More Ratatouille

Dan Okrent's remark that "many" at the New York Times "really dislike" proposals for more openness and responsiveness to its critics is a telling indication of our culture's dysfunctional state of communications. He presents, as an example, assistant managing editor Allan M. Siegal's opposition:

Al Siegal understandably worries that the paper's authority, the staff's morale and the honest pursuit of truth could be severely undermined by deceitful or disingenuous attacks on specific articles by interested parties.

Issues cannot get resolved. Differences are irreconcilable. The masses gape uncomprehendingly as contenders vie for their support.

One issue we'd promptly resolve, were we a healthy democracy, is whether it's OK for the president to lie to the people about the people's business. It's suicide for a democracy to accept this. But our culture can't resolve who's right when people disagree, so it can never conclude that something is an unequivocal lie.

A relatively minor Bush lie occurred recently as he spoke before a crowd urging passage of a bill limiting class-action lawsuits.

An acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration, Walter E. Dellinger III, was there with Bush to show his support for the bill. Bush told the crowd that Dellinger had "actually served in government for the previous administration.... He represents the spirit needed to have good legal reform, and that is the bipartisan spirit."

As the Times reports:

What neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Dellinger mentioned was that Mr. Dellinger and his law firm, O'Melveny & Myers, were paid $780,000 since 1999 - including $580,000 in the last two years - by two of the major lobbying groups set up by companies to try to push the legislation through Congress....

[Commentators] criticized the notion that he was appearing as a disinterested expert.

"When Walter Dellinger appears on this, it has nothing to do with his academic credentials and everything to do with being a paid lobbyist," said Pamela Gilbert, a lawyer at Cuneo, Waldman & Gilbert, which specializes in class-action cases and has lobbied against the legislation.

["Bush Holds Event to Back Curbs on Class-Action Lawsuits," New York Times, February 10, 2005.]

Bush's withholding Dellinger's role as a lobbyist is nothing less than a lie. People who are queasy about the word "lie" should figure out that they'll be more uncomfortable still if the U.S. becomes a fascist regime and civil rights evaporate -- an eventuality that seems inevitable if the people can be lied to with impunity.

The Dellinger appearance is only one one of the more trivial examples of this administration's continual use of deception against its own citizens.

Last year, while Congress was deliberating on pending prescription drug legislation prior to a vote, the chief actuary of the Medicare program, Richard S. Foster, was ordered not to disclose to Congress the estimates he'd made of the legislation's cost. An email message Foster received from superiors, after he'd responded to inquiries from a House Democratic aide, instructed him not to provide the information to "anyone else until [Thomas A. Scully, the Medicare administrator at the time] explicitly talks with you -- authorizing the release of information.... The consequences for insubordination are extremely severe." (Senate Democrats Claim Medicare Chief Broke Law, New York Times, March 19, 2004.)

Here is an expert, his salary paid by taxpayers, ordered to keep congressmen, also paid by taxpayers, in the dark about cost estimates which taxpayers have paid him to produce -- information that is centrally relevant to the votes they are about to cast. A government's lies don't get much more flagrant.

But if that wasn't enough, Bush's administration then produced fake TV news segments to tell the public about the new legislation's benefits:

Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.

The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law on Dec. 8.

The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."

But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government.

Another video, intended for Hispanic audiences, shows a Bush administration official being interviewed in Spanish by a man who identifies himself as a reporter named Alberto Garcia.

Another segment shows a pharmacist talking to an elderly customer. The pharmacist says the new law "helps you better afford your medications," and the customer says, "It sounds like a good idea." Indeed, the pharmacist says, "A very good idea."

The government also prepared scripts that can be used by news anchors introducing what the administration describes as a made-for-television "story package."

In one script, the administration suggests that anchors use this language: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details."

The "reporter" then explains the benefits of the new law....

Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. In the past, the General Accounting Office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government or its contractors without identifying the source....

Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, expressed disbelief that any television stations would present the Medicare videos as real news segments, considering the current debate about the merits of the new law.

"Those to me are just the next thing to fraud," Mr. Kovach said. "It's running a paid advertisement in the heart of a news program."

[U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny, New York Times, March 15, 2004.]

(Adding insult to injury, the videos urge beneficiaries to call 1-800-MEDICARE for recorded information. When they do, the machine at the other end requires them to recite the words "Medicare improvement" before proceeding.)

This culture has to wrap its head around the basics of truth, lies, and integrity. Leaders who lie to their constituents should suffer extreme political damage.

But as things stand now, lies are the winning strategy. Times columnist Maureen Dowd reports on how Bush proxies are sponsoring brazenly false attacks against AARP because of its resistance to the next big lie -- that involving Social Security reform:

USA Next, a conservative lobbying group which has spent millions on Republican policy fights, has pledged to spend as much as $10 million on ads and other tactics. It's hiring some of the same consultants who helped the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth slime John Kerry, a war hero, as a war criminal.

Once again, just as W. runs into political trouble, he floats above the fray while the help takes out his opponents. Just as John McCain was smeared by Bush supporters in 2000, Swift Boat assassins can rid the president of any meddlesome adversaries now.

The USA Next group intends to combine the two ruthless success stories of the Bush re-election: the Swiftian tactic of amplifying its vicious and dishonest attacks through the media, and the Rovian tactic of hanging gay marriage like an anvil around the neck of a foe.

It began with an almost comically hyperbolic Internet ad that briefly ran on The American Spectator's Web site, painting AARP as pro-gay sex - even though it's tough to think of AARP and steamy lust in the same hot breath - and anti-soldier. It showed a soldier with a red X across him, and two gay men kissing at their nuptuals, with the headline "The REAL AARP Agenda."

AARP has not taken a position on same-sex marriage. But Mr. Jarvis told Judy Woodruff on CNN's "Inside Politics" yesterday that it had opposed a proposal in November to ban same-sex marriage in Ohio.

This was, of course, specious. The Ohio chapter of AARP objected to the proposal because it said the wording could affect legal recognition of any union, even of older heterosexuals living together.

The oleaginous Mr. Jarvis explained that the soldier was X-ed out on the ad because AARP does not "take a position on veterans and combat veterans' health and support an expansion of their assets. And we do." That is so lame. Just because AARP doesn't endorse a USA Next plan for veterans' health, that doesn't mean it hates American soldiers.

Mr. Jarvis defended his ad by saying that he was simply trying to provoke liberal bloggers, and that he succeeded. In fact, part of the sinister beauty of the Swift Boat method is its viral quality: it slips into a host body - "Inside Politics," say - and hijacks it. An ad it showed briefly on the Internet has now been replicated free, all over the world, and, yes, it is now being transmitted through the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.

Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey sent a letter to President Bush yesterday calling the USA Next ad "incendiary" and asking him to denounce such tactics. But, of course, President Bush has nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. Right?

["Swifties Slime Again," by Maureen Dowd, New York Times, February 24, 2005.]

Paul Krugman adds his comment the following day:

The slime campaign has begun against AARP, which opposes Social Security privatization. There's no hard evidence that the people involved - some of them also responsible for the "Swift Boat" election smear - are taking orders from the White House. So you're free to believe that this is an independent venture. You're also free to believe in the tooth fairy.

Their first foray - an ad accusing the seniors' organization of being against the troops and for gay marriage - was notably inept. But they'll be back, and it's important to understand what they're up to.

The answer lies in What's the Matter With Kansas?," Thomas Frank's meditation on how right-wingers, whose economic policies harm working Americans, nonetheless get so many of those working Americans to vote for them.

People like myself - members of what one scornful Bush aide called the "reality-based community" - tend to attribute the right's electoral victories to its success at spreading policy disinformation.

The message of Mr. Frank's book is that the right has been able to win elections, despite the fact that its economic policies hurt workers, by portraying itself as the defender of mainstream values against a malevolent cultural elite. The right "mobilizes voters with explosive social issues, summoning public outrage ... which it then marries to pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends."

This week we saw Mr. Frank's thesis acted out so crudely that it was as if someone had deliberately staged it. The right wants to dismantle Social Security, a successful program that is a pillar of stability for working Americans. AARP stands in the way. So without a moment's hesitation, the usual suspects declared that this organization of staid seniors is actually an anti-soldier, pro-gay-marriage leftist front.

It's tempting to dismiss this as an exceptional case in which right-wingers, unable to come up with a real cultural grievance to exploit, fabricated one out of thin air. But such fabrications are the rule, not the exception.

It doesn't matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that was created by and for America's greatest generation - and that it is especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and Arkansas, where it's the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that anyone who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family values.

Their first attack may have missed the mark, but it's the shape of smears to come.

[Edited excerpt from "Kansas on My Mind," by Paul Krugman, New York Times, February 25, 2005.]

But let's not let the lies used to sell Social Security "reform" distract us from the reform itself, which is an even bigger lie. And who can explain it better than the great Paul Krugman[1]?

The way privatizers link the long-run financing of Social Security with the case for private accounts parallels the three-card-monte technique the Bush administration used to link terrorism to the Iraq war. Speeches about Iraq invariably included references to 9/11, leading much of the public to believe that invading Iraq somehow meant taking the war to the terrorists. When pressed, war supporters would admit they lacked evidence of any significant links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, let alone any Iraqi role in 9/11 - yet in their next sentence it would be 9/11 and Saddam, together again.

Similarly, calls for privatization invariably begin with ominous warnings about Social Security's financial future. When pressed, administration officials admit that private accounts would do nothing to improve that financial future. Yet in the next sentence, they once again link privatization to the problem posed by an aging population.

The logic of Bush-style Social Security privatization is, in effect, as if your financial adviser told you that you wouldn't have enough money when you retire - but you shouldn't save more. Instead, you should borrow a lot of money, buy stocks and hope for capital gains.

Experts usually tell people to plan for their retirement by investing in a mix of stocks and bonds. They disapprove strongly of speculation on margin: borrowing to buy stocks. Yet Mr. Bush wants tens of millions of Americans to do exactly that.

What does any of this have to do with the ostensible purpose of the whole thing: saving Social Security? Mr. Bush says the system faces a crisis; what does he propose to do about it?

The answer, presumably, is that his plan will also involve major benefit cuts over and above those associated with private accounts. And it's true that you can improve Social Security's finances with privatization, as long as you also slash benefits - just as you can kill a flock of sheep with witchcraft, provided you also feed them arsenic.

[Edited excerpt from Three-Card Maestro and Gambling With Your Retirement, both by Paul Krugman, published in the New York Times Feb. 18, 2005 and Feb. 4, 2005 respectively.]

Lest we forget, a long-running legal fight in Florida reminds us that the Right is driven by moral values. Governor Jeb Bush's administration has filed a new petition in the case of Terri Schiavo, a woman who suffered severe brain damage in 1990 and whom doctors and a judge have ruled to be in a persistent vegetative state with no hope for recovery. ("'Terri's Law' Spouse Wants In-Laws Out," Associated Press, Nov 3, 2003.)

Schiavo's husband wants her to be allowed to die. Her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, have fought to keep her alive. Following a judicial decision in 2003, Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube was removed. Six days later, Florida passed "Terri's Law," authorizing Gov. Bush to order Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted, which he did. A series of courts since then have rebuked the Florida legislature for passing "Terri's Law," and the tube was to be withdrawn again a few days ago. But as the Times reports, the Florida government's new petition apparently argues that the woman must be kept alive so that abuse allegations can be investigated:

Neither the governor's office nor the protective services agency, the Department of Children and Family Services, would discuss the state's petition, filed just before a hearing before Judge Greer. But lawyers for both sides said the agency wanted to further postpone the tube's removal so it could investigate accusations that Ms. Schiavo had been abused.

David Gibbs, the Schindlers' lawyer, told reporters that someone had complained on a state hot line that Ms. Schiavo had been abused, and so the state was required to investigate. Mr. Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, said that the state had received many such complaints in the past, and that all were politically motivated and false.

"It reeks of political arm-twisting," Mr. Felos said. "Lo and behold, all of a sudden after 61/2 years D.C.F. radically changes its position."

Mr. Bush's press secretary, Jacob DiPietre, would not say whether the agency's petition had come at the direction of Mr. Bush.

["Florida Steps Back Into Fight Over Feeding Tube for Woman," New York Times, February 24, 2005]

What is this right-wing ideology that dominates the U.S. today? Its lies demonstrate contempt for democratic values; it defies U.S. law by practicing torture; it fights to keep people in vegetative states hooked up to machines that unnaturally prolong their "lives"; it loves sacrifice, pain, punishment, while despising sex (despite right-wing leaders' own regular sex scandals).

A recent Times op-ed discusses the Bush administration's partiality for misguided "abstinence only" sex education programs[2] -- programs which lead to more pregnancies, abortions, gonorrhea and deaths from AIDS. A followup letter penetrates the right-wing soul:

To the Editor:

If there were a magical pill that people (especially 17-year-olds) could take to allow them as much sex and with as many people as they wanted without any physical or emotional repercussions, the abstinence-only crowd would surely oppose it.

No one should be fooled into thinking that their primary focus is on the health and well-being of young people. It's not; their primary focus is on the sex itself.

So youngsters, beware: if you insist on having your pleasure, be prepared also for your punishment.

Jane Weidman
Newport, R.I., Feb. 16, 2005

[Published February 18.]

Right-wing morality is also on the march in fighting sensible global health policies:

The Bush administration has contributed to suffering and death through the so-called global gag rule, which prohibits Washington from giving money to any group that performs - or even talks about - abortions. Organizations that provide desperately needed family planning and women's health services have lost their financing. Now there are moves in Congress and inside the administration to apply a similar rule to needle exchange programs. That would be an even more deadly mistake.

Allowing drug users to trade used needles for clean ones gets dangerous needles off the street and minimizes needle sharing. A proven weapon against AIDS transmission, it has not been shown to increase drug use, and indeed may reduce drug addiction by providing a way to talk to drug users and lead them to treatment. It is endorsed by virtually every mainstream public health group.

Opponents of needle exchanges, mainly among the religious right, argue that the practice muddies the message that illegal drug use is unacceptable, and keeps drug abusers from suffering the consequences of their addiction. By this twisted logic, doctors should refuse to treat lung cancer in smokers. In any case, AIDS infections from sharing needles are not limited to drug users. They infect sexual partners, spreading the epidemic through societies.

While Washington does not buy syringes for needle-exchange programs, it does give money to groups that use other people's money to administer needle exchanges. But some conservatives are attempting to stop even that. The assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, Robert Charles, warned the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that the organization should not work on needle exchange issues and should remove positive references to them from its Web site, which it did.

Representatives Mark Souder of Indiana and Tom Davis of Virginia, both Republicans, have asked the United States Agency for International Development for details on all financing for programs in which any group strongly advocating needle exchanges also participates. These lawmakers claim that a U.N. drug agency report attacks needle exchange as encouraging drug use. In fact, the report makes no such accusation and endorses needle exchanges.

In the Senate, a member of the staff of Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican, has compiled a grossly inaccurate chart of programs financed by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria that is subtitled "Immoral, Illegal (with bilateral funds) or Inconsistent with U.S. Foreign Policy." Needle exchanges rank high.

Washington's antipathy toward needle exchanges is a triumph of ideology over science, logic and compassion.

[Edited excerpt from "Ideology and AIDS" (editorial), New York Times, February 26, 2005.]

The right-wingers love guns, while opposing gay rights; they support corporate welfare, but vilify the poor (whether on welfare or working); they're indifferent about harm to vulnerable people, but fanatical about defending the unborn and forbidding death with dignity to the terminally ill who wish to die (witness the Bush admin battle against Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law[3]).

It's time to stop thinking of right-wingism as a legitimate political ideology. It is a malignant perversion, a psychiatric disease. What conception of life do these people harbor? Their "moral values" seem to revolve around pain -- pain for oneself (sacrifice, endurance, "taking responsibility"), and for others: punishment, "cracking down", "getting tough", shooting people, torturing them. But let someone lapse into a vegetative state, and life is suddenly sacred.

Saturday's news brings us a report that a judge has ruled that the husband of Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman, may remove her feeding tube next month.[4] What can Gov. Jeb Bush and right-wing state legislators have been thinking in fighting to further prolong the life of a woman who's been in a vegetative state for 15 years? This is not ideology. It's insanity. These people are possessed by grotesquely twisted ideas about the meaning and purposes of life.

Terri Schiavo's husband is living with another woman and has had two children with her. His unwillingness to macabrely devote his life to the care and maintenance of what is essentially a corpse might bring howls and death threats from the Homo Rightwingus species. Homo sapiens, by contrast, is imbued with a native understanding that life on earth properly involves more than bleak endurance, and that pleasure and joy need not bring damnation. If the Rightwingus soul were not confined to dank caverns, if it could feel the touch of sunlight, then perhaps its unremitting bitterness and fury would abate and it would discover compassion.

(Continued)

Notes