“Winking With A Blind Eye”: Where Are The Pro-Life Reactions To The Romney-Stericycle Story?
Yesterday, David Corn reported in Mother Jones that Mitt Romney may have played an active role Bain Capital’s $75 million investment in Stericycle, a company that disposes of medical waste from abortion clinics. According to Corn, Bain had previously claimed that Romney left the firm in February 1999 and that Romney probably had nothing to do with the deal.
Since this could potentially lose Romney some enthusiasm among social conservatives, I initially thought I would write a post about reactions to the story in the pro-life blogosphere.
Except… I couldn’t find any. Guys, I looked, but as of Tuesday afternoon, here’s where it stands:
Lila Rose’s Twitter feed? No mention as of this writing.
National Right to Life? Top headline as of July 3, 3:57 central time was “Supreme Court Decision Means Americans Must Elect Mitt Romney and a Pro-Life Congress Committed to Repealing ObamaCare.”
Susan B. Anthony List? Its president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, wrote a column for National Review Online yesterday titled “Pro-Lifers Must Unite Behind Romney.” (The discussion in the comments thread did make its way around to the Stericycle story, with folks chiming in both to support and criticize Romney.)
Americans United for Life? Again, as of 4 p.m. central, their online media center made no mention of it.
LifeSiteNews, which previously reported on a Romney fundraiser at the home of a pharmaceutical executive whose company makes the morning after pill, and which published a piece in January calling Stericycle a “medical waste giant allied with the abortion industry” didn’t turn up anything when I did a search for “Romney” and “Stericycle,” and the story wasn’t in their top headlines.
Jill Stanek? Again, no mention in the top headlines and a site search turned up nothing.
World Magazine, which is currently taking a critical stance toward the National Association of Evangelicals over the latter’s acceptance of a grant from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy? Again, my site search turned up nothing.
It could be that nobody’s gotten around to writing about it yet, I guess. Or, it could be that the pro-life blogosphere isn’t thrilled to learn about Romney’s possible role in the Stericycle investment; but, particularly on the heels of the Supreme Court decision, cares most about defeating Obama. In any case, the question will be whether it has any effect on voter enthusiasm. If no likely Romney supporters hear about it, I rather imagine it won’t.
By: Sarah Morice-Brubaker, Religion Dispatches, July 3, 2012
“It’s A Tax! It’s A Penalty!”: It’s A Stupid Argument Over Semantics
The press assumes people are stupid, thereby making them no less stupid.
Since not much campaign news happens over the July 4th holiday, Mitt Romney took the opportunity to change his campaign’s tune on whether the penalty in the Affordable Care Act for those who can afford health insurance but refuse to get it is a “tax.”
To review, the Supreme Court said the government has the authority under its taxing power to penalize those who refuse to get insurance, leading Republicans to cry, “Tax! Tax! Tax!” with all of their usual policy nuance and rhetorical subtlety. The only problem this poses for Romney is that calling it a tax means that Romney imposed a tax with his health-care plan in Massachusetts, which means admitting that Romney sinned against the tax gods. First his spokesman came out and said that no, it’s really just a penalty, but then Romney came out and said, well, if the Supreme Court said it’s a tax then it’s a tax, but it wasn’t a tax when I did it, because the Supreme Court didn’t call it that.
What does all this arguing over semantics tell us? It tells us that the press and public are both complicit in creating the hurricane of stupidity into which all presidential campaigns devolve.
As for the press, they could treat this as the inconsequential semantic quibble it is. The fact is it doesn’t matter whether you call it a “tax,” a “penalty,” a “freedom fee,” or a “Lenin levy.” It’s the same thing. And for the record, according to the Urban Institute, only 2 percent of Americans will be subject to the tax/penalty. And the whole idea is that most of them will be motivated by the tax/penalty to get health insurance, so the whole idea of the tax/penalty is that almost no one will end up paying it.
But the press has treated the question of what Mitt Romney will call the fee as though it matters. Because of some weird nostalgia, I get the dead-tree editions of both The New York Times and The Washington Post, and when I went outside into the 150-degree heat to get my papers this morning (note to self: get time machine, go back and convince George Washington to put the nation’s capital in someplace cold and rainy like Seattle), I found that both front pages had stories about this virtually meaningless issue.
That’s partly because it’s a slow news day, but also because the press knows just how dumb the electorate is. If all voters were at least reasonably informed about things, stuff like this would matter far less. No one who actually knows even the first thing about the Affordable Care Act could possibly have their opinion altered by what we decide to call the penalty for not carrying insurance. No one who thinks it’s a necessary measure will say, “Gee, now that people are calling it a ‘tax,’ that really changes how I think about it.” And if you didn’t like it before, you won’t like it any more or less if we put a different name on it.
But the press operates on the unspoken assumption that meaningful numbers of people actually will react that way. In other words, they assume the public is stupid, and that assumption leads them to make decisions that do nothing to make the public any less stupid. At the same time, if the public knew more about the actual consequences of the election, reporters would certainly pick up on it and alter their coverage accordingly. But since only 55 percent of the public even knows what the result of the most important Supreme Court decision on a policy issue in decades even was, reporters will stick to assuming the public is clueless, and they’ll largely be right.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 5, 2012
“Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire”: Mitt Romney’s Bain Timeline Doesn’t Add Up
It turns out that the implications of David Corn’s explosive scoop about how Mitt Romney misrepresentedhis role in Bain’s investment in a medical-waste firm that disposed of aborted fetuses goes far beyond that specific investment. The short version of that story is that while Romney claimed publicly to have had no role in the investment because it took place after he started working on the Salt Lake Olympics, he actually had an active role in the investment, according to legal documents obtained by Corn.
Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and as Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald points out, if Romney lied about that investment, then he also appears to have lied in his official financial disclosure forms filed with the government.
Twice, first in 2007 during his earlier presidential bid and again this year, Romney filed personal disclosure forms with the Office of Government Ethics which explicitly state that Romney left Bain in early 1999. “Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way,” his ethics filings from June state.
But as Corn’s report details, that timeline doesn’t add up. Romney personally signed documents after February of 1999 related to the human-waste disposal deal and SEC documents also indicate he was a key investor in the deal. Moreover, according to contemporaneous public reports from Bain and the Boston Herald, Romney did not sever all ties or management responsibilities when he assumed his job running the winter Olympics.
Bottom line: Romney’s story doesn’t compute, and given that the credibility of all the defenses he makes to Bain criticism depend on whether or not you take his word, he’s got a real problem developing—if the media is paying attention.
By: Jed Lewison, Daily Kos, July 2, 2012
“Not So Fast Missy”: How Jan Brewer and Many Others Got The Supreme Court’s Immigration Ruling Wrong
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer sounded triumphant Monday as she declared that the “heart” of SB 1070, Arizona’s harsh anti-illegal immigration law, had been “upheld” by the Supreme Court.
“The heart of Senate Bill 1070 has been proven to be constitutional. Arizona’s and every other state’s inherent authority to protect and defend its people has been upheld.”
There’s just one problem: The high court did not find any provision of Arizona’s law to be constitutional—it did not “uphold” any part of the law. The distinction here is a technical legal one, and plenty of reporters and media outlets got it wrong. (My first tweet about the ruling was wrong. Politico, the Los Angeles Times*, and PBS’ Newshour also initially misreported the ruling.) Other supporters of the law, including Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (who is a lawyer) also referred to part of the law being “upheld.”
Here’s what the Supreme Court actually did on Monday. The justices decided that the lower court that prevented SB 1070 from taking effect was mostly correct—because most of the law’s provisions were likely unconstitutional. The Supreme Court declined to block the “papers, please” provision of the law—which Brewer refers to as its “heart”—that requires local authorities to check the immigration status of anyone they arrest. But the high court did not find the controversial provision constitutional, and so it was not “upheld.” Instead, the high court deferred judgment on the matter. Saying that part of the law was “upheld” incorrectly implies that the court decided the “papers, please” provision was constitutional. The justices were actually decidedly agnostic on that point.
“The majority said it didn’t know enough about how the law would work in practice to rule decisively. Because the law has never gone into effect, it just wasn’t clear whether the law would conflict with federal policy.” says Adam Winkler, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law who wrote a column for the Daily Beast noting that many media outlets got the distinction wrong. “The court said to Arizona there’s a right way and a wrong way to apply this law and we’re watching you.”
Although it’s anyone’s guess how the court might ultimately rule on the “papers, please” provision, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion gives very specific guidance on how that part of the law should be enforced. That suggests that in the future, the court could very well find the provision unconstitutional—meaning that Brewer’s celebration was beyond premature.
“They absolutely left open the possiblity of future challenges,” says Elizabeth Wydra, chief counsel at the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center. “We achieved victory on three out of the four provisions [Monday], and I think it’s going to be a delayed victory on the fourth.”
By: Adam Serwer, Mother Jones, June 26, 2012
“With Eyes Wide Shut”: Right Wing Spins The Media With “Job-Killer” Claims
The media is indiscriminately using the term “job-killer” to describe government policies and programs, but without verifying or substantiating the claims, according to a new study. Use of the phrase by major media outlets has exploded since President Obama took office and rapidly circulates throughout the press with little or no fact checking of the “job killer” allegations.
“Job-Killing” Rhetoric From the Right
“The news media, by failing to seek to verify allegations made about government policies and proposals, typically act more like a transmission belt for business, Republican, and conservative sources than an objective seeker of truth when it comes to the term ‘job killer,'” its authors found.
The independent study, Job Killers in the News: Allegations without Verification, conducted by Prof. Peter Dreier of Occidental College and Christopher R. Martin of the University of Northern Iowa, reviewed the use of the term “job-killer” in stories from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Associated Press going back to 1984.
The vast majority of the “job-killer” allegations were directed at federal or state government policies to regulate business (particularly policies towards the environment, taxes, health care, and raising the minimum wage). Most of the sources for the “job-killer” charges came from business spokespersons and Republican Party officials, but in around 17 percent of the articles and editorials, news outlets used the phrase without citing a source. In 91.6 percent of the stories about “job killing” government policies, the media failed to cite any evidence or quote an authoritative source to corroborate the claim.
“With little or no fact checking of ‘job killer’ allegations, Americans have no way to know if there is any evidence for these claims or whether they are simply a cynical political ploy used to discredit opponents’ policy ideas,” Dreier and Martin noted.
Indeed, according to the authors, “There is no correlation between the frequency of the phrase ‘job killer’ and unemployment rate. Instead, ‘job killer’ allegations correspond much more closely with political cycles,” particularly during election season and under Democratic administrations.
“Job-killer” allegations were barely used under the Clinton administration and virtually disappeared during the eight years George W. Bush was president — despite job growth under Clinton and job loss under Bush — and skyrocketed once Barack Obama became president. The number of news stories alleging that a particular government policy would be a “job killer” increased 1,156% between the first three years of the George W. Bush administration and the first three years of the Obama administration.
“The cavalier nature in which the ‘job killer’ allegations are reported suggests that term is used loosely by those who oppose government regulations, and they can get away with it because news organizations fail to ask—or at least report – whether they have any evidence for the claims they make,” the study’s authors wrote.
The Wall Street Journal was the most likely news organization to use the phrase with no attribution.
By: Emily Osborne, Center For Media and Democracy, June 22, 2012
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