Jennifer Loven editorializes for the AP
By Leverkuhn Comments (15) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press has a new "story" out on AOL News. It is revealingly titled "Taxpayers Pick Up Tab as Bush Campaigns for GOP."
http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/taxpayers-pick-up-tab-as-bush-campa...
In the article Ms. Loven breathlessly reports that President Bush is using taxpayer money for political purposes. How so, Ms. Loven?
Bankrolled almost entirely by taxpayers, Bush is roaming far and wide on Air Force One to help Republicans retain control of Congress and capture statehouse contests in high-stakes midterm elections.
In 15 months, including back-to-back fundraisers Wednesday in Arkansas and Tennessee, Bush has collected $166 million for the campaign accounts of 27 Republican candidates, the national Republican Party and its state counterparts across the country, according to the Republican National Committee.
High-dollar Washington galas headlined by the fundraiser-in-chief brought in a big share of the total. The president also has scooped up campaign cash in 36 cities, travels that have taken him as near as McLean, Virginia, in the Washington suburbs, and as far as Medina, Washington, 2,800 miles to the west.
Outrageous! You mean to say that the President of the United States is passing the tab to the taxpayers for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of trips to politically oriented events?! You mean to say that the public actually has to pay for the president's travel expenses wherever he might go? What a blatant violation of campaign finance law!! Wait ... it is a violation of campaign finance law, right?
When Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, first lady Laura Bush or any federal official helps a candidate, Federal Election Commission guidelines say the campaign must reimburse the government only the equivalent of a first-class fare for each political traveler on each leg of the trip. Typically, that means paying a few hundred or at most a few thousand dollars to cover the president and a couple of aides from the White House Office of Political Affairs.
So actually, federal law has provisions covering this sort of thing, and they actually allow the president to do this sort of thing? Well then, why did it merit story from the Associated Press? Is it because President Bush is the first President to use federal funds in this way?
Democrat Bill Clinton, Bush's predecessor, also reaped millions in support, gaining financial support of unions, rich professionals and other Democratic stalwarts while also winning support from the business community.
Err, so a president using federal money to travel to political events is not illegal and not unprecedented? So tell me, Ms. Loven, why did you write this story? Perhaps the President is using federal travel funds in another way that is illegal?
They are not the first presidents to operate this way. Federal regulations governing reimbursement for political travel have been on the books at least since the administration of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and the White House said Bush adheres to all rules.
So in the final analysis, nobody has broken any laws, and nobody has done anything unusual. So please explain to me, Ms. Loven, why you wrote this article in the first place? For that matter, why is it provocatively titled "Taxpayers Pick Up Tab as Bush Campaigns for GOP," and why d you wait until halfway down the column to begin explaining that nothing the president has done is actually illegal or something that his predecessors have not also done?
To the discerning reader, the point of this article is painfully obvious. It is a non-story published only so that AP has an excuse to print a salacious headline with a few paragraphs of text at the top that imply that the White House and/or President Bush is doing something wrong. Sure, Ms. Loven eventually gets around to telling us that no law has been broken and nothing unusual has been done, but to the average member of the reading public who only skims stories such as these a vague impression as been created that something must be amiss with the way the White House is using federal funds. And that, boys and girls, is precisely what this article intends to do.
Isn't this lady married to a guy who was a Kerry Campaign bigwig in 2004?
but the lady sure has some history. For example, this is a powerline sendup of her piece about the famous "sixteen words" controversy:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007959.php
And here is the story itself, entitled "White House can't make questions go away":
http://www.theolympian.com/home/specialsections/War/20030721/57118.shtml
And here is her story on President Bush's recent "State of the Union Address:"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/30/national/w04...
And here is some of her work concerning Hurricane Katrina:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/ats-ap_top14sep12,0,864916....
http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/politics/index.ssf?/base/politics-5/1...
And here is a nasty little piece criticizing the President for, of all things, using too much gasoline:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/08/24/national/w18...
All in all, you could say she is definitely hostile to the Bush Administration, although not everything she has written is as blatantly manipulative as the piece I wrote about here.
A precedent embalms a principle.
- Disraeli
Oh, wait a minute. I just found this: Loven is married to Roger Ballentine, president of Green Strategies which is an environmental group, and he worked for the Clinton Administration.
http://www.thesakeofargument.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=66
Moreover, he did work for the Kerry campaign:
http://www.greenstrategies.com/aboutUs/bioBallentine.html
A precedent embalms a principle.
- Disraeli
Thanks for the props. I wrote this when I was kind of sleepy, so it has more than my usual number of typos, but I think the main point came across well enough.
BTW, how do you do text links these days? I used to be able to do it, but ever since they changed the redstate website I can't do it the same way I used to anymore. It makes a sad little paleo-con.
A precedent embalms a principle.
- Disraeli
for a link: < a href = " link.com " > Text < / A >
Remove all the spaces except for the space between a and href, be sure to include the " " around the link
The autoformat let's you name links too. Set Filtered HTML and do this: [put my text here http://my.url/blah]
--
If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
this out for myself [put my text here http://www.lsu.edu/]
A precedent embalms a principle.
- Disraeli
--
If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
solution to the problem. Louisiana State University Yeah, it works!!!!
A precedent embalms a principle.
- Disraeli
It is simply shocking that the president would actually use the Bully Pulpit to bypass the 'filter' of the Partisan Press and take his message 'directly' to the American people.
It is even more shocking that the president would campaign from said Bully Pulpit on behalf of Republican candidates, fully engage in the effort to maintain his party's congressional majority and promote his legislative and national security agenda before the American people.
Most shocking of all: The president has taken a page from Ronald Wilson Reagan's campaign playbook.
Complaints from the Partisan Press regarding taxpayer-funded travel are just sour grapes. Elections have consequences.
Emulating President Reagan: 'That' is simply untenable, and grossly unfair.
IMHO, it's about time!
***
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
He can't bypass the filter. Only the viewers, those who honestly believe that watching CNN or ABC for an hour a night will keep them informed, can choose to remove the filter and see the truth.
--
If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
When I was actively campaigning for President Reagan's reelection in 1984, I couldn't help but notice the local news coverage surrounding his campaign stops vs. the coverage of those same events by the networks. Local coverage tended to be positive and lasted for several days after each event, while the networks tried, unsuccessfully, to reframe the debate.
Much to the dismay of the major networks, President Reagan's rhetoric struck a chord with the electorate, and he won reelection in a landslide.
That campaign season marked the beginning of the end of the monopoly once enjoyed by the Partisan Press, and gave rise to the conservative movement that took control of congress ten years later.
If President Bush and his senior administration officials are successful in framing the terms of the debate through this series of speeches, conventional wisdom will be swept aside and the GOP will maintain its congressional majority.
***
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
Journalism is the continuation of politics by other means.