In response to this morning’s post about Paula Zahn’s ratings, a CNN insider says: “FNC should be less concerned with Zahn’s performance and more concerned with the fact that O’Reilly continues to hemorrhage viewers month-over-month since October.” Here are the monthly averages:
October: 3,166,000 / November: 3,080,000 / December: 2,610,000 / January: 2,478,000 / February: 2,391,000 / March: 2,320,000 / April: 2,178,000 / May-to-date: 2,096,000
Inevitably, support for President Bush in the hinterlands has taken on a cult-like quality:
Religion and politics clash over a local church’s declaration that Democrats are not welcome. East Waynesville Baptist asked nine members to leave. Now 40 more have left the church in protest. Former members say Pastor Chan Chandler gave them the ultimatum, saying if they didn’t support George Bush, they should resign or repent. The minister declined an interview with News 13. But he did say “the actions were not politically motivated.” There are questions about whether the bi-laws were followed when the members were thrown out.
The by-laws probably state, “All members of this church shall worship George W. Bush or be cast out as heathens.”
There is video here.
In a memo to Microsoft employees today, CEO Steve Ballmer announced that the company would support expanding state and federal bans on workplace discrimination to include gays and lesbians:
After looking at the question from all sides, I’ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda. Since our beginning nearly 30 years ago, Microsoft has had a strong business interest in recruiting and retaining the best and brightest and most diverse workforce possible. I’m proud of Microsoft’s commitment to non-discrimination in our internal policies and benefits, but our policies can’t cover the range of housing, education, financial and similar services that our people and their partners and families need. Therefore, it’s appropriate for the company to support legislation that will promote and protect diversity in the workplace.
Accordingly, Microsoft will continue to join other leading companies in supporting federal legislation that would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation — adding sexual orientation to the existing law that already covers race, sex, national origin, religion, age and disability. Given the importance of diversity to our business, it is appropriate for the company to endorse legislation that prohibits employment discrimination on all of these grounds. Obviously, the Washington State legislative session has concluded for this year, but if legislation similar to HB 1515 is introduced in future sessions, we will support it.
Here is background on the story from ZDNet:
The issue exploded into public consciousness several weeks ago after Seattle newspaper The Stranger reported that Microsoft had backed off support for a state antidiscrimination bill after being contacted by a conservative local pastor.
That pastor, a leader in conservative religious organizations’ opposition to gay marriage and nondiscrimination legislation, said he had threatened Microsoft with a boycott of the company’s products if it supported the state bill. Microsoft executives later said their position on the bill was not related to the pastor’s pressure, but connected to a broader company policy of avoiding taking divisive positions on “social issues.”
The Washington bill subsequently failed by a single vote. Gay and lesbian organizations, which previously had applauded the company’s internal policies of support for nondiscrimination, criticized the company widely over the situation. At least one prominent gay employee resigned this week from the company, according to The Stranger.
Apparently, the Bush Admin didn’t learn its lesson about the imprudence of using outside public relations firms to spin its education message and is now trying to replace U.S. Forest Service information officers with PR consultants. (Disclosure: I am a PR consultant in the leisure travel industry.) According to the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the move to outsource spokesperson duties is the first step in Bush’s renewed effort to further gut the Forest Service and erode forest protections.
The U.S. Forest Service announced that it is weighing replacement of 100 of its public information staff with private public relations firms, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The move is motivated by pressure from the Bush White House to put more federal jobs out to bid by private contractors in order to “increase the cost-effectiveness of Forest Service work.”
According to agency memos, 100 of the agency’s 700 public affairs officers, public affairs specialists, writers, editors, graphic artists, illustrators and audio visual specialists will be reviewed by June 30 to determine whether the positions would be subject to bid by private firms. The agency plans to make decisions this fall and contractors could be in place by January.
Hundreds of other positions throughout the agency may be subject to similar bidding in 2006. In 2004, citing cost overruns and potential side effects, Congress severely restricted the Bush Administration efforts to outsource Forest Service and National Park Service jobs. Those restrictions, however, lapsed this past October and now the Bush Administration is again pushing its “Competitive Sourcing” initiative.
“Wag the Dog is coming to a national forest near you,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, referring to the movie about government use of PR firms to manipulate public perception of events. “Civil servants are under a legal obligation to tell the public the truth while PR firms specialize in shading it. Outsourcing the public information function risks putting a premium on spin at the expense of candor.”
President Bush promised to limit reliance on PR firms after recent controversy over federal agency payments to commentators for promoting Bush Administration programs. Through this “Competitive Sourcing” mechanism, these same firms can have a long-term role in shaping agency communication practices.
In 2004, the Forest Service spent $113,000 for a public relations firm to design a campaign to gain public acceptance of the agency plan to increase logging in California’s Sierra Nevadas. The campaign, titled “Forests With a Future,” sparked criticism but the Government Accountability Office ultimately ruled that the contract did not violate prohibitions on using taxpayer dollars to pay for “publicity or propaganda.”
Ironically, the Forest Service needs to retain contractors in order to prepare private sector competitions. Previous Bush competitive sourcing plans at the Forest Service involved possible contracting for law enforcement, biologist and sylviculturalist positions. The agency spent an estimated $100 million before Congress stepped in and put the effort on hold.
Find out more at http://www.peer.org/
Ronald Reagan entered politics after his career in the movie business was over. Even during his heyday at Warner Bros. before World War II, Reagan was never a huge star, but by the 1950’s even his B-movie luminence had faded. (See right, Reagan with co-star of “Bedtime for Bonzo.”) In the 1960’s, he hosted a television show, which was trés de classé in those days. He even tried a Vegas act, and when that bombed he knew his entertainment career was over. Reagan’s career change into politics was probably the best option available to him.
Like Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger was never slated to play Hamlet or win an Oscar, but unlike Reagan, he has starred in some of the biggest box office hits of the last 20 years, and he probably has a few more leading roles in his future. So there has always been a feeling that going into politics is just something Arnold is doing while his real career is on hiatus.
George Skelton, writing in his “Capitol Journal” column in the Los Angeles Times, sums up the governor’s conundrum thusly:
One former advisor to Ronald Reagan, both in Sacramento and Washington, told me that every celebrity candidate must make a transition to political leader. Once in office, he’s simply forced to make too many decisions that are political and create enemies.
“How he makes that transition will determine his success,” says the veteran strategist, who didn’t want to risk irking the governor by being identified.
“By election time next year, Arnold’s going to be viewed more as a political figure than a celebrity. I don’t think he understands that, and that sooner or later he’ll lose the celebrity aura. He still thinks his personality can overcome all this.
“He has wasted away his celebrity status by picking too many fights and picking the wrong fights. He’s got to back off.”
Schwarzenegger would much rather speak at mall rallies or in diners, performing to the wide eyes of adoring admirers and hearing their cheers, than engage in delicate negotiations with adversarial Democrats who no longer are awed.
And who can blame him? Except rolling up his sleeves in Sacramento is what he was elected to do, and did do during his first year in office.
His big victories last year — workers’ comp reform, plus voter approval of a $15-billion deficit reduction bond and a balanced-budget requirement — were the results of bipartisan compromises in the Capitol.
A recent poll by the nonpartisan Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State found that 62% of voters agreed that “he should be putting more effort into working with legislators so he’d get more done.”
But Schwarzenegger’s strength, he and his advisors believe, is rallying the people for his causes at carefully choreographed events. The governor has insisted on retaining the image of political “outsider.”
It’s this attitude that prompted Schwarzenegger and his gurus to begin planning for a 2005 special election even before the balloting last November.
Never mind that the governor, for the most part, still hasn’t taken the time to develop his own specific “reforms” — researched, tested, vetted them — and merely has latched onto other people’s proposals outside his administration.
One — public pension reform — was so flawed he had to scuttle it.
When anybody would ask his strategists and business backers what was the hurry — what was the justification for spending $70 million in tax money on a special election this year when there’ll be regular elections in 2006 — the whispered answer was: This is a moment to seize. Here is a governor so popular that he can sell voters anything with the force of his personality.
People – and I do mean Democrats – are starting to complain that the Governor’s special election this fall is a waste of time – and the $70 million is just a starting point for the cost, as we learned during the Recall when costs to the state continuted to pile up and up.
The Washington Times, which is owned by the Unification Church, is well to the right of Fox News and The Weekly Standard, so it is surprising to see this editorial from the Moonie paper this morning, lambasting the Republicans for piling up deficits, seemingly without care.
With a full complement of smoke and mirrors distorting spending, revenues and the deficit, the Republican Congress recently passed its 2006 budget resolution.
Admittedly, the 2006 budget does project a modicum of spending restraint in some areas, such as domestic discretionary spending. But health-care entitlement spending … will proceed full-speed ahead. Moreover, the resolution’s celebrated achievement — chopping the federal budget deficit in half between 2004 ($521 billion) and 2008 ($254 billion) — is accomplished only by using gimmicks and other subterfuge.
This is an issue that Democrats have railed against but have yet to gain a foothold with in the public mindshare. The Gops always dismiss the deficit as a by-product of 9/11, which it is not.
We’ve heard some crazy from Marjorie Taylor Greene,
But her latest conspiracy is the craziest we’ve yet seen.
Nuttier than Jewish space lasers,
She now says Dems control the weather,
And to hurt red states, they created Hurricane Helene.
