Archive - Feb 10, 2010

An aide to Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi [D, CA-8] outlined an endgame for health care reform to reporters for subscription-only Congress Daily. Politico has posted a significant chunk of the article online.

The plan is to use reconciliation to pass a package of conference report-style compromises, than pass the Senate health care and have it signed into law. It’ exactly how I explained it a couple weeks ago:

1) House passes a package of changes to the Senate’s health care bill using a budget reconciliation bill. The AP is reporting that Rep. Charles Rangel [D, NY] has already started writing the reconciliation bill for this purpose.

2) Senate passes the same package of changes to its health care bill that the House passed (budget reconciliation can’t be filibustered and only requires 50 votes to pass, plus VP Biden casting the tie-breaking vote). At this point, Congress is done with the reconciliation bill, but it is not signed into law yet. Bills have a maximum 10 day waiting period between being finished by Congress and either becoming law or being vetoed.

3) Within 10 days, the House votes to pass the Senate’s health care bill (H.R. 3590).

4) The President signs the Senate health care bill into law.

5) Finally, the President signs into law the budget reconciliation bill containing the changes to the Senate health care bill.

Qusetion 1: do they have the votes?

Question 2: How does this plan tie in with Obama’s suggestion that it’s back to the drawing board for a new negotiations with Republicans?

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"We have asked the Times and numerous outlets to correct their misstatements and implored numerous journalists to report on the discrepancies between the impression left by the edited tapes and the transcripts posted by the filmmakers themselves. And yes, we will ask again," wrote ACORN's Communication Director Kevin Whelan in response to my query seeking comment on our late Monday exclusive detailing the bizarre emailed comments from the New York Times Senior Editor for Standards, Greg Brock.

In those emails, which we published in full, Brock explained why his paper is standing by what appears to be multiple incidents of inexcusably erroneous reporting concerning the oft-repeated, apparent-fiction that rightwing activist James O'Keefe posed as, or dressed as a pimp in his now-infamous, highly-edited, secretly-taped ACORN hit videos.

"The email chain you posted with Mr. Brock was troubling and disturbing," Whelan wrote. "We will be asking to meet with the Times Public Editor about the whole matter."...

Brock, a Times veteran at the "paper of record" since 1995, has described himself as "the senior editor who oversees corrections". In the emails, he offers several contrasting explanations for why they stand by multiple reports suggesting O'Keefe wore his pimp outfit in meetings with ACORN employees. First, incredibly, he said it was because "Mr. O'Keefe himself explained how he was dressed --- and appeared on a live Fox show wearing what HE said was the same exact costume he wore to ACORN's offices....We believe him."

And later he would he explained there was "nothing for us to correct" because of a shot in some video somewhere and interviews with ACORN workers which, he claimed, prove their reporting is accurate. He would not, however, supply the video or a link to it. Neither would he share the interviews with ACORN workers in which he claimed they described the outfit O'Keefe was wearing in the offices as a pimp costume. All known ACORN employee interviews, and even a report from a former state Attorney General, contradict the Senior Editor's asseritions. [Brock's emails briefly summarized here, full version here.]

I checked with ACORN to see if they were aware of any such video in which, as Brock claimed, "At one point, the camera was turned in such a way to catch part of the 'costume' [O'Keefe] was wearing."

Their Communications Director Whelan, after checking with others at the organization to make absolutely certain, wrote me to confirm that "O'Keefe was not wearing that absurd costume when he visited our offices. We know this from speaking to staff and from the videos posted online by O'Keefe himself which, when you can see any part of his outfit, show a regular dress shirt and slacks."

Indeed my own review of the released video tapes, and another from a BRAD BLOG reader since the Monday night story, confirm no such shots of O'Keefe, other than exterior shots which were inserted afterwards. O'Keefe, however, would don the outfit for media appearances to help sell the fake story, such as this one on Fox, cited by Brock in his email as one of the first reasons given for believing O'Keefe.

Whelan's response echoes the findings Massachusett's former Attorney General Scott Harshbarger who, in his independent Dec. 7th, 2009 report [PDF], commissioned by ACORN as an external investigation of the videos, observed: "Although Mr. O'Keefe appeared in all videos dressed as a pimp, in fact, when he appeared at each and every office, he was dressed like a college student - in slacks and a button down shirt."

As we previously reported, the Times never covered the Harshbarger report. Though they did publish at least eight stories since the release of that report, in which they suggested O'Keefe played his pimp character in the offices of ACORN.

"We have only seen the videos posted online by O'Keefe who has refused to release the unedited tapes. He also refused to release the unedited tapes or be interviewed during Scott Harshbarger's investigation," Whelan explained in his Wednesday email.

"In fact," he continued, "the transcripts posted on biggovernment.com themselves reveal that O'Keefe presented himself as Giles boyfriend not her pimp - his scam involved a story about rescuing her from a violent pimp. So it would not have made sense for him to wear the costume, even within the fictional scenario he presented."

Whelan also noted that "The New York Times did not have a reporter call in to the phone press conference when Scott Harshbarger released his report on ACORN" in early December. That, even though the paper received a rebuke from their own Public Editor Clark Hoyt in September, taking them to task for having been "slow off the mark" by waiting "nearly a week" after O'Keefe's first video was released before reporting on it. The paper took measures, thereafter, to improve on their "insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio," Hoyt reported.

Still, apparently nobody was assigned to cover the release of the independent report that found no criminal wrong-doing by the organization. (Another report from the Congressional Research Service [PDF] released two weeks later found the same, and was noted by the Times.) Apparently the Harshbarger report was not part of "all the news that's fit to print," as the Times slogan goes.

The NYTimes' Brock also went on to allege in his bizarre emails that "ACORN employees who saw [O'Keefe] described his costume," though Brock refused to produce any evidence to back up that claim either. Those unsupported claims --- along with his belief in the word of Fox "News" and James O'Keefe --- apparently serve as evidence for why "There is nothing for us to correct ... We stand by our reporting."

Whelan confirmed that he was aware of no such descriptions from ACORN workers describing the pimp costume in any of their own interviews carried out following the release of the videos. If there are any accounts confirming Brock's claims, The BRAD BLOG remains unaware of them.

On September 17th, 2009, almost three months prior to Harshbarger's report, Katherine Conway Russell, the Office Director for ACORN Housing Corp. in Philadelpia, published a video taped, first hand account of her own meeting with O'Keefe. She provided a description of how the scam worked --- or didn't, in this case, since her office filed a police report following their bizarre encounter with the Republican operative.

In the video (seen at right), Russell explains what happened when O'Keefe and his partner Hannah Giles --- seen dressed similarly to a prostitute in the edited videos from other cities where O'Keefe carried out his campaign --- came in for an interview in her office. "They never said that she [Giles] was a prostitute, and he was not dressed in any usually flashy manor," Russell explains.

"Mr. O'Keefe lied to get his apppointment. He was not dressed like he is on the Internet. And when we got suspicious about the questions he was asking at the Philadelphia ACORN Housing office, we called the police and filed this report," she says.

Whelan went on to call for media outlets, the New York Times in particular, to issue corrections for their various misreporting on these matters. He also says the community group intends to request a meeting with the Times' Public Editor Clark Hoyt:

We kept Hoyt abreast of the comments from Brock, early on during the email exchange. We have yet to hear back from him. If you'd like to request he look into this matter, his email address is Public@NYTimes.com.

O'Keefe was recently arrested with three other Republican Party-connected co-conspirators, attempting to access and "maliciously interfere" with the telephone system of Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu in New Orleans. He was arrested and held on federal felony charges and has since offered an outlandish explanation for the scheme.

Given his willingness to utterly misrepresent his previous ACORN scams --- regarded as "successful" ones --- hopefully federal prosecutors will closely examine his newest claims, now that he's fighting a federal felony that could result in ten years in jail. The New York Times' utter failure to accurately report on O'Keefe's past scams, even during their coverage of his current alleged crimes, is anything but helpful for those seeking the truth --- or, veritas, as the con-man O'Keefe likes to describe it.

Source: Reuters * Snow records set in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia

* US government offices in Washington to close on Thursday

* Snowfall shuts down cities from Washington to New York

* Blizzard slowly ...

Whether you feel the love or feel unhinged, we have your theme song covered here at Late Late Night Firedoglake with Donna The Buffalo and EELS.

What’s on your mind tonight?

AP - Rest up, Kobe. The Lakers are faring just fine without you.

AP - Ellen DeGeneres is glad that her "American Idol" debut drew big ratings and high praise from the show's creator, media mogul Simon Fuller. But the real test, she says, was judging herself.

AP - Iran's state TV is showing thousands of pro-government demonstrators rallying to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Here are the results from five recent polls on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gay and lesbian soldiers. These are the number of Republican respondents who want the policy overturned. To repeat, these are Republicans only, and not the broader electorate -- among the population as a whole, repealing DADT is quite popular.

Quite a range of opinions there.

Some of it may be explained by differences in question wording. The ABC/Post poll is a bit quirky in that the question it poses -- "Do you think homosexuals who DO publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military or not?" -- was immediately preceded by another question which asked "Do you think homosexuals who DO NOT publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military or not?" The former question may condition responses to the latter insofar as that once the respondent has gone on the record as stating that gays should be allowed to serve so long as they remain in the closet, they may be more reluctant to say that they should be booted from the army if they out themselves. The Quinnipiac poll is also a little different (not wrong -- just different), in that it frames the question in terms of a repeal of existing policy, which arguably requires a stronger sentiment from the respondent.

The other three polls, however, from Gallup, FOX News, and Research 2000 / Daily Kos -- this is the much-discussed Research 2000 poll of self-identified Republicans which revealed very conservative attitudes on many topics -- have rather similar questions. Not exactly the same: for instance, Gallup's wording ("gay men and lesbian women") is probably more humanizing and sympathetic than FOX's ("gays and lesbians"). But fairly similar.

Another difference has to do with the timing of the polls. The Gallup poll was conducted last year, at a time when DADT was not very much in the news and before the tea-party movement and the flailing economy had started to make conservatism fashionable again. The FOX poll, on the other hand, was conducted last week, after the President invoked DADT in his State of the Union address. The Daily Kos poll was conducted last month, with about two-thirds of the interviews coming before the State of the Union and the other third afterward. Any of the following are possible: (i) that the sorts of people who identify as Republican has changed -- become more conservative -- over the past year; (ii) that the same Republican voters have grown more conservative over the past year; (iii) that the President's invocation of DADT in the State of the Union served to 'partisanize' the issue.

Still, it's hard to reconcile the difference between the FOX News and R2K/Kos polls, both of which came out at about the same time, and which featured nearly identical questions. An 18-point difference in the responses is quite large.

To be honest, I'm inclined to agree with some of the critiques of the Kos poll's methodology. In particular, it's hard for me to believe that the questions the poll asked -- they led with questions about whether Obama should be impeached, whether he was born in the United States, and whether he's a socialist -- did not some how condition the responses to the latter questions, or induce some of the more moderate Republicans to drop out of the sample. Honestly, if I'd been up at my aunt and uncle's place in Maine (they're moderate, Olympia Snowe lovin', New England Republicans), and we had this poll on speaker phone and the first few questions were about impeachment and socialism, I'd probably have started to make some funny faces and to wonder aloud about the propriety of the poll. These questions are just very different from the sorts of questions that pollsters usually ask, especially at the beginning of a survey. (Just like a good wine list, the rule of thumb is to work from light and neutral to heavier and more pungent questions.)

Indeed, there was another question that the R2K/Kos poll asked where I found the responses even more surprising. That was the question which asked: "Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?" Only 8 percent of Republicans, according to the poll, said yes!

This seems like a very traditional, almost 1950s style of response. There must be thousands of openly gay teachers, and it's not like there are constantly these huge controversies about whether they should be kicked out of the classroom -- which, if only 8 percent of Republicans thought that they should be allowed to teach, I imagine that there would be in some redder districts. The General Social Survey asks a somewhat similar question -- "And what about a man who admits that he is a homosexual? Should such a person be allowed to teach in a college, or university, or not?" On that survey in 2008 (the last time it was conducted), 75 percent of those who identified themselves as "strong Republicans" thought that the gay person should be allowed to teach. Admittedly, there is an important difference between the General Social Survey, which asked about teaching in college, and the Kos survey, which asks about public schools. But a difference between 75 percent and 8 percent? Color me skeptical.

In short, it appears to me that the Kos/Research 2000 poll -- probably for reasons having to do with the nature and ordering of the questions although other hypothesis are plausible -- wound up with a very and perhaps unrepresenatively conservative set of Republicans. Upon further examination, I'd encourage caution in interpreting its results. I'm happy that pollsters are exploring "politically incorrect" attitudes such as these, but they require a lot of sensitivity to survey design. I'm not sure that Research 2000's methodology, which led by hitting the respondent over the head with a 2x4 with questions about impeachment and socialism, really got it right.

House Democratic strategists won’t be nervous about more retirements in their ranks so long as they come in districts like that of Diane Watson of California.