Larry Johnson on McNeil/Lehrer

Online NewsHour: In the Shadows -- September 30, 2003: "Let's be very clear about what happened. This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not as Bob Novak suggested a CIA analyst. But given that, I was a CIA analyst for four years. I was undercover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency until I left the agency on Sept. 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it.

So the fact that she's been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised. When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised. For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that well, this was just an analyst fine, let them go undercover. Let's put them overseas and let's out them and then see how they like it. They won't be able to stand the heat.
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"I say this as a registered Republican. I'm on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear of an individual with no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it. [Novak's] entire intent was correctly as Ambassador Wilson noted: to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy and frankly, what was a false policy of suggesting that there were nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend that it's something else and to get into this parsing of words, I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this."

NewsFlash: At Wal-Mart, Screwing Employees is Job One

NYT reports that leaked internal memo confirms Wal-Mart's cynical (and just plain shady) attitude toward its own employees, erm, Associates:

An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.

In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."

The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.

Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011.

Oops, I guess I got it wrong. This is for the employee's "benefit," not to benefit the company's bottom line:

In an interview, Ms. Chambers said she was focusing not on cutting costs, but on serving employees better by giving them more choices on their benefits.

"We are investing in our benefits that will take even better care of our associates," she said. "Our benefit plan is known today as being generous."

Ms. Chambers also said that she made her recommendations after surveying employees about how they felt about the benefits plan. "This is not about cutting," she said. "This is about redirecting savings to another part of their benefit plans."

Orwell would be so proud. Its odd then that she would concede that Wal-Mart's critics are right, Wal-Mart is indeed a shabby excuse for a workplace and that the taxpayers are subsidizing this basic mistreatment and exploitation so that the company can make profits of $10 billion annually on sales of $250 billion (its true, go look it up):

Acknowledging that Wal-Mart has image problems, Ms. Chambers wrote: "Wal-Mart's critics can easily exploit some aspects of our benefits offering to make their case; in other words, our critics are correct in some of their observations. Specifically, our coverage is expensive for low-income families, and Wal-Mart has a significant percentage of associates and their children on public assistance."

Her memo stated that 5 percent of Wal-Mart's workers were on Medicaid, compared with 4 percent for other national employers. She said that Wal-Mart spent $1.5 billion a year on health insurance, which amounts to $2,660 per insured worker.

But the memo was still a big hit with the suits:

The memo, prepared with the help of McKinsey & Company, said the board was to consider the recommendations in November. But the memo said that three top Wal-Mart officials - its chief financial officer, its top human relations executive and its executive vice president for legal and corporate affairs - had "received the recommendations enthusiastically."

Some of the crack ideas coming from these ivy league MBAs (who have real worries, like where to summer or whether to tip the help)? First, find a way to get rid of unhealthy employees, or anyone that might get sick, like, say, anyone over 30. Or maybe "discourage" unhealthy employees from working at Wal-Mart in the first place. Or maybe just cut loose those poor unfortunates who rely on the paycheck of a Wal-Mart Associate for life's necessities, like spouses and children, and let them get out there in the "marketplace" and try and find their own healthcare. It'll probably be good for them, teach 'em a thing or two about economics:

Ms. Chambers's memo voiced concern that workers were staying with the company longer, pushing up wage costs, although she stopped short of calling for efforts to push out more senior workers.

She wrote that "the cost of an associate with seven years of tenure is almost 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with one year of tenure, yet there is no difference in his or her productivity. Moreover, because we pay an associate more in salary and benefits as his or her tenure increases, we are pricing that associate out of the labor market, increasing the likelihood that he or she will stay with Wal-Mart."
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The memo noted, "The least healthy, least productive associates are more satisfied with their benefits than other segments and are interested in longer careers with Wal-Mart."

The memo proposed incorporating physical activity in all jobs and promoting health savings accounts. Such accounts are financed with pretax dollars and allow workers to divert their contributions into retirement savings if they are not all spent on health care. Health experts say these accounts will be more attractive to younger, healthier workers.

"It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier work force than it will be to change behavior in an existing one," the memo said. "These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart."

And in the requisite irony-laden portion of our story, Wal-Mart, purveyors of the cheapest candy, 18-packs of coke and pepsi, and generally all manner of fructose-fortified foodstuffs, discovers that health care costs are being heavily (ha) impacted by "obesity-related diseases:"

The memo noted that Wal-Mart workers "are getting sicker than the national population, particularly in obesity-related diseases," including diabetes and coronary artery disease. The memo said Wal-Mart workers tended to overuse emergency rooms and underuse prescriptions and doctor visits, perhaps from previous experience with Medicaid.

Ah, but there is always some loudmouth, do-gooder there to rain on the efficiency of market-driven solutions to problems of social welfare:

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families U.S.A., a health care consumer-advocacy group, criticized the memo for recommending that more workers move into health plans with high deductibles.

"Their people are paying a very substantial portion of their earnings out of pocket for health care," he said. "These plans will cause these workers and their families to defer or refrain from getting needed care."

The memo noted that 38 percent of Wal-Mart workers spent more than one-sixth of their Wal-Mart income on health care last year.

Bush: Lies = Impeachment

Nice catch by Jeralyn via TalkLeft: "Bush in 1999: Lies Are Impeachable

Many news reports from 1999 have this quote of George Bush at a 1999 news conference. (E.g. AP, 6/8/99, USA Today, 6/11/99, Dallas Morning News, 6/9/99, available on Lexis.com)"

Texas Gov. George W. Bush said Tuesday that he would have voted to impeach President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

"I would have voted for it. I thought the man lied," he said in response to a question posed during a news conference.

Juan Cole on The Times, Fox News and The Larger Context of the Judy Miller Fiasco

via Informed Comment: "So in this polluted information environment, in which Howell Raines's view of reality, which was perfectly correct, was constantly pilloried by powerful rightwing media as nothing short of treason, there was every incentive to give Judith Miller her head. Remember that the NYT is a commercial publication. All major newspapers were seeing their subscription base shrink. After September 11, the country had moved substantially to the right on national security issues. The Times could easily go bankrupt if it loses touch with the sentiments of the American reading public. There is a lot at stake in the Murdoch et al. assault on the NYT. In its absence, the information environment in the US would be even more rightwing. I've even rethought my own rash response to its editorial on the Columbia Middle East studies issue last spring.

"The NYT had no sources to speak of inside the Bush administration, a real drawback in covering Washington, because it was a left of center newspaper in a political environment dominated by the Right. Miller had sources among the Neoconservatives, with whom she shared some key concerns (biological weapons, the threat of Muslim radicalism, etc.) So she could get the Washington "scoops." And her perspective skewed Right in ways that could protect the NYT from charges that it was consistently biased against Bush. Of course, in retrospect, Bush's world was a dangerous fantasy, and giving it space on the front page of the NYT just sullied the Grey Lady with malicious prevarications."

Hinderaker's Folly

via Crooks and Liars: "If ignorance is bliss, then John Hinderaker is one happy fellow when it comes to talking about Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. According to Hinderaker, who was appearing on Howard Kurtz's CNN show about the media, he trots out once again the big lie of Republican talking points by claiming that Joe Wilson lied in his July 2003 op-ed. Hinderaker says that Wilson, 'reported to the CIA that what he found out was that Saddam Hussein in fact had tried to buy uranium from Niger in the late 1990s. He then wrote an op-ed in which he lied about his own report.'

Excuse me. Are all rightwingers this stupid or is this guy just uniquely ignorant. You don't have to take my word for it, just read The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's PreWar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (July 2004), pages 43-47. However, you'll have to read carefully because the Republican staff who wrote this report tried their best to obfuscate and confuse the matter. These are the clear facts."

Beyond Polarization

via NewDonkey.com: "Last week a sequel appeared to one of the great classics of political analysis--Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck's 1989 paper, The Politics of Evasion. The previous report was published by the Progressive Policy Institute; the latest, entitled The Politics of Polarization, by the folks over at the congressionally-focused group Third Way (which is friendly with the DLC, but is a completely independent organiztion).

This is a 71-page report chock full of findings and recommendations, so my first suggestion is that you read the whole thing, and don't rely on the Cliffs Notes version reported in the newspapers, or on the generally carping references to it in much of the blogosphere, based largely, I suspect, on the Cliffs Notes version. Yes, Galston and Kamarck argue that the real gold in American politics is in the ideological center, and they will annoy some of you who think counter-polarization is the key for Democrats. And yes, they claim that Democrats haven't developed a credible consensus on national security issues, and that will annoy others of you who think a position favoring withdrawal from Iraq will do the trick (for the record, Galston and Kamarck both opposed the invasion of Iraq in the first place).

But the real value of the paper is that it hammers home three fundamental realities of contemporary partisan politics that cannot much be denied: (1) the GOP-engineered polarization of the two parties along ideological lines has made Democrats much more dependent than Republicans on sizable margins among self-identified moderate and independent voters (and thus more vulnerable to base/swing conflicts) (2) George W. Bush's 2004 win was produced as much by persuasion of a sizable minority of moderate voters (particularly married women and Catholics) as it was by mobilization of his conservative 'base;' and (3) a changing issues landscape has reinforced the importance of Democratic efforts to deal with chronic negative perceptions by voters on national security"

Six Things you need to know about Bubble 2.0

via The Register: "There's every reason to be optimistic, now in 2005, that computer networks can begin to fulfill their potential. They can even start to be really useful - but it's only by dispensing with such utopian nonsense - so we can really begin to see what these tools can do for us. Here's a reality-based guide to what's happening - and if you hear a futurist omit more than one of these in a presentation, send them to the Exit toot-sweet, with a firm smack on the backside."

Did Oracle Just Make MySQL Worse?

via Techdirt: "Innobase makes a key component of MySQL that it needs to compete effectively... and now Oracle owns it. While Oracle says they'll continue to support it, they're also going to 'negotiate' when the contract between Innobase and MySQL comes up for renewal next year. It does make you wonder why MySQL didn't try to buy them earlier, as it certainly looks like a big weakness hasn't just been exposed, but ripped out. It's likely that MySQL will try to figure out some way around this -- and, if not, that some other open source databases will have an opportunity to move up in the world. However, in one small move, it certainly looks like Oracle may have given themselves a bit more breathing room in the database world."

The Reticence Fallacy

Kinsley via WaPo: "Gosh, was it only a couple of weeks ago that Republicans were mocking attempts by Democratic senators to find out what John Roberts's views might be on some of the big legal issues? What happened to all those lectures about how it would be 'improper' to call on a future justice to 'prejudge' matters that might come before the court?

With President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, it turns out that Republicans don't want to buy a pig in a poke any more than Democrats do. They were bluffing when they claimed not to know or care about Roberts's views, beyond a vague commitment to avoid 'legislating from the bench.' They did care, but they thought they knew. The surprising conservative bitterness about Miers reinforces the suspicion of many liberals that 'they must know something we don't' about Roberts. Conservatives have been complaining about the Supreme Court for half a century. After a series of false dawns, this would seem to be their true moment. Would they really let Bush squander this opportunity? Apparently not."