Media Rants: Earth Day at 40

Earth Day At 40

By Tony Palmeri

On April 22 Earth Day, the brainchild and legacy of the late Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, celebrates its 40th birthday. With the word “sustainability” now part of everyday speech, and with record numbers of people seeking “green” options on everything from appliances to food choices, one could say that the Earth Day ethic of environmental preservation prevailed. On the other hand, corporate “greenwashing” and the generally awful state of big media reporting on the science and fact of global climate change do not inspire confidence that Earth Day will enjoy a robust middle age.

Which is not to say that big media were much better in 1970. Earth Day coverage generally sucked. Bill Christofferson’s excellent biography The Man From Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Gaylord Nelson (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004) summarizes the national print media mood of the time

“The nation’s news media were uncertain what to make of Earth Day. Newsweek was bemused, and somewhat dismissive, calling Earth Day ‘a bizarre nationwide rain dance’ and the nation’s ‘biggest street festival since the Japanese surrendered in 1945.’ Time said the day ‘had aspects of a secular, almost pagan holiday…’ The question, Newsweek asked, was ‘whether the whole uprising represented a giant step forward for contaminated Earthmen or just a springtime skipalong.’ The event lacked the passion of antiwar and civil rights movements, Newsweek said, and the issues were so unfocused as to give rise to ‘the kind of nearly unanimous blather usually reserved for the flag.’ Time said the real question was whether the movement was a fad or could sustain the interest and commitment it would take to bring about real change. ‘Was it all a passing fancy…?’ The New York Times asked in a morning-after editorial, then answered its own question: ‘We think not. Conservation is a cause … whose time has come because life is running out. Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.’ . . .”

Northeast Wisconsin print media weren’t as dismissive, though certainly did not heavily promote Earth Day events. On April 21, 1970 the Oshkosh Northwestern had this announcement buried on page 4:

Will Air Teachin (sic)
The university radio station, WRST, will provide extensive coverage of the environmental teachin (sic) Wednesday. The station will carry programs live from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It will also broadcast a kickoff speech tonight at 7.

We can excuse the Northwestern copy editor for not knowing how to express “teach-in,” but they couldn’t see fit to announce the speakers or panels? The paper did present two good editorials on April 22: “Everyone Can Help” and “Man Faces Extinction.” The former said that “Today the bell is sounding. Hopefully everyone will take up the challenge.”

The afternoon Northwestern of April 22 carried an above the fold story headlined “Condition of Environment ‘Sad Commentary’ on Man.” Turns out that the Earth Day keynote speaker at the Wisconsin State University Oshkosh was Dr. James Flannery, Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior. Flannery told the audience that “the condition of the environment is a sad commentary on man’s stewardship,” and that “this period in history may well be regarded as the period of conscience.”

Below the fold the paper chose to print correspondent Sarah McClendon’s “Nelson has some Earth Day Doubts.” That story was part of a nationwide press trend to place Senator Nelson on the defensive by forcing him to respond to inanities suggesting, for example, that April 22 was chosen for the celebration because it was the commie V.I Lenin’s birthday.

The Neenah/Menasha edition of the Northwestern actually had some of the best pre-Earth Day reporting in 1970. On April 20, the paper announced some of the UW Fox “Survival 70’s” events. They announced the participants in a panel called “Problems of Pollution in the Fox Cities.” The paper also presented fair treatment of the efforts of UWGB and UW-Fox Valley students to launch a petition drive to amend the Wisconsin Constitution. They even printed the proposed amendment language:

“The people have a right to a clean and healthy environment and this right has priority over any use of the environment for private or public purposes. To secure and maintain this right there shall be an immediate, permanent and continuous end to any degradation of the environment by individuals, public agencies, and private corporations or individuals.”

The amendment never found its way to the Constitution, but students at more than 75 Wisconsin colleges, universities, and tech schools were rallied to the cause.

Student environmental activism was actively encouraged by Senator Nelson and Earth Day national coordinator Denis Hayes. Wisconsin responded enthusiastically and with much idealism. At WSU Oshkosh, weekly programs were held from February until the April event. At Stevens Point, April 21-23 was called “Project Survival.”

At the Oshkosh campus, the “Environmental Crisis Organization” was chaired by Harley Christensen (who was also the first News Director at WRST). On Earth Day 1970 the Northwestern quoted him as saying something that still holds today: “We have a moral obligation to air . . . to the water, the land, and the generations to come.”

Happy Earth Day.

TIF Standards

Due to a bout with pneumonia, I missed the city council meeting last night.

Former councilor Kevin McGee wrote a great commentary for the NWestern on TIF standards (or the lack thereof) in Oshkosh. Money quote:

Without standards, without strict rules identifying what TIF money can and cannot be used for, we're easy marks. If you were a developer or an expanding business, and you knew you could extort a few grand from the public coffers to improve your bottom line, you'd do it too, wouldn't you? Of course you would. Unless of course you had ethical principles, a sense of public spiritedness, a belief in asking what you can do for your country, or something nonsensical like that. Not much risk of that happening around here.

Too bad that commentary didn't appear before the council's vote on the Oshkosh Corp TIF proposal. The corporate press had no interest in looking at the matter seriously; perhaps McGee's commentary could have influenced the vote outcome. We'll never know.

New Politics Site

Launched by Milwaukee Magazine, and called MilwaukeeNewsBuzz. Seems like a clearinghouse for mainstream reporting and commentary from around the state.

Sunshine Week 2010: March 14-20

A Scripps poll conducted for Sunshine Week shows that the majority of Americans do not believe that the federal government has become more open under President Obama:

A new survey of 1,001 adult residents of the United States found that 70 percent believe that the federal government is either “very secretive” or “somewhat secretive.” The largest portion of respondents, 44 percent, said it is “very secretive.”

That matches the worst rating the federal government received during the final year of George W. Bush's presidency.

Surprisingly, people believe that local government is somewhat more open. In response to the question, "Is your local government open or secretive?" 60 percent said "somewhat or very open." 36 percent said "somewhat or very secretive."

The Oshkosh Northwestern on Friday rightly took the Oshkosh Common Council to task for not being more forthcoming in our assessment of City Manager Mark Rohloff.

UW Madison Student Rips Feingold For Oshkosh Corp. Support

I don't agree with everything that UW Madison student Steve Horn says in this op-ed piece about Senator Feingold's support for Oshkosh Corporation. What I like about the piece, however, is the fact that Mr. Horn is still at the point in his life where he has not accepted that political reality in this country involves hard-to-dismantle old boys networks, a corporate press that enables those old fellers, and sell-out politicians who go along for the ride. For young Mr. Horn, something like the "military industrial complex" actually means something; it's more than a punch line to a Jon Stewart joke. Money quote:

Many more productive jobs for society, which are much less deadly, could be created with the money we spend on waging war, so the argument that to oppose Oshkosh Corp. is to oppose Wisconsin workers doesn’t hold its weight in a debate. With that same money we could employ people to build a national rail line that would help save the environment; we could be putting more money into improving our schools and paying teachers higher salaries; we could be opening factories to mass-produce electric cars. The point is, there are few jobs less productive and more dangerous for society than working for a war contractor, and those same bodies could be used to do things that actually enhance humanity rather than diminish it.

Horn's essay does suggest an interesting question: in the (unlikely as it may seem now) event that genuine peace breaks out in the world, what are we going to do with the war infrastructure that we've created? We just spent lots of time and energy figuring out a way to give Oshkosh Corp. 5 million bucks. Perhaps we should be spending some time trying to figure out what to do when we come to the realization that war economy just isn't sustainable.

March Media Rant: Jo Egelhoff Reviews the Post-Crescent

Last month at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association (WNA), the Appleton Post-Crescent (PC) was named the state's “Daily Newspaper of the Year” in the WNA’s Better Newspaper Contest. Judges from the Illinois Press Association said this about the PC:


“The Post-Crescent is everything a great newspaper can and should be . . . The Post-Crescent is a champion of the communities it serves, as both a watchdog of local government and a fundraiser for those in need. Readers in Appleton and the Fox Cities have to know that their daily newspaper has tremendous heart and is, very likely, one of the best of its circulation size in America.”

Those remarks struck me as grossly inflated, but not being a regular PC reader I’m not in the best position to know. So I asked former Appleton Common Councilor Jo Egelhoff, publisher of the TONY Award winning foxpoliticsnews.net site, what she thought of the PC. [Note: For purposes of space I had to edit some of Jo’s responses for the print edition of The SCENE; the unedited interview follows below.]

Media Rants: The WNA Better Newspaper contest judges say the following about the Post-Crescent:

"The Post-Crescent is everything a great newspaper can and should be. Each section is filled with local news and advertising and offers a great variety of storytelling, from indepth series on important topics such as domestic abuse to well-thought opinions on the state budget crunch to fun lifestyle stories told in graphic form without a lick of text . .. The Post-Crescent is a champion of the communities it serves, as both a watchdog of local government and a fundraiser for those in need. Readers in Appleton and the Fox Cities have to know that their daily newspaper has tremendous heart and is, very likely, one of the best of its circulation size in America."

Do you agree with the gist of that statement? Specifically, would you call the PC a "community champion" and "local government watchdog?"

Egelhoff: A community champion? Perhaps. But a local government watchdog? No, that’s a reach. The Post-Crescent is the kind of cozy hometown newspaper that will drive serious readers to FoxPoliticsNews.net, where they can find serious policy and politics news from the Fox Valley and throughout Wisconsin. I see the Post-Crescent like a 3 Musketeers bar – fluffy on the inside and not real stuffy, leaving an appetite for real news.

Media Rants: You served on the Appleton Common Council for quite a few years. During that time, did the Post-Crescent in your judgment provide accurate, fair, and complete coverage of issues facing the city? Did you sense that the paper was playing a rigorous watchdog role?

Egelhoff: Accurate, yes. And yes, most often “fair” if that means they include two sides of a story. Complete? No. A rigorous watchdog role? No.

A good example is the Appleton water plant. I called foul on it almost from the beginning. (Here’s just one of the several blogs I did on the subject.) I asked the Post-Crescent to report on it, bringing them a stack of supporting evidence. Finally, with a third or fourth request, a second alderperson accompanying me, P/C editors and the P/C’s Council reporter on hand, the P/C finally agreed to look into it – and subsequently did quite an expose'.

Then there’s the story of what was then termed the “Co-Gen” – a $2 million boondoggle that two of us objected to repeatedly with quality documentation at Council, and ultimately took to the Post-Crescent. Not a thing was done. Two months after this $2 million white elephant was up and running it was shut down by the Finance Director as not being cost efficient. Unbelievable.

Today, the P/C doesn’t have the time or money or inclination to dig into critical issues, such as:

• Does it make sense for the city to contract out asphalt paving – or to own its own paver?
• Why did the City of Appleton’s 2010 tax levy not increase as much as surrounding municipalities? (Not because they decreased spending – but because a large TIF was brought back on the tax roles.)
• How do public employee benefits compare with comparable private sector benefits? How do wages compare?
• How do the City of Appleton’s 3% increases in 2009 and 2010 compare with increases (or more likely decreases) in compensation in private sector jobs?
• Exactly what do school district salaries and benefits look like? If school district employees’ compensation was frozen, would that allow for keeping more teachers, keeping class sizes from growing?
• What do experts think about the $2 million of contributions every year needed to supplement earned income at the Performing Arts Center (PAC)? What do experts think about the compensation package of the PAC’s Executive Director? What is the compensation for the E.D. of this large and significant 501(c)(3) in our community (well over $250K)? What do experts think about an unusual $36,700,000 mortgage carried on the PAC building, that isn’t being paid off (payment terms are a highly unusual interest-only requirement through 2035)? Is the PAC using endowment or reserve funds to fund annual operations?

Media Rants: What critical issues, if any, do you feel are not getting the right amount of coverage in the PC?

Egelhoff: Several specific examples are mentioned above. Public spending, budgets and public sector compensation packages and settlements could be looked into in further detail. This is critical information for taxpayers – and time consuming stuff; that kind of time is seemingly just not available at the Post-Crescent. Or a series on accountability – what are the standards set up for a specific department or sub-department and are those standards being met? The City of Appleton has clearly defined standards – what of other municipalities – do they even have standards and whether or not they do, how is accountability carried out? How about campaigning for putting a city or county’s checkbook on line? Cook County just did it. http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/746190. Public spending vs. contracting out. The cost to Appleton and indeed, of the Fox Cities, to comply with water quality and quantity NR 151 regs. Or how about questioning a Kagen news release once in a blue moon?
(Larry Bivins, covering D.C., does an ok job, digging effectively occasionally, but doesn’t necessarily aspire to greatness; doesn’t probe or aim to stretch minds. Ben Jones, Gannett’s (and USA Today’s) man in Madison, has done some helpful investigative work.)

Media Rants: What is your general opinion of the PC editorials? Are they well informed and fair?

Egelhoff: The P/C’s editorials are informed enough to sound well-informed, but don’t often challenge readers to think and understand. The editorials are mushier than I like to read, never hard-hitting and stay away from those very controversial, tough issues. More often than not, it’s 3 Musketeers stuff.

“Fair” isn’t an adjective I use for editorials. Accurate, informative, in-depth, convincing. Teach me something, in 400 words or less.

Media Rants: What would you like to see the PC do that it is currently not doing?

Egelhoff: You’ve hit it – and I’ve referenced it – I’d like to see the PC be a watchdog for us taxpayers, a serious questioner. Dedicate a reporter to local government, preferably someone with some first-hand government experience. I know that can be hard, the newspaper business and budgets being what they are, but the P/C needs an insider who can pull news out from between the toes of local government.

Media Rants: Your own media activism requires you to be familiar with many newspapers across the state. Which ones, in your judgment, are the best?

Egelhoff: Understandably, the most frequent in-depth work is done by the Journal-Sentinel, with the largest circulation in the state. It’s lamentable that the J/S is no longer delivered on weekdays in the Fox Valley, though is available delivered on Sundays and at newsstands during the week. The news from the State Journal is ok, though skimpier, less inquiring than from the Journal Sentinel. Sean Ryan and Paul Snyder at The Daily Reporter do thorough work.

The editorials that come out of the Journal Sentinel editorial board are more fluff than stuff. I like the editorial sensibilities at the Beloit Daily News. The Tomah Journal and Racine Journal Times have written some surprisingly thoughtful editorials in the past year – and the Cap Times, left-leaning or not, does a good job calling ‘em as it sees ‘em.

Media Rants: Many thanks to Jo Egelhoff for taking the time to respond to the questions. Be sure to sign up for Jo’s daily news alert at foxpoliticsnews.net.

Sunlight and the Health Care Summit

Kudos to the Sunlight Foundation for their brilliant live coverage of today's White House Health Care Summit. As each wealthy special interest sycophant (i.e. elected members of the US Congress) speaks, the Foundation reveals what financial interests are in their campaign accounts. Excellent.

I'll be on Week in Review Tomorrow

AnnAlthouse and I will be on Wisconsin Public Radio's "Week in Review" tomorrow from 8-9 a.m. Questions/comments can be called in at 1-800-642-1234 or email: talk@wpr.org

Censored in 2009, Part 2

Censored in 2009, Part 2

Media Rants

By

Tony Palmeri

Last month I identified half of the top ten stories that were underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by local and state corporate media in 2009.

Now the top 5:

No. 5: Oshkosh Grand Opera House Repairs: No Thinking Allowed. When the city of Oshkosh restored the historic Grand Opera House in the early 1980s, costs were spread out among city taxpayers, federal funds, private donations, and foundation grants. Because of the lease terms agreed to by the Oshkosh Common Council in the 80s and rubber stamped by subsequent councils, Oshkosh taxpayers cover repair costs over $1,000. That’s an extremely uncommon method of funding repairs; historic arts houses similar to the Grand (e.g. Baraboo’s Al Ringling Theatre, Wausau’s Grand Theater, Milwaukee’s Pabst Theatere, Viroqua’s Temple Theater, the Kenosha Theater, Menomonie’s Mabel Tainter Theater) rely mostly on private, corporate, and foundation funding.

Last summer the Oshkosh Common Council approved $1.8 million dollars for roof repairs. Coverage and editorializing by Gannett’s Oshkosh Northwestern was incomplete, under researched, intolerant of different points of view, and unwilling to consider that the current ownership model is not sustainable or suitable to guarantee the Grand’s long term health. Reporter Patricia Wolff’s tepid story on ownership issues appeared a week after the repair vote, greatly limiting the story’s value. The lesson? When Gannett has to choose between responsible journalism and protecting ad clients (in this case the Opera House Foundation), the ad clients will prevail every time.

No. 4: Oshkosh Corp. TIF: Gannett Mocks Press Watchdog Role. Gannett’s “Principles of Ethical Conduct for Newsrooms” are worthless. Still, the corporation claims that “We will be vigilant watchdogs of government and institutions that affect the public.” In 2009, the Oshkosh Corporation announced a request for taxpayer assistance from Oshkosh citizens in the form of tax incremental financing. Gannett won’t ask difficult questions about the request or Oshkosh Corp’s financial health. When I pointed this out at a December 22 common council meeting, the Oshkosh Northwestern’s managing editor responded with a piece of inane pettiness that mindlessly lampooned citizens involved in a serious neighborhood dispute with the Oshkosh Corp that threatens their home values and safety. Worse, he actually mocked Gannett’s own watchdog principle: “We’re just watchdoggin’ it, you know.”

No. 3: Health Care Reform: Misinformation and No Medicare For All Coverage. Good reasons exist to oppose Barack Obama’s health insurance reform scheme. The idea that the president is proposing a “government takeover” of health care is NOT one of them. Indeed, Obama’s plan would force at least 30 million Americans to purchase insurance from private, for profit corporations; the exact opposite of a government takeover. A single-payer, Medicare for all proposal exists in the House of Representatives and Senate, yet insurance lobby controlled “leaders” refuse to give it a fear hearing, and the corporate press are all too ready to sweep the measure under the table. Throughout 2009 mass media eagerly covered tea party shouting matches, yet the arrest of nine citizens at New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s office while rallying in support of Medicare for all received scant coverage.


No. 2: Outsourcing Wisconsin. In 2004 the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign revealed that the state was paying huge sums of money to engineering giant HNTB in spite of the fact that state workers formally did the same work for a fraction of the cost. You’d think that since then the state’s media would do a better job of monitoring outsourcing in return for campaign contributions, right? Wrong. Even though a study showed engineering work done in-house by state DOT workers was 18% less expensive that the outsourced work, the outsourcing continues without any public accountability. The Democracy Campaign’s Mike McCabe told me that a source inside the Department of Transportation claims that the feds have registered a complaint about the level of outsourcing in Wisconsin. Federal funds might be in jeopardy if the state doesn’t address this. The remodeling of Highway 41 in northeast Wisconsin provides local media with a golden opportunity in 2010 to do some Pulitzer Prize worthy reports on outsourcing.

No. 1: Obama’s Bush-Lite Foreign Policy. Mainstream media insist Barack Obama is committed to softening the War on Terror. A contrary view comes from Glenn Greenwald, author of Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics. He told Amy Goodman that Obama talks a good game while continuing Bush’s policies:

But despite that rhetoric . . . the same policies are being continued. So we’re closing Guantanamo at some point, but we’re shifting the very indefinite detention scheme and military commission scheme that caused such controversy simply to a new location. And although he talks about how air strikes enflame that part of the world, he has escalated air strikes not just in Afghanistan but in whole new countries . . . and in Pakistan especially . . . I think what you see is that he is afraid to or unwilling to challenge the orthodoxies of the intelligence community, of the Pentagon, of the lobbyists and industry interests that have long run Washington. And so, whether his intentions are good, whether he has a purer heart, these things are impossible to know, but they’re really irrelevant. The reality is that the same dynamic continues.

Thank You Howard Zinn

When I think of all the people who have influenced my politics, civic life, and approach to teaching, the late Howard Zinn is near the top of the list.

Lots of obits and tributes can be found on Zinn's site.

I attended some great schools over the years (Archbishop Molloy High School, St. John's University, Central Michigan University, Wayne State University), and was lucky to learn from some fabulous teachers, yet I never remember Zinn's name coming up even once; not even in history classes.

My serious introduction to Zinn came around 1990. On a road trip back to Oshkosh from Brooklyn, I decided to stop in Erie, PA to visit good friends Tim and Dee Thompson. Leaving their place, I put public radio on. The station was playing a talk called "Second Thoughts on the First Amendment" by someone named Howard Zinn. I was so impressed by the talk that as the station signal began to fade I pulled into some fast food parking lot just to be able to continue listening.

When I returned to Oshkosh I went to UWO's Polk Library and scooped up everything by Zinn that I could find. Eventually I would make Zinn's A Peoples' History of the United States required reading in my History of American Public Address course.

One experience I will never forget was Zinn's visit to Oshkosh a few years ago. I had the chance to interview him for the "Commentary" television show, introduce him to the audience for his Reeve Union talk, and talk to him privately for a bit. He was a "gentleman" in the best sense: interested in others, radiant smile, brilliant without making others feel lesser than; I remember thinking "I wish I could have taken a class from this guy."

Because Zinn took pacifist views on issues of war and peace, it was easy to forget that he was a World War II fighter pilot. One of my favorite Zinn writings is his "Dissent at the War Memorial." Excerpt:

"I'm here to honor the two guys who were my closest buddies in the Air Corps--Joe Perry and Ed Plotkin, both of whom were killed in the last weeks of the war. And to honor all the others who died in that war. But I'm not here to honor war itself. I'm not here to honor the men in Washington who send the young to war. I'm certainly not here to honor those in authority who are now waging an immoral war in Iraq."

I went on: "World War II is not simply and purely a 'good war.' It was accompanied by too many atrocities on our side--too many bombings of civilian populations. There were too many betrayals of the principles for which the war was supposed to have been fought.

"Yes, World War II had a strong moral aspect to it--the defeat of fascism. But I deeply resent the way the so-called good war has been used to cast its glow over all the immoral wars we have fought in the past fifty years: in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan. I certainly don't want our government to use the triumphal excitement surrounding World War II to cover up the horrors now taking place in Iraq.

"I don't want to honor military heroism--that conceals too much death and suffering. I want to honor those who all these years have opposed the horror of war."

Former City Manager Was Not Fired

One of Gannett's questions to this year's common council candidates starts off with "When the Council fired the former city manager . . ."

For the record, the Council did not fire the former city manager. He retired. Yes, his retirement followed much public, press, and council scrutiny of his performance, but it's simply not accurate to say that he was fired.

Review of Going Rogue

Over 40 people showed up at the Appleton Public Library last night to discuss Sarah Palin's Going Rogue: An American Life. After Brian Farmer and I spoke for about 15 minutes each, there was some very thoughtful commentary and discussion.

I spoke extemporaneously about Palin's book. Here's a summary of what I said:

1. The book's 6 chapters are not a VP campaign memoir.

• Chapter 1, "The Last Frontier," is mostly early biography and Alaska history.

• Chapter 2, "Kitchen-Table Politics," is about Palin's years as a city councilor and then mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

• Chapter 3, "Drill, Baby, Drill" is about Palin's gubernatorial campaign and what she sees as her accomplishments in that office.

• Chapter 4, "Going Rogue," deals with the trials and tribulations of the VP campaign.

• Chapter 5, "The Thumpin'," is about what Palin perceives as unfair press and leftist attacks on her that led to her decision to resign as Alaska governor.

• Chapter 6, "The Way Forward," presents Palin's general political beliefs; what she calls "Commonsense Conservatism.

2. Even though I am mostly critical of Palin and her book, there's much in it that I find appealing.

• As an elected member of the Oshkosh City Council, I find Palin's description of local government political dynamics to be insightful and accurate.

• The section of the book dealing with her discovery that her son would be born with Down's Syndrome is enough to move even the most strident Palin haters to tears.

• I like the fact that Palin writes admiringly about Matthew Scully, a former speechwriter for Bush #43 who has written an excellent book establishing respect for animals as a conservative principle. (Palin says of him: "A political conservative, he is a bunny-hugging vegan and gentle, green soul who I think would throw himself in the path of a semitruck to save a squirrel."). [Note: I interviewed Matthew Scully for Radio Commentary several years ago. That interview can be found here.]

• I like the notion of the "rogue" politician; someone who isn't predictable and doesn't always follow the party line.

3. I believe the purpose of this book was/is to restore Palin's credibility; a credibility badly damaged as a result of the VP campaign.

• She wants the book to help make people comfortable not only in voting for her, but in listening to her as serious voice on national policy issues.

• The Greek philosopher Aristotle (see paragraph 3) said that restoring or establishing credibility is essentially a matter of an audience perceiving a rhetor as intelligent, of good moral character, and of goodwill.
  

4. For four major reasons, I don't believe the book succeeds in raising Palin's credibility.

• First, in the book one finds a pattern of resignation and withdrawal when the heat gets too hot. Resigning as governor is the obvious example, but she also writes about resigning from her position with the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission when she could not get governor Frank Murkowski to act in a way she saw fit. Palin's resignations may or may not have been the proper course of action, but she seems to have difficulty imaging other ways of resolving intense political conflicts. She concludes that to be governor in the face of a mountain of investigations, much of it frivolous, you "either have to be rich or corrupt." Are those really the only choices?

• Second, the book features much petty defensiveness. She complains incessantly about a left bias in the media, and goes to length to take shots at Katie Couric. But her defensive complaints are not only about media; she complains about the way her family was treated by higher ups in the McCain campaign, about being "forced" to wear expensive clothing, and about not being able to deliver a speech on the night of the general election. She even includes a bizarre story about McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt interrupting her during her prep for the debate with Joe Biden to say that the campaign would be flying in a nutritionist (who never arrived) because of a concern that a high protein/not enough carbs diet was leading to some mental lapses. You read these complaints and cannot help but say, "isn't it time to move on from this nonsense?"

• Third, when it comes to political discourse Palin is still mostly stuck on the low road. She does not regret the "palling around with terrorists" remark about Obama, and without a shred of evidence suggests that his performance as president proves that the comment was appropriate. (Low road politics have been her MO outside of the book; politifact.com--a nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning outfit--called her "death panel" assertions the "lie of the year.")

• Fourth, there does seem to be quite a bit of "culture war," red-state posturing in the book. She tells us, for example, that after she resigned from the Alaska Gas Commission and wondered what to do next she thought of a passage from Jeremiah 29: 11-13. Much of that kind of thing can be found in the book; kind of like an attempt to out-Huckabee Mike Huckabee for the red state vote. In fairness to Palin, she's hardly the first politician to pander in a memoir.

5. Has the book made Palin a credible figure outside of a segment of the Republican Party? No.

• In November, during the special election to fill New York's 23rd congressional district seat, Palin overtly endorsed the conservative independent Doug Hoffman over the Republican nominee who she thought too liberal. Bill Owens ended up being the first Democrat elected to represent that part of New York since the mid-19th century.

• Scott Brown's historic upset in the special election to fill Ted Kennedy's former seat in Massachusetts was accomplished without help from Palin. Indeed, the Brown campaign studiously distanced itself from Palin.

6. Can Sarah Palin be elected president in 2012?

• I can envision a scenario where she enters the Republican primaries and battles with Mike Huckabee for the red state conservative vote.

• I think John McCain's former campaign manager Steve Schmidt has the right angle on Palin:

"She is someone who has a passionate base that constitutes millions of Americans. But in the year since the election has ended, she has done nothing to expand her appeal beyond that base into the middle of the electorate, where elections are decided. In fact, were she to be the nominee we could have a catastrophic election."

Discussion of Palin Book at APL Wednesday Night

Political activist Brian Farmer and I will be leading a discussion of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue tomorrow (Wednesday) evening from 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. at the Appleton Public Library (225 N. Oneida St.). The event is free.

Deer Cull: Firearms Were Discharged Illegally

Because neither the public at-large, the press, nor the city council were warned of the imminence of a deer cull, no one was in a position to make sure the procedure was done to the letter of the law. We are all in the unfortunate position of having to ask questions after the fact. As an example of the kind of mishaps that result when government intentionally chooses to implement its actions secretively, today the city attorney confirmed for me that the sharpshooting did in fact occur in violation of the city code that prohibits the discharge of firearms within the city of Oshkosh. Some background:

On January 13, 2009, the city council passed ordinance 09-12, "Approval of variance to deer feeding ban and firearm discharge ordinances/culling of urban deer/Osborn Ave. area." The ordinance specified that the granting of a variance to allow for the discharge or firearms would be for the time period from January 14, 2009 through April 1, 2009. Thus, when Urban Wildlife Specialists discharged firearms in late December, they did so illegally.

That the council had passed ordinance 09-12 occurred to me last night when I went over my notes relating to the deer cull issue. I immediately emailed city attorney Lorenson to ask if the council had renewed the ordinance, since I had no recollection of us having done so. Here is her response:

"I checked and I do not believe that the variance was ever renewed. As a practical matter we would not pursue citations in this instance for violations of this ordinance though; as the individuals that would be cited under the ordinance are the persons who discharged the weapons, and in this case they did so at the City's direction."

The most charitable explanation of the situation is that it was a bureaucratic mishap; the city manager, attorney, and chief of police somehow forgot that the variance had expired. If that is in fact what happened, it reinforces why it's so important to have a council and press ready to serve a watchdog role. (Unfortunately the secrecy did not allow the council or the press to serve that role.).

Someone less charitably inclined might suspect that the failure to renew the variance was done willfully. To renew the variance would have meant, for one thing, that the city council would have had the opportunity to deliberate about it. Unlike last year, when only I spoke in opposition, this time the deliberation would have included the voice of Bob Poeschl. Mr. Poeschl openly opposed the deer cull during his campaign, and I believe he received one of his highest vote totals in the ward affected by the culling. No doubt citizens pro and con would have came to the council to speak on the issue.

More important, if we had had the opportunity to deliberate about the variance and if the public had had the opportunity to comment, we would no doubt have insisted that firearms not be discharged without public notification.

Regardless of how one feels about deer culling (or fire trucks and pump stations), I hope we can all agree that a city manager ought not have the power to direct an organization or individual to discharge firearms in violation of city codes. Giving a local executive that kind of power is more in line with the old Soviet Union than the US Constitution.

Lamb Not Sheepish About Transparency

The C-Span icon wants the congressional Democrats and president Obama to hold true to their pledge of maximum transparency in health care deliberations. See Lamb's letter here. Money quote:

"President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank and file members, and the nation's editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation's health care system. Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation through the Chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American."

So Much For Transparency

All members of the City Council received this notice today from city manager Rohloff: "Chief Greuel reported to me that Urban Wildlife Specialists harvested nine deer in the Armory area last week. This was done prior to the expiration of their contract on December 31, 2009."

There was no public announcement that the culling was to take place, and to my knowledge no member of the council was apprised in advance.

So much for government transparency.

I've asked to have this situation placed on the agenda for the January 12 meeting.

Censored In 2009, Part I

The following Media Rants column will appear in the January, 2010 edition of The SCENE.--TP

Censored in 2009, Part I

Media Rants

By

Tony Palmeri

Annually since 1976, Project Censored has identified news stories "underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored in the United States." Censored 2010 (Seven Stories Press) cites the Congress’ sell out to Wall St. as the top censored story. Mainstream media minimized or ignored the fact that “Nearly every member of the House Financial Services Committee, who in February 2009 oversaw hearings on how the $700 billion of TARP bailout was being spent, received contributions associated with these financial institutions during the 2008 election cycle.”

Inspired by the Project, every year I dedicate two columns to the top ten stories censored by the local and state corporate media.

And now the censored stories:

No. 10: Obama’s Big Sellout: In punting away campaign promises, Barack Obama is no different from all 43 politicians preceding him over at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Still, it’s rare to see such a complete 180 degree reversal on something as fundamental as economic policy. The Obama sellout is narrated in excruciating detail by Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi:

“What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.”

Probably because corporate media barons perceive they’ll benefit from a Wall St. friendly White House, the mainstream press rarely comment on the real ideological makeup of the president’s policy makers. The Obama administration on economics is still presented to us as governing from the “left”. Thus the tea baggers, birthers, and other Obama foes, of which there are many in the Fox Valley, really do believe that the administration is teeming with “socialists.”
[Note: An excellent recent interview of Taibbi by Thom Hartmann can be seen/heard below; the interview starts at about the 3:50 mark.].


No. 9: Democracy Now! Alone In The Bella of the Beast: The most important international conference in world history was held December 7-18 in Copenhagen’s Bella Center. On opening day, 56 newspapers from 45 countries ran a common editorial arguing, “Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security.” Only two US newspapers (one a Spanish language paper) ran the editorial.

Mainstream media failed to cover Copenhagen with the urgency required. Thank goodness for Amy Goodman; her Democracy Now! program staked out “In the Bella of the Beast” and provided the finest grassroots reporting of the event available.


No. 8: GAB Website FUBAR: I asked the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s politics watchdog Mike McCabe for an opinion on underreported stories. He said in part: “At or near the top of my list is the failure or at least serious shortcomings of outsourcing of government services. ABC News made a big deal out of screwed-up information on the federal government's website showing how stimulus funds have been used. The next day the problem was fixed. But we tried calling attention to data on the GAB's campaign finance website that was totally FUBAR for the better part of a year, and there was next to no media coverage. The state contracted out this project; the initial cost estimate was $1 million but now the tab has been run up to over $2 million and the meter is still running.” [Note: GAB is Government Accountability Board and FUBAR means F*cked Up Beyond All Recognition.]

No. 7: The Twisted Saga Of Mercury Marine. The October Media Rants column discussed Mercury Marine’s low road strategy of extracting huge concessions from workers at the Fond du Lac plant. Also in October, the nonpartisan Institute for Wisconsin’s Future told the true story, a “twisted saga” that Merc’s corporate media lapdogs won’t tell:

“The story of Mercury Marine is a sad documentary on how large corporations can reward executives for failure while dismantling the manufacturing structures that generate real value. Wisconsin’s income tax didn’t scare the company. Workers didn’t drain the firm’s cash. Rather, the company’s senior executives and directors presided over an internal fiscal meltdown while collecting massive incomes. Employees, stockholders and taxpayers are paying the price for their mismanagement and their luxuries.”

No. 6: The Councilor Appointment Process. The election of Paul Esslinger as Mayor of Oshkosh created a vacant city council seat. In a ridiculous display of press arrogance, the Oshkosh Northwestern refused to report or editorialize accurately or fairly about procedures used across the state to fill such vacancies. Anxious to pressure the Council into appointing the Northwestern’s endorsed candidate, the editorialists became his mouthpiece. I’m proud to say the Council stood up to the bullying, applied procedures commonly used across the state, and appointed an individual (Harold Bucholtz) who’s everything the corporate press isn’t: fair, independent, and trustworthy.

Next month: The top 5 censored stories of 2009.

Not Quite Blowin' In The Wind . . .

. . . but Bob Dylan is now using music to help feed the hungry. Proceeds from his "Christmas in the Heart" recording will support anti-hunger efforts. From Investment News:

“The problem of hunger is ultimately solvable,” Mr. Dylan said in a statement. That “means we must each do what we can to help feed those who are suffering and support efforts to find long-term solutions,” he said.

The recording features Dylan's cover of Brave Combo's cover of "Must Be Santa."

Buyer Beware Care Passes Senate

I had an opportunity to watch some of last night's US Senate "debate" over health insurance reform. Earlier in the day, the extent of the sell-out to lobbyists was depressingly documented, so the end result was no surprise.

The saddest speech had to be Senator Dick Durbin's (D-Illinois). Durbin, usually one of the more sane members of the Senate, with a straight face tried to compare passage of what is, at best, a national version of Romney Care (i.e. mandating the purchase of private insurance) to the battles over Social Security and Medicare. He wants to call the new law "Kennedy Care."

Durbin is smart enough to know that Social Security and Medicare analogies went on life support the moment genuine single-payer was taken off the table; and smart enough to know that the analogies died when even a diluted public option could not make the cut through the insurance industry's Senate. I realize he and other Dems desperately want to score a legislative victory for Barack Obama, but c'mon.

If the legislation gets through conference and becomes law, I think it should be called "Buyer Beware Care." The main feature of the reform, after all, is the provision to buy private health insurance. Think of how distinguished this Senate will sound when the history of the era is written 50 years from now: "In the 1930s FDR and the Democrats in Congress created Social Security to ensure some measure of retirement security for seniors. With Medicare, LBJ and the Dems expanded the New Deal vision. Then at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Barack Obama and a Congress bought by the private insurance industry gave us Buyer Beware Care. Some called it de-evolution."

And Russ Feingold? The "maverick" ultimately took one for the team. Apparently he has decided he's going to pacify Wisconsin libs by blaming Barack Obama for the lack of a public option in the final bill. I didn't think the Republicans had any chance of unseating Feingold in 2010, but as more details of this monstrous bill become known, anything can happen.

Barack Obama is sending Democrats into the 2010 elections having to defend:

*The TARP (Wall St.) bailout
*Escalation of the war in Afghanistan
*A mandate to buy private insurance

Good luck with that.

Actually, some statistics in this month's Harper's Index now makes sense. It said since assuming the presidency, Obama has attended 26 party fundraisers. At the same point in his presidency, GW Bush had attended 6.

Even Jay Leno gets it: "I'm trying to...sum up President Obama's first 11 months in office. He gave billions to Wall Street, cracked down on illegal immigrants getting healthcare, sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. You know something? He may go down in history as our greatest Republican president ever."

Tell Feingold to vote NO on Lieberman Bill

Back in June Senator Feingold said he was "not interested passing health care reform in name only." He called a strong public option "fundamental" to reform.

The Lieberman Bill (i.e. the current "reform" bill under consideration in the Senate) is a travesty, shown by Howard Dean and many others to be much worse than anything Senator Feingold could have imagined in June. Go here to tell the Senator to vote against the bill.

Below is Feingold's statement from June followed by Keith Olbermann's "special comment" from last night.