April 28, 1981: Con Man's Triumph

Oh, yes, we've got Trouble...

In his On Bended Knee [Chapter 6, "Jelly-Bean Journalism"],
Mark Hertsgaard takes a detailed look at the Reagan PR team's efforts following the March 30 assassination attempt.

Throughout Reagan's recovery, the White House released to the press carefully staged photos—including this taken at the hospital, on April 3—
and cropped, as Paul Slansky notes, to hide the IV tubes in Reagan's left arm.

Days after the shooting—and subsequent spike in Reagan's popularity—his team began planning his first public appearance: a nationally televised speech before a joint session of Congress. Their goals: "to give a fresh boost to the economic program" and to "focus official Washington's and therefore the news media's attention on the economy"—that is, away from sources of Reagan's pre-shooting decline in popularity (such as news coverage of Central America).

Reagan's return and speech were on April 28. In Hertsgaard's words, it was

... a masterpiece of political theater. Covered live by all the networks, its image of a fallen but now triumphantly recovered President engendered, at least according to press accounts, fresh feelings of patriotism and hope across the land. The network evening newscasts were second to none in leading the cheers. "A boffo performance!" exulted Frank Reynolds in leading off ABC's World News Tonight… NBC's Roger Mudd, quoting a Republican congressman, referred to the speech as "a velvet steamroller."

And the press seemed determined not to get in the way of that steamroller. Instead of critiquing the substance of the speech—what it meant—news coverage focused on the turn-tail-and-run response of Democrats; that is, on what it accomplished. Amidst their disarray the best the Democrats could manage was to sputter that the numbers in Reagan's speech had been inaccurate... the charge was duly noted in the next day's news coverage. But television reporting in particular did little to settle the dispute, much less go beyond it and explain the ramifications of Reagan's proposals. The contest, not its content, was what mattered. As Sam Donaldson concluded: "The lift the President's program may have gotten last night has very little to do with the facts and figures. It was the President as national hero returned, selling his plan on a wave of personal admiration and popularity."

Which is exactly how the apparatus would continue to sell the President and his plan. Time and again when the White House faced a close vote… the claim was made that the American people had given Reagan a mandate for such [drastic economic policy] changes in the November election. And time and again, despite the objective weakness of the case, the claim was uncritically transmitted in news stories.

The predictable results did not take long:

Awed by Reagan's mastery of television and fearful of his ability to sway public opinion, the Democrats also seemed more than willing to accept the mandate thesis. Quickly abandoning any pretense of being an opposition party, dozens… fell in line behind the President while scores more simply refrained from voicing any strong or sustained criticism of his program. Thus on May 8 the House of Representatives gave Reagan his first big victory on economic policy, approving by a 60-vote margin a White House budget that slashed social spending while gorging the Pentagon.

Of course, we still live with the consequences of both Reaganomics and this:

As the opposition party, the Democrats were seen by most Washington journalists as virtually the sole responsible alternative voice to the administration. Thus, when Democrats' criticism of Reagan's program was tepid to nonexistent, the criticism included in news stories to balance administration claims was tepid to nonexistent.

Following the House victory was a story of Democratic blunders on the one side, and Republican image management plus mobilization of party activists and voters on the other; Hertsgaard devotes several pages to the gory details.

The media were there to cheer on Reagan during [in the words of ABC anchor ABC anchor Max Robinson] "his latest drive to budge a stubborn House"—

... Both ABC and CBS did list some specific social programs that Reagan's budget would cut. But they spent just as much time airing the equivalent of a White House political commercial in which Reagan spouted fatuous generalizations about all the good things his economic package would do while he ridiculed Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill as a politician out of step with the country. The visual images of Reagan were especially stunning—his triumphant arrival [in San Antonio] to the tune of "Hail to the Chief," a capacity crowd in full-throated patriotic ardor as he spoke and one particularly flattering closing shot from down in front of the stage which projected an almost majestically commanding image of the President.

In the end, writes Hertsgaard

... The combination of Reagan's personal persuasive skills, the political atmosphere created by the apparatus' media and political outreach shops, and, according to [David] Stockman, some last-minute old-fashioned vote buying behind closed doors on Capitol Hill resulted in a narrow 217-210 victory for the White House on June 25. The actual budget bill passed the next day, 217-211. The first full step toward making Reaganomics a reality had been taken.

Sales Jobs

So good for you, doctors recommend them, too!

Another work week over; a new one looming, in a just few hours.

With this worker, like so many of the still-employed, expected to accomplish the impossible: both physically, and in terms of the time constraints imposed by planet earth + frequency of database failures.

Reading a Friday open thread at Sadly, No...

Opening subject: Trump.

Mr. Toad sums it up:

After much dr-, I mean thinking, I've come to the conclusion that D. Trump is fated to be our next President. He embodies all the greatest American qualities: supreme arrogance and self-importance, a "rags-to-riches" back-story which is actually a shrewdly-spun "riches-to-celebrity" back-story, a complete lack of self-consciousness, irony and sense of humor, and a hairpiece for the ages (maybe I should take back that 'sense of humor" crack?). I think we could do worse as a nation, and debatably already have.

Jim writes from Canada, of the inevitable May 2 election result: "Harper makes Mulroney look like FDR."

A commenter agrees, "I fear for Canada"; Thread Bear replies

You could always move south and join us in living the ***New & Improved*** American Dream. Which is, of course, wo[r]king too damn many hours for too damn little pay.

Jim x / another jim adds:

Otherwise known as the American Ream.

It's missing a 'D' like FDR.

Their Mo$t Important Product

Subject for a novelist of the Thomas Pynchon type: a vertiginous trip through the contemporary history of the world, with a certain corporation at the center of things.

While Kurt Vonnegut used some of his own experience at the company for the 1952 Player Piano, he had other themes to explore. But important features of life and mores in the novel's setting— a company town in the automated future—were inspired by Vonnegut's former employer.

Beyond any predictions likely to be made in 1952, much has happened.

Yes, countless workers have been replaced by machines, as predicted.

What wasn't foreseen: technology making it easy to eliminate reasonable wages and worker protections by moving production to any part of the world offering sweatshops—or virtual slave labor.

One company was at the forefront of 1990s outsourcing.

The company may not have anticipated launching a certain political career; Thomas W. Evans writes that

When he joined GE in 1954, Reagan was a Democrat and a self-described "New Dealer to the core." ... He had been a leader and organizer of California's "Labor for Truman." He was then serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild, which opposed "Right-to-Work" laws. Two years later, he supported Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas in her U. S. Senate contest against Republican Richard Nixon...

Nevertheless, Reagan would be exposed to right-wing reading material that GE promoted throughout its plants. While president of his own union, he also began absorbing the influence of an innovator in anti-union operations

... GE's vice president Lemuel Boulware, whom many leaders in corporate America regarded as the most successful labor negotiator of all time, and Reagan himself sharpened his negotiating skills during this period when he served another term as president of the Screen Actors Guild. (An intriguing aspect of this process occurred in 1960, when Boulware was urging GE's workers not to strike at the same time as Reagan, as SAG president again, took his members out on strike against the Hollywood producers. Incredibly, the situation worked out for the benefit of both GE and SAG.)

To its long-range profit, the company would point Reagan toward politics; his ascent to power would enable GE and other corporations to remake this country.

In time, Lemuel Boulware and GE CEO Ralph Cordiner mounted a national grass roots campaign, recruiting major corporate allies, creating schools where GE employees and others could learn the fundamental political skills to win elections, developing shareholder lists for political mailings, and turning GE workers into "communicators" and "mass communicators" (Boulware's words) who could spread the message of free persons and free markets to a decisive number of local voters. In the course of this Ronald Reagan was taken out of the plants and put on what he called "the mashed potato circuit" of civic forums largely in the south and smaller states, often towns where GE dominated the economy, where he would be most effective. In due course, the "great communicator" was born. In today's parlance, most of these states turned from blue to red.

In the 1960s, among other activities, GE was selling nuclear reactors of questionable design. Some are among those currently uncontained after Japan's nightmarish earthquake damage; the U.S. has 23 of the same design and vintage.

Reagan left GE in 1962. In a review of Make Believe: The Story of Nancy and Ronald Reagan (among essays here), Gore Vidal writes that Reagan had become too publicly right-wing to suite the company:

For eight years, Ronnie was GE's host and occasional actor; he also became the corporate voice for General Electric's conservative viewpoint. During tours of the country, he gave The Speech in the name of General Electric in particular and free enterprise in general. Gradually, Reagan became more and more right wing. But then if his principal reading matter told him that the Russians were not only coming but that their little Red brothers were entrenched in Congress and the school libraries and the reservoirs (fluoride at the ready), he must speak out. Finally, all this began to alarm even GE. When he started to attack socialism's masterpiece, the TVA (a GE client worth 50 million a year to the firm), he was told to start cooling it, which he did. Then, "In 1962, pleading bad ratings, GE canceled the program."[Vintage, 1990; page 87]

In 1964, Reagan gave his nationally-televised speech supporting Goldwater for the presidency. His place in Republican politics now assured, he was elected California governor in 1966.

Once in the White House, Reagan's efforts on behalf of "Progress" included working to overturn Carter's previous attempt at a sane energy policy.

Fast forward to more recent years, and there's the company's synergistic involvement in everything from war to broadcasting (just a tip of the iceberg overview here).

Despite the early move to outsourcing, exploitation of cheap labor is not the only source of fantastic profits—

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

...

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.'s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world's best tax law firm. Indeed, the company's slogan "Imagination at Work" fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

NYT charts here.

The Times piece caused a bit of bad PR for GE.

So bad, in fact, that the company Responds to Public Outcry - Will Donate Entire $3.2 Billion Tax Refund to Help Offset Cuts and Save American Jobs...

... Oh, not really: it was just a piece of brilliant guerilla PR, by US Uncut and the Yes Men.

The AP fell for the story; words beneath a GE logo clearly signaling important news from the masters of the universe.

If the document is actually read, that admission of wrong-doing along with the promise to turn over a new leaf are instant tipoffs: signs of honesty and altruism hilariously alien to "corporate culture."

A "culture" GE has done so much to Bring to Life.

As much as I loathe what Reagan's snake oil did to this country, he was a man of some real talents, which he was able to use for good [1948] or ill [California governor's mansion, January 3, 1967 - January 7, 1975; White House, [January 20, 1981 - January 20, 1989].

Despite the results of Reagan's presidency, the man may have had enough principles to object to some of his old employer's current practices.

According to the NYT's tax story,

"Cracking down on offshore profit-shifting by financial companies like G.E. was one of the important achievements of President Reagan's 1986 Tax Reform Act," said Robert S. McIntyre, director of the liberal group Citizens for Tax Justice, who played a key role in those changes. "The fact that Congress was snookered into undermining that reform at the behest of companies like G.E. is an insult not just to Reagan, but to all the ordinary American taxpayers who have to foot the bill for G.E.'s rampant tax sheltering."

Of course, history is full of ironies.

In the Pacific: the crew of the carrier USS Reagan exposed to "slight" radiation from those smoking GE reactors.

Once Upon A Time

Then...
...a children's book grew lyrical over post-war prosperity:

Now: Swedish corporate giant considers U. S. a source of third-world standard labor.

Not surprising, as our standards allow for workers being subjected to increasingly lowered wages, along with employer intimidation ranging from racial discrimination to union prevention.

This adds to the story with a chart:

IKEA workers in Sweden ... $19/hour
IKEA workers in America ... $8/hour

There's also a paid days off comparison; don't get me started on Swedish workers' annual 5 weeks of freedom...

The vacation, payscale, and conditions: all thanks to those workers' union rights.

At the U.S. factory, conditions are so bad that a Southern workforce is trying to organize.

Well, they need to get over it; this is the greatest of countries - for the One- Percenters.

Meanwhile, the viewing public is free to applaud

... the most visible plutocrat in America... Donald Trump, a man who has made a fetish of his power. What kind of sick mind conceives of a television show built on suspense about which "contestant" he will "fire" next? What sort of masochism builds his viewership? Sadly, I suspect it is based on viewers who identify with Trump, and envy his power over his victims. Don't viewers understand they are the ones being fired in today's America?

But, Roger: that's where our casino Lady Liberty comes in: greeting the huddled masses, yearning to win big.

Anniversaries

On this date, fifty years ago—


Happy anniversary
Comrade Gagarin!

Too bad about the Russkies winning the space race...

But, there you have it: a noted expert says so.

Also on this date, in 1945: the death of FDR.

Now there's someone else who prompted a race.

Although that race has been quite one-sided: organized by an ideology out to bury the New Deal's accomplishments, under the pretense of being something else.

The race started long ago; picked up speed here; and now rushes toward a bi-partisan finish line.

At this 150-year mark: the South is still winning.

An outstanding podcast, by Driftglass and Blue Gal, connects many dots: GOP race-baiting technique as the source of current current attacks on public employees; anti-miscegenation law as the model of the "alliance between bad Christianity and bad law" [Driftglass] that the Right applies to gay marriage, or any other "wedge"; St. Ronnie's use of racist code to signal his base; and more.

Another April 12, another Equal Pay Day.

The same as last year's, with women still making $.77 to men's $1.00.

One Month Later

Having lived in Japan (though in a region far from the disaster zone), I have a small sense of how life there will never be the same.

A post card, c. early 70s:
There's no English caption, and for years I treasured this card as an amusingly odd image: working-class Japanese enjoying a sunny day outing, as they accompany a boat transformed into what looked to me like a rather goofy creature...

... it's something about the look in the eye...Years after finding this card in the U.S., I had learned enough Japanese to identify this as the Minato Matsuri (port festival), held August 4-5 in the city of Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture.

I've found the festival described online: portable shrines are carried aboard two large boats, decorated as a phoenix (as in the card) and a dragon. The main boats are followed by family fishing boats, as everyone joins in to pray for good catches.

From this series: a scene in Shiogama last month—Volunteers sift through debris in Shiogama, northern Japan, Sunday, March 20, 2011, after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
AP Photo/The Yomiuri Shimbun, Miho Takahashi

Having traveled through a good bit of Japanese countryside, I know that the rural population is elderly, as are so many of the survivors living through this trauma.

Toward the end of March, there were some very moving images and words by photographers traveling in the region.

Jake Price's photo essay is here. He stayed in a shelter for the displaced and reported that—

The elderly were hit the hardest. At least sixty percent of the people in the center were elderly...

While much has been written about Japanese stoicism, I don't see it that way. There's a lot going on in thoughts and hearts if you look closely at faces and eyes as well. The events of two Fridays ago were swift and violent; people along the coast are still in a state of deep shock. The first person whom I spoke with in my hotel in Yamagata started shaking and was nearly brought to tears when she heard that I was interested in her story. "Aside from my husband it's been a week since I've told anyone about what happened. I just needed to tell someone."

... Although I had my own food, I was constantly being given more. I wanted to turn it down, but to do so I thought would be impolite. While reserved, people were also open, giving, concerned for this stranger who showed up with dirty boots and two bags. Not stoic at all. If anything, I found people determined to keep a gracious spirit alive even during this most trying of times. At the epicenter I did not come across one crack in a single building; accordingly, the same can be said about people's dignity.

Price's observations are echoed by Wes Cheek, who traveled to rural areas where aid was finally reaching some of the people who, isolated in their own homes (not shelters), had been cut off from the rest of the country.

He phoned reports to Sam Seder during the trip, and the March 30 show [after the 2:30 mark] has some inspiring stories of survivors helping each other.

The March 31 report [2:00 mark] had stories like Jake Price's: of survivors being grateful that someone was simply listening, and that the world had not forgotten them.

Wes also had some observations about how, enormous as the task of rebuilding will be, it will be helped by the country's focus on infrastructure, and a sense of refusing to let the survivors down.

He also mentioned the difference from American attitudes after Katrina, as in the "why didn't they leave?" blaming of victims.

To that I would add: Japanese society isn't subject to the kind of divide and conquer rule under which we live. After Katrina, the political agenda that benefits from pushing fear of the other acted as it always does, demonizing the storm's victims. A practice promoted by our media, directly or by declining to perceive it.

True, there was a Japanese right-winger's grandstanding after the disaster. But Ishihara soon had to walk back what he said; unlike here, there is not a Japanese mass media promoting this kind of thing, 24/7.

One month later: the nuclear plants are anything but contained. Belatedly, the evacuation zone is being extended a little, as aftershocks continue.

Long-range consequences to the environment and human health, in Japan and around the world, are unknown. They are completely unaffected by national borders.

If there's to be any hope for this poor planet, it will be if activism in Japan and the rest of world aren't too late, and can get results.Anti-nuclear demonstration in Tokyo, March 27.
Reuters/Toru Hanai

What He Hath Wrought

A mere thirty years after Reagan, and the GOP is right on track to its Final Solution.

Round One; Mission Accomplished—

"As Services For Main Street Are Gutted, Richest Pay Lowest Taxes In A Generation."

A rundown of the disgusting budget "deal" here.

In the context of the current "negotiations," Peterr writes that "It wasn't always like this in DC."

In the initiative Eleanor Roosevelt took after Marian Anderson was prevented from singing at Constitution Hall, we can see that—

Once upon a time, there were folks there who took on entrenched opponents with creativity and passion. And they won.

It's an inspiring story of

... how you negotiate with those who seek to protect the privileges of the few at the expense of the nation. The DAR kept their precious concert hall pure that day, but Eleanor and Marian moved a nation.

I know we have some Democrats who understand how this works; there's just no incentive for the careerists to do anything but run from their base, once donations and votes are in.

The lower-income segment of Republican voters are just as screwed as the rest of us, but the party will never fail to serve its real constituents, as here.

In other late-breaking actions by Republican God: Wisconsin's Miracle of the Missing Votes—discovered in the exact number needed to prevent the recount that was expected.

Votes that materialized after arrival on the scene of the Bush v Gore miracle lawyer.

Fairy Tales

He wasn't just April Fool-ing; he said the stuff all the time.

Just a small sampling, from Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor: A Chronicle of the American '80s—

[1982]

2/24 Addressing the Voice of America's 40th birthday celebration, President Reagan reminisces about making up exciting details while announcing baseball games from wire copy.

"Now, I submit to you that I told the truth," he says of his enhanced version of a routine shortstop-to-first ground out. "I don't know whether he really ran over toward second base and made a one-hand stab or whether he just squatted down and took the ball when it came to him. But the truth got there and, in other words, it can be attractively packaged."

No one questions his premise that embellishing the truth does not compromise it.

10/31 Accusing his foes of "cruel scare tactics," President Reagan attacks the "big spenders" for causing inflation, adding, "They even drove prayer out of our nation's classrooms." A White House aide refuses to clarify whom Reagan is talking about, saying only, "They know who they are."

[1983]

3/5 "There is today in the United States as much forest as there was when Washington was at Valley Forge."
—President Reagan revealing a little-known "fact" to Oregon lumbermen

7/20 House Majority Leader Jim Wright recalls a conversation in which President Reagan voiced his suspicions about student loans: " 'Well, Jim, I don't know,' he said. 'They tell me that a lot of these kids are taking out these loans and putting them in CDs [certificates of deposit] and not even going to college.' "

[1984]

2/26 "They tell me I'm the most powerful man in the world. I don't believe that. Over there in that White House someplace, there's a fellow that puts a piece of paper on my desk every day that tells me what I'm going to be doing every 15 minutes. He's the most powerful man in the world."
—President Reagan on an unidentified aide

3/9 Defending his failure to attend church, President Reagan piously observes, "Frankly, I miss it very much. But I represent too much of a threat to too many other people for me to be able to go to church." But, why does he not hold services in the White House, as previous Presidents have done? No one asks.