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Key sentence in the government's GM bankruptcy release (via Ambinder) highlighted:
The U.S. Treasury is prepared to provide approximately $30.1 billion of debtor in possession financing to support GM through an expedited chapter 11 proceeding and transition the new GM through its restructuring plan. The U.S. Treasury does not anticipate providing any additional assistance to GM beyond this commitment.
Hmm. If $50 billion ($30B plus an earlier $20B) really is the limit of the taxpayer subsidy, fine. Then GM and the still-privileged UAW will have to make some tough choices down the road--and whatever happens the bailout could be justified by the backup, background rationale of 'we delayed the end until the economy could handle it.' But is the Obama Administration really planning to cut off GM's intravenous drip of federal billions, if when the $50 billion doesn't put the company back on its feet? It doesn't look that way, from this quote in the NYT:
“We don’t think that after this next $30 billion, they will need more money,” one administration official said. “But the fact is there are things you don’t know — like when the car market will come back, and how much Toyota and Honda and Volkswagen will benefit from the chaos.”
That official isn't saying 'We gave them $50 billion. If that's not enough they're on their own. Maybe the UAW will even have to take a wage cut.' The official is saying "We gave them fifty billion but if that's not enough to let them compete with Honda then 'they will need more money.'" In other words, they're not on their own. Indeed, if they want to maximize their subsidy from Uncle Sam, they'd be well advised to need a few more dozen billions within a year or so. ... You'd think that skeptics in Congress, perhaps noticing the surprisingly anti-bailout polls, could succeed in nailing the administration down to a firmer date for cutting off the federal subsidy (which might actually have the pro-GM effect of forcing the UAW to face reality).** ...
P.S.: Toyota has just unveiled a small, mileage-oriented luxurious Lexus hybrid. It seems to be way more than a padded Prius. Gets 34 mpg. Will sell like hotcakes in West L.A.. Elsewhere, might "benefit from the chaos." ... What are the chances that quality-challenged GM will be able to build something in the same league? I'd say that Elon Musk, for all his problems, has as much of a chance of doing it as GM--and Bill Clinton's good friend Belinda Stronach has a better chance than either of them. ...
P.P.S.: The NYT also says that
On Monday, Mr. Obama is expected to argue that any alternative to his plan would be worse, and that a liquidation of G.M. — the only other real option — would send the unemployment rate soaring over 10 percent and would radiate damage throughout the economy. [E.A.]
The unmentioned middle alternative would have been for Obama to actually have driven a hard bargain and forced a significant-but-tolerable reduction in UAW wages, maybe even enough to give GM a small competitive advantage (heaven forbid). WaPo's Steven Pearlstein, a bailout popularizer who seems to have good Obama sources, even predicted this outcome, assuring us back in April that "unionized workers will have to accept immediate reductions in base pay." Didn't happen. Instead, the Treasury sent more money. ...
**--Two Bad Frames: Note that the way this issue is often framed in the press--'Will the government get back its money?'--actually tilts the argument in favor of continued subsidies. After all, if the government just puts in more money, maybe its investment will finally rise in value! Wouldn't want to lose it all after investing so much! If I were advising Congressional skeptics, I'd say 'Forget the getting the $50B back. Maybe it's gone--just like a lot of the TARP bailout money. So what. Forget about the government's "investment." Focus on turning off the spigot.' ... Similarly, as noted, when critics (and the press) frame the issue as "bondholders vs. the UAW' it minimizes the critics' chances of success. The bondholders are doing as well as they could expect to do--and they are, you know, bondholders. It's everyone else (including but not limited to taxpayers) who's paying the price of the unions' extraordinarily favorable bailout deal. ... 11:32 P.M.
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"Clarence Thomas is a great justice. Sonia Sotomayor will be, too." Who wrote that subhed to Dahlia Lithwick's Slate piece? Make him or her get coffee for everyone else for the next month. Lithwick's piece doesn't argue that Thomas is a great justice. It argues he's not a "dim bulb," a "moron," a "dunce or a Scalia clone," and makes an ambiguous, unendorsed reference to the "more common" view that he has a "deeply reasoned and consistent judicial philosophy." ... It would be interesting if Lithwick thought Thomas was a great justice. I can't believe she does--especially after reading this piece. ... 6/1 Update: Subhed rewritten. .. 3:11 A.M.
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Here's another suspect rationalization from the Obama auto task force, as recounted by David von Drehle in TIME:
Task-force members counter that other unsecured claims have received even better deals than the union's. Warranties, for example, have been 100% guaranteed - no haircut at all. "We're trying to avoid liquidation, and so these claims have to be classified according to their importance to the future viability of the company," a task-force official explained. "Obviously you can't sell cars without warranties. You can't make cars without suppliers. So most of those claims are being paid. And you can't build cars without skilled workers." [E.A.]
How many of the UAW's members are skilled workers? I thought one of the big virtues assembly line work is that it can be done by unskilled workers. Even with all the fancy computer-assisted quality control systems, does most auto assembly work really require skills that can't be learned fairly quickly?
The unnamed "task force official" implies that Chrysler's work force (and GM's) is so precious that it must be protected from sharing in the sacrifice of bankruptcy. Is it? If UAW workers are so distinctly productive then why do virtually all auto manufacturers starting production in the U.S. try to get as far away from the union as possible? Is there any doubt that if all Chrysler's workers quit tomorrow they could fairly quickly be replaced by workers--from local communities--who were a) cheaper and b) just as good or better? .. .
The point isn't that the unsecured creditors who did worse than the union deserve a better deal. They don't, at least as long as they're doing as well as they would in a conventional bankruptcy (without the government's expensive intervention). But the lack of sacrifice required of the UAW, after it helped drive its industry into the ditch, is a problem in and of itself, given the billions in taxpayer funds that are being spent to prevent that sacrifice (and the billions more that will be required over the next few years as GM and Chrysler fall short of the inflated expectations set by the Obama task force). Why should the government tax unskilled workers making $18 an hour, who haven't bankrupted their employers, in order to protect unskilled workers making $28 an hour, who have bankrupted their employers, from having to take a pay cut? The press' focus on creditors (because they are the ones whining loudest at the moment) is what is allowing the Obama administration to duck that question. When the question does get asked, I don't think Marc Ambinder's initial suggested answer--"The Obama administration supports the union movement"--will cut it. ... 2:57 A.M.
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Jeffrey Rosen pitches what he says is the latest fashion in "progressive" constitutional theory, "democratic constitutionalism." How is it different?:
While a Warren Court liberal might counsel the Supreme Court to leap ahead of public opinion and provide constitutional protections for gay marriage today, and while a minimalist might urge state and federal courts to wait until public opinion has shifted decisively, a democratic constitutionalist would embrace bold state court decisions but hold back at the federal level.
a) Wow. Inspiring, no? b) Rosen's whole framework seems to be: "How much change can we cram down the throat of the American people?" Maybe that's the problem. Are there any changes Rosen's progressives want that they admit just can't be found in the Constitution? (And, once "public opinion has shifted decisively" in the direction of those changes, why do they have to find them in the Constitution anymore anyway?) c) What's all the talk about "consensus" and not "getting too far ahead of the will of the people"--and about how "Constitutional change ultimately flows from the bottom up, not the top down"? Isn't the more important judicial role to violate consensus and stand athwart the will of the people in defense of individual rights--and to enforce them from the top down? ... 2:48 A.M.
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Obama may be doing many good things with the GM and Chrysler bailout deals, but one thing he isn't doing is "reinventing capitalism for the 21st century"--which is Marc "Spin Me" Ambinder's characterization of what Obama thinks he's doing. .... Indeed, here is the guts of the rationalization offered by Ambinder, presumably after consulting with administration sources:
The administration believes that its intervention will buy Chrysler a few more years. If it fails in a few years, that's bad -- but not destructive.
"Buying a few more years" isn't "reinventing capitalism for the 21st century"--at least I hope not. Seems more like gradually disposing of the carcasses of the Wagner Act industrialism left over from the 20th. ... Nor is it "creative destruction." It's the opposite--temporary preservation, not destruction. ... And we'll see if Chrysler (which now has 300,000 unsold cars!) even survives "a few years," though I guess if the federal government keeps subsidizing them they will. ... Maybe Obama, as Steven Pearlstein suggests, is saving us from the "mortal blow to national pride"** that these iconic firms' "sudden demise"--as opposed to drawn-out, flailing, tortuous demise--would deliver. Again, not crazy, but also not very 21st century, especially when you consider the flourishing of Tesla- and Magna- like firms, many building electric cars, that would occur if the Detroit dinosaurs were no longer staggering around the landscape squashing newcomers. ...
P.S.: Robert Farago runs through GM's recent sales stats. Gruesome! (How many Buick Lacrosses and Lucernes sold in April, combined? 1,481. I think that might be a typo.) ...[via Insta]
**--When you see a Chrysler Sebring do you swell with national pride? I just get depressed. ... 5:26 P.M.
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"[Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton has intervened in talks over the future of Opel and Vauxhall at the request of German ministers," reports the London Times. Why is that fascinating to those who read the gossip columns? Because the two bidders for Opel are FIAT of Italy and Magna of Canada. Magna's Executive Vice-Chairman and former CEO is Belinda Stronach (whose father, Frank Stronach, founded the company and is board chairman). Belinda Stronach has been linked in the gossip pages with ... Bill Clinton. Even the Washington Post once cited Canadian reports of their "'close personal and business relationship.'" She's the one whose mere presence in a tabloid photograph, leaving a restaurant in a group with Bill, caused concern among N.Y. Dem pols, according to the NYT.
Now Bill Clinton's wife will help decide the fate of her firm's bid for Opel.
I thought Jeffrey Toobin told us sex was never relevant! ... [Hillary's listed as a friend on her (unofficial) MySpace "tribute" page. Will her relationship with Bill hurt her or help her?--ed Don't know. But it's likely to be one or the other!]
Update: It appears that Stronach's firm, Magna, will get Opel (after coming up with "new ideas"). That leaves FIAT the loser bidder, and FIAT's new American partner, the New! Chrysler, looking awfully Choochy:
Opel’s technology would have been a major asset in the Chrysler effort, because of its strength in small to medium size cars that Chrysler’s current lineup lacks. Industry analysts were much bigger supporters of the potential Opel deal for Fiat, viewing the chance of a successful combination with Chrysler as much smaller. [NYT]
12:55 A.M.
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Defining Ruthlessness Down
"As it has been up to this point, the Obama administration's role going forward is to be ruthless and impatient about the restructuring of these once-great American companies so they can emerge from the current recession profitable and competitive." --Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein, defending the Chrysler and GM bailouts. [E.A]
"For our active members these tentative changes mean no loss in your base hourly pay, no reduction in your healthcare and no reduction in pensions.”--UAW memo to GM workers about the concessions made to help the company. Via WSJ. [E.A.]
3:08 A.M.
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Overlooked? From The Charlie Rose Show Tuesday (at 8:00 mark)--
CHARLIE ROSE: How would you have lived your life differently based on what you know now?
ELIZABETH EDWARDS: Boy, I mean, there`s so many -- I certainly would have gotten mammograms more often. That was an easy one.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, of course, right.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS: You know, I would not have voluntarily put myself in a position where I thought I would lose a child...
CHARLIE ROSE: Of course not.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS: ... and that I would feel so betrayed. I wouldn`t have done that voluntarily. I would...
CHARLIE ROSE: What does that mean? I don`t know what that means.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS: That means I would have made different choices. You know, I might have married somebody else and done something else ... [E.A.]
Is this (a) a huge dis or (b) something most wives tell themselves every other day? ... Evidence for (a) is that Mrs. Edwards immediately veers into talking about her husband's "gift to stir" and leave people "moved and inspired." Make up call! ... 1:53 P.M.
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Today's Freeze-Dried CW Tomorrow: When Obama picked Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, I figured nobody else would run with the "comprehensive immigration reform" angle--i.e., that Sotomayor offers something to placate Hispanic lobbyists and politicians who aren't getting what they want on immigration (which is legalization of current illegals). The forward lean! I was wrong. The Consolation Prize Theory became Instant CW--so much so that pro-legalization lobbyist Frank Sharry was forced to blog an unconvincing denial. ... 1:33 A.M.
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Die Blingerdammerung--Crouch & Battiata 1, Coates & McArdle 0: The argument against the suggestion that Obama Presidency would kill off certain aspects of hip-hop culture was always a little desperate. (How dare you clueless bourgeois people say that hip-hop will die? Everyone knows hip-hop's already on its last legs!) More evidence from the WSJ that Crouch & Battiata were on to something that Coates & McArdle were just too hip to acknowledge. ("Culture of Bling Clangs to Earth As the Recession Melts Rappers' Ice") ...
Update: Coates, Conor Clarke and reader J. note that the Journal piece on hip-hop jewelry mainly blames the recession for the decline in demand. Hey, that's what GM blames too! But GM has bigger problems. ... All we know for sure from the WSJ story is that hip hop artists have less money with which to buy bling. That could be because of the recession, or it could be because of the decline in the music industry in general ("Internet piracy cutting into musicians' record sales") or it could be a change in hip hop fashion--or it could be because hip hop specifically has been falling out of favor and the ascension of Obama is delivering the coup d' grace. If the latter were true we would be seeing stories like this one about now--but we won't read about hip-hop reviving with the economy. We'll see. I suspect Coates will have many more opportunities to be defensive and argue that it's all too complicated (so don't go speculating that, say, when Obama says "brothers should pull up their pants" it might actually result in some people--not only brothers--pulling up their pants). ... P.S.: I don't quite understand why Coates is so bothered by the possibility that Obama might usher in a cultural era in which hip hop loses its place, since Coates makes a big point of "the disgust that black youth themselves have expressed with the music." ... 1:32 A.M.
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The Good Andrew Sullivan--religious, non-excitable--has nice things to say about Robert Wright's Evolution of God. ... 1:31 A.M.
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Chooch On the Horizon? What happens to Chrysler if FIAT, its putative savior, fails to acquire Opel from GM this week? Was FIAT counting on Opel to fill some of the obvious gaps--mid-sized cars and larger--in Chrysler's weak lineup? The best U.S. car GM makes--the Camry-fightin' Chevy Malibu--started as an Opel design, remember. ... 2:07 A.M.
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Product placement is everywhere these days. ... 12:18 A.M.
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Is there a campaign to tarnish poor Anderson Cooper? First this negativity in the LAT. ("Cooper's ratings have been in sharp decline ...") Today, a suspiciously similar item in the New York Post's Page 6 ("ratings have plunged") that cherrypicks Cooper's worst days. TV Newser has a less excited take, noting
Year-to-date, Cooper is flat in the ratings. In 2008, AC360 averaged 1,194,000 Total Viewers. Year-to-date 2009, he's averaging 1,199,000 (through May 3). ...
It is true that AC360 is shedding viewers from its Larry King Live lead-in ...
Still, flat is not so good! If Cooper falls further, how does Visionary CNN Chief Jonathan Klein not fall with him? ... P.S.: If Klein has done anything at the network, aside from promoting Cooper, keeping his own name in the papers, and sneeringly spinning CNN's declining numbers, I forget what it was. Oh right: He's skillfully positioned CNN as the boring, nonpartisan network in an exciting, partisan time. ... 12:12 A.M.
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Monday, May 25, 2009
Buried Lede of the Day: From the tenth graf of a May 7 WSJ article on furniture retailer Design Within Reach:
Just getting people into stores can be difficult at a time when self-indulgent shopping has lost its allure, says Jim Taylor, vice-chairman of Harrison Group, a market research firm. Dr. Taylor has just completed a consumer study for American Express Publishing that suggests the wealthy no longer really enjoy shopping. What's more, their new, less-materialistic lifestyles are "a lot of fun," he says. "Our happiness scales are up this year for the first time in years." [E.A.]
Is that really true? If so, a big deal, no? ... And why? Perspective? Lower status anxiety? Lower Iraq anxiety? Obama? The power of schadenfreude? ... It's a thumbsuckers' playpen. ... 2:07 A.M.
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Ben Sheffner illustrates Nick Denton's possibly-tragic misunderstanding of American libel law. ... But is linking to Gawker's libel itself libelous, even if the purpose of the link is to show how libelous it is? [What about linking to Sheffner's linking?--ed That's OK under the Two Degrees of Libel rule, which I just made up] ... 2:05 A.M.
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Ezra Klein warns that if nothing is done to control the cost of health care, in 20 years we'll be spending 26.7% of our GDP on it. Is that all? I was thinking the figure would be much higher. ... P.S.: I suppose it depends on what we get for 26.7% of GDP. But if expensive medical advances added a year or two to my life, I'd be happy to fork over a quarter of my income. Wouldn't you? ... P.P.S.: The Obamist Party Line on universal health care--that we have to scare everyone into thinking we need it to control costs--has always seemed ill-advised, given that we've never been able to control health care costs before. And it plays into conservative arguments that liberals really want to meddle in medical decisions and ultimately deny treatment. Now it turns out the O.P.L. health cost scare stats aren't really even that scary. ... Why don't Democrats instead push to provide everyone with health care using the argument that ... everyone needs health care? ... Just a thought. ... 2:03 A.M.
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Saturday, May 23, 2009
Kinsley Pissed at Time So He Shoots Newsweek: I said JPod's NewNewsweek analysis would be definitive. I was wrong. Still ... here's Mike Kinsley's "billboard" graf:
The newsmags face a choice. Actually, they've faced it since long before the Internet. Should they try to provide a complete picture of what happened last week? Or should they stop worrying about that and hope to find appeal in trends, service pieces, fine writing, muckraking exposes, provocative argument, and other traditional non-news magazine fare? Whenever they have an existential crisis--and this is not the first--they always make the wrong choice.
Kinsley's apparently actually saying that the right choice would be to "try to provide a complete picture of what happened last week"-- the traditional newsweekly cribsheet role. But would Kinsley want to put out such a magazine? I bet not. He'd be bored in two weeks and start adding provocative arguments. Soon enough there would be fine writing and the wheels would be off.
This isn't a small problem, I think. Nobody who is clever enough to write the useful magazine Kinsley has in mind would want to work for that magazine, at least not for very long. It would be an inherently unstable institution, like the institution of copyediting. (Good copyeditors are valuable, but most people who are good copyeditors are good at other things and don't stay copyeditors.)
I guess Kinsley's Newsweek could hire young smartasses like Nick Denton's crew at Gawker--but they'll always be able snark more freely on the Web than in a print glossy designed to be distributed in Midwest doctors' offices. (Soon they might be able to make more money on the Web too.) Whoever writes the Daily Beast's Cheat Sheet has the necessary Kinsleyweek tone about right--i.e., explain what's happening with just enough mockery. But we'll see how long they stick around once Tina Brown isn't the only thing keeping half the writers in NY out of the unemployment office. ... In any case, The Week already does an awfully good job of what Kinsley has in mind. And it has a circulation of about half a million--a third of what Newsweek hopes to "be down to" in a year. ...
I tend to think the problem with Newsweek's redesign is less the basic choice (to put out a non-newsweekly) than "what Mikhail Gorbachev used to call 'the approaches of the stagnation period,'" as Kinsley puts it. I expect Newsweek will get much better in future iterations, and that Kinsley's ridicule will have a big impact (goodbye, "Letters" page). That doesn't mean I expect the project to succeed. Just because newsweeklies face a choice of two approaches doesn't mean one of them is right. ...
P.S.: When I worked at Newsweek in the late 90s, I used to wonder at how all these talented people could sit at their desks in a sort of haze---it was as if a soul-deadening gas was permeating the offices. I later concluded that a soul-deadening gas was permeating the offices. Really, the air was bad. Newsweek's moving offices--that should help. ... 2:07 A.M.
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That Was Quick
"Bankruptcy surgery revives Chrysler after all"--Thursday, May 21, Reuters
"Fiat already concerned for 'deteriorating' Chrysler"--Friday, May 22, Reuters
3:05 A.M.
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Thursday, May 21, 2009
The Chrysler Bailout is "capitalism at work," writes private equity macher Scott Sperling in the WSJ. Here are some of the more questionable sentences in his essay:
Without a drastic restructuring neither Chrysler nor GM would have a chance for long-term success ...
These decisions include "right sizing" industry capacity by cutting many union and white-collar jobs and closing numerous manufacturing plants and dealerships; making the unions accept lower wages and benefits so that these companies can compete ... [E.A]
The cuts current union members were forced to accept were not impressive. Before the deal, Chrysler's UAW workers made $28 an hour. After they deal, they'll make $28 an hour. They gave up a scheduled increase in wages, plus a couple of scheduled bonuses. That explains why Chrysler's Belvidere, Illinois workers told TV station WIFR that "the plan is not nearly as drastic as they expected." ...
As for Chrysler's "chance for long-term success," it appears vanishingly small. Italian manufacturer FIAT is supposed to save Chrysler with new products, but according to a recent Automotive News article, "four of the six new vehicles from Fiat will enter the small-car segment," which is highly competitive but "covers only 14 percent of the entire U.S. light-vehicle market."
"The volumes need to be big for Chrysler to survive," [market analyst Tracy Handler] said. "Will they be? I have doubts about that."
See also this BBC article ("it's madness"). Pathetically, Chrysler hopes that even if they don't save the company the new small cars will "[b]urnish the environmental image of Chrysler brands," says Automotive News. Unfortunately, the pipeline for those brands' other, larger, products--burnished or not--is pretty much empty.
If Chrysler workers were paid, say, not $28 an hour instead of $24--still not bad--the firm might actually have a "chance for long term success" through charging lower prices. But that wasn't a sacrifice Obama was ready to ask (even if Belvidere workers were apparently willing). ...
Final obvious point: I don't want to sound like Veronique de Rugy here, but who will pay the price if when this half-baked "restructuring" fails? In normal "capitalism at work," those who would pay the price will be those who made the deal and put up their money--the capitalists. (Query: Would Scott Sperling invest his firm's money in this dubious proposition?) If When Obama's plan fails, the monetary loss will fall not on Obama, but on the taxpayers. It will likely be made up somehow by the taxpayers (via higher tax assessments or inflation). That's not "capitalism at work." It's something else at work. But I'd be all for it, if I thought it really would work. It won't, and it will be Obama's fault. (He'd certainly get credit if it succeeded.) ... 6:05 P.M.
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Buried Lede of the Day: Thomas Edsall, summarizing a new Pew poll, notes the Dems have gained some support recently! While Republicans have lost ground! And voters care more about the economy than "moral values."
We knew that. What we maybe didn't know is this:
Conversely, public support for labor unions appears to be weakening: the percentage of people agreeing that "labor unions are necessary to protect the working person," has dropped from 74 percent at the start of this decade to 61 percent this year. The decline was sharper --- from 76 to 53 percent, a 23 point fall -- among independent voters than among either Democrats or Republicans. [E.A.]
Some 61% say labor unions are "too powerful," a big jump from 52% in 1999. ... Support for unions, says Pew, is at an "all-time low.". ... Also, perhaps counter-intuitively, "'the overall balance of public opinion on the government's responsibility to provide for the needy has shifted to the right' despite the onset of a severe recession." This rightward movement appears to be the result of growing fear among the above $75K set (a big set) that the poor have become too dependent on government programs. ...
Hmmm. Democratic. But skeptical of unions. And worried about welfare dependence. ... What kind of Democrats are these? ... 6:04 P.M.
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Arianna's secret weapon: Are you running a political site and worried about reversing the "inevitable post election traffic decline"? Arianna Huffington has the solution. ...
There are things Don Graham won't do, and this is probably one of them. Which is why Huffington Post will always have an edge on WaPo (and the rest of the MSM). She's not scared to go there. ... 5:49 P.M.
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Wednesday, May 20, 2009
John Podhoretz's analysis of the New Newsweek's doomed daring market strategy seems near-definitive, but guilty of second-degree reification:
[P]artisanship is the hallmark of the opinion journal–not necessarily of the variety that would lead to support for one political voting faction over another, but in the sense that serious journals of opinion stake claim to a side of the ideological divide and then defend its base and attack outward at the other camp. This is what gives them their fire, their vim, their vigor, their reason for being.
Why couldn't you have an opinion journal in which the various sides vimmily and vigorously attacked each other? Come to think of it, The New Republic in its Kinsley/Hertzberg glory days was famously schizo, no? ... But I agree that in today's market such an opinion magazine may be even less likely than a partisan magazine (Rushweek) to sell a million copies. ... 1:18 P.M.
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" ... will study anything to get me out of this f---ing profession for a year." Am I crazy or are the Nieman study subjects even more BS-y than usual? ... 1:05 P.M.
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009
This is no time to start relying on the LAT: The Times' Tom Hamburger writes a virtual post-mortem on card check (" 'We were outspent, outhustled and outorganized,' said one chagrined union advisor ..."). The only problem is that card check isn't dead. In fact, you could argue that the LAT is all too characteristically out of synch here--printing this 'how business did it' piece just when an almost-as-bad-as-the-original compromise is being floated. ....
P.S.: One part of the currently-floating "compromise" would apparently allow workers to unionize if 50% of them mailed in ballots, as opposed to letting union organizers turn in signed cards. This is supposedly "takes away the harassment issue,"according to Sen. Harkin. But if union organizers can distribute the ballots, watch the ballots being signed and collect the ballots for mailing, I don't see where the potential for harrassment has been much reduced. [Why isn't this harrassment potential present in any mail-in balloting procedure, even in presidential elections?--ed Who said it isn't? Despite warnings. ... But people are much better able to resist pressure a) when it's a big, community-wide election that everyone knows is going on, with a tradition of respecting voter independence; and b) when, if they piss off some thuggish organizers (or businesses), it's not going to affect them where they earn their money. I'd be a whole lot more worried about annoying the Teamsters union if it tried to organize my workplace than about annoying ACORN if it tried to collect mail-in ballots on my block.] ...
P.P.S.: Note that Hamburger scrupulously observes the artificial MSM convention that venerates judgments about process in order to banish judgments about substance. The one thing the LAT will never write (if the time comes) is that "card check" failed because it sucks. It's an antidemocratic idea and unions were arrogant in their desperation to push it. In the LAT, if it fails, it will be because the "business groups" out-organized labor groups. ... 11:22 P.M.
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If we're entering an era of politicized media, where you can't count on the NYT to sabotage Obama any more than you can count on the Manchester Union Leader to trash Ronald Reagan, how is the public going to learn the truth (aside from reading more than one paper)? One way is by encouraging news organizations to require reporters to write regular columns like this, where they detail the controversies in which they think their side has its facts wrong. ... If Kos can do it, anyone can. ... [This is constructive and solution-oriented. You OK?-ed I need a think-tank job.] 11:20 P.M.
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One Way Streets Save Energy! Obama has "a healthy disdain for the overrated virtue of political loyalty," writes Jacob Weisberg. Well, I'm convinced he has a healthy disdain for the idea that he should be loyal to subordinates who are no longer "useful," as Weisberg's examples demonstrate. Where's the example of Obama's healthy disdain for the idea that subordinates should be loyal to him? .... 11:13 P.M.
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Monday, May 18, 2009
Clark** Hoyt's Sunday pooh-poohing of the "game changer" affair (the accusation that the NYT killed a story on illegal ties between Obama and ACORN because it might have affected the election) fails to satisfy in several respects: 1) The explanation for why the Times killed its reporters "pursuit of the Obama angle" is a bit squishy. According to Hoyt, the publication of an October, 2008 Times article on "impermissible political activity by Acorn," filled the paper's need. But that story, as Powerline points out, didn't tackle the highly-charged Obama connection; 2) Hoyt tells us what the times reporter, Stephanie Strom, says she didn't tell her source--"she does not believe she ever used the term 'game-changer.'" But he never gives Strom's account of what she did say.
Let's assume what's obvious: The story wasn't close to a game changer. Let's also agree that even if Strom did tell her source what the source says she said--namely that the paper didn't want to print "a game-changer for either side that close to the election"--it might not mean all that much. Reporters tell sources things all the time to gracefully explain why they're being dropped. The real reason might be something else--like that the reporter doesn't believe the source is sufficiently credible, in which case it's easier to give a fake reason.
But here's the thing: Are you really confident that the NYT wouldn't spike an anti-Obama story in the waning days of the election out of fear--conscious or semi-subconscious--that it might badly hurt him? I had a revealing argument with a politically sophisticated friend--call him "Max"-- when the "game changer" charge first surfaced. Max's argument: Suppose it were a scandal sufficiently big to sink Obama. Any red-blooded Times reporter would be proud to publish it and tack Obama's scalp to the wall. To have taken down a presidential nominee--that would be a professional achievement, maybe a Pulitzer. They'd be high-fiving in the newsroom.
I think my friend is right about the culture of the newsroom--about 45 years ago. As for today, I think he's living in a dreamworld. Even if the Times had published such a story, Times reporters would certainly not have high-fived the colleague who'd cost Obama the election. Not after two terms of Bush. And I have no faith the paper would even have published it (before allowing the reporter to slink out of the building). In part, that's because I have no faith that I'd publish it. The old adversarial ethic--I play my role and let the system take care of the moral consequences--rightly went mostly out the window with the ascension of the Sixties cohort.
In part it's because, if there's one major change Pinch Sulzberger has presided over at the Times, it's the end of the pretense that his reporters have to be ashamed of their strong political beliefs. And we know, in the case of the Times, what those beliefs mostly are. ...
Update: Strom's source seems to be twittering. ...
**--Name error fixed [Thx to reader K.R.] 5:34 P.M.
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Will Obama rescue John Edwards by replacing the U.S. Attorney who is investigating him? ... If he does, will Josh Marshall kick up a fuss about it? ... [Thanks to alert reader R.H. ... See also Insta] ... 5:33 P.M.
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Sunday, May 17, 2009
Does Obama really want to ruthlessly eliminate all major threats to his reelection? You'd think that at some point, in a contentious negotiation with Congressional Democrats, it would be useful for Obama to be able to point out that if Democrats raise taxes too high, for example, he might lose the White House in 2012. That threat is becoming increasingly hollow. ... 11:56 P.M.
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Every time I read about a favor Obama's done for organized labor, I instinctively think: "Good. That must mean he knows the 'card check' bill won't pass so he's doing everything else he can to make labor happy." One problem with this optimistic viewpoint is that something very much like the "card check" bill might pass. The other problem is that the list of these little favors, as compiled by Sean Higgins, is getting rather long. I didn't realize Obama has already nominated two new members of the National Labor Relations Board. And then there's this:
The administration has rolled back transparency rules that require unions to more extensively report their finances, executive compensation and potential conflicts of interest every year. The Labor Department said "it would not be a good use of resources" to require this.
The Obama administration's first proposed budget calls for cutting the budget of the Labor Department's Office of Labor-Management Standards, which investigates unions on behalf of workers, to $41 million, down from $45 million last year.
11:24 P.M.
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Isn't Rep. Luis Gutierrez being a little over-thuggish, even by pre-post-racial standards, in this quote:
Gutierrez said he and fellow Hispanic officials appreciate the wooing and White House invites, but want action on the issue of providing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. And he doesn't mince words about what he sees as White House foot-dragging on the issue, which proved difficult to tackle even in better economic times.
"If Rahm [Emanuel] thinks he can get away with not doing anything on immigration and still have the support of Latino voters, it won't get done," said Gutierrez ...
Do you think Obama can get away with not doing anything on immigraton and still have the support of Latino voters? I think Obama can get away with not doing anything and still have the support of Latino voters. Latino voters are Democrats. And, you know, Americans. If they think a President is good for the country, are they really going to switch their allegiance to the GOPs over immigration reform? ... Gutierrez' threats have a tinge of desperation, no? ... 11:13 P.M.
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Friday, May 15, 2009
Is Obama about to waste $100 billion in education "stimulus" spending? That's the implication of this mild-mannered Andrew Rotherham article. ... 1:28 A.M.
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Perplexing Party Line: Net immigration from Mexico to the U.S. is down by half, says the NYT. Is that due to the economy or stepped up enforcement? According to the Times' fourth graf, "Mexican and American researchers" say it's the economy and lack of jobs. That's the party line of pro-legalization forces, who would like to deny that stepped-up enforcement can have, and has already had, a big impact. But then the Times buries paragraphs like this:
The enforcement buildup along the border, which started during the Bush administration, has made many Mexicans think twice about the cost and danger of an illegal trek when no job awaits on the other side, scholars said.
Obviously both factors are at work. But only one factor is PC. ... P.S: The NYT ed board might want to revisit its declaration:
Nor have the forces of global economic migration magically adjusted to fit the American mood.
I don't even understand why the Times ever made that claim--wouldn't it be smarter, if you were a pro-legalization advocate, to argue that free immigration is no threat because in periods of recession the flow does "magically" adjust (reduce) itself?
The Times--and the rest of the pro-legalization lobby--seemed to believe it was more important to stamp out the idea that enforcement--or anything, for that matter--can stop or slow the inevitable tide of immigration to which we all just have to adjust ("whether you like it or not," as Gavin Newsom might put it). Someone should remind them that the sales pitch for "comprehensive" reform is precisely that enforcement will work once existing illegals are amnestied. If enforcement is powerless, "comprehenisve" reform is a fraud. ...
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**This Times ed board passage, for example, comes close to saying that any enforcement strategy is doomed:
[I]t helps to remember that the country has ... [snip] ...spent decades and billions to seal the border as tightly as possible.
It stages raids to pull people off assembly lines and out of their beds and cars. It has added hundreds of thousands of prison beds to hold illegal immigrants and enlisted local police officers to enforce federal laws. It has done everything it can to make illegal immigrants miserable in the hope that they will abandon their jobs, houses and citizen-children and tell everyone back home to forget about America. And how has that worked? It hasn't.
The Times dismisses even the idea that stricter enforcement can discourage would-be immigrants who are still back in their home countries. Isn't it "comprehensive" reformers who say that--once existing illegals are "out of the shadows"--stricter enforcement will discourage would-be immigrants who are still back in their home countries? Cecilia Munoz needs to have a talk with the NYT. ... 1:27 A.M.
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I've been an admirer of Carlos Watson ever since the New Hampshire primary of 2004, where he managed to talk for a half hour with Robert Novak and never make a dull or familiar or bogus point (not easy to do when 3,000 journalists have already chewed over the material). But wow, this is an awfully ambitious new web site. It's as if one man were turning out Slate. ... Elizabeth Spiers seems to be involved in some way, which is another good sign. ... 1:26. A.M.
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Thursday, May 14, 2009
Old Chinese Proverb: Man who gets overexcited in support of a candidate is likely to get excitably disappointed when candidate fails to live up to overexcited expectations. Andrew Sullivan moves on to the inevitable next stage in the cycle of his hyperbolic judgment. Instapundit rubs it in. ... P.S.: It's actually a powerful post, if characteristically overexcited. Why is Sullivan so annoyed? Haven't gay rights been making huge, startlingly rapid gains recently? Maybe Obama's just sitting back and letting it happen, worried that if he forces the issue the result will be a backlash. And it turns out Sullivan also has an acute personal motive for wanting to hurry things up:
Here we are, with marriage rights spreading through the country and world and a president who cannot bring himself even to acknowledge these breakthroughs in civil rights, and having no plan in any distant future to do anything about it at a federal level. Here I am, facing a looming deadline to be forced to leave my American husband for good, and relocate abroad because the HIV travel and immigration ban remains in force and I have slowly run out of options ... [E.A.]
Aha. ... Still, you'd think Obama could at least get away with protecting gay servicemembers with skills--like facility in Arabic--the country badly needs. ... 12:12 A.M.
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Doomsday Reconsidered: Some entries from that Edwards timeline:
September 2007 – Anonymous tip comes into National Enquirer hot line saying Edwards was having an affair with Hunter. ...
Late November 2007 – National Enquirer discovers Rielle is living in Chapel Hill and having dinner with Andrew Young and his wife. Sources were saying Rielle was six months pregnant. ...
December 20, 2007 – National Enquirer editor-in-chief David Perel says source for Hunter-Edwards love child story was not a rival political campaign. Calls sources “extraordinarily good” and “beyond reproach.”
Hmm. Who were the Enquirer's sources? Was Perel's source perhaps "not a rival political campaign" because it was ... the Edwards campaign? Maybe the much-disputed "Doomsday" plan not only existed, but was actually put into effect. ... 12:11 A.M.
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All they had to do was say it was a Star Trek joke. Instead they panicked. ... 12:10 A.M.
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When Hype Congeals: Los Angeles brands Mayor Villaraigosa a "failure." ... 12:09 A.M.
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XX Factor breaks out of the Slate blog ghetto! ... 12:08 A.M.
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009
This impressive timeline of the Edwards/Rielle Hunter scandal** alludes to an obvious John Edwards lie I'd forgotten about (it's hard to remember them all). In his alleged "confession" on Nightline, Edwards was asked by Bob Woodruff about a photo that seemed to show him holding a baby in the Beverly Hilton, when he was visiting Hunter [emphasis added]:
WOODRUFF: And that picture is absolutely you and you are holding that baby.
EDWARDS: The picture in the tabloid. I have no idea what that picture is.
WOODRUFF: But you've seen it right?
EDWARDS: I did see it and I cannot make any sense out of that. When I went to this meeting you've already asked me about, uh, I was not wearing a t-shirt, I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I don't know who that picture -- I don't know if that picture is me, it could well be, it looks like me. I don't know who that baby is, I have no idea what that picture is.
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WOODRUFF: But are you saying you don't remember holding that child of Miss Hunter?
EDWARDS: I'm saying you asked me about this photograph, I don't know anything about that photograph, I don't know who that baby is. I don't know if the picture has been altered, manufactured, if it's a picture of me taken some other time, holding another baby -- I have no idea. I was not at this meeting holding a child for my photograph to be taken I can tell you that.
WOODRUFF: You did say you did meet her at a hotel in California.
EDWARDS: She was there, Mr. McGovern was present, and that's where the meeting took place.
WOODRUFF: But you don't remember a baby being there?
EDWARDS: No.
Does anyone believe this? Even if the baby is (as he claimed***) not his, how could he not remember the baby being there? If the pictures were from another visit, then he still knows perfectly well "what that picture is." ... Even his wife seems to have given up on this line of defense, resorting to the contradictory, but equally implausible 'politicians-hold-babies-all-the-time' response.
P.S.: Is it true that the Center for American Progress' Jennifer Palmieri, last seen emasculating poor Matthew Yglesias, really "helped [Edwards] prepare" for the dissembling Nightline interview, as reported by Walter Shapiro? There's a line she can put on her resume! ...
P.P.S.: Even the liberal New Republic is getting into the business of spotting St. Elizabeth's dissembling. Like Lee Stranahan yesterday, TNR's Jason Zengerle notes that on "Larry King" Mrs. Edwards said she "dismissed" tabloid reports of the Hunter affair on 'they-write-about-airplanes-on-the-moon' grounds, even though by her own account her husband had confessed to at least a one-night stand a year earlier. ...
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**--My main problem with this timeline is that, by focusing on Rielle Hunter and Edwards, it creates the appearance that Hunter was Edwards' only extramarital affair, something that's very much unclear at this point. If that's not true--if Edwards had been screwing around for years, for example--it would cast the subsequent agonizing and dissembling in a very different light, no?
***--In his televised "confession," remember, John Edwards claimed not only that the baby wasn't his but that it couldn't possibly be his, a certainty Elizabeth now seems to have abandoned (she says she doesn know--"I don't have any information" -but that it might be "discovered" that the child is his.) ... 5:09 P.M.
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Day at the Circus: St. Elizabeth's Larry King interview sets HuffPo's Lee Stranahan off: "Enough already, Mr. Edwards ... You could end this stupidity fairly quickly by simply telling the truth and clearing up all the lies you've told already." ... 12:51 A.M.
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Do You Believe in Nudges? When Democrats talk about "reducing inequality," they typically mean more than simply providing universal health care. They mean reshaping a national income distribution that has gotten significantly more unequal in the past several decades. Quintile tables and Gini coefficients are rolled out, along with comparisons to the Gilded Age. Recently, TNR's Franklin Foer and Noam Scheiber proclaimed that Obama was going to
"synthesize the New Democratic faith in the utility of markets with the Old Democratic emphasis on reducing inequality,"
but their article (on the president's reliance on incentives and regulatory "nudges") was missing any discussion of what his actual "nudge" plan for "reducing inequality" was. Noam Scheiber has recently attempted to fill in the hole. The arsenal of new policies is not impressive. True, there's an old standby, training, which a) last time I checked had way too slow a payoff to actually reverse historic inequality trends and b) would push workers into skilled professions where income inequalities tend to run riot (think Hollywood) and where the social inequalities that accompany those inequalities tend to be maximized (smarter people on top, slow learners below). There's traditional social insurance (e.g., social security). And then there are the Obama innovations! Here are two of them:
Two more nudge-ocracy ideas Obama has signed onto with an eye toward reducing inequality: 1.) More generous retirement saving incentives for working-class families. (Families who currently make less than $50,000 are eligible for a refundable 50 percent tax credit on up to $1,000 of savings; Obama wants to raise the income cutoff to $65,000.) 2.) Automatically enrolling workers in 401(k)s and (for those whose employers don't offer them) IRA accounts. This disproporationately benefits the working-class, who tend to leave a lot of retirement money on the table (via unclaimed matches and tax incentives, to say nothing of their not saving enough for retirement in the first place).
They're going to raise the income cutoff of a refundable $500 tax credit from $50,000 to $65,000. That'll do it! It's an insult to small potatoes. My colleague Matthew Yglesias had a phrase for it. ... Update: Sorry, forgot about "expanding rural broadband access"! .... 5:50 P.M.
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Gawker, reporting. That can't be in the business plan. ... 5:49 P.M.
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Developing: Should the editor of kausfiles ever come close to attaining a position of actual public influence, such as a "real" MSM job, kf interns have devised a "doomsday" strategy of sorts to immediately sabotage his career. According to sources in the inner circle, it could involve distributing the text of his unpublished novel about welfare reform. ... Update: "Ibrahim," cashier at a Venice, California 7-11, claims the so-called doomsday strategy is "complete BS." "I don't think there is an hour Kaus isn't in here," he says. "If there was a doomsday plan, I guarantee you we would know about it." ... 5:48 P.M.
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Sunday, May 10, 2009
"Elizabeth is not really a member of the reality-based community." Melinda Henneberger wrote an informative but ... incomplete look "inside the Edwards marriage" for Slate in 2007. The scales have now fallen from Henneberger's eyes! In an excellent post-Oprah column, she outlines Elizabeth Edwards' "surreal" structure of denial and her drive for publicity:
The bottom line in Elizabeth World is that "I have a husband who adores me, who's unbelievable with my children, who's provided for us in ways we never could have imagined.''
"He's fed you,'' Oprah puts in. "He has,'' Elizabeth agrees.
One of the things she feels he's given her is light - and spotlight. In explaining why it was important to her that "this person's'' name not be mentioned, she says that anyone who would "work at destroying my family and my home in order to get in that light, I'm really not interested in them being in that light too much. It's not about this woman. It's about this family.''
So, get out of my shot?
Of course, without Rielle Hunter Elizabeth wouldn't have this big a spotlight. ... Henneberger also offers more evidence that one purpose of Elizabeth Edwards' seemingly destructive self-exposure is indeed to rehabilitate John ("'I think we're getting to a good place,' he says ...")
P.S.:
When Oprah remarks that hmm, she doesn't know a lot of men who would run off to a hotel somewhere in the middle of the night to hold a baby that wasn't theirs, she repeats her husband's lie - or maybe he'd repeated hers: "Golly, then you don't know that many politicians. We do it all the time. Holding babies is what we do.''
Did Elizabeth Edwards really say that? Does she really think it? The really alarming thing would be if she does. [Second thought: She can't possibly think it. That much self-delusion would be clinical. She's BSing. See Update below.**]
P.P.S.: I should have noted the impressively long period of tongue-tied fumfawing in Elizabeth Edwards' NPR interview after she is asked "Do your children have a sister?" Starts at around 6:38. ...
** Update--Three Theories of E: Of course, Henneberger's thesis--that Elizabeth lives in a semi-delusional world of her own--can itself become a form of exculpation. Elizabeth's in heavy denial, poor thing! But I'd say that, at best, the jury is still out on whether Elizabeth Edwards is 1) deluded (e.g., she actually believes the crap about how John "doesn't know any more than I do'' about whether he's the father of Rielle Hunter's daughter); 2) pretending to be deluded (e.g. she knows the truth but she's damned if she's going to admit it on her book tour); or 3) in it up to her eyeballs (i.e. she knows what she's saying is BS, but she's still actively covering up for John to further his ambitions as much as possible, given the circumstances).
How would saying she doesn't know if John's the father advance his interests under #3? That's easy. John hasn't said he doesn't know if he's the father. He has vehemently denied, in his televised Nightline "confession", that he could possibly be the father because he had ended the affair long before. ("I know that it's not possible that this child could be mine because of the timing of events, so I know it's not possible.") Admitting that he might be the father, and that this might be OK with his wife, is a useful halfway house on the road to confronting voters with the likely truth (he's the father and he lied about it even in his "confession.") If you were a PR agent retained by the Edwardses, this could well be the strategy you'd come up with.
That Elizabeth, in her current tour of interviews, doesn't even grapple with what now looks like his big Nightline lie--that he couldn't be the father--even as she substantively concedes it (by allowing that he could) gives support to view #3, no? Why isn't she more annoyed he lied on Nightline (and, presumably, to her)? Why ignore it? Come to think of it, Elizabeth herself once flat out denied, in one of her earlier damage control efforts, that John had fathered the child. Is delusion--at least non-clinical delusion--really the most plausible explanation for the seamless, unremarked shift in Elizabeth's own line---from righteous allegations of "wrongly alleged" to the solipsistic "whatever the facts are it doesn't change my life"? The shift fits awfully comfortably into the PR template for political survival famously sketched out by James Boyd--'Admit what is known. Deny what is unknown ....'
That MSM interviewers don't confront her with these contradictions says something too. ... Even Henneberger may have a few scales left to fall. .. 9:36 A.M.
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Limits of the Groucho Marx Principle: The Vanity Fair/Bloomberg party after the White House Correspondents' Dinner was so exclusive that nobody wanted to go. I think there's a Yogi Berra quote in there somewhere. ...
P.S.: Isn't the point of the modern White House Correspondents' Dinner (assuming it has one) to generate a culture clash between Hollywood and Washington, to revel in the discomfitting celebrity/nerd interface? That point's being lost as bigger and bigger celebrities demand (in some cases with good reason) exclusive partying room. At one event, they were penned in a narrow, brightly lit area as if they were prize animals on display. At least it was still awkward! Next year it will be less so, as Obama's D.C. becomes more skilled at star-greasing. ..
It's almost enough to make you long for the old days when reporters competed to invite the most notorious newsmakers, not the biggest entertainers--when the reigning ethic was: "We Had Hitler at Our Table!" (Mike Kinsley's joke). ..
Update: Rachel Sklar enjoyed it all way too much but is right about the importance of inviting lower-level sources. The event can also be a morale-booster for lower-level journalists (I can atttest). Both purposes are frustrated by Graydon Carter-style status segregation. ... 9:35 A.M.
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George Stephanopoulos reports that Edwards staffers now say they had a "doomsday" strategy in case they actually won the race they were being paid to win:
But by late December, early January of last year, several people in his inner circle began to think the rumors were true.
Several of them had gotten together and devised a "doomsday" strategy of sorts.
Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards' staffers have told me.
Reactions:
1) Which staffers? Not Joe Trippi, presumably--he says he didn't know the truth about Edwards' affair until the next summer. Jonathan Prince?
2) Mighty convenient for staffers to say this now, just when they were looking a) sleazy for staging the elaborate cover up that intimidated the press (not hard) and kept Democratic primary voters in the dark and b) like potential presidency-destroyers, if they'd nominated a candidate who was fated to implode either before or after the election. If this "doomsday" story is true, why didn't it come out last summer when Edwards "confessed" on Nightline? Or once Obama was safely elected?
3) Why not quit the campaign quietly (or noisily) when they learned the truth? Oh right, they were getting paid.
4) The staffers say they were "Democrats first," according to Stephanopoulos. By leaking this story now, during Elizabeth Edwards' "Why Am I Doing This?" Tour, are the staffers making a comment on Elizabeth's judgment or her party loyalty--suggesting she's maybe not a "Democrat first" but "Elizabeth first"? ...
5) How does Hillary Clinton feel about their willingness to let Edwards finish out his campaign? Edwards stayed in the race through the South Carolina primary, during which time he drained votes from somebody. I find it hard to believe he cost Hillary the nomination, but I wouldn't expect Mrs. Clinton to agree. It would be interesting if somebody attempted a thorough calculation of the effect of Edwards' presence. (By "somebody" I mean Nate Silver--who has already made a quickie run at Edwards' impact in Iowa.) ... 5/11 Update: Mark Blumenthal's calculation today is pretty thorough. His New Hampshire numbers seem especially devastating to the idea that Hillary would have benefitted from Edwards' absence. But, as Blumenthal notes, you can never respond conclusively to a conjecture that 'the whole dynamic of the race would have changed.' ... You could also speculate that Edwards' N.H. supporters lied to the pollsters Blumenthal cites--i.e. they were really non-black voters of the sort who would never have voted for Obama. (If only there were a name for this "effect.") ... I'd still be interested in what Nate SIlver's model shows--if I remember, it assumed that voters ethnicity (along with other demographic factors) was hugely predictive--suggesting Hillary might have picked up a lot of Edwards' white support in early primaries, no matter what a) "second choice" polls showed or b) what those voters told pollsters later in the race when Edwards finally dropped out. ...
6) What about all the Edwards volunteers who worked for him on the mistaken theory that he wasn't doomed? What about Edwards donors who gave him money on the same assumption? (Did any of these contributors donate after presentations by any of the Doomsday staffers? Isn't that a form of fraud?)
7) The strategy was to sabotage Edwards if he won, but let him live to fight another day if he lost. How was the latter a sufficient response? If the National Enquirer hadn't finally busted him, Edwards could have gone on to become Attorney General, or Supreme Court justice, or maybe a senator. Or were the staffers going to trigger the Doomsday Scenario if he came close to one of those offices? In any case, Edwards wasn't going to go away--he'd have continued to drain the time and energy of good-willed Democratic followers as he pursued whatever office he was pursuing.
Backfill: Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson made points 3, 4 and 5 on This Week. ...
Update: Edwards strategist Trippi calls the "doomsday" story "Complete BS." From CNN:
But Trippi, who worked closely with Edwards' most senior advisors, including Campaign Manager David Bonior and Deputy Campaign manager Jonathan Prince, suggested he would have been aware of a plan if one existed.
"I don't think there was an hour Prince wasn't with me," he said, adding later, "I can't conceive of how it was possible that if someone had a secret plan I wasn't aware of it."
Hmm. When Trippi was explaining to me why he wasn't part of the Edwards campaign's elaborate coverup, he emphasized his distance from the rest of the campaign--saying he "never got brought in" to the damage control efforts. "[Deputy campaign manager] Jonathan Prince and other people were dealing with it ... I was on the road a lot." [E.A.] He might not have been taken into the confidence of other Edwards aides, Trippi told me, because he'd worked for another candidate in 2004. "I was the Dean guy."
Now he's joined with Prince at the hip? I sense a tension between these two accounts! But I'm also skeptical of the "doomsday" story. (Maybe it was just a conversation or two between aides in the middle of the night that's now getting blown up into a bigger deal to save the aides' reps. ... On the other hand, you wouldn't have needed to an elaborate "plan" in order to "sabotage" the campaign. You'd have needed a dime.) ...
6:25 P.M.
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Friday, May 8, 2009
Roger Simon criticizes St. Elizabeth Edwards ("not just his co-conspirator but also his attack dog") as does Kathleen Parker:
First, Elizabeth was an integral part of her husband's campaign and knew of the affair, about which both later dissembled. She may have an overburdened heart, but part of that load surely is her own ambition. Although Elizabeth claims to have asked her husband not to run after he told her of the affair, is it really credible that he did it anyway, without her consent? Or that he talked her into it against her will?
Second, Elizabeth is blaming The Other Woman-Rielle Hunter-instead of the man with whom she had a marital covenant. ...
Meanwhile, it must be recognized that Elizabeth's first priority was helping her husband get to the White House. Her formidable, brave presence on the campaign trail was John's armor. As long as she was there, his innocence was assumed. Family unity? Or conspiracy to commit public fraud? [E.A.]
Is Parker too nasty? Or not nasty enough! Here are some questions, for example, that weren't asked in Michelle Norris' nauseating NPR interview with Elizabeth Edwards today.
1) OK, you don't really care whether Rielle Hunter's baby is John's, even though that would mean his Nightline confession was a second edifice of lies (with the affair continuing long after he said on Nightline it had stopped). But you make it seem as if John just slipped up with this one woman who approached him. Do you really think Hunter was the only woman John was unfaithful with? Hello? Are you constructing another elaborate bogus media version of your marriage after the first version collapsed? (None of our business? Er, you're the one who's coming forward to expose your private life for some reason. Nobody asked you to. Asserting that it's not our business means we have to accept your version of it. We did that once before.)
2) Your husband's campaign conducted an elaborate coverup to hide the Hunter affair, which involved lying to the voters and lying to the press and running down Hunter's character. You don't have a reputation as a hands-off politician's wife. Did you know about the coverup and the lies? Did you approve of them? At least you acquiesced in them. Why are you a beloved figure again?
3) You're understandably focused on your own family. You won't say Hunter's name. She's "irrelevant to your life." You don't know if Hunter's child--which you call "it"--is John's. You just know "It doesn't look like my children." You say Hunter had no right to disrupt your marriage. "Women need to have respect for other women." But during the campaign an aide and friend of John Edwards, Andrew Young, stepped up and claimed paternity of Hunter's child. Andrew Young has a wife. How do you think she feels about this? How do her children feel about it, and what other kids say about it, when they go to school? Do you really not care if she's going through whatever she's going through because she's playing her part in a lie constructed in service to your husband's, and your, unstoppable ambition? How are you respecting her and her marriage?
P.S.: Some evidence that Elizabeth's book tour isn't just an attempt to cling to the spotlight, but is also part of a rehabilitation project for John. At about the 5:40 mark, Elizabeth tells Norris that John knows he "deserves to be in this purgatory, in a sense, until he's done some way to prove himself." In other words, you'll absolve him in the future, and we should buy that? ... 4:09 A.M.
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Alert: There's undernews under here! Just sayin'. Might be BS, might not be. That's why it's undernews! But it's boiling. .... 4:06 A.M.
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I've sniped at people who sniped at the famous NYT front-page hype of Dr. Judah Folkman's anti-angiogenesis drugs, so I guess I have an obligation to report hype-deflating setbacks when they occur. Derek Lowe describes two studies in which angiogenesis inhibitors seemed to increase the number of tumors. ... This looks like the sort of bad news that ultimately proves helpful (why did the tumors increase?), but I am not a doctor and do not play one on TV. Lowe has some ideas, though. ... 3:59 A.M.
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Wednesday, May 6, 2009
An eerily appropriate pro-card check scam. Using Twitter. ... 11:33 P.M.
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Why might a red-blooded hedge fund manager be intimidated by a phone call from Obama car capo Steve Rattner threatening public criticism? A Wall Street type emailed to explain why, even if Rattner doesn't control the press-- even if the press would side against Rattner and Obama-- the prospect of any increased press coverage might be terrifying.
[T]he thing that Hedge Funds fear most is investor redemptions. If there is press about a hedge fund (again, in this environment) that suggests that that Hedge Fund is cross-wise with the Feds, redemptions would start
Note that threat sort of publicity would be real whether or not the fears of the skittish investors (that the Feds might hurt the hedge fund) are justified, and whether or not the hostility of the Feds is justified. ... 11:31 P.M.
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"[I]t looks like reliability may be a challenge." Consumer Reports checks into FIAT's reliability rating in England. It's better than Chrysler's! Chrysler was 38th out of 38 brands compared. FIAT was ... 35th out of 38. Synergy! .. [via Autoblog via Insta] 11:30 P.M.
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Secret weapon for "card check" Dems? They have leverage with Sen. Specter now--if he plays ball (on health care, but maybe also on "card check") the Dems might give him his seniority back. ... 11:27 P.M.
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Dan Gross, in a defense of the Chrysler deal's treatment of bondholders, writes
The Chrysler deal, midwifed and financed by the government, does upend the traditional order and sets a precedent that, were it to be repeated, would be dangerous. [E.A.]
But Gross argues it's permissible in this case, if I understand him, because thanks to government bailout money the complaining "secured" lenders are doing better than they would have anyway.
Well, OK. My objection isn't so much to the screwing of the secure lenders (let's agree it's a "dangerous" precedent) or to the strong-arming of the banks that received TARP funds (another dangerous precedent!). It's to the screwing of the secure lenders and the strongarming of the banks in order to produce a bailout plan that will not work, that will flop like Chooch. The rationale for the bailout was that a bankruptcy would kill car sales, so the government had to step in and negotiate all the bankruptcy-style concessions without actually having a bankruptcy. But Obama was unwilling to get the U.A.W. to make the bankruptcy-style concessions that would be necessary to have a viable Chrysler.** And Chrysler wound up in bankruptcy anyway. Prediction: It will either fail or suck up continuing annual taxpayer subsidies in the billions. In the process it will keep flooding the market with cars and make it harder to save GM and Ford. It didn't have to be that way. ...
And there is something creepy in the way many analysts simply accept that, of course, banks receiving TARP funds must now do Obama's bidding on unrelated matters like the Chrysler bankruptcy. This is a long way from JFK using his presidential power to face down a steel price hike--a long way toward an unpleasant economic model that creates at least the potential for political thuggery, that preserves capitalism's inequalities without its freedoms and efficiencies. Let's not give it a name. ...
**--I thought Walter Olson was wrong in predicting this. Too cynical and conventional a view, I figured, given Obama's presumed secret centrism and willingness to tame Dem interest groups. But Olson was right. ...
Update: Michael Barone has a name ("Gangster Government"). ... It's not corporatist, really--corporatism implies a vision of an organic, hierarchical society, a vision that's not there, right? ...
Blogger and bankruptcy attorney Steve Smith argues that (as he put it in an email) "secured creditors have never treated as golden idols by the bankruptcy courts, particularly in Chapter 11's, where the law gives enormous power to the debtor in possession to devise their own reorganization plan." Smith concludes: "Contrary to what many on the right may have thought, bankruptcy is not automatically a system designed to screw uppity workers and their pensions; it is a set of rules and procedures geared to allow people and companies a fresh start."
But isn't it also Dan Gross who claims that bankruptcy normally would support the creditors, absent the exceptional circumstances recognized by the Obama administration? Smith suggests the circumstances aren't all that exceptional. ... Then why was strong-arming of creditors necessary? Why not just let the bankruptcy judge stiff them? Answer: Bailout capos Rattner and Bloom obviously wanted to avoid normal bankruptcy proceedings entirely, for other reasons (e.g., the stigma, and its effect on Chrysler sales, or the prospect that the bankruptcy judge might disrupt the UAW's sweet deal). ...
Choochism is actually a pretty good name. Definition: a) Mildly thuggish crony capitalism directed by elected officials b) using large amounts of taxpayer money c) in ostensible pursuit of "progressive" ends d) that flops. ...
Even a strong-arming Obama can't make the FIATs run on time. ... 3:02 A.M.
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I've been trying to figure out if I buy former John Edwards strategist Joe Trippi's claim that he didn't learn that the Edwards/Rielle Hunter story was true until Edwards was caught at the Beverly Hilton last July, shortly before the 2008 Dem convention. I suppose I think that:
a) with two or three phone calls Trippi could easily have learned the truth. If I knew the truth, it wasn't that hard to find out;
b) If Trippi read some blogs, he would have figured out the truth without the phone calls. All a veteran politico would need to know is that a senior Edwards aide, Jonathan Prince, insisted on personally chaperoning HuffPo blogger Sam Stein if Stein was going to view the then-suppressed Rielle Hunter web videos. If Prince was involved at that level, the story had to be explosive. ... But why would Trippi read blogs? It's not like he's the big internet guru or anything. ... oh wait.
c) That said, Trippi seems honest. Maybe he really was off in his own world. If so, that's probably because at some level he wanted to be off in his own world. He couldn't handle the truth!
I suspect a willful suspension of curiosity due to the presence of a paycheck and a press spotlight (in which Trippi thrives). That's my guess anyway. .... 2:59 A.M.
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***SPOILER ALERT*** In case anyone who is going to see the disappointing State of Play hasn't seen it yet. Let the record show that, although the film moralizes unsubtly about the virtues of old-fashioned, time-consuming print reporting over irresponsible blogging, in the end the irresponsible bloggers had gotten it right all along. There is a lesson in that for all of us. ... 2:45 A.M.
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Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Chrysler says it will show a profit in 2012. Hey, that's just about when kausfiles is planning to go public! ... P.S.: Here's the part of the WSJ's account that baffles:
The proceedings also revealed the extent of Chrysler's financial troubles. The company lost $16.8 billion in 2008 and expects to lose $4.7 billion this year, according to documents submitted to the court. {E.A.]
How will they lose two-thirds less money this year than last, when this year's sales are so far down 46% from last year (and down even more for April)? I must be missing something, because even if Chrysler were intent on fudging the books, this fudge seems so huge they couldn't possibly think anybody would fall for it. ...Then again, some people may have fallen for this:
A Chrysler spokeswoman said the loss for 2008 is an updated figure. In a previous turnaround plan submitted to the Treasury, Chrysler and its majority owner, Cerberus Capital Management LP, estimated the auto maker's 2008 net loss was $8 billiion.
[Sales stats via TTAC] 1:58 A.M.
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Flexibility Resilience: On HuffPo, Lee Stranahan gives Elizabeth Edwards a blog post she deserves. ... P.S.: Stranahan writes, of Edwards' mistress:
Rielle Hunter is reportedly broke, living with a friend and seems to be biding her time. She could have written her own book ....
Yes, she could! ... 1:57 A.M.
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Monday, May 4, 2009.
The MSM is sick. John Edwards runs an entire presidential campaign based in large part on his character as shown by his loyalty to his brave, ill wife, etc.--when in reality he's cheating on her, practically setting up a second family--and the press doesn't care (or, rather, pretends in public that it doesn't care, lest its readers get interested). But a year later some prosecutor comes up with a tedious, hard-to-define potential campaign violation, and it's katy-bar-the door! ... P.S.: Not that there isn't plenty of after-action reporting to do. I'd be interested in knowing how this memorable blog post came to be, for example. ... And: What did Joe Trippi know and when did he know it? ... Follow the honey! ... 5/5 Update: I've now talked with Trippi, who signed on as a top Edwards strategist in 2007. He says he didn't know until the "second National Enquirer story," meaning the July, 2008 account of Edwards getting caught visiting his mistress (and her child) at the Beverly Hilton. (That's pretty late!) When the Enquirer first alleged the affair October, 2007, Trippi says, "I said, 'What the hell's this?" and was told "'C'mon, It's the Enquirer. Aliens. ...'" He says he also discounted the story because he didn't think John "would do that to Elizabeth." ... Trippi says "I never got brought in" to the Edwards team's elaborate damage control efforts. "[Deputy campaign manager] Jonathan Prince and other people were dealing with it. ... I was on the road a lot." Trippi notes that he arrived after Rielle Hunter was no longer making her "webisodes" for the campaign, and he might not have been taken into the confidence of those who'd been there longer. "I was the Dean guy." ... That's what he says. ... More: See Ben Smith's piece in Politico, which discusses Edwards aides' reaction to the (accurate, it turned out) rumor. ... 4:25 P.M.
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While some Obama supporters deride "Tea Party" tax protests on the grounds that Obama hasn't increased taxes on the bottom "95 percent of working families" yet, the diligent Matt Yglesias is already trying to figure out which ones to raise. ... 4:02 P.M.
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Short Cabinet: A possible expansive corollary to the 27th Law of Journalism, which says that when an MSM reporter gives an example of something that is supposed to be funny it won't be funny: The rule may also apply to any line singled out of a piece of writing as especially good. Here's Thomas Mallon reviewing Buckley Dearest (I mean, Chris Buckley's Losing Mum and Pup) for the New York Times:
But the writing, like the book's subjects, is generally top-drawer. To take but one example: the elder George Bush "may be a New England Yankee blue blood, but he has the tear ducts of a Sicilian grandmother." The yield of such lines is exceptionally high, and it's fair to say that the particular talent required to produce them is one of the few that William F. Buckley lacked. [E.A.]
OK. If you say so. ... 4:00 P.M.
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Sunday, May 3, 2009
1) NYT's Sanger and Vlasic, with what must be willed credulousness, describe how President Obama's "hard line" on Chrysler gives him and his "team" the "leverage" they will need going into the GM negotiations. Hard line? On Saturday, Micheline Maynard, also of the NYT, described how the United Auto Workers is slated to get a deal of unprecedented sweetness in the Chrysler bankruptcy. Despite all the press releases, the union didn't give up that much, apparently**--the word "lucrative" is even used:
Chrysler’s pension liability will shift from the defunct company to the new one, these people said, and workers will continue to have a lucrative contract.
Despite the concessions, Chrysler’s most senior workers, like those at Ford, still have healthy wages and benefits; bountiful health care coverage, at least until it is adjusted; and subsidies to help bolster unemployment benefits they receive while plants are closed, as they will be at Chrysler for weeks until the sale is final.
That carryover is unusual, [bankruptcy lawyer Mary Jo] Dowd said, since the buyers of assets in bankruptcy cases normally try to purchase them free and clear of their existing liabilities.
It also means the union will not have to come to terms with Fiat once it takes over the company, or risk having its contracts abrogated.
Does the Sunday New York Times read the Saturday New York Times?
2) Sanger and Vlasic also give us a boastful, macho quote from Rahm Emanuel:
“G.M. is very different than Chrysler,” Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, said Friday. “But I suppose the one lesson for G.M., and all the other players, is that this is a moment when a Democratic president said, ‘I am really willing to let a company dissolve, and there’s not going to be an open checkbook.’ There’s got to be real viability.”
Huh? How was Obama "willing to let [Chrysler] dissolve"? Seems like the opposite. And "real viability? Has Chrysler really achieved "viability"? This is at best an open question. Here are Chrysler's new sale figures. They're grim. Chrysler sold 1,320 Sebrings this month, for example--compared with almost 7,000 a year ago. The Sebring is is the mid-sized car that's supposed to compete with the Accord and Camry. How about the lower-end Jeep Compass? 712 sold. "These are the stats of a dead car company." Why the poor sales? Maybe this: Of fifteen manufacturers rated for 2009 on reliability and performance by Consumer Reports, Chrysler came in fifteenth. ("No Chrysler, Dodge, or Jeep vehicles are recommended.") And it's not like Chrysler has lots of appealing new models in the pipeline.
That appears to be the part left out of the Obama administration's self-aggrandizing deal spin: Who is going to buy the New Chrysler's cars? Consumers "in new markets around the world," say Sanger and Vlasic, with a straight face. Is Steve Rattner going to call and bully each and every one of them? At best Chrysler won't have new products to sell for 18 months, when in theory (and only in theory) Americans will be lining up to buy tiny FIATs.
If Chrysler fails in the marketplace again two or three years from now, after billions more in government subisidies, won't that reflect badly on Obama and his "economic team"? WIll it then appear to have been better to let Chrysler go into an actual, non-prearranged, non-jawboned bankruptcy, in which it would likely have been liquidated or in which the UAW would have had to make far more substantial concessions, like workers in other bankruptcies? The government could have assumed some of the U.A.W.s pension and health care liabilities (which it will probably end up doing, in part, in any case). But Chrysler's demise would have been a real cautionary example that gave the administration leverage in the GM negotiations (which may be what the U.A.W. was really scared of). Chrysler's rapid departure would also have opened up market share for GM--and for Ford, which is not wildly healthy itself.
Maybe Steve Rattner has saved Chrysler the way he saved Blender.
P.S.: It's one thing to politicize the reorganization of a prominent failed firm, leaning on private investors and making up new rules--if it works, are voters going to complain? It's another to engineer a slow-motion calamity.
Update: The Truth About Cars reacts somewhat more harshly to the same absurd Emanuel quote and tries to add up the GM and Chrysler subsidies so far ("just north of $37 billion" and "[t]hat doesn't include" ... well, a lot). ... Car and Driver runs down the uninspiring list of potential future FIAT/Chrysler products. The most promising alleged vehicle--the 200C EV--isn't due until 2012. ...
Backfill: Evan Newmark last week. He notices that "[o]n top of the $4.5 billion committed to Chrysler, the Fiat deal was originally supposed to require another $3 billion, but now the president is putting up $6 billion." ...
Psst: FIAT "doesn't actually have any money." ....
**-- Here's a WSJ news story on what the UAW seems to have actually given up: 1) Suspended cost-of-living adjustements; 2) Overtime only after 40 hours a week of work.[That wasn't the rule already?] 3) No Easter Monday holiday in 2010 and 2011." Some additional concessions in this AP report: 4) "The union also agreed to consolidate nonskilled labor job classifications into a team concept at all factories." [You mean unskilled workers were separated into different classifications before?] 5). Performance and Christmas bonuses suspended for two years. 6) In what seems like the only major cut, retirees will lose dental and vision benefits, at least temporarily. ... The 2015 contract will also go to binding arbitration if no deal is reached. I don't know if this is a "concession" or a protection. ... Most significantly, there is apparently no reduction in current UAW workers' high basic wage rate of near $30/hour. See also "Hourly Employees Spared Painful Cuts in Chrysler Bankruptcy". 2:53 P.M.
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Saturday, May 2, 2009
"Kids don't have a union": What it takes to fire a lousy teacher in the Los Angeles public schools--a chart. ... From the LAT's accompanying story:
Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare. ...
When teaching is at issue, years of effort -- and thousands of dollars -- sometimes go into rehabilitating the teacher as students suffer. Over the three years before he was fired, one struggling math teacher in Stockton was observed 13 times by school officials, failed three year-end evaluations, was offered a more desirable assignment and joined mentoring programs as most of his ninth-grade students flunked his courses. ... [snip]
Meanwhile, said Kendra Wallace, principal of Daniel Webster Middle School on Los Angeles' Westside, an ineffective teacher can instruct 125 to 260 students a year -- up to 1,300 in the five years she says it often takes to remove a tenured employee.
It's worth saying again: If the twittish, PC L.A.Times is now going after the teachers' unions, those unions have lost the PR battle in the mainstream press. Does President Obama ("We can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children's teachers") know this? Do the Republicans who are desperately looking for an issue to use against the Dems? ... [via NewsAlert] 5:57 P.M.
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The Dish is a revenge best served cold: President Obama's reliance on the excitable Andrew Sullivan has predictably led him into embarrassing error. Even NPR felt it necessary to correct Obama. ... Note to NPR's Robert Siegel: In interviewing the Guardian's Ian Cobain about the London Cage interrogation center, you say
President Obama was quoting Britain's wartime prime minister Winston Churchill. Do we know that Churchill, when he made those remarks, knew very well what was going on in the interrogation centers? [E.A.]
Huh? Do we have any evidence that Churchill ever made those remarks? (Obama's version: "And Churchill said, 'We don't torture,' ..."). As far as I can see, the evidence is Sullivan, which is perilously close to no evidence at all. ... P.S.: Sullivan's characteristically vigorous post-error backpedaling and ass-covering focuses on whether Churchill knew about the torture at Britain's interrogation centers. The claim that Churchill not only didn't know about the torture but actually banned it--or that he said (or even thought) anything like "We don't torture"--has seemingly been left by the wayside. ... 3:38 P.M.
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Friday, May 1, 2009
We'll know the Chrysler bankruptcy is in trouble when the press starts reporting that Steve Rattner really had nothing to do with it. ... 5:40 P.M
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Faced with the prospect that it might have to balance interests and act responsibly as a new owner of Chrysler, the U.A.W.'s Ron Gettelfinger desperately tries to recreate an adversary system. (The UAW's VEBA health care fund is "independent"! Controlled by "outside ... directors"! We can go on strike against them anytime we want, really we can!) There's something infantile about this, as if a teenager were given the keys to a new car and said, "I'd rather you kept the keys and I'll throw tantrums when I need it." ... If you were a neoliberal from the 1980s you might say the Wagner Act has given them permission to be singleminded, legalistic, and irresponsible--and that's the only role they know. Luckily there are no neoliberals around anymore to make this annoying point. ... 5:38 P.M.
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Despite its CEO's appearance on David Letterman, electric car startup Tesla is looking a little more granfalloonish today than yesterday. ... 5:37 P.M.
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I was waiting for the first undocumented-immigrant-legalization advocate to declare that the Mexico-centered flu epidemic required the immediate passage of "comprehensive immigration reform." I figured Tamar Jacoby would win. I was wrong. The winner appears to be the Southern California Immigration Coalition, which wants President Obama to simply legalize all illegals by executive order:
To deport all these people to Mexico would create an emergency crisis in their own economy. And that's the crisis we would have in Mexico. Coupled with the drug wars that are going on, the problem that we have with the virus, the flu, it would just create great havoc for Mexico in its economy.
5:33 P.M.
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