Can A Democracy Survive Without Print?

Dunn believes Republicans must clean their own stable if they are to benefit from the corruption that is and has been rife in the Democrat Party for generations. Could not agree more. What happened in Illinois simply proves what I have been writing - we have the best Congress money can buy. (See 1 below.)

Increased talk about Obama administration pledging to provide Israel a guarantee of a nuclear response should they be attacked by Iran. Such a proposal raises three questions:

a) What good would a response of that kind be when your nation has been destroyed?

b) Why should Israel rely upon a commitment from an incoming administration that seems to have basically accepted Iran going nuclear?

c) Israel has never asked anyone to defend it and has always been willing to do the heavy lifting in its own defense. What Israel would like is for the Western world to take its collective heads out of the sand and be realistic about the threat Iran poses. (See 2 below.)

Scott Turow on the Illinois Governor's arrest and is Fitzgerald vulnerable? (See 3 below.)

James Galbraith comes up with some interesting ideas on how to jump start the economy that make sense. (See 4 below.)

Google to buy New York Times? Can a democracy survive without print? (See 5 below.)

Does the Ill. Governor's problem make it more difficult for Rangel and Pelosi? One would think so. (See 6 below.)

Dick

1) The GOP Must Take Out the Trash
By J.R. Dunn

As the nation absorbs the depth of Democrat political corruption in Illinois, the Republican Party has an opportunity to claim the mantle of reform, but only at the cost of turning against some of our own.

The impressive 15-point runoff victory of Saxby Chambliss has removed the prospect of the GOP losing its final shreds of influence in the legislative branch. But it has not relieved conservatives from answering the question of how we got into this position in the first place. Since 2000, the GOP has lost 15 senatorial seats, a number, I believe, that stands as a political record. The party has slid from predominance to the very verge of losing its filibuster powers. As a result, one of the more desperate moments in the last campaign involved waiting to see whether Alaskan senator Ted Stevens could eke out a victory against Democrat Mark Begich.


Begich won, which is no bad thing for the Republican Party on a number of levels. Stevens, of course, had at the peak of the campaign been convicted on seven counts of the cheapest form of graft -- offering political favors in exchange for payoffs in the form of house renovations and the like. He was, simply put, a criminal. So the GOP was waiting on tenterhooks to see if its chestnuts would be pulled from the fire by a convicted felon. And nobody found this the least unusual -- that's how far the Republican Party has skidded.


Voting for a felon is an act of shame. All the same, enough Alaskans found themselves capable of that act to make the 2008 campaign an actual race. Some of them voted for Stevens out of habit, some out of party loyalty, some out of pure ignorance. Fortunately, there were not enough of them. Stevens at last went down to defeat, sparing the GOP the agony and embarrassment of piercing his self-esteem and conceit forcefully enough to persuade him to resign (he had already refused to allow himself to be replaced during the campaign), the same distasteful and demeaning process that was required with Larry Craig and Mark Foley.


It's also fortunate that it was wrapped up quickly enough, with no recount or court squabbles, so as not to affect the Chambliss runoff. Stevens -- and the others of his kind -- had already done enough damage. Chambliss would very likely not have faced a runoff, or Norman Coleman a recount, if they hadn't been tarred with membership in the Trash Party.


All of which underlines a fact so unpalatable that it has scarcely come up in discussions concerning GOP reform. Namely, that voting for the Democrats in 2008 was a rational act. Not a very smart act, and in the fullness of time definitely to prove a mistaken one. But rational because the alternative was to vote for the party of Ted Stevens, Larry Craig, Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley, and a gaggle of beggars drooling for earmarks and willing to throw small children onto train tracks to get them. In 2008, the party of Trash went up against the party of Change. That brand of Change is no doubt empty, specious, and dangerous, but you can't argue with the fact that it smells better than trash.


You pay a price for tolerating trash. Perhaps not an obvious one, perhaps not an immediate one, but you always pay a price. The GOP is now paying that price, after getting its wakeup call in 2006 and refusing to roll out of bed. As for current efforts at reform, everything else is on the table except this one factor, despite the easily comprehended fact that everything else will be totally irrelevant if this one factor is not dealt with. Corruption cannot be ignored. As has been demonstrated time and again this past decade, sane, moral, and intelligent voters will not settle for a party comprised of the reprobates that have populated the GOP in recent years.


I am well aware that the Dems are corrupt to the point of delirium. At this moment alone, in addition to the Blagojevich sewer, we have William "Cold Cash" Jefferson, Alcee Hastings, one of the few judges to confront the criminal justice system from both sides, and figures such as Dodd and Frank, engaged in forms of corruption involving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so esoteric that nobody knows quite what to make of them. This very week, Charlie Rangel is fighting for his political life for pulling the oldest real estate and tax scams in the book, while Tony Rezko, friend and mentor of... somebody or other, awaits sentencing in Chicago, perhaps to share a cell with Governor Blago.


But none of that matters. The Dems have been corrupt as far back as anyone cares to look, reaching to the days of Tammany Hall and the Locofocos. The Democratic reputation is well known and factored into decisions made by voters. They are the charming rascals who may steal a few rolls of quarters now and then but bring home the political bacon. The Republicans, on the other hand, are the Eagle Scouts brought in to straighten things out once they get out of hand. When the roles of rascal and Scout start to blur, you get trouble in the form of voter rejection. This may not be fair, but it is the American political dialectic and there's no getting around it.


Democrats may protest and bring up the Grant and Harding administrations, to mention only two instances. But these are recalled as exceptions, as opposed to the corruption-as-a-way-of-life of the Democratic Party. That has held true for over a century and a half, and it holds true today, despite present circumstances. (I have personal reasons to believe this to be the case. I had an uncle who did time after serving as a Massachusetts state senator -- or did I just repeat myself? Today the sole question among Boston Dem regulars is whether or not to name the new Dorchester recreation facility in his memory. That is the Democratic Party, as it was and shall be.)


But what happened to the GOP this time? Quite simply, Ronald Reagan happened.. Not that Reagan was in any way corrupt, or would have tolerated corruption among his following. But Reagan was a watershed in more ways than one. Not only did he end the predominance of New Deal liberalism, he opened up a new epoch of success for conservatism as well. For decades, liberals had called the shots and scooped up the rewards, leaving only the dregs for the Republicans. That ended with Reagan. Suddenly it was smart to be a Republican and to profess conservatism. For the first time in generations, conservatism became a path to worldly success.

Inevitably, with political success came corruption, in the person of individuals looking for easy pickings, a smooth hustle, a way to get over. These people (along with closet liberals looking for a foot on the ladder -- another, closely-related form of corruption) moved into the party in force during the mid to late 80s. I recall one GOP politician in New Jersey who campaigned on the accepted conservative platform, mouthing all the customary slogans, only to be heard to say following his election: "Now it's our turn to belly up." And so he did -- so they all did, leaving the state today bankrupt, hopeless, and Democratic, the Louisiana of the Eastern Seaboard.


Conservatives, unused to success, proved to be bad judges of character. They welcomed these hustlers with open arms, believed in them, trusted them, and promoted them. And now, twenty years later, we have the end results.


Several factors smoothed their way. The normal give and take of politics -- the necessity of making deals with people you might not want to see walking down your street after dark. Then we have the "friends" syndrome, the impulse to excuse inexcusable behavior with a remark such as, "He's not really a bad guy -- he's a friend of mine."


One unique element was a contribution of Ronald Reagan himself, the 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican." While certainly well-intentioned and useful in many circumstances (such as dealing with the media, which I'm convinced was Reagan's primary concern), it has been commonly utilized as a shield to prevent close scrutiny of the activities of the hustler class.


And there was the numbers game, particularly after the GOP triumph of 1994, when it was considered crucial to pack Congress with as many warm bodies as possible to assure that all those vital conservative policies would be passed. (Which policies were those? I'll get back to you on that...)


This environment gave us Duke Cunningham, with his immortal bribe menu, Mark Foley, of the pathetic attempts to groom congressional pages as sex partners, Larry Craig and his more successful forays into various men's rooms, and others who really aren't worth the bother of looking up how their names are spelled.


And we cannot overlook those who viewed politics as a kind of resume-building effort, happily serving when the going was good in the late 90s and early zeros, but cutting and running for greener corporate or lobbying pastures when things got rough after 2004. Or those who said all the right things and were perfectly willing to fight the good fight until there was actually a fight to be fought, one example being Rick Santorum, who scampered out of town rather than be seen with George W. Bush on a presidential visit to Pittsburgh. A short time later, Republicans inexplicably failed to turn out for his 2006 re-election attempt.


Such a situation could not have prevailed without the contribution of the nonentities at the top of the pole, who played the "see no evil" role to perfection. Particular thanks must go to Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert, who ran the Senate and House, respectively (or maybe it was the other way around), creating a legacy of sloth that will be hard for future party heads to match.


The rot is not limited to politics per se, but is prevalent throughout the conservative world, in think tanks, party and advocacy organizations and the like. Though not necessarily guilty of direct corruption, many activists can be accused of careerism and averting their eyes from the more criminal elements. Special attention needs to be paid to the commentariat, the interface between conservatism and the public at large. While happy to talk the talk during the years of plenty, some are now considering jumping ship. They should be encouraged.


This last example reveals that to some extent the problem will solve itself. Now that the snows have come, the summer soldiers are sneaking off to warmer climes. No sense being a hustler where there's nothing to hustle. This process will send large numbers of future indictables home to the Democrats where they belong.


But plenty of rotten apples will remain. What can be done with them?


The simple answer is: expose, expose, and expose. Somebody -- possibly everybody -- knew what Foley, Cunningham, and Stevens were up to. Somebody should have spoken up. Forget the excuses. The numbers? We've seen how well that strategy works. Those seeking to protect corrupt "friends" need to find new ones. The 11th commandment must be repealed until further notice. Shining a spotlight on these people and running them out will pay dividends in the long run. The GOP's major appeal lies in its probity, its steadiness, its sense of virtue in a fallen world. These have been cast aside in favor of ephemera.


The voters and breaking events have given us a good head start; it is up to us to take up the slack. This is in no way a recommendation for a purge but a call for the restoration of the simple, honorable methods of dealing with such types that should have been practiced for the past twenty years and have not been. This is a role that conservatives must take on -- to become the watchdogs of the party and its representatives. While taking action may well mean the end of several "promising" careers, that will represent no loss in the long run.


All the other "urgent" questions -- who is a RINO and who is a true conservative (whatever that might be) and whether social conservatives or moderates would better be dropped from helicopters, are trivia compared to this one. The voters are not stupid. After four years watching the Democrat's nightmare combination of the Chicago and Clinton machines (and what a soap opera that is going to be!), they will be ready for something better. We must be ready to give it to them.

2) Obama to offer Israel 'nuclear umbrella' against Iranian nuke attack
By Aluf Benn



U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran.

But America's nuclear guarantee to Israel could also be interpreted as a sign the U.S. believes Iran will eventually acquire nuclear arms.

Secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton had raised the idea of a nuclear guarantee to Israel during her campaign for the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency. During a debate with Obama in April, Clinton said that Israel and Arab countries must be given "deterrent backing." She added, "Iran must know that an attack on Israel will draw a massive response."

Clinton also proposed the American nuclear umbrella be extended to other countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, if they agree to relinquish their own nuclear ambitions.

According to the same source, the nuclear guarantee would be backed by a new and improved Israeli anti-ballistic missile system. The Bush administration took the first step by deploying an early-warning radar system in the Negev, which hones the ability to detect Iranian ballistic missiles.

Obama said this week that he would negotiate with Iran and would offer economic incentives for Tehran to relinquish its nuclear program. He warned that if Iran refused the deal, he would act to intensify sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Granting Israel a nuclear guarantee essentially suggests the U.S. is willing to come to terms with a nuclear Iran. For its part, Israel opposes any such development and similar opposition was voiced by officials in the outgoing Bush administration.

"What is the significance of such guarantee when it comes from those who hesitated to deal with a non-nuclear Iran?? asked a senior Israeli security source. "What kind of credibility would this [guarantee have] when Iran is nuclear capable?"

The same source noted that the fact that there is talk about the possibility of a nuclear Iran undermines efforts to prevent Tehran from acquiring such arms.

A senior Bush administration source said that the proposal for an American nuclear umbrella for Israel was ridiculous and lacked credibility. "Who will convince the citizen in Kansas that the U.S. needs to get mixed up in a nuclear war because Haifa was bombed? And what is the point of an American response, after Israel's cities are destroyed in an Iranian nuclear strike?"

The current debate is taking place in light of the Military Intelligence assessment that Iran has passed beyond the point of no return, and has mastered the technology of uranium enrichment. The decision to proceed toward the development of nuclear arms is now purely a matter for Iran's leaders to decide. Intelligence assessments, however, suggest that the Iranians are trying to first accumulate larger quantities of fissile material, and this offers a window of opportunity for a last-ditch diplomatic effort to prevent an Iranian bomb.

3) State of Shame
By SCOTT TUROW


HERE in Chicago, where we are accustomed to news that challenges the thresholds of belief, we awoke Tuesday to find that our governor, Rod Blagojevich, had become the second Illinois chief executive in a row to be subjected to criminal charges.

The 76-page criminal complaint implies that Mr. Blagojevich was such an inveterate schemer that despite being the obvious target of a three-year federal grand jury investigation into trading state jobs and contracts for campaign contributions, he had to be taken out of his house in handcuffs to prevent him from selling off the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

Even by Chicago’s picaresque standards, Tuesday’s developments are mind-boggling, even more so to a former federal prosecutor like me with an understanding of some of the nuances of the federal criminal justice system. The most worrisome element is that Mr. Blagojevich’s shameless behavior seems to have put Chicago’s United States attorney, the estimable Patrick Fitzgerald, into the unenviable position of having to bring a case before he was ready.

Mr. Fitzgerald has lived by the Machiavellian motto that if you shoot at the king, you had better kill the king. Mr. Fitzgerald’s highest-profile prosecutions — like those of I. Lewis Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and of Mr. Blagojevich’s predecessor as governor, George Ryan — have been assembled methodically, with an almost obsessive desire to tie down evidentiary details before charges are returned.

Furthermore, Mr. Fitzgerald has a history of trying not to use the justice system to pre-empt the operation of other democratic institutions. Thus, despite a more than five-year investigation, the Ryan indictment was withheld until after the governor left office in 2003, and Mr. Fitzgerald did not oppose a defense request to schedule Mr. Libby’s perjury and obstruction justice trial after the 2006 midterm elections.

Undoubtedly one of the events Patrick Fitzgerald has no desire to influence is his own possible reappointment as United States attorney for four more years (all United States attorneys can be replaced by the incoming administration). Mr. Fitzgerald’s effectiveness as a prosecutor is unquestioned, and the state’s senior senator, the Democrat Dick Durbin, has said Mr. Fitzgerald can stay in the job if he wants to.

But the Justice Department may have other thoughts. Mr. Fitzgerald has held the job since October 2001, some may argue that a position with such extraordinary discretionary powers should not lay in the same hands for 12 years.

Moreover, Mr. Fitzgerald’s bare-knuckle methods have rankled many in the Chicago bar. For example, he got George Ryan’s chief of staff, Scott Fawell, to testify against his former boss by threatening to imprison Mr. Fawell’s girlfriend for perjury.

In his news conference Tuesday, Mr. Fitzgerald indicated that he hadn’t planned to indict Governor Blagojevich until next spring, meaning that the prosecutor was going to wait until his own fate was decided. Instead, with wiretap evidence piling up that showed that Mr. Blagojevich was intent on selling the Obama seat in exchange for a substantial personal benefit, like a high-paying job for himself or his wife, Mr. Fitzgerald was forced to make the arrest. He decided that he could not even wait for the grand jury investigating Mr. Blagojevich to meet on Thursday and indict him.

Bypassing the grand jury and proceeding through a criminal complaint instead effectively puts the case against Mr. Blagojevich on the express route. Mr. Fitzgerald will now have only 20 days to either give the governor a preliminary hearing — which would amount to free discovery for his defense lawyer — or return an indictment. Given Mr. Fitzgerald’s frank appeal for information from the public at his news conference, it’s obvious that his case is not fully buttoned up, and that Mr. Blagojevich forced the prosecutor’s hand.

All of this news comes with personal chagrin for me because I was Governor Blagojevich’s first appointment to the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission, a body created his first year in office. (For the record, I have never made a campaign donation to him.) The commission judges ethics complaints against state officials, supervises ethics instruction, and tries to carry out an overall mandate to improve the ethical climate in Illinois.

Ethics reform in Illinois is often regarded as an oxymoron, and I admit that the commission’s arduous efforts to strengthen our ethics laws have met with little success. Speaking solely for myself, I hope the governor’s arrest galvanizes public outrage and at last speeds reform.

One change that is obviously indispensable is overhauling the campaign contribution laws in Illinois, where there are literally no limits on political donations — neither how big they can be or who can give them. The lone exception is a law, passed over a Blagojevich veto, that takes effect Jan. 1, prohibiting large state contractors from donating to the executive officer who gave them the business. Otherwise, anybody — union officials, regulated industries, corporations, lobbyists —can throw as much money as they like at Illinois politicians.

This astonishing state of affairs persists 32 years after the Supreme Court, in Buckley v. Valeo, recognized “the actuality and appearance of corruption resulting from large individual financial contributions” in approving limits on such donations to candidates for federal office. One can only hope that even in Illinois we are too ashamed now to tolerate business as usual.

4) Stimulus Is for Suckers: All those billions don't add up to much. How Obama can get us on track to a real recovery."
By James K. Galbraith"

President Barack Obama (how sweet those words) has already transformed American politics. The GOP is in crack-up. Obama's coattails in Congress give him leverage, and his vast public support gives him power. There is an economic crisis and a demand for action to deal with it. More than at any time since Ronald Reagan in 1981, what the president wants, he will get.

So, what should he ask for? How big and far reaching should changes to the economy be? Nearly everyone in Obama's circle agrees that more public spending and tax cuts are needed: a "stimulus package." The cautious say $150 billion (about 1 percent of gdp), while the bold and the worried say $500 billion (or just more than 3 percent of gdp). Both focus attention on what is needed in 2009—as if the economic problem can be solved in a year.

That is almost certainly wrong.

When the free fall began, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke argued that the problem with the economy was frozen credit. Banks were unable to lend, they said, because they could not get the funds. This was not true, as we discovered when Treasury gave the banks the funds, only to realize that banks had no wish to lend them out. Instead they used the money to build capital and on dividends and executive pay. (Goldman Sachs, which received $10 billion as part of the bailout, got good press when it announced its top seven execs would forgo their year-end bonuses. But a government ban on bonuses was likely coming, and by limiting the sacrifice to top managers, the company retains leeway to spend the estimated $6.9billion set aside for bonuses on slightly lesser employees.)

In any case, banks did not wish to lend, and ordinary Americans, desperately cutting costs, did not wish to borrow, and with their homes underwater many had little collateral to borrow against.

What began as a housing collapse will not go away soon. Empty houses wreck home values for their neighbors. The ratings agencies are discredited, the investment banks are gone, and high finance is in debt deflation. Foreign investors won't soon trust the market for US private debt, even for blue chip corporations, so long as they remain saddled with toxic health care costs. Regulation will have to be rebuilt. In short, the money wells have been poisoned, and it will take time and patient effort to clean them up.

The historical role of a stimulus is to kick things off, to grease the wheels of credit, to get things "moving again." But the effect ends when the stimulus does, when the sugar shock wears off. Compulsive budget balancers who prescribe a "targeted and temporary" policy followed by long-term cuts to entitlements don't understand the patient. This is a chronic illness. Swift action is definitely needed. But we also need recovery policies that will continue for years.

First, we must fix housing. We need, as in the 1930s, a Home Owners' Loan Corporation to restructure failed mortgages on sustainable terms. The basic objective should be to keep people in their homes by all necessary means, except where borrowers committed willful fraud, so as to stop the spread of blight and decay. Government can use its power over banks to make this happen, as it has with IndyMac, the California bank that is now, as a federally owned company, revising unsustainable mortgages. But this is no small endeavor: The FDR-era HOLC operated for almost two decades and at its peak employed 20,000 people.

Second, we must backstop state and local governments with federal funds. Otherwise falling property (and other) tax revenues will implode their budgets, forcing destructive cuts in public services and layoffs for teachers, firefighters, and police. And when these public servants are laid off, guess what? They have trouble paying their mortgages. General revenue sharing—unrestricted federal grants to states and towns, a program invented by Richard Nixon and killed by Ronald Reagan—is required. Luckily it can be reintroduced quickly on a large scale.

Third, we should support the incomes of the elderly, whose nest eggs have been hit hard by the stock market collapse. We can't erase those losses case by case (nor should we), but we can sustain the purchasing power of the group. The best way is to increase Social Security benefits. Useful steps would include boosting the formula for widowed spouses, ensuring a minimum benefit for retirees who worked their whole lives in low-wage jobs, and allowing college students to receive survivors' benefits up until the age of 22. But let's go further and raise benefits across the board, which has not been done for a generation. I'd say raise them 30 percent, and let the federal government make the contributions for five years. This would be good for the elderly, who could retire; good for working-age people, who would replace the retiring; and good for the economy, since people who need money spend it when they get it.

Fourth, we should cut taxes on working Americans. Obama proposes to effectively offset the first $500 of Social Security taxes with a refundable credit. It's a good idea, but can be expanded. If the economy continues to spiral downward and a really large fiscal boost is needed, let's declare a payroll tax holiday, funding Social Security and Medicare directly from the treasury, until the economy gets back on track. Workers would get an immediate 8.3 percent raise to help meet their mortgages; employers would have the same amount to spend on wages, job creation, or investment. (Not all efforts to jump-start the economy deliver so much bang for the buck. See chart below.)

Is this the standard "liberal line"—borrow and spend? No. It is the situation, not the philosophy, that demands this action both grand and sustained. Economic recovery in an existential crisis like this means actually building a new economy. For that, we need investment—to restore our roads, rails, transit, broadband, and water systems, to build parks and museums and libraries, to protect the environment. Right now, states and localities can't borrow for these things. Creating a National Infrastructure Fund, using Uncle Sam's borrowing power to put money where it's needed, is one way forward. Federal capital spending should be bond financed and exempt from budget rules, especially pay-as-you-go. It makes no sense to finance projects whose benefits will last for 50 years solely from tax revenues of today.

Finally, we must change how we produce energy, how we consume it, and above all how much greenhouse gas we emit. That's a long-term proposition that will require research and reconstruction on a grand scale: support for universities, for national labs, for federal and state planning agencies, a new Department of Energy and Climate. It's the project around which the economy of the next generation must be designed. It's the key to future employment and future growth—and to our physical survival.

Energy transformation is key for another reason. Even during this crisis, the world has supported the dollar. Why? Because no alternative safe haven exists. Despite our faults, we have a well-designed economic system, the enduring fruit of the New Deal and Great Society. Thus Uncle Sam can borrow, at very low cost, whatever he needs—a terrific advantage over the competition. But in the long run, the world will support us only if we give something back. Ushering in new technologies that the rest of the world can adopt in order to save the planet is the right sort of gift. By helping to save the physical world, we may be able to save our currency, our credit, and our economy as well.

5) Will Google Buy The New York Times?
Andrew Sargus Klein

Or does it make more philanthropic and financial sense to buy the AP? Either way, someone needs to bail out print media.


On The New York Times’ book blog Paper Cuts, Barry Gewen recently reviewed One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost. We learn that of the 6900 spoken languages, 69 percent of the world speaks four of them. Just as species of animals reach the end of the line, so do languages—more often than not it is not a matter natural selection or choice. Gewen writes:


When a small population gives up its language voluntarily (as opposed to compulsorily), it does so to become part of a larger or more powerful community. To preserve such peoples, we’d have to isolate them or maintain their languages through some other artificial, even coercive, means.


The point is not lost when applied to the very real dismantling of paper media. The Tribune Co.—piloted by Sam Zell and owner of The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, among others—is on the verge of collapse. The New York Times, the media world’s onetime bastion, is frantically circling the wagons as it borrows against its own assets to protect its brand new building. As the paper seeks to cut loose dead weight, it’s finding that brand amputation costs more in the short run than the former assets are currently worth. The paper has declined 70 per cent in value over the past five years. It’s a grim situation. (I wonder how many New Yorkers see the Times’ stake in the Boston Red Sox as the metaphysical culprit…) Media pundits have been singing print’s swan song for years now. And that song is blaring as America’s storied dailies, weeklies and magazines shudder to a halt, one fiscal quarter at a time. The business models cannot support the medium, as the Internet has so deftly shown—and expedited.

It seems newspapers were just starting to jam their homepages with dozens of blogs, just starting to “get” the whole Web thing. It seems we were just starting to feel out some sort of reconciliation between the “just the facts,” hard-line old media with the loose, first-person new. But as theoretical and invigorating as that debate was and is, it’s largely irrelevant. Newspapers as we know them have failed.

Pulitzer Administrator Sig Gissler told Editor and Publisher that journalism’s top prizes are now open to many “text-based newspapers and news organizations that publish only on the Internet” in an effort to “keep up with the changing media landscape.” It might be that in 20 years time Pulitzers will only be given to online outlets.

But if the money, the audiences, and the prize committees are moving online, there still remain the newspapers and their reporters. There still remain the beats, the institutional knowledge and the print world’s existing infrastructures of information. No business model can be found to support Baghdad bureaus and years-long investigative reporting. Yet the Sulzbergers, who have owned the Times for more than a century, do not want to sell their paper. It is a point of fact they’re devoted to their paper and see it as the high-water mark of journalism—and it is their duty to protect it.

A new favorite recipe for salvation that’s kicked around the blogosphere involves none other than Google. The Times has an estimated price tag of $3 to $4 billion. (Rupert Murdoch paid $5 billion for Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal’s parent company.) A fistful of billions, even in this economy, might not be too big of a dent in Google’s bottom line and, it’s argued, the ends would soon pay back the means. The anonymous blogger at Dear John Thain divided his pro-acquisition reasons into four points: it would give Google an even more highly integrated advertising model; if Google distributes the Times, it takes in the paper’s ad revenue while also moving the medium away from dead trees; the Times’ push to personalize content couldn’t be better supported by Google; the Times’ product—the news—is priceless, and it would benefit Google and the rest of us if it stayed available.

All valid points, but none that take into account the irrationality of immovable human devotion. The Sulzbergers don’t want to sell their paper. But John Ellis, from Real Clear Markets, sees the Google acquisition as perhaps the only defense against Rupert Murdoch:

[Murdoch] did not buy Dow Jones because of its growth potential. It’s a crowded market, to say the least. He did not buy Dow Jones because he sees limitless growth opportunities in financial news and business information. It’s a crowded field. He intends to use The Wall Street Journal as a precision-targeted weapon. And the target he has locked onto is The New York Times.

The Times Co. simply doesn’t have the pockets to match Murdoch. How righteous will the Sulzbergers feel if they watch their beloved paper choke to death. As a family business, will they attempt to nobly go down with the ship? The Times isn’t privately owned, and it’s very possible outside shareholders would attempt a hostile takeover of some kind—of any kind—in order to at least earn a few bucks selling the daily to a random business magnet.

For the Sulzbergers, it seems, it’s all or nothing. They don’t want to see their product diluted or mismanaged. They don’t want to slash reporting teams in half or close down overseas bureaus. As they say out in the Midwest somewhere, Go big or go home.

The thought of Google buying the Times is a giddy one: the search giant’s unofficial motto is “don’t be evil,” and what could be less evil than saving the world’s greatest news outlet—journalism itself, if you’re the emotional type—from bankruptcy? Google’s product is access to any and all information. If an information hub like the Times dies off, what happens to Google’s product?

In June, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said there is a “moral imperative” in saving news media. Betsy Schiffman wrote in Wired, “we’d venture to guess there’s a financial once, too.” Schiffman argued that Google should buy the Associated Press instead. The AP is co-op of some 1500 daily newspapers across the world. Head to head, which is more valuable? To the public? To Google or AOL or Microsoft?

The language of newspapers is dying off, replaced by blogs and videos and the ever-churning Web—Gewen's "large and more powerful community." Whether news media evolve voluntarily or not remains to be seen.

6) Rangel investigation expanded
By: John Bresnahan

The House ethics committee has voted to expand its investigation of Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) to include allegations that he helped a $1 million donor to the Charles B. Rangel Center at the City College of New York retain a lucrative tax loophole.

The ethics committee’s action raises serious doubts about whether its probe into Rangel’s finances will be completed before the new Congress arrives in January. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently said she was given “assurances” that it would be, yet the newest allegation may take longer to review.

The ethics committee issued a brief statement on Tuesday saying it had authorized a four-member investigative subcommittee, led by Reps. Gene Green (D-Texas) and Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), to determine if Rangel had violated any House rules “with respect to contributions of money or pledges of contributions of money to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York from any person or entity associated with Nabors Industries.”

The New York Times has reported that Rangel met with Nabors CEO Eugene Isenberg on Feb. 12, 2007 — the same day that Rangel’s Ways and Means Committee was marking up a major tax bill with implications for Nabors. The Senate Finance Committee had already adopted legislation closing a lucrative tax loophole for Nabors, and Isenberg wanted assurances from Rangel that he would not back the Senate bill, the paper said.

Earlier that morning, Isenberg, Rangel and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau had met to discuss Isenberg’s $1 million contribution to the Rangel Center, the Times reported.

Both Rangel and Isenberg have denied any link between the $1 million gift and Rangel’s stance on the loophole.

John Buckley, the chief tax counsel for the Ways and Means Committee, released a long statement on Friday in which he said emphatically that Rangel made no effort to protect Nabors while the chairman was crafting the 2007 tax bill. Buckley’s statement will almost certainly make him a witness as the committee expands its probe to include the Nabors matter.

Isenberg and Ken Kies, a lobbyist hired by Isenberg to defend the loophole, may also find themselves receiving subpoenas, according to ethics experts, and Morgenthau could end up being deposed in order to determine what he remembers about the discussion he had with Rangel and Isenberg.

It is unclear whether Rangel himself has appeared before the ethics committee yet. His office could not be reached for comment at press time on this newest development in the case.

At Rangel’s request, the ethics committee began an investigation into his personal finances in late September. The New York Democrat has faced a barrage of media reports detailing his control of multiple rent-stabilized apartments in a Harlem apartment building where he lives, his failure to pay taxes on $75,000 in income on a vacation home in the Dominican Republic and his alleged use of official congressional stationery as part of his fundraising efforts on behalf of the Rangel Center.In response to the ongoing controversy, Rangel has launched a determined attack on the press — especially the Times — and he has repeatedly refused demands from Republicans and editorial boards to give up his gavel.

But if the ethics committee investigation drags into the 111th Congress — which now appears increasingly likely — then Pelosi may be forced to oust him. The Ways and Means Committee is responsible for drafting major tax and health care legislation that lies at the heart of President-elect Barack Obama’s agenda, and Rangel’s problems could prove to be a distraction in passing those bills.

Although Pelosi’s aides have privately suggested that she wants this matter resolved as soon as possible, the speaker herself again defended Rangel Monday, telling NBC, “Until they make their decision, which I hope will be soon, I think that he should stay as chair of the committee.”

But with Tuesday’s arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Republicans in Congress are sure to turn up the heat on Pelosi to “drain the swamp,” as she promised to do before she became speaker.