Day: May 25, 2005

The Hill:

At a time when journalists are under attack for political bias and factual inaccuracy, local celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley isn?t backing down a bit from criticism of her controversial biography of the Bush family, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty.

In the afterword of a just-issued paperback edition of the hardcover edition published last year — which sold some 715,000 copies — Kelley takes on those who accuse her of portraying the Bushes as a spoiled, dysfunctional family… But she’s especially hard on the mainstream media. “I had broken the personal code of poodles on the Potomac,” she writes. “Do not speak ill of the powerful.”

She notes that CNN’s Larry King refused to interview her after admitting he wanted to keep his friendship with the president’s father, who called her “a liar and smear artist.”

She adds that President Bush “has doghoused the White House press corps so that they are almost totally dependent on scraps tossed over the fence by presidential spokesmen,” who, she said, called TV executives to keep her off the air.

Even though Matt Lauer of NBC agreed to interview her, she said made it clear he didn’t like doing so, while a New York Times reporter asked her if she ever had an abortion or did cocaine, charges she levels against members of the Bush family.

“I was sermonized by Lauer, patronized by CNN’s Aaron Brown, and chastised by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews,” she writes.

Kelley said that writing this book was “the most daunting, probably because I was writing about a sitting president and his quite secretive family in the midst of a contentious presidential campaign. The book is political, but it is not meant to be partisan.”

Companies like Wal-Mart have deflected all responsibility for their employees’ health costs. They keep the mix of part-timers very high, which means they don’t have to offer benefits such as health insurance. But part-time pay is so low that these folks can’t afford insurance. When they get sick, the costs of their healthcare is picked up by the taxpayers.

Wait a minute – isn’t that like a tax that Wal-Mart charges the communities it serves?

Effective solutions to social ills almost always require a partnership between the public and private sectors. Based on what we have seen so far, private companies like Wal-Mart have no intention of voluntarily working on way to get insurance coverage for the portion of the 45 million uninsured Americans who are Wal-Mart “associates.” The time has come for government action.

Writing in The Nation, Liza Featherstone looks at how the public sector is dragging private industry into the debate, whether they like it or not:

More and more states are considering similar legislation, thanks to a growing and coordinated national movement. A pending Pennsylvania bill would require firms with fifty or more workers to provide data on how many workers depend on public assistance for health care. Other states and localities debating Wal-Mart-inspired measures similar to Maryland’s–requiring large companies to ensure workers or contribute to Medicaid– include New Jersey, Georgia, New York City, California, Montana and Connecticut. To keep abreast of these developments, and take action, sign up for updates at www.americansforhealthcare.org.

If Wal-Mart find these bills irksome, and still doesn’t want to provide decent health insurance for its workers, the company should lobby for national health insurance. That’s unlikely, of course, but let’s hope the political battle over Wal-Mart’s benefits at least convinces Americans that our health is too important to be left to the whim of greedy employers.

“Crazy Frog Axel F,” a cell phone ringtone, is set to top the British singles pop charts by this Sunday, knocking off Coldplay’s “Speed of Sound,” the band’s first single in two years. Retail-sales tracker HMV said Crazy Frog would be the first hit ringtone to cross over into the singles charts. According to HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo:

“Music purists might not be too happy at the prospect of the Crazy Frog outselling Coldplay. But it shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise when you consider its huge novelty appeal and the massive amount of exposure it’s currently getting.

“Kids obviously find it cute and cool, but students and even office workers seem to be drawn to its rather kitsch, ironic appeal. The only real issue is whether the record label can press enough copies to keep up with the huge demand that we’re seeing right now.”

In the aftermath of the fillibuster finagle, the most common theme seems to be to say one side or the other “blinked.” Here’s one of the more twisted analyses so far, excerpted from an e-blast from that paragon of hyperconservative hyperbole, Richard Viguerie:

There is no question that, over the last 40 years, the federal courts have been the greatest threat to conservative values. And last night, the Republicans cancelled a vote to reign in the liberal judiciary.

The vote in the US Senate to abolish the filibuster for judicial appointments if successful, would have been the closest America has ever come to having a vote on the direction for one third of our federal government.

The so-called “compromise” on judicial nominations is nothing more than the liberal Democrats getting most everything they wanted, namely the right to filibuster conservative judges with impunity.

For the better part of a year, the Republicans talked and talked, promised and promised, threatened and threatened, and then in the final minutes of the battle blinked and called off the vote, allowing liberals to live and fight again.

This “deal” proves the weakness of the Republican leadership and a lack of respect for the grassroots conservatives and the “values voters” that put Republicans in power. For decades, conservatives have carried the water in the Republican Party while that same party ignores our issues. Its conservative issues, work, and money that elect Republicans.

But conservatives also must remember that we also live and will fight again – and that there is a political solution available to remedy Republicans failure to get control of the judiciary – GOP primary challenges and the November 2006 congressional elections.