Saturday, February 12, 2011

Compare & Contrast

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of the far-left Nation magazine, in the January 16, 2011, Washington Post:
It will be a year this week since Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative activist colleagues on the Supreme Court joined together in a dramatic assault on American democracy. . . As former senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), himself a victim of Citizens United spending, said, "It is going to be worse in 2012 unless we do something -- much worse."
Senator Russ Feingold in the January 13, 2011, Nation magazine:
Money in politics is a huge issue. But let's be clear: I certainly wasn't underfunded [in 2010]. I don't think another $100 million would have changed the outcome of my race. I don't think even $100 million would have mattered, because of the mindset that had developed, because of the desire on the part of a lot of voters to send that message. I think it's important to make this point, because I'm not here to say that I was a victim in particular of that. I think we have to see the whole money-in-politics issue in a broader context.
Conclusion: Don't believe what you read about the Citizens United decision. As Wendy Kaminer says in the February 8, 2011, Atlantic magazine:
It takes chutzpah, shamelessness, or negligence to cite as support for a factual assertion an authoritative statement that directly contradicts it. Maybe vanden Heuvel didn't read the interview in her own magazine; maybe she relies on incompetent research assistance; maybe she assumes that her readers don't bother checking links and accept her claims at face value; maybe, like the right wing propagandists The Nation deplores, she's decided that facts don't matter. Whatever. I like to think they matter to the Washington Post, so, naively perhaps, I emailed a request for a correction. I received no substantive response (only an automated message acknowledging receipt). Vanden Heuvel's disingenuous column still appears uncorrected.
(via NewsBusters)

4 comments:

suek said...

Yeah...well...here are some very nice graphs that should provide a concrete argument against those who would limit political participation of _some_ ... but not all.

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/02/when-special-interests-put-their-thumb.html

@nooil4pacifists said...

Sue: Great set of charts; thanks!

OBloodyHell said...

A note about that first chart, though. It shows the "Clinton Surplus".

That little bit of crappola involving the "Clinton Surplus" should be annotated for the garbage it is.

It was attained only by treating monies taken in for Social Security and using them to pay for general revenue expenditures. Do a search on "Myth Clinton Surplus" and you can find one or more detailed factual descriptions of the accounting trickery they pulled.

Accounting trickery that no one except a government would ever be allowed to pull, and which governments should not be allowed to pull, either.

suek said...

>>Accounting trickery that no one except a government would ever be allowed to pull, and which governments should not be allowed to pull, either.>>

Agreed. If I were elected to congress (no danger of _that_!), I'd move to establish the same system of accounting for government as there is for business...or at least using the same principles.