I never, never, never want to hear you tell me that Talking Points doesn’t give you an utterly unique take on the news of the day!
Needless to say, things are sort of heating up today on the Condit-Levy front. You’ve got Mrs. Condit’s interview with authorities in suburban Virginia. Then you’ve got the DC police chief saying that the police consider it unlikely Levy committed suicide. They believe she was either the victim of foul play or simply went into hiding. And if you have a brain, of course, that sounds a lot like they think it was foul play.
Condit’s attorney Abbe Lowell issued this statement to the press and announced that henceforth Marina Ein will be handling press matters for the Condits, presumably to give a break to the hapless Mike Lynch, Condit’s press secretary who probably didn’t know quite what he was getting into when he signed on to handle media for the obscure California congressman.
Now, sitting here at my desk writing out a draft of my soon-to- be-published article on foreign lobbyists, I couldn’t help but wonder: Marina Ein? Marina Ein? Where do I know that name from?
Oh, right! She’s the one who signed on back in the Spring of 2000 to do media relations work for General Wiranto of Indonesia at the time when he was coming under intense scrutiny for his role in alleged crimes against humanity in East Timor in 1999.
According to Ein’s April 4, 2000 Foreign Agents Registration filing (reg.# 5369), she:
agreed to provide media outreach services — including editorial services — to General Wiranto. We are providing these services for a monthly retainer of $20,000 for an open-ended period …. We will draft editorial material for use in a “by-lined” or op-ed piece(s) and work to secure interviews and other speaking opportunities. We will seek such opportunities in print and electronic formats.
I guess the real question is, who will Ein have a harder time defending, Wiranto or Condit? And does Condit have to pay her 20Gs a month too?
P.S. Late Update: One TPM secret informant tells me Ein also used to do PR work for The New Republic. But I’ll bet you third world strong man-types pay better than center-left opinion mags. Trust me, I should know.
You hear a lot these days about how the Bush administration is starting to heed the polls and buff up its image on the environment and Big Oil lackey fronts. But developments like these reassure me that the Bushies are going to stick determinedly to principle. This from today’s Wall Street Journal ‘Washington Wire’ …
Climate-change treaty foe Philip Cooney is the new chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which helps formulate the U.S. position on global warming. At the American Petroleum Institute, he helped develop the oil lobby’s opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions.
Which reminds me, I’ve still got to get in my application for this year’s oil studies fellowship over at the ‘Institute.’
Just a quick note on the Condit front. The story that’s only starting to get a touch of play in the reporting is how much orchestration is taking place on the part of the public relations operatives working for the Levy family.
One hesitates to use the loaded word ‘orchestration’ since these people are desperately trying to find out what happened to their daughter; and the chances of finding a happy answer seem bleak. Still it’s a point worth noting since it speaks to a broader issue of how the media functions today, and specifically how this story is being advanced.
Reporters I’ve spoken to who are covering the Levy camp (if I can use that word) say that the Levy supporters (would it be too cheeky to call them Levites?) are quite open about their strategy, which is to day-after-day drib and drab out more information on Condit-Levy relationship, both to squeeze Condit and keep pressure on the police. Yesterday’s revelations from Chandra’s aunt are of course part of this effort. These days even feeding frenzies and personal tragedy apparently can’t do without professional management.
I’m not saying this is good or bad necessarily; just that much of it is very, very thought out in advance, and planned for greatest impact and effect.
Of course, Condit too now has an anti-feeding frenzy consultant on hire. But her job seems a touch more challenging than theirs.
And by the way, for you real Talking Points loyalists out there, I’ll be on CNN’s Reliable Sources (Sat. 6:30 PM; Sun 11:30 AM) this weekend making what (if I remember correctly) were some fairly vacuous media criticism type comments about you know what.
Reformist Democrats have many, many reasons for believing (rightly I’d say) that time is on their side. Demographics, ideological propensity … many, many reasons. But the biggest and probably most obvious sign is the one sitting right under our noses.
That is this: on pretty much every major question of domestic policy these days you have one piece of legislation, supported largely by Democrats, and enjoying pretty broad popular support. Then on the other side you have a phony-baloney piece of legislation put forward by Republicans (more or less entirely reactive to the Democratic legislation) intended to scuttle the effort to pass the original reform. Is the Republican approach better? Sure, maybe. Would they ever have thought to propose it on their own without heat from the Dem bill? Of course not.
In most cases you’ll find some deer-caught -in-the- headlights backbench Republican Rotarian you’ve never heard of before hustled up to affix his name to the bill.
The latest example of course is in the campaign finance debate, and the new bill-killer in the House sponsored by Rep. Bob Ney (OH-R) and (regrettably) Rep. Albert Wynn (MD-D). But pretty much the same logic applies to Patients’ Bill of Rights, prescription drug benefit, and a slew of other current debates.
It didn’t used to be this way. Remember welfare reform? Nor does it mean the Democrats are right and the Republicans wrong. But it gives a clear sense of the trajectory of our politics today.
It may not be the Dems’ time. But time is on their side.
Doesn’t this speak for itself ?
“Governor Bush supports lockboxing $ 2.4 trillion to save and strengthen Social Security.”
– Bush-Cheney Campaign 2000 website
(Quoted in LAT, Oct. 31, 2000)
“There is no box, there is no mattress. Paul O’Neill doesn’t have a hole in the backyard where this money goes. And all the dollars are fungible … What’s unfair is to mislead the American people into thinking this money’s in a box somewhere. It isn’t. That box has nothing but promissory notes in it.”
– Mitch Daniels
Office of Management & Budget Director
CNN, Late Edition, July 8th, 2001
P.S. Special heads-up to Senate Democratic staffers reading TPM from their offices. There are much, much better Bush lockbox quotes out there. But the TPM oppo research staff is small and greatly overextended. So have at it!
P.P.S. Ahhhaa! Another example of Bush’s lockbox talk from New Hampshire in January 2000:
“First, unspent surpluses in Washington, D.C. will be spent, you mark my words, you leave money sitting around the table in Washington, Washington politicians will spend it. Now, I believe there’s enough money. If you lockbox the payroll taxes, there is $2 trillion to make sure the Social Security system is safe and secure– $2 trillion. I intend to lockbox the payroll taxes and spend them only on what they’re supposed to be spent on, and that’s Social Security.”
That’s courtesy of PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, January 14, 2000
For months I’ve wanted to write a post asking what should be (or should have been) one of the great questions of contemporary American journalism: why is LATimes.com the most pitiful website in the history of the universe?
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mean the LA Times. Talking Points grew up near Los Angeles and well knows that the LA Times is one of the nation’s great newspapers. Certainly at least the equal of any other in the country — save the New York Times.
No, I’m talking about the website. And what I always wondered was why this big-time national newspaper would have a website more pitiful and impossible to navigate than your average 4th tier small-time paper like the Podunk Crier or the Lametown Gazette.
Well, you know what they say: carpe diem! I’ve missed my chance. I just noticed the LAT has redesigned their site. It’s still far from the best newspaper website design I’ve seen. But it’s not chaotic and pitiful either. And that’s a big improvement.
Does Gary Condit have a possible mal-practice suit against Abbe Lowell? More on this later this evening.
Remember that Social Security privatization group Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill spoke to a while back? Well, turns out there’s a story to tell. The Coalition for American Financial Security is actually pretty tight with the Bush administration. And the outfit is a product of a company involved in social insurance privatization efforts all over the world.
Think I spill this kinda reporting for free on Talking Points? Please!!! I’ve gotta get paid for this kind of work. Check out the article in the new issue of The American Prospect.
With no new Condit posts since the congressman admitted to his affair last Friday, a reader wrote in and asked if maybe my silence was because someone had ‘gotten to me.’ The funny thing is I’m not completely sure he was kidding …
Anyway, a number of papers are reporting on their websites tonight that the police will be giving Congressman Condit a lie detector test. But they’re getting way ahead of themselves. The police have asked. Abbe Lowell told them he’d get back to them.
And that gets back to the point I raised earlier: whether Gary Condit, whatever other legal difficulties he may face, may have a malpractice case against Abbe Lowell.
It’s difficult to imagine that Lowell realized just how quickly and eagerly the DC Metro Police Department would go for his offer to provide various pieces of evidence. 
When DC Police Chief Ramsey gave his press conference this afternoon he had the look of someone whose quarry had fallen into a trap.
Ramsey accepted Lowell’s ‘offer’ of a lie detector test for Condit. But, as I note in an article to be published tonight in Salon.com, that was an offer that Lowell never really made. He said he’d be willing to talk to police about it. Nothing more. In fact, if you look at Lowell’s news conference yesterday it looked very much like he got maneuvered into the lie detector remark in an impromptu exchange with reporters.
Lowell quite clearly intended to offer the search of the apartment and the phone records. But there was no mention of a willingness to take a lie detector test in his original prepared statement. That only came up in response to two reporters’ questions. And Lowell’s willingness to have his client undergo a lie detector test seemed to increase over the course of each answer and from one response to the next.
Here’s the first …
QUESTION: Does that include a lie detector test?
LOWELL: I have just said that I will work with the police and I will do with the police what they find useful. And the congressman will be as cooperative as he can possibly be. With respect to lie detectors, I know there is a great public appeal to lie detectors, but I know from my own practice that they leave a lot to be desired.
If the police call me and tell me that at some point they think that, no matter how suspect it might be, can be helpful, I will discuss it with them, but I will discuss it with them, and not with you.
And here’s the second …
LOWELL: You heard my statements today and my statements today were that the police have said that he has answered all questions to their satisfaction, they have said that he has been cooperative, they have said that they are comfortable with his answers, there is no question to test. There is nothing that a lie detector could test. He has not been inconsistent to the police and he has answered their questions.
So let me reiterate, that if the police get back to me say, you know what, even though we think as you think, lie detectors don’t really work very well, if they find that useful at some point, I will listen to them, and we will respond accordingly. But let me say today that the congressman is going to make available what the police ask for that they think is helpful. And if it is a search of his apartment, if it is something as somebody said, a sample, if it is anything else, let it come.
It’s impossible to say what was in Lowell’s mind. But listening to his impassioned press conference, it was hard not to wonder whether he didn’t let the passion of the moment (his deep desire to communicate his client’s lack of anything to hide) get the better of him and lead him to say more than he wished to or should have.
He didn’t really offer to let Condit take a lie detector test. But he came close. Apparently close enough for Chief Ramsey to feel he could pounce. If Condit can take that lie detector test there’s no problem. If he can’t, he’s in a hell of a bind. And so is Abbe Lowell.
Wow. Talking Points hasn’t just cracked the Grey Lady. He’s practically got her swooning. First the Monday article about Me-zines and then Paul Krugman’s column on Wednesday about the Bushies’ shameless lockbox climb-down.
Krugman didn’t mention the Talking Points site by name. But he quoted from it, or rather borrowed a quote from Mitch Daniels, which appeared here on this site, and was kind enough to give credit. Something that hasn’t been done by some others who shall remain nameless.
In any case, let me try to salvage this self-promoting post with something approaching substance.
Krugman made a point which I had intended to cover in a follow-up to the original post, but he made it with far greater elegance and authority than I could have mustered. That is, while the concept of a ‘lockbox’ is of course a fiction, it is a very important fiction, or rather one with very real consequences and effects.
Simply put, Social Security’s incoming revenues will not cover its outflows in the coming decades. There is a decent argument put forward by some liberals that the economic forecasts on which these assumptions are based are too pessimistic — and we can largely grow our way out of the problem, if you make certain assumptions based on long-term gains in productivity and so forth. But even if this is true, it’s still sensible and prudent not to base our plans on the rosiest of possible outcomes.
So you come back to the basic point that income won’t cover outflow. Some of that difference will likely have to be made up by some mix of benefit cuts and perhaps tax increases — though I’m very dubious about further raising payroll taxes on workers — or perhaps supplementing Social Security payments with funds from general revenue, i.e. not from payroll taxes.
But the bottom line is that some more money is probably going to have to be found somewhere. By paying off debt now we reduce the amount of money the government currently pays in interest on that debt. That frees up general revenue funds which could go to propping up Social Security down the road.
But the more basic point is that reducing our burden of debt today will make it easier to do some borrowing to shore up Social Security tomorrow. Though the mechanism for all this is complicated by the intricacies of government bond issues, and one part of the government owing money to another part of the government, the essence of the matter is that some of it will likely have to be borrowed. And paying off debt today will make that potential borrowing tomorrow far more feasible.
However this may be, as Krugman notes, the sort of funny-business the Bushies are now engaged in makes it far more likely that Social Security really will go off a cliff in a few decades and that the problem will have to be solved through draconian benefit cuts.
In any case, this is the point I was going to make but Krugman beat me to it. But if Krugman wants to keep up with this Talking Points-Krugman vs. Daniels-Bush tagteam action, what can I say, I’m game.
Along other lines, for the real Talking Points die-hards, I’ve got three new articles which might strike your fancy. This one in the American Prospect details the story behind the Social Security privatization group Treasury Secretary O’Neill spoke to recently. This one in the New Republic Online argues that you need only look at the legislative docket in Congress to see why time is on the Democrats’ side. And this one in Salon.com details an as-yet-untold story about ABC News and the ‘timeline’ Gary Condit’s office made available at the end of June. Here’s a hint: one of the meetings the original timeline described on May 1st (the day Chandra disappeared) never happened.
You might look at this blizzard of words (running the gamut from polemic, to commentary, to investigative reporting) and say to yourself: This is the sign of a fabulously prolific up-and-coming young writer with acute insights on contemporary politics! Actually, the real lesson to be drawn is a touch different. And that would be? That supporting yourself as a freelance writer is *#$%&@ hell on wheels!!!