Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

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Watching the Young America Foundation Conference, where young conservatives are asking questions of a pair of Barry Goldwater experts. Just saw one of them go up and say he “couldn’t imagine why anyone is thinking of voting for George Bush” given his perceived selling out of the right on immigration, deficits, medicare and such. One panelist proffered the tax cuts as the main conservative accomplishment on Bush’s watch. The other panelist, Goldwater biographer Lee Edwards, sidestepped the question of domestic policy entirely, simply invoking the idea that “Everything changed on 9/11,” saying a few words about how frightening the prospect of another terror attack is, and then – without suggesting any Bush policy which would make us safer – nodded to suggest that the question had been settled.

I’d be curious to know how the kids in the room took his answer.

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Following the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission (and the lead of John Kerry), Bush announces his support for a National Intelligence Czar:

In an announcement in the Rose Garden at the White House, Mr. Bush also said that he would adopt another commission recommendation, the creation of a national counterterrorism center, which the commission sought to conduct strategic analysis of intelligence, plan and assign intelligence operations, and oversee what intelligence is collected.

“This new center will build on the analytical work — the really good analytical work — of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center,” Mr. Bush said in referring to an office that already exists, “and will become our government’s knowledge bank for information about known and suspected terrorists.”

The president added that his administration had already taken steps that had made the United States safer since the attacks. “Yet we are still not safe,” Mr. Bush said.

“Today I am asking Congress to create the position of a national intelligence director,” he said. “The person in that office would be appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, and will serve at the pleasure of the president.”

But the intelligence director will not be a cabinet post, he said, in a departure from what the 9/11 commission had urged.

“I don’t think the person should be a member of my Cabinet,” Mr. Bush said. “I will hire the person and I can fire the person.” At the same time, the president said, “I don’t think that the office should be in the White House, however, I think it should be a stand-alone group to better coordinate.”

Given our record with government czars, there are reasons to be skeptical.

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Wal-Mart Watch: Saskatchewan Wal-Mart workers fight to unionize:

Union officials say Weyburn’s band of rebellious workers are closer than any others to becoming the first successfully unionized Wal-Mart in North America, slightly ahead of parallel efforts elsewhere in Saskatchewan, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, British Columbia, and dozens of U.S. states. From a distance, it might look easy to convince workers they need a union in the birthplace of socialism. But this town of 10,000 people, about 120 kilometres southeast of Regina, no longer supports collectivist ideals with the same enthusiasm that revolutionized politics during the Depression. The region elected right-wing candidates in recent provincial and federal elections. Just a five-minute drive away from Mr. Douglas’s old church, a freshly paved strip of fast-food restaurants and retail outlets on the Western edge of town could be mistaken for almost any piece of suburbia on the continent. Wal-Mart has the biggest sign on the block, and the parking lot is full. Inside, the workers are bitterly divided. Some accuse the United Food and Commercial Workers Union of tricking them into signing union cards, by telling them the signatures didn’t mean supporting the unionization drive. Union supporters say those employees are lying because they’re frightened that unionization would shut down the store.

The only point on which the employees agree is that these recent months have been fraught with fear and confusion, as a battle between the world’s largest retailer and North America’s largest union turns their store into a den of whispers, nasty rumours, and personal attacks. The tension is fuelled by high stakes, legally and symbolically: Union organizers hope Saskatchewan’s comparatively pro-union labour laws will finally allow them to show Wal-Mart workers around the world that the company’s anti-union tactics can be defeated. The company wants to set its own precedents, too, by proving that labour laws written decades ago violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by restricting the employer’s right to communicate with workers during union drives.

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Britain’s Home Secretary tries to keep our animal rights activists out of their country:

Animal rights campaigners yesterday said they would fight any move by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to ban American activists from entering the UK.
The Home Office has written to a number of US campaigners, warning them that they may not be allowed in if they are deemed to have made statements inciting violence in the UK. There is no appeal against exclusion, although campaigners in the UK can seek judicial reviews of Home Office decisions.

Among those written to is Jerry Vlasak, a California-based surgeon and adviser to Speak, the group leading a campaign to halt construction of an animal research laboratory at Oxford University. Dr Vlasak is due to appear at a conference being organised next month by Shac, the group waging a campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences, which uses animals for research, in Cambridgeshire. Dr Vlasak came to the attention of Mr Blunkett when quoted in the Observer last Sunday as apparently advocating the killing of scientists involved in animal research. He claims he was misrepresented. The Home Office will not say which American activists have been written to, but Dr Vlasak told the Guardian yesterday that he was among them. He had received an email from the home secretary asking him about what he had allegedly said.

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The Post on Ridge’s Orange Alert:

The federal government raised the terror alert level yesterday to orange for the financial services sectors in New York City, Washington and Newark, citing the discovery of remarkably detailed intelligence showing that al Qaeda operatives have been plotting for years to blow up specific buildings with car or truck bombs. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the newly acquired information points to five potential targets: the International Monetary Fund and World Bank headquarters in Washington; the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup Center in New York; and the Prudential Financial building in Newark.

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Senator Trent Lott recently stumped for Bush in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Reagan declared his campaign by condemning “welfare moms” and championing “states; rights” not far from the graves of murdered civil rights activists:

— U.S. Sen. Trent Lott today told an enthusiastic Neshoba County Fair crowd that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is “a French-speaking socialist from Boston, Massaschusetts, who is more liberal than Ted Kennedy.” It was a line that Lott said he’d been working on for a while, and it produced loud applause from hundreds of Mississippians gathered at Founders’ Square, the centerpiece of the historic fair.

Obviously a vile remark. Boilerplate red-baiting aside, condemning a man for speaking French is a cynical appeal to isolationist nativism. It’s an insult to this country to suggest that we’re stronger if our leaders can’t communicate with the rest of the world in any language but their own. But degrading the speaking of French isn’t just an insult to the international community. It’s an attack on the most vulnerable members of our national community, those who’ve immigrated here, increasing numbers of whom come from France and former French colonies, like the large and growing Haitian community here in Florida. An attack on Americans who speak French is simply another incarnation of the less-politically-expedient attacks on those who speak Spanish and the more-politically-expedient attacks on those who speak Arabic. This isn’t populism – this is a divisive attack on the populace. Don’t hold your breath for our “uniter” of a President, whose campaign equates criticism of his record with “political hate speech,” to condemn Senator Lott’s chosen attack on his challenger.

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FAIR questions the factuality of John Stossel’s hatchet job against John Edwards on 20/20 last week, and the justice of giving him the space to fulminate from the right each week without any counter-balance from the right:

How much of the increase in C-sections is due to medical judgment, rather than fear of lawsuits? Stossel doesn’t address the question. Dr. Luis Sanchez-Ramos, an obstetrics professor at the University of Florida, noted in the British Medical Journal (2/12/94) that “in Brazil and Mexico, where malpractice is not a problem, the caesarean section rate is still high.” Sanchez-Ramos suggested that profit may be another motive driving C-sections, pointing out that rates are higher in for-profit hospitals and with patients who have good health insurance.

But Stossel focused on lawsuits as the core problem: “So are women today suffering more pain, even risking their lives on unnecessary surgery, partly because lawyers like John Edwards scared doctors?” It’s a complex question, depending among other issues on how much of the surgery is actually “unnecessary.” But Stossel’s answer just assumes that trial lawyers are the villains: “Well, maybe all Edwards’ cases were good ones, but the fearful atmosphere that lawsuits create has far-reaching consequences.” That we should see malpractice suits as making doctors “fearful” rather than “careful” is something that the ABC journalist asserts rather than explains.

Of course, political candidates are fair game for criticism. But given Stossel’s politics, it’s unlikely that he will be doing a similar attack on George W. Bush or Dick Cheney this campaign season– certainly not one that fits in with their opponents’ talking points so well. (When Edwards was picked by Kerry, the Republican National Committee’s website headlined its response, “Who Is John Edwards? A Disingenuous, Unaccomplished Liberal And Friend To Personal Injury Trial Lawyers.”) When ABC’s parent company Disney refused to allow its Miramax subsidiary to distribute Michael Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 9/11,” company CEO Michael Eisner offered this rationale (5/5/04): “We just didn’t want to be in the middle of a politically oriented film during an election year.” So why does ABC air one-sided political commentary during an election year?

When I watched part of Stossel’s commentary on TV, I thought to myself “Maybe we should let both sides bring medical experts to argue their case to the jury. Except – we already do.” Conservatives are always claiming that their opposition to judicial decisions which limit the power of their constituencies is based in an abiding faith in democracy and a distrust of unelected judges. But in the same breath they argue for tort reform in order to protect those same constituencies from regulation by juries. And they gleefully marshall technocratic arguments to suggest that a sampling of “the people” shouldn’t be trusted to decide such cases. They’re stuck making that argument because for all the talk about Americans hating lawyers and malpractice suits, it isn’t trial lawyers who decide cases and determine damages. It’s a (not fully representative) sampling of the American people. So conservatives’ concern isn’t about democracy. It’s about power.

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Human Rights Watch calls for Vietnam to release dissidents:

The Vietnamese government should immediately release Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, a 62-year-old physician who was sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment for “abusing democratic freedoms,” Human Rights Watch said today. Dr. Que is one of three dissidents, all winners of the prestigious Hellman/Hammett award for persecuted writers, convicted this month solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression. On Thursday, Dr. Que, a longtime human rights advocate, was convicted for writing an essay—distributed over the Internet—about state censorship of information and the media. Since his arrest in March 2003, he has been held in incommunicado detention.

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The IFCTU on the Doha talks:

As trade negotiators began a marathon high-stakes discussion at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva on 27 July, the world’s largest trade union body the ICFTU, jointly with the Paris-based TUAC and the ITGLWF representing textiles and clothing workers, criticized the WTO negotiations for ignoring the worsening impact of trade on peoples’ lives and working conditions around the world. “Unfortunately, while WTO trade negotiators pore over the fine print of their schedule for completing their Doha Round negotiations, the very basis of support for a multilateral trading system is being cut away from under their feet,” commented Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the ICFTU. “Governments must raise their sights and tackle the basic social and development questions at the heart of the inequity and injustice that characterize world trade today. Otherwise they will fail to mobilize support among their own populations for completing, ratifying and implementing whatever trade deal may ultimately be concluded.”

By the end of the year, whilst trade negotiators strive to make progress in the “Doha Round” that originally should have been concluded by 31 December 2004, millions more workers in vulnerable sectors around the world will have seen their jobs undermined as multinational companies continue to shift their production to China and other countries where production is cheaper due to violations of basic workers’ rights. Nothing in the framework of WTO trade talks being presented this week tackles this social void at the heart of the world trading system.

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The Times surveys the competition between labor’s New Unity Partnership and its old guard:

“The way they talk, it’s my way or no way,” Mr. Buffenbarger said. “If the rhetoric doesn’t calm down, you’ll see old alliances form and that might lead to recreating the old A.F.L. and old C.I.O.” Mr. Buffenbarger said some union leaders felt that the partnership’s leaders – three of the five are Ivy League graduates – talk down to them. Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here, a union representing textile, hotel and restaurant workers and a member of the New Unity Partnership, said Mr. Stern and the partnership were right to push for far-reaching changes. He said the structure of organized labor was outmoded, asserting that unions were too fractured, small and poorly structured to contend with global corporations. “The labor movement needs to confront these issues, but not in a backroom,” Mr. Raynor said. “We’re not the Kremlin. It’s not like people don’t know that our ability to protect American workers has been weakened. We have to turn that around, and to some degree that debate has to be done publicly.”

Behind this feuding are the seeds of the race to succeed John J. Sweeney, 70, who has been the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president for nine years. Mr. Sweeney has repeatedly said he would seek a new four-year term next July. But many labor leaders predict that he may step aside, suggesting that he declared he wanted another term to prevent labor leaders from focusing their energies this year on campaigning to succeed him, instead of campaigning for the Democratic presidential nominee. Some labor leaders say they expect the New Unity Partnership to pressure Mr. Sweeney not to run again to make way for new blood. Many say they expect John Wilhelm, the longtime president of the hotel and restaurant employees union and a leader of the New Unity Partnership, to seek to succeed Mr. Sweeney. But if Mr. Sweeney steps aside, several industrial unions are expected to back Richard Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s secretary-treasurer.

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Zogby shares good tidings for John Kerry:

Mr. Bush has fallen in key areas while Senator John Kerry has shored up numerous constituencies in his base. The Bush team’s attempted outreach to base Democratic and swing constituency has shown to be a failure thus far, limiting his potential growth in the electorate. The most important group in this election now is the undecideds and Mr. Bush’s standing among them is weak. He is generally well liked among the undecideds, having a strong favorability (56%), but his job performance is another story. Only 32% approve of Bush’s job in office and only 31% believe the country is headed in the right direction. The undecideds are not yet sold on Mr. Kerry, with only 49% having a favorable opinion of him. But Mr. Kerry can still sell his message to them: over a quarter (28%) are either not familiar enough or are not sure of their opinion yet. These undecided voters are generally dissatisfied with the President, but are still not acquainted enough with the Senator from Massachusetts to support him.

The Bush campaign’s efforts to court voters in the Hispanic, Jewish, and Catholic communities seem to have fallen flat. Mr. Kerry is leading Mr. Bush by a similar margin to that which former Vice-President Al Gore won among Jewish voters in 2000. Mr. Bush is also running far behind his 2000 Hispanic total, with only 19% of the Hispanic voters supporting him, while Mr. Kerry is beating Mr. Gore’s total with 69%. Mr. Kerry is also running very strong among Catholics, topping Mr. Bush, 52% to 37%, showing that not only has Bush’s courting of them failed, but his use of wedge issues like gay marriage and partial birth abortion have failed to separate Catholic voters from Kerry. The Senator’s lead among Catholics is similar to the Clinton margins of the 1990s.

Mr. Bush has also shown weakness in what is considered to be his best region, the South. While Kerry’s choice of Senator John Edwards gives him his biggest boost, his economic populism and courting of veterans are also key in his eroding of Mr. Bush’s support. Not only has Kerry now come to a tie with Bush in favorability in the South (55% for both), the Kerry-Edwards ticket has pulled ahead, 48% to 46% in the South. President Bush’s job performance is down to only 44% in the South, and only 43% of Southerners think the country is headed in the right direction…In the Blue states, Mr. Kerry is winning 50% to 38%, while in the Red States, Mr. Bush is only winning 48% to 46%. Among single voters, Mr. Kerry is winning huge by a total of 69% to 19%. And among young voters – 18-29 year olds – a group Al Gore only won by 2 points in 2000, Kerry is winning in a landslide, 53% to 33%…Mr. Kerry is showing a 2-to-1 lead (50% to 25%) amongst voters who didn’t vote in 2000, while winning three-quarters (75%) of Ralph Nader’s voters and stealing twice as many (8% to 4%) of Mr. Bush voters in 2000 than Bush is stealing of Gore voters in 2000.

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So much for being a uniter:

President Bush’s re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney. The Star refused to provide the information. Cheney is scheduled to appear at a rally this afternoon at the Pima County Fairgrounds. A rally organizer for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign asked Teri Hayt, the Star’s managing editor, to disclose the journalist’s race on Friday. After Hayt refused, the organizer called back and said the journalist probably would be allowed to photograph the vice president. “It was such an outrageous request, I was personally insulted,” Hayt said later.

Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the president’s re-election campaign, said the information was needed for security purposes. “All the information requested of staff, volunteers and participants for the event has been done so to ensure the safety of all those involved, including the vice president of the United States,” he said. Diaz repeated that answer when asked if it is the practice of the White House to ask for racial information or if the photographer, Mamta Popat, was singled out because of her name. He referred those questions to the U.S. Secret Service, which did not respond to a call from the Star Friday afternoon.

Hayt declined to speculate on whether Popat was racially profiled, but said she is deeply concerned. “One has to wonder what they were going to do with that information,” Hayt said. “Because she has Indian ancestry, were they going to deny her access? I don’t know.” Journalists covering the president or vice president must undergo a background check and are required to provide their name, date of birth and Social Security number. The Star provided that information Thursday for Popat and this reporter. “That’s all anybody has been asked to provide,” said Hayt, adding that this is the first time in her 26-year career that a journalist’s race was made an issue.