David Sirota's Open Salon Blog

Access and Stenographic Journalism In the Obama Era

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:01:50 -0500

During the Bush years, progressives - rightly - criticized the Washington press corps for trading favorable coverage of the administration for access to the administration. Some reporters defended themselves by insisting that the administration created the necessity for such a quid pro quo, by effectively locking out anyone who didn't provide glowing coverage to the White House.

That argument, of course, is pathetic. There was plenty of (but certainly not enough) solid independent administration-questioning journalism happening during the Bush years. However, it came from real journalists who were willing to do investigative work, not from "journalists" who rely on the stenographic/ass-kiss model of reporting and who comprise the majority of the D.C. press corps (And if you don't believe that remains the majority of the D.C. press corps, I suggest you take a good look at how much coverage and attention the two leading stenographic journalists of our time, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, are getting this week for their new work of stenographic access journalism called Game Change. To know this form of "journalism" dominates D.C. - to know there hasn't been any kind of "game change" in journalism - is to simply compare how many D.C. media resources are going into scrutinizing the details of this work of tabloid trash versus how many journalism resources are going into scrutinizing, say, the details of the health care or financial legislation and/or how many resources went into scrutinizing, say, the case for the Iraq War).

The results of the Bush era are obvious - it was one of the darkest periods in American journalism history, as the triumph of the stenographic model gave us a media that largely refused to question reasons for war, financial meltdown (anyone remember Enron?) and corruption.

Now, with the Obama administration, the question is whether the same dynamic is at play - and if it is, what are the ramifications?

I don't know whether the Obama White House is using as heavy-handed tactics as the Bush White House - I don't know if there's an explicit access-for-favorable-propaganda deal at work. My guess is that while perhaps not as explicit as the Bush thugs, the Obama administration operates with the same paradigm. In my limited dealings with the Obama campaign's press operation and my less limited dealings with the congressional offices, I've learned the access-for-favorable-propaganda deal is now the norm - not the exception.

OK, so what's the upshot? What's that then mean for the political discourse? The Public Accountability Initiative's must-read LittleSis blog gives us a very good example that tells the larger tale, using Matt Taibbi's hard-hitting piece about the Obama administration's economic team - and the vitriolic response to the piece - as its vehicle.

You may recall that Tim Fernholz of the American Prospect, a self-described liberal journalism magazine, viciously attacked Taibbi. You may recall that the Prospect was soon humiliated for airing such an attack without actually showing that Taibbi was factually wrong in his article's major reporting and assertions. And you may also recall wondering why a "liberal" magazine would engage in such a counterproductive and substantively wrong attack on a reporter who was questioning the credentials/promises of the Obama administration from the liberal left.

Well here's a possible answer to the mystery - one that goes right to the perils of access and stenographic journalism in the Obama era:

Much of Taibbi’s piece focused on Robert Rubin’s network and its dominance of economic posts in the Obama administration, analysis which Fernholz dismissed as conspiratorial.
Interesting, then, that Fernholz recently met with one of the Obama economic officials and former Rubin underlings mentioned in Taibbi’s piece: Diana Farrell, deputy director of the National Economic Council...

The fact that Fernholz enjoys special access to White House officials may help explain why he mounted such an “intemperate attack” on Taibbi, as (Reuters') Felix Salmon called it. I don’t mean to suggest anything nefarious or conspiratorial (God forbid!). Just that Fernholz is on good terms with the Obama economic team and their leading lights, and this likely helped influence his views of Taibbi’s article. What is this kind of access worth? The piece Fernholz interviewed Farrell for, The Myth of Too Big to Fail, amounts to a flimsy, meandering defense of the Obama administration’s unwillingness to break up the big banks. Fernholz says that he spoke to a wide range of sources for the story, including consumer advocates and congressional staffers. Farrell appears to be the only interviewee quoted in the piece, and she is quoted at length (Dean Baker is also quoted, but that quote appears here). Fernholz essentially built the piece around her quotes, offering no counterpoint or critical framing of her arguments (see Simon Johnson for the opposite view).

Do we really need more journalists peddling the administration’s views on Wall Street and the economy? A line from Fernholz’s critique of Taibbi comes to mind: “This is pernicious for a lot of journalistic reasons…”

Look, do I think there was an explicit quid pro quo between the Prospect and the administration? Do I think Fernholz traded access to a high administration economic official for both a celebratory article about the administration's economic policy and an attack on an administration critic? No, of course not. That's not how politics and media work - the compromises, corruptions and capitulations are more immersive than transactional, more osmotic than wink-and-nod. If you are rooted in access and stenographic journalism, as parts of (but not all of) the Prospect is, there's a natural tendency to treat more gently those whose access you rely on.

Now it should go without saying that progressivism and real journalism are not synonymous with lockstep criticism of Obama administration, and anti-progressivism and stenographic journalism is not synonymous with lockstep hagiography of the administration. Real life just doesn't cut that cleanly.

However, it is worth being aware that stenographic journalism is not an exclusive phenomenon of the Bush era and - more importantly - may not be an exclusive phenomenon of the corporate media. Indeed, just as the administration has successfully converted many of D.C.'s Professional Liberal organizations into administration sycophants (what Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher calls corralling them into the "veal pen"), so too may it try to use the carrot of access to coerce liberal-labeled media to serve as the administration's house organ of political defense.

At one level, that is a brilliant-if-cynical strategy by the White House: If liberal publications are attacking progressive independent administration critics like Taibbi, then the implicit message beyond the overt attacks is that someone like Taibbi's arguments can be wholly written off not on the substance, but on the simple fact that he clearly must be on the extreme ideological fringe. I mean, hell, if you are being attacked by the "liberal" American Prospect, you've gotta be some sort of communist, right?

At another level, though, it misunderstands the new media ecosphere. For every liberal DC publication like the Prospect trying to base part of its niche on inside access there are other liberal media organizations that have the opposite model: namely, questioning power, regardless of who has that power.

Look at the terrific independent reporting of people like Arianna Huffington, Ryan Grim, Sam Stein and Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post. Look at the awesome health care and financial coverage from Firedoglake. Look at Chris Hayes' pieces in the Nation or Dylan Ratigan's coverage of the financial crisis. Look at Naomi Klein, Jeremy Scahill, David Brancaccio and Bill Moyers. Look at sites like LittleSis, Salon or (excuse the momentary self-congratulatory suggestion) at OpenLeft. It's not that these reporters and outlets bash the administration for bashing's sake - it's merely that their model and disposition is to not trade propagandistic coverage for inside access, and to treat facts as more important than partisan affinity.

Some of that encouraging success has come because some of these people aren't actually in DC, and therefore don't feel the personal conflicts and uncomfortable social pangs that come with the idea of writing hard-hitting stuff about the same administration staffers DC journalists hang out with after work. But a lot of it is because progressive media has discovered new avenues for genuinely independent reportage.

So sure, it's discouraging to see old liberal magazines like the Prospect (which, by the way, still produces a lot of stuff of genuine value) sometimes serve as the Obama administration's left-attacking hitman. And sure, it's discouraging (though not surprising) that the administration might be engaged in similar media management tactics as the Bush administration. But when you look at the trends and progress in the progressive mediascape, that kind of cynical behavior will be increasingly ineffective.

The D.C. Media's Stake In Denigrating Transparency

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 14:01:45 -0500

The most effective kind of propaganda - as any propagandist will tell you - is the kind that is almost completely invisible, cloaked in the argot of objectivity or worse, in the argot of a political ideology antithetical to the propaganda's message itself.

We can discount over-the-top press releases from the national Republican or Democratic parties because we know they are propaganda - we know that the parties both have ideology/substance-free motives for attacking the other party, and thus will cite anything they can to attack the other party. We know, in short, that they are propaganda.

But it's harder to detect and filter the invisible propaganda, and the most pernicious of invisible propaganda comes from what New York University professor Jay Rosen aptly calls The Church of the Savvy - that is, from Washington reporters and pundits (both liberal and conservative) who produce "news analysis" that is skewed by their own highly subjective, ideological and self-interested views of what is "politically realistic."

Case in point is the now-simmering debate over the most undeniably objective issues in the political/journalism realm: Whether or not the president has broken clear campaign promises, and whether such promise breaking should be considered dishonorable or honorable. And what makes today's debate so fascinating is that it's taking place not on any kind of ideological issue, but on an issue that, unto itself, should be considered the most nonpartisan of all: Basic government transparency.

President Obama made an explicitly clear promise to hold negotiations over national health care legislation not only in public, but on C-SPAN. And this wasn't a minor promise - he made the promise as an instrument to attack his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton, insisting that because Clinton refused to open up negotiations to such transparency in the past, Clinton was a legislative failure.

President Obama has now broken his promise, first by cutting secret deals with the drug industry, and now by endorsing a plan from congressional leaders to hold final legislative negotiations behind closed doors. These are the facts, and they are not in dispute - even though the White House insultingly pretends they are.

What is in dispute - rather incredibly - is whether or not this should be seen as A) acceptable and B) newsworthy. And those members of D.C.'s Church of the Savvy who are arguing that the promise-breaking is acceptable and not newsworthy are deftly presenting their conservative, Establishment-coddling propaganda in the most effective way: As allegedly "progressive" and/or "objective" arguments.

Consider the propaganda from the Center for American Progress. Igor Volsky - under the banner of progressivism - argues that we should applaud President Obama for breaking his campaign pledge to let C-SPAN cameras bring the health negotiations to the public. But his rationale is entirely antithetical to the basic progressive principle not just of open government, but of the concept that the public (ie. voters, activists, etc.) can play a role in public legislation. Responding to C-SPAN's letter asking for access to the negotiations, Volsky writes:

The C-SPAN letter itself betrays this reality. “Since the initial introduction of America’s Affordable Health Care Act of 2009, in the House and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the Senate, C-SPAN has televised literally hundreds of hours of committee hearings, mark ups and floor debate on these bills for the public to see,” it reminds us. On the whole, C-SPAN’s coverage informed and entertained the viewer. But did it improve the underlying bill?...
It’s no exaggeration to claim that health care reform is only possible because of the ritualistic ping-pong back and forth that occurs through private conversations...

Notice the Church of the Savvy assumption here: Transparency might be fine and dandy, but it didn't improve anything - and the only thing that improves anything is secrecy. Never considered is the fact that those hours and hours of C-SPAN coverage might have helped viewers - individual viewers, grassroots organizations, journalists, etc. - follow the process for purposes of organizing, pressure, and reporting. Never considered is the fact that such transparency might have allowed for the public pressure that kept good provisions in these bills. In the Church of the Savvy, even considering the value of such benefits is blasphemy because it is "unsavvy" to consider that government is anything other than a gated community whereby Powerful People make decisions for The Rest of Us. Put another way, even for many Professional D.C. Progressives, it's "unsavvy" to consider a less elitist ideology that sees the possibility of government working in a different, less elitist sort of way.

If this wasn't bad enough, Volsky goes beyond effectively arguing that efforts to crush transparency are actually progressive and on to arguing that the concept of lying to voters as AOK. He says we should all simply accept that "the reality of politics doesn’t square with the promises of the campaign trail," not bothering to explain what would be so "unreal" - so impossible - to simply let C-SPAN cameras film the negotiations, as promised. That's not an objective - much less, progressive or even fact-based - viewpoint. It's a conservative platitude with absolutely no basis in any substance whatsoever.

He is aided by fellow CAP blogger Matt Yglesias who takes it one step further, saying that we should all accept President Obama breaking any campaign promise he made that we now know he didn't need to make in order to win election. "The fact of the matter is that if Barack Obama had never promised a more open legislative process, he would have won the election anyway," Ygelsias declares.

Ezra Klein builds on this, adding not just his own progressive credentials to this defense of dishonesty, but also adding the veneer of journalistic objectivity via his affiliation with the Washington Post:

Did Obama actually win any undecided voters by promising, specifically, that "we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies?" How about his vow to avoid raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year? Are there any actual voters who worry about Democrats and taxes but were calmed by this line?
People in campaigns don't campaign to govern so much as to have the opportunity to govern...If the specificity of these lines really seemed to decide elections, you'd understand the impulse [to go all out to fulfill these promises]. But there's little evidence of that. Barack Obama won because Republicans were very unpopular and the war in Iraq was pretty unpopular and the economy was falling apart. It's easier to say that in retrospect than it was to confidently predict it at the time, but then, most people predicted it at the time, too. And it's not as if moving from "I won't raise taxes on people making less than $250,000" to "I'm not running for this office because I want to raise taxes on people and get kicked out in four years" is likely to swing the election in one direction or the other, or as if the C-SPAN line won Obama so many votes in Ohio.

First and foremost, the answer is probably yes, some voters did actually vote for Obama because of these specific promises. Perhaps it wasn't the margin of victory, but we can safely assume that some voters were swayed by these specific arguments, and - at minimum - there's more chance that at least some voters were swayed than Klein's assertion-as-empirical-fact that absolutely no voters were swayed.

But that's less important than the message that any campaign promise that the Church of the Savvy deems non-pivotal to a specific election is a campaign promise nobody is really allowed to care about or to expect to be fulfilled - even a campaign promise about the most nonpartisan of issues, open government. When such a cynical message comes not only from activists/operatives but from the media - the supposed guardian of democracy - it makes a joke of that democracy. The Fourth Estate watchdog is effectively saying that there's almost no campaign promises worth watchdogging.

As I said to start, these kinds of arguments, made under the banner of (allegedly) progressive organizations and objective news organizations don't seem like ideological propaganda - but they are.

The ideology is the catechism of the Church of the Savvy replete with all sorts of subjective assumptions about how government should work, and how the American public should view campaign promises.

And make no mistake about it: These subjective assumptions are not prompted from opinion, but from self-interest (and assumptions/ideology based on such self-interest is one of the foundational hallmarks of true propaganda). These assumptions protect the members of the Church of the Savvy's prerogatives and territory as insiders. That is to say, the worldview inherent in railing against transparency and against holding politicians accountable for broken promises is one in which these insiders, and no one else, protets a monopoly on power, on access and on the understanding supposed "realities" of politics. If, as DC insiders, they - and only they - get to see the inner workings of the opaque legislative process and understand the "realities" of campaign promises, then they have Significance and Relevance. They have an artificial monopoly over information and political comprehension.*

These people do not inherently have these monopolies - and these "realities" are not Laws of Nature. These monopolies and "realities" are manufactured by this kind of propaganda, and the sooner we expose it for what it is - propaganda - the sooner those monopolies end and those "realities" change.

* SIDENOTE: As I've reported before, This is exactly why big news organizations in the DC Press Corps seeks to use its powers to prevent independent journalists from getting credentials to cover Congress. If independent journalists are granted such credentials to cover Congress, then the big news organizations suddenly lose their money-making monopoly over access to the U.S. Capitol.

When Julia Became Julie, Content Lost Its Throne

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:12:54 -0500

Every now and then, rank-and-file writers, bloggers and radio hosts like myself (but by no means limited to myself) are accused of "self-promotion." This is not a charge usually leveled at very famous writers, bloggers and radio hosts, nor at television hosts (who are, almost by definition, famous) - it is specifically leveled at those who have not achieved notoriety. Regardless of whether the accused is promoting some sort of substantive message or promoting themselves for their own vanity, the charge of "self-promotion" aims to indict the accused for conceit and unbridled ambition - as if only those already famous are permitted in our culture to exhibit those qualities.*

I'll be the first to say that there's a problem when someone promotes themselves for their own sake and nothing more (think Paris Hilton or Sarah Palin). That's true "self-promotion" - promotion of the self for the self's sake - and there's a lot of that these days. However, some of the "self-promotion" criticism is also aimed at people who are pushing substance. And while there is some truth to the charges against the latter (I mean, in a sense, when someone promotes a cause they are inherently promoting themselves too), the motive for the latter's self-promotion comes from a different origin - one you can see most vividly in (of all places) the recent film Julie & Julia.

The film is, at one level, a typical Nora Ephron affair - vapid and formulaic to the point of predictable. If you've seen one Nora Ephron movie, you've seen them all - which isn't necessarily an artistic criticism of Nora Ephron. There is certainly room and need for movies that are pure mindless entertainment - and there is an art to making such formula-driven pieces repeatedly entertaining (which Julie & Julia most certainly is).

But Ephron's movies often include inadvertent - and typically disturbing - points about modern society. In My Blue Heaven, for instance, the mob is effectively absolved of all its crimes, because hey, the mafia is just benign and hilarious! In You've Got Mail, Ephron focuses on a superficial happy-ending love story, and seems positively unaware that the story not only glorifies/absolves the practice of rapacious corporate conglomerates crushing locally owned stores, but worse, reinforces anti-feminist stereotypes of women as pathetically weak. The heroine, who was fighting the good fight, ends the film not merely giving up her business, but seeking shelter in and romantically rewarding the guy who economically destroyed her.

But nowhere is Ephron's patented inadvertent social commentary more powerful than in Julie & Julia. Underneath the happy stories of Julia Child and Julie Powell's ascensions, is an extremely depressing parable about how the media has changed for the worse.

Julia Child's rise is a truly up-from-the-boostraps story of great creativity and talent finally being recognized after years of grinding work in total obscurity. It took her 8 years and multiple rejections by publishers to write and then publish her masterpiece cookbook. She was rewarded with fame not because she had some insider connections or because she already was famous (what's called, in publishing circles, having a "platform"), but because her work was just so damn good.

Her story is told in tandem with Powell's tale - a tale that Ephron leads us to believe is somehow synonymous with Child's. But (and here's what Ephron never seems to grasp) it's exactly the opposite. Powell published a blog documenting her year cooking Child's recipes - and when the New York Times ran an article about her stunt, we watch as Powell's answering machine immediately fills up with publishers begging her to write a book. We innately understand that the publishers are not calling Powell because her blog is so well written or the Internet equivalent of Child's genuine masterpiece (they weren't calling about her blog before the Times piece was written). And we understand those publishers are not calling because Powell's ideas are so innovative (they aren't, by definition - she's literally replicating Child's recipes). They are calling because the New York Times - by journalistic fiat - has said Julie Powell is now famous and now has a platform.

This is exactly how much of the media world now works - celebrity for celebrity's sake rewarded well before genuine talent and compelling content.** If a publisher has the choice of publishing a brilliant work by someone nobody knows or publishing the worst-written trash by a famous person, they'll choose the latter in a heartbeat. Indeed, you get the feeling that there is a genuine Julia Child out there writing a genuinely fantastic book that will never be published because publishers will be too busy publishing Julie Powell.

Perhaps there was always some of this dynamic at play. Just as billionaires have always had an easier time making larger returns than the average income earner (ie. it takes money to make money), celebrities have an easier time of making themselves even more famous than the average person making themselves slightly famous. But, as evidenced by Julie and Julia's two stories, this dynamic has become far more powerful today than ever.

And so we get back to the question of self-promotion. For writers, bloggers, radio hosts and so many other kinds of creative workers in the media, the promotion of one's work has become as important as the quality of the work itself. I note that with no sense of happiness - it's a damn shame, if you ask me. If I had my choice, I'd spend all of my time making trying to make my writing and radio program the best content I could possibly make it, instead of having to use some of that time simply to get my work out there.

But that is now the requirement in our celebrity culture. I wouldn't have a newspaper column to write if I didn't promote it and my other work, because newspapers probably would not have chosen to pick up the column and run it had I had no established platform at all. I wouldn't have been able to get the opportunity to write a book if I hadn't done the same, no matter how well-done my book proposals, because publishers are first and foremost looking for platform. That's the same reason I probably wouldn't have had the chance to do radio fill-in (which ultimately led to my new radio show) without promoting all my other work.

It's the same for everyone else in a similar position. When you aren't world famous, you have to take time away from the content you are producing to make sure the content gets out there. Put another way, whereas previously the content created the value ("content is king"), today the publicity creates the value, almost regardless of the content. And here's the key (and most depressing) point: That publicity is so central to the value of everything, the content has a hard time existing without it.

Sure, you can publish a blog in obscurity - but it's almost impossible to be a professional content creator (which is more commonly known as a "member of the media") and make a living from that work. You can say that's a luxury, but it's only a luxury in a society that doesn't care about the quality of content, because it takes time and resources to produce good content.

Then again, perhaps that's really the lesson. Perhaps we really don't care about the quality of content - and perhaps the conversion from Julia's content-is-king world to Julie's platform-is-king society reflects a deeper degradation in what we want and demand from our media. I'd like to think that's not true. I'd like to think content, if not king, is still a prince - that ultimately, great content is rewarded, even if it has to toil in obscurity for years. But it's getting harder and harder to believe that these days when you look at the New York Times bestseller list, flip on the television, or - yes - watch a film with a very powerful message about media values have no idea it is telling anything other than a happy bubble-gum fairy tale.

So here's the deal: The next time you get annoyed a content-creators' "self-promotion," unless it's really clear that the creator is really just trying to be a narcissistic spectacle with zero substance, give that content creator a break. Those writers, bloggers and/or radio hosts probably don't want to have to be pushing their work out as hard as they are. In fact, they probably just want to spend their time making the content as good as they can and hate the fact that they have to simultaneously work to get that content out there. But as Julie & Julia show, that's what the marketplace now demands.

* Not surprisingly, most people who become very famous are accused of "self-promotion" until they achieve fame - and then the attacks are typically replaced by sycophantic worship and pure ass-kissing.

** By the way, Julie Powell may be a talented writer - I don't mean to suggest she isn't. But she didn't achieve her notoriety - and therefore, her opportunity to be a professional writer - based as much on her talent as a writer as on her getting written up in the New York Times for cooking the recipes of Julia Child.

Some Simple Questions After Obama's Afghanistan War Speech

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 21:12:24 -0500

Just a few quick questions to ponder after President Obama's speech announcing a massive escalation in Afghanistan - the very first being shouldn't we be able to honestly answer these queries before mindlessly cheering on a deployment of more troops to a Central Asian war zone?

Here they are in no particular order:

- What percentage of those kids in the West Point audience will die because of this decision?

- Would you be OK sending yourself or a loved one over to face combat and potentially death for the mission Obama articulated in Afghanistan? If not, how could you support sending other people?

- Why do so many pundits and pro-Obama activists continue to focus on how "hard" and "difficult" and "trying" this decision is for President Obama, rather than on how "hard" and "difficult" and "trying" this will be for the soldiers who are killed? Doesn't Obama get to make this decision, and then go home to the comfortable confines of a butlered White House, while thousands of Americans will be sent 7,000 miles from home to face their potential deaths? Isn't the latter "harder" than the former?

- Where's the antiwar movement and the marches and the organizing and the protesting? Where's all those well-funded groups that protested George W. Bush's war policy? Or was all that really just about hating George Bush and embracing blind Partisan War Syndrome?

- In the days and weeks after this speech, will the White House's cynical new spin get ever more desperate and become, hey - at least an Afghanistan escalation holds out the possibility of making sure military combat casualties start outpacing military suicides?

- Simple budget question: Should we now believe that escalating the Afghanistan War at the same annual cost of universal health care will save more than 45,000 Americans a year (ie. the number of Americans who die every year for lack of health insurance)?

- Did CNN really turn a move to send thousands of Americans to potentially die in Central Asia into an over-stylized, hyper-marketed television show called "Decision Afghanistan?" Is the media really that soulless, or did my eyes betray me? Because it's really hard for me to believe that even in this cynical age, a television network tried to make a cheap reality-TV show out of life-and-death decision that could affect tens of thousands of people.

- Which is worse - a stupid person like George W. Bush starting a dumb occupation, or a smart person like Barack Obama following the lead of that stupid person, but actually escalating that occupation?

- The "we're going to escalate war to end war" refrain throughout the speech - have we heard that before somewhere? It sounds sorta like "we'll burn down the Vietnam villages to save them." Just curious if that's what we're talking about here - because, ya know, that worked out really well.

- Are we really expected to believe that massively escalating a war is the way to end a war? I mean, really? Like, is the public really looked at like we're that stupid? And a follow-up question: Are we really that stupid?

- If Obama's Afghan War strategy about escalating a war to end a war was a self-help strategy for, say, alcoholics, wouldn't it prescribe drinking more whiskey to stop drinking - and wouldn't we all laugh at that?

- How many pundits will insist that bowing down to the Military-Industrial complex and escalating this missionless war somehow shows "resolve" and "strength" and "toughness" and "leadership" and not embarrassing weakness?

- Would the Obamaphiles now telling us to "give President Obama a chance" with this decision and/or defending Obama's escalation - would these same people be saying we should "give President McCain a chance" and/or defending President McCain's escalation if he was the one in office making this decision?

- I'm confused: Is this hope or change?

Floors Not Ceilings, Stupid

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:10:51 -0400

"States rights" has been the divisive clarion call of the extreme right on social and civil rights issues for decades. But devolving power to the states doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be what's known in policy circles as Progressive Federalism - an ideology whereby "governors and activist state attorneys general [are allowed to] lead the way on environmental initiatives, consumer protection and other issues," as the New York Times reported in a piece about the Obama administration's support for the idea.

But in order for Progressive Federalism to happen, the federal government has to be supportive of floors not ceilings - that is, oriented toward setting minimum progressive regulatory standards that states must at least comply with, not maximum regulatory ceilings that states are not allowed to go above and beyond. And the problem is that the Democratic Party is split on that idea - because Big Money hates it.

Case in point is the intensifying debate about Wall Street reform. During the era of deregulation, Washington policymakers passed statutes preempting (read: invalidating) many state laws that went further in regulating the banking industry than federal law. Now, a faction of Wall Street-funded "New Democrats" are trying to gut a White House proposal to change that paradigm and establish minimum floors of bank regulation that states can go beyond. According to the Wall Street Journal this Democratic congressional faction is trying to flip the proposal on its head by making the final product establish a federal ceiling whereby states cannot regulate banks any further:

Democrats are split over whether the proposal should allow states to trump federal regulations and enforce their own, often tougher consumer rules against national bank...This would permit states to bar certain fees and late charges otherwise allowed by federal regulators.
The White House proposal would create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency with the power to write and enforce rules against a range of products. States would be allowed to write stricter rules than the CFPA, overturning existing policies under which national banks typically are immune from state regulation...

Rep. Melissa Bean (D., Ill.) is preparing an amendment that would prevent states from enforcing tougher standards against national banks than the federal entity's.

It's self-evident that what Bean and the Wall Street-funded Democrats are trying to do has nothing to do with the "public good" and everything to do with political harlotry - The New Democrats are, after all, have proven to be the Best Little Whorehouse in Washington and this just proves that truth.

Indeed, the meltdown did not happen because there were too many regulators - it happened because there weren't enough. So obviously, any "reform" bill that effectively takes more state cops off the beat isn't going to be real reform. Likewise, the Wall Street meltdown did not happen because regulatory agencies were going to far in policing the market - it happened because those agencies weren't going far enough.

Thus, it's obvious why real "reform" should set minimum standards of progressive regulation not maximum limits of such regulation, and even more obvious why that same reform should encourage (or at least permit) state regulatory institutions to go further than federal standards if their constituents (via their legislatures, etc.) want. But it is also obvious why Wall Street lobbyists and the lawmakers they have bought and paid for want to do the opposite: The more real reform becomes, the less speculative profiteering that will be allowed and hence the less six- and seven-figure lobbying contracts, and the less campaign contributions.

The good news is that, according to the Huffington Post, President Obama is sticking to his guns on this one:

President Barack Obama reaffirmed his commitment Friday to allowing states to adopt stronger consumer protection measures than the federal government when it comes to financial products like credit cards and mortgages.
In a meeting at the White House, Obama told a group of state attorneys general and consumers that he was still committed to the idea. He didn't mention it, though, during his public remarks.

Over the last several years many states have adopted tough pro-consumer laws governing predatory lending, bank fees, interest rates and late charges, only to be told by federal regulators that their laws can't be applied to national banks such as Bank of America, Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

If anyone understands the value of Progressive Federalism, it should be President Obama considering most of his political experience comes from the Illinois state legislature. So this stand is definitely grounded in his own history.

Certainly, I hope he goes public with his stance - and based on the White House's willingness to issue its first veto threat over the reform package, I'm optimistic that he will if the Wall Street Democrats are successful in trying to destroy reform (the vote on Bean's amendment is probably going to happen in the House Financial Services Committee this week). This is a fundamental, baseline issue rooted in common sense: "If a state wants to provide for its citizens' stronger consumer protections, it ought to be able to do so," as Obama's Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin told reporters.

Make no mistake about it: This fight over state and federal policy isn't limited to Wall Street. States, as the old cliche goes, are the laboratories of democracy. You can see that truth in financial reform and even in in the debate over health care: The Progressive States Network has organized a letter to Congress signed by more than 1,000 state legislators demanding real reform, and a leading proposal before Congress would allow states to administer their own public plan options.

The point here is not to inherently value state regulation over federal regulation or vice versa, but to make sure the two reinforce each other. To get that kind of Progressive Federalism on every issue will, again, require floors not ceilings.