The 62,000 or so folks in that Upper East Side zip code who don’t rent live in domiciles worth, on average, just under a million bucks. And those people in 10128 have donated $1.7 million in the 2010 election cycle to federal candidates, national parties, or PACs. (Sorry, Rush: Your neighbors preferred Democratic entities.)

But the folks in 10128 are cheapskates compared with the real money farther south on Fifth Avenue. The 100,000-plus people who live in 10021 have given $3.3 million. In fact, eight zip codes surrounding Central Park rank in the top 20 zip codes nationally in political giving by individuals for this election cycle, their residents having coughed up $17.4 million. 10021, 10022 and 10024 are the top three individual donor zip codes in the nation.

I was going to tell you this a few months ago. I had intended to point out that zip codes in and around Washington, D.C., where the real money is, ponied up $22.9 million in this election cycle. I’d planned to tell you that individuals in the top 50 zip codes in the nation had so far contributed nearly $74 million to federal candidates or committees.

But these numbers summarizing individual donations direct to candidates or parties have become meaningless. That means I will likely end four years of writing about them.

The totals provided here, courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics, an organization that aggregates Federal Election Commission records to make them easier to understand, represents donations exceeding $200 by individuals. Federal election law limits individual candidate contributions to $2,400, up to an aggregate total of $45,600 per election cycle. Individuals may also give an aggregated total of $69,900 to national parties and PACs per cycle. Bottom line: An individual may make $115,500 in campaign contributions per election cycle.

Well, that’s chicken feed now, so there’s no reason to write about campaign contributions by individuals any more.

You all know why: The Supreme Corporate Court of the United States struck down provisions of campaign-finance law in its 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, overruling precedents. (So much for stare decisis.) The bottom line: The government may not ban corporations from spending unlimited amounts of money on broadcast political ads prior to primary or general elections. (This is not the first episode of judicial activism by the “pro-corporate wing” of the Roberts Court.) Says The New York Times:

For the first time, though, as a result of the [Citizens United] ruling, corporations will be able to spend unlimited amounts of money on “electioneering communications” (i.e., broadcast advertisements) expressly advocating for a candidate’s election or defeat. While the court upheld the ban on direct contributions from corporations or unions to candidates, it also clears the way, for the first time, for corporations to donate money to nonprofit groups that place advocacy advertisements.

But, because the Supreme Court has not yet struck down the remainder of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, corporations may spend limitless money on ads supporting or opposing candidates while individual contributors continue to face limits on their donations direct to candidates or parties.

That means all those donations by folks in the top 50 zip codes for this election cycle — $74 million and counting — are small change now. Those who used to be big players in the Election Power Grab Sweepstakes are now bit players. Corporations — those newly minted artificial beings with more power than individual human beings — can outspend them.

In fact, perhaps many of those well-to-do folks in the zip codes surrounding Central Park, those able to afford that $115,500 aggregate limit, might be high-ranking executives of corporations. Maybe they’ll just stop donating as individuals and leave it to the corporation to pay the advertising freight charges to influence election outcomes.

The Screw Democracy Game™ — spend large amounts of money on behalf of political parties and candidates with expectations of a beneficial return on that investment — has changed, it seems. We’ll know for sure as the 2010 mid-term elections near. To what extent will corporations pour money into television advertising to support candidates they prefer? Will they overtly or covertly threaten candidates holding positions unfavorable to business and corporations by dumping millions into advertising support for those candidates’ opponents?

Will Congress require full, public disclosure of direct corporate (or union) spending on “electioneering communications” (even though they may be unlimited financially) and include immediate online disclosure? Will Congress mandate a “I’m the CEO, and I approved this message” tag for corporation-funded, televised political ads? Will Congress close the door that allows corporations (and unions) to hide massive financial support of political entities by passing corporate (or union) money anonymously through nonprofit civic leagues and trade associations? Says The Times:

That means that those nonprofit groups, which are not required to disclose their donors, can now use corporate contributions to buy political commercials, and the corporations can potentially operate behind the anonymity of their donations. [emphasis added]

The Court’s ruling means it has become useless for me to continue to root through the records in the FEC’s database of individual donations to candidates, parties or PACs. Similarly, how useful will be such data aggregated by categories provided by the Center for Responsive Politics? True, the center is “a clearinghouse for data and analysis on multiple aspects of money in politics—the independent interest groups called 527s committees, federal lobbying, Washington’s ‘revolving door’, privately sponsored congressional travel and the personal finances of members of Congress, the president and other officials.” It will continue to provide an important public service. Perhaps it will find a way to track this new, unlimited spending on “electioneering communications.”

But in light of five men’s decision to dramatically change the face of election financing, the role I’ve played — finding out what individuals gave how much to whom with what effect — appears pointless.

Political advantage is gained or lost through television advertising. Corporations can now spend unlimited amounts of money on such advertising to influence the outcome of elections with more effect than an individual’s maximum donation of $115,500 direct to candidates or parties can accomplish. More importantly, corporations have the legal means to hide that spending.

But, supporters of the Court’s decision argue, individuals can spend on broadcast political ads without limit, too. They are only constrained on direct donations to candidates or parties.

Yes, if you, as an individual, are sufficiently wealthy, you may spend unlimited money on “electioneering communications” just as corporations now can. But can you, the wealthy individual, match the political ad spending of the wealthy corporation? Or corporations, plural?

This means sorting through aggregations of FEC data on individual campaign contributions has lost interest for me.

Now I need ideas, new techniques, to track all this corporate money that will be spent on “electioneering communications.” Suggestions, dear readers?

Part 2 of 2. (Read part 1…)

It’s Time to Separate Church and State, Once and for All

If you recall, anti-Catholic prejudice was once a problem for Catholic politicians in the US. John F. Kennedy went so far as to address the issue head-on in his 1960 campaign – probably because he didn’t feel he had much choice. Here’s what he told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12 of that year:

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters — and the Church does not speak for me.

He went on to assert his respect for the separation of church and state and vowed that Catholic officials would not dictate policy to him. As noted in part 1, the times, they have a-changed.

In 1960 it was “anti-Catholic prejudice.” In 2010 it’s “empirical evidence of improper behavior by the Roman Catholic Church.” And it’s time it stopped. Cold.

If I were a Congressman, I’d introduce a bill yesterday stripping all US operations of the Roman Catholic Church of their tax-exempt status. At the press conference announcing the move I’d also say something along these lines: “I won’t be running for re-election – what could possibly be the point? However, between now and the day I leave office, I’m going to raise hell 24/7/4ever over this issue. I know that I’ll probably never get my bill into a committee hearing, let alone get it out of committee, but if Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens can draw as much attention as they have, I feel certain that I, as a sitting member of the United States Congress, can get booked on every talk show in America. Rest assured, my fellow citizens, this is going to make for some epic television.”

Of course, I’m not Congressional material. If you want to know what Congressional material is, recognize that representatives of a foreign theocracy are inside Congress shaping policy … and not a damned one of the spineless sacred whores on Capitol Hill has uttered a fucking syllable in protest.

Did I miss something?

“America is a Christian nation.” It certainly is. Sort of. It’s a Christian nation in the same way that it’s a white nation, a heterosexual nation, a right-handed nation and a nation with brown hair. That is, “Christian” is the majority position. Boy howdy, is it the majority position, with a majority of the population saying it believes angels and demons are active in the world and 80% saying they believe in miracles. Hell, even our atheists and agnostics sound a little religious. A snapshot of American religious affiliation that I offered up back in 2007 is instructive:

• Polls show the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Christian ranging as high as 85% or beyond.
• The president is a Christian…
• …as is the VP.
• The Speaker of the House is Catholic…
• …and the Senate Majority Leader is Mormon.
• Well over 90% of our Congressional representatives are Christian, with a majority of the remainder being Jewish.
• The Supreme Court features seven Christians and two Jews.
• All of our major presidential candidates in both major parties.
• Almost all of our past presidents; depending on how you count Unitarians, you have to go all the way back to Lincoln (ironically enough, the founder of the GOP) to even find one to debate over;
• Hell, even sports franchises are starting to build their operations around the evangelical litmus test.
• It seems unlikely that a similar review of the legislatures and courthouses in the 50 states would reveal too much variation from this overpowering Judeo-Christian norm.

There’s no denying that we’re a Christian culture – in many ways, that’s a simple math question and it’s about as controversial as noting that whites of European descent are the racial majority. But Christian culture and Christian government aren’t the same thing, and the United States is most emphatically not a Christian state. Not yet, anyway.

Reflecting back on my “if I were a Congressman” fantasy from above, I suppose I’d spend the remainder of my time in office asking the audiences of those TV shows to think about a proposition: to wit, while most Americans are Christian, “Christian” describes a lot of different things and not one unitary thing. Dr. Sid’s “modest proposal” from a couple of months back was more about provoking than persuading, but at its core there’s an important question. If you’re a Christian, you may want to see a more Christian government. But if you’re a Baptist, do you want to see a more Catholic government? If you’re Catholic, how are you going to react when the Texas School Board is co-opted by Mormons and all of a sudden the nation’s textbooks are filled with lessons that transform the hallucinations visions of The Prophets into stone cold fact? If you’re a member of the Foursquare Bible Congregation in Smallpond, Alabama, you probably agree with the Stupakers on abortion, but how do you feel about the idea that your duly elected representatives are keeping counsel with that German eunuch in the pointy hat?

Think about it, Christian supermajority. Think hard.

Crawling Toward a More Rational Future

Evidence suggests that there may be hope in the long run.

From USA Today:

The percentage of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

“More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself,’ ” says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

From FutureMajority:

The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) also found that a movement towards claiming no religious affiliation is “a general trend among younger white American.” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported “people not affiliated with any particular religion stand out for their relative youth compared with other religious traditions.”
…
The National Journal profiles a growing faction of non-religious youth – the Secular Student Alliance (SSA). Their motto is “Mobilizing Students for a New Enlightenment.” The SSA’s chapters have grown from 42 in 2003 to 129 this year and they currently have a network of over 14,000 students. Their mission is “to organize, unite, educate, and serve students and student communities that promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism, and human based ethics.”

From AlterNet:

We are on the verge — within 10 years — of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I’m convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

So perhaps in the 2020s and beyond the Bible-thumping Jesus Jihadi yahoo will be a thing of the past – or at least, his inexplicable influence on the course of government will be. But that’s of little comfort today. Just because the good guys win the war eventually doesn’t mean they don’t lose battles along the way, and lost battles mean casualties, measured in lasting damage to real human lives. Even if it’s just ten years until we’re free of these crusaders, understand that a lot of mischief can be done in a decade. If I might put it in more meaningful terms, remember how long George Bush was in office? Add two years to that.

Not that it will do any good, but your Senators and representatives need to hear from you that it is not acceptable for the Catholic Bishops to be meddling in the people’s business. Separation of church and state. Today.

When Jesus attacks, the proper course of action is to smack him in the nose with a crowbar. It says so, right there in the Constitution.

Part 1 of 2.

I tripped across a provocative headline in the Wall Street Journal the other day: “They Need to be Liberated from Their God.” Turns out the story was about Mosab Hassan Yousef and his spying on Hamas. Which was a little disappointing. There’s no doubt that Palestinian Muslims need to be liberated from their god, but given the recent explosion in documented attacks by US Christians on their fellow Americans (as well as on reason and basic common sense), I thought perhaps the WSJ was going to be the first mainstream “news” outlet to do a story on Jesus Gone Wild!

I keep a running tab of stories that strike my interest. Taken individually, each might suggest a particular narrow social pathology, which is to be expected in a nation of 300 million. But over time they accumulate into a gestalt, with all the small pictures adding up to a disturbing big picture. For instance:

Item: Pope warns against witchcraft in Angola

(AFP) – Mar 21, 2009

LUANDA (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI issued a warning against witchcraft Saturday during his visit to Angola, after calling on African leaders to battle corruption and drawing a tough line against abortion.

Item: Pope in Africa reaffirms “no condoms” against AIDS

YAOUNDE, March 17 (Reuters) – Pope Benedict on Tuesday reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to the use of condoms in the fight against AIDS as he started a visit to Africa, where more than 25 million people have died from the disease in recent decades.
…
“It (AIDS) cannot be overcome by the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, they increase the problem,” he said in response to a question about the Church’s widely contested position against the use of condoms.

The disease has killed more than 25 million people since the early 1980s, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, and some 22.5 million Africans are living with HIV.

Item: Rape row sparks excommunications

By Gary Duffy
BBC News, Sao Paulo

A Brazilian archbishop says all those who helped a child rape victim secure an abortion are to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

The girl, aged nine, who lives in the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, became pregnant with twins.

It is alleged that she had been sexually assaulted over a number of years by her stepfather.

The excommunication applies to the child’s mother and the doctors involved in the procedure.

The pregnancy was terminated on Wednesday.

Abortion is only permitted in Brazil in cases of rape and where the mother’s life is at risk and doctors say the girl’s case met both these conditions.

Police believe that the girl at the centre of the case had been sexually abused by her step-father since she was six years old.

Item: Did the Mormons baptize Obama’s mother, after her death, without his knowledge or consent? A: Yes, they did.

A reader contacted me last week, saying that last year, in the heat of the presidential campaign, the Mormons had posthumously baptized Barack Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. Baptizing the dead of other faiths, secretly and without the consent of their families, is a common Mormon practice. For the past fifteen years the Mormons have caused quite a stir by forcibly baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims – in other words, converting them to Mormonism – despite strong objections from the Jewish community.

Thus, it’s hardly a stretch to imagine the Mormons’ doing this to Obama’s mother. Still, I had no proof. Then yesterday, I received a document. It’s allegedly a screen capture of the registration-only section of the Mormon-run Web site, FamilySearch.org. In that screen capture, excerpted above, is clearly the name and correct date of birth and death of Barack Obama’s mother (Stanley Ann Dunham, born 29 Nov 1942 in Kansas, died 07 Nov 1995) and the date of her alleged post-death baptism by the Mormons.

Item: Catholic schools bans child whose parents are gay

Last week, a standing policy of the Archdiocese of Denver denied a child from enrolling in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School for kindergarten next year because the student’s parents are lesbians.

Currently the student is in the school’s preschool program and will be allowed to finish the year, according to Jeanette DeMelo, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese.

“It’s clear if they only accept students with perfect parents, they would have almost nobody,” said Beth Osnes, an organizer for the protest. “I know they have the right to, but why would they want to?”

Inside the church, the Rev. Bill Breslin addressed the issue in his sermon. He also posted his comments on his blog.

“If a child of gay parents comes to our school, and we teach that gay marriage is against the will of God, then the child will think that we are saying their parents are bad,” Breslin said on his blog. “We don’t want to put any child in that tough position.”

Please note: this is happening in the People’s Republic of Freakin’ Boulder!

That’s some big picture, huh? It’s gotten so bad that even former president Jimmy Carter, a man as responsible as any for introducing the poison of evangelical influence into the mainstream of modern politics, has had enough.

Of course, you live here. You read the news. That a lot of Christians are out of control isn’t a real revelation, is it? But lately, the goddamned Catholic Church has been making an unusually immoral and anti-Constitutional nuisance of itself. For instance:

• The Catholic Church is ending its long-standing relationship with St. Charles Medical Center in Bend over a surgical birth-control technique. Note, that’s Saint Charles the place is named after.
• The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a directive for Catholic health care that insists on inflicting artificial “life” sustaining techniques on dying (or functionally dead) patients despite the wishes of the patients or their families.
• And it doesn’t matter whether you’re even Catholic or not – all you have to do is be in the building.
• 300,000 Terri Schiavos, anyone? Let’s face it, the opinion of one reactionary geezer in Rome has now trumped centuries of ethical progress.

Still, we’re talking about their facilities and they’re paying the bills, and they have the right to control their operations the way they see fit, no? Well, maybe, maybe not. Ignoring the wishes of the patient, especially when those wishes are legally expressed in something like a living will, that’s pretty appalling, but I guess you could make the argument.

Even if you won that argument, though, get a load of the latest shenanigans from our friendly Catholic Bishops, who have now offered their “help” in wrangling an outcome in the Senate. You know, because that would make democracy better and stuff.

The Roman Catholic bishops signaled Thursday that if agreement is reached with House leaders on anti-abortion language, the church would work to get the votes needed to protect the provisions in the Senate — and thereby advance the shared goal with Democrats of health care reform.

“We would strongly urge everyone, Democratic and Republican, to vote to waive the point of order,” Richard Doerflinger, an associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told POLITICO. “Whether it would be enough to get to 60 votes, I can’t predict. We would certainly try.”

“I think it’s something we should explore,” said Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.), a longtime opponent of abortion. “It could be something that could carry out the bishops’ objective.”

And why not? The Bishops have “helped” before, after all.

In November, the bishops drove a tough bargain, winning an amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) that would severely restrict the ability of even private companies to provide abortion coverage under new state insurance exchanges. That House deal — since weakened by the Senate — is what the bishops want to revive now as part of Obama’s final push on health care. But to survive the Senate, any revisions would need 60 votes to overcome points of order under the expedited reconciliation procedures being contemplated.

David Dayen observes, astutely enough, that “the Catholic bishops want to show a measure of dominance over the US government.” His nuanced look at the tactical knife fight of this particular backroom liturgical drama is helpful to those trying to understand how sausage law gets made.

Meanwhile, those of us out here beyond the Beltway can perhaps be forgiven for saying “wait a sec – back the truck up.” An organized cabal of Roman Catholic aparatchiks are so far up Congress’s ass that they’re openly discussing how they’re going to inject Vatican dogma into a US health care bill?

Excuse me?

The Constitution is clear that what you believe is your business, and I have no problem with that. But when your beliefs inspire actions that hurt the innocent, that systematically victimize those who believe other things, then I start to care. When those beliefs fuel actions that harm me and impinge on my freedoms, well, that’s the point where it becomes self-defense, isn’t it?

Tomorrow: Divide & Conquer

Overturning key provisions of McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and flouting a century of precedent, the decision opens the floodgates to a torrent of spending by banks, insurance companies, energy companies, automakers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, chemical producers, agribusiness giants and media oligopolies — both domestic and foreign – to sway races by buying candidates. And to trash American democracy in the process.

“Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy — it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people — political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. The irony in Kennedy’s logic is profound, as the Court has in essence granted the status of personhood — of individual citizenship — to corporations, who are the least likely entities on earth to hold officials accountable to anyone but their own interests.

When Goldman Sachs, for instance, finds itself with a $16 billion (that’s with a “b”) bonus pool for top executives, what is the likelihood they are going to make campaign contributions to any political candidate who supports a tax on such bonuses, despite the government’s bailout for Wall Street?

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who was in the room for the Court’s announcement, condemned it as “the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case. It leads us all down the road to serfdom.”

Yet it may be that prospect that offers the only remaining hope to unite a nation so fractured by partisanship and anger. In the face of this ruling, average Americans will become disenfranchised laborers, with no access to any ability to affect the political system in their favor. The grassroots donations of $10 here and $25 there that Barack Obama credited with momentum for his victory will be so much chump change in the face of these new playing rules. While labor unions and other groups will also be exempt from previous spending limits, it is the staggering power of corporations to shout down ordinary citizens through an exponential ability to outspend them that poses the gravest threat to our common welfare.

The real divide in this country is not so much left vs. right as haves vs. have-nots. Most Americans want health care reform. We just disagree on the best route to get it. Most Americans are disgusted at Wall Street’s escape from the economic hardship average people face every day, losing their jobs and homes and worrying about feeding their kids. Some think Democrats should be punished for the banks’ bailout; others insist it’s a Republican legacy for which the right must bear blame. Today’s decision, however, cements the already-entrenched power of the ‘haves’ to control public discourse and thereby the political agenda toward their own ends.  But if anything can galvanize the populist base of this country – and that is our true, uniting base – it must be today’s catastrophic court decision, which threatens to undermine our jobs, our health, our safety, our environment, the air we breathe and the water we drink, our access to information, virtually every element of the quality of life and freedoms we jointly value as Americans.

In the wake of this decision, progressives have more in common with teabaggers than either of us ever dreamed possible. We’ll need a lot more strange bedfellows to come together to save our democracy, fractious and scarred as it is. Congressman Grayson has introduced a set of bills to bite back – learn more here.

I’ve been thinking with increasing irritation about that perennial conundrum-within-an-enigma-which-actually-isn’t-that-difficult-at-all: the separation of church and state, this time in the context of gay marriage. The issue becomes more annoying the more headspace I give it, and it’s not the prejudice or the public protests or the proclamations of any group on either side. The question that makes my brain twitch is this: why is this even an issue?

I firmly believe that the followers of any given religion have the perfect right to include, exclude and/or vilify anyone they choose. I further believe that their right to express their group disapproval stops absolutely short of causing their chosen bugaboo any actual harm… as in, breaking the laws enacted by the larger secular state in order to protect all its citizens.  Those laws, we hope, evolve in specificity and efficacy as our understanding of what constitutes demonstrable societal or individual harm evolves as well. The American legal system has always possessed the power to control, modify or ban religious practices on these grounds: for example, in direct contradiction of Biblical precedent and many current religious beliefs, women are no longer owned by their husbands, twelve-year-old girls are off limits and public stoning for adultery has been replaced by Facebook flaming.

Another example: the general population, excluding certain Louisiana JOP’s, has eventually come to understand that a union between two people of differing overall skin pigmentation does not lead to apocalyptic plagues or children with multiple heads (also, that allowing humans to own other humans is a damaging economic construct, not to mention leading to some rather hard feelings in general). Had the original Southern Baptist Conference (and by “original,” I mean the SBC from 1845 until 1995) been able to retain a state-sanctioned grasp on the laws of the Southern states, slavery would still be legal, “miscegenation” would still be a crime and hundreds of thousands of lawn jockeys would still be on proud display across the land of Dixie. The Southern Baptist Conference was created to support these ideas: in defiance of the views of other Baptist congregations, but with the full support of Messieurs Leviticus and Nehemiah, to name only two. The Old Testament is all for concubines, slaves and massacres, but not intermarriage among tribes. Is this our best authority on human relations?

And what about the endless variations on marriage sanctioned by religions just as legitimate as Decent Christians Everywhere Inc? Why aren’t we respecting their traditions? Why are we letting widows remarry, those whores (Hinduism)? Why aren’t we letting Islamic American men who can afford it collect the four wives to whom they’re entitled? Who’s in charge here? The Founding Fathers, those whacked-out Deists, should have left us some instructions about which religion is right so we would know whose tenets to make law… oh. Wait. They did mention it. NONE OF THEM.

In a democratically-based society, the general idea is that we don’t let small groups dictate to everyone, in the belief that time, evolving understanding and the collective better judgment of a larger group of citizens usually works out better for everyone.  When small groups, or large groups, or individual states or Bible-beating rednecks do attempt to tar and feather someone, we can take their asses to courts which represent successively larger segments of the population and hope that somewhere along the line, better judgment and better education will prevail.

I don’t give a damn what happens in anyone’s church if the law isn’t being broken, if children aren’t being abused, if the Kool-Aid is untainted. And if a particular religious sect decided that I was by nature a lesser human being, I think I’d leave. Wait, make that I know I’d leave – that’s essentially why I don’t consider organized religion a tool that’s safe for most people to play with.  Any system of thought which approves and allows the dehumanization of certain other humans is risky stuff.

No religion owns marriage: the concept, the reality or the word itself. Religions have their own variations on the theme and every right to them. Marry (or don’t) anyone that you like (or hate (or sadly but firmly condemn)). Your religious definition, Ms. Christian or Mr. Sikh (and you do NOT want to go to the dictionary on this), is yours to live by. But please try to understand: pair-bonding predates religion; stable, wealth-creating, ably-parenting households are the true and demonstrable societal benefit of such bonds; and there’s not one iota of real evidence that a pair of the same gender doesn’t work just as well… and your talking shrubbery or flaming cow, while inspirational and possibly entirely real, is no excuse for ignoring science, history and simple justice.

In the past year, had I sought a professorship to teach print news reporting, writing, and editing, I’d be hard-pressed to find a job despite my two decades of experience and a really expensive piece of PhD parchment. A reason: Several thousand highly experienced, talented print journalists have been shitcanned by their newspapers in the past two years. But print professorships are few, making it a buyer’s market, writes Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher.

But there’s another reason: Journalism schools, at least in terms of their job postings, may be shifting identities.

In its January 2010 edition of AEJMC News, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (colloquially known as AEJ) lists few jobs in which experience in print journalism is a must, or teaching print journalism is required.

Aside from traditional broadcast, advertising and public relations professorships, here are some jobs and or job descriptions listed:

• “new media including but not limited to Internet Technology, E-commerce, and Webpage Design”
• “Digital TV/Advertising/New Media”
• “Corporate Communications”
• “integrated marketing communications” (Disclosure: My school offers this as a graduate degree.)
• “digital communication” … “web design, social networks, search engines, new media theory, media law, media ethics, gaming, blogs, virtual worlds, databases, digital literacy, new media, online communities”
• “expertise in the use of digital media applications in the advertising and/or public relations professions (e.g., social media, Web 3.0, blogging”
• “Economic Literacy and Entrepreneurship”
• “the business of the news media, including entrepreneurship and/or management”
• “communications/ media economics/ regulation and/or innovation. Knowledge of entrepreneurship as it relates to telecommunications, information technology, digital media, and/or web-based enterprises”

It’s the same with many of AEJ’s online ads. Florida wants “two new visionary faculty members with expertise in the rapidly emerging fields of Interactive Media / Digital Arts & Science.” Boston University wants “[s]cholars utilizing diverse modes of inquiry and methodologies with an interest in any aspect of new media, including but not limited to online communication, media effects, media policy, social networking, media economics, media history, and computer-mediated communication.”

J-schools are changing. In some respects, have they become commercially oriented entities that focus on designing, formatting, presenting and selling content instead of the journalistic production of that content? Are journalism schools thinking more like schools of business about their missions and pools of potential students?

Difficult questions reside here for the press, the public, deans of journalism schools and faculty.

When (not if) media corporations find a successful business model and realize credible journalism can be a profit center, whom will they hire to produce it?

Will they hire journalism school graduates whose coursework and internship experiences left them adequately trained to use various media to present content but who were not necessarily encouraged or sufficiently trained to do the hard work of reporting to produce it? Or, more simply, will they hire iPhone journalists or future Jimmy Breslins? (Breslin on media economics: “Why something in the public interest such as television news can be fought over, like a chain of hamburger stands, eludes me.”)

In the coming decade, who will provide information — the product of rigorous reporting — in the public interest?

Readers and viewers should expect a lost decade in which they are told much more about that of little import and much less about that of great import.

Name the journalistic illness, and the decade will provide it: more one-source stories; fewer competent analyses of political, economic, and social issues; and more focus on the mundane and meaningless (i.e., celebs and pseudo-celebs) than on the meaningful (such as the true human cost on readers of the performance failures of the nation’s political and corporate elite).

Why? Simple: The newspaper business, which once had about 56,000 journalists and was understaffed at that level, lost nearly 16,000 jobs (not all newsroom) in 2008 and almost 15,000 in 2009.

Any manager faced with the need to cut people begins with the most expensive ones first — in the newspaper business, they are often the most experienced, those with decades of experience in finding out stuff others tried to hide and telling us what they learned. But newspaper executives have been lying: With each round of staff cuts, they’ve continued to say: “We’ll be a leaner, more efficient newspaper, better able to serve our readers. Our award-winning journalism will be the same as ever. And everyone can find us online.” Do they think readers really believe that?

As the new decade unfolds, who will tell the stories 315 million Americans need to hear as citizens and consumers facing overwhelming taxes, higher health-care costs, unemployment over 10 percent, and two wars (about to become three, perhaps)? They won’t be told by the experienced former journalists who lost their jobs and who are now working in public relations but not necessarily richer or happier.

In 2005 I wrote in a commentary for E&P:

Without journalists, others without a sense of the journalistic mission — such as unscrupulous advertisers and political charlatans — will be telling the stories.

Duh. Expect more stories from more sources who hide their motivations and intent. Fewer journalists are on the job. Journalism schools are training, it appears, fewer journalists. Strupp notes that newspaper majors at the University of Missouri have declined. Lee Becker’s 2008 survey of J-school enrollment notes an increase overall but a slight decline in any form of journalism as a major. Thus fewer journalists-to-be may be in the pipeline. Meanwhile, those remaining in newsrooms, if they survived because they’re inexpensive, are likely to be less experienced and will need this decade to mature.

Nature abhors a vacuum. So, predicts Rachel Sklar at The Daily Beast, bylines as brands, niches, “undernews” and Web TV will fill it. But how credible will be the content produced by the 200 million Twitterers and the 350 million Facebook users?

Do those hundreds of million of Americans trying to live out their lives with some vestige of happiness and faith that the American Dream still exists even give a damn about the economic, social, cultural, and political consequences of the media turmoil that surrounds them?

A traditional task of journalism is education. That’s why, when the Republic was founded, newspapers were given special mailing rates. School systems had not taken firm root. Teaching the public (not brainwashing or misleading it) ought to still be a part of the public-service mission of journalism.

Perhaps that’s why there’s room in journalism schools for ossified, old newsroom hacks like me. We need to teach that mission. We need to teach these iPhone-honed students that there is still a need to observe well, record faithfully, analyze intelligently, organize thoughtfully, and present compellingly. That’s the nature of communication, be it print journalism or “entrepreneurship as it relates to telecommunications, information technology, digital media, and/or web-based enterprises.”

And Sklar, who is as “new media” as you can get, walks the fine line between the old and the emerging:

Grownups, you’ve been in this business for decades, but the ground is shifting under your feet and if you don’t grab on to some smart 22-year-old, you’re screwed. Why? Because that 22-year-old grew up on the Internet while you were spending all your time working in some other quaint old-timey medium. So stop pulling rank and just say, “help me.” They will. And to you young punks who think you run this world—there actually are rules in this Wild West. Quaint old-fashioned conventions like transparency, attribution, confirmation, and accountability will matter just as much in 2010, maybe more now that the Internet is multiplying around us like Mickey’s broom in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And if you don’t get that reference, ask a grownup. There’s much we can teach you.

Thank you, Rachel. Well said. You’d make a terrific colleague.

But, no. After a tradition of reporting on the reporters dating back to 1884, E&P is done. And that’s sad, because the careful inspection of the media industries by a longtime, experienced staff led by editor Greg Mitchell has ended. Mitchell, who took over as editor in 2002, had revived a publication that had become moribund and almost irrelevant. To much criticism, he killed E&P as a print weekly and reintroduced it as a monthly. But his master stroke was diving headlong onto the Web, where E&P has prospered, at least in terms of timely analytical coverage of the industry.

I don’t have readership or page views, but given that newspaper staffs nationwide have been cut so drastically during the years of Mitchell’s editorship, I wouldn’t be surprised if circulation of the monthly had fallen.

The impending end of E&P was, as they say, all over the ‘nets today, rising to No. 4 as Twitter topic. For the time being, it seems, the good work of longtime E&P hands like Joe Strupp, Mark Fitzgerald and Jennifer Saba is at an end. I will particularly miss the pairing of Fitz and Jen, whose stories and podcasts on the economics of the media business have been prescient and accurate.

I have been reading E&P since 1970. If you’re in the news biz, it’s been a trusted companion and professor. If it has died solely because of financial considerations, we should be saddened. Even the industry watchdog, it seems, must make budget — or was E&P just not sufficiently profitable? In days and weeks to come, perhaps we’ll learn more details.

But the loss of E&P is just another bullet to the heart of journalism as a public service. Those who love, need, or appreciate good journalism will mourn its passing.

We’re losing, people. E&P’s end is just another symptom of the continued erosion of a democracy’s ability to closely inspect and monitor itself through its adversarial relationship with the press. E&P has been more than a mirror of the newspaper industry; it has been a teacher of how to press for information from governments and industries (and unions) that would rather stay uninspected.

Perhaps an institution that believes in that public service mission (Pew? Poynter?) could offer Greg, Joe, Fitz, Jen and company a new home. E&P still performs a valuable mission. Find a way to retain it.

[Disclosure: E&P has published commentaries I have written. Greg Mitchell is a graduate of the journalism program in which I teach.]

That’s because paid circulation of daily newspapers nationally fell more than 10 percent from a year ago. Some papers suffered truly horrendous daily circulation losses: the San Francisco Chronicle (down 25.8 percent), The Boston Globe (down 18.5 percent) and The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger (down 22.2 percent), reports Rick Edmonds on his Poynter Biz Blog. USA Today, hit by a slump in travel, fell nearly 18 percent. The circulation of 400 daily newspapers has fallen to only 30 million readers.

This hemorrhaging of circulation — the worst ever — will have serious consequences. Expect newspaper staffs, already slashed below the minimum necessary to adequately cover their turf, to be cut further. Expect more shallow, one-source stories. Expect more stories laden with anonymous sources because the poorly paid, younger, inexperienced reporters left on staff won’t have the skill to persuade sources to speak on the record. Expect more wire-service content because local stories won’t get done. Expect corporate newspaper management to continue to stall on finding a business model that enhances the public-service mission of journalism. Expect more style than substance.

Just expect less of what good newspapers used to be. The nation’s newspapers, the constitutionally anointed watchdogs and adversaries of government, can no longer be considered as successful in those roles as they used to be.

Mr. Edmonds lists several reasons for this continuing, massive loss of paid circulation. From his Biz Blog:

• Readers continue to migrate from print to the Internet — sometimes to newspapers’ own sites, sometimes to aggregators.
• Papers, metros especially, are voluntarily trimming circulation to remote areas because they are more expensive to serve and less valuable to advertisers.
• So-called “start pressure,” the selling of new subscriptions to replace lost ones, has taken a hit from cost-cutting.
• Decisions at many papers to aggressively increase subscription and single copy prices has resulted in fewer copies being sold, though circulation revenue has increased.
• This period is the first to include the full impact of the recession, in which some consumers are dropping subscriptions and others buying the paper less frequently.
• Smaller news staffs and news space make the product weaker and less appealing.

In 2008, newspapers shed more than 9,000 jobs. This year, so far, newspapers have cut more than 14,100 jobs. How can such cuts in reporting and other capabilities not have serious social, cultural, and political consequences? Yes, various foundation-funded, non-profit, experimental approaches to independent newsgathering have emerged. Consider the well-intended efforts of ProPublica and MinnPost. (Read Alan Mutter’s excellent two-part take on non-profit news startups.)

Too little, perhaps too late. American journalism sprouted from local printers who became family owners of newspapers — local newspapers. The Founders intended the First Amendment to protect those who owned presses and printed newspapers from interference by the government. But the utility of the First Amendment has been eroded by overt corporate mismanagement and malpractice far more than covert government malfeasance.

At the local level, newspaper staffs have been reduced far below necessary levels for competent, comprehensive coverage of local government. Government didn’t cause this — but it now benefits from the ability to operate with far less inspection by journalists.

No non-profit efforts on the horizon would make up for the quantitative loss of experienced reporters nationally. Fewer reporters means fewer watchdogs.

How is that not costly to a democracy?

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the 182 nations of the world had a combined GDP of nearly $60.9 trillion (or $60,900 billion) in 2008. But comparing the GDP data to the Fortune 500 data produces the table at right (click for the top 182 nations and corporations each, in order). If Exxon Mobil were a country, it would rank 25^th in the world, right between Norway and Austria. Wal-Mart would rank 27^th, sandwiched between Austria and Taiwan. Chevron would rank 28^th, ConocoPhillips 42^nd, GE 49^th, GM 59^th, Ford 60^th, and AT&T, H-P, and Valero would be ranked 64-66 respectively.

In fact, all of the Fortune 500 would rank above the 40 smallest national economies in the world. And the smallest company on Fortune’s list of the 1000 largest U.S. companies would be larger than the national economies of 28 entire countries. Exxon Mobil’s revenue is greater than the combined GDP of the 78 smallest countries (out of a total of 182) in the world.

And yet the Supreme Court took the unusual step of ordering a hearing during the court’s recess in order to hear legal arguments over whether corporate money could be spent to influence elections and whether the current bans on most such money in politics were constitutional. And indications are that the conservative majority will likely rule to overturn nearly 20 years of precedent and rule that it is constitutional for corporate money to be spent directly to influence local, state, and federal elections.

According to the Constitutional Accountability Center, the four liberal justices were the ones quoting from the U.S. Constitution to support their questions and arguments:

Justice Ginsburg reminded Olson that it is living persons, not corporations, who are “endowed by [their] Creator with unalienable rights.” Justice Sotomayor, too, picked up on this theme, emphasizing how the Supreme Court had rewritten the Constitution to create the fiction that corporations are persons entitled to the same basic rights as human beings. If we are looking to constitutional first principles to topple precedents, she asked, why shouldn’t we also look at the cases that invented corporate constitutional personhood and “imbued a creature of State law with human characteristics”?

Several of the court’s conservatives are supposed to be Originalists, judges who believe that the meaning of the Constitution was fixed at it’s writing (except for amendments, of course) and has not changed since then. Granting state creations the rights guaranteed to flesh and blood people when the Constitution doesn’t mention state creations is hypocrisy of the first order. It’s also an example of the very judicial activism than the Senate Republicans who voted against confirming Justice Sotomayor feared she would bring to the court. Perhaps the most activist judge on the Supreme Court today, defined by being the most willing to overrule Congress, is Antonin Scalia.

At present, corporate profits may not be spent to directly influence elections. This has historically been the case because corporations can live effectively forever and amass financial resources that no individual person could equal, and because legislators and courts have been concerned about corporate influence corrupting the political process. In essence, these are many of the same arguments that federal law uses to ban foreign nationals and governments from donating money to political campaigns. And yet, to the best of my knowledge, there are no foreign governments suing for free speech rights to influence elections.

The problem twofold – corporations are presently considered people, and money is considered speech. Corporations were defined legally as people for the purposes of limiting personal liability in the event of a business failure. But one of the results is that corporations have claimed the rights guaranteed to real people in the Bill of Rights, specifically the First Amendment right to free speech. And because the Supreme Court declared, in Buckley v. Valeo, that spending money equals exercising the right to free speech, corporations are now claiming that their money should be given identical rights to the money of individual citizens.

There are at least two direct solutions to this problem. The first would be to overturn Buckley v. Valeo. This would make money no longer equal to speech and could be an even more significant change in legal precedent than overturning 100 years of campaign limits on corporate donations to candidates. It would also require the conservatives on the court to go against their known personal ideologies.

The second is to redefine corporations so that they are not considered individual people for all situations. This would certainly require federal legislation and would probably require state legislation as well. It would also require that the economic and political powers at the state and federal levels voluntarily relinquish the power that corporate money (via PACs today, possibly via direct contributions in a few months) brings them.

Neither is particularly likely given the composition of the Supreme Court and the major influence of money in politics today.

Eventually, though, if the laws are overturned, enough companies will corrupt enough politicians with direct donations that they’ll overreach, and the public reaction will be swift and unstoppable. And when that happens, Exxon Mobil’s money and Wal-Mart’s money and Chevron’s money will be as untouchable as money from Hugo Chavez of Venezuela or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Both of which have smaller economies than either Exxon Mobil or Wal-Mart.

I can assemble with others to complain about the government. I can petition the government for redress of grievances. I can practice a religion free of government interference. Most importantly, I have the right to speak my mind. I can say whatever I want about the government short of advocating violence against it. I am free to speak or write critically about the actions or inactions of my government.

I can be a critic of my government because for hundreds of years, hundreds of thousands of Americans before me fought and died for my right to do that.

In this young century, however, Americans have suffered increased assaults on their rights — especially privacy — by their own government, all in the name of the proclaimed need for “national security.” Because of fear, government continues to attempt to foreclose on constitutional protections.

Government may erode constitutional guarantees in the absence of the watchful eye of the governed. Rights not exercised may become rights lost. It is an obligation of citizenship for Americans that they continually critique and comment on the actions of their government. That is how we shape our government. Failure to do so allows government to shape us and our rights instead.

At the moment, America has a slew of problems confronting it — record unemployment, a shrinking economy, two foreign wars, a two-party system run amok, and an enormous fiscal deficit, just to name a few.

As we toss the steak on the barbecue and watch the fireworks today, let’s keep in mind the rights and riches we do have, the historical cost of attaining them, and the future risk of losing them if we fail to speak up when government displeases us.

Dear Conservatives:

Your fellow Americans demand an answer — and we want it now. Just one simple question:

Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?

Just answer the question. Yes or no. Don’t insult us with elisions, evasions, dithering, qualifications, or conditional answers. We need to know what your intentions are — and we need to know NOW. People are being shot dead in the streets of America at the rate of several per month now. You may not want responsibility for this — but the whackadoodles pulling the triggers make no bones about who put them up to this.

You did.

The assassins themselves are ratting you out. They’re telling us, straight up, that they were inspired to act by the hate radio talkers that you empowered — one of whom is now the de facto head of the Republican party. They got it from media outlets owned by your biggest donors. They got it from bloggers who receive daily talking points faxed in from the GOP. They got it from activists representing causes that would have never become causes in the first place if the issues hadn’t been politically expedient for you.

Beyond that: You’ve already admitted your own complicity. When the Department of Homeland Security expressed their worries about right- wing extremist violence last April, practically every conservative pundit in the country went into a righteous fit. DHS never named anyone directly, so it was astonishing how many of you on the right were so quick to step up and claim that that memo was slandering you, personally and collectively. Since you were so eager to claim that that memo was all about you, now that the violence has come to pass, we’re well justified in holding you to that.

And please don’t insult our intelligence by saying that these acts are the work of lone wolves, and that you don’t have anything to do with this, and that it’s all the fault of the left. It’s true that there have always been crazies in our midst. But by choosing to gain power through a politics that only motivates through hate and fear, you’ve recruited a good-sized army of those crazies, armed them up, and turned them into paranoid monsters that are now running loose on the American landscape.

We know you have absolute and utter contempt for the intelligence of the average American, but trying to blame the left for creating this situation is a fabrication so vast that it tells us you don’t even have so much as a shred of respect for yourselves. Even you seem to know that your word is worth nothing to most Americans now — and you don’t seem to care.

You don’t seem to give a damn about the future of this country, either. You’re just in it to win the next election, increase profits for the next quarter, or boost your ratings in the next book. As long as selling hate accomplishes any of these goals, you’ll do it — without regard for the cultural sewage you’re creating, without regard for the way you’ve polluted the political landscape, and now apparently without even a moment’s regard for the innocent lives that are being lost because you seem bent on destroying every shred of trust required for our democracy to function.

But the bodies are piling up. We are demanding an accounting from you. We are demanding that you take responsibility for the situation you’ve created. We are looking you straight in the eyes and demanding a straight answer:

Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?

If your answer is yes, then stop this cowardly half-assed screwing around. You speak the language of war and honor; but the honor code of the warriors you pretend to revere demands that you declare your intentions. If you really believe that the only way to get the America you want is to negate a fair election, shred the Constitution, and violently cleanse the country of everyone who doesn’t agree with you, then man up and get on with it. If it’s a shooting war you want, do not doubt that there are plenty of progressives who will oblige you. If this goal is so important that you’re really willing to kill for it, please don’t forget that you will also need to be willing to die for it. Because, like martyrs Greg McKendry and Steven Johns proved, we are willing to do whatever is necessary to stop you.

If your answer is no, then you have just one other choice. Knock off the tantrums, grow up, rebuild your party, come back to the table, and sit down and govern with us. (We know this will be a stretch, but we think some of you are capable of it.) You will need to learn, many of you for the first time, to get your way as adults do — without fear- based politics, polarizing rhetoric, on-air threats against those who disagree with you, and repeating outrageous lies in the face of stone facts and irrefutable evidence.

And most of all: you need to stop feeding the crazies. You need to disavow them in every way possible — sincerely, emphatically, and with full awareness that every time one of these people acts, it destroys the credibility of “conservatives,” “Republicans,” and “the right wing” in the eyes of the country. You cannot assassinate your way back to power. And don’t doubt for a moment that the majority of Americans — even those who agree with your ideas — will abandon your cause forever once it realizes that’s what you’re trying to do.

Since you’re the ones funding the violent radicals on your flank, you need to stop sending them money. Since you know far more about their activities than any one else, you need to be the ones who turn them in. Since you’re the ones who make heroes and martyrs out of them, you need to be the ones who call them out as criminals. Until you do this
– consistently, wholeheartedly, and responsibly — we can only conclude that these assassins are operating with your support and approval, and that you are intentionally trying to start an armed revolution in America.

That’s your choice. Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war? Or are you willing to work for real civility, and return to your seat at the table, ready to help us choose the country’s future?

Yes or No. Right now. The window is closing fast behind you. And once it closes, none of us — not you, not us, not anyone — will have the choice to avoid the catastrophe that will follow. It’s your decision. And you need to make it now.

Sara Robinson is one of the few trained social futurists in North America, and will complete her MS in Futures Studies from the University of Houston in 2009. Her skill set includes trend analysis, scenario development, futures research, social change theories, systems thinking, and strategic planning. She is a fellow at Campaign for America’s Future.

But this week, it gave its product to me for free. I would have gladly paid up to 5 cents to read just one of its stories. But the JS didn’t charge me. What kind of business model allows me to consume a product for free?

I learned of the story through an e-mailed version of Romenesko, the legendary (or infamous, depending on your POV), media news page at Poynter. org, the Web site of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.

The Poynter e-mail contained this tease: “Wisconsin university football coach bans student reporters (http://www.jsonline.com/business/43539347.html).” I clicked on the link and —ta da — there it was, a story written by JS reporter Don Walker. Free. Didn’t have to pay a penny. And I would have. Gladly.

I know this isn’t a rare phenomenon. I suspect you’ve read news for free online, too. Bet you kinda expect it to be free, even demand that it be free. Perhaps you think it’s some kind of birthright. But in the long run, if you do not pay for the product of professional journalists, you will lose one of your best defenses against secrecy, corruption, and tyranny.

Those who wish to keep information from you, those who demand or offer kickbacks and bribes to get what they want, those who wish to secretly manipulate the levers of power unfairly for selfish financial advantage, those who wish to attain and maintain power over you … they’re winning. They’re winning because fewer and fewer journalists are keeping an eye on them, holding them accountable for their words and actions. Remember, that’s the deal the Founders gave the press: Hold government accountable, and we’ll protect you from government intervention.

If you don’t pay for the product produced by professional journalists who cover the “eat-your-spinach” stories bloggers don’t, won’t, or can’t, then don’t complain if the powerful and influential take advantage of the lack of scrutiny formerly provided by the 5,900 journalists who lost their jobs last year.

In 1990 America’s daily newspapers had 56,900 staffers, very close to the historical high, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Newspapers were cash cows for investors, with profits north of 20 percent. In 2000, the population of journalists at dailies was still high — 56,400. Then the Internet came, folks say, and stole all the advertising revenue. Profit margins have been halved — as revenue has dropped precipitously. (Of course, it’s not as simple as that. Apparently, bad management and arrogance had much to do with the decline of circulation, and hence the declining advertising revenue, of daily newspapers. In effect, corporate newspaper management shot itself in the foot as it bad-mouthed the Internet as an irrelevant upstart.)

To attempt to maintain the profitability of that now-highly suspect business model, newspaper managements whacked jobs — the very jobs that produce the product those executives presumably want to sell. This has to be among the dumbest responses to economic stress in corporate history.

At the end of 2008, only 46,700 journalists were left at the America’s daily newspapers. 2009 is off to a rough beginning: The Web site Paper Cuts reports that about 8,500 newspaper staffers (including journalists) have been laid off or bought out as of mid-April. (Paper Cuts is a Web site by Erica Smith, who has been tracking newspaper layoffs since 2007.) It is possible that by 2010, the number of daily print journalists will have been halved in only a decade.

Surely that’s not a positive development for the democratic health of the Republic.

Interestingly, the nation’s premier journalism graduate programs are seeing marked increases in applications: Columbia, up 38 percent; Stanford, 20 percent; and NYU, 6 percent. But these new students are not necessarily seeking to become journalists. Says Jim O’Brien, director of Northwestern University’s Medill Career Services office:

Corporate communications is a growth area in terms of opportunities for jobs for our MSJ grads. Both corporations and nonprofits who are interested in communications, where they had typically looked at an English major before, are now thinking that a journalism grad might have leg up on those candidates because of their training.

This is a two-pronged blow to “eat-your-spinach” news. First, newspapers are shedding the very people trained —and paid — to do that. Second, former journalists and others are seeking graduate journalism degrees to become corporate communicators.

That means fewer professionally trained and experienced journalists are digging for information corporations and governments wish to hide, and more smart people are being trained — and, eventually, paid handsomely — to do the hiding.

They’re winning. Democracy is losing. Please consider that next time you read a news story online — for free. It may be, in the long run, a very costly read.

April 20, 2009: 11:19 am MDT

Ten years ago a co-worker turned to me and said something that I’ll never forget, no matter how long I live: “Hey, Sammy, there’s been a school shooting in Littleton.”

Since that day a great deal has been written and said about Columbine High School and the events of 4.20.99, and like a lot of other people I’ve tried my hardest to make sense of something that seemed (and still seems) inherently senseless. Tried and failed. Now, ten years on, the grief hasn’t fully dissipated here in the city that I have come to call home, and even if we manage to understand the whos, whats, and hows, there’s a part of us that’s doomed to wrestle forever with the whys.

We’ve learned a lot over the past decade, though, and as we mark the tenth anniversary of Columbine, let’s begin by recounting three important lessons.

1: The authorities cannot be relied on. From the emergency response through the investigation process, Columbine was a case study in how not to.

I hate to be overly critical of police because they really have to do a hellish job, but that day witnessed one of the worst failures by a law enforcement agency that we’ve ever seen.

Two officers exchanged fire with one of the teenage gunmen just outside the school door, then stopped — as they had been trained to do — to wait for a SWAT team. During the 45 minutes it took for the SWAT team to assemble and go in, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot 10 of the 13 people they killed that day.

The killers committed suicide around the time the makeshift SWAT team finally entered. But the SWAT officers took several hours more to secure the place, moving methodically from room by room. One of the wounded, teacher Dave Sanders, slowly bled to death. [Source]

If this is the book on how to operate, explain to me exactly why you need a SWAT team in the first place. Events would have played out more or less identically if the SWAT budget had instead been allocated to Parks & Rec.

The good news, as the article goes on to explain, is that the meltdown at Columbine led to “active shooter” training, which is credited with making police officers across the country far more effective in these kinds of cases.

Sadly, there’s no indication at all that the longer, more mind-numbing process of investigating and reporting has been improved. “Quagmire,” “spin,” “cover-up,” “embarrassment,” “lost” and “hidden” reports – at every turn those charged with getting to the bottom of the worst school shooting in history acted like they were auditioning for roles on CSI Hooterville.

If the whole story – or at least most of it – is known today, it is despite these officials, not because of them.

2: Religious interests will colonize your grief for their own ends. As I walked the grounds of Columbine and Clement Park a few days after the massacre, I was absolutely staggered at the extent to which the tragedy had been transformed into an explicitly Christian extravaganza. Which was a little fascinating, since it wasn’t a Christian school and unless you were sucker enough to believe that there was a religious tint to the killings (there wasn’t – more on this in a minute) the tragedy had about as much to do with Jesus as it did Kubla Khan. Still, the impromptu memorials prayed, beseeched, questioned and promised in a distinctly evangelical way that had to make non-evangelicals a little uncomfortable. After all, this was their town, too, and I can say with absolute certainty that it didn’t matter what your religion was or wasn’t. Columbine was personal and the grief it engendered was profound.

It wasn’t just my imagination, either. One prominent local minister said he felt like he’d been “hit over the head with Jesus.”

To top it all off, Billy Graham’s lackwit boy Franklin parachuted in to preside over a nationally televised Mournapalooza service. No doubt some were comforted by the presence of a bona fide religious carpetbagger, but it’s hard to see, looking back, how the needs of the community were actually addressed by the self-serving machinations of a C-list opportunist.

To put it in Chaucerian terms, we could have done with a little less Summoner and a little more Parson.

3: The mainstream press values the narrative above the facts. They were goths! It was the Trenchcoat Mafia! They were targeting jocks, blacks and Christians! Cassie Bernall said yes!

Lie. Lie. Lie, lie, lie. And damnable, intentional lie. Local and national “reporters” could have been outperformed by monkeys with Ouija boards.

Not that the run-of-the-mill press bumbling came as any real surprise – journalistic malpractice is well-known in Colorado. But ineptitude is one thing. Outright, overt, premeditated lies are quite another, and that’s exactly what both of Denver’s mainstream papers – the Denver Post and the recently-defunct Rocky Mountain News did when they ran the “Cassie Bernall said yes” story as fact. They knew, by their own admission, that it was false, so why did they lie? Well, the lie seemed to be providing comfort to a grieving city.

Take that as the foundational operating principle for a free press and see where it leads…

If some of us have sort of moved on, then, if we have somehow clawed our way to a modicum of closure, it has been against a backdrop of secrecy, deceit, ineptitude and a pervasive moral pathology born of evangelical self-righteousness. Whatever insights we have attained, whatever emotional peace we have found, it has all been accomplished without the help of our community’s central institutions. As a result, I suspect that many of us mark the tenth anniversary with a little anger, a little bitterness.

There’s not much I can do about that except to suggest that what happened ten years ago today was not a one-off. It has happened since and it will almost certainly happen again, and my deep suspicion is that these kinds of events arise, in part, as a result of the dysfunctions noted here. That is, the governmental breakdown, the evangelical circus and the unforgivable duplicity of those who were granted particular 1st Amendment freedoms so that they could safely tell us the goddamned truth were not results of Columbine. Maybe I’m cynical, but it seems to me that these flaws in the fabric of our society existed well in advance of 4.20.99 and it’s hardly surprising that a sick system would spawn broken children capable of unspeakable barbarism. Nor is it surprising that the system would then cannibalize those children and their victims in order to slake its spiraling lust for ignorance and hatred.

Whatever was wrong ten years and one day ago is still wrong.

Next

• Was Columbine the rule or the exception?
• Columbine and the power of symbols
  

Until the discovery of newspapers as profitable cash cows by Wall Street more than four decades ago, newspapers were owned by people who had 1) worked as journalists, 2) understood the community the paper served, 3) believed in the public service mission of journalism, and 4) understood the need for an appropriate profit to maintain that mission of serving the public interest.

Those owners and publishers understood what they were selling — the ability of their editorial staffs to tell both wanted and needed stories to their readers about their communities. They knew that readers wanted and would buy their papers for sports, Dear Abby, and crossword puzzles. But they also knew their readers needed and would also buy well-done, “eat-your-spinach” stories about corrupt government and its agencies; misbehaving businesses; shenanigans of politicians; and fire, court and police activities. But that’s all changed now.

Those owners and publishers understood their audiences’ needs and wants. They knew that to maintain the daily stream of salable and profitable content they needed a sufficient number of well-trained, experienced journalists who knew their beats and their sources.

Those owners and publishers are a minority now, bought out by profit-maximizing mega-corporations seeking to turn these 10-percent papers into 30-percent papers. The old, ink-stained owners have been replaced by corporate minions who never worked in a newsroom and who believe that whatever is placed on a newspaper page (or a Web site) is sufficient to breed substantial profit.

Google “editorial staff cuts.” You’ll probably find that American newspapers cut a few thousand journalists last year and bought out hundreds more. Gone are minds that produced the content that is the product that newspapers have historically sold to readers for a few hundred years.

Modern newspaper management has made numerous bone-headed decisions in the past 15 years, mostly from failing to anticipate the influence of the Web as a delivery vehicle for news — and from failing to charge for the unique content journalists produced during those nascent days of news Web sites.

Now these corporate management tycoons are making an error likely to prove fatal to their attempts to recover from their missteps and misdeeds. Oh, sure, they’re trying to dump the printing presses in a rush to be Web-only. But what will they put there?

Because current newspaper owners have so few roots into the meaning and role of journalism in American life, they’re getting rid of the minds responsible for locally generated, unique content.

That’s the content that readers used to be willing to buy. If it’s not present in these new, Web-only aggregations passing for news, no one’s going to read it — free or not.

Corporate newspapers owners should show some spine — hire back experienced journalists, and plenty of them. Produce newspapers, Web-only or not, worth reading. That’s their only route to return to profitability and respectability.

(Tip o’ the hat to my colleague John Hanchette.)

We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas. – Natalie Maines

I don’t even know the Dixie Chicks, but I find it an insult for all the men and women who fought and died in past wars when almost the majority of America jumped down their throats for voicing an opinion. It was like a verbal witch-hunt and lynching. – Merle Haggard

Last night over dinner the subject of The Dixie Chicks came up, and I got mad all over again. Which is unfortunate, because when you think about artists that talented the last thing on your mind ought to be anger. But still, it’s been six long years now since “the top of the world came crashing down,” and I can’t quite free myself of my rage at the staggering ignorance that led so many Americans to piss on the 1st Amendment by attempting to destroy the careers of Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robinson. Frankly, I don’t know how Natalie can make it through a performance of “The Long Way Around” or “Not Ready to Make Nice” because I can barely listen to the songs without wanting to take a folding chair to every goddamned corporate radio executive and program director in America responsible for driving them from the airwaves.

No doubt that this makes me a lesser man than I should be. I can’t imagine that the Chicks would approve of my violent impulses (which, I have to admit, are a little too literal for my own comfort), given the grace with which they have navigated the turbulence surrounding their lives in recent years. In truth, they haven’t taken the long way around so much as they have taken the high road, and I regret that I’m not quite worthy of the example they have set for those of us trying to lead civilized lives in the midst of so much willful ignorance.

In recognition of their willingness to risk their careers speaking truth to power and for their courage in facing the backlash (which included death threats, let’s remember) that’s all too frequently aimed at uppity women in the less advanced corners of our nation, Scholars & Rogues is proud to honor The Dixie Chicks as our latest Scrogues and accord them a place in our masthead of fame.

And, if it isn’t obvious, then I’ll apologize in advance for not being up to the standards that Natalie, Martie and Emily have set. They’re not to blame for my tribute to them.

What Did the War on The Dixie Chicks Teach Us About Our Freedoms?

Some time back I read a story in the international press about the rise of fundamentalist Islam in one of Europe’s leading nations – I believe it was the Netherlands, but can’t recall for certain. They’re apparently facing the prospect that one day this minority could grow to the point where it could go to the polls and, using the legitimate engines of the democratic system available to it, vote to eradicate the nation’s religious freedoms. A politician was asked what should be done in this case. His answer was that nothing should be done – it must be allowed, since it would be the result of a democratic process.

Quite a conundrum, that. What to do when democracy is used to dispose of democracy? Obviously America is under no immediate threat from organized Islamist voters, but we do have our own Christian Taliban problem, don’t we? What should we, here in the Land of the Free^®, think about those who do not value actual freedom of religion? How many Americans would we send off to die to preserve the free speech rights of those who’d squelch the free speech rights of their fellow citizens? What should a true patriot do when confronted with the reality that the tools of liberty are being used against Lady Liberty herself?

My own code of ethics has always said that you cannot allow a barbarian to use your civilization as a weapon against you. A man who insists on fighting according to a set of honorable rules while his opponent is using a tire iron to liquefy his testicles deserves what happens to him. In my angrier moments I’ve said that no, you don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with a flamethrower.

But that’s just me, and you’ll recall from earlier that I’m perhaps not to be taken as a role model. Still, we do live in a nation with many who do not share our respect for Constitutional freedoms. Exactly how many I can’t say, but I feel comfortable with “millions and millions.” It’s certain that without such people we’d not have had to endure eight years of Bush/Cheney thuggery.

I’m Not Ready to Make Nice

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

This was the message – “shut up and sing.” You’re not being paid to think, you mouthy little bitches, you’re being paid to entertain us. Now dance, girlies. God Bless America.

History will validate, with a minimum of controversy, the sentiments Natalie Maines expressed at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire theatre on March 10, 2003. Hopefully the record will point to our present moment and note that already the momentum had shifted and that within a generation people would have an impossible time imagining how such an affront to freedom was ever possible. Hopefully.

For the time being, “mad as hell” doesn’t begin to describe the indignation that those of us working to move this culture forward by promoting genuinely intelligent and pro-human values ought to feel, even now. I won’t tell you how to think and act, of course – you have a conscience and a brain, and you can be trusted to take in the information and perspectives around you and form an opinion that you can live by.

But for my part, I have a message for the “shut up and sing” crowd: I’m not ready to back down and I never will be. Your values are at odds with the principles upon which this nation was founded and true liberty cannot survive if your brand of flag-waving ignorance is allowed to thrive. You will not be allowed to use the freedoms that our founders fought for as weapons to stifle freedom for others.

You have declared a culture war, so here’s where the lines are drawn: I’m on the side of enlightenment, free and informed expression and the power of pro-humanist pursuits to produce a better society where we all enjoy the fruits of our shared accomplishments.

What side are you on?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Buff U is pointing to all manner of irregularities in Churchill’s scholarship, asserting that he was fired for plagiarism. Ward’s attorneys have another theory:

His lawyer, David Lane, has sought to portray him as the victim of a “howling mob” of university administrators, conservative media and politicians who were “falling over themselves” to have him fired.

You’ll recall that in the aftermath of 9/11, Churchill penned a screed that referred to the victims in the Twin Towers as “little Eichmanns” for their role in propping up an unjust political and economic system. Trust me when I say that “howling mob” is, if anything, a charitable characterization of the group that sought Churchill’s dismissal.

Before I go further, let me note that I’m not an attorney, so my take isn’t something that’s going to find its way into the case studies mentioned earlier. Further, I have a strong investment in what happens at CU since that’s where I earned my PhD. I know the place and I love it dearly, despite the fact that it can’t seem to go more than a few days at a time without shooting itself in the foot. So if my general lack of lawyering knowledge seems infused by a bit conflictedness and/or frustration, you’ll now know why. Back to the case.

CU lawyers will be asking the jury to pay attention to the technical minutiae attending academic integrity. Churchill’s lawyers will be asking the jury to pay attention to the politics that drove the inquisition. Who’s right?

From my humble perspective, it seems clear that both are right, and that more broadly, everyone was wrong.

• There is zero doubt about the pressure brought by the “howling mob,” which comprises a barely educated pack of slobbering wingnuts and the “leaders” who follow them everywhere. The political right in Colorado knows little and cares less about academic integrity, and I’ve remarked about the state’s “war on education” for a reason. CU’s current president is an anti-academic freedom global warning denier who’s unparalleled in his unfitness for leadership among America’s major universities, and former president Betsy Hoffman’s testimony that she’s endured an “all-out assault” by conservative politicians not only seems plausible, it would have been remarkable had it happened any other way.
• Multiple faculty committes found serious fault with Churchill’s scholarship. Churchill’s various claims are unconvincing, at best. The practices of cultures with oral traditions notwithstanding, when you’re a prof in a research one institution you know the rules and you follow them. You don’t like them, you go after them, but you do not simply ignore them.
• While I have not learned, through the years, to trust uncritically the actions or motivations of university administrators, the final faculty committee report is compelling. It did not recommend that Churchill be fired – two members called for dismissal, but the majority recommended suspension and demotion. However, that means that they were unanimous in their opinion that he was guilty of academic dishonesty. This is a critical piece of evidence. I have some small understanding of the CU/Boulder culture, and can tell you that tenured profs are going to be incredibly sensitive to political encroachments on academic freedom. Their decision in the Churchill case could potentially widen the door to future partisan attacks on unpopular (or misunderstood) scholarship, so my assumption is that Churchill received (as one committee member testified) “the great big benefit of the doubt.”

But wait, you say. They don’t hand out tenure like they would coupons for 10% off a burrito at Illegal Pete’s. How did Ward go from tenure-worthy scholar to dirty cheating whore overnight?

Right. And when all is said and done, I expect the jury to be sitting there convinced of two things. One, Churchill broke the rules and by that standard deserved to be turfed. Two, the process that brought the breach to light was the result of a politically motivated witch-hunt that violated every tenet of the academic freedom upon which our entire university system rests. (If you don’t believe the second part of this equation, let’s talk. I have some prime waterfront property in south-central Florida that’s ripe for development, and you may be just the slack-jawed hillbilly shrewd investor I’ve been looking for.) “Fruit of a poisoned tree” is a term you may have heard if you watch the average courtroom drama. Yes, the perp had the half-eaten remains of 12 murdered prostitutes hanging from hooks in his dayroom, but the cops didn’t have a warrant. So we have to find some way of getting him, and if that means a workaround or two, so be it. Light that torch and hand me my pitchfork, would you?

In sum, it’s a fascinating case that will ask the jurors to focus on the details of the law despite the overpowering stench of politics and, frankly, the fact that the plaintiff isn’t terribly cuddly. Let’s be honest – Ward Churchill is a jackass, although you and I probably think so for different reasons. Here’s mine. He had an opportunity to make an intelligent and altogether valid scholarly argument about the character of our system – and I’m not asking you to agree with the proposition, but merely to understand that such a thing would have been perfectly legitimate within the context of his job; however, instead of behaving like a tenured scholar at a flagship research one university he started lobbing firebombs. Fine. This was a calculated choice and he should have been prepared to deal with the inevitable consequences.

I can’t help thinking that you’d play hell trying to seat a jury that’s a) intellectually capable of tracking the arcane nuances surrounding the tenure and academic research processes, and b) remaining unbiased by the controversial things that Churchill has written and said. This isn’t necessarily a slam at the jury pool, either, because I imagine the case would be extremely difficult for me, as well.

My guess is that both sides have already drafted their respective notices of appeal.

It’s  been suggested before that Jon Stewart is perhaps America’s most trustworthy journalist. Which is nice for him, but not so good for the rest of us, because he’s not a journalist. He’s a comedian. He’s David Letterman. He’s Larry the Cable Guy. He’s Phyllis Diller. He makes his living by making people laugh.

But here he is, once again stepping up and telling truth to power in ways that seem spectacular to us. (And make no mistake – money is power in America, and media conglomerates are among power’s most critical brokers. So stomping the balls off of Jim Cramer does, in fact, constitute speaking truth to power.)

The relevant part of that last paragraph occurs toward the end of the first sentence. What Stewart did has been the talk of the entire fucking world in the last 48 hours. He, a guy with a TV show, hauled a man out into the town square who has done, by omission or commission – your choice – grave damage to countless Americans. Whether Cramer contributed to the insanity that has led us to our current economic apocalypse directly or whether his worst sin is that he did not use his platform to call out the guilty in advance, he and his employers played a noteworthy role in facilitating our financial crash. And we, the citizenry of the information-logged society in the history of the solar system, stand agog: motherfucking WOW! Did you SEE that?!

This is the tragedy. We’re as staggered at the occurrence of actual journalism as we would be by the sight of Rosie O’Donnell clubbing Donald Trump to death with her boobs. The fact that the only journalism in recent memory has emanated from Comedy Central is … well, it’s like shooting novocaine into the leg of a quadriplegic, really.

Cap and Bells

It’s never been easy – or profitable, or even safe – to speak truth to power. America circa 2009 isn’t the first place when the ordained channels have failed to convey to the people an accurate accounting of the events shaping their lives. In fact, what we’re dealing with now is more reflective of the historical rule than it is the exception.

Throughout most of history you’ve had to search for the truth about power in indirect commentaries: literature, and especially speculative genre fiction, for instance. Comedy. Art. The forms allow a person with a point of view to express it while maintaining a sheen of plausible deniability. “Oh, no, your majesty, I wasn’t writing about your munificent presence! The malevolent criminal monarch in my story is something I imagined might exist in a less just society on a planet in another galaxy.” It’s good to remember that science fiction and fantasy are never about the future or other worlds – they’re always about here and now.

And there’s the very old tradition of the fool. The jester, in his classical incarnation, was the only one in the court who could get away with telling the truth. The fact that he was a certified nutball removed enough credibility from his words that he could say serious things without being taken seriously. He was fine so long as he didn’t slip into lucidity.

Put another way, the truth has always been there if you knew where to look and understood the code. 2009 isn’t a lot different from 1009 in that respect, I imagine. There can be a price to be paid if the wrong person says the wrong thing in the wrong way. Once upon a time the price might be that your loved ones would get to watch your head being paraded around on a pike. Now the price might be something as pedestrian as losing a job opportunity or having your reputation perma-slandered by a vicious partisan noise machine. But there’s always risk, so the citizen bent on telling the truth needs to understand the context.

Clowning America

Throughout the Bush years any journalist with the temerity to act like an actual reporter paid a price. The default was loss of “access,” and that was pretty terrifying to most on the best because your ability to survive was going to be hindered if you couldn’t get anywhere near the newsmakers. This wasn’t the worst that could happen, of course. Ask Joe Wilson or that mealy-mouthed cocksucker Scott McClellan (not a journalist by any means, but a good illustration of the point) what happened when you hit the Bush/Cheney mob a little too close to home. At best, it took courage and hopefully enough cash-on-hand to sustain you through some hard times.

Clearly that wasn’t the only place where the institutions of the Fourth Estate lacked, and continue to lack, courage. As Stewart makes brutally clear in his 20 minute-plus dismemberment of Jim Cramer – a man not heretofore known for being short on words or self-confidence – finding malpractice in the field of financial journalism (my new favorite oxymoron, by the way) is about as tough as finding loose morals in a whorehouse. Think about it. You have CNBC, FOX’s biz news, the Wall Street Journal, the financial sections of hundreds of newspapers, and how many more business “news” outlets. How many of them were warning you of the things that we’re now told were more or less inevitable? (Told by some, I should say – others are still trying to say there was no way we could have predicted this. Which is bullshit – I know some very sharp people who predicted it, but they don’t have TV shows, in large part because they’re the sorts willing to tell the truth about rigged games. Maybe they should have put together an irreverent ventriloquist act or written a fantasy novel.

Media as far as they eye can see, so much media, so much “analysis,” and not a drop of journalism in sight.

It’s true that Jon Stewart isn’t the first funny guy in history to be the best available source of reliable reporting on the social, political and economic condition. But most of those places didn’t have democracies. Most didn’t have a free press. And none of them had more access to information or channels of distribution than we do.

“Journalism is no worse off now than it was during the reign of Caligula” is a true statement, but it’s not the sort of thing an advanced society should have to settle for, either.

Let’s get Jon Stewart the Peabody. Then a Pulitzer for The Onion. And why not a Nobel for the karma-obsessed lead in My Name is Earl?

If that’s the world we’re willing to accept, it’s the best we deserve.

The response? The USA PATRIOT Act. It authorized expanded powers for US intelligence and law enforcement agencies including surveillance capabilities, broadened the definition of “terrorism”, increased border security and gave the Treasury the ability to stop money laundering the world over.

But its authority is so broad that it can lend itself to abuse. It gives power to wiretap and spy on law-abiding American citizens including monitoring what they read at the library, “sneak and peek”  without a warrant, and access to medical and financial records. Plus, this large bill was being quickly pushed through Congress without giving it full consideration or even being read by those voting on it.

Now imagine if almost every Democratic member of Congress voted against the Act based on those reasons. Or perhaps they didn’t trust this new, untested administration to do what is right. Or maybe they did it to just make a point about party unity. Would there be a public outcry? Would the pundits say that the opposition party did not grasp the enormity of the situation and that in this moment of peril it is better to “shoot first and ask questions later”? With the great danger the country is in, would it be better to err on the side of giving too much power to the government to deal with the crisis than too little?

Remember your mental answers to those questions as I change the circumstances slightly.

Let’s zoom back to the present day. The national and world economies have never been in as bad shape since the Great Depression. We have been losing a half a million jobs a month since the election and now 4.81 million people collect unemployment benefits, the highest number in at least 40 years. Consumer confidence is at a 29-year low. The Dow has lost a quarter of its value since September. The financial sector has $1.17 trillion in defaulted loans on its books which lead to a 12.4% reduction in housing prices. 1 in 9 US homes are now vacant.

The response? The $787 billion economic recovery package. It offers the largest tax cut in US history,  $272 billion for the working class. $58 billion to jump-start green energy infrastructure and another $90 billion to shore up traditional infrastructure – from bridges to roads to levees and transit. There’s $100 billion to boost welfare and unemployment, $112 billion for health care in Medicare, electronic medial records and preventative care. And then there’s billions for school reconstruction, greening federal buildings, Head Start, buying foreclosed homes, and laying down broadband for the entire country.

But this is a big bill. At a heft of over 1000 pages it has the biggest price tag of any stimulus bill ever debated in Congress. And that debate didn’t include many Republicans; only the very moderate got to influence the bill significantly while the more conservative members got their ideas heard out but never implemented. But this bill is so large it would fundamentally change the size and scope of the government’s influence in American lives. And like the PATRIOT Act, this thing blazed through Congress and no one had a chance to read it all.

Now the Republicans had their equivalent of the PATRIOT Act sitting in front of them. So what would they do? What if almost every Republican member of Congress voted against the Act based on the above reasons? Or perhaps they didn’t trust this new, untested administration to do what is right. Or maybe they did it to just make a point about party unity. Would there be a public outcry? Would the pundits say that the opposition party did not grasp the enormity of the situation and that in this moment of peril it is better to “shoot first and ask questions later”? With the great danger the country is in, would it be better to err on the side of giving too much power to the government to deal with the crisis than too little?

Some might balk at equating 9/11 with the current economic crisis. But its impact and reach are very similar. There was a lot of talk about going into the depths of another Great Depression, but the institutions and foundations laid down after the Great Depression would prevent that great of a collapse. Just like there was a lot of talk about 9/11 being another Pearl Harbor, but we were then facing a coalition of highly militarized, fascist countries actively attacking America and invading its allies.   Now we are facing a small number of fanatics with light arms. You can compare the two by type but not size.

Let me put it in an SAT equation:

Pearl Harbor : 9/11 :: Great Depression : today’s major recession

Our country has faced worse in the past and it is entirely within our capabilities to deal with our present crises. And while the Democrats were willing to take on 9/11 on the Republicans’ terms, the Republicans aren’t willing to tackle this economic crisis with the Democrats holding the reins. Every single House Republican voted against this bill along with all but three Senators. This is either because the Republicans don’t appreciate the dire straits that we are in, they had issues about the substance of the bill and way that it was pushed through, or they are more concerned with with their party than their country. My guess that it is a little of all three.

But if you’re all pissed off about that, how about Olympic athletes wrapping themselves in the flag? Or flag napkins? Or a car painted as a flag? Flying a flag in the rain or leaving it up overnight unlit? Flag beach towels? Flags on campaign buttons? In every case, that’s mistreatment of the U.S. flag, according to the Flag Code.

According to the US Code, Title 4, Chapter 1, Section 8, “Respect for the flag”:

(b) The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.

So much for those beach towels.

(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery
(j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform.

And so much for flag clothing.

(h) The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
(i) It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard.

And there goes those campaign buttons, napkins, cups, and plates.

(e) The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.

And given how dirty cars get (pigeons, insects, road grime, slush), you’d think that a flag paint job on a car would qualify as “easily soiled.”

As for displaying the flag, let’s not forget that all-weather flags are OK in bad weather, but no flag should be displayed unlit overnight – it’s disrespectful, and against US Code Title 4 Chapter 1 Section 6.

Tell you what – you don’t question the patriotism of Obama’s supporters and I won’t question the patriotism of all the Olympic athletes who have soiled a flag with their sweat, of all the swimmers who have lain on a flag beach towel, of all the patriots who throw millions of flags away on the Fourth of July every year. Deal?

Image credit: Baltimore Sun

It’s not yet known who was behind the attack.

Paul Preston, who runs the network, was understandably at the point of despair early today, posting a note saying that the operation was dead. Fortunately his latest missive notes that things are stabilized and moving ahead, and for this we’re grateful.

With luck today’s events will result in the development of a more reliable infrastructure. Paul has done heroic work building and maintaining SoapBlox, but like a lot of us out here, he’s been doing so with precious little support or resources. Perhaps today’s hack was inevitable, and I hope that it won’t be long before we can all look back and say things like “that was the best thing that ever happened to the progressive blog network.”

UPDATE: New statement from SoapBlox provides additional details.

Meanwhile, I don’t know if anyone has yet had time to call the FBI. If not, it needs to happen soon. Never mind the nature of the views being expressed on these sites – this attack was a naked broadside aimed at the very infrastructure of public speech and discourse in America, just as surely as if vandals had destroyed the presses used by the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine back in the 1700s. As long as the United States professes to be in the free speech business, actions like these cannot be allowed to stand.

Those responsible need to be found and brought to justice, and we at Scholars & Rogues hope that the incoming Attorney General feels as strongly on this point as we do.