We’ve already written about the Bush administration’s use of illegal covert propaganda by production and distribution of “video news releases” designed to look like real news segments. Apparently it’s catching. From LA Times (via Romenesko):

Using taxpayer money, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration has sent television stations statewide a mock news story extolling a proposal that would benefit political boosters in the business community by ending mandatory lunch breaks for many hourly workers.

The tape looks like a news report and is narrated by a former television reporter who now works for the state. But unlike an actual news report, it does not provide views critical of the proposed changes. Democrats have denounced it as propaganda. Snippets aired on as many as 18 stations earlier this month, the administration said.

[…] Rob Stutzman, Schwarzenegger’s communications director, defended the so-called video news release, saying it is “just like any other press release, only it’s on video.”

He noted that lawmakers who are criticizing the tape “also issue press releases.”

[…] The Republican governor appears to be taking a cue from President Bush’s administration, which produced videos that looked like news reports touting new Medicare regulations — and incurred criticism for doing so last year from congressional Democrats.

Of course, Bush wasn’t so bold as to defend the practice of state propaganda disguised as independent news. (The difference, Mr. Stutzman, is tax money and hidden sponsorship.) But then again, the Governator exists only in the twilight of the silver screen, a bronzed actor playing the part of a terminating anti-politician. To him there really is no difference.

But stand back, Republican propagandists – you have incurred criticism! Feel the wrath of the people!

The incomparably-named Myron Magnet writes in the Wall Street Journal about the blight of poverty, a foul stench wafting into the boardrooms of the “Ownership Society":

If you want to help the poor, compassionate conservatives argued, liberate them from dependency through welfare reform; free their communities from criminal anarchy through activist policing; give them the education they need to succeed in a modern economy by holding their schools accountable; and let them enjoy the rewards of work by taxing their modest wages lightly–or not at all.

Because, as everyone knows, the poor are unjustly taxed on their dividends and million-dollar estates. And giving low-income families that Earned Income Tax Credit check is the moral equivalent of breaking into their house and robbing them blind.

For the worst-off… Such people need a change of heart to solve their problems, the president himself deeply believed; and while a clergyman or a therapist might help them, a bureaucrat couldn’t.

Job training? No, job-prayer.

The War on Poverty rests on a false premise: that capitalism creates a permanent class of poor. And War on Poverty attitudes have a deeply harmful effect on those entrammeled in America’s current welfare state. So the second Bush term is bringing the War on Poverty–demonstrably a cataclysmic mistake–to an end. A glance at the administration’s recent budget shows the ongoing dismantling of antipoverty programs: a sharp reduction in the Community Development Block Grant, the main conduit for funneling federal money to cities; the reduction in HUD money for Section 8 subsidized housing vouchers, which abets the formation of dysfunctional single-parent families and destabilizes respectable working-class neighborhoods; and the shrinkage of ever-expanding Medicaid.

This is the heart of the War on the War on Poverty: that the evils of Big Gummint infect the hearts and minds of the lumpenproletariat. Indeed — poor families are likely to break up simply to be eligible for more and more Section 8 apartments. If we eliminated HUD, then families could stay together and live, like the Magnet family, in a bluebird shack, down by the railroad track. How can families stay emotionally close together unless they are crammed, physically, into the same room (or cardboard box)?

And how can the poor ever dig themselves out of their never-ending cycle of dependency if they are not denied medical care? Health care is like a drug to these people. And like a stern father, we must be deaf to their cries for more “juice.”

It’s in this context that we should understand President Bush’s campaign for Social Security reform. It is part of the large and coherent world view that has evolved out of compassionate conservatism. What has always made America exceptional is limitless opportunity for everyone, at all levels–the ability to find a job, to advance up the ladder as you prove yourself, and to prosper.

Yes, it’s true! Elderly immigrants flock to our shores in order to work as Wal-Mart greeters for $5 an hour, a privilege they are denied in the quasi-Communist regimes they leave. It is worth $4.9 trillion in transition costs, and much more, merely to see the smiles on their faces.

However, Myron Magnet is forgetting one crucial component of the president’s poverty plan: subsidizing third-string conservative commentators. While Bush has encouraged faith-based charities such as the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal (where Myron Magnet himself has found economic and spiritual relief) to take on these impoverished pundits with hearts of gold, sometimes a few of the Neediest Cases — the Williams, Gallagher, and McManus families, for example — slip through the cracks.

Since the Bush administration provides such a cornucopia of malfeasance – from privatization to propaganda to permanent war, etc., etc. – we have largely left uncovered one of the most historically important issues on the horizon, currently simmering but soon to boil over: judges.

It’s going to be nasty.

What is “it"? The grand quest by the Federalistas to dismantle the New Deal and plant in its place a New Gilded Age (with gold replaced by oil).

Of course, we can kiss Roe v. Wade goodbye. But that’s just the beginning. How about anti-discrimination laws, environmental and drug regulation, medical entitlements, and, yes, even Social Security.

This is an activist conservative vision of a “shadow constitution” existing in the hearts and minds of conservatives since FDR, and someone like Clarence Thomas, Bush’s model appointee, would be happy to overturn the last 75 years of social advancement and create a new constitutional order.

Today we see the preposterous assault on the filibuster, the so-called “nuclear option” to assure the mutual destruction of an independent judiciary and the feeble checks and balances we still have. You have been warned.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal tow the Novak line about Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame:

The bitterest irony here is that this case should never have been investigated in the first place. Ms. Plame is the wife of Joseph Wilson, the CIA consultant who wrote a July 2003 op-ed in the Times accusing the Bush Administration of lying about yellow cake uranium ore from Niger. The allegation became a political cause celebre at the time, though a year later both a British and a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee probe found that the White House had been accurate and that Mr. Wilson was the one who hadn’t told the truth.

What does that mean, that “the White House had been accurate"? President Bush, State of the Union, 1/28/03:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Joseph Wilson, New York Times, 7/6/03:

The vice president’s office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.

The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.

Ari Fleischer, 7/7/03:

Now, we’ve long acknowledged – and this is old news, we’ve said this repeatedly – that the information on yellow cake did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect.

CNN, 7/8/03:

the White House released a statement admitting: “We now know that documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger had been forged.”

“The other reporting that suggested Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Africa is not detailed or specific enough for us to be certain that such attempts were in fact made,” it said.

Condoleeza Rice, 7/11/03:

What we’ve said subsequently is, knowing what we now know, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn’t have put this in the President’s speech – but that’s knowing what we know now.

The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee is limited in scope to criticism of the CIA, which the committee oversees.

The language in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that “Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake” overstated what the Intelligence Community knew about Iraq’s possible procurement attempts.

The office of Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS):

Despite our hard and successful work to deliver a unanimous report, however, there were two issues on which the Republicans and Democrats could not agree: 1) whether the Committee should conclude that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s public statements were not based on knowledge he actually possessed, and 2) whether the Committee should conclude that it was the former ambassador’s wife who recommended him for his trip to Niger.

(You can read Wilson’s response to and David Corn’s reporting on the Senate Republicans’ assertions.)

Nobody, not even the Senate partisans who have tried to discredit Joseph Wilson, has claimed that Iraq really bought yellowcake uranium from Niger, nor that the allegation was credible. A few people have said that it was technically possible to make the claim that they “sought” to buy uranium, but the White House and the CIA have admitted they shouldn’t have used such a claim to make the case for war. The question raised by Mr. Wilson was how dubious intelligence rose to the level of the State of the Union address.

A career diplomat who spent most of his tenure under Reagan and Bush the Elder, and who had direct experience in Iraq, Africa, and specifically the uranium industry in Niger, was sent to Niger to investigate whether Iraq could have struck a deal with Niger, and later claimed that administration ought to have known that such an allegation was dubious at best.

Suddenly, consummate Republican insider Bob Novak — whose shared column once said Wilson “showed the stuff of heroism” in Baghdad ‘91 — hears from a White House source that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and “recommended” Wilson for the mission. Despite the obvious attempt to retaliate against a critic by attacking his credibility rather than his claim (which was correct), despite the fact that Novak’s sources were in the White House and not the CIA, and despite a warning from his source not to print her name, Novak does so.

The Journal is right to defend the practice of journalists protecting their sources. Miller and Cooper, the reporters held in contempt, did not abet the retaliation by printing the leak. Novak, however, did, and it would take more of an ethical and legal argument than the Journal offers to justify his actions. Instead, they merely repeat the ridiculous smear against Wilson and cry journalistic immunity.

James Guckert, or “Jeff Gannon,” or Bobby Brown, or whatever his name is, denies having had a “special relationship” with the Thune campaign. From Editor & Publisher:

Although Guckert said he was not paid by, or directed by, Daschle’s opponents in South Dakota or in Washington, D.C., to write about the Argus Leader, he admitted to sharing information with local blogs, such as Daschlevthune.com and SouthDakotaPolitics.com.

“We traded information back and forth,” he told E&P. “But having some special relationship, I would not characterize it as that. We were pursuing the same story.”

Suppose, hypothetically, that you were running for senate, and you wanted to pull out all the stops and play it real dirty. First you might hire out some “grassroots” supporters to plug your message online. Second, you might, I don’t know, find a “news outlet” that will print your opposition research, so that your fake grassroots will have something “legitimate” to source. You’d have a chain of fraudulent independence and authenticity that would only be uncovered after you’re safely in office, if ever. Hypothetically.

Maybe not. But he expands on the Thune connection first noted by John Stanton in the National Journal and explored by us last month.

One missing step in “walking back the cat,” as Conason puts it, is to wonder who was feeding the cat in the first place. Something makes me doubt this cat was a hunter rather than a lazy, indoors type who just wanted to be pet.

Meow!

Eberle – who is not fat as I imagined him, nor does he wear a ten-gallon hat and chomp on a cigar – tries to clear his name to the Houston Chronicle:

Eberle is the owner, president and CEO of two Web sites, the openly partisan GOPUSA (gopusa.com) and what he says is a nonpartisan news organization, Talon News (talonnews.com).
[…]
The two sites, though, are inextricably linked. Talon News contains only blurbs of stories. Users who want to read more are directed to GOPUSA.

“Talon News is not designed to be a destination Web site,” Eberle said, explaining that Talon provides content for other Web sites, including GOPUSA. “The GOPUSA site is designed to be a destination site.”

Well, I’m glad we cleared that up. Where I come from, we call those press releases.

But “hey, did you read that press release of RNC talking-points from “GOPUSA,” a Republican-affiliated company, about Tom Daschle?” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “hey, there’s a new report featuring breaking news from independent journalist Jeff Gannon for Talon News, a totally unbiased and unvarnished independent news outlet.”

Eberle would not discuss Gannon, but he portrayed himself as a do-gooder who got involved in journalism and politics to spread information and the conservative message.

“I’ve loved to write my whole life, short stories, poetry here and there that my mom has saved,” the newcomer to political punditry said in an interview.

That’s adorable.

Billmon has a brief primer on Mr. Negroponte, for those who are interested in how he might define the new job of Director of National Intelligence.

Freedom. Tyranny. Death squads. Whatever.

No, I don’t mean John Ashcroft’s singing. I’m talking about our government torturing people. One technique is to abduct someone – for having the wrong name, say, or maybe they met somebody once – handcuff them, and fly them to our “allies” who aren’t as squeamish as we are.

Jane Mayer, writing in The New Yorker:

Five days after Al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vice-President Dick Cheney, reflecting the new outlook, argued, on “Meet the Press,” that the government needed to “work through, sort of, the dark side.” Cheney went on, “a lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in. And so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”

(Via Legal Fiction.) Freedom. Tyranny. Torture. Whatever.

From the Hartford Courant:

Reporter: yes, Bill Jones here, a.k.a. Tom True, a.k.a. Rev. Wholey Rowler. My tough independent question is, Do you think that the President is even more handsome today than he was a week or ago? And, really, is there any end to how dashing and gallant he can be? Whatta hunk.

Spokesman: Thank you, that’s a good point. The president strives to meet all his challenges with equanimity. He’s a War President after all. And, Bill, your 1099 form is misplaced and accounting can’t pay you without it. Can you work on that? Sarah?

And meanwhile, at a forum called frighteningly “Media, Propaganda, and the Forming of Opinions” …

In addition [to media consolidation], the panelists said, the media are facing a blizzard of lies and propaganda from corporations and the government. But journalists at mainstream news organizations don’t feel free, under the conventions of “fair and balanced” journalism, to call a lie a lie, Hall said.

“Too many of us have become too passive,” [Chicago Tribune dep. man. editor] Warren said. Journalists are scared of angering administration sources and losing access to Washington officials, which he mocked as “access to get lied to.”

(Both via Romanesko.)

Jeff Gannon, that mysterious Republican plant in the White House press corps, has uploaded his programming and returned to the mothership. (Via Atrios.) His web site now reads:

Jeff Gannon
A Voice of the New Media

 The voice goes silent.

Because of the attention being paid to me I find it is no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News.  In consideration of the welfare of me and my family I have decided to return to private life.

What on earth is he talking about? Why, just a few days again he got another mention on Rush (turn off Javascript to view) — he should be basking in the glory of “liberal media” villification.

Unless, of course, he’s not a real person, but rather a fictitious character created by Republican operatives to campaign from the press box and undermine media inquiry of an increasingly fictitious political reality.

Dick Cheney, via Paul O’Neill:

Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.

Government Accounting Office, via F U G O P:

If we assume that all tax cuts remain in effect rather than expire as scheduled under current law, and if we further assume that for the first 10 years discretionary spending grows with the economy rather than at the rate of inflation, a dramatically different picture emerges. This simulation is called Discretionary Spending Grows with the Economy and All Expiring Tax Provisions are Extended. (See fig. 2.) Under this alternative simulation, by 2040 the government would have only enough money to pay interest on the federal debt.

See this chart.

Wouldn’t it be funny if we phased-out Social Security right before our economy collapsed? Ha ha. Ha.

Yesterday saw the invasion of the Washington Examiner, a free conservative tabloid put out by billionaire playboy evangelical Philip Anschutz. I haven’t had a chance to give it a close read, but I did notice a passing reference to Pat Toomey, the new president of Club for Growth. The same Pat Toomey whose kamikazi run from the right at Arlen Specter was funded by said Club for Growth.

Sure enough — the New York Sun reports that Toomey has taken over the partisan arm in a “power struggle.”

[Former president Stephen] Moore said that he and the club’s leadership essentially agreed to break the organization in two, with Mr. Moore taking control of the policy arm and the board retaining control of the entity that raises funds for political races.

“I took the 501©(4). They took the 527,” said Mr. Moore, referring to the provisions of the tax code under which the nonprofit groups are organized.

And why not? Running for office can be unprofitable, as Toomey learned. This way he can practice his voodooo economics without having to listen to the squealing of constituents. He knows first hand how to keep a congressman in your pocket — and why rent a seat, when you can own?

(NB. At first glance, it might look like the far-right is catching the factionalism blues the left has always had, but more likely it’s Gremlins: you give them water and they multiply; you feed them, and they turn into flesh-eating monsters.)

It’s one thing when the Justice Department tries to cover up its incompetent mass arrests and deportations after 9/11; but can they cover up the cover up?

The New York Times is running an editorial about just that: an almost $400,000 price tag on a FOIA request by People for the American Way to “to know how many requests the government made to seal proceedings and what rationales were offered.”

That’s a lot more than change for the copier. Clearly, John Ashcroft is embarrassed about something, and not just aluminum.