Tag Archives: economy

“Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality – no one in America is”

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So says Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald investigating the Valerie Plame identity leak affair.

For my friends who have no idea what this is about. A quick review.

1. Joseph C.Wilson was a U.S. ambassador assigned to investigate Iraq-Niger WMD production claims. He reported he found none. When President Bush, later in his State of the Union address claimed there were, Wilson went public.

2. Shortly after, his wife Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative, had her identity leaked to CNN personality Robert Novak – who revealed it in a newspaper column. It is believed that the revealing of her identity was in retaliation for his going public.

3. Revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative is illegal. An investigation has begun into who leaked her identity to Novak and to other journalists across the country, notably Judy Miller at the New York Times and Time Magazine’s Matthew Cooper.

4. Time Magazine’s Matthew Cooper has helped reveal his source as George Bush’s primary politcal advisor Karl Rove. Judy Miller, refusing to reveal her source, and has since been sent to jail. Article at the Guardian.

Jay Rosen thinks it’s Time for Robert Novak to Feel Some Chill

I, for one, have had it with Robert Novak. And if all the journalists who are talking today about “chilling effects” and individual conscience mean what they say, they will, as a matter of conscience and pride, start giving Novak himself the big chill.

That means if you’re a Washington columnist maybe you don’t go on CNN with him– until he explains. If you’re a newspaper editor you consider suspending his column until he explains. If you’re Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/US, you take him off the air until he decides to go on the air and explain. If you’re John Barron, editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, you suspend your columnist (with pay, I should think); and if Barron won’t do it then publisher John Cruickshank should.

If Novak says he can’t talk until the case is over, then he shouldn’t be allowed to publish or opine on the air until the case is over. He should know the rage some of his colleagues feel. Claiming to be “baffled” by Novak’s behavior may have been plausible for a while. With reporter Judith Miller now sitting in jail, and possibly facing criminal charges later, “baffled” is sounding lame.

After the decision yesterday someone asked Bill Keller, top editor of the New York Times, if this was really a whistle-blowing case. Keller answered: “you go to court with the case you’ve got.” I understood what he meant, but that answer was incomplete.

For in certain ways the case that sent Judy Miller to jail is about a classic whistler blower: diplomat Joseph C. Wilson. Those “two senior administration officials” in Novak’s column had a message for him: stick your neck out and we’ll stick it to your wife. (They did: her career as an operative is over.) Might that have some chilling effect?

For more on the consequences of Mathew Cooper revealing his sources read this commentary. via dangerousmeta.

NYTimes: “Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide”

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A new series in the New York Times discussing social class in America is opening discussions in various blogs I read: Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide. I haven’t had a chance to read the first article yet, but for now here goes the relevant posts:

Metafilter: Rich get richer, poor get poorer.

Ed Cone: “there is a big difference between being a partner in a Wall Street law firm and handling traffic tickets and simple wills in a small town”.

Want a simple rule to define class in America? I have one – and it is sure to offend:

On average: If you shop at Dunkin Donuts for your coffee – you’re middle, working class or poor. If you shop at Starbucks for your coffee – you’re upper middle class or richer.

That’s it.

I am the only person I know who shops at both. Most thumb their noses one way or the other. I go to Starbucks in the afternoon at work – even though might I bitch and moan to my co-workers that Dunkin Donuts costs less and has better coffee. Sometimes we do a double stop – we go to Starbucks for them and they walk with me to Dunkin Donuts for mine. These same co-workers chide me when I buy a drink there every now and then. Three dollars for a small hot chocolate. Three dollars for six ounces! I admit it – I’ve had a few of them!

Dunkin Donuts is a left over from my economic past. I continue to drink it because Starbucks smells of elitism to me – even if I can supposedly afford it – and I love it over Starbucks – even some try to convince me that Starbucks is just better.

I need to get around to reading that article…

Google becomes a media company

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Google’s new video service, that allows you to upload, share, and sell your own works, sounds like a powerful tool, not only for professional video producers, but for hobbiests, bloggers, and more. Google gets to become a media company with the content produced by users of its service.

As always, there is a discussion at Metafilter worth checking out.

I think folks should be contrasting and comparing this to OurMedia.org another video distribution service, but one with vastly different terms of service and copyright requirements.

Nickel and Dimed

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In my off time I’ve been reading “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich. I highly recommend it. Speaking from experience – it is a clear look into reality for the forgotten America – the working poor. Ehrenreich, by jumping in the trenches with those that actually make this country work has written a highly readable book. Not facts and figures, but stories of daily struggle thru the eyes of an observer. The kind of stories that are lost in the daily din.

Are there any related weblogs people would recommend? I’m not talking about hard-core rant sites. I’m talking about sites that are as focused as this book is on the daily struggle, with additional tips on how to not only survive it, but overcome it.

That Was The Deal

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I am not sure, in this economy, someone can do what I did the last ten years. I don’t think the same opportunities exist. But what can be done about it? Will the coming tax breaks help or hurt?

Democracy presumes and enshrines equality. Capitalism not only presumes but requires and produces inequality. How can you have a society based on equality and inequality at the same time? The classic answer is that democracy and capitalism should reign in their own separate “spheres” (philosopher Michael Walzer’s term). As citizens, we are all equal. As players in the economy, we enjoy differing rewards depending on our efforts, talents, or luck.

But how do you prevent power in one from leeching into the other? In various ways, we try to police the border. Capitalism is protected from democracy, to some extent, by provisions of the Constitution that guard individuals against tyranny of the majority?for example, by forbidding the government to take your property without due process of law. Protecting democracy from capitalism is the noble intention, at least, of campaign finance laws that get enacted every couple of decades.

Separation of the spheres also depends on an unspoken deal, a nonaggression pact, between democracy’s political majority and capitalism’s affluent minority. The majority acknowledge that capitalism benefits all of us, even if some benefit a lot more than others. The majority also take comfort in the belief that everyone has at least a shot at scoring big. The affluent minority, meanwhile, acknowledge that their good fortune is at least in part the luck of the draw. They recognize that domestic tranquility, protection from foreign enemies, and other government functions are worth more to people with more at stake. And they retain a tiny yet prudent fear of what beast might be awakened if the fortunate folks get too greedy about protecting and enlarging their good fortune.

That was the deal. Under George W. Bush, though, the deal is breaking down.

Read the rest by Michael Kinsley in Slate Magazine (via rc3.org). Today Paul Krugman in the NYTimes asks and anserers, “The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, this latest tax cut reduces federal revenue as a share of G.D.P. to its lowest level since 1959. That is, federal taxes are now back to what they were in an era when Medicare and Medicaid didn’t exist, and Social Security was still a minor expense. How can we maintain these programs, which have become essential to scores of millions of Americans, at today’s tax rates?”

A great conversation related to all this is taking place over at Oliver Willis’s.