National Notice

Why Someone Else Being Wealthier Actually Makes Me Poorer: Debunking a Suspect Claim

2011-12-23T13:23:00.000-08:00

I found that the assertion stayed naggingly with me after I heard it expressed by one of the conservative talking heads appearing one night on Bill Maher’s Real Time HBO program: “Just because someone else is wealthier than I am doesn’t mean that it makes me poorer.”

I didn’t believe the statement when I heard it expressed but the way it seems to relinquish any envy gives it an attractive quality, making it sound admirably virtuous, as if it bespeaks a magnanimity of spirit even though it’s a statement wielded by the sort of spokespersons who also espouse such theories as “trickle down” economics. Somewhat inconsistently, “trickle down” economics proposes a world where another man’s accumulation of wealth can indeed be counted upon to affect your own but, optimistically, only for the better: Those who have less are expected to be satisfied by all the extra crumbs that will spill off the table with overflowing wealth. (The math behind this involves a prediction that the overall pie will always be bigger by more than the amount the wealthy themselves take.) These are the same sort of folk who now speak about the 1% Club as munificent “job creators.” Those espousing such theories can be counted upon to argue against measures such as a progressive income tax structure in order to to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor by having the wealthy pay higher income taxes.

“Just because someone else is richer doesn’t make me poorer”: Does this kind of statement really need debunking? Isn’t it just obviously wrong when you think about it? Maybe only to some and what might not be so obvious is just how many ways the statement is wrong. Let me count some ways:

1. Compensation to top executives in the United States is now paid at absurd multiples of other employees’ salaries. Ben and Jerry’s may no longer limit compensation of its highest paid employees to seven times that of entry level employees but the fact that it once did puts in perspective the kind of huge differentials now prevalent. Exact reliable figures about the ratio of top executive pay to bottom level employee pay or average employee pay level for given years is not easy to come by and the figures depend upon which group of companies one is selecting to derive one’s statistics, but whether one is looking at a ratio of 531 average employees’ salaries to1 highly compensated CEO’s, 525 or 263 to 1, 185 to 1, or 325-to-1 (the last ratio involving executives getting paid an average of $10.8 million each), each of those multiples represent corporate resources that could be redirected into hiring more employees or paying other lower-paid employees more. And isn’t it reasonable to expect that in the face of a more progressive income tax system we would likely see that kind of redistribution as the attraction of high salaries waned just as was the case when taxes were once more progressive?

2. Further, as focus shifts away from jobs being chased and held just for the sake of very high salaries mightn’t the quality of corporate management improve as a result? This is something we’d perhaps be more apt to believe if, along with Warren Buffett, we believe that executive compensation for U.S. executives is too often “ridiculously out of line with performance” and that a cooperation’s board’s ability to rein in such excessive compensation is a critical test of proper corporate governance. These then are two ways in which wealth lavished excessively on select individuals means the impoverishment others.

3. After another man is paid so many multiples more than his fellows the amount he is likely to invest should predictably be much greater than the rest of the populace and that investment will, in turn, spin off even more income. A fair amount of his wealth will probably be invested where so many of us inevitably think to invest: in stocks. Much of the nation’s wealth is owned through corporations. Ownership and control over a corporation is represented by its stock. The wealth of all of the nation’s investors intermingles in its ownership of the stock of those corporations but the intermingling is not equal in terms of ownership of the decision-making process because when it comes to corporate governance majority rules, the preferences of the minority must bend to the decisions of the majority. That majority is not added up in terms of stockholders as individuals; majority is counted up in terms of the majority of individual shares of stock. Which is to say the calculation involved is sheerly a measure of total wealth. As so much of the nation’s wealth is owned through corporations much of the nation’s policy is consequently set by the demands of those corporations but in the setting of such policy the voice of any minority ownership is lost as the corporate governance structure acts as a lens to focus the corporation’s influence behind the interests of aggregating wealth, much like a magnifying glass can bend the diffuse rays of the sun to focus on one concentrated incinerating point. Maybe I want my local environment kept clean and pure but maybe the corporations don’t, and maybe the wealthy will fly away to vacation in remote spots beyond my means where devastations to the environment will matter less to them.

4. When we think of influencing policy in the United States we think about appealing to our politicians and electing those we think will represent our interests, but every politician thinks of him or herself as having two constituencies: a.) Those individuals capable of voting for them, and b.) Their money constituency. The first is a finite constituency tied to a locality. In the United States every individual must decide where he will vote and there he will get to vote only once in each election. The monied constituency is free to cross lines. Those wealthy enough can support candidates anywhere no matter whether they live or vote where a candidate is running. They can even support candidates running against each other in the same election, and do. The amount of support supplied this way is limited only by one’s wealth and the will to deploy it. In the United States political spending in the form of contributions to political candidates is almost entirely the provenance of the very wealthy. Most of the money for the nation's political campaigns comes from .5% of the population,which means that it is really the .5% vs. the 99.5% that Occupy Wall Street ought to be talking about and 1 percent of the 1 percent account for almost a quarter of all individual campaign contributions to federal political campaigns in 2010. That means we have a government where it is going to be very difficult for ordinary citizens to get the attention of their political representatives because those representatives will spend most of their time preoccupied thinking about the donating elite. Unequal access to those entrusted with governing the nation leads, quite justifiably, to distrust of the system by those without access.

5. One reason that distrust of the system may now be very sensibly coming to the fore is that, as argued by Glenn Greenwald, the author of “With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful,” we have seen a two-tier justice system emerge, one for the nation’s uppermost class, another for the less politically powerful. Normatively, the idea that the same rules apply to all ought to supply a check and balance against draconian abuses in the legal system and against violations of the law. With a two-tier system liberties are no longer protected by this check and balance. So yes, when others become a lot wealthier than the rest of us we poorer souls all become still poorer because even our life and liberty are put in jeopardy.

6. Others being wealthier also makes us poorer when we are competing in the market for the same limited resources. This is really classic supply and demand economics. More money chasing a limited supply drives prices up. Since real estate is unique and can’t be duplicated it is very easy to see how the rules apply. In 2004 when apartment prices in New York were rapidly rising the New York Times ran an article about “gazumping” which, technically, is the acceptance of higher offer from a different buyer after a handshake deal on a lower apartment price was reached. With the market awash in new cash, offers significantly trumping already accepted offers for which contracts weren't yet executed were becoming commonplace. It created a lot of pressure to close deals rapidly. A “gazumping” buyer can be particularly effective in persuading a seller to accept an offer (in the bidding practice that is considered less than entirely ethical) if they offer cash and a substantial deferential in price. Sellers may appreciate the higher prices the wealthy pay but say, for instance, you have a property that has been in a family for many years: Members of the extended family who want to buy it and keep it in the extended family (essentially maintain the status quo) may be “gazumped” out of their opportunity to do so by those who have become disproportionally wealthy. Another example involving real estate would be a neighborhood townhouse providing homes to perhaps nine renting families which is then purchased by a bet-winning hedge fund entrepreneur who, with his newly minted wealth intends to occupy the entire building after he evicts all the long-term tenants. Those tenants will have to move elsewhere. Shifting wealth will subtract from their other choices and the prices they will pay will accordingly be higher. These examples involve real estate but the same rules apply whenever there is competition for commodities that are limited.

7. Others having wealth substantially exceeding my own makes life more expensive in other ways. Sometimes the cost of living gets established as a community package. Say I live in co-op or condominium building where the expense of maintenance and operation are handled communally. If everyone in the building has resources similar to mine we are all apt to have similar notions about the value of certain expenditures and the need to make careful resource-conserving choices. But if others in the building become far wealthier than I am then they may want to hire extra doormen and porters, multiplying expenses. They may also care less about close oversight of the the wisdom with which each community dollar is spent. They may be more inclined to delegate such oversight to hired professionals at extra expense. In their view the lobby might need to be grander. The wintertime heat in the building might be ratcheted up profligately allowing windows to be flung open. The building may become unaffordable to the less affluent but because the expenditures are communally undertaken and enforced those expenses must be paid by all who stay. Those who need to move as a result will bear an extra expense but those who don’t, won’t.

8. The community-determined expenses discussed above which are enforced are presented conceptually with the example of a residential co-op or condo, but the very same sort of situation can occur when government in a locality decides to provide a higher level of more expensive services, better roads, more frequent trash pick-ups, a more ostentatious Town Hall, etc. Or it can work similarly but in reverse: As an area fills with wealthier residents there may be fewer among them who feel the need for the services of a good public library open at convenient hours throughout the week. As a result these services may be cut back.

9. Besides communally undertaken and enforced expenses there are expenses associated with living alongside wealthier people that are not enforced but nevertheless hard to avoid. Those with fewer resources appreciate some of the changes that come with a gentrifying neighborhood (renovations, cleanliness, policing may improve and some new stores may be appreciated) but one of the complaints such residents often have is that many of the stores selling merchandise at price points geared to their own incomes disappear and are replaced by stores selling merchandise at price points they can’t afford. A Starbucks may have a certain novel cachet but the Starbucks coffee can be a lot more expensive than the alternatives.

10. Looking for a new home one might also find one’s choices of apartments circumscribed by the wealth and more affluent life style of others when one encounters apartments that are available only if one pays unaffordable “amenity fees.” The amenity fees may boost the cost of renting more for those looking to save money by doubling up when they are required to be paid on a per person basis. Developers have been packing new New York City buildings with amenities like swimming pools, party and entertainment rooms, screening rooms, roof decks, etc. - There is no free lunch (although amenities sometimes include ostensibly-free regularly-served breakfasts) so these would be paid for in increased prices somehow but now developers make a practice of charging overtly for these amenities by required fees imposed in addition to the rent.

11. The very best schools, particularly colleges, are also likely to exceed the reach of the less wealthy for a variety of cumulative reasons: a.) tuition b.) higher SAT scores by virtue of hired tutors and prep c.) preference for legacy admissions based on prior family member attendance d.) Attendance at better feeder schools, and e.) donations from the family to the school. Whether or not one succeeds in sending one’s children to the nation’s select set of very top schools would not be such an significant issue (many schools are very good and more than sufficient for providing excellent educations) were it not for the fact that attendance and socializing at premier schools significantly eases the entry of the next generation into a privileged club whereby they can expect better opportunities in terms of earning wealth. Ultimately it becomes a self-perpetuating system.

The above list can no doubt easily be expanded. I invite readers to suggest additions by commenting on this post. I know the list is not all-inclusive.

I originally thought to write this article months ago back when I first mused about what had been said on Bill Maher’s show. Since that time there was an influential article in the May 2011 edition of Vanity Fair by Joseph E. Stiglitz that makes similar and related points even if its theme is not exactly the same. On point Stiglitz makes that could be added to the above list is that the nation’s decisions with respect to war are affected when there is a class wealthy enough not to send any of its children to war. Surely we are poorer when another disinvolved individual makes a decision to send our children to war. I strongly suggest that if you have appreciated this National Notice article and haven’t yet read Mr. Stiglitz’s, you read it: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.

A final point to mention: After acknowledging that another man’s wealth can, indeed, make me poorer in all the ways mentioned, there is another economic truism to remember. . . The value of a dollar is greater to a poor person than it is to a rich person. Ergo, when a wealthy man’s wealth makes a less wealthy man poorer, the significance in the shift is greater to the poorer individual. To the extent that the shift reflects an injustice, that injustice is consequently greater.

Republican Party Plutocracy At Work: The Big Money Wants Romney Over Gingrich or Ron Paul- Steering the Selection of Candidates

2011-12-21T15:20:00.001-08:00

I am not inclining to vote for any Republican candidate in the next presidential election. It is not that I couldn’t ever bring myself to vote for a candidate that represented proper Republican principles, at least as I once understood those principles to be, but what we are getting out of the national Republic party is just so absurdly contorted. . . Why even go into it?

But that doesn’t stop me from wondering at the way that the national candidates are selected, and most specifically the fixated way that big money will always keep steering toward what it wants: In this election the big money wants candidate Romney.

The Republican primary race has been a fascinating roller coaster ride as potential candidates emerge, surge and are then purged when they can’t stand the light of day. Then as front runners in the race (focusing on the important first state of Iowa) we recently got the candidate who was cavalierly dismissed by the pundits as never having had a serious chance (Ron Paul) and the first candidate in the race who first demonstrated how the emerge, surge and purge cycle worked (Newt Gingrich). Gingrich, as a result of what we are about to discuss has dropped in the Iowa polls and also slide in the national polls.

From the sidelines I can certainly see what any electorate might like better about Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich.

Ron Paul has been resolutely courageous in his willingness to say what he apparently believes about what’s wrong with wars, a foreign policy wastefully bending toward imperialism, and his libertarian precepts about limiting governments interventions. I would even endorse much of what he has to say if it were properly tempered.

While ultimately very scary, Newt Gingrich’s relentless energy has an attraction and the roguish self-interest of his pursuits has a rascally charm. It’s hard not to grudgingly admire someone who can cross all sorts of lines when it comes to principle (for instance, what ought to be the legitimate goals of charities) and thereby quickly amass a personal fortune of $50 million Beltway dollars by selling, to corporations subscribing for access, his ability to schmooze.

Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich as comprehensible individuals each supply a more emotionally satisfying narrative than Mitt Romney’s dutiful shape-shifting which registers as mechanically robotic and programed, which it is. Conventional wisdom says that Romney is a better choice for a candidate likely to defeat Obama. While making him less recognizable as a human his malleability also makes him less threatening in other ways: He is less threatening to electorates because, on the outside, he conforms himself to the latest polls and fashionable view affecting whatever race he is in (a familiar trait in politicians in general, and one not necessarily completely unhealthy for the nation’s governance) and, on the inside, Romney is no doubt ready to mindfully hew to instructions from the powers-that-be (another not uncommon trait amongst politicians who are all likely to be cognizant of their monied constituency).

What’s fascinating in this election cycle is the way in which Romney’s steady attraction for the 1% money providers diverges from the affection the general populace of the Republican party have for him. As far back as August I’ve listened to people telling me that Romney’s appointment as the Republican nominee was a certitude. Mostly these people have been those who track and predict the future based on where the big money is going and I guess there was never any significant disagreement amongst the big money contributors as to which candidate they supported this cycle. But if Romney wins this time there will be some necessary explaining to do within the Republican party as to whether everyone in the party has an equal voice and vote or whether it is simply a top-down plutocracy. Big money’s sharp elbows are more apparent than usual this season.

As we get down to the short strokes of the primary season with Romney running third in various recent polls and Gingrich having experienced a surge that put him well ahead, big money has pulled out all the stops to support Romney and we are beginning to see the effects.

According to a December 19th Associated Press story more than $1 million has been spent in negative advertising attacking Gingrich in Iowa: Attacks Hurt Gingrich In Iowa, No Letup Pre-Caucus.

Much of the money is being spent by a Super PAC called “Restore Our Future” supporting Romney. As result of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case such spending is unstoppable and it is not currently possible to know who are all the individuals and corporations funding the Super PAC. In theory, although that Super PAC is run by political operatives who used to work for Romney, Romney can’t communicate or coordinate with the PAC or the people running it to, for instance, ask that they dial down the negativity of the attacks. Gingrich says that this theoretical inability is “baloney.” It will be interesting to see what Gingrich says about such conceptual niceties if he ultimately becomes the Republican nominee. (See: Romney, Gingrich Spar Over Negative Super PAC Ads, by Kathy Lohr, December 21, 2011.)

That the monied establishment will protect itself and go after what it wants is self-evident. It moves in less than mysterious ways. This week’s New York Times has in it at least two more stories that are essentially about how clearly the Republican monied establishment wants Mitt Romney as its nominee: One is again about how well-funded attacks are being mounted against Newt Gingrich and the other is about how past writings appearing in Ron Paul’s newsletters include bigoted statements.

This problem of big money steering the selection of candidates is not just a Republican party issue or a problem that presents itself only on the national level. I just finished writing about how similar problems are present in the race to select nominees for mayor in New York, which in NYC is a problem that clearly affects the Democrats’ primary process ( In New York City the big money problem is headlined by the real estate industry): Tuesday, December 20, 2011, John Liu And the Mayoral Race: We Are Confronted by A Misfortune. Can Misfortune Be Turned Aside?

A partial window into what Gingrich is up against in terms of how big money is working for Romney is provided in a December 21, 2011 CNN story:

According to an analysis of disclosure forms from Restore Our Future conducted by the nonpartisan government watchdog Center for Responsive Politics, the pro-Romney super PAC has spent $430,380 on ads in Iowa. That's more than the $325,770 spent by the Romney campaign. Combined, they are outspending Gingrich in Iowa by more than seven to one.

Bain employees have given $1.25 million to Restore Our Future. Contrast that to the $84,500 contributed by Bain employees directly to the Romney campaign.

(See: Pro-Romney super PAC slams Gingrich, by Jim Acosta, CNN Political Correspondent.)

Outspending Gingrich “by more than seven to one”? And look at the amount of money coming just from Romney's former investment firm, Bain Capital.

Why Are Hearings on High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (“Fracking”) Held In New York A NATIONAL Issue?

2011-12-07T10:33:00.000-08:00

(Above, evening hearing attendees in the 900 seat auditorium)

Last week I presented Noticing New York and National Notice testimony when the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation held a day’s worth of hearings in Manhattan concerning Governor Cuomo's proposal to start allowing High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing, aka “Fracking,” in the state for the first time by lifting the current moratorium under which it is now effectively banned. An account of the hearings, the testimony I provided and amplification for my testimony is available here: Thursday, December 1, 2011, Wednesday’s Department of Environmental Conservation Hearings on High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (“Fracking”): Noticing New York’s Testimony Plus. .

A shorter article providing, for pith’s sake, just the testimony I delivered that day is available here: Thursday, December 7, 2011, Testimony at Department of Environmental Conservation’s 11/30 Hearings on High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (“Fracking”): The LONG and the SHORT of It.

(People lined up after me Wednesday morning to get into DEC's first hearing, the afternoon hearing on introducing the new technology of fracking to New York state.)

Why are such hearings held locally in New York a national issue on which National Notice readers would want to focus? Because:

• The brand new technology of fracking, which involves injecting huge quantities of poisonous “hyperslick water” into the earth at enormous pressure in combination with underground explosions, is associated with an enormous amount and a great variety of pollution that travels across multiple state lines, particularly flowing down through river basins and blowing through the air, thereby involving many states, and is likely to pollute, in toto, much of the country’s natural resources.

• By seeking to target a win in the very heart of the opposition, the fracking industry is seeking to hijack New York State’s history as a leader in protecting its environment. As I point out in the longer article linked to above, if the industry can sell its despoliation and overturn environmental protections in New York it can, by “spreadin’ the news,” parlay that into a sales pitch for fracking anywhere else in the country. A sort of “New York, New York” refrain mentality: “If I can frack it there, I'll frack it anywhere, It's up to you, New York, New York.” Conversely, as also discussed in that linked-to article, the industry is attempting to use experiences since 2007 in North Dakota (population 640,000) and New York's neighboring Pennsylvania in order to stage manage a super-hyped sale of fracking in New York.- - In fact, as you can read, what the industry is trying to promote in New York is the idea of “unregulated or lightly regulated fracking” as if any kind of fracking at all isn’t enough to ensure disaster.

• The attempt to get fracking introduced in New York is being pressed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, a man recognized to have presidential ambitions likely viewing this as fulfilling a cherished goal his father, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, fell short of. Andrew Cuomo’s tactics to force the introduction of fracking in New York bespeak some sort of behind-the-scenes political deal which falls in line with an observation that is more and more being offered about Mr. Cuomo: That whatever people may commend him for in terms of his effectiveness, he operates without transparency, and in this case without regard to the true needs of the voters who are properly his elective constituency.

• And then, of course there is the whole giant planet-affecting issue to which all the rest of this is integral: How many years do we have left to forestall pushing beyond a disastrous climate change tipping point?

So you may want to read and find out exactly how matters with respect to those “local” New York hearings are playing out.

(Hazmat suited protester. The first thing many saw approaching the hearing location)

Times Editorial Page Quandary: After He’s Dubbed Free Speech Champion Bloomberg’s Police Suppress Press During Occupy Wall Street Eviction

2011-11-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

This weekend the Times ran an editorial that must have posed a fascinating challenge to write. It criticized the suppression of the press when the police executed Mayor Bloomberg’s orders to evict the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zucotti Park. (See: Editorial, Police and the Press, November 25, 2011.)

Off On the Wrong Track: Reporting That Mayor Bloomberg is Backer of Free Speech
How exactly does the New York Times editorial page get out of a bind like this- The Times in writing about Occupy Wall Street had just dubbed Mayor Bloomberg a champion of the First Amendment and backer of free speech, including running an article that conveyed this assessment in its front page headline. Almost immediately thereafter, and this is what the editorial was dealing with, the editorial page was confronted with a letter written by one of its own attorneys, a vice president and assistant general counsel, that said that the police actions in executing Bloomberg’s orders to evict the Occupy Wall Street protesters were “more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory.” That letter gained a high profile in that it was signed not just by the Times itself but also by almost every news organization of importance in the city that was conceivably available to sign it.

This article follows up from another angle on others I have already posted here about how off course it has been to promulgate the notion that Mayor Bloomberg is a free speech protector . . .

. . . I have previously written about how the Times suddenly christened Bloomberg a champion of the First amendment and defender of free speech in its Occupy Wall Street coverage. (In fact, I noted that part of this strange behavior included an editorial page buy-in to the notion that Bloomberg was defender of free speech.) The Times was apparently succumbing to recent PR management emanating from Bloomberg’s City Hall since, as I documented, the Times prior coverage of Bloomberg’s attitudes about protesters was strictly at odds with such a characterization. (See: Sunday, November 20, 2011, Question of Truth For The Times: The Meme of Bloomberg as Champion of the First Amendment & Free Speech, Firmly Planted Before OWS Eviction.)

. . . I also wrote about how Bloomberg’s biographer, Joyce Purnick, discussing the OWS protesters (before their removal) proclaimed Bloomberg to be “a firm supporter of the First Amendment,” probably having been influenced by the recent stories in the Times; what appears in her biography is directly contrary to that notion. (See: Tuesday, November 22, 2011, Orwellian Purnick Purge: Bloomberg Biographer Rewrites Billionaire Mayor’s Record On First Amendment Free Speech Rights.) The documentary about the New York Times, “Page One: Inside the New York Times” describes something it terms “The Times Effect” which is that the Times can make something virtually true by reporting it, setting the agenda, and then afterwards everyone imitatingly follows suit, reporting similar things. Perhaps this is an example of that effect.

Bloomberg’s “Free Speech Zones”

The previous articles dealt principally with Bloomberg’s attitude and treatment of protesters wanting to exercise their right to free speech and freedom of assembly. As captured in what the Times and Ms. Purnick had historically written, Bloomberg’s attitude was always one of disrespect for-- at best ‘brusque’ impatience with-- the principles of the rights being exercised. Bloomberg was even impatient with those who might merely wander near to such protesters, to him a stupid mistake. His `pragmatic’ preference was to circumscribe and impede the exercise of these rights to the best of his abilities, particularly so when ideas being expressed were in opposition to ideas he was supporting, as in the case of the 2004 Republican National Convention. One Bloombergian tactic standing out prominently as a symbol for how Bloomberg believed he could regulate protesters’ speech so as to minimize its effectiveness was his creation of “free speech zones” set up as far as possible from the object of the demonstrators’ protest. In other words: “You can speak, but if we can set it up that you are far enough away, maybe you just won’t be heard.”

Bloomberg’s “Freedom of the Press Zone”

The Times editorial, although it dealt with the suppression of the press rather than the suppression of the protesters’ speech itself, dealt with something quite analogous. The Times weekend editorial and the letter signed by the press organizations to which it referred both wrote about how with chilling calculation the police set up a freedom of the press zone to keep reporters far enough away from the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators so that the press would not be able to see what happened as the police moved in to evict the protesters. According to the Times editorial, “Before clearing tents and other structures from Zuccotti Park, for example, a police representative asked journalists in the area for press credentials.” Why? The letter describes the next step complained about by the press organizations:

credentialed media were identified, segregated and kept away from viewing, reporting on and photographing vital matters of public concern. A press pen was set up blocks away and those kept there were further prevented from seeing what was occurring by the strategic placement of police buses around the perimeter.

The Times editorial makes the point that this was a violation of the Police Department’s own policy expressed in a “1999 reforms and policy statement”: “under no circumstances should the press be provided less access than that afforded the general public.” There is a good reason why that is the official policy that has to bind the police. It has to be there because of what is in that First Amendment of the Constitution of which Bloomberg is supposedly a champion. The First Amendment, binding upon New York’s mayor and his police department, says that the government shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press. That is why the Times editorial objected to the use of press credentials as a mechanism to regulate and prevent reporters from witnessing what was going on, saying: “Reporters and photographers do not need credentials to be in a public area. The passes are supposed to give them better access. .”

Suppression of the Press During the OWS Eviction: A Litany

A Gothmist blog headline addressed the gist of what was going on, and the penning in of the credentialed reporters blocks away from the scene of the eviction was only part of a bigger picture: “The NYPD Didn’t Want You To See Occupy Wall Street Get Evicted.”

Other ways the police prevented the press from being witness to the events:

• As noted in the Gothamist article, “Airspace in Lower Manhattan was closed to CBS and NBC news choppers by the NYPD”. Really? Was this done for any other reason except to block images of police routing the demonstrators? Did the police believe that Occupy Wall Street protesters were going to call in air support they had at the ready to resist eviction?

• Credentials were peremptorily and illegally seized from credentialed reporters.

• Police did not want reporters admitted to the interior private space of nearby office buildings to watch the eviction from behind the glass of those buildings from where other members of the public could witness events.

• Reporters were ordered off the streets and kept as far as three blocks away.

• When a photographer close to Zucotti Park raised his camera to photograph police carrying a protester covered with blood two police officers shoved a barricade into the photographer, “screaming” (according to the Times editorial) “that he was not permitted to take pictures even though he was on the sidewalk.”

• Journalists who were clearly journalists were “roughed up” by the police, held in choke-holds, thrown to the ground, pushed to the ground, sent to the hospital for injuries from being thrown and dragged around, and reporters (and in at least on case also that reporter’s camera) were struck with police batons. One chief police spokesman, Paul J. Browne, dismissed what was reported, officially denying that he had personally witnessed any of the multiple incidents of roughing up reported.

• Over 25 Journalists were arrested though never formally charged and many more were threatened with arrest for being in public places.

“Free Speech Zones” and “Free Press Zones” - Never The Twain Should Meet?

The evident Bloomberg philosophy is to suppress the protest and to suppress the coverage of the protest. The cumulative effect is a monumental suppression of free speech. There is undoubtedly a reason the First Amendment nestles its protection for freedom of the press in between its protection of “freedom of speech” and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” If you have the other two freedoms but the press can’t report it, it’s like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one to hear. In fact, a large part of what the Occupy Wall Street protesters are attempting to communicate in their protests is about exactly what the police actions were attempting to suppress, the response by the “Government” [and those like Bloomberg representing Wall Street and the 1%] to their request via protest “for a redress of grievances” (to employ yet one more phrase in that First Amendment).

There may be times when the protesters’ absolute right to engage in specific demonstration tactics may be questionable: Remember that one judge (Lucy Billings) issued a court order that said the protesters had a right to remain in Zucotti Park, a court order which the Bloomberg administration blatantly defied for the half day it was in effect, and then a more administration-friendly judge, Michael D. Stallman, was pulled into the fracas to rule the other way. But even when the protesters are with careful calculation choosing civil disobedience such as setting up the preplanned November 17th arrest of a symbolic 99 volunteers to be arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge (in a prearranged and orderly staging) to commemorate the Saturday, October 1st arrest of 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge with police in the lead, they are doing so as a free speech communication to be noticed and reported upon. Among other things, intentional civil disobedience is a comment that not all laws are good laws. Sometimes it is the way that all those laws converge in their affect that makes them unjust. The press needs to be able to cover such events as part of our public dialogue.

Reconciling Bloomberg Administration Suppression of Press With Characterization of Bloomberg as First Amendment Champion

How did the New York Times editorial page manage to reconcile its complaint about the “numerous inappropriate, if not unconstitutional actions” by police officers during the eviction with the Times’ recent proclamations that Mayor Bloomberg is a defender of free speech and champion of the First Amendment? It concluded with the stern admonition:

It is time that Commissioner Kelly made a serious effort to enforce the department’s own code.

In other words, as serious as the subject was, the editorial never mentioned Bloomberg once, directly or by implication.

Does this mean that despite how the police actions reflected Bloomberg’s trademark traditions Bloomberg might not have been involved? That seems unlikely: The Times reported on the day that Bloomberg evicted the Occupy Wall Street protesters that the police raid was planned in advance, carefully, minutely and in secrecy at the very highest levels with the intention that it be a surprise. (See: After an Earlier Misstep, a Minutely Planned Raid/Operation to Clear Zucotti Park, Carefully Planned, Unfolded Without Warning- the second headline is the Times print edition’s, by Al Baker and Joseph Goldstein, Published: November 15, 2011.)

In fact, there seemed to be coordination between New York City and other similarly timed Occupy Wall Street evictions elsewhere in the country. Then there is the fact that Diana Taylor, Bloomberg’s live-in girlfriend and companion, is on the board of Brookfield Office properties, the company that technically owns the public Zucotti Park space and whose security guards were involved in the police actions the day of the evictions.

If Bloomberg was going for plausible deniablity with respect to the actions taken by his police the question is how could he be doing so and still maintain that he was doing his job, especially after so many years of receiving criticism, including from the New York Times, for the way that he has dealt with protesters in years prior. In 2005, the Times editorial page addressed itself directly to Bloomberg as mayor, in criticizing his administration’s use of agent provocateurs in a “a deliberate effort to incite violence that would in turn justify a tough police response” when dealing with protesters.

Bloomberg’s Endorsement of Keeping the Press Away

That being the record how could it be appropriate for the mayor to refrain from the involvement necessary to ensure that similar things not happen again. And that being the record you can see how important it was for the press to be there and observe if similar things were, indeed, happening again.

What most damns the Times editorial’s failure to admonish Bloomberg alongside of his admonished police commissioner is that Bloomberg has already connected himself with the police tactics and endorsed their intent to keep the media away. In essence the Times editorial page was either ignoring or disavowing coverage in two of the paper’s own stories, the first covering the media blackout that day and the other covering the subsequent press complaints about it, each of which ran practically identical versions of the paragraph below:

At a news conference after the park was cleared that day, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended the police behavior, saying that the media were kept away “to prevent a situation from getting worse and to protect members of the press.”

(See: November 15, 2011, Reporters Say Police Denied Access to Protest Site, by Brian Stelter and Al Baker and November 21, 2011, News Organizations Complain About Treatment During Protests, by Brian Stelter.)

New York Magazine reported the mayor’s endorsement of the police tactics, following up with a terse comment) this way:

Mayor Bloomberg previously defended the NYPD's actions. "The police department routinely keeps members of the press off to the side when they're in the middle of a police action," he said last week. "It's to prevent the situation from getting worse, and it's to protect the members of the press."

That's all nice and good, but there's a difference between keeping people "off to the side" and launching them into pavement.

(See: 11/21/11, Journalists Protest Police Treatment During Occupy Wall Street Eviction, By Brett Smiley.)

Addressing Unaddressed Complaints

The letter of complaint signed by the news media was addressed to Bloomberg’s Police Department (its full text is here: New York media organizations demand meeting with Kelly, Browne about Zuccotti Park 'abuses' of the press, by Joe Pompeo, Nov. 21, 2011- I can't find the full letter on the Times’ own web site). A second similar letter sent by the New York Civil Liberties Union was addressed first to “Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor” and secondly to Raymond Kelly as commissioner of the Police Department. That letter expresses concern about the “media backout” imposed by the NYPD effectively blocking first-hand reporting, details physical abuses and mentions the closing of the airspace over Zucotti Park to prevent news helicopters from documenting the police actions. It goes on to say that it is:

clear to us that the NYPD is aggressively blocking journalists from doing their constitutionally protected work and in some instances is even targeting journalists for mistreatment. That this has happened during a nationally important protest is all the more disturbing.

A copy of that letter is available here.

Who Signed News Organization Complaint Letter? And One Organization That Didn’t

The letter of complaint by the news organizations that the Times addressed in its editorial this weekend was signed, in addition to the Times, by more than a dozen of the most important news organizations and associations in New York, a veritably complete BINGO of everyone conceivably of importance available to sign. It includes the following:

1. The Associated Press
2. The New York Post
3. The Daily News
4. Thomson Reuters
5. Dow Jones & Company
6. The Associated Press,
7. WABC
8. WCBS
9. WNBC (NBC Universal and WNBC-TV)
10. National Press Photographers Association
11. New York Press Photographers Association
12. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
13. New York Press Club
14. Deadline Club

Although it includes one organization, Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones & Company, owner of the Wall Street Journal, that famously reports on Wall Street, it does not include another major company reporting on Wall Street, Bloomberg, L.P. whose “Bloomberg TV” was given a prominent spot on the NYC Time Warner dial by City Hall (Bloomberg) and which publishes BusinessWeek. It seems that if you own the press you might no longer need to worry that it will criticize you.

Owning One’s Journalistic Principles

The Times editorial this weekend doesn’t say so but you should probably infer from it that a press that is free to go where it wants and report what stories it wants is important and a good thing. That, however, is something that the Bloomberg administration and apparently Mayor Michael Bloomberg himself doesn’t want. But if you fight for these rights in principle, what difference does it make to win them if, in the end, you are only going to report things as the administration would like them reported? Isn't that what the Times has done by compliantly passing along the administration’s recent PR that Mayor Bloomberg is defender of free speech and a champion of the first amendment. And it furthers that misguided notion by failing to chastise the mayor for the blatant suppression of the press when the Occupy Wall Street protesters were evicted. Michael Bloomberg may own Bloomberg, L.P. and that may be one of the many ways that he, with various forms of paid speech, ensures that messages he wants promulgated get out (or, alternatively are ignored), but what hold does Michael Bloomberg have on the editorial page of the New York Times that it should be guilty of such a gross lapse in not holding Bloomberg himself accountable?

Pepper Spraying Cop Gets Around: National Notice Found Him Spraying Mayor Bloomberg’s Dogs Bonnie and Clyde at Zucotti Park

2011-11-25T17:26:00.000-08:00

If you are at all exposed to the contagions that rage through the social media then you have already been exposed to the ubiquitous meme of the “casually pepper spraying cop.” The image plays off and derives from police Lt. John Pike pepper spraying a line of seated Occupy protesters at the University of California, Davis that was also captured in a video that went viral. The protesters and those witnessing the incident responded by chanting “Shame on you” and “Who do you protect?” (Video below).

One of my more frequent encounters with the CPSC was seeing on people’s Facebook pages an altered version of George Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” below. Another favorite is Christana of Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” getting a facefull.

Images are collecting at this Tumblr site: Pepper Spraying Cop.

The list goes on, Peanuts characters, Cindy Loo Who, Muppets, Gandhi, an appearance in Picasso’s Guernica, or flipping things, CPSC becomes part of the "Clockwork Orange" gang.

The phenomena has been covered by National Public radio’s “All Things Considered” ('Casually Pepper Spraying Cop' Meme Takes Off: Categories: Technology, National News, by Mark Memmott, November 21, 2011) and in an article of surprising thoughtfulness in the New York Times (Pepper Spray’s Fallout, From Crowd Control to Mocking Images, By Katherine Q. Seelye).

I thought it was time for National Notice to contribute images to the furiously compiling flurry of images. My immediate instinct was to build upon a Photoshop theme I have played with before although it makes for multi-step mental process to appreciate the product rather than what might be achieved by riffing off an immediately recognizable icon: Mayor Bloomberg’s dogs, bizarrely named after Bonnie and Clyde, two bank robbers who, via folklore and a movie directed by Arthur Penn, have become imbued with a certain Robin Hood reputation, robbing from those who have too much.

The dogs are not as quintessentially helpless, nonthreatening, or carefree as some of the images others have composited. Nor are they classic pacifists as in other compositions that involve Jesus and Gandhi. They don’t epitomize American liberty as do the iconic images pressed into service by others.

Originally I Photoshopped the dogs joining the Occupy Wall Street protesters because it seemed that if they were named after Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde the dogs, having more in common with the protesters, ought to be joining them. It also seemed especially absurd that, the way things were originally going to happen, the New York Times was going to run a `Mayor loves (or tolerates) his dogs story’ on the same morning he was going to evict the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zucotti Park, although it didn’t finally happen that day.

Anyway, I figured that these days the mayor’s dogs, if they could, would still be hanging out with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and that means that the “casually pepper spraying cop” would naturally want to show up to spritz the placid animals.

For more about Bloomberg’s Bonnie and Clyde including pictures see:

• Saturday, October 22, 2011
Occupy Wall Street and the Banks- Messages From Bonnie & Clyde, “They’ve Got Too Much Money”: Ownership of the Public Forum by the Wealthy?

• Monday, October 24, 2011
On NPR, Echo of Coinciding Principles Noticed: What the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Ought To Agree On

Orwellian Purnick Purge: Bloomberg Biographer Rewrites Billionaire Mayor’s Record On First Amendment Free Speech Rights

2011-11-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

The answer is Orwellian. The question is whether I was wrong. . . Nope! Not at all. . .

I wrote about Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s eviction of Occupy Wall Street’s protesters from Zucotti Park and how the New York Times, with absolutely no basis for doing so, reported in its coverage of the eviction that Bloomberg is a Champion of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. (See: Sunday, November 20, 2011, Question of Truth For The Times: The Meme of Bloomberg as Champion of the First Amendment & Free Speech, Firmly Planted Before OWS Eviction.)

In that story I wrote about how, once the New York Times had run a story to the effect that Bloomberg is a defender of free speech bolstering that notion with the headline that appeared on its front page (Demonstrators Test Mayor, a Backer of Wall St. and Free Speech, by Kate Taylor, November 3, 2011.) the meme of Bloomberg being a backer of free speech was being picked up elsewhere, including on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show where Bloomberg biographer Joyce Purnick in a discussion of the protest stated unequivocally that Bloomberg is “a firm supporter of the First Amendment”:

Within days of Kate Taylor’s front page article, the meme was even picked up and incorporated in WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show when Lehrer introduced a segment on the “Mayor and the Occupiers” with Joyce Purnick and Matt Taibbi guesting. Lehrer said “he’s been supportive of their free speech rights, maybe more than some other mayors” and Bloomberg biographer Purnick moments later emphatically stated that “he is a firm supporter of the First Amendment.” (See: What OWS Tells Us About Mike Bloomberg, Monday, November 07, 2011.)

I realized that was I might have been unfair to Ms. Purnick. What I wrote essentially implied that she, as Bloomberg’s biographer, was influenced in her statement that Bloomberg is “a firm supporter of the First Amendment” by reading the New York Times. I seemed to discount the possibility that Ms. Purnick was basing her statement on the greater intimacy she might have with Bloomberg’s reputation as a civil libertarian based on her own work, including the access and interviews Bloomberg gave her to write a rather complimentary biography about him.

Maybe I was even being unfair to the New York Times: In that earlier article I provided extensive research to show that the Times’ recent assertion that Bloomberg is a champion of the protesters’ free speech rights was completely at odds with the Times’ own past coverage and editorial positions on the subject. But, maybe the Times’ wasn’t relying on its own past paper-of-record coverage of Bloomberg’s record respecting free speech. Maybe it was drawing from another source. . . Maybe rather than Purnick superficially succumbing to the influence of the Times front page it was the reverse and the Times had adjusted its views of Mr. Bloomberg after reading Purnick’s 2009 biography of Bloomberg.

Alas for Ms. Purnick and the New York Times: Not so! There is nothing in Ms. Purnick’s biography of Bloomberg that supports the notion that Bloomberg is “a firm supporter of the First Amendment” free speech rights of protesters. Quite the reverse. Here is what Ms. Purnick writes about Mr. Bloomberg on page 154 of her book “Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics”:

New Yorkers, most of them still Democrats, objected to Bloomberg’s handling of the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2004, when eighteen hundred people were arrested and held in a large detention center, some guilty of no more than standing on a street during a police sweep. Never a conspicuous civil libertarian, the mayor in a talk with me, brusquely dismisses the issue of treatment of demonstrators, and privacy in general, justifying himself and the Police Department, pitting his pragmatism over the principles of others: “Number one, there’s a camera watching you at all times when you’re out in the street, the civil liberties issue has long been settled,” he says.

As he sees it, those who were arrested put themselves at risk and in effect got what they deserved because the police were reacting to threats. “What are you gonna do, say one yes, one no? I am sorry, if you get caught up in a crowd where everybody’s throwing rocks and you get arrested, that’s just the real world! You have to be stupid to be in that crowd!” There have been no allegations of rock-throwing, but his point is clear. He feels he owes no one any apologies.

Maybe “never a conspicuous civil libertarian,” together with the rest of the above, is strong enough: Could it leave open the possibility that Bloomberg was an inconspicuous civil libertarian? No, because you are not going to find things elsewhere in the book that make that case. Instead, Purnick asserts Bloomberg’s stance on civil liberties is very similar to Rudolph Guiliani’s while saying that Guiliani had “no patience” for First Amendment civil liberties.

On page 78 of her book she says (emphasis supplied):

Guiliani gave New York a needed slap in the face, actually governing the ungovernable city. He went after crime, improved the quality of life, ruthlessly reduced the welfare rolls. But he had no patience for civil liberties of the First Amendment, damaged race relations with his unrelenting ferocity, was constantly attacking somebody or something and governed with a strict top-down discipline that discouraged creativity.

On Page 204 she writes of Bloomberg (emphasis supplied):

Despite his idiosyncracies, he was prudently nonconfrontational, which helped him in the inevitable comparisons with his belligerent predecessor, making it less obvious than it might have been that he shares some of Rudy Guiliani’s autocratic attitudes about he news media and civil liberties.

There is nothing else in Purnick’s book about Bloomberg as a civil libertarian unless you want to go straight to the book’s introductory summary pages where Ms. Purnick writes on page 4 (emphasis supplied):

He doggedly challenged dealers of illegal guns, kept crime rates down, and becalmed race relations despite aggressive police strategies that offended minority communities and civil libertarians.

Verdict? Bloomberg Biographer Joyce Purnick had no basis in her book to assert that Bloomberg “is a firm supporter of the First Amendment,” just as there was no basis in the Times’ previous reporting for the Times to suddenly start asserting, as it has, that Bloomberg is a “champion of the First Amendment” or a “backer” “defender” and celebrator of “free speech.” Ergo, it doesn’t appear that I was unfair to Ms. Purnick at all. It appears that she was, just as my previous article would imply, influenced, not by her own theoretically deep knowledge of Bloomberg as his biographer, but by what she had just read on the front page of the New York Times, the PR message du jour that the Bloomberg administration was putting out as it readied itself to evict the protesters.

That’s what’s Orwellian: George Orwell posited how totalitarian dystopias function by erasing facts and history, by having the public consume as information and accepted reality whatever current fictions the government wanted to on a particular day. Maybe in the future the way that it will work is that all our biographers will wake up every morning and chose to believe that whatever they previously wrote in any of our biographies is simply what they last happened read in the paper that morning.

PS: Note, I provided previous coverage of Purnick’s Bloomberg biography here- Saturday, October 3, 2009, What Purnick Has Purged: The Bloomberg Bio Mysteriously Missing Atlantic Yards.

PPS: I also checked Bloomberg’s own politically self-promotional 1997 autobiography “Bloomberg by Bloomberg”(By Bloomberg- With invaluable help from Matthew Winkler) and found no evidence in it of Bloomberg being a supporter of the First Amendment free speech protections.

And one Final PPS: The situation and Bloomberg’s retrospection on the demonstrators at the 2004 the Republican Convention are far worse than might be supposed. Read my earlier article about the Times’ misleading coverage of Bloomberg as free speech champion. Purnick correctly notes that there never were any reports of people “throwing rocks” despite Bloomberg’s reference to being arrested when you are “caught up in a crowd where everybody’s throwing rocks” Perhaps Bloomberg’s memory, rather than being of crowds actually throwing rocks, is instead his memory of actions his police department tried to make happen by sending agent provocateurs into the those crowds. It’s actually true: Read the prior National Notice article.

Question of Truth For The Times: The Meme of Bloomberg as Champion of the First Amendment & Free Speech, Firmly Planted Before OWS Eviction

2011-11-20T05:40:00.000-08:00

You know the old axiom for watching politicians: “Watch what he DOES, not what he SAYS”? Well, here is the axiom that Michael Bloomberg watchers ought to employ: “Listen to what he SAYS and then figure the OPPOSITE.” One opposite to figure: The notion Bloomberg wishes to promote that he is a big `defender of free speech.' But if you are reporting for the New York Times these days maybe you would just like to report Bloomberg's assertion as fact.

Planning (and Planting?) In Advance?

According to one of the articles appearing in the New York Times the day that Bloomberg moved to evict the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zucotti Park, the police raid that effected the eviction was planned in advance, carefully, minutely and in secrecy at the very highest levels with the intention that it be a surprise. (See: After an Earlier Misstep, a Minutely Planned Raid/Operation to Clear Zucotti Park, Carefully Planned, Unfolded Without Warning- the second headline is the Times print edition’s, by Al Baker and Joseph Goldstein, Published: November 15, 2011.
That article focused principally on police associated logistics, the day and time of night chosen. (Was even the weather watched?) One thing we didn’t learn from the article was about other the planning that took place at the highest levels of the Bloomberg administration, including one thing we will now direct Noticing New York attention to: the planting in the media of a meme. On November 4, 2011, ten days before police were ordered into action for their 1:00 AM November 15th, raid, the front page of the Friday New York Times carried a story with a headline and content laudatory of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s esteem for “Free Speech.” Quoting that article:

Mr. Bloomberg’s evolving response to the protest has come to embody a central tension in his third term, between his celebration of free, and at times cacophonous, speech as a hallmark of New York, and his emphasis on bolstering the city’s economy by improving its appeal to residents, employers and tourists.

* * * *

Mr. Bloomberg has managed simultaneously to be less sympathetic to the protesters’ point of view, and more sympathetic to their right to protest, than some other elected officials around the nation. “There’s nobody that’s more of a defender of the First Amendment than I am,” he has often said.

(See: Demonstrators Test Mayor, a Backer of Wall St. and Free Speech, by Kate Taylor, November 3, 2011.)

Where Do Quotes Come From?

As for the Bloomberg quote, “There’s nobody that’s more of a defender of the First Amendment than I am,” which the Times article describes as frequently stated: I can’t find it anywhere on the web and it appears nowhere on the Times own site except in that same article.

The article was written by Times reporter Kate Taylor. As pointed out in an earlier Noticing New York article, Kate Taylor was one of the two Times reporters who dutifully reported what looked like a direct pass-along for the Bloomberg administration, that the mayor’s staff was “under strict orders from Mr. Bloomberg” not to “lobby the owner of the park, Brookfield Office Properties, about whether to push ahead, leaving the decision up to the company’s management, according to several people involved in the discussions” while simultaneously failing to mention what had been in the Times just the day before, that Diana Taylor, the Mayor’s girlfriend and live-in companion, was on the board of Brookfield.

While reporter Kate Taylor did not let the Bloomberg/Diana Taylor relationship go unmentioned in her new article about Bloomberg as the `backer of free speech,' her reporting makes it sound as if her sympathies are with the mayor, that she considers it a sorrowful misfortune that the very small world of the rich and powerful necessitates uncomfortable disclosures: “At one point, he felt compelled to disclose that he did not talk about Zuccotti Park while in bed with his girlfriend.”

The morning following the eviction of the protesters Bloomberg said in his press conference that throughout the crisis he had been in constant contact with Brookfield Properties. Interesting . . . . Square that with Ms. Tayor’s reporting that staff contact was proscribed and that pillow talk was also avoided. It's possible.

Meme Gets Rolling

Did Ms. Taylor write her front page story because Bloomberg held a press conference the day of her story where he stated he was concerned about “free speech” or was this a theme Ms. Taylor was already working on and getting attached to it before that? No matter, once this story appeared on the front page of the Times the meme was up and running despite the fact that Bloomberg had already been saying that he did not think that what the protesters were doing in Zucotti Park constituted free speech. The meme was even picked up right away in a Times editorial that was otherwise complementary about how the message of the Occupy Wall Street protesters was getting through to the public.

As such, the meme was prophylactically in place and the following wound up embedded in one of the major stories the Times immediately ran covering the eviction.

For the mayor, a champion of the First Amendment who made a fortune on Wall Street and defends its virtues, the decision was even more freighted: just a month ago, he announced that the city would clear the park for cleaning, but backed down after a chorus of political protest and an influx of new demonstrators.

* * * *

Facing mounting criticism from the city’s tabloids and from some business interests for his tolerance of an encampment they found increasingly noxious, he spoke increasingly of the need to balance free speech with public safety.

(See: Jolted, Wall St. Protesters Face Challenge for Future, By David M. Halbfinger and Michael Barbaro, November 15, 2011.)

And the meme was similarly picked up by the Times in another story that day here: City Reopens Park After Protesters Are Evicted, by James Barron and Colin Moynihan, November 15, 2011.

In fact, Michael Barbaro, one of the reporters writing the article with the paragraphs quoted above, let the meme peek through a few days before in an article about how Bloomberg was developing new oratorical skills and was increasingly being inspired to do his own authoring as he addressed grand issues. The puffy article is made up of quotes and information supplied by Bloomberg staff:

Again and again, Mr. Bloomberg celebrates New York’s public disputes, even the two-month-old Occupy Wall Street protest, though he has struggled over how to balance the free-speech rights of demonstrators in Lower Manhattan with the concerns of annoyed neighbors.

(Data-Crunching Mayor Now Sees Power in Words, by Michael Barbaro, November 12, 2011.)

Within days of Kate Taylor’s front page article, the meme was even picked up and incorporated in WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show when Lehrer introduced a segment on the “Mayor and the Occupiers” with Joyce Purnick and Matt Taibbi guesting. Lehrer said “he’s been supportive of their free speech rights, maybe more than some other mayors” and Bloomberg biographer Purnick moments later emphatically stated that “he is a firm supporter of the First Amendment.” (See: What OWS Tells Us About Mike Bloomberg, Monday, November 07, 2011.) Item of disclosure and interest: I can be heard during that segment phoning in to venture my disbelief that Bloomberg is a true supporter of free speech as opposed to merely being an ostensible one.

Better To Accompany Eviction With a “Mayor Loves Free Speech Story” Than a “Mayor Tolerates Dogs Story”

Is it true that Mayor Bloomberg is the “backer” of “free speech,” the “champion of the First Amendment”? Certainly the press that Bloomberg is now getting to this effect is lot better than the press Bloomberg might have been getting for his tone deafness if his originally planned eviction of the protesters had gone through, as scheduled, the day the Times ran its `Mayor tolerates dogs’ (“Bonnie and Clyde”) story. (See: Saturday, October 22, 2011, Occupy Wall Street and the Banks- Messages From Bonnie & Clyde, “They’ve Got Too Much Money”: Ownership of the Public Forum by the Wealthy?)

Are reporters doing their job, are they worth their salt if the report that Bloomberg is a “backer” of “free speech,” the “champion of the First Amendment”?

Testing the Times. . . Against the Record That Appears in the Times

Since the media buy-in to the meme that Bloomberg is a “champion of the First Amendment” probably originated or was significantly bolstered by the Times front page article promoting that idea, the best place I could think of to put that notion to the test was . . . the Times itself. What did the Times report about Bloomberg’s positions on free speech and the First Amendment before the Occupiers Occupied Zucotti Park?

Much of it could be summed up by these words from a Times editorial in the spring of 2006:

Mr. Bloomberg's record on free speech took a beating in his first term after he moved aggressively to limit protests, most notably those surrounding the Republican National Convention in New York two years ago. And as a report in yesterday's Times by Jim Dwyer made clear, the Police Department's willingness to subvert free speech in the name of security appears to have gone beyond that one event to an ongoing strategy that included "proactive arrests" of political demonstrators who were spotted as potential troublemakers.

(See: Editorial: The Mayor and the Imam, March 18, 2006.)

Donations From the Wealthy Are Said To Privatize a Great Public Space And Curtail Free Speech

One year later, another Times editorial prompted by a First Amendment lawsuit criticized Bloomberg for his selectivity in denying “the right to demonstrate on Central Park’s Great Lawn” mainly because the wealthy in New York had paid to refurbish its lawn. Apparently, if you want to privatize public space and make it off-limits for political expression (and there is a lot of that going on in New York City) it is no longer necessary for the wealthiest to actually acquire and take legal title to that space. Said the Times:

In the heart of the nation’s largest and arguably most opinionated city, there is no place to hold a large rally. Central Park has long been the site of such gatherings, but the Bloomberg administration insists that its grass is too fragile to permit them now. It’s an inadequate and distressing rationale . .

. . Central Park, at 843 acres of green, is often called the city's lungs. But it is also its vocal cords. The Great Lawn, with 13 acres of open space, is the most suitable site for large rallies in Manhattan. It has been the site of some spectacular events, like the 1982 "No Nukes" rally and the 1995 Mass with the pope, both of which drew more than a hundred thousand people.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to put an end to such gatherings. Since around the time of the 2004 Republican convention, when the city repeatedly denied protesters the right to gather in Central Park, his administration seems to have had a wild fixation on saving every blade of the Great Lawn.

* * * *

The lawsuit also calls attention to the uneven way the city applies its rules. It’s telling that while the New York Philharmonic and its well-heeled subscribers have had no problem securing the Great Lawn for concerts, there hasn’t been a rally there in years. Classical music fans are just as capable of flattening grass as critics of the White House.

* * * *

The mayor’s solution might make tending the grass in Central Park easier. But turning Manhattan into a rally-free zone is too high a price to pay.

(See: Editorial: The Perfect Lawn, Mowed and Muted, March 12, 2007.)

Bloomberg Politically Motivated As He Curtails Speech

The Times editorial could have been even harsher if it had looked back to evidence of the calculated and politically motivated way that Bloomberg had suppressed speech as reported only months before in its own pages. Here is just the beginning of a very long article presenting such documentation:

When city officials denied demonstrators access to the Great Lawn in Central Park during the 2004 Republican National Convention, political advocates and ordinary New Yorkers accused Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of squelching demonstrations that could embarrass fellow Republicans during their gathering.

Documents Regarding Use of Great Lawn (justiceonline.org) The Bloomberg administration denied being guided by politics in banning the protests. Instead, officials said they were motivated by a concern for the condition of the expensively renovated Great Lawn or by law enforcement’s ability to secure the crowd.

But documents that have surfaced in a federal lawsuit over the use of the Great Lawn paint a different picture, of both the rationale for the administration’s policy and the degree of Mr. Bloomberg’s role in enforcing it.

Those documents, which include internal e-mail messages and depositions in the court case, show that Mr. Bloomberg’s involvement in the deliberations over the protests may have been different from how he and his aides have portrayed it. They also suggest that officials were indeed motivated by political concerns over how the protests would play out while the Republican delegates were in town, and how the events could affect the mayor’s re-election campaign the following year.

(See: In Court Papers, a Political Note on ’04 Protests, by Diane Cardwell, July 31, 2006.)

Rewriting and De-Righting the Constitution

Back at the time of the Republican Convention protests the Times reported that Bloomberg was saying that the protesters instead of having a right of free speech only benefitted from a privilege to speak that would be lost by them if they were, in Bloomberg’s opinion, unreasonable. One person quoted in that article commented that it was as if “the mayor paid someone to rewrite the Constitution.” (See: Behavior May Cost Protesters 'Privileges,' Bloomberg Says, by Jennifer Steinhauer, August 17, 2004.)

Bloomberg: "Let Me Tell You How I Want You To Protest"

For Bloomberg free speech is ideally exercised by others in the fashion he prescribes which is also likely to be less effective. This is pointed out in Times columnist Clyde Haberman’s most recent column:

In February 2003, a few weeks before the start of the Iraq war, antiwar organizers wanted to march along First Avenue past the United Nations as part of a worldwide day of protest. Citing security risks, the city said no. Instead, with a federal judge’s approval, it forced the antiwar groups to accept a visually less engaging rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.

(See: November 16, 2011, It’s Not Just What You Protest, It’s Where, by Clyde Haberman and also Critical of Judge's Ruling, Antiwar Protesters Brace for Rally, by James Barron, February 15, 2003)

This notion of dictating that protest be in the `less noticeable, less offensive, and less effective’ modes that the powers-that-be prescribe is a variation on what Bill Maher has talked about: That the plutocrats want the 99% to stay off the streets and do things the plutocratic way with “lobbyists and suits” because then they will certainly lose (and can be ignored) given that all the “lobbyists and suits” are on the side of the plutocrats. (See: Wednesday, October 26, 2011, Bill Maher: Right Wing, Wanting It THEIR Way, Yearns To Get Occupy Wall Street On THEIR Unlevel Playing Field of Lobbyists and Suits and Wednesday, November 9, 2011, Bill Maher Reiterates Theme of Plutocrats Favored By Unlevel Playing Field of "Lobbyists & Suits": Glenn Greenwald Dittos Advantaging Rules For Elite.

Protesters Likened To Terrorists

It is not that Bloomberg never invokes the concept of “free speech” at all. Right after the Republican Convention left town Times columnist Clyde Haberman commented on some strange Bloombergian rhetoric. Bloomberg extolling free speech rights (of the Republicans) likened the protesters to terrorists. Haberman referred to the “less-than-edifying moments on the part of some anti-Bush types who cornered convention delegates on the street, haranguing them with tirades of the four-lettered variety”:

That these protesters were ill-mannered, at best, seems beyond question.

But does that put them in the same league with terrorists? Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg seems to think so. "A handful of people have tried to destroy our city by going up and yelling at visitors here because they don't agree with their views," Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday.

This, he continued, is "the city for free speech if there ever was one, and some people think that we shouldn't allow people to express themselves."

"That's exactly what the terrorists did, if you think about it, on 9/11. Now this is not the same kind of terrorism, but there's no question that these anarchists are afraid to let people speak out."

(See: It's Safe to Return, Girlie Men, by Clyde Haberman, September 3, 2004.)

Bloomberg Ostensibly In favor of What He takes Away

The few times when Bloomberg is extolling the First Amendment or free speech for its own sake have to be distinguished from the times when Bloomberg extolls free speech while at the same time cracking down on its exercise by others. (The OWS-related media management essentially reprises this tactic except for Bloomberg's adroit PR move of getting out the meme about his believing in the First Amendment somewhat before he moved on the eviction.) Bloomberg exercised his own free speech rights as mayor (and soon-to-be-richest New Yorker) by likening protesters at the Republican Convention to terrorists. Thereafter, when the City Correction Department's top chaplain complained that the Bush White House, which had launched a pre-emptive war in Iraq, was “occupied by terrorists” Bloomberg penalized the chaplain, suspending him without pay for two weeks, while at the same time defending his free speech rights. Is that a “political” straddle or is it “Solomonic”? The suspended jail chaplain had also attacked “Zionists of the media.” (See: Mayor Suspends Top Jail Chaplain While Defending Free Speech, by Sewell Chan, March 15, 2006.)

Deliberately Provoking Protesters To Do What Bloomberg Says Will Lose Them Their Rights

After relegating protesters to those protest locations he prefers and warning them that he will take their rights away if he doesn’t consider their protesting reasonably conducted it might be nice if Bloomberg at least let the protesters retain control of their own message without manufacturing interference to make them look bad. He doesn't. In 2005 the Times editorial page chastised Bloomberg for doing the the very opposite, for using agent provocateurs and “underhanded” tactics as the Times said, “to spy on and even distort political protests and mass rallies.” The editorial was based on the “sorry tale" that was " laid out by Jim Dwyer” in the previous day’s Times, a story that was, in turn, based on a forensically analyzed archive of civilian and police videotapes that showed among other things “a sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police” designed by “New York City police officers or people working with them” to “set off a bruising confrontation with demonstrators.” Not pulling any punches the Times editorial said:

Protesters were put on the ground, and at least two were arrested. Meanwhile, the blond-haired man spoke quietly with the police and was quickly led away. The same man was videotaped at an arrest scene a day earlier calling out words that seemed intended to rile the bystanders.

This was a deliberate effort to incite violence that would in turn justify a tough police response.

And it concluded (after describing other objectionable police conduct involving surveillance):

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's record on free speech is already pretty poor. Unless he wants to make a disregard for New Yorkers' rights part of his legacy, he should make sure that the police understand what civil liberties mean in a democracy.

(See: Editorial: Surveillance, New York Style, December 23, 2005.)

No one that I am aware of has yet reported that agent provocateur tactics were used again against Occupy Wall Street but one thing that may need to be investigated is reports that police sent young men being booked for crimes in the direction of Zucotti Park because the park was a place to sleep and get some free food from the protesters. Remember that at his press conference the day of the eviction the mayor said one reason he felt compelled to move in was that there ostensibly issues with safety due to the way some fringe individuals were conducting themselves in the park.

Free Speech Messes at Columbia?

Bloomberg got involved offering a somewhat rambling `rebuke’ to Columbia University about protesters interrupting the free speech of others on the campus. That involved a speech by Jim Gilchrist of the Minuteman Project, which mounts armed patrols to curb illegal immigration. The statement about the free speech right to speak or speak while not being interrupted versus the free speech right to harangue would hardly qualify Bloomberg as a free speech champion. Bloomberg might have been attracted to comment about free speech issues at Columbia University because there had been so much recent high-profile focus at the university respecting free speech issues of interest to the city’s Jewish electorate, harassment of Jewish students by pro-Palestinian faculty members and the question of whether Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, should speak there. After being disinvited Ahmadinejad ultimately did come to speak at Columbia. While the head of Bloomberg's Police Department didn't want Ahmadinejad laying a wreath at Ground Zero, Bloomberg said that Ahmadinejad speaking was free speech but that he personally wouldn't be in the audience.

Another reason for Bloomberg to snipe at Columbia's president Bollinger about free speech issues in the educational environment?: Bollinger had already sniped at the handling of such issues by Bloomberg's City Education Department being run by Joel Klien.

Which First Amendment Rights?

Since the First Amendment to the Constitution also encompasses the prohibitions against Congress establishing religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, it is technically correct to say that Bloomberg is defending the First Amendment when on David Letterman he says that “government shouldn’t be involved” in prohibiting a mosque or Muslim Community Center near Ground Zero. It's true that is championing the First Amendment, but when the Times calls Bloomberg a “champion of the First Amendment” in the context of removing the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zucotti Park it naturally implies that the Times is talking about the protesters’ free speech rights not their right to freely practice their religion.

Controlling Speech

Bloomberg a free speech champion? Bloomberg likes control. Had the New York City hosted the 2012 Olympic the Bloomberg administration planned to control the content of advertising and control who was going to be allowed to advertise while the Olympics were in town. (See: City Demands the Final Word If It Wins 2012 Olympics Bid, by Jennifer Steinhauer, May 1, 2004.)

In 2006 Bloomberg sought to change the rules respecting public assembly. Rather than just required permits for amplified sound or marching in a public roadway it was proposed to require “police permits for every sidewalk procession involving 35 or more people, every roadway procession with 20 or more vehicles or bicycles, and every procession of two or more people using a roadway.” (See: Op-Ed Contributor: License to Stroll, by Christopher Dunn and Donna Lieberman, August 13, 2006.)

Free Speech of the Sort That Benefits Bloomberg

Bloomberg does champion the way that the First Amendment protects free speech that only he can exercise: Bloomberg is mayor because of the personal fortune he has spent in campaign and other funds to secure that office. The term “personal fortune” should be used advisedly because Bloomberg accrued most of his wealth after going into politics and became the wealthiest New Yorker while mayor and while his company, Bloomberg, L.P. was doing business and selling Bloomberg terminals to almost every company in the city with which the City of New York has significant interactions. When in 2003 two city councilmen introduced a bill to “prevent Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg from using his personal fortune on an advertising campaign asking New Yorkers to abolish party labels and party primaries in city elections,” Edward Skyler, a spokesman for Bloomberg, said: “Such legislation would be illegal, since it would violate the First Amendment.” From Bloomberg’s point of view he can regard the law as safely protecting all of the spending that put him into and kept him in political power as protected “free speech”

Something You Learn In Journalism School: Bloomberg's Money Speaks

Consider this free speech tangle with respect to Bloomberg’s expenditures of money to control how his image is perceived. Understand first that Patti Harris, Bloomberg’s First Deputy Mayor and top political strategist, controls the disbursement, annually, of hundreds of thousands of dollars in “charitable” contributions by Bloomberg’s Bloomberg, L.P. Against that background Bloomberg L.P. hired Tom Goldstein, then the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia, “to help ensure impartiality in the company's coverage of Mayor Bloomberg.” Mark Crispin Miller, a professor at New York University’s education school quoted in a New York Observer article “called the hiring troublesome because of the conflicts Mr. Goldstein's relationship might pose for Columbia, which has business with the city government.” The Observer article misidentified Miller as an NYU journalism professor: He was actually “a media critic and a professor of media ecology at the Steinhardt School of Education.” Miller “also called a news media tour of the renovated City Hall `improper'’ because it had resulted in front-page pictures that included Bloomberg terminals, which he described as ''product placement.” (This was before Bloomberg’s wealth from terminal sales really skyrocketed.)

The result of this (perfectly fair) criticism of Bloomberg by NYU Professor Miller? Here’s the lead-in to the Times story from which the quotes in the paragraph above are taken:

Bloomberg L.P., a financial information service that prides itself on philanthropic activity, told officials at New York University last year that the company would no longer support a business journalism program because a professor in its education school had criticized the company and its founder, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the university said yesterday.

Bloomberg terminated the $26,000 per annum it was contributing to the two fellowships. (See: Bloomberg L.P. Stops Aiding N.Y.U. Fellows After Criticism, by Stephanie Strom, February 21, 2003.)

Prof. Stephen D. Solomon, the founder and director of NYU’s business journalism program, saw a free speech issue in all of this:

''This whole thing is ironic because in addition to running the business and economic journalism program, I also teach First Amendment law to undergraduate and graduate students''

Bloomberg’s defense?:

Edward Skyler, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, said, “The donation of Bloomberg terminals to the mayor's office was cleared by the conflict of interest board, and any pictures of the mayor at his desk are meant to illustrate his work environment and aren't intended to promote that product.”

Stacking Up The Rights of the Monied Individual vs. the Public

How do Bloomberg’s protected free speech rights stack up against the rights of the public not to be overpowered by the expenditures of the vast sums he controls? Bloomberg would not be in office right now had he not, in the middle of the election cycle, changed the City Charter to allow himself a third term. When he made that change to the City Charter a lawsuit was brought where one of the arguments of the plaintiffs’ lawyers was that the public’s “free speech” rights were violated, that:

by changing the limits legislatively, the city had violated voters’ constitutional rights to free speech and due process. They charged, in essence, that the new term limits law annulled a decision that had been twice endorsed at the polls and gave an unfair advantage to two-term incumbents over political newcomers who might have wished to challenge them

The courts did not uphold the proposition that the "free speech" rights of the public had been violated. (See: Judge Rejects Suit Over Term Limits, by Fernanda Santos, January 13, 2009.)

The change to the City Charter in 2009 might have been successfully headed off if, in 2003, a proposed law had been adopted that was “meant to discourage wealthy New Yorkers from using their money to sway public opinion on proposals to revise the City Charter.” The problem with that bill?: It was considered that such prohibitions respecting the wealthy and the spending of their wealth to charge the charter, as Bloomberg eventually did, would have been a violation of their First Amendment's free speech protections. A substitute bill that was proposed but it would have had no effect on Bloomberg because Bloomberg has never needed to take public “matching funds” to promote his causes. (See: Bill Seeks to Discourage Wealthy From Swaying Charter Changes, by Jonathan P. Hicks, September 30, 2003.)

Every Benefit That Goes Around, Comes Around- If You're Rich Enough

It’s funny how things can get turned around in terms of who needs protection from whom and what laws should be resorted to in this regard. When the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Bush v. Gore to intervene and prevent the statewide recount ordered by the Florida's highest court (that ballot counts show, in retrospect, would have given the state’s electoral votes and the election to Al Gore), the justices deciding for Bush ironically cited the equal protection provisions under the Constitution that one would have thought were intended to protect minorities. Thus the justices did the opposite. The same sort of unfortunate irony presented itself in a lawsuit brought in 2008 by the “real estate industry and lobbyists, who together provide millions in campaign cash for city candidates, are trying to overturn a new law that would vastly reduce how much they can donate.” They said that the law's prohibition of their ability to contribute those vast sums “violated free speech and equal protection provisions of the Constitution and discriminated against minorities.” (See: Suit Against New Campaign Finance Law Claims Racial Bias, by Ray Rivera, February 12, 2008.)

Bloomberg Support For The Free Speech That Works For Big Business

What does the future hold for free speech and protection of the public? Assertion of the right to free speech of the particular variety that Bloomberg extols seems to be working well for big business even when weighed against public protection, safety health and welfare. Bloomberg, L.P. was among the companies that aligned itself with Big Pharma asserting the free speech rights of the drug companies to overturn Vermont’s law that was to keep doctors’ prescription records confidential to prevent the doctors from being marketed to with that information. The law got overturned. So, in this regard maybe Bloomberg is a champion of First Amendment free speech rights. But free speech for the rest of us? (See: A Fight Over How Drugs Are Pitched, by Natasha Singer, April 24, 2011.)

Miscellany of Legal Cases and Disputes Involving Bloomberg and Free Speech

As should be expected, you can find in the Times for the period that Bloomberg has been in office a very long list of stories about all the lawsuits, issues and disputes involving the city and Bloomberg as mayor, many of which would inevitably come up no matter who was in office (things like what city employees can say and to whom). None of these stories is individually that important or nor probably determinative in providing insight with respect to Bloomberg as a potential defender of free speech rights. Collectively, you can note that more or less across the board in all these stories the Bloomberg administration is on the opposing side of free speech rights. A certain amount of this is to be expected.

You are welcome to comb these links as I have done already. You won’t find anything in them that would cause one to believe that Bloomberg is a defender of “free speech.” You are likely to find a number that cause you to think otherwise and, depending where you draw your own personal lines with respect to the right to free speech, the number may be greater. They involve things like: artists and book vendors being kicked out of public parks, union disputes over “exorbitant” fines on transit workers who walk out, whether a coalition to stop school closings can protest outside the mayor’s residence, whether artists can carry all their art supplies on the subway, how stingy or not the city can be in “credentialing” those who they wish to treat as having journalist privileges, how tightly shops that sell sexually oriented material can be regulated, shutting down a controversial art exhibit, restrictions on street begging, restrictions on street boxes to dispense newspapers, etc.

• Judge Blocks City’s Crisis Pregnancy Center Law
By David W. Chen, July 13, 2011

• July 8, 2010, Artists Challenge City’s Limit on Vendors
By Javier C. Hernandez

• Metro Briefing | New York: Manhattan: Transit Union Sues City
By Sewell Chan (NYT); Compiled by John Sullivan, November 24, 2005

• Manhattan: Principal of Arabic School Sues City
By Jennifer Medina, November 20, 2007

• Metro Briefing | New York: Queens: Rehiring Ordered In Blackface Case
By Julia Preston (NYT); Compiled by George James, December 1, 2004

• November 23, 2009, Artist Arrested for 42nd Time, This Time on the High Line
By Jennifer 8. Lee

• Hearing on Limits for Vendors Gets Creative Response
By Javier C. Hernandez, April 23, 2010

• January 15, 2010, Protesters Win Right to March Outside Mayor’s House
By Sharon Otterman

• Federal Panel Finds Bias in Ouster of Principal
By Andrea Elliott, March 12, 2010

• NYC: Labeled by Their Own Markers
By Clyde Haberman, April 28, 2006

• November 12, 2008, N.Y.P.D. Is Sued Over Denial of Press Credentials
By Sewell Chan

• Judges Back New York City's Effort to Curb Sex Shops
By Sabrina Tavernise, April 13, 2005

• Comments on TV Are Issue in Police Captain's Conduct
By Al Baker, February 22, 2006

• Brooklyn Art Exhibition Comes Down Amid Protest
By Randy Kennedy and Janon Fisher, May 9, 2006

• Judge Orders End to Arrest of Beggars
By Jim Dwyer, June 11, 2005

• Neighborhood Report: New York up Close; News Box Law Walks a Line Between First Amendment and Public Safety
By Erika Kinetz, August 25, 2002

2006 Bloomberg Says Criticizing Government Is Patriotic: Say Again?

Is the Times record totally devoid of Bloomberg statements that promote the idea of free speech in the traditional sense? No. I found one story (but only one) where Bloomberg sounds almost exactly like the protesters of Occupy Wall Street. He made the statement in question when he was lobbying the Bush administration for a greater share of Department of Homeland Security aid. That money is often spent on security measures that make citizens feel more constricted with respect to their civil liberties. The remark was made in 2006 when the Bush administration was very unpopular in New York. Also, from a variety of stories in the Times at the time it looks as if Bloomberg may have wanted in 2006, with there being a safe remove in time from memories of the 2004 Republican convention, to rehabilitate the way he was perceived on the issue of free speech. Bloomberg said:

"There is nothing — absolutely nothing — wrong with criticizing our government, on any topic, and challenging it to live up to the democratic ideals."

The mayor added: "It is not unpatriotic; in fact, what could be more patriotic?"

(See: Bloomberg Denounces the Pressure Not to Question Leaders, by Winnie Hu, June 11, 2006.)

That's All The Grey Lady Wrote. . .

All of the forgoing is what a review of Times’ own reporting of Bloomberg’s history reveals when it comes to free speech. So where is the record that justifies the recent reports in the New York Times furnished in connection with the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters that Bloomberg, notwithstanding the protesters' eviction, is confirmed, in any way, to be more than moderate or minimal supporter of free speech rights? Don’t the all the most important things in the record show the situation to be precisely the contrary?

. . . . Except “Bloomberg now wants to dominate a new sphere — the world of opinion.”

Noting that Bloomberg has no receptivity to the views of Occupy Wall Street and doesn’t think that Occupy Wall Street should be promoting their views in the streets, using street demonstration tactics as their figurative public megaphone, and that Bloomberg apparently also would aver that the Occupy Wall Street protesters should be promoting their views the same way he does, I thought I would leave you with the telling information in this New York Times article:

Over the last year, representatives of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg quietly reached out to a handful of the country’s top journalists with an intriguing job offer: Divine and distill his singular brand of political philosophy and disseminate it around the globe for an annual salary of close to $500,000.

After conquering Wall Street in the 1970s, crushing competitors in the information-technology industry in the ’80s and reigning over New York City politics for the past decade, the ever-ambitious Mr. Bloomberg now wants to dominate a new sphere — the world of opinion.

At the mayor’s urging, his giant media company will soon make a splashy foray into opinion, churning out columns and essays on issues as varied as gun control and deficit spending. At the center: up to two editorials a day that channel the views of Mr. Bloomberg himself.

(March 1, 2011, Morning Buzz | Bloomberg’s New Venture, by Daniel E. Slotnik.)

The article above comes up when you do a search of the Times web site for “Bloomberg” + “free speech” but only because of the coincidence that there is another story reporting about free speech that appears on the same page.

Breaking News: 1:00 AM Bloomberg Moves In To Evict Occupy Wall Street Protesters

2011-11-15T07:15:00.000-08:00

(Above, a picture of Mayor Bloomberg’s dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, at Occupy Wall Street, explained here.)

Noticing New York and National Notice usually don’t cover breaking news. A breaking news focus doesn’t readily permit the kind of considered contextual articles that seem to be the most valuable addition that can be made to the prevalent media chatter. This article will make this exception to cover important breaking news.

Bloomberg reportedly had the New York Police Department move in at 1:00 AM last night (without warning) to remove the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zucotti Park. According to one of the protesters who was there, interviewed on the BBC, the police moved in with knives to cut up and shred the property at the encampment. Reportedly about 70 protesters were arrested. (Another report said 200.) On the BBC you can hear protesters chanting to the police: “Who do you serve: Who do you protect?” and “Shame on you.” You can also hear, “Don’t push me.”

The dispersed protesters are now reassembling at a number of other nearby city sites. There were reports that Bloomberg closed down subway stations to divert the public away from the area.

Bloomberg seems to have chosen his time to evict the protesters so as to fold it in into reports of attempted evictions occurring elsewhere in the country. So it will be less noticed? So, with the help of a short public memory, it will hopefully disappear after a quick run through the 24- hour news cycle?

Bloomberg held a press conference this morning to explain his actions. Most notable in the press conference from standpoint of what Noticing New York and National Notice have previously reported were the following:

• Bloomberg cited health and safety reasons (not suppression of the protesters speech) as the principal reason for removing the protesters. In doing so he gave what I believe were inaccurate (and to my mind manufactured) descriptions of the conditions in Zucotti Park. The many times I have been to Zucotti Park while the protesters were there I never found or felt it was unsafe. I never found that it was difficult to enter or use the park except for the impediments in doing so that came from police barricades and sometimes from shoulder to shoulder police. I did not note that the many elderly choosing to be in the park seemed to feel any concern about their safety. A paralyzed protester in an expensive wheelchair and on a breathing apparatus also did not seem in the least perturbed about his safety. Why did Bloomberg feel it necessary to stress multiple mischaracterizations in this regard during his press conference? Why bother to say things like “there were reports of. . [insert inflammatory thing that didn’t happen] . . . but the police could find no evidence of this”?

• Bloomberg also said several times that the protesters had to be removed because they were violating Brookfield’s property rights. That’s something already written about by Noticing New York and National Notice. Brookfield is the theoretical owner of Zucotti Park. Zucotti Park is the kind of quasi-public space we now see replacing and substituting what used clearly to be public space. So Bloomberg is making the case that Brookfield’s ownership private rights were an operative factor justifying constriction of the protesters’ rights to free speech and free assembly. The argument that free speech violates property rights is increasingly easy as the skewing of wealth in this country to the 1% conjoins with a rapid and continuing privatization of what was previously public.

• Bloomberg was very clear that going forward he (together with Brookfield) intends to be in control of exactly how he wants the protesters to exercise their free speech rights in Zucotti Park. He said this will extend to the police searching people entering Zucotti Park, randomly or as the police see fit.

• Bloomberg said that he did not believe that the protesters were exercising their free speech rights. At the same time Bloomberg has been working to have the press report repeatedly that he is a strong believer in “free speech.” Again, one theme of Bloomberg’s press conference was that he is willing to tell the protesters how they may and should express themselves.

• At one point during the press conference Bloomberg mocked the strength of Occupy Wall Streeters’ ideas and their inability to get their ideas out in other ways. Some of their ideas are that a 1% Club, of which Bloomberg (who became the city’s wealthiest man while mayor) is conspicuously a member, exercise too much control in this country. That most certainly extends to control over who gets to say what and where and with what kind of amplification by the media and with what kind of assistance by paid advertising.

• In the press conference Bloomberg said that throughout the crisis he had been in constant contact with Brookfield Properties. This was despite the fact that earlier in the coverage of Occupy Wall Street the Bloomberg’s administration had prevailed upon the New York Times to report that Bloomberg’s staff was under “strict orders from Mr. Bloomberg” not to “lobby the owner of the park, Brookfield Office Properties.” I did not hear anyone at that press conference ask Mr. Bloomberg about the fact that his live-in girlfriend companion, Diana Taylor, is on the board of Brookfield.

Informative background with respect to much of the above is available in an earlier and thorough Noticing New York article written about Bloomberg’s intention to evict the protesters back on October 13th: Saturday, October 22, 2011, Occupy Wall Street and the Banks- Messages From Bonnie & Clyde, “They’ve Got Too Much Money”: Ownership of the Public Forum by the Wealthy?

(Above, another picture of Mayor Bloomberg’s dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, at Occupy Wall Street, explained here.)

Damned If You . . . WHAT? Deep Doo Doo (or Don’t Don’t) Questions For Whistleblowers: Does All It Hinge On Private vs Public Sector Employment?

2011-11-11T22:25:00.000-08:00

(Picture of fired Penn State football coach Joe Paterno above from Wikipedia.)

From the world of football to the world of politics, that's where we are going, but we are not going to be talking sports metaphors applied to politics. . . The topic by which we will make our segue is very real world: the duties of of whistleblowers . . . . How they may be punished for what they do or, as the case may be, don't do.

A lot of eyes are going to be on the Penn State football game that is being played today.

In the Penn: Trouble For What You Don't Do

The Penn State sexual abuse of young minors scandal presents an interesting question now that it has resulted in the firing of the university’s football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier. Without getting unduly specific about the unattractive details of the allegations with respect to Jerry Sandusky it is interesting to note that some think that the fired Paterno did nothing wrong.

That’s what's said in this high Google-ranking letter to the editor taking issue with a Star Ledger editorial:

In your editorial “Paterno must go” (Nov. 8), you say he should have called the police. Why? . . .

Yes, it was his duty to pass on what he had learned, but not his job to call the cops. . . .

Paterno did the right thing by notifying superiors. To do otherwise would be overstepping his authority.

(See: Joe Paterno fired? He did no wrong, Friday, November 11, 2011, Letters to the Editor/The Star-Ledger.)

The original editorial the letter was responding to was of exactly the opposite opinion as to whether simply reporting illegal conduct internally to superiors was sufficient rather than reporting it externally to those who will actually do something about it:

Paterno acknowledges being told about one of the alleged assaults, but instead of calling police and turning in his friend in 2002, Paterno allowed athletic director Tim Curley to handle the matter. Curley is one of two school officials charged with covering it up. Both have stepped down.

* * * *

Paterno insists, “I did what I was supposed to do,” by handing off to Curley, but Paterno did only the minimum the law required. Telling Curley doesn’t absolve Paterno from a moral obligation. He should’ve taken action himself.

(See: Joe Paterno must step down after Penn State child sex abuse revelations, Tuesday, November 08, 2011, Updated: Wednesday, November 09, 2011, By Star-Ledger Editorial Board The Star-Ledger.)

That was before Paterno's firing. The New York Times, after the firing, similarly editorialized that firing Paterno since he “failed to call the police” was justified “because he did not take steps that probably would have ended” very wrong acts. (See, Editorial: Penn State’s Response, November 10, 2011.)

Nonetheless, feelings sympathetic to Paterno and the course of action he took are running strong. There was also something verging on a riot (far surpassing the anything Manhattan’s Occupy Wall Street protesters have done) as thousands of students took to street to express displeasure over Paterno’s firing. Apparently, the students were also of a mind that Paterno did no wrong by not doing more. (See: Penn State Students Clash With Police in Unrest After Announcement, by Nate Schweber, November 10, 2011.)

The New York Times ran a whole article, a long one, focusing on exactly what Parterno did and didn't do:

Paterno, according to the prosecutors, did not call the police. Instead, the next day, he had the university’s athletic director visit him at his home, a modest ranch house just off campus in State College. According to prosecutors, Paterno told the athletic director of the report regarding the former coach, Jerry Sandusky.

* * * *

[Quoting Paterno’s son, Scott] “The appropriate people were contacted by Joe. That was the chain of command. It was a retired employee and it falls under the university’s auspices, not the football auspices.”

It appears prosecutors believe that Paterno, whatever his personal sense of obligation to inquire or act further, met his legal requirement in reporting the graduate student’s allegation to his direct superior, Curley.

Under state law, if a staff member at a school makes a report of possible sexual abuse of a child, it is the responsibility of “the person in charge of the school or institution” to make a report to the state’s Department of Public Welfare.

But the people up the chain of command, including Spanier, didn’t make that required “report to child welfare authorities.” (See: In Sexual Abuse Case, a Focus on How Paterno Reacted, Doug Mills/The New York Times, by Mark Viera, November 6, 2011.)

The Central Whistleblowing Issue: What Follow-up Can You Expect When Reporting Misconduct?

The Times article says that a dean emeritus of the school, Nicholas P. Cafardi, who it describes as a “professor of law at Duquesne University School of Law and an expert on the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal” said that Paterno “had reason to expect that others would do their jobs.”

Really? Paterno “had reason to expect that others would do their jobs”? How can someone be an “expert on the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal” and think that when whistleblowers report misconduct of this sort within an organization that those in charge of an organization can, without question, be expected to do their jobs?

This goes to the crux of the most central issue when it comes to Whistleblowing: When you only report things internally within an organization where improper conduct is occurring can you truly expect that others will do their jobs or should it be your personal duty to report it externally? Parterno was fired because, in retrospect, it was considered clear that he should have reported the incident, at least eventually, externally to those would take effective action. This is the standard the university and the the editorializing newspapers are applying even though, as the story is being told, Paterno did not personally investigate to ascertain the truth of the allegation.

Now (and here is our promised segue), compare the dismissal of Paterno and university president Spanier* for what they didn’t do with the punishment of whistleblowers working in the government for what they did do.

(* As well as the additional Penn State employees who are losing their jobs.)

Two Roads Diverge In a Wood

Granted, it may be that whistleblowers are invariably faced by a dilemma: damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Even if it is not an absolute Morton’s Fork decision, it is easy to understand that the position in which whistleblowers find themselves is almost always going to be uncomfortable, but is there a distinction when it comes to private sector whistleblowers versus whistleblowers working for the government. Maybe the former are more likely to be damned if they don’t while the latter will be damned if they do. Do you think?

I began mulling this over because at the same time I was listening to stories about the Paterno and Spanier dismissals I was recalling what was said on a recent Leonard Lopate broadcast discussing the fate of whistleblowers in the government sector. Lopate was talking with constitutional and civil rights litigation lawyer Glenn Greenwald and the observation was that, when it comes to government, unlike what happened to Mr. Paterno, whistleblowers are most likely to be damned for what they DO rather than for what they DON"T DO, if and when they take effective action to report misconduct.

The Path That Government Wants Not Taken: Whistleblowing

At about 6:45 minutes into the program Greenwald and Lopate were discussing the Bush administration’s warrantless spying on Americans that was a clear violation of the FISA law enacted by Congress:

GREENWALD: Interestingly, nobody has ever been indicted. The only person who paid any price is this individual Thomas Tamm who was the mid-level Justice Department lawyer who found out that this law was being broken, picked up the phone and called Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times. He lost his job over it. He had no money to hire a lawyer. He went bankrupt and had all kinds of problems. Only the one who exposed the crimes suffered. The criminals themselves suffered none.

LOPATE: Is that often the case?: The whistelblower is the one who winds up paying the biggest price?

GREENWALD: Sure. And then if you look at what the Obama administration is doing now with how it is arguing that the Bush torture regime should not be held accountable under the law, that the warrantless eavesdropping program shouldn’t be, that even the private sector crimes that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis shouldn’t be. The argument they make is that it is more important to look forwards, not backwards. But again, if that were applied across the board, even to the margin lines, then you could have a debate about it but it wouldn’t offend the rule of law principles,* but the Obama administration is on an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, to punish the people who expose government criminality but not the criminals themselves . . . . .

(* We will get to Greenwald’s “rule of law” concern in a moment. Essentially it relates to his thesis that there are different legal standards now being applied to the elite 1%, as opposed to the other 99% of the country.)

At this point there was a brief discussion of the situation of Sergeant Bradley Manning, a distinguishable situation because, whatever higher moral imperatives people think may apply, Manning probably violated the law when he leaked classified information to Wikileaks. But Manning’s initial extraordinarily harsh and unusual Obama administration-imposed detention conditions were brought up with Greenwald commenting that the Obama administration was:

. . . sending a signal to say, `if you also learn of things that we have done in secret that are high-level law breaking, you should think twice about whether you will expose it because look at what we have done to Bradley Manning.

The Greenwald/Lopate discussion proceeded to focus specifically on concern analogous to what happened with Paterno:

LOPATE: But whistleblowers have all sorts of protections under the law. How come they don’t always apply? I don’t mean Bradley Manning (he may very well have criminally leaked things), but the whistleblower who revealed unwarranted wiretaps, I would think that he would have been protected.

GREENWALD: But he wasn’t, and that was Thomas Tamm who was criminally investigated. And the reason is that they have protections IF they invoke an internal procedure within the government, so they go to their boss, or they go to an investigative agency within that department, but that goes nowhere; those are always whitewashes. So leaking to the media which is the traditional way in which we learn about important aspects of criminality, that does not have any whistleblower protection.

At the very end of the broadcast segment (at about 29:300 Lopate and Greenwald had one more exchange of crucial relevance:

LOPATE: Now, Haven’t things like Wikileaks enabled citizens to know more about wrong doing? It looks now like Wikileaks might finally be destroyed.

GREENWALD: Well, those two thoughts go together perfectly: I mean, when somebody steps up and actually exposes what the government is doing then they become an enemy of the state.

A Distinction Explained By A Government/Private Sector Dichotomy?

So, do you think? Do you think there is a distinction when it comes to private sector whistleblowers versus whistleblowers working for the government as to judgements whether they will get in trouble for reporting misconduct externally or not reporting it externally to those who will take effective action?*

(* It is acknowledged that Paterno was expected to report organizational misconduct to the police, which is to law enforcement, while Tamm reported organizational misconduct to the New York Times, which is only a media organization; but in purely practical terms because of government structure there was no effective course of action for Tamm to take in reporting the misconducts except to go to the press.)

At one point in the Greenwald/Lopate discussion Greenwald explained that “crimes committed in [government] office” are not viewed as “real crimes.” If that’s true, and it probably is, it would sufficiently support the distinction we are making with respect to government vs. private sector whistleblowers and we might leave it at that . . .

Maybe Not

. . . But that would be unfair to Mr. Greenwald because he has some broader observations that account for what is happening and as I have said before they are scary, even scarier than what we have just discussed.

This is Mr. Greenwald’s “rule of law” point. Mr. Greenwald theorizes that we have been on a downward slope since the pardon of Richard Nixon and that there is now an elite club, essentially the 1% Club, that expects to behave with impunity while for the rest of us other standards apply. He suggests that “leniency,” the non-application of the “rule of law,” is something we see “only among the powerful.” As for the rest of us? Greenwald offers startling statistics: The United States has 5% of the world population and yet 25% of the prison population worldwide is in US.

Glenn Greenwald is the author of “With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful.”

Here is a link and WNYC summary of the Leonard Lopate segment and you may click below to listen to it:

Glenn Greenwald on Our Justice System
Monday, November 07, 2011

Glenn Greenwald argues that, over the past four decades, the principle of equality before the law has been replaced with a two-tiered system of justice—the country's political and financial class is virtually immune from prosecution, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in greater numbers than in any other country in the world. With Liberty and Justice for Some reveals the mechanisms that have come to shield the elite from accountability. He shows how the media, both political parties, and the courts have abetted a process that has produced torture, war crimes, domestic spying, and financial fraud.

Another Explanation: Government By and For the Elite

Does this bigger picture of Greenwald’s throw into a cocked hat our observation about different treatment specifically intended to discourage whistleblowers in government? No, because Greenwald has another observation: The 1% Club has essentially become the government. Greenwald referred in his discussion with Lopate to an Atlantic Magazine article “The Quiet Coup” by Simon Johnson (May 2009), which made the case that a financial oligarchy has taken control of the government. Greenwald also points out that the press is no longer the bulwark against the absence of the rule of law it might once have been considered to be. That is because the media class, now consisting of highly paid employees of large media corporations who are no longer outsiders and instead identify with the elite, now defend this exclusive leniency for the 1%.

There you go: How’s that for kicking the football all the way into the realm of politics?

Post Script Thoughts:

• It is worth noting a couple of things about the warrantless wiretapping that violated the FISA law:
• As pointed out infrequently (if ever) except as was noted by Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu in his book “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires,” the phone companies were assisting the Bush administration to violate the law at the same time they had pending before the Bush administration approvals they wanted for the reunification of much of the original phone company monopoly.

• The failure to prosecute administration and phone company officials for breaking the law was also due to the passage of the telecom immunity act which unprecedentedly gave retroactive immunity for past criminal acts.
• For those National Notice readers who have difficulty thinking objectively and unemotionally when it comes to topics like Wikileaks and Bradley Manning that circumnavigate the issue of national security it is worth remembering that the issues of concern discussed here relate to all government conduct. Listening to the Lopate/Greenwald segment you will hear the discussion taken out into broader territory.

Bill Maher Reiterates Theme of Plutocrats Favored By Unlevel Playing Field of "Lobbyists & Suits": Glenn Greenwald Dittos Advantaging Rules For Elite

2011-11-09T20:15:00.000-08:00

Regarding the above headline, Maher didn’t say “plutocrats”; first he said the “right wing” and a week later he said “Republicans” but each time he was clearly referring to the 1% Club, that elite group that is specially advantaged by rules by which they want the rest of us to play, rules setting up contests they expect always to win, because as Maher says, those contests are played with “lobbyists and suits” and they have all of the “lobbyists and suits” on THEIR side.

As Rachel Maddow observed, this means the elite can ignore the 99%.

(Bill Maher, above, on the first show where he commented on futility of the plutocratically-preferred processes.)

The first time Maher ventured this thesis to explain way the 1% Club so desperately objects to the rule-changing presence of the Occupy Wall Street 99 percenters in the streets, I wrote about it in National Notice, including exactly what Maher said: Wednesday, October 26, 2011, Bill Maher: Right Wing, Wanting It THEIR Way, Yearns To Get Occupy Wall Street On THEIR Unlevel Playing Field of Lobbyists and Suits.

One week later, on his next “Real Time” edition, Maher returned to the topic of how the 1% Club craves rules that render futile for the rest of us the forms of participatory democracy into which we are conventionally channeled. I wrote about his doing so in one of two Noticing New York articles that translated how Maher’s thesis applies to the futility of public hearings in New York City for big real estate projects when those projects are handing out enormous benefit at the expense of the public to politically connected developers through heavy use of of subsidies and frequent abuse of eminent domain. (See: Wednesday, November 2, 2011, Big Politically-Connected Real Estate Projects: Ignoring The Public Majority With Futile “Participatory Democracy” Hearing Process? and Tuesday, November 8, 2011, Public Hearings For Big Real Estate Projects: Refining Your Sense of the Absurd.)

In the first of those two Noticing New York articles (linked above) I covered Maher's updating remarks about his thesis from that second show:

My point I was trying to make last week is that the Republicans don’t want them in the streets, the people, because they would like them to fight the way THEY fight, with lobbyists, where they will lose.

* * * *

When the original Red Coats. . . didn’t like it when George Washington and his troops were fighting behind trees, you know, not fighting in a straight line with red coats where they can be SHOT– It’s the same thing with these people. They’re not fighting FAIR in the way they will LOSE by going to Washington and getting a lobbyist: They’re in the streets! It’s the same way you guys are all saying about Obama, “Oh, he’s out campaigning. He’s not governing!” Yeah, he’s not sitting in Washington giving you guys bills that you’ll crumple up and throw away. He’s taking his case to the people. Is there something wrong if you are not winning with one tactic . . . . Is it so wrong to try the other tactic where you might be able to WIN?

(Above, Maher the seconds Friday night with Ron Christie reacting to his remarks.)

In that same Noticing New York piece I mentioned the very similar sentiments expressed by Chris Hedges when he was discussing Occupy Wall Street on an edition (October 24) of Charlie Rose where he and Amy Goodman were guests. (A link to the video of that discussion is available on the Noticing New York post) Hedges, described a world where it “doesn’t matter what the citizens think,” where what Goldman Sachs wants, Goldman Sachs gets because, as a practical matter: “There is no way to vote against the interest of Goldman Sachs.” Maybe you can vote as a technical matter but if you do “vote against the interest of Goldman Sachs” your vote will simply be ignored because, as Bill Maher might analyze it, your vote doesn’t count in a system where “the other side has all the lobbyists and all the suits.”

In the second of those two Noticing New York articles where I wrote about public process and big real estate projects in New York discussing the absence of the rule of law for the elite, spurred me to bring up Glenn Greenwald’s thinking:

There is a theory, a rather frightening one, that there is now a club, a political and financial class, that is above the law. I heard this theory propounded by Glenn Greenwald, the author of “With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful” on a Leonard Lopate show segment yesterday.

Mr. Greenwald theorizes that we have been on a downward slope since the pardon of Richard Nixon and that there is now a elite club that expects to behave with impunity. He was utterly too convincing in the case he made. I hope it’s not true.

Here is a link and WNYC summary of the segment and you may click below to listen to it:
Glenn Greenwald on Our Justice System
Monday, November 07, 2011

Glenn Greenwald argues that, over the past four decades, the principle of equality before the law has been replaced with a two-tiered system of justice—the country's political and financial class is virtually immune from prosecution, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in greater numbers than in any other country in the world. With Liberty and Justice for Some reveals the mechanisms that have come to shield the elite from accountability. He shows how the media, both political parties, and the courts have abetted a process that has produced torture, war crimes, domestic spying, and financial fraud.

Maybe Mr. Greenwald should appear as a guest on one of Bill Maher’s upcoming shows. It sounds like there is a lot they could flesh out on the topic of the tailoring or rules specially benefit the 1% Club and equipping them with impunity at the expense of the rest of us.

Is it just fringe thinkers who believe this kind of special rules inequality has gotten entirely out of hand? My thoughts were picked up by a post on Norman Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report site comparing this to hot-off-the presses editorial in the Wall Street Journal. Said the Wall Street Journal in its editorial:

As important as this economic damage is [from corporate welfare/crony capitalism] the corrosive effect that corporate welfare has on public trust in government. Americans understand that powerful government invariably favors the powerful, who have the means and access to massage Congress and the bureaucracy that average citizens do not. This really is aid to the 1% paid by the other 99%.

(See: Tuesday, November 08, 2011, Catching up: WSJ on corporate welfare, Noticing New York on the connection between public hearings and the lack of public trust.)

The Journal’s editorial headlined “The Corporate Welfare State: A cause to unite the tea party and the Occupy Wall Street crowd” and beginning:

The Occupy Wall Street protesters aren't good at articulating what they want, but one of their demands is "end corporate welfare." Well, welcome aboard. Some of us have been fighting crony capitalism for decades, and it's good to have new allies if liberals have awakened to the dangers of the corporate welfare state.

Corporate welfare is the offer of special favors—cash grants, loans, guarantees, bailouts and special tax breaks—to specific industries or firms.

. . . You’ll have to be a paying Journal subscriber to read more. . . Sounds a lot like National Notice, Noticing New York (and NPR) as written here:

Monday, October 24, 2011
On NPR, Echo of Coinciding Principles Noticed: What the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Ought To Agree On

and here:

Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Opposition To Crony Capitalism As Uniting Cause: Resource-Grabbing Mega-Monopolies (Like Atlantic Yards) As Catalyst For Great Recessions/Depressions

When the “Wall Street Journal” begins to sound like the “Occupy Wall Street Journal” maybe Occupy Wall Street is having and effect.

Faces of Occupy Wall Street: A Wonderful Site For Wonderful Sights

2011-11-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

I have been writing a number of articles about Occupy Wall Street under my "Noticing New York" and "National Notice" banners and much of what I have posted includes relevant photos I've taken of the protesters at New York's Zucotti Park. My own pictures are entirely serviceable but there are photos and then there are photos. I can direct you to a wonderful site for wonderful sights if you would like to see lots of portraits of individual Occupy Wall Street protesters, all of them beautifully done.

I suggest visiting the main page and hitting the "Random" button for one marvelous surprise after another. The picture at the top of this post is an example.

The site I am referring you to is: OWS Faces (We are all here). Repeat: OWS Faces.

Below are links to "Noticing New York" and "National Notice" OWS articles done to date. (You can also hit the "Occupy Wall Street" label that follows this post to pull up any future National Notice OWS posts I do after this one.

If you want to see one of my photos, here is something I snapped today, giving you the idea of what sort of purpose Bloomberg's barricades around the protesters might be serving.

Saturday, October 22, 2011
Occupy Wall Street and the Banks- Messages From Bonnie & Clyde, “They’ve Got Too Much Money”: Ownership of the Public Forum by the Wealthy?

Friday, October 14, 2011
Not THAT Michael White: Visiting Occupy Wall Street and How I Know The Economy Is Bad (For the 99%)

Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Bill Maher: Right Wing, Wanting It THEIR Way, Yearns To Get Occupy Wall Street On THEIR Unlevel Playing Field of Lobbyists and Suits

Sunday, October 23, 2011
On NPR, Echo of Coinciding Principles Noticed: What the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Ought To Agree On

Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Opposition To Crony Capitalism As Uniting Cause: Resource-Grabbing Mega-Monopolies (Like Atlantic Yards) As Catalyst For Great Recessions/Depressions

Sunday, October 16, 2011
Bloomberg’s Increasing Annual Wealth: 1996 to 2011

Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Visiting Occupy Wall Street We Hear “Eliminate the Fed!”: OR Maybe Just Federal Reserve Directors Backing Mega-Monopolies For the Super-Connected?

Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Big Politically-Connected Real Estate Projects: Ignoring The Public Majority With Futile “Participatory Democracy” Hearing Process

HOV Lanes (“High Occupancy Vehicle” Lanes) and Mississippi’s Proposed Constitutional Personhood Amendment

2011-11-08T15:53:00.000-08:00

One of the many uproarious “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episodes features a joke where the Larry David character hires a prostitute so that he will have enough people in his car to use the faster-moving HOV or “High Occupancy Vehicle” Lanes.

This election day one of the matters pending that we shall soon hear about is whether a proposed “personhood amendment” to the Mississippi state constitution will pass. The amendment, a “right to life” initiative, declares a fertilized egg to be a “person.” If it passes it will make most of the better forms of birth control illegal in the state. (A tourism problem?) It will also play havoc with how a lot of laws will have to be interpreted. Word is that the amendment might pass. I wonder: Do the people of Mississippi, polled at being about 50/50 on the amendment, know what they are getting themselves into?

Here just one ridiculous question. If the amendment passes will the High Occupancy Vehicle Lane laws in Mississippi have to be rewritten? If they aren’t, how will the police officer who stops someone for using the lane know how many “persons” are in the car?: “But officer, I have a fertilized egg inside me.” What if the woman can claim that she has both an egg inside and a sperm cell she is sure is hellbent on fertilizing that egg?

Maybe the state of Mississippi will decide ii needs to address the need to make such challenging distinctions by pushing back its legal definition for the beginning of life still further. Maybe it will decide that a person exists if there is a man amorously interested in a female companion and they are both in the same car. Maybe, if a man and a woman are together in a car it will be considered a prima facie case for proving “personhood” if the woman has been hired for purposes of prostitution . . .

. . But wait a minute! That’s sort of the opposite of the joke of the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode, where, as memory serves, the joke's whole point depended on the fact that though the Larry David character had hired a prostitute he had absolutely no interest or intention of having sex with her.

By tomorrow morning we should know whether the citizens of Mississippi are going to be dealing with a whole lot of headaches involving interpretation of a whole lot of statutes. We'll also know whether you will need to think about what birth control you are using before you decide to visit the state.

Bill Maher: Right Wing, Wanting It THEIR Way, Yearns To Get Occupy Wall Street On THEIR Unlevel Playing Field of Lobbyists and Suits

2011-10-26T12:16:00.000-07:00

(Above, Bill Maher on his show this week making the statement talked about below.)

Messages Needing To Break Through: Private Companies Keeping Public’s Solutions Off the Table

Right near the end of this week’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, at about the 45 minute mark, Rachel Maddow was talking about how there was no mystery to the fact that “so many common sense solutions, not very partisan solutions” to America’s problems were “off the table” because one or another “big business wants them off the table” “precluding these serious issues from getting traction.” (“Crony capitalism” ?)

Thomas Friedman, who in the discussion had just identified a set of issues such as a possible carbon tax (i.e. fossil fuels tax) that are vexingly “off the table” thereupon asked how “we the people” can, “leverage our energy to take these people on,” saying with exasperation that this was what he was “hungry for” right now.

That’s when Maher ventured his insight that the right wing wants Occupy Wall Street to resort to more routine and conventional forms of opposition because, if they do, those with the money will have them outgunned so that the Occupy Wall Street crowd will lose. Maher’s words:

When I see these Occupy Wall Street folks and I hear the right wing say `Humph, these people down there with their dirty, filthy. . pissing in the street’ and, you know all this stuff. It’s like, you know what?: They want them, to do it THEIR WAY. They don’t want them in the streets. They’re saying `come inside, put on a suit and get a lobbyist instead, because that way, `we know you’ll lose.’ . . .

. . . This is the only other way to get power when the other side has all the lobbyists and all the suits.

Maddow, commenting on what makes street demonstrations effective, said that demonstrations were designed to be “inconvenient” and “in the way” so they won’t be ignored.

Touré (the MSNBC correspondent and one-name author of “Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?”) commented that inconvenience to the protesters themselves was also key because by expressing the “depth of their commitment” it gave their actions power.

Apparently concurring, Maher said about the value of the particularity of this Freedom of Assembly tactic that:

The only thing that impresses the other side is willingness to stay in the street.

With Privatization Public Expression Becomes an Option “Off the Table”

These observations accord with the key points of a Noticing New York article I posted this week about Occupy Wall Street’s free speech and how it had been effective in breaking through with its message by physically occupying the Zucotti Park space. I quoted Michael Kimmelman, the new architecture critic of The New York Times, that, “we tend to underestimate the political power of physical places” and that the power of various media aside, “nothing replaces people taking to the streets.”

I further noted that as Occupy Wall Street has been achieving surprising success in transmitting its message to a receptive public Mayor Bloomberg has reacted by redefining what he originally described as free speech as something that he no longer wants qualified as such, or to accept. It seems that pro-Wall Street Bloomberg, much as Bill Maher aptly described, would like Occupy Wall Street compelled to communicate more conventionally, on more Bloombergian terms, in which case it is doubtful its message would be getting through as effectively.

Bloomberg already has formidable potential tools at his command to bring about what he wants in terms of breaking up a ‘real estate’ insurrection: His live-in girlfriend is on the board of the private company that owns the `public’ space of Zucotti Park, and Bloomberg is very entwined with the developers of the Real Estate Board of New York who are now seeking to change the law retroactively to evict the OWS protesters.

All of this is especially important, because meaningful free speech, the ability to actually break through with a message is being increasingly threatened with new, historically unfamiliar constraints. Free speech is threatened by an escalating privatization of that which used always to be public. As I wrote, privatization of the streets and parks (real estate) is coming up as an issue right now with Occupy Wall Street but there is also the broader background issue of privatization of the basic elements and channels of speech, via unprecedented restrictions imposed by copyright and through ownership of monopoly media and airwaves. We are even having to fend off pending schemes to privatize ownership of the Internet. And the implications of such privatization for political expression are all the more bleak considering the way in which the nation’s wealth and resources are being ever increasingly skewed to the wealthy.

People publicly “taking to the streets,” is a great leveler to get popularly supported messages through. But when you take on the plutocrats, as Bill Maher suggests, those plutocrats are going to try to convince you to do so on their home playing field, an unlevel one, where you will lose because they have “all the lobbyists and all the suits.” In a world where everything is rapidly being privatized you need “lobbyists” and “suits” to express yourself, unless you resort to “taking the streets.” But, in New York City, that option too is fast being precluded to by the privatizing of previously public space: streets, sidewalks and parks. If Bloomberg and the New York City real estate oligarchs have it their way it may soon be that to demonstrate in what used to be public space you will need your own private army of lobbyists and suits.

I said a lot more about this in my Noticing New York article on the subject: Saturday, October 22, 2011, Occupy Wall Street and the Banks- Messages From Bonnie & Clyde, “They’ve Got Too Much Money”: Ownership of the Public Forum by the Wealthy?

If you read it you will also gain an appreciation (also explained here) for why the picture below depicts Mayor Bloomberg’s dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, joining the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

On NPR, Echo of Coinciding Principles Noticed: What the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Ought To Agree On

2011-10-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

(Above, Mayor Bloomberg’s dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, at Occupy Wall Street?- Keep reading.)

On Saturday I had just posted a Noticing New York article, almost a treatise, about Occupy Wall Street and how it is confronting the subtractions of free speech flowing from Occupied Wall Street’s declared bane, the increasingly unfair effects of concentration of wealth in this country. In that article I had commented briefly:

Objection to the teaming up of government and monopoly should be common ground for both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street activists although I suspect that the proportion of Occupy Wall Street protesters astute enough to realize this may be greater.

(See: Saturday, October 22, 2011, Occupy Wall Street and the Banks- Messages From Bonnie & Clyde, “They’ve Got Too Much Money”: Ownership of the Public Forum by the Wealthy?)

The post was hardly up when I heard much the same point made in a very good eleven-minute “All Things Considered” story about what the Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party have and ought to have in common: Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party: United In Distrust, by NPR Staff, October 22, 2011. (I went back to add a link to it in the article I already had up.) This point, perhaps the strongest part of the story, was in NPR’s audio version of the story (not the written article accompanying it), transcript now available. It is an exchange between All Things Considered host Guy Raz and Harvard professor and activist Lawrence Lessig:

RAZ: In some ways, the Tea Party was a response to the perceived growth and power of government. And, of course, Occupy Wall Street is a response to the perceived growth and power of corporate America. Are those incompatible ideas?

LESSIG: No, they're not. Because whether you are upset about the size of government or the size of corporations, one thing everybody should be upset about is when corporations use their power to corrupt the government, to reinforce their size and their influence. A critical change in the way in which we've seen America become much more unequal was driven by changes in public policy that was driven itself by the kind of influence that my book [“Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It”] is trying to attack.

So whether, again, you like big corporations or you like capitalism, you and the right cannot possibly defend crony capitalism. And that's why Cato Institute and every single credible principled right-wing organization or libertarian organization or conservative organization has historically fought that kind of corruption.

The whole story is worth listening to. This exchange occurs at about minute 8:00 if you click below.

Professor Lessig's book suggests one solution he thinks would help: campaign finance reform. Whether or not that would be easy, given such things as free speech issues, it is worth thinking about. Lessig points out that all the money for the nation's political campaigns comes from .5% of the population which means that it is really the .5% vs. the 99.5% that Occupy Wall Street ought to be talking about.

Coinciding Principles Noticed Before

I have been making the point of this obvious common ground for some time now. For instance here:

Noticing New York Philosophy

Where does Noticing New York stand on the political spectrum? Noticing New York attempts to apply both conservative and liberal tests of what good government should be. They overlap a great deal more than is generally acknowledged. Conservatives may fear big government and liberals may fear big business, but these days the preeminent problem both should unite to oppose is the collusion of big government to give big business the edge

(See: Wednesday, March 23, 2011, Whither the New York Times? Noticing New York Comment Respecting a Manhattan Institute Sponsored Debate.)

And here:

The New York Times is often referred to as a “liberal” or “liberal establishment” newspaper. I think that is inaccurate. I think the Times is more a quasi-Democrat-establishment paper. To me, true liberals have more in common with libertarians than is often acknowledged. The Democratic establishment and the Times have assimilated predilections to unfairly support big business at the expense of the rights of individuals and local communities that ought to be protected. This doesn’t make them different from Republicans: mostly it makes them more like them.

A Voice on Eminent Domain

The city needs voices to speak out for "limited government, individual liberty, constitutional fundamentals” and those voices should be speaking out against eminent domain abuse as a foremost concern.

(See: Thursday, September 11, 2008, If the Sun Sets.)

And here:

Even though or despite the fact that the Atlantic Yards area was, through natural economic processes, attracting substantial economic capital and creating million dollar co-ops and condos, Atlantic Yards is a supreme example of something with so many bad economic equations it would never happen except for public subsidy. That subsidy is overriding private enterprise in a huge way that ought to be offensive to conservative and liberal thinkers alike.

(Sunday, November 15, 2009, Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #30: Avoidance of Cataclysmic Money? NO.)

An Odd Couple: Like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, More In Common Than They Think

Author and columnist Amity Shlaes, whom most would consider to be at the conservative or libertarian end of the political spectrum was one of the principles involved in running the now defunct newspaper the New York Sun written about in the “If the Sun Sets” article linked to above was. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman who writes for the New York times si what many would consider a liberal. Much was made of a supposed feud between Ms. Shlaes and the Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman at a time when you could find at front table of Barnes and Noble new books that each of them had written analyzing Depression economics. Ms. Shlaes’ late 2007 book was “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression”; Krugman’s book, “The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008” came out in 2009 and was a reworking of a 1999 Krugman book.

Each of these books endeavors to inform the reader about where the dangers lurk respecting what can send a country into a downward economic spiral, either an economic depression or a severe recession like the Great Recession we are now experiencing. Ms. Shlaes’ book, which I previously wrote about in a Noticing New York article (Wednesday, February 11, 2009, A Brooklyn Paper Editorial & Atlantic Yards: With Nothing Else Good To Say, We Are Stimulated To Say. . . ), is clearly focused to a large extent on finding fault with the Franklin Roosevelt administration’s handling of the Great Depression. It seeks, if you will, to bust the myth that Roosevelt handled it with aplomb. Krugman, on the other hand, would argue that, in big-picture terms, that the FDR administration acquitted itself well by having government step in to stimulate the economy in a Keynesian way, spending when private enterprise was failing to so.

One thing Shlaes’ book makes clear is just how free rangingly Roosevelt was reaching to experiment as he was trying to address the Depression. While the Milton Friedman/Richard Nixon “We are all Keynesians now” statements of 1966 and 1971 secured in economic convention the importance of Keynesian thinking when Roosevelt was president, that thinking was brand new and everything associated with it just an experiment. Shlaes is clearly preoccupied with the lines that should not be crossed, or are not beneficially crossed, when a subsidizing government steps in to take over enterprises that she thinks should be done independently by the private sector.

Shlaes’ criticisms of the fuzzy cost calculations and empire building associated with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) sound reminiscent of Jane Jacobs’ criticisms of the TVA in her “Cities and the Wealth of Nations,” where Jacobs points out how the TVA (financed with what she describes as capital imported into the region by the government) with the assistance of tricky (government program) “advantageous accounting,” went astray from its original clean, healthy environment and low-cost power goals, once involving hydro-electric power, to provide subsides, ultimately, for uneconomic coal-fired and nuclear plants. Jacobs always endeavored to think freely, refusing to be tagged with political labels such as liberal, conservative, libertarian, Democrat or Republican.

Shlaes’ concepts of the multitudinous things she thinks government should not be spending on may make counter-cyclically Keynesian government spending a greater challenge but oughtn’t to preclude it. That being said, Krugman and Shlaes are both opposed to “crony capitalism.”

Krugman on Crony Capitalism

Krugman brings up the topic using the term a number of times in his “Return of Depression Economics.” For instance, as many are doing these days he compares current problems in the United States to Japan’s crisis of long lasting economic doldrums and says this of the Japanese economy and its “distinctive characteristics” once mistakenly associated with prospects for success (p.60):

Only much later would those same distinctive characteristics– the cozy relationship between government and business, the extension of easy credit by government-guaranteed banks to closely allied companies– come to be labeled crony capitalism and seen as the root of economic malaise.

On page 82 he revisits this in connection with the Asian economic bubble:

What should have been noticed was that he claim that Asian borrowing represented free private-sector decisions was not quite the truth. For Southeast Asia, like Japan in the bubble years, had a moral hazard problem– the problem that woudl soon be dubbed crony capitalism.

This leads in to a description of the necessary job the Asian banks were consequently not doing and why they were not directing “funds to their most profitable uses” (p. 83);

The answer, basically, was political connections– often, indeed the owner of a finance company was a relative of some government official. And so the claim that the decisions about how much to borrow and invest represented private-sector judgments, not to be second-guessed, rang more than a bit hollow.

There is more and the entire book is worth reading.

Bubble Popped on Crony Capitalism

Crony Capitalism makes it possible to go hugely into debt without getting corresponding assets in return. It means that society's investments aren't productive. If you pump money into a country without getting value in return you get a bubble economy* which shouldn't be good for anyone. But if a crony capitalism economy is going to be good for anyone it is probably going to be the cronies in whom such cronyism is concentrating the wealth.

(* Although John Maynard Keynes played speculatively as a mind exercise with the notion of government’s generating economic growth simply by hiring people to dig holes and fill them up again, he pointed out how wastefully nonsensical the notion was, even though it would have a stimulative effect. He did not address the bubble-inflating aspect of such conduct if it is paid for with debt and an expanded money supply. One thing to be wary of: Construction worker unions will support projects that are the conceptual equivalent of digging holes and filling them in again. Example: Atlantic Yards' tearing down of newly renovated top-of-the-market condominiums.)

Shlaes: Find and Reward Success, Not Government Connectedness

Even though Shales never once uses the actual term “crony capitalism” or a variant thereof in her own book, this kind of analysis is quite consistent with the kind of thinking and the many situations she presents with a mind to arguing that there were government practices on the part of the Roosevelt administration that unnecessarily prolonged the Depression, how not everything that was done in the name of lifting the nation out of the Depression was serviceable in doing so and how much of what government did was unwittingly counterproductive.

What Shlaes keeps returning to as her central vision for the kind of workable capitalism for which she argues is establishing a cycle of finding and rewarding economic success, rewarding such success not political connection. Crony capitalism, with its assets that don't produce, is the opposite of that and leads, overall for a country as a whole, to failure. Crony capitalism leads to a downward spiral, a cycle and ever-increasing concentration of power as political connection is rewarded instead.

(For material on the Krugman/Shlaes feud/debate here are some links, although what you will find discussed are their differences not the commonality discussed here. The last two links attempt some reconciliation of their viewpoints: November 19, 2008, 3:22 pm, Amity Shlaes strikes again, By Paul Krugman; Shlaes Back to Krugman, Posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008, by Amity Shlaes, November 29, 2008, Changes in money-wages and Amity Shlaes, Opinion November 29, 2008 The Krugman Recipe for Depression, Massive government spending is no solution to unemployment; The Leonard Lopate Show / December 01, 2008 / Paul Krugman on Depression Economics; Krugman vs. Shlaes — Not A Fair Fight, by Marion Maneker - November 29th, 2008; and My take on the Shlaes/Krugman debate, by Adam T, Sun Nov 30, 2008.)

Common Ground of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party Not Shared By Crony Capitalist Bloomberg

What does the Tea Party think about the fact that they may have common ground with Occupy Wall Street? Well, some Tea Party spokespersons have been commenting that the difference between the Tea Party and Occupy is that te Tea party believes in process and the Constitution and the Occupy Wall Street protesters don’t. Really? Where did that come from? Where that comes from and what Occupy Wall Street protesters think about this and the potential for common ground will have to be the subject for a later article.

As for why there was a picture of Bloomberg’s two Labradors Photoshopped to show them joining the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, two things:

• Occupy Wall Street and the Tea party might have reason in common to oppose crony capitalism but Bloomberg is a man in favor of crony capitalism and practices it

• To read about the way that crony capitalism is concentrating wealth at the top and thereby putting in jeopardy your free speech rights to protest that very fact, (AND what the New York City real estate industry has to do with it), you’ll have to read my above-mentioned Noticing New York article about why Bloomberg’s dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, should perhaps be joining the Occupy Wall Street protesters. (See: Saturday, October 22, 2011, Occupy Wall Street and the Banks- Messages From Bonnie & Clyde, “They’ve Got Too Much Money”: Ownership of the Public Forum by the Wealthy?)

Not THAT Michael White: Visiting Occupy Wall Street and How I Know The Economy Is Bad (For the 99%)

2011-10-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

My first visit to the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Zucotti Park I got to chatting with a reporter from the New York Times. When we concluded, she asked my name and I gave her my card. I cautioned her that if she used my name she would have to put in both my middle initials (D. & D.) between the Michael and the White or nobody would know who I was. There are too many Michael Whites I told her. After all you hardly have to go very far at all to find another one who is also a lawyer and an urban planner. (See: Wednesday, August 13, 2008, Not THAT Michael White.)

In fact, I told her (since we had been speaking a lot about the economy), because there are so many Michael Whites I have my own personal barometer of how bad the economy is now. I am getting a lot of calls. I recognize them right away. Someone on the other end of the line adopts a very firm businesslike tone as they prepare to dun me to pay some other Michael Whites defaulted bills. “Do you have any middle initials for the Michael White you want?” (I always ask the same question.) Sometimes they get feisty and want to know mine first or have me give my Social Security number to them, which I don’t do. These days I get pretty conversational with these guys and give them helpful hints about saving time by not going after the wrong people or getting suckered into pursuing some account that was originally handed off to some other collection agency first. And, I politely convey my hopes that they won’t call back.

I didn’t used to get all these calls. Not when the economy was good. I know from the variety of the middle initials they give me that there sure are a lot of Michael Whites having a tough time these days.

The Times reporter wanted to know if I supported the Occupy Wall Street demonstration. Yes, I pretty much do, I said, although I said I recognized that it was still a relatively inchoate movement working on putting together the messages that they wanted to collectively convey. I made the obvious comparison to the Tea Party but noted that I thought that a key difference was that a lot of money had been poured early on into the Tea Party from above, like from the Koch brothers, to help structure it’s messages. The result was a deflection of popular anger from where it should have gone. I told the reporter that I thought the occupiers of Wall Street are much more on target about who they ought to be angry at.

A few days later Paul Krugman, opening up one of his columns, said exactly what I’d meant and since there is always benefit in quoting a Nobel prize-winning professor of economics when talking about the economy I will use his words:

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.

(See: Confronting the Malefactors, by Paul Krugman, October 6, 2011.)

Krugman’s more recent column about Occupy Wall Street is to the effect that the shrill and disproportionate reaction of the super-rich and their defenders to the protests indicates that they realize that they have something to hide:

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

(See: Panic of the Plutocrats, by Paul Krugman, October 9, 2011.)

I told the reporter that not all that long ago (January 2010) I had been part of luncheon discussion, attended by another Times reporter, with Jonathan Tasini who was then running for the U.S. Senate against Kirsten E. Gillibrand. That discussion was immediately following the specially held Massachusetts Senate election for Ted Kennedy’s former seat that had been unexpectedly won by Tea Party candidate Scott Brown. I explained that we had discussed at that lunch how we understood and appreciated the anger expressed in that race together with our expectation that we would ultimately see anger, having much in common with the Tea Party’s own, that would be expressed on the left and directed where it ought to be directed. (You will remember that the Senate seat now held by Scott Brown is the one that Elizabeth Warren is seeking to reclaim for the Democrats. Brian Lehrer bluntly ventured that Occupy Wall Street is happy with Ms. Warren, and that's a good guess.)

Michael Cooper, the reporter who wrote about the luncheon with candidate Tasini, put in both my middle initials. (See: An Underdog Who Isn’t Daunted by a New Try for the Senate, January 26, 2010, by Michael Cooper, January 19, 2010- BTW: Reporter Michael Cooper has a problem similar to my own: There are a lot of Michael Coopers, including an attorney who was once part of my legal staff.)

I went back and looked at Mr. Cooper’s article when writing this and unfortunately it does not document our prescience as extensively as I might have hoped, although it does refer to Candidate Tasini’s being “persuaded of broad voter furor” and his diagnosis that the loss of the Massachusetts race reflected, “voter contempt for insiders.” The article also noted that Mr. Tasini, “wants a tax on every transaction on Wall Street.” Our antipathy for the infuriating Yankee Stadium boondoggle was also mentioned in the article.

The reporter covering Occupy Wall Street wanted to know if I had demonstrated against anything else recently. I told her I had been there to protest the Prokhorov/Ratner (“Barclays’) basketball arena ground breaking.

“Atlantic Yards,” she said without skipping a beat. “And before that?”

The truth is that I don’t generally think of myself as much of a street protester. Had I thought about it I should have also mentioned my participation in demonstrations against Columbia’s abuse of eminent domain to gain exclusive control of the swath of West Harlem over by the Hudson (in one demonstration we walked over to the home of Lee Bollinger, the very highly paid president of Columbia, much as the OWS folks just marched to the homes of Wealthy Wall Streeters) and on July 26, 2011 I was also outside Governor Cuomo’s New York City office to protest his apparent intent to open up New York to hydraulic fracturing.
“I remember protesting the Vietnam War and the manufacture of napalm,” I told her, my more recent demonstrating not coming immediately to mind. Perhaps the flavor of the occupancy was prompting me to think back to that era. “I tend to be more of a thinker,” I told her, “putting thoughts together.” I held up a Jane Jacobs book I was carrying with me. (I also had material with me about real estate tax policy respecting not for profits).
“There has been a lot of talk recently about how the banks were helped out and permitted to continue during the fiscal crisis because they were `too big to fail’,” I said. “And people point out quite readily that `too big to fail’ ought to mean `to big to exist.’ What no one is mentioning,” I continued, “is that `too big to fail’ may also mean ‘too big to do a good job.’ Jane Jacobs in `The Economy of Cities’ discussed how in order to promote development, growth and innovation in the economy, it is beneficial for financing institutions to be small and intimately connected with their client businesses. Had the banks not been handed a bailout we might have capital diffused among more effective smaller institutions. Instead, we see huge impersonal institutions sitting on a lot of capital they are NOT lending out.”

“Vietnam!” said my interviewer, impressed, and I admitted, when she asked, that I’ll soon be sixty. A few days later, comparison to Vietnam demonstrations came up in Times articles: “Several New Yorkers said that they had not been to a protest since the Vietnam War” (See: Wall St. Protest Attracts Many New to This Sort of Thing, by Cara Buckley, October 5, 2011) and, because Mayor Bloomberg (a target of many OWS placards) referring to protest of that era commented that, “we treated our vets who came back terribly, just terribly,” (See: For Mayor, ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Evokes Protests From Vietnam Era, by Kate Taylor, October 7, 2011) which assertion by Bloomberg ties in with a commonly perpetuated myth on that topic.
Do I believe the same things that the protesters of Occupy Wall Street believe? I do support many of their positions. To a large extent I find that things I have been writing match up well against the placards I see in Zucotti Park. For instance:

• The economy is poor because with greater income inequality most people’s incomes are going down. See: Friday, May 13, 2011, Inflation That's Causing Deflation: Some Not So Very Good News For the Real Estate Market
• It is not true when we are being told that there are problems with Social Security and that benefits will have to be cut back. Instead, the problem about which we we are not being told is that the wealthier are no longer contributing what they were expected to contribute before. See: Friday, April 29, 2011, Social Security Inequation: This is Rich, Living Longer While Everyone Else Enjoys It Less; Putting Two Together

• Congress is NOT doing it’s job and so-called “job creation” efforts are often rigged games intended to benefit the wealthier instead. See: Sunday, March 27, 2011, Congress Not Doing Its Job? Job Creation Programs That Don’t- The American Jobs Creation Act and the EB-5 Program for Sale of Green Cards

• Women need to be more respected. See: Wednesday, June 29, 2011,Women Are Better Than Men At Nearly Everything- But We Are Eliminating Them! The Absence of Women In A Man-Made World

• The tax system needs to be more favorable to the 99% and less to the 1%. See: Tuesday, October 11, 2011, The First Most Obvious Tax To Eliminate If You Want To Increase Employment: The Payroll Tax

• If we are not going to abolish the Fed, we need to at least consider whether the directors who staff it are serving the 99% or the 1%. See: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, Visiting Occupy Wall Street We Hear “Eliminate the Fed!”: OR Maybe Just Federal Reserve Directors Backing Mega-Monopolies For the Super-Connected?
• Government supported monopolies targeted for those who are privileged and politically connected are unconscionable. See: Friday, September 30, 2011, Could the Atlantic Yards Monopoly Be Even Less Regulated Than It Is? Why A Mega-Monopoly Continuation Isn’t Workable
• Many of the placards in Zucotti park decry the rape of the environment via the fossil fuel industry scam of hydrofracking about which I have written encyclopedically. See: Monday, August 8, 2011, Hydraulic Fracturing’s Deleterious Environmental Effects: Andrew Cuomo’s Plan To End His State’s Ban and the Passage of the NYS Marriage Equality Law
• I have also been alert to how the hydrofracking issue is closely related to the proposed development of the Canadian tar sands together with facilitation of that development by building the XL high pressure pipeline. In this regard I have noted parallels between this and other publicly abusive corporate-government alliances. See: Sunday, October 9, 2011, More Parallels: Atlantic Yards and the Way the Fossil Fuel Industry Is Setting Up An Approval For the Keystone XL Tar Sands High Pressure Oil Pipeline and Wednesday, October 5, 2011, Mayor Michael Bloomberg In the Regalia of Queen Elizabeth I? Noticing New York’s Testimony at the DOT Hearing on Atlantic Yards Bollard Plan
• The oil companies and the rest of the fossil fuel industry, together with their captured politicians, interested only in their own profit, are endangering all of us by absurdly ignoring Global Warming/Weather Weirding. See: Saturday, September 3, 2011, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, Global Warming and Those Texas-based Oil Companies

• Because a captured press is too often not reporting the stories that need to be reported the 1% are able to take advantage of the 99%. See: Sunday, June 26, 2011, “Page One: Inside the New York Times” Reviewed; Plus The “New York Times Effect” on New York’s Biggest Real Estate Development Swindle

• The American public needs to wake up and think rather than be lured into circus side shows. See: Friday, September 16, 2011, Will America Shrink FROM Or INTO Crowds Clamoring For Death? and Friday, July 1, 2011, Cultural Circus? Mr. Ratner’s Attempt to Rechristen His Arena A “Cultural Center”

• Communication in this country is too much in the control of corporate interests. See: Tuesday, September 20, 2011, A Parable: Some Words Concerning the Future of Communication
(Above an interfaith protest arrives Sunday with their version of Wall Street's "bull" being the bible's Golden Calf idol. Below the golden idol gets a wary police escort) • The corporate world has become unethical. See: Friday, April 22, 2011, Applying the Principles of Legal Ethics to New York Development: Lawyers Are Not Supposed to Represent Deceiving Clients

• The miscalculations of the self-interested and greedy will bankrupt us. See: Friday, May 20, 2011, The Miscalculations Encouraged By the Fuzzy Math of Subsidies: Yankee Stadium Bonds on Verge of Default- A Case Study
• Private corporations are too much in control and have taken over the work that government should be doing. See: Thursday, June 16, 2011, Sovereign Immunity, Reconfiguration of Brooklyn’s Traffic And The Peculiar Verisimilitude of Government Functions When Forest City Ratner Takes Over
• There is unprecedented absurdity in making the city’s richest man, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of the city and just because he’s “corporate” and out sources to corporate friends doesn’t mean Bloomberg runs the city well. See: Thursday, October 22, 2009, This Is Rich! Looks Like Bloomberg is Making History and Monday, March 28, 2011, Take TWO (AYR’s) On Times Coverage- Revisiting Light Shed by CityTime Outsourcing Scandal When Reexamining Bloomberg Management Myth
• And perhaps it is worthwhile to extend this list with a mention of one last post. We saw Reverend Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping in the throng at Zucotti Park. His bright white suit makes him stand out, especially as we run into him often at other events important to how New York City is developing including Save Coney Island and Atlantic Yards events. See: Friday, December 19, 2008, A Jolly Good Meet and there is now an OWS Reverend Billy video: Let's call it - Banking!

Some of the above articles from Noticing New York may be more parochial in the concerns they detail than are the articles above from National Notice that focus specifically on national policy issues and debate but the underlying themes are all pretty much in common.
Am I presumptuous to be fairly confident that I have identified above many key concerns that a lot of the Occupy Wall Street protesters share?
Last week on Bill Maher’s Real Time (presumably it is still possible for a number of the 99% to afford HBO which carries the show) there was a discussion about whether the protesters had a coherent message or needed more focus. Journalist P. J. O'Rourke and commentator Nicole Wallace (being snide and juvenile with attempts at potty-humor) provided perfect foils for Democrat Alan Grayson a former one-term Congressman from Florida to address the issue. Said Grayson:

No, listen, Bill I have no problem understanding what they are complaining about. . . .I was an economist for more than three years. . . .

. . . . Now let me tell you what they talking about: They’re complaining that Wall Street wrecked the economy more than three years ago and nobody has been held responsible of that. Not a single person has been indicted or convicted for destroying 20% of our national net worth accumulated over the course of two centuries. They’re upset about the fact that Wall Street has iron control over the economic policies of the country and that one party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and that the other party caters to them as well. That’s the real truth of the matter as you’ve said before.

O’Rourke jibed that the Occupy Wall Street protesters had “found their spokesperson,” to which Grayson rejoined:

If I am a spokesman for all the people who think we should not have 24 million people in this country who can't find a full-time job; that we should not have 50 million people in this country who can't see a doctor when they're sick; that we shouldn't have 47 million people in this country who need government help in order to feed themselves; and we shouldn't have 15 million families who owe more than their mortgage, then the value of their home.- Okay, I'll be that spokesman.

A video of the exchange is available at Real Clear Politics: Grayson: I'll Be Spokesman For Unemployed, Uninsured.

I don’t know who the Occupy Wall Street protesters will endorse as their spokespersons in the end but Grayson’s endeavor in this regard was credibly eloquent. The one quibble: It is not just that Wall Street wrecked the economy and that no one has been indicted; it is also that much of the wrecking of the economy involved people doing things that were wrong and that they knew were wrong. With or without Grayson’s help one thing is clear: However much sharper the protesters’ message could be in the future it is pretty damn clear already.

A final point. The theory for letting the 1% keep their highly disproportionate share of the nation’s wealth (and keep, as well, all the rules running in their favor that make it that way) is that we can somehow expect that their wealth will ultimately trickle down to the rest of us. In fact it would be truthful to say that New York City is doing better than they rest of the country right now because Wall Street is located here. That makes this city first in line for any trickle down and means the city likely benefits from more "trickle" than anywhere else. Maybe that’s so, but remember all those Michael Whites the bill collectors keep contacting me about? Well, those Michael Whites live around Wall Street too and their creditors are still calling.

Visiting Occupy Wall Street We Hear “Eliminate the Fed!”: OR Maybe Just Federal Reserve Directors Backing Mega-Monopolies For the Super-Connected?

2011-10-12T11:12:00.001-07:00

(Photo above from this link.)

There are provocative ideas circulating among the Occupy Wall Street protestors. Maybe with respect to one idea, a very powerful one, we can take heed, but start small by considering a basic essential: Is the Federal Reserve on the public’s side?

Visiting Occupy Wall Street you will probably see, as I did, the placards calling for elimination of the Fed, (aka the “Federal Reserve” or “Federal Reserve System”). That’s also something that Ron Paul, more frequently thought of as closer to the Tea Party side of things, is calling for. Indeed, hostility toward the Fed is a theme that is also circulating amongst the Tea Party activists and activists invoking the Tea Party label (how does one differentiate and how critical is it to do so?).

See:

From Tea Party Advocates, Anger at the Federal Reserve, by Sewell Chan, October 10, 2010

Tea Party Rallying Cry: Abolish the Federal Reserve! By Liz Peek, The Fiscal Times, November 10, 2010

End the federal reserve - American Tea Party Constitutional Coalition
The Federal Reserve - A Scam!

The Tea Party vs. the Federal Reserve, by Michael Tennant, Wednesday, 13 October 2010

AUDIT THE FEDERAL RESERVE (New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition)

That's not to say that all those out to earn Tea Party credentials and endorsement are opposed to the Fed. Herman Cain was chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank in the mid-1990s. (See: Herman Cain: Federal Reserve Chairman, Tea Party Champion, by Joshua Green, May 27 2011.)

Eliminate the Fed? GULP! That would be a big step. It’s really hard to get one’s mind around what it would mean in terms of the economy. And the belief of some that eliminating the Fed would be good because it would be better to regulate the money supply by a return to the gold standard is scary: How much gold you have isn’t a measure of true societal wealth. Among other things you can’t eat it.

(Below an interfaith protest arrives Sunday with their version of Wall Street's "bull" being the bible's Golden Calf idol.)

We understand concerns that the Fed has a lot of power, that while it functions as if it is one of the most powerful organs of government it is not readily accountable as other branches of government are supposed to be, that it is in technical terms essentially a private entity.

Although it is embedded in the nation’s political history the Fed is a entire branch of government you can’t find in the Constitution.

The origin’s of the Fed go back to the creation of federal central banking via the famous Hamilton, Jefferson Dinner Table Bargain of June 1790 whereby the other side of the agreement was to locate the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. (The Constitution also doesn’t say where the capitol of the U.S. should be. Before D.C. it was located in Philadelphia and New York City.) Though the compromise may have traded away New York City’s then status as the official political capital of the U.S. via the compromise, Hamilton, then the Treasury Secretary (Jefferson was Secretary of State) secured for New York the de facto status as the nation’s financial capitol from then on.

Take the big step of eliminating the Fed? Maybe we could start with the smaller step of looking at who are the Federal Reserve Directors and whether they can be counted upon to serve the public interest. As mentioned above: Herman Cain?

(Above Federal Reserve Directors Kathy Wylde and Lee Bollinger both of whom are key backers of neighborhood-seizing eminent domain abuse to benefit government assisted monopolies.)

More important, I have previously pointed out with some anguish that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has on its board two directors, Kathy Wylde and Lee Bollinger, both with one thing conspicuously in common: They have both been key in backing the neighborhood-destroying seizure of land through eminent domain abuse. At the expense of community interests they have endorsed those seizures for the sake of governmentally assisting politically-connected private mega-monopolies. This is some of what I previously wrote:

Regarding Director Wylde:
Kathy Wylde, whose most high-profile recent actions have been to go out of her way to promote Atlantic Yards, the megadevelopment on track to be one of New York’s most conspicuous money-losing failures. (See the July 27, 2009 story in Crain’s.)

* * * *

Ms. Wilde has been president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City for some time and was prominently in the news in the (pre-fiscal crisis) summer of 2008 as a supporter amongst the inner business circle strategizing for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s overturn of term limits to get a surprise third term. Wylde effused that the business world was “primed” to help him. (See: Bigs Back Law Change to Keep Mike, By Angela Montefinise, July 27, 2008.) . . .

Wylde Support of Economic Mega-Losses for NYC

A spectacularly flawed project in almost all respects, New York City’s Independent Budget Office has concluded that the Atlantic Yards arena, the only part of the Atlantic Yards project currently designed or for which any kind of enforceable, documented deal exists will be a net money loser for the city to the tune of $220 million($39.5 million in direct losses and $180.5 million in opportunity losses). The megadevelopment’s guaranteed inadequacies flow principally from the fact that it was set up and concocted by the developer, Forest City Ratner, as a subsidy-infusion system intended to deliver maximum benefit to the developer at the expense of the public. The IBO has conservatively calculated that on the arena alone the city will be giving the developer$726 million in no-bid giveaways.
Regarding Director Bollinger:
Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University. One of the three highest paid presidents at a private university ($1.4 million annual compensation package), Mr. Bollinger has spearheaded Columbia’s usurpation of West Harlem using eminent domain to gain a multi-decade monopoly shut-out on the real estate there, very much like Atlantic Yards.

(For more of what I said then- and I had a lot of points to make- See: Saturday, September 19, 2009, Really Wylde? New NY Federal Reserve Bank Director Supported Major NYC Net Loss ($220 Million) Megadevelopment.)

The Tea Party tends to focus its anger at government. Occupy Wall Street is focusing anger more directly at Wall Street. Both groups ought to be properly directing their anger at the double-whammy you get whenever government steps in to support Wall Street and/or to specially benefit politically connected monopolies and elites. We see it far too often. Indeed, the shared objections to the Fed is that it is a private entity usurping government prerogatives and functions to favor private interest over public interests.

So, if the Fed is going to be kept around do we want it to have directors like Wylde and Bollinger who readily endorse the kind of abuse favoring the 1% over the 99%?

The First Most Obvious Tax To Eliminate If You Want To Increase Employment: The Payroll Tax

2011-10-11T14:54:00.000-07:00

It seems pretty obvious that the U.S. economy needs to create more jobs. So obvious that there’s an obvious fix that ought to be considered: elimination of payroll taxes. Taxation is necessary as the price of civilization but in the world of taxation it is axiomatic that what you tax you will get less of. So look at what you tax. Do you really want to tax employment?

Headlines on Dwindling Employment: Fewer and Lower-Paying Jobs

The headlines rolling in about national employment, or the lack thereof, make it clear the situation is sensationally bad and headed for worse. There aren’t enough jobs and the majority of those that exist need to be better paying At the meager rate that the U.S. economy is creating jobs, the relatively good job figures reflected by the uptick of jobs in the September jobs report (103,000 new jobs, better than the number of jobs added over the summer) will not be enough to keep pace with the growth in population. Consequently, if job creation only remains at this level, and there is reason to think it won’t even do that, the nation’s unemployment rate will not go down from 9.1 percent. That's already unacceptably high. If the job creation numbers return to where they have been recently the unemployment rate will rise.

The reason to think job creation figures could likely head down again is that real household income is declining and this, as previously pointed out in an earlier National Notice article, is likely to lead to a downward spiral, particularly as it cycles through real estate values that could be very similar to the dynamic during the first Great Depression.

Continuing High Unemployment Rate, Perhaps Headed Up

Here from the headlines:

The New York Times on the last job report: Adding Jobs, but Not Many, U.S. Economy Seems to Idle, by Motoka Rich, October 7, 2011

The economy is not growing fast enough to bring down the unemployment rate, which held steady at 9.1 percent in September. Local governments and school districts are cutting large numbers of workers. And about a third of the jobs added by the private sector last month were actually 45,000 Verizon workers who had been on strike during August and were simply returning to work.

American Public Radio’s Marketplace about the same report: Jobs added in September, By Mitchell Hartman, Friday, October 7, 2011. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman interviewed economist Kevin Hassett at the American Enterprise Institute who thinks:

. . . . we'll plateau around 100,000 new jobs a month for the foreseeable future.

And he interviewed Harvard economist Lawrence Katz to conclude that this means “the unemployment rate won't budge and the six million long-term unemployed won't get back on the job,” or in Katz’s own words:

The modest job growth that we've seen is just about what you need to keep up with population growth. It's not enough to bring people back to work.

6.7 Percent- Falling Average Income

At the same time the Times is reporting about declining incomes that “between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent”: Recession Officially Over, U.S. Incomes Kept Falling, by Robert Pear, October 9, 2011:

In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found.

* * *

That reduction occurred even though the unemployment rate fell slightly, to 9.2 percent in June compared with 9.5 percent two years earlier. Two main forces appear to have held down pay: the number of people outside the labor force — neither working nor looking for work — has risen; and the hourly pay of employed people has failed to keep pace with inflation, as the prices of oil products and many foods have jumped.

During the recession itself, by contrast, wage gains outpaced inflation.

One reason pay has stagnated is that many people who lost their jobs in the recession — and remained out of work for months — have taken pay cuts in order to be hired again.

Here is the Times graph: Declining Household Income, October 9, 2011.

Eliminating or Reducing Payroll Taxes Means What?

Proposing to eliminate or reduce payroll taxes does not mean to eliminate income taxes or associated income tax withholding procedures. Instead the proposal is to eliminate or significantly reduce the cost of Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance.

Do it Long Term and Across the Board

Employment often is and needs to be a long-term relationship (among other things it is not always easy for employers to quickly fire people) so, to be meaningful, any reduction or elimination of these taxes would have to be long-term and assured and understood to be long-term when implemented. The adjustments should also be broad-based, applying to all workers: In other words the temptation to tinker around the margins and reduce taxes only for `newly-created’ or `added’ jobs should be rejected. That’s just too complicated and leads to all sorts of senseless and unhelpful accounting ruses to qualify.

Social Security Structure Remaining Intact

Elimination of these payroll taxes does not mean having to change the Social Security Trust structure. The same amounts would have to be deposited into the trust to keep it actuarially sound but the moneys would have to come from somewhere else. Payouts to retired workers who worked more years and earned more would still be greater, just as under the current system. That means that more payments would have to go into the system when the economy was booming and more workers were working, but isn’t this the exactly the kind of problem/challenge that it is good to have?

Medicare and Unemployment Insurance

By the same token, all that is good about or bad about the formulas pursuant to which money is set aside for Medicare or as unemployment insurance could remain intact, but to the extent that these formulae don’t make sense they could be changed. It does make sense to save against a rainy day and, when the economy is good, set aside funds for the payout of unemployment benefits in the future. But that doesn’t mean that an actuarial relationship can be exactly calibrated or that payout of unemployment benefits shouldn’t be continued when the economy is especially bad.

On the other hand, does it make sense that Medicare taxes should be based on employment at all, that employers should perceive the (future) provision of healthcare, generally, for persons over 65 (currently) to be a cost of employing additional workers? In fact, what proper relationship should there be between healthcare and employment at all? To the extent that healthcare (fostered by special tax treatment- i.e. by excluding employer-provided healthcare benefits from income taxation- or whatever) is viewed as an essential incident to employment then, healthcare costing what it does today, gums up the employment economy. It makes it much harder for employers and employees who are otherwise a good fit for each other to match up for the right reasons.

A Revenue Shortfall That Would Need To Be Addressed?

If payroll taxes were cut back wouldn’t a resulting shortfall in revenue need to be addressed? Yes, in the long term. (Economists are diagnosing the economy to be troubled by a lack of consumer demand so pumping income into consumers’ pockets without addressing it immediately might make sense right now.) But it would not necessarily need to be addressed in the immediate term, during a bad economy, when we are deficit financing all sorts of other things like the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Where would the foregone payroll taxes be made up? Anywhere that makes sense. Arguments are being made that the wealthy, the corporations, and the profits they are making should not be taxed because they are the nation’s self-described “job creators” even if, when given the opportunity, they choose to do other things with their extra cash rather than create jobs. Instead of trying to create jobs by not taxing income flowing to wealthy theoretical job creators, it makes sense simply to tax actual job creation less by eliminating payroll taxes.

Payroll Taxes vs. Income Taxes: The Wealthy vs. the Rest of Us

What if it was decided that the resulting shortfall in revenue could be made up nowhere except by an increase in income taxes? Would increased income taxes wind up being essentially just a reversal of the cut on payroll taxes? Are payroll taxes just the same as income taxes? No: Income taxes include taxes on capital gains and investment income. Further, income taxes can and should be progressive with the wealthier paying at a higher rate than the poor and middle class. Payroll taxes are regressive with the poor and middle class paying a higher percentage of their taxed pay than the wealthy.

Don’t taxes on income, like taxes on payroll, result in less employment when people don't seek employment because the salary paid in income will be taxed? Are income taxes paid by an employee securing employment the same as payroll taxes that must be paid by an employer providing that employee employment? . . .

. . . That can get into the lengthy and abstruse arguments economists engage in when they debate where the “incidence” of a tax (or subsidy) falls, who actually pays a tax when a transaction between two parties is made subject to that tax whether or not one or the other party is nominally considered responsible for paying it. But, the ultimate answer is complicated and also tied up with complex psychology. Among other things the employee is for various reasons likely to value a job for the sake of the job itself, not just the income. Even when income is taxed progressively at a higher rate at the higher end of the spectrum it is doubtful that an individual would want to be significantly less successful or productive just because he was paying more taxes.

Obama Has Suggested Lower Payroll Taxes

Obama has proposed temporarily cutting payroll taxes. (Remember it was suggested above that to be effective any such cut should be long-term.) One might consider that Obama's proposal has, to date, been under-reported and under-analyzed. For more on this see:

Obama Challenges Congress on Job Plan, by Mark Landler, September 8, 2011

Old Tax Relief Seen as Anchor in Obama Plan, by Jackie Calmes, September 6, 2011

September 14, 2011, How Payroll Tax Cuts Can Create Jobs, by Casey B. Mulligan

News Analysis, Plan’s Focus on Social Security Taxes Reflects Its Modest Ambitions, by Binyamin Applebaum, September 8, 2011

Politifact: Barack Obama on Monday, September 5th, 2011 in a Labor Day speech in Detroit: Barack Obama says payroll tax cut has boosted average family income by $1,000

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has weighed in with a brief article supporting a reduction of payroll taxes although the precision with which he suggests parameters is perhaps somewhat limiting to the imagination: Reich: Eliminate payroll taxes to improve economy, Marketplace, Wednesday, August 25, 2010.

Why Does the Republican Opposition Dislike Reducing These Taxes?

President Obama has tweaked the Republican opposition for being philosophically inconsistent in not supporting lower payroll taxes: After all, aren’t these Republican supposed to be opposed to taxes in general, even routinely signing on to anti-oaths?

There are reasons for the Republican opposition to oppose reduction of the payroll tax, reasons other than that they want to reflexively oppose Obama about everything, and beyond the fact that many Republican's likely have no interest in seeing the economy improve before the upcoming general election. Here are two points. (Does it let the cat out of bag to offer this analysis that others don’t seem to be offering elsewhere?)

One reason for Republicans to oppose payroll tax elimination is that a shift away from dependence on payroll tax revenue could result in a shift that winds up with lower taxes on most low- and middle-income wage earners and higher taxes on the income of the wealthy, replacing regressive payroll taxes with more progressive taxes on investments and capital gains.

The other reason the elite of Republican party leadership likely don’t want such a change in the payroll tax system is that there are many within the party who have their eye on handing a gift to Wall Street by unwinding Social Security and redirecting to Wall Street the contributions that are currently paid into the Social Security Trust Fund. Turning the investment of these vast sums over to Wall Street's brokers would be a much more expensive system than we have now, ridden with risks and a potential for fraud that doesn’t currently exist. That, however, is what some Republicans have their eyes on. If payments currently going into the trust fund became untethered from the payroll tax payments that now come in from individual workers (and were replaced with deposits that clearly came directly from government), Republicans would have a much harder time arguing for and trying to implement their desired switch over to a Wall Street benefit-based system.

Not a Panacea, Only a Start

While reduction or elimination of payroll taxes is the first most obvious tax to eliminate to increase employment, it would not be a panacea. It would not be a panacea because of the structural problems that need to be addressed in the American economy today. But to the extent that some of those problems are tied in with an increasingly skewed distribution of wealth it might begin to address at least some of those structural problems. Historically, skewed distribution of wealth and a lack of regulation of the activities of the wealthy and the financial sector have accompanied significant economic downturns like the Great Depression. We’ll have to leave off here though. The country’s ability to address its problems through versatility, innovation and the generation of new industries when it is faced with the increasing prevalence of lumbering (government-assisted) conglomerates and monopolies is a discussion for another day.

A Parable: Some Words Concerning the Future of Communication

2011-09-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

This is the way the future happened. Development of the Internet unfolded as many people saw, with it becoming progressively more integrated with everything and everybody in every way. Access to the Internet through brain-chips implanted in people’s heads really happened and this was good, at least in some ways for me because it made it so much easier for my guide to explain the new way that things were. The brain-chips made a lot of things possible that were never possible before.

I was given free access to the Internet, a six month free trial. Everyone got one free trial but I was the first adult, the first person of my age that anyone could remember who had not yet had his free trial, who had never once been hooked up to the Internet with a brain-chip at all. I was given a six month free trial of everything available and able to sample every nook and cranny of the Internet at will without paying. That was not true about my guide: My guide had to pay.

My guide chose her words judiciously as she explained how things were different from the world I had known. She had to make her word selections carefully for she had to pay for the words she communicated to me. Oh, not all of the words she used, only some, and words were not all the same price. In fact, she liked to search her mind rigorously for the new words available, the recently minted words, for which, if she used them, the word companies would pay her, rather than vice versa. But the new words being introduced were harder for her to remember because they were so new.

You see, some years before, the Supreme Court had ruled that word companies, if they created new words, would be allowed to own their copyrights. That being the case, the word companies created as many new words as they could. At first, to make the words popular, the word companies would pay the public to use their new words. And the words then did become popular. But when they did, the companies would gradually reduce what they would pay until through such reductions the price would eventually cross a line and be reversed. Then the public would be paying to use those same words, now “old words” they had previously been paid to use. Meanwhile, perhaps to appease those most irked, the word companies would have arrived on the scene with new “new words” which the word companies would now pay people to use if people could think if them. (Advertising was often of assistance in this regard.)

Besides the “new words” that the word companies paid people to use and the much greater number of familiar and more comfortable “old words” that people had to pay the word companies to use, there were also the “ancient words,” the words that you and I know and use (potentially also including the ancestral words that preceded them that you and I have already probably mostly forgotten). The “ancient words” could be used without anyone having to pay anyone at all. . . but that was only if anyone could remember them. The nature of the future being what it was (and the way things were often buried on the Internet), nobody could remember those words, at least not very well. . .

. . . BUT, there was also incipient talk about whether the word companies could by “rediscovering” and reintroducing these “ancient words” acquire the rights to them if those ancient words were already deemed sufficiently forgotten by the public. Here was a possible job they discussed for me: It was noted that I did not have a job in this new world and it was thought that because of my unusual association with the past I could, in advertising terms, give these ancient words a sort of retro-cachet.

I spoke to my guide, not worrying about my choice of words. I was curious. It seemed to me that the monopoly of the word companies was rather tyrannical and I asked her whether the people of her culture had not gotten together to discuss bringing about a change. She looked at me with deep open eyes in which I could map no thoughts for the longest moment. . . . “No,” she said, “that hasn’t happened. Among other things I think we would have difficulty finding the words for . . . it.”

"For a `revolt' or `revolution'?" I asked.

“And,” she added, “right now we are only charged for the words we communicate, not those we think. Perhaps it is best not to upset the apple cart.”

* * * *

To Our Readers: If you think you can search through this parable to make a point-by-point analogy that matches up against a specific event, historical, current or pending, I don’t think you will be able. It didn’t have that in mind when I let the fable write itself. On the other hand, I am quite conscious that its themes are resonant of things that have really happened or are now actually happening in the communications industries and which I am busy thinking about by virtue of reading two excellent books that both came out in 2010. I commend them to you and think you find that each informs the other:

“The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” by Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu: In chronicling episodes going back to the telegraph and forward to the arrival of the Internet the book examines the patterned cycle of information and communication empires with the repetitive advent and frequent ultimate triumph of monopoly industries that seek to control the industry and culture, often aided and abetted by government when it should be doing the opposite.

“Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership” by Kenyon College and Harvard University Professor Lewis Hyde. Going back as far as ancient Rome, spending a lot time in merry old England (pre- and post- William the Conqueror) and visiting very importantly with the American Founding Fathers, Hyde’s book examines how rather recent and increasingly aggressive modern notions about intellectual property rights (copyright and patent) are, with the complicity of government, encroaching on the commonwealth of knowledge and intellectual exchange, the “cultural commons” we once assumed belonged freely to everyone.

Will America Shrink FROM Or INTO Crowds Clamoring For Death?

2011-09-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

The braying of the crowds is frightful, the reflexive clamoring for death . . . .

. . . First it was the crowd at the September 7th Reagan Library Republican candidate debate cheering Texas Governor Rick Perry’s record of executing “234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times” even though, as National Notice pointed out* Perry went out of his way to execute Todd Willingham, an innocent man for the sake of earning such cheers**.

. . . Then it was the boisterous crowd at the September 12th Tea Party debate calling for the hypothetical death of a 30-year-old working man in a coma and needing six months of intensive care, on the principle that the man had not purchased adequate healthcare in advance of falling into this condition. Paul Krugman points out that had the crowd given it a little thought it was, by the same principle, condemning to die children, the poor and the chronically ill, noting that: “very few of those who die from lack of medical care look like Mr. Blitzer’s hypothetical [hypothetical?- not really] individual . . . . most uninsured Americans either have low incomes and cannot afford insurance, or are rejected by insurers because they have chronic conditions” and that George W. Bush, to the accompaniment of similar right-wing cheering, blocked more extensive health coverage for children so that “one in six children in Texas lacks health insurance, the second-highest rate in the nation.”

Jon Stewart’s Daily Show (at 9:11 and 11:49) made humor out of the fact that the Tea Party that had started out as the party “fearing” death panels had become the death panel. That observation also transfers exceedingly well to the Republican plan to replace programs like Medicaid and Medicare with fixed payments to individuals that could then be readily whittled down to inadequacy by inflation or other forms of cutbacks, leaving those program recipients essentially at the mercy of the private insurance companies’ death panels.

(* The central theme of the September 3, 2011 National Notice post, how startling it was to see Rick Perry belittling the reality of global-warming/weather-weirding even as his state is being reduced to cinders by temperatures and drought of unprecedented severity and duration seemed so self-evident that I didn’t know why others were not busy writing about it. Since then, Tom Friedman’s September 13, 2011 column, Is It Weird Enough Yet?, picked up on the same point but doesn’t get into the extra weirdness of Texas oil companies trading their U.S. oil fields to an undependable Russia.)

(** As of September 15, the Todd Willingham miscarriage of justice is being elevated by e-mails designed to spotlight it as a campaign issue with a petition asking that the press ask Perry about it.)

It might be hoped that the crowds cheering for death are not reflective of the American public at large. Indeed they are not really. The crowd at the Reagan Library debate (like the backdrop of the questionably accurate Reagan Library itself) was cherry-picked by Republican party leaders to be what they wanted the responding public to be, while the crowd for the Tea Party debate was similarly hand-picked by the powerful higher-ups steering that movement.

Still, the cheering for death, reminiscent of the thumbs down audiences of the Roman Coliseum, seems to evince a discouraging pettiness of spirit that is hard to explain except for the fact that these hand-picked audience members feel very small themselves and that the only way that they can feel bigger these days is by calling for unfortunate others to be further cut down in size.* There is in such Coliseum audience conduct an implicit faith (or a desperately clung-to hope) that they themselves will never be the ones in the arena awaiting the crowd’s thumbs -up or -down verdict.

(* They say that every era gets horror films reflective of the particular anxieties of the times. A report on the Toronto film festival mentions an upcoming “gorefest `The Incident,' about workers locked in an asylum for the criminally insane, many with impressive knife skills”: The film may be onto something important.)

In another report on this survival-of-the-fittest culture-of-death, the Times today editorialized about a new Florida state law passed by the state's Republican-controlled legislature that will now prevent Florida localities from retaining or enforcing their local gun control laws so that, per one town council member: “We’re not allowed to have bows and arrows or slingshots in a park, but we can have a gun.” (See: Pandering to the Gun Lobby, September 15, 2011.)

Without debating the value of having a gun in areas of Montana where a cougar might stalk you, whether one could be safer in communities where citizen-vigilantes can out-draw their local version of a massacre-intending, arsenal-equipped Columbine student, the merits of shooting a coyote on your morning jog, or how fast on the draw the average senior citizen from St. Petersburg is, the vision of everyone carrying a gun to the public park sounds like a Streets-of-Laredo version of life where it's up to everyone to be quick on the draw and trigger irrespective of whose “done wrong.”

I was once pretty OK with a BB gun when I was a kid but I really don’t know where I’d come out in a world where winding up as the one alive means always being quicker on the draw. Did I already suggest the bravado of death-wishing audiences who are sure that they are never going to be down on their own luck (awaiting in the arena the audience’s thumbs down), may have something to do with these poor souls not feeling very big to begin with? Sure I did. . . .

. . . And here’s a probable irony: Maybe there is a reason all of us may be feeling rather small right now and it has to do with why so much of the Tea Party anger is misplaced. Maybe what’s happened is that all of us have already been out-drawn by the ubiquitous big corporations and monopolies that are leaving little space in the world for the rest of us. Is the government really to blame for that? Maybe it is when it fails to intervene and cut these monopolies down to size or when the government actively aids and abets the establishment and/or perpetuation of such monopolies. But is big government really where the anger should it be directed or should it be directed at the corporate power players themselves, those influencing the government in these respects? And aren’t those powerful insiders the very same ones who, behind the scenes, were hand-picking those frightful, vengeance-hungry audience members? No wonder those guys in the audience might feel uncomfortably small.

Governor Rick Perry of Texas, Global Warming and Those Texas-based Oil Companies

2011-09-03T15:48:00.000-07:00

As news stories about the big stories affecting our nation persist in arriving in depressing little dribs and drabs I find that an exercise that cheers me up is to put some of those dribs together with some of those drabs.

In that vein, let’s have a go with some recent headlines:

Rick Perry "Doesn't Believe" in Global Warming

Governor Rick Perry of Texas, leading in the polls, in the race for the Republican nomination for president, says he doesn’t believe in global warming: Rick Perry: Global Warming Based On Scientists Manipulating Data. He says it's: “a scientific theory that has not been proven, and from my perspective is more and more being put into question.”

(For some interesting takes on that see:

PolitiFact.com: Rick Perry says more and more scientists are questioning global warming

Paul Krugman’s Republicans Against Science, August 28, 2011.)

While Texas Fries. . .

Then we have these stories the first of which preceded Perry’s remarks by days and the second of which is little more than a week afterward: As Texas Dries Out, Life Falters and Fades, by Richard Parker, August 13, 2011.

The drought that grips Texas is a natural disaster in slow motion. . . .

* * * *

Folks around here say this is unlike any drought Texas has ever seen. [The worst since Texas began keeping rainfall records in 1895.] In a way that’s right; it’s the worst single drought year on record. But, as scientists now tell us, historically droughts here can last decades. Worse, when the rain does fall, it evaporates faster and faster as the American Southwest become drier, threatening to turn Texas into desert. As bad as this year’s drought is, the long view tells us that things could get much worse.

Perry did organize state prayer for rain in April. Our friends living in Texas, resigned to the fact that Perry stepped up to the state’s governorship from the position of Lieutenant Governor with the departure in 2000 of George W. Bush, refer to Perry as “Governor Good Hair,” an allusion to how this career politician (since 1984) likes to look good and is always perfectly coiffed. They don’t like his superficiality.

. . . . And Burns

Notwithstanding, Perry’s praying, there’s been more in the news about the Texas climate: Throughout the summer firefighters in Texas have been dealing with fires that just won’t quit: Texas Wildfire's New Path Helping Firefighters In Possum Kingdom Lake Area. Texas is on track to have its third yearlong wildfire season; the three yearlong wildfire seasons are the only ones on record and have all occurred since the 2005-2006 season (although there aren’t records available for the droughts of 1918 and the 1950s.)

Quotes from that story:

Firefighters haven't had much of a break this summer, even after various crews battled what turned out to be seven of the 10 largest wildfires in state history this spring.

Usually the wildfire season wanes in the spring because of rain, greener vegetation and higher humidity, weather experts said. But the state's normally wettest months – April through June – were anything but this year because of the lingering La Nina weather condition that causes below-normal rainfall.

The conditions have become so severe that "normal rain events will have little positive impact on the drought and consequently the fire danger," Texas Forest Service specialist Tom Spencer said.

As background, before the drought and still continuing, Texas has been steadily depleting the vast Ogallala Aquifer in the northwest Panhandle and High Plains which, in “civilized” human time frame terms is not a replenishing rechargeable resource.

Perry Finds Science of Fire a Trial

Perry’s got a propensity to prefer ignorance of science (rather than have a bad hair day) in order to demagogically look good to his base constituency. For another “trial by fire” example of such blind shortcut expedience consider the Todd Willingham case, where Perry chose to ignore science and send an innocent man to execution* when, with politically macho swagger reminiscent of Bush, he politically commandeered control over the commission that was otherwise set to tell him that, paying attention to science fact, an accidental fire wasn’t actually arson. Is that what a truly good or intellectually honest man would have done? See Frontline’s: “Death By Fire.”

(* Footnote added September 14, 2011: When, at the Reagan Library Republican Candidates Debate held September 7, 2011- four days after this post- the moderator, NBC's Brian Williams, addressing Perry said: “Your state has executed 234 death row inmates more than any other governor in modern times” the audience applauded, presumably also applauding the execution of Todd Willingham despite his innocence. Perry was then asked whether he “struggled with the struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent.” Perry said he didn’t. Asked about the audience’s spontaneously applauding all his executions, Perry endorsed it without reservation. See: Reagan Debate Audience Applauds Texas' Rate Of Executions, Real Clear Politics Video, September 8, 2011.)

Speaking Up For the Oil Companies and Domestic Insecurity (Swapping Texas Assets)

So according to Perry there is no weirding of the world’s weather? Given that he's from Texas can we excuse Perry for being a mouthpiece for the oil companies’ official version on non-reality. Another, line we are asked to swallow from the Texas-based oil industry is that we as a nation have to do all sorts of extra drilling in this country to achieve "energy independence." If you believe that line then here is a headline to bring you up short: Exxon Reaches Arctic Oil Deal With Russians, by Andrew E. Kramer, August 30, 2011. The gist of the story is that Exxon, which is based is Texas, in order to get drilling rights in the Arctic Ocean from Russia is going to swap assets it owns “elsewhere in the world, including some that Exxon owns in the deepwater zones of the Gulf of Mexico and on land in Texas.”

It's Russian to Judgment

Nowhere in the story’s text do we see mention of (let alone have explained) how this swap of domestic assets to a former sworn enemy would be consistent with the idea of domestic energy independence and security. That Russia was so recently an enemy country is one thing, but doing business with the Russians now is still no reliable play-by-the-rules/play-the-law picnic. Days after announcement of the Exxon deal, the Russians raided the offices of BP, the company that lost out to Exxon in connection with a related lawsuit. That’s been interpreted as meaning simply that the company has fallen out of favor with a Kremlin that decided to do business with someone else. Nope, doing business with the Russians isn’t a peachy-keen proposition at all: The last two decades, companies doing business in Russia maintained “safehouses” standing by (just like the FBI or CIA) for their executives should problems crop up.

Doing business with the Russians is not about good policy or good ethics; it’s about the money. So what the oil companies say is not really about good policy or good ethics; it’s also all about the money. And when we find Rick Perry saying what the oil companies are saying . . . . It’s not about good policy or good ethics- It’s about the corporate money in politics.

PS: The following stories became available not long after this National Notice post first went up.

'Mother Nature Has The Upper Hand' In Wildfire Fight, by John Burnett, September 5, 2011

NPR’s “All Things Considered Summary” (emphasis supplied):

Ferocious wildfires shipped by the winds of tropical storm Lee are surrounding Austin and other parts of dust-dry Texas. The worst fire is in Bastrop County, just southeast of Austin, where the blaze has been burning out of control for more than a day. The scale of the blaze prompted Gov. Rick Perry to cancel his appearance at a GOP event.*

(* Perry who was scheduled to speak in at a Republican Presidential candidate summit in Columbia, South Carolina, cancelled appearing at this event with rivals Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain plus other events later events later this week.)

Hydraulic Fracturing’s Deleterious Environmental Effects: Andrew Cuomo’s Plan To End His State’s Ban and the Passage of the NYS Marriage Equality Law

2011-08-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

(Map of Marcellus Shale from Geology.com. Click on this image to enlarge. Other visuals providing an overview of the hydrofracking problem are available in the Noticing New York article linked to.)

Hydraulic Fracturing is an issue of national concern that should be preoccupying much of the nation. It involves a significant despoiling of public resources including the serious poisoning of vast quantities water and air. And what goes on in one state is apt to be to the very consequential detriment of other states downstream or downwind. For instance, actions now being taken by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo respecting his planned lifting of a ban in New York State is likely not only to poison or polute, in one way or another, most of New York State, it will also affect much of the eastern seaboard via the rivers that run down from New York (the Delaware and the Susquehanna) and the drinking water of major downstream cities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware. Also of concern is water flowing into the Ohio River from the Allegheny (going all the way down into the Mississippi) and water flowing into the two Great Lakes bordering New York and and also the St. Lawrence Seaway.

All of the multiple ways hydrofracking poisons broad swaths of the environment is discussed in depth in a lengthy Noticing New York article which also examines the intriguing question of whether Andrew Cuomo might possibly have traded the lifting of the state’s ban on the deleterious hydrofracking industry in order to get the state’s gay marriage equality law enacted: Friday, July 29, 2011, Conundrum: If Gov. Andrew Cuomo Traded The Moratorium on Hydrofracking To Get Gay Marriage Would That Be Good Or a Bad Thing?

The Noticing New York article provides this observation about the proposed hydrofracking of the Marcellus Shale formation respecting the effect on New York State alone:

If you consider what parts of the state lie over the Marcellus Shale formation, what parts are downstream of it and what parts are downwind of it the entire state of New York will be environmentally affected by the drilling the Cuomo plan proposes to permit.

Much of the analysis of the Noticing New York article is more detailed and thorough in the connections it makes than what is frequently to be found elsewhere. Much cannot be found elsewhere at all. The article may not have come to your attention when it first went up at the end of July. This is because Google currently has some sort of block in place making Noticing New York content suddenly exceptionally difficult to find if you use Google. That blocking is something National Notice will cover further in a later post respecting research into this matter. For the moment, you are more likely to find your way to the Noticing New York content through the link in this article when your interest in these matters causes you to Google: “Andrew Cuomo,” “hydraulic fracturing ban” and “gay marriage” or “marriage equality.”

Women Are Better Than Men At Nearly Everything- But We Are Eliminating Them! The Absence of Women In A Man-Made World

2011-06-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

Here is some ammunition I am not interested in having used against me (I am, after all, the sole male living in a household of four): Women are better than men at just about everything!

Dang, if that doesn’t leave me struggling for self-respect. Actually, respecting women and praising women’s achievements comes naturally to me: I come from a family with a fair share of illustrious women on both sides (one side includes the “celebrated Daly sisters”) and I have always been surrounded by wonderful women. Still, I’d like to stick up for men as being at least equal but now I’m told that they are not and there is a gentleman who has assembled a lot of data that proves it. (Also, as I will get to later, "mankind" can do some pretty stupid things.)

Data on Women Being Better

I got the male ego-deflating news about female superiority listening to a segment of the Brian Lehrer Show: Girls Rule, Boys Drool, Monday, June 13, 2011. Dan Abrams appeared to discuss his new book: Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt that Women are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers and Just About Everything Else. Mr. Abrams is a legal analyst for Good Morning America and ABC News, as well as the founder of the Abrams Media Network.

What are women better at than men? Here is a list of some of things mentioned in the segment:

• Hedge Fund Managers: Women get consistently higher returns as hedge fund managers and investors.- They are more careful and deliberative.

• Political Leaders: Legislatures that have more women are less corrupt and laws passed by female legislators are more popular and better funded. They also get more laws passed.

• Newscasters: Women newscasters are more credible when reading news copy.

• Qualified Ivy League School Applicants: Ivy league schools are having to act affirmatively to admit enough men to equal the number of qualified women applying.

• Hammering nails: Women are 10% more accurate. (Men might swing harder.)

• Enduring pain: Women complain less about pain.

Men are better at some things it is not necessarily desirable to be good at: 82% of the people struck by lightning are men. Some things are a mixed bag: Women are supposedly better drivers but men are better at parking. And how much does it matter that women wash their hands more frequently than men after going to the bathroom?

Here is something to think about that wasn’t mentioned during the discussion: It has been suggested that women are better at fitting into large organizations and working cooperatively with large teams. The heads of very large corporations may especially like women in the many support positions that exist in such organizations. (Why, we might ask, are those corporate heads so often men?) What does that entail for an American economy with an ever increasing consolidation of businesses into a smaller and smaller number of 21st-century monopolies where working for a few large corporate teams is about all there is?

One thing the segment gave credit to men for is that they are better risk takers, with the attendant characteristic that they make more mistakes and errors. That might be valuable if we still had an economy that supported a proliferation of small businesses, but . . . .

If Women Are Better Than Men Why Are We Getting Rid Of Them?

If women are really better then men that means that the world must be on the precipice of a fearful decline since more and more families around the globe are choosing to have boy babies instead of girls. The world-wide choice to have an increasing number of boy babies rather than girls is written about in another new book out by Mara Hvistendahl: Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men.

Ms. Hvistendahl was a guest for a segment of another WNYC radio program, Leonard Lopate’s: The Consequences of Choosing Boys Over Girls, Thursday, June 16, 2011.

The artificial selection of male babies over female seems repugnant on its own, but mention of Ms. Hvistendahl's book begs to be paired with Mr. Abram’s book, albeit that his is of a lighter tone, to conclude that the women thus being eliminated from world may actually have more to offer than the men edging them out. Mara Hvistendahl looks at other wide-ranging detrimental consequences of the unnatural sex selection.

From the Lopate show and web site:

• The port city Lianyungang has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls.

• In China the overall ratio of boy to girl babies is now 120 to 100. The natural ratio in nature is 105 boys to 100 favoring boys, it is thought, to make up that boys are more likely to die (perhaps getting hit by lightning?)

• Other countries and cultures are involved in this emerging trend, India, Azerbaijan, Armenia (in 2005 Armenia had 120 boys to every 100 girls), Georgia, Albania, South Korea and Vietnam.

• China and India together account for one third of the World’s population.

• Globally the male female ration is 107 to 100.

• United State has had a historic preference for boys and new technology in this country will allow sex selection of embryos - U.S. and western countries helped introduce sex-selection in Asia.

• Families immigrating to the U.S. continue sex selection-biased practices after arriving here.

• Middle- and upper-class families are more likely to select sex (and have more means to identify and select sex) and then the practice trickles down.

• Historically, eras in which there have been an excess of men have produced periods of violent conflict and instability. (An example is the Wild West where a strategy adopted to improve things was to ship women in.)

• By 2020 there will be 24 million “surplus males” in China.

• Surplus men can’t find partners- Men from South Korea and Taiwan are taking trips to Vietnam, another country sex-selecting against women, to find wives.

• In Asia women are being kidnapped to even out the sex ratio imbalance.

Man’s Brave New World?

The arrogance of artificial intervention to replace valuable females with less valuable men seems like science fiction. Is man actually willing to step in and change the natural order of life so drastically, like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?

The arrogance made me think of how we are now dealing with the disappearance of bees around the world due to colony collapse disorder. Colony collapse disorder may be occurring because genetically modified crops are producing a new class of neonicotinoid pesticides (produced by companies like Monsanto). How are companies like Monsanto dealing with the fact that the world is dependent upon bees for fertilization of most of the world’s crops, about 40% of what we eat? Not by eliminating the genetically modified crops threatening the bees. These companies are hard at work developing almond and soy crops that won’t require fertilization by bees.

Ending with a reference to the impending elimination of bees from the natural world may seem to go rather far afield for a National Notice post that was supposed to be talking about the value of women in the world. . . Until you realize that nearly all the bees in a bee colony, the queen bee and all the worker bees, are female . . . .

. . . In a summer beehive consisting of 60,000 - 80,000 bees, perhaps only 3% (300-3000) are male drones kept around to mate with the queen. In the winter the hive is all female: The male drones are expelled in the autumn because they are of no use during the winter.

That may seem like too little respect for men . . .

But when it comes to humans, it's mankind that has too little respect for women.

“Page One: Inside the New York Times” Reviewed; Plus The “New York Times Effect” on New York’s Biggest Real Estate Development Swindle

2011-06-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

There is a new just-out documentary out about the New York Times: “Page One: Inside The New York Times.” Unfortunately, because of `conflict of interest,’ the Times own readers may be in the dark about how good it is. If you read the June 16, 2011 Michael Kinsley review of the film that appeared in the paper’s own pages you probably came away with the impression that the film is a god-awful mess and not worth seeing. You’d be wrong. Before I get around to some quibbles and tell you what I think is missing from the film (and what could possibly make it a better film) it should be made absolutely clear that this is a very good film and well worth seeing.

Conflict of Interest as an Explanation for a Tin Ear

Mr. Kinsley begins his Times review of the film disclosing why we might have to excuse his tin ear in evaluating the film: He explains that he knows “almost nothing about how The New York Times works.” The reason he, someone who professes to know nothing about the Times, is reviewing the film is, he tells us, is because the Times disqualified the more informed possible reviewers of the film as having a “conflict of interest.” That’s appropriate enough in that much of the film concerns journalistic ethics and the importance of reporting with a balanced and fair perspective. Unfortunately, while the resort to having Mr. Kinsley review this film about the Times may have circumvented a conflict of interest, it also demonstrated the sort of disservice to the public that can happen when the best journalists and experts are not covering their regular beat.

If Mr. Kinsley is sincere in his disclaimer of having no knowledge regarding how the Time works before he watched the film then it is baffling how he can assert that after watching the film he did not “know much more than I did before.” Kinsley charges that the film utterly lacks discipline, flitting “from topic to topic, character to character” explaining little, “like a shopper at the supermarket without a shopping list” careering around the aisles picking up various items and ultimately arriving home without the obvious basics.

The Film’s Meta Structure

While Kinsley’s descriptions suggest that the film lacks structure, its “fly-on-the wall” footage, revolves around two highly suitable armatures.

First, most of what we see in the film is about the Times reporting news stories central to the current ongoing rapid evolutions in today’s news media. This “meta” approach causes the film to resemble and have a number of things in common with one of our favorite NPR programs, and one of our favorite sources of news, the weekly, “On the Media” produced in New York by WNYC. With both “On the Media” and “Inside the New York Times” this reporting about news reporting approach does double duty, teaching you about the media itself while simultaneously allowing one to absorb underlying stories. Beyond this, a critical advantage is that the approach constantly requires one to be rigorously conscious of the fact that stories are not just their facts but the perspective and fashion in which they are reported in the media.

Anointing a Protagonist

The second structure to the film is that it focuses on the personal story of reporter David Carr. Given that Mr. Carr is a media columnist for the Times this makes perfect sense in that it is consistent with the “meta” reporting-about-reporting approach just described.* He is hardly an “unlikely hero” of the film as Mr. Kinsley suggests. For instance, the film can follow Mr. Carr as a media columnist and reporter to industry conferences where participants and insiders are discussing where the industry is going. Carr is also a reflexive New York Times chauvinist. As he himself says in the film it is as if he had chip implanted in his head, making him so. A cantankerously feisty defender of the paper who lauds what he refers to as “New York Times exceptionalism”, Carr was redeemed by his commitment to the paper’s high journalistic values from a hard-living life of addictive behaviors (self described “violent drug-snorting thug” for which he was once imprisoned). This makes him a riveting spokesman for what the paper aspires to be.

(* Other key staff focused on to a lesser degree, also reporting on media, include Media Desk Editor Bruce Headlam, and Media Desk Reporters Tim Arango and Brian Stelter.)

Anointing a Feisty Protagonist, Take Two

In choosing to structure the film in substantial part around Mr. Carr as its central protagonist the film makers made a choice very similar to the decision made by the makers of “Battle For Brooklyn,” another documentary released the same day and reviewed in the Times on the same page (see below). In a very similar way, “Battle For Brooklyn,” which is about the travesty and mega-boondoggle known as Atlantic Yards, tells its story by focusing on Daniel Goldstein, one of the key activists leading the principled fight to oppose the project.

In its review of “Battle For Brooklyn” Noticing New York mentioned “Page One” because the stories told by the two documentaries are interrelated. Similarly we will return to discuss “Battle For Brooklyn” more in this review.

Here is what “Page One” seems most notably to leave out of its story.

Omission of Public Broadcasting

There is only one mention in the film of public broadcasting, National Public Radio, American Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. The mention in the film made of public broadcasting is of its potential as a model for the way that it finances itself with listener and viewer contributions. The mention comes when it is explained how the Times is fishing about for the ways it can best finance itself to survive.

The omission of any further mention of public broadcasting may be a significant a hole in the overall perspective the film provides, but it could be intentional because of the way it accentuates the drama of its central theme, which is that the Times is struggling financially to survive and that the Times is one of the last remaining bulwarks of essential, quality journalism.

If the Times ever goes under, we will probably have to look mainly to public broadcasting for the kind of quality journalism the Times has been able to provide. While the Times has been laying people off, public broadcasting has been augmenting the role it plays, at least for those with access to computers (with the Times daily print edition at $2.00 that is probably the same segment of population that has access to the Times). Increasingly public broadcasting’s reporting is permanently available on the web and also transcribed into text, providing a record that is it searchable on the web.

There is a story to public broadcasting itself (which we won’t go into) to the extent that the partial government financing it receives may impair its independence. That story was recently in the news given Republican attacks. As this didn’t happen within the year “Page One” was being filmed perhaps its omission from the film is understandable.

Omission of Local Reporting

The other thing largely missing from “Page One” is the story about coverage of local news. (There is a brief mention about how no one is covering the cop shot or local zoning board meeting in the Huffington Post- not exactly true*- but this was about it.) As seen through the lens of the film the Times is a national paper covering national stories. I think this is partly because the Times more and more wants to see itself this way. (It should also, obviously, help the film play better in theaters around the country). In effect, becoming a more national paper is one way that the Times can hope to survive. As other papers around the country fold, the Times can step in to fill the vacuum providing national and international news now no longer provided by others.

(* Also see my own Huffington Post piece.)

Officially, the Times also still considers itself a local paper for New York as well. The one clue in the film is when we find out that it still runs two front pages, one for national consumption and one for local. We learn this, after a senior editors’ meeting being told that a story that was a candidate for the front page will “swing” appearing on one page but not the other.

Still, the missing coverage of local news is a big story in itself and this is a vacuum the Times is not stepping in to fill. In fact, part of that story, as we will go on to discuss, is exemplified in the “Battle For Brooklyn” narrative concerning the Atlantic Yards economic and political fiasco.

Inability to Hold Local Government Accountable

With respect to the absence of coverage for local news in general around the country, last week “On the Media” reported on a new FCC report that local reporting has recently “taken a significant hit” as distinct from the media in general and that in that respect “neither old nor new media seem to have the resources to hold government accountable.” (See: FCC Report says Local Reporting in Crisis, June 17, 2011.)

Press Release PR Driving Local Stories. . .

Part of that story was an exchange between Steve Waldman, the advisor to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, who headed the research project, and OTM’s Brooke Gladstone, concerning the likelihood that the deficit in local reporting will result in stories involving the spending of taxpayer dollars will be driven by the unexamined press releases of the institutionally powerful: companies, together with government agencies and politicians:

STEVEN WALDMAN: Right, or another example is that during a five year period the amount that state governments spent went up by about 20 percent, and during that same time the number of reporters covering state government went down by about a third. Anyone who has some concern about how tax dollars are spent on the state level, it's a bad formula. And it ripples through the system in a variety of ways.

First of all, basic reporting functions like the covering of City Hall and the school board and the state house and health and education have gotten less and less. First, that means that reporters are relying more on press releases.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Which means the news gets driven by these government agencies and politicians, and not by probing reporters.

STEVEN WALDMAN: . . . . . which basically is a shift of power from citizens to institutions - to government, to companies, because they're in a better position to drive the storyline.

As told in the “Battle For Brooklyn” documentary a large self-interested development company (and subsidy collector), Forest City Ratner launched a public relations onslaught seeking to grab public and (via eminent domain abuse) private land. The Times, rather than questioning their suspect narrative was itself deeply involved in helping to promulgate it.

Bad News: If the Times Isn’t Around To Do Its Job

Before we return to discuss the negative influence the Times had in covering local news in New York (which the “Page One” documentary is not about) we should discuss what the “Page One” documentary is about, which will help put those negatives in harsher relief.

Few are apt to be headed off to see “Page One” without being aware that the overarching theme of “Page One” is how terrible it would be if the Times were not around to do its job. (See the Noticing New York review of “Battle For Brooklyn.”) Kinsley in his review that appeared in the Times says that the film’s discussions of how “dreadful” this would be is “boring to the point of irritation after five or six repetitions.”

Trailer Indicators

The trailers for the film also make it clear that this is the main point.

One of the movie’s trailers begins with Times Executive Editor Bill Keller (who looks like he got his job through Central Casting) addressing Times staff saying “We are here to take note that journalism is alive and well, and feisty, especially at the New York Times.” This is juxtaposed in short order (following a painfully sad shot of a laid-off reporter) with reporter Carr saying, “Could the New York Times go out of business?”

Another of the film’s trailers begins with Carr ominously intoning: “Even casual followers of the newspaper industry could rattle off the doomsday tick-tock.” Seconds later he goes on: “Not to worry suggest the new media prophets, the end of the new York Times wouldn’t be that big of a deal they say because tweets, blogs and news aggregators could create a new apparatus of accountability. . . But some stories are beyond the database. Sometimes people have to make the calls, hit the streets and walk past the conventional wisdom.”

And if the trailers haven’t done it for you before you arrive at the film, the film begins with obituary news for publications like the Rocky Mountain Times that have gone out of existence.

The Why and Wherefor of What Would be a Dreadful Loss

If the film were merely a statement that it would be a terrific loss if the Time went under there would be no need to see the film after seeing these trailers. But the film is really about what stands to be lost if the Times is not around to do its job.

It provides the insight by covering the Times coverage of the following stories in the following ways:

• WikiLeaks: Is Julian Assange a journalist or an activist, both, or are such roles mutually exclusive due to conflict of interest? How does an institution of professional journalism like the Times “partner” with Assange, if Assange is not, in fact a journalist and perhaps merely a “source” with an agenda? How does the Times respond when, with the internet, it is less of a gatekeeper for news stories when an organization like WikiLeaks can easily publish what is, in fact news. Should the Times be a gatekeeper so it can promote balanced reporting, draw public attention to the most important stories and/or support the public’s(?)/government interest in keeping some information classified?

The film deals more than suitably with the Wikileaks questions from the standpoint of its overall goals. If readers would like to view an hour providing a still deeper perspective on the intricate moral quandaries revolving around Wikileaks’s work, including speculation about how the transparencies forced by Wikileaks has likely been beneficial in ways the participating journalists involved were unable to foresee, then they should watch PBS Frontline’s documentary, WikiSecrets, The inside story of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and the largest intelligence breach in U.S. history.)

• Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal: The Comcast cable company was interested in purchasing NBC in order to shift into ownership of content as a hedge against Comcast’s worries that with online web access reshaping the media industry people will soon be cancelling their cable subscriptions. As the story is covered you see an emphasis on fact checking by collaborating reporters directed under editorial management. (Implicit in the story for the more knowledgeable is the detriment of vertical integration with the monopolistic control of content by business interests. Also see this OTM story.)

• “Departure of the last U.S. troops from Iraq”: Times staff is seen evaluating how and whether to cover the Obama administration’s orchestration of an August 2010 PR video camera photo-op non-event (a Kuwait boarder crossing covered by the major television networks), about how the “last U.S. combat troops” were being withdrawn from Iraq when that was neither the case nor something the Defense Department was willing to state formally in an official press release. This involves the rigor and vigilance it takes for reporters not to be manipulated by events manufactured for the press and designed to make “hallucinatory” appearances reported in the press take precedence over reality. I think the Times called it wrong by deciding not to featuring the event in its coverage although reporter Brian Stelter did a blog post in the “Business Day, Media and Advertising” section of Times site about how befuddled much of the media (NBC, AP, Fox News, the LA Times, the Washington Post, Al Jazeera) were by the government’s tactic. Those seeing the film get to see the government’s manipulation of the story but as the Times readers wound up uninformed about the pseudo-story nor and the manipulation.

• The Scandal-Laced Bankrupcy of the Tribune Company Under the Management of Sam Zell and Randy Michaels: The Tribune Company, the owner of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs baseball team, was bought by billionaire real estate investor Samuel Zell with a great deal of leverage from Barclays and major investment banks, paving the way for “the biggest media bankruptcy in history.” From the film’s perspective the story of Zell’s acquisition of the news organizations was about the deterioration of a culture of professional journalism into what amounted to the personal playground (replete with plenty of sexual harassment) with people “looting” companies that were once “important community assets.” Zell institutes a more permissive ethics policy allowing for a `cash is king’ kind of selling out of editorial probity respecting the papers’ contents. It is observed how the Zell management team, sharing no values with the increasingly dispirited journalists working for them “manifestly” didn’t “respect” what the journalists did. Next, we see how the Tribune Company management threatens legal action to prevent the story from coming out in the Times and Carr muses knowingly about how the institutional muscle of the Times will mobilize in response, reminding us yet again about the importance of resources. Then, even if the legal protection is there to publish this story, we see that there is also the question of how many words can be devoted to it (Not necessarily a problem with web reporting.)

The abominable management and the falling revenues at the Tribune papers likely amounted to a vicious cycle-style free-fall. Carr comments that the “frat house”-like environment is more like “a radio station in the 1970s” than a newspaper. In a way it’s like a rolling back in time to less profession models of running a business. The story communicates how, as revenues dwindle and come from a smaller variety of sources, the putting out of a cheap paper (vs. a good one) can become the trivialized play of real estate moguls, with their own personal wonts and agenda.

• Vice Magazine: The film covers the expansion of Vice, a magazine with on-line content representative of emerging new styles of media, via an infusion of cash from “some of the biggest names and deepest pockets in the media business” including an MTV co-founder and WPP, a giant media conglomerate. (See: Vice Media Empire Is Near a Big Infusion of Cash, By Jeremy W. Peters, April 4, 2011.) What gets discussed is what is truly newsworthy vs. what amounts to sensationalism and superficial pandering to young people and also the role of trusted brands in news delivery.

• Coverage of presidential travel: The importance of having reporters out in the field covering the president is discussed in the context of how expensive it is to travel with the president. Other orgaizations looking to “save every dollar” are not doing it. On the other hand, some things are cheaper these days: Who knows what a bored kid with video cameras can capture on the cheap.

• News sites that no longer curate their own headlines: With computers and new web technology it is possible for news sites to let their top headlines be determined robotically, simply by how often their readers click on them. The Times has variations on this with its “most popular- e-mailed- blogged- viewed” lists. Just because new organizations can abandon knowledgeable curation of their most important headlines doesn’t mean that it is a good thing.

• Release of the iPad: The nearly irrational exuberance accompanying the introduction of the iPad provides an occasion for the film to consider whether the new technology can “save the newspaper business.” Carr caustically point out that the Venn diagram of Steve Jobs financial interests at Apple are not likely to overlap 100% with the media industry’s.

In addition to this meta-style coverage of the Times-covering-stories-about-other-media the film makes sure it addresses certain issues either critical to the Times itself today or wherein the Times, became the story itself:

• The Pentagon Papers (a historic Times success) and Watergate History: There is fascinating audio from the Watergate tapes wherein President Nixon is discussing his antagonism to the New York Times and implicit desire to control the news. Daniel Ellseberg appears in the film to make the inevitable and elucidating contrasts with the current Wikileaks news. Similarly, there are retroactive references to Watergate.

• Judith Miller and Jayson Blair (historic Times failures): In an interview, Judith Miller addresses her infamous weapons of mass destruction cheerleading on the way to the War in Iraq saying, “If your sources are wrong you are going to be wrong.” It is suggested that the “implied credibility” of the Times contributed to the Miller story not being better vetted.* The Jayson Blair scandal, involving unvetted news stories fabricated by Mr. Blair that quickly got Howell Raines, the then Executive Editor of the paper, fired is cited for the loss of trust it created chipping away at that “implied credibility.” Mr. Carr points out that most criticism of the Times based on such mistakes amounts to cherry-picked fault-finding given the volume of high quality journalism the Times puts out. Michael Tomasky, Editor of Democracy Journal and American Editor-at-Large, Guardian recently made the same point in a debate on the subject covered by Noticing New York.

(* Perhaps analogous to how the Times just reported that the Japanese nuclear industry’s successful propagation of a “safety myth” led to appropriate safety measures not being taken.)

• Twitter: Discussions of Twitter in the film give Carr a chance to describe Tweets with his typical deprecating eloquence as: “cacophonous short burst communication.” While the possible value of Twitter is discussed it does raise the concern of the public’s diminishing attention spans and ability to absorb complex stories. (If one wonders if Carr’s dependable eloquence with phrases was cutting room magic, it wasn’t: Carr, fired off a number good ones as a guest on Bill Maher’s HBO Real Time this week.)

• Web Aggregators: As mere publication in itself becomes free, the Times has been perplexed by non-content-producing web sites that gather content from other Web sites without paying for it thus, as the Times sees it, forcing the Times to compete against its own work. The film mentions sites that repurpose New York Times stories and stories on other web sites that “bounce off of” Times reporting. This is probably the time to note that Noticing New York frequently posts articles that “bounce off of” stories by the Times and others. It is hoped that, in the process, NNY is rigorous about adding new value and insight into what is covered and respectful about sending NNY back to those sites to look at the original content to which NNY posts refer.

• The institution of a Times paywall: The Times after considering all sorts of models is instituting a paywall. But it is a challenge in a world where information is regarded, perhaps immaturely, as free.

• The loss of Times revenue: The web has taken an incredible amount of revenue from the Times and other papers. Craigslist took most of the classifieds. Monster took the job listings. Advertisers do more of their advertising on their own web sites; the film mentions Ford and Chrystler. We went to the film with a real estate brokerage executive who commented that their firm had cut back on their advertising expenditures in the Times by an astounding amount, advertising instead on their own website. It is in connection with the Times new pauperish status that the new Times building is discussed. The Times’ sale and lease back of the building is explained to be the equivalent of having mortgaged it. The film doesn’t suggest that the initial self-compromising decision to partner with Forest City Ratner and resort to eminent domain to build that building in the first place might also have had aspects of financial desperation.

• Layoffs at the Times: We watch as the Times lays off roughly 100 people out of 1250 when, according to Executive Editor Keller, there is “not much slack in the system.” With barely concealed irony the film zeroes in on a departing deputy editor of obituaries.

• Partnerships with ProPublica: Somewhat similar to public broadcasting, ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom. It specializes in investigative journalism that is in the public interest. It has been pairing with “legacy media” to report and get attention for its biggest stories, working with the Times and others like CNN and 60 Minutes. The film explains that these “partners” from the legacy media have been financially forced into this new model. Previously, they would likely have been deterred by concerns that the shared responsibility would associate them with work they could not fully vouch for.

• The departure of a reporter for Iraq: Fortuitously for the film makers, one of the media reporters they were covering when filming, Tim Arango, was tapped to change jobs and go to Iraq. He later became the Times Bagdad Bureau Chief. The film uses this opportunity to focus on personal relationships at the newspaper and also to emphasize the courage and personal risk that can be required from reporters. Probably overreaching a bit, it suggests that bloggers don’t report from war zones. Granted, courage and risk is required for many reporters when they to do their jobs, different kinds of courage and risk from different kinds of reporters.

Does it need to be pointed out that all of the above are collectively about the need for fair, balanced, expert, rigorous and professionally impartial reporting? The above stories are also all about how the implicit reputation the Times has for delivering such reporting. That leads to another subject of the film.

“The Times Effect”

Mostly using the Times’ own staffers to describe it, the film educates its viewers about something dubbed “The New York Times Effect,” which refers to the way the Times leads the way in establishing what is, or is not, news. In fact, if it's not in the New York Times it can be as if it’s not really true, but if it is in the New York Times then everyone follows suit in reporting the story. From the film:

There is actually something called the “New York Times Effect.” In the world of analogue newspapers there was an observable effect. If on day one the New York Times ran a piece on a particular story, political or business issue; on day two, the tier two newspapers would all essentially imitate the story.

It is suggested that the Times effect was more pronounced when “analogue newspaper distribution” was a bigger part of the industry but we are told:

The Times still does to a remarkable degree set the agenda. You really can trace almost any major story these days back to something that originally appeared in the Times. The problem is that once it reaches the public they may not even know that it came from the Times.

(Some of the above quote is included in one of the film’s trailers.)

“The Times Effect” is described in the film after we have been reminded via a vintage earlier documentary hosted by a young Alistair Cooke that the Times goes through an “avalanche of news” in order to decide what will get noticed and how many, including world leaders, view what is “duly recorded each day in the Times” as necessary proof, virtually for the world’s very existence.

We are told:

NBC, CBS, ABC, the first thing they do in the morning is look at the New York Times. And if the New York Times had a story about such and such in a far away place - Well then we will send Walter Cronkite over there.

“The Times Effect” and Atlantic Yards

When it comes to “The Times Effect” on local reporting and Atlantic Yards, the biggest real estate project proposed in New York City, some of the most important events occurred in a 60 day window of time May 24, 2005 to July 27, 2005 shown about a third of the way through the film “Battle For Brooklyn.”

On May 24, 2005 New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (the “MTA”) put out a perfunctory RFP soliciting bids for the railyards it was planning to transfer to developer Forest City Ratner. The 42 page RFP was a palpably insincere gesture. It allowed only an absurdly short 42 days for response. It was 42 pages whereas the MTA’s comparable later RFP for its Hudson Yards railyards site ran 1,369 pages. Doubtless, all the city’s big developers correctly perceived that, as a political matter, they were NOT supposed to bid against Forest City Ratner because even though the public property of the railyards had never been bid, this was viewed as a done deal. In fact, according to statements that the MTA later retracted in connection with court proceedings, the MTA considered that it had already sold the rights to the Yards to Forest City Ratner prior to September 2003.

Clearly not expecting a response, the MTA planned to act on the Ratner plan on Wednesday, July 6, 2005, the same day that responses to the RFP were due.

Pretty depressing.

In the “Battle For Brooklyn” film a quietly desperate but dogged Daniel Goldstein (above in Tracy Collins photo used by the Times for the film) is shown reacting to the notice of the MTA’s wired deal coupled with the compounding frustrations of how “The Times Effect” was working against him. Undeterred, Goldstein has formulated a plan:

The MTA put out a proposal leaving all of 42 days to put together a proposal. Somebody had the idea to call this other developer: This developer had owned property and had plans to build a large building, but Bruce Ratner had the state condemn that property to build the New York Times headquarters. Somebody suggested they might be interested, and they were right. Ratner with their partner the Times are doing a leading promotion on how wonderful Frank Gehry is, and his plan is, how he respects the neighborhood, isn’t it just great!

In fact, on July 6, 2005, the developer Goldstein contacted, Extell Development, put in a bid of $150 million against Forest City Ratner, three times as high as the Forest City Ratner bid of only $50 million. The Extell bid was actually arguably of even greater comparative value to Forest City Ratner’s because it was only for the 8.4 acres of railyards and did not involve eminent domain abuse to lock up an additional 13.6 acres of private property with a questionable upzoning. Providing the same or better creation of affordable housing, it didn’t involve the same overbearing immensity as the Ranter plan, nor did the Extell bid involve enormous subsidies of a billion or more for a money-losing basketball arena.

On July 27, 2005, the MTA Board authorized exclusive negotiation with FCR rather than with Extell.- - Gary Barnett, the president of Extell, commented when interviewed later that, “We are shocked—shocked—that we bid $150 million, [compared with the] Ratner bid $50 million, yet he somehow managed to get it” thus invoking Captain Renault’s acknowledgment of the open tolerance of corruption in Casablanca.

Times Reporting Within Critical Window

The Times briefly reported (May 26, 2005) the issuance of the MTA’s RFP but printed nothing picking up on its bogus character. The bogus character of that bid deserved to be major story. The brief report of the RFP came several days after the Times ran a story under a press release-style headline touting that the Ratner project would theoretically provide lots of affordable housing: Brooklyn Arena Plan Calls for Many Subsidized Units, by Michael Brick, May 20, 2005.

Goldstein’s concern about how the Times was promoting the Ratner project virtually as if its was an extension of the Times existing real estate partnership with Ratner was well founded and prescient. On July 5, 2005, the day before the MTA board planned to approve the project, not expecting the pending Extell proposal in response to its solicitation, the Times published a front-page article about the Atlantic Yards project (Instant Skyline Added to Brooklyn Arena Plan, By Diane Cardwell), when Frank Gehry's new design sketches were released exclusively to the Times. In an accompanying "appraisal" the Times architectural critic effused over the fantasy design (An Appraisal: Seeking First to Reinvent the Sports Arena, and Then Brooklyn, by Nicolai Ourousoff).

The very next day, July 6, the day of the intended MTA approval, the Times followed with another largely complimentary story about Ratner’s plans: Brooklynites Take In a Big Development Plan, and Speak Up, by Robert F. Worth, July 6, 2005. The day after that the Times had to run a story about Extell’s competing bid, “tailored to address some of the major criticisms of the Ratner proposal.” Its headline?: Brooklyn Plan Draws a Rival, and It's Smaller (by Diane Cardwell, July 7, 2005.)

Does it look like the Times stories were being selectively tailored by the Times to help the Ratner project? Certainly, Ratner knew the schedule for various events related to the bid during this window, not that it would have been appropriate for public officials to have been feeding him all these details. Ratner was therefore in a position to, in turn, feed appropriate stories to the Times.

But here is more.

On July 10, 2005, a few days after the Extell bid, the Times ran a City section editorial (Skyscrapers Grow in Brooklyn) comparing the two bids (after saying competition is a good thing). It starts out rather disingenuously implying that it was possible to assume “open and fair competition.” It says the Extell bid has “no provision for the Nets” and “needs to credibly address improvements that would have to be made to the site.” By contrast is contains this cheerleading for the Ratner plan:

The far more ambitious $3.5 billion Ratner plan deals with those issues, and has the very important advantage of carrying with it a commitment to create jobs for area residents, including minorities and women, and to build as many as 3,000 affordable housing units - 50 percent of the total planned. That's significant in a borough with high unemployment and a housing shortage.

* * *
But it is not reasonable to reject the Ratner plan simply because Brooklyn has never before seen anything that big. The area seems ripe for more adventurous ideas. . . .

* * *
. . . . Such a transformation is almost inevitable in a city where growth is usually vertical, and if it happens in Brooklyn, it could help diversify the city's Manhattan-centric economic base.

. . . . If counted as a separate city, Brooklyn would be the fourth largest in the United States. The potential for developing the Atlantic railyards site furthers the prospect that it will may yet emerge from the shadow of its smaller sister, Manhattan.

During this window of time, Times reporter Charles Bagli produced a June 3, 2005 story starting out with a reference to the “2012 Olympics and the proposed West Side stadium,” warning that, “the legacy of these [arena] projects in other Olympic cities is mixed, and skeptics have raised questions about whether some of New York's would become costly white elephants after the Games are over and the athletes have moved on” (After Cheering Stops, Arenas Would Endure; New York Faces an Olympic Reality: Sites Can Become White Elephants).

This was just days before a vote in the Albany capital killed the West Stadium. Many would agree that Times coverage helped kill the stadium.

Bagli went all over the world for the compelling examples of economic failure supporting his warning: Barcelona, Spain, Athens, Greece, and Sydney, Australia. New York-wise he zeroed in to mention plans to build a number of specific arena, other than the West Side Stadium in all the different boroughs: the Regiment Armory (Manhattan) the Olympic Velodrome (Bronx), the Olympic Aquatic Center (Brooklyn’s Williamsburg), Greenbelt Park, a water course complex (Flushing Meadows, Queens) Equestrian center (Staten Island). Only, finally, in a long complete list of everything Mayor Bloomberg’s development officials were contemplating was there an oblique, buried reference to “Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn: Gymnastic center.”

More important is where the Times editorial page (closer to Times management) was on the subject of subsidizing sports stadia and arena a bit later in the month when it ran an editorial critical of the over-generous plans for public funding of the Yankee Stadium and Mets, and the by-then-defunct West Side Jets Stadium. The Times did not similarly criticize the comparably generous public financing for the Atlantic Yards arena then, or ever afterwards.

The sports section also managed to drop in a promotion for Ratner’s pending bid: Bench Battle of 2 Lawrences Taking Shape, by Harvey Araton, July 22, 2005.

In another article distinguishing why the Ratner project could proceed the Times inaccurately reported a supportive City Council president’s inaccurate statement that Ratner “worked more cooperatively and openly with elected officials and community leaders,” and was a conduit for the misimpression that Forest City Ratner “slowly . . . carved a base of support” when it “courted groups like Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development” [B.U.I.L.D] when, in fact B.U.I.L.D was simply and artificially created for the occasion with Ratner-supplied financing. (Unlike Stadium on West Side, an Arena in Brooklyn Is Still a Go, By Jim Rutenberg and Michael Brick, June 9, 2005.)

In lieu of criticisms . . .

On June 26, 2005 the Times featured in its magazine a friendly Q&A with Bruce Ratner titled, “Stadium, Anyone?” (by Deborah Solomon) It doesn’t mention the Times business partnership with Ratner. The softball lead-in: “How do you explain the sudden vogue for stadiums and arenas?” Here's another softball: “How would you define the social value of the Nets?”

June 19, 2005 the Times ran a long story, complete with an interactive graphic feature that looked like it came out of Ratner's market studies, hip illustrations, and a video with images and text like a marketing brochure, proclaiming that Brooklyn was changing for the better: The New Brooklyns, The Great Awakening, /Signs of Changing Times, by Suketu Mehta. This is the way it covers Atlantic Yards (emphasis supplied):

After decades of disinvestment in Brooklyn, major projects are in the works, among them the development of 175 waterfront blocks, complete with 40-story luxury apartment buildings, along the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront; the construction of an 800,000-square-foot sports complex for the Nets in the Atlantic Yards; and, in Red Hook, the return of cruise ships, including the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Elizabeth 2, to a major new pier and passenger terminal.

Spoiler Alert!

Enough time has passed so that at this point we already know how the story of the Forest City Ratner Atlantic Yards bid turns out. “Page One” doesn’t have any local reporters appearing in it but Charles Bagli, the Times principal development reporter, is interviewed at the end of “Battle For Brooklyn.” He says:

Here we are, so many years later and you start scratching your head and you say, ‘Well, I see the arena going up, the steel is rising, but I don’t see any housing, the famous architect’s gone,’ it fed the notion that this was a hollow accomplishment.

What’s more, while Forest City Ratner originally bid $50 million when the MTA decided that it would only negotiate exclusively with it, its upfront payment for the land was reduced to $20 million. (For appearances sake it was increased to a never-implemented $100 obligation for an interval of time right after the Extell bid was rejected.)

The reason the MTA’s decision to negotiate exclusively with the Ratner firm was, in theory, justified was because Ratner was going to provide all of those supposedly superior benefits that Bagli notes have now not been provided. The benefits may never be provided, and Forest City is not now obligated to provide them for at least 25 years instead of within the ostensible ten-year schedule that was part of the original PR (and environmental impact statement).

That the benefits have not materialized is directly attributable to the corrupt fashioning of the of the MTA’s original RFP bid request and partly due to the MTA’s gift to Ratner, again without any effective bid, of substantial sweeter terms after the mega-project was later overhauled in the developer's favor.

Missed Warning Signs Including an Improperly Structured Bid

The obvious insincerity of the bid request, as well as the objectionable selection of the lower, rather than the higher bidder should have provided easy-to-spot clues respecting the ultimate failure to deliver promised benefit. The way the bidding was structured it was doomed to fail. That is because it was designed by Ratner to give Ratner exactly what he wanted and exactly what he should not have been given for exactly the reason he wanted it: a single-developer mega-monopoly for the deployment of all public funds ($2 - $ billion*) for 22 contiguous acres of Brooklyn’s most prime real estate, more than thirty acres if one counts the contiguous acres already owned by the developer which the developer was trying to protect from development competition.

(* Also not covered by the Times.)

Arguably, had the Extell developer been selected, the benefits of the Extell plan would have been provided by now. But if they hadn’t, the community would not have been subjected to another 13.6 acre of eminent domain abuse destruction where land now lies fallow. Further, if the MTA site had been divided up and bid out to multiple developers, as it should have been, per the model of Battery Park City, then any non-performing developer could easily be quickly replaced which would itself encourage performance.

Ergo, much of the failure goes to what the Times did not report on and the mistaken impression it gave of the Ratner plan benefits in that critical window of time when Daniel Goldstein sat in his apartment complaining of “The Times Effect” playing out with respect to Atlantic Yards.

Fair Warning?

To be fair, on July 23, 2005, just days before the MTA decided to reject it, Charles Bagli did author an article that appeared in the Times about the competing Extell bid: Rival Bid Tops Ratner's Offer to Develop Brooklyn Site. While nowhere near as stark in its criticism as what you have been reading here it did note all of the following:

The difference in those bids could be a problem for the Ratner proposal, even though it has far more political support. The agency's board, which is set to choose between the two offers at its monthly meeting on Wednesday, may have to contend with a new law that requires it to take the highest offer, without regard to any political considerations.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat, said that the authority "ought to live by the law," which was passed in June but does not take effect until late this year.

In a further complication, an appraisal commissioned by the transportation agency and released yesterday put the value of the development rights at $214.5 million, far more than either bidder is offering.

Those three paragraphs might have been fair waning to a populace that was on alert, but the public had been lulled by many longer, more prominently featured pro-Ratner PR stories.

The “new law that requires it to take the highest offer, without regard to any political considerations” referred to above was violated by the MTA a second time when it, again, bid out a substantially reconfigured version of the mega-project when Forest City Ratner could not meet the terms upon which the project had originally been awarded to it. When community groups and legislators sued because of its violation a judge ruled, essentially, that even though the New York State legislature had passed a law to this effect it could not be enforced because the legislature forgot to say that there should be anyone who could go into court to enforce it.

What was the MTA’s argument for violating the law yet again as it continued with Ratner and a reconfigured project without bid?: It reasoned that the structure of the original ersatz bid giving Ratner monopoly control over the acreage made substitution of a new developer impractical. In other words, everything hinges upon what the public didn’t know and appreciate during that May 24, 2005 to July 27, 2005 window.

Cancelling Out “The Times Effect”?

Lest one think that The Times Effect might not have been strong or that it might have been cancelled out, for instance, by `citizen bloggers,’ that is not the case.

Atlantic Yards was announced accompanied by a fullout publicity press. Little information was available other than what the publicists wanted out. If the Times was not going to do its job, it was going to take some time for others to mobilize and fill in.

It is important to remember that this was back in 2005. That’s eons ago in internet time. Lots of people know that Atlantic Yards Report can be depended upon these days to scrutinize all aspects of the Atlantic Yards megadevelopement. However, back during this critical window of time, Atlantic Yards Report didn’t exist, nor did its predecessor, TimesRatnerReport.

On September 1, 2005, after all these MTA bid events had concluded, independent journalist Norman Oder issued a report criticizing the Times's coverage of the Atlantic Yards which includes much of what was observed above. Two of the telling headings in that report: “8. The Times has soft-pedaled FCR’s track record of gaining subsidies for its projects and failing to fulfill the visions promised.” and “14. Times architecture critics have been cheerleaders for the project.” Bill Keller was Executive Editor of the Times then as he was during the critical window of time when the MTA bids were out.

Essentially as a continuation of that report’s undertaking, Mr. Oder published the first TimesRatnerReport blog post on Sept. 3, 2005. On Wednesday, March 1, 2006, Mr. Oder launched Atlantic Yards Report to replace his TimesRatnerReport, reflecting a “broader approach to the topic.” Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, the community group spearheading opposition to the Ratner project, founded a web site in March of 2004 but it was a somewhat static site and didn’t become a news-dispensing blog until May of 2006 when it took its current format and design. The No Land Grab site, however, had mobilized its watchdog activities.- See also, here and here. (Noticing New York was started in June of 2008, partly because of the Atlantic Yards abuses.)

Could these `citizen bloggers’ make up for the Times not doing its job? David Carr is adamant that they can’t. He is probably right. But any argument that `citizen bloggers’ can’t surpass the Times and often do a better job of investigative reporting is abjectly wrong. There is, for instance, no way that the Times coverage of Atlantic Yards in any way measures up to the depth, accuracy, timeliness and vigorous digging done by Norman Oder as in independent blogger-journalist.

At the outset of “Page One,” the audience is told that the Times is suffering from two things simultaneously. It is not just suffering from the collapse of advertising revenue, it is also suffering from the way in which, with the internet, journalism is no longer practiced by a (superiorly-resourced) specialty class which means that the “authoritative tone of Times” is called into question. It is not likely that simple. Probably, as came into play after the Judith Miller and Jayson Blair affairs, what buttresses or undermines the Times’ “authoritative tone,” more than anything, is whether it gets things right or wrong. And sometimes, maybe whether it gets it at all.

“The Times Effect” Protects the Times When the Times Credibility Is Questioned

When the Oder report was issued questioning the Times credibility on Atlantic Yards coverage the New York Observer quickly responded with dismissive disbelief:

Does any of that matter, if the paper covers the issue fairly? No, not really.

* * * *

“Please note that the Times newsroom operates wholly independently of the Corporate operations of the Times Company,” he wrote. “The Company’s development project with Forest City Ratner Companies is not remotely a consideration in the newsroom’s editing decisions. The newsroom discloses the Company’s relationship with FCRC in its pages when it is relevant, just as it would disclose any other such relationship — for example, a review of a novel written by a Times reporter.”

“We report fully and fairly on any newsworthy project, ours or others’,” he further wrote.

(See: Circulation War, 9/01/05.)

Interestingly, the reporter who wrote so with such casual dismissiveness, is Matt Schuerman who later, at the Observer and then at WNYC, the city’s public radio station, wrote and broke stories much more consistent with Mr. Oder’s revelations as opposed the Times sidestepping.

The Converse of “The Times Effect”: the Possible Check Upon The Times

While “The Times Effect” means that the Times has a very substantial influence on what is said and reported in other papers, there is a converse effect that keeps the Times in check. The Times looks over its shoulder and is concerned whether what other press reports will make it look unprofessional. In “Page One” this is shown when Times staff is deliberating whether to cover the Iraq troop withdrawal publicity-stunt. In leaning toward noncoverage of the event staff worries: “What we won’t be able to predict is what the Post and the LA Times will be doing with it.” That’s followed up by “I am only wondering if- someone is going to come in tomorrow and say, `Gee, everyone covered this but us.’”

There may be a number of respected press institutions to keep the Times looking over its shoulder nationally and internationally. In New York City when it comes to real estate matters there are two daily papers of significantly less stature: The Daily News owned and run by real estate mogul Mortimer Zuckerman, and the New York Post owned by Rupert Murdoch, frequent friend of New York real estate moguls. Another small circulation paper, the New York Sun went out of existence without surviving many years. The New York Observer is a weekly.

For a time it looked as if the most significant competition in keeping up the delivery of Atlantic Yards scoops the Times could ignore was going to come from local community papers whose readership apparently found that those development stories were hitting close to home. The Brooklyn Paper, in particular was covering Atlantic Yards. That changed when Rupert Murdoch bought the Brooklyn Paper along with many other local community newspapers he was acquiring. Forest City Ratner coincidentally, or not so coincidentally became the Brooklyn Paper’s landlord.

The Brooklyn Paper went from actively and critically pursuing Atlantic Yards stories (and winning awards for it) to ignoring potentially negative stories about Atlantic Yards and printing PR fluff from the developer.

With an efficiency that gives the public fewer options and points of view, The Brooklyn Paper now runs the same stories as Murdoch’s New York Post and other community papers. Murdoch also owns the Wall Street Journal which many view as a Times competitor nationally (potentially locally with expanded coverage) together with the Fox Broadcasting Company which also delivers news to New Yorkers.

New York Magazine which has also covered real estate development in New York City, sometimes more so , sometimes less so, was owned by Murdoch from 1976 until 1991, into which he folded Cue Magazine, a competitor he bought and thereby eliminated. When Murdoch purchased New York Magazine he also acquired The Village Voice, which has been from time to time responsible for important investigative journalism in the city. He sold the Voice in 1985.

Then there is public broadcasting, particularly the city’s public radio stations, WNYC FM and AM and now (after being sold off by the New York Times) music station WQXR, which used to be a commercial radio station when it was the “voice of the New York Times.”

Does competition provide a sufficient check on the Times reporting of local news in New York City?

When Real Estate Development Is a“Not Reported In My Back Yard” Story

To sum it up, “Page One,” is a good film, well worth getting out to see. There is a lot to be learned from it. There is a also lot to be learned by stepping back to consider it in broader context.

It is interesting to think that the Times considered it would be a conflict of interest to have one of its own professional staff to review the documentary, that this alone might cross a line wherein the Times would be reporting a story about itself. This sidelining of the normally depended upon professionals resulted in an inadequate review. That’s ironic because “Page One” asks the question: What if press professionals were not around to do their job? The aspirational goal probably needs to be to avoid the conflict of interest in the first place.

“Page One” contemplates how disastrous loss of the Times would be almost entirely by considering the prospective void we would face with respect to national (and international) reporting. But, if the FCC study is correct, the greater immediate danger being faced around the country is an inadequacy of local reporting that can hold governments and big institutions accountable. Mr. Carr offers a cryptic aphorism at one point in the film: “If you work for the media long enough, eventually you’ll type your way back to your own doorstep.” It seems, in fact, to have worked out that way. There’s a big story going on in New York and it’s unfolding on the Times' own doorstep. The public was crookedly sold a lot of hype and hooey with the help of politicians who are not being held accountable. These unfolding events include the meta-story of how the Times is reporting on its own real estate partner who concocted that hype and hooey. That makes “Battle For Brooklyn” a powerful companion film to see with “Page One.” Both films address the question of what can happen when the New York Times is not around to do its job.

As discussed in connection with the FCC report on local reporting needs and with “Page One” by Times staffers, professional journalists should not be passive conduits of PR and they should not be taken in by publicity substituting “hallucinatory” appearances for reality. It is unbecoming when they swallow hype whole failing to provide perspective. Suggested rules: Don’t be seduced by the sensational and shun the superficial. That may be difficult in a world of increasingly short attention spans. Rigor and fact checking are important and as, Judith Miller can caution: “If your sources are wrong, you are wrong.” Stories that are handed to you full blown by others may have cooties. Be wary of the self interest of others you may consider your partners or salvation. You’ve got to check under the hood.

Carr suggests that reporters must be willing to “walk past the conventional wisdom” and think for themselves. Good reporting often takes courage. That may entail not just going with the flow. Yes, the job is getting more difficult. As resources dry up and news organizations shrivel in financial stature they can become the abused playthings of wealthy moguls. In fact, wealth and consolidation in the media industry itself is a story affecting the telling of the all our news stories and the attendant question about how many voices are out there that will say what needs to be said.

A big part of the story lying on the Times’ own doorstep is how “The Times Effect” comes into play. When one of the instruments you wield in doing your work is your “authoritative tone,” extra responsibilities must follow. With great power and authority comes great responsibility. The responsibility is awesome when you lead the reporting pack, set the agenda and can virtually define reality by what you deign to “duly record” as the paper of record. Conversely, if your “authoritative tone” is one of your most valuable assets then you owe it to yourself to husband that asset by getting the story right, properly use it so as not to lose it. And there is always the possibility that “implied credibility” of the Times will be trap, breeding complacency. Complacency, particularly with respect to local reporting, is apt to be more entrenched if other news outlets are diminishing in quality.

"Page One" not only frets that the Times could go out of business, the film’s fret also extends to the `what ifs” were the Times to be significantly diminished, something it suggests has not yet happened. The Washington Post is cited as a cautionary example. First it is respectfully noted that the Watergate story was pretty much “owned” by the Washington Post. Then we are informed that “diminishment has made the Post a lesser paper” but assured that “hasn’t happened to the Times in a meaningful way.” Perhaps, though, the Times has, in fact, already been diminished and that where it has been diminished is in its local reporting. It is easy to make that case by pointing out that the narrative of “Battle For Brooklyn” has been largely unreported by the Times even though the narrative involves billions of taxpayer dollars and is an unparalleled story of abuse assisted by public officials. (Though not dealt with in "Battle For Brooklyn," I consider chronicles of events regarding Columbia’s takeover of West Harlem part and parcel of the same story.) The “Battle For Brooklyn” story is, in fact, the kind of thing the Times might even swoop in to report if it were happening elsewhere in another U.S. city.

Hindsight vindicates that the Times reporting lacked even rudimentary prescience about the mischief afoot. When it comes to national reporting and the Times missteps with Jayson Blair and Judith Miller it is possible to say that these were isolated faults amongst a wealth of truly fine reporting. Can the same be said of the New York Times local reporting? One difference is that the Times openly admitted and atoned for its errors with respect to Blair and Miller. Hindsight notwithstanding, that is something that Times has not yet done with when it comes to its local reporting of Forest City Ratner’s exploits. Maybe the Times fears that admitting such error will further detract from the stock people put in its “authoritative tone” but not reporting this story as it should be reported likely hampers the Times because we live in a world were everything is ultimately connected. For instance, the local Atlantic Yards story is also now also involves a national scandal involving the abusive sale of green cards under the EB-5 program. . . and the Times hasn’t reported about it.

“Page One” convinces us that the Times is a superlative newspaper, one that can and should be held in high esteem in many regards. It is. But there is a story happening on the Times own doorstep which the Times reporting is not doing justice and that may soon be discovered to be a bigger part of the story than many now imagine.

[This post is the same as a post appearing on Noticing New York.]

Inflation That's Causing Deflation: Some Not So Very Good News For the Real Estate Market

2011-05-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

Inflation, deflation, stagflation: A little bit of inflation might be good for the economy, but too much is bad, as are deflation and stagflation.

In some ways that does not bode well for the national real estate market. It looks like we may, for a while, be experiencing the worst of all three of these economic problems. While real estate is often thought of as hedge against inflation it isn’t a hedge against the kind of inflation we are about to talk about: Inflation that causes deflation in the real estate market.

A Depressing Review Respecting the Concerns About Classic Deflation

Most people understand that what was going on during the Great Depression was not good news. It was a vicious cycle and the problem was deflation. The economy seriously slowed. Jobs were lost everywhere. As a result the prices of everything declined. If you were holding cash that was good because your cash was more valuable. But if you had to pay a mortgage, or rent property you were in trouble because you were now obligated to make payments that were effectively, in real terms (adjusted for deflation), more expensive than what you had originally agreed to, more than what you originally bargained for. The result: You might be propelled into a default. In fact, thinking it over, you were given a good reason to default on your obligations; your home, the property you were paying the mortgage on, was no longer worth as much as you once agreed to pay for it.

Deflation, Unemployment and Low Wages

Defaults then generated the vicious cycle mentioned. Spreading defaults meant that foreclosed upon properties flooded the market, lowering property prices still further- - adding to the deflation which would in turn again cause more defaults and around and around you could go. The slack could be picked up by increased employment but that is not what happened and there is a problem with expecting an uptick in employment in that situation. Deflation contributes to further unemployment and lower salaries and so that also becomes part of the vicious cycle. Generally, real estate price downturns follow rises in unemployment with a generous lag in time. But a slow real estate market contributes to unemployment.

The Money Supply and Keeping Deflation At Bay

Everyone knows that deflation is not good for the economy. It is a trap to be avoided. The way to stay out of that trap is to pump up the money supply enough so that prices don’t go down. That’s what the federal government via the Federal Reserve was trying to do with its effort at monetary easing, the last go-round known as QE2 for “quantitative easing, the second round.”

QE2's Fine Calibration: Walking the Line Between Staving Off Deflation and Causing Overheated Inflation

The Fed is was trying to finely calibrate the easing so that there would be enough additional money in the system to keep the economy moving and avoid deflation but not, on the other hand, overheat the economy with runaway inflation. It is to be remembered that a lot of money has already been pumped into the U.S. economy with the stimulus packages, and like the Vietnam era, with heavy spending on wars paid for with debt, not taxes (which led to high inflation after the Vietnam war). So it is quite possible that one day inflation could really take off.

Funded Inflation. . .

In fact, the Fed’s quantitative easing has, indeed, helped fund some inflation. The problem with the Fed’s quantitative easing, however, is that, aside from the fact that some felt it was too timidly restrained, its potential for deflecting deflation in the housing market was sapped as prices rose, particularly in two other areas: Fuel and food. The price of food is going up (with world food prices hitting a record in January) largely because of global climate change events. What are people to do when the price of eggs goes up 50%? The price of fuel is going up because we are still relying on the fossil fuels causing the climate change. And because we are importing so much of the oil, American employment doesn’t go up when those prices do. Instead, American employment goes down. The price of raw materials, including rare earth elements are also going up as other countries economies compete (out-compete?) with our own economy for them.

. . . Accompanied by Deflation

To the extent that the inflating prices driven by the inelastic demand for relative necessities like food and fuel absorb increases to the money supply intended to deflect the possibility of deflation we can get the worst of all possible worlds: Overall, we can have inflation as people shell out to pay for what are largely necessities, with things like oil being imported, while no money is left over for the more discretionary expenditures like the bigger and bigger homes in which Americans have been choosing to live in the last several decades, which means a continuing cycle of deflation and unemployment in those home sectors of the economy.

Consumer Income is Deflating For Most Americans

The inflation means consumers have less to spend in real terms overall. Over the last year, prices are up by 3.2 percent but average hourly earnings were only up 1.9 percent during the year. (See: U.S. wages can't keep up with consumer prices, Marketplace Morning Report, Friday, May 13, 2011.) So, consumers are losing ground financially with less real income to spend even before most of what they do extra to spend is directed to the rising fuel and food costs.

For most Americans whose principal income comes from wages rather than investments the decline in real purchasing power is exacerbated by the fact that they are on the short end of growing income inequality.* They have less comparative purchasing power as wage income declines relative to income overall which includes investment income. Recently released figures for March show that the rise in wage and salary income was only 0.3 percent but the rise in income overall was 0.5 percent. (See: Consumer spending rises on higher prices, Marketplace Morning Report, Friday, April 29, 2011.)

(* Today the top 1 percent takes in more than 20 percent of the nation’s income, in fact, almost a quarter of all the nation's income in any given year and controls forty percent of the country's wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 40% of the country currently has only 0.3% of the nation’s wealth. According to Professor John Quiggin: “the vast majority of benefits of economic growth have gone to people in the top 10 percent of the income distribution. Within that 10 percent, the top 1 percent has done much better than the remaining 9 percent, and within that 1 percent, the top tenth of a percent has done even better.”)

Stagflation and the Real Estate Market

Remember the “stagflation” of the 70s? That’s essentially what we are experiencing again. The stagflation fo the 70s was when we learned that inflation and recession were not mutually exclusive, as previously believed. Back in the 70's under Nixon sharp increases in oil and food prices were both an issue. What you get: 1.) slow economic growth, 2.) high unemployment, 3.) rising prices, 4.) economic stagnation. That’s the classic view. Here is something this discussion is looking to add to the list: “5.) falling real estate prices.” That’s because the rising prices are confined to the inflation of the prices for other commodities out-competing real estate (and often not factored or considered to be part of the core inflation being measured).

Profit might go up in the oil sector as the energy firms take a tithing on all the additional cash flowing through that part of the economy, but persistence of the situation described above won’t be good for the real estate market.

Proving Numbers

Do we see any empirical proof of this?

According to the Zillow home price index home prices have been drastically declining since June of 2006. (See: First Quarter Brings More Dismal News for Housing Market, May 8, 2011, Katie Curnutte from which the chart above- similar to the one appearing below- is extracted.) Home values fell again last quarter by about three percent. 1.5 million homeowners are seriously delinquent on their mortgages. 2 million homes are in foreclosure. (See: U.S. home values fall 3%, By David Gura, Marketplace Morning Report, Monday, May 9, 2011 and Housing numbers continue to slide, Marketplace Morning Report, Monday, May 9, 2011.) Zillow is now predicting that the real estate market won’t bottom out until 2012, “at the earliest.”

Here are two other related Marketplace reports:

When will housing climb out of the recession?
Marketplace Morning Report, Monday, May 9, 2011

When will we hit bottom in the housing market?
Marketplace Money, Friday, April 22, 2011

Proving Exceptions?

The exceptions to this bad news?: Places where there is employment. Also, government policies that temporarily intervened with subsidies to boost home sales positively influenced the housing market for the brief while that they were in effect, but it is not necessarily a good thing that these policies artificially postponed reckoning with a final bottoming out of the market necessary to reflect low employment. Nor is it likely a good thing that there is now an oversupply of housing resulting from the bubble that ensued when the government pumped money into the housing sector with aggressively lowered interest rates and unregulated and unwise subprime mortgage lending.

Affordable Housing, But For Whom?

The silver lining of the oversupply is, arguably, that in the end it will be good for people looking for more affordable housing. . . . But that only works if such families have managed to retain jobs or income sufficient to afford even those lowered prices. Also remember that to the extent that there has been inflation in other areas of the economy such as food and fuel (accompanied by low interest rates on bank deposits), those on fixed incomes or retirees living on invested savings have actually had their incomes effectively reduced. (See: Low interest rates have costs, not just benefits, by Bob Moon, Marketplace, Tuesday, April 26, 2011.)

If you want to hear another perhaps facetiously contrarian point of view go to this article to consider the argument that substantial money is actually being pumped into the national economy (possibly to the tune of $50 billion) by defaulted homeowners living cost-free in the homes on which they no longer are paying the mortgages: 'Squatter rent' may benefit the U.S. economy by $50 billion, Marketplace, Friday, May 6, 2011.

An Oddball Silver Lining Theory

The proponent of this idea, Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase, calculates that with about 8 percent of mortgages of the nation’s 44 million mortgages being past due, there is about $800 billion in mortgage payments that are past due, so that about $50 billion per year can be redirected by the defaulting mortgagor families and is therefore “free for other purposes.”

For Mr. Feroli’s theory to work it has to mean that this money is more beneficial when spent by the defaulting families directly rather than had they paid what was owed to the banks to have them do with what they would. Mr. Feroli supposes that the families being in dire economic straits will quickly spend the money on necessities. Conversely, if the banks aren’t paid they might fail, in which case the FDIC picks up the tab at taxpayer expense. The Marketplace coverage doesn’t say what Mr. Feroli thinks happens if the banks simply stay afloat without getting the money. Is he presuming that banks are tending to just sit on money these days?

In Late April S&P Case-Shiller Home-price Index Precursed Zillow's Early May News

Here from another Market Place segment that covered the latest S&P Case-Shiller home-price indexes figures showing a drop in prices at the end of April:

the amount of housing production that's taking place . . . . went below the 50-year-low level. That's a depression for the housing sector. It's been down 30 months at low levels, and it's because the demand is not there.

(Home prices continue to drop, Marketplace Morning Report, Tuesday, April 26, 2011)

See also this Marketplace story about the release of those Case-Shiller index figures which emphasizes how lower home prices translate into reduced consumer spending: Home prices going down, by Nancy Marshall Genzer, Tuesday, April 26, 2011.

And a NPR Planet Money post (which provided the chart above by Alyson Hurt/NPR) extracts these points out of those Case-Shiller report numbers:

• Home prices fell by 1 percent between October and November (according to Case-Shiller's 20-city composite).
• Prices fell in 19 out of the 20 cities tracked by the index between October and November.
• Prices fell by 1.6 percent between November of 2009 and November of 2010.
• Home prices fell in 16 out of 20 cities between November of 2009 and November of 2010.
• Eight cities hit new, post-bubble lows in November: Atlanta, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, Portland, Seattle and Tampa.

(See: Home Prices Keep Falling, January 25, 2011, by Jacob Goldstein):

If you go to the that article you will also see a table of home prices in the 20 metro areas tracked by the monthly Case-Shiller report.

The Glutting Oversupply of Homes

Perhaps if Americans had more jobs and at better salaries there wouldn't be such an oversupply of housing, but as things now stand, there is a glut of homes people can't afford and that glut stands in the way of a bottoming out of home prices and their eventual recovery. It's a problem in cities across the country such as "Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix and Tampa." In some cities the statistics are truly astounding. For instance, in Miami three out of five homes sold there are foreclosures or short sales:

Foreclosures have flooded the market in Miami. Three out of five homes sold there are foreclosures or short sales. (Short sales occur when lenders allow homes to be sold for less than what's owed on the mortgage.)

(See: Bargain Prices Help Reduce Glut Of Foreclosures, by The Associated Press, April 26, 2011.)

Three out five homes? That's 60% of the market. And that's recent news.

Skittish Banks

The oversupply and this dire picture leaves banks skittish. When, as a result, they refuse to provide financing there is less capital in the market to finance transactions that aren't foreclosures or short sales. (See: Housing market faces headwinds, by Janet Babin, Marketplace, Monday, May 9, 2011.) The banks have good reason to be skittish with fraud in the housing lending market increasing.

The Latest Bad News

It looks like there may be even more bad news piling on. It is reported that the federal government which “last year backed nine out of 10 new mortgages nationwide” is likely to stop providing government backing for larger loans. For three years now government agencies like Fannie Mae have been backing mortgages as large as $729,750 which, in high-cost areas like New York could be for a not very big apartment (and what it costs to build one). If government backing drops back down to $483,000 it could definitely drag down the market in those high cost areas like New York, California, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. (See: Federal Retreat on Bigger Loans Rattles Housing, By David Streitfeld, May 10, 2011.)

Yo-Yo Federal Policy

If prices do get dragged down it will be another example of questionable government policies to support the housing market. There is nothing necessarily wrong with subsidizing the housing market, and backing mortgage loans may be a good strategy to do that. Maybe high-price loans should be excluded from support and there are certainly countervailing arguments that populations living in higher-cost areas of the country should not be discriminated against. If there is a cut-off point for federal backing it should escalate over time as prices rise. What is highly undesirable, however, in terms of federal housing subsidy programs are in-again-out-again strategies, because without consistent commitment the market will only yo-yo, ending on the downside when they come to an end.

As it is, we have already been waiting a very long time to find out where the actual bottom of the market is after the ending of the last set of temporary federal housing subsidies were terminated.

What's the best federal strategy to boost prices in the housing market? It's the obvious one: The federal government needs to create an economy that generates more and higher-paying jobs.

Social Security Inequation: This is Rich, Living Longer While Everyone Else Enjoys It Less; Putting Two Together

2011-04-29T19:31:00.000-07:00

Here are two stories I came across that seemed like they absolutely had to go together. Since I’ve not seen anyone else pairing them, we’ll do it here. One is from economist Paul Krugman, the other from Robert Reich, also an economist, and the former Secretary of labor under President Clinton. Each concerns Social Security, the wealthy and why the system may not be anywhere as close to insolvency as some (are they all Republicans?) would have the rest of us presuppose.

Krugman: Some of Us Are Living Longer- The Rich

The Krugman piece was the first to catch my eye back in November. It concerned the suspect work product of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform tasked with finding a supposedly bipartisan solution to the nation’s fiscal problems. (See: The Hijacked Commission, by Paul Krugman, November 11, 2010.)

The commission announced its plan November 10th. As Mr. Krugman points out, the section of the plan on tax reform was summarized in seven bullet points the last of which was “Reduce the Deficit” while the first was “Lower Rates.” The commission was, in fact, all about tax reduction being a priority, stating that one of its “Guiding Principles and Values” was to “Cap revenue at or below 21% of G.D.P.”

Krugman writes many great articles, but this was one of his best. The whole article is worth reading but for purposes of this National Notice story what caught my eye about Social Security was this:

Let’s turn next to Social Security. There were rumors beforehand that the commission would recommend a rise in the retirement age, and sure enough, that’s what Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson do. They want the age at which Social Security becomes available to rise along with average life expectancy. Is that reasonable?

The answer is no, for a number of reasons — including the point that working until you’re 69, which may sound doable for people with desk jobs, is a lot harder for the many Americans who still do physical labor.

But beyond that, the proposal seemingly ignores a crucial point: while average life expectancy is indeed rising, it’s doing so mainly for high earners, precisely the people who need Social Security least. Life expectancy in the bottom half of the income distribution has barely inched up over the past three decades. So the Bowles-Simpson proposal is basically saying that janitors should be forced to work longer because these days corporate lawyers live to a ripe old age.

Reich: Some of Us Are Paying Less Into the Social Security System- The Rich

The Krugman statistics about who, exactly, is living longer came to mind when I came across the Robert Reich piece, the basic point of which was that there is no problem with the solvency of the Social Security system except that the wealthy are now paying proportionately less into than ever before and because “Now a much larger portion of total income goes to the top -- almost twice the share they got back then.” (See: How to fix Social Security, Marketplace, Wednesday, February 23, 2011.)

As Reich points in his commentary on Marketplace and in a column that appeared a number of places, including in the Christian Science Monitor and the Huffington Post (Budget baloney: Social Security isn't to blame for deficit, and the Best Way to Fix It Permanently, February 16, 2011) the solvency question was addressed and supposed to have been dispensed with by Alan Greenspan’s Social Security commission back in 1983 by gradually increasing payroll taxes and raising the retirement age.

Why hasn’t the Social Security system stayed in balance and “fixed for good” as Alan Greenspan’s 1983 commission expected? Reich explains that it is all due to fact a shift of income to wealthier Americans who pay proportionately less to Social Security because their contributions to the system are capped after they earn more that $106,000:

The Commission assumed that, as the ceiling rose with inflation, the Social Security payroll tax would continue to hit 90 percent of total income.

Today, though, the Social Security payroll tax hits only about 84 percent of total income.

It went from 90 percent to 84 percent because a larger and larger portion of total income has gone to the top. In 1983, the richest 1 percent of Americans got 11.6 percent of total income. Today the top 1 percent takes in more than 20 percent.

Putting Two Together

In other words, putting Krugman’ and Reich’s points together, the wealthy are living longer, longer then the rest of us, presumably getting more Social Security benefits paid out to them as a result, while at the same time they are paying proportionately less and less of their income into the Social Security system. And the system is becoming unbalanced because the wealthy are hoarding a greater and greater proportion of the nation’s income, thus subjecting an increasing amount of that income to an artificial cap that’s now limiting how much of the nation’s income is going to support Social Security to a lower percentage than everyone expected when things were last put in balance. . . That’s because in 1983 no one expected the degree to which income inequality would increase in the last 28 years.

Solutions Within Reach

Reich points out that the solution for balancing the system is therefore easy. Since the whole problem is that the shift in income to the wealthier earners has exempted more national income from going into the system by virtue of that cap on the ceiling income over which wealthier earners are exempted from paying into the system, all you have to do is raise that ceiling. Then the percent of income being subject to Social Security contributions will go back to the percent it used to be:

If we want to go back to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax would need to be raised to $180,000.

Presto. Social Security’s long-term (beyond 26 years from now) problem would be solved.

That’s the easy solution. Another solution Reich doesn’t mention would be to reverse the unexpected trend in income inequality. Do wealthiest earners really need to be earning twice the share of total national income they were earning back in 1983? Does the top 1 percent in the country need to now be earning "more than 20 percent" of the nation's total income instead of the 11.6% that very lucky and elite 1% was earning back in 1983?

Those two possible solutions both involving asking for a contribution from the longer-living (and greater benefit-collecting) rich aren’t the ones being talked about however. For some reason, increased taxes for the well-to-do always seem to be off the table. Instead, what is being talked about is having the rest of the public shoulder the extra burden resulting from the increasing income inequality. As Krugman noted, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is suggesting an increase in the retirement age. Alternatively, benefits might be reduced.

As for Reich’s suggested solution, Reich makes this point:

Not incidentally, several months ago the White House considered proposing that the ceiling be lifted to $180,000. Somehow, though, that proposal didn’t make it into the President’s budget.