The Best Editorials Money Can Buy

Guest Perspective/Ralph Nader

On September 26, 2007, the powerful National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) bought two pages in the Wall Street Journal to tout a prosperous, expanding group of member-companies producing products.

It occurred to me as I began the copy, that the NAM rarely bought expensive space like this in the Journal. Then after going through NAM’s introductory message, I realized why they purchased the ad. Month after month in hundreds of loyal editorials, the Journal’s editorial writers already have been conveying the cravings and demands of this trade association.

The parallels between this revenue-producing two page spread and the Journal’s opinion scribes, in contrast to its often sterling news pages, are the stuff of the corporate state.

The editorials argue for more “clean” coal and nuclear power and emphasize expanding production of U.S. oil and natural gas with a token tip to renewables (with plenty of taxpayer subsidies).

So does the NAM.

NAM wants more so-called “free trade” agreements without recognizing, at the very least, that there can be no “free trade” with dictatorships like China. Dictatorial, oligarchic regimes determine wages, prevent free trade unions, and otherwise through grease and no-rule-of-law or access to justice, obstruct market-based costs and pricing.

So do the Journal’s editorial writers.

In scores of frenzied editorials, the Journal assails tort law, tort attorneys and “unreasonable awards.” Having read just about all these advertiser-friendly diatribes, I have yet to discern any data to back up their flood of declamations about “frivolous” litigation and “wild” awards.

Neither did the NAM produce any evidence about “lawsuit abuse” because the evidence points to declining product defect and malpractice suits, notwithstanding that 90% of these injured people suffer without any legal claims filed on their behalf. (See: http://www.centerjd.org/ and http://www.citizen.org/)

The Journal’s rigid ideologues demand less regulation (read less law and order for corporations) and the weakening of the Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted to modestly deal with part of the corporate crime wave of the past decade.

So does the NAM.

The NAM wants further reduction of the already reduced corporate tax rate and more taxpayer pay-out to corporations, including super-profitable ones like Intel, GE, Cisco and Pfizer. These latter windfalls are called research and development tax credits. How many Americans know that they are paying these and other super-profitable companies more money to make still more profits? Cisco does not even pay dividends.

So also demands the big business echo chamber on the Journal’s editorial pages.

The Journal has been campaigning for years to end the estate tax which is so diluted that less than 2 percent of all estates have to pay anything to Uncle Sam. Conservative Republican wordsmith, Frank Luntz, in a moment of abandon, called lobbying an effort to end “the billionaires tax.”

The NAM wants an end to the estate tax, even though none of its corporate-members ever has to pay an estate tax. For good measure, NAM wants to keep the maximum tax rates on investment income and capital gains at a level half of a worker’s maximum tax rate. Far lower taxes on capital than on labor suits the NAM three-piece-suits just fine.

The Journal is for brain-draining the Third World. Drain those critical doctors, nurses, scientists, engineers, innovators and entrepreneurs from Asia, Africa and South America. Give them permanent visas and then wonder why those countries are having trouble fielding the skilled leaders needed to develop their own economies. It is easier than training talented minority youths in our country.

The NAM ad calls for “reform of the visa system to attract and retain global talent.”

And so it goes. Such a symbiotic relationship! Big business members of NAM pour millions of dollars in ads daily into the Wall Street Journal. In return, the dutiful and gleeful editorial writers deliver the screeds that caress the brows and deepen the pockets of the CEOs.

There is another recurrent message in the insistent materials of NAM and its comrade-in-greed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Enough is never enough.

For over a quarter century, there has been more and more de-regulation (electricity, motor vehicles, coal, drugs, nuclear, occupational safety, pollution, aviation, rail, truck antitrust and more) with detriment to the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people. Still not enough, they say!

In the same period, you the taxpayer have been forced to have your tax dollars pour out of Washington and into the coffers of Big Business in a myriad of ways. Hundreds of billions of your dollars. Not enough, they say! They roar for more coddling.

You want chapter and verse, evidence and data? Get ready to read Free Lunch, a riveting new book by the Pulitzer-prize winning tax reporter for The New York Times, David Cay Johnston. It will be out in about two months. Just in time for your gift-giving season.

Doomsday for Dow Jones?

From stories posted over the weekend, it looks like tomorrow is the day the Bancroft family makes a final decision about whether they will sell Dow Jones/WSJ to Rupert Murdoch. Here are some of the corresponding stories: ["Bid for Dow Jones opposed"] and ["Family at war over Murdoch's Dow bid"].
I find it interesting that the Bancroft family is worried about editorial control. I mean, have they read the WSJ editorial page recently? They are to the right of Attila the Hun. How bad could a Murdoch ownership be? I don't know, but it doesn't look like it is going to happen.

This just in ... Murdoch closer to getting WSJ
This just came in over email:

News Corp. reached a tentative agreement to buy Dow Jones at its original $5 billion offer price. The deal will be put to the full Dow Jones board Tuesday evening for its approval. The deal still faces its biggest hurdle -- getting approval from the Bancroft family, which controls 64% of Dow Jones's voting stock. For more information, go to: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118463978304868582.html?mod=djemalert

GE makes play for Dow Jones
According to a WSJ alert:

General Electric and Financial Times publisher Pearson are in talks about making a joint bid for Dow Jones that would allow the Bancroft family to keep a minority interest in the company.
Under a scenario that has been discussed, GE's CNBC unit, the FT and Dow Jones would be combined in a privately held joint venture, according to people familiar with the matter. The joint venture would be owned in equal parts by GE and Pearson, with the Bancroft family maintaining a minority stake in the new company, these people said.

This is very interesting and might throw a monkeywrench into Rupert Murdoch's plans.

Why I love reading the WSJ, reason number, whatever

This island, Leaf Cay, in the Bahamas, will be sold on June 28 at an auction in Ft. Lauderdale. The auctioneer, Fisher Auctions, had a display ad in the Wall Street Journal last week.
This is something the Internet just doesn't give you - the display ad. Sure, there are tons of Web display ads. But it just is not the same as physically holding the newspaper in your hand, flipping through the text and ads, seeing all kinds of different things. Right next to all kinds of locales you will never visit, fast cars you will never own [Maserati: $99k], and fancy suits you can never afford, are these kinda of ads. Imagine for a second: Your own island in the Bahamas, fully developed, diesel tanks, airstrip, communications building, guest houses ... you could be your own Dr. No in the middle of nowhere! But ... then what?
The only bad thing about the WSJ is that it is sometimes too thorough. It isn't a newspaper a reader can just skim through. You have to read the articles in order to learn anything. And that is why they often pile up on me.

Missing headlines: The Uh-Oh Version
OK, it's been awhile. But, ya know, I've been a tad busy. Too busy to write about anything, never mind the latest headlines. And, because I've been too busy, I've missed the opportunity to talk about a lot of interesting things, like the potential Michael Bloomberg indie candidacy and all the crap about the Bob Shrum book. Oh well. Here's what we got:

First, the biggest uh-oh of the week, dropped in a WSJ alert at 6:34 p.m. on Thursday night: ["Bancrofts Open Door To a Sale of Dow Jones"]. This is only a meeting and, frankly, I don't know if Rupert Murdoch is that bad of a guy. I've never worked for the man and I blame FoxNews' nonsense more on Roger Ailes than Murdoch. Ailes could easily make the network truly "fair and balanced" by actually making it that way. It was a great antithesis to CNN when it was first created, especially as a watchdog on President Clinton. But its constant cheerleading and fawning over President Bush, and not being a watchdog over the corruption and lies, is downright sickening.
But what I do wonder is this: Is a takeover of Dow Jones the best thing for the WSJ and its employees? After I catch up on the print editions later this weekend, I wil see if the notoriously obnoxious editorial board has had anything to say about this. More than likely, it will be rah-rah, and that means readers have to be a bit skeptical about the deal.

Also on Thursday, the seatbelt law, thankfully, was defeated in the New Hampshire state Senate. Democrats joined Republicans in a 16-8 vote, so at least one nanny state bill has been defeated. Most of us are responsible and we wear our seat belts. But we don't need the cops pulling us over for this and we don't need the fines either.
On the flip, the smoking ban did pass the House and Gov. Lynch is expected to sign it. So now, bartenders and restaurant workers can work in a safe workplace without the risk of being harmed by second-hand smoke. And those of us who don't smoke, won't come out of restaurants and bars smelling like an ashtray! Nice job.

FAIR, the liberal media watchdog group, has a great update here on the fallout from Ron Paul's GOP debate performance a couple of weeks ago: ["Treated Like a Democrat"]. I love that his comments were assumed to be unorthodox when the guy was basically paraphrasing the 9-11 Commission report or the fact that the guy was dead-on correct. Nope, can't have that.
The closing line in the email pretty much sums it up, especially in light of the press conference Paul had discussing his comments, which I didn't even hear about:

The real problem isn't that Ron Paul can't win the White House, or that he might "muck up" a debate; if anything, he started a debate the media don't want to have.

Exactly correct. When are we going to start having a serious conversation about our foreign policy instead of always talking about how tough we are or which and how many foreigners we are going to kill.

While dealing with the truth as spoken by Ron Paul may not be enough, it looks like the GOP faithful are a bit pissed when it comes to their president and his immigration policy: ["Republican revolt over immigration']. If this is true, it is really amazing and it is the writing on the wall.
But imagine, if you will, if one of the stronger Democratic candidates came out against this amnesty package and instead, embraced the closed border policy. If they could get through the primaries, and not be pigeonholed as too liberal, they might actually win the election in a landslide. If you think the rank and file Republicans were mad about Iraq, look at what they are doing about the immigration bill! Their shutting off the spigot. This looks like a prime time opportunity to me.

John Cox, the long-shot Republican presidential candidate, put full-page ads in both the New Hampshire Union Leader and Concord Monitor this week requesting that voters call the UL, WMUR, and CNN, and request that he be allowed into the June 5 debates. He doesn't have the ad on his Web site but he does have a pretty good list of talking points here: ["The Next Republican Debate"]. I especially like this line:

Tell them that candidates like Ron Paul, Jim Gilmore, and Tommy Thompson are not gaining new supporters since they've been in the last 2 televised debates.

Oh come on, John. You know as well as I do that viewers of the FoxNews debate had Paul winning, that is until "Guy Smiley" Romney got all his "followers" to start calling in and bumped Paul down to second place. A solid second place, I might add, 10 points above Rudy Giuliani.
Although, you may have a point: Since MSNBC viewers voted Paul the winner of the first debate, he has slipped to second place. But that is, however, no reason to put you in the debate.
But here is a reason Cox should be allowed in the debate: According to his FEC filings, the guy spent $796k through March 31 of this year, so far, and most of it has been his money. And, if Mike Gravel, the longest of long shots, with Vegas odds of something like 1,000,000 to 1 of getting the nomination, is allowed in, why not Cox?
Note to self: Put $5 bet on Gravel to win the nomination so if he does, I'll get $5M from the bookie.
In the end, Cox will not be allowed in and that's a shame. I interviewed the guy and he is talking about things the other Republican candidates aren't talking about, like a national sales tax. He is also one of the only Republicans admitting that we are in Iraq because of the oil ... Paraphrasing from our interview, since I don't have a copy of it readily available to quote from, Let's get in there and get that oil out of the ground ... And he is correct on this point: He has as much of a shot as the nomination as Jim Gilmore or Tommy Thompson, so why not let him on the stage? They're going to offer a podium to Fred Thompson. That will make 11. When you're at 11, why not 12?
Lastly, it should be noted that WMUR did do a Conversation with the Candidate featuring Cox and that is more than most other long-shot candidates receive: ["Commitment 2008"].

More tomorrow.

Okay ...

So, is the latest position on the war for the GOP just posturing or are they going to finally come to their senses and bring the troops home?: ["GOP Senator: Patience on Iraq Is limited"].
Jeez, patience, wow. Tell that to the folks back home. Tell that to the folks in Kansas who have so many troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan that they can't clean the state up after those massive tornadoes this week. Tell that to the families waiting for their loved ones to get home safely.

2008 roundup: Another "Law & Order" star and indie Angus King talk about Unity08: ["PostTalk"]. Biden has this pretty cool head to head site comparing his answers at the recent South Carolina debate to other candidates on the stage: ["Head to Head 08"]. Florida moves its primary way, way up: ["Florida ignores national party threat, sets early primary for Jan. 29"]. Some disillusioned Bush supporters are flocking to Barack Obama, allegedly: ["Republicans defect to the Obama campaign']. MSNBC had a poll on its site after the Reagan Derby Debate the other night and with more than 65,000 responses, Ron Paul swept all categories: ["Vote on the Republican Candidate Debate"].

Strike two for former Bass aide: Oh man, this has gotta suck for Charlie Bass: ["Former Aide Runs Far Afield of Main Street"].

Jesus?: No, not Hey-zeus, this guy claims he's Jesus, yeah, Jesus, the real thing: ["Growing in Grace"].

Hmm ...: The SEC is investigating suspicious trading in the wake of Rupert Murdoch's bid for the WSJ: ["US regulators probe trading in Dow Jones before Murdoch's bid"]. Very interesting.

Shortcuts: Learn about digital filmmaking at these seminars: ["Digital Filmmaking Workshops"]. I just found out that Al Quint continues to publish stuff about punk rock only now, he does it on a blog: ["Suburban Voice"]. You can also download his Podcast here: ["Sonic Overload"].

Charts and graphs

This chart, in Saturday's WSJ, shows that even when the stock market is rockin', the economy - as reflected by the gross domestic product - isn't doing as well as it has in the past.

As the saying goes, liars figure and figures lie. Well, sometimes they do and sometime they don't. One of the reasons I really like reading the WSJ - not skimming it, but actually reading it - is that a person can really learn a lot about what is going on in the world, especially concerning economics. The next key, after reading, is to implement your own values into the things you've learned. If you just follow it blindly, you're just a robot. If you take everyone at their words, you're not thinking for yourself.
For example, I've always loved the phrase, Economists need to learn to subtract. Well, one might say, economists know how to subtract. But do they? Do they, for example, subtract the detractions of pollution on economic growth? Nope. They just add up the value. Do they figure in the harm of free trade agreements when they add up all the economic value? Nope, they don't. They just add. No subtracting. The point is that for every action, there is a reaction, both negative and positive. Now, I'm not trying to stress just the negative. Economists should add. But they should also subtract.
Alright, well what's the point about this and why graphs and charts? Well, look at the one above. Do you see anything in it? It doesn't matter if the stock market is raging. It doesn't mean the economy is any better because it is raging. Some folks need to kinda get over that.
I found another interesting statistic in Saturday's WSJ on the back page of the B section in the Breakingviews.com column, which I read everyday. The columnists are noting that while blue chip stocks are under-performing, the recent devaluation of the dollar is boosting their revenue pictures:

"Nearly half of the revenues of companies in the S&P 500 come from overseas. A similar figure isn't available for small companies. But since only 8% of total U.S. economic activity comes from exports, it's clear that bigger companies account for most foreign sales."

OK, think about that for a second. Did you catch it? Only 8 percent of total U.S. economic activity comes from exports. Free trade agreements allegedly boost exports while costing Americans millions of jobs. Three million, in fact, since NAFTA's implementation in 1994. So, why are our leaders costing us millions of jobs to only assist 8 percent of the total country's activity? Seems foolish, doesn't it?

WSJ Update

Well, over the last two days, I've received not one, but two editions [!] of the Wall Street Journal - one in the newspaper box and one slipped between the storm and front door of my house. I guess they are trying to get it together after all.

Catching up on the WSJ

Since subscribing to the Wall Street Journal back in early October, two things have occurred regularly: 1) I haven't received a full week's delivery since starting the subscription; and 2) I don't always have time to read the entire newspaper on the day I receive it, when I actually do get it.
I will get to the second part later in this post. But first, the delivery problems.
I sense that there are delivery problems in suburban and rural areas with the more specialty papers like the WSJ but hopefully, they will figure it all out. The people who manage the delivery folks feel my pain, if you will, when I call them to complain. They have been very sympathetic to me and I can hear the frustration in the voices. But the problem remains unsolved.
For example, during the morning of the last three snowstorms, I received no newspaper. There wasn't a lot of snow on the ground Friday when the paper should have been dropped off, maybe four inches. The roads were plowed. The Concord Monitor was delivered and even bagged to keep from getting wet. But the WSJ? Nada. I guess my delivery person takes snow days off. I don't know. The guy doesn't even deliver the paper late the next day or anything. I mean, what happened to the extra newspaper? Did it get thrown away? Is it in the back of his car? At least have the courtesy to deliver it the next day.
Another example? Well, I didn't get a newspaper on Monday and I didn't get one this morning either. No snow, no visible problems, no nothing. Well, OK, it was a bit cold outside today. But is the new policy ... that the newspaper doesn't get delivered when it snows or when it is cold? Come on.
For about two months after I started the subscription, I wasn't even receiving the Saturday edition, which I paid for. It was only after a clerk realized that I wasn't getting it that it started getting delivered.
As I've explained - or complained - to the people who manage the delivery people, I don't understand why my newspaper isn't delivered. You either do the job or you don't.
In addition, I live about a half a mile north of the most affluent neighborhood in the city. I'm sure that there are a ton of people who get the WSJ delivered down there and they probably have the same delivery driver. I seriously doubt they have delivery problems. If they do, they are probably complaining too, which means something needs to be done about the situation.
The worst part about all of this is that I paid ahead for the subscription, for a year. Yeah, I got a special rate [Maybe that's why I'm not getting it every day, I joked to a clerk]. But that shouldn't mean I shouldn't get it. If I paid on a monthly basis, I could deduct the missed papers and maybe that would get the point across. I don't know.

I know newspaper delivery people are a unique breed. Who wants to get up at 4 a.m. to deliver newspapers? I know that both the Monitor and the New Hampshire Union Leader have problems keeping people in these positions because they are constantly running help wanted ads for delivery people in their classified sections. From what I've heard, most are 1099 employees and since it is only two hours work in the morning, they should be independent contractors. The Monitor has a cute spin with their ads - make money on your morning walk. The ads are clearly targeted towards adults and not the kids who have historically done the job.
I also know a bit about the newspaper delivery business because I was one of those kids who "peddled" the Monitor when it was an afternoon newspaper. We used to say "peddle the newspaper" because many of us rode our bikes for most of the year. Back then, in the mid-to-late 1970s, the newspapers were huge ... or seemed huge, compared to the size they are now. Wednesdays were the dreaded circular and store flyer days. On that day, the papers weighed a ton! Back then, the Monitor was a weekday afternoon paper with a morning edition delivered on Saturdays.
I had a route on the west side of Concord, around White Park, down Centre Street, to the area around North Spring and Union streets, then back up Washington. It was altered here and there as paperboys came and went. My friend Leo - who is still my friend to this day - had the area behind mine, near Rumford and Franklin, if I remember correctly.
After our routes, we would meet at this small neighborhood market on Rumford Street - I think it was called Quality Cash or something - for some snacks which spoiled our dinner appetites. The market had three stools so there was always time for Leo and me to shoot the sh*t there before going home. I went through a phase of having Cokes and Ring Dings until I started getting a bit chubby and replaced them with V-8s and Fig Newtons. I was a carb addict even back then I just didn't know it. Leo could eat anything and still stay as thin as a rail. Of course, he isn't Irish and Italian either so ...

I learned a lot from those years delivering newspapers and it gave me a lot of real-life experience at an early age. Most importantly, I learned to love newspapers and the news. I learned so much from reading the newspaper.
It also was the first time in my life when I started to understand about class/caste systems. Even though I had experienced some of those things while living in Warner and being schlepped off to New London Middle School, I really didn't understand what I was experiencing until later on in life.
Interestingly, the less-affluent subscribers to the newspaper were always the best tippers. The paper was $1.15 per week and I made $22 plus tips every two weeks which was pretty big money at the time. One working-class mom, who lived on White Street, used to pay the subscription by giving me a dollar bill and then grabbing whatever loose change she had and giving it to me. It would often end up being a pretty big tip. However, the snooty wife of the insurance executive who lived three doors down from us on Essex Street, would hand you a dollar bill and then count out 15 pennies, never giving out a tip or even smiling. The subscribers who were "office" accounts, meaning they would send a check into the Monitor directly, never tipped at all. It's probably why they paid that way. Today, there is a gratuity check-off on all the bills so you can add a small tip if you like, which I always do. I hope the delivery folks are actually getting the money.
To this day, I often think about Tyler's mom, the one who would just hand over a ton of change to me each Friday night. I wonder what she is doing now. She clearly understood what hard work it was to deliver the newspapers each day. But that is kinda what happens when you have walked in someone else's shoes.

Back to the second point and the whole purpose of this post: Catching up on old newspapers. I do actually try and read the paper every day. If I get up earlier than usual for my morning workout, I'm able to get through the entire thing during a weekday morning, over coffee before everyone else gets up. But that always isn't the case. But if I can't, I will catch up with them on Saturday and Sunday mornings, when I have a bit more time to take in some of the stories. More often than not, the articles take a bit more time to take in. Like I said in a previous post, reading the redesigned WSJ these days is like reading the NYT: It isn't all numbers and statistics but a lot more in-depth reporting about business, trends, and marketing. It is a great read, to say the least, and I have learned so much about business and life by reading the Journal ... which makes it all the more frustrating when I don't get the damn thing.
Now, I can access it online if I want. But for us newspaper people, we like to physically have the paper in our hands ... to look at the pictures ... to smell the ink - which is getting harder and harder to do as the business moves to non-petroleum-based inks ... to do more than just skim - to actually take the newspaper in.
Over the past few weeks, the WSJs have been piling up. I just haven't had a chance to read them all. However, late this week, I made a concerted effort to attempt to get through the pile. And, I'm glad I did. Here are some of the articles which have been featured this week:

First, this pretty big story: ["Federal Aid Does Little For Free Trade's Losers"]. So not only are these programs not working, most folks who lose their jobs aren't able to afford the partial payment on the aid. They also have to jump through all kinds of hoops to even get the aid. Lastly, if you are with the service sector and you lose your job, it is extremely difficult to prove you were a victim of the free trade fraud. This is going on while Bush and the Democrats are talking more trade deals with Columbia, Peru, Panama, South Korea, Malaysia, and the DOHA Round with the WTO. What a disaster!

In the same edition, there is this about how Apple is changing their hilarious ad campaign to fit overseas markets: ["Mac and PC's Overseas Adventures"]. No pun intended, probably. Hah. If you haven't seen the ad campaign by Apple, you are probably living in a cave. It starts out with a kinda cool geek introducing himself as a Mac and a middle-age fuddy-duddy saying, "I'm a PC." The old fuddy-duddy has all these problems while the cool guy doesn't. There was a great bit where the PC has a guy duct-taping a Webcam on his head while the Mac says, I have one built in. Totally hilarious. Having toyed around with the new Vista program on the new PCs, Windows is becoming increasingly Apple-like. I only know this because the wife uses Macs - and loves them. I use PCs - and love them. I haven't taken the dive into Vista just yet but it looks like a very impressive operating system.

Here is an interview with the new CEO of Catepillar, which posted $41.5B in revenue last year: ["Global Trade Galvanizes Caterpillar"]. Congratulations to them. But Jim Owens foolishly goes on and on about the supposedly great free trade system the world has. It's amazing how clueless some of these people can be. Here is a nice slice of the silly logic:

"It's [free trade] a very difficult sell. It's like the guy who's making horse carriages when the car comes along. How do you make the case to him that the car's going to make the world a better place?"

Why do these guys keep using these fake, non-existent comparisons? This is the phony Chuck Adler argument: 'We can't protect the buggy whip industry!' Cars, tractors, computers, and other items are not buggy whips and horse carriages! And the high-tech, futuristic jobs which were supposed to replace all the jobs sent overseas are also being sent overseas. Good grief.

More on advertising here: ["Impotence Ads Draw Fire-Just Like Old Ones"]. This one is kinda funny. I mean, you can make the case that these ads should be on later in the evening. But shouldn't kids get a bit of reality? The couple is clearly married and the wife motions to the husband that he should shut off the game and go have some fun. That's what being married is supposed to be about, right?

Lastly, also in the Feb. 16 edition, there was a full-page ad by Chevron, noting that of the 193 countries in the world, none of them are energy independent. The ad points to a Web site about what the company is doing to diversify energy resources: [Will You Join Us?]. Now, of course, this is a PR campaign to make up for bad publicity from global warming, Liberia, gas prices, who knows what. But at least, it would seem, like they are trying to help.