Not So Fast, Officer!

Jim Dwyer of the New York Times wrote a most interesting piece Wednesday about a phenomenon that seems to be on the rise. He profiled the case of an encounter between a bicyclist and a New York City police officer that is now resonating through the corridors of 1 Police Plaza (headquarters) here. A bit of explanation is in order here.

Periodically, an organization called Critical Mass holds a sort of  bike-a-thon through the streets of Manhattan. They do so to call attention to the need for more New Yorkers to start pedaling and stop driving, among other things. For reasons best known to themselves, the NYPD doesn't care much for these bicycle demonstrations. So it was last Friday that one cop decided to knock a cyclist off his bike with a picture perfect football tackle, then charge the rider with a variety of offenses.

There was only one problem. Somebody managed to make a videotape of the incident. Before you knew it, the whole thing was on YouTube, and nearly 400,000 people saw what was obviously a cop out of control. To make matters worse, people got a window into how cops will occasionally lie like a rug to cover their own misconduct. The story the officer told bore absolutely no resemblance to what the tape showed.

This isn't the first time this inexpensive digital monitoring has caught cops making up stories to justify arrests. Sadly, the offending cops don't get charged with perjury, as they should. In this most recent case, even the police commissioner, usually a staunch defender of his people, couldn't come up with a valid explanation for the incident, or the cop's version of it. The police union here is backing the cop, saying he was just trying to stop a cyclist who was a danger on the street.

Maybe he didn't see the tape. 

The Best Things in Life ARE Free

Sen. John McCain, as most know, hasn't raised nearly as much money for advertising as his opponent Barack Obama. So what does he do? He creates an ad that's sure to generate plenty of free airings by news outlets hungry for anything during this lull in the election cycle.

McCain's new ad attacks Obama for canceling a visit to wounded troops in Germany during his overseas trip. The ad says Obama bowed out because he couldn't bring television cameras. Obama himself has said he had no intention of bringing cameras on the visit, but no matter. Exposure trumps inaccuracy every time.

The ad began running this past Saturday. It has run as a paid commercial roughly a dozen times to date. Yet it's run literally hundreds of times, for free, as the network and cable news outlets highlight the controversy it has created. Is there a lesson to be learned from this? If so, is it that a candidate should run a wildly inaccurate ad during a time when he or she knows there's little other news to cover?

The news outlets ought to know better, and they do. They can cover the controversy without showing the ad every time they do. McCain himself ought to know better as well. What's good for the goose is also good for the gander. How will he respond if Barack Obama does what he's already done and gets an equal amount of free news coverage of a paid advertisement?

And when will all this end? 

A Different Kind of Affirmative Action

That bunch of lawbreakers at Alberto Gonzales' Justice Dept. are finally being exposed. An internal report says senior aides to the then Attorney General used politics to guide their hiring decisions for a number of important jobs. The interesting part is they often picked less qualified candidates as long as they were seen as card carrying Republicans.

The person at the center of this nonsense, Monica Goodling, was a top aide to Gonzales. She managed a meteoric rise after coming to the Justice Dept. from (and this should tip you off) the Republican National Committee. She herself admitted she may have "crossed the line" in using politics to guide hiring when she testified last year before Congress.  This new report says she was being modest.

It alleges Goodling and other top aides to Gonzales established a pattern of hiring that is described by one official as a farm system, filling temporary jobs with Republicans who could then be moved up. If a candidate was seen as too liberal, they were passed over, no matter how qualified they were. The report doesn't begin to quantify how many political hacks currently work in the department due to the Goodling affirmative action program.

Let's now see how many opponents of affirmative action who speak so loudly when it comes to black people raise there voices to decry this wanton misuse of taxpayer money. 

Bet there won't be many.   

Poll Vaulting

Oh, those polls! Wasn't it just last week that a series of Quinnipiac University polls told us Barack Obama was in trouble in four key states? Hadn't he gone from in front of to behind John McCain in Colorado? Hadn't a big lead in Minnesota virtually evaporated? And now, here comes a new Gallup poll that says something very different.

This, I suppose, should come as no surprise. Polls fluctuate based on a number of factors. Yet polls also become a big part of the media storyline in a presidential campaign. This is especially true now, during that fallow period before either national convention. So Gallup says Obama is now nine points up on McCain, and the important part is that the poll was taken after his overseas trip.

There's an interesting component of human nature on display every time polls are released. If the poll reinforces what someone already thinks, or is good news for a candidate a person supports, the poll has validity. On the flip side, if the poll is bad news, it's flawed or irrelevant. Polls are simply snapshots of a segment of the electorate at a given point in time, little more, little less. If they drive anything important, it's fundraising. 

When people hear commentators say the results of any poll are the voice of the American people, beware.

You are that voice.

What, No White Heroes?

The absurdity of the following story leaps off the page. Actor/activist Danny Glover has had it in his mind to make an epic film on the life of Haitian hero Toussaint Louverture for quite some time. It looks like shooting will start early next year. Yet according to Glover, it's been a twisted road to get funding for his flick.

In an interview while in Paris, Danny Glover recounts going to producer after producer in the US and abroad to get financing. The actor says some producers thought the project was a great idea, but wanted to know where the white heroes were. That's right. A story about the Haitian revolution had to have white heroes in order to be successful. Glover adds that the first question producers will ask is whether its a black film. If so, conventional thinking goes, it won't be successful in Europe or Japan. 

Of course, producers can put their money anywhere they want. That's their right. It's also their right to think nothing in film has changed since the '50s. Maybe that's why, as Danny Glover points out, others from Sergey Eisenstein to Anthony Quinn to Harry Belafonte have had this idea, but have been unable to get the project off the ground.

Danny Glover raised a good part of the money from a cultural body in Venezuela. Imagine that. Hugo Chavez more enlightened than the liberals in Hollywood!

Best of luck, Mr. Glover.

A Tabloid Tale Worth Telling?

When should the mainstream media pick up a tabloid story and run with it? So far, the most recent National Enquirer story on John Edwards isn't making much noise. Remember last year, when the Enquirer alleged Edwards had both a mistress and a love child? Both Edwards and the woman vehemently denied the story. In fact, a married friend of the former senator stepped forward and said the child was his.

So, most folks thought the story ended there. But now, the Enquirer says a bunch of its reporters caught Edwards meeting the woman in a Beverly Hills hotel just this past Monday. According to the tabloid, the meeting lasted until 2:40 in the morning. They go into some bizarre, almost comedic details about what happened when their people confronted Edwards as he was leaving the hotel. They say he hid in a hotel bathroom for 15 minutes. It almost sounds like one of those screwball comedies from the '30s. There's also the intriguing question of just who tipped the Enquirer off.

In the end, of course, none of that matters. What does matter is whether any of this foolishness impacts the possibility of Edwards being Barack Obama's running mate. There's also the chance the right wing blogosphere will pick up on it and call the lack of coverage another example of liberal bias. 

Stay tuned. My gut tells me this isn't over yet.

Fare Hike Fury

Anyone who's ever been to New York City knows the transit system is its soul. Every day, the city's subways and buses move millions, and is in fact the way a majority of people get around. That's why so many people, from elected officials to riders to transit advocates, slam the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's proposal to raise fares next year.

Yes, tolls for drivers over bridges and tunnels would also go up, So would fares for suburban commuters. Yet it's the subway and bus system that draws the most attention. As well it should. If enacted, an increase next year would only be the second time in the history of the system fares went up in consecutive years. The MTA says the hikes are needed because it faces a $900 million dollar deficit next year. Never mind that just six months ago, the deficit was estimated at just over $200 million.

On top of that, delays on subways just rose 24% in a one year period. Not a great way to introduce the need for more money from straphangers. Already, the governor, mayor and Assembly speaker have lined up publicly against raising fares. Don't think for a minute, however, that the increase is doomed. The MTA must balance its budget. If the fare doesn't go up, the alternatives are bleak. Mayor Bloomberg may be right when he says any business with a $10 billion dollar budget that can cut 5% is guilty of poor management.

That's never stopped a fare increase before.

The Times' Mistake

Maybe I'm the only progressive in America who has a problem with the New York Times' rejection of Sen. John McCain's editorial on Iraq. McCain's piece was a direct rebuttal to an essay written by his presumptive opponent, Barack Obama. The Times Op-Ed editor David Shipley opined that McCain's editorial should "mirror" Obama's. Talk about spoon-feeding the right wing media machine an issue!

With a recent poll showing almost half the respondents believing the media is trying to help Obama win the presidency, you can almost hear talk radio hosts bellowing at the top of their lungs. And for what? The Times comes off sounding like a teacher telling a student to redo a science paper. Somehow, Shipley's explanation that Obama offered new information just isn't good enough. 

What ever happened to letting the piece run, and letting the people decide its merit? After all, McCain isn't writing a news story here. Nobody is going to confuse him with a journalist. That's why they call it Op-Ed. David Shipley says McCain should define victory in the editorial. Does he think Times readers can't figure that out for themselves?

It's heavy handed decisions like this that give fuel to the right wing's mantra that the media terminally biased in favor of liberal thinking.  Trouble is, it's all so unnecessary. Print the piece as written, and be done with it.

And I'm no fan of John McCain.

Misquoted? Mistranslated? Or What?

Barack Obama is in Iraq today, and he's expected to meet with top US military officials and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Yet already, that meeting has been overshadowed by Maliki's interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. Published over the weekend, Maliki appeared to endorse Obama's timeline for the withdrawal of US troops from his country. But did he?

Not so fast! The Bush Administration, obviously looking to deny Obama this kind of advantage in the US presidential race, pressed Maliki for what it called "a clarification" of his remarks. Lo and behold, the Iraqi leader backtracked, saying he was "mistranslated" when he said Obama's 16 month timeline was fine with him. 

Bush wanted a quick retraction because only Friday he'd agreed to a "general time horizon" for a troop pullout. That horizon contained no specific timeline. Speaking of lacking specifics, when the Iraqi government said Maliki had been "misunderstood and mistranslated", they offered none. Nor could they explain how the mistranslation occurred, since the interpreter works not for Der Spiegel, but for the Iraqi government. 

That the American president and the Iraqi prime minister are working at cross purposes should come as no surprise. It's Maliki who is under pressure in his own country to get the Americans out as soon as possible. He's also the one facing an election in the not too distant future. He could care less about political points in the US presidential race, at least not now.

Nouri al-Maliki knows he could well be meeting with George W. Bush's successor when he meets with Barack Obama today. Rest assured, so does Bush.

Fires and Shocks

As Barack Obama prepares to embark on an ambitious overseas trip, maybe he should have some questions beyond the efficacy of the troop surge in Iraq. Maybe he ought to ask just what's going on with the reported 283 electrical fires due to shoddy work by contractors who are getting paid really good money.

The New York Times reports that while the Pentagon has acknowledged that 13 Americans have died by electrocution in Iraq, many more have been injured. In fact, one building in Baghdad had soldiers complaining about shocks on a daily basis. So, you might ask, who is responsible for providing basic services for US troops in Iraq? KBR, who did its own study that showed a systemic problem with electrical work.

As is so often the case in the American military, the problem didn't get much attention until a Green Beret was electrocuted while showering this past January. What followed was a classic case of butt covering. Investigations were begun, as were inspections of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR.

For its part, the contractor issued one of those pro forma "We're committed to safety" statements. Yet the Times reports that dozens of e-mails and memos indicate both the Pentagon and KBR were aware of electrical problems well before this soldier's death. So then, a fundamental question ought to be asked.

The American taxpayer is shelling out billions of dollars for the Iraq war. Many millions of that money has gone to KBR and other private contractors. The Bush Administration has made them a cornerstone of everything from security to equipment distribution to building maintenance.

Can someone reasonably argue that, after seeing a story like this, taxpayers are getting their money's worth? Never mind whether this represents a commitment to the troops.

The Street Taketh Away

The Rev. Jesse Jackson's use of the "N word" during that off mic conversation the other week shouldn't surprise those who know him. Sad to say, for once, Bill O'Reilly was right. He really did have something else on that tape. Rev. Jackson has apologized, again. No word yet from the Obama camp, which one would guess has other fish to fry.

Talk to black folks about Jesse's faux pas, and reactions run the gamut. some say it's jealousy, pure and simple. Others, as we've mentioned before, go back to his out of wedlock child to trace his fall. Yet what surprises is not what people say about Jesse Jackson, but the eagerness with which many black folks embrace the message Jesse was dogging in the first place.

Back in the day, black folks had little tolerance for those among us who "aired our dirty laundry in public". It was considered giving those operating against black interests just the ammunition they needed to promote their agenda. Indeed, when Jesse Jackson uttered his ill advised "Hymietown" remarks back in '84, many blacks were critical of the messenger, a black reporter. 

In 2008, things have changed. Not only do many blacks embrace Obama's message of personal responsibility, a good number have no problem venting their feelings about Jesse Jackson. Suffice to say Jesse went "street" on Obama, saying the kind of thing regular black folks might say in a barber shop or local bar.

Somebody should remind Jesse Jackson those places don't have microphones. 

If It Walks Like a Lame Duck....

President Bush feel awfully alone these days, what with Republican lawmakers running away from him like he's got some sort of communicable disease. If you want proof that Bush has become the quintessential lame duck, consider this. He held a news conference yesterday, and yes, it was televised. Yet here in New York, Channel 5, the main Fox station, kept the new Wendy Williams talk show on the air. Bush was relegated to the second tier station, Channel 9.

And as they say on informercials, but wait, there's more. Just hours after receiving Bush's veto message on Medicare legislation, Both houses of Congress overrode him. In the House, 153 Republicans sided with all the Democrats, making the override vote a lopsided 383-41. On the Senate side, 21 GOP members defected, and the margin was 70-26. Ouch! This was a bill that only weeks ago Democrats thought didn't have the votes to even get through Congress.

Then there's the mortgage finance crisis. That was actually the subject of Bush's news conference. He's backing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Again, Republican lawmakers crossed their president, leaving Paulson to lobby Democrats to get something passed.

As things now stand, it will be the Treasury secretary, and not Bush himself, that will try to navigate a way out of the mortgage crisis. As for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both mortgage giants have lost about half their share value since the beginning of last week.

Bush is obviously fiddling. The question is, will America burn? 

Watch List or....What?

Every now and then, a story about the government's terror watch list crops up in the news. Usually, it's not about a terrorist being apprehended by use of the list, but rather about some innocent American detained at an airport somewhere because his or her name matched one on it. So it is with a man named Jim Robinson, who says he's been hassled numerous times at airports. There's one difference with him, however. He's a former Assistant Attorney General who just had his top-secret security clearances renewed last year.

Robinson says the list ought to be eliminated, because he's one of possibly hundreds of thousands of people who get stopped and inconvenienced due to an improper match. Yet the government calls the list one of its most important tools in the war on terror. So who is right here? As of October 2006, over 30,000 people had asked the government to clear their names from the list. Some may remember a few years ago that a two year old child was detained in Houston because his name matched one on the list.

On top of that, as many as 20 suspected terrorists were left off the list due to a technology glitch. There isn't even agreement on how many names are actually on the list. The ACLU estimates 1 million. The government says no more than 400,000. One thing is clear. It's time for a little transparency here.

The government needs to tell the American people how many names are on the terror watch list.  It also needs to detail its efforts to see to it innocent people aren't wrongly detained simply because their name matches one on the list. Just as important, the government needs to convince people the list actually does what they say it does, that is, keep terrorists out of the country.

This isn't too much to ask.

The Cover, or What?

Not too long ago, we told you we're currently in a "fallow period" of the presidential election cycle. That's between the end of the primaries and the national conventions, still well over a month away. Stories that might not get a lot of play under other circumstances suddenly become front page news. Proof positive of this is the controversy over the latest cover of the New Yorker magazine. It shows the Obamas, Barack and Michelle, in garb that can only be described as less than flattering.

The Illinois senator is depicted in traditional Muslim attire. His wife has a mile high afro and an AK-47 slung over her shoulder. Both are in the Oval Office, where a portrait of Osama bin Laden adorns a wall. The cartoon itself is called "The Politics of Fear", and both the McCain and Obama camps have lashed out at it. For its part, the New Yorker doesn't see what all the fuss is about. They call it satire. The campaigns call it tasteless and offensive.

Anyone who has read the New Yorker (as I do regularly) shouldn't be surprised. Even Obama himself said he had no response to it. Yet his campaign certainly did. The point of the cover (although unexplained) is to satirize many right wing lies told about both Obamas. Point taken. Part of satire is not necessarily giving a detailed explanation of why you do what you do. That sort of ruins the effect.

Those who will try to make this a story lasting more than a single news cycle need to find something else to do. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that important.

That's why it's called fallow.

Race and the Base

If there's one thing I've learned since I've begun to host "Politics Plus" on WLIB, it's that the audience is different from both the audience at Air America, where I previously worked, and even from that of the "old" WLIB, where I worked for 30 years. Nothing bought this home faster than Thursday's discussion of Rev. Jesse Jackson's backhanded slam against Barack Obama.

Both on the phone and in text messages (now there's a new wrinkle), many in the audience thought Rev. Jackson was simply "player hating" on Obama. Some people brought up his fathering of an out of wedlock child as proof of his fall from grace. Still others slammed him for not doing much lately to advance the cause of black America. Suffice to say this would have been unheard of just a few years ago.  

Black folks were supposed to be circumspect in criticizing other black folks. And maybe that's the line Jesse Jackson himself crossed. Yet look a little deeper, and you find other forces at work here. Put simply, black people believe in Barack Obama. Many believe in him to the extent that they understand his need to position himself more to the center of the American political spectrum. There seems to be a forbearance in Obama's case that certainly wasn't there 20 years ago when Jesse Jackson last ran for president. The belief that Obama can actually win has pushed some in black America re-examine what should be expected from a politician, regardless of color.

Maybe Jesse Jackson just wishes it was like that for him.

Ouch! Hot Mic!

One thing people learn if they either work in media or deal with it regularly is, always assume a microphone in front of you is on. Always. That's shorthand for, don't start saying stupid stuff because you think a mic is off. That's a lesson you would think Rev. Jesse Jackson would have learned by now. Apparently not.

By way of full disclosure, I've interviewed Rev. Jackson literally dozens of times over the past three decades, and have learned an awful lot from him. One thing I learned is that off the cuff can often become off the wall. That's obviously what happened when Rev. Jackson used what he describes as a crude remark to criticize Barack Obama.

That remark was "I want to cut his nuts out" for what he considers "talking down" to black people. Rev. Jackson hurried to apologize just as the 24 hour cable news machine began airing the remark. The Obama campaign accepted the apology, but in a bizarre twist, the most stinging criticism came from Rev. Jackson's own son. Cong. Jesse Jackson Jr. called his father's statements reckless, and went further. "I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric".

Indeed. The irony is that Rev. Jackson actually supports Obama. In reality, it should be no more than a one news cycle story. Yet, you never know. Which is the lesson folks should take from this.

You never know when a mic is on. 

Nothing More than Feelings?

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are raising money together here in New York City today and tomorrow. On the surface, the bad blood between these two contestants for the Democratic presidential nod will have vanished. After all, they did that whole Unity, New Hampshire thing recently, didn't they?

Well if published reports are to be believed, things aren't going quite so well when it comes to burying Hillary's mountain of campaign debt. At least one report says Obama supporters are balking at helping his old rival. As most know, the Illinois senator asked his top donors to kick in to help retire Senator Clinton's $23 million dollar debt. The take thus far? $100,000 dollars, a small sum by any objective standard. 

Yes, they've gotten more in pledges, but some of Obama's donors are reportedly balking at paying down a debt they feel was amassed trying to damage their guy. In other words, some feel the senator from New York ran up the bulk of that massive sum after she lost the mathematical chance of catching Obama. Most reportedly want their money not to go to Clinton, but to beating John McCain in November.

The down side for Obama is that he can ill afford to look less than helpful in the effort to help his formal rival. There are still lingering resentments among some in the Clinton camp, and some of her donors are feeling left out of the loop when it comes to visible positions in the Obama campaign.

All this could be a minor dust-up, a tempest in a teapot. The money raised at the New York fundraisers over the next two days will go to Obama, not Clinton. Maybe these media reports are overblown.

Let's hope so.     

Balanced Budget?

It was day one of economics week for John McCain. The presumptive nominee of the Republican Party now says he wants to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term, that is, 2013. This is a switch for McCain, who previously opined the budget would take two terms to balance. This is a tall order on a number of fronts. First, President Bush notwithstanding, the nation is in a recession. Balancing budgets during a recession is difficult.

Yet this isn't the toughest part for McCain. Economists and fiscal experts say his proposed tax cuts would be the real impediment to balancing the budget. Where do you derive revenue to lower the deficit if at the same time you're driving down revenue? McCain has an answer. He's proposing a hold on overall spending growth to 2.4% a year. Never mind the average growth rate in federal spending has been 6% per year for the past five years. And that's with a Republican president.

Then there are the big ticket federal spending programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. McCain says he'll slow their growth as well. But how? Each of these programs provide benefits to millions of Americans. Most of them are voters, and the GOP learned the hard way what happens when you try to tamper with them.

Then there are those pet congressional spending programs called earmarks. McCain has long opposed them, and says as president he'll eliminate them. Trouble is, his friend President Bush says earmarks this year total $17 billion dollars. In a budget of nearly $3 trillion dollars, that's a drop in the bucket.

If McCain can't put more meat on the bones of his budget balancing proposal, consider it DOA in the court of public opinion.   

Back to Business

If this past holiday weekend reminded Americans of anything, it's the fact that the economy is slumping. It means the two presumptive presidential nominees have a lot of work to do. Convincing the American people you've got the magic bullet to right the US economic ship is a tall order. 

John McCain has the task of making people forget his statement earlier in the campaign that he's no expert when it comes to the economy. Expect Barack Obama to touch on that more than once this week, as both of them present their economic visions to the nation. McCain is also, rightly or wrongly, associated with the economic policies of President Bush. Those policies aren't very popular right now, and Bush doesn't seem to have a clue how to reverse the current slide.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, can't afford to be painted as a candidate who will raise taxes for new economic programs. That's what you'll be hearing from the McCain camp. Obama also must get past last week's criticisms that he's moving away from some of the progressive positions that got him this far.

He's also got to face the reality that McCain, in shaking up his campaign staff and elevating proteges of Karl Rove, will be taking the gloves off. They'll be seeking to erode what's perceived as Obama's advantage in dealing with the economy. With job losses, home foreclosures, and rising gas prices knocking the American people for a loop, both of these folks have their work cut out for them.

Let's hope they come with substance, not style.

Fear Itself

I'm finally shaking off the lingering effects of a cold, but throughout there's been something troubling me. I meant to write about it at the beginning of the week, but it's still quite relevant.

John McCain's chief foreign policy guy Charlie Black took quite some heat for saying a terror attack on US soil would be "a big advantage" for his man. Since then, a number of pundits have written pieces saying, essentially, that Charlie Black was right. Let's follow that logic for a second, and suppose there is no way the US could actually control the timing of such an attack. What would be the next best thing, something the US, that is the Bush Administration, could control?

Well, how about a military strike against another country? That the administration could control. And, if the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh is to be believed, there are already plans on the drawing board. Against whom, you ask? Iran, of course!

According to Hersh, who's writing on the subject has always been first rate, there's already been about $400 million dollars allocated for a covert destabilization program against the country's religious leadership. He further writes that despite misgivings on the part of America's top military leadership, the Bush people seem fixated on regime change in Iran, by military force if necessary.

If it were to come prior to the November election, how would the candidates respond? Keep in mind there would likely be some event used as a catalyst for such an action. Could Barack Obama oppose a military strike against Iran against a wave of patriotic fervor? Or would the American people create a backlash against such a strike that would doom anyone who supported it (like McCain)?

Just thinking. 

Still Sick

Still sick today. Hope to be back tomorrow.

Mark