Thoughts Aloud

Archive for October 27th, 2008

In The Crypt at Politico:

Boehner hits Obama on ‘redistributive change’

The Obama campaign immediately pushed back, arguing that the Right is deliberately misinterpreting a narrow legal argument Obama was making about decades-old court cases.

“This is a fake news controversy drummed up by the all too common alliance of Fox News, the Drudge Report and John McCain,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

“In this seven year old interview, Senator Obama did not say that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth at all.”

Fake Controversy?  My turn to ask, “Is this a joke?” What was narrow about:

the Warren Court…didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution… one of the… tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was… so court-focused… there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.

Please explain, Senator, exactly what you were trying to say, and just how much “redistributive change” do you have in store for us if you are elected? ◄Dave►

Our Constitution is just a political document that paved the way to where we are now… with a fundamental flaw that continues to this day? Hmmm… who is going to fix it? Here is 28 seconds of audio:

…that can make a crusty old man almost weep. ◄Dave►

This guy:

Michael S. Malone is one of the nation’s best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation’s first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world’s largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling “Virtual Corporation.” Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, “The New Heroes.” He has been the ABCNews.com “Silicon Insider” columnist since 2000.

…is going to need a new gig.  I am amazed that ABC News actually published his “Media’s Presidential Bias and Decline - Columnist Michael Malone Looks at Slanted Election Coverage and the Reasons Why”:

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game — with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer,” because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist…

But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass — no, make that shameless support — they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press…

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography…

Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes & and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain’s. That’s what reporters do. I was proud to have been one, and I’m still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.

So why weren’t those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don’t see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn’t; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.

And then he explains why, with a simple yet fascinating theory that I had not heard before.  Treat yourself to a good read. ◄Dave►

Here is the transcript of the NPR audio below in 2001:

Barack Obama:

“You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the Civil Rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of re-distribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

“And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution – at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [it] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

“And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.”

A caller:

“The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn’t terribly radical. My question is (with economic changes)… my question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work, economically, and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to change place?”

Obama:

“You know, I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way… You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time. You know, the court is just not very good at it, and politically, it’s just very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard.

So I think that, although you can craft theoretical justifications for it, legally, you know, I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts.”

Marxist; Socialist; Fascist? Pick one; but proud American Patriot, Capitalist, or Constitutionalist he ain’t. ◄Dave►

Gee, I find this audio blast out of Obama’s past strangely comforting:

Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered

I had become so accustomed to his “rope a dope” – “aw shucks, I didn’t know what was going on around me” jive that I was starting to think the man was clueless. While still inarticulate, and unable to speak a complete sentence extemporaneously without stuttering, it is obvious here that he was very familiar with the subject matter. This means he is not clueless; but just a very good liar when he pretends not to be toying with Marxist principles. Perhaps this heretofore hidden intelligence might keep him from making too many serious blunders when confronted with the reality beyond the petty world of Chicago politics after all. One can at least hope so. We have survived lying political opportunists shoveling tax money into their enablers’ coffers before, and can do it again… but if he chooses to kill the golden goose for ideological “redistributive” purposes as punishment for the dastardly achievers, we probably won’t. Time will tell. ◄Dave►