random rants and references

Yesterday in my Whither Big Media ? post, I discussed the changes underway in Big Media and the fact that the latest newspaper circulation figures show a continuing decline. Now let's take a look at how one Big Newspaper wants to address its "credibility" problem, which may be related to its circulation problem. It seems the NY Times became aware that people don't take their word as gospel any more and set up a panel to investigate the problem.

Today the Times reports that its internal review panel Proposes Steps to Build Credibility : "In order to build readers' confidence, an internal committee at The New York Times has recommended taking a variety of steps, including having senior editors write more regularly about the workings of the paper, tracking errors in a systematic way and responding more assertively to the paper's critics. The committee also recommended that the paper "increase our coverage of religion in America" and "cover the country in a fuller way," with more reporting from rural areas and of a broader array of cultural and lifestyle issues."

The article notes that: "The report comes as the public's confidence in the media continues to wane. A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing of what they read in their daily newspapers, a level of distrust that may have been inflated because the questions were asked during the contentious presidential campaign when the media itself was often at issue. When specific newspapers were mentioned, The Times fared about average, with 21 percent of readers believing all or most of what they read in The Times and 14 percent believing almost nothing."

Did you notice how the writer tossed in that comment about "inflated" results due to the media being at issue during the election ? That's an example of confounding fact with opinion that is often found in NY Times reportage. In this case, its so reflexive that it even occurs when the Times looks better than some of its rivals. Could it be a part of their problem? Will the editors seek out and address that systemic issue or just respond assertively against any such charge ?

Let's look at another article in the same edition, A New Political Setback for Iraq's Cabinet with the subheading "The parliament approved appointments for six new cabinet spots, but a Sunni chosen as human rights minister declined the post". It's in the International Section where we should expect more fact that opinion; but perhaps not this time. The article reeks of bias against American policy in Iraq - not just in what and how it tells the story, but in what it doesn't say. To clarify this point, let's compare this story with some other reports from the WS Journal.

The Times first Paragraph says :"One of four Sunni Arabs picked this weekend to join Iraq's new Shiite-controlled cabinet abruptly rejected the job on Sunday, saying he first learned of his selection from a television news report on Saturday night. He added that he felt his selection would further a quota system for Sunnis that would only make sectarian problems worse."

After citing the weekend homicide totals for the insurgency, the third paragraph notes : "In the capital, the National Assembly approved six new cabinet ministers on Sunday, including the unwilling candidate, Hashim al-Shibli, who had been named human rights minister. But on a day when Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari had hoped to complete his cabinet and end the contentious political battles that delayed his government, the rejection was another embarrassment." OK; Got the image of Klutzy Iraqis and Americans being embarassed? Good!

So, how did the WSJ handle the same news item on the same day? Check their OpinionJournal - Featured Article, Titled "Iraq's New Government" with the subheading "Iraq's new governing coalition may not hold together.Welcome to democracy." (OH Yes. This is an WSJ opinion not reportage article). The first Paragraphs:
"Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari completed his Cabinet yesterday, and we hope Americans appreciate the accomplishment. It is the first popularly elected government in Iraq's history, and the only one in the entire Arab world. Now it's up to Iraqis to see if they can keep it.
That last point is crucial, because apart from security and technical expertise American leverage with the new government really is limited. Iraqis are going to have to forge their own political coalitions and compromises, and in that sense the weeks of bickering over the new government may well have been useful. While the delay since the January 30 election was frustrating, the political jockeying clarified a few things.
One such is that the victorious Shiites realize they can't govern Iraq by themselves. They have ceded a significant role to the Kurds, including the Presidency to Jalal Talabani, and they have invited willing Sunnis into the government as well. Six Cabinet posts will be held by Sunnis, including the defense ministry. Counterintuitively, the Sunni choice for human rights minister refused the post yesterday precisely because he said he was chosen on ethnic grounds. He wants the government chosen on merit."

So, if that's what the WSJ offers as "Opinion" what else does it offer? Consider this bi-weekly OpinionJournal - Extra report from Arthur Chrenkoff, also on the same day. It has a solid summary of facts and presents them in the context of a country emerging from long dictatorship and struggling to create it's own version of collaborative democracy. As an example, he quotes from a letter written by Iraq's President, Jalal Talabani, to Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair :"Building a democratic federal Iraq is a difficult, and slow, but rewarding process. Those who doubt the swiftness of transition must keep in mind that a state such as Iraq is a cultural, ethnic and linguistic mosaic that was only ever held together by brute force, thus, political speed can kill."

And later discusses the formation and approval process for the new government , e.g. : "T he Cabinet . . . would have 17 Shiite Arab ministers, eight Kurds, six Sunni Arabs and one Christian, fulfilling promises by leaders of the Shiite majority to share power among ethnic and religious groups.
These Cabinet numbers quite faithfully reflect the size of various ethnic and religious groups in Iraq. The cabinet also includes six women."


Maybe it's just me, but reading those three articles , all focused on Iraq and its new government, I can't help but feel that the NY Times does not really understand why they have a credibility problem with most people. Their "factual" reportage has more implicit and explicit bias and opinion than the WS Journal's opinion pieces. That's why I feel justified in using those "scare" quote marks. But having a Internal Panel is a start, even if it failed to identify the biggest contributer to their problem. Maybe they should try an independent External Panel next time.

It's becoming increasing clear that some major changes are taking place in the way we get news and how we interact with our news sources. Yes, I do mean "interact". Some of us may interact rather passively by simply choosing what we read or view among the many old and new choices available to us. Others, myself included, choose to take the next step and write, or"blog", about what we've read - as therapy, or as a way to internalize what we've learned by articulating it. Two recent articles touch on this topic, providing some light but not illuminating the end of the tunnel. Since I don't see that end either, I'll just present some excerpts from them.

Terry Eastland has an insightful article at the Wilson Quarterly @ The Collapse of Big Media : Starting Over. It begins :
"It’s premature to write an obituary, but there’s no question that America’s news media—the newspapers, newsmagazines, and television networks that people once turned to for all their news—are experiencing what psychologists might call a major life passage. They’ve seen their audiences shrink, they’ve had to worry about vigorous new competitors, and they’ve suffered more than a few self-inflicted wounds—scandals of their own making. They know that more and more people have lost confidence in what they do. To many Americans, today’s newspaper is irrelevant, and network news is as compelling as whatever is being offered over on the Home Shopping Network. Maybe less. .... So it’s time to write, if not an obituary, then an account of their rise and decline and delicate prospects amid the “new media” of cable television, talk radio, and the blogosphere."

And continues :
"The most influential journalists understood that news is rarely news in the sense of being undisputed facts about people or policy, but news in the sense that it’s a product made by reporters, editors, and producers. They knew that news is about facts, but that it fundamentally reflects editorial judgments about whether particular facts are “news,” and if they are, what the news means and what its consequences may be. They knew, too, that those who define and present the news have a certain power, since news can set a public agenda. And they weren’t shy about exercising this power. That’s what made them dominant—an establishment, in fact."

"And they influenced the nation, most dramatically during the 1960s and 1970s. They probably tipped the close 1960 election between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, when, as Theodore H. White reported in The Making of the President, 1960 (1961), the coverage clearly favored Kennedy. They early and correctly judged that the civil rights movement was news, and they turned news with datelines in the South into a national story of profound significance. They also affected the 1968 election—through what historian Paul Johnson called their “tendentious presentation” of news about the Vietnam War, which came to a head with the Tet offensive in January 1968, a major American military victory that the media cast as a defeat. Some described this portrayal as flawed reporting—notably the founding editor of this journal, Peter Braestrup, in Big Story (1977)—while others saw it as a product of bias. But the effect of the treatment of Tet was to help shift elite opinion decisively against the war. In March 1968, after nearly losing the New Hampshire primary, President Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for reelection."

The point about media bias and it's impact on the outcome of the Vietnam War is quite significant and is covered in my earlier post here . The media's complicity in that self-inflicted defeat may well have become over time a significant contributory factor to the public's disillusion with the media as authority. Americans don't like to lose or to have their leaders tell them they are losers and can't change their environment. Perhaps it is not coincidence that, after rejecting Carter's "miasma", the public migrated rightward while the media maintained a leftward path.

"Since the 1980s, however, more and more Americans have stopped relying on the traditional media for news. Some have quit the news habit entirely. Newspaper circulation has been declining, and network ratings are sharply down. Mainstream outlets no longer have a monopoly on the news, their journalism is subjected to sometimes withering scrutiny, and they are ignored when they are not criticized. Life is no longer so good."

"Whatever bias the media did not concede, and whatever places they skipped past where news might have been sought, there remained this essential fact: Most journalists were liberal in their political views and voting preferences. Today, no one really disputes that fact, nor have mainstream journalists changed much in this regard, for every new survey only confirms what all the previous ones reported. But when the mainstream media began their decline in the 1980s, they were reluctant to concede the point. In so many words, they often seemed to say, “If our liberalism is a fact—and we don’t really know that it is—it’s irrelevant.”" That was a great mistake - in Eastland's view and mine. The New Media Genie, of Fox, talk radio and blogs, is out of the bottle and won't be put back in.

For a second , more print-oriented perspective, this article in the WS Journal notes that Newspaper Circulation Continues Decline, Forcing Tough Decisions : "The newspaper industry, already suffering from circulation problems, could be looking at its worst numbers in more than a decade.Circulation numbers to be released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations probably will show industrywide declines of 1% to 3%, according to people familiar with the situation -- possibly the highest for daily newspapers since the industry shed 2.6% of subscribers in 1990-91. ... The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Co., expects to report today that total circulation for the six-month period declined 0.8% to 2.07 million."

Two executives express different views on this phenomena. First, and probably on target :
"At a recent industry conference, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch sounded the alarm about what he called a "revolution" in how young people access news. News Corp. owns television stations, movie studios, cable channels and 175 newspapers world-wide. Mr. Murdoch said young people essentially relied on the Internet for news, and unless the newspaper industry recognized these changes, it will "be relegated to the status of also-rans.""

And, then, as if in counterpoint, there is the content & relevancy free salesman view :
""Newspaper circulation is important but readership is the key issue," says Don Stinson, senior vice president of marketing for Gannett's newspaper division. "At the end of the day what we want to deliver to advertisers is prospects who are ready, willing and able to buy what they have to sell. Whether the person pays for the newspaper or got it from somebody else isn't particularly relevant. It's whether they read it.""

I don't know how it all will turn out, but Eastland and Murdoch are feeling the tectonic plates shift and that is a good omen.

The W2i Digital Cities Convention: The Frontier of Broadband Wireless Applications was held 2-4 May in Phidelphia,PA, and some interesting items are emerging in the trade press. Put on by the Wireless Internet Institute, the convention brought together municipal and technology experts to discuss how the country is progressing in deploying advanced wireless communications services to all rural and urban residents with an emphasis on wireless technology contributions. Philadelphia was a good choice since that city is planning to deploy a city-wide wireless broadband system based on mesh networks, WiFi, and WiMax technologies.

To put a global context on why this is a timely topic, just review the ITU's New Broadband Statistics for 1 January 2005 . " The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has just released its new statistics on global broadband penetration per 100 inhabitants as of 1 January 2005. Korea and Hong Kong, China have kept the top rankings they received in 2004. The Netherlands makes an impressive move from 9th in ranking in 2004 to 3rd this year. Denmark also moves up two slots to 4th. Canada drops to 5th from 3rd in 2004. Switzerland moves from 10th in 2004 to 6th this year. Israel moves to 12th this year. The USA drops from 13th in 2004 to 16th in 2005. France has moved up fast in the rankings and is now just behind the USA followed by the UK at 15th." In real number terms, the US has 11.4 Broadband subscribers per 1oo inhabitants compared to 24.9 in Korea and 20.9 in Hong Kong or 19.4/.3 in Netherlands/Denmark. Even canada has 17.6. Interestingly, the ITU chart shows that most nations have more DSL service than Cable; it is the reverse in US.


So, we are lagging; but there are some helpful insights from the convention. This article claims the U.S. Needs Municipal Wi-Fi to Plug Broadband Wireless Gap , arguing that: "Broadband Internet access in the United States is languishing behind other countries and without municipal Wi-Fi projects the situation is only likely to get worse.
That was the consensus of industry leaders who gathered here this week to discuss the opportunity for public-private partnerships in broadband wireless at the W2i Digital Cities Convention. "

According to Tyler van Houwelingen, founder of Azulstar, a Grand Haven, Mich., company focused on mass deployment of wide area wholesale networks and services, "It's not about the network anymore. It's about the services benefiting the community. Building the network is only the first step." He predicted BPL (broadband over powerline) would be the next big area of opportunity for service providers working with municipalities. "The power here is that the network reaches 100 percent of the population," . He also described the private-public balance in cities where Azulstar has worked. "In every case so far we've funded the network and then we bring in these partners that we have established. Every time we go in, we create an affiliate company in each one of the areas so it actually is a local company thatthey're dealing with." Azulstar partnered with Meru Networks of Sunnyvale, Calif., and others on the Rio Rancho build-out.

This article announces Rio Rancho Boasts First Metro 'VOWi-Fi' Service , noting that :
"Carrier-class voice-over-Wi-Fi telephone service, the first of its kind in a U.S. metro deployment, is now available in Rio Rancho, N.M."

"By partnering with governments, technology leaders and other service providers, we are able to quickly design and deploy Wi-Fi/WiMax mobile networks and services like the one we've deployed in Rio Rancho," said Azulstar CEO Tyler van Houwelingen.

"As more cities follow Rio Rancho's lead, it's going to have a profound impact on telco and wireless industry dynamics," he said. The city's Wi-Fi "cloud" will support mobile calls up to 55 m.p.h. Roaming in and out of cellular CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks will be added later this year. "

"The service is available to businesses, residences and mobile phone users in the 505 area code, and current phone numbers will be portable. Caller ID, call forwarding, voice mail over e-mail, multiparty calling, call waiting and Web-based call control manager features are also available. It will sell to consumers for $29.95 per line for unlimited calling in the United States and Canada." That's a pretty good deal for a rural area.

This Wireless Networks article continues the theme, noting some aspects that could apply equally well to rural NE PA :
"Rio Rancho, New Mexico, brought in wireless provider OttawaWireless because incumbents didn't reach many areas, assistant city administrator Peggy McCarthy said. Now that the network is up and running, the incumbents' service has grown more competitive, she said.
"The lethargy and apathy with which we had been given DSL and cable have both changed," she said.

Some cities, including Spokane, Washington, found they could easily set up wireless service when they upgrade their emergency communications networks with a little help from the Homeland Security Department. The federal department awarded $925 million last year for communications upgrades."

That's the gist of what's been reported from the Philadelphia convention thus far. The key point is that we may need public-private partnerships to get broadband to rural areas soon. The sad part is that PA Law , under HB30, seems to hinder greatly or preclude that from happening.

I hate to end on a downbeat note. So let's look at a very positive sign. Laws can be changed and workarounds found if the need is there and the technology is available and inexpensive. This article, Intel's CEO Says WiMAX Competitive With DSL, Cable , offers a lot of hope :

" Intel Corp. Chief Executive Craig Barrett said on Friday that new wireless high-speed data technologies would be competitive with Internet links provided by cable and phone companies.
WiMAX, which should be capable of 50 megabits to 100 megabits per second, is "significantly better than what we typically look at with DSL and cable," Barrett said. "I think that will be very competitive with those technologies, and especially where those technologies aren't built out, in rural areas.
"Will it compete with wired access? Absolutely. Will it be perhaps the only broadband solution you have in some areas? Absolutely, especially in rural areas."

With Intel's muscle behind the WiMAX push, some 240 companies have joined the industry group developing WiMAX standards and equipment. Sprint Corp., and Intel said on Thursday they would cooperate on WiMAX tests. "

Now that's a better ending to this tale.

It is now 30 years since the end of the Vietnam War and the news media has provided a variety of retrospectives from different viewpoints. I'll draw on three items that make some interesting points. Mr. Liscomb offers us a 50+ year strategic perspective that contrasts the very uncertain and dangerous situation in Asia in the 50's with it's much healthier state today. Mr. Morris deals more directly with the war in Vietnam and it's damage to US morale and global influence - covering a shorter period in the middle of Lipscomb's long-term purview. The last item by Mr. Sherwood really discusses what may be the next stage in the country's healing process - an essential step for those older Americans who were participants then as well as for all Americans who will participate in our future conflicts.


Mr. Thomas Lipscomb's grand strategic perspective on What America Won in 'Nam begins by setting the context for the struggle : " the Vietnam War began in the late 1950s with the return of Communist cadres to what had now become South Vietnam as a 'National Liberation Front' to create an insurgency against the Diem government. Better known as the Viet Cong, the NLF was not an independent political movement of South Vietnamese. According to an editor of the official North Vietnamese People's Daily, 'It was set up by our Communist Party ... .' So this was no civil war. North Vietnam began and supported a campaign of Viet Cong subversion of its equally sovereign Southern neighbor, and after the destruction of the Viet Cong at Tet in 1968, intervened directly with its own military."

In Lipscomb's view, Secretary of State Dulles had set the obectives that led to our subsequent engagement : "The object of American action in South Vietnam was intended to stabilize Asia in general and Southeast Asia in particular. At the times, Asia was anything but stable. ... Dulles wanted to save "essential parts" of Asia. America understood at the outset it was unlikely to save all of it." The instabilities were related to Communists attempts to overthrow or convert existing governments in Malasia, Singapore, India, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines as well as in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

Lipscomb sees success because : "And now, 30 years later, the new "Asian tigers" have standards of living and booming economies that would astonish an old Asia hand like Dulles. Asian prosperity is the wonder of the 21st Century and particularly valuable to United States trade at a time when the stagnant European Union is becoming an increasing problem. "

Perhaps so, but this article resembles a good analysis of a chess game at move 10 of a complex opening that jumps to move 70 when the game is won. A lot happens in between; and understanding the mid-game is essential. In this case, we abandoned allies who fled their overrun country and died by the 10's of thousands; almost 25% of the entire Cambodian population was killed by the Kyhmer Rouge; and our self-induced national sense of weakness led other countrys to push into the power vacuums created by our withdrawal.

The mid-game phase is addressed by Mr. Stephen Morris in a NYTimes Op-Ed that begins a discussion of The War We Could Have Won thusly : "The Vietnam War is universally regarded as a disaster for what it did to the American and Vietnamese people. "

He correctly dismisses the notion that we were oppossing a Vietnam nationalist movement, noting that :
"For all the claims of popular support for the Vietcong insurgency, far more South Vietnamese peasants fought on the side of Saigon than on the side of Hanoi. The Vietcong were basically defeated by the beginning of 1972, which is why the North Vietnamese launched a huge conventional offensive at the end of March that year. During the Easter Offensive of 1972 - at the time the biggest campaign of the war - the South Vietnamese Army was able to hold onto every one of the 44 provincial capitals except Quang Tri, which it regained a few months later. The South Vietnamese relied on American air support during that offensive.

If the United States had provided that level of support in 1975, when South Vietnam collapsed in the face of another North Vietnamese offensive, the outcome might have been at least the same as in 1972. But intense lobbying of Congress by the antiwar movement, especially in the context of the Watergate scandal, helped to drive cutbacks of American aid in 1974. Combined with the impact of the world oil crisis and inflation of 1973-74, the results were devastating for the south. As the triumphant North Vietnamese commander, Gen. Van Tien Dung, wrote later, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam was forced to fight "a poor man's war.""

That is an accurate summary; but it fails to reflect the extent and impact of anti-war press distortion and publicity and how that imagery was utilized by North Vietnam as a strategic asset. As he notes the Vietcong were basically defeated by 1972; in fact, they never recovered from being almost annihilated during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Tet'68 was a major military defeat for the VC and NVA ; it was also an enormous political image victory for them. The press imagery showed combat in the cities and at American headquarters and gave little attention to the fact that the attackers were literally decimated while US and South Vietnam forces suffered relatively light losses.

Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather's predecessor at CBS, set the tone by declaring the event a catastrophe and the beginning of the end for our side. It was, in fact, a desperate gamble that succeeded in large measure because of the increasingly biased public views expressed by Cronkite and others in the news media. ( No Blogs then to give the other side of the story.) The impact of the press in combination with the anti-war activists was the decisive factor in creating the attitude of defeat and disengagement that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think Morris is correct in his conclusion:

"In 1974-75, the United States snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Hundreds of thousands of our Vietnamese allies were incarcerated, and more than a million driven into exile. The awesome image of the United States was diminished, and its enemies were thereby emboldened, drawing the United States into new conflicts by proxy in Afghanistan, Africa and Latin America. And the bitterness of so many American war veterans, who saw their sacrifices so casually demeaned and unnecessarily squandered, haunts American society and political life to this day.""

Sadly, that is all too true; but the haunting began to be reversed in the last election campaign when large numbers of veterans lined up to oppose Sen. Kerry's bid to be Commander-in-Chief. Despite the best attempts of the Main Stream Media to marginalize or ignore them, the Swift Boat Veterans succeeded in setting Sen. Kerry's dismal record straight. ( Oh, yes, it is now 98 days and counting since Sen. Kerry last promissed on national television to sign his SF-180 and release his full military records; don't hold your breath.) The national catharsis on America's conduct, at home and afield, in the Vietnam Conflict is only partially done. The next step is outlined in Mr. Carlton Sherwood's article, titled Winning America's "Lost" War . In his words :

"Thirty years ago, Americans were transfixed by the chaotic images flickering across their TV screens. Hordes of frantic South Vietnamese men, women and children desperately clinging to the U.S. Embassy fence in Saigon, pleading for escape. .... If the film footage wasn't compelling enough to make the point, all three television networks, the only sources of broadcast news in the last days of April 1975, made certain their audience got the message. This undignified, ignominious retreat, they reported, marked the end of the Vietnam War, a shameful chapter in U.S. Military history, "the first war America lost." .....
But, was it, really? Did the U.S. military lose the Vietnam War? If not, who was responsible?"

"Now, thanks to a distinguished group of Vietnam combat veterans, the American public is beginning to hear different, far more factual answers to those questions and many others. This time, they will get it straight from those who know Vietnam best, .....
Earlier this year, the former POWs created the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation (VVLF), a non-profit educational organization, designed, in part, to "separate truth from fiction, to expose the myths about Vietnam and those who perpetrate them and, to do so, factually and accurately."
The chairman of the VVLF is Col. George E. "Bud" Day, a Medal of Honor recipient and Air Force pilot who was held prisoner by the North Vietnamese Communists for six years. "

"If the names of Col. Day and others on VVLF Board seem familiar, they should be. Last year, they were among the handful of Vietnam combat veterans who publicly denounced Sen. John Kerry for his post-Vietnam activities, for his "slander and betrayal of all those who served in Vietnam." First, in Swift Boat TV ads and later in the documentary, "Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal," the VVLF Board members excoriated Kerry for his 1971 testimony before the U.S. Senate where he accused the POWs and other Vietnam combat veterans of genocide, deliberately "murdering" and "torturing" hundreds of thousands of innocent Vietnamese civilians."

Sherwood lays responsibility for the way the war ended on Congress - "Instead, it was Congress or, more specifically, the nearly two to one Democrat majority in the Senate (61 to 37) and the House (291 to 144) in 1975 that voted to cut off all military funding to the Saigon government that was directly responsible for the defeat of South Vietnam. Congressional Democrats literally abandoned our South Vietnamese allies and it was they, not the U.S. military, who were responsible for the carnage that followed," ( I would add that Congress's actions should be put in the context of the Media's strong support of anti-war activism.)

VVLF Chairman Col Day puts it this way "The false history of Vietnam has been used to endanger and demoralize our troops in combat, undermine the public's confidence in U.S. foreign policy and weaken our national security. Radical leftists such as Sen. Kerry and Jane Fonda lied about the war 35 years ago and are lying about it today. The goal of the VVLF is to continue the work of countering more than three decades of misinformation and propaganda, and set the record straight." And this time, they have the power of the internet and blogs to sustain them in their struggle against conventional views and old media.

I wish them well in setting the record straight and in completing the catharsis, for their sake and for all of us.

President Bush just gave another superb speech on freedom and democracy in Latvia. Don't rely on the mainstream press to give an adequate account of it or of it's scope and likely impact. You can get the full speech text of Freedom and Democracy in Latvia here or you can get some excerpts and thoughtful annotations from John at Power Line Blog . Bear in mind that the President is speaking bluntly about the end of Nazi fascism in Europe, being replaced, for some, by an unfree life behind an Iron Curtain; and doing so before planned discussions with Putin. President Bush has a clear, strong foriegn policy vision and he uses this speech, as his others, to make both the vision and the strength clear to all.

These quotes give the flavor of John's commentary :
" I see it as another in a series of brilliant speeches, dating back to 2001, in which President Bush has outlined not only his foreign policy, but his--and our nation's--philosophy. His purpose today, I think, was to locate his Middle Eastern policy squarely in the tradition that has animated America's actions abroad since 1941. Implicit in his historical narrative is a rebuke to the liberals who oppose freedom and denounce the administration's 'neoconservative' foreign policy as a radical and unrealistic departure from America's historical role."

"To a greater extent than any politician since Churchill, President Bush has set forth and defended his policies in a series of speeches that combine intellectual brilliance and philosophical gravity. Today's speech in Latvia was the latest in this series, and, like the others, it will be studied by historians for centuries to come."

Both are worth reading; do so I think you will agree with the above assessment.

This WSJ OpinionJournal article discusses the general phenomena of how hype becomes expensive policy by treating the "Great Big Fat (or Obesity)" crisis as : " a case study in how public policy gets formulated in a highly advanced, highly educated and not least, highly neurotic society." As the article points out : "The day the munching died is March 9, 2004, when the Journal of the American Medical Association gave its imprimatur to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, announcing that "obesity" had caused 400,000 deaths in 2000, a whopping 33% increase from 1990. "

And with that "official imprimatur", those who would protect us from ourselves ( a real bipartisan cause!) moved into high gear :"Back in March, the great American campaign to control obesity was no longer an issue. It was a done deal. The government was onboard. The medical community was onboard. And of course the food industry and plaintiffs lawyers had launched parallel campaigns to cash in on fat people. But .....

It turned out that the CDC's arithmetic had "methodological flaws." After recombing the data dump, the CDC announced last month that the new number of obesity-related deaths annually is not 400,000 but . . . 26,000. Most intriguingly, though, the new study found that 86,000 "overweight" people lived longer than people of normal weight.

This is confusing--and that's the point. Science, of its nature, is always confusing. Medicine is uncertain. But public-policy formation in the U.S., especially as concerns health policy or the environment, whether obesity or the melting of the polar ice caps, admits to very little confusion. We claim to know. But in fact we usually don't know."

Importantly, The CDC's conclusions about mortality were not based on sound scientific theory or experimentation that could be replicated. Instead, it was based almost wholly on statistical associations. Some things simply may not lend themselves to sound scientific analysis, and good statistical analyses can yield useful insights. But non-replicable findings, based solely on statistical studies, should sound a warning bell telling us to be very cautious in moving to policy formulation. As the article points out, this new-found clarity on the numbers does not obviate the issue; it does allow us to discuss the issue in rational terms, rather than accept the hyped conclusion as religious belief beyond questioning.

The same caution applies to many fields of science- emotion based policy (global warming comes to mind here) : "Public officials will always ride in the slipstream of an evident crisis. But there is a cautionary tale here. The informational world we inhabit has become a volatile mixture of news, rumor and often incomplete science. This or that threat, need or cause comes at us constantly. But there may be a limit to how often politicians can lower a bucket into the well of public credibility, asking people to alter their behavior and pay handsomely for the privilege--as here, or climate change or fuel alternatives. There might not be much left when the authorities most clearly must ask people" to deal with a real threat.

The CDC's director called it's 400,000 obesity death miscalculation a "lesson in humility." It's a lesson more government agencies and "advocacy" agents should learn. And, even if they don't, the rest of us can learn to be a lot more skeptical of the next "Great Crisis" that is supported only by statistical association or simulation.

Yes, another post on Social Security reform. But, after Bush's press conference, the Democrats and the mainstream media (MSM) are creating a target rich environment that just should not be avoided. There is a theory that says the bigger the lie and the louder you proclaim it, the more likely it is to be believed.

I agree with Michelle Malkin and Patrick Ruffini who think the MSM demagogues are in full throat about a Big Lie. The Big Lie here, of course, is that Bush would cut Social Security benefits. In fact, his plan does not cut any benefits for anyone. Clearly, for all current and near retirees, nothing will change - except gaining the assurance of continued benefits which can not be paid under the current system.

Nor will anyone, no matter how rich or poor, get less than they do now. What is being proposed is to peg, in the future, high earner initial benefits to increases in inflation, or cost of living, instead of to increases in wages. This change will not cut benefits; but it will prevent the very large cuts in benefits already hard-wired into the system and due to occur by 2041 under the current law.

In this article, Michelle Malkin nails the Big Lie about Bush's Social Security plan that's being spouted by the NY Times, Washington Post, ABC News / Associated Press and others. What these mainstream media outlets have in common is their unerring instinct for finding and repeating Democratic party lines that have great sounding Big Lies. As Malkin puts it :
"Those who oppose Bush's indexing plan are arguing, in essence, that Social Security benefits to upper-income beneficiaries should continue to grow faster than the rate of inflation. That's reckless given the program's long-term fiscal problems."

As Patrick Ruffini correctly states, Bush is proposing increases in benefits and, furthermore, those future "benefits" that the papers are crying about simply do not exist. In his words, quoting the Washington Post, :
""Reduce future benefits for tens of millions of Americans." But those "future benefits" don't exist and under current law, can't be paid. Unlike a discretionary budget, where Congress has the ability to spend pretty much whatever it wants, Social Security cannot fund future benefits outside the Trust Fund, and by 2041, that Trust Fund will be able to pay 74% of "promised" benefits – a guaranteed benefit cut that is enshrined in current law.

Any reporter or politician who does not recognize these reduced benefits as the baseline for analyzing any and all changes to Social Security is simply being dishonest.

Even by Democrat standards, this Big Lie doesn't hold water. It used to be a cut when spending increases were held below inflation. But now it's a cut when Social Security benefits grow in real terms, and benefits for the poor grow even faster. "

As the folks at Social Security Choice put it, the White house may not have been surprised by the negative mainstream media reaction : "I'll bet they had this fact sheet ready before the President even started talking last night.

Setting The Record Straight: Social Security Reform Means Funded Benefit Growth, Not "Benefit Cuts"

Today, some opponents of fixing Social Security are suggesting that the President's proposals would result in "benefit cuts." This rhetoric recklessly disregards the facts about the President's proposal:

* Fact: Under the President's proposal, benefits would grow relative to today's levels. Future generations of seniors would receive benefits that are at least as high as seniors receive today (even after adjusting for inflation.)
* Fact: The Pozen proposal referenced by the President would allow for faster overall long-term benefit growth than can be paid by current-law Social Security.
* Fact: Under the Pozen proposal referenced by the President, lowest-income Americans would get the fastest benefit growth of all, significantly faster than inflation.
* Fact: Under the Pozen proposal referenced by the President, medium-wage workers would also receive faster benefit growth than the current system can pay.
* Fact: The current Social Security system can fund only 74% of promised benefits in 2041. The Social Security actuary's analysis of the Pozen proposal finds that at the same time, each of "Low Earners," "Medium Earners," and 'High Earners" would all receive benefits that are higher than the current system can pay.
* Fact: All of the above figures exclude income from personal accounts. Social Security Administration figures show that expected benefit growth will be even greater for those who choose to participate in voluntary personal accounts.

That about sums up the response to the media feeding frenzy about what they wish Bush had said instead of what he did say. While the rebuttal is all true and there are some attractions to the Pozen proposal for progressive indexing, I still prefer the Ryan-Sununu proposl. That alternative also achieves long-term SS solvency; but it relies, instead, on Congress mandating a self-imposed restriction to keep federal spending growth at the same level as the growth in the cost of living, at least for the next 8 years. And both of these options allow people to acquire real inheritable wealth in Personal Accounts, if they choose to do so.

OK, maybe the idea of real Congressional spending restrictions is wishful thinking on my part. But the key point is that there is plenty of room for serious debate about substantive options to solving this real problem. What is unacceptable is to deny the facts and demagogue on a Big Lie. Let's hope our political representatives can get there.

Well, actually it's a tale of one real tower and one "wanna have" tower. It's also a tale of frustration in two areas - Mendham Township, NJ, where the residents have lost a battle to keep a cellphone tower out; and Susquehanna County, PA, where residents can't get the towers they want. If there is one big common lesson in these tales, it's that the cellphone towers go where the market force directs. If you want one, may the Force be with you. I'll tell you why I think the Force is coming to us, but first the tale.

In Susquehanna County, 42,000 people live in 850 square miles of the wooded, rolling "Endless Mountains" of NEPA. Many residents live on farms or large rural plots. Over the last few years, several attempts have failed to attract cellphone service providers and their towers. Both the county and individual townships have offered up their land as potential cell tower sites to no avail. We have lots of rural tranquility, but not much cellphone coverage or broadband access.

"In Mendham Township," ,according to this NYTimes article on Cellphone Towers , "with a population of 5,600, multimillion-dollar homes are set back from the main roads along long narrow lanes. The area's lush, hilly terrain contributes to its appeal but obstructs the lines of sight needed for clear cell signals." (Well, at least we have that in common!)

" The residents here (are) among the wealthiest in the nation .... So when Verizon Wireless proposed building a 150-foot cellular transmission tower atop one of the highest hills in town, local officials said no, thinking local zoning laws would dictate where the tower could be placed.
They were wrong. In the next few months, after a futile battle against Verizon and four other wireless carriers, the residents of Mendham Township will see the tower go up, visible from most parts of the town."


"Ed Donohue, a lawyer based in Washington who has represented wireless carriers in several cases, estimates that more than 500 cell tower disputes around the country have ended up in court.
As carriers expand their networks to cover more residential areas, they are invoking the federal telecommunications law, which allows them to ask either a state or federal court to overturn a local zoning decision to reject a tower if that decision has the effect of prohibiting the provision of cellphone services.
The carriers, more often than not, are winning the legal skirmishes."


"Howie Waterman, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, said the carrier's search in Mendham Township for a suitable site was painstaking.
"We looked at 33 different locations," he said. "It wasn't random by any stretch." "

"Town officials had recommended alternative sites on municipal property, which they considered less obtrusive and which would have generated revenue for the town.
But Verizon Wireless rejected the town's suggestions, arguing that Mr. Barsa's property made the most sense because of the stretch of road the carriers needed to cover."

Well, that's how the sad tale of Mendham ends. What can we learn from it? A key lesson is that cellphone service providers have a very clear idea of what makes good business sense for them; they will investigate and may negotiate, but will do what it takes to get good tower sites and to avoid less desirable ones. It really is all about enough market force to warrant the investment.

Another point is that we are not being ignored. Recently a major service provider came to our county officials about potential sites in areas of interest to them. They were not induced to come here by us or by our suggested sites. They decided to come here based on gaps in their coverage and their expansion plans - much like Verizon's effort in Mendham.

So, do we have to wait for the market to catch up with us or can we get some of that Force to be with us? There are two aspects to the Market issue - size (potential revenue) and entry cost. Certainly we can try to advertise ourselves as an attractive and interested market. That can help, but it still leaves the entry cost problem. Long distances over hilly terrain implies a lot of investment in expensive towers for a few customers - at least for now.

Rapid advances in technology, along the lines of WiMax and Mesh Networks, are on the verge of forming new "consumer technologies", that is, technologies that produce very large quantitiies of relatively inexpensive devices. These technologies apply directly to distributing communications services over our kinds of terrain at potentially much lower investment costs. Instead of half a dozen big towers, with high power equipment, to cover a hilly area, think about one smaller less expensive tower and many very small antennas on utility poles or silos to distribute the radio and phone signals where needed. And the system may be able to provide both cellphone and broadband internet access.

We may get the Force with us, but for a future that doesn't look like the present.

This Washington Times: Special Report covers the end of the Minuteman Project's border vigil in Arizona. Yes, the Minutemen accomplished their goals: proving citizen action works, cutting illegal border crossings down by 90%, and focusing a great deal of national attention on the border control problem. But there is also the story of local residents who enjoyed a month of peace and freedom from worry. Some excerpts tell that story :

"Heaven help these folks when we leave," Mr. Gaddy says, attempting to make eye contact with each of the 40 men and women sitting at a dozen wooden tables. "The relative peace and tranquility they've experienced over the past few weeks is going to end, quite literally, overnight."
No one has to tell Connie Faust what he means.
Every night, illegal immigrants head north across the "retirement hideaway" that Mrs. Faust and her husband, Ed, own four miles down the highway near the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona.
"You have no idea how much safety and quiet you have given us, how grateful we are that you all are here," she says to the Minuteman Project volunteers, struggling to maintain her composure.


John Waters, who opened his diner at the antiquated Palominas Trading Post on Highway 92 as an "eating and meeting place" for the Minuteman volunteers, also knows what Mr. Gaddy means.
"All night, every night, the dogs are barking, the U.S. Border Patrol is chasing up one road or down another, and their helicopters are constantly buzzing overhead," says Mr. Waters, whose border property is also a favorite corridor for illegals crossing into the United States.
"Since the Minutemen arrived, we've been able to sleep at night, and that's no small task," he says.


Illegal immigrants have overrun the many oak tree-covered canyons and washes that flow out of the Huachuca Mountains and intersect with Highway 92, where numerous expensive houses have been built in recent years.
"They're hiding in the bushes, waiting to hook up with the smugglers in the very same area our children wait for the school bus," says Cindy Kolb, who has lived in the canyon area with her family for the past six years and waits for the bus with her daughter daily, armed with a pistol holstered on her ankle. "Maybe President Bush doesn't care about this, but many of us do."
Two weeks ago, Mrs. Kolb stood alongside the highway as the Border Patrol rounded up about 30 illegal immigrants who had been spotted and reported by the Minuteman volunteers.
"Thank you, Border Patrol. Thank you, Minuteman volunteers," she shouted, jumping several times into the air with both hands raised high above her head.

A good bottom line summary was made by Rep. J.D. Hayworth of Arizona, a Republican member of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus :

"What the Minutemen proved to the American people was this: The federal government can do something about illegal immigration other than to raise a white flag and surrender to the invasion on our Southern border," says Mr. Hayworth, who visited the volunteers.
"They not only discouraged the illegal crossing of our border, if only temporarily, but they also cast light on a national disgrace," he says. "I hope more members of Congress and more officials in this administration will see the light and join us to strongly enforce our laws against illegal immigration."


Indeed. A successful demonstration needs serious action and follow through to be a permanent fix.