This Week:

Quote of the Week

Economic Good News, Sort Of

The “Quiet” Use of Power

Greetings,

My apologies for the error last week. I gave the address of Physicians for a National Health Program as http://www.pnhp.org/index.html. That’s almost right, although they changed it enough that if you went there they gave you an error message. The correct address is http://www.pnhp.org. It’s hard to keep up with this internet stuff, y’know. It’s a great website, whatever the address is.

I realize I’ve been writing fairly lengthy (for me) pieces lately, and this week’s issue seems to have a couple of long pieces, too. Next week’s edition is mostly written already, and looks like another long one – Yikes! I can’t explain it.

By the way, it is likely that next week’s edition will come out early, as I am scheduled to go into the hospital overnight in the middle of the week for a small operation. I fully expect the following week’s Notes to come out on time, but there is a chance that it’ll take a little longer to recover than they predict. I’ve never been in the hospital before. I’ll let you know. Maybe I’ll even write about it, who knows?

Until next week,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

The author of the following “quote” is James Rosen, a member of the White House press corps who works for the Fox News Channel. He was quoted in the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) of August 12th. Incredibly, he appears to be praising Ari Fleischer, the recently-retired White House press secretary, for...well, see for yourself what he’s praising Ari for. And, in turn, he is actually encouraging Scott McClellan, the new White House press secretary, to do the same thing.

“One of Ari's great gifts was he was able to appear as though he was saying different and new things even though they were all variations of the same talking point. Scott must learn to do a better job of that.”

Economic Good News, Sort Of

On August 1st the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) ran an article on the front page headlined “Military Spending Boosts Economy.” It reported on the “unexpectedly rapid growth” in the economy in the second quarter (April-June), which “was led by a 44 percent surge in defense spending,” according to the Commerce Department report cited in the story. “Without the push from defense,” the article told us, “Gross Domestic Product growth would have been under 1 percent.”

The Star Trib went on to report the words of Vince Boberski, chief economist at RBC Dain Rauscher in Chicago, who said that “Certainly the headline number was surprisingly good, but once you take a look beyond that, you can really see that Washington bought itself an accelerated recovery. We really just got a pop from spending on the invasion of Iraq.”

He’s right, of course. For those economists who look at any kind of “growth” as a good thing, such events as wars, hurricanes, and other disasters are “good news.” After all, we have to spend money and employ people when we execute a war, or when we clean up after a hurricane, and such spending is always an economic stimulant. But, wait a minute. Nobody is going to say that wars and other disasters are good things because they raise employment and wages. Are they? Sure they are, with some qualifications, as noted by people like Mr. Boberski. And that thinking is definitely apparent in the August 1st Star Trib article. So...

When I saw that article about the “boost” we are supposedly getting from war spending, I did something very unusual for me. I wrote a letter to the reporter who wrote it (Mike Blahnik) with a copy to the Star Trib’s ombudsman, whom they refer to as the “Reader’s Representative.” (He is paid by the newspaper corporation, yet he is supposed to “represent” readers; repeated queries of Star Tribune management over the years have failed to get a credible explanation of the thinking behind this apparent paradox.)

The Alternative: Peace Conversion

I think my letter to the Star Trib, which appears below, is pretty much self-explanatory. The web page I sent along to Mr. Blahnik was the electronic version of an article entitled “ Fewer Jobs, Slower Growth: Military Spending Drains the Economy,” by scholar David Gold. It appeared in the July-August 2002 edition of the economic magazine “Dollars and Sense,” and it was an articulate statement of some economic facts that I learned back in the 1970s, when I worked on a campaign for “peace conversion.”

“Peace conversion” refers to the restructuring of an economy that is set up to prepare for war into an economy that is set up to meet human needs. So, for example, conversion might call for eliminating the funding used to produce cluster bombs in the Minneapolis suburbs. But (here’s the “conversion” part) rather than laying off workers and handing out tax cuts, we would call for using those public funds to retrain the laid-off workers and then employ them as teachers, or nurses, or for some other useful purpose. You get the idea.

Here is the final paragraph of the article I sent to the Star Tribune, which kind of sums it up: “Reducing the military budget and shifting resources to civilian activities would improve our prospects for long-term economic growth. Conversion is not a cure-all; too much else is wrong in the U.S. economy to suggest it can all be made right by a change in the military budget. But the costs imposed by military spending indicate that conversion is a necessary part of any program for change.”

Here’s the letter I sent to the local paper:

Hello, Mr. Blahnik,

I am a freelance writer, and I occasionally write on economics and military affairs. I send along this web page in response to your front-page article of August 1, which bore the unfortunate headline “Military Spending Boosts Economy.” [Note: Web page is found at: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Military_Budget/MilitaryBudget_Economy.html]

While it is true that military spending “boosts the economy,” that is true for any spending, public or private. The important point here is that military spending is perhaps the least efficient way to use public spending for overall economic benefit. While I know you are not responsible for the headlines on your articles, the head and the prominent placement of your article gave the misleading impression that military spending represented an overall economic “plus” for the state, and that this was “news.” I think it would be more accurate to point out how the federal government has chosen to reduce the economically more-efficient civilian spending that it could do, in favor of the less efficient military spending that, as you say, has “surged” in recent months. This shifting of federal spending priorities is, I think, the real “news” here.

One may or may not agree with the overall decision to spend our federal dollars in the manner your article points out. Still, given the generally-low economic literacy of the average newspaper reader, I think it is important to be very clear and vigilant in the impressions we give on our front pages in regard to the economic effects of the militarization we have seen in the post-9/11 period. I'm afraid your article gave a misleading impression, and wanted you to have at least one credible source for another angle on this story.

Sincerely,

Jeff Nygaard

I sent off the letter, by email, about a week-and-a-half ago. I haven’t heard anything yet. If and when I do, Nygaard Notes readers will be the first to know.

The “Quiet” Use of Power

A big part of the immense power of the media is the power to shape the public discourse. The huge corporate media companies really do have eyes and ears all over the place—at least in the places where the rich and powerful hang out, like Washington DC—and their reporters see and hear a lot of stuff. Those reporters, and the editors that supervise their work, make all sorts of important decisions about what to report and what not to report, and about what to emphasize and what to marginalize; in short, they decide what it is that it’s important for us to know.

Since few people have the time or the energy to go hunting through the billions of news reports available to us every day and construct their own “picture” of the world, the mass media, by default, pretty much decide what that “picture” is for most people, and hence have a huge role in deciding what is on the agenda for the nation.

One of the best current illustrations of this phenomenon is the amazing number of United Statesians who came to believe that Saddam Hussein was “personally involved” in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. There is no evidence that he was. Now, it is true that many powerful politicians had an interest in having voters believe that Saddam was behind 9/11, and it’s even possible that they actively worked to propagate that lie. Still, it is also true that I, like most United Statesians, never talk directly to these people. I only know what they say by looking at the media. Of course. That’s why a good share of the famous ignorance, gullibility, and, yes, bigoted hatred, of United Statesians can be laid at the feet of the mass media. Where else would people get these ideas?

If a Tree Falls in the Forest, And Nobody Reports It...

Those who read the media closely can spot many details that betray the mainstream media’s failure to acknowledge the responsibility that ought to be assumed to come with its power. One telling detail is the use of the word “quiet” to describe the actions of powerful political leaders, up to and including the “President.” Is it possible that the most powerful executive in the world can do something “quietly?” How about the Congress of The World’s Only Superpower? If you said, “No, the actions of these people are inherently newsworthy, and cannot be done ‘quietly,’” then you’ll be interested in the following tidbits from recent news reports.

The New York Times (“All the News That’s Fit to Print!) editorialized this past January using these words:

“There may be a few grizzled Republicans from the Gingrich revolution who still carry next to their hearts a laminated pocket copy of the Contract With America. This was the blueprint for the 1994 revolution that swept the party into control of the House. High on the agenda was a call for term limits on politicians. But no Republican was seen waving the contract in the air in protest last week when the new Congress convened with a gavel-quick rules change quietly eliminating the four-term limit on the House speakership.”

Why was this change of the rules “quiet?” Because the media failed to do its job.

A month later, on February 10th, an article appeared in the Times reporting on the costs of the buildup to war, saying,

“While much of the government has been getting ready for a war whose price tag has not been included in the presidential budget, the House Republican leaders quietly reinforced their political defenses. They passed a rule letting lawmakers raise the debt ceiling automatically with each spending resolution. Constituents can only wish their A.T.M.'s were so forgiving.”

(I guess that A.T.M. line was an attempt at humor, no?) Increasing the debt ceiling is a highly-charged issue, especially with many Republican voters. So, why were Republican leaders allowed to change the rules “quietly?” Because the media failed to do its job.

A little while later the “President” took a similar action, and the Times handled it similarly. Here’s what they said on May 8th, in an article headlined: “Bush Signs Tax Cut Bill, Dismissing All Criticism.”

This was the first paragraph: “President Bush signed into law today the third tax cut in three years, dismissing criticism of the legislation's cost, fairness and effectiveness, while casting the measure as ‘essential action to strengthen the American economy.’”

This was the 10th paragraph: “Many private economists are projecting that the deficit will reach at least $400 billion this year and next year, up from $158 billion last year, and that deficits are likely to persist for the foreseeable future. Although Mr. Bush quietly signed a $984 billion increase in the national debt limit on Tuesday, raising the limit to $7.4 trillion, Treasury department officials said the limit would most likely have to be raised again between next April and October, in the heat of the presidential campaign.”

Clearly the news media cannot report with equal emphasis on everything the President and the Congress do. There probably isn’t enough space to even mention everything that they do. So, some decisions have to be made as to what is important and what is not. Somebody makes these decisions, which give most of us our “picture” of the world. How are these decisions made? It’s not an “objective” process. And who, exactly, are the people who make these decisions? They are, for the most part, the employees of large, for-profit corporations.

What our current media system does, in other words, is to take the subjective process of deciding the content of our public agenda and put it in the hands of people whose primary responsibility is not the welfare of the society but, instead, the generating of profit for stockholders. That’s one way to do it, but there are better ways.