Monthly Archives: September 2019

The Hens in the Fox House

Media

 

If you have either read Gabriel Sherman’s The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News-and Divided the Country or watched the Showtime mini-series based on the book, you know Ailes believed Donald Trump’s occupancy of the Oval Office was dependent on his network’s coverage of the 2016 election.  The most telling moment comes in Episode 6 when Ailes calls Trump following the latter’s attack on Fox debate moderator Meghan Kelly and his pledge never to appear on Fox News again.  Ailes reminds Trump, “We can make you or break you.”  Not surprisingly, Trump calls into Fox and Friends the following morning.

Nice story!  But like most everything else associated with Trump it is just not true.  How do I know?  For three and a half years Fox News and the White House have been attached at the hip and not once has Trump’s job approval rating equaled 46.1 percent, his share of the 2016 popular vote.  For most of the Trump era, that figure has hovered between 38 and 42 percent.  Giving Ailes and the Fox News team the benefit of the doubt, they can and did help deliver a sizable share of Trump voters in 2016.  No small accomplishment.

Image result for jimmy fallon trump hairSo where did the other four to eight percent come from?  Hens chasing the Fox News ratings.  The mother hen was NBC.  As I have previously documented, the Peacock Network became the normalizer-in-chief thanks to Trump’s hosting Saturday Night Live, his appearance with David Feherty on NBC’s Golf Channel, and the now infamous guest spot on the Tonight Show when host Jimmy Fallon played with Trump’s hair.

But NBC was not alone.  All of the major networks chose schmoozing over newsing.  They would interview Trump without fact-checking or challenging him on many of his most outlandish and clearly inaccurate statements.  For example, when Trump declared he had no business dealings with Russia, not once was he asked directly, “Mr. Trump, then how do you reconcile that with your son’s 2008 statement at a New York real estate conference,  ‘In terms of high-end product influx into the U.S., Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.’?”

Equally damning were the occasions when news organizations never followed up on Trump promises to clarify situations raised during the campaign.  When questions arose about Melania Trump’s immigration status upon arriving in the U.S., Trump assured attendees at an August 9, 2016 North Carolina rally, “She has got it so documented.  She will hold a news conference over the next few weeks to address the issue.”  We are still waiting.  And it took four yours for Ms. Trump to admit she LIED when she claimed to be a college graduate with a degree in design and architecture from a university in Slovenia.  On August 31, the reference was removed from her bio on the White House website when it was discovered she dropped out after her first year.  I wonder if Melania’s philosophy of honesty is, “Be late than be never.”

I chose this example because since January 2017,  Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (drum roll) “has investigated possible cases of immigration fraud that resulted in U.S. citizenship, sending 95 of these cases to the Department of Justice for prosecution and denaturalization.”  (Source: Bipartisan Policy Center).  In June 2018, Francis Cissna, director of Citizenship and Immigration Services,  told the Associated Press, “We finally have a process in place to get to the bottom of all these bad cases and start denaturalizing people who should not have been naturalized in the first place.”  I wonder if they have a hotline you can call if you know someone who might have lied on their citizenship application.

The bottom line?  It is not what the Fox does.  It is what the hens do.  Step ONE: Stop lobbing soft-boiled eggs.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

 

Union Queens

Economics

 

Image result for labor day mattress salesIn case you’ve not been watching mattress commercials on television or similar advertisements in newspapers, you probably did not notice we are supposed to be celebrating Labor Day.  And as is his habit, the narcissist-in-chief spent the morning patting himself on the back for not screwing up the economy in his first two years in office.   Though he is certainly making a valiant effort recently with non-existent trade deals and tariffs.  He followed this ego trip with a round of golf at his his Virginia resort (and I use HIS reluctantly since there is a good chance the majority owner is Deutsche Bank or the Kremlin).  I am so glad he cancelled his Poland trip to stay in the White House and monitor the situation associated with Hurricane Dorian.  Better to embarrass himself in the USA than in front of a worldwide audience.

But that’s not what I came here to talk about.  As we pay tribute to American workers let’s make sure we give credit where credit is due.  For far too many years Republicans and conservative economists have questioned the value of the social safety net by pointing out some beneficiaries abuse the system.  The targets of these accusations are called “welfare queens.”  According to Wikipedia, “‘Welfare queen’ is a derogatory term used in the United States to refer to women who allegedly misuse or collect excessive welfare payments through fraud.”

However, individuals on public assistance are not the only ones with a safety net.  The overwhelming majority of workers in America today are the beneficiaries of:

  • better wages,
  • reasonable hours
  • safer working conditions
  • health benefits
  • retirement programs
  • unemployment payments, and
  • aid if injured on the job.

EVERY single one of these worker gains were introduced and fought for by dues paying members of unions and labor organizers.

Yet more and more states are authorizing open shops (places of employment where workers are not required to join a union) and fewer workers are contributing to the cause for even better working conditions, higher pay and corporate accountability.  I ask you, do non-union workers getting the above perks sound like a class of individuals who are collecting payments and in-kind benefits through fraud?  I have yet to hear one corporate executive or open shop employee give credit to the likes of Samuel Gompers and other giants of the labor movement.

I am not quite sure when “union” became such a dirty word but it seems to coincide with economic downturns.  Organized workers often are portrayed as the reason American business cannot compete in a global marketplace.  If that were true, the decline of unions should have resulted in a massive increase in U.S. manufacturing.  Or the wages and benefits in non-union firms would be significantly lower than their organized counterparts.  But neither is the case.  So now the excuses de jour are health and safety regulations and immigrants.

So, this Labor Day, take a moment and thank the union workers and organizers who are responsible for many of the workplace advantages so many non-union workers take for granted.  And if you see one of these union queens driving the BMW or Mercedes Benz they built in an open shop, refrain from confronting them with the fact they are living off the teat of hard-working, dues paying union members.  Even though it is the truth.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP