Bad Deeds for 1/12/2010

 

Conservatives make a lot of noise in hope that if they shout loud enough and often enough, you’ll believe it’s true. Well, the American people aren’t buying it. Here are some examples of reality that run counter to what Conservatives would have you think:

 

Majority Confident Obama Can Handle Terrorism – In the wake of the Christmas day attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner, most Americans remain confident that the Obama administration can protect the country from terrorism, according to a new national poll. Nearly two-thirds of people questioned in the poll say they have a moderate or great deal of confidence in the administration to protect the public from future terrorist attacks, up 2 points from August. Thirty-five percent say they have not much or no confidence at all, down 1 point from August.

A number of Republicans have criticized the president over his handling of the attempted bombing of Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. But according to the survey, 57 percent approve of the way President Barack Obama’s responded, with 39 percent disapproving of how he handled the situation.

 

Public Says – Health Care Bill Doesn’t Go Far Enough – Far from overreaching on health care reform, a plurality of the public thinks President Obama and Democrats have done too little to regulate the insurance industry, hold down costs and extend coverage, a new poll finds. Forty-three percent of Americans said the health care bill goes “not far enough” in regulating health insurance companies, according to a new CBS survey released Monday evening. Just 18 percent deemed it “about right” and 27 percent thought it “go[es] to far.” Thirty-nine percent said the legislation doesn’t achieve strong enough cost controls one of the leading goals of reform as opposed to 24 percent who believed it goes too far and 21 percent that are satisfied.

The study contradicts the common argument made by the Republican Party and some conservative Democrats that the bill forces too much change upon the American people.

(And here is a personal observation: Shortly after seeing this new poll, I saw Fox News reporting a new poll shows that most Americans oppose the health care bill. How could that be? It turns out that Fox News added the percent of people who said that the bill didn’t go far enough to the percent of people who said the bill went too far and counted all of them as “opposed to the health care bill.” A sneaky way to give a false impression.)

 

US Fed Earned Record $45 Billion in 2009 – The US Federal Reserve turned a record profit of 45 billion dollars last year even as it plowed money into teetering banks to prevent a financial collapse. The country’s central bank played a pivotal role in propping up the US economy in the midst of the sharpest recession since the Great Depression, spending billions of dollars on a highly controversial bailout of financial institutions. The Fed’s unconventional moves led to a windfall for the government. It is the highest earnings in the 96-year history of the central bank. The figures lend weight to claims by President Barack Obama’s administration that the Fed has been largely successful in its drastic intervention in the US economy and the protection of the American public. In addition to the bonds, the central bank also made money on its emergency loans to banks and financial firms, some of which repaid billions of dollars in loans and interest payments in 2009. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has received a modest raise for 2010, bringing the annual salary of one of the most powerful figures in the United States to just 199,700 dollars, with no bonus.

 

Most People and Companies Recognize That Glenn Beck is Unacceptable – Ninety-eight companies have pulled their ads from the Glenn Beck show. The Glenn Beck show is losing more than 50% of its weekly ad revenue as a result of this boycott. It also appears that Fox News has been left with unsold airtime on Glenn Beck’s show.

 

China is Doing Much More Than the U.S. to Reduce CO2 Emissions – Traveling by rail is on average three to 10 times less CO2-intensive compared to road or air transport, according to the UIC, a Paris-based international organization of the railway sector. Among governments, China has been especially aggressive, spending heavily on its emerging high-speed nationwide rail network. In December 2009 it launched a line between the cities of Wuhan and Guangzhou that cuts travel time from over 10 hours to within three, putting pressure on domestic airlines. China plans to build 42 high-speed rail lines in the next two years. Europe is making progress also. The Boston Consulting Group estimates that by 2020 passengers will be able to travel faster point-to-point by high-speed rail than by plane on nearly half of Europe’s densest air routes. The U.S. is only starting to talk about doing something with high-speed rail.

 

Underpants Bomber Would Have Been “Lawyered Up” Faster Under Military Court – James Cullen, a retired brigadier general who served as a JAG officer, tells the Huffington Post that there are narrow differences between the legal and interrogation proceedings Abdulmutallab was subjected to and those which would have happened in a military commission.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the suspect would have been granted access to a lawyer if he had been put in a military system. In fact, he may have had easier access to an attorney.

“The military is not some type of Soviet show-trial kangaroo court,” said Cullen. “Absolutely he would have gotten a lawyer.”

Indeed, a study completed by The Century Foundation, a non-partisan research foundation, noted that under Defense Department rules, “regardless of a defendant’s wishes, he will have a military lawyer appointed to him at government expense. However, he may have a regular criminal defense attorney only if he arranges and pays for it himself.”

But, the next question goes: isn’t there a difference — with regard to the civilian and military systems — in the time that can elapse between when a suspect is captured and when he or she has to be granted legal representation? Not all that much, says Cullen. Abdulmutallab, for starters, was questioned for 30 hours before requesting a lawyer. Military personnel might have had more time. But not all that much.

More broadly, even in a civil system, authorities can question a suspect without reading them their Miranda rights for a limited amount of time as long as there is “no intention to try the person” and it is “purely for intelligence purposes.” This is little different then in a military setting, where — if the detaining authority wants to prosecute the detainee — the impetus is on bringing legal counsel into the equation early on. “If you want to prosecute you can’t foul up the process,” explained Cullen.
There is a similar mischaracterization over what can be done in terms of interrogating the detainee, claim Cullen and others.

As Stacy Sullivan, counterterrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch posits: “al Qaeda views itself as warriors… Our argument is you shouldn’t elevate their status to that. They are criminals and you should treat them just like criminals.”

 

Media and Conservatives Distort Terrorism Expert’s Testimony to Bash Obama Administration – Brian Michael Jenkins, who has been called “one of the world’s leading authorities on terrorism, testified that al Qaeda has been reduced to “a strategy of weakness.” He said that the US has destroyed al Qaeda’s ability to engage in large-scale terrorist operations and forced it to fall back on scatter-shot attempts. However Conservatives have misrepresented his remarks to paint the Obama administration as weak on terror by saying Jenkins testified, “there were more low-level jihadist plots uncovered in 2009 than in prior years.”

 

UK Daily Mail and Fox News Distort Scientist’s Statements – Using a 2008 report that is widely mischaracterized as proof that warming has slowed, the Mail, whose report was later picked up by Fox News, claimed that statements by Professor Mojib Latif, of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, could prove that the threat of global warming has been Newspapers Are Still Important – Newspapers and other “traditional media” still generate the bulk of news that gets to US consumers despite the rising importance of online media, according to a study released Monday. The report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, based on a study of media in Baltimore, Maryland, found that 95 percent of stories with “new information” came from traditional media, mainly newspapers.

“Most of what the public learns is still overwhelmingly driven by traditional media — particularly newspapers,” the report concluded. “These stories then tended to set the narrative agenda for most other media outlets.” The report found general interest newspapers generated 48 percent of the news and specialty newspapers such as those dedicated to business or law produced another 13 percent. Local television accounted for 28 percent of news gathering and “new media” outlets just four percent of “enterprise reporting,” Pew said.

Regards,

Jim