A Lehman Brothers Equity Research analyst report dated October 15th, 2004 makes the following comments about Sinclair Broadcast Group, Sinclair's decision to run "Stolen Honor", and the resultant boycott effort.
Under the headline "Mgmt Chooses Politics over Shareholders" the report notes the following ...
"In our opinion, Sinclair's decision to pre-empt programming to air 'Stolen Honor' is potentially damaging -- both financially and politically. In a best case scenario, we believe that this decision could result in lost ad revenues. In a worst case scenario, we believe the decision may lead to higher political risk. As mgmt has increased the co's political risk, we are reducing our 12-month price target to $9 (from $10)"
Attempts to contact the Lehman Brothers analyst, William M. Meyers, on Friday afternoon by phone and email were unsuccessful.
--Josh Marshall
Reed Hundt responds to Michael Powel<$NoAd$>l ...
Dear Josh:As a former FCC chair, I read with interest -- and disappointment -- the following:
"Don't look to us to block the airing of a program," Michael Powell told reporters. "I don't know of any precedent in which the commission could do that."Eighteen senators, all Democrats, wrote to Powell this week and asked him to investigate Sinclair Broadcast Group's plan to run the program, "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," two weeks before the Nov. 2 election."
But no one has asked the FCC to bar Sinclair from showing the program. There are only two issues for the FCC and only two requests to Chairman Powell.
The issues are: if Sinclair shows this anti-Kerry propaganda (which can be downloaded from Internet, lest anyone question the characterization), then (1) should it also give a free hour to pro-Kerry content selected by any authentic progressive organization, and (2) will Sinclair face at least the prospect after the fact of a review of its fulfillment of its public interest duties.
And the two requests are: (1) will the Chairman of the FCC remind Sinclair and other broadcasters by word and deed that they have public interest obligations, and (2) will the Chairman of the FCC investigate now, before the propaganda airs, whether Sinclair has a duty to give an hour to pro-Kerry content selected by any progressive organization?
Chairman Powell instead pretends that he has been asked to bar the showing of the propaganda -- which no one has asked him to do. His remarks are so far off the point, and he is so intelligent, that one must conclude that he knows what he is doing and intends the result -- tacit and plain encouragement of the use of the Sinclair airwaves to pursue a smear campaign. No broadcast group in the history of America has ever committed an hour to smearing a presidential candidate, and no FCC chairman before this one would have reacted with equanimity to this radical step down in broadcasting ethics.
By the way, this FCC Chairman had no trouble issuing volumes of commentary about the obligation of broadcasters not to air indecent material during hours when children are in the audience. As important as that obligation is to many people, no less important to our democracy is the ability to conduct an election without the bombardment from the airwaves of station-sponsored propaganda.
In any event, the current FCC Chairman is no stranger to the White House. They know who he is and what he says. So the White House can and should remind the Chairman of his duties and express publicly its expectation that broadcasters will honor our democracy by playing fair. This is what should happen. If it is not a prediction of what will happen, that's a sign of how far out of the mainstream the current Administration is.
Reed Hundt, FCC Chair 1993-97
--Josh Marshall
Here's an issue that deserves a lot of attention, but has received precious little.
National security and military readiness experts generally concede that it will be extremely difficult for the United States to indefinitely maintain 130-odd thousand troops in Iraq and still maintain even threshold levels of capacity to deter and/or respond to threats in other areas.
By some measures the system is already stretched to near the breaking point.
At the same time the president's oft-stated policy is that we will stay in Iraq as long as it takes to complete the mission of democratizing and pacifying the country.
With that reality and that policy, somethings got to give.
It doesn't mean a draft is a necessity. But it does move it into the realm of serious policy possibilities the country has to face. This is particularly so when our military relies on regular recruitment of reservists who until now generally assumed that deployments in warzones were a serious possiblity as opposed to a near certainty, as they have been for the last few years. This is also the case since the administration has said very little about how it will confront this challenge.
In any case, it's a very legitimate issue. And anyone who thinks seriously about military policy issues has to see that it is one of fairly few policy options to address a looming crisis facing the US military.
Now, the youth voter participation group Rock The Vote has been pushing this issue recently, calling for an election-year debate on the topic in ways you can see if you do a quick google search with their name in it.
And what has the response been from the president?
This week RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie sent the group a 'cease and desist' letter threatening legal action against the group and raising the possibility of seeking the revocation of the group's status as a tax-exempt 501c3 organization if the group did not cease discussing the draft issue.
Claims that a draft is possible, Gillespie argued, are so ridiculous on their face that the the group could only be acting from 'malicious intent and a reckless disregard for the truth.' (Those, of course, are catchphrases laying the groundwork for legal action.)
Gillespie's rationale for arguing that there is no basis for discussing the possibility of a draft is the say-so of the president. Gillespie quotes him saying, "We don't need the draft. Look, the all-volunteer force is working ..."
That, to Gillespie, is -- quite literally -- the end of the debate.
This move, if you think about it, is extraordinary. In a political campaign there are very few forms of political speech -- judged by content -- that should ever be subject to legal proceedings. But to threaten legal action to squelch discussion of a subject that is obviously a very newsworthy and relevant issue -- and one the country could face in the next four years -- is simply astonishing.
And yet, no editorial condemnations. Hardly a mention of it. These are now, apparently, the rules of the road -- expected and calling for no particular commenton.
That's even more astonishing.
--Josh Marshall
Beside the Bush campaign angle to Jim Tobin's resignation today, there's the connection to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
At the time the election-tampering incident happened, Tobin was Northeast political director for the Committee. What now seems clear from the offers of proof of the two men who've pled guilty in the case is that the scheme was not a local affair but arranged through the NRSC or at a minimum through its regional political director, Tobin. This is, again, what the first man to plead guilty in the case, Allen Raymond, told prosecutor Todd Hinnen during his plea negotiations.
Which raises the question, is Tobin the only person at the NRSC who was aware of the scheme? And was this the only such scheme Tobin was involved in during his tenure at the NRSC, given that he had responsibility for several other hotly contested senate races that year?
During the 2002 election cycle, the Executive Director of the NRSC was Mitch Bainwol; the Political Director was Chris LaCivita. Bainwol is now Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). LaCivita now works for push-poll king Tom Synhorst's DCI Group and is also a senior advisor to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Asking them might be a good place to start.
--Josh Marshall
Bush-Cheney New England campaign chair Jim Tobin resigns over election tampering scandal.
A few suggested questions for national political reporters needing to do catch-up on this story.
Tobin was named by the two men who've pled guilty in the case as part of their plea agreements. The Bush campaign has known for months of Tobin's involvement in this case. The only reason he resigned today is that this information was finally pried free from court documents. Why did they keep him in such a senior post if they knew of his role in such serious wrongdoing?
At the time the incident happened Tobin was the Northeast political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. This was under Sen. Bill Frist's tenure as chairman. Did anyone else at the NRSC know about this at the time?
--Josh Marshall
The rumor has been buzzing all day. And now the AP has the story about Karl Rove's appearance today before the federal grand jury investigating the Plame leak.
--Josh Marshall
Now we're cracking down?
From Reuters: "The United States on Friday ordered a freeze on assets of the militant group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq."
I know they say, 'slow to anger', but ...
--Josh Marshall
Karl trying it out in the minors before <$NoAd$>taking it to the bigs? I think we may have our first find for Karl Rove Dirty Tricks Watch (KRDTW).
In Josh Green's article in the current Atlantic Monthly, there's this passage ...
A typical instance occurred in the hard-fought 1996 race for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court between Rove's client, Harold See, then a University of Alabama law professor, and the Democratic incumbent, Kenneth Ingram. According to someone who worked for him, Rove, dissatisfied with the campaign's progress, had flyers printed up—absent any trace of who was behind them—viciously attacking See and his family. "We were trying to craft a message to reach some of the blue-collar, lower-middle-class people," the staffer says. "You'd roll it up, put a rubber band around it, and paperboy it at houses late at night. I was told, 'Do not hand it to anybody, do not tell anybody who you're with, and if you can, borrow a car that doesn't have your tags.' So I borrowed a buddy's car [and drove] down the middle of the street … I had Hefty bags stuffed full of these rolled-up pamphlets, and I'd cruise the designated neighborhoods, throwing these things out with both hands and literally driving with my knees." The ploy left Rove's opponent at a loss. Ingram's staff realized that it would be fruitless to try to persuade the public that the See campaign was attacking its own candidate in order "to create a backlash against the Democrat," as Joe Perkins, who worked for Ingram, put it to me. Presumably the public would believe that Democrats were spreading terrible rumors about See and his family. "They just beat you down to your knees," Ingram said of being on the receiving end of Rove's attacks. See won the race.
Now, look what's turned up in Tennessee. Steve Clemons has the details.
--Josh Marshall
"A crass, below-the-belt political strategy to attack the vice president's daughter."
Is that what John Kerry did in Wednesday night's debate? That's what President Bush's campaign spokesperson calls it.
People can interpret things differently. So perhaps you could say it was inappropriate or cynical or a bunch of other things. But an 'attack' on the vice president's daughter? That's just saying up is down.
And 'below-the-belt'? Like 'cheap and tawdry', why are all the criticisms coded in sexual language?
One way or another, the Republicans do seem to be playing most of the folks in the press like a fiddle on this one.
If you look at the words used by the Bush campaign's communications folks and their foot soldiers among the commentators, the issue is not so much the reference to the vice-president's daughter or her sexuality. (After all, Dick Cheney has repeatedly discussed his daughter's homosexuality on the campaign trail. And when John Edwards mentioned it during the vice-presidential debates, Cheney thanked him for doing so.) It is a fever over the use of the word 'lesbian', which these folks seem to feel is the equivalent to calling her by the name of a sex act itself.
It's a telling example of how the heavy-weights on the cable nets, the gilded and the gelded, can be played into running with genuflections to anti-gay panic as though it were a riposte to homophobia.
--Josh Marshall
"Hannaford supermarkets, the Lee Auto Malls, and the law offices of Joe Bornstein withdrew their advertising indefinitely, according to the Portland Press Herald." That's from an AP story out this morning. Sinclair's stunt has also made TheStreet.com's list of 'The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week.'
Perhaps most important, I'm hearing from sources with inside knowledge at the local station and Sinclair national headquarters level that Sinclair is getting a lot more than it bargained for with this.
All those calls to advertisers are having a real effect.
--Josh Marshall
Leave no election fraudster behind!
As we told you a few days ago, six Republican party staffers and campaign workers in South Dakota resigned over a burgeoning voter fraud scandal. Chief among them was Larry Russell, head of the South Dakota GOP's get-out-the-vote operation, the Republican Victory Program.
To date, no criminal charges have been filed. But the state Attorney General says the investigation is "continuing."
Today comes news, however, that Russell -- still under investigation in South Dakota -- has been reassigned to run President Bush's get-out-the-vote operation in Ohio. Russell will now "lead the ground operations" for Bush in Ohio, according to an internal Republican party memo obtained by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
And Russell's bringing along with him to Ohio three of the five other GOP staffers who had to resign in South Dakota and are similarly under investigation in that state.
--Josh Marshall
Ya heard it here first.
And now the Manchester Union Leader comes on board.
The unindicted co-conspirator in a 2002 election fraud case, which has already yielded two felony guilty pleas, is none other than Jim Tobin, New England regional chair of Bush-Cheney 2004, according to court documents filed Thursday by the New Hampshire Democratic Party and now reported by the Manchester Union Leader.
Tobin is named, according to the Union Leader and TPM sources, in the plea agreements of Allen Raymond and Chuck McGee, the two men who have already pled guilty to felonies in the case.
Tobin, says the article, did not return calls requesting comment from the Union Leader Tuesday or Wednesday. Tobin has also not returned repeated calls over the last three months from TPM requesting comment on his alleged involvement in the case. TPM last attempted to contact Tobin on Sunday and Monday of this week.
Now the Justice Department is intervening to delay discovery and depositions that would almost certainly bring more of the facts to light before election day.
Tobin's alleged role has been an open secret for some time within the Bush campaign, political and journalistic circles in New Hampshire and, of course, among the lawyers involved in the case. But late Thursday the state Democratic party, which has been trying for months to get more information on what happened in this case, identified Tobin by name in a new court filing and the Union Leader ran the story.
A few questions ...
1. Why do Justice Department officials in Washington seem to be interfering in the legal proceedings surrounding this case to push depositions and discovery past November 2nd? (See the Union Leader article and today's court filing.)
2. When did the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign first learn of Tobin's alleged involvement in the phone-jamming case?
3. Does the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign believe that Tobin is an appropriate person to oversee the Bush campaign in New Hampshire and the rest of New England when his alleged involvement in this earlier election fraud case is still being investigated.
--Josh Marshall
Kevin Drum has the details: as slimy and cynical as you might have imagined the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to be, they end up being even more shameless than you might have thought.
Exposed again as hacks, liars, puppets.
But then who escapes Rove with his soul in his own hands?
--Josh Marshall
A thought.
I understand that George Soros is a rather wealthy man. Perhaps he should announce that he is interested in buying 90 minutes of prime time air time on Sinclair Broadcasting to show either Fahrenheit 9/11 or, even more appropriately, Going Upriver, the new movie out about John Kerry during the Vietnam era.
If Sinclair won't sell the time, they're exposed for what they already clearly are. If the FEC won't allow it, on the premise that it amounts to a de facto campaign contribution to the Democrats or the Kerry campaign, then the folly of our current campaign laws is exposed.
I doubt somehow that Soros would ever end up having to spend the money. But he has a big enough checkbook to force the issue.
--Josh Marshall
Well, now that we've had the primaries, <$NoAd$>the convention, and the nail-biting debates, all that's really left now is the Karl Rove dirty tricks portion of the campaign, right?
As Josh Green writes in the current issue of The Atlantic (finally available free online), Rove's trademark is ferocious dirty-tricksterism in the final few weeks of dead-even campaigns ...
If this year stays true to past form, the campaign will get nastier in the closing weeks, and without anyone's quite registering it, Rove will be right back in his element. He seems to understand-indeed, to count on-the media's unwillingness or inability, whether from squeamishness, laziness, or professional caution, ever to give a full estimate of him or his work. It is ultimately not just Rove's skill but his character that allows him to perform on an entirely different plane. Along with remarkable strategic skills, he has both an understanding of the media's unstated self-limitations and a willingness to fight in territory where conscience forbids most others.
With Kerry coming out of the debates with the momentum, it really does come down to Karl now.
The voter registration shredding seems to have gotten upended, though a lot are probably already shredded. And I suspect we'll be hearing some interesting news out of New Hampshire in the next day or so.
But what else? It'll be like a 'where's Waldo' thing: Karl Rove Dirty Trick's Watch. (For examples, see the Green piece.) Who will be able to spot Karl's dirty tricks first? Who has the sharpest eye? Sit back in your seat. Get out the popcorn.
--Josh Marshall
A couple more points about the Mary Cheney brouhaha. First, Mary Cheney isn't simply the vice-president's daughter. She's managing her father's campaign. She's Bush-Cheney '04's 'Director of Vice Presidential Operations.'
A reader (RS) notes another point -- a very perceptive one that I'm surprised no one else has noted. Lynne Cheney called Kerry's mention of her daughter "cheap and tawdry." Those are words redolent of associations with sexual deviance, not rough campaign tactics. She might have said what he did was 'mean-spirited', 'underhanded', 'devious', 'inappropriate', 'wrong'. She chose 'cheap and tawdry'. Interesting ...
And one other thing: how long will the Bush campaign push this issue since they've already made the strategic choice to run as the anti-gay campaign? That's a tough balance to hold.
--Josh Marshall
A number of folks have noted an underlying <$Ad$>disagreement that came up several times in last night's debate. Namely, that in President Bush's worldview states remain central. Once terrorists are separated from their state sponsors -- as al Qaida was from the Taliban after the Afghan War -- the danger they pose diminishes dramatically.
Kerry, meanwhile, disagrees, believing that what is genuinely novel and dangerous about the post-Cold War world is the breakdown of sovereignty itself, which allows terrorist networks to practice catastrophic violence with little or no support from states.
The issue is discussed in an article in The Atlantic Monthly from this summer ...
From its inception the Bush Administration has viewed states as the key actors on the world stage, and relations among them as the primary concern of U.S. foreign policy. It is a mindset rooted in the realities of the Cold War, which defined U.S. foreign policy at the time when most of the president's key advisers gained their formative experience in government. The fixity of this mindset also explains why the Bush Administration spent its first months so heavily focused on the issue of national missile defense, and seemed so surprised by al-Qaeda's transnational terrorism. The Bush team didn't discount the problem of weapons of mass destruction; it simply expected trouble to come from an ICBM-wielding "rogue state" like Iraq or North Korea rather than from Islamic terrorist groups.Viewed through this lens, the Administration's fixation on Iraq after 9/11 becomes somewhat easier to understand. As Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith explained to Nicholas Lemann, of The New Yorker, on the eve of the Iraq War, "One of the principal strategic thoughts underlying our strategy in the war on terrorism is the importance of the connection between terrorist organizations and their state sponsors. Terrorist organizations cannot be effective in sustaining themselves over long periods of time to do large-scale operations if they don't have support from states."
To the Democrats ha Kerry's orbit, this approach is at best inefficient and at worst akin to fighting fire with gasoline--for example, it has created terrorism in Iraq where little or none previously existed. Last fall, when I asked the presidential candidate General Wesley Clark about Feith's characterization of the threat, he said it was the "principal strategic mistake behind the Administration's policy." Clark went on, "If you look at all the states that were named as the principal adversaries, they're on the periphery of international terrorism today."
First as a military negotiator in Bosnia and later as NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the second Clinton Administration, Clark was one of the figures at the center of the process that shaped current Democratic foreign-policy views. In its early years, rhetoric aside, the Clinton Administration hewed closely to George H.W. Bush's policy of studied non-involvement in the Balkans, even as Yugoslavia slid into chaos. But over time that region became a forcing ground for re-evaluating Democratic beliefs about foreign policy. The Balkans proved that soft-sounding concerns like human-rights abuses, ethnic slaughter, lawlessness, and ideological extremism could quickly mount into first-order geopolitical crises.
By the mid-1990s this had led the Clinton Administration to focus on terrorism, failed states, and weapons proliferation, and as it did, its foreign-policy outlook changed. The key threats to the United States came to be seen less in terms of traditional conflicts between states and more in terms of endemic regional turmoil of the sort found in the Balkans. "The Clinton Administration," says Jonathan Winer, "started out with a very traditional Democratic or even mainstream approach to foreign policy: big-power politics, Russia being in the most important role; a critical relationship with China; European cooperation; and some multilateralism." But over the years, he went on, "they moved much more to a failed-state, global-affairs kind of approach, recognizing that the trends established by globalization required you to think about foreign policy in a more synthetic and integrated fashion than nation-state to nation-state"
As Winer argues, the threats were less from Russia or China, or even from the rogue states, than from the breakdown of sovereignty and authority in a broad geographic arc that stretched from West Africa through the Middle East, down through the lands of Islam, and into Southeast Asia. In this part of the world poverty, disease, ignorance, fanaticism, and autocracy frequently combined in a self-reinforcing tangle, fostering constant turmoil. Home to many failed or failing states, this area bred money laundering, waves of refugees, drug production, gunrunning, and terrorist networks--the cancers of the twenty-first-century world order.
In the Balkans, Holbrooke, Clark, and other leading figures found themselves confronting problems that required not only American military force but also a careful synthesis of armed power, peacekeeping capacity, international institutions, and nongovernmental organizations to stabilize the region and maintain some kind of order. Though the former Yogoslavia has continued to experience strife, the settlement in the Balkans remains the most successful one in recent memory, and offers the model on which a Kerry Administration would probably build. As Holbrooke told me, the Bush Administration's actions in Iraq have shown that the Administration understands only the military component of this model: "Most of them don't have a real understanding of what it takes to do nation-building, which is an important part of the overall democratic process."
A key assumption shared by almost all Democratic foreign-policy hands is that by themselves the violent overthrow of a government and the initiation of radical change from above almost never foster democracy, an expanded civil society, or greater openness. "If you have too much change too quickly," Winer says, "you have violence and repression. We don't want to see violence and repression in [the Middle East]. We want to see a greater zone for civilization--a greater zone fur personal and private-sector activity and for governmental activity that is not an enactment of violence." Bush and his advisers have spoken eloquently about democratization. But in the view of their Democratic counterparts, their means of pursuing it are plainly counterproductive. It is here, Holbrooke says, that the Administration's alleged belief in the stabilizing role of liberal democracy and open society collides with its belief in the need to rule by force and, if necessary, violence: "The neoconservatives and the conservatives--and they both exist in uneasy tension within this Administration--shift unpredictably between advocacy of democratization and advocacy of neo-imperialism without any coherent intellectual position, except the importance of the use of force."
Because Afghanistan was the Bush Administration's first order of business following the 9/11 attacks, the results of this policy have advanced the furthest there. And because Kerry is on record as saying he would increase the number of U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, it's probably the clearest measure of how a Kerry Administration would differ from Bush's. Afghanistan is a subject that Kerry's advisers and other senior Democrats turn to again and again. When I interviewed Joseph Biden in late March, he recounted a conversation he'd had with Condoleezza Rice in the spring of 2002 about the growing instability that had taken hold after the Taliban was defeated, in late 2001. Biden told Rice he believed that the United States was on the verge of squandering its military victory by allowing the country to slip back into the corruption, tyranny, and chaos that had originally paved the way for Taliban rule. Rice was uncomprehending. "What do you mean?" he remembers her asking. Biden pointed to the re-emergence in western Afghanistan of Ismail Khan, the pre-Taliban warlord in Herat who quickly reclaimed power after the American victory. He told me: "She said, 'Look, al-Qaeda's not there. The Taliban's not there. There's security there: I said, 'You mean turning it over to the warlords?' She said, "Yeah, it's always been that way.'"
Biden was seeking to illustrate the blind spot that Democratic foreign-policy types see in Bush officials like Rice, who believe that if a rogue state has been lid of its hostile government (in this case the Taliban), its threat has therefore been neutralized. Democrats see Afghanistan as an affirmation of their own view of modern terrorism. As Fareed Zakaria noted recently in Newsweek, the Taliban regime was not so much a state sponsoring and directing a terrorist organization (the Republican view) as a terrorist organization sponsoring, guiding, and even hijacking a state (the Democratic view). Overthrowing regimes like that is at best only the first step in denying safe haven to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Equally important is creating the institutional bases of stability and liberalization that will prevent another descent into lawlessness and terror--in a word, nation-building.
For all those who say there's no difference between the candidates on foreign policy, this is a critical one.
--Josh Marshall
RNC payments this year to Sproul & Associates. About 125k, according to FEC records.
But they didn't do anywhere near as well as [all caps] SPROUL & ASSOCIATES,INC. They got about a half a million RNC dollars.
Special sleuthing thanks to TPM reader JW.
Also check out this petition about the RNC's registration shredding wizards.
--Josh Marshall
A couple days ago we posted a link to this database of Sinclair Broadcasting advertisers. Unfortunately, at least at first, there seemed to be some problems accessing the site. Now, though, those problems seem to have been resolved and everyone should be able to access the site and the database without any problems.
It's been steadily updated and contains many more entries than it did only yesterday.
The big groups have been surprisingly, painfully cautious about getting into this. So if this is important to you it will have to be picked up on the local level.
If you're wondering if it helps, see this ...
Meier said his restaurants began receiving calls on Tuesday and the volume picked up on Wednesday."I took most of the calls, and the people were very polite and well-behaved," said Meier. "But most of them said they were long-time customers and they weren't going to come in as long as we continued to advertise on Channel 47."
See the rest here ...
--Josh Marshall
"I want justice. There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, "Wanted: Dead or Alive" ... I just remember, all I'm doing is remembering when I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in the old west, a wanted poster. It said: "Wanted, Dead or Alive." All I want and America wants him brought to justice. That's what we want."
Bush on bin Laden
September 17th, 2001
"A fellow came the other day to the office and said, 'Well, are you worried about Mr. bin Laden?' I said, 'No, I'm not too worried about him. He's the guy that needs to be worried.' [Laughter] But I want to assure you, the objective is not bin Laden. Oh, we'll get bin Laden. There's only so many caves he can hide in, if he's still hiding in caves. My attitude was, once we get him running, it's just a matter of time before we bring him to justice."
Bush on bin Laden
January 22nd, 2002
"As I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban. But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore."
Bush on bin Laden
March 13th, 2002
--Josh Marshall
A number of Republican party-liners are trying to whip up a hue and cry over John Kerry's mention of Dick Cheney's daughter. Carl Limbacher ludicrously calls it "Kerry's 'Lesbian' Attack."
In Pennsylvania, Lynne Cheney called it "a cheap and tawdry political trick" and said Kerry "is not a good man."
If you scan over the right-wing press, they're using terms like 'outed' and 'attack' and other words like that.
They doth protest too much.
Not only is Mary Cheney not closeted, her professional life has been explicitly tied to her sexuality. She did outreach to the gay and lesbian communities when she worked at Coors.
It is a delicate issue -- since it's inherently personal and deals with one of the candidate's children. But it was brought up in the context of a question about whether homosexuality is a choice. And more to the point: what's the problem exactly unless you instinctively believe that homosexuality is something to be ashamed of?
If one of Cheney's children was, God forbid, paraplegic and Kerry referred to him or her in the context of a question about people with disabilities, would there be a problem?
I suspect not.
From what some are saying, you'd think he brought up her criminal record, her problem with shoplifting, the unspeakable problem with pills.
--Josh Marshall
Now, to follow up.
Various mistatements get made in debates. Some clearly intentional; others because of poor memory or confusion. But the president gave the Democrats one helluva gift with that remark about bin Laden.
As you'll remember, it came from this exchange ...
KERRY: Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."
We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.
SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?
BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.
Now of course about a thousand wire stories have made crystal clear that the president said precisely that.
As the AP put it in a story out just after the debate ...
Kerry accurately quoted Bush as saying he does not think much about Osama bin Laden and is not all that concerned about him. The president protested: "I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations."But in March 2002, Bush indeed said, "I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run." He described the terrorist leader as "marginalized," and said, "I just don't spend that much time on him."
It's actually worth reading the passage in its entirety. It comes from a press conference the president held on March 13th 2002, just as the build-up for the Iraq war was getting underway ...
Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.
But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.
And we've got more work to do. See, that's the thing the American people have got to understand, that we've only been at this six months. This is going to be a long struggle. I keep saying that; I don't know whether you all believe me or not. But time will show you that it's going to take a long time to achieve this objective. And I can assure you, I am not going to blink. And I'm not going to get tired. Because I know what is at stake. And history has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom.
Not only is the quote accurate. But the broader context is <$Ad$>entirely on the mark. This wasn't some stray comment taken out of context.
Setting the narrow gotcha issue aside, though, there are three reasons why the Democrats can use this effectively against the president.
First, this isn't some insignifcant matter like whether Dick Cheney ever met John Edwards. This cuts to the essence of what the election is about: terrorism and whether the president kept his eye on the ball.
Second, the president's honesty is also a central issue. In particular, honesty about terrorism and bin Laden and Saddam. This cuts to the heart of that too: the president not leveling with the public about what's happened in the war on terror.
Third, as Kevin Drum rightly notes, this is an excuse to play that video clip again and again and again. And for the president that's not a good clip at all. In that passage, when the president says that bin Laden has become marginalized and that he's moving ahead with the war on terror, what he's talking about -- more or less explicitly -- is shifting from bin Laden to Iraq. He's describing how he took his eye off the ball. And seeing what we're now seeing in Iraq, that really says it all.
--Josh Marshall
Looking back over these four debates I realize that in two of the cases my judgment was significantly different than what the consensus judgment turned out to be. In the first debate I thought Kerry put on a solid performance while the president was wobbly. I thought Kerry won; but my initial impression was not that it was a rout, as the consensus judgment eventually determined. I thought the veep debate went much better for Edwards than many thought.
Having said that, I thought John Kerry won this debate. And I say that in the context of the debate itself as well as its role in the campaign now unfolding. It wasn't a trouncing. Bush did okay. But here are several reasons why I think Kerry bested the president.
Kerry looked more presidential than the president. I don't know how else to put it.
He seemed collected and forceful through the whole thing. The president, meanwhile, seemed excitable, edgy and sometimes ungrounded. Again and again with the banging the table. Perhaps after one question you can get away with a cocky look of sarcastic disbelief after your opponent stops talking. But not every other time.
At one point in the debate, after Kerry referred to two leading news organizations rejecting the president's attacks on Kerry's plan, Bush looked back at Bob Schieffer and made a crack about trusting "leading news organizations."
I don't doubt a few media bias obsessives (and probably a few CBS execs) understood that this was a dig at Scieffer's employer, CBS. But I suspect it went right over most people's heads. As well it should have. Not everyone lives in wingerville. And the president's habit of roughing people up with jocular derision doesn't work as well when the trappings of power aren't all around him.
Again, to recap, Kerry seemed more presidential than the president.
Another point struck me as similar to the first debate, very similar. Kerry controlled the tempo of the evening. He kept the president on the defensive. He landed his key points about the budget deficit and the president's avoidance of the job issue several times. On health care there was more of a tussle. But I don't think the president framed the evening in the way he and his advisors wanted -- defining Kerry as an out-of-the-mainstream liberal. He did better at that in debate number two than he did tonight.
Let me draw back now and say something about timing and the progression of the debate. I thought both candidates came out to fight. The president came in hitting hard. But Kerry stood toe-to-toe with him. And after maybe 15 or 20 minutes I thought some of the ummph went out of the president.
I watched on CSPAN, where you have the benefit of the permanent split screen. And right there at probably about the half hour mark, there were a few times when Kerry was talking and the president was looking over at him, neck slightly craned, with this odd look on his face. (My dad would probably call it a sh-t-eating grin.). And with that look of edgy hesitation the president seemed to be saying, 'You're guttin' me like a fish.'
At some level the president seemed to wobble after that. His hits about the 'global test' seemed half-hearted and poorly delivered, as did other attacks. They even struck me as a tad desperate. Sometimes he'd tack on a catch-phrase after not being able to put together an actual answer. He talked about being strong but he didn't seem strong.
A few other miscellaneous points.
The president should have used humor more. It works for him. And I mean actual humor, not the jabs at the moderator.
I thought President Bush landed some punches with his attacks on leadership as well as when he hit Kerry on spending in the abstract after Kerry was discussing so many different new programs.
On the other hand, as was the case with the veep's debate, the president just told a number of untruths. And I think that'll be used against him in the coming days. Kerry is better at thinking on his feet than using prefab lines from the debate coaches. The Tony Soprano line? ehhh ...
As for the broader context of the race. If you look at the polls right now they are about as close to an absolute tie as they could possibly be. Even a standard margin of error should -- or one might expect would -- have created a little more of a spread in the numbers. But if these guys go into election day dead even in the mid- or high 40s, that's not good at all for the president. And there does seem to be some very slight poll momentum moving in Kerry's direction. As was the case with the first debate I think the key to tonight's performance was that the public saw a very different John Kerry than the president, his vice president and their surrogates are portraying on the hustings.
The president needed to land some punches tonight. I don't think he did. I think a tie would be a narrow win for Kerry, given the broader dynamics of the race. And I don't think it was a tie.
--Josh Marshall
You'll notice that we've been referring to Voters Outreach of America as GOP-backed or GOP-funded. We're not using the phrase loosely. You'll note that on this VOA job flyer posted on careerbuilder.com it says "Paid for by the Republican National Committee. www.gop.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee."
--Josh Marshall
Nathan Sproul, it seems, is also a regional president of Voyager Expanded Learning Company, a company chock-full of Bush cronies currently supping at the No Child Left Behind act gravy-train. Also at Voyager is Jim Nelson, President Bush's education commissioner during his tenure in Texas. That was before the president appointed him as deputy education czar in Baghdad for a brief stint in 2003. This thread at Kos seems to provide a complete Sproularama.
--Josh Marshall
Fascinating. Employees of Voters Outreach of America, a GOP-funded voter registration outfit operating in Nevada, say they personally witnessed company employees shredding hundreds or even thousands of Democratic registrations. Now the same company (VOA) is being accused of destroying Democratic registration forms in Oregon.
The head of VOA is Nathan Sproul, a Republican political consultant who used to be the executive director of the Arizona state Republican party.
In gaining access to venues to register voters, he has apparently been claiming that his group is part of America Votes, a voter education and registration groups put together by a consortium of Democrat-leaning groups like the AFL-CIO, Emily's List, the Sierra Club and others.
A quick scan of Nexis shows Sproul's outfit is also operating in West Virginia (see Charleston Gazette, August 20th), where they've already raised some controversy for misleading tactics if not destroying legally valid registrations.
--Josh Marshall
The guy who's got the best handle on the Bush campaign's strategy in the final stretch is the author of the NewDonkey website. It's back to the future, straight outta the 1980s, 'liberal, liberal, liberal!'
Before the afternoon slips away, I'm hoping to do a few posts about tonight's debate. But given that new strategy, the Kerry camp would do well to mine this end-of-August piece from the National Journal. You'll remember that the Bush campaign has been endlessly harping on the claim that the Journal judged Kerry the most liberal member of the Senate.
In this piece the Journal itself says in so many words that the stat is bogus and that the Republicans' use of it has been "sometimes misleading -- or just plain wrong."
As the Bush campaign's reputation for lying goes, it's not all that bad. But it's still worth noting.
--Josh Marshall
I've already gotten a number <$Ad$>of emails, as I expected, about the Newsmax ad for Ann Coulter's new book down there to the left. It's not a mistake. The site hasn't been hacked. A year ago, when I started accepting ads I gave much thought to the policy I would maintain for them. And I decided, for many reasons, that I would not reject ads based on political content. (I restated the policy a few days ago in this post and discussed limits of taste and appropriateness that I do apply.) Distinguishing issues of taste and appropriateness from mere political disagreement is not always easy, especially when the opinions expressed are as hateful, ugly and -- more than either of those two -- just ridiculous as Coulter's are. But this is my policy. It is consistent with my understanding of what this site is and why it accepts paid advertising. And I'm sticking with it. Your comments are of course welcome.
--Josh Marshall
Their own private Florida. News from the CBS affiliate in Las <$NoAd$>Vegas ...
Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.
The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.
The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.
Click here to read the rest of the story.
And here's a careerbuilder.com listing for the same company looking for door-to-door canvassers. Paid for by the GOP. And here it seems that the same outfit was doing work for Nader in Arizona.
--Josh Marshall
Do you live in a Sinclair media market? (Check here to find out.)
If so, watch tonight's evening newscast and write down a list of the advertisers (especially the local ones) who have commercials running during the broadcast.
Write up a list, as brief, clear and concise as possible, including the names of the advertisers and the time and date of the program you watched them on. Of course, include the name of the affiliate and the city too. Then send them in to us. Make the Subject heading "ADVERTS."
--Josh Marshall
In the last few hours many readers have written in to say that they've called various Sinclair affiliates either to be referred to Sinclair corporate headquarters, shunted into voicemail, or hung up on.
Some affiliates have refused to identify the given station's sales manager.
Now, this site might be of help for identifying who's who at various stations. But let's be very clear: contacting a given affiliate's sales manager and telling them of your displeasure is very much of secondary importance.
Local Sinclair reps are suggesting that callers call their corporate HQ. But, believe me, don't waste your time.
The key is to identify their local advertisers and contact them. You can find information out here or, if you're in a Sinclair market, just watch the evening news show and mark down who the advertisers are. Then contact them directly -- and if possible, place a call. Or better yet, send an old-fashioned paper letter. Actually, scratch that, do both.
For good measure, it's great to tell the sales manager what you're doing. But if your message to the advertiser is successful they'll be taking the matter up with the sales manager directly. And he or she will definitely be taking their call.
--Josh Marshall
A reader from <$NoAd$>the WSTR media market sends in the following ...
Just talked to Eric Lazar, sales manager at WSTR, who said he'd heard from only one or two other people regarding Sinclair's decision to broadcast the program. He was very courteous, but suggested I contact the corporate office before I began calling advertisers culled from tonight's 10 p.m. news broadcast. He suggested I start with William Butler, vice president of programming and promotions.
I just put in a second call to Lazar. The reader is correct: Lazar was quite courteous. I asked if he would confirm that LaRosa's and King's Automall were WSTR advertisers. He politely declined to discuss who their advertisers are and referred me on to corporate headquarters. But with respect to Mr. Lazar, calling corporate headquarters is exactly what Sinclair would like you to do. And calling their local advertisers -- where most of their revenue comes from -- is the last thing they want you doing.
--Josh Marshall
A brief follow-up on contacting advertisers. I'm already getting reports from the field that many Sinclair advertisers are starting to communicate their concern to Sinclair. If you don't live anywhere near a Sinclair station then by all means make your concerns known to their national advertisers. But from knowledgable folks I talk to, I get the strong impression that the real point of vulnerability are the local advertisers. So if you live in or really anywhere near a Sinclair market that's definitely where to focus.
--Josh Marshall
Just a note on how this can work.
The Sinclair boycott website lists two advertisers on WSTR, the Sinclair station in Cincinnati, Ohio. I know some folks haven't been able to access the site, but the two listed are King's Automall and LaRosa's, a pizzeria chain.
I called WSTR and the sales manager wasn't available. The woman I spoke to could not confirm that King's Automall and LaRosa's were advertising at this moment. But she did say that they were regular advertisers on the station.
I then called LaRosa's and King's Automall to ask if they were indeed presently advertising on WSTR. In both cases I was told the person in question was at lunch. So I wasn't able to get confirmation from the advertisers.
But you can see how this is done. As the reader earlier today noted, the key is to talk to the sales manager. Tell that person of your concerns and that you'll be contacting the advertisers individually to do the same.
Specificity is key.
And one other point about tactics and decency, which overlap in this case. Please don't be rude or hostile. Be firm. Make clear that you're serious. And make your feelings known. But remember that the advertiser in question probably didn't know anything about this until today or maybe yesterday. And the person you'll actually be talking to at the station, and even more so with the advertiser, is as likely as not to be a Kerry supporter. What Sinclair is doing is egregious. But if you start making calls you'll be talking to a lot of folks who don't even know what's going on with all this and certainly aren't directly responsible for it.
Finally, and again, there are good instructions for how to approach this in the reader letter posted here this morning. And here's the list of Sinclair's local stations.
--Josh Marshall
A reader gets results<$NoAd$> ...
As suggested in a post you have further down, I just called the Cincinatti station's sales mgr. He was really concerned when I read him a list of local adverstisers and said I'd be calling their advertising managers to express my displeasure that they choose to advertise on a Sinclair station. He practically begged me not to, saying "this involves people's livelihoods." And then I did call the local advertisers.So you are correct. Local stations -- SALES MANAGERS and local advertisers AD MANAGERS are the pressure point.
Please do what you can to get the word out.
You heard the guy ...
--Josh Marshall
The verbatim quote from Sinclair's Mark <$NoAd$>Hyman, from this morning on CNN ...
However, the accusations coming from Terry McAuliffe and others, is it because they are some elements of this that may reflect poorly on John Kerry? That it's somehow an in-kind contribution of George Bush?If you use that logic and reasoning, that means every car bomb in Iraq would be an in-kind contribution to John Kerry. Weak job performance ratings that came out last month would have been an in- kind contribution to John Kerry. And that's just nonsense.
This is news. I can't change the fact that these people decided to come forward today. The networks had this opportunity over a month ago to speak with these people. They chose to suppress them. They chose to ignore them. They are acting like Holocaust deniers, pretending these men don't exist.
Reporting unemployment statistics is the same as running free commercials from rabid partisans. See where we're going with this?
Pigs ...
--Josh Marshall
From Reed Hundt, Former Chair, FC<$NoAd$>C ...
Dear Josh:Why is it important that Sinclair Broadcasting be urged in all lawful ways that can be imagined to reconsider its decision to broadcast on its television stations the anti-Kerry "documentary"?
Because in a large, pluralistic information society democracy will not work unless electronic media distribute reasonably accurate information and also competing opinions about political candidates to the entire population. Certainly, for the overwhelming number of voters this year, controlling impressions of the candidates for President are obtained from television.
In all countries, candidates for public office governments aspire to have favorable information and a chorus of favorable opinion disseminated through mass media to the citizenry. In a democracy, on the eve of a quadrennial election, the incumbent government plainly has a motive to encourage the media to report positively on its record but also negatively on the rival. But its role instead is to make sure that broadcast television promote democracy by conveying reasonably accurate reflections of where the candidates stand and what they are like.
To that end, since television was invented, Congress and its delegated agency, the Federal Communications Commision, together have passed laws and regulations to ensure that broadcast television stations provide reasonably accurate, balanced, and fair coverage of major Presidential and Congressional candidates. These obligations are reflected in specific provisions relating to rights to buy advertising time, bans against the gift of advertising time, rights to reply to opponents, and various other specific means of accomplishing the goal of balance and fairness. The various rules are part of a tradition well known to broadcasters an honored by almost all of them. This tradition is embodied in the commitment of the broadcasters to show the conventions and the debates.
Part of this tradition is that broadcasters do not show propaganda for any candidate, no matter how much a station owner may personally favor one or dislike the other. Broadcasters understand that they have a special and conditional role in public discourse. They received their licenses from the public -- licenses to use airwaves that, for instance, cellular companies bought in auctions -- for free, and one condition is the obligation to help us hold a fair and free election. The Supreme Court has routinely upheld this "public interest" obligation. Virtually all broadcasters understand and honor it.
Sinclair has a different idea, and a wrong one in my view. If Sinclair wants to disseminate propaganda, it should buy a printing press, or create a web site. These other media have no conditions on their publication of points of view. This is the law, and it should be honored. In fact, if the FCC had any sense of its responsibility as a steward of fair elections its chairman now would express exactly what I am writing to you here.-- Reed Hundt
Speaks for itself ...
--Josh Marshall
From a reader ..<$NoAd$>.
I’ve worked in the media business for 30 years and I guarantee you that sales is what these local TV stations are all about. They don’t care about license renewal or overwhelming public outrage. They care about sales only, so only local advertisers can affect their decisions.Here's how to have an impact on the local Sinclair stations: first, watch the station and make a list of all of the local advertisers. Then, write to the sales manager -- not the general manager, but the sales manager -- and tell him that you're going to contact all of the local advertisers to register a protest about the station airing this program. Be specific -- mention the names of those local advertisers. Then, actually contact them (if you write or email, cc the sales manager). These stations make most of their income (around 60%) from local advertisers and will NOT want to have that income threatened.
This has worked numerous times. A recent example was when a local radio morning show host in North Carolina told his listeners to aim for bicyclists on the road (he was ranting about how cyclists have no right to share the roadways). The station defended him for several days amidst public outcry, until the advertisers, under pressure from outraged cyclists, began to make noise. Suddenly, the station reversed itself, suspended the host for several days, and made him do public service announcements for weeks about sharing the road with cyclists.
This can work! I plan to start tonight!
Sounds right to me.
--Josh Marshall
Schadenfreude on the prairie ...
So many Republican bark lines really do come down to simple projection. John Thune and the South Dakota GOP have now spent two elections trying to get him back into office with trumped up charges of voter fraud -- largely aimed at the state's Native American population.
Last night six employees and affiliates of the state Republican party had to resign over their own burgeoning ballot fraud scandal.
--Josh Marshall
Meanwhile, if you needed more evidence of what sort of sick trash we're dealing with here, according to a poster on DailyKos, Sinclair vice president Mark Hyman just said on CNN that Kerry and the Democrats are like "holocaust deniers" and that if the Sinclair stunt is an "in-kind donation to George Bush" then "every suicide bomb that goes off in Iraq is an in-kind donation to John Kerry."
Presumably this was just down from on-air within the last hour. So I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the quotes. But a quite look at this morning's Post shows that yesterday Hyman said "the networks are acting like Holocaust deniers" for not showing the POWs' story. So I think there's every reason to believe that the quotes are accurate.
--Josh Marshall
Many readers have written in to say that the link below to a database of Sinclair advertisers does not work. I'm not sure why or what to suggest. It opens up fine for me and at least some other readers. All I can figure is that perhaps it's a brand new domain (URL) and it hasn't propagated fully yet. So keep trying and if anyone has another site or address for the same info, send it along and I'll post it.
--Josh Marshall
Zogby has the race back to a tie at 45%. CBS has a new poll out with Bush up by three -- 48% to 45%. (CBS has a one point Bush lead if Nader isn't included, which shows you the impact of the fools who are planning to vote for Nader.) Gallup has Kerry up by one, 49% to 48%.
--Josh Marshall
A database of Sinclair Broadcasting Group advertisers, organized by market.
--Josh Marshall
The buck stops with the Joint <$NoAd$>Staff ...
KERRY: He rushed to war without a plan to win the peace.Ladies and gentleman, he gave you a speech and told you he'd plan carefully, take every precaution, take our allies with us. He didn't. He broke his word.
GIBSON: Mr. President?
BUSH: I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, "Do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes?"
I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, "Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?"
And they looked me in the eye and said, "Yes, sir, Mr. President." Of course, I listen to our generals. That's what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy.
From Friday night's debate.
--Josh Marshall
A suggestion from a reader ...
A stockholder in Sinclair Broadcast Group can file what's called a "shareholder's derivative action" against the officers and directors of the corporation, which is publically traded, to enjoin the officers and directors from using corporate resources in ways that do not benefit the shareholders. I believe Sinclair is incorporated in Maryland, and if so that's probably where the action should be brought. One stockholder has standing to sue and should request a temporary restraining order before the pseudo-documentary airs to prevent the officers and directors from misusing corporate property to benefit their political agenda. The reason it is misuse of corporate property is because ordering the local stations to air the anti-Kerry propoganda will likely cause a loss of network advertising revenue, may in fact violate the stations' contracts with the networks they are affiliated with, and is almost sure to embroil the corporation in costly legal battles, for example from entities complaining that this is an illegal corporate campaign contribution, or from angry consumers who will contest the stations' license renewals. Against this, there has to be some plausible benefit to the stockholders or the corporate action is unlawful and could subject the officers and directors to personal liability for any damage to the stockholders. They also could be stuck with the legal fees of both the corporation and the stockholders who sued them.Shareholders derivative actions are fairly complex; we need a Maryland corporate lawyer type. I'm a lawyer in Texas and was thinking to file the suit here but under Texas law, the acts of the officers and directors are governed by the corporate law of the state of incorporation, about which I know little. However, I do know that as a general principle, corporate officials have a fiduciary obligation to the stockholders, and everything they do is supposed to be for the benefit of the same. Normally a court won't second-guess the decisions unless the stockholder can show that there is no plausible benefit to the corporation in the complained-of act. What could the benefit be here?
I'd be curious to hear <$NoAd$>reactions from readers with relevant legal or business experience how practicable this would be. Of course, I'm curious about everyone's reactions. But in this case I'm particularly interested in hearing with folks with professional insight into how this might work. Of course, the most direct approach -- and I suspect a successful one if done correctly -- is to target Sinclair's advertisers. Another reader writes in the following ...
[I've removed the introduction to this letter where the reader describes a local TV market where he works. Suffice it to say that he works in local TV and says he has friends who work at some of the Sinclair affiliates in question.]
Let me tell you, they're NOT afraid in the least of the license challenges that Steve Soto has proposed. I mean, what's the point? If they air it, then fine, challenge away, I'm all for taking revenge on them. But the goal should be to shut down the broadcast before it happens.What they're deathly afraid of is the stink of this thing will somehow waft over to their advertisers. That's of course why they're not selling local ad time for this show. Having worked in the ad department of Sinclair's competitor, I know that local Sinclair stations make over 60% of their ad revenue from their nightly 6pm newscast. That's their bread and butter. You make a concerted effort to go after their top advertisers on the 5pm/6pm news hour and you'll have the executives spiking this show so fast it'll be amazing.
Again, I have no basis for judging what would work best, though common sense suggests that going after these guys on every front simultaneously would probably be the best bet.
--Josh Marshall
As we move into the rough and tumble of the final month of this campaign, let me take a brief moment to restate the TPM ad policy first discussed here just under a year ago.
(If you'd rather read about US politics rather than this site's ad policy -- which I'd entirely understand -- by all means scroll down to the next post.)
I've gotten many questions about this via email. So let me try to address them again in one fell swoop.
The ads that run on this site represent a commercial transaction. There is no implied endorsement whatsoever.
Recently, there was one ad running on this site that was pro-Nader; another that was anti-Nader. People wrote in complaining about the pro-Nader ad; others were miffed by the anti-Nader ad. And when they were both running at the same time there were several complaints from folks claiming it was hypocritical to run both of them since I could not support the messages contained in each.
Anybody who's read this site for any length of time knows there aren't many people who have a dimmer view of Ralph Nader these days than I do. But, again, the ad space is open to all political views -- left, right and center.
That doesn't mean that everything is allowed. I reserve the right to reject ads that I find inappropriate for reasons of content or taste. And I would reject ads that I thought were unambiguously spreading falsehoods. But in each case my effort would be to lean in the direction of inclusion. And I would do my best to make the judgment with as little coloration as possible by my political views.
(I have, for instance, rejected a number of ads over the last year. Some of those were simply cases of content that censors wouldn't let you put on TV -- four letter words, sexual content, etc. Most though were ads that attacked the president in ways I found tasteless, needlessly degrading or just disrespectful.)
I think this is a sound policy, both practically and in principle. And I don't plan on changing it. But I welcome your views and suggestions.
--Josh Marshall
Too generous ...
I had been thinking about a post that would put in stark terms what is going on with this Sinclair Broadcasting stunt, noting how it amounts to a massive in-kind contribution from Sinclair to the Bush-Cheney campaign to pay for the broadcast of an hourlong Swift Boat ad ("Stolen Honor") smack down in the middle of primetime broadcasting on local network television channels across the country. After all, it's the same basic material and it even includes several of the same aggrieved veterans.
But like I said, too generous. It isn't like a Swift Boat ad. It actually is a Swift Boat ad.
A perspicacious TPM reader (JJG) notes that a September 29th press release on the 'Stolen Honor' website announced that 'POWs for Truth', the sponsor of the 'documentary', was merging with 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' to form the new consolidated group 'Swift Vets and POWs For Truth.'
If it weren't so disgusting, it would almost be funny.
So the Swift Boat folks are hawking a 'documentary' put together by a guy who has specialized for the last fifteen years or so in made-to-order investigations for various right-wing outfits like Rev. Moon. Sinclair orders their 62 network affiliates to run the thing in prime time days before the election. And they give the Swift Boat folks the ad time for free on the premise that they're running it as news programming.
Unlike cable programming, local broadcast licenses aren't 'owned' -- courts have always been clear on this. The right to broadcast over a given slice of spectrum is public property on loan to the broadcaster in exchange for providing programming in the public interest. This move is but a paler version of the de-democratization we're now seeing in Russia as the standing government asserts increasing control over a nominally independent media.
It's not a 'fairness' or a free speech issue. It's a massive and quite public case of election and campaign finance fraud.
It's the sort of thing that, if it happens, will put the legitimacy of the entire election into doubt.
Welcome to the world of Rove.
--Josh Marshall
Yesterday former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt sent the following message to <$NoAd$>executives at Sinclair Broadcasting Group ...
Dear sirs:I'm told you were involved in a decision to order Sinclair stations to carry anti-Kerry propaganda. If my information is false, please forgive this intrusion. While I do not believe you should be required to carry pro-Kerry content, except of course for an even-handed sale of your advertising time to both campaigns, I do wish to register my objection and concern if in fact you have obliged your stations to carry anti-Kerry propaganda.
I assure you that if you were carrying anti-Bush propaganda I would be equally concerned.
The problem is this: How can it be part of a broadcaster's public interest obligation to aspire to alter the perceptions of the audience about a presidential candidate by showing biased content that in no way reflects either breaking news or even-handed treatment of the issues? Why should a broadcaster keep its licenses if it behaves in this manner? I hope you will reconsider your edict -- unless, of course, I am misinformed, in which case I do hope you forgive this message.
-- Reed Hundt
He hits on the key point: the stations' licenses. And here are some good ideas about how to proceed.
--Josh Marshall
The Times today has a piece on the anti-Kerry documentary Sinclair Broadcasting Group has ordered its 62 local stations to broadcast in the days before the election. Those 62 stations include affiliates of all six major broadcast networks in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The broadcast will preempt normal prime-time programming on those channels.
In case you are holding out some errant hope about the accuracy or fairness of the presentation, you'll be happy to know that the major claim-to-fame of the movie's producer, Carlton Sherwood, is Inquisition, his 1991 expose on the US government's alleged 'persecution' of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
Sherwood's report was so 'independent' that he let Moon's representatives pre-screen it and make changes to the text. They also reportedly agreed to buy 100,000 copies of the book for good measure.
Welcome to the world of Rove.
--Josh Marshall
Amazing. Just as the Department of Health and Human Services did last year with the White House's Medicare reform bill, it seems the Department of Education has been sending out faux 'news' videos to local TV stations promoting the No Child Left Behind bill.
(They even use the same faux reporter -- 'Karen Ryan' -- as appeared in the earlier HHS videos.)
What really popped out at me in this new AP story, however, was this: The company that the Department of Education hired to produce the 'news' videos was also hired to analyze and rank news coverage of the law in order to gauge the success of their PR campaign.
One might say that this was a reasonable use of public money if the coverage were being judged on the basis of how effectively it informed the public about benefits they could receive under the law, and stuff like that. But according to the AP story, in the rankings paid for by the Department, "points are awarded for stories that say President Bush and the Republican Party are strong on education."
What's the public interest in that exactly? That's campaign work, paid for by tax dollars.
--Josh Marshall
Longtime TPM readers will remember the election day 'phone-jamming' scandal in New Hampshire in 2002. The state Republican party hired an Idaho company to knock out the phones of the Democratic get-out-the-vote operation on election day by placing hundreds of automated hang-up calls to their phone banks. The whole episode might seem to be fading back into history were it not for the fact that a motion filed Friday in US District Court in Concord claims that a key player in the felonious scheme was none other than the man who now serves as the New England Chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004.
To put this all in context, let's review what we know.
As we noted in August, two men have already entered guilty pleas in the case: Chuck McGee, former Executive Director of the State Republican party and Allen Raymond, a Republican political consultant. But earlier court filings and press reports had already made it clear that there was a third person involved.
Some details about this unnamed individual's role were revealed in open court in July by prosecutor Todd Hinnen, when he told the court ...
In late October 2002, the defendant, Allen Raymond, then the president of Virginia-based political consulting company GOP Marketplace, LLC, received a call from a former colleague who was then an official in a national political organization. The official indicated that he had been approached by an employee of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee with an idea that might give New Hampshire Republican candidates an edge over New Hampshire democratic (sic) candidates in the upcoming election. (emphasis added)
The suggestion that this accomplice was then "an official in a national political organization" caught the notice of folks who were watching the case. And later, on August 12th, TPM and the Manchester Union Leader both reported that the person in question held a senior position in the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign.
As the Union Leader put it, "We can’t tell you who it is or whether he broke any laws, but we can tell you the person questioned by the feds has a significant role in the Bush-Cheney campaign."
But on Friday, counsel for the New Hampshire State Democratic party filed a motion in the case that sheds some new light on the identity of this mystery individual.
(On Sunday, state Democratic party Chair Kathy Sullivan confirmed the contents of the motion excerpted below and that the motion had been filed with the court late on Friday afternoon. A .pdf version of the motion is available here.)
It reads, in part ...
6. The victim believes that the unnamed individual who connected the criminal endeavors of convicted defendants McGee and Raymond was a regional director of the 2002 Republican Senatorial Committee and that his efforts were directed at depriving former governor Jeanne Shaheen of victory in her race for the United States Senate. This same individual is believed to currently be directing the New England Regional Bush-Cheney campaign, and thus is in a critical position from which he can engage in further illegal activities to distort the outcome of the presidential race of 2004. (emphasis added)
Now, who is this person they're talking about?
The New England regional chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign is Jim Tobin, a Republican political consultant and operative from Maine.
Tobin fits the other description contained in the motion as well: In 2002, when the phone-jamming incident happened, he was the Northeast political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
There is simply no one else who fits the description in the motion.
Neither Tobin nor Bush-Cheney 2004 returned repeated calls requesting comment on the claims contained in the aforementioned motion, whether Tobin was involved in the November 2002 phone jamming episode, or whether he has been questioned by federal investigators in the probe.
--Josh Marshall
