Is the press biased? Editorial views can influence news coverage

A couple of weeks ago, an election was held to fill a vacancy in Georgia’s 6^th Congressional District. The seat had been held by the Republicans since 1979, and pundits saw this election as a key test of President Trump’s popularity and its effect on GOP candidates.

The election could be settled if a single candidate out of the 18 running received more than 50 percent of the vote. Otherwise, there would be a runoff on June 20 between the top two vote getters.

The Democratic candidate received a bit more than 48 percent, far more than any other candidate, but not enough to avoid a runoff.

For the Democrats, it was a victory, but bittersweet for failing to send a strong message about Trump’s declining popularity. For the Republicans, it was a near miss, but one which could well be reversed in the runoff.

Here are the headlines of news reports, not editorial comment, about this election in several major national media outlets.

Washington Post: “Republicans avoid big loss by forcing runoff in Georgia House race.”

New York Times: “Democrat just misses victory in Georgia House race.”

Wall Street Journal: “Democrats falter in bid for outright win in Georgia House race.”

Associated Press: “Georgia House race to high-stakes runoff as Trump wades in.”

The Washington Post and the New York Times editorial pages strongly oppose Trump and generally support Democrats. In contrast, while the Wall Street Journal seems lukewarm about Trump, it is faithful to GOP conservatism. The Associated Press provides news reports to media of all political stripes.

From these headlines, it seems clear that a newspaper’s editorial stance can influence the slant it puts on a news story.

Readers can get the message. If you support the Republicans, you can easily see the New York Times headline as coming from the opposition. Because of that newspaper’s standing in the media main stream, it becomes ripe for attack by conservatives who believe most such newspapers are biased against them.

This sense of alienation from what some conservatives call the “lame stream” media has helped promote openly conservative and right wing resources like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. They are safe and comfortable havens from what is seen as a biased main stream.

With each side having its own preferred media outlets, while spurning the others, the political gap deepens. Each side believes it has the facts right, while the opposition distorts the truth.

This is not so much a question of so-called “alternative” facts as it is a matter of selective coverage. Of course, there’s a certain amount of downright fabrication on the right and unbalanced consideration of opposition views on the left. The result can lead to the conclusion there’s much “fake news.”

The harm of inherent bias is considerable, because a free and fair media is essential to the American system. If the people rule, they must be informed to make good judgments. They cannot depend on government, which is often not responsible to the public. Instead, they must depend on the media to inform them and convey their views.

Trump dismisses interest in his tax returns and says only the media, apparently a minor player in his view, seeks them. Not only do the polls show he is wrong, but the media represents that public interest. The media is not an end in itself, but is the public’s path to participation in the political process outside of elections.

A recent example, not involving government, demonstrates the power of a free media. The New York Times revealed that Fox and Bill O’Reilly, its star personality, had paid $13 million to settle complaints of sexual harassment by O’Reilly.

Fox had not fired him, despite these payouts. It fired him only when the complaints were made public in the media. The media forced Fox to honor what it called its “consistent commitment to fostering a work environment built on the values of trust and respect.” Where was that “commitment” before the Times’ revelations?

The problems with news bias may explain the relative success of local newspapers compared with some major papers. Local outlets focus mainly on covering local news for people who may have no other reliable source.

Of course, local papers may reveal bias, but they are more likely to recognize their survival depends on fair reporting for all readers, regardless of ideology.

In the end, readers and viewers have their own responsibility to keep open and critical minds when reading or watching the news.

Democrats, depending on Trump's errors, risk overconfidence

The Democrats may be making a serious mistake.

In planning for the 2018 and 2020 campaigns, they could be counting on President Trump's unpopularity to allow the elections to fall into their laps. Good showings in special House elections, like this week in Georgia, might encourage this way of thinking.

Many Democrats and probably Hillary Clinton herself thought that voters' dislike of Trump would be sufficient to hand them victory in 2016.

They suffered from a dangerous kind of political myopia. They thought everybody or at least a majority shared their view of Trump’s values and behavior. A majority of voters did, but they were concentrated in only 20 states, not enough for an electoral vote victory. Have they learned their lesson?

Democrats see Trump as incompetent, with major conflicts of interest, lacking knowledge of government, and beholden to the extreme right. After making extravagant promises on health care, he had no proposal, and the GOP proposal flopped. In foreign policy, he flirts with danger and is highly inconsistent.

His supporters have not melted away because of such concerns, which many do not share. They see him as different from traditional politicians, trying to keep his promises and getting tough with the world. His exaggerations and inaccuracies don't bother them. Their continuing support is a sign that he won't self-destruct.

For many, Washington is still “the swamp.” Trump is struggling against being sucked in. He is slowly learning that he cannot drain it simply by virtue of having won the election, but he hasn't given up.

In their apparent belief that Trump is doomed to fail, congressional Democrats seem content to oppose the GOP and stick to their traditional policy proposals. But voters are now completely jaded by political promises that are not kept. As Bernie Sanders and Trump showed, voters want change.

Next year, the Democrats face a major challenge. They need to pick up 24 seats to control the House. Although the opposition party to the president traditionally gains seats in the next elections, that's a long hill to climb.

Democrats hold 20 of the 33 Senate seats to be contested, meaning they would have keep all of them and pick up three of the GOP's seats for a majority. That would take an almost unprecedented reversal of Democratic fortunes.

In February, the Democrats supposedly started out fresh. They struggled to decide if the Sanders or the Clinton wing would control and finally picked a new chairman. But there are still no signs of a positive, new message from the party, beyond opposing Trump.

Looking at the Democratic Party’s official website, it is about organizational matters and insider issues. There is nothing there for the independent voter or disgruntled Republicans. Next year, there may be nothing more than a decentralized array of candidate proposals.

The alternative to a policy of coasting and hoping would be to draft a clear statement of party policy and get it out to the public. Of course, organizing work needs to be done as well, but with the next elections about 19 months away, the Democrats need to be making their case now. And it needs to be more than anti-Trump.

New party chair Tom Perez should swiftly move to end any rifts between Sanders and Clinton supporters. This is a critical need for a party that, given its fallen status, cannot afford to be divided.

The Republicans found a form of self-discipline was a major factor in their transformation from a minority party to majority control. Their party discipline and the “Contract with America,” which could be written on one side of a piece of paper, were effective tools in communicating a simple message to voters.

Not only do the Democrats need to get on with writing a bold, new statement of their values and goals, but they need to be working hard at all levels to find ways to get more voters to the polls and to identify appealing new candidates.

Merely leaving these tasks to a decentralized and often lackluster effort by the states will not produce the kind of results necessary for a reversal in the course of American politics.

The challenge for the Democrats is to take a leaf from the GOP playbook and abandon business as usual. Depending on Trump alone to create more Democrats won’t work.

The country needs a vigorous two-party system to produce the kind of government based on compromise that people want. From a position of strength, the Democrats have a better chance of forcing such compromise than they have now.

Trump, Maine Dems would use projected revenues to pay real costs

President Trump and Maine Democrats have something in common. Their initial budget proposals count on future revenues to cover current costs.

Trump has not yet unveiled his full budget. But he has announced agency budget cuts and “massive” tax cuts that will not raise the federal debt.

He forecasts four percent economic growth, which will provide sufficient new tax revenues. The strong gains would result from growth prompted by less regulation.

The tax cuts would be permanent, but there’s no way of knowing if his projected revenue boost would materialize or last over time.

The level of economic growth Trump projects may occur in new economies, especially in low-income, resource-rich developing countries. In a huge, mature economy like in the U.S., the added activity to create that amount of growth is not possible, and it has no precedent.

In fact, the U.S. would be doing quite well if it could sustain growth at two percent, half Trump’s forecast, for an extended period. The country may hit that rate in any given quarter, but maintaining it indefinitely may be out of reach.

An economy may boom for a short while, but sustaining long-term high growth cannot be expected. How, then, does a country cover lost revenues or increased spending when the boom tapers off or when the country faces unexpected challenges requiring it to make unexpected expenditures?

In the future, as revenues fail to achieve their forecast levels, some spending, already reduced, would have to be cut even more. The only other alternative is to raise taxes to keep the federal government operating.

Just as more deficits leading to more debt pushes the cost of government into the future to be paid by the children and grandchildren of today’s taxpayers, so does funding current spending and tax cuts by projected future gains in government tax revenues.

Not only is it unlikely those revenue gains will materialize, but it is virtually certain they would not last at a sustained high level. But the spending will have taken place and the tax cuts will have been made permanent.

So Trump can look good now by cutting taxes and promising huge spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure, but the bill will come due under a later president who will face the unenviable task of raising taxes. It’s paying for today’s costs by smoke that hides the price that others will pay.

Meanwhile, Maine Democrats have issued their budget priorities, not a full budget. They propose to pay the 55 percent of school costs voted by referendum, increase municipal revenue sharing and recover some lost public health nurse positions. Their proposal is being sold as a major property tax break.

Some of the costs would be covered by the tax increase on the wealthy voted by referendum last year. Some funds would come from the sales tax that Amazon will begin collecting in Maine to pay the state. And some will come from a tax on recreational marijuana.

The Democrats also propose bond issues for capital costs. While that may make sense, they do not include the cost of debt service in their proposal, at least as circulated.

But the largest chunk of money to cover proposed costs will come from added tax revenues, a forecast based on the state’s economic growth. While all of the new costs proposed by the Democrats are meant to be permanent, the higher tax take, even if it really happens, offers no certainty of being as permanent.

What happens to the big property tax break when the economy slows down? Either it begins to melt away or revenues have to be found in the form of an income tax increase. So today’s spending would have to be paid in part by tomorrow’s taxpayers.

It’s likely that neither Trump nor the Maine Democrats will succeed. Both would need the support of their political opponents. Both face special interests. The real issue is whether the end result will depend on forecasted revenues, less ambitious spending or higher taxes.

The problem is not Trump or the Democrats. We like what government can do for us, but we dislike paying more taxes. The current proposals shift the “paying” part to an optimistic view of future revenues or to future generations.

Politicians make budget-making look like magic: you get something without paying for it.

It’s not magic. Somebody pays, probably later and more.

Political leadership should make clear that what we want now, we should pay for – now. That would be responsible budgeting, which requires political courage.

Much ado about a filibuster -- the confirmation of Gorsuch

Much anguish has surrounded the Senate vote to confirm Neil Gorsuch as a new Supreme Court justice. Democrats denied the ruling Republicans enough votes to cut off debate. The Republicans were faced with the need to lower the 60-vote debate-ending requirement to a simple majority. By themselves, they have the votes for that.

One Republican senator said that Alexander Hamilton would roll in his grave if he knew that it was becoming easier to end debate on Supreme Court appointments. That’s not true.

The Constitution specifies a few times when a Senate vote by more than a simple majority is required. Confirming people to any federal office is not one of those situations.

A “filibuster” is endless debate. “Cloture” is the vote the end a filibuster, cutting off debate.

Blocking a majority vote by use of the filibuster rule was not foreseen when the Constitution was written. Changing Senate rules to require more than a simple majority for cloture changes the constitutional intent.

From 1789 until 1917, there was no way to break a filibuster. A way to end debate was needed, so first two-thirds and later 60 percent of the senators was required for cloture. The real filibuster talk-a-thon was used only once a year by southern senators opposing a civil rights bill.

In recent years, the Republicans began using cloture for virtually all bills. When in the minority, they could block any legislation by simply denying a 60-vote majority to end debate. A few years ago, the Democrats, then in control, eliminated the supermajority for many of President Obama’s appointments that otherwise were stymied.

Obama was able to get many court vacancies filled, because the GOP could no longer block them. But the filibuster rule was left in place for the Supreme Court.

Without a supermajority requirement, which gives the minority the power to block majority rule, the party controlling the Senate can do whatever it wants. As voters, the people are supposed to be worried about majority rule even if the Founders of the country were not.

Political writers and senators have been anguished over the end of the supermajority for confirming Supreme Court nominees. They prefer the unconstitutional requirement of a special vote. They lose sight entirely of whether the filibuster is wrong and focus more on how its loss might affect their political interests.

The filibuster is a way the Senate can ignore the voters’ decision in an election. The voters picked President Trump, so he gets to make the appointments with a Republican Senate. Should the Democrats be able to block them because they can prevent a supermajority?

It’s possible that, without the supermajority, voters would be more aware that they were choosing not only the president but also judges. Right now, judicial appointments get little attention.

Senate Republicans have been claiming the Democrats are trying to change the system, while GOP senators are guiltless defenders of the proper way of conducting Senate business. But their hands are stained by their own past action, which has stimulated the Democratic response.

Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, a judge every bit as solid as Gorsuch, to fill a vacancy. Controlling the Senate, the Republicans refused to even talk with Garland, much less give him a public hearing.

The GOP senators claimed that, because Obama was in the last year of his term, the appointment should wait until after the elections, That approach has never been used in American history. A president is elected for a full four years and ought to be able to make nominations that are carefully considered, even in the last year of the term.

The Democrats approved a fourth-year nominee of GOP President Reagan. But last year, the Republicans would not even consider – or talk to – Obama’s pick. After the normal hearings, they could have voted against him. They could have even used the filibuster rule to prevent his confirmation.

We also hear that ending the supermajority for appointments will change the American political system “forever.” But, in American history, we have had periods with no cloture, a two-thirds requirement, a 60-vote requirement and, now, the 60-vote rule for only certain matters. That certainly does not suggest that changes last forever.

What some supermajority supporters really mean is that it pastes a patch over the deep divide between the parties in Washington. Without it, partisan warfare will only get worse.

Just how much worse does it have to get? This unconstitutional patch is really a fig leaf over a crisis of partisanship that must come to an end.

Trump gets civic lessons from failed health bill

The defeat of the House of Representatives attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act provided great civics lessons.

Its most important student turned out to be President Trump. “We learned a lot about the vote-getting process,” he said. “Certainly, for me, it was a very interesting experience.”

The first lesson is there’s a big gap between promise and performance. Many voters believe politicians lie. That’s because they overpromise and then cannot produce.

Candidate Trump promised his health care reform would do more than the ACA but cost less. Yet the White House offered no specific proposal. The president simply endorsed Speaker Paul Ryan’s bill as if it were what he had promised. When it failed, he failed.

The second civics lesson is that on major issues, the president proposes and Congress disposes. That’s called the separation of powers.

Trump expected that, because he won the presidential election, congressional Republicans would fall in line behind him. This time, it did not work that way. As much as he wanted to dominate the process and paste the Trump name on it, he depended on an independent Congress.

This piece of legislation had to begin in the House, because the Constitution requires “money” bills to start there. While passage of the ACA, done with only Democratic votes, had taken more than a year, Ryan allowed his bill only 18 days.

The president made a series of assumptions about the House. He made no effort to attract Democratic votes, expecting virtually all of the majority Republicans, out of loyalty to him, would support the bill.

But the bill ran into the Freedom Caucus, an extreme conservative GOP group, which wanted outright ACA repeal without replacement. Desperate to pass the bill, Trump and Ryan agreed to delete coverage for such essential services as emergency and maternity coverage, trying to reduce costs to gain conservative votes.

By cutting health services and Planned Parenthood funding, Trump and Ryan lost the support of some moderate Republicans, who risked election defeat if they opposed their constituents’ interests on these matters. And the leaders still could not pick up some Freedom Caucus members.

Maine Second District Rep. Bruce Poliquin, while worrying about Ryan’s rushed efforts at passage, was not among the bill’s GOP opponents.

Ryan could not afford to lose more than 21 GOP votes, but 33 opposed his modified bill. Trump, always the salesman, urged them to change, but they refused. The president was learning that loyalty to him does not overcome the separation of powers.

Here is another civics lesson. The bigger a party’s legislative majority, the less unified it will be. More members means more diversity of outlook. That explains the GOP opposition.

Even if the House passed the bill, the matter would not be settled, despite the impression Trump gave. The key part of this civics lesson ignored by Trump was the independent role of the Senate. It would not have simply accepted whatever the House passed.

Affecting previously approved spending, the bill needed only 51 senators, avoiding the 60-vote threshold to end a filibuster. But, with just 52 Republican senators, only a handful of opponents were needed to block the bill. A sufficient number of conservatives and moderates had already made clear their opposition.

While the ACA may not be “collapsing,” as Trump and the Republicans claim, it needs to be fixed. Competition is lacking in some markets and costs are rising. It cannot work indefinitely under its current rules or management by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who would abolish it if he could.

The lesson is that ACA reform, which must come eventually, should be the result of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. Ryan worries about cooperating with Democrats, because he will lose some Republicans simply for doing that.

Ryan and Trump should try to get enough votes for a bipartisan deal and worry less about inevitable Republican defectors. And they should drop the idea of using health care reform to cut taxes on the wealthiest, the real conservative strategy.

If the Democrats accept the need for changes in ACA operation including markets, while insisting on preserving ACA coverage, they should get off the sidelines if invited by Trump or Ryan.

To win votes, Trump overpromises. Trump needs to be less of a salesman and more of a statesman. Is that possible?

A friend of Trump’s has said: “On future legislation, he won’t make the same mistakes.” If so, he must better understand Congress and be more realistic about making promises he can’t keep.

GOP right, moderates make ACA reform unlikely; bring on the Dems

The Affordable Care Act and its reform are causing confusion. Here’s what we know.

It covers more people than did the free market system and changes some of the terms of insurance policies, but it does not abolish the market.

Conservatives dislike it because they believe it substitutes government for the free market, costs too much and requires participation.

Progressives like it because it partly substitutes government for the free market, which did not cover millions of people.

Everybody agrees it needs to be fixed.

There are fundamentally only two ways to provide health care insurance to people.

In the U.S., the traditional approach was insurance sold by private carriers. People could choose among policies the companies offered, choose not to be insured, or simply couldn’t afford insurance. Competition among insurers would supposedly control prices. The system was mainly financed by insurance premiums.

In other developed countries, government is the insurer, providing coverage to virtually all people. Government, the “single payer,” pays the bills. As the only customer, the government can control prices and costs. The system is financed by taxes, which replace insurance premiums.

The American system includes elements of single payer: Medicare for older people and the Veterans Administration.

The traditional American system left too many people without coverage, but the single payer system approach was widely considered to give too much power to the government while destroying a key element of free enterprise – competition.

By 2010, Congress included enough Democrats and President Obama to move away from a pure market system, but not to a single payer. Congress would not allow government even to provide a nonprofit competitor in the market. The result was a compromise that shows the defects of a hybrid.

In 2017, Congress includes enough Republicans and President Trump to restore some or much of the market system, allowing competition to attract people to insurance rather than a government requirement. Some elements of the ACA might be allowed to survive.

The ACA imposed some new costs resulting from the inclusion of tens of millions of previously uninsured people and required additional features, like guaranteeing coverage for pre-existing conditions.

It does not control drug or hospital costs, which to continue to rise, though at a slower rate. The new ACA costs are financed by new taxes, mainly levied on the wealthiest taxpayers. Republicans would repeal those taxes.

Rising costs, accompanied by limits on what insurers can charge despite higher premiums, are causing insurers to leave some markets. Trump and GOP critics say that shows the coming collapse of the ACA.

Strong right-wingers don’t want reform; they want repeal. Outright repeal now may be impossible because the program is established, and many previously uninsured people are not only becoming accustomed to it, but find they like it.

Like Social Security, which was once similarly challenged, it may become an integral part of American life. If the ACA cannot be killed now, strong conservatives reckon, it will never be ended.

One element of the ACA that gets much attention is the financial aid offered to states, allowing them to expand Medicaid to include many more low-income people. States could turn this money down, but even many Republican-led states accepted it to provide help to their low-income uninsured.

In Maine, Gov. LePage has thus far successfully blocked the state from accepting more federal Medicaid funds. This year, a referendum could allow Maine voters to expand Medicaid, known as MaineCare, without the governor’s agreement.

As Congress considers the ACA, a conflict exists between those who favor repealing as much as possible and others whose constituents have come to rely on it. Sen. Susan Collins has tried to lead Republicans toward a state-by-state compromise that serves both sides, but it seems to have no chance.

Neither she nor Sen. Angus King is inclined to agree to a deal that strips Maine people of coverage.

Health care costs are increasing and with them insurance premiums from Medicare, the ACA and insurers. Unless costs are controlled, the health care tab will become impossible to pay under the free market, single payer, or anywhere in between.

As a start, when government gives drugs a monopoly, it should be possible for government to impose price controls on greedy pharmaceutical companies. That would be a huge reform in itself.

Whatever happens in Washington, states may adopt their own health care insurance programs. After all, Massachusetts adopted a program in 2006 that became the basis of the ACA. That state now has the lowest rate of uninsured in the country.

Immigrants, refugees face U.S., European nationalism

President Trump wants to build a wall with Mexico. The United Kingdom wants out of the European Union. The Netherlands blocks the Turkish Foreign Minister from campaigning. Gov. LePage wants to keep more refugees out of Maine.

What these policies have in common is a desire to keep a high degree of national identity alive in face of mounting immigration.

That’s “nationalism” and it’s sweeping much of the world. It is incorrectly labeled “populism,” which applies to policies, mostly economic, to support average people against the interests of the rich and powerful. The nearest politician to populism is Bernie Sanders not billionaire Trump.

Countries like Britain, the Netherlands and France have long had immigrant populations, usually supplied from their colonies abroad. Germany has imported Turkish workers to support its strong economic growth.

Under the EU, which aims at creating a single continental economy much like the American, workers are allowed to take up residence in any of its 28 countries. As in the U.S. system, the efficiency expected from a single market requires a single labor force.

Layered over the presence of foreigners in European countries, who may gradually assume citizenship where they live, is the influx of refugees.

In the U.S., refugees, mainly economic but sometimes political, may enter the country without permission. Seen as refugees, they are “undocumented immigrants.” Seen as lawbreakers, they are “illegal aliens.”

Some Americans oppose undocumented or illegal residents because they may threaten to take jobs that otherwise might go to long-time citizens or change the racial mix in which white men have dominated since the founding of the country.

This opposition has a long history. While Chinese were imported to build railroads, work that American did not want to do, they were blocked from immigration until the 1940s, when China was America’s wartime ally. Interestingly, denying votes to women until 1920 reflecting much the same sentiment.

Unlike Europe, the U.S. had a long traditional of allowing, even inviting, immigration as a way of taking control of vast territory. But implicit in this policy was the understanding that the immigrants should look like those already in the country. In short, they should come from Europe.

In Maine, there was once a movement called KPOOM – Keep People Out of Maine. Now, LePage seems to agree with that movement if the newcomers are refugees, who are different from the majority in the least racially mixed state in the Union.

The big exception to U.S. open immigration was Africans, who did not ask to come, but were brought by force. They were not recognized as being eligible to be Americans. It took the Civil War plus a hundred years to change that view.

Today’s anti-immigrant policy promotes the survival of a mentality that does not welcome people who don’t look like the majority. The reason is that the majority can see itself becoming the minority.

In Europe, nationalism based on color and culture has deeper roots. That creates a problem of divided loyalty. For example, the Turks in the Netherlands may have Dutch passports, but they can also vote in Turkish elections. That’s why a Turkish official wanted to campaign in the Netherlands.

The same dual nationality problem, maintaining divided loyalties, arises in other European countries like Germany.

Then there’s the EU. In Britain, an island country, people have become uneasy with what seemed like an invasion of people from eastern Europe. While ex-colonials might not be white, they behaved like the British. But Poles and Rumanians obviously bring their own culture.

The prime force behind Brexit is keeping different Europeans out. The prime cost to Britain may be losing the benefits flowing from open economic links with the Continent.

Add the refugees to all this. As the result of devastating conflict in the Arab Middle East, partly caused by the policies of the U.S. and its European friends, millions of people have lost their homes and their livelihoods. They fled to the nearest area where they could find economic stability and shelter – Europe.

Europe as a whole was not ready for them and had no policy, leaving it up to individual countries. Germany, still overcoming its Hitler legacy, opened its doors, at considerable risk to Chancellor Angela Merkel. Other countries, through which a flood of refugees had to pass, could not handle the influx.

Simple nationalism, dual nationality or open-ended refugee status are not the answer. Workers and refugees moving across borders are no longer unusual. They are the new normal.

National policies are needed that are clear, understandable and possibly uniform across the world.