Food companies can now stop their “pyramid-scheming” and start to square the circle

This past Memorial Day weekend brought news from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that it is taking the wrecking ball to the food pyramid, which USDA, nutritionists and countless school curricula have used to try to educate children (and adults!) about nutrition since 1992.

As the article in the New York Times details, nutrition experts have come to the conclusion that the pyramid is too confusing for people to understand and deeply flawed “because it did not distinguish clearly between healthy foods like whole grains and fish and less healthy choices like white bread and bacon. A version of the pyramid currently appearing on cereal boxes, frozen dinners and other foods has been so streamlined and stripped of information that many people have no idea what it represents.”

Well of course it was confusing.  It was meant to be that way.  I’m not talking about the original pyramid concept, which was conceived as building blocks, with more blocks for carbohydrates, fruit and vegetables (near the base of the pyramid) and fewer for meats and almost none for desserts and sweet snacks.  The pyramid concept was and still can be useful in discussing proper nutrition.

But the construction of the pyramid fell into the hands of the pharaonic leaders of the food industry: The dairy industry made sure that dairy products had their own bricks and that there were more of them than they should have.  The pyramid proposed minimum amounts for fruits and vegetables, but maximum amounts for meats, a nice little touch for meat packers. 

But these initial sops to the food industry were not enough.  Still later the USDA replaced the horizontal bricks with vertical strips, each one representing a different food group and all laden with information.  The color of the strips and the fact that they were laid side by side and ascended to a pinnacle made it hard to distinguish the widths of the strips, making it appear at first glance that you were supposed to eat as many sweets as vegetables.  This confusing ordering of geometric space must have also delighted chip makers.

Delightful to all merchants of processed food was the overall confusing muddle into which the USDA turned the pyramid structure.  To those selling food products full of salt, sugar and chemicals, even more advantageous than no information is a confused tangle of information from which consumers can freely select what they want to follow.  

The new symbol of ideal nutrition proposed by the Obama Administration is a round dish.  USDA hasn’t released the final composition yet, but it promises that half of the plate will be dedicated to fruits and vegetables.  Although I fully approve of the First Lady’s campaign against childhood obesity, which highlights nutrition and fitness, I have seen the Obama Administration sell out to the interests of industry time and again, so I’m dubious about the USDA commitment to making the dish reflective of what an ideal diet should be.  Already, we have learned that it will come with a separate smaller plate representing dairy products, which must gratify the dairy industry.  Will we end up with several plates, for appetizers, side dishes and dessert as it were?

The 20-year history of the food pyramid is really the story of American enslavement to advertising and its siren call of immediate gratification. Junk food is sold at every event.  It’s given out at every play date.  Snack machines are in virtually every office building.  The amount of TV programming dedicated to food has grown geometrically, so when we see people on TV, they are often doing what we’re doing as we watch them: eating.  Our youth are addicted to chips, soda, dry cereal, fast food…and overeating.  And most of the many food ads we see on TV are for the worst of foods: for every pitch for blueberries or apples we see on TV, there must be dozens if not hundreds of ads for hamburgers, all laden with high-calorie sauces, bacon and cheese.

So while I’m overjoyed to see this symbol of our enslavement fall, I also wonder with trepidation what the government and food industry are planning to dish out next.

Associated Press spins its own poll about the public’s perception of Medicare and Social Security

Yesterday the Associated Press released the latest version of its surveys with GfK and it shows that two-thirds of the public say that Social Security or Medicare benefits can’t be cut because they are vital to their financial security as they age.

Hey, let’s face it.  One reason that Americans can spend so much in good times, and thereby serve as Atlas holding up the world’s economy, is that they depend on Social Security and Medicare to take care of a good part of their needs when retired or infirm.

More facts from the survey: 70% said Social Security is “extremely” or “very” important to their financial security in retirement, and 72 percent said so for Medicare.

The story points out that 54 percent believe it’s possible to balance the budget without cutting spending for Medicare, and 59 percent say the same about Social Security.

But the Associated Press does its best to spin the story away from the message the voters are emphatically communicating to elected officials: find another way to balance the budget than taking it away from the elderly.  Instead the article becomes a quiet little hand-wring that the experts have not been able to convince people to sacrifice their retirement benefits, even though the rich are currently paying an historically small share of total taxes.

First and foremost, like every other story I have ever read about the future of Social Security and Medicare, the writer focuses on the short-term and not the long-term.  Check out this statement: “Combined, Social Security and Medicare account for about a third of government spending, a share that will only grow.” True enough, but then the baby boomers will all die and the next generation of seniors will be much smaller, so Social Security and Medicare will not have the current problem it faces: not enough working people to support the growing number of retirees.

Demographers have likened the journey of the baby boomers through life to a rat passing through the snake that has just swallowed it: to the observer, a bulge is moving through the snake, from head to tail.  Because the population of boomers is so much larger than the one that came before it and was followed by a baby bust, wherever the boomers have been in their life cycle, its bulge has created both challenges for society and opportunities for businesses.  

Now we boomers are old, and that means there are more old people than ever before in history.  The very good news is that they’re living longer, which of course means we have the responsibility of paying for their Social Security and Medicare longer.  In a humane society, that should be a problem we all like to have, like the problem of having to pay for a child to go to Stanford or North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Every expert the AP story quotes says that we will have to cut benefits, and these opinions are underscored by statements such as, “Again, there’s a sharp difference between what the public believes and what experts say. Most experts say the programs will be there for generations to come. But they may look very different than they do today, and Americans should take note.”

No one in the article mentions raising taxes, nor does the reporter.  For some reason raising taxes is completely off the table.  And yet we could solve the temporary challenge presented by the baby boom bulge as simply as lifting the limit on income that is assessed the Social Security and Medicare taxes.

I’d like to see AP-GfK ask people if they would be willing to have higher taxes on the wealthy to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent while my rat of a generation completes its journey through the snake of life.  My guess is that Americans would be overwhelmingly in favor of it.  

Three ideas for public school districts facing massive budget cuts.

Yesterday morning I entered the following search terms into Google News: “budget cuts school district.”  I didn’t stop perusing the articles until I got through 40 of the more than 7,000 listed, and the articles were still dated May 21 and May 20 (the two prior days).  I skipped ahead to the 120th article and we were still on May 18 (less than a week ago).

The 40 stories over a two-day period to which I linked came from all over the country, including South Berkeley, Michigan;  Great Falls, Montana; Iowa City, Pennsylvania; Levittown, Pennyslvania; Logan, Utah, the Meridian School District in Idaho;  the Plymouth School District in Sheboygan, Wisconsin; and the Pendleton School District in Oregon.

Most of the articles bemoaned the fact that state and federal budget cuts were leading to teacher and support staff layoffs and the curtailing of programs.  Of special note are these shockers:

While there are a handful of stories about districts raising taxes (usually the millage on property taxes) or doing fundraising, the tone of virtually all the stories favored defeatist and discouraged hand-wringing.  School boards, parents and teachers seem to accept their fate in an oddly disoriented, almost catatonic way. We’ve seen some anger, but not as much as I think there should be among either parents or school districts. 

In fact, I think we should be seeing people everywhere up in arms!

The anger should be directed at our politicians for preferring the interest of one group of Americans above all others: the wealthy.

Board members tend to be smart, educated and media savvy.  They must know these well-documented facts:

  • If Americans, and in particular the wealthy, paid in taxes today what they did 30 years ago, we wouldn’t have the tax shortages that are forcing these terrible cut-backs, which will hurt children, and in particular children in the poorest school districts.
  • The recently negotiated budget cuts are paying for the two-year extension of the temporary tax breaks for those making more than $250,000 per year.
  • While many Americans bemoan the many “failures” of education in this country, an overwhelming majority think their own children are getting or had a fine education in their public schools.

These facts form the basis for action by school boards and calls to action to residents of the school district.

I want to recommend the following actions to school board members. Some provide immediate funds to staunch the bleeding, while others can help to build towards a more permanent financing solution. 

1. Immediately raise school taxes, even if it’s a temporary move.

Most school districts have taxing authority, often over real estate.  The rationale for increasing the millage or other taxes is straight-forward: Everyone is paying less than they should in federal taxes now and we need this money to educate our children.  To make the tax increase fair, school districts could consider a number of ideas: in many school districts it might be possible to exempt retired people with houses under a certain value from the additional amounts or to add a tier of additional taxes on those properties worth more than a certain value.

Raising taxes in the current environment will take a lot of courage.  In many school districts, there are sure to be recall campaigns, financed by those who have abdicated their responsibility for educating all our children in return for a few, or many, pieces of silver.  But I would hope that voters whose children’s lives are improved by the increased millage will offset the “taxes are always too high” bunch. 

2. Close down all charter schools that do not perform better than the public school.

That will mean closing down most charter schools, since all studies show that most charter schools underperform both in the classroom and on standardized tests. Charter schools take money from public schools, much of which is turned into profit for the charter school operator.  By returning charter school students to the public school classrooms, the public schools can put this “profit” back to work to educate children.

3. Make sure the voters know whose fault it is.

School boards (perhaps jointly with teachers unions) should send to all voters a monthly update of the following lists:

  • State and federal legislators and announced candidates who have voted to cut education or proposed such cuts.
  • State and federal legislators and announced candidates who are voting to cut taxes or to continue temporary tax cuts or who support such moves.

People need to know just who it is who continues to transfer wealth from the poor and the middle class up the ladder to the wealthy by extending a three-decades-old low-tax regime while demanding draconian cuts to education (and to alternative energy, infrastructure improvements, the elderly and health care).

Most school districts have a public relations budget.  I recommend that over the short term, most of it be dedicated to a campaign that communicates one message: “We need to raise federal income taxes to support the education of our children.”

The last election saw right-wingers who want to lower taxes more and cut funds for public education sweep into office, but they didn’t win because an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with their views.  They won because their voters went to the polls and those who would prefer a more equitable distribution of the wealth in the United States stayed home. 

The right-wingers were, of course, aided in the last election by the mainstream news media, which consistently framed issues in conservative terms, gave far more coverage to Republican candidates and events and kept hidden key facts that might have energized Democratic, young and minority voters to come to the polls. But school districts can speak directly to voters, with notes to parents, the monthly newsletter, the district website and school meetings.  Moreover, school districts are too big to ignore in the local news media.  School districts can build a let’s raise taxes to where they once were so we can educate our children message into everything they send the media, from the announcement of how the kids did on standardized tests to the cute feature on careers day.

It’s time for school boards to take a stand in favor of the constituency they are supposed to represent: the youth of America (as Casey Stengel used to say).  Those who say that the school boards in fact represent the entire community have said the same thing because the school board’s charge from the community is to ensure quality and cost-effective education.  It is the fervent and ethical pursuit of that mission that school boards owe to their communities.  The special interest group that school boards represent are not those who want a low-tax regime or selfish, but the children in the district.  That representation demands that school boards take a stand today for higher taxes.

Scientist Tim Flannery ties Darwinian myths to politics of selfishness and myth of free markets

From time to time, I analyze pop science and pop psychology articles that try to infer in current mores the echoes of primordial genes trying to propagate themselves through the selfish behavior of the animals containing them.  On any number of occasions I have demonstrated that these little Darwinian myths or fairy tales are pure speculations that reflect the belief system of the writer and by implication of the publication.  These myths always uphold conventional beliefs, e.g., that men like to play around while women want one mate or that women find dumb but athletic men more sexually attractive.  See for example, my blogs of December 22, 2009,  February 25, 2011 and November 17, 2009.

Tim Flannery, the Australian scientist and global warming activist makes the same point in his latest book, Here on Earth, when writing about Richard Dawkins, who was the first to propose the concept of the selfish gene, i.e., the idea that we are just shells for the replication of our genes, which are engaged in a brutish battle for survival with all other genes and therefore always act selfishly. 

Here is Flannery’s entire paragraph:

We have a tendency to use ideas such as selfish gene theory to justify our own selfish and socially destructive practices. It’s significant, I think, that Dawkin’s book received wide acclaim on the eve of the 1980s—the era when greed was seen as good, and when the free market was worshipped. As our experience with social Darwinism illustrates, we need to be eternally on guard against the siren song of self-interest if we wish to live in a fair and equitable society.”  

Compare Flannery’s paragraph with what I posted on OpEdge earlier this year: “The first thing we notice is that selfishness is equated with both the natural and the good.  Selfishness is the reigning spirit of state-supported capitalism and justification for an inequitable distribution of wealth.  Thus the hidden ideology of all Darwinian myths is the glorification of free-market capitalism.  It is no coincidence that the proliferation of these Darwinian myths in English and American popular science began around the time Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took office.  It was, and unfortunately remains, the zeitgeist.”

I’ll take Flannery on my side of an issue any day.  He is one of the most articulate and right-thinking scientists around, and I’m surprised that he hasn’t taken over the Carl Sagan role of “Mr. Science” in the mainstream news media.  Perhaps it’s because the mainstream news media is so in thrall to the right-wing that it really doesn’t want to call attention to science by having a universally recognized expert. 

I recommend any of Flannery’s books to anyone, but in particular, The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America, which plays out the history of North America as a long series of successive invatisions from other parts of the earth, each invasion dramatically changing the ecosystem of the continent.

As usual, I can’t criticize the pop science of Darwinian myths without stating unequivocally that I believe in the theory of evolution because all the facts support it.  What I object to is the attempt by some to spin scientific myths in support of ideology and in particular the false ideology of selfishness.  I’m delighted that Flannery agrees with me about both the theory of evolution and its ideological misuse.  

Santorum tells torture victim John McCain that McCain doesn’t understand how torture works

Torture supporters keep repeating the big lie that torture helped to find Osama bin Laden not just to re-spark the debate on the value of torture, but also to twist its terms in a way that assumes that it’s legal.  Which it isn’t.

The latest torturista to make the false claim that torture led to the identification of ObL’s location is former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum.

The story starts in the middle of last week, when John McCain wrote an OpEd piece in the Washington Post saying that torture had nothing to do with finding ObL.  The next day on the floor of the Senate, McCain condemned former U.S. Attorney General Mike Mukasey for promoting the false view that torture helped to get the terrorist.

This morning’s news now brings Santorum’s absurd claim that McCain doesn’t know anything about torture.   Santorum embarrassed himself to no end by proposing that he, who never served a day in the military and specialized in domestic issues as a Senator, knows more about torture than long-time member of the Senate Arms Service Committee  John McCain, who suffered 5 1/2 long years as a prisoner of the Vietnamese and may have himself been a victim of torture. 

Santorum looked foolish, to be sure, but he accomplished his objective: to keep the idea that torture works in the mainstream media. 

Other than Santorum, up to this point, the only people to say that torture led to the capture of ObL 1) were part of the torture bureaucracy; 2) have been out of a position to know for years; and 3) have not seen the current evidence first-hand.   Santorum does share characteristic 2 and 3 with the likes of Dick Cheney, Mike Mukasey, John Yoo and Peter King.

So let’s be clear: All the evidence that has been released shows no connection between our torture and the identification of ObL. 

All the people who have looked at the evidence say that there is no link.

On one side we have this mass of evidence and on the other side the ostensibly lame attempts by the opposition to claim a little credit for what they could not do despite their torture, illegal rendition and the establishment of a worldwide gulag of prisons.  

Yes, to the average person, those supporters of the torture-found-ObL theories look pretty ridiculous, and especially Santorum.

But look what they have accomplished: the debate on torture is alive again and the issue at hand is: does it work or not.

The issue should never be “Does torture work or not?” (By the way, it doesn’t.)  Torture was and is illegal in the United States and goes against our basic humanistic principles as a country.  We do not argue about the efficacy of killing men who don’t pay alimony and child support and then giving their estates to their ex-wives.  And we don’t argue about the efficacy of selling our children to institutions of higher learning when they turn 12 to work as day laborers in return for a free education and emancipation at the age of 25.  Even if these policies did work, we wouldn’t implement them because they break our laws.  And torture breaks our laws and our shared convictions, as well.

As a society, we can not avoid being dragged into a battle with the torture-found-ObL crowd, because if we are silent, the lie passes.  In his recent comments, John McCain has not forgotten to stress that torture is wrong and illegal.  I don’t like most of his politics, but I salute the old soldier for reminding us that we shouldn’t shift the debate to “does it work or doesn’t it.” Because it doesn’t matter. It just ain’t right.

It was okay for Facebook to hire PR pros to go after Google until they started to lie and conceal the client’s name

Don’t be shocked by the news that Facebook hired public-relations agency Burson-Marsteller to plant negative stories about Google ‘s social-networking feature, Social Circle.  Companies, governments and politicians try to plant stories and create Internet buzz all the time in an effort to shape public opinion or influence elected officials and regulators.  They also establish support groups and foundations, fund research, commission experts to write articles and distribute video news releases to TV stations.

I’ve been involved in these kinds of issues management public relations campaigns from time to time.  I want to share one example that concerns a now defunct supermarket company, The Penn Traffic Company, which at one time made the Fortune 500 list of largest companies by sales volume.  A stitching together of several regional supermarket chains across upstate New York, New England, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, Syracuse-based Penn Traffic’s business eroded over two decades for a number of reasons, one of which was Wal-Mart.  The Northeast was the last U.S. market to which Wal-Mart expanded and wherever Wal-Mart went in upstate New York and Pennsylvania, it seemed to run into a Penn Traffic store.  Wal-Mart always has looked first to small towns and that’s where Penn Traffic was strongest.

Now when Wal-Mart opens a store in a small town like Rome, New York or DuBois, Pennsylvania, the local downtown stores usually die quickly, and money in the form of profit flows out of town to Wal-Mart corporate headquarters.  That’s why soon after an announcement of Wal-Mart’s plans to build, many local small businesses band together to try to stop the behemoth.  And guess who provided financing to these anti-Wal-Mart groups in the towns where Penn Traffic had supermarkets?  Yes, Penn Traffic did.

And there was nothing wrong with it, for two reasons:

  1. We (Penn Traffic and its PR agency, Jampole Communications, Inc.) never lied.
  2. We never tried to conceal what we were doing.

Over the course of several years, reporters from various local newspapers may have asked me a dozen times if Penn Traffic was funding a specific group, and I always answered with some version of the following, ”That’s right, we support these groups and are proud of it.  Wal-Mart will take business away from our store, because every new supermarket takes business away from the existing supermarkets; Food Marketing Institute numbers show that half of food sales go to the new nearest supermarket, and every new supermarket becomes the nearest one.  But we are also very concerned about the negative impact of Wal-Mart on small towns.  Everywhere Wal-Mart has gone, it has cannibalized local and regional businesses owned and operated by residents, turning smaller cities into ghost towns.  We are more concerned about what Wal-Mart will do to our community than we are about its impact on our business, which is large and thus able to respond to competitive challenges.”

I would also make sure that reporters understood that although many articles identified me as a Penn Traffic spokesperson, I was in fact an outside consultant hired by the company.

Contrast this attempt to influence the public and regulators to what Facebook/Burson-Marsteller (BM) did: The posts that BM employees made contended Google Social Circle violated user privacy and may have broken federal regulations. Two USA Today reporters uncovered that many of these claims were false.  When asked about its involvement, BM at first refused to name the client. 

By spreading falsehoods instead of speaking the truth and by not identifying who was paying for the message, Facebook/BM crossed a very clear and clean ethical line.  It is shameful and gives other corporations and their propagandists a bad name.

The broader issue if course is whether or not it’s okay to hire professional communicators to pass on truthful information, assuming that it’s relevant to the issues at hand.  I think it is okay, because not to allow the free dissemination of truthful information is a form of censorship. 

Who cares what politicians do in their private lives as long as they don’t condemn the same in others

One of the major themes in the news lately has been the sex life of Republican candidates for President.  Will Newt Gingrich’s standing with “values” voters suffer because he was “dating” his current wife while his then-wife was recovering from an illness in the hospital, or will his current wife be an asset to him?   And what will the voters think about Mitch Daniels, whose wife left him with the kids for two years to shack up with another man?

I for one never cared about Clinton’s peccadilloes and I don’t care about what Gingrich, Daniels, Nikki Haley (who has been accused of getting around a bit), Donald Trump, or any other Republican candidate does in his or her private life.  And I don’t care what Democratic candidates do, either.

There are, however, two exceptions:

  1. When candidates condemn what they themselves are doing, as Senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig did by condemning homosexuality while trolling airport men’s rooms for quickie gay sex.  As most of us know, Newty dallied while condemning President Clinton for his liaison with Monica Lewinsky.
  2. When the private actions suggest a pattern of wrong-doing that goes beyond adultery, such as sexual harassment, nonconsensual sex, pedophilia or, as in the case of Senator John Ensign, bribery.

As an adjunct to this “live and let live” philosophy, I am also not ready to condemn the adulterer who lies about his or her adultery, as long as there is no proof that he or she lied about anything else.  Just as you can’t score a home run without touching home plate, most adultery involves lying.  The “act” of lying is part of the “sin” of adultery, and not a separate sin. 

It would be great if all our politicians and public figures were saints, but they’re not.  Who is any of us to define sainthood for other people anyway?  And no one can get inside a couple’s marriage and really know what it’s like in there.

I would rather see the news media focus our attention on these factors:

  • The candidates’ past actions in elected office and past record of accomplishments and stands on issues.
  • What the candidate is currently advocating.
  • How often the candidate follows the line of his or her party and if that party line conforms to what you want.

The news media does a disservice to the voters by wasting time on speculation about the private lives of any candidate, again, unless that candidate’s private life involves illegal activity or demonstrates hypocrisy. 

The only people who benefit from House Republican axe to Medicaid are those with insurance and without hearts

The Kaiser Foundation and Urban Institute today released their analysis of what happens if the Republic House budget is passed, and it’s real bad: 44 million more Americans will lose Medicaid health insurance coverage.

Who could possibly benefit from 44 million poor and indigent people suddenly not having protection against illness and medical bills?

Let’s start by taking a look at who doesn’t benefit:  first and foremost, the 44 million  who are now getting a modicum of health care protection and will suddenly be without any.  The saddest part is that even though the people on Medicaid are virtually all poor, they are still allowed to vote, and yet many don’t.

But groups other than the indigent losing coverage also suffer.

For example, health insurance companies will suffer, because they serve as administrators and claims processors for state Medicaid programs, a fact that those who tout privatization conveniently never mention.  The Medicaid insurance carriers will have fewer Medicaid customers, and only a fool would think that all or even a majority of people who are kicked off Medicaid rolls will buy private insurance.

Those physicians who still treat Medicaid patients will find their practices shrink.

Hospitals who accept indigent patients will find their beds filled with nonpayers, and these nonpayers will be far sicker than they would have been if they had been on Medicaid, because all pertinent surveys demonstrate that people without insurance forgo preventive care and wait to go to the doctor until an illness or condition is truly critical. 

Then there are the people who can afford insurance who have compassion towards their fellow men.  After all, 44 million men, women and children will now not be able to afford to go to the doctor or to get a prescription filled.  Many of these people will suffer excruciating pain, miss work or be unable to work and die younger than they have to die.   It’s true that those with insurance may pay less in taxes, but only the truly wealthy are getting a significant tax break, say those making more than $150,000 or $200,000 a year or those with at least a few million in investments.

(Remember that we currently have historically low income taxes for many, but especially for the wealthy.  I think I was the one of the first to point out this embarrassing fact, and also to recognize that massive budget cuts are what are paying almost dollar for dollar for the continuation of the temporary Bush II tax cuts.  But I’m delighted that many others are picking up the beat, including Michael Tomasky in his fine article titled “The Budget battles on Which His Reelection Depends” in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books.)

Thus, virtually the only people to benefit are those whom the government is already subsidizing with historically low tax rates.  Those in the middle class are getting a minor subsidy, but the wealthier you are the greater the subsidy for two reasons: 1) you make more; and 2) the more money you make, the greater the difference in the rate you once paid and now pay.

But is the tax break enough money at any level to enable someone to feel good about themselves and their community knowing that 44 million more people are going without health care?

My conclusion: the only people to benefit from the Republican House proposal to cut Medicaid funding by one-third over the next 10 years are those who:

  • Have health insurance
  • Are enjoying the low tax regime of the last 30 years
  • Are pitiless and heartless Scrooges.

We’re a nation of Church, Mosque, Synagogue, Meeting and Hindu-Temple-goers, so I can’t imagine many people who will fit all three criteria.

But evidently those who do meet these criteria dominate the voters, and seem to dominate the small group of individuals and foundations feeding Republican and Democratic politicians a steady stream of cash.

I’m sure someone is going to believe the big lie about torture producing the evidence that found bin Laden.

Sometime this past Monday, the head of the House home land security committee, Republican Peter King of New York, made the claim on Fox TV that waterboarding and other torture led to the information that identified Osama bin Laden’s location.  (Readers may remember King for his support of Irish Republican terrorists or for his special hearings in which he effectively accused every Moslem living in the United States of suborning terrorism.) Former Vice President and current Prince of Darkness Dick Cheney also bragged on Fox that enhanced interrogation techniques contributed to finding ObL.   John Yoo, who wrote the legal memos that used tortuous reasoning and claimed new rights for the executive branch to justify torture, said that finding ObL proved that the Bush Administration’s torture policies worked.

Of course it was a supposition based on air, which is a nice way of saying that King, Cheney and others lied.  Whatever… In point of fact, no information leading to the location of ObL came from waterboarding or any other torture technique.  Even the Donald (and I mean Rumsfeld, who trumps the other Donald) stated unequivocally that torture did not lead to the locating of ObL.   

That hasn’t prevented Conservative media and websites from drinking the “torture worked” Kool-Aid.  

Moreover, there are four interlocking media phenomena at work that may keep alive the myth of torture finding ObL long after the news cycle ends:

  1. The vacuum of news:  Although we have more news outlets, we have fewer professionals gathering news.  As Pew research has demonstrated, most news starts with newspapers, and they’re getting smaller than ever.  But space and time must be filled, and into the online and broadcast vacuum rushes news commentary (much as your humble OpEdge does).  Into this vacuum rush lies like torture found ObL or the President was not born in this country, if for no other reason than that the repudiation of the lies can masquerade as news (while spreading the lie).
  2. The “Three Penny Opera mirror effect,” named so because a literature professor of mine once said that when this wonderful light opera first came out in Berlin in the late 20’s of the last century, all of the bourgeoisie loved it even though it was a socialist play that excoriated bourgeois values.  My professor said that the play became a mirror which substantiated the views of whoever was viewing it.  Applied to this situation, I mean to say that conservatives will believe the drool about water-boarding finding ObL, because they will believe anything the Kings and Cheneys of the world say; the more outrageous the statement to us, the more believable to the Mr. and Mrs. Rightwing Kool-aid Drinker.  In the same way, the believer will see those telling the truth as liars because of the believers’ previously fixed belief in the lie they believe.
  3. The fragmentation of the news media.  The Internet has led to the creation of more media outlets not tied to mainstream values.  The way people look for information on the Internet—in a directed, focused manner that zeroes in on exactly what is desired has infected how they view news.  It used to be that leafing through a newspaper or news magazine exposed someone to the full mainstream view of the issues of the day.  But now people can create their own little media worlds in which the only inhabitants are media that advocate only what they already believe and the only thing they see, even in online mainstream media, is fodder for their views.
  4. The “Matt Drudge gambit,” which enables media to proffer the most outrageous and scurrilous views by reporting what a disreputable reporter, media outlet or even politician, such as Matt Drudge, Michelle Bachmann or Glenn Beck, has said even if it’s almost assuredly false. In this case, mainstream and conservative media can keep the controversy alive by quoting King, Cheney and their ilk.  NPR played this game in its coverage of the so-called controversy yesterday evening. So did the New York Times this morning in a front-page article which starts with John Yoo’s assertion and then spends the rest of the story disputing it. 

I’m going to go out on the limb a little to say that over the next two years one of the minor themes of the right wing will be to say that the finding of Osama bin Laden demonstrates the value of enhanced interrogation techniques.  It won’t be the top myth they spout, but it will be one of the right’s playing cards, especially when preaching to the choir.

I want to close with the words my cousin Marshall Dayan, an attorney who defends convicted prisoners on death row from state assassination, emailed me about the capture (and not the killing) of Osama bin Laden: “The manner in which he was located and caught proves that the appropriate response to the 9/11 bombings was a criminal justice response, not a military response.  He was located and identified by painstaking investigation used in the criminal justice model; he was not caught “on the battlefield.”  We spent trillions of dollars fighting wars that did not advance the search for and apprehension of Al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for 9/11; they were all caught and killed using fairly straightforward criminal justice investigative techniques. 

Bin Laden dies, and where ignorance meets deviousness, you’re sure to find Tom Corbett

First, my reaction to the breaking news:  I’m delighted that we caught Osama bin Laden, but dismayed that our troops killed him.  He should have lived to stand trial and after conviction, been sentenced to rot away his years in solitary confinement.  The images of people celebrating his death were quite disturbing to me.  No man’s death should please anyone.  In a humanitarian world, one without war, the world we hope to build—in this future world, the true enemy is death against which all men and women will fight together as brothers and sisters.  Didn’t bin Laden gleefully celebrate the destruction of 9/11?  Let’s despise Osama bin Laden and celebrate his capture, but let’s not stoop one nanometer to his level by applauding his death.  

Now we return you to your regular programming:

We’re used to hearing and reading lies from the right wing, such as the lie that gutting job-creating programs to cut taxes on the wealthy creates jobs.  Or the lie that providing unemployment benefits for too many weeks will lead to people staying at home instead of looking for work.  Or how about the lie that government never does anything as well as the private sector can do it, or that charter schools lead to better educational outcomes.

We’re also used to stupid statements from the right, such as the many factual errors of Sarah Palin or the absurd exaggerations of Michelle Bachman.  Or how about the Florida Tea-partite politico who said that 90% of Planned Parenthood’s work involves abortions.  

But Tom Corbett, newly elected governor of Pennsylvania, concocted an especially unheady brew of lying and ignorance late last week with his solution to the budget problems facing Pennsylvania’s public universities.  His idea is for the state schools to earn money by allowing companies to drill for natural gas below campus.

Let’s start with the lying part that underlies the idea:  The primary reason that Pennsylvania institutions of higher education face a critical funding shortfall is because Corbett’s new budget hacks $2.0 billion in state support to education and cuts aid to colleges and universities by 50%.  Corbett tells us that cutting aid to education is the best way to solve the budget crisis and free businesses to forge Pennsylvania’s economic future in an increasingly globalized and knowledge-thirsty world.   These cuts make little sense to anyone who has one or more child in college.

Corbett’s other lie that lurks behind his advice to public universities is his insistence that gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale becomes deregulated and remains relatively untaxed.  The lie of course is that the current price of oil and the impending shortage of the stuff isn’t enough to interest gas drillers in the Marcellus Shale.  We also have to let them sully the environment and not pay their fair share in taxes.

So after having had a major hand in creating the problem—immediate and critical budget shortfall—the Governor proposes his unshackled Marcellus behemoth as the savior.

Only one problem, and here’s where Tommy Boy’s ignorance comes into play: Under current law, none of the royalties from drilling on campus property would go to the universities.  The royalties would all go directly to Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Lease Fund.  In other words, Tommy Boy’s plan would provide no help to the colleges and universities now scrambling to pay for teachers, equipment, staff and building maintenance.

I imagine, though, that Corbett’s idea delights his true constituency, the oil and gas companies that see the Marcellus Shale as a potential goldmine, especially if they can drill everywhere (like on the many campuses of college-rich western Pennsylvania), with little regulation and a light tax burden.

No wonder that surveys show that Corbett’s popularity has plummeted since he took office. He was elected to create jobs, but instead cares more about ramming through the right-wing soak-everyone-but-the-rich-and-poison-the-environment agenda. Like Tea-partites and their fellow travelers everywhere, his brand of lies and ignorance plays well until people actually see it in action.