Libertarian Leanings

Journolist and What Passes for Ethics Among Progressive Journalists

James Taranto has more on Ezra Klein's now defunct Journolist.  Journolist, an online message board for elite lefty journalists, was recently shut down when one of it's presumably less ideologically committed members leaked some inflammatory emails posted by David Weigel, who up until that time was a Washington Post reporter.  He was was actually forced to resign because of those emails.

The fact that Journolist was terminated is a sure indication that Weigel's online diatribes were the rule rather than the exception.  But what Taranto reports is very nearly incredible.   

One quote from the Caller piece, however, went too far even for an opinion journalist:

After Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat, threatening to kill the health care legislation by his presence, Weigel stressed how important it was for reporters to highlight what a terrible candidate his opponent Martha Coakley had been.

"I think pointing out Coakley's awfulness is vital, because it's 1) true and 2) unreasonable panic about it is doing more damage to the Democrats," Weigel wrote.

Remember, Weigel's supposedly off-the-record audience consisted of hundreds of journalists, both left-wing and purportedly objective. What it appears he was doing was not merely expressing an opinion but engaging in partisan politics--i.e., advising other journalists on how they should tailor their coverage so as to avoid "doing more damage to the Democrats."

So much for progressive claims that there is no media bias.  That lefty journalists would engage in this kind of coordinated slanting of the news comes as no surprise.  Shocking that one of them feels secure enough in the practice to say it out loud.

Credibility and the Afghan War

Credibility is the big difference.  Everybody knew, allies and enemies both, that George W. Bush was committed to winning the war in Iraq.  It's unfortunate, but hardly anybody is convinced that Barack Obama is committed to winning in Afghanistan.

Wars are contests of wills. If our efforts in Afghanistan have an increasingly ghostly quality—visible to the naked eye but incapable of achieving effects in the physical world—it has more to do with a widespread perception that we just aren't prepared to do what it takes to win than it does with the particulars of counterinsurgency strategy or its execution. Gen. Petraeus won in Iraq because George W. Bush had his back and the people of Iraq, friend as well as foe, knew it.

By contrast, the fact that we have been unable to secure the small city of Marja, much less take on the larger job of Kandahar, is because nobody—right down to the village folk whom we are so sedulously courting with good deeds and restrictive rules of engagement—believes that Barack Obama believes in his own war. The vacuum in credibility begets the vacuum in power.

You can sense Obama's disappointment.  From time to time he revisits his Afghan dilemma, hoping conditions will permit him to begin his promised troop draw down, but every time he looks he finds that he can't do it.  Back to domestic issues until Afghanistan intrudes upon him again, and again he engages with the only question that matters.  Can the troop withdrawal begin? 

Obama Get's Another F

This time it's for his handling of the BP oil spill.

Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. "Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.

You would think that cleaning up the gulf would be the highest priority.  You would be wrong.  Political considerations far outweighed the minor issue of an environmental catastrophe.

The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks," remarked Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer --the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment --unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts.

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

Federal environmentalists demanded absolute purity.  That is, until they finally had to admit they were overwhelmed and accepted the Dutch offer.  Sort of.

The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.

The Obama administration has deliberately delayed the gulf cleanup, deliberately courted environmental and economic disaster for the Gulf Coast.  All of this for political payoff to labor unions.  This is more than his usual mining for political opportunity from each crisis that comes along.  It's becoming obvious that President Obama just doesn't do anything unless there is political advantage in it.

Afterthought:  What it boils down to is this.  By his delay, Obama is inflicting economic hardship upon the people of the Gulf Coast in order to direct federal cleanup funding to his labor union political base.

Journolist Is Dead. Long Live Journolist.

Ezra Klein, the lefty opinion writer at the Washington Post who founded Journolist, says he has decided to shut it down.  Or not.  In the next breath he predicted it would reassemble itself in a new venue.  But for now, the original Journolist is gone.

Journolist is done now. I'll delete the group soon after this post goes live. That's not because Journolist was a bad idea, or anyone on it did anything wrong. It was a wonderful, chaotic, educational discussion. I'm proud of having started it, grateful to have participated in it, and I have no doubt that someone else will re-form it, with many of the same members, and keep it going.

Journolist, in case you are wondering, was a online message board where elite lefty journalists and pundits could exchange lofty notions insulated from all but like minded savants, predisposed to agree.   

At the beginning, I set two rules for the membership. The first was the easy one: No one who worked for the government in any capacity could join. The second was the hard one: The membership would range from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left.  I didn't like that rule, but I thought it necessary: There would be no free conversation in a forum where people had clear incentives to embarrass each other

Diversity in the eyes of Jlisters meant macho far left lefties would tolerate the mere liberals.  Barred from the Jlist were and conservatives or libertarians who might poke holes in liberal to Marxist prejudices, or who were likely to be Journolist targets.

Journolist became an embarrassment anyway, though it took two years before anybody not on the list got wind of it.  In March, 2009 Michael Calderone wrote an article about it in Politico headlined JournoList: Inside the echo chamber.

POLITICO contacted nearly three dozen current JList members for this story. The majority either declined to comment or didn’t respond to interview requests — and then returned to JList to post items on why they wouldn’t be talking to POLITICO about what goes on there

In an e-mail, Klein said he understands that the JList’s off-the-record rule “makes it seems secretive.” But he insisted that JList discussions have to be off the record in order to “ensure that folks feel safe giving off-the-cuff analysis and instant reactions.” 

One byproduct of that secrecy: For all its high-profile membership — which includes Nobel Prize-winning columnist Paul Krugman; staffers from Newsweek, POLITICO, Huffington Post, The New Republic, The Nation and The New Yorker; policy wonks, academics and bloggers such as Klein and Matthew Yglesias — JList itself has received almost no attention from the media.

The secret was out.  Shortly after Calderone's article appeared Mickey Kaus got hold of thread from the list and posted it on his blog.  Now that was embarrassing.  Get a load of the backbiting.

From: Jonathan Chait <jch...@tnr.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:27:59 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:27 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Perhaps, if his work is going to be brought up here  2 or 3 times a
week, he should be invited on the list. Or is the point of this to
create a forum where certain people can be criticized (or, more
precisely, called names) without the criticizer having to fear a
response? I do recall Eric Alterman going after Eve Fairbanks, and
then -- when Eve mounted a defense -- confessing that he didn't know
she was on the list, and only criticized her because he thought he was
speaking behind her back.
Is Michelle Cottle on this list? She's criticized less frequently
here, and I don't think this sort of thing interests her, but her
presence would definitely improve the list. There seems to be a junior
high quality to this list with regard to TNR, where if you're not on
it you get sniped at constantly, but if you are on it you're mostly safe.

[...]

From: Eric Alterman <era00...@aol.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:56:38 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:56 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Quit lying about my record, Jonathan Chait.
Or at least check the archives before descinding into Kirchickism.
What I posted about Eve was an article I PUBLISHED. It could hardly
have been going behind her back to PUBLISH an article, could it? What
I explained when you last leveled this false accusation ... [SNIP] ...  was the fact that had I known Eve was on the list, I
would not have posted it here, even though it was relevant to the
discussion at hand, because a) I had no wish to hurt the feelings of
someone I had never met, and b) this is no less important, I respect
the value of civility on this list. As you well know, there are plenty
of attacks going on between yourself, Matt, Ezra, Spencer, and myself
that do not make it onto this list because we respect the importance
of civility here. Or at least we did....
I expect Ezra will want to intervene here, but please do feel free to
forward our exchange to Marty. I can only imagine how proud he'd
be....
n Mar 24, 2:51 pm, Michael Cohen <speechbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:

- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -

From: Chris Hayes <christopherlha...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:57:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  There's a lot of people on this list routinely criticized who are not
on it, Jon. That said, I'm more than happy to call Marty Peretz a
racist to his (electronic) face.
-c

So lefty bloggers and journalists compared notes, refined their messages, and generally engaged in group think.  They argued among themselves about which conservatives were more racist, more anti-Semitic, more deserving to be smeared. 

Ezra Klein, blogger for the "liberal" American Prospect, got caught by Politico coordinating his stories with other liberal bloggers and journalists. Exposed for being a journalistic fraud, Klein needed an enemy. He found Ann Althouse. Althouse, who has a very popular blog, could be considered "conservative" (as in, when a law professor doesn't kneel at the alter of Obama, she is a "conservative").

Althouse's crime? She linked to the Politico story in a post at 8:54 a.m. on March 19, 2009 under the title "The Journolist." Althouse's blog gets tons of comments, unlike mine, which only gets a lot of comments when there is an Instalanche. Apparently, some of the comments were hostile to Klein, so Klein decided to take out Althouse by smearing her as an anti-Semite.

No, Klein didn't say that "Ann Althouse is an anti-Semite." The obvious weasel that he is, Klein did it indirectly under a post at 1:50 p.m. on March 20, 2009, titled "Are Ann Althouse's Commenters Anti-Semites?" Klein did a simultaneous Tweet with the same title. [Correction 3/21, 3:50 p.m.: The sequence was Klein tweets, Althouse objects, Klein posts the full post.]

This is how the left does it. When you can't find racist/sexist/anti-Semitic/homophobic comments by a conservative, you impugn their reputation by finding some lunatic in a crowd (or in blog comments) who did make such a comment.

Smearing techniques must have been what Klein was talking about in his farewell to Journolist blog post when he said, "It was a wonderful, chaotic, and educational experience."  It must have been.  

And we can be sure it's not over.  Son of Journolist is on the rise in this very moment, if not fully operational.  Lefty journalists and pundits will gather in secrecy to discuss how better to present their message so that the rest of us can "get it."  Thomas Frank wrote a book describing their quandary.  He called it "What's The Matter With Kansas."  Kansas, a hotbed of radical socialism a hundred years ago, twice voted for George W. Bush.  How could that have happened?  It was truly baffling!

So the quest to advance the progressive message continues.   Journolist arose as a forum for plotting strategy and pondering the impenetrable:  Why aren't those racist, anti-Semitic, rubes more receptive to progressive messages of hope, love, and equality?  Progressives continue to ponder.

Dodd-Frank - No One Knows How It Will Work

Congress has agreed upon financial reform legislation, but the bills leading sponsor doesn't know how it will work. Only that it's good.

"It's a great moment. I'm proud to have been here," said a teary-eyed Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee led the effort in the Senate. "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done."

Both the House and Senate must approve the compromise legislation before it can go to Obama for his signature.

I suppose it's an improvement over health care reform, which congress had to pass before they could find out what was in it.  At least this time they know what's in it.  They just don't understand what it means. 

Yippee.  When reform passes congress will have let loose a bureaucracy that will have nearly unlimited power.  Let's pause now and ponder, what will it do with that power?

A new consumer protection bureau housed in the Federal Reserve would have independent funding, an independent leader and near-total autonomy to write and enforce rules. The government would have broad new powers to seize and wind down large, failing financial firms and to oversee the $600-trillion derivatives market. In addition, a council of regulators, headed by the Treasury secretary, would monitor the financial landscape for potential systemic risks.

Bureaucratic legislation!  Lobbyists, lawyers, and congressmen must be salivating at the prospect of huge financial firms lining up with their political action cash.  And what large financial firm won't be thrilled at the chance to influence rule writing in ways that will shield it from any meaningful competition.  Call it the cost of doing business.  In the best case scenario we will see yet another round of regulatory capture where the regulated industry writes its own rules  What we won't see out of this is any reduction in the systemic risk nor any economic stability.

"This legislation is a failure on both counts," Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) said in a statement that denounced the compromise as failing to address "shoddy underwriting practices" or problems with the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. "It will not encourage much-needed stability and confidence in our financial markets. It will not significantly reduce systemic risk in our financial sector."

What it will do is generate more special interest money that will flow through lobbyists into political campaign war chests.  This is what you get with progressive government.

Obama's Binge Rhetoric

For George Will the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is a metaphor for Obama and his party.

The unceasing torrent of his ill-chosen words is analogous to the unstoppable oil spill, which itself resembles his and his party’s incontinent spending. Just as congressional Democrats’ budget strategy is to have no budget, Obama’s communication strategy is to have no silence. Having no budget means, as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says, having no priorities and hence no restraints. Having no communication strategy means him being constantly in the nation’s face, hectoring incessantly, unconstrained by priorities.

Obama is into his second year of a rhetorical bender.  He won't stop talking and his party won't stop spending.

Katrina and Deepwater Horizon

Paul Rubin, a professor of economics at Emory University, compares Katrina to Deepwater Horizon.

In many respects, the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Katrina are mirror images of each other...

State and local efforts—particularly in New Orleans, and Louisiana more broadly—interfered with what actions the federal government could actually take. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was late in ordering an evacuation and did not allow the use of school buses for evacuation, which could have saved hundreds of lives. President Bush had no power to change that decision.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is on federal offshore territory...

As opposed to Katrina, state and local attempts to address the oil spill have been hindered by an ineffectual and chaotic federal response.

The bigger difference is in press coverage.  The press gave Bush about 30 seconds before charges of an inadequate botched response to Katrina hit the front pages.  Two months into the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the press is still making excuses for Obama's inattention and incompetence.  His golf is very important, you know.

Hostage

1960s Redux?

Bill Kristol suggests that we look to the 60s for a decade most closely mirrors our present political climate.

But what if we’re in for a period more like the late 1960s? We could soon have a rebellion, from both left and right, against a difficult war. We already have a Middle American populist reaction against the government schemes of pointy-headed intellectuals. Barack Obama got the highest percentage of the votes of any Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964; Republicans look to be on track this year to replicate their 47-seat House pick-up in 1966. 

What comes next? That’s up to us—especially to us conservatives. We’re not doomed to repeat the pretty miserable political, social, and economic performance of 1967-80.

Unlike in that period, we’re not all Keynesians now; Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom has spent much of the last week at number one on the Amazon bestseller list. Unlike in the late 1960s, the Silent Majority already knows it shouldn’t defer to the big people. Unlike 40 years ago, progressivism is no longer hegemonic and the reactions against it no longer merely uncertain or instinctual. And today, there is a serious revival of interest in the Founders and in constitutionalism.

It's the Silent Majority that is taking their protests to the streets this time.

Health Care Reform - Opposition Remains Strong

Back in January of this year, David Brady, Daniel Kessler And Douglas Rivers, all of them professors at Stanford University, commissioned a poll of voters in 11 states where November Senate races are expected to be competitive. Those states are Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania.  How, they asked, did voters feel about health reform and how would they be likely to vote?

In January, a majority in each of the 11 states opposed health reform. Not surprisingly, public opinion was more favorable in the more liberal states. Voters in Connecticut opposed reform by a margin of 55% to 45%, whereas voters in Louisiana opposed reform 63% to 37%. In key battleground states like Colorado and Ohio, voters opposed reform 58% to 42%.

By the end of May, opposition had generally declined, although the declines were small and not statistically significant. Notably, health reform's biggest gains have come in the most liberal states, where election outcomes are less in doubt. Opinion about reform in Connecticut is now evenly split at 50/50; opinion in Louisiana went more negative, to 64% against and 36% for. In battleground states, opposition to reform has hardly budged. Voters in Colorado and Ohio still oppose reform 56% to 44% and 57% to 43%, respectively.

Democrats passed health care reform on the strategy that it would become popular with the passage of time.  Quite the opposite is happening.

We also asked the standard generic ballot question, "If the 2010 elections for the House of Representatives were held today, would you vote Democrat or Republican?" If anything, the effect of health reform on House races is even larger than the 20 point effect on Senate races. In January, voters who opposed health reform were 24 points more likely to vote Republican; by May, they were 44 points more likely. This is consistent with Charles Franklin's analysis in Pollster.com showing that, for the first time since 1994, Republicans lead in the generic ballot.

My emphasis above.