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Im-Politic: Times Pundit Krugman Grows Ever More Truth-Challenged

19 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Uncategorized

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class warfare, Fox News, Im-Politic, Immigration, non-college whites, Paul Krugman, polls, Populism, pundits, tariffs, The New York Times, Trade, Trump

Oops, he (almost) did it again. That’s not only (almost) a gender-specific version of a Britney Spears song. It’s also an apt description of Paul Krugman’s latest column for The New York Times. As I wrote on RealityChek two weeks ago, Krugman’s June 3 essay on tariffs cited information on the U.S. agriculture sector fallout from 1920s duties that the source material simply didn’t contain. Yesterday, his piece on President Trump’s allegedly phony populism were partly based on a blatantly cherry-picked poll result.

According to Krugman, Mr. Trump’s talk of helping his core white working class voters economically is in fact so transparently phony that even these voters no longer believe it. His evidence? A June 16 Fox News poll finding “that only 5 percent of whites without a college degree believe that Trump’s economic policies benefit ‘people like me,’ compared with 45 percent who believe that the benefits go to ‘people with more money.’”

Regardless of whether these views reflect economic reality, the results certainly sound damning. But here’s the rub. First, Krugman didn’t get the question exactly right. Pollsters asked respondents whether the Trump programs “benefit everyone” or “mostly benefit people like you….” In other words, the benefits distribution was not presented solely as an either-or choice.

Second, and more important, the percentage of whites without college degrees believing that the Trump program “benefit everyone” (i.e., including them, and not qualified with “mostly”) was 32 percent. That’s not stratospheric, by any means, but it’s a lot higher than five percent. (See question 24.) 

(Adding another complication missed by Krugman, that five percent wasn’t five percent of the entire non-college white sample. It was five percent of the respondents who didn’t view the Trump policies as benefiting “everyone.”)

And some other notable poll results Krugman conveniently passes over:

The percentage of total Trump voters answering that his economic policies “benefit everyone” was 67 percent. That finding suggests an inclusive, rather than an us-versus-them view of how the economy should work – which in turn interestingly indicates that this part of the electorate isn’t terribly receptive to the kinds of so-called class warfare memes pushed by so many Democratic politicians.

In addition, the share of non-college whites who say they’re “strongly” or “somewhat optimistic about the U.S. economy right now” was 55 percent. That’s only a bit less than the 58 percent of the total sample that turned in such answers.  (See question 23.)  

These Fox poll results hardly demonstrate that the President is home free with his base on the economy. Moreover, they show that he’s far from having persuaded this big share of his staunchest supporters – much less the rest of the electorate – that he’s on the right track when it comes to his signature issues of immigration and trade (although as is often the case, in my opinion, the questions on these subjects – see 16-20, and 25-26 – leave much to be desired).

But Krugman’s selective report on the survey, following his off-base portrayal of an analysis of past tariffs, does demonstrate that his writings should now be accompanied by the warning, “Let the reader beware.”

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Being Tom Friedman Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry About China Trade

09 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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China, Mainstream Media, protectionism, pundits, The New York Times, Thomas Friedman, Trade, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Uber-pundit Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column this week about China demonstrated both that “better late than never” may not always be true, and that there’s precious little accountability in the Mainstream Media. Too bad he performed both vital tasks completely unwittingly?

As he traveled through China recently, Friedman told us, his conviction grew that, as President Trump has been charging, “China is not playing fair on trade and has grown in some areas at the expense of U.S. and European workers….” Moreover, he adds, this China challenge “needs to be addressed — now.”

Continued Friedman: “The core problem, U.S. and European business leaders based in China explained, is that when the U.S. allowed China to join the World Trade Organization in 2001 and gain much less restricted access to our markets, we gave China the right to keep protecting parts of its market — because it was a ‘developing economy.’ The assumption was that as China reformed and become more of our equal, its trade barriers and government aid to Chinese companies would melt away.

“They did not.”

And Friedman did a pretty good job of summarizing what RealityChek regulars and so many others have known for years – that China’s mercantilism became considerably worse.

The author ended his piece with a (sort of) ringing call for action: “China needs to know that some people who disagree with everything else Trump stands for — and who value a strong U.S.-China relationship — might just support Trump’s idea for a border-adjustment tax on imports to level the playing field.”

But Friedman also included this kicker: According to someone he called “the smartest person I know inside China on trade (who will have to go nameless),” such actions “if anything… may be too late.”

As the author’s reaction – “Ouch!” – suggests, there’s a distinct possibility that his source is right about the consequences of waiting sixteen years to grapple seriously with China’s predatory practices.

But here’s what Friedman didn’t tell you: One of the folks who pushed vigorously for the boneheaded American WTO decision was none other than Thomas Friedman! As he wrote in 2000, opponents of China’s admission, like U.S. labor unions, were “head-in-the-sand” protectionists. Nor did Friedman seem to think much of fears that “China’s entry into the WTO will make it a more formidable geopolitical rival to the United States.”

Instead, he confidently wrote that “to say that [admission] will hurt the cause of democratization in China or that it won’t help create more islands from which Chinese democrats can operate and more tools by which they can communicate, is to speak utter nonsense.”

Interestingly, by 2011, Friedman seemed to be having important second thoughts about China’s reformist intentions. But he still doggedly opposed meaningful actions to neutralize Beijing’s currency manipulation, for example, with tariffs.

Since no one likes to admit mistakes – especially whoppers – I can certainly understand Friedman’s failure to report his enthusiasm for a China trade strategy he now recognizes as a titanic failure. Much less clear is why so much of the rest of the Mainstream Media – and especially news talk shows who view him as a globalization oracle – keep giving him a pass.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. North Korea Policy Remains Dangerously Behind the Curve Despite Signs of Progress

22 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Uncategorized

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alliances, Charles Krauthammer, China, deterrence, extended deterrence, Finlandization, foreign policy establishment, Japan, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pundits, South Korea, Trump, Washington Post

As I explained last week (not that it’s my insight alone!), America’s leading political pundits enjoy much of their fame (and consequent incomes) to their access to power. Close relations with American and other leaders can turn them into craven establishment mouthpieces when they express their own opinions. But they also enable these commentators to serve as reliable carriers of messages being sent quite deliberately by decision-makers, and by the policy specialists who advise them.

That’s why the latest column from the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer was both encouraging and discouraging when it comes to dealing with the growing nuclear weapons threat from North Korea. The good news, if Krauthammer’s piece is any guide, is that the policy community is finally starting to consider some desperately needed outside-the-box ideas for making sure that U.S. policy doesn’t wind up with Pyongyang destroying an American city or two. The bad news is that these same policy specialists and political leaders still don’t have their arms completely around this intensifying crisis.

Krauthammer’s main point seems to be that the United States still has “major cards” to play both against North Korea and against China, whose help President Trump says he’s counting on heavily to either de-nuclearize the North or somehow contain its weapons program to an acceptable degree. Some of them are pretty innovative and constructive, and per my analysis above, if he’s mentioning them, that’s a strong indication that important conventional thinkers and policymakers are mulling them, too.

For example, Krauthammer observes that Washington could ease many of China’s fears about the consequences of regime change in North Korea (which he describes nicely), and spur decisive pressures by Beijing, by “abjuring Korean reunification. This would not be Germany, where the communist state was absorbed into the West. We would accept an independent, but Finlandized, North Korea.

“During the Cold War, Finland was, by agreement, independent but always pro-Russian in foreign policy. Here we would guarantee that a new North Korea would be independent but always oriented toward China. For example, the new regime would forswear ever joining any hostile alliance.”

For my part, I agree that no significant American interests would be compromised or even affected by such a deal.

Maybe even more significantly, Krauthammer seems to be recommending that the United States suggest to China that, if it doesn’t get on the North Korea stick, South Korea and Japan would likely develop nuclear weapons themselves. As he notes, because of the history of brutal conflicts “The latter is the ultimate Chinese nightmare.”

If I’m right, this Krauthammer point signals that American policy toward Asian security (and possibly European security) could be headed for a highly welcome sea change. After all, as I’ve explained, preventing Japan’s nuclearization in particular has been a central goal of U.S. strategy in Asia since the end of World War II. Because a nuclear Japan, or even a conventionally mighty Japan, was thought too likely to return to its warlike ways, American leaders for decades have insisted on handling the job of defending Japan, and incurring many of the greatest risks – including triggering nuclear conflict.

And as you may remember, when candidate Trump suggested during his campaign for the White House that this approach be rethought, he was hammered by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment – including former President Obama – as a dangerous know-nothing.

So the change Krauthammer could be foreshadowing would represent nothing less than a U.S. foreign policy revolution.  It would mean that Washington at long last recognizes that the favorable nuclear balance that for so many years arguably made this policy of “extended deterrence” a reasonable risk is now rapidly changing for the worse. Specifically, as I’ve written, North Korea’s progress toward developing a secure retaliatory force now could be exposing the American homeland to risk that is by definition unacceptable because it’s being borne in order to protect other countries, not the United States itself.

Unfortunately, Krauthammer’s column also may add to the evidence that official and quasi-official thinking on North Korea remains way behind the curve. For example, he seems to recommend that Washington at least implicitly threaten China with the return of American nuclear weapons to South Korea if Beijing doesn’t raise its North Korea game.

Actually, this move would reduce the nuclear threat posed to the United States by war in Korea – by increasing the odds that such a conflict’s nuclear dimension would be confined to the exchange of short-or medium-range weapons whose destructive effects would be limited to the Korean peninsula. North Korea, according to the conventional and, to me, reasonable, wisdom, would continue to be deterred from launching nukes at the United States itself for fear that America would retaliate by using much more powerful intercontinental weapons that could completely annihilate the North (as well as the South).

So what’s the problem? Precisely because it alone would suffer the greatest damage, and precisely because that knowledge would make America likelier to use those short-range weapons in response to an invasion from the North, this strategy has surely become completely unacceptable to South Korea. And you can bet that neighboring Japan isn’t a big fan, either.

The Asian allies would greatly prefer that, if U.S. nuclear weapons are used in a Korean conflict, they be the weapons that shift as many risks as possible to the United States itself – and create the chance that the nuclear dimension of any Korean conflict would be fought literally over their heads. South Korea would also (legitimately) tell the United States that threatening North Korea with instantaneous nuclear destruction if it invades the South is the best way to reduce the chances of that invasion taking place to begin with. In other words, it’s the best way to strengthen deterrence and therefore preserve peace.

I know that for those outside the foreign policy community, these ideas sound completely loony. But they’re exactly the kinds of ideas that had roiled relations between the United States and its allies in Europe for decades, too.

Krauthammer also endorses, at least in principle, the notion of conveying American resolve to the North by shooting down “a North Korean missile in mid-flight to demonstrate both our capacity to defend ourselves and the futility of a North Korean missile force that can be neutralized technologically.”

He’s correct in writing that this option would be safer than a “preemptive attack on North Korea’s nuclear facilities and missile sites [which] would almost surely precipitate an invasion of South Korea with untold millions of casualties.” But what if the shoot-down attempt fails? Wouldn’t that further embolden the North? I sure as heck wouldn’t want to take that chance.

So despite the encouraging signs in Krauthammer’s column, I remain convinced that the Korean crisis is a situation where the only choices for the United States are not between good and bad, or even between bad and worse, but (because of the nuclear dimension) between perversely reckless and downright suicidal. Therefore, U.S. leaders need to capitalize on the only truly decisive asset working on their country’s behalf –America’s great distance from the peninsula – and withdraw as soon as possible the military forces still stationed in South Korea. They have no ability to advance or defend important U.S. interests at acceptable risk, but they have greatly and rapidly increasing ability to drag the nation needlessly into a potentially disastrous conflagration.

Im-Politic: Trump-Bashers Who Flunk the Competence Test

17 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 2 Comments

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chattering class, Donald Trump, foreign policy establishment, George Will, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, Mary Jordan, media, media bias, Peter Scoblic, pundits, Washington Post

Memo to Mary Jordan, J. Peter Scoblic, and George Will: If you want to write effective critiques of Donald Trump, his policies, and his qualifications to be president, rather than inept hit pieces, don’t ignore facts that are screamingly obvious to at least many of your readers.

Jordan is a Washington Post political reporter who published a piece in this morning’s paper on the irony of the Republican National Convention being held in Cleveland. Why, as she sees it? Because the city “was built, and continues to be shaped, by immigrants” and because a defining message of the presumptive presidential nominee’s campaign is that “it is time to pull up the U.S. welcome mat: build a giant wall on the Mexican border, deport millions of foreigners who did not enter legally, maybe even ban Muslims.”

But here’s what Jordan didn’t believe was worth mentioning. First, the predominantly European immigrants that made up so much of Cleveland’s population during her childhood there arrived in the country legally. They didn’t take advantage of lax U.S. enforcement measures and sneak into America by the millions.

Second, although Jordan acknowledged that “the city still has many poor,” and has seen its population fall by more than half since 1950, she both understated Cleveland’s straits and ignored how one of its prime causes strongly reinforces one of Trump’s other signature issues – the offshoring-friendly trade policies that have devastated former manufacturing centers like Cleveland.

Indeed, Cleveland not only has “many poor.” It’s the second-poorest big city in the country as measured by official poverty rates. Indeed, it might still be number one in poverty – with about 37 percent of its residents falling under the poverty line – except that it’s recently been passed by Detroit, another urban giant blighted in part by trade policy failures. And in the last few years, despite the downtown night spot revival Jordan describes (and in my view hypes, based on numerous visits over the years), Cleveland’s impoverishment has worsened, not improved. Anyone thinking that manufacturing’s troubles have played a marginal role here – a claim that, incidentally, most of the city’s leading Democrats would heatedly reject – doesn’t have a clue about Cleveland.

Just as clumsily one-sided was the article in the Post‘s Outlook section by Scoblic contending that Trump would bring to the presidency a business-related “do-something” outlook that is “precisely the wrong attitude for a president of the United States.” The author’s reasoning:

“[K]nowing how and when to do nothing — or, to put it less absolutely, knowing when to show patience, to tolerate delay and to restrain the urge to act — may be the most critical element of presidential leadership. U.S. interests depend on having a commander in chief who not only can handle the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call but also understands that sometimes it’s best to go back to sleep. Such self-control is necessary for maintaining alliances and defusing confrontations with enemies. On at least one occasion, it probably prevented nuclear war.”

Scoblic, who has written a book on “Conservatism in the Age of Nuclear Terror” and who holds a fellowship at a liberal Washington, D.C. think tank (surprise!), unquestionably raises an important point, since, all else equal, the hotheaded Trump temperament on display during the campaign seems problematic for handling international crises – including nuclear crises.

But why didn’t Scoblic even mention something at least as important in anticipating Trump as America’s diplomat- and command-in-chief: He’s so far run the least interventionist campaign on the foreign policy front in the last few decades of American political history. In fact, over the last few months, the nation’s foreign policy establishment and the Big Media that typically champions its incessant overseas meddling has continually trashed Trump as a neo-isolationist.

It’s certainly possible that a president who seeks to reduce America’s world role could still find him- or herself in dangerous confrontations. But if Trump actually travels down this strategic road, his tenure would be even likelier to reduce the odds of such face-offs for at least three reasons.

First, his focus on domestic reform and reconstruction holds the promise of ending Washington’s practice of portraying every instance of turmoil and upheaval breaking out abroad as a mortal threat to American interests. As a result, he’d logically face less public pressure to “do something” than national leaders who habitually push the figurative panic button whether the stakes for the nation’s safety and prosperity are significant or not.

Second, it stands to reason that a more restrained U.S. foreign policy, and especially one that concentrates more tightly on protecting the homeland, would make fewer decisions and take fewer steps that other great powers would find provocative. This point is nicely illustrated by America’s longstanding policy of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) reach right up to Russia’s national borders – despite the end of the Cold War. This policy was initiated by the level-headed Bill Clinton, and has been sustained by the equally cool, calm, collected Barack Obama. And arguably nothing has done more to inflame the West’s tensions with Vladimir Putin’s regime – and increase the odds of a military clash in Europe.

The third consideration that Scoblic completely ignores is Trump’s critical view of U.S. alliances. Although the author appears to support the conventional wisdom about these arrangements being essential to safeguarding America’s security, there’s an increasingly compelling case that, especially in the post-Cold War era, they can needlessly function as “transmission belts of war” by committing the United States to fight – mainly against other great powers – on behalf of countries whose fate is no longer even close to vital to America’s own. Worse, the so-called tripwire American forces deployed in powder-keg areas like the Korean peninsula are actually intended to deny Washington the option of standing aside – by ensuring that the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American lives would inevitably result.

Scoblic’s omission of all these points is enough to label this piece a smear job, not an example of intellectually honest analysis.

George Will, of course, is the proudly pompous nationally syndicated columnist and charter member of the Washington, D.C. chattering class that stands to be marginalized if Trump gets elected. So it wasn’t surprising to see that his latest column lamented that the GOP (which he has just left) this week will decide that “the nuclear launch codes and other important things should be placed in the hands of someone not known for nuance, patience or interest in allies and collective security,” and that the Cleveland delegates seem oblivious to the threat confronting the United States from China’s growing expansionism in East Asia.

Let’s assume that Will is right to judge that if the next president handles this challenge with diplomatic or military ineptitude, “the result could be the collapse of America’s position in the world’s most populous, dynamic and perhaps dangerous region,” (I’ve repeatedly argued that this fear is baseless because America’s overriding interests in East Asia are economic, and can be protected by the right economic policies no matter who runs the place politically.)

Confidence in his judgment would be much easier to justify if Will had acknowledged that the dangerously thoughtless trade policies pursued by recent Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses alike and cheered on by Establishment Media pundits like him, have been instrumental in boosting Chinese military power through massive infusions of wealth and militarily relevant technology alike. In fact, as I’ve documented, these transfers have proceeded apace despite China’s increasing belligerence.  

By contrast, who is the only Republican presidential candidate who has consistently opposed these policies?  Not offshoring lobby flunky Jeb Bush, or the self-proclaimed adult-in-the-room John Kasich or China pseudo-hawks like Marco Rubio or Rick Perry.  Of course, it’s been Trump.

Incidentally, it’s no coincidence that these three examples of unmistakable and easily spotted anti-Trump bias have all appeared – and on the same day, yet! – in the Washington Post, a mainstay of that threatened Beltway insiders’ culture whose editorial opposition to Trump has consistently verged on the hysterical. (For some reason, the Will column is in the print edition, but hasn’t made it to the website yet).

The implications seem as obvious as they are disturbing – far from being limited to the paper’s publisher, editorial board, and pundit roster, the paper’s determination to slant its campaign coverage now extends deep into the layers of editors who are supposed to tether contributors and staff writers to some recognizable version of reality.

Im-Politic: What a Pundit’s Confession Really Tells Us

07 Saturday May 2016

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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chattering class, David Brooks, elites, Im-Politic, media, punditocracy, pundits, The New York Times

New York Times columnist David Brooks just wrote one of the most remarkable articles this remarkable campaign season has seen yet on the Donald Trump phenomenon, and on how (incompetently) the nation’s chattering classes have handled it. In about 1,000 words, Brooks made clear not only how thoroughly he and most of the punditocracy has misunderstood an enormous swathe of the nation’s population, but how little it knows even about the elite policy communities that supposedly comprise its home turf. Along the way, Brooks also provided a valuable (if unwitting) reminder that the chattering classes have become so hidebound and cocooned that they’re no longer subject to the kind of accountability that governs most of the rest of American life.

Brooks’ April 29 offering was highlighted by what looks like an admirable confession. Although continuing to portray Trump as a “gruesome,” Joe McCarthy-class demagogue, Brooks also wrote that the success of his unparalleled maverick candidacy (along with the strength of Senator Bernie Sanders’ run for the Democratic crown) “has reminded us of how much pain there is in this country.” But then Brooks went significantly, and revealingly, beyond this increasingly standard punditocracy position.

“I was surprised by Trump’s success,” he wrote, “because I’ve slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata — in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own.”  And he promised to “rip [himself] out of that and go where [he feels] least comfortable.”

Obviously, the more first-hand contact media (and other) elite mouthpieces have with Main Street America (in all its variants), the better, though there’s no guarantee that these experiences will enlighten. Brooks also has some legitimate credentials as a reporter and social observer – though the work that made his reputation in the latter category perhaps characteristically focused on “the new upper class and how they got there.”

But his “bad pattern” mea culpa amounted to admitting a sin that is all-but-unforgivable in journalism – or should be. Brooks just basically told us that he’s spent much and perhaps most of his time in the punditocracy – and certainly this presidential cycle – pontificating about issues like income inequality and middle class stagnation and how they’ve been affected by Trump’s signature issues of trade and immigration from entirely inside one of the most brightly gilded cages imaginable.

As is all too typical of the chattering class’ members, even if they come from working or middle class backgrounds, they’re become so far removed from them that they live utterly different lives, face none of the economic and social pressure experienced by their less fortunate compatriots, and in all likelihood have spent no meaningful time recently in Main Street neighborhoods or even states (excepting of course quick swing-throughs during campaign seasons).

Yet even granting that Brooks is a purveyor of “opinion journalism” (accent, it seems on “opinion”), he’s just acknowledged that his opinions have resulted mainly from whatever prejudices and groupthink commonplaces he’s absorbed from the Acela Corridor bubble he inhabits. In other words, his sources for the sweeping observations he has confidently made about the nation’s politics, society, culture, and economy comprise a flyspeck-scale, entirely unrepresentative sample. His essays and verbal commentaries don’t result from literal fabrication – the ultimate journalistic crime. But even if not disseminating deliberate falsehoods, Brooks is nonetheless trafficking in exercises in wild extrapolation whose results are comparably inaccurate, or at least misleading.

Moreover, especially on the economic issues I follow most closely, Brooks doesn’t even consult with a representative range of policy community sources! True, scholars, other policy specialists, and think tanks that consistently criticize current trade and immigration policies take decidedly minority positions. But they exist, and they’re not that difficult to find, especially since they manage to attract media coverage on a quasi-regular basis. If you read and listen to nothing but Brooks, however (and so many others like him), you’d never know this. Either Brooks is unfamiliar with them, or chooses to ignore them. Neither conclusion is flattering.

Finally, although he’s not alone in this failing, Brooks’ column not only shows unmistakably that he’s gotten the biggest political story by far of recent decades flat wrong – Trump’s rise – but admits this blunder. In other walks of life, incompetence of this magnitude is called a firing offense. And confessing this ineptitude makes this task a slam dunk for an employer. Yet Brooks keeps bloviating on – no doubt because his views closely mirror those of the family that still runs The Times – in yet another display of the gulf between the chattering classes and the country they feel entitled to lead.  

Guest Post: Cable News is Badly Missing the Big ISIS Picture, by B.J. Bethel

03 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Guest Posts

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Brussels attacks, cable news, Fareed Zakaria, Guest Post, Iraq, IS, ISIS, media, Middle East, Paris attacks, pundits, San Bernardino, Syria, terrorism, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Thomas Friedman

Although campaign junkies wouldn’t know it, one of the biggest news developments of the day is being badly mis-reported by the cable news networks they followed obsessively: The Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL – also commonly known as ISIS or just IS) is losing in the Levant – namely, in Syria and in Iraq.

With presidential candidates wanting to forgo the Geneva Convention, carpet bomb civilians and generally try to out-tough each other in debate after debate, you’d think IS is conquering the world like Alexander the Great, or running a blitzkrieg through central Europe. But producers and executives trying to capture eight-second attention spans seem incapable of getting the story right. In fact, the only reliable American reporting on IS’ remarkably fast fade is coming from major U.S. newspapers.

Just a year and a half ago, IS was indeed frighteningly on the rise. It controlled an area the size of Great Britain, reaching from Syria into Iraq to Tikrit. The group captured the second-largest city in Iraq – Mosul – after the Iraqi military refused to fight. It created a new arena for terror on social media, posting videos of brutal executions. Mass executions of Christians in Libya, captured on video, quickly followed, and shocked those who failed to realize the reach of the group or its brutality.

Adding to the sense of alarm: evidence that IS was rewriting the terrorism rule book Western officials thought they’d figured out. Indeed, last year The New York Review of Books published a history of IS by “Anonymous” – identified as a high-ranking official in a Western government. The main theme: The group defied convention. Nearly every move it made was wrong according to the existing framework of success for terror groups and the West had no explanation for its existence, let alone its success and how to stop it.

Circumstances are different now. The Islamic State has lost most of its major territory in Iraq. An Iraqi military division – trained by the U.S – ran IS out of the city of Tikrit in a day and a half. Its last major stronghold outside of rural territory is Mosul, but local news service Rudaw has reported that Sunni militia, the Kurdish and Iraqi presidents, and U.S. envoy Brett McGurk are planning to retake Mosul, in what is expected to be one of the bloodiest battles in the region’s history of the region. Already, the U.S. military has been operating within 75 miles of Mosul. It seems the bully has finally taken a punch to the face.

Yet when the IS issue is discussed on television – whether by pundits, politicians or candidates – it’s within the framework of two years ago, when the group was flooding Iraq. This alarmism seems to be justified by the group’s dramatically stepped up attacks outside the Middle East – in Paris, Brussels, and San Bernardino, California. But paradoxically, IS’ strikes outside its home region reflect its worsening predicament in Iraq and Syria, not its strength, and cable’s failure to present this context shows the costs of coverage lacking context or even analysis with minimal depth.

The contrast with the major dailies is especially revealing. Take The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the battle in the Levant. When the Free Syrian Army took Palmyra last week, the Journal had the story a day or two later. The New York Times, and Fareed Zakaria’s Sunday morning GPS CNN show are also feature reporting with detail and solid judgment.

Why has national TV news been portraying the Islamic State with all the sloppiness of local TV news discussing the latest school board meeting? In all likelihood, because reporting complexity would make the standard four-panelist, five-minute pundit segments much difficult for audiences to follow. How could you keep typical viewers from flipping the dial after years of feeding them little but the latest cheap shot or salvo aimed at a rival political operative?

Debates could suffer, too. Since the audiences generally haven’t been informed about the current facts on the ground, on-target questions would be confusing. And the candidates themselves, as well as ratings-starved networks, would lose valuable opportunities to make those showy, attention-grabbing, tough-sounding “crank up the Enola Gay” quotes that end up on Vines and Facebook.

What exactly should the cable networks in particularly be covering? In particular, they need to do a much better job understanding and explaining IS’ attraction to its fighters and supporters.

During the group’s heyday a year ago, IS was indeed recruiting in droves. Now it’s failing to find new followers as it takes major losses and discovers fighting is a bit tougher when you aren’t rolling into cities unimpeded.

Thomas Friedman of The New York Times put it best – if you are a 20-year-old man in Syria or Iraq, don’t have a wife or job; IS can provide those. But circumstances have changed. IS is facing actual opposition, meaning there’s a good chance of dying from a bullet wound or a gravity bomb. IS, moreover, was paying its fighters with oil revenues, but these started drying up substantially right after its rigs were bombed by allied airstrikes.

In addition, one major reason for IS’ success despite its brutality and other convention-defying tactics has been its religious message. That is, IS is as much an apocalyptic cult as much as a radical Islamist terror group. It cites a belief that a confrontation with the West in Syria would bring about the end of the world. This is why the group uses social media as a means to keep itself in the news and to try to drive the U.S. into a conflict in Iraq: a final round with the West on Islam’s home soil would lend credibility to its vision of the end times and ostensibly supercharge recruiting.

But today, the group is engaged in heavy combat, its organization and rank and file both taking heavy losses. But the Western military role in Middle East combat has been relatively light – especially on the ground. So those end-of-the-world predictions are looking ever dicier.

In addition, IS has been losing much of the ground it had gained in Syria as well as in Iraq. The Kurds pushed IS across the Euphrates three weeks ago, forcing them into their home territory of Aleppo. Six months ago this accomplishment would have been unimaginable. Last week the Free Syrian Army defeated IS in Palmyra, the ancient Roman/Greco city.

Indeed, this brings us to another reason why IS’ recent loss of traction isn’t being covered: the unholy alliance arrayed against it. Hezbollah, Syrian dictator Bashir Al-Assad (who was Public Enemy No. 1 three years ago ahead of IS and all other radicals before him), the Free Syrian Army, the Russians, the Turks, the Kurds, (maybe some Al Qaeda elements), the Iranians – all these forces have had a part in pushing IS back and handing it defeat after defeat even as U.S.-aided Iraqi forces are beating the group in Iraq. How does one tell that tale in a 30-second news byte?

But complexity can never excuse shoddy reporting – in particular when it’s obscuring the most important IS-related development of all: IS isn’t attacking Brussels and Paris for its enjoyment but for survival, trying to move the battlefront, trying to take the focus from the Levant. Expect IS also to become more active in Libya, where it has created a new franchise, for lack of a better word. This isn’t the darkening shadow of conquest we’re seeing, however, but the desperate lashing out of a cornered animal.  

B.J. Bethel is an Ohio-based journalist who has covered politics, government, the environment, and sports for over a decade.

 

Im-Politic: Another Big Media Honcho – Charles Lane – Goes All Sick Puppy

27 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2016 elections, Bernie Sanders, Charles Lane, Charles M. Blow, Donald Trump, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mainstream Media, middle class, punditocracy, pundits, The New York Times, Trade, Washington Post, working class

If Charles Lane wasn’t a stalwart of the Mainstream Media, and indeed the punditocracy, it wouldn’t matter that he’s a acting like a sick puppy. But because he’s both a columnist for the Washington Post and a contributor to the paper’s belligerently dogmatic unsigned editorials on trade policy (and other economic and business issues), it matters considerably and is worth reporting in some detail. For it speaks volumes about why the Big Media’s finances and credibility are increasingly on the ropes.

You’ve all encountered sick puppies at some point. They’re the folks who can dish it out, but can’t take it, no matter how serious or light-hearted the debate or exchange – who believe they embody special virtue and deserve special status and treatment; who wind up fleeing the scene with their tails between their legs when they can’t take the heat; and who, after the old French proverb, bitterly condemn as wicked those who defend themselves when attacked.

I first ran into a Mainstream Media puppy sick enough to write about earlier this year, when I reported that New York Times columnist Charles Blow had blocked me on Twitter even though I had had no direct social media contact with him, and had only even mentioned him critically (but entirely respectfully) on two occasions.

Lane at least decided he’d had enough after direct contact on Twitter. But it was so minimal, and my tweets so entirely appropriate (albeit not reverential), that he belongs in this doghouse, too.

It all began with a column Lane had written about Thanksgiving and what it should be teaching Americans nowadays. As he saw it, Americans are living in “the most prosperous and secure nation in human history,” but demagogic presidential candidates are “encouraging voters to think of themselves as victims of a ‘rigged‘ system — or demonizing everyone and everything, from the incumbent president, to Congress, to their Muslim neighbors, to the media, to ‘the billionaire class.’” And worse, these (presumably imagined) grievances have taken hold among the public, producing a season of unusually sharp “political discontent” and overshadowing “the big things [Americans] all have in common” – and (again, presumably) should be thankful for.

At many other times in American history, Lane would have had a reasonable – and indeed important – point. Moreover, however hard times are – and especially at Thanksgiving – it’s always good to step back, get some perspective, and try focusing on whatever blessings we have. Therefore, Lane would have had an especially good argument had he not so explicitly used it to condemn presidential candidates he doesn’t like, specifically Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump.

But he did make this connection. And in my view, it was particularly and revealingly tone deaf at best and clueless at worst because two major economists (including the latest Nobel Prize-winner) have just reported that the trade and immigration policies that these candidates have attacked – and which Lane and the Post have consistently championed – are not only killing jobs and wages for the American middle and working classes. They’re literally killing middle and working class whites themselves.

So this year, it seems to me, the candidates who Lane charges are “inflaming and exploiting mutually exclusive grievances,” and the voters responding to them, are on to something legitimate, and might be cut some slack by their Lane-like political opponents in the Mainstream Media. As a resulted, I tweeted, “Elite #journo @ChuckLane1: US #politics not rigged 4 #billionaire class, & too many Americans too darned unthankful.”

To my surprise, Lane “Liked” this tweet – though it’s hard to tell whether he took the point or was being snarky.

A little while later, though, he did something much more surprising – he responded to a previous tweet I had sent about trade issues. A news report had revealed that South Korea had decided to fine Volkswagen for its widespread practice of rigging the software in its vehicles to fool government emissions tests. Since South Korea has all but hermetically sealed itself to auto imports for decades, I tweeted, “Kinda surprised that protectionist #SouthKorea has let in enough #Volkswagens to fine!”

This comment elicited the following reaction from Lane: “Has it occurred to you that you didn’t know how protectionist they really are? #No.” In all honesty, I had no idea what he was trying to say, though I suspect it was something critical of my position. That’s of course fair enough. But genuine puzzlement was – and remains – foremost on my mind. (Feel free to let me know your own interpretation.)

So I tweeted back “Happy Thanksgiving, but please practice your #tweeting. Yours was painfully muddled.”

Snide? Sure. Over-the-top contemptuous or hostile or insulting? Obscene? Outside the bounds of respectable discourse? Not even close, in my opinion. But this is in fact what set Lane off. A few moments later, he shot back, “Where is that ‘block’ button? There we go!” And he thereby set the Twitter controls to ensure that he would not hear anything from me unless he changed his mind, and that I could see none of his tweets (unless someone I follow re-tweets or otherwise mentions him).

What’s bizarre about Lane’s actions is that he wasn’t following me, and therefore could only see tweets of mine if he was expressly looking for them, if I responded to one of his, or if I mentioned his name in one of my own tweets. Just as weird – Lane felt the need to let me know that he was blocking me. That wasn’t necessary at all. Did he think I cared? Did he feel the consequent need to gloat or flaunt his power? He couldn’t have thought that he’d prevent me from seeing any of his material, since it’s easily available at the Post, and his views can be heard on the Fox News talk shows where he appears as a contributor. Therefore, I am just as free to attack or praise him on Twitter (and I have complimented one or two of his columns) as I ever was.

Again, feel free to send me your interpretations. But here’s mine: Lane makes his living with words. My tweet called attention to an instance of his ineptitude with them – and in turn implicitly (and credibly) called into question his qualifications and position as a premier American thought leader (as these folks are now called). This observation stung because although journalism tends to views itself as a profession, it’s nothing of the kind. There’s no important body of knowledge to master, and therefore no objective basis for evaluating performance or even competence.

So it’s reasonable to suppose that those near or at the top of this trade, like Lane, don’t owe their prominence solely, or perhaps even mainly, to merit. Hence, challenging the expertise or the word-smithing skills of the Big Media’s members is like revealing that these emperors have no clothes – and that their opinions deserve no special regard.

Lane’s touchiness therefore is understandable. But is it a recipe for “winning friends and influencing people” (Google it!) – not to mention the better revenues essential for the Big Media’s survival in its current form? Not, as they say, so much.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Punditocracy’s Trade Coverage Races to the Bottom

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Charles Lane, China, fast track, Federal Reserve, imports, Japan, Jobs, pundits, race to the bottom, Simon Constable, TheStreet.com, third world, TPA, TPP, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership, wages, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, World Trade Organization, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Upon reading Charles Lane’s Washington Post column this morning about Congress’ fight over giving President Obama sweeping new trade authority, my first reaction was “And I thought the Wall Street Journal editorial board was ignorant!” But that’s unfair to Lane. Although he’s just treated readers to a breathtaking display of fakeonomics, his own know-nothing-ism on these issues is really no worse than the Journal‘s latest. All the same, since the Post is often considered on a different level than, say, the National Enquirer, Lane’s treatment of trade economics – and politics – merits spotlighting.

Lane’s looney-ism begins right away with his claim that, since President Obama and both Houses of Congress are record supporting fast track authority for the Executive Branch (the House’s vote Friday, to be sure, was purely symbolic), anyone in opposition is standing against a “democratic tide.” As if it’s unusual for special interests, especially Wall Street and the rest of Big Business, to control the Washington deployments of both major parties?

But the author’s economics are even sillier. According to this Post pundit, planned new trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will only affect the small number of American workers who produce tradeable goods. Apparently he doesn’t know that for a quarter century at least, the job- and wage-killing effects of wrongheaded trade deals and related policies have rippled widely through the labor markets encompassing working class Americans of all skill levels.

And don’t take my word for it. As Simon Constable just wrote for TheStreet.com, there’s growing agreement in the mainstream economics community – including the Federal Reserve – that admitting China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 destroyed millions of American manufacturing jobs in just the half decade that followed. Does Lane really believe that these displaced workers haven’t been plunged into competition for remaining (often less remunerative) employment with their counterparts in “sectors outside the flow of global commerce,” putting powerful downward pressure on pay? And does he really think that the “cheap imports” facilitated by these and similar decisions healthily offset the effects of trade-related job and wage loss?

Equally bizarre is Lane’s stated view that the only possible trade threats to American worker’s well-being come from “low-wage competition” from third world countries like China. I guess he’s never heard of Japan, the world’s third largest national economy, which is known to have sent a subsidized export or two to the United States over the last few decades – and which of course is a member of the first group of prospective TPP countries.

And speaking of Japan, Lane’s claim that under the TPP, Tokyo will “open its markets to U.S. goods and pursue long-postponed structural reforms” is positively side-splitting. Just who on earth told him that? A White House press flack?

These Journal and Post missives over the last two days are far from the Mainstream Media’s worst analyses of U.S. trade policy. They’re just the two most recent examples of the kind of media mud- and hokum-slinging that’s always generated when Congress towards decisive trade votes. You might even call it another globalization-related race to the bottom.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Glimmer of Establishment Realism on the Middle East

18 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

border security, David Ignatius, elites, energy, foreign policy establishment, Iran, ISIS, Middle East, nuclear weapons, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pundits, September 11, terrorism

You know the saying, “Out of the mouths of babes”? David Ignatius’ Friday Washington Post column shows that “Out of the mouths of pundits” might also belong in our lexicon. The big difference is that the former suggests that many problems that look forbiddingly complex can be solved by examining them without the preconceived notions and other intellectual baggage built up by adults. The latter would suggest that, at least now and then, truths that have long been screamingly obvious to anyone with a lick of common sense, but that clash with the conventional wisdom, get recognized by columnists and other political and policy class types who usually defend this wisdom with a vengeance.

As I’ve written, Ignatius was born into this establishment and has faithfully disseminated and championed its view his entire career. So imagine my surprise to read his Friday article – which not only in detail strongly echoed my view that the Middle East these days has become an utterly hopeless mess, but at least referenced the policy conclusion that I’ve been pushing: that since outsiders can’t prevent the the region’s multiple disasters from unfolding, they need to focus on “protecting themselves from collateral damage.”

To be sure, Ignatius still seems to believe that something viable can be created in the Middle East – but not for years and even perhaps (as I consider likelier in my most optimistic moments) decades. The next logical step for Ignatius and the rest of America’s elites is supporting the specific measures needed to shield the nation from the main Middle East dangers it faces – major disruptions to global energy supplies and September 11-like terrorist attacks. (In my opinion, U.S. nuclear forces are a much more than adequate deterrent against any nuclear weapons and delivery systems developed by Iran.)

But don’t expect him or his colleagues to be vigorously pressing for ramped up efforts to develop the fullest range of alternatives to Middle East oil, much less for genuinely securing U.S. borders (along with pounding ISIS by air and with special forces until these goals are achieved). If Rome took more than a day to build, think of the obstacles to shibboleths that have fed elitist egos and preserved their privilege – at the expense of national security and prosperity – for generations.

Following Up: Looks Like New York Times Pundit Blow Really is Impossibly Thin-Skinned

14 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Following Up

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Charles M. Blow, Following Up, Mainstream Media, pundits, The New York Times

On January 31, I posted an entry expressing my astonishment at discovering that New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow had blocked me on Twitter. (For the link, see below.) I gave Blow the benefit of the doubt and explained that our complete lack of direct contact strongly indicated that his action was an accident.

But since deliberation couldn’t be ruled out, I felt obliged to check with the source to find out for sure. On February 3, I sent him this email:

“Dear Mr. Blow,

“I am writing to call your attention to a new post on my blog RealityChek that was occasioned by my surprising finding that you have blocked me on Twitter.

https://alantonelson.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/im-politic-is-ny-times-pundit-charles-blow-impossibly-thin-skinned/

“As my post indicates, the block may well have been inadvertent on your part. Certainly, our areas of interest overlap little, and I have only tweeted about two of your own tweets. Nor have these tweets contained language that would meet any reasonable person’s definition of offensive. I have sent out tweets on subjects you do follow closely – e.g., Ferguson and similar race relations and policing issues. But although many have differed from your own positions, I don’t believe they could reasonably be called offensive either.  The same holds for other tweets of mine.

“Moreover, as my post makes clear, my long record of appearances in many leading national and international publications, including The Times, surely places me outside the “crank” category. So does the fact that my Twitter following includes many prominent journalistic, business, economic, and political figures.

“So I hope you will write back and let me know whether the block is accidental or a deliberate decision. And if the latter, I would appreciate an explanation. Please note that I plan to report as a follow-up item on my blog any response I receive – including confirmation that the block was an accident.

“Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to hearing from you.

“Sincerely,  Alan Tonelson”

More than ten days have now passed, and still no response from Blow. I know he’s a busy person, but given that I mentioned a record of publishing in leading national media – including his own New York Times – it now seems clear to me that he did deliberately block me, and that his sensitivities are way too delicate for someone making their living by generating and participating in public debate.

After all, nothing could have been easier for Blow than to state that his action was mistaken, and to remove the block. (Again, I have never tried to make contact with him – even by tweeting.) So it seems he deserves some credit for honesty.  But if so, it’s hard to avoid concluding that Blow surmised that a truthful response would have confirmed a tetchiness that’s stunningly inappropriate for his profession – and indeed completely embarrassing for an adult with even minimal self-respect.

 

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Current Thoughts on Trade

Terence P. Stewart

Protecting U.S. Workers

Marc to Market

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Alastair Winter

Chief Economist at Daniel Stewart & Co - Trying to make sense of Global Markets, Macroeconomics & Politics

Smaulgld

Real Estate + Economics + Gold + Silver

Reclaim the American Dream

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Mickey Kaus

Kausfiles

David Stockman's Contra Corner

Washington Decoded

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Upon Closer inspection

Keep America At Work

Sober Look

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Credit Writedowns

Finance, Economics and Markets

GubbmintCheese

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

VoxEU.org: Recent Articles

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Michael Pettis' CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS

New Economic Populist

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

George Magnus

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

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