Following GOP Rep. Foxx's lead, media
conservatives compare health care reform to terrorism

From Media Matters:

On November 2, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said on the House floor regarding health care legislation before the House: "I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country." Following Foxx's statement, Fox News' Glenn Beck compared health care reform to 9-11, and talk radio host Neal Boortz and the Fox Nation promoted Foxx's attack.

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-lead-media.html

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What competition

Body

Rationales for the way our economy operates are in constant conflict. Lower taxes are a conservative rallying cry, but tax cuts tended to put money in the pockets of the rich without benefiting most Americans. The transfer of wealth to the affluent did not create jobs but, resulted, rather, in massive layoffs, pay cuts and benefit reductions or ?increased productivity? for those seeking euphemisms to describe the process.

Some analysts agree that our tax system needs re-working in order to create a revenue stream for needed social programs, close loopholes and produce something resembling a level playing field. Of course free-marketeers decry any effort to redistribute wealth as tantamount to creating a socialist form of government. But when executives can walk off with multi-million-dollar golden parachutes and retirement packages while union workers are called avaricious consumers of health care and wages, a moment?s reflection proves that our present system has deteriorated into a twisted version of free enterprise in which money managers are free to manipulate markets and people at will.

When Henry Ford priced his cars so that his workers could afford to buy them he wasn?t doing it to be charitable. He was making a business calculation. That connection between profit making and a public ready and able to participate in the rewards of entrepreneurial innovation has been lost in the way business today interacts with ordinary people.

And arguments in Congress and the media about health care reform expose the fact that competition has become an empty word that clouds true debate and fosters the pretense that a competitive insurance market exists. It is the last thing insurance companies really want. Only when the voices of the mistreated, under-treated and not-treated-at-all are heard is the true picture of our health-care delivery system made clear.

Only then do we learn that one company may dominate an entire region and that the industry is exempt from anti-trust legislation. Only then do we worry that insurance entities may be engaging in some form of ?price fixing.? And only then do we get an accurate picture of what happens to ordinary folks who thought their government would protect them, not just from outside forces in times of war but against threats from tyrants within as well. Who ever imagined we would be besieged by fortune hunters playing medical roulette with our finances and our lives?

It seems odd there are so many Republican doctors in Congress that they have their own caucus. Why they aren?t actively at work in their chosen profession instead of trying to promote what are in many cases ideological positions about abortion for example is an irritating subtext to the subject of health-care. But their steady rant about tort reform despite its relatively small impact on costs doesn?t seem worth the elongated exchanges it provokes. An accommodation in that regard would take that argument out of circulation and allow more important health-care-reform evaluations to proceed.

A capitalist construct in this country shouldn?t just be a tussle among corporate giants. It should be a validation of a common heritage in which we the people are provided with an opportunity to participate in enterprises that are at the core of our economic survival. But we are caught up in a dishonest version of capitalism with people unable to benefit from the fruits of their labor and to feel secure in their homes.  The deck is stacked and no amount of pontificating about free markets can dispel visions of the robber barons in earlier times or cover up the inequities that contort our financial interests. The health-care debate is a crystallization of how far we have departed from real competition.

The aura surrounding our ?national pastime? provides further proof that we are enveloped in a stifling corporate embrace. Naming rights for Citi Field, the new Mets stadium in NYC, were purchased by Citigroup referred to as ?a financial service company? for $20 million a year for 20 years. (ballparksofbaseball.com) In Texas the Enron Corporation paid $100 million for naming rights to its stadium. Of course the name has since been changed - - the disgrace and all. The new Yankee Stadium is a monument of every amenity imaginable for both players and fans. The trouble is that tickets are so expensive the regular fan base has been all but priced out of the market.

And at the University of Kentucky the Board of Trustees has agreed to include ?coal? in the name of its new basketball-team dorm, as stipulated by its major donor who heads the Alliance Coal Company - - a lesson that shouldn?t be lost on the undergraduates attending the university as a tribute to the kind of society we have become.

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http://blog.buzzflash.com/davidow/181

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Hilton: I'm Too Sick To Forfeit Self-Portrait For
Auction

The Billings Gazette in Montana has the latest from now-admitted conman Michael Hilton: asked to hand over four works of art to help pay a $700,000 judgment in a California real estate fraud case, Hilton claimed he had the flu and couldn't make it.

Hilton says those works of art, including a self portrait, a work by Hilton titled "Mother Theresa," and two stereographs, are his only assets. It's safe to say that even if Hilton ever does forfeit the art, it's not going to make a dent in the $1.1 million he owes in California for fraud judgements.

Read the full story.

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k_to_forfeit_self-portrait_f.php

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Denver Votes on Vehicle Impound Law

If you live in Denver, don't forget to vote today and oppose the vehicle impound initiative mandating police seize your vehicle if you are stopped and don't have a valid driver's license.

Aimed at undocmented residents (referred to as illegal aliens in the initiative), it has a far greater reach. Here's the text on Initiative 300.

What if you left your wallet at home? Unless you have have "convincing corroborating identification," proof of insurance and a valid driver's license of record, your car will be impounded. If you have these things with you, you will get a summons and have ten days to bring your license to court. If you miss the ten days, your vehicle will be ordered impounded.

[More...]

What if your license is expired? It gets impounded and you have 20 days to get it renewed. If your vehicle is impounded, you will have 30 days to post a $2,500. bond (and pay a $200.00 impound fee) to get it released. The city keeps the bond for a year, and if an unlicensed driver is found to operate your car, you lose the car and the bond.

Whose idea was this? Some guy named Daniel Hayes, who opposes undocumented residents and doesn't even live in Denver.

The Denver City Council has passed a resolution urging voters to reject it. For one thing, it will cost $1.6 million a year to enforce. Even the Mayor, police chiefs and county sheriffs oppose it. If you live in Denver, you need to vote. Vote No on Initiative 300.

Ethics Watch has followed Hayes' failed attempts to get the initiative on the ballot in Aurora and Lakewood. He spends thousands of dollars getting people to gather signatures.

It only took 3,472 signatures to make the Denver ballot. (Ruling here.)

Given the probable low turnout for this election, it's important to get the word out. If you have a mail-in ballot but forgot to send it in, you can still drop it off today at the County Clerk's office or vote in person at your designated voting place.

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Eric Boehlert: The myth of Fox News' ratings
spike

Fact: The breathless claim that Fox News' ratings recently spiked thanks to the White House's public critique is bogus hype -- hype that Fox News and the Beltway press have relentlessly pushed.

It's just not true.

No matter how many times reporters and pundits made the claim, a detailed analysis of Nielsen ratings numbers clearly indicates that in the two weeks after the White House in mid-October sparked a media controversy by claiming Rupert Murdoch's channel was not a legitimate news organization, Fox News' ratings did not soar or go "through the roof." In fact, not only did Fox News' overall ratings not soar, they experienced no significant increase at all. Instead, in the two weeks following the initial verbal jousts with the White House, Fox News' total day ratings virtually flatlined.

Think about it. The unfolding controversy, which gobbled up untold hours and pages of news coverage as the Beltway press treated the dispute like a major news event (even though news consumers couldn't care less), and the hubbub barely moved the ratings needle one inch in Fox News' favor.

Another example of the Beltway press not letting the facts get in the way of a good story? It sure looks that way. In this case, we saw nearly universal agreement among media elites that the White House decision to publicly call out Fox News was monumentally dumb, thin-skinned, short-sighted, and uncivil. (Paging the etiquette police!)

Everyone said so. Therefore pundits were certain that Fox News' ratings were way up and that Obama and his aides had made a huge tactical blunder. The ratings angle simply provided statistical ammunition for what the Beltway press corps already knew to be the truth: Fact-checking Fox News, in the immortal words of The Washington Post's CW-loving Sally Quinn, was "absolutely crazy."

Except it turns out none of that was true. There was no viewer stampede toward Fox News.

How did the story line about Fox News' (phantom) ratings surge morph into cemented fact? First, pundits simply announced the ratings bonanza was on the way. They knew it had to be the case, so they simply said so, over and over and over. (See below.) Then some misleading ratings reports began to surface that seemed to confirm the spike. For instance, on October 26, the Los Angeles Times, going with ratings data provided by Fox News, reported: "In the two weeks since aides to President Obama took after the [cable channel's] coverage, the audience has been 8% larger than the previous two weeks."

Not only did that report make a specific ratings claim, but it also set the parameters for measuring the supposed Fox News success -- its ratings for the two weeks prior to the eruption of the White House controversy, (i.e. September 28-October 11) compared to the two weeks that followed (i.e. October 12-25). Again and again we saw that model used to support the ratings "spike" claims.

On October 27, BusinessInsider.com used the same framework and posted this blaring headline: "Fox News Ratings Soar After Snub From Obama." Like the Los Angeles Times, Business Insider adopted the two-weeks-before-vs.-the-two-weeks-after model to conclude that in the two weeks prior, the cabler averaged 1.2 million viewers vs. 1.3 million in the two weeks after the political controversy erupted.

The Business Insider report was quickly trumpeted by right-wing blogger Allahpundit, who belittled the administration: "Good work, Barry."

From there, it's no exaggeration to suggest that virtually every high-traffic conservative blog on the Internet linked to the report and mocked the White House for helping spike Fox News' numbers. And like the bogus right-wing claim from last month that 2 million anti-Obama protesters gathered in Washington, D.C., on September 12 (the number was only off by 1.9 million), the dubious claim that Fox News' ratings had soared became the beloved gospel.

Late that same day on October 26, industry ratings site TVbytheNumbers.com also posted an item, which seemed to confirm the ratings spike: "Fox News Ratings Up During White House 'War.' " Like Business Insider, TVbytheNumbers, citing Nielsen data*, reported: "Fox News' total day adults 25-54 demo ratings and average viewership are up 14% and 9% respectively during the two weeks of 'war' vs. the previous two weeks of 'peace.' " And like Business Insider, TVbytheNumbers reported that prior to the controversy, Fox News averaged 1.2 million viewers; after the controversy, 1.3 million were tuning in.

The next day, the Chicago Tribune's political blog, The Swamp, parroted the same stat: "FOX viewership is up 9 percent and 14 percent among adults since the feud with the White House started."

Done deal, right? Wrong, because those numbers didn't add up. Or more specifically, those numbers did not reflect Fox News' ratings two weeks prior to the controversy and two weeks after. Instead, the numbers represented a cherry-picked attempt to create the illusion of a ratings spike for Fox News.

And here's how. As I mentioned, the two weeks prior to the White House dispute cover the dates from September 28-October 11. The two weeks after that cover the dates from October 12-October 25. But the tabulation used to come up with the 9 percent ratings gain (i.e. 1.2 million vs. 1.3 million) only measured Fox News' post-controversy ratings from October 12-October 23, which meant it was a 14-day comparison vs. a 12-day comparison. And which two days were left off the tabulation? Saturday, October 24 and Sunday, October 25. Traditionally, Saturday and Sunday, of course, are the two lowest-rated days of the cable news week.

What happened when you included October 24 and October 25 in the tabulation to make a true two-week-vs.-two-week comparison? Suddenly, that 9 percent gain in overall viewers evaporated into a barely-there 2 percent blip, while that 14 percent increase among viewers 25-54 shrunk to a much more modest 7 percent bump.

Behold the massive Fox News ratings "spike":

And by the way, in the world of cable news, a tiny 2 percent bump in viewership over a relatively short span of two weeks is utterly irrelevant and signifies nothing more than the normal up-and-down viewing patterns that are part of the business. For instance, on October 15, Fox News averaged 1.5 million viewers for the day. The next day, the total audience slipped to 1.3 million, a drop of more than 10 percent. Did that mean Fox News' ratings "plunged"? Hardly, which is why the channel's 2 percent gain in the two weeks following its battle with the White House didn't signify much of anything.

The same was true of the relatively modest 7 percent gain among the more targeted 25-54 demo. Because that audience group is much smaller (roughly 330,000 viewers each day as compared to the larger pool of 1.2 million), a 7 percent increase or decrease is unexceptional. Again, between October 1 and October 2, Fox News' total day 25-54 demo decreased from 415,000 to 320,000 viewers -- a drop of almost 25 percent. The smaller 25-54 demo often fluctuates like that.

And besides, if you listened to media elite pundits, Fox News ratings weren't inching up incrementally thanks to the White House. Pundits didn't cautiously claim that because of the White House critique, Fox News' ratings among the niche 25-54 demo were going to increase modestly.

Nope. The media chorus was unequivocal: Fox News' ratings were soaring [emphasis added]:

• "I sent Barack Obama, President Obama a fruit basket for all that comments because our ratings are up 20% since he made it." [Fox News' Bill O'Reilly]

• "[R]atings at Fox are through the roof." [Politico's Mike Allen]

• "Every time the president or one of his spokespeople mentions [Glenn] Beck or [Rush] Limbaugh, the latter two enjoy increased ratings and bucks." [Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker]

• "Beck and O'Reilly were nearly orgiastic. Every presidential harrumph sends their ratings through the roof." [TVNewser's Michael Wolff]

• "It's working. Their rating, their ratings are going through the roof." [PBS host Tavis Smiley, on NBC's Meet the Press; 10/25/09.]

• "[A]ttacking Fox just drives the 'fair and balanced' news network's ratings through the roof." [The Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott]

• "It serves to help Fox, not punish it, by driving up ratings." [Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus]

• "By raising the network's profile, Obama has all but guaranteed higher ratings for his nemesis." [Arizona Republic editorial]

• "And the [Fox News] ratings will increase, and the White House will look petty in the short term." [CBN's David Brody]

• "The more Obama goes after Fox, the better the ratings." [Denver Post columnist Mike Littwin]

• "Fox will use this White House move to boost their ratings." [New York magazine's Daily Intel blog]

• "It's going to spike Fox's ratings." [Pundit David Gergen]

• "And the White House's public attack will no doubt give Fox 'stature' and boost its ratings." [Providence Journal's Edward Achorn]

This is what happens when claustrophobic uniformity takes over among the Beltway chattering class. This is what happened when the media elites agreed that it was nuts for the White House to fact-check Fox News, and they were sure that the administration's carping sent the cable channel's ratings "through the roof." With so little original thought involved in the robotic repetition of the anointed Beltway truth, nobody bothered to checks the facts.

The chattering class wanted to claim Fox News' ratings were going up, up, up. They wanted to suggest that the White House critique had massively backfired. But now we know that's fiction. So when are the pundits going to start posting their retractions?

We'll wait.

*For the record, the Nielsen ratings company never issued any findings regarding Fox News ratings in the wake of the White House dispute, according to company spokeswoman Alana Johnson, who responded to my email inquiry. Lots of third parties subscribe to the Nielsen data and can put together their own interpretations of the ratings and attribute that analysis to Nielsen numbers, which is what happened in this case. But in terms of Fox News, Nielsen itself never made any kind of official finding about the cable channel's recent ratings in regards to the public controversy.

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Best Guilty Political Pleasure

It’s Politico’s CLICK. Yesterday my jaw was on the floor due to the Washington Post fight club report, by Michael Calderone. Oh, and by the way, at this point in the day, 65% who took the CLICK poll will be watching election results on Fox[...]

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http://www.taylormarsh.com/2009/11/03/best-guilty-political-pleasure/

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70 Percent of Americans: Women Should Take
Spouse's Name

According to NY Daily News, " Some 70 percent of the respondents in a new study feel they should[...]

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http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2009/11/70_percent_of_americans_think.html

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70 percent of Americans think women should take
spouse's name after Marriage

According to NY Daily News, " Some 70 percent of the respondents in a new study feel they should[...]

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http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2009/11/70_percent_of_americans_think.html

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TPMDC Morning Roundup

Election Day! We'll be here all day and into the night bringing you all the latest. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.[...]

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oundup_194.php

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Election Day: The Dead, Dead Tree Ballot Proposal

And now for something super local on this Election Day.As you may have heard, the Ann Arbor News closed down during the summer. That has left a bit of a problem under the city charter, which requires the publication of public ordinances in a[...]

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http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/11/03/election-day-the-dead-dead-tree-ball
ot-proposal/

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