Day: September 10, 2008

Olbermann/Matthews Revisited

NBC‘s decision to move Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews out of the MSNBC anchor slots for this fall’s election – widely seen as an attempt to protect the traditional NBC News brand – points up a longer-term problem with splitting that brand, a rival executive said yesterday.

After weeks of infighting, several uncomfortable on-air moments and mounting criticism that MSNBC’s political coverage was tainting NBC’s image of objectivity, NBC announced that David Gregory would become MSNBC’s chief anchor. Olbermann and Matthews will continue as analysts.

Critics have already weighed in on that question. When speakers were blasting the alleged bias of mainstream media at the Republican convention last week, delegates chanted, “N-B-C!”

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who has engaged in a heated feud with Olbermann, said Thursday night, “The networks are biased, there’s no question, and NBC is the worst.”

NBC News may not take its cues from O’Reilly, but it is not immune to the perception.

That’s where it’s gotten tricky for NBC. If “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams is on MSNBC, is he labeled opinionated like the rest?

The impact of moving Olbermann and Matthews out won’t matter much to the typical viewer, who looks at MSNBC as just another cable network, said analyst Andrew Tyndall.

“NBC has established such a good reputation over the years because of Tim Russert, who made it the place to go for politics,” said Tyndall, publisher of the Tyndall Report, which tracks coverage. “This is really a symbolic move.”

US Hiring Decline

If one is out there looking for work then the sad news is there is little to choose from.

A private survey projects a continued decline in the hiring intentions of U.S. employers during the fourth quarter.

“The continuing softness in hiring activity comes as no surprise as weakening market conditions are causing many companies to carefully adjust their hiring in line with the demand for their product or service,” said Jeffrey A. Joerres, chairman and CEO of Manpower, in a statement Tuesday.

Survey data shows that six of the 10 industry sectors surveyed will decrease hiring slightly during the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter, continuing a downward trend.

Mining is the only sector that expects to raise staff levels during the fourth quarter, according to the survey. Employers in the durable and non-durable goods manufacturing, transportation/public utilities, wholesale/retail trade, finance/insurance/real estate and services sectors all expect to decrease hiring.

Dodd Feels Misled On Fannie/Freddie

AS written on The Crypt on Politico

For more than a year, Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd has been at the epicenter of everything having to do with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meltdown.

But when the Bush administration gave him a heads up on Friday that it was about to seize control of the mortgage giants, he was caught off guard.

“I was led to believe that this was something that started over the weekend, but now I believe this was started weeks ago,” Dodd said in a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon. “… I’d be hard pressed to find out this all happened Friday afternoon.”

Dodd and other leading Democrats were surprised that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson exercised his takeover authority so quickly after Congress gave him that power in the housing bill passed this summer. Now, Dodd is demanding that Paulson appear before the Banking Committee for a hearing to investigate how the decision was made, because clearly Congress was left in the dark.

Paulson had been getting along famously with congressional Democrats this year, engineering a major economic stimulus bill in January while helping negotiate the housing bill earlier this year. But now the relationship seems shaky.

“I’m not opposed to this [the federal seizure] but I want to know more,” Dodd said. “I’m going to be much more cautious this time around … fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Will The US Remain Dominant?

An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.

The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community’s top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority — military power — will “be the least significant” asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because “nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force.”

As described by Fingar, the intelligence community’s long-term outlook has darkened somewhat since the last report in 2004, which also focused on the impact of globalization but was more upbeat about its consequences for the United States. The new view is in line with that of prominent economists and other global thinkers who have argued that America’s influence is shrinking as economic powerhouses such as China assert themselves on the global stage. The trend is described in the new book “The Post-American World,” in which author Fareed Zakaria writes that the shift is not about the “decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else.”

In the new intelligence forecast, it is not just the United States that loses clout. Fingar predicts plummeting influence for the United Nations, the World Bank and a host of other international organizations that have helped maintain political and economic stability since World War II. It is unclear what new institutions can fill the void, he said.

Nearly absent from Fingar’s survey was the topic of terrorism. Since the last such report, the intelligence community has projected a declining role for al-Qaeda, which was deemed likely to become “increasingly decentralized, evolving into an eclectic array of groups, cells, and individuals.” Inspired by al-Qaeda, “regionally based groups, and individuals labeled simply as jihadists — united by a common hatred of moderate regimes and the West — are likely to conduct terrorist attacks,” the 2004 document said.

The Hiding Of Sarah Palin

John McCain’s campaign essentially confirmed over the weekend what some had suspected: Media access to Sarah Palin, would-be vice president of the United States, will be tightly controlled.

Troublemakers need not apply.

And how will we know those troublemakers? They will be the ones unwilling to treat the governor of Alaska with what campaign manager Rick Davis called “some level of respect and deference.”

Deference?

The dictionary definitions I find begin with “respectful submission” and “yielding.”
But it would be wrong — and, dare I say it, even sexist — to suggest that Sarah Barracuda is too meek for a little back-and-forth with the denizens of the Fourth Estate.

Early this year, voters (and a certain “Saturday Night Live” skit) rightly smacked news outlets for falling captive to the Barack Obama “rock star” narrative. They demanded to know more about the Democrat than that he had a knack for drawing big crowds and delivering inspiring speeches.

Those complaints and a time-honored primary season tradition — reporters boring in on candidates after they become front-runners — helped spur a tougher look at Obama. Stories examined his fundraising, picking over his ties to shady fundraiser Antoin Rezko; detailed his apparent comfort in the bare-knuckle world of Chicago politics; and described his awkward attempts to downplay his opposition to the military “surge” in Iraq, even as it appeared to be having some success.
Even without that flimsy standard, Gibson should have no trouble finding the justification to ask Palin a few of these questions:

* You have been skeptical that global warming is caused by humans. On what basis do you reject the scientific consensus that fossil fuels and human activity have contributed to climate change?

* You asked the librarian in your town about the policy for banning books. Are there books you think should be kept from the public?

* You have claimed credit for killing the “bridge to nowhere,” the $398-million link between Ketchikan and Gravina Island. Didn’t you support it until it was clear Congress was not willing to pay for the much-ridiculed project?

* You have said students should be allowed to “debate both sides” of evolution. Should creationism be taught alongside evolution in the public schools? Do you believe in evolution?

* What’s at the root of the terrorist problem in Pakistan? And how would you make progress, which has eluded the Bush administration, in that dangerous country?

* Your opponents claim you and McCain would just extend the Bush administration for another four years. Cite three instances in which you have differed with the president.

These comments were written int LA Times

Today In Labor History

10 September

Polish, Lithuanian and Slovak miners are gunned down—19 dead, more than 50 wounded—by the Lattimer Mine’s sheriff deputies in Hazelton, Pa. Most were shot in the back. The miners were marching peacefully and without weapons for collective bargaining and civil liberty – 1897

CEO Exit Pay

Democrats on Tuesday criticized the multimillion-dollar pay packages awarded to the former chief executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at a time when taxpayers could foot a massive bill for the companies’ bailout.

In a joint letter to Fannie and Freddie’s regulator, Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Jack Reed of Rhode Island said the combined pay and bonus packages of about $24 million should be revised.

“We find it way out of line,” they said in the letter, saying the severance pay for former Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and former Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron should be questioned especially if any financial losses could have been caused by errors in management.

The U.S. government takeover came as worries heightened over shrinking capital at the congressionally chartered companies, which had combined losses of nearly $14 billion in the last four quarters.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said the final price tag for taxpayers cannot be estimated until the extent of the declines in the mortgage market is fully known.

Child Rape Revisited

An embarrassed U.S. Supreme Court indicated this week that, because of a statistical error in the majority opinion, it may reexamine its controversial holding of only three months ago that the death penalty for child rapists is unconstitutional. Fortunately, the justices can come to the same correct conclusion using a more straightforward rationale: that executing anyone for a crime other than homicide shocks the conscience.

It has been 51 years since the court last agreed to rehear a major constitutional case, and it may yet decline to do so in this situation. But the court has asked lawyers for new briefs from both parties — and from the Bush administration — in the case of a Louisiana man sentenced to death for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. The case has spilled from the judicial system into the presidential campaign, with both Barack Obama and John McCain denouncing the decision.

The reason the court is considering revisiting its 5-4 decision is that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion for the majority understated the number of jurisdictions that imposed the death penalty for child rape, arguing that only six states did so and implying that the federal government was among the jurisdictions that had refused to join them. In fact, Congress had authorized the execution of child rapists as part of the military justice system.

As reported in the LA Times.

The Approaching Storm

The federal government will run a near-record deficit of $407 billion this year, according to the latest Capitol Hill estimates.

The Congressional Budget Office released figures yesterday that indicate the red ink will spill over into next year, when the deficit would reach a record $438 billion – and could go even higher as the government takes over mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The deficit, more than double last year’s sum, is largely attributed to continuing weakness in the economy, high energy and food prices, and the slump in the housing and financial markets, said the nonpartisan agency, which makes economic and budget estimates for Congress.

Such deficits feed inflation, make the nation dependent on foreign lenders, cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments on the growing national debt, and drain capital from more productive investments.

The new forecast may restrain the appetite of the next president for adding expensive spending programs or new tax cuts. Pressure may build to allow some tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 to expire as scheduled at the end of 2010, with Congress also feeling pressure to curb spending growth.

The economy still could slide into a recession.