Recount on HBO

Recount looks to be pretty compelling, based on the trailer I saw. Airs on HBO May 25 and May 26. I might just subscribe to HBO for the first time ever.

In the meantime, here an excerpt from Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media? I'm putting up here for posterity:

Following the court's announcement, a group of eight newspapers invested nearly a million dollars to hire the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to undertake a detailed study of the Florida vote, to discover, if possible, who really won. The Bush administration always opposed this action and treated the ultimate correctness of the court's intervention as all the legitimacy it needed. And, during the long period before the results of the count were announced, the news outlets who funded the study communicated a decided impression that they were not terribly eager to call the president's (and hence the system's) legitimacy into question either. September 11 made this impression unmistakable. Top New York Times correspondent Richard Berke admitted as much when, shortly after the attacks, he declared the outcome of the recount to be "utterly irrelevant" and worried that its release might "stoke partisan tensions."[1]

Berke was right to be concerned. Shortly before the September 11 attacks, a Gallup Organization poll found that nearly half of Americans surveyed remain convinced that President Bush either "won on a technicality" or "stole the election." They were right, though this would have been difficult to discern based on the coverage the eventual release of the recount report received. The headlines read: "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote" (New York Times) and "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush" (Washington Post). These were misleading at best. What the NORC researchers really discovered was the Gore legal team's incredible incompetence. The lawyers happened, it turned out, to choose just about the only counting argument that would have lost Gore the election even had the court ruled in his favor. Lead member David Boies had explicitly ruled out a more inclusive recount of Florida's votes -- one that not only would have elected his man, but would have been immeasurably more fair to the people of Florida. Instead Boies asked the court to count "undervotes" but not "overvotes." Using that method, Bush did indeed outpoll Gore and the court's intervention did not ultimately make a difference. It was, perhaps, a perfect coda to a perfectly awful campaign.

But buried beneath the misleading headlines was the inescapable fact that Al Gore was the genuine choice of a plurality of Florida's voters as well as America's. As the AP report put it, "In the review of all the state's disputed ballots, Gore edged ahead under all six scenarios for counting all undervotes and overvotes statewide." In other words, he got more votes in Florida than George Bush by almost every conceivable counting standard. Gore won under a strict-counting scenario and he won under a loose-counting scenario. He won if you count "hanging chads" and he won if you counted "dimpled chads." He won if you count a dimpled chad only in the presence of another dimpled chad on the same ballot -- the so-called "Palm Beach" standard. He even won if you counted only a fully-punched chad. He won if you counted partially-filled oval on an optical scan and he won if you counted only a fully-filled optical scan. He won if you fairly counted the absentee ballots. No matter how you count it, if everyone who legally voted in Florida had had a chance to see their vote counted, Al Gore is our president. [2]

But by the time of the release of the report, the mainstream media had grown so protective of President Bush's legitimacy that many were willing to tar as crazy anyone who took the trouble to read the report carefully. To this reader anyway, they put one in mind of a husband who is doing everything he can to try to get his wife not only to forgive, but also to forget a past infidelity. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported, "The conspiracy theorists have been out in force, convinced that the media were covering up the Florida election results to protect President Bush.... That gets put to rest today." Kurtz scoffed as well at the notion that anyone still cared about whether Bush had stolen the presidential election. "Now," he wrote, "the question is: How many people still care about the election deadlock that last fall felt like the story of the century -- and now faintly echoes like some distant Civil War battle?" [3] Following suit, the Associated Press even rewrote its own history. In September 2002, the news service carried a story from Florida that read: "Some unofficial ballot inspections paid for by consortiums of news agencies showed Bush winning by varying margins." But when the recounts were initially released in November 2001, the news service's editors acknowledged, "A full, statewide recount of all undervotes and overvotes could have erased Bush's 537-vote victory and put Gore ahead by a tiny margin ranging from 42 to 171 votes, depending on how valid votes are defined." [4] Meanwhile CNN's Candy Crowley fell back on that old reliable, "Maybe the best thing of all is that messy feelings at the Florida ballot have only proved the strength of our democracy...."

In fact, had the Supreme Court not intervened for Bush, it seems quite likely that Gore would have won the count despite his own side's incompetence. Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis informed an Orlando Sentinel reporter that he had never fully made up his mind, but he was considering the "overvote" standard that would likely have given the count to Gore. [5] Newsweek's Michael Isikoff also discovered a contemporaneous document demonstrating exactly this intent. [6] Hence those newspapers who reported even the narrowest victory for Bush without a Supreme Court intervention, may have been wrong. Once again, the so-called liberal media was spinning itself blind for the conservative Republican. But to point this out was to be termed a "conspiracy theorist" by the same "liberal media." Let's give the last word to the editors of the conservative London-based Economist, who, unlike their American counterparts, managed to read the results of recount with a clear eye, and hence, felt duty-bound to publish the following correction of its earlier coverage: "In the issues of December 16, 2000 to November 10, 2001, we may have given the impression that George W. Bush had been legally and duly elected president of the United States. We now understand that this may have been incorrect, and that the election result is still too close to call. The Economist apologizes for any inconvenience."

[1] Richard Berke, "Aftermath; it's not time for a party but for how long?" The New York Times, September 4, 2000, Week in Review, 3

[2] Eric Alterman, "Florida Speaks, Media Spins, World Turns," MSNBC.com, November 12, 2001

[3] Howard Kurtz, "George W. Bush; Now More than Ever," The Washington Post, Nov. 12, 2001, C1

[4] "Katherine Harris: Gore's 'Dogs of War' Bit Him," CNN.com, August 26, 2002

[5] David Damron and Roger Roy, "Both Sides Guessed Wrong," Orlando Sentinel, November 12, 2001

[6] On December 9, just as the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the counting, Lewis authored a memo instructing canvassing boards to isolate "overvotes" that demonstrated clear intent. "If you would segregate 'overvotes' as you describe and indicate in your final report how many where you determined the clear intent of the voter," he wrote "I will rule on the issue for all counties." Overvotes were clearly legal under Florida law, as a few counties had already included them in their counts. www.msnbc.com

And then there was "Move On", which, in its name, proscribed us all.

Eric Alterman on Libertarianism

Great quote today by someone I admire, Eric Alterman, on libertarianism:

"I feel that libertarianism, as I understand it, is overly concerned with theoretical liberty at the expense of its actual practice. The freedom to starve, to see one's labor unfairly exploited, to drink polluted water or breath polluted air, are not freedoms I strongly value. And to battle these and others like them, society requires collective institutional action and in many cases, government (or labor union) protection. I'm no fan of "big government" per se--and neither was Dewey. It's merely that powerful forces like global corporations require powerful forces to balance them."

from TPM

Also see

Michael Gerson - The Libertarian Jesus - washingtonpost.com

"Just as Jesus the leftist revolutionary is a distortion, so is Jesus the libertarian."

The Bipartisanship Scam

I highly recommend this piece in the Huffington Post. Some excerpts:

...I was handed the Journal on my Saturday flight from New York to San Francisco on United Airlines. And the Harwood/Seib piece was so out of touch with the current zeitgeist that I found myself repeatedly checking the date at the top of the page to make sure the flight attendant hadn't mistakenly given me a paper that someone had left on the plane a decade ago.
...
The piece starts off by rightly noting the public's "hunger for change" and "major reforms." But the authors then argue that the cause of this hunger is the fact that "the two parties have moved further apart on the ideological spectrum," resulting in "party fatigue."

Excuse me? The reason 82 percent of the public thinks the country is on the wrong track is because of "party fatigue"? This is beyond parody.
...
Wasn't the Iraq war the crowning example of bipartisanship during the Bush era? And we know how well that bipartisanship worked out. Actually, what is tragic is that in the run-up to the war we didn't have more of the "gridlock" Harwood and Seib decry. A lot of people are dead because of the bipartisanship that Harwood and Seib venerate.

Bush Gave Up Golf to Show Solidarity with Troops

From Politico:

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It's just not worth it anymore to do.’"

McGovern's Advice for Hillary and Barack

I agree with this hopeful suggestion from McGovern.

Excerpted from NY Times Op-Ed, A Two-for-One Campaign, May 13, 2008:

To reduce the risk of creating the kind of divisions that afflicted Democrats during my campaigns, here is a proposal that I hope Senators Clinton and Obama and our party will consider.

After today’s vote in West Virginia, the two candidates should agree to make joint visits to the sites of the five remaining primaries (in Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota).

During these visits, Senators Clinton and Obama should agree not to criticize each other. They would simply state what each would do if elected president. They would also point out why President Bush’s policies have failed and why they would continue to fail under John McCain.

After each candidate speaks for 15 minutes or so, they would then be taken to a reception where citizens paying $50 a ticket would mingle with the two candidates. The money raised would go to the state Democratic Party to assist local and state candidates in the fall elections.

The two candidates should also visit the two disputed states, Michigan and Florida. No matter what happens to the delegations from those states, their voters are entitled to see and to hear these two historic candidates.

This is an agenda that could unite our party and prepare us for a successful convention with a big victory in November. It would also be a refreshing and welcome change for American presidential politics.

Inflation Reduces the Wealth of the Rich

Great quote:

[The] fundamental political economy fact about inflation: that unanticipated increases in inflation reduce the wealth of net creditors, who map more or less perfectly on the rich as a whole. There will always be a need to find a reason to make inflation the scapegoat for whatever ails the general public

-Peter Dorman

Proliferation of Schools Looking to Capitalize on Unemployed

Would-Be Caregivers, Beware
By PHILIP SHISHKIN
May 7, 2008; Page D1

Tammy Barnes, an unemployed mother of three, used up her $12,000 in savings last year pursuing a career in nursing. But after completing a course offered by Advanced Medical Training Institute, in Marietta, Ga., Ms. Barnes can't get a nursing license or a job, because Advanced isn't accredited by Georgia's nursing board.

Ms. Barnes, who lives in Hiram, Ga., and two other Advanced students have sued the school and its owners, claiming they were duped into believing the school was properly certified. The owners have been battling regulators in West Virginia over similar issues, and in February, they were ordered by the Texas Workforce Commission to stop operating an uncertified school in Dallas.

One owner, Joseph Tucker, declined to comment, and the other, Edlyne Charles, didn't return calls. In depositions and hearings, Ms. Charles and Mr. Tucker have denied wrongdoing and have said that Advanced is a legitimate business.

The actions against them represent the potential risks would-be nurses face amid a proliferation of schools looking to capitalize on the fast-expanding nursing field. As job openings for nurses have grown, established nursing schools haven't been able to keep up with the demand. According to a recent study, U.S. colleges turned away about 40,000 qualified applicants for nursing programs in 2006.

For-profit schools have rushed into the market -- and a number of them are drawing scrutiny and litigation. Texas regulators issued cease-and-desist orders against a total of six unlicensed schools this year. Last year, California regulators issued two similar orders against uncertified schools and say they are investigating three more. In September, the Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit against an outfit that allegedly collected thousands of tuition dollars by claiming a nonexistent link to a bona fide college. Nancy Spector, education director at the National Council of the State Boards of Nursing, says that over the past few years, she has heard about one new suspect program a month, up from zero in 2002, when she joined the council.

Some unscrupulous operators have relied on loopholes in the regulatory system. There is no law that prohibits schools from offering courses that purport to teach nursing skills. But state nursing boards will issue permits to practice as a registered nurse or a licensed practical nurse only to those students who train in certified programs and pass a state nursing exam.

In Georgia, Advanced Medical had 96 students in the class that graduated in June 2007. Many are of modest means. Maxine Rogers, a single mother of two in Decatur, Ga., who took classes until late 2007, took out an $8,000 personal loan to complete the Advanced course before she discovered it was a dead end, she says. She is now struggling to keep up with $222 monthly loan payments. "I had to double my shifts," says Ms. Rogers, who works as a nursing assistant.

Chichi Sabor, a licensed practical nurse in Haltom City, Texas, enrolled in Merit Excellence Institute in nearby Carrollton to upgrade to a registered-nurse degree. After she made a down payment of $2,500, a Merit official raised her suspicions by suggesting she teach a course, she says. She declined the offer and ultimately went to the state's regulators -- who issued an order against the school after it went out of business. Ms. Sabor says she lost her $2,500. Merit's owners couldn't be reached to comment. The school, which charged $7,500 to $10,000 in tuition, had at least 55 students in its last session.

Advanced Medical's owners managed to recruit students, obtain hospital cooperation for training, and build a network reaching as far as Texas and Jamaica. Its president, Ms. Charles, is a licensed practical nurse who once falsely identified herself as a registered nurse in a brochure for another venture, according to a consent decree she signed with Georgia nursing regulators in 2002. Mr. Tucker, who was vice president, told a recent closed-door hearing at the Texas Workforce Commission -- where the school was to trying to expand -- that he hardly knows "how to put on a Band-Aid." Mr. Tucker claimed to be worth "a million and a half dollars" in the hearing. "I don't need to do this," he added. "I do this because I like to work and I like helping people."

Advanced Medical classes in Georgia were held twice a week from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Ms. Barnes said lectures became progressively more cursory, with instructors rushing through coursework. When she started training at Kindred Hospital Atlanta, "I was very, very nervous, I was so sick about what I might do to patients," she says. Still, she says, she was permitted to give them drugs.

Brian Pugh, the hospital's chief executive, confirms Advanced Medical students trained at Kindred, but says they weren't allowed to administer medication. He says Kindred revoked its agreement with Advanced in September after being notified by Georgia authorities that the school wasn't certified.

Although Ms. Barnes intended to practice in Georgia, she said she applied for a license in West Virginia at Ms. Charles's suggestion. She said she was told by Ms. Charles that she would be able to obtain a license in Georgia through state reciprocity agreements. Ms. Charles denied this in a deposition.

Last fall, to Ms. Barnes's surprise, she received a letter from the West Virginia nursing board asking her for proof of having gone to school -- in Jamaica. A transcript sent to the board, Ms. Barnes later learned, showed her attending not Advanced Medical, but Hospicare Nursing Academy in Mandeville, a town in Jamaica she had never visited. The transcript also showed her studying for six months longer than she actually did. Advanced Medical has said it has a franchise agreement with Hospicare.

In October, Hospicare sent the West Virginia board a second set of transcripts for Ms. Barnes. The records were different this time, and Ms. Barnes was shown to have received A's in all 33 courses listed -- including courses she says she never took.

Hospicare is registered with Jamaica's Ministry of Education. The ministry official whose job is to monitor such schools, Yvonne Campbell, went to bat for Hospicare and Advanced Medical in the U.S., arranging a meeting with West Virginia's nursing-regulatory board to try to convince the state that the program was legitimate, says Lannette Anderson, the board's executive director.

Reached by phone in Jamaica, Ms. Campbell said, "I'm not at liberty to discuss the issue." In a brief interview, Hospicare principal Lovern Spencer said she'd "heard of Advanced," but added that "we don't do business in the U.S."

Ministry of Education spokeswoman Charlene Ashley said the ministry didn't know Ms. Campbell had been to West Virginia. On Feb. 14 the West Virginia board ruled that Hospicare/Advanced students will no longer be allowed to take the board exam and voided licenses already issued to the school's graduates.

Back in Marietta, Ms. Charles decided to liquidate Advanced Medical, she said in a recent deposition. She now runs a school called Mega Career Institute at the same number and the same address as its predecessor.