Intellectual Garbage Cleanup (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?)

The American Prospect performs a public service--one that the Washington Post would have long ago performed, were it a real newspaper:

American Prospect Online - Dems Don't Know Jack : The analysis, which was commissioned by The American Prospect and completed on Jan. 25, was done by Dwight L. Morris and Associates, a for-profit firm specializing in campaign finance that has done research for many media outlets.... Although Abramoff hasn't personally given to any Democrats, Republicans, including officials with the GOP campaign to hold on to the Senate, have seized on the donations of his tribal clients as proof that the saga is a bipartisan scandal.... [T]he ombudsman for The Washington Post, Deborah Howell, ignited a firestorm by wrongly asserting that Abramoff had given to both. She eventually amended her assessment, writing that Abramoff "directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties." But the Morris and Associates analysis... shows that... when Abramoff took on his tribal clients, the majority of them dramatically ratcheted up donations to Republicans. Meanwhile, donations to Democrats from the same clients either dropped, remained largely static or, in two cases, rose by a far smaller percentage than the ones to Republicans did.... [W]hatever money went to Democrats, rather than having been steered by Abramoff, may have largely been money the tribes would have given anyway....

in total, the donations of Abramoff's tribal clients to Democrats dropped by nine percent... while their donations to Republicans more than doubled.... Abramoff's clients gave well over twice as much to Republicans than Democrats, while tribes not affiliated with Abramoff gave well over twice as much to Democrats than the GOP -- exactly the reverse pattern.... Bloomberg News published a similar, more limited analysis last month, which relied on a small amount of data also from Morris's firm.... The Prospect asked Morris to do two things: First, compare the contributions of all of Abramoff's tribal clients before they'd signed on with Abramoff versus after they'd become his client. And second, compare the contributions of all Abramoff tribal clients with the contributions of all non-Abramoff tribes.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post "stands by its reporting that Jack Abramoff directed campaign money to some Democrats."

Comments

[Howard]

prof, c'mon now: don't you know that sue schmidt valiantly broke this story?

and that's it just ol' blogging meanies who don't acknowledge the superiority of the wapo coverage of this matter?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?ex=1296190800&en=51c46d7689bee520&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

January 29, 2006

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," he said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

Mr. Acosta said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel whom the public could perceive as speaking for the agency. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Dr. Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, is a leading authority on the earth's climate system. He directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute on Morningside Heights in Manhattan.

Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/opinion/13tue1.html?ex=1292130000&en=16890ab75ba802ec&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

December 13, 2005

America's Shame in Montreal

The best that can be said of the recently concluded meeting on climate change in Montreal is that the countries that care about global warming did not allow the United States delegation to blow the whole conference to smithereens. Washington was intent on making sure that the conferees required no more of the United States than what it is already doing to restrain greenhouse gas emissions, which amounts to virtually nothing.

At least the Americans' shameful foot-dragging did not bring the entire process to a complete halt, and for this the other industrialized countries, chiefly Britain and Canada, deserve considerable praise. It cannot be easy for America's competitors to move forward with costly steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while the United States refuses to carry its share of the load. Nevertheless, the Europeans and other signatories to the 1997 treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions - a treaty the Bush administration has rejected - promised to work toward new and more ambitious targets and timetables when the agreement lapses in 2012.

For its part, the Bush administration deserves only censure. No one expected a miraculous conversion. But given the steadily mounting evidence of the present and potential consequences of climate change - disappearing glaciers, melting Arctic ice caps, dying coral reefs, threatened coastlines, increasingly violent hurricanes - one would surely have expected America's negotiators to arrive in Montreal willing to discuss alternatives.

They did not....

[RonK, Seattle]

Abramoff directed a ton of money to Dem's.

That doesn't make it a bipartisan scandal, but that's the facts.

Brad, take a closer look at that piece -- using with your math/econ brain instead of your partisan brain.

[John]

Brad, I proposed the following to the Post editors via email: If I have given $1000 a year to politician X and my new friend Jack recommends that I reduce future annual contributions to $300, and this year I only contribute $300 to X, did Jack "direct" this years contribution to X?

I think the simple answer is no, unless I am a Post editor.

[liberal]

RonK wrote, "Abramoff directed a ton of money to Dem's."

Depends on what you mean by "directed" and "tons".

The details of the article Brad quotes makes it clear it's not a bipartisan scandal.

[AlanDownunder]

RonK's "math/econ brain" thinks (to use the term loosely) that Brad is using his "partisan brain" when he bemoans what has become of a WaPo that "stands by its reporting that Jack Abramoff directed campaign money to some Democrats."

Ron, it's not the literal accuracy of "directed money to Dems". It's:

1 - the arrant irrelevance of it; and

2 - the direction of an overall decreased contribution to Dems; and

3 - the co-incidence of WaPo adamance with GOP spin

... which leads me to wonder whether you are merely self-lobotomized down to your "math/econ brain" or whether you are also using your "partisan brain".

[AlanDownunder]

... decreased percentage-wise that is.

[mndean]

Alan,
RonK has been peddling this line re: Abramoff just about everywhere he can, making an ass of himself wherever he goes with his strident one-note humping. It may have been speciously contrarian a week ago, but it looks pathetic now, and as you say, irrelevant. Considering the bargeload of criminal activity that Abramoff was involved in, it seems that tribal issue is about the only feces that the right can throw at the Dems, and it's not much. What will RonK do when the issue shifts to the Marianas or SunCruz or the direct payoffs? No Democrats there, but of course Pool Boy, Steno Sue, Lovee Howell and the rest of the gang can be relied on to ignore the real story. Maybe RonK will still be peddling the tribal issue - it wouldn't surprise me at all.

[Bruce Webb]

RonK was a stalwart in opposing the Iraq war back in the day on dKos, really a warrior and I only have good memories of him then. So I want to have his back but am baffled here.

Ron, no one has offered any evidence beyond a sloppily chopped PDF of a document with no header that Abramoff directed any money whatsover to any Democrat. And even if we wanted to credit that WaPo document it still showed a 55 to 1 imbalance between Republicans and Democrats. It's like Anakin in Star Wars. Who stole RonK and gave us Darth Vader?

[John Emerson]

The reason the Enron investigation never went anywhere is that a lot of Dems were tarred, notably Lieberman (who was Arthur Anderson's punk in the Senate and helped close things down.)

By the evidence, though, Abramoff worked quite differently. The whole point of the K Street project was to freeze out Democrats.

I do get an alternative universe, through the looking glass feeling here. Before he was indicted no one ever said that Abramoff was bipartisan, and he was always thought of as a Republican operative.

There's enough Abramoff information out there by now that it's hard to see how anyone could peddle the Republican cover story any way but knowingly. Perhaps RonK has gone Green on us or always was, but this does not seem to be one of the cases when the Republicans and the Democrats are "equally bad".

Just a reminder -- "Both Parties are equally bad" is a Republican talking point by now. They aren't even bothering to pretend to be ethical, and cynicism works in the Republicans' favor, since the discouraged voters are, more likely than not, Democrats.

[dubblblind]

RonK, I'm not sure what, exactly, you were *trying* to establish with your comment. What you *have* established is that you are available as a GOP whore.

[liberal]

dubblblind wrote, "What you *have* established is that you are available as a GOP whore."

That's hardly fair, or even a reasonable inference from what RonK is claiming.

If you follow his argument, e.g. at
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/01/abramoff_direct.html
it's clear RonK is no right-wing shill. Rather, the most uncharitable interpretation of his line of argument is that he's being pedantic or overly literal. Another interpretation is that he's actually correct.

Same reasoning you use could lead to _The Daily Howler's_ Bob Somerby being labeled a right-wing shill, because he's been pretty obstinate with a different interpretation of the potential validity of Bush's "famous 16 words" re Iraq in that SOTU address. In that case, my own opinion is that Somerby is being pedantic and overly literal, and is incorrect in disputing what seems to be a reasonable inference about the context and meaning of Bush's words.

But again, that hardly makes him a right-wing shill.

[liberal]

Of course, this entire attack on RonK is one reason the Reality-Based Community has a hard time fighting Rethuglicans---we actually care about whether what we say is true and reasonably accurate.

If public dialogue is a prisoner's dilemma, we're cooperating, and the right has (since long ago) defected.

[FD]

Why would anybody give money to the Democrats right now? They can't get anything passed and they have no significant power. Abramoff seems to be a scuzzy person, but in this case he was simply being practical: Bribe the people who have the power. You get more bang for your buck.

[dubblblind]

"That's hardly fair, or even a reasonable inference from what RonK is claiming."

I openly questioned what it was RonK was claiming. He is working hard in citing a very weak detail to create a false impression which he buttresses by his open attempt to drag Brad down with his reference to Brad's "partisan brain". He asserts himself with heavy hand: "Abramoff directed a ton of money to Dem's." which you yourself pointed out. Such grandstanding on an overstated technicality (which John disassembled, January 29, 2006 at 03:52 AM) makes him a target, especially so because his inference is duplicitous. He is smart enough to know exactly what the issue is and by taking the trouble to take a critical stance on Brad's position he is himself staking out some territory. His effort to appear balanced while attempting to cast a shadow on the truth of the matter is a favorite trick of the right and merited my calling him on it. And frankly I think I chose my words carefully in stating that he was only "available", I could have been harsher.

[mike]

Deborah Howell is an embarassment to the legacy of Woodward and Bernstein.

[Charles]

Ron K. says, "Abramoff directed a ton of money to Dem's,"

Others have answered the particular issue, but I want to add a point on the politics and history of the matter.

The Democrats have actually been doing things on behalf of the tribes ever since John Collier and the Indian New Deal.

Half a loaf, yes, but there was no question that Democrats were the more sympathetic of the two parties. Good Republicans like the Koch family were showing their respect for Native Americans by stealing their oil revenues. The lynching of Native Americans by right-wing extremists is a story as ugly but less well-known than the lynching of African Americans.

Why any tribe would give as much as a dime to the GOP is a mystery.

I am prepared to bet real American money that Ron did not actually read the report or examine the xls files.

That doesn't make him a right-winger. But it does make him, at the most charitable, a naif.

[Charles]

To be perfectly fair to Ron K., I went and read his argument.

In the parlance of the day in journalism, I would describe it as "technically accurate."

It provides a couple of quotations, presumably in context and accurately sourced, by tribal members possibly in a position to know who used the word "directed" with reference to contributions.

To understand why this falls into the (possibly) true but trivial bin, one must understand the relationship between Jack Abramoff and the tribes. As his clients, they are his employer. Therefore, he doesn't "direct" anything. He advises them and they do what they think is in their best interests.

Next, in proving that there is anything even slightly illegal about this, one needs to establish that there is a quid pro quo. So far, no allegation has been made that the *tribes* were engaged in the bribery of members of Congress. They may have been supplying quid, but Abramoff had the quo, and as we know, it was often *against* the interests of his clients.

Finally, I don't want to be grudging by using the phrase "possibly true." But in any complex story, witnesses always tell different stories. Responsible people analyzing a story do not pick out a couple of unsubstantiated statements to make their case. If there's a crime, the preponderance of evidence tends to support it.

Not prooftexts.

Ron should linger over the numbers before casting aspersions on others.

[RonK, Seattle]

All I'm saying here is that I believe Brad -- if he came across these same data and arguments in a neutral relabeling -- would go into quant mode and see them quite a bit differently.

What I'm saying elsewhere, I haven't said yet -- except to the Prospect author, who is quite attentive.

Will post something later today at TNH.

Bruce - I'm disappointed in you.

[RonK, Seattle]

Charles -- I don't want your "real American money". Actually I examined the .xls's more closely that some people probably did when they posted them. Discussions in progress.

[Charles]

If you could have answered the points that were raised, you would have done, Ron. Find a better way to generate traffic.

[RonK, Seattle]

Charles -- I'll thank you to stay awy from my (our) very fine site ... but check back on that Prospect article from time to time. You may see some interesting **ahem** changes.

I don't know what "points" you are referring to. Something about casting aspersions? I haven't cast any.

John Emerson does not seem to have read anything I wrote, since he raises arguments against nothing I have ever asserted.

At lesat two discussants are under the impression that "Dems Don't Know Jack" showed a decrease in contributions to Democrats ... which it did not. Which shows how deceptive the article was as written (unintentionally, Greg assures me). Kevin Drum got it. I was amazed Brad didn't -- which is why I suspected he was using the wrong brain, and hoped to help him avoid needless error.

Brad, I have faith in you. Don't even exercise your quant brain. Just use your budget brain. What's the first thing you see?