If you want to know when the press went wrong, Septemper 8 2002 works

by Abode of Chaos

From Judith Miller to Julian Assange
[Via Pressthink]

Our press somehow got itself on the wrong side of secrecy after September 11th.

For the portion of the American press that still looks to Watergate and the Pentagon Papers for inspiration, and that considers itself a check on state power, the hour of its greatest humiliation can, I think, be located with some precision: it happened on Sunday, September 8, 2002.

On that morning the New York Times published a now notorious story, reported by Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller, in which nameless Bush Administration officials claimed that Iraq was trying to buy the kind of aluminum tubes necessary to build a nuclear centrifuge. Press critic Michael Massing, who in 2004 reviewed these events, describes what happened:

Gordon and Miller argue that the information about the aluminum tubes was not a leak. “The administration wasn’t really ready to make its case publicly at the time,” Gordon told me. “Somebody mentioned to me this tubes thing. It took a lot to check it out.” Perhaps so, but administration officials were clearly delighted with the story. On that morning’s talk shows, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice all referred to the information in the Times story. “It’s now public,” Cheney said on Meet the Press, that Saddam Hussein “has been seeking to acquire” the “kind of tubes” needed to build a centrifuge to produce highly enriched uranium, “which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.” On CNN’s Late Edition, Rice said the tubes “are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.” She added: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”—a phrase lifted directly from the Times.

We know from retrospective accounts that the Bush White House had already decided to go to war. We know from the Downing Street Memo that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” We know that the Bush forces had decided to rev up their sales campaign that week because ”from a marketing point of view you don’t introduce new products in August,” as chief of staff Andrew Card brazenly put it. We know that the appearance of the tubes story in the Times is what allowed Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice to run with it on the Sunday shows, because without that they would have been divulging classified information and flouting their own rules. We also know that the tubes story was wrong: they weren’t for centrifuges. And yet it was coming from the very top of the professional pyramid, the New York Times. Massing again:

[More]

I think that when history books remark on this period, they will focus on the willful collusion of the press and the government. Miller says her job is simply to tell people what the government is thinking, even if it is wrong and she knows it. Gordon says it is good writing because it reflects the views of the government, at least the ones they told him. Apparently being open open conduit for any information the government wanted to feed them was what their job was.

This continues today. The lack of concern for their readers and for publishing anything resembling truth is one reason their balance sheets are going down the tubes. As Doc Searls writes, we no longer have a watchdog press. Maybe a watchdog web will replace it.

The game Monopoly as an economic metaphor, again

by Mark Strozier

People do not understand seem to understand the inequalities of our economy, ones that have gotten worse over the last generation. Here is one way to get your mind around it by using the game, Monopoly.

Many people do not realize that the original game was created by a political activist in 1903. It was designed to illustrate the problems for all of us when wealth becomes concentrated in a few – one person gets all the wealth and everyone else loses.

I came across a comment that reestablished this line of thinking. One percent of America earns about 25% of all the income in the US. The bottom 50% owns less than this. But things are even worse than that when capital and property is included. The bottom 80% holds only 7% of that wealth, the top 1% holds over 42% and the rest hold about 50%. Here is a way to visualize it with Monopoly.

100 people are playing a game of Monopoly. Everyone starts with $1500 for a total beginning capital of $150,000. We are 30 years into this game and all the property has been bought. There are hotels on most property – some people came together to develop a specific street. Here is how the game looks now, realizing that the top 1% owns over 42% of all the financial wealth in the US:

• One person has $64,500 ($150,000 x 0.43) in cash, personally owns 10 properties, two railroads and a utility.
  
• Nineteen people own $75,000 for an average of $3950 each. They own 11 properties, 2 railroads and a utility as a group. Only by huddling together as small groups can they actually develop any of the properties.
  
• Eighty people own $10,500 for an average of $130 each. They own 1 property as a group, no railroads and no utilities. They have to pay rent to everyone else.

Here is what the cash looks like:

The bottom 80%’s cash can not be separated from the axis line and is totally inconsequential. The next 19 are at least visible. But they too hold little competition for the one with all the money.

Who do you think is going to win this game? Do you really think that any of the 99 people have much chance at all? That is where we are today.

The one person at the top has almost 500 times the cash as the average of the bottom 80. The 19 who are not completely losing have 30 times more money than the bottom 80. But they still each have 16 times less cash than the one person at the top. And that cash will do little to increase their capital.

The bottom 80% own no property to collect rent. They hold 30 times less cash than the next closest group. They pay out rent to everyone else and only collect $200 as a wage. And the regressive tax structure of the game – think railroads, income tax (only one bracket) and luxury tax – means that they lose money every time around the board. They have no property to sell and no hope. Chances are that they will not be able to complete another trip around the board without going bankrupt. That one property will end up in someone else’s hands.

The next group of 19 is not doing too much better. They may own 11 properties and could exact rent if they form groups. However, they need to make a capital cost to build the houses, reducing further the amount of cash reserves they have. And that rent needs to be divided amongst a group, lessening the benefits. Most properties would not pay back the capital expense of developing, at least for this group of 19. They still have the same expenses from landing on the properties not owned by them and the same regressive taxes. And without banding together, they can not build any houses and really collect big rents.They may last for a few more times around the board if they hoard their money, keep expenses low and are very lucky.

But as the bottom 80 disappear and fall away from the game, the next 19 become under even greater pressure as some of them head down.

The one guy at the top is doing great. They own enough properties to allow him to completely develop several with hotels. By leveraging their cash hoard to gain property from failing owners they can continue to gain property from those that fall. They can play the other 19 – the only players they need to worry about – against each other as they capture more capital, property and money. The rents they collect more than make up for any expenses they have to pay. They most likely own the best properties and collects the highest rents, which accrues entirely in their bank account.

The ability for any of the other 99 players to topple the person at the top is negligible. In fact, each of them will gradually fall.

First the 80 that can no longer make it around the board to the $200 pay day, then the next 19, as some of them try and move up but others drop. As each drops, the top gains most of the capital.

There really is no way for the TOP guy to lose. And the other 99 have nothing.

Now, the goal of Monopoly is to make everyone else go bankrupt, not to be the wealthiest. But the outcome often follows that path.

Would you like to be any of the 99 who will lose that game? Is there any hope for you to enhance your position much at all? Why would you continue playing at all? I’d rather just start over.

Our economy seems to be following a similar path.

But it is not game. What really happens to the 80% who have nothing? Or the 19% barely hanging on? Would a winning strategy be for them to give the top guy extra money? Of course not.

So why do so many people want to continue the current approach – give even more money to the top 1%, make it even easier for them to hold onto capital, increase regressive taxation while lessening progressive taxation?

This is not sustainable and we are seeing the result.

I guess that one guy who wins can go find another game in some other country. The rest of us can play something like Candyland.

Swan Lake like you’ve never seen it

Late Night Open Thread: Winter Ballet
[Via Balloon Juice]

Okay, it’s not the Nutcracker. Deal.

[More]

Ballet might be more popular if the Chinese had invented it instead the Europeans. This was a pretty amazing demonstration of balance and flexibility. Fun to watch.