Lobbying

2008 started "off" to say the least, for The New York Times. First it was the hiring of Bill Krystol as an Op/Ed columnist. Then it was their craptacular endorsement of both Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Yet, if we're going to cast aspersions, let's not forget the embarrassment and disgrace Judith Miller's aiding and abetting of the Bush Administration brought to the paper's credibility not so long ago.

So it's just amazing that they'll come out with a hit job against John McCain. In an allegedly "investigative" report of John McCain's ethics, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk is a thinly vield gossip piece about whether he was lobbied hard, really really hard, by a woman called Vicki Iseman.

I am of two minds about this. Let me start with the deep and ponderous one first :

Look, anybody who has been married ought to never take anybody else's private life as a barometer of their professional shortcomings. Especially when you have someone like Hillary Clinton in the running.

As if we don't already know, today is Trent Lott Appreciation Day. While this is a great step forward for mankind, Lott, featured above rocking his signature hip hop dance move, deserves so much more than one day of Appreciation. Because Lott is so much more than a mere mortal and senator. Did you know he was also

1. a misunderstood STD: Of course Lott is an STD (Strom Thurmond-defending); and outspoken segregationist. But Trent is no racist, and is as opposed to racism and Strom Thurmond was opposed to miscegenation. He is actually color blind. Lamenting the Sunni/Shiite hoopla, Lott said: "It's hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what's wrong with these people. Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me." See! Like Steven Colbert, Lott doesn't even see color, or ethnicity!
2. a salt of the earth working man One of the many exploited workers in Washington D.C., and part of the great Capitol Hill to K street migration, Lott recently left politics in search of a better life and a living wage as a lobbyist. Luckily, and purely coincidentally, by stepping down before the end of the year, Lott avoided a law, that was about to come into effect, requiring that senators wait two years after retiring before they start lobbying their former colleagues.
3. a martyr: as if the abject poverty faced by senators weren't enough, Trent's economic woes were only worsened by Hurricane Katrina. Nobody felt Trent's pain more than the President himself, seen here either trying to hold back tears or looking at a pretty molding on the ceiling, who said:
   
   

I was asked if I wanted to help The Nation identify the blogosphere's influentials that could help them in one of their current campaigs, the first thought that popped into my head was, "here we go again, another one of those blogger phone calls". Yet, when I heard the name "TimeWarner" as one of the main antagonists, I knew I had to take on this project.

Earlier this year, the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) rejected a postal rate increase plan offered by the U.S. Postal Service. Instead of implementing a plan that would spread equitably the rate hikes across all bulk mail clients, they opted to implement a modified version submitted by and partial to media giant Time-Warner Inc.

The new postal increase drafted by TimeWarner-AOL and approved by the PRC favors large bulk mail users like the magazine publishing divisions of TimeWarner-AOL by increasing the rate of small independent publishers by as much as 20%. Just to put things into perspective, for a publication like The Nation, this translates into paying $500,000 extra in postage yearly and in perpetuity (or until the next postal increase comes along).

As Teresa Stark put it in Disseminate Information, Protect Democracy, "While it is understandable that Time Warner would relish the idea of making it more difficult for new competitors, there is no reason to think that it is in the interest of the American people or the market economy.

Ironically, about two years ago a coalition of organizations and netactivists created DearAOL.com after the media giant tried to impose an email “stamp” system for bulk emailers like MoveOn.org or bloggers with weekly newsletters produced by blogs like YearlyKos, BradBlog or Afronetizen. Yes, they actually tried to play post office with AOL's email service.

And it was thinking about this bit of irony that it hit me : TimeWarner has been one of the biggest enemies of the free internet (aka, net neutrality) not just so they can be free to charge whatever they want for all aspects of publishing, privacy, creativity and freedom on the internet. It's part of a larger business vision in which all publishing, recording and broadcasting in the United States is control by a handful of large (and therefore manageable) media conglomerates.

Just out of the blue Thing 1 said to me yesterday : "Mommy, did you hear the polar ice caps are melting?" Thing 2, who was nearby jumped into the conversation with a "Yeah, and supposedly the polar bears are dying because the world is getting warmer. Is it true mommy, is is true the polar bears are dying?" With misty eyes Thing 1 added, "And the penguins, mommy. Are they dying to?"

I wasn't surprised that my kids asked me these questions. I was surprised it took them so long.

All of my kids education, political or otherwise, is based on evidence. When we went to see the penguin movie, Happy Feet, I explained how the movie uses Mumble the penguin's oddyssey to talk about the UNification of Antartica (which happened in 1959) and the politics behind not recognizing global treaties.

Wikipedia, by the way, plays an astoundingly important part of these conversations.

Notwithstanding they know mommy does something with a thing called "politics" that keeps her tied to her computer and her blog, they rarely hear me haranguing them about the ills of the world. What they hear me talking about, at least during most of these conversations, is about facts. So George W. Bush is not a bad man : Categories of bad or good in people are problematic to me. Yet in his capacity as President (and leader and representative of the US) George W Bush has been astoundingly bad. And there's enough evidence to support the "GWB is a bad president" judgement.

Anyway ... Back to the kidlets.