Monthly Archives: June 2013

Citizens United and Media Credibility

At a recent conference bewailing the loss of civility in political discourse (now there’s a lament for the ages), former Republican Congressman and current head of the NEA Jim Leach, was quoted on an allied concern: the role money has played in the decline of media credibility.

Leach connected our information infrastructure to Citizens United, saying corporate campaign money has harmed civil discourse in Washington and elsewhere. “Money is the elephant at the door in Washington,” Leach said. (The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which defined corporations as individuals with First Amendment rights to free speech, is widely seen as facilitating negative political campaigning. There has been less focus on its effect on the availability of the accurate information on which citizens rely to participate in the political process.)

“Rather than conflate a corporation with a person, and money with speech, should not the focus be shifted to the transactional relationship inherent in speaking and listening?” Without limits on independent expenditures made by corporations, more money will be spent on negative attack ads for political campaigns that will further taint the tenor of the debate and erode the focus on real issues, Leach said.

“At one end, uncivil speech must be protected by the courts, but filtered by the public,” Leach said. “At the other, moneyed speech must not be allowed to weaken the voices of the people. The Constitution begins, after all, ‘We the People,’ not ‘We the Corporations.’”

A recent (May 27) issue of the New Yorker carries a perfect example of the behavior Leach indicts. 

The article reports on the fate of two documentaries. The first, by Alex Gibney, an Academy Award winning filmmaker, was called “Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream.” It was scheduled to air on PBS on November 12th. The movie had been produced independently, in part with support from the Gates Foundation, and was intended to be an exploration of the growing economic inequality in America and a meditation on the often self-justifying mind-set of “the one per cent.” It focused on the lives of wealthy inhabitants of a very expensive apartment building in Manhattan.

Unfortunately for Gibney, one of the residents of the building was David Koch. Among other things, Koch was a member of the board of WNET, the New York PBS station, and was being solicited for a large contribution. It doesn’t take much imagination to predict how difficult the battle between journalistic ethics and money became–even at PBS. WNET offered Koch the opportunity to rebut the reporting, and ended up doing a “roundtable” immediately following the show, to facilitate a critique of its message.

At least that movie aired. Others–as the New Yorker piece reported–did not. Another documentary–this one about the influence of money on American politics after the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, had been accepted by the Sundance Film Festival and would compete for Best Documentary. In the wake of “Park Avenue,” it lost its funding. Money not only talks–it silences opposing views, and suppresses unfavorable coverage.

Recently, the billionaire Koch brothers have expressed interest in purchasing a string of newspapers. Given their willingness to silence opposition and engage in propaganda, that’s a chilling proposition.

However benighted the decision in Citizens United, I doubt seriously that the Justices understood the dimensions of the Pandora’s box they were opening. We’re just beginning to see what happens when money manufactures “fact.”

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Job Creators or a Tale of Two Big Boxes

There are job creators, and then there are job creators.

Debates about economic policies tend to center on concerns about job creation. Corporate CEOs often argue that raising tax rates or the minimum wage will suppress hiring. (I’ve often wondered why we can’t just offer a tax credit for each job created, rather than keeping rates low and hoping that will translate into additional employment. But I digress.)

The question that is too seldom addressed is: what kind of jobs do we want to incentivize? Because all jobs are not equal–not from the standpoint of the employee, and not from the standpoint of the taxpayer.

A recent study released by Congressional Democrats underlines the issue. According to that study, Walmart’s wages and benefits are so low that many of its employees are forced to turn to the government for aid, costing taxpayers between $900,000 and $1.75 million per store. As Mother Jones reports,

Walmart’s history of suppressing local wages and busting fledgling union efforts is common knowledge. But the Democrats’ new report used data from Wisconsin’s Medicaid program to quantify Walmart’s cost to taxpayers. The report cites a confluence of trends that have forced more workers to rely on safety-net programs: the depressed bargaining power of labor in a still struggling economy; a 97 year low in union enrollment; and the fact that the middle-wage jobs lost during the recession have been replaced by low-wage jobs. The problem of minimum-wage work isn’t confined to Walmart. But as the country’s largest low-wage employer, with about 1.4 million employees in the US—roughly 10 percent of the American retail workforce—Walmart’s policies are a driving force in keeping wages low.

Businesses do not have to be conducted this way. Good jobs that don’t require public support are not inconsistent with  healthy profits. A recent Business Week article reports on the very different business approach taken by Walmart competitor Costco.

Despite the sagging economy and challenges to the industry, Costco pays its hourly workers an average of $20.89 an hour, not including overtime (vs. the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour). By comparison, Walmart said its average wage for full-time employees in the U.S. is $12.67 an hour, according to a letter it sent in April to activist Ralph Nader. Eighty-eight percent of Costco employees have company-sponsored health insurance; Walmart says that “more than half” of its do. Costco workers with coverage pay premiums that amount to less than 10 percent of the overall cost of their plans. It treats its employees well in the belief that a happier work environment will result in a more profitable company. “I just think people need to make a living wage with health benefits,” says Jelinek. “It also puts more money back into the economy and creates a healthier country. It’s really that simple.”

Despite its higher wages and more generous benefits, Costco nets more per square foot than Walmart.

I have increasing numbers of students who believe that all business enterprises are at worst evil and at best unconcerned with anything but the bottom line. They look at Walmart and the many businesses that emulate its rapacious approach; more recently they point to the employers who are cutting workers hours in order to avoid having to provide health insurance under the terms of the Affordable Care Act, and they note the huge disparities between the salaries of CEOs and their employees, and they see those behaviors as an inevitable result of market capitalism. It isn’t.

Costco and many, many other enterprises demonstrate that concern for workers’ welfare is entirely consistent with a healthy bottom line. The problem is not with our markets, it is with our culture, and with public policies that enable and reward despicable behaviors.

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Why Trust Erodes

A couple of days ago, I linked to an essay by David Frum, in which he encouraged “reform” of the current conservative movement, and professed to see some signs of that reform emerging. I hope he’s right, because this country desperately needs two responsible, reality-based political parties.

As Jonathan Chait put it recently:  “The radicalism of the current Republican Party – its ideological extremism, disdain for empiricism, the inability to share or modulate power – is, to me, the central problem in American life. In the long run, the resolution to nearly every policy problem depends on the GOP refashioning itself as a normal, non-pathological party.”

For specific examples of what Chait is referencing, see this post on “The Wonk Gap.”

In today’s world, governments must fashion policy in areas so complex that average voters simply cannot be expected to understand the underlying challenges or the proposed interventions; we increasingly need the expertise of the relevant specialists–policy wonks. And we need to be able to trust that those specialists are telling us the truth as they see it. When the experts are willing to place partisanship above honesty, when people who presumably know what they’re talking about are delivering fundamentally inconsistent messages, citizens either withdraw from the political arena or they choose to believe the experts who are telling them what they want to hear.

In either case, governance suffers.

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The Rest of the Story

We are home after what was mostly a great vacation. The hospital in Nottingham released Bob in time for us to make our original flights, and the medication they gave him seems to be working, so all good news. Many thanks to those of you who expressed concern.

Still a bit jet-lagged, but by tomorrow our regular routine–and regular blogging–will recommence.

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Up Close and Personal with the NHS

We had our first (only) encounter with Britain’s National Health Service yesterday.

Bob’s cough kept getting worse, despite the cough medicines and lozenges, and our granddaughter and her partner suggested we take him to one of the NHS’ Walk-In facilities. There were two nearby (we walked from our hotel).

When we got there, we took a number from a dispenser and sat in the waiting room. The system was that the people at the desk would call a number, and you would then register, explain what was wrong, etc., and wait to be called back to be seen. Our number was called almost immediately; when we described the problem, the very nice woman behind the desk put a monitor on Bob’s finger, pronounced his oxygen levels low, and said she was putting him at the “head of the queue.” (She also said that she very much regretted that she would have to charge us for service since we weren’t British. The cost was fifty pounds.)

Bob was called back within ten minutes to see a nurse practitioner. She took a history, examined him, and called an ambulance to take him to Nottingham University’s hospital. She said she might be “over-reacting a bit–I hope so” but “better safe than sorry.” The ambulance drivers were there almost immediately, and I went with him in the ambulance while our granddaughter and her partner drove separately. I can’t say enough about how efficient and caring the EMTs in the ambulance were. They were also very proud of the vehicle itself, which they explained was new, and certainly looked well-equipped to my untrained eye.

We were taken to emergency (they call it A and E, for Accident and Emergency). Again, we were impressed with the efficiency of the process; first, an evaluation and a number of lab tests, then further tests based upon the initial results. Throughout the (very long) day, personnel kept us informed of where we were in the process, why they were doing what they were doing, etc.

The concern was that he was having a pulmonary embolism. Thankfully, the scans ruled that out; however, what we thought was a bad cold (and what the ship’s doctor had shrugged off as a cold or allergy) turned out to be a heart problem that has evidently been developing for some time and had not been detected by his cardiologist on his visit a week before our trip. The doctor explained that his symptoms were the result of fluid accumulation–probably the result of unusual activity on the trip. He was admitted for a short stay so that they can eliminate the additional fluid and he can safely fly home. (Only then were we asked whether we had insurance; a nurse took our information and nothing more was said about payment.)

To say that we had a stressful day would be an understatement. I extended our hotel booking in Nottingham and my son managed to change our flight home from tomorrow to Saturday (unfortunately, we lost those first-class seats we’d used our frequent-flyer miles to secure..).  My granddaughter and her wonderful partner pretty much saved what sanity I managed to retain. So at this point at least, it looks to be an “all’s well that ends not so badly” situation.

When you live with an 80-year-old husband with heart problems, you see the inside of a lot of emergency rooms and hospitals. I don’t know whether my experience yesterday was representative, but I was very impressed with the efficiency and thoroughness with which Bob was treated. There were adequate numbers of personnel, and they were unfailingly pleasant and responsive. Our waits were for lab results. Doctors and nurses took time to ask questions and listen carefully…I really could not have asked for better or more reassuring care.

The systemic differences between my previous experiences at home and here really boiled down to two: 1) The clinic and hospital were both in old buildings and certainly didn’t have the physical amenities/decor of most American hospitals. They were clean and well-equipped, but not the sort of plush environments we generally encounter in the U.S.  2) At home, unless he was having a heart attack, treatment wouldn’t have commenced until payment had been arranged–I always check him in by providing insurance information, etc.

As academics like to say, anecdotes aren’t data. But my anecdote says lots of good things about the NHS.

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