Failing the Midterms: Press overplays election results

Republican candidates won gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday; meanwhile, Democratic candidates won two special elections for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York and California. But it was very clear which set of elections corporate media wanted to portray as sending an important message about national politics--that voters were discontented with the White House and wanted Democrats to move to the right.

"By seizing gubernatorial seats in Virginia and New Jersey, Republicans on Tuesday dispelled any notion of President Obama's electoral invincibility," declared the Los Angeles Times (11/4/09)--as if Obama had previously been confused with Superman. On NPR, Mara Liasson reported (11/4/09): "There's already a feisty argument going on about what the election results tell us, but there's no argument about the score. The Democrats got a slap in the face. The Republicans a much-needed victory."

By Norman Solomon
(Norman Solomon is co-chair of the national Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America.)

In Washington, “healthcare reform” has degenerated into a sick joke.

At this point, only spinners who’ve succumbed to their own vertigo could use the word “robust” to describe the public option in the healthcare bill that the House Democratic leadership has sent to the floor.

“A main argument was that a public plan would save people money,” the New York Times has noted. But the insurance industry -- claiming to want a level playing field -- has gotten the Obama administration to bulldoze the plan. “After House Democratic leaders unveiled their health care bill [on October 29], the Congressional Budget Office said the public plan would cost more than private plans and only 6 million people would sign up.”

EDITORIAL It's possible that Mayor Gavin Newsom took a long look at himself, his life, and his future last week and decided that politics — intense, 24/7/365 politics — wasn't what he wanted right now. It's possible (as Randy Shaw noted in Beyondchron.org) that Newsom "now joins longtime adversary Chris Daly in putting family relationships ahead of one's political career." It's possible that he never really wanted a future in electoral politics and was driven to run for governor less by personal ambition than by the desire of his advisors to see him in a higher political role.

In that case, Newsom has a responsibility to do the best job he can over the final two years of his term as mayor, then step away and find something else to do with his life.

Photo by Jim Block

By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Special note: read Barnett's scathing indictment of Examiner/Chronicle/JOA news coverage in the San Francisco Bay Guardian (9/31/1970)

Steve Barnett would have been highly amused with the way the Associated Press and the San Francisco Chronicle handled the obituary of his death on Oct. 13 of cardiac arrest. He was 73.

The AP and the Chronicle ran respectful obituaries of his illustrious career as a UC Berkeley law professor, prominent First Amendment advocate, critic of the California Supreme Court, a director of the California First Amendment Coalition, and widely published legal scholar on media, antitrust, and First Amendment law.

The Chronicle even tossed in a couple of paragraphs pointing out that Barnett was "a frequent commentator on the Newspaper Preservation Act, the 1970 federal law that allowed papers in the same market to cut costs by merging some of their operations."

By Dick Meister

It was 20 years ago this month that the Berlin Wall finally fell, one of the last vestiges of the Cold War. But though it's long gone, I and I'm sure many others, have not forgotten that Soviet-erected barrier which had stood for 28 years as a nearly impenetrable divider between the Soviet East and the West.

I especially remember the first time I saw the wall, just after it went up in 1961. The atmosphere was incredibly tense, a tension I and other reporters had found almost too acute to describe.

West Berliners sat at sidewalk cafes downtown, chatting amiably but without gaiety. Genuine relaxation seemed impossible because of the newly-constructed wall that stood just a few miles away. Out there the crowds were greater, but almost no one was talking.

Let A Hundred Theories Bloom

By George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz

BUDAPEST – The economic and financial crisis has been a telling moment for the economics profession, for it has put many long-standing ideas to the test. If science is defined by its ability to forecast the future, the failure of much of the economics profession to see the crisis coming should be a cause of great concern.

But there is, in fact, a much greater diversity of ideas within the economics profession than is often realized. This year’s Nobel laureates in economics are two scholars whose life work explored alternative approaches. Economics has generated a wealth of ideas, many of which argue that markets are not necessarily either efficient or stable, or that the economy, and our society, is not well described by the standard models of competitive equilibrium used by a majority of economists.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

As I was preparing to update my annual Halloween blog, I checked the Guardian politics blog to see what the action looked like for tomorrow night on Halloween Eve.

Two years ago, Mayor Gavin Newsom shut down the Halloween celebration in the Castro, killing off one of San Francisco's most famous party events. But this year, as Melanie Ruiz reports, a local flash mob operator by the name of Amandeep "Deep" Jawa is organizing an unauthorized "Take Back Halloween" party in front of the Ferry building.He has arranged for at least two mobile DJs to spin and more than 300 people have signed up on Facebook.
But he says that he has no permits and the police may shut down the event.

Well, back where I come from in the Halloweens of my youth, we didn't get permits, didn't have authorization, and the police tried and failed to shut us down our events. This was in my hometown of Rock Rapids, a small farming community nestled along the Rock River in northwest Iowa. But we did have some fast times and created some almost famous urban legends on Halloween. I can speak for a generation or two back in the early 1950s when Halloween was the one night of the year when we could raise a little hell and and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops.

1.

So why did President Obama

Decline to meet the Dalai Lama?

It's said that he must curry favor

With Chiina. Yes, it has our waiver

To toss its people in the clink

For how they pray or what they think

And we've resolved that we won't fret

About the way it rules Tibet.

2.

For going along when China's rotten

It's hard to think of what we've gotten.

Calvin Trillin, The Nation, ll/9/09

By David Balt , Stephanie Gross

(The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all.)

View the full memo (pdf)

Competition is the lodestar of the marketplace. Where competition thrives, consumers benefit from numerous choices, low prices, superior service, and innovation. But where competition is absent, consumers pay more for less, have fewer choices, and are at the mercy of market participants with unbridled power. Bringing competition to health insurance markets is essential to achieve meaningful health care reform, and as a first step Congress should eliminate the antitrust exemption that prevents effective federal enforcement against health insurers.

It is becoming clear in the health care debate that health insurance markets are broken. A tsunami of health insurance mergers has led to high levels of concentration in practically every market to the point where there are only one or two dominant insurers in many states. New companies face substantial entry barriers, and so these local monopolies go unchallenged.

By Dick Meister

“2X2L calling CQ … 2X2L calling CQ, New York …. Isn’t there anyone on the air? Isn’t there anyone on the air? Isn’t there anyone?

Millions of Americans – panic-stricken, many of them – waited anxiously for a response to the message, delivered over the CBS radio network in slow flat, mournful tones on a crisp Halloween eve. It was Oct. 30, 1938.

“Isn’t … there … anyone?”

There wasn’t. Listeners heard only the slapping sounds of the Hudson River.

Many of New York’s residents were dead. The others had fled in panic from “five great machines,” as tall as the tallest of the city’s skyscrapers, that the radio announcer had described in the last words he would ever utter. The metallic monsters had crossed the Hudson “like a man wading a brook,” destroying all who stood in their way.

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom has set off something of a crisis in San Francisco government by insisting that he will defy the city law that seeks to protect immigrant youth from deportation. While Newsom claims that the sanctuary policy approved 8-2 by the supervisors last week violates federal law (something the same-sex marriage advocate hasn't worried so much about in the past), this is really a matter of politics. Newsom, candidate for governor of California, doesn't want to seem soft on crime — so Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, is siding with the federal immigration authorities.

He's also putting out a misleading message about the law.

"West Fest, Woodstock 40th Anniversary this Sunday October 25th, 72 acts, 4 stages, 26 poster artists- FREE-9 a.m. to 6 p.m.Golden Gate Park. Let the magic begin."

But I like to think of the event as full of Mel Belli's friends and coming in a direct line from the famous Human Be-In of l967 and the Summer 0f Love and the Summer of Love anniversaries and other such events in Golden Gate Park.

Let me explain the story as told to me by the late Michael Bowen, a promoter with Allen Cohen of the Be-In. Bowen called me from Sweden, where he was living, on the eve of the 40th Summer of Love event in 2007. He said the story, a closeted San Francisco classic, had never before been told and he wanted it out. Mel Belli was the famous San Francisco attorney and King of Torts, as he liked to call himself. He's been dead for many years, but to me his spirit will live on in Sunday's Woodstock event.
Bowen said he and Cohen were in desperate need of a permit for their event because, as hippie activists, they were persona non grata at City Hall. So Bowen went to the downtown office of his friend Mel Belli and asked for help.

Belli sent his secretary down to City Hall and she returned later that afternoon with a permit.

It read, "A permit for Mel Belli and his friends." And so Mel Belii and his friends showed up by the tens of thousands and turned the Human Be-In into a world famous cultural event and the precursor to the Summer of Love and anti-war events that followed. The event drove the tac squad crazy and police and City Hall officials scurried about trying to find out how this huge event blossomed almost over night. Bowen loved retelling the story and swore up and down to me that it was true. I believed him.

There will once again be tens of thousands at the Woodstock event. And they will all be in an Oraclean sense Mel Belli's friends. Mel would like that. B3

Poster by Carolyn Ferris

Poster by Mike Dolgushkin

To view more West Fest posters click here, here, and here.

Click here to read Johnny Ray Huston's preview of West Fest, Park life -- and 3,000 guitars.

EXPLANATIONS FROM

THE NOBEL COMMITTEE

Don't be surprised. Don't gasp. Don't faint.

We've simply said, "George Bush he ain't."

The prize diplomacy can reap'll

Prevent this guy from bombing people.

Since Henry Kissinger has won,

You know that this is all in fun.

Calvin Trillin, Deadline Poet, The Nation, Nov. 2, 2009

By Norman Solomon

(Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, is the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”)

Almost eight years after choosing Hamid Karzai to head the Afghan government, Uncle Sam would like to give him a pink slip. But it’s not easy. And the grim fiasco of Afghanistan’s last election is shadowing the next.

Another display of electioneering and voting has been ordered up from Washington. But after a chemical mix has blown a hole through the roof -- with all the elements for massive fraud still in place -- what’s the point of throwing together the same ingredients?

This time, the spinners in Washington hope to be better prepared.