State of Change

Beyond Obama's Town Hall

By Ari Melber

President Obama fielded eight questions from guests at his town hall event Thursday, including one from the instantly famous eight-year-old Ethan Lopez. It is obviously great for the President to directly interact with citizens, especially as the nation makes such big choices about how to address the economic crisis. Why should the opportunity be arbitrarily limited, however, to people who happened to attend a packed presidential event in one part of the country?

There's no good answer.

At least, not anymore. People used to argue that local events were the only way for a President to hear directly from citizens, but network technology has opened up our civic possibilities, as the Obama campaign showed. It's past time we used these tools to open up the Presidency.

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March 19, 2009

Dodd's Dumb Move

By Ari Berman

As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd was more interested in mounting a hopelessly far-fetched presidential campaign than in drafting the type of legislation and doing the sort of vigorous oversight that might have prevented or at least softened the economic meltdown, particularly in the banking and housing sectors that Dodd had jurisdiction over.

Now comes word that Dodd drafted legislation to cap bonus payments to firms that received bailout money, only to scrap the provision from the economic stimulus bill after the Obama Administration objected. The language was rewritten at the final hour, when no one had a chance to read the bill or even knew it had occurred. So much for changing the culture of Washington.

"We are outraged to learn that Sen. Dodd, at the behest of the Obama administration, inserted a last-minute loophole into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that allowed AIG employees to receive exorbitant bonuses at the American taxpayers' expense, and the vast majority of elected officials, not to mention the American public, missed the amendment because they only had 13 hours to read the bill!" the Sunlight Foundation commented today.

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March 19, 2009

Obama Spiritual Counselor: Change Course on Afghanistan

By John Nichols

President Obama, formerly of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, is currently looking for a new spiritual home. In the meantime, he is reportedly taking religious counsel from several pastors, including the Rev. Jim Wallis.

How much counsel the president is taking from the president and chief executive of Sojourners magazine and key player in a Washington-based activist network that takes the same name remains to be seen.

But we can only hope that Obama is listening to Wallis on the question of how the United States should proceed in Afghanisatn.

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March 19, 2009

Enough With Cramer's Apologies; Fix CNBC!

By John Nichols

Coming off the "meltdown smackdown" inquisition of CNC cheerleader Jim Cramer by Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, a great new campaign has been launched to "Fix CNBC!"

Truth be told, CNBC may be beyond repair.

But the messaging is smart and instructive with regard to the broader media crisis in America:

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March 17, 2009

Recession Hits Liberal Radio

By Ari Melber

The nation's economic failures are also media failures, as Jon Stewart and Glenn Greenwald can tell you. So it is particularly sad to see the hard times take down a program that has been consistently, presciently skeptical about corporate and government abuse. Liberal radio host Peter B. Collins has announced that this will be his last week on air:

To make money in syndication, we need to be on 20+ stations and at least one of the big 3, NY, LA, Chicago. As an independent, self-syndicated show, we've had to compete with Air America, Dial-Global and Nova M programs, and for various reasons, the PBC Show didn't break through. Air America is the brand that most people connect with progressive talk radio, and their bankruptcy and sequence of blunders has, unfortunately, defined our collective efforts in a negative way that has provided an easy target ...

Collins tweaked Air America, where he occasionally guest-hosted, for signing TV host Montel Williams, who joined the channel in a surprise announcement last week:

Air America just announced that Montel Williams will be their new offering in the Thom Hartmann time slot, which tells us that Jerry Springer's flameout was just their first attempt to retread a tabloid TV host as a "progressive" radio host.

Meanwhile, in the last month, liberal channels were dropped in once-promising cities like Ann Arbor, Miami and Washington D.C. The trends have been down for at least two years, Collins added: "The total number of stations offering progressive talk in the US peaked at about 105 in 2006, and is now around 70." Collins' show had broadcast in several states, including California, Washington and Massachusetts, but it was not enough.

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March 16, 2009

Obama Moves to Block AIG's Bailout Banditry

By John Nichols

Picking up on a call by one of the loudest congressional critics of the no-strings-attached bailout of banks and insurers, President Obama today ordered Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to pursue legal challenges to the American International Group's plan to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives.

"In the last six months, AIG has received substantial sums from the US Treasury," Mr. Obama said of the embattled insurance giant that wants to give one percent of its bailout buckage to the people who made the mess -- and have yet to find a way out of it.

AIG, which intends to pay its executives $165 million in bonuses, has collected $170 billion from the federal government.

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March 16, 2009

House of Labor Wrangling: UNITE-HERE v SEIU, AFL v CtW

By John Nichols

At precisely the point when the labor movement should be consolidating gains made in the 2006 and 2008 elections -- an advancing policy initiatives such as the Employee Free Choice Act -- a series of nasty internal fights are absorbing key unions and the country's two major labor federations: the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition.

UNITE-HERE, the amalgamated union of clothing workers and hotel and restautant employees that has one of the richest and most honorable histories in the U.S. labor movement, appears to be breaking apart and key leaders are now angling to exit the Change to Win federation to rejoin the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations..

The UNITE-HERE move is a blow to the key player in Change to Win, Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern.

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March 13, 2009

Stewart Asks Cramer: "Where's the D'Oh!"

By Leslie Savan

Whew! Stewart vs. Cramer--which might as well have been called journalism vs. the kind of bullroar that got us into this mess--was the most riveting TV since the Inauguration. Here's Part I; you can click through to see Part II and III:

Cramer was sitting like a Catholic schoolboy in trouble with the head nun--hoping that by sitting with superstraight posture, hands always visible on the desk, and mea culpa-ing her to death he'd get the lecture over with sooner. He was all animal fear, his every gulp and bead of sweat palpable through the screen: I felt I was inside his skin, my stomach turning over too, as if the experience was bringing us all down to the bottom of the human condition.

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March 13, 2009

GOP Gov Likens Obama Policies to Zimbabwe's

By John Nichols

Zimbabwe is, by every account, a very troubled country.

Why? Most analysts say its economy has been horribly mismanaged by a frequently dictatorial and seemingly delusional leader, President Robert Mugabe, who has arbitrarily rejected outside advice and assistance that might allow the country to ease the suffering of its poorest citizens.

That may sound a little like South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who is trying to arbitrarily reject federal stimulus aid despite the fact that his state has a 10.4 percent unemployment rate.

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March 12, 2009

CNBC's Credit and Fault Swaps

By Leslie Savan

Just like the politicians and the bankers, the financial news media has been playing a game of musical chairs for two decades, and the music just stopped: Every talking head who still has a job is terrified of becoming the face of the new Depression by getting tagged as the glibbest enabler of this deregulatory disaster. And deep down they know they're guilty, just as all the news division haircuts know they cheered as Bush plunged us recklessly into Iraq.

And that's why Jon Stewart's Daily Show critique of CNBC has shot through the Internet like a hamster video, and why it keeps generating sequels, like this from Tuesday morning, which in turn sparked Stewart's reply that night:

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March 12, 2009