Chris Hedges's Blog, page 365

How Thousands of Child and Adolescent Brides Enter America

WASHINGTON—Thousands of requests by men to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved over the past decade, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press. In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl.

The approvals are legal: The Immigration and Nationality Act does not set minimum age requirements for the person making the request or for that person’s spouse or fiancee. By contrast, to bring in a parent from overseas, a petitioner has to be at least 21 years old.

And in weighing petitions, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services goes by whether the marriage is legal in the spouse or fiancee’s home country and then whether the marriage would be legal in the state where the petitioner lives.

The data raises questions about whether the immigration system may be enabling forced marriage and about how U.S. laws may be compounding the problem despite efforts to limit child and forced marriage. Marriage between adults and minors is not uncommon in the U.S., and most states allow children to marry with some restrictions.

There were more than 5,000 cases of adults petitioning on behalf of minors and nearly 3,000 examples of minors seeking to bring in older spouses or fiances, according to the data requested by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2017 and compiled into a report.

Some victims of forced marriage say the lure of a U.S. passport combined with lax U.S. marriage laws are partly fueling the petitions.

“My sunshine was snatched from my life,” said Naila Amin, a dual citizen born in Pakistan who grew up in New York City.

She was forcibly married at 13 in Pakistan and later applied for papers for her 26-year-old husband to come to the U.S. at the behest of her family. She was forced for a time to live in Pakistan with him, where, she said, she was sexually assaulted and beaten. She came back to the U.S., and he was to follow.

“People die to come to America,” she said. “I was a passport to him. They all wanted him here, and that was the way to do it.”

Amin, now 29, said she was betrothed when she was just 8 and he was 21. The petition she submitted after her marriage was approved by immigration officials, but he never came to the country, in part because she ran away from home. She said the ordeal cost her a childhood. She was in and out of foster care and group homes, and it took a while to get her life on track.

“I was a child. I want to know: Why weren’t any red flags raised? Whoever was processing this application, they don’t look at it? They don’t think?” Amin asked.

Fraidy Reiss, who campaigns against coerced marriage as head of a group called Unchained at Last, has scores of similar anecdotes: An underage girl was brought to the U.S. as part of an arranged marriage and eventually was dropped at the airport and left there after she miscarried. Another was married at 16 overseas and was forced to bring an abusive husband.

Reiss said immigration status is often held over their heads as a tool to keep them in line.

There is a two-step process for obtaining U.S. immigration visas and green cards. Petitions are first considered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS. If granted, they must be approved by the State Department. Overall, there were 3.5 million petitions received from budget years 2007 through 2017.

Over that period, there were 5,556 approvals for those seeking to bring minor spouses or fiancees, and 2,926 approvals by minors seeking to bring in older spouses, according to the data. Additionally, there were 204 for minors by minors. Petitions can be filed by U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

“It indicates a problem. It indicates a loophole that we need to close,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told the AP.

In nearly all the cases, the girls were the younger person in the relationship. In 149 instances, the adult was older than 40, and in 28 cases the adult was over 50, the committee found. In 2011, immigration officials approved a 14-year-old’s petition for a 48-year-old spouse in Jamaica. A petition from a 71-year-old man was approved in 2013 for his 17-year-old wife in Guatemala.

There are no nationwide statistics on child marriage, but data from a few states suggests it is far from rare. State laws generally set 18 as the minimum age for marriage, yet every state allows exceptions. Most states let 16- and 17-year-olds marry if they have parental consent, and several states — including New York, Virginia and Maryland — allow children under 16 to marry with court permission.

Reiss researched data from her home state, New Jersey. She determined that nearly 4,000 minors, mostly girls, were married in the state from 1995 to 2012, including 178 who were under 15.

“This is a problem both domestically and in terms of immigration,” she said.

Reiss, who says she was forced into an abusive marriage by her Orthodox Jewish family when she was 19, said that often cases of child marriage via parental consent involve coercion, with a girl forced to marry against her will.

“They are subjected to a lifetime of domestic servitude and rape,” she said. “And the government is not only complicit; they’re stamping this and saying: Go ahead.”

The data was requested in 2017 by Johnson and then-Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, the committee’s top Democrat. Johnson said it took a year to get the information, showing there needs to be a better system to track and vet the petitions.

“Our immigration system may unintentionally shield the abuse of women and children,” the senators said in the letter requesting the information.

USCIS didn’t know how many of the approvals were granted by the State Department, but overall only about 2.6 percent of spousal or fiancee claims are rejected.

Separately, the data show some 4,749 minor spouses or fiancees received green cards to live in the U.S. over that 10-year period.

The head of USCIS, L. Francis Cissna, said in a letter to the committee that its request had raised questions and discussion within the agency on what it can do to prevent forced minor marriages. Officials created a flagging system that requires verification of the birthdate whenever a minor is detected.

But it’s difficult to make laws around the age when so many states allow for young marriages.

The country where most requests came from was Mexico, followed by Pakistan, Jordan, the Dominican Republic and Yemen. Middle Eastern nationals had the highest percentage of overall approved petitions.

800,000 Federal Workers Get the Bad News: ‘Net Pay $0’

Federal employees received pay stubs with nothing but zeros on them Friday as the effects of the government shutdown hit home, deepening anxieties about mortgage payments and unpaid bills.

All told, an estimated 800,000 government workers missed their paychecks for the first time since the shutdown began.

Employees posted pictures of the pay stubs on Twitter and vented their frustration as the standoff over President Donald Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for a border wall entered its 21st day. This weekend, it will become the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

“I saw the zeros in my pay stub today, and it’s a combination of reality setting in and just sadness,” air traffic controller Josh Maria told The Associated Press after tweeting a screenshot of his pay stub. “We’re America. We can do better than this.”

The missed paychecks were just one sign of the mounting toll the shutdown is taking on Americans’ daily lives. The Miami airport is closing a terminal this weekend because security screeners have been calling in sick at twice the normal rate. Homebuyers are experiencing delays in getting their loans.

Roughly 420,000 federal employees were deemed essential and are working unpaid. An additional 380,000 are staying home without pay. While furloughed federal workers have been given back pay in previous shutdowns, there is no guarantee that will happen this time.

Workers are turning to Uber, Lyft and other side gigs to pick up some money in the meantime. In Falls Church, Virginia, outside Washington, a school district was holding a hiring fair for furloughed federal employees interested in working as substitute teachers.

Chris George, 48, of Hemet, California, has picked up some work as a handyman, turned to a crowdfunding site to raise some cash and started driving at Lyft after being furloughed from his job as a forestry technician supervisor for the U.S. Forest Service.

But the side gigs aren’t making much difference, and he has been trying to work with his mortgage company to avoid missing a payment.

“Here we are, Day 21, and all three parties cannot even negotiate like adults,” he said, describing government workers like him as “being pawns for an agenda of a wall. You’re not going to put a wall across the Rio Grande, I’m sorry.”

Economists at S&P Global said the shutdown has cost the U.S. economy $3.6 billion so far.

The typical federal employee makes $37 an hour, which translates into $1,480 a week, according to Labor Department data. That’s nearly $1.2 billion in lost pay each week, when multiplied by 800,000 federal workers.

Many workers live paycheck to paycheck, despite the strong economy and the ultra-low unemployment rate. A Federal Reserve survey in May found that 40 percent of Americans would have to borrow or sell something to make a $400 emergency payment.

Government workers are scaling back spending, canceling trips, applying for unemployment benefits and taking out loans to stay afloat.

Maria, based in Washington, was already in a financially precarious situation because of two cross-country moves in 2018 and the birth of a premature son. The shutdown has made matters much worse.

“I’m just not paying certain bills. Car payments are being delayed, which is going to put a hit on the credit,” he said. “Credit card payments are being delayed.”

Maria took out a personal loan last week just in case. Now he is pulling his 4-year-old daughter out of day care and telling his 7-year-old son he cannot sign up for extracurricular activities.

Tiauna Guerra, one of 3,750 furloughed IRS workers in Ogden, Utah, said employers don’t want to hire her when she explains her situation because they don’t want to lose her in a few weeks.

In the meantime, she is taking out a loan to make her car payment, and she and her husband are delaying plans to move out of her parents’ house until the shutdown ends.

“We’re barely getting by,” said Guerra, a mother of two small children. “We are not able to pay a lot of our bills. We’re having a hard time trying to buy gas, food.”

Most of the government workers received their last paycheck two weeks ago. Around the country, some workers are relying on donations, including launching GoFundMe campaigns. Food pantries have opened up in several locations.

In Massachusetts, a private group has stepped up to ensure that those working at local Coast Guard stations have food and clothing. Don Cox, president of the Massachusetts Military Support Foundation, said the nonprofit group has opened up centers at Coast Guard stations in Boston and Providence, Rhode Island.

The group is helping feed 500 to 600 families a day during the shutdown, about double the typical demand, Cox said.

“We’ve been doing this for 10 years. This is my fourth shutdown,” Cox said. “I wish the senators and the congressmen weren’t taking their paychecks. I’d feel a lot better then.”

Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado said she would not take her paycheck as long as federal workers were unpaid. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, another Colorado Democrat, said his staff would offer free breakfasts and lunches to unpaid federal workers at his district office in suburban Denver starting Friday.

___

Associated Press writers Alina Hartounian in Phoenix, Steve LeBlanc in Boston, Matthew Barakat Falls Church, Virginia, Chris Rugaber in Washington, and Dan Elliott in Denver contributed to this report.

Joe Biden Should Spare Us All the Trouble

There is a moment in “Hamlet” when the titular Danish prince orchestrates a coup: A play within the play is staged, its proceedings aimed squarely at provoking the evil King Claudius. This puts the audience at an even stranger remove. We are watching the assorted castle dignitaries watching a play of their own, one that dimly reflects the central drama of “Hamlet” itself.

That’s a bit what it feels like to read coverage of Joe Biden as he struts the stage, a skull between his hands, utterly anguished over whether or not to run for president in 2020. I certainly understand why a born ham like Biden would relish the role, even if he is a bit long in the tooth to play Hamlet. I even can understand why his story has our modern-day courtiers in the Beltway so enraptured, lovingly capturing every development and half-step toward the announcement of his candidacy.

What’s less clear is whether all parties involved know that Joe Biden 2020 is not a saga worthy of Shakespeare. At best, it’s that shabby show within a show for an audience of royal hangers-on—a drama that only gestures toward the human struggles currently tearing America apart, as cast upon the wall of some high-vaulted castle room.

***

I’ve always had a soft spot for Biden, which is useful to remember any time I find myself agog at whatever new political cult should spring up next in America. He’s an avuncular Irishman from Scranton, Pa., who blurts out things more calculating politicians would never permit. His likability is understandable; Biden appears distinctly human, a quality that is surprisingly rare in the upper echelons of either party these days. That his particular oozing style has been pressed into the service of villains, for decades, is where the fuzzy image of Uncle Joe blurs into nonexistence.

A politician crafts an image; the press determines whether it’s digestible—“shovel-ready,” as they say—and runs with it; the general public increasingly finds itself adopting the same view of the politician, seemingly independent of any manipulation, when in fact it’s been persuaded by a full-court press that appearance is reality. It’s no wonder that Biden was among the eulogists at the funeral of John McCain, by far the most skilled operator in recent memory to play this game. And just as the death of McCain generated endless encomia for “the happy warrior,” obscuring his legacy of bitter, thoughtless criminality, so the approach of 2020 has begun turning the gears for a gutsy, straight-shooting type, one who might beat Trump at his own game.

It’s worth reflecting on why beating the president at his own game need be a qualification for any prospective Democratic nominee. Had Biden been the nominee in 2016, I think he’d probably have crushed Trump—even with the home-court disadvantage of having to rely on Democrats to win an election. Biden was not nominated, of course, and did not even compete in the primaries, despite serving for two terms as vice president for a largely popular commander in chief capable of turning out vast numbers of voters. Why?

To hear him—and plenty of other observers—tell it, Biden was muscled out by the Clintons and their sycophants, intent as they were on clearing the field for a 2016 coronation. As we all know, this was a winning strategy, which paid enormous dividends for Hillary Clinton, the would-be 45th president of the United States. In fairness, Biden was right to suspect that a 2016 primary bid against the former secretary of state would have invited the kind of vicious, scorched-earth tactics her camp shamelessly employed in 2008—those glory days of circulating photos of Barack Obama in a turban or smearing him as a coke sniffer on national TV.

Indeed, Clinton had trouble putting down the insurgent candidacy of a self-proclaimed socialist with none of the deep-pocketed financial backers she’d come to rely upon, even with all the levers of the Democratic Party under her control. No doubt Biden has had more than one sleepless night, playing and replaying how exactly it was that he didn’t throw his hat in the ring, and thus leaving the field open for the worst candidate in U.S. presidential history to bobble her race against the second-worst candidate in U.S. presidential history.

Now, with Clinton (hopefully) beyond reprise, there is a vacuum to be filled within the Democratic Party—a safe pair of hands with high-name recognition that won’t rock the boat for plutocrats the way Bernie Sanders might, and who, it must be said, seems a better match against Trump than many of the would-be challengers. If all that’s true, would Biden really be the worst of a bad lot?

***

Whatever his personal virtues, the fact remains: If the age of Biden hasn’t exactly expired yet, it’s not on any basis of merit. That toothy straight-talk he’s spent his career perfecting sounds a lot less blarney-smooth when it’s employed to salute the patriotism of the superrich or mock as crazy any substantive attack on their predatory designs. And those are just some of his newer songs; Biden’s back catalog reflects some darker streaks.

In 2019, it shouldn’t be required to lay out why, exactly, voters should run like hell in the opposite direction of Team Biden, but here we are. Excavating his record provides a useful cross-section of the worst kinds of Democratic compromise, struck with the relentless, ultra-right forces whose march through the halls of power continues under Trump. If the iron triangle of American conservative thought has been a love of wealth, war and racism, then Biden’s career is a testament to every weak counteroffer the Democrats have ever made, conceding miles of ground in the process.

It’s mostly forgotten now how violently contentious busing efforts were in the ’60s and ’70s, met as they were with explosions of white supremacist violence in northeastern and Rust Belt cities. Despite Biden’s all-too-tenuous and often wince-inducing claims to be a uniquely friendly legislator to African-Americans, his push for anti-busing legislation mimicked the depredations of Jesse Helms, albeit to a lesser extreme. Biden’s advocacy of some of the most punishing drug laws of the 1980s helped put an entire generation of mostly black men into prisons, while his ineptitude during the Anita Hill hearings—which led to the appointment of a likely sexual predator to the Supreme Court—continues to resonate today.

So what—Biden’s sorry now that he helped throw hundreds of thousands of drug users in prison, ruining their lives forever? The cynical apology tour notwithstanding, there is nothing to suggest that he is a changed man at all, as exemplified by his stated lack of sympathy for debt-ravaged millennials. The utter unwillingness of the Obama administration to confront Wall Street, and the corruption of every office of government by its proxies, would continue under a Biden presidency. The borderless, endless war that Obama expanded and worsened, driving Libya and Syria deep into the abyss amid pointless military conquest, is unlikely to slacken. And only days ago, Biden advanced the signature aim of Paul Ryan and the modern GOP: to “means test” Social Security and Medicare, and thus dismantle what little remains of our tattered social safety net.

Biden is a man out of time. He is, despite his reputation, not the fighter we need for the policies we need.

On the campaign trail, Biden tells it as a sad sign of the times that the D.C. bipartisanship he fondly recalled of his early years has all but dissipated:

I’ve been around so long, I worked with James Eastland. … Even in the days when I got there, the Democratic Party still had seven or eight old-fashioned Democratic segregationists. You’d get up and you’d argue like the devil with them. Then you’d go down and have lunch or dinner together. The political system worked. We were divided on issues, but the political system worked.

It may be news to some that a political system can be described as “working” when monsters like Mississippi’s Sen. Eastland were in place to fight any steps toward racial integration and equality well into the 1970s. Who knows? Perhaps he really was that stupendous a dinner companion. But the false comity of segregation-era D.C. is hardly what these times call for, and tough talk aside, Biden’s track record gives little cause to be confident that his presidency would be anything less than a stale retread of the Obama years.

There are more might-have-beens in political history than actual events. What if Mario Cuomo had run when he had the shot? What if Colin Powell had resigned, instead of blowing up the U.N. with tales of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Or if David Cameron had nixed that stupid Brexit referendum, or Lincoln had skipped theater night, or Hitler had choked on mustard gas on the Western Front? It’s galling, no doubt, for an eternal go-getter like Biden to know he could win the presidency, at a time when his autumn’s already come.

The best prize Biden can hope for is a hollow crown, snatched in the twilight of a questionable career. The worst we can hope for is that he wins, and we still lose.

Bernie Sanders Faces Questions About Political Future

NEW YORK — Allies of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are rallying behind the embattled presidential prospect even as they reluctantly begin to ponder the painful possibility of a 2020 campaign without him.

The 77-year-old self-described democratic socialist is the most prominent contender to face a serious setback in the evolving White House field. He’s been forced to confront reports detailing allegations of sexual harassment of women by male staffers when he sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.

Sanders’ loyalists expect him to launch a second campaign in the coming weeks, and his network of die-hard supporters is hosting hundreds of events across the nation this weekend encouraging him to run.

But the allegations put Sanders in an unenviable position in the early days of a contest playing out in the #MeToo era. While his competitors are visiting early-voting states and scoping out potential campaign headquarters, Sanders spent Thursday apologizing for the behavior of a handful of 2016 campaign workers and looking for a new staffers for his 2020 operation should he run.

Some allies have had their confidence shaken in the future of the man who has reshaped Democratic politics in recent years and almost single-handedly brought liberal priorities such as “Medicare for all” and free college education into the party’s mainstream.

“If he doesn’t run, there’s a massive void in this country,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, an activist and former executive director of the National Nurses United union, who reaffirmed her support for Sanders. “The passion in that base goes away. That base evaporates. It doesn’t go to someone else. There would be a void so deep it would go to (President Donald) Trump, I suspect.”

Politico reported Wednesday that in July 2016, a former senior Sanders adviser forcibly kissed a young female staffer after making sexually explicit comments. Sanders’ team said the adviser, who denies the allegation, would not be involved in a second campaign should there be one. Former campaign manager Jeff Weaver, who was made aware of some incidents after the campaign ended, would not serve as campaign manager again, although he may serve in another capacity.

No one has alleged that Sanders had direct knowledge of the incidents.

“Obviously, it’s impacted all of us quite a bit. It’s very upsetting,” said Heather Gautney, executive director of Our Revolution, the political arm of Sanders’ network.

Despite her concern, Gautney warned Democrats that a 2020 contest without Sanders would undermine plans to shake up health care, education, housing and other liberal priorities.

“Bernie is holding the flank on the left. If he doesn’t run for president, then the whole horizon shifts, and universal health care maybe gets taken off the table,” Gautney said. “In my view, he is an absolutely necessary part of our political system.”

Sanders may not be taken seriously by some in the political establishment, but he would be a force in 2020. Having nearly beaten Hillary Clinton in the 2016 contest, he boasts an engaged nationwide network and an impressive grassroots fundraising ability. He almost certainly would draw some of the same voters being courted by likely 2020 contenders such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke.

Former Sanders’ staffer Giulianna Di Lauro Velez, who alleged she was harassed during the 2016 campaign, wrote Thursday in The Intercept that sexual harassment is prevalent in many political campaigns. But she wrote that new allegations on Sanders 2016 campaign indicate “the depth of the problem was likely deeper than most knew.”

She called on Sanders to “take the rare step of setting up an independent investigation into the 2016 allegations.”

A Sanders spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about Velez’s comments.

Earlier in the day, Sanders apologized, as he did last week, for the harm done under his watch and offered a direct message to women affected.

“I thank them from the bottom of my heart for speaking out. What they experienced was absolutely unacceptable and certainly not what a progressive campaign — or any campaign — should be about,” Sanders said.

Sanders added: “Every woman in this country who goes to work today or tomorrow has the right to make sure that she is working in an environment which is free of harassment, which is safe and is comfortable, and I will do my best to make that happen.”

Sanders’ critics in the Democratic Party seized on the new revelations as reason to abandon any 2020 plans.

“These allegations inform us that Bernie is really not concerned about the well-being of women. And therefore, he would not represent us well as the president,” said Toni Van Pelt, president of the National Organization for Women. “I really think Bernie needs to sit down.”

Sanders’ vast political network does not agree.

Katherine Brezler, co-founder of People for Bernie Sanders, said the allegations of sexual harassment had absolutely no impact on her preference for Sanders. The New York activist said that sexual harassment was present in virtually every one of the 100 or so campaigns she’s worked on.

“I’ve met those people and they’re not Bernie Sanders,” Brezler said. “We are not going anywhere.”

Corporate Media Stoop to New Low in Shutdown Coverage

Last month, FAIR (12/7/19) examined the absurd false equivalence that some fact-checking sites, including the Washington Post’s Fact-Checker, sometimes engage in by comparing imprecise or accidental misstatements by left-wing politicians with the unprecedented and willful lies and conspiracy theories emanating from the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Coincidentally, the Post rolled out a new, even more extreme “Bottomless Pinocchios” rating (12/10/18)—which only Trump has qualified for, 14 times—three days after our post. And just this week, one of the targets of the Post’s false balance, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, addressed and linked to the column (cross-posted at Salon) on Twitter (1/7/19), to illustrate her comments about fact-checking during a recent interview on CBS News’ 60 Minutes (1/6/19).

With all that prologue, you might think mainstream news organizations would be on high alert about the trap of tendentious equivocation when it came to covering Trump’s prime-time immigration speech, and its Democratic response, on Tuesday night. But you would be wrong.

Barely an hour after the Democratic leaders Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi had completed their on-air response to Trump’s prime-time address, the New York Times (1/9/19) had published a fact-check story that stooped to ridiculous nitpicking. Of the eight statements analyzed by the Times, the lone Democratic example had all the earmarks of being shoehorned on to the end to create some semblance of balance. After quoting Schumer’s statement that the ongoing government shutdown was “hurting millions of Americans who are treated as leverage,” the Times countered by saying, “This needs context.” But what followed was a surreal example of fact-checking pedantry from the nation’s leading newspaper (emphasis added):

An estimated 800,000 federal workers are furloughed or working without pay because of the shutdown. While millions of Americans are not being directly harmed, there is a multiplier effect when considering family members of those whose jobs are affected. This also spills into the broader economy, harming business owners whose customers must cut back, tourism and travel.

Treating those federal workers who aren’t getting a paycheck as the only ones “directly harmed” by the ongoing shutdown is a shameful oversimplification, to say the least. To describe the families of federal workers who might go hungry because the federally employed member of their household has been furloughed—or worse, must work without pay—as a so-called “multiplier effect” is the very opposite of journalism’s comfort-the-afflicted ethos.

It also ignores the singular role the federal government plays in the life of our country and its citizens.  Millions of Americans have already been put at risk from curtailed food and environmental safety inspections, reduced health care access in Native American communities, and the expiration of a low-income HUD program, which now threatens the housing status of thousands of people because of the shutdown.

All of this surreal narrative not-so-subtly flows from an impulse to imply that Democrats are exaggerating the shutdown’s impact in much the same way Trump is exaggerating the border crisis. This is both cruel and counterproductive “context” that muddies rather than clarifies. In effect, the paper’s blinkered, literalistic framing reinforces Trump’s fact-free spin on the shutdown, where he has claimed that any suffering is superficial and—without one iota of evidence—that the unpaid federal workers secretly support him.

But as bad as the Times’ fact check was, it paled in comparison to this jaw-droppingly stupid example from the Associated Press (1/8/19).

AP FACTCHECK: Democrats put the blame for the shutdown on Trump. But it takes two to tango. Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for his border wall is one reason for the budget impasse. The Democrats refusal to approve the money is another.

The facile logic on display here is so untethered from any basic grounding in how political power works according to our Constitution that it might just float out into space. The warped framing effectively removes any of Congress’s agency in governing other than to rubber-stamp the President’s wishes. On Twitter, the AP’s tweet was quickly and mercilessly ratioed, as thousands of people cheekily responded with their own similarly vapid analogies. (Kidnapper-and-hostage scenarios were a popular choice.)

Of course, this “fact check”—pulled from a piece co-authored by AP’s Calvin Woodward, who has a long history of fact-check false equivalence—completely elides the fact that the government shutdown began while the Republicans still controlled both houses of Congress. In fact, the GOP-led Senate unanimously passed a bill funding the remaining portion of the government on December 19, but only after Trump abruptly changed his mind and signaled he would not sign that bill were it to reach his desk, did the Republican House (barely) pass a different funding bill that included appropriations for a border wall. That bill was dead on arrival in the Senate, and then the money ran out. In other words, the origins of the shutdown can be directly laid at the feet of the president’s own stubbornness and legislative bumbling.

Not to mention the fact that Trump publicly boasted about his desire to shut down the government in a bipartisan leadership meeting: “I will be the one to shut it down,” he declared in a meeting with Schumer and Pelosi (Politico, 12/11/18). “I am proud to shut down the government for border security.”

What’s more, the new Democratic majority in the House has already passed a government funding bill—albeit one different than the one passed by the Senate in the last Congress—so to imply it is equally to blame for obstructionism, when it is merely adapting to a legislative impasse it inherited, is ludicrous.

As the blowback to the AP’s inanity ricocheted across the Internet, the Washington Post’s media critic Erik Wemple sought out a comment from the wire service. AP’s response (1/9/19) manages the feat of both doubling down on the broken logic and incorrectly relating the facts on the ground, as detailed above:

The tweet was intended to point out that Democrats have refused to accede to President Trump’s demands, which preceded the president’s decision to refuse to fund the government without wall funding included.

In a tell-tale sign of damage control, AP (1/9/19) quickly issued a follow-up clarification to its first clarification of its fact check, again to Wemple:

The tweet was intended to make clear that Trump and Democrats have failed to find common ground in their disagreements, but it could have done a better job of explaining the dynamics that have led to the shutdown. The complete AP fact check was robust and focused almost exclusively on Trump’s comments.

Note this little dodge at the end; it is instructive. Both the actual AP (1/9/19) and Times fact-check stories included just a single example from the Democratic response. Perhaps not coincidentally, both of those strained, scrounging-for-anything examples turned out as flaming journalistic failures. This is not to say Democratic politicians don’t make factual mistakes in their rhetoric, or willfully lie on occasion; they obviously do. But the press’s determination to artificially package and elevate Democratic inaccuracies to help achieve partisan balance in coverage of Trump is a serious journalistic problem.

This nuance is lost on some in the fact-checking industry. For example, Sal Rizzo, who authored the misguided Post Fact-Checker column (12/4/18) on Rep. Ocasio-Cortez last month, resorted to a string of smarmy comebacks and straw-man arguments this week when earnest online critics challenged the way the press sometimes stoops to unfair equivalence when comparing Trump’s dishonesty and propaganda efforts to his political opposition:

“(I don’t think they’re worried about the integrity of our Trump factchecks)” (1/8/19)
“Democrats are never wrong/shouldn’t be factchecked” (1/8/19)
“trying to but I keep getting rage tweets sted of something to study” (1/8/19)
“the question stands for anyone who can handle some moxie” (1/8/19)

As FAIR noted last month, it will be worth watching how the corporate media treat Democrats once they return to power in the House. Sadly, just one week into that party’s control of the House, it looks as if the press is eager to put its thumb on the scale of reality when it comes to placing blame for the current dysfunction in Washington.

By no means should any Democratic efforts at misinformation be allowed to hide in the shadows next to Trump’s forest of falsehoods. But then, any forced effort to keep balancing them out will only make it that much harder to hold accountable both Trump and those who oppose him.

Michael Cohen to Testify Publicly Before Congress

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, will testify publicly before a House committee next month in a hearing that could serve as the opening salvo of a promised Democratic effort to scrutinize Trump, his conflicts of interest and his ties to Russia.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee announced Thursday that Cohen will appear before that panel Feb. 7, a little more than a month after the Democrats took the House majority.

The hearing marks the latest step in Cohen’s transformation from a trusted legal adviser to the president to a public antagonist who has cooperated extensively against him. Although Democrats say the questioning will be limited to avoid interfering with open investigations, the hearing is still likely to pull back the curtain on key episodes involving Trump’s personal life and business dealings, including hush-money payments to women and a proposed Moscow real estate deal, that federal prosecutors have been dissecting for months.

Cohen is a pivotal figure in investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign and by federal prosecutors in New York into campaign finance violations related to payments to buy the silence of a porn actress and a former Playboy Playmate who say they had sex with Trump. Federal prosecutors have said Trump directed those payments during the campaign.

Trump has denied having the extramarital affairs.

Cohen has pleaded guilty in both investigations and was sentenced last month to three years in prison. An adviser to Cohen, Lanny Davis, said shortly after he was sentenced that the former political fixer wanted to testify and “state publicly all he knows.”

In a statement released on Thursday, Cohen said he had accepted the invitation “in furtherance of my commitment to cooperate and provide the American people with answers.”

Cohen added: “I look forward to having the privilege of being afforded a platform with which to give a full and credible account of the events which have transpired.”

Trump has denied wrongdoing and sought to minimize Cohen’s statements by painting him as a liar. Asked by reporters in Texas on Thursday about Cohen’s appearance, Trump said he’s “not worried about it at all.”

Cohen acknowledged in the Mueller investigation that he lied to Congress by saying negotiations over a Trump Tower in Moscow had ended in January 2016 when he actually pursued the project into that June, well into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In New York, he acknowledged his involvement in payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

The chairman of the oversight panel, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said the committee is consulting with Mueller’s office about the testimony. He told reporters on Thursday that “there will be limitations” on the topics covered in Cohen’s testimony.

“We don’t want to do anything to interfere with the Mueller investigation — absolutely nothing,” Cummings said.

The panel’s top Republican, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, said Cohen’s appearance shows that Cummings is using the “committee as a venue for political theater rather than legitimate oversight,” noting how Cohen has admitted knowingly lying to Congress and is a witness in ongoing investigations.

“This makes clear that Chairman Cummings and the Democrats will do whatever it takes to attack this President,” Jordan said in a statement.

A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.

Cummings has signaled that his committee is more interested in investigating the president’s involvement in the campaign violations to which Cohen pleaded guilty last year.

Cummings has sent document requests to the White House and the Trump Organization that seek to determine why Trump, who reimbursed Cohen for the hush-money payments, omitted that debt on his public financial disclosure form. Cummings is also requesting a raft of potentially revealing communications about the payments and other legal services Cohen provided for the president and his company.

The oversight hearing may not be Cohen’s only appearance. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said he welcomes Cohen’s testimony before the oversight panel, but “it will be necessary, however, for Mr. Cohen to answer questions pertaining to the Russia investigation, and we hope to schedule a closed session before our committee in the near future.”

Cohen testified before the House intelligence panel in a closed-door hearing in 2017, before his role in the federal investigations was fully known and when Republicans controlled the committee. The GOP-led committee later ended its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, saying there was no evidence of collusion or conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Schiff wants to restart parts of that probe.

The Senate intelligence committee has also asked Cohen to return. He spoke to that panel in 2017.

“The request still stands, regardless of any public testimony Mr. Cohen may give on other issues,” its chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said in a statement.

___

Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey in McAllen, Texas, and Darlene Superville and Padmananda Rama in Washington contributed to this report.

Will Brazil’s New President Usher In a Return to Dictatorship?

Jair Bolsonaro began his tenure as president of Brazil in the new year exactly as human rights and environmental activists feared he would—by issuing executive orders aimed at indigenous groups, Afro-Brazilians descended from enslaved people and the LGBTQ community. He declared that his inauguration meant “liberation from socialism, inverted values, the bloated state and political correctness.”

Like his counterpart in the United States, Bolsonaro enjoys making pronouncements over social media, using his Twitter account prolifically. Many fear that Brazil’s rabidly right-wing, pro-business, pro-gun and pro-military president will usher in an era reminiscent of the two-decade-long dictatorship, the horrors of which are still fresh in the memories of many Brazilians. Bolsonaro has even spoken admiringly about the years between 1964 and 1985, describing the dictatorship as “a very good period.”

Ivo Herzog is the board president of the Vladimir Herzog Institute, named after Ivo’s father, a Brazilian journalist who was tortured and assassinated during the dictatorship. In an interview from Sao Paolo, Herzog explained that “the best way for you to understand Bolsonaro is that his mentor is Donald Trump.” Indeed, Bolsonaro has echoed much of Trump’s racist and misogynist rhetoric and has mirrored his agenda on the environment, business, the military and even, to an extent, foreign policy. His slogan—“Brazil Before Everything”—mimics Trump’s “America First” mantra. Trump is only too eager to embrace him, tweeting on the day of Bolsonaro’s inauguration, “The U.S.A. is with you!”

Within hours of taking office, Bolsonaro transferred the authority for land protections of indigenous communities away from the National Indian Foundation (known as FUNAI by its Portuguese acronym) to the Ministry of Agriculture. Herzog explained that this was a “conflict of interest,” as agribusinesses are more interested in farming than in protecting the rights of indigenous people. The new minister of agriculture, Tereza Cristina Dias, is the former chair of the farm caucus.

An attack on Brazil’s indigenous people is, by extension, an attack on the Amazon rainforest. Indigenous tribes have historically been stewards of the precious land that functions as a massive, planetary-scale carbon sink. Dinamã Tuxá of Brazil’s Association of Indigenous Peoples told Reuters, “We are very afraid because Bolsonaro is attacking indigenous policies, rolling back environmental protections, authorizing the invasion of indigenous territories and endorsing violence against indigenous peoples.”

Seemingly as racist as Trump, Bolsonaro has included Afro-Brazilians in his targeting. In fact, he has a history of virulently anti-black racism. Among those whose land rights he has weakened are the descendants of enslaved Brazilians. Herzog explained that Bolsonaro also is attempting to rescind racial quotas at universities, which were put in place only in the past decade to address systematic racism.

The history of Brazil’s slave trade—like that of other nations—is a sordid one. Millions of people were trafficked from Africa to Brazil, and it was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish the institution. But racism stemming all the way back to slavery persists in Brazil. For example, according to Herzog, in Sao Paolo, where he lives, “The police in 2017 killed over 900 people; 70 to 80 percent of those were Afro-Brazilian, most of them young men.”

Bolsonaro’s racism goes hand in hand with his homophobia. On his first day in office, he disempowered the Human Rights Ministry’s ability to monitor the rights of the LGBTQ community. Brazil’s new president hails from a powerful evangelical church—an institution that poured money into electing him and has promoted a homophobic agenda.

He also has unleashed controls on gun sales, once more taking after his American counterpart. Brazil, second only to the U.S. in the number of gun deaths each year, is awash in guns. Bolsonaro’s answer to the scourge of gun proliferation is to flood the market with more guns. In fact, the National Rifle Association—America’s largest gun lobby group—appears to have as much a hold on Bolsonaro in Brazil as it does on Trump in the U.S. Herzog also warned that Bolsonaro has “empowered several state governors to use violence against crime.” In other words, police are encouraged to shoot at suspects first and ask questions later.

Corporations love Bolsonaro, and he appears to love them back, with his announcement on Twitter of a plan to privatize a number of airports and seaports. Brazil’s stock markets have soared since he took office, leading him to declare in the first week of the year that “Brazil is the best stock market in the world.”

Bolsonaro is not only ushering in a frightening new chapter in Brazil, he is dangerously ignorant—another similarity to Trump. According to Herzog, “[H]is knowledge is very limited on everything,” an inference based on the fact that he refused to participate in debates during his campaign. Additionally, when reporters questioned Bolsonaro on his policies, he often demurred to his future Cabinet members for details. “It’s very scary to have the leader of a nation the size of Brazil as someone who knows so little about our country and about the world,” Herzog said.

So how did Bolsonaro become president? Again, the answer is eerily linked to Trump. Herzog explained that social media played a huge role in disseminating propaganda during the election campaign and tilting the election toward Bolsonaro—just as it did in the U.S. “The result of this election is due to social media, one hundred percent,” he said. In Brazil’s case, the popular messaging software WhatsApp was the primary means of sharing misinformation. But, according to Herzog, Bolsonaro’s campaign also hired Cambridge Analytica—the now-defunct British firm that Trump and the Brexit campaign successfully deployed—to help him win. So prevalent was the “fake news” that “people lost their reference point for truth,” Herzog said. A majority of Brazilians were convinced that a far-right president harboring the same ideology as that of the loathed dictatorship was preferable to the liberal leftist Workers Party that held power under the now-imprisoned Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, until her impeachment.

When I asked Herzog whether he fears a return to the type of repression seen under the dictatorship, he said, “Actually I think it might be even worse, because during those dark days, the enemy was well known. We had a dictatorship put in place.” Now, he explained, “You have the same people with the same ideology, but they have the legitimacy of the vote.”

Report: Americans Over Age 65 Are More Likely to Share Fake News

Americans over age 65 are four times more likely to share articles from suspected fake news domains than those ages 18 to 29, according to a new study published in Science Advances. The study found that overall, sharing fake news sites is “a relatively rare activity,” although, as The Guardian observes, “American Facebook users over 65 shared nearly seven times as many articles from fake news domains as those aged between 18 and 29.”

Age is the biggest predictor of whether a person will share fake news online and, according to researchers from Princeton and New York University, the practice is most prevalent among older generations, regardless of gender, income or race.

“In fact,” as The Verge points out in its coverage of the study, “age predicted their behavior better than any other characteristic—including party affiliation.”

The impact of fake news on election outcomes has been widely debated, making it difficult for researchers to develop a consensus on whether and how such stories influence voter behavior, or to quantify the extent of their reach. One study, by the Comparative National Elections Project at Ohio State University, suggests that approximately 4 percent of Barack Obama’s supporters in 2012 voted for Donald Trump in 2016 due to false stories. Another study by researchers from Dartmouth and Stanford, published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, shows that just 10 percent of Americans made approximately 60 percent of the visits to fake news sites.

The most recent study analyzed the Facebook habits of 1,750 American users just after the 2016 election. Participants installed an application that shared data with the researchers, including public profile fields, religious and political views, what they posted to their own timelines and the pages they followed. Researchers cross-referenced the links participants posted with a list of suspected fake news sites compiled by BuzzFeed reporter Craig Silverman.

Researchers later checked those links against four similar lists for consistency. Just 8.5 percent of those surveyed shared at least one link to a domain associated with any of the lists of fake news sites.

Among that group, participants age 65 and over shared the most fake news stories.

The authors did not draw a firm conclusion as to why older users share more fake news, but they suggested two ideas for further testing. One is that people experience cognitive decline, including memory loss, as they age, which may make them more susceptible to hoaxes. Another is that older people are more likely to have begun using the internet later in life, and perhaps lack internet literacy:

As the largest generation in America enters retirement at a time of sweeping demographic and technological change, it is possible that an entire cohort of Americans, now in their 60s and beyond, lacks the level of digital media literacy necessary to reliably determine the trustworthiness of news encountered online.

Within this cohort, lower levels of digital literacy could be compounded by the tendency to use social endorsements as credibility cues. If true, this would imply a growing impact, as more Americans from older age groups join online social communities.

Authors of the NYU-Princeton study indicate that they hope to test both hypotheses in the future.

Matthew Gentzkow is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research who studies Facebook’s attempts to stop fake news. He told The Verge that this study might be helpful for developing tools to prevent elderly Facebook users from falling victim to various internet scams. “The age result in this paper points very directly toward at least narrowing down the set of solutions that are likely to be most effective,” he said.

4 Reasons Corporate Media Refuse to Talk About What Matters

The media recently was all over Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for calling Donald Trump a “m@therf*cker” in the context of wanting to impeach him. It got lots and lots of coverage, over a period of several days, while the really big work the Democrats were doing in the House is largely ignored, along with most other consequential issues of the day.

Ever since the media began, in a big way in the 1980s, to ignore actual news and go for highly dumbed-down or even salacious stories, many of us who work in the media have been astonished by this behavior by the network and cable news organizations and the major newspapers.

They used to report the details of policy proposals in great detail (see this report from the 1970s about Richard Nixon’s proposal for universal health care, comparing his with Ted Kennedy’s, for example). But since the Reagan era, the networks have largely kept their coverage exclusively to personality, scandal, and horse race.

Why would that be? Why, since the late 1980s, has the “news” lost any semblance of actual news and detail, and degenerated into a cleaned-up version of the National Enquirer?

For example, on January 3, the House of Representatives passed one of the most sweeping political reform bills since the Nixon era, including automatic voter registration, 15 days of nationwide early voting, and an end to gerrymandering. Not to mention a totally revolutionary code of ethics for the Supreme Court.

But was there any coverage of these details—or even of the bill itself—in the media? Even though there’s no way it would pass the Senate, it’s worthy of discussion and debate.

This is just one example of dozens of events that happen every day and are completely ignored by the media in favor of “who’s up and who’s down” horse-race reporting, and gotcha or scandal coverage.

Watch a few hours of national cable TV media, and—outside of a very few shows—odds are you won’t hear any detail of actual policy whatsoever. Every issue is instead framed in the horse-race format of “who’s going to win this fight”—leaving Americans uninformed about the consequences to themselves of the issues being fought over.

But the networks love scandal and conflict. So, to get issues on TV, maybe it’s time to make them obscene.

Imagine if the Democratic Party were to enlist a dozen or so members of Congress to go on national TV and say things like:

“We’re going to stop that m@therf*cker Brian Kemp from blocking any more black people from registering to vote in Georgia!”
“Those Republicans who are blocking early voting in Indiana are in for an ass-kicking!”
“No more gerrymandering by those ratf*ckers!”

Alas, it’s just a dream.

Even if the Democrats did this, the only dimension of it that would get covered would be how much political damage (or benefit) the profanity may be doing to the politicians who are the source or butt of it, as happened with Representative Tlaib. In other words, they’d turn the issues aside and focus on the personalities and the horse race.

Which brings us back to the media refusing to actually discuss or inform the American public about actual issues.

Why would it be this way in 2019, when there’s such a demonstrable thirst for issues-based discussions, as we can see with the ratings of the few top cable network shows that actually do discuss issues and don’t spend half their hour with a “panel”?

Trying to figure out why this is, I’ve come up with four possible reasons (none of which are mutually exclusive; it may be all or a combination of them). Let me know on Twitter or call into my show if you have additions to the list.

The End of the Fairness Doctrine

In 1987, Ronald Reagan ordered his FCC to cease enforcing the Fairness Doctrine. This much-misunderstood regulation required radio and TV stations, in order to keep their licenses, to “pay” for their use of the public airwaves (the property of We the People) with actual news. It was called “broadcasting in the public interest.”

Because of the Fairness Doctrine, every one of the networks actually lost money on their news divisions, and those divisions operated entirely separately from the entertainment programming divisions of the networks.

CBS, ABC, and NBC had bureaus all around the world and employed an army of reporters. At the little radio station where I worked in Lansing, Michigan, in the 1970s (WITL), we had, as I recall, five people staffing the newsroom, and it was a firing offense if we were caught hanging out with the sales staff. While stations lost money on news, the payoff was the much larger sums they could earn with entertainment during the rest of the hour or day.

The Fairness Doctrine also encouraged a discussion of the issues of the day with the “balanced commentary” (probably not the official name; it’s what we called it in the ’70s) requirement. This did not say that if a station carried an hour of Limbaugh, they’d have to balance it with an hour of Hartmann. “Entertainment” programming (see Joe Pyne, William F. Buckley, etc., etc.) could have any tilt it wanted.

But when a station ran an editorial on the air that conveyed the opinion of the station’s owners, they then had to allow a member of the community to come on the air and present a balancing and different perspective. If this provision was still in the regulations, every time Sinclair Broadcast Group requires their local stations to air their “must-carry” right-wing editorials, they’d have to follow them with a left-wing perspective rebutting their points.

The Rise of “Reality TV”

Reality TV grew out of the twin writers’ strikes of 1988 and 2001. In each case, the networks had to figure out a way to offer compelling programming with shows that didn’t require union writers. In 1988, they mostly did documentaries on policing like “Cops” and “America’s Most Wanted”; in 2001 they rolled out the full-blown reality programming we know today, starting with “Survivor.”

The networks learned two big lessons from this. The first was that “reality” programming actually pulled an audience, and thus was profitable. Extremely profitable, in that it didn’t require union writers and generally didn’t even require union actors.

The second was that it was incredibly cheap to produce.

If you tuned into TV prior to the Reaganification of the news, you may still have heard “experts” discussing things, but there were several differences. First, they were usually actual experts on actual issues that were before Congress. Second, they were a very, very small part of the overall program.

In the years since the rise of reality TV, the news networks have discovered that it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to have four or five or six “pundits” join a host for an hour and “discuss” the issues of the day than it is to pay for actual salaried reporters and news bureaus around the nation and the world.

So every hour, at least on the low-budget or weak-talent shows (notice what a contrast the Maddow show is to this truism), plan on hearing a half-dozen very, very familiar talking heads discussing ad nauseam the same four or five stories all day long. (One wonders why the networks don’t encourage their talent to do more of the kind of in-depth reporting and analysis found on Rachel’s show, particularly since it’s profitable and draws killer ratings. Perhaps the answer is found in reasons three and four.)

Guests like you see on the panels that fill daytime news programming start out working for free, and if they become an “analyst,” “contributor” or some other title for the network are paid between $500 and $2,500 an appearance. In a world where on-air personalities often start with seven-figure salaries, this is incredibly cheap programming.

Even cheaper for the networks is to have politicians on as guests—they show up for free!—which may be why they’re almost never held to account in any serious way. After all, if you piss off a politician on your network and they refuse to ever come back on the air, you’ve lost another bit of “free” talent. And if you piss off an entire political party, and your programming model doesn’t work without “balance,” you’re really screwed.

There’s a reason people all over America are screaming at their TVs every Sunday morning: the majority of guests are conservatives or Republicans, and much of what they offer as “fact” or “opinion” is merely lies and propaganda. Which leads us to number three.

Media Corporations Are Corporations, Too

It’s easy to postulate that the absolute lack of coverage of the death, at GOP hands, of net neutrality is because two of the big three cable TV networks are (or soon will be) owned by internet service providers (NBC/MSNBC is owned by Comcast, AT&T is trying to buy CNN), and other big corporations see all sorts of financial advantage if they can use their financial and programming muscle to dominate a newly sliced-and-diced corporatized internet.

Consider: When was the last time you heard an intelligent discussion on TV about taxing the rich? Or holding corporations accountable when they break the law? Or how destructive oligopolies and monopolies are to workers? Or how big pharma scams us about their R&D expenses and price fixing, buying up generic companies, etc.? The list could go on for pages.

Back in the day, the big joke in corporate America was, “You know it’s going to be a bad day when you get to work in the morning and there’s a ‘60 Minutes’ news truck outside the building.” The last time this was seriously considered was in the late 1980s, as in this article about “60 Minutes” doing an exposé of the meat industry. Now, not so much.

The simple fact is that TV “news” organizations are now for-profit operations, and, lacking regulation like the Fairness Doctrine, thus have the same natural and inherent biases toward protecting corporate power and privilege, and the wealth and privilege of their management and largest shareholders.

They also derive the bulk of their money from two sources—billionaire-funded political campaigns (have you noticed how there’s no in-depth coverage of the political spending of the Kochs, Adelsons, and Mercers of the world?), and giant transnational corporate advertisers.

All those campaign ads represent hundreds of millions of dollars going right into the pockets of the networks and their affiliates, along with other corporate advertising revenue. Lacking a regulation like the Fairness Doctrine to require actual “programming in the true public interest news,” who’d bite those hands that feed them?

Corporations Like Republicans

The final possibility that occurs to me (and others in media with whom I’ve discussed this over the years) is that the large TV and radio news operations simply like what the GOP stands for. They also know that if GOP policies were widely understood, the Republican Party would fade into the kind of powerless obscurity it enjoyed for most of the FDR-to-Reagan era, when working people’s salaries were growing faster than management and the middle class was solid and stable.

TV networks don’t like unions or uppity workers or regulation any more than any other billion-dollar corporation. They’d prefer the salaries of their senior corporate management weren’t debated (or even known). They prefer to live in today’s semi-monopolistic system where they’re only minimally held accountable, and want to keep it that way.

This is the core of GOP ideology that media shares: Cut taxes on rich people, kill off the unions, cut welfare so more of that money can go to rich people’s tax cuts, deregulate big corporations so they can act without regard to the public good, and subsidize big corporations with government funds whenever and wherever possible.

But if any of these issues were ever explicitly discussed on TV, all hell would break loose. Can you imagine if Bill Kristol or Rick Santorum or any of the other dozens of right-wing trolls who inhabit cable TV were ever asked about their actual positions on policy?

Should we sell off (privatize) Social Security to the big New York banks as the GOP has wanted to do since the 1930s? Should we end Medicare and Medicaid and turn everybody over to the tender mercies of the insurance industry? Should we stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry? What should we do about the audit that found $21 trillion (yes, with a T) missing from the Pentagon? How do we break the stranglehold monopolistic drug corporations have on the pricing of our pharmaceuticals?

Similarly, the networks are equally terrified of having actual progressives on to discuss actual progressive issues—because the majority of American voters largely supports these issues and, if well informed, will start to vote out Republicans and vote in progressive Democrats.

Imagine how things would go down if the networks started having actual discussions and debates about free college education, free national health care, the environmental impact of big oil, how well publicly owned utilities and internet services (like Chattanooga) work?

The simple reality is that the media oligopoly and the GOP work hand-in-glove, and the Democrats (and particularly the progressives) have been locked out since the Reagan era.

Solutions

The solutions to these problems are not particularly complex, although the GOP will fight them tooth-and-nail.

Reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, put back into place ownership rules, and break up the big media monopolies so there’s a diversity of voices across America. Overrule the Supreme Court’s (by legislation or constitutional amendment) Citizens United (and similar) ruling to regulate money in politics, diminishing the power of big corporations and billionaires (and foreign governments).

In other words, restore to America a rational media landscape.

Today, you can drive from coast to coast and never miss a moment of Hannity or Limbaugh on the radio, so complete and widespread is the nation’s network of corporate-owned radio stations that will only carry right-wing talk. You’ll be hard-pressed, outside of a few major cities, to find any progressive or even moderate talk programming.

This has corrupted America’s politics and led to a nation divided.

We can do better.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute

Trump Threatens Emergency Declaration Ahead of Border Visit

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress if he can’t reach a deal with Democrats to fund his promised border wall. He headed to the U.S.-Mexico border to draw further attention to his case after negotiations with lawmakers blew up.

The partial government shutdown dragged into a 20th day with hundreds of thousands of federal workers off the job or working without pay as the wall fight persisted.

Asked about a national emergency declaration, Trump said as he left the White House for Texas, “I’m not prepared to do that yet, but if I have to I will.” He contends such a declaration would allow him to direct the military to begin wall construction.

“So we’re either going to have a win, make a compromise —because I think a compromise is a win for everybody— or I will declare a national emergency,” he said.

It’s not clear what a compromise might entail. Trump says he won’t reopen the government without money for the wall. Democrats say they favor measures to bolster border security but oppose the long, impregnable walling that Trump envisions. He is asking $5.7 billion for wall construction.

Trump’s comments came a day after he walked out of a negotiating meeting with congressional leaders — “I said bye-bye,” he tweeted soon after — as efforts to end the partial government shutdown fell into deeper disarray. Affected federal workers face lost paychecks on Friday, and more people are touched every day by the rollback of government services.

Putting the standoff in personal terms, the president tweeted before leaving for Texas: “The Opposition Party & the Dems know we must have Strong Border Security, but don’t want to give ‘Trump’ another one of many wins!”

In McAllen, Texas, Trump will visit a border patrol station for a roundtable discussion on immigration and border security and will get a briefing. But he has expressed his own doubts that his appearance and remarks will change any minds as he seeks money for the wall that has been his signature promise since his presidential campaign.

McAllen is located in the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest part of the border for illegal border crossings.

The White House meeting in the Situation Room ended after just 14 minutes. Democrats said they asked Trump to reopen the government but he told them if he did they wouldn’t give him money for the wall. Republicans said Trump posed a direct question to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: If he opened the government, would she fund the wall? She said no.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Trump slammed his hand on the table. But Trump, who handed out candy at the start of the meeting, disputed that characterization. He said he “didn’t smash the table” but “should have.”

One result was certain: The shutdown plunged into new territory with no endgame in sight. The Democrats see the idea of the long wall as ineffective and even immoral. Trump sees it as an absolute necessity to stop what he calls a crisis of illegal immigration, drug-smuggling and human trafficking at the border.

Trump also went to Capitol Hill Wednesday, seeking to soothe jittery Republican lawmakers. He left a Republican lunch boasting of “a very, very unified party,” but GOP senators have been publicly uneasy as the standoff ripples across the lives of Americans and interrupts the economy.

During the lunch, Trump discussed the possibility of a sweeping immigration compromise with Democrats to protect some immigrants from deportation but provided no clear strategy or timeline for resolving the standoff, according to senators in the private session.

GOP unity was tested when the House passed a bipartisan spending bill, 240-188, to reopen one shuttered department, Treasury, to ensure that tax refunds and other financial services continue. Eight Republicans joined Democrats in voting, defying the plea to stick with the White House.

There was growing concern about the toll the shutdown is taking on everyday Americans, including disruptions in payments to farmers and trouble for home buyers who are seeking government-backed mortgage loans — “serious stuff,” according to Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican.

Some Republicans were concerned about Trump’s talk of declaring a national emergency at the border, seeing that as unprecedented interference with the right of Congress to allocate funding except in the most dire circumstances.

“I prefer that we get this resolved the old-fashioned way,” Thune said.

Democrats said before the White House meeting that they would ask Trump to accept an earlier bipartisan bill that had money for border security but not the wall. Pelosi warned that the effects of hundreds of thousands of lost paychecks would begin to have an impact across the economy.

“The president could end the Trump shutdown and re-open the government today, and he should,” Pelosi said.

Tuesday night, speaking to the nation from the Oval Office for the first time, Trump argued that the wall was needed to resolve a security and humanitarian “crisis.” He blamed illegal immigration for what he said was a scourge of drugs and violence in the U.S. and asked: “How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?”

Democrats in response accused Trump appealing to “fear, not facts” and manufacturing a border crisis for political gain.

In an off-the-record lunch with television anchors ahead of his speech, Trump suggested his aides had pushed him to give the address and travel to the border and that he personally did not believe either would make a difference, according to two people familiar with the meeting. But one person said it was unclear whether Trump was serious or joking. The people familiar with the meeting insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the meeting publicly.