ARTS & FARCES internet

First it was the war on Iraq. Then it was the Patriot Act. Now it’s the Wall Street bailout and Paulson’s ultimatum. The Bush administration insisted that each of these abominations (well, two abominations; one in-waiting) had to be resolved immediately, with no time for debate; only blind and instant action. “Trust me,” was Bush’s mantra.

Well I call bullshit. In each case the corporate media received the Bush breathless warning of impending doom as gospel. It’s time to take a deep breath and look around at what’s really going on. Ask the questions that need to be asked.

The stock market dropped another 160 points today but the lights are still on. If the credit markets were really on the verge of collapse, wouldn’t the banks be eager to renegotiate homes in—or on the verge of—foreclosure? Why isn’t this happening? Why aren’t we hearing stories of small businesses having their loans called in or their lines of credit being slashed? Do a Google search for “interest-only mortgage”—about 748,000 results. Why are these toxic mortgages—the root of the problem, remember—still out there?

Most importantly, where’s the evidence? Not hand-waving, not predictions, not scenarios, but evidence.

We’re told repeatedly and without mercy that the markets are failing. But how does that cotton with Warren Buffett investing US$5 billion in Goldman Sachs?

How, at the end of the day, does Bush explain that his administration has been planning the emergency bailout—and its attendant ultimatum—for months.

“[White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony] Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.”

Simmer down and ask the questions that need to be asked.

The largest wealth redistribution plan in US history—a plan to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the middle class to the super-rich and massive amounts of power to the executive branch—is apparently garnering bipartisan support in the US Congress. The Bush administration has proposed raising the national debt ceiling to US11.3 trillion and letting the Treasury Department purchase up to US$700 billion in “toxic” mortgage-related assets without oversight or regulation.

The only restriction placed on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would be semiannual reports to Congress. Any reforms, according to Paulson, should come after the financial system is stabilized. Here’s the key bit:

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

Should Paulson spend the entire US$700 billion, it amounts to more than US$2,000 for every American citizen, more than the Pentagon’s annual budget, and about the equivalent as the direct costs of the Iraq occupation. And it appears to be a revolving credit line.

Representative Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) told the New York Times of interest in limiting the compensation of executives of firms seeking aid under the plan: “There are going to be federal tax dollars buying up some of the bad paper. They should accept some compensation guidelines, particularly to get rid of the perverse incentives where it’s ‘heads I win, tails I break even.’” The Bush administration has been adamant that any compensation restrictions are off the table.

As for not regulating executive compensation, consider the following:

One of the last bastions separating corporate and independent media has been liability insurance. Corporatists had it; independents didn’t. Now that final wall has come down.

The Media Bloggers Association on Friday announced the launch of a comprehensive program to provide independents with access to the legal resources long enjoyed by corporate media outlets.

BlogInsure, part of the program, provides liability insurance—covering defamation, invasion of privacy, and copyright infringement (but apparently not errors and omissions)—for webloggers. The insurance is provided by Media/Professional Insurance, the world’s largest underwriter of media insurance and a unit of the Select Markets Division of AXIS Insurance.

Jay Rosen tweets that the cost for this liability insurance is about US$600 per year.

Insured members will have access to a legal hotline to help resolve issues before they grow into major problems. The hotline was created and is operated by Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, one of the top media law firms in the US.

Additionally, the trade organization developed an online course in media law in collaboration with the Poynter Institute.

A DaVita dialysis facility in Manhattan voluntarily shut down after the New York State Health Department found blood on equipment, unsatisfactory staff behavior, and at least one patient who had contracted hepatitis C as a result of the facility’s unsanitary conditions. More than 650 patients were instructed to get hepatitis and HIV tests. And 171 patients were forced to seek treatment elsewhere.

The facility’s medical director, Walter Wesser, was fined US$300,000, lost his operating certification, and faces revocation of his medical license.

When the DaVita facility was inspected last month—as a follow-up to previous violations—the Health Department found that employees regularly failed to wash their hands properly, didn’t change gloves between patients, and didn’t correctly disinfect equipment.

Interestingly, the Anemona Hartocollis’s report for the New York Times fails to identify the facility as owned by DaVita. Anna Bennett’s accounts for Dialysis from the sharp end of the needle (Bennett was a patient at the closed Manhattan DaVita facility) are much better written and more compelling.

It started with CNN’s Campbell Brown holding a McCain aide’s feet to the fire, not letting him dodge a direct question asking for a single example of Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience. And it seems to have started a trend among other corporate journalists: they’re sprouting new appendages that could actually develop into something very closely resembling spines.

Now comes Jay Rosen urging his Twitter followers to point out examples of this phenomenon by including the “#spinewatch” tag in their tweets along with links to exemplary coverage. Because so many journalists follow Rosen, this idea will almost surely spread quickly. By tomorrow morning we’re going to be seeing “#spinewatch” tags everywhere and probably at least one Spinewatch weblog.

As I write this there are 61 Google hits for “spinewatch.” That’s only three hours after Rosen first tweeted his initial “spinewatch#” idea. Wonder what the Google count will be by the end of next week.

Oh, this just gets better. Rosen has created a spinewatch newsgroup on Scott Karp’s publish2.com. The meme has been loosed.

Update: Sunday, 14 September 2008 08:28PM CDT: Dan Gillmor extends the meme with the idea of a companion “spinelesswatch#” tag. Finally got around to watching the pilot for Fringe and not sure yet what I think. Best line, by far, was “excellent! Let’s make some LSD.” But then they injected it. Bad writing, no donut.