I don't know why it should surprise me that Glenn Beck doesn't know what he's talking about, but you'd think that if you had a furious grudge against someone who died 40 years before you were born, you would spend at least a little time finding out what exactly was wrong with that historical figure. But then, as Tom Frank explains in a subscribers-only column in the Wall Street Journal (3/10/10), you're not Glenn Beck:

Consider how Mr. Beck, the popular host of a Fox News program, began his performance at CPAC: "Hello. Please. Thank you. Please be seated. I have to tell you, I hate Woodrow Wilson with everything in me. God bless you."

Now, deploring the works of the 28th president is not a new thing at CPAC. But Mr. Beck has developed a theory of progressivism that he illustrated by listing the many tyrannical misdeeds of the Wilson administration: "he gives us the Fed." "He gives us the income tax." And then, a confusing few sentences later, "Prohibition. So he took away the alcohol. Progressive plan to take care of everyone."  It's easy to see how all of these villainies might come together in the mind of a freedom-fighting CPAC attendee: Progressives were the original big-government sinners; prohibition, which was backed by some progressives, was the classic example of misguided governmental overreach; Wilson, who was a progressive, was president when prohibition passed; ergo, prohibition must be added to the list of offenses that will keep Wilson in freedom purgatory for eons.

But the neat pattern does not hold. As it happens, Woodrow Wilson was not a prohibitionist. He even vetoed the 1919 Volstead Act, which enforced the 18th Amendment's prohibition of intoxicating liquors. (Congress overrode his veto.) By contrast, the laissez-faire hero Calvin Coolidge, whom Mr. Beck praised at CPAC, signed the 1929 Jones Act, which beefed up prohibition enforcement. Meanwhile, arch-progressive Franklin Roosevelt got prohibition repealed in 1933.

FAIR has a new Action Alert reacting to reports that PBS's replacement for the retiring Bill Moyers and the canceled Now series will be headed by Newsweek editor Jon "Center-Right Nation" Meacham. To learn more or to send a message to PBS ombud Michael Getler, click here. Feel free to leave copies of your responses in the comments thread here.

The New York Times has a piece today (3/9/10) with the headline "Experts Urge Keeping Two Options for Terror Trials"--meaning both regular trials under the criminal justice system as well as newly established military tribunals. But who are these "experts," exactly? Well, they're "national security officials who served in the Bush administration"--though later on, "national security officials from both the Bush and Obama administrations" are also cited.

Balancing out this "expert" point of view are "conservatives," "supporters of military commissions" and "the Republican line"--all of which argue that the civilian court system is unnecessary and military tribunals should be exclusively used to try those accused of terrorism.

Conspicuously missing from this framing are those who argue that military tribunals are unconstitutional, and that even people accused of terrorism-related crimes are still entitled to the guarantees of the Bill of Rights--people like Judge Andrew Napolitano and, well, the Supreme Court. But apparently they don't meet the New York Times' criteria as "experts."

If you're a politics buff, you probably remember the way National Journal's ratings were used in the 2004 and 2008 elections to establish that the Democratic candidate was the "most liberal voting record in the Senate"--first John Kerry (Extra! Update, 6/04), then Barack Obama (CounterSpin, 3/28/08). FAIR pointed out the flawed methodology that the magazine was using, but the headline-grabbing findings still had a profound--and profoundly misleading--impact on both races.

Now National Journal has released its rankings for 20098 (2/28/1009), and they reveal that Dennis Kucinich is one of the more conservative members of the Democratic caucus--he's the 240th most conservative representative out of 416 ranked by the Journal. He's more conservative, according to the Journal rankings, than Blue Dog Democrats like Mike Arcuri (No. 243), Dennis Cardoza (No. 245) and Robert Marion Berry (No. 248).

Virtually any political observer will tell you that Kucinich is one of the most if not the most progressive member of Congress. Either none of them understand the political spectrum, or the National Journal's rankings are useless--take your pick.

Update: As reader Matt points out, the rankings linked to above are for 2008, not 2009. In the rankings for 2009, which are accessible only to National Journal subscribers at this point, Kucinich is a little farther to the left--270th most conservative out of 435 members--but is still grouped with "The Centrists," part of the "ideological center of the House of Representatives" according to the Journal's dubious rating system.

Newsweek devotes several pieces this week to public schools. But the lead piece, "Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers," by Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert, lays out the magazine's skewed vision: Teacher unions protect the worst performers, while charter schools offer an easy solution. ("In the past two decades, some schools have sprung up that defy and refute what former president George W. Bush memorably called 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.'") Newsweek even finds the silver lining in Hurricane Katrina:

It is difficult to dislodge the educational establishment. In New Orleans, a hurricane was required: Since Katrina, New Orleans has made more educational progress than any other city, largely because the public-school system was wiped out. Using nonunion charter schools, New Orleans has been able to measure teacher performance in ways that the teachers' unions have long and bitterly resisted.

The decision of a Rhode Island superintendent to fire every teacher at one low-performing high school is called a "notable breakthrough."

Many of these ideas are the subject of intense debate--research on charter schools has generally not shown substantial improvement over conventional public schooling, for example. Experts and advocates disagree with the notion that New Orleans is a success story. But Newsweek presents little debate--sticking with the right-leaning narrative version of "school reform" that is primarily about bashing teachers.

An accompanying article pitting teachers union president Randi Weingarten and anti-union D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee is presented on Newsweek's home page under the headline "The Union Boss vs. the School Reformer." It's not hard to imagine which option is supposed to be more attractive (unless you're the pro-boss, anti-reform type).

Back to the Thomas article, though, with its subhead: "In no other profession are workers so insulated from accountability." This is particularly ironic to see under Evan Thomas' byline. One only needs to recall his contribution to the pre-Iraq War propaganda effort summarized below, and wonder what sort of accountability exists at Newsweek.

March 17, 2003
—Newsweek's cover story is entitled "Saddam's War," and the cover features a close-up of Hussein's face on fire. At the top of the story, Newsweek reports from the scene of a Baghdad military parade, describing as jarring the sight of Iraqi fedayeen fighters "garbed in the familiar tan camouflage of the United States Army. Saddam has ordered thousands of uniforms identical, down to the last detail, to those worn by U.S. and British troopers. The plan: to have Saddam's men, posing as Western invaders, slaughter Iraqi citizens while the cameras roll for Al-Jazeera and the credulous Arab press." The article closes with this call for war:

"One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the green mushroom' over Baghdad—the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time."

Sometimes the words journalists choose are revealing. Take the lead of a story in the Washington Post today (3/9/10) about congressional debate on the Afghanistan War:

Liberals in the House, who have spent much of the past year complaining that other congressional Democrats and the White House are insufficiently progressive, will get a chance this week to vent about one of their biggest concerns: the war in Afghanistan.

To say that lawmakers are "venting" is a short way of saying that they're wasting time with pointless complaining.

And what are they whining about, anyway? Nothing special--just whether or not the war complies with the law.

The resolution will invoke the 1973 War Powers Act, which Congress passed in protest of the escalation of the Vietnam War by a series of presidents without formal congressional authorization. It requires congressional approval for a president to put troops in a military conflict for more than 90 days. Congress passed a resolution authorizing military force in Afghanistan in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, and some congressional scholars doubt Congress can invoke the act now to force changes to President Obama's war policy.

As Robert Naiman wrote: "The Pentagon doesn't want Congress to debate Afghanistan. The Pentagon wants Congress to fork over $33 billion more to pay for the current military escalation, no questions asked, no restrictions imposed for a withdrawal timetable or an exit strategy."

The media don't seem to want to have a debate over Afghanistan either.

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the end of the historic British miners strike of 1984-85. The BBC has a special broadcast in commemoration, The Ballad of the Miners Strike, featuring the voices of miners.

But where can Americans turn for commemorations of our progressive history? There is always Howard Zinn's excellent book, A People's History of the United States.  But turn on NPR, the closest thing the U.S. has to the BBC, and the closest you'll get to the people's history is the denunciation of Zinn.

The New York Times features an op-ed today (3/5/10) by Gen. Merrill McPeak, a retired Air Force chief of staff, arguing against allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military. It's not much of an argument, really--there's not much more to it than the assertion that "warriors are inspired by male bonding, by comradeship, by the knowledge that they survive only through relying on each other," and the claim--presented completely without evidence--that acknowledging that not all soldiers are heterosexual will "weaken the warrior culture." You can't really describe the piece as an attempt at persuasion--it's more a statement of prejudice and a demand that that prejudice be given respect.

McPeak's op-ed does mimic the form of an argument by beginning by stating a premise--but that premise is wrong. After asserting that the discussion over changing the military's anti-gay rules "should start with the question, 'What are armed forces for?,'" he continues, "Assuming the services exist to fight and win wars, those seeking fundamental change in the composition of combat units carry a special burden of proof." Elsewhere, he restates this idea by saying that the military services "have no higher responsibility than to organize, train and equip formations that are effective on the battlefield."

But the rationale for having a military is not to win wars; it's to keep your country free. (McPeak may recall that his oath as an Air Force officer began, "I will support and defend the Constitution..."--that's the military's actual highest responsibility.) Even if one believed that an ethnically cleansed military motivated by a racist ideology would be a more effective fighting force--with a stronger "warrior culture" and greater "unit cohesion"--that would in no way justify reorganizing the Defense Department along supremacist lines. No military is a democracy, of course, but a democracy can only have a military that is consistent with democratic values.

Which leads me to wonder: When President Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the military, did the New York Times publish an op-ed from a retired officer arguing that only a racist military could be counted on to win wars? (Glancing through the New York Times' archives, I didn't see any, but they're somewhat awkward to search.) If they did publish such an op-ed, are today's editors proud that their institution included the racist point of view? If they didn't, are they sorry that their predecessors failed to be so inclusive?

It's a good bet that in 60 years, the homophobic policies of the military will be seen in the same light as military segregation is today. And people looking back on the history of how it changed will see that the New York Times allowed homophobia to have its say. I doubt that this will be seen as a proud moment.

In a column headlined "A Word From the Wise" (3/3/10), New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman lets us know what Intel CEO Paul Otellini thinks is wrong with the U.S. economy. And there's a certain theme that runs through his critique:

"The things that are not conducive to investments here are [corporate] taxes and capital equipment credits."...  "If I build that factory in almost any other country in the world, where they have significant incentive programs, I could save $1 billion," because of all the tax breaks these governments throw in.... "The cost of operating when you look at it after tax was substantially lower."... If the government just boosted the research and development tax credit by 5 percent and lowered corporate taxes.... With the generous research and development tax credits and lower corporate taxes they receive, Intel's chief competitors in South Korea basically have "zero cost of money."...

You think maybe the CEO of Intel would like to not pay so much in taxes?

One thing is strikingly missing from Friedman's column: any discussion of how high U.S. corporate taxes actually are. On paper, the country has some of the highest corporate tax rates in the world--but as Otellini's reference to "tax breaks" suggests, what matters to business executives is how much they actually pay.  And as a share of the total economy, U.S. corporate taxes are some of the lowest in the world: According to a Congressional Budget Office report (11/05), out of 31 industrialized countries, 28 have corporate taxes as a bigger share of the economy and only two have less.*

"'Something has to pay for' everything government is doing today," Otellini lectures the United States via Tom Friedman. But it shouldn't be corporate America, apparently.

*In the U.S., corporate taxes are 1.8 percent of GDP, vs. 2.9 percent in Britain and France, 3.1 percent in Japan, 3.4 percent in Canada, 5.3 percent in Australia and 8.2 percent in Norway. Germany is the one major country where corporate taxes are a smaller share of the economy, at 1.0 percent of GDP.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has always been a controversial figure--famously profane and short-tempered, and politically speaking a center-right Clinton Democrat. As of late, though, there's been a strange effort--particularly in the Washington Post--to present Emanuel as the confidant whose political advice Barack Obama has too often ignored and who offers a clear path to political rehabilitation. This only makes sense in a Beltway media that views Obama as too far to the left, and in need of Emanuel's pragmatic centrism to pull him back to the middle.

This campaign was kicked off by a February 21 Dana Milbank column in the Washington Post, headlined "Why Obama Needs Rahm at the Top." Milbank wrote: "Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter." What advice would that be? Milbank says:

For example, Emanuel bitterly opposed former White House counsel Greg Craig's effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year, arguing that it wasn't politically feasible. Obama overruled Emanuel, the deadline wasn't met, and Republicans pounced on the president and the Democrats for trying to bring terrorists to U.S. prisons. Likewise, Emanuel fought fiercely against Attorney General Eric Holder's plan to send Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York for a trial. Emanuel lost, and the result was another political fiasco.

As Matthew Yglesias has noted, the odd thing about this argument is the fact that Obama's foreign policies--whatever you might think of them--are generally more popular than Obama's domestic efforts. So why should we think that not taking Emanuel's advice on security issues is the cause of Obama's political woes?

Milbank also writes that Emanuel was against the public option in the healthcare bill, but Obama listened to "Capitol Hill liberals," with disastrous results. Again, the public option remains relatively popular with the public--despite consistent demonization from the right--so it's not clear why one would think Obama would have fared better without it.

Milbank noted that Emanuel "has set up his own small press operation and outreach function"--leading to some speculation that Emanuel is either directly or indirectly the originator of this if-only-he'd-listened-to-Rahm storyline (Huffington Post, 2/21/10).

And the story lives on in today's front-page Post article (3/2/10), "Hotheaded Emanuel May Be White House Voice of Reason." According to the piece, despite Emanuel's reputation for being loud and obnoxious, "a contrarian narrative is emerging: Emanuel is a force of political reason within the White House and could have helped the administration avoid its current bind if the president had heeded his advice on some of the most sensitive subjects of the year: healthcare reform, jobs and trying alleged terrorists in civilian courts."

Yes, that "narrative" is "emerging"--in the Washington Post. And it's being seconded by the likes of right-wing columnist Jonah Golberg. Debates are raging about who fed the story to Milbank, but that misses the real point: The press always counsel Democrats to move to the right.

Sasha Issenberg reports in the Boston Globe (3/2/10) that Fortune magazine Washington bureau chief and Fox News pundit Nina Easton advised Republican Mitt Romney on his recent book No Apology. Easton told the Globe that she "offered some writer's advice on things like structure and how to better tease out themes in his writing."

This isn't the first time Easton has had conflict-of-interest issues; her husband was a media consultant to Romney's 2008 presidential campaign, and earlier worked for John McCain's bid, entanglements that Easton dealt with by avoiding writing about her spouse's boss (L.A. Times, 3/19/07). As Issenberg notes:

Many news organizations have policies explicitly forbidding reporters and editors from offering any support for political figures or their campaigns. A spokesman for Time Inc., which owns Fortune, did not respond to a request for comment on Easton's role.

Presumably Fox News Channel doesn't mind this sort of thing, but what's Time/Fortune going to do?

There's a certain category of newspaper article where you're better off ignoring the text and just looking at the accompanying graph. Such an article is "Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book" (New York Times, 3/1/10), by Motoko Rich.

The context for the article is the fight between publishers and Amazon over how much to charge for an electronic copy of a book; Amazon wants to price them at $10, whereas publishers would prefer to charge $13 or $15.  Here's what you learn about publishers' profits from the article itself:

In the emerging world of e-books, many consumers assume it is only logical that publishers are saving vast amounts by not having to print or distribute paper books, leaving room to pass along those savings to their customers.... Publishers...say consumers exaggerate the savings and have developed unrealistic expectations about how low the prices of e-books can go. Yes, they say, printing costs may vanish, but a raft of expenses that apply to all books, like overhead, marketing and royalties, are still in effect.

All of which raises the question: Just how much does it actually cost to produce a printed book versus a digital one?... On a typical hardcover...the publisher is left with $4.05, out of which it must pay overhead for editors, cover art designers, office space and electricity before taking a profit.

An e-book [priced at $12.99]...leaves the publisher with something ranging from $4.56 to $5.54, before paying overhead costs or writing off unearned advances.

What's missing from the article's account is how much the publishing company makes from a $10 e-book--but you can learn the answer from the attached chart: $3.51 to $4.26, depending on how big a royalty authors end up getting.  So publishers get about as much per-unit profit at $10, and quite a bit more at $13 (let alone $15).  So it would seem if the question is, can publishers afford to publish e-books for $10, the answer would be "yes."

Only that's not the conclusion of the article--whose alternative headline is "Making the Case for iPad E-Book Prices." Rich follows her financial calculations with a series of unfortunate events that will occur if the publishing industry does not make more money from e-books than from regular books:

At a glance, it appears the e-book is more profitable. But publishers point out that e-books still represent a small sliver of total sales, from 3 to 5 percent. If e-book sales start to replace some hardcover sales, the publishers say, they will still have many of the fixed costs associated with print editions, like warehouse space, but they will be spread among fewer print copies.

Somehow I doubt that the book industry has so much capital tied up in warehouses that their emptiness is going to bring publishers to their knees.

While the piece is framed in studiously neutral Timespeak, Rich's conclusion seems to be this: "Certainly, publishers argue that it would be difficult to sustain a vibrant business on much lower prices. Margins would be squeezed, and it would become more difficult to nurture new authors." Funny, you would think new authors would benefit from a switch to a technology where it cost much less to either produce or purchase a book.

The most eye-opening thing about the Times' chart--not spelled out in the article--is the shifting contributions of the various players in the publishing business.  With the traditional book, the publisher pays an author $3.90 per copy for a manuscript, adds $5.05 worth of editing, printing, marketing etc. to it, and takes a profit of $4.05--about the same amount that the person who actually wrote the book gets.  With the e-book priced at $13, on the other hand, they're paying the author between $2.27 and $3.25, adding $1.28 worth of value and taking between $4.56 and $5.54 in profit--roughly twice as much as the writer gets.

Publishing houses are going to have a tough time in the digital era explaining why they are entitled to so much for doing so little.  But not to worry--they'll always have the New York Times to help them make their case.

In a February 28 piece headlined, "Obama Ready to Move Forward on Healthcare Reform," the Washington Post's Anne Kornblut closed on a rather odd note:

Republicans have expressed growing confidence heading into the midterm elections, with healthcare as a potential campaign tool. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele took the argument a step further, saying after the Thursday summit that it had been "a death panel for Obama-care."

"If that wasn't enough, when you come out of this thing and you're looking at the reconciliation fight that may loom ahead of us, it certainly will have represented a death panel for the Democrats this fall," Steele said on CNN.

Death panels became part of the debate last summer, after prominent Republicans, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, claimed the government would set them up to decide who could live or die.

Is the assumption here that everyone knows that there were never any death panels in any healthcare bill? When the leader of a major party is still making references to them, it deserves some sort of corrective from a journalist.  The Post reminds readers where the lie came from--but not that it's a lie.

A headline over an Evan Thomas story in this week's Newsweek (3/8/10) tells us:  "We the Problem: Washington Is Working Just Fine. It's Us That's Broken."

Thomas blames, among other things, "our 'got mine' culture of entitlement," adding:

Politicians, never known for their bravery, precisely represent the people. Our leaders are paralyzed by the very thought of asking their constituents to make short-term sacrifices for long-term rewards. They cannot bring themselves to raise taxes on the middle class or cut Social Security and medical benefits for the elderly. They'd get clobbered at the polls. So any day of reckoning gets put off, and put off again, and the debts pile up.

Now that's the problem--the middle class needs to pay more taxes, and everyone should get less from Social Security. These are very familar "hard truths" you hear from corporate pundits. Thomas goes on to finger "the college hookup culture," and suggests that Obama should give in to Republican demands on "tort reform" in order to make progress on healthcare--an offer Obama has actually already made, with no discernible response from Republicans.

The blame-the-people narrative was echoed in Jon Meacham's editor's note, where he advised that we should "own up to the reality that Washington is not an abstraction but a mirror. Our political life is a reflection of who we are, no matter how unattractive we may find the image looking back at us. Washington is an expression, not a thwarting, of the will of the people."

It's odd for journalists to conclude that Washington politics is a perfect expression of Americans' political views. If it were, one would have to think that Congressional approval ratings would be somewhat higher, and that political outcomes would be very different. The public consistently favors higher taxes for the wealthy, for example--but don't hold your breath waiting for pundits to take up that cause.

Meacham goes on to illustrate this misguided notion by comparing Obama's healthcare reform drive with George W. Bush's push to privatize Social Security. The two are apparently similar in that they were both about reforming the system, and Americans prefer the status quo. It's hard to know what to say about that, though one could point out that the threat to the country's fiscal well-being posed by the rising costs of healthcare are  significantly greater than anything having to do with Social Security.

Meacham also warns readers not to idealize the past, though, since urgent political problems weren't solved back then either:

The first report predicting a crisis in Social Security was released 35 years ago, but the fabled bipartisanship of ages past produced only incremental fixes. If more had been accomplished, it would not be an issue today.

That crisis was handled with tax increases that created a multi-trillion dollar surplus for Social Security. The only reason Social Security remains "an issue today" is due to journalists like Meacham making it one, usually by misleading people about the program's imminent collapse.