion, it’s churlish not to grant him any credit at all. If nothing else, it’s an inspiring thing to see the United States standing on the side of national self-determination. It hasn’t happened very often in the past 60 years, unless anticommunism was at stake. John Kerry would be commended for it if he were president; George W. Bush should be, too.
Riiiiiiight. These uprisings aren’t connected, they’re just related. And Bush didn’t set all this in motion, but he deserves some credit. This all would have happened under a President Kerry anyway…etc., etc.
As another recent Slate essay put it: bullshit.
I am enjoying watching the left come to terms with the fact that they’ve been on the wrong side of history. I look forward to seeing how they finally decide to write Bush out of the story completely. I mean, really, when you think about it, Clinton might have invaded Iraq, too, if he’d still been president. Bush was really just continuing Clinton’s policies. And a Clinton or Gore or Kerry could have gotten Europe on board, so we even could have avoided pissing off our allies. When you think about it, this whole Iraq invasion thing was really France’s idea, but then Bush screwed it up.
Yeah, that’s the ticket…
Eduwonk says that this Samuel Freedman column in The New York Times — which discusses the financial problems Catholic schools are having and the fact that they haven’t learned to be good fundraisers — raises questions about the efficacy of vouchers as a way to keep Catholic schools open.
The only sentence in the article that deals with vouchers is this:
And one can only speculate about whether the prospect of tuition vouchers, a cause championed by former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, contributed to a lassitude in Catholic education circles, a belief that soon enough tax dollars would bail schools out.
Huh.
Yes, that does raise some questions. Mainly: Why does Andrew Rotherham find it necessary to spit on the idea of vouchers every chance he gets? For someone who claims to be led by the facts and the outcomes in education, he’s awfully opposed to any significant experiment with vouchers for what can only be ideological reasons.
Anyway, the Freedman column raises no questions whatsoever about the efficacy of vouchers as a means of propping up the Catholic schools. Quite simply, if Catholic schools in New York City haven’t gotten their fundraising act together, it’s probably not because they think vouchers are right around the corner — unless they’re idiots who have never heard of the United Federation of Teachers.
Nor would vouchers or tax credits for Catholic schools obviate the need for those schools to raise money. Charter schools get government funding, but the good ones still have well-organized fundraising campaigns.
Show me Catholic schools shutting down in a city with school vouchers, and I’ll reconsider my wild guess that directing more money to Catholic schools is likely to help with their financial problems.
The post below reminds me of something that the great Israeli columnist Hillel Halkin told me over lunch in Tel Aviv back in 2002.
I’m recounting from memory, here, as I wasn’t taking notes (just enjoying the amazing scenery and the chance to sit down with a columnist I admire so much).
Regardless, here it is:
Years ago, Halkin, in the course of his reporting, was in the West Bank asking Palestinians what they thought of Yasser Arafat. Some, of course, if they felt secure enough, would tell him that they thought Arafat was corrupt and a crook.
Eventually, however, some Arafat sympathizers caught on to what he was doing and apprehended him, dragging him into a police station. Something of a mob gathered, and the question was what might they do with the Jew.
What was striking was this: They didn’t kill him or beat him. They were concerned that he receive due process and be turned over to the proper local officials. Eventually those officials arrived, and Hillel was released.
And the lesson Hillel took, he told me, was this: Even having seen the worst of Israelis, the most brutal part of them under occupation, the Palestinians could not help but absorb the best of Israel as well — the ideas of due process and the rule of law and even free speech. This isn’t to say that those are the principles that reign in the territories — but that’s because of the terrorists, not the average citizens.
And, so, we Americans have now taught the Iraqis and the Middle East something about Western character — not through our explicit attempts to win their hearts and minds, but through our response to their dissatisfaction with us. When we screw up and they protest, we…allow them to protest. This seems trivial to those of us in the West, to those of us in New York City who have seen people protest over a family of red-tailed hawks being displaced from a luxury apartment building.
But to the people of Iraq, and to the people of the greater Middle East, this tolerance of dissent — even if it is dissent against American occupation — is, quite literally, revolutionary.
Best of the Web takes note of this interesting take on Al Jazeera. I’m quite firmly in the camp that says whatever the problems with Al Jazeera’s anti-Americanism, the problems pale in comparison to the benefits of a relatively independent media source in the Arab world.
Here’s what Iraqi blogger Ali Fadhil has to say about Al Jazeera’s connection to the demonstrations in Lebanon:
Al Jazzera focused, as part of its coverage for the “deteriorated situations in Iraq” on every single demonstration against the interim government or the American presence in Iraq even if it was 10 people that are demonstrating! But this coverage, that was missed in the official Arab media most of the times, showed the Arab street an unusual scene. “Arab” citizens demonstrating freely against their government and the supposed brutal occupiers under the eyes of police!
These days we hear every now and then about demonstrations almost everywhere in the Arab world. Excuse me, but this is far from usual! I haven’t seen *any* demonstration against Saddam all my life and similarly I haven’t heard of any in Syria or Saudi Arabia prior to the 9th of April. Most of us think it’s what happened in Iraq that encouraged Arabs to demand more rights, but how could Arab citizens know the details of what’s happening in Iraq if it wasn’t for Al Jazeera and Al Arabyia?
Really, really remarkable, isn’t it?
More, on our friends the Saudis:
The Global Research in International Affairs Center in Israel, a highly reputable and reliable think-tank, has published a paper titled “Arab volunteers killed in Iraq: an Analysis,” available at e-prism.org. Authored by Dr. Reuven Paz, the paper analyzes the origins of 154 Arab jihadists killed in Iraq in the last six months, whose names have been posted on Islamist websites.
The sample does not account for all jihadists in Iraq, but provides a useful and eye-opening profile of them. Saudi Arabia accounted for 94 jihadists, or 61 percent of the sample, followed by Syria with 16 (10 percent), Iraq itself with only 13 (8 percent), and
Kuwait with 11 (7 percent.) The rest included small numbers from Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Algeria, Morocco (of which one was a resident in Spain), Yemen, Tunisia, the Palestinian territories (only 1), Dubai, and Sudan. The Sudanese was living in Saudi Arabia before he went to die in Iraq.The names of most of the dead appeared on the websites after the battle of Falluja, and they were all supporters of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al Qaeda.
Of the 94 Saudis, 61 originated in the region of Najd, known as the heartland of the Wahhabis. The total of 154 included 33 suicide terrorists, of whom 23 were Saudis (with 10 from Najd). Given that Najdis make up 43.5 percent of Saudi suicide bombers in Iraq, and 65 percent of all Saudi jihadists on the list, Paz concludes that the “Wahhabi doctrines of Najd–the heart of Wahhabism–remain highly effective.”
From The Weekly Standard. People are calling the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Israel highly reputable. Since I’ve never heard of it, I can’t speak much to its reputation — but I’d be interested in hearing what anyone knows.
This column by Thomas Geoghegan at Slate (about not wanting a private Social Security account because he’s too lazy to manage it) probably shouldn’t be taken at face value.
But it should teach Republicans an important point — laziness is probably a latent reason people are resistant to privatization. What Geoghegan is saying to be snarky, many people feel but would never admit.
Hell, I can barely figure out my dental plan — I understand what he’s saying. Just think how the average, non-ideologically invested American feels about private retirement accounts.
The Forward’s Eve Kessler picked up on the debate between me and Ramesh Ponnuru about the libertarian-conservative divide and the future of the Republican Party.
Here’s the most action-packed part of her piece (Ramesh’s last name is misspelled throughout):
The debate was quickly joined by other conservatives. Weighing in on Sager’s side was blogger and New Republic Senior Editor Andrew Sullivan, a proponent of gay marriage, while National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponuru argued the socially conservative side on the paleo-conservative magazine’s online site.
“Do social issues hurt the Republican Party? No,” Ponuru told the Forward in a telephone interview. “The free market and limited government have long been the Achilles heel of the Republican Party.”
Such social-conservative causes as banning “partial-birth” abortion have gained the support of two-thirds of Congress; opposition to abortion and gay marriage “bring in more Republicans than they lose,” Ponuru said. In contrast, he added, the conservative economic positions on limiting the minimum wage, reducing Medicare and outsourcing “are not winning issues.” That’s because “a mixture of social liberalism and economic conservatism,” while “overrepresented in American elites,” is not found among “socially conservative union members.”
“A sound political strategy for any party has to take account of” working-class cultural conservatives, Ponuru said.
Sager feels that the GOP’s future expansion lies in the so-called economic freedom agenda: tax cuts, business deregulation, private Social Security accounts, etc.
“In the long run I don’t think the Republican Party can have a future catering to Christian conservatives,” Sager told the Forward in a telephone interview.
When Bush “played the gay marriage issue” during the recent campaign, Sager said, “it was just rhetoric.”
“If Christian Conservatives are serious about this issue, they should be outraged at this president,” Sager said. “They were had.”
I know Ramesh means simply to be matter-of-fact, but what does it say when a senior editor at the most influential conservative magazine in America says: “The free market and limited government have long been the Achilles heel of the Republican Party”?
It doesn’t say to me that that magazine is terribly prepared to fight for those principles. But maybe the quote’s out of context.
The most important point I think I made is right there at the end. Christian conservatives were had in the 2004 election on the gay marriage issue. Bush has no intention — and never had any intention — of pushing the Federal Marriage Amendment.
Isn’t it time for a revolt?
Promiscuous Octopus Myths
Published by March 4th, 2005 in Misc. Self Promotion and Misc. Miscellany. 0 CommentsUsually when I do a column on Wal-Mart (aka the promiscuous octopus), I get an angry call from the Central Labor Council. This time, either they’ve given up on me (and realized that I’m going to support consumers over union members no matter what), or they realize that I have them dead to rights.
Maybe it’s both, as in today’s column I took apart all of the anti-Wal-Mart myths they have the Democratic candidates for mayor spewing:
Myth No. 1: Wal-Mart’s prices aren’t really low.
“History shows us Wal-Mart’s low prices are somewhat ephemeral,” Rep. Anthony Weiner, Democratic candidate for mayor, told The Post this week.
Someone better tell the 100 million shoppers who cruise Wal-Mart’s aisles every week looking for bargains.
What’s more, someone better tell University of Missouri economist Emek Basker, who conducted a study of prices in 165 U.S. cities from 1982 to 2002. Basker found that Wal-Mart’s entry into a market caused prices on a sample basket of goods (including things like toothpaste, underwear and detergent) to fall by 2 percent to 10 percent in the short run, and about twice that much in the long run.
Partly the price drops were a function of Wal-Mart’s low prices, she concluded, and partly they reflected Wal-Mart’s competitors having to lower their prices to compete.
Other studies have found that when Wal-Mart enters the grocery market (one of the last bastions of organized labor in the private sector), it pushes consumer prices in that area down by about 15 percent.
If I do say so myself: snap!
Anyway, I know some people are going to start thinking I’m a paid Wal-Mart flak. Or at least that the company’s is feeding me information.
So, let me say it now: Wal-Mart is useless when I do these articles defending it. It just does not have a real PR campaign in place. I can’t get stats of any kind from them, nor any particularly good information on their plans in New York.
All of the data I’m giving you comes from lots of research. Plain and simple.
I’m really glad James Taranto TIVOed Tuesday night’s Daily Show and typed up this transcript of Jon Stewart’s interview with former Clinton aide Nancy Soderberg.
I happened to be watching the show as well that night, and the transcript seems dead on to me.
Anyway, what’s been interesting is the extent to which Stewart, who has treated the Iraq war with an inordinate amount of snark, seems to have been turned around on the issue. The progress in the Middle East is just so overwhelming, so striking, that it can’t be written off as simply coincidence that it’s all happening on Bush’s watch. There’s simply no question that a President Gore or President Kerry would not be seeing this progress.
Here’s the transcript of the relevant part of the interview:
Stewart: This book–it talks about the superpower myth of the United States. There is this idea, the United States is the sole superpower, and I guess the premise of the book is we cannot misuse that power–have to use it wisely, and not just punitively. Is that–
Soderberg: That’s right. What I argue is that the Bush administration fell hostage to the superpower myth, believing that because we’re the most powerful nation on earth, we were all-powerful, could bend the world to our will and not have to worry about the rest of the world. I think what they’re finding in the second term is, it’s a little bit harder than that, and reality has an annoying way of intruding.
Stewart: But what do you make of–here’s my dilemma, if you will. I don’t care for the way these guys conduct themselves–and this is just you and I talking, no cameras here [audience laughter]. But boy, when you see the Lebanese take to the streets and all that, and you go, “Oh my God, this is working,” and I begin to wonder, is it–is the way that they handled it really–it’s sort of like, “Uh, OK, my daddy hits me, but look how tough I’m getting.” You know what I mean? Like, you don’t like the method, but maybe–wrong analogy, is that, uh–?
Soderberg: Well, I think, you know, as a Democrat, you don’t want anything nice to happen to the Republicans, and you don’t want them to have progress. But as an American, you hope good things would happen. I think the way to look at it is, they can’t credit for every good thing that happens, but they need to be able to manage it. I think what’s happening in Lebanon is great, but it’s not necessarily directly related to the fact that we went into Iraq militarily.
Stewart: Do you think that the people of Lebanon would have had, sort of, the courage of their conviction, having not seen–not only the invasion but the election which followed? It’s almost as though that the Iraqi election has emboldened this crazy–something’s going on over there. I’m smelling something.
Soderberg: I think partly what’s going on is the country next door, Syria, has been controlling them for decades, and they [the Syrians] were dumb enough to blow up the former prime minister of Lebanon in Beirut, and they’re–people are sort of sick of that, and saying, “Wait a minute, that’s a stretch too far.” So part of what’s going on is they’re just protesting that. But I think there is a wave of change going on, and if we can help ride it though the second term of the Bush administration, more power to them.
Stewart: Do you think they’re the guys to–do they understand what they’ve unleashed? Because at a certain point, I almost feel like, if they had just come out at the very beginning and said, “Here’s my plan: I’m going to invade Iraq. We’ll get rid of a bad guy because that will drain the swamp”–if they hadn’t done the whole “nuclear cloud,” you know, if they hadn’t scared the pants off of everybody, and just said straight up, honestly, what was going on, I think I’d almost–I’d have no cognitive dissonance, no mixed feelings.
Soderberg: The truth always helps in these things, I have to say. But I think that there is also going on in the Middle East peace process–they may well have a chance to do a historic deal with the Palestinians and the Israelis. These guys could really pull off a whole–
Stewart: This could be unbelievable!
Soderberg:—series of Nobel Peace Prizes here, which–it may well work. I think that, um, it’s–
Stewart: [buries head in hands] Oh my God! [audience laughter] He’s got, you know, here’s–
Soderberg: It’s scary for Democrats, I have to say.
Stewart: He’s gonna be a great–pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, “Reagan was nothing compared to this guy.” Like, my kid’s gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.
Soderberg: Well, there’s still Iran and North Korea, don’t forget. There’s hope for the rest of us.
Stewart: [crossing fingers] Iran and North Korea, that’s true, that is true [audience laughter]. No, it’s–it is–I absolutely agree with you, this is–this is the most difficult thing for me to–because, I think, I don’t care for the tactics, I don’t care for this, the weird arrogance, the setting up. But I gotta say, I haven’t seen results like this ever in that region.
Soderberg: Well wait. It hasn’t actually gotten very far. I mean, we’ve had–
Stewart: Oh, I’m shallow! I’m very shallow!
Soderberg: There’s always hope that this might not work. No, but I think, um, it’s–you know, you have changes going on in Egypt; Saudi Arabia finally had a few votes, although women couldn’t participate. What’s going on here in–you know, Syria’s been living in the 1960s since the 1960s–it’s, part of this is–
Stewart: You mean free love and that kind of stuff? [audience laughter] Like, free love, drugs?
Soderberg: If you’re a terrorist, yeah.
Stewart: They are Baathists, are they–it looks like, I gotta say, it’s almost like we’re not going to have to invade Iran and Syria. They’re gonna invade themselves at a certain point, no? Or is that completely naive?
Soderberg: I think it’s moving in the right direction. I’ll have to give them credit for that. We’ll see.
Stewart: Really? Hummus for everybody, for God’s sakes.
My favorite part is right at the beginning when Soderberg says of the Bush administration that “I think what they’re finding in the second term is, it’s a little bit harder than that, and reality has an annoying way of intruding.”
Actually, it’s Soderberg who has had reality intrude on her worldview. In fact, America is not misusing its superpower status, but using it to great effect to accelerate democratic revolutions.
God, it’s almost as if Bush had been planning this all along.
Jonah Goldberg on liberal America-Firsters.
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