The invaluable site GovTrack notes this startling fact about last week’s Democratic debate:
[T]the different candidates are not getting the same amount of speaking time. Clinton spoke more than 3.5 times more words, and the same for speaking time, than Biden. For that matter, basically so did the moderator, who held the floor for more time than anyone but Clinton. It’s no wonder that Clinton is considered “the Democrat to beat” considering she’s in our face more.
If the numbers weren’t so vastly different between the candidates, we’d chalk it up to some random variation that happens from debate to debate. But, from the numbers, the speaking times are clearly planned. It’s so clear that I feel like maybe I missed something. Is it common knowledge that the debates are proportioning time out to the candidates based on their poll numbers (or something equivalent)? It’s not just that the front-runners are getting more time. The statistical correlation is ridiculously high (speaking time versus FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. Oct. 23-24: r=.96). That is, the debate organizers are basically using this formula to determine how much time each candidate should get:
Speaking Time = 8:26 minutes + 25 seconds * Latest Poll Number (%)
They note that no speaker’s time deviated from that formula by more than 140 seconds.
What’s really shocking is that correlation coefficient. You never see a correlation of 96%, even between real-world factors that are actually linked. I can’t quite figure out how they would do it (maybe give the moderator a running countdown of each speaker’s allotted remaining time and have him hustle them along so they don’t run over), but it’s hard not to suspect it was being done.
And that’s not right. There are constant complaints about the news media deciding which candidates should be taken seriously and which are not real contenders - but for them to make that decision secretly, and then literally silence the ones who don’t meet their standards (on the basis of popularity standings a year from the actual election!), is offensive. And of course it makes those early polls self-fulfilling prophecies: the ones who aren’t popular now not only don’t get much attention from the voters, they aren’t even allowed to make their case to the voters on an equal footing with the front-runners; less visibility means less influence, more visibility means more influence, and the media sets the candidates’ running positions in stone a year out, by acting as gatekeepers on who gets to present their message at all.
Of course there’s the problem of the fringe candidates and kooks, but debate organizers have by and large been responsible about that. The League of Women Voters used to set a 3% popularity cutoff for its debates, which doesn’t seem unreasonable, but most importantly their debates were scrupulously fair; this recent debate had participants polling at 1% or below, which is admirably inclusive, but it then condemned them to a stacked deck in the debate itself. I’m guessing they demanded the candidates keep their mouths shut about the unequal access as a prerequisite for being included. At any rate, it’s just another way to take influence out of the hands of the voters. It’s not like anybody lacks opportunities to hear what Clinton or Obama have to say; really empowering voters would mean helping them hear the options that are offered to them, not reifying poll results before the voters have even heard from the candidates.
November 6th, 2007
|
General, Politics, Media, News & Current Events |
4 comments
Rumor has it that telecom amnesty is working its way back into the telecom bill in the Senate. People who support the amnesty like to claim that the companies should not be punished for doing what the government asked of them. That is a terrible notion.
First, it makes no sense. The law is not what any particular Administration says it is. Companies as powerful and profitable as the ones in question have more lawyers than you can count in a day. It is not unreasonable to expect that such well defended companies would have the legal brainpower to realize that they were, in fact, being asked ot break the law. And break it they did, for years past the immediate emergency, mooting any notion that they were just trying to be good citizens in a time of immediate crisis. They were trying to curry favor with the Administration in power, their obligation to respect the laws of the land be damned.
Which brings us to the real problem with telecom amnesty. These companies were perfectly positioned to defend both themselves and the rule of law form the overreach of the Bush Administration. If we let these companies off the hook, if we say to them, well, it’s okay, the government asked you to, then we are setting a very dangerous precedent. One of the very few things that keeps corporations in line, outside of government regulation, is the notion that any particular bad act would be more costly to them in lost good will and at trial than profitable by itself. The amnesty would not only prevent future governments form criminally prosecuting them, but would also shut down ongoing civil cases. The public would never know the extent to which these companies betrayed thier fellow citizens and their would be no concrete punishment for that betrayal. If we allow that, then we have a created a situation where any Administration could ask a private company to violate any one of the provisions of the Bill of Rights for it and suffer no consequences, since it would be then established that no company should be punished for being a “good citizen” and doing as their government asks.
Your freedoms can be taken away by an employee of ATT just as easily as they can be taken away by a government employee. Telcom amnesty and the mainstreaming of the notion that a company should not be punished for doing what any given White House told them to do would essentially allow the outsourcing of the death of the Bill of Right.
November 6th, 2007
|
Legal Issues, Economics, How Capitalism Will Ruin You |
one comment
Via Molly I at Atrios’s place, we see that Senator Schumner is either not terribly bright or thinks that we are not terribly bright. In his defense of the torture supporting Mukasey, Senator Schumer says this:
We are now on the brink of a reversal. There is virtually universal agreement, even from those who oppose Judge Mukasey, that he would do a good job in turning the department around. My colleagues who oppose his confirmation have gone out of their way to praise his character and qualifications. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, for one, commended Judge Mukasey as “a brilliant lawyer, a distinguished jurist and by all accounts a good man.”
Most important, Judge Mukasey has demonstrated his fidelity to the rule of law, saying that if he believed the president were violating the law he would resign.
They key phrase here is “if he believed” because we know that the President or his underlings have already broken the law and we know that Mukasey finds nothing wrong with that. We know that the US government has used water boarding and we are certain as anyone can be that such tactics were ordered, if not by the White House, then with the White House’s approval. That is the real reason that Mukasey will not simply state the obvious fact: water boarding is torture. If he did, he would have to either be unwilling to serve under a President who allowed such abuse to take place or be publicly committed to arresting and trying the people who committed and ordered that torture, no matter where that investigation would lead. Since he can do neither — an one gets appointed Attorney General if they intend to prosecute the President or his advisers — he must dance around the true nature of the torture his future boss has allowed to take place.
So Mukasey has already once decided that clear, black letter law does not apply to the White House. There is no reason to believe that Mukasey will not simple re-adjust his understanding of “illegal” as the situation warrants. he has done it once already on a very serious, very grave matter. Schumer would be an idiot to believe he wouldn’t do it again, especially if the stakes were not as high. I don’t think Schumer is an idiot. I think he is a political coward.
Schumer says something very telling in his op-ed:
Should we reject Judge Mukasey, President Bush has said he would install an acting, caretaker attorney general who could serve for the rest of his term without the advice and consent of the Senate. To accept such an unaccountable attorney general, I believe, would be to surrender the department to the extreme ideology of Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, David Addington. All the work we did to pressure Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign would be undone in a moment.
The specter of a fight over executive power, especially on the grounds of national security, is almost certainly what is driving Schumer to this vote. Yes, Bush would probably try to do exactly this, to make permanent an un-accountable choice. But the Senate can fight back against these maneuvers. They can stay in session, preventing a recess appointment. They can use the power of the purse to cut off spending on the salaries of senior Administration officials. They can prevent any of Bush appointments in other areas form moving forward. They can do a lot of things, some drastic some not so drastic. But doing those things means a very public show down over executive power, a showdown that Schumer clearly does not have the stomach for.
But the fight is there whether or not Schumer wants to have it. By refusing to face up to that fact, Schumer has just surrendered. he has plainly given up the power of the Senate to prevent the White House from using torture if he allows an AG who will not stand against such abuse to be confirmed. By running away, Schumer has lost and has lost badly. One more piece of the lunatic unitary executive has just been implicitly affirmed. The only way to stop this nonsense, to prevent the next generations of Cheneys, Bushs and Roves from pushing this destructive agenda is to stop it now.
But Schumer wont even try. He will quietly walk away form the most important fight in a generation, accept Mukasey’s pat on the head and soothing, if already proven worthless, assurances and hope things get better without him having to actually, at any point, behave as if he was a United States Senator.
November 6th, 2007
|
Politics, Legal Issues, Torture |
3 comments
