Investigative Journalism Being Reborn Through the Web?

Combating the stigma that investigative journalism is dead or dying, the Huffington Post has just launched a new venture to bankroll a group of investigative journalists to take a look into stories about the nation's economy. "The popular Web site is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to launch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post, she said. The Huffington Post Web site is a collection of opinionated blog entries and breaking news. It has seven staff reporters. Huffington said she and the donors were concerned that layoffs at newspapers were hurting investigative journalism at a time the nation's institutions need to be watched closely. She hopes to draw from the ranks of laid-off journalists for the venture."

Comments

Hi.

[EkriirkE]

Welcome to the internet.

Re:Hi.

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to /b/

Re:Hi.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's some great investigative journalism done online at this site. Click and give it a read.

The Huffington Post?

[tjstork]

You can't take the Huff seriously. IT's a political shill site.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't take the Huff seriously. IT's a political shill site.

One can't take your post seriously. IT's a bullshitical shill post.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Red Flayer]

You can't take the Huff seriously. IT's a political shill site.

By that criteria, you can't take ANY site seriously.

The trick is to sample a large number of sites across the political spectrum, and try to distill the most truthy explanation of current events.

In other words:

You take the good
You take the bad
You have 'em both
And there ya have...
The facts (of life).

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

Arianna, is that you?

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't take the Huff seriously. IT's a political shill site.

One can't take your post seriously. IT's a bullshitical shill post.

One can't take your critique seriously. IT's a bullshit shill critique.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[im_thatoneguy]

And slashdot is a pro-tech, pro-netneutrality, pro-science blog. Fox news has investigative journalists. No reason the left shouldn't. No reason Slashdot shouldn't. No reason why anyone with an agenda shouldn't be generating content. And at least you understand the bias when you read huffington post. It doesn't attempt to hide behind any veil like a certain other news organization.

The problem isn't whether or not there is bias it's whether or not the reader knows the bias and filters appropriately.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[jgtg32a]

My grandfather died in a Concentration Camp you insensitive clod.

He fell out of the guard tower.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

I represent the estate of Alan Thicke. You owe $0.07 USD for use of his intellectual property in your post on Slashdot.Com. Kindly remit these funds at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,
Goldfarb, Goldblum, Goldfrappe, Goldstein, and Horrific Ethnic Stereotype, LLC, Inc.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Xaedalus]

Mod parent up. This is not a troll, this is a personal statement of difference.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[ArcherB]

And slashdot is a pro-tech, pro-netneutrality, pro-science blog. Fox news has investigative journalists. No reason the left shouldn't. No reason Slashdot shouldn't. No reason why anyone with an agenda shouldn't be generating content. And at least you understand the bias when you read huffington post. It doesn't attempt to hide behind any veil like a certain other news organization.

The problem isn't whether or not there is bias it's whether or not the reader knows the bias and filters appropriately.

Actually, the left does have their investigative journalists. They work for every other outlet other than Fox News (and CNN to a much lesser extent).

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a troll

Of course it's a troll.

this is a personal statement of difference.

That doesn't make it not a troll.

Perhaps if the poster had provided some facts as to why they believe what they do, then it might not be a troll. (Note the word "might".) But to state an inflammatory opinion with no reasoning behind it is definitely trolling.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[ClosedSource]

"Fox news has investigative journalists."

Well, they do if "investigative journalists" means "people who make stuff up".

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Chris Burke]

Horrific Ethnic Stereotype

Sounds Swedish; what's he doing at a law firm?

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Attila Dimedici]

"Fox news has investigative journalists."

Well, they do if "investigative journalists" means "people who make stuff up".

No, that's the New York Times you are thinking of (google Jayson Blair, Walter Duranty).

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

You owe $0.07 USD for use of his intellectual property in your post on Slashdot.Com.

So, does Red win on a technicality then?

Re:The Huffington Post?

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Dammit.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Thelasko]

Goldfarb, Goldblum, Goldfrappe, Goldstein, and Horrific Ethnic Stereotype, LLC, Inc.

You better pay these guys, I hear they win more cases than Dewey, Cheatem, & Howe!

Re:The Huffington Post?

[ssintercept]

that depends on YOUR biased opinion.

well, it's all relative anyway...

Re:The Huffington Post?

[afabbro]

And slashdot is a pro-tech, pro-netneutrality, pro-science blog. Fox news has investigative journalists. No reason the left shouldn't. No reason Slashdot shouldn't. No reason why anyone with an agenda shouldn't be generating content. And at least you understand the bias when you read huffington post. It doesn't attempt to hide behind any veil like a certain other news organization.

The problem isn't whether or not there is bias it's whether or not the reader knows the bias and filters appropriately.

Thank you. The idea of journalistic neutrality is bullshit. Go back 100 years, when each city had a dozen newspapers. All of them were wildly biased and when you picked up a newspaper, you knew what you were getting - heck, it often stated its bias or philosophy in the mast head! Go look in Europe in the pre-War years - many of the newspapers were organs of the political parties.

Pretending to be unbiased is nonsense - I'd rather have a couple papers that report ferociously with an in-the-open bias then the subtle, stupid bias (towards sensationalism) that we have in the modern, neutered American press.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Jane Q. Public]

Horrific Ethnic Stereotype is an African American, you insensitive clod!

Nowadays we have to call them just "people". Because the President is one. Sheesh. Get with the times.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Red Flayer]

Horrific Ethnic Stereotype

Sounds Swedish; what's he doing at a law firm?

Gersh Gurn-dee Seerven zee subpoenorsky bork bork bork?

Re:The Huffington Post?

[spartacus_prime]

My grandfather died in a concentration camp when someone fell off of a guard tower and crushed him.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[interkin3tic]

You can't take the Huff seriously. IT's a political shill site.

As opposed to YOUR favorite political news blog, which is (unbiased/balanced/hard-hitting/other meaningless buzzword) news reporting.~

Re:The Huffington Post?

[SnapShot]

I'm not defending Blair or Duranty, it was a world-wide scandal at the NYT because we hold them to such a high standard. A top-flight reputation that they have earned, for the most part.

Nobody bothers to hold Fox, Drudge, and the DailyKos to the same standards...

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Omestes]

a one it's can't take your shill critique bullshit critique seriously..

Re:The Huffington Post?

[sycodon]

What standard could be lower than to not make stuff up out of whole cloth?

Re:The Huffington Post?

[tjstork]

As opposed to YOUR favorite political news blog,

Nope, actually, when I go to a political blog, I expect it to be shilling for whatever it is they shill for. But they are still shills....

Re:The Huffington Post?

[ClosedSource]

No, I meant "people who make stuff up on a daily basis and don't get fired for it".

Re:The Huffington Post?

[jgtg32a]

Oh that was your grandfather?

Thanks to him, mine was able to live long enough to say his farewells to his wife and children.
They were very grateful for the chance.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[SnapShot]

I think you are confusing individuals with news organizations. For example, if you were to say that Jayson Blair was no better than Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, or Glen Beck, I would have to agree with you.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[sycodon]

Hmm.

How can you separate the reporters from the paper?

The reporters are the paper. The editors are the paper, the fact checkers are the paper, the managers that supervise it all and have responsibility for it all are the paper.

When crap is published, they are all responsible, from the top down.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[SnapShot]

So your point is that the New York Times is equal in respectability to Fox News since Jayson Blair (who was fired) made up stories and Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly (who are all active, highly paid stars at Fox News) also make up stories?

Re:The Huffington Post?

[sycodon]

Are you saying that one of these folks created a series of segments, aired them, was awarded a Pulitzer prize (television equivalent), then had all revealed as made up and was then fired?

If so, then I'd say yes, they had dropped to the level of the New York Times.

But arguing about Fox vs. NYTs is just a distraction. My statement about the entire organization being responsible for the crap they put out is true. You can argue about who puts out the most crap, but responsible for it all they are.

My original state is still true that

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

The President is only half a people.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[im_thatoneguy]

I would say the Mainstream media's complete failure to adequately report the lead up to the Iraq war wins them 8 years of being free from liberal bias accusations.

The media reports what I would describe as sensational reports more than liberal reports.

If you take a look at the Washington Post you'll see a liberally biased news source. If you look at Newsweek I would see a every so slightly liberal agenda. If you look at US News and World Report I think you would find an equally conservative slight agenda. I would put NBC, CBS and ABC somewhere in between. Now when it comes to MSNBC they're probably left of Newsweek especially with madow. But CNBC clearly is probably more right than MSNBC is left so I would say the NBC cable brand is as a whole neutral. CNN isn't biased so much as weird I wouldn't define them as any political leaning, just loud.

Of course the Radio is Far Right. So I guess I fail to see this grand liberal slant. If by liberal you actually mean "Centrist and left of right". Then most certainly. But the conservative media as a whole is so much further right than liberal media has traditionally been left I fail to see a hearty comparison.

Dan Savage, Limbaugh, only exteremly recently has Daily Show and Air American risen as serious contenders as sources of liberally slanted ideology. The huffington post being extremely recent. And for every washington post there's a new york post.

If you take the entire US media market and then look at it in perspective globally the whole thing including Washington Post is actually biased to the right. So perhaps they appear to be biased since they don't clearly see that Stem Cell research should make everysingle person queezy (It doesn't. They're killing toe nails as far as I'm concerned). But that doesn't make them automatically liberal. That just makes them to the left of YOU.

But I understand. You're trying to play the refs to slant in your direction. Which is cool. But don't expect me to just let you have it.

If you think NBC nightly news is liberal then you clearly haven't been properly exposed to liberal media.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

You really don't know anything, do you?

As an atheist/socialist with plenty of plots I can say with some authority concerning Obama's plans:

Giving billions to corporations? That ain't socialism!

Re:The Huffington Post?

[UnixUnix]

Huh... go look in Europe now. Many of the newspapers are organs of political parties.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[ArcherB]

If you look at Newsweek I would see a every so slightly liberal agenda.

You're joking, right? Here are two photos from the same issue, one of Obama, one of McCain. You think they treat both equally? (Ignore the source, just look at the pictures).
Then, there's this:
http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/liberal-bias-at-newsweek/

Oh, hell, I'm tired of finding articles. Just google "Newsweek bias" (no quotes) and read through the over 850,000 hits. Funny, none of them mention Newsweek as bring biased to the right.

I'll agree that Fox is right of center, but they are alone. That's why they are number one. Conservatives make up about 40% of the population. Liberals make up about 40%. The problem for most of the media is that Fox automatically gets most of the conservative 40%. The rest of the media has to split up the liberal audience.

As for MSNBC... I don't know if they are left of Newsweek, but they are definitely left. Even their not-supposed-to-be-biased journalists got "thrills up their legs" when Obama spoke. Then there is Olbermann. What a joke! The guy can't be parodied because he is a parody of himself. Oh, and didn't NBC put him back on football on Sunday nights to try to promote him? Yeah, no bias in that network.

And yeah, radio is far right, but it sells. Air America tried it and failed. They had to steal money from charities to stay afloat. Rush, Hannity, Beck and the rest don't have that problem. Liberals just don't listen to talk radio.
As for TV, it appears that liberals don't sell too well there either, but these guys don't really care much. Their ideology trumps their pocket books, for now.

Oh, and the Big Three, NBC, ABC and CBS, may not be terribly liberal on their local news, but their national news shows are extremely liberal. Are you telling me that Katie Couric is a conservative? The closest thing I've seen to a conservative on any of the network news shows has been John Stossel, and he's not really conservative. He's a libertarian who just calls it like he sees it. He'll gladly hammer either side when they are acting stupid. The guy's awesome!

If you take the entire US media market and then look at it in perspective globally the whole thing including Washington Post is actually biased to the right

I love the BBC. Not their specials, but their interviews. They'd hammer Mother Theresa if they got an interview. They ask the hard questions of anyone. They simply don't care who they offend.

Finally, as for stem cell research... read my sig. It is a close quote from the guy that practically invented stem cell research. (the whole quote wouldn't fit within the 2 to 3 words you are allowed as a sig). The full quote is "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough". But you are correct on the left of me part, but that's human nature.

The bottom line is that we all see center of the road to be right in front of us. So anyone to the right of us is right of center. Conservatives see Fox News as truly "Fair and Balanced" and liberals see them as far right wing. It's compounded when Fox is compared to the rest of media. I try to base my comparison by comparing them to the competition. I also look at things like, "how many liberals do I see on Fox News?" "How many conservatives do I see on MSNBC?" Answers: Plenty and Zero, respectively. So, by that alone, Fox is much more balanced than MSNBC. (Many liberals actually work at Fox as returning talking heads and true, full time employees)

Re:The Huffington Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish all that was true. But its not. We, the rest of the world have the same problem in our newspapers too. Neutered and sensationalized to the point of meaninglessness....

Re:The Huffington Post?

[ClosedSource]

Of course the NY Times doesn't award the Pulitzer so it has nothing to do with the issue. Blair duped the NY Times, is it your argument that Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly duped (and continue to dupe) Fox News?

Re:The Huffington Post?

[sycodon]

The entire NYT management structure is responsible for Blair's action. They hired him, they paid him, they functioned as his editor and were supposed to be fact checking him. They published his work and they benefited from the prestige of his winning the prize.

Why is it so hard to accept that the employer is responsible for the conduct of their employees?

As for Fox, et. al, what they do is no different than what the NYT times does every day, hyperbole, sensationalism, etc. The only difference is that you know Hannity, O'Rielly, and Beck are expressing their opinions and advocating a position. The NYTs pretends it's the "news" while doing the same thing.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[ClosedSource]

If you don't think there's any difference between firing a reporter for making stuff up vs. encouraging a reporter to make stuff up, then there's no point debating with you.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[sycodon]

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Re:The Huffington Post?

[orcrist]

The bottom line is that we all see center of the road to be right in front of us. So anyone to the right of us is right of center.

Nonsense. I see the middle of the road as a good bit to the right of my personal beliefs in most subjects, but since I actually have a broad exposure to many different ideas I can still see where it is. I can also see the American middle of the road as being a fair amount to the right of the European middle of the road on average, which is still to the right of my personal beliefs.

Just because personal views will bias what you see as "right" in the sense of "good" or "correct" does not mean you are unable to judge what is "right" in the sense of where something is on the political spectrum compared to the average. The former is a matter of bias, the latter is merely a factor of your exposure to different views combined with how intellectually honest you are.

Conservatives see Fox News as truly "Fair and Balanced" and liberals see them as far right wing. It's compounded when Fox is compared to the rest of media. I try to base my comparison by comparing them to the competition. I also look at things like, "how many liberals do I see on Fox News?" "How many conservatives do I see on MSNBC?" Answers: Plenty and Zero, respectively. So, by that alone, Fox is much more balanced than MSNBC. (Many liberals actually work at Fox as returning talking heads and true, full time employees)

Only idiots even think "Fair and Balanced" is worth anything in a news organization. If one person says "2+2=5" and the other says "2+2=4" then being "Fair and Balanced" in representing their views is being dishonest by implying the two views are equivalent. The "liberals" who work at Fox news are generally incompetents or sidekicks who serve as straw men for the rest of the Fox staff to gleefully knock down or present for the derision of their audience. You'll never see anyone who has the respect of liberals working there.

Investigative?

[geek]

HuffPo is an extreme left-wing wannabe news outlet. By investigate, what they really mean is "smear machine."

They did a bang-up job investigating when they posted the John Gibson remarks which were obviously fake and it only took them the better part of a week to retract, grudgingly so.

If HuffPo is what passes for investigative reporting then it's truly the end of journalism as we know it.

Re:Investigative?

[timeOday]

Seems to me this new investment directly addresses your problem with them. Hiring investigative reporters is the best way to become more fact-based.

Re:Investigative?

[Touvan]

Is it left-biased, or reality biased? It seems a lot of people that smear the current American left, have been living in the right wing bubble for the last few decades, and can't fess up to the reality bias that reality has.

Only in American can I consider myself, a centrist progressive. The state of politics here is severely depressing, so anything that pulls us out of the childish, conservative, backward looking rut we've been in, is a plus in my book.

Re:Investigative?

[nine-times]

HuffPo is an extreme left-wing wannabe news outlet. By investigate, what they really mean is "smear machine."

I think that whether you like the Huffington Post is beside the point: they're going to pay investigative reporters. For a little while now, lots of people have been concerned about the fact that newspapers are dying off and have asked the question, "How will get get our news now?"

The reason lots of people have said that sites like the Huffington Post can't be considered "replacements" for newspapers is that they don't have investigative reporters that actually find and generate news stories. What they do is more like aggregate news and op-ed pieces, so if newspapers die, they'll have nothing to aggregate. And that's a valid complaint.

However, if these sites start getting big enough to employ their own reporters and they start actually doing their own investigations, then the death of newspapers becomes less of a scary prospect. Right now, the Huffington Post is just one example of people trying to find a business model that allows for real journalism without the need of an actual printed newspaper. If some successful business models are found, then we might just be ok.

But you're pointing out that the Huffington Post has a slant, and that's a fair thing to note. However, print newspapers also each have their own slant, so it's not really anything new.

Re:Investigative?

[agrestic]

"...the end of journalism as we know it..." HuffPo / investigative journalism? God forgive us. You'd get better quality from an egalitarian rag like the atlanta journal constitution.

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

I'm sure many right wing type people will dismiss your remark out of hand without considering it for a moment, but consider:

1) Which nation did this huge economic disaster start? America, a country that had been under complete Republican rule for 6 of the last 8 years and had undergone many deregulations over the past three decades which directly contributed to this crisis.

2) Which European countries have most felt the economic fallout of this? Iceland and Ireland, the two most free-wheeling democracies in Europe. For years Republicans would use Ireland as an example for us to follow since they had the lowest commercial tax rates in the world. Since Ireland's economy has been in free-fall I haven't heard Republicans mention them at all (I wonder why?).

3) Which European countries have been effected least? Spain and France due to their more conservative banking regulations and greater safety net for people living there.

So take a serious look at the mirror and consider the possibility that Touvan is actually correct--reality really does, in fact, have a left-wing bias (at least in terms of economic policy). The first top economic adviser to Bush 43 resigned shortly into Bush's first term because he was simply ignored and believed their economic policy would be disastrous (paying for wars with tax cuts was an extremely bad idea). It's hard to argue that he was wrong now (it really was even then...).

Re:Investigative?

[hansamurai]

I never understood the "reality has a liberal bias" line. What is that supposed to mean? That reality thinks that universal health care is good? That taxing is generally the best solution instead of cutting programs? Can someone explain this to me?

I personally think that reality has a half libertarian bias. People want to be free and left to their own, except when they have the opportunity to mess with someone else's life.

Re:Investigative?

[maxume]

It has an unashamed left wing perspective. Perhaps that isn't the same thing as a bias, but if you don't think it has a left wing perspective, well, forest, trees, etc..

Re:Investigative?

[jgtg32a]

Exactly
Even if it did have a liberal bias, why would you ever mention it.

Reality is defined by the people who make it up, and by definition the average person has an IQ of 100.
Have you ever talked to a person with an IQ of 100?

Re:Investigative?

[grassy_knoll]

When you say "reality biased" do you mean "based on measurable events, peer-reviewed science, or statistics for which source data is freely available" or do you mean "agrees with my preconceived notions"?

Because so often when I hear people speak of "reality biased" they seem to mean the latter rather than the former.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

This may come as a surprise to you, but there actually isn't any such thing as an "objective journalist". The Huffington Post has an obvious agenda, but so do all journalists... including the investigative kind. With the whole concept of the advertiser-supported news organization on a collision course with oblivion, one of the few chances for investigative journalism of any kind to survive is through patron-supported efforts like this. (Pro Publica is another.) As time goes on, you'll (hopefully) find other people with money sponsoring their own news organizations, and with enough of them (kind of like it works now with both conservative and liberal old-media organizations) we'll get enough sides of the story to get an idea of the truth. The ones that do a bad job of it should receive enough bad publicity from that to lose credibility.

Re:Investigative?

[ArcherB]

Is it left-biased, or reality biased? It seems a lot of people that smear the current American left, have been living in the right wing bubble for the last few decades, and can't fess up to the reality bias that reality has.

Only in American can I consider myself, a centrist progressive. The state of politics here is severely depressing, so anything that pulls us out of the childish, conservative, backward looking rut we've been in, is a plus in my book.

Reality is how you spin it. Sure, MSNBC can interview two documentary producers to appear non-biased, but treat them both very differently. HERE is an example.

Yes, NewsBusters is a "right-wing" site, however, they do post the entire transcript so you can make up your own mind.

Additionally, Hall offered almost no tough questions, instead tossing softballs such as "What is your observation, having been [to Afghanistan] recently, regarding the Obama administration's plans?" Uninterrupted, Greenwald was allowed to later assert, "Well, again, remember that many people there believe that troops are not the answer. Troops contribute to the problem." He also instructed that the U.S. should send 17,000 teachers instead of soldiers. At the close of the interview, he complained, "But, I think we all get trapped in, as one of my friends in Afghanistan said, 'Shoot first. Think later.'"

In contrast, on January 9, when MSNBC host David Shuster interviewed John Ziegler about his movie on the media's treatment of Sarah Palin, the anchor got into a heated argument with the filmmaker, repeatedly challenging the "conservative documentary's" thesis and deriding, "John, you and Sarah Palin can't take any responsibility for the fact that she wasn't prepared to run for vice president."

Is it really a journalists job to state as fact that Sarah Palin wasn't prepared to run for VP? Regardless of your "opinion" of Sarah Palin, it's just that, an OPINION, and JOURNALISTS shouldn't be spouting theirs. It's not their job.

Re:Investigative?

[Abcd1234]

That reality thinks that universal health care is good?

Umm. That's correct. Or is the rest of the world not proof enough for you? You know, the world in which everyone else spends less, per capita, on healthcare than the US while covering more people?

That taxing is generally the best solution instead of cutting programs?

When did that become an either-or decision?

Can someone explain this to me?

Okay, let's see, examples:

1) Evolution is real and happens, creationism is bollocks.
2) Sex education is good, abstinence-only education does not, and has never, worked.
3) Government involvement in industry (regulations for safety, to avoid systemic risk, etc) is, in fact, sometimes a good thing.
4) Government *can* provide useful services that private industry cannot, or cannot offer cheaply and effectively (healthcare and related social safety nets, various infrastructure development, etc).

That's just a few off the top of my head. I'm sure you can come up with others if you just think about it for a few moments.

Re:Investigative?

[conspirator57]

So why did Obama keep on so many of Bush's economic team? Geithner for example got a promotion from Goldman-Sachs to Bush's TARP administrator to Obama's Treasury Secretary. I'd suggest that there are not quite as many differences between the two parties as many on both sides like to pretend there are. Both are in favor of crony capitalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism Your (and since you're just repeating the party line here your party's) attempts to place blame on a fantasy deregulation straw man are... unconvincing to those who do more than accept your play on class warfare chords. Both sides are to blame for allowing so many unproductive ventures to survive for so long on the backs of the productive members of society. One of my favorite pieces on the framework for the current crisis (over last 30 years) is this one: http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom

Re:Investigative?

[CannonballHead]

I don't see why this is flamebait. At all.

Look at pretty much any "bias" ranking thing, even skewz.com.

Or, just visit the site for yourself. Let's see. Headlines show bias pretty quickly...

"Obamas Are Personally Paying For White House Renovations"
Just what I needed to read about. One of those very important things. Up there with the White House garden.

"WATCH Weekend Late Night Round-Up: Sarah Palin, Obama's Rabid Questioner, And Octomom"
They are STILL talking about Palin. And apparently, Obama's questioner has problems.

"WATCH: Steele Discusses Hard-Partying Past, Getting Kicked Out Of College"
Definitely one of those big news items. I wonder what would happen if Fox News started reporting on Biden's college years? Incidentally, I'm conservative and I don't even really like Steele... but something is fishy. I don't see any democratic leader stories on here...

"Lawyer Peddling Alleged Biden Daughter Cocaine Tape Withdraws"
It's a good thing he withdrew, I suppose? If he has a real tape, what's the problem with him "selling" it and if it's not a real tape, then it's obviously not going to be Ashley Biden, so what's the big deal? Seems it'd be better to just get the tape and see if it's real or not? Oh, but family members should be off limits. Like Huffington Post left Palin's daughter alone. (they even covered the daughter/boyfriend breakup.)

"Obama Calls For Global Unity In FT Interview"
Well good for him. He does a lot of calling. It'd be nice to see HP criticize Obama at least ONCE somewhere. I don't think anyone but the most deluded think that Obama has actually made no mistakes and has acted perfectly since he's been in office, do they?

They even call out a Republican and only a republican on some stupid remark during a Senate debate. Strangely enough, a search for a flat out mistake (or something) by Pelosi, the house speaker, of saying "500 million" American jobs were lost every month yielded no results on HP except in user comments.

Yeah, sounds "reality biased" to me...

Re:Investigative?

[ArcherB]

Seems to me this new investment directly addresses your problem with them. Hiring investigative reporters is the best way to become more fact-based.

That depends on what they choose to investigate and the angle they take. They might take the angle that the Bush twins are party-girl lushes and with a straight face, claim that Biden's daughter "has an addiction problem" with cocaine.

OK, here's a better example: Did the recession start under Bush's watch or did it start when Democrats took over congress? Both are true. How do you report it? Looking at Huff-Po's record of distortion and hatred, I don't have high hopes for honest, non-biased reporting.

Re:Investigative?

[Idiomatick]

Yeah history shows us that reality has a liberal bias sorry. Yes taxing and healthcare are good things. Sorry.

Re:Investigative?

[maxume]

Geithner never worked for Goldman Sachs. If you are insinuating that Goldman Sachs runs the New York Fed, well, you should just come right out and say it, as next to no one here is going to get the reference.

Re:Investigative?

[cthulu_mt]

3) Which European countries have been effected least? Spain and France due to their more conservative banking regulations and greater safety net for people living there.

Have you seen the news out of France lately? The country is being wracked by strikes and rioting.

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

Where did I say anything about Democrats? I was using Europe purposefully since countries like France and Spain are unquestionably farther to the left than we are, especially in economic and social policy. My argument would be that the Democrat party as a whole certainly is not as far to the left as they should be.

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

France has strikes all the time, year after year as far back as I can remember. Strikes are somewhat part of the culture there.

You can lose your job there and not face losing your medical insurance or going hungry. There's a huge difference in terms of the human cost of this financial disaster between France and the US in addition to the differences in growth/shrinkage of GDP.

Re:Investigative?

[sammy baby]

I never understood the "reality has a liberal bias" line. What is that supposed to mean? That reality thinks that universal health care is good? That taxing is generally the best solution instead of cutting programs? Can someone explain this to me?

I don't have a source, but I always assumed the line "reality has a liberal bias" was a satirical reference to the phrase "reality-based community", which entered the popular lexicon via a Ron Suskind article entitled Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush. The relevant grafs:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Whenever someone tells me that they think the phrase "reality-based community" is an example of the smug and snide attitude of liberals, I direct them to that article.

Re:Investigative?

[whoever57]

Is it really a journalists job to state as fact that Sarah Palin wasn't prepared to run for VP? Regardless of your "opinion" of Sarah Palin, it's just that, an OPINION, and JOURNALISTS shouldn't be spouting theirs. It's not their job.

I think you are confusing news reporting with interviewing. It is the responsibility of interviewers to probe the interviewees. If that requires making statements to prompt a response from the interviewee, then so be it. Let me suggest that you watch the ORIGINAL Frost/Nixon interviews and imagine what they would be like if Frost had not challenged Nixon by offering his (Frost's) own interpretation of events.

The role of journalists is to report and interpret events. Interpretation can't happen in a vacuum and will naturally be affected by journalists' pre-conceived notions. I think it is only in the USA where there is the fiction of the unbiased newsroom. Other countries expect some level of bias and think it more important to understand the reporters' biases.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering it's Congress that ultimately holds the purse strings, I think the answer to the question of who started the recession is pretty cut and dry.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're argument is that there was no government to prevent people from acting stupidly, but the government (Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are part of the government, right?) did sign off on some bad ideas (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) which directly led to our current situation. And, the situation would have been avoidable despite the government if not for the greed of the common man.

Blame Bush. You people love to do that. Clearly, he was the only person with any power to prevent this entire crisis. Fits very nicely into your world view.

The idea that more government will solve anything is ridiculous. You need to re-read 1984 and Brave New World, but this time don't look to the right-wing to find Big Brother. Look to the left.

Re:Investigative?

[shadow349]

Which nation did this huge economic disaster start? America, a country that had been under complete Republican rule for 6 of the last 8 years and had undergone many deregulations over the past three decades which directly contributed to this crisis.

First, if you think that the economic "disaster" can be attributed to a specific political party, then you a playing the part written for you quite nicely.

Second, true free markets are not guaranteed to be always upward moving; failures and downturns are part of the natural process. And there is really nothing wrong with that. When a government gets in the way of the natural progression, it is no longer a free market.

Third, the die was cast for the downturn to become a disaster when big business realized that the Federal government considered them "too big to fail". At that point, they had no reason NOT to take huge risks because they knew that they could socialize the risks and privatize the rewards.

Currently, the disaster is well on its way to a depression, mainly because this country did not use the "good" times to prepare adequately for the bad (thanks President Bush) and are taking steps that, in the long run, will have a negative impact on our economy (thanks President Obama).

The first top economic adviser to Bush 43 resigned shortly into Bush's first term because he was simply ignored and believed their economic policy would be disastrous (paying for wars with tax cuts was an extremely bad idea). It's hard to argue that he was wrong now (it really was even then...).

I call your O'Neill and Lindsey and raise you a Richardson and Gregg. At least O'Neill and Lindsey almost made it to President Bush's third year in office (roughly half-way through his first term, which is a little more than "shortly"); President Obama's choices barely made it three weeks, if that.

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

I'm also not seeing how I'm using a straw man argument (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)

I made a statement of fact in point one, followed by two that are technically opinions but if not correct nearly so (both economic and social pressure can be more qualitative than quantitative when using 'affected most/least').

As for Bush's economic adviser I based my remarks on his own remarks on the recent Frontline episode which interviewed him.

How the heck is that a straw man argument?

You're also mistaken about Geithner--as a sibling poster mentioned he never worked for Goldman-Sachs (his previous job was being the president of the Federal Reserve bank at New York City). Geithner's pick was a very non-controversial pick (and a fairly obvious one) due to his intimate knowledge of the financial crisis and the respect he has from many financial experts.

There is no question that with more regulation of companies like AIG (who were essentially acting like banks without the regulations banks must follow) they could not have overextended themselves to the degree that they did. There is also no question that there are more financial regulations in France et. al than here.

Re:Investigative?

[ZFox]

You know, the world in which everyone else spends less, per capita, on healthcare than the US while covering more people?

You know, we could give every person in the US a $1 medical voucher and easily fix this problem.

Seriously, though, this statistic of yours is meaningless.

Re:Investigative?

[ArcherB]

I'm sure many right wing type people will dismiss your remark out of hand without considering it for a moment, but consider:

1) Which nation did this huge economic disaster start? America, a country that had been under complete Republican rule for 6 of the last 8 years and had undergone many deregulations over the past three decades which directly contributed to this crisis.

BZZZTTTT! Wrong! First, Republicans never really controlled anything. Remember "Jumping" Jim Jeffords? He was the Republican who turned Independent to give control of the Senate back to the Democrats after the first Congressional election of Bush's term. Even the next election when Republicans took control of both houses, they only did by a couple of votes and couldn't pass anything without Democrats filibustering it. The next election, Democrats took over congress right about the time the economy tanked. You could just as easily blame congress as the President. Seeing that Congress writes and passes the budget, I think they should take more of the blame, if blaming someone is your goal.

As for deregulation, where did the problems start? Banking? Sure. Who was in charge of the Banking committee when the banks started failing. I'll give you a hint. It rhymes Dodd and Frank (neither of which are Republican).

2) Which European countries have most felt the economic fallout of this? Iceland and Ireland, the two most free-wheeling democracies in Europe. For years Republicans would use Ireland as an example for us to follow since they had the lowest commercial tax rates in the world. Since Ireland's economy has been in free-fall I haven't heard Republicans mention them at all (I wonder why?).

Does Bush run the Irish economy as well? I had no idea. It would appear to me that the problem is that economies grow and shrink naturally. We are in a shrinking trend right now.

3) Which European countries have been effected least? Spain and France due to their more conservative banking regulations and greater safety net for people living there.

Spain and France were in the tank long before this recession hit. You could say that they led the pack.

The first top economic adviser to Bush 43 resigned shortly into Bush's first term because he was simply ignored and believed their economic policy would be disastrous (paying for wars with tax cuts was an extremely bad idea). It's hard to argue that he was wrong now (it really was even then...).

First, the economy did very VERY well during Bush's first six years (minus the 9-11 recession and the recession he inherited). As for paying with wars with tax cuts, national receipts went UP after tax cuts. If the economy sucked, how do the feds raise receipts after a tax cut? Hmmm... Seems as if the facts disagree with you. Maybe you should get away from the mirror and go back and retake Intro to Economics. You might also want to brush up on recent history as well.

Here is a chart that proves what I just said. You will clearly not a drop in tax receipts ending around 2002 and then a sharp increase of government revenue AFTER BUSH'S TAX CUTS!

So please, tell me genius, if the economy sucked during Bush's eight years, as you stated, how was there an increase in tax revenue when taxes were cut? I LAFF at your ignorance of how economies work.

Re:Investigative?

[shadow349]

3) Which European countries have been effected least? Spain and France due to their more conservative banking regulations and greater safety net for people living there.

That's not really a fair comparison. Whereas the US chooses to prop up failing automakers will ill-advised "loans", France just increases demand.

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

Then why is France and others in far better financial shape than we are (heck, even China is in a better position)? Are they running huge deficits? Nope. Do they have massive federal debts? Nope. Do they have problems with getting everyone insurance? Nope. People living there also have about twice as many vacation days as we do in America.

Sure, they pay more in taxes but they also get a lot in return (like superior infrastructure, transit, health care, etc) and a more stable economy to boot. It's nothing like 1984 and A Brave New World (try going over there to see for yourself).

Re:Investigative?

[ArcherB]

Umm. That's correct. Or is the rest of the world not proof enough for you? You know, the world in which everyone else spends less, per capita, on healthcare than the US while covering more people?

Are you saying that the 30-50% tax rates that most European countries pay are somehow less than the $400/month I pay to insure a family of three?

Re:Investigative?

[megamerican]

Yeah history shows us that reality has a liberal bias sorry.

Reality has a conservative bias; conservation of energy, linear momentum, electric charge, etc...

Yes taxing and healthcare are good things.

Not all taxes and health care systems are created equal. Some are better than others. Many of the taxes we now have are outright thievery, as is how our healthcare system (the one Nixon set up) is paid for. The changes proposed by Bush (New Freedom Initiative) and Obama are both going to make things worse, both in costs and in privacy.

People had good healthcare well before our government decided to try and "fix" it. Before our current system many doctors would give patients reduced or free health care depending on their financial situation. Now, no matter what you are charged the maximum amount. Now hospitals and doctors can't do very much without approval of the state, which puts corruption directly into the system (google "certificate of need" and find out what post Blagojevich wanted in Obama's administration).

Re:Investigative?

[conspirator57]

my bad, but he was a quant for an investment bank. meaning a "scientist" (phd who uses their quantitative analysis skills outside their field).

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

I didn't say it could be pinned on a particular political party, but to an idea (basically, deregulation is good and the government is the enemy).

We put in place many regulations after the Great Depression that worked great until we weakened them over the past three decades and now we are going to strengthen them again which will surely prevent another crisis like we're facing now (until they are weakened sometime in the future by people of similar mind as the ones that weakened them recently).

These companies did not know what the heck they were doing. Giants like AIG relied on their AAA credit for their business model, not the belief that the government would rescue them if they failed (they never believed they would lose their AAA rating much less fail). The stockholders of AIG lost their shirts on this, it's nuts to think they would do this on purpose. Rather, they made some fundamentally bad assumptions (like they would always have AAA credit and that the housing market would continue to grow) and believed that even with bad assumptions they were protected by these complicated financial instruments they had devised.

You're also comparing apples to oranges. Richardson never was nominated and thus never resigned (he simply pulled his name from consideration). This has happened under previous administrations as well. You're also completely missing the differences in motivation, in the case of Bush's economic adviser he resigned since nobody was listening to him while in the case of Richardson they were trying to avoid public controversy.

Re:Investigative?

[pixelpusher220]

Libertarian: 'be free and left to their own'

Doesn't work so well when your neighbor wants to be left alone working on his 'home grown' nuclear reactor.

Gov't exists because by definition, some of my interests will interfere with some of your interests. We like having cops on the streets (and on Wall Street!) and that costs money, hence we need to pay taxes. There may be valid arguments for and against individual tax or spending issue, but in the end you need to tax in order to be able to provide for basic societal needs.

As for my, admittedly liberal, bias. I take the last 10 years as a perfect example:

Lets spend 10 trillion dollars (Bush's taxcut) and see what we have to show for it? not much.

Lets spend 10 trillion improving infrastructure and healthcare. I'll bet we have more to show for it...and we end up MAKING money in the process.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would simply refer you to this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/ and this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tentrillion/

If after seeing those two shows you still feel exactly as you do now I don't think anybody can change your mind in regards to this.

Re:Investigative?

[whoever57]

Are you saying that the 30-50% tax rates that most European countries pay are somehow less than the $400/month I pay to insure a family of three?

But how typical is that $400/month? Try insuring a family after some of the family members have had significant health issues and includes family members over 45. You will find that $1000/month is not enough for coverage and probably $1500-$2000/month is a more realistic figure. Many older people who buy their own insurance have little option except to buy "catastrophic" coverage -- which won't pay out a dime in most years.

Also, is $400/month all that you pay, or do you also have deductables, co-pays, etc.?

Re:Investigative?

[megamerican]

Reality does not have a liberal bias. If anything it is conservative; conservation of energy, linear and angular momentum, etc...

If you look at the true political spectrum, the far left is total government control and the far right is anarchy (no government). Looking at it that way both the Democrat and Republican corporations are well to the left. It doesn't matter which party gets into power because both do nothing but increase government control over everyone's life.

Don't be fooled by the image of conservative you see on TV played by people like Hannity, Limbaugh or Kudlow. They are there to fool conservatives into thinking that bombing brown people and printing money out of thin air are conservative values.

People on the left get fooled by similar things.

The left-right paradigm you see on TV is there to keep you in a box and not ask real questions, like where did the $9.7 trillion go? Instead we are supposed to be outraged by $165 million.

Re:Investigative?

[pixelpusher220]

While I agree with your arguments, I find one possible flaw:

the world in which everyone else spends less, per capita, on healthcare than the US while covering more people

We spend a good bit more because as a culture we are pretty unhealthy. Compared to Japan for instance, we pale in comparison healthwise.

Dumping the 'me first' culture into a gov't healthcare plan *may* be problematic for a few years/decades until people start to retrain themselves to live healthier.

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

I'm not sure how you're getting that either. Everyone that knows him say he's extremely intelligent. However, his undergraduate degree was in government and Asian studies and his masters was in international economics and East Asian studies (he studied Chinese and Japanese).

The way I've seen 'quant' used was in regards to physicists that changed professions to financial analysts and investors.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the recession start when we cut taxes with a surplus of money or years later after two wars ate into the available funds leftover from "giving the extra money back?"

Nah, had to be 10 months after the Democrats took control...that makes MUCH more sense.

(Here's the answer to your question: Anyone who doesn't blame the Republicans and Bush's leash on Congress from 2001-2007 is full of shit. The Democrats get some blame, but I reduce it some by considering the Rove-ian campaign that was led from 9/11 and on to make every Democrat look unpatriotic for questioning Bush's policies. Between that and Bush's grip on Congress, they had little effect on changing the money spending, tax cutting policies. After 2007, the Dems have no excuse and get the full blame for helping run it all into the ground by failing to change what the previous 6 years massively fucked.)

Re:Investigative?

[maxume]

Wikipedia says that he worked at an investment consulting firm in 1985, but it is likely that he was an analyst, not a quant (based on the timing and the description of the firm...):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_F._Geithner#Early_career

Starting in 1988, he held various public positions. The previous Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, was at one time CEO of Goldman Sachs, perhaps you have your wires crossed?

Re:Investigative?

[orthancstone]

Even the next election when Republicans took control of both houses, they only did by a couple of votes and couldn't pass anything without Democrats filibustering it.

Between this and the Heritage foundation links, it is easy to see why your comments are so laughable.

I'll counter the quoted claim easily: Why did it take 6+ years for Bush to veto something? Answer: Because nothing got on his desk that he didn't ask for. So much for Democrats having such power over the Republican majority. Your claim is hilarious given the fact that the Republicans never let the Democrats sniff a hint of power during those 6 years. It's no wonder we're being screwed right now by a Democrat party out for revenge. Same shit, different day.

Re:Investigative?

[conspirator57]

Straw men frequently conveniently omit facts that contradict their conclusions. You do this in point 1. Our system has a great deal of regulation. Unfortunately, what we have is a maze of regulations haphazardly constructed and reconstructed over the years. Moreover, some of that body of regulation has (and still does) discourage sustainable economics in our banking industry (CRA + HUD objectives). Clearly CRA isn't the only villain, but it is a regulatory one. Another is the lax enforcement of regulations on favored (politically connected) banks.

If a bunch of /.ers were to go start a bank/whatever we'd get slammed by the costs of that regulation. What is needed is a thorough reconstruction of regulation, but really what is needed is a page limit on the federal code of laws. Just as our putative bank would be forced out of business under the weight of compliance (see barriers to market entry under crony capitalism tactics), so too does the sheer volume of laws present the government with the perfect tool to visit injustice on us at its caprice.

However, I wholly agree with you regarding our expanding defecits and debt, and it sickens me to see Republicans who went gladly along Bush's primrose path decrying Obama's spendthrift ways. They're the same ways, just with slightly different "objectives" (cronies).

However, there is another correct way that is not leftist. As ineffective a speaker as he is, Ron Paul has been consistently correct on economic issues, pointing out the risk (of which we have subsequently realized the downside) of providing systemic federal backing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Re:Investigative?

[ContractualObligatio]

I don't see why this is flamebait. At all.

Not at all? Here's one clue: "extreme left-wing" is an emotive term, lacking in objectivity when you compare the Huffington Post to extreme sites like DailyKos on left, or Powerline on right.

Headlines show bias pretty quickly...

In which case, you should try reading the headlines. Currently, it is "WHITE HOUSE STRUGGLES TO CONTRAST WALL STREET AND AUTO BAILOUTS" as they criticize the Obama administration for being biased towards Wall St. The sub-headline is "More Financial News: Stocks Fall On New Plan For Automakers... Ford Shuts Down Chicago Plant... Morgan Stanley Suggests Major Stock Sale... CBS Stock Falls On Analyst Downgrade, Auto Industry Fears" - all fairly negative.

Then the top three featured blogs (you know, the columnists that set the tone of the site) start with these comments:

"Critical and constructive analysis of President Obama's policies is certainly more useful than our Black Media's continued uncritical celebration of our new president."

"Fear and anger are rising in Michigan. New York gets what it wants, when it wants it, from Washington; Michigan gets slapped in the face."

"I fear that these columns have been too polite. What we have is something perilously close to a dictatorship of the Fed and the Treasury, acting in the interests of Wall Street."

I don't think anyone but the most deluded think that Obama has actually made no mistakes and has acted perfectly since he's been in office, do they?

No. But you no have no comprehension skills if you think that is view of the Huffington Post. Although I guess if you can only think in the black & white terms of perfection, and ignore facts that don't support your viewpoint so that you can talk about the headlines yet ignore them at the same time, then you might not really appreciate what flamebait is.

Re:Investigative?

[ChaosDiscord]

Are you suggesting that 100% of income taxes on Europeans go to health care? If so, are you suggesting this because you're stupid, or are you actively trying to deceive people?

$400 a month for a family plan? A decade ago when I worked at an HMO and wrote proposals, family plans were way more expensive than that. (I believe they were on the order of $800 a month, but it has been a long time.) You either have really crappy insurance, live in a weird situation, or (my guess), you're ignoring your employer's contribution. To your employer his contribution to your health insurance is just another part of your compensation. A more honest assessment would be to add your employers contribution to your salary, then compare percentages there.

Take my income. I happen to have my W2 for 2008, and I know what my employer pays for my health insurance. Working from the total of my salary plus my insurance cost, more than 22% of my compensation is taxed. Now how much of my compensation pays for health coverage? More than 17%. Add those up and... 39% of my income goes to government services and health care. You're warning me about Europe, where... 40% (+/- 10%) of income goes to government services inclusive of health care. I hope you'll understand when I'm not worried that my income will radically drop if we have guaranteed health care.

Re:Investigative?

[shadow349]

I didn't say it could be pinned on a particular political party, but to an idea (basically, deregulation is good and the government is the enemy).

Silly me. I don't see how I could have ever come to that conclusion with statements like:

1) Which nation did this huge economic disaster start? America, a country that had been under complete Republican rule for 6 of the last 8 years and had undergone many deregulations over the past three decades which directly contributed to this crisis.

Is there some other way to read the bolded text then blaming the Republican party?

We put in place many regulations after the Great Depression that worked great...

No reason to speak in generalities... please, give examples.

These companies did not know what the heck they were doing. Giants like AIG relied on their AAA credit for their business model, not the belief that the government would rescue them if they failed (they never believed they would lose their AAA rating much less fail).

And, yet, the US government has poured about the same about of money into AIG as what AIG's maximum market capitalization has even been.

The stockholders of AIG lost their shirts on this, it's nuts to think they would do this on purpose.

And the reason you think the stockholders had anything to do with it is .... ?

You're also completely missing the differences in motivation, in the case of Bush's economic adviser he resigned since nobody was listening to him

That's one way of looking at it. Completely wrong, but it is one way. Usually when your boss "asks" you to resign, it is just a polite way of saying "you're fired".

while in the case of Richardson they were trying to avoid public controversy.

Sure. Apples and oranges. And your thoughts on Judd "are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy" Gregg?

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

Ron Paul would do exactly what Hoover would do (seriously). I do not see an improvement.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

If so, are you suggesting this because you're stupid, or are you actively trying to deceive people?

It's because he's stupid. Go read his comment history and I'm sure you'll come to the same conclusion.

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

Also, a 'straw man arugment' is a "misrepresentation of an opponent's position." I don't see how I'm doing that at all.

People tend to not use arguments that counter their own arguments simultaneously (the most similar I can think of would be to argue both your side and play devil's advocate simultaneously). By not playing the devil's advocate I'm not using a straw man argument. If that was true then virtually all arguments anyone ever uses is a straw man argument.

A straw man argument is considered a terrible argument because it uses a logical fallacy (by proposing a somewhat fictitious counterargument that nobody believes). In your counter example you claim that some portion of the regulations are bad. That's completely compatible with my point of view however in that it wasn't due to bad regulations that we are experiencing the current financial crisis so that is irrelevant. From everything that I've read companies like AIG and Lehman Brothers exploited a hole in the regulations in order to create securities that were completely unregulated and ended up making their companies insolvent. That (and our crisis) had nothing to do with regulations that arguably caused slower growth.

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

I consider the Republican party's economic policy of the past 8 years to be about as far away from the economic policy of France and Spain as you can get and still be in the same universe of free market economies which is why I used them by name.

Namely, the SEC and FIC are the main additions from the post depression era. One key regulation that was removed occurred in 2001 that certainly would have come into play in some of the activity of the current crisis if it still existed (sorry, will have to check the Frontline episode for the specific regulation, I don't recall at this moment--I'll try to check later and reply again).

Another rule that was allowed to expire (I believe also in 2001, could have been 2002) was the provision added during Bush Sr's presidency, the 'pay as you go' provision which forced any additional spending to be matched by either a tax increase or spending cut elsewhere. The Clinton administration had to follow this rule (luckily for us) and this certainly contributed to the budget becoming balanced by the end of his presidency.

The top stock holders are typically on the board of a company and thus direct their policy.

As I said, in Richardson's case he didn't resign. He had no position to resign from, except for governor of New Mexico (you have to go through the nomination process and Congress before you have a position you can resign from). He didn't resign at all (or get fired or whatever).

Re:Investigative?

[Eli Gottlieb]

The problem is that there are roughly 3 different things called "the left", and between each of them almost everyone can find something to dislike.

1) The economic left that supports better regulation of business (aka: sane regulations) and a social safety-net for ordinary people. Plutocrats hate this one.
2) The social left that wants to legalize marijuana and gay marriage. Religious fundamentalists hate this one.
3) The foreign-policy left who think the West, the USA, and related allies should appease the Muslim world or even side with it against its enemies. Foreign-policy realists hate this bunch, not least because they've made being against the Iraq War synonymous with being pro-Jihad.

What I'm saying is that if the people in favor of protecting the economy and the citizenry from crashes and poverty could dissociate themselves from the crazy protesters who wave Hizballah flags around and the potheads who think hemp solves all problems, those sane people would have a much easier time at the polls.

Re:Investigative?

[Abcd1234]

We spend a good bit more because as a culture we are pretty unhealthy.

Sorry buddy, but that's BS. I live in Canada, and we're not much more healthy than our US neighbours (if at all), and yet we spend *much* less, per capita, on healthcare. The difference? The US private insurance system introduces *massive* overhead (sadly, all while doing its best to deny people coverage).

Re:Investigative?

[metrometro]

The reason HuffPo isn't a replacement for newspapers is that (according to their numbers) they have 3000 opinion/analysis writers (aka unpaid bloggers), and 7 reporters.

That's, umm, 0.2% news, 99.8% analysis. This is at the 15th most popular news site in the world. Yikes.

So, yeah, throw some coin at a stable of investigative reporters. Talking Points Memo, ProPublica and The Center for Public Integrity have proven that small teams of diggers (database people, mostly) and writers (old school newspaper journalists, mostly) works pretty well. Good luck to them.

I still think HuffPo is a joke of a news site, for reasons above. 0.02%!

Re:Investigative?

[lgw]

History shows us 99.999% of all new ideas are wrong and fail. Therefore, rejecting new ideas works 99.999% of the time, and embracing new ideas works 0.001% of the time. Of course, all progress comes from that 0.001%. Conservatives are almost always right, but all progress comes from those very few times when they are wrong. Claiming that "reality has a libral bias" is to ignore the 99999 times you were wrong and remember the 1 time you were right, because that 1 time was cool and interesting.

We know for sure that tax rates above a certain amount will actually produce less goverment revenue. What that amount is is still the subject of much dispute. Even if you believe that more government is always good, history is silent on whether more taxes are good - we lack the data to how to maximize government revenue. And clearly more government isn't always good, as a glance at any of history's totalitarian regimes will show - so how much is too much? Not enough data.

We know for sure that almost all medical innovation in the 20th century came from a system with no government healthcare system, and that almost no innovation came from any country with a government healthcare system. Causation or mere correlation? History is silent, as we lack the data to do more than spawn a million "expert opinions".

Every good engineer is highly skeptical of new ideas until tested in controlled envireronments *and* proven in the field. New ideas in government are even more dangerous than new ideas in airplane engine design or bridge building, and should demand even more skepticism.

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

Is it left-biased, or reality biased? It seems a lot of people that smear the current American left, have been living in the right wing bubble for the last few decades, and can't fess up to the reality bias that reality has.

Only in American can I consider myself, a centrist progressive. The state of politics here is severely depressing, so anything that pulls us out of the childish, conservative, backward looking rut we've been in, is a plus in my book.

Considering that "progressive" is pretty much synonymous with "communist", I guess it is "only in America" that a claim to be a "centrist progressive" is possible, since everywhere else communism is pretty much considered to the far left of the spectrum.

Or maybe I'm confused by the whole "progressive" idea. If progressives don't stand for communal property, equal outcomes for all levels of ability, and complete nanny state government with planning every aspect of your life from cradle to grave, then what is it about? And how is that different from total control by a centralized government with no constraints on its power (i.e., communism)?

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

I'm sure many right wing type people will dismiss your remark out of hand without considering it for a moment, but consider:

1) Which nation did this huge economic disaster start? America, a country that had been under complete Republican rule for 6 of the last 8 years and had undergone many deregulations over the past three decades which directly contributed to this crisis.

Really? "many deregulations"? Can you please tell me what they are? because I keep hearing that claim, but the only one that I know of was the repeal of Graham-Rudman under Clinton. So what were the "many deregulations" that caused the crisis? And while you're explaining it, please explain how the CRA did not contribute.

thanks.

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

Libertarian: 'be free and left to their own' Doesn't work so well when your neighbor wants to be left alone working on his 'home grown' nuclear reactor.

Yea, because that's been such a huge problem. The government wouldn't be nearly as intrusive if it weren't for all those idiots building nuclear reactors in their basements.

Lets spend 10 trillion dollars (Bush's taxcut) and see what we have to show for it? not much.

That's NOT "spending". It can only be called spending if the government gave the money away. (hint: the government only takes money - it doesn't create anything on its own).

Lets spend 10 trillion improving infrastructure and healthcare. I'll bet we have more to show for it...and we end up MAKING money in the process.

And that will be actual spending. Do you know where that money is coming from? The money that you and your children MAKE. Except the government will then take it to pay back the Fed and the Chinese that loaned out the money.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm replying to one, does that count?

Re:Investigative?

[SnapShot]

Also, GM and Chrysler would not be in the problem they are in if we had universal coverage. We've established a system where all companies -- car companies, computer companies, banks -- have to be in the healthcare industry. Let's get universal healthcare coverage and let GM, Ford, and Chrysler back into the business of building cars.

Re:Investigative?

[nine-times]

In fairness, I don't think the issue is the ratio of news to analysis. The big question is, when the newspapers go under, will the total volume and quality of news drop? And if we assume the answer is "yes" the next question is "By how much?"

You have to remember that one of the advantages websites have over newspapers is that space is not limited. Adding analysis doesn't need to take away from the news in any way. It's important to keep a separation between news and opinion/analysis, and to keep each of them easy to identify and find.

Now obviously a handful of reporters at one website doesn't make up for all the newspapers around the country, but these online news outlets are still relatively new. I'm suggesting that if there is a business model for running websites that hire real journalist to do real reporting, then losing newspapers might not be such a horrible thing. If, however, there is no way for journalists to get paid to do thorough jobs of reporting and editing, and newspapers and magazines still go under, then our society may have some real problems figuring out what's going on within itself, let alone around the world.

Re:Investigative?

[SnapShot]

Before our current system many doctors would give patients reduced or free health care depending on their financial situation.

Are you seriously suggesting a healthcare system based on the individual charity of doctors? An open source healthcare system, perhaps, where you get your chemotherapy from a sourceforge? Don't get me wrong, many of them are wonderful people -- I'm married to one and she's a wonderful, charitable person -- but they also leave medical school with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and even if they were willing to work for free, I doubt Pfizer is going to send you your free chemo drugs.

Re:Investigative?

[SnapShot]

We know for sure that tax rates above a certain amount will actually produce less goverment revenue.

We also know for sure that tax rates below a certain amount will produce less government revenue.

We know for sure that almost all medical innovation in the 20th century came from a system with no government healthcare system, and that almost no innovation came from any country with a government healthcare system.

Actually, we don't know that for sure. For example the 2008 Nobel Prizes in Medicine went to a German, a Frenchman, and another Frenchman.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in your personal right wing bubble is progressive considered a synonym of communist. Take off your white hood and look around. It's actually pretty nice out here in the real world.

Re:Investigative?

[Gogo0]

its a catch-phrase that people use to support their argument because its witty, and witty comments you agree with are true.

Re:Investigative?

[Quikah]

A bit of googling indicates that France has a serious debt/deficit problem currently.

Re:Investigative?

[lgw]

Is this the same Nobel committee that gave the Peace Prize to Arafat for his heroic efforts in Jew-murdering? Politics couldn't possibly be at work with those guys.

At any rate, that's off the point I was making: people have a bad habit of ignoring the fact that the vast majority of ideas that "seemed right at the time" turned out to be wrong, and unless they were disasterously wrong, they were soon forgotton (as a wrong idea is such a common thing, not noteworthy).

"I want progress now. This idea sounds like it will make thing better. Let's do it!" is a terrible, terrible strategy. Only ideas which prove themselves against harsh conservative skepticism should rise above the froth, and we don't seem to have the attention span to allow that process to play out. Sometimes it takes a few decades for the awful consequences of a seemingly-good idea to arrive in force.

For example, it seems like every country with government-paid health care has huge and unsustainable unfunded liabilities. Impossible to overcome problem with the entire idea, or mere happenstance? Time will tell. Expert opinions won't.

Re:Investigative?

[SnapShot]

Is this the same Nobel committee that gave the Peace Prize to Arafat for his heroic efforts in Jew-murdering? Politics couldn't possibly be at work with those guys.

Terribly off topic. You don't win any points with non-sequiturs... we were talking about healthcare innovation, right?

Anyway, you made the assertion that "almost all medical innovation" comes from countries without a government healthcare system (by which, I assume you mean the U.S. but ignoring Medicare, NIH, CDC, and the VA). I pointed out that the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine [which had nothing to do with "Jew killing" as you disturbingly put it] went to a German and 2 Frenchmen. Thereby, with a quick Google search I was able to prove that you were incorrect in your assertion.

Re:Investigative?

[Red Flayer]

Second, true free markets[1] are not guaranteed to be always upward moving; failures and downturns are part of the natural process. And there is really nothing wrong with that[1]. When a government gets in the way of the natural progression, it is no longer a free market[3].

[1] Please define what you mean by true free market -- do you mean an ideal free market, or a free-as-in-unchecked-capitalism market?

[2] Care to support your opinion that there's nothing wrong with an unchecked business cycle? You state it as fact, but I personally have a differet opinion -- namely, that it is possible and just for government to act to reduce the negative impacts of a natural economic downturn (things like starvation come to mind); and I also believe that it is possible and just for a government to act to benefit the whole of the population by esatblishing rules and regulations that serve to mitigate risk, thus allowing capital to flow freely.

[3] So? What is to say that a free market is the best way to handle an economy?

Here's the thing I don't understand about most people who support free markets -- do they support free markets "just because" of some idealogical notion, or is there some rational reason that an unrestricted market would produce better results?

Even the Austrian model recognizes the need for regulation in order to (1) promote better information access to the market and (2) adjust for monopolies.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and yet you fail to be able to distinguish the two in any way.

Re:Investigative?

[Idiomatick]

Pyschological studies show that most people will stick with the familiar rather than change rather than basing their desicions on what they think would be better. 'Should we spend x or y dollars on healthcare, y is currently in place' mosst people chose y. Even with information pointing to the change being a better idea most people stick with the one currently in place. For most people to accept change the benefit has to be extraordinarily good. Think about people lagging on decisions that from a logical pov are obvious. Even nerds are guilty of this, think about how many people bitch when things are added to the game in a patch. Rationally, more content is usually better but people would prefer not to change.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

when did the bad mortgages start getting disbursed, the late 90's? what? going *EITHER* full tilt neo-con or save-the-whales is always a bad idea.

Re:Investigative?

[ArcherB]

Did the recession start when we cut taxes with a surplus of money or years later after two wars ate into the available funds leftover from "giving the extra money back?"

Nah, had to be 10 months after the Democrats took control...that makes MUCH more sense.

(Here's the answer to your question: Anyone who doesn't blame the Republicans and Bush's leash on Congress from 2001-2007 is full of shit. The Democrats get some blame, but I reduce it some by considering the Rove-ian campaign that was led from 9/11 and on to make every Democrat look unpatriotic for questioning Bush's policies. Between that and Bush's grip on Congress, they had little effect on changing the money spending, tax cutting policies. After 2007, the Dems have no excuse and get the full blame for helping run it all into the ground by failing to change what the previous 6 years massively fucked.)

First, what was the vote for the Iraq war in the Senate? Wasn't it something like 99-0? How is that Bush's war again?

Anyone who goes around trying to place blame on anyone should really have some sort of idea as to what they are talking about. Republicans held the Senate for only four years of Bush's eight. That means that Democrats held the Senate exactly half the time that Bush was in office, not six years. It also happens to be the first two and the last two that Democrats held the power in the Senate. Strangely enough, those were also the years that the economy dropped in the Bush administration. Coincidence? Either way, you were exactly 50% off. So, are you fuckin ignorant or just a fuckin liar? Judging by your post, I'm going to guess a whole lot of both.

Wait, wait wait. Maybe you're thinking of Bill Clinton. I'm sure you thought he did a great job right? Republicans held the house and senate for six of his eight, maybe THAT'S what you were thinking of.

As for being unpatriotic for questioning Bush, how long did that last? Let me guess, you think that any country in the world would have done anything for the US, but Bush fucked it up, right? Well, if that were true that any country in the world would have done ANYTHING, then it would have been impossible for Bush or anyone else to fuck it up. Then again, as we learned in the last paragraph, you are either too stupid or dishonest to understand the irony in that.

As for Bush's "money spending, tax cutting policies", I have to agree with you about the spending part, but that's what happens you don't have a strong majority. You need to bribe the other side to get them to shut up and sit down. But, if you were upset about the spending then, why are not just LIVID about the spending now? Shouldn't you be talking about that instead?

Now, as for the taxing, I've shown several times, and it's easy to research for yourself, that the government actually made MORE MONEY after Bush cut taxes! I know, it's hard to understand if you are simple minded. May I suggest you look up the Laffer curve for an explanation.

Listen, I don't mean to make you look stupid. You did that with your ignorant comment. But seriously, you really should educate yourself with the facts before you spout off. Don't bitch about Bush's economy and act like you don't remember Alan Greenspan. Before 2007, wasn't he called the Maestro because the economy was so strong? Greenspan received honorary Knighthood from the Queen of England the economy was so friggin strong! Don't act like you don't remember. Don't lie to us and especially don't lie to yourself to try to justify your hatred.

Re:Investigative?

[ArcherB]

Are you suggesting that 100% of income taxes on Europeans go to health care? If so, are you suggesting this because you're stupid, or are you actively trying to deceive people?

Well, they are not spending on their military, that's for damn sure. Oh, and dental care appears to be out too!

$400 a month for a family plan? A decade ago when I worked at an HMO and wrote proposals, family plans were way more expensive than that.

No, I said LESS THAN $400 a month. I've never spent more than that. It may actually cost more than that, but I have a job that helps me pay for my health insurance. So yeah, I'm ignoring my employer contribution... and I know, you are going to tell me that if my employer didn't pay that, they'd pay me more, right? Uh, wrong. Jobs that pay less almost always offer less in benefits, with the exception of temporary or contract jobs.

Now, how about the quality government run health care. Sure, I could find a thousand links that say it sucks, but I don't have to. Go to the DMV or Social Security office or any other government run institution and tell me that's how you want your medical care run. Where do you think the phrase "good enough for government work" came from? Do you want your doctor saying that when he's removing your kid's tonsils?

Finally, I've lived under government run health care and it sucked. I was in the military. When you are in the military, you are government property and must go to government doctors. For starters, you have no say in your treatment. It may be good, it may not. Odds, are, after waiting in line outside in January for three hours, you get to see a medic who hands you some over the counter pills and tells you to come back if you still have problems. Surgery? NO WAY. I was completely conscious when I had two of my wisdom teeth pulled. I saw the smoke, heard the drilling and cracking, saw the bone and blood flying and felt the dentist's knee on my chest holding me down. You see, they only have me a local anesthetic. That means he just numbed my mouth. He didn't give a shit if I was happy with my treatment or not because he was paid all the same. If I didn't come back, well that's just one less patient he has to deal with after they waited in line for three hours.

So yes, it IS cheaper and better here in the US. And since the vast majority of the world has government health care, go get it. Move. I don't mean to say love it or leave it, but the US is one of the few places left in the world that gives ME control of MY healthcare. Why would you take that away when from me when you could go to where the government runs it and we will both be happy.

Sorry, but no thanks! I think I'll pay for my own. The payer has the power and I'm not giving up control of my body to the government (again!)

Re:Investigative?

[ArcherB]

Between this and the Heritage foundation links, it is easy to see why your comments are so laughable.

Um... did you find anything that counters the numbers from the Herritage Foundation graph? No? So you'll ignore facts because you don't like the messenger? You'll only believe what you WANT to be true. Fine, here's a New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/business/13deficit.html?pagewanted=print
others:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104655.html
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/1411.html

Oh, and the true source from The Heritage Foundation page is actually Rates from Joint Committee on Taxation publication #JCX-6-01; Receipts from FY 2009 Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Table 2.3.

The Heritage Foundation just put in a pretty graph form. As long as you have all the numbers and they are not "adjusted", Numbers don't lie, no matter what the source is.

Re:Investigative?

[pixelpusher220]

Libertarian: 'be free and left to their own' Doesn't work so well when your neighbor wants to be left alone working on his 'home grown' nuclear reactor.

Yea, because that's been such a huge problem. The government wouldn't be nearly as intrusive if it weren't for all those idiots building nuclear reactors in their basements.

Ok, how about people hunting near an elementary school? Bullets flying into classrooms is not exactly most parents idea of OK. Yet the hunters were completely within their rights as the law said they had to be 50 yards away from buildings. 50 yards. yeah that's a safe distance to be in front of a gun. Why should we change the law? they were just minding their own business shooting at 'game'. This happened in VA within the last year.

Lets spend 10 trillion dollars (Bush's taxcut) and see what we have to show for it? not much.

That's NOT "spending". It can only be called spending if the government gave the money away. (hint: the government only takes money - it doesn't create anything on its own).

Um, saying the tax cut isn't *spending* is like saying buying stuff on a credit card isn't actually spending either. Whether the gov't wrote a check or simply collected less its still money we don't have and we still owe (a lot of) money. If by choosing to not pay down your debt you reduce your income, yes you've 'spent' that money, as in you don't have it anymore. And we would have had it if the tax cuts hadn't been enacted.

Lets spend 10 trillion improving infrastructure and healthcare. I'll bet we have more to show for it...and we end up MAKING money in the process.

And that will be actual spending. Do you know where that money is coming from? The money that you and your children MAKE. Except the government will then take it to pay back the Fed and the Chinese that loaned out the money.

That money will come from you and me and the guy next door who has a JOB because the gov't stepped in to jump start the economy. Sort of like today when Obama said the US Gov't will stand behind GM auto warranties. Not exactly my idea of fabulous but it will clearly give people more confidence to buy from GM, to then have those vehicles serviced, the auto-techs get paid and lo and behold it's stimulus in action. Acting to keep the economy going when there's no one else able to do it.

That doesn't even take into account the added benefits of having bridges that don't fall down, roads that aren't potholed all to h3ll and quality healthcare for *everyone*. Yes that is all spending, but at least we get something from it.

The option of just standing pat and letting the 'system' work itself out means many more months if not years of hard economic forecasts and more layoffs, foreclosures and greater social costs associated with high unemployment.

Re:Investigative?

[ChaosDiscord]

I don't like trolling, but I must respect skill when I see it. You deftly dance the edge of plausibility. Kudos, sir.

Re:Investigative?

[Aceticon]

As anyone which is exposed to media sources outside the US knows, when compared with pretty much every other party in the planet, both the Republicans and the Democrats are right-wing parties - the only difference is how far to the right they are.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he's just as much a capitalist pig-dog as Bush was? This is the failure of free-wheeling capitalism, not isolated to the Republican party as such; they've just got a purer allegiance to it.

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

Lets spend 10 trillion dollars (Bush's taxcut) and see what we have to show for it? not much.

That's NOT "spending". It can only be called spending if the government gave the money away. (hint: the government only takes money - it doesn't create anything on its own).

Um, saying the tax cut isn't *spending* is like saying buying stuff on a credit card isn't actually spending either. Whether the gov't wrote a check or simply collected less its still money we don't have and we still owe (a lot of) money. If by choosing to not pay down your debt you reduce your income, yes you've 'spent' that money, as in you don't have it anymore. And we would have had it if the tax cuts hadn't been enacted.

No, a tax cut is not like using a credit card. It's like saying I am spending money because I didn't go into my neighbor's house and take all the money he had hidden in his cookie jar.

Try this: If it's all "your" money that you are "allowing" people to keep by "spending" it, then why not start by assuming a 100% tax rate. That's your (asinine) premise: that it all belongs to the Federal government unless they decide we can keep some.

Guess what happens then? Nobody works because they don't get anything out of it, so why work? Out of some sense of duty?

If you understood anything about economics, you would know that tax cuts often increase revenue, by encouraging people to put their money to work (and earn more) rather than trying to shelter it. Biden even admits that raising capital gains will most likely reduce federal revenues. But, he says "it's about fairness".

Check out this chart and see how revenues go up after the Reagan tax cuts. That's where the "Clinton surplus" came from (actually it was only a surplus if you don't count the SS IOUs). It was a revenue increase caused by tax cuts.

I already gave you a hint, and it went completely over your head, so I'll have to spell it out for you. The government creates nothing of value - it only spends other people's money. The government does NOT create JOBs. According to the Obama administration, their "stimulus" plan is supposed to "create or save" 3.5 million jobs. That's about $220,000 per job!! And they'll get that money by taking it out of the economy (actually, they'll borrow it from China, if they will lend it to us, or from our kids).

Come back when you have a clue about economics.

Re:Investigative?

[conspirator57]

no, go back and read your history... Hoover did about what Bush did and Paul decried.

Re:Investigative?

[conspirator57]

i'm sure the crisis had *nothing* to do with easy money policies of the Fed throughout the last decade or two. [/sarcasm]

and rather than dismissing my argument regarding the wrong regulations and an unwilingness to enforce them unexamined, perhaps you might consider that we have and had *insurance regulations* which the SEC did not enforce on the *insurance* being sold between banks. If those regulations had been enforced, we'd not be in this mess as bad.

But more centrally to your claims regarding the political left being correct, I find that unconvincing because communisms devolve into fascist governments much more quickly than representative democracies do. The Russian Oktober Revolution was subverted by fascists even before it was over.

My argument is that *mutually skeptical* decentralization of government is the best path because no one part has conflicts of interest and discommoded parties can go to the courts of the next higher level. In a world closer to ideal the US courts would be the largest branch of the Federal government, resolving disputes between individuals and the state governments. See our current domestic spying issues for an example of why the fox cannot be allowed to guard the hen house. Federal judges (paid by the Federal government) hear cases with only the prosecution at the table and nearly automatically get outrageous powers against anyone they please. Some of these people turn out to have been completely innocent, but somehow it's difficult for them to fly commercially ever again, etc.

Leftists rarely consider the weaknesses in their schemes or the liklihood of things deteriorating in any way from their ideal of the welfare state benevolently taking care of everyone. If you could convince me that such were impossible then I might be more inclined to give credence to leftists claims of correctness. I empathize greatly with the motivations behind most leftist idealists. They tend to be noble, but naive and misguided however in thinking that their ideals are attainable.

Re:Investigative?

[conspirator57]

actually a not quite as articulately stated point was that there's another dimension to politics. Both of America's major parties are heading towards fascism, with way too strong and large of a central government. I'd prefer a *mutually skeptical* decentralization so as to remove conflicts of interest and foster justice in an individuals interactions with government. I'd like it if the Federal courts were the largest branch of the central government, resolving disputes between individuals and the states providing services (of whatever stripe: socialist or whatever the state's residents prefer). That way people can have the government they want and still have somewhere to go (federal court) when something's wrong. America's current system has too many instances of federal strong arming at whim. the individual usually loses. See the U.S. domestic spying disputes for examples. The state (federal government) secret privilege as currently interpreted is pure conflict of interest between the federal executive and the federal courts.

Re:Investigative?

[Touvan]

Read up on the American school of economics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)

Your idea of what "progressive" is seems to be fear based, and is largely incorrect. The idea of community property is not a new one, and does not belong solely to the communist ideal (in their ideal - everything - is community property, no one in the United States suggests going that way).

As far as I can tell, progressive is another word for use the best system for the case that comes up. In healthcare, some kind of baseline publicly funded system is the only one that makes sense. We currently pay the most per capita for healthcare out of every nation, and we rank 38th in terms of quality of care. There is no way to defend that.

On the internet, I see very little that needs to be regulated - of those things that do need it, they tend to be related to the infrastructure, and those old media companies that run that infrastructure - regulation of the highways, not what you drive on them. Real highways have more regulation than that, and I think that's fine - the net doesn't (yet) need very much government intervention. There's nothing even vaguely communist about that.

BTW, you may also be interested in the US Constitution - so few actually read that marvelous document (it's an easy, short read).

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

Re:Investigative?

[Touvan]

I was using the term as it is commonly understood in that lexicon you mentioned. The origins of that phrase doesn't actually matter if the the meaning I intended came across (and it did). An example, tragedy originally meant "goat song" but now means something entirely different. So nice try.

Re:Investigative?

[pixelpusher220]

No, a tax cut is not like using a credit card. It's like saying I am spending money because I didn't go into my neighbor's house and take all the money he had hidden in his cookie jar.

I'll submit the CC example isn't the best, you would still have the goods you bought even if you hadn't paid for them yet. I was thinking more along the lines of budgeting, no money has left your pocket (like a taxcut).

How about a real world example. If you are renting a house to someone, and the rent is $1000/month. You plan on $12,000 in income for a year. If you lower the rent you charge by $100/month. At the end of the year you have only $10,800. By taxing at the lower taxcut rates the gov't reduced how much money it took in. So there is the *loss* of revenue. No its not 'spending', that's my point. You didn't get *anything* for that money, it was just given to people.

As for Reagan's tax cuts. Yes revenue increased, but how much did it *cost* us? Revenue is only one side of the equation. And since Reagan's tax cuts only created a Trillion dollars over 10 years, Bush's concept of 10 trillion over 10 years is laughably irresponsible. Unless you can somehow produce 1000% increase. The Clinton surplus was as much Clinton as it was the Republican controlled congress. Two opposing forces cancel each other out and spending goes way down. That was hidden by the dotcom boom increasing revenues, followed by the bust where the cracks in the system from lack of spending started to be noticable. (sound familiar?)

Tax cuts DO have a place in economics, but as for increasing revenues they are woefully behind infrastructure and services like food stamps in terms of their effects. Tax cuts give you about $0.75 for every dollar of tax cuts. Infrastructure gives between $1 and $1.75. Food stamps literally give you over $2 for every dollar spent on the program. I never understand why 'conservatives' don't want to make the highest returning investments possible and instead stay with what gives the rich more money instead...

But if you want to continue the fallacy that 'trickle down' economics work, you might want to check the stock market. It doesn't work. Couple that with very Libertarian 'just let us make money' stock market oversight and you have a complete economic meltdown. Your comment about Obama's stimulus costing $220,000 per job is laughable. Those jobs pay people money, who SPEND it, keeping other jobs viable. Its 'trickle up' economy that is proven to increase revenues. Give money to people who are likely to spend it (low to middle class) and you get many more returns on your investment than giving it to the rich hoping they invest it.

As for government creating nothing of value...well I won't convince you otherwise I'm sure, but you are quite sadly mistaken.

Hoover Dam
Interstate Highways
the Power grid
running water in homes
cheap mail service
THE INTERNET (and no not Al Gore)
Cops
Firefighters

The gov't creates plenty of value, sadly you've just grown up at a time when you take most of it for granted.

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that Bush's war again?

I'll go ahead and sum up how full of shit you are with this comment: Where did I use the term "Bush's war?" I merely pointed out that we had two wars, I didn't waste my time blaming anyone for said wars.

Pull your head out, get some fresh air, and maybe you'll get some clarity on how your getting played by the party you seem to think is so perfect.

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

Read up on the American school of economics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)

Ah, Hamilton. Well, Hamilton was a Nationalist and felt that the central government should be very strong, with the states and the people subordinate, quite in contrast to Jefferson and most of the other founding fathers. Note that his idea of a "central bank" meant that the federal government would control it, not some conglomerate of private banks like exists now in the Federal Reserve.

Frankly, I simply feel that it's the wrong philosophy, because of the danger of a tyrannical leadership taking over.

Your idea of what "progressive" is seems to be fear based,

No. It's based on policies I see advocated by self-proclaimed "progressives".

and is largely incorrect. The idea of community property is not a new one, and does not belong solely to the communist ideal (in their ideal - everything - is community property, no one in the United States suggests going that way).

As far as I can tell, progressive is another word for use the best system for the case that comes up. In healthcare, some kind of baseline publicly funded system is the only one that makes sense. We currently pay the most per capita for healthcare out of every nation, and we rank 38th in terms of quality of care. There is no way to defend that.

You're comparing apples and oranges here. The US rank 38th in overall "health", based on factors like infant mortality and life expectancy. That's different than "health care". In the US you can obtain the best health care that money can buy (well, yea). The per capita costs for health care is because of the regulations in place which discourage people for shopping health care based on price. Some might shop health insurance by price, but pretty much no one in the US shops health care by price, because of the crappy system. It doesn't need to be socialized to fix that.

For a reasoned report on spending and health care comparisons to other countries, here is a pretty unbiased view of the issues.

On the internet, I see very little that needs to be regulated - of those things that do need it, they tend to be related to the infrastructure, and those old media companies that run that infrastructure - regulation of the highways, not what you drive on them. Real highways have more regulation than that, and I think that's fine - the net doesn't (yet) need very much government intervention. There's nothing even vaguely communist about that.

Agreed.

BTW, you may also be interested in the US Constitution - so few actually read that marvelous document (it's an easy, short read).

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

I'm quite familiar with that - in fact I keep a copy in my pocket, just for reference. Unfortunately, it's stunning all the unconstitutional acts that the Federal government gets away with these days. I thought Obama would reverse course on that in at least some areas, but he seems to be more of a puppet that's intent on shredding the Constitution even more than it has been in the last 8 years.

Re:Investigative?

[joggle]

No, Hoover tried to keep the federal budget balanced. He cut spending and raised taxes at a time of recession and let banks failed. Ron Paul would also want to balance the federal budget immediately (somehow without raising taxes in the process) and is also perfectly willing to let the banks failed.

Re:Investigative?

[conspirator57]

and it would be over quicker if the banks and business that deserve to fail were allowed to. Check the depression of 1921.

Re:Investigative?

[Touvan]

It is fear based.

I don't have much time, but it sounds like you like for the guys that won the last round of economic competition (and their children) to be charge of everything. You seem to like to let the very wealth few families that run the banks to be in charge of your money. And you seem to enjoy the fact that in America, the richest country on Earth, you can only have healthcare if you can afford it. Is that not a form of tyranny?

I just don't get guys like you. You are so concerned with the rich guys' money and their wealth that you can't even see how they take advantage of every benefit of society, while avoiding all responsibility to actually pay for it - shoving their burden to pay down on the rest of us, and then turn around and deny those benefits to those that need it most.

Please help me understand why you want to help those guys, by giving them every advantage - and this isn't disputed, in a market based system, the guy who starts with the most has the most advantage. The game is so unbalanced now, that they do have almost unimpeachable advantage.

Maybe you can't see the suffering going on in this country? Do you live in a nice neighborhood? Are you one of those rich guys, that have rigged the system, and taken all the wealth for themselves?

None of those countries that top the ranks, in terms of quality of "health" (which you conveniently, and bizarrely separate from the quality of care), has a market based system to pay for healthcare. For the record, my employer recently did shop for healthcare by price and we chose the cheapest that still offers decent coverage - guess how much it cost. The state of Massachusetts, recently obligated employers to buy healthcare, and they did - specing out coverage primarily by price, and it covers not much.

You seem to look at a lot of information, but somehow can't see it. I'm not sure what the problem is. Maybe it's the fear you mentioned of some bogeyman form of government for which progressives don't advocate. I tell you though, when I watch these guys that run the banks you stated you favor, take huge bonuses, while Americans die in the street because they got kicked from the ER in cities around the country, I can't see why you think that's better than a system with a fairer set of rules.

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

It is fear based.

Says you. Which counts for bumpkiss.

I don't have much time, but it sounds like you like for the guys that won the last round of economic competition (and their children) to be charge of everything. You seem to like to let the very wealth few families that run the banks to be in charge of your money.

Based on what? WTF did I say that gives you that impression? The Fed and the rest of the private banks have control of our money and they are quickly merging with the federal government. Is that what you want? How the hell do you subscribe that opinion to me? Sounds like you've got your head up your ass and want to blame the smell of shit on someone else.

And you seem to enjoy the fact that in America, the richest country on Earth, you can only have healthcare if you can afford it. Is that not a form of tyranny?

No, it's not a form of tyranny. It may not be very compassionate, but it's not tyranny. Tyranny means you'll get your fucking health care after I beat a confession out of you. I never said that I thought the current system was good or didn't need changing, just the opposite. Take your blinders off and read what I wrote. I'm not responsible for what you hear.

I just don't get guys like you.

That's because you want to take everybody and put them in a box. I won't fit in your fucking box. And I won't fit in any of the boxes you think the government should be creating for everybody. What are you going to do with all of us guys that won't fit into your boxes? I guess we'll be rounded up and sent to concentration camps and reeducation centers.

You are so concerned with the rich guys' money and their wealth that you can't even see how they take advantage of every benefit of society, while avoiding all responsibility to actually pay for it - shoving their burden to pay down on the rest of us, and then turn around and deny those benefits to those that need it most.

Gee, I'm sorry your mother didn't love you enough, and that you've been raised with that sense of entitlement. It's not my fault, though, and I won't be held responsible for it.

Your class warfare won't work, either. While you're busy railing about the top 1% of our society not paying enough, the top 0.00005% are laughing with glee about all the money and control you will allow them to have as they build their global banking system. They don't care about you - they are using you to demonize a large group of people that currently have too much influence. And by and large, they are generous and compassionate people. That 0.00005% that you are being distracted from watching don't care about you, and they will throw you away once they are done using you to overthrow individual liberty.

Please help me understand why you want to help those guys, by giving them every advantage - and this isn't disputed, in a market based system, the guy who starts with the most has the most advantage. The game is so unbalanced now, that they do have almost unimpeachable advantage.

Maybe you can't see the suffering going on in this country? Do you live in a nice neighborhood? Are you one of those rich guys, that have rigged the system, and taken all the wealth for themselves?

As a matter of fact, I have a small 2 bedroom house, 2 cars both over 5 years old (and bought used), and 3 kids to raise. I work a full time job and part-time on the side to make ends meet, and I pay taxes.

I also give generously to a few organizations, including the Red Cross and the Rex Foundation, in addition to helping out when I hear of someone needing help. Most Americans are very generous when given half a chance, but the move now is to try to tax more of that charitable giving, thus reducing it.

I hope you're not looking to the federal government to help, because they are the least efficient at

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

So please, tell me genius, if the economy sucked during Bush's eight years, as you stated, how was there an increase in tax revenue when taxes were cut?

I don't see how it's surprising to see tax revenues increase after a downturn reverses. In fact, that's exactly what I would expect.

If you're seeing a long run trend indicating that tax cuts pay for themselves, you're probably prone to pareidolia.

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

And while you're explaining it, please explain how the CRA did not contribute.

Actually, I'd like an explanation on this one. Let's say you run a bank. Let's say that the government wants you to make a loan that you don't want to make (let's say... filthy poor people in minority neighborhoods) because you know it won't be profitable. Do you:

a) Do the bare minimum and lobby Congress to stop it?
b) Leverage yourself to death and make as many of those loans as you possibly can?

If you can explain why profit maximizing firms chose B over A, simply because the CRA existed, I'd be interested in hearing it. More to the point, it's worth looking into which financial entities made the majority of the securitized subprime loans. Hint: They weren't subject to the CRA. The CRA links are political chaff.

That being said, the general "deregulation" bugaboo is not something that can be laid neatly at the feet of conservatives. People have been making noise about the potential dangers of allowing an unregulated insurance industry to develop since before Bush was in office. Nobody in charge seemed interested in doing much about it over a couple of administrations and several congresses.

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

Well, they are not spending on their military, that's for damn sure. Oh, and dental care appears to be out too!

The data you're looking for is simple: What percentage of GDP is spend on health care? I cannot find any source that plausibly suggests that the US spends a smaller percentage of its GDP on health care European countries in general. Uwe Reinhart does good work on this topic.

No, I said LESS THAN $400 a month. I've never spent more than that. It may actually cost more than that, but I have a job that helps me pay for my health insurance. So yeah, I'm ignoring my employer contribution...

Well, there's your problem.

...and I know, you are going to tell me that if my employer didn't pay that, they'd pay me more, right? Uh, wrong. Jobs that pay less almost always offer less in benefits, with the exception of temporary or contract jobs.

Let's not compare a job with medical benefits to a job without medical benefits. That's just ridiculous. The question you need to ask yourself is, would you command a higher pay for the same work if your employer didn't have to pay for your health care? Are you suggesting that when they figure out how much they can offer you, that they aren't factoring in the extra several thousands of dollars a year they have to pony up to Blue Cross? If so, I'm willing to bet that you don't believe the same thing about the employer contribution to social security.

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

Is this the same Nobel committee that gave the Peace Prize to Arafat for his heroic efforts in Jew-murdering?

No, it would be the committee that reviews medical advances.

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

If you understood anything about economics, you would know that tax cuts often increase revenue, by encouraging people to put their money to work (and earn more) rather than trying to shelter it.

The key word here is "often." In a case like this one, the marginal propensity to consume each dollar rebated is very low.

Check out this chart [heritage.org] and see how revenues go up after the Reagan tax cuts.

We were also coming out of a long period of stagflation. Try finding a long run trend between tax rates and GDP growth that indicates that they're a net positive for revenue. Especially when the velocity of money is low.

The government does NOT create JOBs.

So you're suggesting that, for example, an engineer at Lockheed Martin making a satellite system that the government will use for imaging is unemployed?

According to the Obama administration, their "stimulus" plan is supposed to "create or save" 3.5 million jobs. That's about $220,000 per job!!

I don't think it's particularly reasonable to assume that 100% of stimulus spending will go to labor and none of it to capital. If I pay a guy $1M to pave my front yard with gold, he's not walking away with a $1M salary.

Re:Investigative?

[Touvan]

Wow, so angry. What I want is for the federal government to take over these banks and insurance companies, clean their books, then break them up into dozens of smaller companies that don't create a systemic risk to the rest of us. But all the crazies scream socialism when anyone suggests doing what has been the only solution in the past to this exact kind of problem.

Your preference for allowing private players to control the banks is suggested by your asserted preference to allow markets to work - is that an unreasonable conclusion? That if you want markets to do their thing, then the government should get out of the way? You'll always get the same result when you do that - one or very few players will control the market (thus defeating market forces). Now you don't have to start from a regulated position, but you do need to deal with the problem, selectively, when it arrises - like in healthcare right now (though the problem with healthcare is that we have laws that force hospitals to treat everyone that needs care, but don't say how to pay for it, which creates a lot of opportunity for abuse - the market can't fix that, and in fact, the purest market based solution would simply get rid of the requirement that hospitals treat everyone, and instead require them to treat only those who can afford it - market forces).

I have found that those who try to offer markets as the solutions to everything are the same people who appose any kind of government intervention, and scream socialism. I think I have correctly identified you as one of those people, though I could be wrong. I doubt it though, after reading parts of your response which include weird phrases like, "Tyranny means you'll get your fucking health care after I beat a confession out of you." I'm not sure where to even begin with a sentence like that.

Are you an old person? You used phrases like "class warfare", that's an odd phrase. I think "struggle for economic fairness" would be better. My sense of entitlement pales in comparison to the sense of entitlement that the guys who ran Enron, and who currently took so much federal bonus money at AIG - what kind of entitlement must these guys feel to think that that was ok. Why do you compare my sense of fairness to their sense of entitlement? Maybe you are one of those guys, I'm not, I know which side of that line I sit on.

The problem with the rest is that you are selectively quoting sources of information, and skewing your numbers - Bush's bailout deal was for more than $700, and if you really don't know that, then I am forced to question your powers of perception.

Have a great day! :-)

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

Wow, so angry.

Cause I don't like your attempt to put me in your box, mischaracterizing what I said, misinterpreting my position based on nothing that I said, etc.

What I want is for the federal government to take over these banks and insurance companies, clean their books, then break them up into dozens of smaller companies that don't create a systemic risk to the rest of us.

And that's why you're part of the problem. There's already a process for that, and it's called bankruptcy. Allowing the government to get further involved invites favoritism, nepotism, and corruption. The FDIC can deal with bank failures like they did in the '80s, and let the insurance companies fail. Bankruptcy court can sort them out. Why should the taxpayers be on the hook for them? That's what risk is all about. They leveraged their investments and it failed. Whatever's left will be picked up by the smaller firms and entrepreneurs. You want to shake up who controls the wealth - that will do it right there. Government involvement (and socializing the debt) is not needed.

Your preference for allowing private players to control the banks is suggested by your asserted preference to allow markets to work - is that an unreasonable conclusion? That if you want markets to do their thing, then the government should get out of the way? You'll always get the same result when you do that - one or very few players will control the market (thus defeating market forces).

Nope. You get that when the big players get Washington to put up barriers for their competition. Why do you think all those campaigns are funded by wall street firms and banks? Why do you think they spend so much money on lobbyists and perks for their favorite congressmen? It buys them favoritism which gives them a better position and keeps the competition out.

I don't have an answer to the health care issue. There are just too many problems with the current system. I can tell you though that the problem started with government intervention. After WWII, many of the price and wage controls that FDR put into place were still there. The wage for every job was set by law. As the economy boomed and unemployment dropped, companies had a hard time competing for good employees because the wage was set. So they offered benefits like health insurance to make their companies more attractive. So many did it that it eventually became the norm. And soon people stopped paying attention to how much it cost for doctors and medical procedures. And when the cost of a good doesn't matter, it's bound to rise...

I think I have correctly identified you as one of those people, though I could be wrong. I doubt it though, after reading parts of your response which include weird phrases like, "Tyranny means you'll get your fucking health care after I beat a confession out of you."

Well you were trying to define tyranny as "you can only have something if you can afford it" - which is not tyranny, it's just the most efficient way of distributing goods and services.

... - Bush's bailout deal was for more than $700, and if you really don't know that, then I am forced to question your powers of perception.

... while demonstrating that you have none, and that you selectively filter everything you see to support your opinion. What I said was that $700 billion went to the banks. The bailout bill that passed in October was closer to $850 billion, but $150 billion of that was pork added by the senate. Only $700 billion of that was for TARP. There was other moneys, too, in the form of guarantees and so forth, but what I said was not inaccurate.

The Federal Reserve also printed a lot of money and issued a bunch more debt. But they did that unilaterally, because as a private bank they can do that, and pretty much anything else they want. If you are so in favor of

Re:Investigative?

[Touvan]

Gah, these are getting too long. :-)

Bankruptcy was not an option for these companies, like AIG, because the pose a risk to the entire system if they go down so fast. That's what happens when you let a company get too big (especially one in the financial markets). They should be allowed to fail, lose all their money, and then many of them should go to jail. The problem is, most of what they did was legal, because they lobbied the government in the late 90s, to get rules removed that kept them from getting "too big to fail" - and when those rules were removed, they did in fact create the mess we have now. The markets as it turns out, don't self correct, until it's too late, and huge companies can actually be in a position to threaten the entire system, and the individuals in it (like you and me - who had nothing to do with any of this).

If you think that Washington put up barriers to competitors, you really have reread your recent history - they used to have rules to keep these guys in check (keep them from getting too big to become a systemic risk), and they took those rules out (based yes on lobbying) - that lead directly to their uncontrolled growth, which caused this crisis - and there were people at the time who predicted it.

The idea that markets self correct has turned out to be incorrect, despite how strongly you cling to that idea. Heck even Allan Greenspan (previously a hero, now a crook?), has admitted that. It's a dead idea, let it go.

BTW, you'll never get rid of the social problem that results from concentrated wealth, and more than anything that's the piece that freemarket ideology misses - the guys that have enough money to bend the system that got them that money, will attempt to stack the rules in their favor (after all, they won the game, so they are entitled to remake the rules). It'll happen every time. It's predictable, and markets can only be manipulated by that, they cannot control that - the rules of the economy come from the social political side of things, not from within the markets.

On efficiency, democracy is the least efficient form of government, but I will not trade it for even a benevolent dictatorship. What I'm after is a fairer, more just form of distribution of goods and services. Efficiency is only one consideration.

Also, in the face of all these numbers, it would cost 900 billion to insure every american, if we can get the cost per captita down to 3000 instead of the current 6000 we spend now (1.8 trillion). I can't see why that's a problem - it would be half as expensive (or maybe twice as efficient?).

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

The FDIC can deal with bank failures like they did in the '80s, and let the insurance companies fail. Bankruptcy court can sort them out.

For one thing, the FDIC is finite and actually quite small relative to the banking system as a whole. If a lot of banks go under, the FDIC has to go back for taxpayer money to cover the rest. Letting a company like AIG default on its debts would trigger *more* bankruptcies. At some point, you have three options:

1) Let everything fall apart and then spend enormous piles of money paying out on everbody's underinsured demand accounts while dealing with the fact that there are not nearly enough banks left to facilitate a healthy economy.
2) Let everything fall apart and don't pay off the insured deposits and watch as people act surprised when their FDIC bank accounts shrink. Follow this up by wondering why a huge percentage of otherwise healthy large companies shrink and downsize massively because nobody will lend to them.
3) Realize that while the banks have very real solvency issues, such insolvency is contagious if you allow large scale defaults on wideley spread debt and try to stop the contagion to keep healthy and fixable banks alive.

Done properly, (3) allows you to avoid draining the FDIC to zero and watching a lot of otherwise perfectly workable financial institutions go down in flames.

Why should the taxpayers be on the hook for them? That's what risk is all about.

The problem is that we're largely "on the hook" for them already in the form of FDIC guarantees and whatever pain we experience when the financial system comes to a complete halt. The simple question is whether it's cheaper to take full responsibility for a small number of very badly broken pieces or partial responsibility for a huge number of failed pieces once everything hits the fan.

If you are so in favor of government control, why do you think it's okay for the Federal Reserve, the largest private bank in the world, to be in complete control of our monetary system?

I'm not the grandparent, but I'm OK with it for two reasons:

1) Politicians would do a phenomenally bad job of deciding how big the monetary base should be. I'm much happier limiting them to nuclear weapons. Ben Bernanke is infinitely more qualified to do what he does than any group of congressmen.
2) As long as the Fed is a public / private partnership and not run for profit, the incentives for it to act in the national interest are stronger than the incentives for it to do evil things.

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

If you are so in favor of government control, why do you think it's okay for the Federal Reserve, the largest private bank in the world, to be in complete control of our monetary system? Isn't that a bad thing? The Constitution give that power to congress. Why would you be in favor of them relegating that authority to a private bank?

I'm not the grandparent, but I'm OK with it for two reasons: 1) Politicians would do a phenomenally bad job of deciding how big the monetary base should be. I'm much happier limiting them to nuclear weapons. Ben Bernanke is infinitely more qualified to do what he does than any group of congressmen. 2) As long as the Fed is a public / private partnership and not run for profit, the incentives for it to act in the national interest are stronger than the incentives for it to do evil things.

What makes you think they don't earn a profit? The shareholders do, through dividends paid by the Fed. Many of those shareholders are foreign investors. What makes you so sure they would act in the best interests of the US?

Congress and the US treasury did a fine job running the monetary system for 150 years. What happened in 1913 that suddenly made them too incompetent to do so? In fact, it only took the Fed 16 years to completely bankrupt the banking system and the US government. And they admit that because of the way the government is funded through the Fed they can never pay off the debt. What makes that a good thing?

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

What makes you think they don't earn a profit? The shareholders do, through dividends paid by the Fed.

Non-tradeable stock with a fixed dividend held by member banks is hardly a recipe for perverse incentives. The dividends paid out are proportional to the required reserves held by the banks at the Fed.

Many of those shareholders are foreign investors. What makes you so sure they would act in the best interests of the US?

The fact that, unless something has changed in the past few years, none of those shareholders are foreign investors. The shareholders are US banks whose holdings of Fed stock are requirements of their membership in the Federal Reserve system. As far as I can tell, whoever originated that claim simply fabricated it.

Congress and the US treasury did a fine job running the monetary system for 150 years. What happened in 1913 that suddenly made them too incompetent to do so?

I would take issue with your first sentence. The lack of any sort of fast-acting buffer on the fluctuations in demand for money and debt made for a very exciting banking system as seen here.

In fact, it only took the Fed 16 years to completely bankrupt the banking system and the US government.

I think that we can all acknowledge that the Fed did the wrong thing during the run up to the Great Depression. I'm not sure what that has to do with modern Fed operations.

And they admit that because of the way the government is funded through the Fed they can never pay off the debt. What makes that a good thing?

I have no idea what this refers to, but I strongly suspect that the source is nonsense.

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

And they admit that because of the way the government is funded through the Fed they can never pay off the debt. What makes that a good thing?

I have no idea what this refers to, but I strongly suspect that the source is nonsense.

http://www.nolanchart.com/article2991.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north532.html

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=14757

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

So by, "They admit [that the government can never pay off the debt]" you actually mean, "I believe that there is a conspiracy to prevent the government from paying off the debt." Let me try to detangle this:

*) Yes, it is mathematically impossible for 100% of the debt owed in a fractional reserve system to be paid off. That does not mean that any given actor (e.g. the government) cannot pay off its debt.
*) This point may seem like a problem, but it is only an issue if you're concerned that we will run out of integers.
*) The vast majority of US debt is not held by the Fed. The Fed has increased its stake in the past year due to unusual circumstances, but those measures are temporary.

In order for the great Federal Reserve conspiracy to work, somebody needs to explain exactly how the decision makers at the Fed (who are largely government appointees at the top) have some profit motive that encourages them to act against the best interests of the US financial system. I have never seen such an explanation that doesn't include completely made up stuff (like the idea that there are lots of shadowy foreign Federal Reserve Bank stock holders reaping huge profits that don't show up on any accounting statements).

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

In other words: "I don't understand how fiat money and central-bank controlled fractional reserve works, so I'm just going to dismiss all this as a conspiracy theory".

Nice.

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

If you have any desire to explain yourself, please do. I really want to know: What incentive do the decision makers at the Federal Reserve have to do what you claim they're doing (and... err... what exactly do you claim they're doing)? If you can be charitable and assume that an econ degree qualifies me to understand your deep and ground-breaking claims, I'd like to hear them...explicitly.

Frankly, you're not doing too well at the moment. You've popped off a few claims that appear to be complete fabrications (Foreign stock holders making a profit? WTF?) and you've given hints that your understanding of our banking system comes 100% from the illustrious Internet. I'm not confident that you can fully explain the structure of the Federal Reserve system and what it actually accomplishes, much less provide a meaningful explanation of where these supposed adverse incentives come from. You could prove me wrong, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Re:Investigative?

[Curunir_wolf]

If you have any desire to explain yourself, please do. I really want to know: What incentive do the decision makers at the Federal Reserve have to do what you claim they're doing (and... err... what exactly do you claim they're doing)?

Ummm... Let's see... total control of the global monetary system, natural resources and food production of most of the world (if not all). Yea, they're pretty ambitious. But they have managed, through actions of the world bank and the IMF, to gain control of a good portion of the resources of the 3rd world.

If you can be charitable and assume that an econ degree qualifies me to understand your deep and ground-breaking claims, I'd like to hear them...explicitly.

That depends. Are you of the flawed Keynesian school (and blindingly dedicated to it), or are you open to the theories of the Austrian school and its theories? Are you open to a mixture of ideas and take into account historical perspectives of global, value-based economies?

Frankly, you're not doing too well at the moment.

I know, but it's hard to awaken the sleeping masses. Especially the younger ones with no perspective, and that have been indoctrinated with a skewed view of history.

You've popped off a few claims that appear to be complete fabrications (Foreign stock holders making a profit? WTF?)

Those aren't my claims. The banking system is global, and is controlled by a small group of people that are loyal to no country, but only to themselves. This discussion started with the claim by "Touvan" that the wealthy aren't paying their fair share. But from a global perspective, every citizen in America is part of the richest 1%, and needs to pay a great deal more before they are paying their fair share.

and you've given hints that your understanding of our banking system comes 100% from the illustrious Internet.

LoL. I've been in banking, you insensitive clod. And I'm well aware of the attitude and behavior of those at the top of those institutions. I'm also aware of what a "dollar" is (it's not what the Federal Reserve claims it is), and that the only thing propping up the value of what passes for a dollar today is the willingness of the American taxpayer to continue paying taxes.

I'm not confident that you can fully explain the

You don't seem confident of anything except your own opinion

structure of the Federal Reserve system and what it actually accomplishes,

Mostly, what I would say it accomplishes can be described as "pillage"

much less provide a meaningful explanation of where these supposed adverse incentives come from.

I think I already did that. You can dismiss it as a "crazy conspiracy theory" if you want, and I'm pretty sure that you will

You could prove me wrong, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Probably a good thing. Because if I could prove it, when even those in Congress are blocked even trying to get a modicum of information about the internal workings of the Fed (see, for instance, HR 1207), then they would have a hard time keeping people like you in the dark.

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

Ummm... Let's see... total control of the global monetary system, natural resources and food production of most of the world (if not all). Yea, they're pretty ambitious. But they have managed, through actions of the world bank and the IMF, to gain control of a good portion of the resources of the 3rd world.

"They"? Let's start here. Who is "they" in this context?

That depends. Are you of the flawed Keynesian school (and blindingly dedicated to it), or are you open to the theories of the Austrian school and its theories? Are you open to a mixture of ideas and take into account historical perspectives of global, value-based economies?

I tend to think that most schools have something worthwhile to offer. The Austrians don't appear to have contributed anything meaningful in decades, and I think that their business cycle theory is more of a descriptive morality play than an actual mechanistic theory, but that doesn't mean that nothing can be learned from reading the likes of Hayek.
Of course, when I hear phrases like, "the flawed Keyensian school" and "blindingly dedicated" I am forced to question whether intellectual plurality for thee but not for me is the game we're playing.

Those aren't my claims. The banking system is global, and is controlled by a small group of people that are loyal to no country, but only to themselves.

I recommend not repeating the one about foreign Fed shareholders, then, since it's not your claim and it's only true in the most peripheral sense. Anyway, could you name some of these people? That's what I'm really getting at. All you have at this point is vague innuendo about some small number of people who are taking over the world. This seems important enough to warrant some details.

I'm also aware of what a "dollar" is (it's not what the Federal Reserve claims it is), and that the only thing propping up the value of what passes for a dollar today is the willingness of the American taxpayer to continue paying taxes.

I'm hoping you're not waiting for some sort of shocked reaction that fiat money is... well... fiat money.

I think I already did that.

Humor me. I'm looking for something along the lines of, "Person X can enhance his wealth by using his position of influence [name that position here] to cause the Federal Reserve to do [list some Fed action here]. This will cause [something] in the financial system that is desirable for person X, but not for Americans in general."

Probably a good thing. Because if I could prove it, when even those in Congress are blocked even trying to get a modicum of information about the internal workings of the Fed (see, for instance, HR 1207), then they would have a hard time keeping people like you in the dark.

Again, humor me. What data would you be looking for in that audit? How would you analyze it and what would it tell you that something like this would not? What would you be looking for, specifically?

Re:Investigative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I'll bite.

Henry Paulson, of Goldman Sachs, went to congress and asked for $700 billion dollars to hand off to the banks or the entire economy would crash (call it extortion if you want). What nobody noticed (because Frank, Dodd, and a few other distracted attention by railing about some relatively minor bonuses paid to actual workers at AIG) was the $180 billion or so that went to AIG were mainly used to pay out (at 100%) the CDS obligations they owed to banks like JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, and (yes) Goldman Sachs.

Bernanke, meanwhile, has been busy at the Fed pouring trillions of dollars into the banking system and monetizing its own debt in an attempt to keep the major shareholders of the Fed (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo Wachovia) from being put into bankruptcy or receivership under the FDIC, where they belong. These banks hold trillions of dollars in derivatives, and as long as they are allowed to survive, they will continue to drag down the global economy.

Geithner, Larry Summers (former Treasury secretary) and Robert Rubin were primary architects of this massive wealth build-up and credit default swap scheme, and now they are trying to hide the fact that these banks are insolvent and that the TARP money and the loans from the Fed is money that is going into a black hole and it will never come out.

Re:Investigative?

[Copid]

I'm going to try to respond to this as best I can, since it's not quite what I was looking for. I'm looking for the conflicts of interest and bad behavior on the the part of the Federal Reserve banks, specifically. Yes, I could go on for pages about what I think is going well and going badly in the government's attempt to rescue the banking system, but I don't see that your first point about AIG has any real bearing on the subject. Moving on:

Bernanke, meanwhile, has been busy at the Fed pouring trillions of dollars into the banking system and monetizing its own debt in an attempt to keep the major shareholders of the Fed (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo Wachovia) from being put into bankruptcy or receivership under the FDIC, where they belong.

I take it from this that you're suggesting that the Fed has some sort of interest in seeing its major shareholders bailed out. I disagree for a few reasons:

1) "Major" shareholders (meaning banks with lots of required reserves sitting in Fed accounts) have the same voting rights for Fed board members as minor banks. The point of that rule is to keep what you're suggesting from happening. The fact that Wells Fargo is gargantuan could otherwise be used to unduly influence voting for board members.
2) Goldman Sachs only recently became a bank holding company. Unless was is some holding I'm not aware of (and I suppose there could be), they had no say in the current board for the Fed.
3) The connection between the Fed's leadership and the private banks that hold the stock in the Fed is often blown out of proportion. The Board of Governors is a bunch of federal appointees.

As for whether they "should" be in receivership, I agree that we should be more aggressive about which zombies we kill. I would be happier seeing them taken over and restructured by the government than kept on life support. We've already essentially guaranteed all of their debts anyway, so we might as well go the rest of the way. We're treating GM like we're 100% owners while we're treating companies we actually do have a major stake in like we have no right to touch them.

Geithner, Larry Summers (former Treasury secretary) and Robert Rubin were primary architects of this massive wealth build-up and credit default swap scheme...

I'm not sure how one gets from "They didn't stop it when they should have" to "They were primary architects" but I'll leave that debate for another time. The point of my posts with Curunir_wolf was simply that the Federal Reserve conspiracy theories are usually based on ridiculous nonsense. So far, I haven't seen much that indicates otherwise this time around.

BS

[conspirator57]

it's really in response to propublica.

http://propublica.org/

Journalists protection

[IamGarageGuy 2]

I believe the big question here is whether the journalists will be provided the protection that the big newspapers could always provide. It is fine to believe in the letter of the constitution but without the backing of a major media conglomerate with deep pockets to go to bat for you when you are sued in indispensible. You may want to say something publicly against corporate America but the fear of repercussions is usually what limits individuals from doing so. So...how would they propose to protect the whistleblowers?

Re:Journalists protection

[Radhruin]

Submit documents anonymously to Wikileaks, then use Wikileaks documents as a primary source for a report.

Re:Journalists protection

[pileated]

I tend to agree with you but given the populace's ignorance about journalism(see the idiotic replies to the original post that ignore it and instead choose it as a stepping off point for rants of the left and right political persuasion) it's hard to believe that anyone will understand the importance of what you say.

We now seem to have a generation of people who believe that only the web produces anything of importance, that anything of importance can be completely comprehended in the 30 seconds that it takes to read the lengthiest web post, that all information wants to be free, and that this 'free-ness' has no cost to anyone. You're talking about cost and it sure seems to me that the vast majority of people who comment on the press (whether print, broadcast, or web) don't have the slightest idea about COST. It's a nasty little detail that they'd prefer to ignore.

Re:Journalists protection

[Anonymous Coward]

Google.

Re:Journalists protection

[nine-times]

...the backing of a major media conglomerate with deep pockets to go to bat for you when you are sued in indispensible. You may want to say something publicly against corporate America but the fear of repercussions is usually what limits individuals from doing so.

What makes you think being the backing of a major media conglomerate makes you more safe when saying something publicly against corporate America? I mean, when you consider the overlap of major media conglomerates and corporate America, it seems like backing real whistleblowers could just as easily be against the media conglomerate's interests.

I think I'd rather have a whole ton of smaller independent operations than a couple humungous umbrella companies that run the whole show.

Re:Journalists protection

[Brandybuck]

Don't forget government. Far forabuses of the press have come from government than have come from corporations. If you piss of a company, they can pull their advertisements from your paper, but if you piss of government they can imprison you. Not just in Zimbabwe or Nicaragua, but in the U.S.! People bitch about Bush, but he was a pansy compared some former presidents. Contrary to his angelic image, Lincoln would close down newspapers and jail their editors, without trials.

Re:Journalists protection

[Jane Q. Public]

Considering that a Civil War was going on, I don't think you can validly compare the circumstances. Or the people.

Re:Journalists protection

[vertinox]

You're talking about cost and it sure seems to me that the vast majority of people who comment on the press (whether print, broadcast, or web) don't have the slightest idea about COST. It's a nasty little detail that they'd prefer to ignore.

No. Not all all.

Economic theory states that when goods and services are indistinguishable between competitors, that the consumer will always choose the cheapest one.

Of course it isn't so simple, so that's why it is specified "indistinguishable" because an inferior product can be made to look the same or even better through marketing ;)

That said, if people feel that a newspaper and an online news website provide the same value of goods and services, they will always go with the cheaper one (the online).

In the olden days, price was affected by supply and demand, but if your product is virtualized the only limitation is artificial scarcity if you so choose to have one.

My point is that the consumer decides which product lives and which dies. They don't care about how much it really costs you to bring the news to them. If you cannot satisfy the consumer by either providing a lower price, then you must have something in the way of providing a better good or service.

As it is now, in the eyes of the consumer, newspapers provide neither so their business model will eventually fail.

You can yell at the consumers all you want (buy American! buy companies that don't use sweat shops!) but in the end they'll usually go with what is the cheapest. Its a hard cold economic reality.

Re:Journalists protection

[Anonymous Coward]

http://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks:Feed-all, how about that money goes to wikileaks...

Re:Journalists protection

[hedwards]

I'd say the bigger question is how many journalists are going to be able to afford working for weeks on end to bring a large story to the web. Or even still to be at city hall day in and day out in case there's something important going on.

Those are the real issues, you can do things like wiki leaks for whistleblowers, but the current system doesn't work when people cave in under threat of jail.

Re:Journalists protection

[metrometro]

how would they propose to protect the whistleblowers?

I refer you to the Fund for Independence in Journalism. A legal defense fund for small, aggressive media outlets. They take donations.

http://www.tfij.org/

Started by Chuck Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity after the Center spent over a million dollars fighting libel cases. They have never lost a libel case, but pretty soon their libel insurance company dropped them. Their opposition spent 3 million litigating a single case. Scary.

Re:Journalists protection

[pileated]

Sadly I agree with you that consumers will go with what's cheapest, though it just hit me that today of all day's proves the opposite. Detroit made cheap cars. But people chose more expensive but better cars, at least I think that's a viable theory. Nonetheless I think that you're generally correct.

But my point is that the original article seemed to indicate that there would be equivalent investigative journalism on HuffPo that there currently is in print. Or at least it can approximate it. But I doubt that's true, as the thread to which I responded also argued, because HuffPo hasn't thought of all the costs involved in true, investigative journalism.

You seem to be saying that people will accept the cheapest news they can find, regardless of quality. And I'm afraid you may be right. But that's not the same as saying that they'll also get investigative journalism. That isn't done cheaply. They may get something. But they won't get something equivalent to print investigative journalism.

Re:Journalists protection

[Brandybuck]

Doesn't matter. Throwing NORTHERN journalists in prison for criticizing the war is unconstitutional in the extreme. But Lincoln did even more than that, he threatened to imprison the attorneys of those journalists! Even one congressman was arrested!

The Constitution is most needed in wartime.

Re:Journalists protection

[Jane Q. Public]

I do not dispute that; I was merely saying that the situations are not comparable.

Re:Journalists protection

[Copid]

Doesn't matter. Throwing NORTHERN journalists in prison for criticizing the war is unconstitutional in the extreme.

I won't say it was good policy, but the Constitution explicitly says that habeas corpus may be suspended in case of rebellion or invasion.

Re:Journalists protection

[Brandybuck]

Suspending habeous corpus is not the same thing as suspending the First Amendment. Go read what I wrote again. Non-rebellious, non-invading members of the press were being imprisoned for criticizing the President.

Re:Journalists protection

[Copid]

Suspending habeous corpus is not the same thing as suspending the First Amendment.

I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that it effectively is. A suspension of habeas corpus basically means that you can be thrown in jail and have no right to demand that the government explain why in a timely fashion. In a case like that, it really doesn't matter whether you were thrown in there for espionage or exercising your perfectly legal First Amendment rights. The why of it no longer matters.

I certainly wouldn't say that using the suspension of habeas as a backdoor way to squelch speech or any other legal activity, but I don't think it's necessarily true that it's an obvious constitutional violation. I suppose it's reasonable to make the argument that the suspension of habeas corpus is listed in Article I and that in this case, it conflicts directly with Amendment I and Amendment V. If that's really the case, I suppose that the amendments win, since they're amendments (even though the amendments in question were ratified at the same time as the suspension of habeas corpus was).

Any con. law experts out there willing to take a stab at the argument that the Bill of Rights effectively neutered the President's right to suspend habeas corpus under most circumstances? I think the argument is an interesting one, so it has probably been tried somewhere. Anybody?

Re:Journalists protection

[Brandybuck]

Why are you arguing? First you say that suspending habeas corpus is constitutional, but now you say that suspending free speech is constitutional. Remember, it's made out of parchment. If you try to stretch it too much, it will rip.

the more the merrier

[wstrucke]

hell, i don't care what their slant is, the more people out there looking at and reporting on the economy and the government, the better. perhaps through all of the crap that comes up we might find a grain of truth

Re:the more the merrier

[conspirator57]

and perhaps the grains of truth will get lost in the haystack of noise to mix as many metaphors as possible.

Err when did it die?

[MosesJones]

I mean apart from in the US where the media appears to have become scared of actually questioning politicians or holding them to account. Journalism in the UK still seems to find the dirt on politicians and companies and deep investigative exercises are still carried out in lots of different areas.

The basic issue in the US is the partisan nature of both politics and the media, why bother to investigate when its all basically just monkeys throwing shit at a wall. Blogs and the internet are unlikely to change that as its just going to be the same partisan stuff with slightly different shit.

When the likes of Jon Stewart are the finest investigative political journalists that your country has then you know you are in trouble.

Re:Err when did it die?

[Red Flayer]

When the likes of Jon Stewart are the finest investigative political journalists that your country has then you know you are in trouble.

There's a big difference between an investigative journalist and a talking head.

There are lots of good journalists in the US... they just don't get TV time. And since Americans can't be bothered to digest any news not provided to them in an ADD-friendly 2 minute TV blurb (or a scrolling text bar at the bottom of their TV screen), the good journalists are ignored by the public. Since they're mostly ignored, those journalists aren't paying the bills at their place of employment, so they get laid off.

Seriously... VERY few investigative journalists are recognized by name in the US, Seymour Hirsch being probably the only prominent counter-example. Since the US culture is largely dominated by celebrity, having no reporters who are celebrities means that no one cares about investigative journalism.

I think it's great the the HuffPo will be employing some of these reporters... I just hope that the editorialization at HuffPo doesn't get in the way of good journalism.

Re:Err when did it die?

[cornercuttin]

it did die here in the US. the first 3 months of the Iraq war and the death of Anna Nicole-Smith is great proof in the failings of the US media system.

newspapers are dying because we can get all of our information online now. they are also dying because people are tired of partisan bullshit (i.e. Fox News, MSNBC, as well as several newpapers).

we are all getting the same, regurgitated crap from every source, why not get it for free on the internet.

Re:Err when did it die?

[Thelasko]

The basic issue in the US is the partisan nature of both politics and the media

Agreed, and The Huffington Post is widely regarded as a left leaning blog. I think objective journalism died long before investigative journalism. I would love to see some great, old fashioned, investigative journalism, but I fear it would be extremely biased in today's media outlets.

Re:Err when did it die?

[cthulu_mt]

Too long; didn't read.

Sincerly,
An American.

Re:Err when did it die?

[joggle]

There's still PBS. Frontline does great investigative reporting all the time with new episodes most weeks.

Re:Err when did it die?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every piece of investigative journalism is labeled "extremely biased" by those cast in a negative light.

Re:Err when did it die?

[Thelasko]

Every piece of investigative journalism is labeled "extremely biased" by those cast in a negative light.

Very true.

Re:Err when did it die?

[aaandre]

"When the likes of Jon Stewart are the finest investigative political journalists that your country has then you know you are in trouble."

I enthusiastically concur.

This tiny NYC Jew with big balls keeps asking the important questions indirectly and directly, pointing out the surreal absurdity of the BS statements fed through CNN ABC etc.

In a time when TV reporters are only chosen for their ability to look and sound authoritative while regurgitating the government approved, corporation funded newspeak fed by their teleprompters, Stewart is an incredible phenomena. And funny as hell.

Oh, and he would be the first one to call himself a tiny Jew, so hold your horses political correctness nazis.

Go to www.thedailyshow.com and see a couple of episodes. The more brainwashed you are by politics, the more you'll suffer... but the cure is worth the pain, you'll thank me later!

Re:Err when did it die?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Truth is the first casualty of any war.

Re:Err when did it die?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... the government funded investigative journalist save the day. When was the last time PBS made a difference? Give me a list of investigations that ended in any real impact on our lives.

Re:Err when did it die?

[MrSteveSD]

I think you overestimate the British media. They suffer the same issues as any corporate media.

Stories that regurgitate government statements without challenge are defined as being impartial. Stories that strongly challenge government statements and cite previous deceptions etc, are classed as biased and/or left-wing. The few journalists who adopt highly critical points of view are largely cast out of the mainstream media, even if they are award-winning. A good example would be John Pilger.

The BBC is being particularly bad at the moment. It is becoming increasingly afraid to criticise the US and they keep talking about the problem of "anti-Americanism". Several BBC jouralists have even written happy-feelgood books about the US (e.g. Justin Webbs "Have a Nice Day"). If the BBC allows journalists to express highly positive views about the US, where are the journalists writing books with Chomskyesque titles like "Why the US is a Rogue State". The answer is the the system filters such journalists out before they ever reach that level of journalism. If a BBC journalist did suddenly break ranks and write such a book, he would be slammed as being biased or even anti-American (since obviously criticising US foreign policy means you hate the US and everyone in it).

When you look at BBC stories on Iran they are highly critical and suspicious of official statements. This is the standard line and is never taken to be biased and certainly not anti-Iranian. Where are the BBC journalists who are gushingly in love with Iranian culture and their struggles against the Shah etc? Such a journalist would be viewed as completely biased in Iranian favour and kicked out. Endless stories about how Hugo Chavez is crazy and wants to rule for ever are also not viewed as biased within the BBC and the word anti-Venezuelan certainly never comes up.

Time and time again, the British media will take a stance and then effectively define it as being the unbiased view. Any other views are then easily dismissable as biased, and occasionally even more potent words like "anti-American" are available.

Re:Err when did it die?

[MosesJones]

You seem to equate "balance" with "both sides get equal coverage". This is one of the nonsense things that the Beeb does do badly at the moment, it doesn't matter how nut-job the opposing view is they always seem to have someone giving that perspective. Why aren't there gushing bits on Iran? Well the Beeb has done things on Iran around the normal populace and it not being as nut-job as its leadership, but the leadership is verifiably nut-job.

If you want to see anti-US coverage on the Beeb just look at anything that deals with religion in the US, pretty much every channel in the UK, BBC included, covers the Christian Coalition mob in the US as a bunch of nut-jobs.

The Beeb isn't perfect, in fact to paraphrase Churchill its the worst kind of journalism, except when compared will all the other choices.

Re:Err when did it die?

[Anonymous Coward]

TL;DR

-Bubba

Shattered Glass

[VinylRecords]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323944/

Shattered Glass is a film about how an investigative journalist, Adam Peneberg, working for Forbes.com in 1996, exposed journalist Stephen Glass for plagiarizing nearly every article he wrote for The New Republic, a well trusted and highly respected journalistic publication.

This was considered one of the first major breakthroughs for online journalism and it happened in 1996. Online news has been filled with investigative journalism for a while.

Even wikileaks can be seen as legitimate investigative reporting and whistle blowing. http://www.wikileaks.org/

 

Re:Shattered Glass

[Red Flayer]

Shattered Glass is a film about how an investigative journalist, Adam Peneberg, working for Forbes.com in 1996, exposed journalist Stephen Glass for plagiarizing nearly every article he wrote for The New Republic, a well trusted and highly respected journalistic publication.

Stephen Glass wasn't busted for plagiarism, he was busted mostly for making up sources and facts.

A contemporary of his at TNR, Ruth Shalit, was busted (& fired) for plagiarism and factual errors.

Under Peretz (the Editor-in-Chief of TNR), TNR has lost a ton of respect in journalistic circles.

There have been more recent issues with TNR, (google Spiegel, Ackerman, or Beauchamp and The New Republic for details)... lots of factual problems and insufficient editorial oversight.

At any rate, you're correct about investigative journalism on the web... I just find it interesting that the examples you cite (sans wikileaks) deal with 'disproving' traditional print media investigative journalism. I find the web to be a great source for debunking falsehoods, but not as good for primary material... maybe I'm looking in the wrong places :)

Re:Shattered Glass

[Thelasko]

Even wikileaks can be seen as legitimate investigative reporting and whistle blowing.

People always hold wikileaks in such high regrard. Why, just the other day a snake slithered up to me and said:

...your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.

Then I heard a story about another couple who read wikileaks.

...their eyes were opened to any more perfect knowledge of good; but only to the unhappy experience of having lost the good of original grace and innocence, and incurred the dreadful evil of sin.

I guess ignorance is bliss.

Re:Shattered Glass

[Jane Q. Public]

"Even wikileaks..."???

Wikileaks (which, by the way, is timing out on me right now) basically IS a "whistleblowing" site. That's what it's for. What do you think that name means?

Granted, a bit of the stuff may be questionable, but there have been some very, very big stories come out of there.

Re:Shattered Glass

[metrometro]

maybe I'm looking in the wrong places :)

Try these:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/

http://www.propublica.org/

disconnect. reconnect. abort, retry, ignore.

[girlintraining]

Disconnect. Bad plan, darlings. Journalism is undergoing a paradigm shift right now in the same way graphics design underwent it. Before the 1990s, we had separate jobs for typesetting, graphic artist, layout, etc. All that went out the window when the PC came along and suddenly anyone could make a newsletter using PageMaker. The demand for all that graphic design footwork -- needing to hire a team of people to design it, imploded. What came out of it was the versatile graphic designer -- a jack of all trades. Journalism until recently had many different career paths. With the collapse of the printed media and an entire generation growing up used to the idea of instant access to everything, cross-referenced and streaming on demand -- deadlines have gone from a day to a few minutes. How long does it take to get indexed into google so people can search for your article? That time difference is the new deadline. And audiences aren't local anymore -- they are global.

Reconnect. Our collective knowledge is also heavily slanted to the global and national level now. For example, up here in Minnesota, a recent "local" story has been the flooding near Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN along the Red river. When I asked my friends who would be willing to car pool up with me to help sandbagging efforts last friday (the story had been out for a good week) -- only one of my friends had any knowledge of the event, out of about 15 people I asked. Local news doesn't exist anymore for our generation. Strange, but true. Of course, they ALL knew about major national and global events. Our communities really are losing their geographical ties.

I see the future of journalism being somewhat akin to blogging. Journalists simply pick their own interest and self-direct their energies towards it. Interested parties will, via word of mouth and advertisement, come to know that particular journalist. A one-to-many relationship. The sources for these stories will be the readers of those stories. Slashdot is a decent example of what journalism will come to resemble -- open, online forums that are dedicated to particular communities. But I highly doubt that in the journalism to come that people will simply visit one website for their needs. It'll probably look more like Google news -- RSS feeds that we select and create lists of journalists who are involved in fields we have a mutual interest in.

Journalism will become, much like graphic design, at least half or more self-employed or contract/temp work in the next ten years. And we'll come to know journalists by name, instead of by what network or paper they represent.

Re:disconnect. reconnect. abort, retry, ignore.

[Slider451]

Good post. Wish I had mod points.

Re:disconnect. reconnect. abort, retry, ignore.

[Chris Burke]

only one of my friends had any knowledge of the [flooding in ND/MN], out of about 15 people I asked.

That's just weird, since the flooding has made national news so even if that was their only source they should have heard about it. Are these major national and global events mostly political in nature? If they get their news from politically-focused sources, that might explain it.

Slashdot is a decent example of what journalism will come to resemble

Ugh that made my eyes tear up and some vomit come up my throat.

Journalism will become, much like graphic design, at least half or more self-employed or contract/temp work in the next ten years. And we'll come to know journalists by name, instead of by what network or paper they represent.

Yeah I think that's generally a good prediction. In the meantime, I noticed that your list omitted the "fail" option. That was always my favorite to pick, and honestly the one I think most news outlets and journalists formerly employed by them will end up following. :P

Re:disconnect. reconnect. abort, retry, ignore.

[pileated]

Sorry I've been "paradigmed-shifted" to death. Paradigm shifts are recognized long after the fact. Contemporaneous paradigm-shifts are not paradigm-shifts at all: they're someone trying to further their own objectives coupled with wishful thinking about the future.

I don't know how many times I've read this identical analysis about the future of journalism: all successful journalists will be BRANDS. We'll see. My guess is that in 5 years any journalists that are still around will look back at the self-promotional branding of the last few years they same way that older journalists look back at photos of themselves wearing flower-patterned bell-bottoms....... Did I really look like that? Did I really do that?

Re:disconnect. reconnect. abort, retry, ignore.

[MaWeiTao]

Having worked in the graphic design industry for at least 10 years now I have to point out that you're quite mistaken about the state of the industry.

I happened to enter the industry after computers were fully embraced by the industry but just as the internet was starting to take off. What I've found is that the perception towards graphic design has changed, but the reality of the work itself has not.

Because people have access to desktop publishing applications there has a tendency for design to be trivialized. It's all well and good for simplistic newsletters, but what I've often encountered is that once these people start trying to put something together they find themselves overwhelmed. Design wasn't about having the mechanical skills to produce a layout; it's about working with a variety of resources and using creativity, improvisation and strategy to produce work that meets particular requirements. It's common to have people look at design and claim they could do it themselves. But try doing so without copying.

As for the nature of freelancing in design, you'd be shocked by how many design companies exist out there. If anything, I think the market is over-saturated, but the fact is that the work is there. There aren't a lot of freelancers in this profession not because of a particular challenge facing the industry. There are so many of them out there because it's so competitive a market. And a lot of design companies have adopted the approach of primarily hiring freelancers because it's cost effective. It's because design has been commoditized. A lot of the same business idiots who keep outsourcing work think they can get everything on the cheap. They'd outsource design if they could, but it's almost impossible to get someone overseas to produce the kind of design work companies here need.

This brings me back to journalism and this attitude that anyone can produce this work and be good at it. There's this talk about how blogging is changing things. It is, but is it doing so in a good way? Nearly all blogs are little more than a news aggregate. All they provide in the way of content is commenting and maybe some editorializing.

This brings me to another issue. At least traditional news agencies have the pretense of being unbiased. Blogs are almost always dripping with bias and are generally unfriendly to dissenting views. Slashdot's format is better than most, but even here certain viewpoints have a tendency to be modded down. I have no problem with this, whatsoever, if it's clear the blog is more of a personal editorial. But I do have a problem when they try to pass themselves off as being impartial.

Another problem is that people want everything spoon-fed in bite-sized doses. How many people actually read full articles and don't just read sensationalist headlines and maybe skim over the summary. Blogs encourage this model.

Well, I could go on with the problems I see. And despite this I do think that the internet has real value and will probably bring about positive change. The problems I describe are probably symptoms of American media in general, but from what I've seeing the web isn't really helping.

Re:disconnect. reconnect. abort, retry, ignore.

[girlintraining]

whoa. whoa boy. A lot of good points, but you are mistaken about the level of self-employment. Read this. They quote 25%. I know the amount of freelance work done is more -- even graphic designers who have a permanent position do it on the side. It's just the lifestyle we have. As to market saturation, i don't know where you live, but here in Minneapolis/St. Paul, all my contacts say we have more candidates than positions right now. And I know how many design companies are out there. I also know a lot of them are sole proprietorships with less than 25 employees -- it's freelancing "plus"... Everyone has a graphic design "business" on the side. Few of them are making much money.

I agree that Joe Average can churn out a simple newsletter and do simple layouts. Which is all a lot of people need. But running a marketing campaign, or designing an art catalog, submitting to a magazine -- they wouldn't know a bleed margin from a x-line, or Helvetica from Century Schoolbook. :) Absolutely there's a need, but for small projects that publish directly to the web or a small circulation they can print at Kinkos? Not so much.

There's this talk about how blogging is changing things. It is, but is it doing so in a good way? Nearly all blogs are little more than a news aggregate. All they provide in the way of content is commenting and maybe some editorializing.

I didn't say it would be an improvement. Frankly, the quality of news in general has gone down in recent years. Few people have time to do fact-checking and research and a lot of embarassments have happened in recent times. Blogging only lowers the professional responsibility to uphold journalistic integrity another notch. And as to bias, you're right again! But most people don't want unbiased news. Witness the Fox News Network, or the Rush Limbaugh Show, or Larry King... dear god, it's horrible out there. But people are buying it.

Another problem is that people want everything spoon-fed in bite-sized doses. How many people actually read full articles and don't just read sensationalist headlines and maybe skim over the summary.

There's more information on a soup label today than most people's knowledge of the world a hundred years ago was. We are swimming in information; When you're faced with so much data, you're going to skim, look for key phrases, and try to "surf" it rather than "absorb" it. That's just human nature. The media needs to adapt to this, because most people can't read 500 WPM at post-doctorate level like most of us can. The average reading comprehension is 5th grade, and you're lucky if they have ever read a book cover to cover in their life. That's why people still spend so much time watching TV instead of the internet -- they can't type as fast and they can't read as fast. The average person can listen to a conversation (about 200-300WPM) faster than they can read. So any news publication will need to adapt to that reality, not the other way around.

despite this I do think that the internet has real value and will probably bring about positive change. The problems I describe are probably symptoms of American media in general, but from what I've seeing the web isn't really helping.

The problem is not limited to "american media". We're just ahead of the curve.

Re:disconnect. reconnect. abort, retry, ignore.

[Falconhell]

Ah yes the Graphic desingner, defined as someone who can use a Mac but cant read.

Their job (At a newspaper at least) is to remove any remaining useful content and replace it with a diagram

So, um . . . this is news?

[SlappyBastard]

I guess folks haven't been reading ProPublica, Media Matters or Talking Points Memo.

Re:So, um . . . this is news?

[Red Flayer]

I guess folks haven't been reading ProPublica, Media Matters or Talking Points Memo.

ProPublica -- fair enough. Investigative journalism is the meat & potatoes of this org.

Media Matters -- not investigative journalism. MM is a metajournalism site -- they are all about criticizing other media sources for bad journalism.

Talking Points Memo -- They are trying to focus more on original reporting, but are still largely a metajournalism site. Most of the entries are viewpoints on stories published elsewhere. It remains to be seen if they can pull off the switch to actual reporting (Polk award last year is helping :)).

$175,000

[jgtg32a]

To be a few ticks above a forum moderator?

Nice gig

Re:$175,000

[Yvan256]

Indeed, they should be able to easily get 25 to 50 people for that amount, not 10.

Re:$175,000

[Jane Q. Public]

With 10 reporters, you will have a bit more administrative work, you will need someone to (more) editing and layout, and more expenses (especially if they have to travel), and more. Plus benefits. It does not translate directly into $175k apiece. Very far from it.

Why are all the newspapers surprised??

[johnlcallaway]

I haven't bought a paper in years, and the free ones that get tossed in my driveway go into the recycling bin. I get all my news off free Internet sites.

Welcome to the 21st century Huffington (and NY times, and Washington Post, et. al.) No bailout loans for those that refused to change until it was too late, or changed and couldn't figure out how to make money at it.

Re:Why are all the newspapers surprised??

[Anonymous Coward]

The Jim Jones death cult drank Flavor-Aid, not Kool-Aid. Your cultural reference is as incorrect as your ignorant news-gathering strategy!

Re:Why are all the newspapers surprised??

[Tibor the Hun]

Not only that but "Huffington" is not a newspaper, it's a website/blog...
But hey, as long as he's foaming at the mouth...

Journalism?

[TrebleJunkie]

The Huffington Post is to journalism what an Asian Nike sweatshop is to day care.

Re:Journalism?

[Kid Zero]

If I had Mod points....

Re:Journalism?

[Evildonald]

So true. So funny. So ultimately depressing. Huffy is so one-eyed, Ulysses tried to poke its eye out.

Re:Journalism?

[nine-times]

So you're saying that in "journalism" the writers get pampered and looked after while the Huffington Post puts them to work?

Or wait, I'm forgetting that sometimes kids get mistreated and abused in day care... So traditional newspapers would be better off if one of their parents were looking after them, but the Huffington Post is run by people with small hands?

Sorry, I'm bad with metaphors.

Re:Journalism?

[RingDev]

Albeit inflammatory, it's really not as insulting as you think.

Huffington Post is putting Journalists to work.

Asian Nike sweatshops put day care employees to work.

So your analogy is spot on accurate, but the inflammatory choice of subject mater leads me to believe that you have a bias.

-Rick

Re:Journalism?

[TrebleJunkie]

Yeah, no. Maybe I better explain.

The asian sweatshop -- putting kids to work making shoes (not putting day care employees to work, as you've quite deliberately misinterpretted) -- is about as far a cry from day care as calling what The Huffington Post engages in, "journalism."

Damn skippy I'm biased -- I'm biased against smearmiesters masquerading as journalists.

Are you a Huff Post reader?

Re:Journalism?

[RingDev]

The asian sweatshop -- putting kids to work making shoes (not putting day care employees to work, as you've quite deliberately misinterpretted) -- is about as far a cry from day care as calling what The Huffington Post engages in, "journalism."

There was no deliberate misinterpretation, I assure you.

I read your post to be every bit as inflammatory and insulting as you intended it to be.

What the Huffington Post does is not "journalism", no more so than any other politically active news aggregate web site (with a left OR right bias). Trying to assert that Huffington Post does journalism is akin to claiming that /. does journalism. What they are doing in this case though is funding Journalism. Journalism is a profession, something practiced by individuals. It is time consuming and resource intensive, so to see funding from any source is a good thing, IMO. Along with that goes the need for moral and reputable Journalists who will not allow the hand that feeds to become the hand that writes.

Also, while the term "sweat shop" is heavily loaded in the US, it is important to realize that their impact goes far beyond labor laws. While it is deplorable that people have to work in such conditions, it sure beats unemployment, starvation, childhood prostitution, crime, and many of the other lesser jobs that while not classified as sweat shops, lead to a far worse quality of life. I know it might come as a surprise to someone who has lead a privileged and sheltered life having never left the safety of the United States, but there is a whole world out there, across the boarder. Many places where the life you take for granted is a pipe dream.

Heck, you don't even have to leave the US to find people putting in longer hours than most former Nike sweatshop employees were putting in. And odds are, those sweat shop employees are getting paid much better (in relation to COLA) than Joe Schmoe in the US holding down 2 full time jobs trying to keep up with the mortgage.

Are you a Huff Post reader?

No, I am not. Judging by your grammar, verbally abusive nature, and moderate paranoia, I would venture to guess that you are more of a News Busters fan. Maybe even a Savage Nation member?

In any case, I classify them all as bathroom tissue. Some are optimistic, the others are pessimistic, but they are all ass-wipe.

-Rick

Mike

[imp7]

OMG, job postings?

Content Theft

[TyntTracer]

The real issue for all online journalists is theft of content. It is difficult to create good content. Therefore it is particularly tough for those that create it if there is no traffic going to their site. Why would they bother?

Re:Content Theft

[TyntTracer]

Copying and pasting but really it is an issue of semantics. 'Copyright protection' is another way to say 'do not steal'

Parent is true

[eclectro]

Parent is not flamebait as the Huffington Post actively works to censor comments it doesn't like and then outright bans the user.

So yes, the Huffington Post does appear to be be a shill site and this attempt at investigative journalism should not be taken seriously.

Re:Parent is true

[pixelpusher220]

Glad to see there's some common sense left here. I'm as left-wing as the next left-wing-conspirator, but one of the concepts of 'journalism' is being un-biased.

Anyone who claims HuffPost isn't 'biased' is themselves nicely biased.

Want to know what gov't healthcare will look like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go wait in line at your local DMV. Also, see Social Security, Medicare, MedicAid, and the home mortgage market. The gov't has done a real bang-up job on those, hasn't it? First will come the inevitable cost overruns because for some reason nobody could predict that more services = more cost. Then will come price controls. Then will come longer waiting periods and denials for once routine procedures. Then will come US citizens fleeing to Mexico for affordable medical care.

Newspapers might be dead

[Tibor the Hun]

Newspapers (as in "news" printed on paper) may be dead, or dying due to the medium switching to electronic distribution of information, but Journalism is far from dead.
Far from it, in this age when every prepubescent teen with an agenda can slap an opinion blog and consider it news, it is more important than ever to have professionals discovering, editing and presenting information.

Mod parent up! Unfair, opinion moderation

[ArcherB]

You can't take the Huff seriously. IT's a political shill site.

He's not the only one who feels that way. Allow me to quote Wikipedia:

The Huffington Post (often referred to on the Internet as HuffPost or HuffPo) is an American liberal[1] news website and aggregated weblog founded by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, featuring various news sources and columnists. The site covers a wide range of topics, including sections devoted to politics, entertainment, media, living, business, and the green movement.

Please read the bold part. Parent stated fact and was downmodded for it.

Mods based on opinion have no place on slashdot and are against the moderator guidelines. The Mod should have posted a reply if he/she disagreed rather abusing moderator power.

Too much astroturfing being sold as

[Phizzle]

"investigative" reporting :( CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

there it is...

[ssintercept]

The problem isn't whether or not there is bias it's whether or not the reader knows the bias and filters appropriately.

Awareness...

...no longer just a philosophical or scientific dialogue.

but of course i am biased...

Re:Mod parent up! Unfair, opinion moderation

[tjstork]

Please read the bold part. Parent stated fact and was downmodded for it.

I didn't even condemn them for being a liberal shill site, just a shill site. Of course conservatives have their shill sites. But, you still have to have some honesty and say that's what they are.

Mods based on opinion have no place on slashdot and are against the moderator guidelines. The Mod should have posted a reply if he/she disagreed rather abusing moderator power.

Mods based on opinion are a fact of life on slashdot. When the conservative mods who are on slashdot mod my post, it will go back up. Generally conservative leaning or seemingly conservative leaning posts get modded down right away, then gradually go back up after hours. Also, if you trash Europe in a post, that will usually bounce up right away if you do it when Europe is asleep, and then becomes a good troll when Europe wakes up.

no such thing

[Uberbah]

There is no "content theft", only copyright infringement*. Aside from that notable correction, what exactly are you referring to - copying and pasting of entire articles, which is a blatant copyright violation? Or AP style whining about people who (gasp!) exercise their fair use rights?


*Yes, it's infringement, not theft. Deal with it. You don't have any problems seeing the difference between driving under the influence and embezzlement, or the difference between rape and arson. We have different terms for different violations of the law for a reason - they're different.

Re:Unfair, opinion mod parent down

[ssintercept]

wikipedia, the source that anyone can edit is chock full of bias and in no way should be used as "fact".
the use of "liberal" in that sentence is as a descriptor, which in and of itself is - biased.
cue (citation needed) AC post now. ;-)

We're all biased. It's about reputation

[wowbagger]

We are all biased - I'm biased, you are biased, he's biased. In and of itself, that doesn't have to be a bad thing - bias can be a hell of a motivator.

If $Journalist investigates $Politician because $Politician is a member of $Party and $Journalist thinks $Party are a bunch of crooks, and $Journalist's bias makes him keep digging until he finds something out and reports it, that is GOOD.

However, it is a question of reputation: If I know that $Journalist has a hate-on for $Party, I can weight what $Journalist write accordingly. If I know that $Journalist has a hate-on for $Party and lets that bias color his reporting, I can take that into account. If, on the other hand, I know that $Journalist has a hate-on for $Party, and as a result is especially scrupulous on his checking of his facts, I can take that into account as well.

If $Biased_as_Hell_website hires investigative reporters, but is careful not to spike stories from them just because it goes against their bias, then I might read them even if their bias goes against my own. But $Biased_as_Hell_website is going to have to PROVE to me, every day, that they are trying to keep their facts separate from their opinions. And if I get a whiff that they aren't, then I will ignore them from that moment onward.

And if $Journalist gets a reputation for ignoring "inconvenient facts", for going soft on his friends and hard on his foes, then I will blow him off as well.

And THAT is what is important - that these "New Media" types establish reputations I can use to judge their reporting. Be up-front with your bias - at least with DailyKos and Rush I know their biases, and can at least begin to apply a correction factor. But when somebody tries to pretend "Oh, me? I'm not biased, trust me" - I know they are lying to me, I just don't know in which direction to correct for it.

Re:Mod parent up! Unfair, opinion moderation

[ChaosDiscord]

Here in the reality-based community "liberal" and "political shill" are not synonyms.

What the hell is the difference?

[Beefslaya]

Journalists can be bought anywhere, in cyberland and on the street.

It's very apparent on how fucking BENT the television and print media is. Look at the most recent lovefuck Obamafest '08.

The web is a great place to get "real" investigative news to the street without the bias filters. However, credibility is a factor.

Maybe the old Who, What, When, Where, Why, How should be the format of choice.

Reporter character is a fine line to walk. (Matt Drudge)

Re:Mod parent up! Unfair, opinion moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need more mentions from other sources besides Wikipedia, publications like Monocle have mentioned the Huffington Post. One particular mention was in their coverage of the then upcoming US election night, where they reviewed the various probably major news outlets. Monocle, which is not known for being conservative or pro-US or pro-Republican party, and has an especially global view, readily acknowledged the Huff's liberal bent.

And besides, while readily acknowledging the Huff isn't just the founder, anyone who's seen the woman speak on CNN's Larry King, and doesn't think she's a liberal, needs their eyes checked. She sits with the "left" commentators as well as is normally shown with the left and/or Democratic commentators.

Re:Mod parent up! Unfair, opinion moderation

[tjstork]

Here in the reality-based community "liberal" and "political shill" are not synonyms

That's some definition of reality ya got there!

will not matter, UNTIL

[WindBourne]

a bob woodward comes from it. After that, news media are in MAJOR trouble.

Don't open a false front!

[kong74]

It's a failure to think the key behind exploiting the masses, governing them into wars as needed for the might to exploit them, forcing them to live for the money and starve if the money can't use them to grow, making them beg for labour by all means and costs, although nobody needs labour, but the things it produces, while all labour is only producing property of those who "give labour" and take money for those things the labour produces, let them rot rather than giving them starving humans, don't even let the labour produce them, if there is no chance to earn money -- it's a failure to believe the key behind all this was mis- or disinformation about the crude practices, that go with such a normality, or about the moral integrity of the leaders of this damaging world. Everybody knows what's going on. There is no secret about it. The point is: take this as information about the cause and it's consequences and stop thinking it was something like abuse or misuse of an originally nice order. Stop thinking that the "real" purpose of mankind was to be noble and the reason for failure was uncovered, bad behavior. The purpose is making money, the damage is a consequence of this -- it's about to change this purpose, not about to spot traitors on an imagined good purpose. And this to be changed purpose does not come from lies or human nature, it is dictated by force, by the force the governments command.

The Public is Lazy

[Dreadneck]

The only things journalists are truly responsible for are reporting facts accurately and not committing libel.

The concept of objective journalism is absurd on its face. Journalism is a human affair and, as such, will always be prone to bias even if it enters in unconsciously.

The public whining about bias, IMHO, boils down to a lazy public that expects to have its thinking done for it. It is not overly difficult to train one's self to discriminate between fact and opinion.

Is the Huffington Post biased in favor of the Left? Absolutely. Is it therefore rendered incapable of conducting solid investigative journalism? Absolutely not.

It's the job of the reader to separate the wheat[facts] from the chaff[opinion].

I've got a bad feeling about this.

[Jamie's Nightmare]

If "Investigative Journalism" includes the same blog crap I've seen posted on Slashdot, we're in deep shit.

Confuzed

[bloobamator]

I never saw the Huffington Post until today. I've heard of it of course but never read it until I saw it mentioned here on /.

I voted for Obama. I voted for Bush. You cannot call me biased on way or the other. Stupid perhaps, but never biased.

My first thought when I hit their main page was, "WTF?" It has to be the ugliest, most poorly designed and confusing "news" site I have ever seen. It looks absolutely crappy.

My second thought was, "are these all op-ed pieces or are there some actual news articles here?" At the very least it's terribly misleading.

My third thought was, "what exactly is their bias?" I had to come back here to /. and read the comments before I realized that it's a left-leaning site. Maybe that's a good thing but my gut tells me it's just more confusion.

Actually my first thought was that Ms. Huffington is not a very good writer. She uses phrases like "all the more" and leans way too heavily on the comma key.

Overall I would give the site a credibility rating of: poor. I don't expect to go back.

I stopped reading cnn.com because their editing is so poor. Plus it's written at the 2nd or 3rd-grade reading level, and their stories are so diluted that reading them is almost a complete waste of time.

I read the NYtimes.com because I'm a New Yorker, plus their writing and editing are decent. OK so they have a liberal bias but at least they try to represent both sides of the political fence. Some of their staff writers are hardcore conservatives.

So now where do I go for balanced journalism? The only thing worthwhile that I got out of Huffington was the list of links to news sites that appears at the bottom of the page. Maybe I'll find what I'm looking for among those links.

Sigh.

Re:Unfair, opinion mod parent down

[ArcherB]

wikipedia, the source that anyone can edit is chock full of bias and in no way should be used as "fact".
the use of "liberal" in that sentence is as a descriptor, which in and of itself is - biased.
cue (citation needed) AC post now. ;-)

Seriously? Are you trying to say that Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post are NOT liberal?

No, Seriously, tell me that you think they are both middle of the road. Then, tell me what a liberal is because if HuffPo is middle, I'd like to know what leftist really is.

Licensing can protect -- or defeat -- bias

[gregwbrooks]

It'll be interesting to see how they license the content.

An example of why licensing matters: ProPublica is another new investigative journalism operation, funded as a nonprofit and dedicated to doing deep investigative journalism at a time when many daily newspapers can no longer afford it. They make their content free (as in beer) to newspapers and online sites.

Sounds great, right? The problem is, their Creative Commons license does not allow for editing of the stories. On a day-to-day basis, that means newspapers and other content users can't localize the piece directly -- they'd have to write a sidebar. What's more troubling is that the license also means local editors can't legally alter the story if they find factual errors or want to add additional facts.

That's why licensing matters. It'll be interesting to see the approach HuffPo takes.

Re:Unfair, opinion mod parent down

[ssintercept]

liberal compared to who/what?

in a discussion on bias-my opinion on arianna huffington will be ah, well, biased.

my reply was on the topic of using a biased descriptor to define something, and that using wikipedia as a source that could literally change overnight is just not good

nowhere in my post did i mention what i thought of huffington because my opinion of her/her website is of no consequence.

you are pulling shit out of thin air and your reply seems to be an effort to troll/flamebait my ass, albeit a very weak and juvenile reactionary attempt at that.


PS- you know you like her, she's your buddy. now just admit it.

Re:Unfair, opinion mod parent down

[ArcherB]

If you don't like my source, provide one of your own. Either way, don't attack the messenger unless it truly is a bad source. And, true, while wikipedia is not the best source, it's accurate more times than not. Besides, I've never heard anyone accuse Wikipedia of right-leaning bias!

Would you take the Washington Post meet your standards as a source?

The most notable change is that HuffPost has morphed from a left-leaning site with a modest conservative presence to a pugnaciously liberal operation in which the banner headlines and majority of bloggers holler about the latest outrage perpetrated by the Bush administration.

"We are opposed to the war in Iraq," Huffington says from her Los Angeles home. "We think the troops should come home. The headlines are going to reflect what is in the best interests of the country."

As Lerer puts it: "Attitude is a huge positive, not a negative. People don't have to love you. Maybe people come to you because they don't love you."

After President Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence last week, HuffPost put up 15 blogs -- every one of them critical -- including one from Huffington and another by Russell Shaw headlined "President Bush, You Are a Disgrace to My Flag."

Now that we've established that the point of HuffPo is to promote left thinking ideology, do you think that it can be trusted to do non-biased "investigative journalism"? That's what we are discussing here.

(also, note that Scooter Libby did NOT out Valerie Plame. His problem was with his memory which led to perjury. Did Russell Shaw display the same outrage when Bill Clinton committed the same crime as Scooter Libby? Of course not. Scooter's biggest crime was that he was a conservative, not that he lied under oath. Google "Russell Shaw impeachment" for more views of this seemingly non-biased individual. This is the type of "journalism" I expect to see from HuffPo)

As for my personal opinion of Arianna Huffington? Yeah, I like her. I just don't like that she treats people different based on their political beliefs. And her "blog" is the worst. In the example I gave above, people don't see the irony in it. They act as if the crimes from their side is no big deal, but the the other side do it.... OK, imagine if Bush, Rove or Rice ever said, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Wouldn't they get hammered over it? Well, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and Hillary Clinton all said something to that effect? Where is the outrage on HuffPo (or any other media source)? Where are the calls for impeachment? Nothing, just crickets. Anyway, THAT'S my problem with bias on either side. It sets up a double standard. (disclaimer: I was against the Clinton impeachment as well)

Huge Differences

[DesScorp]

"By that criteria, you can't take ANY site seriously."

Well, yes you can. You can have a site that has an ideological bent, but still has quality reporting and writing. National Review on the right, and The New Republic on the left are good examples here (and yes, with the exception of the Stephen Glass episode).

The HuffPuff, however, is a really horrible vehicle to attempt serious journalism. Its always been the Daily Kos with celebrities. That's great if what you want is ideological red meat (or blue meat here, if you will). But to me this is like Michael Savage or Janeane Garofalo announcing that they're going to become "serious journalists".

Specifics, please?

[DesScorp]

"Fox news has investigative journalists."

Well, they do if "investigative journalists" means "people who make stuff up".

Can I see specific examples of this? And, pray tell, do you think the other major networks are "making stuff up" as well?

back away from the crack pipe

[ssintercept]

easy killer. you just want to argue. i could care less about your politics. i honestly have no idea what you are talking about.

my original post that you replied to was about BIAS. the original post that i replied to had used bias in his definition (as did GP) and that in fact was reason enough to not mod parent up.

what you and your knee jerk reactionary blatherings are on about leaves me confused and sad, sad for you.

and about ms anna. i thought you had a distaste for her and that post script was an ill fated attempt at humour.

Re:back away from the crack pipe

[ArcherB]

i could care less about your politics.

It's "couldn't care less", not "could".

my original post that you replied to was about BIAS. the original post that i replied to had used bias in his definition (as did GP) and that in fact was reason enough to not mod parent up.

Maybe so, but the GG*P post did not deserve to be down-modded for stating fact, either. That's why it needed to be modded up, to counter the down-mod.

and about ms anna. i thought you had a distaste for her and that post script was an ill fated attempt at humour.

I got it. The point is that I don't dislike someone because of their political views. To do so is akin to racism or bigotry, IMHO. As for Arianna, I find her to be respectful in her interviews and sincere in her beliefs. Her website is a different matter.

Have a good one.

Re:back away from the crack pipe

[ssintercept]

now you are really trolling.
accusing me of racism is laughable from the guy who purports that: "Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense"
yes yes Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi were not only fascist swines goose stooping to Wagner but they were also lovers. its a fact.
for your information- I could care less, but i have chosen not to, hence this reply. my haphazard capitalization and lousy grammar should've been an indicator that i dont have a high regard for such things.
original post calling HP a shill site is offering an opinion not a fact. this opinion is relative and has no way of being a "fact". You can't take the Huff seriously. IT's a political shill site.that is a troll/flamebait and you know it.

you my friend need help. i suggest a 12 step program myself. maybe a regime of daily masturbation will help. you obviously have something exerting pressure on your brain.

Re:back away from the crack pipe

[ArcherB]

Relax. I never accused you of anything. I said disliking people for no other reason than their political views (an R or a D after their name) is akin to racism or bigotry. When did I accuse you of that? I said that I, meaning ME, not you, would not hold Arianna's political views into account when considering my like or dislike of her. That was all.

Gandhi had political views that are radically different than my own, but that doesn't mean I have no respect for the man, his cause or his methods.

original post calling HP a shill site is offering an opinion not a fact. this opinion is relative and has no way of being a "fact". You can't take the Huff seriously. IT's a political shill site.that is a troll/flamebait and you know it.

Um, no. I'm pretty sure Arianna Huffington would agree that her site has more than a slight liberal slant. Here is a quote from her Bio:

Huffington describes herself as a "former right-winger who has evolved into a compassionate and progressive populist". She is the founder of The Huffington Post, a liberal online news and commentary website and aggregated blog.

I don't think you will find anyone to the right of Stalin that says HuffPo is not a left leaning site at the very least. That's fine. It's great that she can do that. That's what free speech is all about. However, that must be taken into consideration when branching out to "investigative journalism". The source must be considered in all matters. Besides, don't you think the political leanings of TownHall.com would have been mentioned in the summary if they were claiming to start "investigative journalism"? It needed to be pointed out, regardless if it leans left or right.

you my friend need help. i suggest a 12 step program myself. maybe a regime of daily masturbation will help. you obviously have something exerting pressure on your brain.

I'm not the one doing the accusing here. Nor am I the one taking offense when none was meant. Do you know what trolling means?

Now, please, step away from the crack pipe and pick up the bong and relax. No one is trying to insult you or piss you off. Then again, given your already heightened sense of paranoia, maybe a bong is not the best thing for you either.

Re:back away from the crack pipe

[ArcherB]

Oh, and "Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense" is not my quote. That's Orwell.

Nothing new, just a realignment

[Anonymous Coward]

What looks like a rebirth of investigative journalism is merely a symptom of a grand realignment. When it is complete you will find that control of the media will be in fewer hands and the sites which most people visit will span the world. It isn't getting better, it's getting worse.

Technology has enabled fewer voices to command the attention of larger numbers of people, The fact that there a few thousand websites which have a few dozen visitors each can eke out an existence doesn't make for increased democracy.

A document is worth nothing, whatever its content, if nobody is reading it.

Re:Unfair, opinion mod parent down

[Anonymous Coward]

Scooter Libby did NOT out Valerie Plame

No, Libby was charged with DELIBERATELY making untrue statements in order to OBSTRUCT a special prosecutor's Grand Jury investigation. He was successfully CONVICTED of trying to coverup the administration's involvement in a crime.

Re:Mod parent up! Unfair, opinion moderation

[Gallowglass]

You are citing Wikipedia as proof?!?!?!!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH111

I think there is merit to this approach

[beatymccloud]

I will admit upfront that I am not a journalist, and haven't read the Huffington Post before (except perhaps when it was linked to from a previous story). With that said though, I think that there is merit to this. A year and a half ago during the presidential primaries there was (and still is to a lesser extent) a huge outrage directed towards the mainstream media for their blatant bias and not reporting on much of the news out there.

I think that there is a shift going on, and grassroots journalism is where it is headed. People aren't going to get the information that they are looking for from traditional media sources, it is going to have to come from each other. This started with blogging, and I think as more and more people get frustrated with the media, new forms of news are going to come about.

I personally was so frustrated with the mainstream media that I developed (and am still in the process of doing so) a grassroots news site called WEport where anyone can post news and events taking place in their communities.

It's like Red Flayer commented, "There are lots of good journalists in the US... they just don't get TV time." As long as people keep relying on the media, government, or whoever, they are going to keep getting screwed. It's these good journalists that aren't heard which need an outlet (and why WEport was created).