Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Dream (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
I was talking to a friend, and he said, “You know what I dream? That one day the Democrats will control both houses of Congress and the White House, and then we’ll stop the war, get all the money out of politics and have single-payer healthcare.” Hah. Keep dreaming.

Black Agenda Report

Obama Preserves Entrenched Power, Sidesteps Racial Disparities (by Glen Ford at the Black Agenda Report)
Barack Obama actually said it: a truncated form of the hackneyed rich man’s expression, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” The cliché was a fixture of trickle-down Reaganics and the Bush I and II permutations, as well as the Clinton deregulationathon. Now Obama employs it to justify his refusal to offer any programs to “address historical and emerging racial disparities.” The twisted logic goes something like this: “The deeper Blacks sink into the abyss, the more they are eligible for general assistance – therefore, the Obama plan already contains everything African Americans need as a group, and will be of more use to them than to more advantaged groups.” Thus, the nation’s first Black President turns the misery index on its head.

Homeowners Underwater (Calculated Risk)
From the WSJ: House-Price Drops Leave More Underwater “…Moody’s Economy.com estimates that of 78.2 million owner-occupied single-family homes, 14.8 million borrowers, or 19%, owed more than their homes were worth at the end of the first quarter, up from 13.6 million at the end of last year.” And many of these borrowers are in danger of default if they experience a negative event (death, disease, divorce, unemployment, etc.)

U.S. Says Bank of America Needs $33.9 Billion Cushion (New York Times)
The government has told Bank of America it needs $33.9 billion in capital to withstand any worsening of the economic downturn, according to an executive at the bank. If the bank is unable to raise the capital cushion by selling assets or stock, it would have to rely on the government, which has provided $45 billion in capital through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. It could satisfy regulators’ demands simply by converting non-voting preferred shares it gave the government in return for the capital, into common stock. But that would make the government one of the bank’s largest shareholders.

Crisis: Who Is to Blame?: Banks that Financed Subprime Industry Collecting Billions in Bailouts (by John Dunbar and David Donald, Center for Public Integrity)
The top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or bankrolled by banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money — including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges. These big institutions were not only unwitting victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending that has threatened the financial system.
Click through for the highlights, and for a link to the full report.

The PPIP: keep banks out by Lucian Bebchuk at Economists’ Forum, Financial Times, U.K., thanks to Economist’s View)
Should banks with large amounts of troubled assets be allowed to participate as managers or investors in funds set up under the US’s public-private investment programme?… One problem with allowing banks clogged with troubled assets to participate on the buying side is that it defeats one of the programme’s main goals: to cleanse the balance sheets of these banks of troubled assets… The second problem with the participation of banks with large holdings of troubled assets on the buying side is that it will exacerbate the misalignment of interests between the private side in funds set up under the programme and taxpayers. To enhance the programme’s effectiveness and protect the interests of taxpayers, the interests of the private side – the fund’s manager and the private investors affiliated with it – should be aligned with the interests of taxpayers.
Protect the interests of the taxpayers? Economists are such comedians!

As Investors Circle Ailing Banks, Fed Sets Limits (New York Times)
[G]iant private equity players are circling distressed banks around the country, competing to buy into the industry. Bidding wars are now breaking out among private equity firms, including the Carlyle Group… [Emphasis added.] They and other investors see banks as the recession’s biggest prize: potential money machines that could one day generate fabulous returns, particularly after the federal government eats the losses of failed banks, then heavily subsidizes their sale. But … some of them would prefer to take over the banks completely, replace their managements and take all the profit.

With strings attached, banks can return taxpayer money (McClatchy)
Federal regulators are preparing to release new rules governing how banks can return billions in taxpayer bailout money… [B]anks would have to give up a special loan guarantee program in the process… Few banks are thought to be strong enough to both give up the money they received from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and walk away from the loan guarantees. The guarantees give investors a much greater degree of comfort in buying bonds issued by the still-troubled banks… To get the TARP money, the government required the banks to agree to tough executive compensation rules and to swear off bonuses, travel on company jets and other perks reserved for top officials.
What’s to stop them from giving the money back, handing out big bonuses, and then coming back with their hands out again?  Nothing.

Bank failures to date, as measured in Gramms (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)
The crack research team at Mock, Paper, Scissors have done it again! Because Texan former Senator and rabid deregulator Phil Gramm is the architect of the financial disaster when he eradicated the Glass-Steagall act and destroyed oversight of the banks, he is a logical unit of measure for the number of failed banks by state from January 2009 to present. Or you could just count the number of bank failures for these four states.

SEIU Writes Bank Of America, Calls For Lewis’ Outright Firing (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Officials with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are calling on the new chairman of Bank of America to fire recently-replaced chairman Ken Lewis and commit the troubled banking giant to “real financial reform” from top to bottom. SEIU’S Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger sent the letter to new BofA Chairman Walter E. Massey on Tuesday, a week after Massey took over the post from Lewis following a shareholder’s meeting.

In the note, Burger stressed that in addition to removing Lewis from his remaining functions (he serves currently as CEO), systematic changes need to be made to how BofA treats its employees. Among other concerns, she urged Massey to:
* Provide access to affordable healthcare to all bank workers; and
* Stop lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act and other legislation which would ensure bank workers have a voice to protect consumers and improve living conditions and wages.

AIG bonuses four times higher than reported‎ (Politico)
AIG now says it paid out more than $454 million in bonuses to its employees for work performed in 2008. That is nearly four times more than the company revealed in late March when asked by POLITICO to detail its total bonus payments. At that time, AIG spokesman Nick Ashooh said the firm paid about $120 million in 2008 bonuses to a pool of more than 6,000 employees. AIG spokesman Ashooh said the company’s revised accounting is the result of different wording of the questions asked by [Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)] and POLITICO. 

I’m shocked (by lambert at Corrente)
According to Yves, Obama’s chief of the SEC, Mary Schapiro, dumped $862 million worth of “auction rate securities” while head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) — without telling the public. So, while FINRA and the insiders got out in time, the public was left holding the bag. Quelle surprise. And the beauty part? The agency that would investigate Mary Schapiro’s conduct while head of FINRA would be the SEC. Which Mary Schapiro now heads. Cozy!

New York Fed Chairman’s Ties to Goldman Raise Questions (Wall Street Journal)
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York shaped Washington’s response to the financial crisis late last year, which buoyed Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other Wall Street firms. Goldman received speedy approval to become a bank holding company in September and a $10 billion capital injection soon after. During that time, the New York Fed’s chairman, Stephen Friedman, sat on Goldman’s board and had a large holding in Goldman stock, which because of Goldman’s new status as a bank holding company was a violation of Federal Reserve policy.

Cashing In on ‘Government Sachs’ (by Robert Scheer at Truthdig)
We are so inured to tales of business corruption that even a devastating expos in The Wall Street Journal no longer shocks us. The fact that the chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank made millions off his secret purchase of Goldman Sachs stock has barely registered a blip of outrage. 

Wall Street Firms Will Revert to Pre-Crisis Model, Cohen Says (Bloomberg, thanks to Lambert at Corrente)
“The system will look more like what preceded the current environment than many people seem to believe,” [said H. Rodgin Cohen, chairman of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP], said yesterday at a panel discussion on the future of Wall Street sponsored by Bloomberg News in New York. “I am far from convinced there was something inherently wrong with the system.”

Business lobby and some Democrats voice opposition to Obama’s crackdown on offshore tax havens. (Think Progress)
[Monday], the Obama administration announced “a major offensive against businesses and wealthy individuals who avoid U.S. taxes by parking cash overseas.” Predictably, the business lobby immediately cried foul over the changes, claiming that they will destroy businesses and “eliminate American jobs.”

But Congressional roadblocks have also emerged: “Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, called for ‘further study’ of Obama’s proposals within minutes of the president’s announcement yesterday. Representative Joseph Crowley, a Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said he’s wary because the tax changes would hurt Citigroup Inc., his New York district’s largest private-sector employer.” The Wonk Room provides some facts to help inform “wary” Democrats.

Kudlow calls Obama’s “corporate tax attack” part of his “war against capital” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Buchanan: “What is happening now to white men right now is exactly what was done to black folks for years” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Fox Nation: Has Obama Declared War on American Business? (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Why Obama is taking on corporate tax havens (by Robert Reich)
It’s about revenue and fulfilling campaign promises, but it may also have something to do with getting universal health insurance enacted.

Corporate Hedge Fund Lawyer Who Attacked Obama Now Clams Up: ‘I Have No Comment’ (Think Progress)
Tom Lauria, a lawyer representing “a small group of speculators” who forced Chrysler into bankruptcy because they wanted a few more cents on the dollar, made a stunning allegation against the Obama White House on a conservative talk show last Friday. Lauria claimed that one of his former clients — Perella Weinberg — withdrew its opposition to the government deal because the White House threatened “that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.”… Now, Tom Lauria is clamming up, refusing to stand by his earlier accusations against the White House. 

Limbaugh claims “[w]e’ve got literally a thugocracy that is operating out of the White House” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Plan to Sell Chrysler to Fiat Clears Bar (New York Times)
The judge overseeing the bankruptcy of Chrysler on Tuesday took a significant step toward allowing the sale of most of the automaker to Fiat, approving the bidding procedures advocated by the company and backed by the Obama administration… The judge’s decision was a victory for Chrysler and the government, which together argued that a speedy sale was the only way to protect tens of thousands of jobs and help along the American economy.

Creditors May Have Pushed For Chrysler Bankruptcy To Rake In Bailout Cash (by Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
The White House, auto executives and union representatives were all able to come to an agreement last week to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy. But the car company’s creditors — Wall Street banks and hedge funds — refused repeated compromises and drove the company under… AIG, thanks to the government bailout, has paid off swaps in the past at 100 cents on the dollar. Under the deal they would have had to accept with Chrysler, the bondholders would have received as little as 30 cents on the dollar, for example. Why take 30 or 35 cents on the dollar from Chrysler when you can get the whole buck from the American taxpayer?…

“The basic story is very simple,” says economist Dean Baker of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. “If they hold credit default swaps on the bonds, they’re totally happy with them defaulting.” In what would rank as one of the great scams of this financial crisis, government bailouts may be colliding. Wall Street may be raking in taxpayer dollars through AIG and returning the favor by driving the auto industry into bankruptcy.

Benefits and Standards Down the Drain (Black Agenda Report)
The same fearless, insightful news media that misrepresents Wall Street’s raid on the U.S. Treasury as somehow necessary to save the economy has a story to tell about how the harm to hundreds of thousands of current and retired auto workers will be minimized by incorruptible public officials and knowledgable bankruptcy judges.  Only it’s not true.  The wages of auto workers will be permanently cut, their hours lengthened, their benefits cut.  And those who worked 25 or 30 years on the line, counting on lifetime medical care and a dignified retirement have already been sold out.

Commentary: With pensions at risk it’s fair to ask ‘who will pay?’ (by R.D. Norton at the American Institute for Economic Research )
With GM flirting with bankruptcy and Chrysler already there, it’s fair to ask whether taxpayers will be expected to cover the costs of the pensions the companies promised their workers. The cost for GM alone is estimated at $13.5 billion.
You only need one guess.

Matt Davies

Colbert Report: The Word – Captain Kangaroo Court (video)
Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney should have to explain the nuance of their rationale on torture to a jury of children.

A man of most excellent fancy (by Owen Paine at Stop Me Before I Vote Again)
Here’s the devilish Mr Blum… “We’re now told that Obama and his advisers had recently been fiercely debating the question of what to do about the Bush war criminals, with Obama going one way and then another and then back again, both in private and in his public stands. One might say that he was ‘tortured”’” Nice turn, eh? It’s a human-rights violation to make anyone president of the United States who has a living soul. Better a pickled, salted, dried-out silver-spoon zombie decider. At least in that case there’s no further spiritual damage to be done, that Mom and Pop haven’t already done for him.

Bush Officials Try to Alter Ethics Report (Washington Post)
Former Bush administration officials have launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts… A draft report of more than 200 pages, prepared in January before Bush’s departure, recommends disciplinary action, rather than criminal prosecution, by state bar associations against Yoo and Bybee, former attorneys in the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, for their work in preparing and signing the interrogation memos. State bar associations have the power to suspend a lawyer’s license to practice or impose other penalties.

Torture Memo Probe May Lead To Disbarments (NPR)
The Justice Department has nearly completed its investigation into lawyers who wrote the “torture” memos authorizing harsh interrogations. According to two sources familiar with the investigation, the report will refer people to bar associations for possible disciplinary action. Criminal prosecution, however, seems increasingly unlikely.

Questions Remain About Bush Torture Lawyers Escaping Prosecution (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
The Bush administration lawyers who drew up the torture memos appear to be escaping prosecution, according to multiple news reports. An internal Justice Department probe has concluded that the lawyers — John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, all top officials in Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel — committed serious lapses of judgment but shouldn’t be prosecuted for their role in creating legal rationales for Bush’s torture program.

Here’s one key outstanding question: Will the report, which isn’t final and hasn’t been released, clarify whether:
1) The lawyers reached an independent, though deeply flawed, judgment about the legality of the torture techniques; or whether
2) The lawyers deliberately set out to skew their legal opinions to justify CIA torture techniques that they had already decided to rationalize, perhaps on orders from on high?

Complicity — and Accountability — on Torture (by Dan Froomkin at White House Watch, Washington Post)
As torture chronicler extraordinaire Mark Danner has pointed out, one of the great paradoxes of the torture scandal “is that it is not about things we didn’t know but about things we did know and did nothing about.” It was, for instance, in December 2002 that Dana Priest and Barton Gellman first reported on the front page of the Washington Post that American interrogators were subjecting detainees to “stress and duress” techniques. James Risen, David Johnston and Neil A. Lewis first told the world about waterboarding in May 2004.

But that doesn’t mean that the rest of us are as guilty as the people who committed the crimes — or that those who ordered those crimes should avoid accountability. Jacob Weisberg now joins Michael Kinsley, however, in arguing that the nation’s collective guilt for torture is so great that prosecution is a cop-out… There are two big problems with this argument, however. While it’s true that the public’s outrage over torture has been a long time coming, one reason for that is the media’s sporadic and listless coverage of the issue… Secondly, while it’s certainly worth exploring why any number of people were either actively or passively complicit in our torture regime … that has nothing to do with whether senior administration officials willfully broke the law, and whether they should be held accountable. It doesn’t change the law.

Dodd: Torture investigations may need to go as high as Cheney’s office. (Think Progress)
In a new interview with Connecticut bloggers, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) unequivocally states that he believes waterboarding is torture and comes out in support of Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) Commission of Inquiry into a “comprehensive, nonpartisan, independent review of what happened.” He also compares today’s situation to the Nuremberg Trials — for which his father was a prosecutor — and criticizes the Obama administration for releasing the documents and then resisting calls for investigations… When someone then pointed out that “a lot of this stuff seems to point toward Cheney’s office,” Dodd replied, “You gotta go where you gotta go.”
Click through to watch the video.

Dodd Ridicules “Genius” In White House Who Won’t Investigate Bush (VIDEO) (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Sen. Chris Dodd took some noticeably hard shots at the White House in a recent interview with Connecticut bloggers, ridiculing the Obama officials who decided to release documents showing the Bush administration authorized torture without having the political will to follow up with an investigation or prosecution… Dodd said that he definitively believed waterboarding to be torture and added that if “people did do something illegal it ought to be pursued.” He did not have a preferred avenue for pursuing investigations into the matter, though spoke somewhat favorably of Sen. Patrick Leahy’s proposal for an independent body to handle the matter.

But it was his comments aimed at the president that were the most biting. Though Obama noted that his hands were tied when it came to the document release — his White House had to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request from the ACLU — the fact that the president remains un-eager to pursue potential illegal activity struck Dodd as antithetical to basic American principles.

The Bush Administration Homicides (by John Sifton at the Daily Beast)
The Justice Department may not be prosecuting the torture-memo writers, but John Sifton asks, what about those who killed an estimated 100 detainees during interrogations?

Transparency Interview: Jameel Jaffer (by Clint Hendler, Columbia Journalism Review)
The ACLU lawyer who helped uncover the detainee memos says there are more documents to come

The reluctant enablers of torture (by Sheri Fink, Salon)
A Senate report shows that during the Bush administration’s War on Terror, mental health professionals raised questions about harsh interrogations — but helped design interrogation programs anyway.

The “best and the brightest”? Spare me (by Michael Lind, Salon)
Some are arguing that if we prosecute Bush officials for torture, or reregulate the financial industry, talented people won’t enter government or become bankers. No, they’re not kidding.

Freedom Rider: Is Bush Still President? (by Margaret Kimberley at the Black Agenda Report)
Afraid that “some of the defendants might actually be acquitted,” President Obama “is considering resuming the use of military tribunals to prosecute Guantanamo detainees.” And some of the defendants might be tried on American soil, something even George Bush feared to do. What has emboldened Obama? “He was never called to account by self-described progressives during his presidential campaign. The same individuals who chose to silence themselves throughout 2008 have continued to act like doormats for president Obama,”

Commentary: Swine flu shows need for good public health systems (by Amitabh Pal, The Progressive Media Project)
A major reason for the spread of the epidemic has been the sorry state of the Mexican health-care infrastructure… Governments around the world need to have robust public health care systems and universal health care in place to respond to emergencies such as the swine flu. Otherwise, pandemics will regularly claim large numbers of victims in the years to come.
Yes, and why aren’t Democrats trumpeting this, as a way of gaining more support for radical health care reform here in the U.S.?

Max Baucus ‘Cares Deeply’ About Your Views on Single Payer (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
You know, it really is interesting, how thoroughly they’ve scoured almost every public hearing on healthcare reform from anyone testifying in favor of single-payer – the only solution that makes economic sense under our dire economic circumstances. I wonder why? They must really be scared. “Health care activists disrupted a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday, standing up one after the other as Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) tried to restore order. ‘I want you to know I care deeply about your views,’ Baucus said.” Uh huh.

From the Physicians for A National Health Program website: “The press seated comfortably at the press table first looked amused and then puzzled by the procession of protest in the chamber. The C-SPAN cameras fixed on both the Committee’s table at the front of the room and the witness table directly across from them could have easily picked up the protests but the network chose to keep their cameras fixed only on Chairman Baucus — though the protestors’ words could be heard in the audience. Only two reporters of the 20 or so assembled were curious enough or industrious enough to rise and exit the room to see the arrests being carried out in the hallway.”

Izvestia: the middle ground in health care reform is a public option that’s public in name only (by gob at Corrente)
Izvestia-on-the-Hudson “reports” [Tuesday] that Senator Schumer, “scorched by Republican opposition to the idea of a new public program like Medicare,” (scorched? what’re they gonna do, take away his birthday?) offers a “middle ground”: a public plan based on a set of principles, the first of which is that it won’t be supported by public funds: “The public plan must be self-sustaining. It should pay claims with money raised from premiums and co-payments. It should not receive tax revenue or appropriations from the government.”

GOP’s “New” Health Care Playbook Echoes 1993 Harry And Louise Ads (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Okay, this is striking. This morning The Politico reported that uber-GOP pollster Frank Luntz has concocted a 26-page strategy memo advising Republicans on what language to use in the coming health care debate. But if Luntz and House GOPers were hoping this new linguistic strategy would help the party recast itself as ready for today’s challenges — and not trapped in the past, as Dems have sought to portray them — they have a bit of a problem. That’s because the language echoes, to a striking degree, the same language that was used in the infamous “Harry and Louise” ads to defeat health care reform back in 1993 — 16 years ago.
Obama used the Harry and Louise tactic against Hillary in last year’s primary. If that comes back to haunt us all, I’ll be even more angry with him.

Alexander on public health care plan: ‘It’s like putting an elephant in the room with some mice.’ (Think Progress)
As part of President Obama’s push to reform health care, he has made it clear that he supports creating a public plan that would compete with private health insurance plans. In response, the health insurance lobby group AHIP has insisted that such competition would be “potentially lethal” to their industry. Republican Conference Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is now making their arguments for them, likening the competition between private and public health insurance to mice trying to compete with an elephant…

Igor Volsky recently explained the actual impact of having a competing public plan, writing, “In an environment where private plans are forced to compete with a new efficient public program, inefficient, over-bloated insurers will go out of business, but private plans with good networks of providers or better services will continue attracting new enrollees.”
No one will be able to compete with the price, though, and that’s a good thing, I believe. It will drive the private insurers out of the market, and we’ll be left with one provider. The we can determine that it doesn’t make sense to pay for it separately, so we’ll fold payment into the tax structure. Voilà! Single payer!

Give Everyone Healthcare By Shutting Down Insurance Companies (by David Swanson, writing at the Black Agenda Report)
The only way to get something that remotely resembles single payer health care is to demand…single payer health care. Progressives that supported single payer now set their sites lower because President Obama isn’t going there. But “opening a political negotiation by asking for what the other side is offering is no negotiation at all.” Obama offers many explanations for backing away from the health care approach he once claimed to favor. But the real explanation “is the financial influence in Congress and the White House of the insurance industry.” 

Health Reform Lessons from Massachusetts, Part II (by Trudy Lieberman, Columbia Journalism Review)
Does an individual mandate work? Depends on who’s talking

First 100 Days: Hillary at 71% (by Alegre)
And BHO… not so much.  This one’s worth posting for the title…  “…The most recent polls show Clinton with a whopping job approval rating of 71% as secretary of state, while the new President topped out at 65%.”

Obama moves to bolster consumer product safety agency (McClatchy)
President Barack Obama on Wednesday chose former South Carolina schools superintendent Inez Tenenbaum to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission and charged her with revitalizing a dormant federal agency.

U.S. May Add Shots for Swine Flu to Fall Regimen (Washington Post)
The Obama administration is considering an unprecedented fall vaccination campaign that could entail giving Americans three flu shots — one to combat annual seasonal influenza and two targeted at the new swine flu virus spreading across the globe. If enacted, the multibillion-dollar effort would represent the first time that top federal health officials have asked Americans to get more than one flu vaccine in a year, raising serious challenges concerning production, distribution and the ability to track potentially severe side effects.

PHANTOM AIR FARCE PICTURES (New York Post)
The $328,835 snapshots of an Air Force One backup plane buzzing lower Manhattan last week will not be shown to the public, the White House said [on Monday]. “We have no plans to release them,” an aide to President Obama told The Post, refusing to comment further. The sole purpose of the secret photo-op, which sent thousands of New Yorkers running for cover, was to take new publicity shots of the presidential jet over the city.

From May of 2003:
Just plane crazy Jet buzzes Statue of Liberty (New York Daily News)
A jumbo jet – larger than either of the planes that exploded into the twin towers – flew low along the Hudson River and buzzed the Statue of Liberty yesterday before veering toward the heart of midtown. This time, terrorists were not behind the controls. The plane was carrying U.S. troops on their way home from Iraq. But almost no one watching from below knew that – and the jittery city braced for the worst.

Inspector Says Report on Pentagon Publicity Program Was Flawed (New York Times)
In a highly unusual reversal, the Defense Department’s inspector general’s office has withdrawn a report it issued in January exonerating a Pentagon public relations program that made extensive use of retired officers who worked as military analysts for television and radio networks. Donald M. Horstman, the Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for policy and oversight, said in a memorandum released on Tuesday that the report was so riddled with flaws and inaccuracies that none of its conclusions could be relied upon. In addition to repudiating its own report, the inspector general’s office took the additional step of removing the report from its Web site.

EPA Proposes Changes To Biofuel Regulations (Washington Post)
The Obama administration waded deeper into climate regulation yesterday, proposing new standards for alternative motor fuels and setting off a debate among ethanol producers and environmentalists about scientific assumptions that could be worth billions of dollars to industry. The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulations are designed to curtail greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change and to make sure that alternative fuels, such as ethanol or biodiesel, do not have indirect effects, such as deforestation in other countries, that could inadvertently increase levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Brand Obama (by J –SOM at Liberal Rapture)
I suppose one must suck it up and be glad Truthdig has posted some TRUTH. I imagine The Nation will get on the “Newsflash! Obama is a fraud!” bandwagon soon enough. Followed – after he slips below 50% – by that shell company the NYTimes and then, with the the startled look of a goldfish who can’t remember it’s seen the fishbowl castle 2000 times before, CNN will reveal that Obama is actually really not very good at Presidenting beyond the showing off parts – or a particularly honest man. (The corruption being revealed in the Chrysler/Hedge Fund attack is quite remarkable…you can take the thugs out of Chicago but you can’t take the thuggery out of the thugs.)

What is dangerous about Obama has not changed in the last 15 months. That being that he is everywhere and nowhere, all things and nothing- making him the perfect front man for ongoing looting. This is what has occurred so far – and, I will bet right now, his health care proposal will – when and if it is actually read – will benefit certain insurance companies enormously. Obama is the outsider the elites brought in to do the job. In this way he is the perfect and logical extension of Bush. Effective blowback against him will be apparent in the media in direct proportion to the degree he goes against the wishes of those who brought him to the party.

Plouffe Warns: Democrats Are A “Little Over-Confident” Right Now (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
David Plouffe, whose refusal to let poll numbers eclipse electoral realities became the defining feature of the Obama campaign, threw some cold water on Democrats on Monday. The gains made in 2006 and 2008 had left little room for further growth, he said. And right now, the party was a “little over-confident” with their majority status. The Obama campaign manager, speaking at the Panetta Institute in Monterey, California, alongside Bush strategist Karl Rove, predicted that Democrats could at best only pick up a handful of seats in the 2010 congressional elections.

“Because we’ve won so many House seats in the last two elections, we have got more Democrat representing swing seats, so the balance has shifted a little bit,” he said. “Right now the Republicans are, I think, at a core in the U.S. House, where there may be four or five House seats that you can plausibly suggest the Democrats have a chance of winning. We’ve won pretty much all there was to win in the last two elections.”
Yes, remember that it was the Democratic Party that was dead in 2004. Overconfidence can lead to some bad strategic choices, such as calling Republicans names instead of fighting them on the issues.

Like this:
DNC Survivor Ad Mocks Republicans As Hapless Castaways  (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Taking advantage of the latest internal squabbling and insecurity of the GOP, the Democratic National Committee put out a new web ad Tuesday evening comparing the lot of prospective leaders in the Republican Party to a theoretical cast of the hit show Survivor. Entitled “Survivor: GOP,” the clip makes its point in images rather than words… Replete with a mock Survivor emblem — “Outwit. Outplay. Outlast. Survivor: GOP Edition” — the ad represents a new crest of DNC mockery about the search for leadership and message in the Republican Party.

CREW AND VOTEVETS.ORG ASK HOUSE ARMED SERVICES TO INVESTIGATE ARMY MISDIAGNOSES OF SERVICE MEMBERS AND VETERANS WITH PTSD (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington)
In light of news reports that the Army has instituted the cost-cutting practice of ordering doctors to misdiagnose soldiers returning from battle with anxiety disorder rather than post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and VoteVets.org today asked the chair of the House Armed Services Committee to investigate the extent of this outrageous practice.

Senate Democrats Deny Specter Committee Seniority (Capitol Briefing, Washington Post)
In a unanimous voice vote, the Senate approved a resolution that added [Arlen] Specter to the Democratic side of the dais on the five committees on which he serves, an expected move that gives Democrats larger margins on key panels such as Judiciary and Appropriations. But Democrats placed Specter in one of the two most junior slots on each of the five committees for the remainder of this Congress, which goes through December 2010. Democrats have suggested that they will consider revisiting Specter’s seniority claim at the committee level only after the midterm elections next year.
Absolutely. Make him prove himself.

But then again,
Gibbs: Obama Will Back Specter No Matter What He Does (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
So what can Obama and the Dem establishment do to pressure Arlen Specter to get behind their agenda? [Tuesday’s] White House press briefing dramatized the problem well. The key moment came when ABC News’ Jake Tapper asked White House press sec Robert Gibbs a good question: Is there any point at which Specter’s refusal to back key aspects of Obama’s agenda might get him to, you know, rethink his automatic support for Specter through the 2010 Dem primary?… Gibbs’ answer: Not really. Yes, it’s really, really great for Dems that Specter switched. But this aspect of it could prove a real problem for them. Period.
My comment: No, it’s not really, really great that Specter switched. We need fewer, not more, Blue Dogs in the Congress. But at least it will force the Democrats to come up with new excuses about why they can’t implement a progressive agenda.

Poll: Even Republicans Want Specter To Back EFCA (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Buried in this week’s Quinnipiac Poll of Pennsylvania is a stunning number that really leaves you wondering why Arlen Specter is holding out against the Employee Free Choice Act. The poll finds that twice as many Pennsylvania Republicans want him to support the measure than want him to oppose it. Twenty six percent of Republicans say his opposition makes them less likely to back him; only 13% say it makes them more likely. Overall, the numbers are roughly the same. Twenty three percent of Pennsylvania voters overall say his opposition makes them less likely to back him; 14% say it makes them more likely.

Pence: I’m Not ‘Anti-Science’…But I Don’t Believe In Global Warming, Stem Cell Research, Or Evolution (Think Progress)
In a contentious debate with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews [Tuesday], the third-ranking House Republican [Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN)] claimed that the science behind climate change is “mixed.” Pence did, however, admit that it is “fair” to question whether that makes him a discredited messenger on energy issues… “In the mainstream media, there is a denial of the growing skepticism in the scientific community on global warming,” Pence bellowed.
Click through to watch the video.

Bachmann: Obama’s Policies Are Fitting America’s 19 And 20-Year-Olds ‘With Shackles And Chains’ (Think Progress)
This past weekend, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appeared on the Northern Alliance Radio Network show, hosted by conservative bloggers John Hinderaker and Brian Ward. During the interview, Bachmann said she was “concerned” that debt resulting from President Obama’s policies are fitting “the current 19 and 20-year-olds” with “shackles and chains.” To support this, Bachmann then claimed that today’s youth will face a tax rate of “65 percent or higher” because of Obama… Continuing her paranoid fearmongering, Bachmann then claimed that Obama’s plans to institute a cap-and-trade program to reel in greenhouse gas emissions will turn Americans into “servants to government”…

This isn’t the first time Bachmann has used over-the-top rhetoric to attack efforts to move to a clean energy economy. “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back,” said Bachmann in March. “Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing.” Additionally, Bachmann has a record of implying that Obama is seeking to enslave Americans. Last month, she claimed that the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which Obama signed, had provisions for “re-education camps for young people.”
Click through to listen to the audio and to read the transcript.

The Republicans are against it! Whatever it is (by Mike Madden, Salon)
Led by Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, the GOP is already preparing to oppose President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court as a radical leftist — whoever he or she is.
Yes, well, that’s their job. Hitting on them for it will only increase their approval with their base.

Castle Would Crush Biden in Senate Race (Political Wire)
A new Susquehanna Polling and Research poll in Delaware shows Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) soundly beating Attorney General Beau Biden (D) in a possible match up for U.S. Senate in 2010. Castle leads Biden, 55% to 34% with only 8% undecided.
A few weeks ago, Castle said he was more likely to run for Senate than for re-election, but he is also considering retirement.

McAuliffe Pulls Away in Virginia (Political Wire)
After three months of polling showing the Democratic race for Virginia Governor in a dead heat, Terry McAuliffe has broken out from the pack, taking a ten point lead over Brian Moran, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey. McAuliffe is now at 30%, followed by Moran at 20%, and Creigh Deeds at 14%. Another 36% are still undecided.

Democrats on Track to Flip Ohio Senate Seat (Political Wire)
According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, the race for the seat held by retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) leans Democratic, regardless of which of the two leading candidates wins the party nomination.

Palin turns down federal energy efficiency money (McClatchy)
Alaska legislators argue Gov. Sarah Palin is overstating the strings attached to federal stimulus money she’s planning to reject. But Palin isn’t backing down and said she still won’t take the $28.6 million for energy programs.

Schwarzenegger says it’s time to study legalizing pot (McClatchy)
As California struggles to find cash, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday it’s time to study whether to legalize and tax marijuana for recreational use.
Forget your idea of what’s moral when there’s money to be made!

Racist e-mail forces resignation of N.C.’s ABC Chairman Fox (McClatchy)
Gov. Beverly Perdue asked for and received the resignation of N.C. Alcoholic Beverage Commission Chairman Doug Fox on Tuesday, just hours after newspapers provided Perdue’s office with a copy of a racist photo illustration sent from Fox’s e-mail address after last November’s election.

DC Council recognizes out-of-state same-sex marriages. (Think Progress)
After an “emotional debate” today, the DC Council gave “final approval to legislation that recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. … The issue now goes before Congress, which has final say over the city’s laws.” The vote was originally unanimous, until “councilman Marion Barry proclaimed that he didn’t realize what he was voting for and asked for reconsideration of the measure. The measure was amended to another bill.” Berry said that his nay vote was an “‘agonizing and difficult decision’ that he made after prayer and consulting with the religious community.”
What was Barry smoking, do you think?

Miss California Blames ‘Topless’ Photo on Gay Marriage Conspiracy (by Ryan Tate at Gawker)
When Carrie Prejean spoke against gay marriage during the Miss America competition, she said it was the “biblically correct” thing to do. So presumably Miss California found scripture to justify this shirtless picture.

Should DC Reporters Pretend They Don’t Love Obama? (by Hamilton Nolan at Gawker)
The biggest issue facing the DC press corps today: whether they are all IN THE TANK because they stand up when Obama comes in the briefing room, but they didn’t do that so much when Bush came in the briefing room. 1. Yes they are in the tank. 2. Bush never came in the briefing room anyhow. 3. Ideally the DC press corps would greet all presidents with jeers and invective at all times. Work on that.
My sentiment exactly.

Time 100 Gala: Boozy Enemies Get Intimate at Twitter-ized Party (by Ryan Tate at Gawker)
The press corps shrank at this year’s Time 100: We heard the Observer, Mediabistro and Daily Beast weren’t there; Folio was reportedly turned away. The media truncation was just one way the party was Twitter-ized. Everyone, it seemed, was friending everyone; Glenn Beck was even snapping fan pics of Michelle Obama and chatting up liberal internet publisher Arianna Huffington.
Click through for photos and tweets—if you can stand it.

Defense of Waterboarding Story, Waterboarding Itself Exactly the Same (by Hamilton Nolan at Gawker)
ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross got suckered into a 2007 story about the effectiveness of waterboarding, that turned out to be false. ABC’s newest defense sounds just like…Dick Cheney, defending waterboarding: “[ABC News president David] Westin said the network had done all the soul-searching it needed to. ‘We were all misled, including the New York Times,’ he said. ‘Listen, investigative reporting always involves taking aggressive positions, and there are people who want to mislead you and people who want to criticize you. That’s inherent in investigative reporting. The worst thing we could do would be to pull back.’” And the worst thing America could have done is to not waterboard Abu Zubaydah 83 times. Better safe than sorry! Let God sort it out! Report, then decide. We’re right there with you, ABC!

Limbaugh Endorses GOP ‘Listening Tour’ After Pence Placates Him (Think Progress)
[Monday], Rush Limbaugh slammed the GOP’s “listening tour” re-branding effort, saying that the conservative movement does not need to listen to the American people. Rather, Limbaugh declared, “We need a teaching tour.” Asked about Limbaugh’s rejection of the GOP listening tour [Tuesday] on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) did not take issue with Limbaugh’s remarks, saying only that the GOP’s objective was to help “educate the American people.” The change in rhetoric appears to have been enough to placate Limbaugh, who strongly endorsed Pence’s new goal on his radio show.
Click through to watch the video.

Limbaugh’s living large while radio boss Clear Channel implodes (by Eric Boehlert at Media Matters for America)
Clear Channel’s fall from business grace remains epic in its proportions. In 10 years time the company has gone from dominating a flourishing radio industry to a corporation that now teeters on the brink… And yet Clear Channel’s most famous employee, Rush Limbaugh, remains oblivious to it all. I sometimes wonder what Limbaugh thinks when he reads about the not-so-slow-motion collapse of his radio employer while lounging in his 24,000-square-foot Florida estate or motoring in his $450,000 car to the airport to ride in his $54 million jet. Does Limbaugh feel bad? Does he feel a little guilty? And does he ever think about giving some of his riches back so that thousands of radio colleagues wouldn’t have to be bounced to the curb?
Gosh no, Eric, Limbaugh thinks the recession is something to joke about.

EXCLUSIVE AUDIO: Limbaugh Mocks Recession During Speech To Wealthy Right-Wing Donors (Think Progress)
[Monday] night, Rush Limbaugh came to Washington, D.C. to address the President’s Club Dinner, a meeting of wealthy donors and supporters of the Heritage Foundation. The audience included Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), as well as various millionaire trustees of the Heritage Foundation, like Thomas Saunders. After more or less reprising his radio show routine, Limbaugh went on to brag about his $400 million contract with Clear Channel Communications. As he continued to gloat about his show’s success, Limbaugh mocked the idea that Americans are suffering, noting, “I’ve never had financially a down year” despite the “supposed” recession.
Click through to listen to the audio.

With “our liberties once against threatened” by the Obama administration, Hannity unveils his own “Tree of Liberty” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

O’Reilly’s key to “GOP Comeback”: Attack Bruce Springsteen’s “snide reference to America” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Banned By U.K., Radio’s Savage Threatens to Sue (The Times, U.K.)
“Shock jock” Michael Savage, who hosts the Savage Nation radio show, said last night that he was planning legal action against the British government after discovering that he had been on a list of 16 people banned from entering Britain under the category “preachers of hate.”
Judge for yourself whether Savage preaches hate.

Competition: The missing ingredient of American democracy (New Deal 2.0, thanks to Economist’s View)
A disastrous war in Iraq has yielded no congressional hearings, not even on cost overruns on no-bid contracts. Decisions on torture were made among a handful of lawyers feeling the heavy hand of former Vice President Cheney and his enforcers, but without having to confront the deeper institutional experience of the military on these matters. Financial deregulation was undertaken with little apparent attention to the hit to the public when high risk begets not high yields but catastrophic failure. What were the institutional safeguards? Where were the gatekeepers? The answers are complicated, but there is one thread that runs through it all: the lack of political competition among the institutions of government and in the electoral process.

Educating Girls – It’s a No-Brainer (by Alegre)
Sadly, many leaders of the developing world don’t quite get this (yet).  They probably know that it’s smart to educate all children, but this clearly isn’t enough of a priority for them to put resources and energy behind the idea… “Girl Power Can Lift Global Economy - An extra year in primary school statistically boosts girls’ future wages by 10% to 20%… – Young women have a 90% probability of investing their earned income back into their families, while the likelihood of men doing the same is only 30% to 40%… – A girl’s school attainment is linked to her own health and well-being, as well as reduced death rates.”… It doesn’t make sense to hold back half of your citizens and this report illustrates that very clearly. 

Resource: Flash activists use social media to drum up support (USA Today)
A Seattle-based online marketer is part of a new wave of protesters, called “flash activists,” who use an arsenal of social-media tools Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs and Wikis to organize hundreds sometimes thousands of people to gather at events and express their views.

Resource: U.S. Senate Now Posting Voting Data in XML (by Amy Gahran. Poynter Online)
The Sunlight Foundation reported this week that the U.S. Senate has begun posting roll call voting data in XML format… This move reverses the Senate’s longstanding policy of restricting public access to raw data about how Senators vote.
Great. Now we need them to post campaign contributions and expenditures electronically, so that we can cross reference their votes with those factors. And now that OpenSecrets.org has lobbying data online, we’ll be able to nail their asses to the wall with that comparison, too. We’ll have a free flow of data to match them all up.

Media Matters for America headlines

CNBC’s Haines uses false analogy to mock TARP repayment requirement

Savage says Muslims, others should be banned from US, but he’s “going to sue” UK for banning him

Rosen, Napolitano cite anonymous law clerks criticizing Sotomayor

Fox News falsely claims Dems voted to “protect,” “defend” pedophiles

Will Holmes, Coulter, Pinkerton follow Wash. Times in retracting Obama polling falsehood?

Wash. Times forwarded distortion of Obama’s “Christian nation” remarks

Media myths and falsehoods about the Supreme Court

TNR’s Rosen misrepresented footnote in making purported “Case Against Sotomayor”

Commentary: Proposed media law worries Iraqi journalists
A proposed law intended to protect the freedom of the press could end up being a major setback for journalists. That’s what many reporters here say about a bill that would include tough penalties for those who attack journalists. But the same measure would also give the government the right to withhold information it deemed not “in the public interest” or if it “threatens national security.”

US Needs ‘Digital Warfare Force’
The head of America‘s National Security Agency says that America needs to build a digital warfare force for the future, according to reports.

Craigslist responds to deadline set by SC Attorney General‎
Attorney General Henry McMaster [on Tuesday] called on the CEO of the Internet classified site “craigslist” to remove “the portions of the Internet site dedicated to South Carolina and its municipal regions which contain categories for and functions allowing for the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material” within ten (10) days. “If those South Carolina portions of the site are not removed,“ McMaster said, “the management of craigslist may be subject to criminal investigation and prosecution.“

US congressman moves to legalize online gambling
A US congressman unveiled legislation on Wednesday which would legalize online gambling in the United States.

Photographer Who Shot Historic Kent State Picture Reunites With Subject On Campus
Inextricably linked by the annals of history for the past 39 years, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer John Filo and his subject, Mary Vecchio, were reunited Tuesday at Kent State University.

When the Watchdogs Are Asleep, We All Get Robbed (by Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher)
In the wake of the financial collapse, I wonder if the remaining (if relatively low) public respect for the press is gone for good. Yes, the delivery platform of the future will change, but the content still has to be credible.

The Wall Street Journal Steers Away From What Made It Great (by Liza Featherstone, Columbia Journalism Review)
There are reasons to fear that in the midst of a financial crisis, with greater demand for high-quality journalism on finance than at anytime in decades, the Journal is abandoning values that have long distinguished it: a commitment to deep reporting and elegant writing.
I don’t know which Wall Street Journal Featherstone is talking about, but I have seldom found much in it that’s worth reading. When I started studying for my MBA in the early 70s, I bought a student subscription. After reading any one of the long articles about some company or industry, I’d ask myself what I’d learned. The answer was nothing of value, so I canceled my subscription.

Capital Eye Report: Congress Barks Back at Society’s Watchdogs (Capital Eye, OpenSecrets.org)
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) … will be leading a hearing about the future of the journalism industry and what Congress can do to prevent newspapers from indefinitely stopping their presses in these daunting economic times… But a similar subcommittee hearing just weeks ago turned into a bitter rant about the media… In addition to being viewed by some lawmakers as overly intrusive, reporters and editors are at yet another disadvantage as they seek help from Congress–in general they are prohibited by journalism ethics rules from giving campaign contributions, one of the most persuasive forms of speech on Capitol Hill…

[J]ournalism associations, newspaper publishers and executives of big media conglomerates that own newspapers don’t face the same kinds of ethical restrictions on political spending. In the 2008 election cycle, for example, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which owns the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, gave the most money in the industry at $433,250. In total, current lawmakers collected $5.6 million from the employees and PACs associated with book publishers, magazines and newspapers in the 2008 election cycle.
Click through for more.

Jacoby: It’s not liberal bias that’s killing newspapers
“If liberal media bias is the explanation, why are undeniably left-of-center papers like the Globe, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle attracting more readers than ever when visitors to their websites are taken into account?” asks Jeff Jacoby. “How does liberal bias explain the shutdown of Denver‘s more conservative Rocky Mountain News, but not the more liberal Denver Post?”

How to Save Media (by Jason Pontin, Technology Review) 
There will be a great and terrible clearing: scores of newspapers and magazines will vanish; those that survive will be much reduced; and most people employed as journalists or media professionals today will have different jobs in five years. But anyone who tells you that media-as-a-business is dying is wrong.

Don’t Call the Gravedigger — Newspapers Aren’t Dead (Yet) (by Brian McConnell,  founder of the Worldwide Lexicon project and Der Mundo, writing at Tech Insider, Salon)
I believe that newspapers are struggling, at least in part, because of a basic misunderstanding about advertising. Online advertising is based on the wrongheaded premise that ads are unwanted parasites, therefore we should build highly automated systems that minimize them and try to predict what any individual might want to see. .. [But] if you create an appealing and efficient marketplace, you’ll attract readers. Imagine that — people going to a page specifically to read ads. Outrageous? That’s exactly what people did for decades when they leafed through display ads to see what was on sale. There’s no reason this format can’t be relaunched in an improved form on the web.

It would be ironic if a key to newspapers’ survival was to rediscover a merchandising format that was invented more than a century ago, one whose solution is not rooted in technology but clever design and layout. I, for one, would welcome witty merchandising tactics over ads that have all of the appeal of a prompt on an ATM machine. Advertising is part of our culture and language. If nothing else, we’re a nation of willing buyers, and while we may complain about it, we’re always receptive to a clever sales pitch. Just ask President (and master salesman, in the good sense [sic]) Barack Obama.

NYT’s Heekin-Canedy: Times Is ‘Not A Newspaper, But A News Provider’ (Paid Content)
Scott Heekin-Canedy, president and GM of the group, is the latest NYT exec to answer reader questions during a week-long stint… [He participated] in the decision to raise the NYT’s weekday newsstand price to $2 from $1.50 and Sunday to almost unimaginable $7 from a previously hard-to-believe $5. Most people kept buying the print edition the last time the price changes; this time, though, the NYT has to contend with the double whammy of the economy and the free access it provides to its own news… A few excerpts…”

—Charging for digital access: Several readers mentioned willingness to pay for online access or to pay for both. Heekin-Canedy basically punted the question…
—Future formats: The question:  The Times is a newsPAPER. Will the online edition replace the paper one? The answer: “My colleagues and I see The Times not as a newsPAPER but instead as a news provider…”
—Ending Discovery Times: When a reader suggested the Times start its own CNN-like channel, Heekin-Canedy brought up the 2002 partnership with Discovery for a branded cable net, explaining that the video strategy changed toward broadband short-form. “With higher broadband penetration, video has proven popular with both users and advertisers. Increasingly, that is where we focus our efforts. Today we have more than 4,000 videos on NYTimes.com.”

Report: Murdoch Planning News Corp-Wide Paid Content Program (Paid Content)
How long can the news industry go on making only minimal profits from its supposed digital white knight? A month after saying online readers’ dependence on free content is “going to have to change somehow”, News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch has now “set up a global team, based in New York, London, and Sydney, to create a system for charging for online content in an environment where consumers have come to expect to get it for free”, The Daily Beast reports…

As evidenced by Murdoch’s refusal to take WSJ.com free, it is possible to charge for B2B and business news, but any effort to put Pandora back in her box by asking consumers to pay for general news may need to be undertaken together with industry partners – so the Beast says News’ new digital CEO Jonathan Miller is also speaking with “other content providers” about the project.

Interview: Condé Nast’s Carey And Wired’s Anderson: Pursuing The ‘Fremium’ Model (by David Kaplan at Paid Content)
It’s small consolation for magazine publishers that the industry can at least say it’s doing better than newspapers. In terms of the transition to digital, most of the main players in print get less than 10 percent of their revenues from online. At last week’s American Society of Magazine Editors magazine awards, I spoke to David Carey, Condé Nast group president/publishing director, and Chris Anderson, editor of Wired—which took home three Ellie awards. Both had a lot to say about the current landscape, including the demise of Portfolio, figuring out the right mix of free and paid content, and whether publishers should be getting into the e-reader device business…

[Chris Anderson:] There are two elements to a successful business. One, you make something people want. The other is you find a way to make people pay for it. It’s a work in progress, frankly. If you’re going to ask what our model will be in 10, 20 years time, I suspect it will be different than it is today. But I don’t think it will be radically different. Print will still make sense. Right now, we have free online and paid—at a relatively low cost—in print. There’s other revenue streams you can imagine: events, e-commerce, magazines are experimenting with retail, there’s subscription models based on something other than an annual basis. And others are examining selling individual stories. I suspect ‘fremium’ (a blend of free and premium content) is something that will define our business models over the next few years.
Click through for more.

What Google Can Do To Make The Web Less Of A ‘Cesspool’ (by Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com, posting at Paid Content)
After years of debate about the value of the near monopoly owned by the folks in Redmond, it would appear that this particular discussion is quickly moving south to the Googleplex. And from where I sit, appropriately so. For some time there have been murmurings about the relative value generated by Google vs. the parasitical nature of its business model. In short, is Google being disproportionally compensated for what is fundamentally other people’s work?

There is a strong case to be made that Google is indeed getting a bigger piece of the pie than it deserves. It certainly feels that way to content-producing companies when the advertising cycle is in a trough (as it is now) and the advertising lifeblood for branded professional journalism seems to be shrinking by the day. But is there substance to this feeling beyond the pain of lower ad dollars? I think the answer is becoming more and more clearly, yes.
Click through for the details of Spanfeller’s recommendations.

ChicagTrib’s Recipe For New Site: A Dash Of HuffPo, Stir In Some Facebook—Do Not Add Display (Paid Content)
The Chicago Tribune will introduce a new website adjunct in June called Chicago Now that has a lot of various elements: there’s social media and a blog aspect, along with e-commerce right along with general news, and even advertorial, E&P Pub’s Mark Fitzgerald reports. In describing this farrago, Fitzgerald’s item directs to Chicago Now’s promo video, in which the company says is going to be like “Huffington Post meets Facebook for Chicago.” Interestingly enough, the site is meant as a direct challenge, not just an homage, to HuffPo’s own Chicago site.

The promo also clearly states that Chicago Now will not rely on display advertising—instead e-commerce and advertorial will be its primary means of support. That seems like a pretty risky boast and it’s worth wondering how long Chicago Now will be able to maintain that stance. But with online ad spending what it its, newspaper websites can’t afford to dilute CPMs on the main site by creating more inventory for their staffs to sell. As a brand, Chicago Now is intended to largely independent from the Trib and will replace the website that belongs to RedEye, the paper’s youth-targeted free daily. Chicago Now also follows a road the Trib has been down before. About a year-and-a-half ago, it unveiled the now defunct independent broadband video site ChicagoLive.

Who is the Fifth Estate and What is Its Role in Journalism’s Future? (by Roy Clark at Poynter Online)
I recently heard the term “Fifth Estate” used at a Poynter conference to describe an emerging landscape for news, information, community and citizenship. It has also been used to describe the work of bloggers, but that circle may be too small for such a big term.

In my head, the Fifth Estate includes the Fourth Estate, the idea and value of a professional press corps as a way of informing and engaging the populace, and holding the powerful accountable. This vision of a Fifth Estate sees the Fourth Estate as necessary but insufficient for democratic life. The Fifth Estate could express what Jay Rosen has described as a “pro-am” model for the future of news, a frame that sees that the freedoms and responsibilities of the First Amendment empower not just a professional caste of news gatherers and distributors, but potentially every citizen.

Latest Recession Indicator: Press Confabs Canceled
In flusher times, media conferences and glitzy industry award ceremonies were arenas for journalists to huddle at open bars, trade gossip, and gather string on competitors. This spring there has been an unprecedented spate of cancellations and downsizings of industry confabs.

NYT Co. Reaches Deal With Globe Union
The Boston Globe’s largest union reached a tentative deal with The New York Times Co. shortly after 3 a.m. this morning, agreeing to a substantial pay cut, unpaid furloughs, and modifications to the lifetime job guarantee provisions that protect almost 200 employees in the Boston Newspaper Guild.

Sun-Times newsroom OKs temporary 9% pay cut
The vote was 52 to 9. The union concessions are to last only one year, but would end immediately if the Sun-Times is sold, if there’s a filing in bankruptcy court to reject the collective bargaining agreement or if the company strings together two consecutive profitable quarters.

Reader-in-Chief Gives Netherland a Bounce on Amazon
On Wednesday, April 29, CNN reported that Barack Obama was reading Joseph O’Neill’s 2008 New York novel Netherland. At that time, the hardcover edition of the book stood at #1,002, while the forthcoming Vintage paperback was at #4,277. Today both have jumped substantially.

@ Kindlefest: Amazon’s Bezos Touts Textbook, Newspaper Deals For Large Screen Kindle DX (Paid Content)
Apart from unveiling the new, larger screem Kindle DX, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that subscriptions for WaPo,NYT and its troubled NYTCo sibling The Boston Globe will offer reduced monthly Kindle subscriptions. Bezos was vague on the details and didn’t say how much the prices would be reduced or when.

Vogue on Your eReader? New E-paper Tech Will Make It Happen (Tech Insider, Salon)
[E]arlier this month, a group of researchers at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio came up with a new technology that allows them to re-create the brightness and color capabilities of paper-based media. This makes it possible to mimic the experience of glossy magazines such as Vogue and InStyle. In other words, they’re bringing us much closer to the real thing.

A Stimulus Plan From Glamour
Glamour is in the early stages of providing a little retail therapy to readers in its October issue with the title’s own version of an economic stimulus package. “We are going to provide a nationwide shopping program,” said Bill Wackermann, senior vice president and publishing director.

TelevisionWeek to Become Web-Only Publication, Spin Off New Magazine for News Pros
TelevisionWeek, the nation’s leading TV programming newspaper, will cease print publication and become online-only beginning in June. It will also spin off its successful NewsPro supplement as a stand-alone print magazine. Both the continuing TVWeek Web site and NewsPro will come under the management of BtoB, a sister publication of TVWeek. The last print issue of TVWeek will be on June 1, but coverage will continue after that on its Web site, at TVWeek.com, which also will be the home for NewsPro’s Web site.

The Sun Sets On BusinessWeek, Forbes, and Fortune (by Douglas A. McIntyre at 24/7 Wall St.)
Over the last several weeks, there has been speculation that one of the three large business magazines might fold. That is not going to happen, at least not in the foreseeable future. Instead these publications will have to cut staff, circulation, and abandon the ambitious editorial goals that have sustained their images for decades.

CBS Eyes Game Show Remakes
CBS is weighing pilot orders for Let’s Make a Deal and The Dating Game. The network wants to check out updated versions of the shows as part of its effort to fill the daytime slot to be voided by Guiding Light, the recently canceled soap that ends its historic run in September.

Daryn Kagan Offers Good News to TV Stations
Former CNN news anchor Daryn Kagan is launching Good News with Daryn Kagan, a syndicated news service. The service offers five two-minute video packages each week of positive, inspirational stories that stations can include in their local newscasts and on their Web sites.

DirecTV to Merge With Liberty Media’s Entertainment Arm
In a move aimed at getting more control, satellite broadcaster DirecTV Group is merging with Liberty Entertainment, a programming arm of media mogul John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp. The all-stock deal will put a handful of cable networks under DirecTV and give Malone a 24 percent voting stake.

Another Down Quarter for Disney, but Cable’s OK
A bad quarter for Disney, but it could have been worse. Bob Iger and company earned 43 cents a share on revenue of $8.1 billion. The bright spot for the entertainment conglomerate is the same one you see at every media giant these days: Disney’s cable business.

Disney’s Iger On Hulu, YouTube: ‘New Media Isn’t Going Away’; Planning Movie Subscription Product (Paid Content)
He didn’t exactly say “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” but that was the gist of Disney CEO Bob Iger’s explanation for joining the Hulu joint venture and for other online initiatives… Iger told analysts: “We believe that broader distribution of our content makes sense given the growth in online viewing,” adding, “New media isn’t going away. … We absolutely must be where our consumers are going.”  One reason: if Disney and others don’t make programming available on a well-timed, well-priced basis, consumers will find it anyway. Iger said going with a service like Hulu helps fight piracy by offering better alternatives.

But avoiding piracy isn’t the only rationale. Iger wants to be where the audience is and, so far, the demographics for Hulu are younger than those for broadcast television. Just as he has with iTunes sales and ABC.com VOD, Iger stressed that cannibalization isn’t a concern. Instead, Disney sees a way to expand its reach to views. The short-form deal with YouTube signed a few weeks before Hulu was confirmed is part of that promotional outreach.

@ Digital Hollywood: Looking Beyond The Hype On Hulu (Paid Content)
MTV’s EVP of digital ads Nada Stirratt questioned whether online video providers (even a company that has been TV-centric, like MTV) should even be trying to emulate TV’s content and monetization models on the web: “If someone really wants a TV experience, they’ll watch TV. And TV’s great for that. But the reason people go on the Web is for an engagement experience—being able to interact with other viewers, get commentary, see archives—and Hulu doesn’t complete that. It will be interesting to see what Hulu looks like in 18 months.”

@ Digital Hollywood: Can The TV Industry Survive The Online Video Boom? (Paid Content)
Will online video kill the TV star? That’s the question panelists tried to answer during the Video Advertising panel at Digital Hollywood. “The TV and movie industries have a value chain—grips, actors, screenwriters, etc. What do we do in our industry so it doesn’t get decimated like it has with newspapers or music?” asked Steve Robinson, president of video ad firm Panache. Responses varied, of course, but the consensus was that there was no way the TV industry would survive in its current form…

“We’re spending too much time trying to figure out what model is going to work, when it’s clear that we just need to be better at following consumers.” said Jason Forbes, group SVP of strategy, new products & marketing at Time Warner Cable Media Sales. “If we don’t, we’re just going to lose the revenue—like the music industry and Napster, or like newspapers in their attempts to catch up online.”
Yes, but just blindly going where the customers were is a big part of the problem that newspapers now have.

Jimmy Fallon, Trent Reznor Among Webby Award Winners
Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show hasn’t been on the air three months, but he’s already got an award. The comedian was chosen as person of the year by the annual Webby awards for being “one of the most ardent online evangelists.”

Earnings: WebMD Reports Higher Profit; Advertising and Sponsorship Revenue Up 16% (Paid Content)
WebMD continues to benefit from relative strength in the online health advertising market. The company said its revenue increased to $90.3 million, up 12 percent from $80.7 million a year ago. The company posted net income of $2.8 million (5 cents per share), up from a loss of $23.3 million (40 cents per share) a year ago. The results were largely in line with analyst expectations. On average, analysts expected earnings per share of 5 cents and revenue of $90.67 million.

Earnings: The Street.com’s Revenues Drop 26 Percent (Paid Content)
Commerce and subscriptions may be helping some media companies better weather the recession, but certainly not all of them. The Street.com’s first-quarter revenue decreased 26 percent, to $14 million (below consensus estimates of $15.4 million). It had a net loss from continuing operations of $3.1 million, a steep drop from a $2.4 million gain during the same quarter last year, and had a loss-per-share from continuing operations of $0.10, below consensus estimates of a $0.03 loss… Revenue for paid services (subscriptions, syndication, and licensing) decreased 12 percent to $9.5 million… Revenue for marketing services (advertising and integrated marketing) was down 45 percent to $4.5 million. 

8 of the Best Social Media Extensions for Joomla (by Cyrus Patten of TheBestofJoomla.com, posting at Mashable)
Joomla! is a CMS powerhouse, but the core does not include any social media integration other than RSS feeds. With a free download and easy installation, any Joomla! administrator can quickly integrate with popular social media applications. In addition to driving traffic to your site, integrating your Joomla! site with social media applications shows your readers you value them and want them to return. It also shows your readers that your content is valuable (or you think it is) and it’s worth sharing.
Click through for details.

Sprucing Up Online Display Ads
Online display ads are taking a hit, with many marketers questioning their effectiveness. Now, some Web companies are trying to breathe new life into the format. Businesses ranging from ad-technology start-ups to Web publishers are increasing the size and beefing up the quality of display ads.

General Mills Cooking With First iPhone App
As marketers seek to strike a chord with time-pressed consumers, they’ve begun to turn to mobile devices.

Report: Microsoft Guts In-Game Advertising Unit In Layoffs (Paid Content)
Roughly seventy-five percent of the staff at Microsoft’s Massive in-game advertising unit was laid off in Tuesday’s round of job cuts, according to VentureBeat. The company laid off roughly 3,000 employees [Tuesday] in its second round of job cuts in four months… Anecdotal accounts on the anonymous Mini-Microsoft employee blog and on Twitter suggest that other Microsoft advertising businesses, including its Atlas Solutions unit, saw major job cuts today.

Earnings: ValueClick Profits Down 30 Percent, But Display Steals Lead Gen Dollars (Paid Content)
Online ad company ValueClick cited the usual economic woes as Q1 net income tumbled 30 percent to $13.2 million ($0.15 per share) as revenues slid 20 percent to $135 million.

In a statement, Tom Vadnais, ValueClick’s CEO, tried to put as bright a sheen on the results as possible. Striking a somewhat defensive posture, he said that if it weren’t for the company’s concentration on performance-based marketing and cost-cutting, things would have been worse. In the area of display, ValueClick’s results often offer a microcosm of that business, which has taken a beating in general for the past year. Display beat expectations, gaining 2 percent to $34 million. While not earth-shattering, it’s another sign that display might have hit bottom and may rise slowly

@ Digital Hollywood: Tracking The Innovation And Monetization (Paid Content)
Where’s the best place to find examples of innovation and monetization in digital content? Big media companies with massive budgets? VC-backed indie studios? Nope, according to panelists Tuesday at Digital Hollywood. Content labs— typically non-profit organizations that manage to get media execs, creatives and tech developers to do pro-bono work—are the ones pushing the envelope, they said.
Click through for examples.

Magic Manhattan Maps (Gawker)
This is technically called a “horizonless projection in Manhattan” but it’s basically a crazy bendy map of everything from 34th street down.
This is a wonderful innovation for the spatially impaired, like me.

Libraries eye stimulus money for their Web access
The libraries in Delaware County, Pa., are trying to shift into warp speed. The county is hooking eight branches to a fiber-optic network to help meet library patrons’ ever-rising demand for high-bandwidth tasks like streaming educational videos and uploading online resumes.

1 in 5 Americans has dropped land-line phone
One out of every five Americans no longer worries about telemarketers, tangled phone cords or getting the door unlocked before the phone inside stops ringing.