Liberal College Kid

The last Democratic debate before Super Tuesday, and the first featuring solely Obama and Clinton, just ended. The most acute of us will have noticed an unusually frequent amount of shots of the crowd. Maybe it was because they were in an architecturally beautiful building, but the more likely explanation concerns the guests in attendance. Throughout most of the debate, my eyes were at the computer instead of the television screen, but it seemed as though every time I looked up, I had an equal chance of seeing Obama or Clinton as I did of seeing Stevie Wonder, Topher Grace, Diane Keaton or Rob Reiner. Of course, the debate was in Los Angeles, and celebrities are bound to show up in attendance. But the question I want to ask is, who cares?

 Why did CNN feel it necessary to be continuously flashing celebrity faces in the middle of an important and historic presidential debate? It could be that they wanted the audience at home to have an idea of how these celebrities were reacting to the stances of the candidates. If so, again, who cares? Why should the opinions of these people matter at all? How are they more qualified to make tricky political judgements?

The answer is: they shouldn’t matter, and they are not more qualified than the average citizen. At all. In fact, super-rich movie stars, living in the dream world of Hollywood, are the last people we should be looking towards for political opinion or advice. What do they know about the major issues facing Americans? They don’t have to worry about health care or being able to afford their kid’s education or pay their bills (well, it’s possible that they may have bill-paying problems, but we can all agree that its just a little different). Their children are not dying in Iraq. They make pretty speeches about energy conservation and global warming, written on coast-to-coast flights in their private jets.

USA Today pointed out that:

It’s fitting that tonight’s Democratic presidential debate will be held at Los Angeles’ Kodak Theatre, home of the Oscars and one of Hollywood’s most hallowed monuments to the stars.

Star power rocks on the campaign trail these days, with an unprecedented number of actors, entertainers and sports figures stumping for candidates

And it’s not only the phalanx of celebrities attempting to influence the primary races; it’s also what they’re doing. In years past, most stars have been content to endorse and bankroll candidates and make high-profile appearances. But this year, with the race still open and 22 states up for grabs on Super Tuesday next week, celebrities have been working in key states earlier, in greater numbers and more extensively than ever.

I know that most of these celebrities have pure and good intentions, and I do not mean to indict them: they are doing what they do best for the cause that they choose. There is nothing wrong with that. Their increasing participation could be a result of the celebrity-obsessed culture we live in, but maybe it’s just because people in general are getting involved in greater numbers this year, celebrities included. It can be hard to resist their influence. Anyone who has met a celebrity can tell you it can be exciting and make you act differently than you normally would. But when we let those star-struck feelings go unchecked, and assign more meaning to their presence at a debate or on the campaign trail than it truly has, it becomes a dangerous situation. We surrender our own powers of decision making and critical thought and allow our opinions to be swayed by which candidate people like Oprah or Tim Robbins think is the best choice for president.

Even endorsements from other politicians are being focused on too heavily. Now, compared to an endorsement by a celebrity, these make much better sense, since politicians are experts on these issues (or should be). But, it should still be largely irrelevant. Ted Kennedy has decided to back Barack Obama. Fine. But is Obama any different now than he was the day before Kennedy made that announcement? Has something epic changed in his stance on issues and his policy plans? Should the fact that a Kennedy endorsed a candidate really change our views on he or she? Polls, taken after the State of the Union address, show that, unfortunately, it very well may.

Ted Kennedy is one of the most respected members of the Democratic party, and I think most Democrats, rightly, value his opinion. But his endorsement should be noted, and then immediately discarded from our minds. The same goes for those celebrities that really are important parts of our culture and national identity (i.e. Toni Morrison, who has endorsed Obama, and Maya Angelou, who’s going for Clinton). If they have some well-thought out and insightful comments about their candidate as well, there is no harm in listening to them and considering their opinions carefully. But we must resist letting them have too strong of an effect on our own ideas. The American people are intelligent enough on their own without needing to be directed by larger than life personalities. We must think for ourselves, Oprah be damned.

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Hey there, I’m just taking a quick break from reading all about the wonders of the Commerce Clause to say that I am THRILLED that Rudy only came in third in Florida tonight. Anyone who has the ego to assume that they can, for all intents and purposes, skip the first round of primaries and focus on states where they think they have a huge advantage and then assume that by winning in that state they’ll magically be propelled to the nomination is completely, totally, and unequivocally undeserving of the nomination of either party. The fact that this now sets the precedent for all politicians to come that you need to be the President of all the states and not just those that you feel comfortable with gives me joy enough to trudge though the intricacies of fringe benefit exemptions in my tax law class tomorrow.

So, thank you Rudy. Thank you for being such a pompous ass that you doomed your ill conceived and baseless run for the White House because you thought your balls were big enough to make everyone forget that you don’t care about what Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Wyoming, South Carolina, and Michigan care about when it comes to the next President of this country.

Please Rudy, drop out now and stop embarrassing yourself and spitting on those who lost someone on 9/11 by using it as nothing more than a cheap shill tactic. You thought you could swing around a national tragedy as an advertising gimmick and no one is happier than I to see that your hubris blew up in your face.

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Admittedly, some of us actually enjoy deciphering what any given candidate’s platform is.  Unfortunately, as many of my colleagues have astutely pointed out on this site, that is getting more and more difficult to do due to the media’s constant spin. In this time of constant media bombardment sometimes it’s nice just to let someone else think for you.  So take a break from figuring out who your candidate should be:

http://www.gotoquiz.com/candidates/2008-quiz.html

Hey it’s got to be slightly more valid then picking your candidate based on whether or not they cry in public…right?

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After reading a CNN article about the Colombian hostages who returned to their families recently, I am pondering. The same president who embraced the hostages upon their return is calling for the organization which held them for six years and another similar to it be taken off of the “European Union’s list of terrorist organizations.” This organization, the FARC, according to the Colombian government holds approximately “750 hostages…” The reasoning behind Chavez’s call for removal is that he feels, according to the article, “…the two groups were only on the European list because of U.S. pressure.” With the pending elections coming I am wondering, can any one candidate truly heal our America? When I watch the news today or read articles, the world is a place where the greatest nation in the world is not taken seriously. If you look into the eyes many other country’s representatives when they are shaking hands with our representative, you can see it. The smile is not one of respect or admiration it is one of fear. Their eyes say if I step out of line are they going to come to my country and tell me what is best for my people with their M-16’s? The rest of the representatives, those that are not afraid, well they don’t meet with our representative. Our representative does not hear the voices of local Palestinians. I guess my main question is can any of the new representative possibilities really make those who have gone unheard for eight years feel they can trust us? Can this representative make the nations who fear we will try to occupy them feel relaxed around us? For it is my belief that only when this happens can true and honest diplomacy happen, without this diplomacy what does the true future hold of us?

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Steven E. Landsburg, a columnist for the New York Times, thinks that the two Republican front runners, McCain and Romney, are too liberal. At least in one case.

In the last few days, there has been a lot of talk from McCain and Romney about how to deal with jobs disappearing due to globalization and outsourcing. Because they were campaigning in Michigan, the issue was particularly relevant, a state where the automobile industry was once an enormous employment provider. Now, however, the migration of factories overseas has resulted in an unemployment rate in Michigan that is the highest in the country. McCain and Romney, despite having different outlooks on the future of the automobile industry in that state, are both proposing government programs that would be available to downsized employees that would retrain them for new work opportunities.

In an attempt to show how ridiculous these programs would be, Landsburg applies cold economic reasoning to the plight of these unemployed workers. First, he gives us the standard free trade zealot response, namely, that Americans as a group benefit so much from cheap, foreign labor that it more than makes up for the loss of a few, insignificant American jobs. Now, as ugly as this fact is, there is some truth to it. The goods that we consume so vigorously do, in many cases, owe their low prices to outsourcing and foreign labor. Obviously, this is a touchy subject. There are many valid arguments on both sides of this issue, and the answer is not completely clear.

But what is clear, to even the Republican presidential candidates, is that the situation that middle class workers are put into when their factories or offices are moved to another, more profitable country, is dangerous to their livelihood, and that there should be some measure of safety from complete financial collapse for them. This view is pretty standard on the left, but with the rising number of instances in which this occurs, even pro-business, free trade conservatives have been forced to face this fact. However, Landsburg disagrees: he believes that we owe nothing to workers who are downsized and find themselves without an income to support them and their families. These, according to him, are the necessary casualties of economic progress:

All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices. In other words, the winners can more than afford to compensate the losers. Does that mean they ought to? Does it create a moral mandate for the taxpayer-subsidized retraining programs proposed by Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney?

Um, no. Even if you’ve just lost your job, there’s something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon that’s elevated you above the subsistence level since the day you were born.

Here Landsburg insinuates what has become an increasingly common idea within the discipline of ecomonics, both inside and out of the academy: that economists know everything. They have, through their in depth studies, found a higher awareness and a more lucid insight into the workings of the world. In the game of global economics, the losers deserve nothing from those who have profited greatly from their loss, except a casual, “sorry, man, that’s the way the world works. You should be grateful for what you’ve gotten this far.” In this case, we are not even talking about the foreign “losers” in this game. He is not referring to citizens of the third world, who work in slave-like conditions and are compensated with poverty level wages. They do not even factor into his analysis in this piece. The losers he is referring to are our fellow Americans. Even they, according to Landsburg’s worldview, matter little. It’s dog-eat-dog, baby.

If Landsburg would just come out and admit that in his mind, some must suffer for the benefit of others, and that he really doesn’t care about what happens to the losers of economic progress, it would be, however reprehensible, a technically valid viewpoint. Instead, he tries to justify this phenomenon with, at best, skewed logic:

One way to think about that is to ask what your moral instincts tell you in analogous situations. Suppose, after years of buying shampoo at your local pharmacy, you discover you can order the same shampoo for less money on the Web. Do you have an obligation to compensate your pharmacist? If you move to a cheaper apartment, should you compensate your landlord? When you eat at McDonald’s, should you compensate the owners of the diner next door? Public policy should not be designed to advance moral instincts that we all reject every day of our lives.

Landsburg would like to think that these situations are analogous to the ones downsized workers face, but they simply are not. If you stop buying shampoo from your neighborhood pharmacy, how much of an impact is that really going to have on the success and profits of the store as a whole? Maybe they lose four dollars of business, maybe once a month. Even if every single person that used to buy shampoo at this establishment suddenly decides that they will switch to the internet for their hair product needs, its a safe assumption that this pharmacy will not go bankrupt. In the same way, most landlords own multiple properties, so if you decide to move to a cheaper apartment or house, they will most likely still have other places to collect rent from. And, if they do only own one property, I think its fair to assume that this is not their only source of income. Plus, in most areas (this is definitely true for my college town), landlords have no problems renting out properties once they are uninhabited. Landsburg’s final “analogy” is to the restaurant business. The same problems prevent it from being an accurate representation of what happens to laid off workers. Even if you do eat at McDonalds, instead of a diner nearby, not everyone is going to choose the fast food, and you yourself will probably not eat at McDonalds every time you dine out. There really are no meaningful comparisons in Landsburg’s analysis.

When a worker is downsized, their job moved to a foreign land or replaced by cheaper labor, they are completely cut off from all income, all at one time. Even if the situations that Landsburg posits do, eventually, lead to the pharmacy closing, the landlord losing all their tenants, or the restaurant failing, it would happen gradually, allowing the owner in question the time and some amount of income to invest in educating themselves and attempting to find a new career opportunity. This is not the case with people who just lose their jobs. It is fundamentally different when you own your own business and the prospect of losing all your income at the very worst can be seen coming through various signals (less and less shampoo sold over time, might want to think about getting out of the pharmacy business). Of course, in Landsburg’s calculating, free market economics-trained mind, there is no disctinction between these vastly different situations.

When someone is downsized, they immediately face a very serious crisis. They may have worked at the same factory for thirty years, in which time they have become highly specialized at a distinct skill that is not always transferable to another career. They may have spent years working up to the wages they now enjoy, and because of this, many of them have mortgages, car payments, and insurances premiums out for themselves and their families that are in line with the income they are now getting. If they lose this job and have no other skills with which to find a similar paying career, they have to start at the bottom. They can kiss their home, car and health insurance out the window. Despite whatever Landsburg may think, it IS society’s moral obligation to make sure that those who have spent years of their life working hard for an employer who has now made a profit-based decision to leave them jobless can still provide food, shelter and health care for themselves and their children. Or, if not all that, we should at least give them some education and training in order to make their transition from one job to another easier (you would think that someone who disdains government hand-outs would support a program that helps people get off unemployment). This is not just an indictment of businesses that decide to outsource: it is their right to do so, and as Landsburg keenly points out, it may be for the better of this country in some circumstances. But this does not mean that we have to forsake our own citizens in the process.

Something is often lacking in the recent wave of economists’ attempts to apply their discipline to all aspects of society (Landsburg himself released a book called More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics). They seem to feel less than content applying their methods to finances and want to branch out into other realms, from dating to parenthood. Why should we listen to them? What gives them the authority to comment on everything under the sun? Certainly not their degree in microeconomics. The real world has endless layers and subtleties that do not always fit into formulas and economists’ “rational” thinking. Sometimes, people would rather behave humanely (that is, like humans) rather than as machines engaged rational, cold decision making.

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Update: A little while after I published this post, I went to Slate.com. What do I find? This piece, which is an excerpt from Tim Harford’s book, The Logic of Life. The specific section they have published here is titled “The Economics of Marriage.” Read it for yourself and let me know what you think of this new-found love for applying economics to everything.

There is also a BBC documentary called The Trap (by Adam Curtis) that deals, in part, with game theory (originally championed by John Nash, of A Beautiful Mind), its origins and application to economics, and since then, to many aspects of social life.

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A study has shown that Zetia, one of the most widely prescribed cholesterol reducing drugs, does nothing to prevent heart attacks and strokes, and that in some cases it may make them even more likely, as it sometimes causes fatty plaque to develop more quickly in arteries.

This should be shocking news, and it is. But its not that unusual of a discovery. The past ten or fifteen years have seen drugs that have been heavily prescribed to millions of Americans turn out to be flawed, useless and potentially life threatening. Remember Vioxx?

The website DrugRecalls.com lists over a dozen prescription medicines that have been either recalled or deemed worthy of serious warnings, including:

• Avandia
• Ephedra
• Crestor
• Fen Phen
• Zelnorm
• Baycol
• Meridia
• Neurontin
• Prempro
• Celebrex
• Risperdal
• Pemoline
• Rezulin
• Vioxx
• Bextra
• Many Antidepressants

All of these drugs have been at one time, or still are being, ingested by Americans all across the country. Why, if they are so potentially dangerous, did they ever make it to the market in the first place?

While there is a growing amount of concern over the practices within the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), the government body that tests and approves or denies new drugs, it is my opinion that there are two serious problems that lead to the approval of dangerous drugs, and one of them may already be rectified.

First, the FDA has had a serious problem in the past. Members of the panels who give recommendations for, or against, the drug in question, have actually in many cases been receiving financial backing from the pharmaceutical companies that have developed the drug in the first place. Can there be a more egregious conflict of interest? An FDA employed researcher being paid, in any way, by the pharmaceutical industry should not, under any conceivable circumstances, be involved int he approval of a drug. In one case, probably the worst, every single member of the trial study panel had been paid by the company that manufactured and developed the drug. This is completely unacceptable. Even if they really do evaluate the merits of the drug objectively, the entire study will smell rotten. We are talking about the health of millions of American who are shelling out unreasonable portions of their income to be able to take these drugs. There should be absolutely zero chance that the integrity of trial study is betrayed because of a researcher or researchers’ nepotism and greed.

However, that said, this problem may already be solved. In March of last year, the FDA released new guidelines that would create more strict rules barring individuals who have financial conflicts of interest from participating in advisory committees. The press release announcing these changes said the following:

FDA would tighten its policy for considering eligibility for participation. If an individual has disqualifying financial interests whose combined value exceeds $50,000, after applying certain exemptions, the person would generally not be considered for participation in the meeting, regardless of the need for his or her expertise. If the financial interests are $50,000 or less, after applying certain exemptions, the individual might be recommended to participate as a non-voting member. Only individuals with no potential conflicts would be eligible to fully participate in meetings as voting members.Financial interest means the potential for gain or loss to a person (or their family and outside affiliations) as a result of the government’s action on a particular topic. Financial interests screened include, but are not limited to, stock ownership, related research and consulting arrangements.

Now, while this is definitely a move in the right direction, I do have a problem. $49,000 is a lot of money to most people. Under these new rules, a researcher with $49,999 dollars worth of “financial interest” in the approval of a new drug would still be allowed to take part in the committee’s, even though they cannot participate in the final vote. This set up still has a distinctly rotten smell. Imagine a situation like this:

• Researcher A participates on the advisory committee of one drug, but because he has a conflict of interest, he cannot participate in the vote.
• Researcher B does not have financial interest, and therefore is a full, voting member of the committee.
• In another unrelated study, A does not have financial interest (and therefore can vote), but B has more than $50,000 worth of interest, and therefore cannot participate at all.

Maybe I am being pessimistic about the character or dedication to science of members of the FDA, but it seems to me that in this situation it would be profitable for both researchers A and B to help each other get the drugs in question approved for the public. I’m not even saying that committee members in a situation such as this would make an explicit, spoken deal with each other. What I am suggesting, however, is that, say, researcher B might skew the numbers or omit certain data, having a feeling that researcher A will be grateful and do the same for him.

I think that in order to really prevent corrupt influence on the trials of drugs, the FDA should use only doctors and researchers that do not have any financial interests in the marketing of any drugs at all. However, I’m not sure how feasible this is or how many doctors are even available that do not have these conflicts (anyone that has more information on this should post a comment).

The second problem is that the FDA itself has a conflict of interest once drugs are released to the public. Since they are the institutional that both approves the drugs in the first place, and also the ones that monitor their effectiveness or potential problems amongst the public, that have serious incentive to overlook early signs of danger once the drugs have hit the market. If a prescription that they approved turns out to be problematic or even life threatening to those taking it, it reflects very poorly on the FDA.

The drug Troglitazone, which was used to treat diabetes, was not pulled from US markets for three full years after it had been in the UK. This most definitely resulted in the injury or death of thousands of Americans (David Graham’s congressional testimony can be found here). The FDA was slow to react for fear of backlash.

The only useful solution to this very serious problem is to create an independent agency to follow a drug’s effect on the public after it has already been released. This group should have nothing to do with FDA so that if there is any sign that a drug should be recalled from the market, it can be done quickly and without concern over the FDA’s image. Many would resist the formation of an agency like this, especially proponents of small government at any cost. But in this case, I think it is vitally important.

Of course, there are other, even more insidious problems with the marketing of prescription drugs to the public. In 2004, the pharmaceutical industry spent more than 4 billion dollars for drug advertising. In addition to making drugs vastly more expensive for the patient, all this advertising has created a nation of hypochondriacs that are constantly self diagnosing themselves and then begging their doctors for the prescriptions they think that they need. But in many cases, they do not need them, and studies have found that most television ads don’t fully explain the risks associated with the drugs they are promoting. If you are going to convince people that they need a drug which they most likely do not, at least be completely honest and don’t mislead them as to the potential side effects. There are many groups that are speaking up and attempting to get prescription television ads banned entirely. If cigarettes can’t be advertised on television, and liquor is excluded from many times slots, why not limit or ban the marketing of often-dangerous drugs? This study nicely breaks down the misleading nature of prescription commercials. The following is a portion of the study’s abstract:

Most ads (82%) made some factual claims and made rational arguments (86%) for product use, but few described condition causes (26%), risk factors (26%), or prevalence (25%). Emotional appeals were almost universal (95%). No ads mentioned lifestyle change as an alternative to products, though some (19%) portrayed it as an adjunct to medication. Some ads (18%) portrayed lifestyle changes as insufficient for controlling a condition. The ads often framed medication use in terms of losing (58%) and regaining control (85%) over some aspect of life and as engendering social approval (78%). Products were frequently (58%) portrayed as a medical breakthrough. CONCLUSIONS Despite claims that ads serve an educational purpose, they provide limited information about the causes of a disease or who may be at risk; they show characters that have lost control over their social, emotional, or physical lives without the medication; and they minimize the value of health promotion through lifestyle changes. The ads have limited educational value and may oversell the benefits of drugs in ways that might conflict with promoting population health.

I’ve had the television on next to my desk as I work on this post. While I’ve written, I’ve been shown a total of 17 prescription commercials (note: some are the same ones repeated). I think I should go to the doctor now: I’m pretty sure that I have restless leg syndrome, anxiety, depression, high cholesterol and an enlarged prostate.

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Today a new web site was debuted, called Big Think (www.bigthink.com). I read about it in this article in the New York Times and was very fascinated with the idea. The site resembles other video sharing websites like the wildly popular YouTube, only instead of hosting videos featuring basically anything imaginable (from television clips to cinnamon swallowing challenges and stripteases), Big Think focuses on intellectual ideas and debate. The story behind the site’s creation is explained fully in the Times article linked above, so instead of focusing on its origins I want to share my first impressions.

From an ergonomic (or is the correct word here ‘usability’?) standpoint the site is great. It’s easy to navigate the pages and find what you are looking for. One video leads nicely to others that are either on the same subject or feature the same ‘expert’ (so far, it is mostly just expert videos, but this will change with time as user videos are added). Each video has a voting feature where you can choose “I agree,” “I’m neutral,” or “I disagree.” In addition, you can rate each clip on its value: whether or not you find the video interesting and/or relevant. The nicest aspect of these two features is that you can use them while the video is still playing without it stopping and without the browser opening up any new windows or taking you to another page (as long as you are signed in.) If you choose to vote, your name and picture (or avatar) may be displayed to the side of the window under whichever response you made. For example, I agreed with novelist and Yale law professor Stephen Carter on his views about the most important issues facing the legal system today. Once I voted, my name was listed among six others who had also concurred with Carter, above one person who did not. These are not the only way to respond to what you’ve just seen. You can make your own video or audio file and post it as a response; or, if you don’t have a camera or microphone you can simply respond with text. It’s even possible for you to begin your own line of questioning and debate by simply hitting the “Create an Idea” button and following the directions.

There are many categories from which to choose and search for clips. Broken into two broad divisions, “Meta” and “Physical,” (a nice play on words) the categories are as wide ranging as “Truth & Justice” and “Outlook & the Future” (both under meta) to “Economics” and “Philanthropy” (both physical). They are then further divided into sub-categories. “Arts & Culture” is broken down into “Architecture & Design,” “Art,” “Dance,” “Literature,” “Music,” and “Theater & Film.” These divisions make it simple to find specific material. Oh yeah, there’s a search and advanced search as well, for those who don’t like perusing to find content (I personally like to just skip around and see what I find). It will be interesting to see how well the integrity of these categories holds up as the site’s use increases. On YouTube and its competitors, I sometimes click on “Comedy” only to find clips that can hardly be referred to as funny or amusing.

The actual video clips are sleek and stylish looking. Again, once more users start uploading their own videos, the quality and crispness of the images will suffer, but the interviews and monologues recorded by Big Think itself are aesthetically pleasing for sure. Each clip begins and ends with the Big Think logo and a little bit of music; from what I can tell, they have a wide selection of music on the various videos, all of high quality. Instead of hearing the interviewers voice, the question is posed as text just before the expert gives his or her response. And unlike many traditional interviews, the interviewee is looking directly into the camera. These characteristics make the clips seem very intimate, as if you are being spoken to directly.

But all of these features and characteristics of the site are basically side notes. The real story is the idea itself: a website fully dedicated to the exchange of intellectual ideas and opinions using new media that has, in the past, been mostly the property of entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of sites like YouTube and College Humor. But I think others will sympathize with my desire for a more serious, intellectually oriented forum like Big Think to come along. I just spent a solid hour surfing around the site. I watched Dennis Kucinich talk about the inadequacies of the two-party political system and about how the government can be used to improve the chances of poor students getting into, and flourishing, in college. Dan Gilbert informed me about his work at the Psychology department at Harvard, where he is working on theories of happiness and affective forecasting. Pete Peterson, the former Secretary of Commerce, discussed for me the current state of American economics. Big Think has no single ideological message to propagate, featuring experts from all sides of an issue (notice I said all sides, not both), making it possibly the first completely open forum for ideas on the internet. The site has only been functioning for less than twenty four hours, and already there has been a large number of responses made, tons of opinions expressed. This is the kind of venture that the internet was truly created for, and I can hardly wait to see what becomes of Big Think.

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“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and the obedience of the [U.S.] media.”

“The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or the modern corporation.”

-Noam Chomsky

Following the results of New Hampshire’s primary votes, it seems that John Edward’s presidential hopes are not looking good. It is infuriating, to me personally, that the whims of two states representing a tiny fraction of the American public can have such a substantial effect on the fate of the presidential race, and thereby the republic as a whole. But these frustrations, as much as I would like to now expand on them, are currently irrelevant, and should be reserved for a later date. What I do want to discuss, however, is what the Edwards campaign contributed to the general direction of the Democratic struggle for the presidency, and, vastly more important, the consciousness of the nation.

First of all: an indictment of the mainstream media. Throughout the last two years, as the candidates on both sides of the aisle have traveled around the country, the major news outlets in the United States (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, to name only a few) have depicted the Democratic race as a two-sided battle; namely, the battle between the Clinton and Obama campaigns. We would be foolish to think that this has not had a significant, if not vital, effect on the bid for the White House. The mainstream media is an incredibly powerful force. It has the ability to, and general does, shape our view of reality and world around us. The tell us who is a “viable” candidate and who is not (this, of course, is in reference to only one small aspect of the reality that the media shapes for us; the power they have extends far beyond campaigns and “politics,” in the strictest sense of the word). While anyone who considers themselves educated and enlightened acknowledges this fact, we must think further. Why is it that Edwards has been consistently counted out, considered a nearly hopeless candidate? Before you answer this question, try to disassociate yourself from everything you have been molded to think in the last year or two, everything that has told you that Obama and Clinton are strong candidates, and others like Edwards, Biden, Dodd, Kucinich, and even Paul are weak.

The easy answer is that all of the latter campaigns have been very short on money, some more desperate than others. Despite the fact that we live in a “democracy” (a word that, in my opinion, has lost much of its meaning over the last quarter-century), those that do not have adequate financial backing are doomed. This, perhaps, is one of the great tragedies that our nation has had to suffer, and, no doubt, will continue to suffer. But I hope, for the sake of our fate as a nation, that this is not your only justification for supporting a candidate: whether they have the financial assets necessary. Let’s ponder for a moment what having a large sum of money to support a campaign actually means. It means that those with the money will have the most television advertisements and radio commercials; they will have the most signs crowding the landscapes of our neighborhoods; they will have the greatest number of paid staff members to conduct activities like door-to-door recruiting and focus group organizing.

Those of us that claim to be on the Left should have an ideological discomfort with these facts. We tout our commitment to equality and fairness, and yet barely notice when the entire system of nominating a Democratic presidential candidate is blatantly unbalanced and favored towards those who have the most money. This is not to say that a candidate cannot rise from obscurity and become a serious prospect for the nomination. But, there are certain circumstances that must unfold in particular ways in order for this to occur. They must convince those in this society that have the most money to donate that they are justified in supporting them. This is what the Barack Obama campaign has done. The donors that are really necessary to the success of a campaign saw that his chances of winning the nomination were reasonable, and therefore pushed money his way. It’s an easily identifiable cycle.

But there is another, more important reason that certain campaigns are focused on by the media, and others are ignored or portrayed as hopeless. For candidates like Kucinich and the libertarian - turned - Republican Ron Paul, its because their platforms and ideas are, rightly, considered radical. Suddenly the number one issue in the Democratic campaign (and even in the Republican one, to a lesser extent) is “change.” But can we honestly say that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are proposing policy shifts (if you can find any at all on Obama’s side (I know that they are there, but he rarely references them)) that are even comparable to the platforms of Kucinich? The worst part about the entire game is that huge numbers of voters have a feeling in their gut that people like Kucinich and Paul may be the only candidates playing straight, making a priority of honesty, not simply speaking from focus group and poll results. Paul, especially, is the only one of the Republican candidates who really understands terrorism in the Middle East and its causes, yet when he attempts to explain them during debates, the other men jump on him, ridicule him, condescend to him, and make him seem delusional. Even those of people in this country that are the most outspoken about terrorism, specifically that it is simply a manifestation of the terrorists “hatred of our freedom,” must know at some level this is fantasy, and that the a major cause of hatred against the United States is not jealousy or a disdain for democracy, it is a reaction to the imperialistic foreign policies that have been in place since the end of World War II. These candidates are counted out from the beginning, none the less, most importantly because the media says they are. The fact is, that in our culture of twenty four hour non-stop media, no matter how much you canvas a state talking about your ideas, the majority of voters are seeing you through the camera lens. The more politically active and focused members of the country will go out to hear candidates speak in person, the ones that have rational reasons for their vote and can clearly demonstrate why they are supporting one candidate over the other. But in reality, elections are swayed in one direction or another largely because of how voters “feel” about a candidate, not for any identifiable policy factors, and these feelings are a direct result of how the the candidates are portrayed in the media. Its not an obvious process, in fact, in many cases, it is the most sophisticated propaganda system ever implemented. We think that we are making these decisions for ourselves, and to some extent we are, but these choices are made based on ideas and images formed in our minds via the media.

Why, then, would the media choose to raise certain candidates to the status of “viable” while leaving the majority nearly out of the conversation? The answer seems elementary, but it is worth noting.

All the major news outlets in this country are owned by a handful of corporations: the television channels, the newspapers, the magazines, and many important websites. The reporters and journalists employed by these powerful conglomerates are often forced to report what they are told, to shape the issues and the reality of American life into the vision that their bosses have. The alternative is often the loss of their job (see the documentary The Corporation, one version is here.) Like any powerful force in the world, the owners of these conglomerates have certain interests that they must protect in order to achieve their own personal goals, which are generally the increasing of their personal fortunes or the appeasement of their stockholders.

From the beginning John Edwards, like the so called “second and third tier candidates”, was described by the media as a long shot, despite the fact that he was perhaps the second most recognizable candidate on the Democratic side (after Clinton, and before the rise of Obama’s celebrity status). As we have already discussed, if the media deems your candidacy hopeless, it usually is, both because many people will hear and see less of you and because opportunistic but well informed voters will latch onto a candidate that they believe is most likely to be elected (I include myself in this category: many times I’ve passed on supporting my first choice candidate simply because “they’ll never get elected.”)

John Edwards has been one of the most disturbing candidates to the owners of mainstream media and their friends. While all democratic candidates use rhetoric suggesting a dislike for corporate greed and corruption, those who own these interest know that this is probably just an empty platform with which to get elected. Whatever they may say, the major and now the only probable candidates, like Clinton and Obama, still take donations from lobbyists and wealthy corporation owners, hence insuring that they will be indebted to them and their influence once in office. Edwards, on the other hand, refused to take this sort of donation. Despite the enormous temptation to do so, he would not be bought off, and his campaign has suffered for it, both in their financial capabilities and their media portrayal. While reading posts and comments on the internet, I am surprised how many talk about how sincere they think Edwards is (to be sure, not all people think that of him). There are certain aspects of his campaigning that bother me, certain tactics used, like the many sound bites he produces, but these are, unfortunately, a necessary part of campaigning, and beneath them, myself and many many others can see the sincerity from which they stem.

The central idea of Edwards’ campaign has been resisting corporate influence and putting a limit on their powers in the government. This is exactly the opposite of what corporations that own media are interested in. This desire is most obvious in the case of the FCC and the recent loosening of monopoly-preventing regulations under the Bush administration. But it also extends to their friends whose fortunes and power would be threatened were Edwards to win the presidency. NBC, for example, is owned by General Electric, surely one of the largest and most influential corporations in the world. Edwards’ stance on limiting their ability to exploit cheap labor (which in many cases more closely resembles slavery), control the vast majority of the market, destroy the environment and produce harmful products is dangerous to their interests. Consequently, when NBC and MSNBC along with their related outlets have discussed John Edwards, it has been in language that distorts his image and reduces his chances of nomination, as I pointed out in one instance in an earlier post. And they are obviously not the only corporate giants afraid of Edwards. Most pointedly he has attacked insurance and pharmaceutical companies (who, on another note, Mitt Romney said were not the problem), two of the most powerful lobbyist groups in Washington.

Corporations are not only afraid of the attacks they receive from Edwards, but also of who his most important supporters are. Edwards has been consistently backed by the major unions (the few that still exist) in a large majority of the country. It doesn’t take a degree in Labor-Industrial Relations to see the problems this could create for large businesses like Wal-mart that do not allow their employees to organize and pay them near poverty level wages in addition to providing little or no benefits. Raising the pay of these people and giving them health care and other benefits would cut deeply into the pockets of the Waltons, the family that owns the mega-giant corporation and whose members are among the wealthiest in the country. In fact, Wal-mart is the perfect example of all that corporate America has to lose under an Edwards presidency.

Edwards has not yet dropped out of the race. His determination to keep going is remarkable, although its prudence can and will be debated. Even if he does eventually decide to stop running, the impact that he has had on the tone of the campaign will be felt all the way to the popular election and hopefully into the policies of the next administration. Not since the early part of the twentieth century has there been a presidential election that has confronted the growing power of large conglomerate interests and the resulting social stratification it produces. The American public, largely thanks to Edwards, is more aware now, I hope, of all that is being stolen from them in order to line the pockets of the upper echelons of society. Hopefully those that bemoan the welfare state that gives assistance to single mothers (although it is not much) will start to realize that while these programs are cut, corporate welfare in the form of subsidiaries, tax breaks and policies that allow functional monopolies are growing. Both Obama and Clinton have already had to address this issue more than they would have if it would not have been inserted into the discussion so forcefully as is has been by Edwards, and hopefully they will continue to pay it the attention it deserves. Nearly all of the major problems in the United States today can be traced back to the skewed influence of the corporate world into public affairs, and this trend is becoming ever more important and visible. Whether or not Edwards goes on to win the nomination, a scenario that is unlikely now, this election season has been fundamentally altered by his presence, and all of us that believe in real, not just the appearance of, equality and fairness, have him to thank.

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Well the vote is in, and once again I got it wrong…  Congratulations Hillary.
However, for those that think of the 2008 Presidential election as the Ballot Bowl, the results in New Hampshire should certainly make for an interesting run up to the next Democratic primary in South Carolina.  As of this writing, Hillary leads there by 8 points.

<Yeah, she should be smiling!>

The 2008 race is forcing Democrats to make uncomfortable decisions.  In the caucus state of Iowa I think two things combined to boost Obama over Hillary that didn’t exist in  New Hampshire.

First, the caucus creates a different kind of vote.  That is, the caucus is a public vote, where everyone present gets to see who you are voting for.  Democratic voters this year have their choice of a woman, an African American, a Latino, and a few white guys.  One can easily imagine how this could become the oppression Olympics in terms of what group is most deserving of a vote based on their minority’s past experiences.  In essence, voters are being asked if they would rather have the first female president or the first black president, not an easy choice.  It is especially a difficult decision when everyone else around you gets to see who you are voting for.  We have to ask the question, how much of Obama’s vote in Iowa came from people who wanted to be for a black candidate in front of others?  While this question and others like it make me extremely uncomfortable I think there may be something to this theory.  South Carolina is another primary state and Nevada is another caucus state.  If the results of those two follow New Hampshire and Iowa we will certainly have to give this theory some serious consideration.

Next, the caucus rules in Iowa require that people casting their vote for candidates who receive less than 15% of the vote switch to another candidate or not vote.  This means that lower tier candidates, which for the Democrats in Iowa included Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Mike Gravel all had to find others to vote for (except in just a few places where Biden and Richardson received more than 15% of the vote of those present).  We have to ask the question of who did the best when these candidates’ voters had to switch to candidates with more votes.  Kucinich was fairly outspoken in asking his voters to go for Obama as a second choice.  The rest of the candidates had to choose between Edwards, Clinton and Obama.  This election season both sides are talking about the need for change.  Clinton, clearly, represents not change but a return to the prosperous 90’s.  So, many voters likely moved to Edwards because of his emphasis on the middle class and to Obama based on their desire for change in Washington.

These two factors had no bearing in New Hampshire, though.  Women turned out in record numbers, but something else existed in New Hampshire that was missing in Iowa.  The New Hampshire vote was a primary, done in private.  No one to try and convince voters to change their vote, no one there to see who they were voting for.  This helped Hillary, more so than anyone else could have predicted.  Obama came into today projected to win New Hampshire by double digits, and left 3 points behind Clinton.  The exit polling didn’t show it though, early exit polls and even those later into the evening were showing Obama in the lead.  However, as the votes were counted it became clear that Hillary had won.

So why were the exit polls wrong?  If my theory holds true its the same thing that happened in Iowa: people want to be seen as voting for the African American.   Now its on to South Carolina for the Democrats where the African American vote is around half of the Democratic electorate.  Don’t think race will be a factor in this election?  Think again.

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