Glenn Beck

Dropping Dobbs

As you may be aware yesterday we joined a broad coalition of groups in launching a campaign to get CNN to drop Lou Dobbs from their thoughtful and respected airwaves.   The site can be found at dropdobbs.com.  Check it out, watch the video if you have a few minutes and add your name to the petition in the take action section asking CNN and Dobb's advertisers to take a stand.

This kind of campaign is not the usual thing NDN does.  But the decline in civil discourse that we've seen this year (what I call the rising "politics of intolerance") and Dobbs' increasingly wild and irresponsible performance on the air of late convinced me - and the whole NDN team - that it was time to take a stand.  Lou Dobbs is free to say whatever he wants on his own website, in his books, on his own radio show.  I am all for free speech.  But he should not be given a daily platform on the globally respected CNN, or on a brand owned by the well-regarded and innovative Time Warner.  It is time for them to drop Lou Dobbs.

There is a precedent for something like this - what Disney/ABC did when Rush Limbaugh was bounced from Monday Night Football for racially offensive remarks.   Mainstream, respectable network bouncing a hate talker off their air because it simply didn't fit their brand, their values, their vision for America.  Every day CNN and Time Warner keep Dobbs on their air they are telling us a great deal about their values - that they care more about making money than they do about creating a civil and just America; that they are willing to tolerate divisive, ignorant talk to make a few extra bucks here and there.  I'm not sure about you but that is not how I see CNN or Time Warner.  Dobbs is antithetical to their brands, and it is time for them to make clear that they believe this is so.  Leave all that crazy talk to News Corp, am radio, blogs and the angry, intolerant right.  But please my friends take Lou Dobbs off CNN.  Your brands, and the country, will be better for it.

I offered up some thoughts, and some video, on all this Dobbs and Beck stuff a few weeks ago.  For me this new campaign is about taking a stand against the rising politics of intolerance we've seen spread across the country in recent months.  As a nation we are better than the screamers, and it is time that those of us who believe that to do more, to take a stand - and in this case lets start by getting Lou Dobbs off CNN.

Beck's List of "People He Wants to Kill With a Shovel" - Charlie Rangel Tops the List

I don't really know what to say about this disturbing 2001 Beck clip, which Jed L (of jedreport.com) over at DailyKos dug up. You really just have to listen to it yourself.

The ironic part is, after spewing this violent, vitriolic venom, the kind of filth that should have gotten him immediately removed from any form of public communication whatsoever, he complains that everyone on TV is an "extremist" and nobody in the media is rational. Words excape me.

Oligarhy!

There has been a lot of chatter on the web these last few days about a new round of really crazy rants from Glenn Beck.  I tend to skip these stories because I think the guy is a reprehensible loon, a wierd characture of Howard Beale from the movie Network

So a few minutes ago while cruising around Huff Po I gave in and watched some of his stuff from last week.  I could try to describe it but it is just too hard.  You need to watch.   And get ready for all sorts of Hitler, Hussein references, and of course, the idea that Americorps is Obama's very own 21st century version of the Brownshirts!

Man it is really incredible that News Corporation puts this stuff on the air.  It feels a little more like a guy making a show in his basement and putting it out over a community access channel.  But here it is, bad spelling and all, on a major American television cable network. 

Wanna bet that Dick Cheney watches all the time?

Made O'Reilly Tonight. Talking About Lou Dobbs

So Bill O'Reilly was kind enough to put me on his show tonight, using a clip from this past weekend's Netroots Nation convention. In the clip I talk about Lou Dobbs, and why he needs to follow Glenn Beck, and move from CNN to Fox.

My guess is that O'Reilly used this clip to send a covert signal to Dobbs that he, for one, wants him over there with him at America's real news network.

For more on the panel that generated this clip check out this post I offered up from this weekend about Dobbs and Beck.

Movement to Drop Race-Baiting Pundits Builds Momentum

At Netroots Nation last week, Simon was on a panel with Media Matters, America's Voice and Color of Change talking about right-wing hatred of Obama and its manifestations in the media. At the panel, Simon told the room that, by mounting a smart and sustained campaign, we have the power to get hate-mongers like Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs, with their consistent lies and distortions and their unacceptable public racism, off the airwaves.

We're now one step closer to that happening. Several days ago, Simon wrote a post called "Beck Loses Advertisers, Dobbs Should Be Worried." Since that was posted, at least 8 more major companies have pulled their ads from Beck's program over his assertion that Obama is a racist who has a "deep seated hatred of whites and white culture [whatever that is]." Even by the near-nonexistent standards over at Fox, this was apparently a bridge too far for many - pressure from Color of Change has caused a number of advertisers to back out, and Media Matters is keeping up the pressure:

The racism and xenophobia of demagogues like Dobbs and Beck have no place anywhere in the media, even on the 24/7 right-wing propaganda outlet known as Fox News (or is the Republican party itself an organ of Fox News now?). Nobody wants to be associated with this sort of naked, ugly hatred, which has nothing to do with a legitimate debate about the issues, which is why advertisers are backing away. It's unclear that Fox will fire Beck, despite this unwanted attention - his ratings remain high, and Fox caters to a particularly conservative and, coincidentally, ignorant audience. But Lou Dobbs has no place on a purportedly ideology-neutral network like CNN, and I think his days there may be numbered.

Beck Loses Advertisers, Dobbs Should be Worried

UPDATE 8/18/09 - More advertisers drop Beck.

The Times has this encouraging report this morning:

ABOUT a dozen companies have withdrawn their commercials from “Glenn Beck,” the Fox News Channel program, after Glenn Beck, the person, said late last month that President Obama was a racist with a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

The companies that have moved their ads elsewhere in recent days included ConAgra, Geico, Procter & Gamble and the insurance company Progressive. In a statement that echoed the comments of other companies, ConAgra said on Thursday that “we are firmly committed to diversity, and we would like to prevent the potential perception that advertising during this program was an endorsement of the viewpoints shared.”

The campaign against Mr. Beck is rooted in an advocacy group’s objection to the commentator’s remarks on July 28. Given the number of advertisers that have pledged to remove their spots, it appears to have been unusually successful.

At Netroots Nation yesterday I was on a panel with James Rucker, head of the advocacy group mentioned above, Color of Change, where we discussed all this.  The success of this effort reinforces what I said yesterday - the center-left has the power to get wild, irresponsible demagogues like Beck and Lou Dobbs off mainstream news outlets.  It will require intense focus, patience and a broad based campaign.  But it is possible.  And it is not for their conservatism, or even their opposition to the Democrats.  It is that their consistently articulated understanding of race, of immigrants, of people not like them, of who we are as a people is offensive, anachronistic, and has no place in this age of greater racial understanding offered by our new President. 

We cannot forget that several years ago a Dobbs and Beck fellow traveler, Rush Limbaugh, was given a shot to go mainstream, joining the booth of the Monday Night Football.  Within just a few games he was fired for making racially insensitive remarks.  As a veteran of a network news division, I am very much for freedom of speech, and believe that folks like Limbaugh, Dobbs and Beck are entitled to make their case, grow their shows, do their thing.  But not on a network owned by Disney, or Time Warner.  One of the main reasons I have switched my cable news allegiance from CNN to MSNBC in recent months has been CNN's unwillingness to get rid of Dobbs, who really has no place on CNN, and whose views are wildly out of sync with the CNN brand. I for one will not start watching CNN again until they get Dobbs off their network.

At a forum two weeks I talked about Dobbs and Beck.  A conservative news site, CNS, covered it this way. Their video is included below.

Congrats to James Rucker, Media Matters and those who have worked so hard to hold these awful demagogues to account.  There is much more we can and need to be doing to be building on their success.  More on that soon.

Right Wing Site Features Simon Talking Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck

At an event we held last week, Simon argued that Lou Dobbs's racist, xenophobic blather has gotten so bad that he should be banished from CNN to FoxNews, where Glenn Beck has normalized insane rantings.  He was captured on film by the folks over at CNS News (The Right News. Right Now.), who covered Simon's speech in an admirably impartial manner.

Making the Case: Why Congress Should Pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform this Year

Today in the Senate, Senator Schumer is holding an important hearing: "Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do it and How?" Here at NDN, we believe the answer to whether Congress can pass reform this year is "yes." Below are seven reasons why:

1) In tough economic times, we need to remove the "trap door" under the minimum wage.

One of the first acts of the new Democratic Congress back in 2007 was to raise the minimum wage, to help alleviate the downward pressure on wages we had seen throughout the decade even prior to the current Great Recession. The problem with this strategy is that the minimum wage and other worker protections required by American law do not extend to those workers here illegally. With economic times worsening here and in the home countries of the migrants, unscrupulous employers have much more leverage over, and incentive to keep, undocumented workers. With five percent of the current workforce -- amazingly, with one out of every 20 workers now undocumented, this situation creates an unacceptable race to the bottom, downward pressure on wages, at a time when we need to be doing more for those struggling to get by, not less.   

Legalizing the five percent of the work force that is undocumented would create a higher wage and benefit floor than exists today for all workers, further helping, as was intended by the increase in the minimum wage two years ago, to alleviate the downward pressure on wages for those struggling the most in this tough economy.  

Additionally, it needs to be understood that these undocumenteds are already here and working.  If you are undocumented, you are not eligible for welfare. If you are not working, you go home. Thus, in order to remove this "trap door," we need to either kick five percent of existing American workforce out of the country -- a moral and economic impossibility -- or legalize them. There is no third way on this one. They stay and become citizens or we chase them away. 

Finally, what you hear from some of the opponents of immigration reform is that by passing reform, all of these immigrants will come and take the jobs away of everyday Americans. But again, the undocumented immigrants are already here, working, having kids, supporting local businesses. Legalization does not create a flood of new immigrants -- in fact, as discussed earlier, it puts the immigrant worker on a more even playing field with legal American workers. It does the very inverse of what is being suggested -- it creates fairer competition for American workers -- not unfair competition. The status quo is what should be most unacceptable to those who claim they are advocating for the American worker.  

2) In a time of tight budgets, passing immigration reform will bring more money into the federal treasury.  

Putting the undocumented population on the road to citizenship will also increase tax revenue in a time of economic crisis, as the newly legal immigrants will pay fees and fines, and become fully integrated into the U.S. tax-paying system. When immigration reform legislation passed the Senate in 2006, the Congressional Budge Office estimate that accompanied the bill projected Treasury revenues would see a net increase of $44 billion over 10 years. 

3) Reforming our immigration system will increasingly be seen as a critical part of any comprehensive strategy to calm the increasingly violent border region

Tackling the growing influence of the drug cartels in Mexico is going to be hard, cost a great deal of money, and take a long time. One quick and early step toward calming the region will be to take decisive action on clearing up one piece of the problem -- the vast illegal trade in undocumented migrants. Legalization will also help give these millions of families a greater stake in the United States, which will make it less likely that they contribute to the spread of the cartels influence.  

4) Fixing the immigration system will help reinforce that it is a "new day" for U.S.-Latin American relations.     

To his credit, President Obama has made it clear that he wants to see a significant improvement in our relations with our Latin neighbors and very clearly communicated that message during his recent trips to Mexico and the Summit of the Americas. Just as offering a new policy toward Cuba is part of establishing that it is truly a "new day" in hemispheric relations, ending the shameful treatment of Latin migrants here in the United States will go a long way in signaling that America is taking its relations with its southern neighbors much more seriously than in the past.  

5) Passing immigration reform this year clears the way for a clean census next year.  

Even though the government is constitutionally required to count everyone living in the United States every 10 years, the national GOP has made it clear that it will block efforts for the Census Bureau to count undocumented immigrants. Conducting a clean and thorough census is hard in any environment. If we add a protracted legal and political battle on top -- think Norm Coleman, a politicized U.S. Attorney process, Bush v Gore -- the chance of a failed or flawed census rises dramatically. This of course would not be good for the nation.  

Passing immigration reform this year would go a long way to ensuring we have a clean and effective census count next year. 

6) The Administration and Congress will grow weary of what we call  "immigration proxy wars," and will want the issue taken off the table.  

With rising violence in Mexico, and the everyday drumbeat of clashes and conflicts over immigration in communities across America, the broken immigration system is not going to fade from public consciousness any time soon. The very vocal minority on the right -- those who put this issue on the table in the first place -- will continue to try to attach amendments to other bills ensuring that various government benefits are not conferred upon undocumenteds. We have already seen battles pop up this year on virtually every major bill Congress has taken up, including SCHIP and the stimulus. By the fall, I think leaders of both parties will grow weary of these proxy battles popping up on every issue and will want to resolve the issue once and for all. Passing immigration reform will become essential to making progress on other much needed societal goals like moving toward universal health insurance. 

7) Finally, in the age of Obama, we must be vigilant to stamp out racism wherever it appears

Passing immigration reform this year would help take the air out of the balloon of what is the most virulent form of racism in American society today -- the attacks on Hispanics and undocumented immigrants. It will be increasingly difficult for the President and his allies to somehow argue that watching Glenn Beck act out burning alive of a person on the air over immigration, "left leaning" Ed Schultz give air time to avowed racist Tom Tancredo on MSNBC or Republican ads comparing Mexican immigrants to Islamic terrorists is somehow different from the racially insensitive speech that got Rush Limbaugh kicked off Monday Night Football, or Don Imus kicked off the radio.   

So for those of us who want to see this vexing national problem addressed this year, this important hearing is a critical step forward.  But we still have a long way to, and a lot of work ahead of us if we are to get this done this year.

(Also check out our recently released report, Making the Case for Passing Comprehensive Immigration Reform This Year, which succinctly lays out our case for why Congress can -- and should -- pass comprehensive immigration reform this year).

McCain Backs Away from Cap and Trade

Last week, as U.S. Sens. McCain and Obama rained down haymakers on energy policy, ads and rhetoric out of the McCain campaign seemed to suggest that his already wavering commitment to Cap and Trade legislation could soon be going to way of his positions on comprehensive immigration reform and the Bush tax cuts. Whether he is having trouble remembering his commitment to this issue or is moving for political reasons, the emerging signs from last week are too much to ignore.

On Tuesday, July 29, McCain economic adviser Steve Forbes appeared on CNN’s Glenn Beck and said:

"I think cap and trade is going to go the way of some other things, as you may remember, when he came into office, Bill Clinton had a proposal of tax carbons and stuff like that. I don’t think those things are going to get very far as people start to examine the details of them."

The same week, the McCain campaign released its now infamous "Celeb" ad, which included a line criticizing Obama for wanting to "tax electricity." Of course, none of Obama’s speeches or plans specifically call for raising taxes on electricity, so what could this possibly mean?

The McCain campaign points to a February, 2008 Q&A with the San Antonio Express-News, during which Obama said, "What We Ought To Tax Is Dirty Energy, Like Coal And, To A Lesser Extent, Natural Gas." He said this in context of putting a price on carbon emissions, a large portion of which come from, of course, energy production. Obama’s (and supposedly McCain’s) chosen method of doing so is cap and trade.

So, if McCain has a problem with pricing dirty energy, then he has a problem with cap and trade. These two points out of the campaign, one from an adviser and one in an ad, in the same week, seem to be more than just coincidence, and a fairly direct repudiation of carbon-pricing regimes.

In light of this, McCain needs clarify his position on climate change legislation – specifically cap and trade. And if he does plan on dropping support of this legislation, he then needs to show how he would create the clean energy future that he has made a central part of his platform without incentives for renewables or pricing carbon. Right now, it just doesn’t add up.

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