Thinking of Bill Moyers, Next Steps, and a Vietnam War-ending Anniversary
April 30th, 2010 - by: danny
NO NEWS DISSECTED TODAY
MY TIMES, THEY ARE A CHANGING
We all know nothing lasts forever. I usually write about the news of others. Today, I am offering some notes from my own mind and heart.
First, I salute our colleague, our friend, our mentor and role model, Bill Moyers, who airs his last Journal program tonight on PBS.
Bill Moyers Journal . Last Guest on the Journal
Full transcript here.
Throughout his long career, from his days in Texas through his stint at the Johnson White House, to his role as Publisher of Newsday, to his commentaries on CBS, to his amazing track record as documentary filmmaker and talk show host, Bill has demonstrated a range of probing intellectual interests, and a deep and unwavering commitment to democratic discourse.
He went from a being a servant of power to a critic of power, from an insider to an outsider in traditional TV terms, from the networks to public broadcasting, to become an engaged citizen-journalist and then a patron and supporter of media reform lobbying, campaign finance reform and so much more.
Bill is admired by his colleagues but also tolerated by a far more centrist and often cowardly crew of comfortably sinecured public TV executives because he became an institution, one of public media’s few revered legends in part because he was damn good on the air as an issue-raiser and, also, as a fundraiser for just about every public TV station as well as for his own work which attracted, it seemed, unlimited foundation support and even a corporate sponsor who stayed with him over the years.
Bill knows how to work the system and the room. His southern twang, charm and charisma has kept audiences coming back, week after week, year after year, even when he was relegated to a Friday night public affairs ghetto air slot.
He resigned at age 76, but the PBS Gods used the opportunity praise him to the skies while quietly killing the excellent magazine show NOW which he created. Why? Do we really need another show hosted by a corporate editor who just turned an issue of Newsweek into an uncritical praise poem for a resurgent America?
Bill is now firmly in the pantheon of TV greats – still alive, praise the lord, and right up there with Edward R. Murrow, Cronkite and so many more.
Long live!
PBS.org: The Journal travels to Iowa where one group, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI), has been helping ordinary citizens fight for change for more than three decades. “We are the government.”
Full transcript here.
The other two interviews can be viewed by clicking on the links below:
• Bill Moyers sits down with populist Jim Hightower to look at the history and legacy of people’s movements and discuss how ordinary people can reclaim political power. More about Jim Hightower and American populism.
• Acclaimed author Barry Lopez joins Bill Moyers to discuss nature, spirit and the human condition. Lopez is an essayist, author and short-story writer, whose many books include ARCTIC DREAMS, winner of the National Book Award and OF WOLVES AND MEN, a National Book Award finalist. More Barry Lopez.
PBS.org: The JOURNAL on-air will be coming to an end on April 30th but the conversation continues online and on our blog. We’ll be posting commentary, features and selections from the Moyers Digital Archive. Stay in touch even after we’re off the air at this address and through RSS feeds, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and our newsletter. Sign up here. We look forward to hearing from you.
BILL AND ME
Bill was always friendly towards me, occasionally quoting me in his speeches and emailing back and forth, but I felt he was basically uncomfortable with my more independent approach. Perhaps it was my funkier style, outspoken criticisms of the PBS system, and activist proclivities.
When my dad was dying, he sent him copies of his series on death and dying and a beautiful personal letter. It so moved him that he wrote several drafts of letters to respond but none of them were quite right or said all he wanted to say. My dad had a religious devotion to his program. It was his church and, or, schul.
Moyers and I never worked together really, even though I tried. I understood his need to cover his back and to attract guests among the high and mightier.
I wish him and his thoughtful colleague and wife, Judith, every blessing as he transitions out of the public spotlight. My hunch his he will be back in public life sooner than later. The relentless “detached” advocate may soon come out of the closet as an up-front activist.
I can more easily reflect on Bill Moyer’s career than my own which seems to be trending down if not out, even as I am engaged in an effort to get my new, and possibly last, film PLUNDER The Crime Of Our Time out. Making it has been my hardest project so far – funding was almost impossible to come by but I couldn’t let it go because I am so pissed about how our economy has been wrecked.
It was a compulsion, and so far, I am pleased that the people who have seen it like it. I am grateful to Moyers for letting me use part of one of his interviews in it.
It’s also reassuring that so many people who were passive and silent on the issue are now speaking out and ventilating their anger. I was at the AFL-CIO rally yesterday afternoon and was heartened by all the people who were there to march on Wall Street. I think we may be at one of those moments when these issues become mass issues. Here’s one report. Typically, and predictably, the presence of the president of the AFL-CIO and thousands of workers in the streets did not rate prominent attention as news fit to print in the New York Times.
In that sense, my film is out at the right time. We gave out flyers about the movie, and found people receptive in the ranks of the union members there. My argument about the crisis as a crime story is already the conventional wisdom in that world. Later, i screened the film to an audience at the National Arts Club which included some Wall Streeters. A few came up to say they liked it, and that I knew my stuff.
I said there would be no news but I have to make an exception for one related news bulletin, just out last night, hooray:
AP: Goldman Sachs under criminal investigation by the US attorney’s office in Manhattan
“The Justice Department move was the latest in a dramatic series of turns in the Goldman saga, which has pitted the culture of Wall Street against angry lawmakers in an election year, in the wake of the financial crisis that plunged the country into the most severe recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.” [More here →]
WHAT NOW?
For years now, I have been studying and exposing the bubble while been traveling in a far more isolated bubble of my own making, pursuing my passions with, alas, a smaller and smaller community of support.
I know I am far too driven, perhaps individualistic and work-oriented. Some call it prolific. I sometimes think of it as obsessive especially because I have not really built the kind of friendship networks and political community one needs to prosper spiritually as well as financially in this type of work.
LEARNING FROM THOREAU
My brother, Bill, who lives in Massachusetts, and writes regularly about one of our greatest Americans, Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden Pond and other great works including his treatise on civil disobedience. For years he drove right by Walden Pond on his way to teach High School history to generations of appreciative students.
Recently, when I told him I was going to be moving from my office as the company I co-created by in l987 is forced to scale back in these tough economic time, he sent me a quote from Thoreau who was reflecting about his own move more than a century ago.
He was leaving the pond that he loved and had made his home.
Bill writes:
“Thoreau takes nearly 300 pages to describe his beautiful, Edenic stay in the paradise along Walden’s shores. Then he stuns the reader by ending the next-to-last chapter this way:
“Thus was my first year’s life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.”
But why would he suddenly choose to leave a incomparable paradise that he had described to us at such length?
He gives the answer in the “Conclusion:”
“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.”
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours …”
MY OWN WALDEN POND
In a sense, Globalvision may have have become my own Walden Pond, a comfortable world that nurtured me but also became a kind of parallel universe to retreat into as our media and political words became coarser and more driven by reactionary thinking, market logic, and a deep corruption of spirit and practice.
I have worked too hard to produce programming that was not seen as widely as I think it should have been, but, that’s how the cookie crumbles in our media culture.
Perhaps my critics are right—you can’t be good at everything. Quality suffers when you work with low budgets and small, often inexperienced teams.
You get what you pay for, especially, when you don’t have the money to pay.
I am proud or my books and films and videos and blogs, and articles and etc., but in some ways I have been my own worst enemy when it came to finding the audience I was hoping to reach. I know I overdo it. Too much information. Too much news. Too many stories. Maybe I am just too much. Just look at the length of my 3000 word plus daily blog. It’s been compared to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I am sure I could have done it better, and I am not sure now how much longer I can or will do it.
The need to do more has often limited my ability to do my best. I have always been driven and in a rush, writing too often without proper editing, or even proofreading, often flinging work out there without adequate support from distributors or well-endowed publishers. I have always wanted to be timely, the duty, I guess, of a news junkie.
BLASTS FROM THE PAST
Next month, I will be joining a reunion of the kids I worked with on the Clinton News, our student newspaper back at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx where I first discovered an affinity for journalism.
Those years, so long ago, were, I realize now, a turning point.
As are the events of today.
Did you know it was on this date back in 1975, that the Vietnam War, which activated and radicalized me as it so many, came to a crashing end with one side winning and the other fleeing? It was a Ho Chi Minh moment.
A brief overview of the history as presented, as i had been for years by our one-sided media offering no sense of why and how the Vietnamese victors–always labeled Communists — survived and triumphed. Today, Vietnam is our friend and trading partner. Peace out.
I cried and then cheered the liberation and reunification of that country which I visited and reported on even as the abuses at the end mirrored the abuses over so many years in a war whose lessons we have yet to learn and seem doomed to repeat. We called it the FALL of Saigon, they, the RISE.
Vietnam is still a reference point, which is probably why my past will never be past.
“We had no homefront
We had no soft soap
They sent us playboy
They gave us bob hope
We dug in deep
And shot on sight
And prayed to Jesus Christ with all of our might.”
[full lyrics here]
May Day is just a day away. It’s also World Press Freedom Day!
This weeks News Dissector radio show on ProgressiveRadioNetork.org is now a podcast. LISTEN
Comments welcome to: dissector@mediachannel.org
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GOP Drops Objections To Reform Debate, Democracy Now! Interview
April 29th, 2010 - by: danny
I will be hosting News Dissector Radio on ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com 10 AM to 11 AM EDT. Financial reform update and interviews with student activists on educational cutbacks.
DEMOCRACY NOW! UPSCALES
I was at Democracy Now’s new headquarters yesterday morning. It happens to be in my neighborhood. Wow. Impressive. A real facility that is functional and attractive! I am told they are even running classes there for media students. They deserve the best, given their commitment and the quality of their work even if it made me just a tad jealous. As they open up new digs, we are, alas, shutting down an old one. At the same time, I was grateful to be there and be on the show because I know how important it is for viewers and listeners. Have a look at Amy and Juan’s interview with me about my new film and see what you think. If you like it, share it with friends.
GOP WINS CONCESSION ON BAILOUTS, NOW WILLING TO DEBATE BILL
WE MUST REGULATE RATINGS AGENCIES
MARCH ON WALL STREET TODAY
TheNation.com: Goldman Exec: It’s Unfortunate To Have Shi*&y Deal, Piece of Crap “On E-Mail by Robert Scheer
MSNBC: GOP drops objections to banking reform debate; Senate Republicans will now try to change Democrats’ proposal on floor
AP: The most sweeping new controls on financial institutions since the Great Depression are a big step closer to approval in Congress.
The changes, aimed at preventing a recurrence of the crisis that knocked the nation’s financial system to its knees in 2008, advanced Wednesday when Republicans abandoned their blockade in the Senate. Now, the battle begins over crucial details and that could take at least two weeks. The House has already passed its version.
Democrats and Republicans agree the Senate will ultimately pass landmark changes.
Sen Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) said the ‘biggest obstacle’ remaining between him and Dodd is a proposed independent consumer regulator to oversee mortgages, credit cards and other consumer loans.”
Washington Monthly – Should the agency be independent?
As Congress hammers out its landmark financial reform bill, one of the most controversial points of debate is the question of where to put the government’s new financial watchdog, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Should it be a freestanding agency, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, or rolled into the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve? Liberal Democrats have argued fiercely for making the CFPA independent, on the theory that an autonomous agency will be more powerful and less vulnerable to pressure from the financial sector. Republicans seem to agree with liberal’s theory, and fear that a freestanding agency would tend toward overregulation. What is really at issue in this debate, as in so many others, is the question of bureaucratic power.
In a probing essay-review in the May/June issue of the Washington Monthly, Steven Teles of John Hopkins University and the New America Foundation uses a new history of the Food and Drug Administration–an agency which for decades ranked among the most formidable in Washington–as a vehicle for exploring why some agencies are granted far more autonomy and clout than others. Delving into Daniel Carpenter’s new book, Reputation and Power, Teles finds the answer boils down largely to a single factor: status. Bureaucracies that are seen and admired as powerful guardians of the public interest are less likely to fall prey to political whims or special interests. Extending these findings to the CFPA debate, Teles argues that, contrary to popular belief, the agency would have more autonomy and regulatory clout if placed inside the Federal Reserve, which is taken seriously by the financial industry and has the reputation and resources to attract top talent. Click here to read a sneak preview of Teles’s treatise, “Brains on Drugs.”
Daily Beast: Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal offers a summary of the financial-reform plan that Republicans released on Tuesday.
Possible deal on liquidating failed financial institutions. TPMDC: “Without going into great detail, Dodd trumpeted the fact that he and Shelby have largely come to an understanding over one major aspect of the legislation–how to unwind large, failed financial institutions–and said he believes that will be enough to move the bill forward, despite continuing disagreement over other key sections.”
FEDHEADS: NYT: President Obama plans to nominate three new Federal Reserve governors on Thursday, a source familiar with the plans said.
The prospective nominees are: Janet Yellen, currently president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Sarah Bloom Raskin, currently Maryland’s top bank regulator, and Peter Diamond, an economist at MIT. Yellen will be nominated to be vice-chairman of the central bank. The White House had previously acknowledged that the three were under consideration to join the seven-member Fed board of governors.
Also in Fedland: NYT: Fed Keeps Short-Term Interest Rates Near Zero
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday kept short-term interest rates near zero and maintained, as it has for months, that rates would stay at that level for “an extended period.”
Despite intense market speculation, the central bank disclosed nothing about the fate of the $2.3 trillion balance sheet it accumulated as it acquired mortgage-backed securities in an effort to prop up the housing market.
NOTE: The demand for more accountability by the Fed, and an audit of its funds, the issues raised by Ron Paul and Alan Grayson, among others, have been DROPPED from the “reform” bill.
OTHER ISSUES
Al Giordano, The Battle for Immigration Reform
“When on the night of the passage of the US health care law March 21, I wrote that the next big battle would and should be immigration reform, I had no idea that the state of Arizona was about to polarize the issue with the passage of its Juan Crow law last week. It is a law so unwieldy, unenforceable, unconstitutional and un-American that its authors inadvertently gifted to reform proponents that ‘fierce urgency of now’ that Martin Luther King, Jr. once spoke of as a basic building block of change.
“…Under radar, Obama and his party’s Organizing for America army has, for months already, been doing the stealth community organizing spade work, preparing the ground for this perfect storm. Throughout the country, organizers show up at citizenship swearing-in ceremonies with voter registration forms, and in key areas have begun door-to-door canvasses in Hispanic neighborhoods previously untouched by electoral machines because they had so few eligible voters.”ws:
What The War Looks Like On The US Side, Michael Yon, The Big Guns Of Kandahar
Return of the Death Squads Honduran oligarchs target members of the National Front of Popular Resistance.
WORLD
WSJ: U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown was caught on a live microphone calling a voter a “bigoted woman” after she confronted him over government policies. In an interview with the BBC, a visibly distressed Brown apologized to the voter over the incident, which could prove one of the most costly gaffes of any recent U.K. election campaign.
Who helped cause the economic Greece crisis?
OH, ARIZONA
Arizona’s looming tourism disaster By kos (hisself) h/t DXM
Arizona xenophobes have put the tourism trade at serious risk.
“Backers of the ethnic cleansing law in Arizona claim that nationwide calls for boycotts of Arizona won’t amount to much. Maybe they will, or maybe they won’t, but [Arizona's looming tourism disaster] won’t be so easy to laugh off.
“‘The Mexican government warned its citizens Tuesday to use extreme caution if visiting Arizona because of a tough new law that requires all immigrants and visitors to carry U.S.-issued documents or risk arrest.’”
[SNIP]
“‘With Arizona’s international visitorship decimated, the state now must rely on domestic visitors – many of which come from liberal California, where cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles are seeking official boycotts of the state. Late Tuesday, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), leader of the California State Senate, also proposed a statewide boycott of Arizona.’”
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Daily FINANCIAL CRISIS CAPSULE: More On Goldman and The Greek Disaster
April 29th, 2010 - by: danny
GOLDMAN THE VOODOO DOLL
Did they deserve the harsh questioning and the needles stuck in their eyes? Of course. They have become the poster child for Wall Street irresponsibility, a great company to demonize, especially because they are so successful. GOLDMAN ON THE GRIDDLE was one NY headline. GOLDMAN SMACKED, another. But beating their bankers up for an afternoon in a public inquisition does not solve the problem even if it made many feel good.
Michael Moore is now advocating DEPORTING Goldman, A good applause line, but once again its so much easier to bash the bad than explain the need for structural changes.
Let us admit, the Goldman Gang was right when they said all the banks did what they did. But all the banks are not yet on the griddle, or, at least, not all of the big 6. Why not?
RELATED from last October:
Yves Smith on Goldman Hearings in Naked Capitalism
It seems clear that the Goldman executives were completely unprepared for this line of hostile questioning and have no ready responses. How this could be and how they could not have anticipated how they would be grilled, is a true mystery.
Collins notes that it seems to be Goldman’s strategy to burn through the time without answering anything. Whether this is true or not may be subject to debate. However, it seems clear that Goldman is doing a good job of making themselves look bad in this type of situation.
Josh Birnbaum is the first Goldman employee being quizzed that seems able to answer questions directly and explain their positions and their rationales. Unlike the other Goldman representatives, he agrees with Senator Collins that Goldman has a duty to act in the interest of its clients. He agrees that it may make sense for regulators to impose a fiduciary duty on broker dealers.
FINANCIAL TIMES: WE NEED TO REGULATE RATINGS AGENCIES
The organisations on political trial last Friday were the ratings agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, which played a more central role than any investment bank in the failure of so many investment-grade securities. If all the subprime mortgage securities they rated triple A had not turned to junk, no bail-outs would have been required.
The stories that former Moody’s and S&P employees told at that hearing – of the agencies trying to please investment banks that were paying big fees to get high ratings – cast doubt on a central plank of how the fixed-income markets are supposed to work. Why should investors place faith in these over-rated bond market guardians again?
Ratings agencies have been criticised in past crises – most recently in the aftermath of Enron’s collapse – for lending their approval to dubious bonds and issuers. Their failings in the housing bubble were much greater. Yet, despite shareholder lawsuits against the agencies and some political heat, there is little sign that their quasi-official status – or their business models – will be substantially changed. The financial reform bill that is still blocked on Capitol Hill has placed other priorities, such as derivatives regulation, above them.
That is unfortunate. If the crisis proves anything, it is that the agencies enjoy too much authority among investors and regulators. Any reform that would loosen their grip on bond markets deserves a shot.”
GREECE IS CRASHING TODAY AND CAN’T BE SAVED
Simon Johnson on the Greek Shock in BaselineScenario.com
This is not now about Greece (with 2 year yields reported around 20 percent today) or Portugal (up 7 basis points) or even Spain (2 year yields up 27 basis points; wake up please) or even Italy (up 6 basis points). This is no longer about an IMF package for Greece or even ring fencing other weaker eurozone economies.
This is about the fundamental structure of the eurozone, about the ability and willingness of the international community to restructure government debt in an orderly manner, about the need for currency depreciation within (or across) the eurozone. It is presumably also about shared fiscal authority within the eurozone — i.e., who will support whom and on what basis?
It is also, crucially, about stabilizing the macroeconomic situation without resorting to more unconditional bailouts. Bankers are pounding tables all across Europe, demanding that governments buy out their position — or bring in the IMF to do the same. We again find ourselves approaching the point when the financial sector will scream: rescue us all or face global economic collapse.”
He doesn’t believe President Obama knows what’s going on–and how serious this is!
WORRIED
FT: Dangers loom beyond the eurozone
The crisis in Greece serves as a warning to other countries not to lose control of their fiscal positions and the confidence of markets. But advanced countries have now stretched their public budgets so far that investors, economists and international organisations are getting worried. (Understatement of the day!)
Telegraph: ECB may have to turn to ‘nuclear option’ to prevent Southern European debt collapse”
The European Central Bank may soon have to invoke emergency powers to prevent the disintegration of southern European bond markets, with ominous signs of investor flight from Spain and Italy.
IMF TO THE RESCUE?
A Greek official said the IMF is considering increasing its promised 15 billion euros ($19.8 billion) loans to Greece by between 5 billion euros and 10 billion euros, but expressed doubts about whether the boost would happen.
EUROPEAN DEBT CRISIS SPREADS: EU COULD BREAK APART
SCM:BEWARE SKIMMING ATTACKS
U.S. banks are grappling with a recent increase in skimming attacks, which are being carried out by Eastern European gangs aiming to steal consumer bank account numbers and PINs, according to a Gartner analyst.
These types of attacks are not new, but the scale and the organization behind them is, Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, told SCMagazineUS.com on Tuesday. Over the past six months, fraudsters increasingly have been mounting well-organized and systematic attacks that involve placing skimming devices on not just ATM machines – the most commonly targeted device – but also point-of-sale systems and gas-pump card readers.
Litan said she heard about the increase in skimming at a recent fraud conference attended by numerous financial services companies. There, she learned that skimming is currently one of the top problems with which banks are dealing.
On the Side of the Angels: Citibank Says It Supports Reform Principles
Ellen Brown, Global Research, Computerized Front Running and Financial Fraud: How a Computer Program Designed to Save the Free Market Turned Into a Monster
GOOD READ
James Kwkl recommends: The June issue of The American Prospect includes a section on financial reform that is already available online. Our contribution is on the way the financial sector has used its time-honored techniques to block and water down meaningful reform over the past year. There are also articles by many of the usual suspects, including Elizabeth Warren, Michael Greenberger, Rob Johnson, and Nomi Prins.
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About Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter is an Emmy award winning journalist, television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes, blogs and speaks about media issues.
His latest film is PLUNDER The Crime Of Our Time.
Mr. Schechter is NOT the Godfather of Soul.
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