News Cut: May 20, 2009 Archive

Five at 8: May 20, 2009

Posted at 7:29 AM on May 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Tonight, I'll be live-blogging Joshua DuBois' appearance with Krista Tippett at the Fitzgerald Theater. The conversation will focus on the changing face of religion in public life in the era of the Obama administration and the perspective DuBois brings through his new role as head of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. A question-and-answer session hosted by Larry Jacobs will follow. Join me here -- or there -- tonight at 7.

U.S. forces and the Taliban have something in common. Their ammunition. It's something I wondered about when watching that fascinating 60 Minutes segment on the UAV "drones." What happens when the "other guy" gets ahold of it?

Ways to beat the recession in Taiwan: From anti-mosquito forces to public eyebrow shaver.

The newspaper industry has reached new depths of despair when media critics stop getting the newspaper delivered. Mark Glaser, who writes the Media Shift column on PBS, writes about starting his life as a non-subscriber.

That whole "change" thing where government listens to people? It's a giant pain in the neck for federal officials trying to figure out how to manage all of that. Tangent: It would've been informative if House leaders had made public the suggestions they solicited for solving the state's budget crisis? Did they incorporate any of the ideas into their final solutions? Which ones? It would be interesting to see whether the public gave it any serious thought and supplied well-formed suggestions.

Timewaster: FaceinHole.com. Use it for good. Not evil. Second choice: Another episode of Mary's Pets.

(Update: My friend, Nick Young, who anchors the CBS world news roundup each morning, reminds me that John Hall -- the lead of the group -- is now a member of Congress. Warning: If you're in your 50s, do not look at his picture. It will only make you feel old and ruin your day.)

WHAT WE'RE DOING

First this: I'm starting a new series of profiles. This one involves people over the age of 80 who still get up each day and go to work. If you have a suggestion, please send it to me.

Midmorning -- First hour: Midmorning looks at the Obama administration's requirements on gas mileage and auto emissions. Second hour: Playwright Tony Kushner.

Midday -- Sen. Amy Klobuchar is calling in from Washington where she's doing the job of two senators because...well... you know.

Talk of the Nation -- The Political Junkie, Ken Ruden in the first hour. On his blog yesterday, he jumped into the mystery of John Boehner's perpetual tan. Second hour: Simon Schama on the history of our future.

All Things Considered -- Marty Moylan will take a look at Target's pursuit of WalMart and its price-matching policy. Also: Chicks in the city. More people are electing to raise a few chickens to help out with the grocery bill. And Tom Scheck is going national with a piece on Minnesota's budget woes. Between this and Franken-Coleman, is Minnesota's reputation as a place that knows what it's doing pretty well shot?

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Prisoners of the Catholic Church

Posted at 11:16 AM on May 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Religion

(Photo: Kevin Flannagan, brother of a victim of child abuse in Catholid-run schools in Ireland, shouts at members of a commission which issued a report on the abuse. He was not allowed to attend a news conference where the report was released on Wednesday.)

Few news stories will lead reasonable people to shake their head more so than the bomb dropped by a commission in Ireland today. A 2,600 page report said thousands of children sent to state-sponsored schools were subjected to "beatings, rapes and humiliation" in the schools run by the Catholic church in, perhaps, the most devout Catholic country. And, it says, the government did nothing to stop it until the schools were closed in the '80s.

Says the New York Times:

"The management did not listen to or believe children when they complained of the activities of some of the men who had responsibility for their care," the commission found. "At best, the abusers were moved, but nothing was done about the harm done to the child. At worst, the child was blamed and seen as corrupted by the sexual activity, and was punished severely."

There are no names of the accused, many of whom are long dead. But it says the kids, sent to the schools by their families for such things as being pregnant or truant, became virtual prisoners.

"The commission dismissed as implausible a central defence of the religious orders - that, in bygone days, people did not recognise the sexual abuse of a child as a criminal offence, but rather as a sin that required repentance," the Australian reported.

"If they took a liking to a person then you became a danger, then you became a target. And there was no way of avoiding it... I mean they had access to you 24 hours a day," Thomas Wall told the BBC.

"Your cell door was locked every night when you went in and you had a bucket and an iron bed and you couldn't look out the window. It was all bars," another former student prisoner said.

(The report is available here, but the server has crashed repeatedly today.)

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Half full or half empty?

Posted at 12:22 PM on May 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Major financial news sources had two decidedly different ways to headline Minneapolis-based Target Corp's earnings report today.

HALF FULL
Bloomberg: Target First-Quarter Profit Tops Analysts Estimates

HALF EMPTY
New York Times: Revenue Flat, but Target's Profit Falls 13% (the headline was later changed)

MPR (AP): Target posts 13-percent drop in 1st quarter profit

Which is more accurate? You decide. Target made a half-billiion-dollar profit in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, the company is imposing a near news blackout on its annual shareholder meeting next week, when it has a showdown with hedge fund manager William Ackman. The proxy fight for four seats on the board of directors has become one of the nastiest business stories lately.

In an advisory to news reporters, Target officials said it will ban electronic devices at its meeting at an unfinished store near Milwaukee next Thursday. There will be no question-and-answer session with company officials at the meeting, nor will it be Webcast. Reporters will be able to cover it the old-fashioned way -- with a pencil and a notepad. I had asked if live-blogging would be allowed. No.

The restrictions will also apply to shareholders. It will be interesting to see if anyone with an iPhone and a Twitter account slips through.

How do they do things at WalMart? Differently. WalMart Watch was able to live-blog and take pictures at last year's annual meeting, although the biggest controversy appeared to be whether Miley Cyrus would appear . She didn't.

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The bookstore in the manure tank

Posted at 1:43 PM on May 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: The jobs we do

It's amazing, really, how many great stories are tucked in the back roads of the Upper Midwest.

What would lead a couple to turn 12 buildings on the farm in Wisconsin into "the world's largest bookstore"?

So it's a good time to repeat my call for those of you who know stories like this, to let me know.

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Editorial assessments on the budget: Lose-lose

Posted at 3:37 PM on May 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

Lawmakers and the governor spent much of Tuesday trying to spin the just-concluded legislative session. For the most part, newspaper editorial boards weren't buying it. The DFL legislators, the Republican minority and Gov. Tim Pawlenty all received failing grades.

A look at some of today's judgments:

The St. Cloud Times:

Of course, he's successful with it thanks largely to just enough Republican legislators who either are so enamored with "no new taxes" they don't read their own local property tax bills, or they are politically fearful of what Pawlenty will do to them should they vote against his fiscal wishes.

Either way, they failed to do their jobs.

And then there is the DFL and its leadership.

From the day he delivered his State of the State speech, they were incessantly critical of the governor's budgeting plans, but noticeably short on their own detailed solutions. Beyond across-the-board cuts, they seemed to offer few ideas that truly reformed how the state does business.

Marshall Independent:

Minnesotans deserve better than a DFL-controlled House and Senate jamming a tax bill through the Legislature late Monday and Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who threatens to make cuts on his own, on budget and the DFL tax bill.

In a time when the state needed leaders with vision and the ability to have spirited, healthy debate on issues which will shape our state for years to come, we got partisan bickering, stubbornness and, it seems, no one with an ability or voice strong enough to ask the Legislature to think beyond the next year or two.

Fargo Forum:

The governor might think he's won because he will exercise his constitutional authority to cut and modify the budget to his liking, and will do so without going along with Democratic tax increases. But Democrats also are smiling because they believe they can blame the governor, not their own legislative failure, for the deep cuts in vital funding that will be felt in every city, school district and college campus in the state.

If the governor and his Democratic antagonists see the legislative stalemate as a win-win situation in political terms, they should understand that the people of Minnesota are the losers. The governor and Democratic leaders should be embarrassed not only by wasting 19 weeks in St. Paul, but also by engaging in a dizzying, post-session spin cycle regarding their culpability.

Albert Lea Tribune:

How state funding is distributed is now in the hands of one person, rather than determined through a series of compromises by many leaders.

Good? Bad? That's up to you, but most people vote for legislators because they want representation. For a Republican Party worrying a lot lately about disenfranchised voters, it sure seems to be a move that will disenfranchise voters.

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Credit card regs

Posted at 4:38 PM on May 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Congress has passed the new credit card law that imposes restrictions on rate increases the banks can charge customers. The president will sign it Friday.

Marketplace reports, however, that if you've got good credit, and don't carry a balance, you might get dinged in the deal. We might return to the old days of annual credit card fees of, say, $30 or so. Rewards programs might also disappear.

Perhaps, then, some good might come from the legislation if it convinces people to wean themselves off revolving credit. But somebody must be using those checks the credit cards company send; the ones that come with a big fee for using them, usually to pay off other credit card bills. But the bill isn't aimed at consumer habits; it's aimed at the financial institutions who've done pretty well with an assortment of fees and gimmicks.

The industry argues that the good customer will end up subsidizing the deadbeat. "This industry will start looking more like a one-size-fits-all pricing approach which dominated in the '80s -- 18 percent interest and a $20 annual fees," David Robertson, publisher of the Nilson Report, told the Washington Post.

But Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein says it's wrong to separate credit card customers into good and bad. Some have lost their jobs or lost their bills, he says. The bill "forces the credit card companies to return to treating you like a responsible card holder if you return to acting like a responsible card holder," he says.

Perhaps the best consumer protection for credit card customers is a pair of scissors.

The issue is of great concern in South Dakota, which became the credit card company capital of the world because of favorable banking legislation that made the state an attractive place for financial firms to call home. The governor says up to 5,000 jobs are in jeopardy because of the legislation and South Dakota accounted for 2 of the five votes against the bill in the Senate.

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Religious life in the Obama era

Posted at 7:49 PM on May 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Joshua DuBois, President Obama's "pastor-in-chief" (he was director of religious affairs for the campaign) and Speaking of Faith host Krista Tippett held a discussion at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul on Wednesday evening about religious life in the Obama era.

Julia Duin, religious editor of the Washington Times, complained a couple of weeks ago that she was having a hard time getting an interview with DuBois. But, then again, she's not Krista Tippett.

6:58 p.m. - The Fitz is pulling in a pretty hefty audience for a sweltering May evening. We're almost ready to go.

7:03 p.m. - It'll be interesting to see to what extent discussion of inclusivity when it comes to right and left religious entities comes up this evening. DuBois was the one who pushed for Rick Warren to be invited to be part of the Inauguration. He also set up a meeting in the White House early on with religious leaders who the left does not consider acceptable. It's hard to bring warring groups together.

7:12 p.m. - We're underway. Speaking of Faith managing editor/producer Kate Moos (my first boss when I moved to Minnesota) is noting the show is trying to engage the online audience tonight. Tweeting is being done via @softweets. It will be interesting to see how many people nationally are tuning in this evening. They're taking online questions via the Twitter side of things, though it still makes me chuckle when people giggle whenever the word "twitter" is uttered in public.

Here on News Cut, it's just you and me.

7:17 p.m. - Krista: The campaign brought faith out of the closet in the Democratic Party.

7:21 p.m. - DuBois says he found his religious life about the same time he found his political life. An extensive bio is here.

7:23 p.m. - Asked by Krista, DuBois says he's reached the first level of ordination. How he became aware of Obama: He was wrapping up grad school and was trying to figure out how to combine faith and public policy. He was at a restaurant and looked up and saw Obama at the Democratic National Convention (I assume this in the '04 convention in Boston). He tried to join the campaign and got a rejection letter.

7:27 p.m. - Talking about the 2006 Obama speech on religion. "He wasn't trying to chart a new course," DuBois says, "but he was trying to be true to who he was ... rather than trying to change the conversation in the party."

7:28 p.m. - On his role and message in the campaign as director of religious affairs. He organized community faith forums. "We had some in Manchester, New Hampshire that were some secular humanists and some evangelicals. South Carolina was a little difference. It was striking to see the difference in the conversations you see on television on religion and the ones we were having. On TV, you'd think we can't stand each other."

7:30 p.m. - What he learned about religion and politics. "We're all told our differences are so broad and wide, there's no bridge than can span them. But churches in Montana and temples in New York, there's so many things we agree upon. I was expecting more pushback."

7:32 p.m. - Interesting point on how people get along. "It's easy to disagree with people on issues, but it's hard to disagree with someone's story," DuBois said. Is that a problem in discourse these days, not only in politics and religion, and everything. Are we not listening to people's stories?

7:33 p.m. - We're onto the speech in Philadelphia. Yeah, you know the one:

7:35 p.m. -- and the Saddleback Forum, when Obama was asked by Rick Warren about abortion and he said "it's above my pay grade." "We live in a news cycle that demands winners and losers," DuBois said, saying the short sound bite did not capture the nuance of his message on abortion. This blog didn't think so.

This (and by the way, this is Bob talking now) was a tremendous issue in the campaign -- religion and politics -- probably more so than ever got covered in the mainstream media, at least meaningfully. At the Democratic National Convention, I wrote a bit about it in a post called The Jesus Factor. It was -- and is -- tremendously divisive within the Catholic Church (as we saw in the Notre Dame speech). I'm not sure that's going to get addressed significantly tonight. We'll see.

7:42 p.m. - Discussing the office of faith-based initiatives: Reducing need for abortion, reducing teen pregnancy, recovering from the poor economy, renewed focus on outreach to different religious and non-religious backgrounds. The council has secular organization represented, too. Insists that Obama has said that prostheletyzing is not the mission.

7:45 p.m. - From the vantage point of the balcony, I can see people on the floor playing on their iPhones and cellphones. They're either tweeting, submitting questions to the chat, or checking the Twins score. Prayer may be involved in the latter activity.

7:47 p.m. - Should faith-based groups that get government money be allowed to only hire people of their own faith? "We'll explore these issues on a case-by-case issue," DuBois says.

"How's that changed from the Bush administration," Tippett asks.

"It increases the profile of that exploratory process," DuBois says. "The president believes we need to understand the legal terrain and environment before making a decision." That doesn't answer the question which, to me, is the gorilla in the room -- if Obama talks faith, do people react differently than when Bush talked faith, and why?

7:55 p.m. - "Fighting can leave one tired," DuBois says of the culture wars. "Not among the pundits for whom these battles are a living, but people are tired of hearing people yell at one another. Folks don't want to fight anymore; they want to find some common purpose."

Nice joke by DuBois. He tells people to raise both hands, then move them. "Thank-you, I promised the president I'd shake every hand in St. Paul tonight."

(Musical interlude precedes questions from the audience)

QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE

Nice to see Larry Jacobs getting some exposure for a change. He's moderating the Q&A session.

Q: Where is Scripture in the president's talk of faith?

A: He's never been afraid to talk about faith. But he thinks because we're a pluralistic society, people have to know they have a place in his work. It's a balance. He's been outfront on what faith means to him.

Q: Colin Powell said there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim in America, what initiatives can your office take?

A: The president has sent phenomenal signals with his Inaugural speech and his speech in Turkey. It's an ongoing process. (Not too impressed with answers so far. Very Washingtonian.)

Q: How can we balance the issue, making sure children have a religious life with no religion in public schools?

A: Families are balancing those challenges every day. It's up to parents to strike that balance.

Q: The Pew Forum released a report showing 50% of Americans have become unaffiliated because they think of them as being "hypocritical." Why do you think people feel this way about unaffiliated people?

A: I'm not sure. The president is speaking for all Americans. (Bob: Here's the survey. The question could have and should have been asked in a less-Minnesotan way. Like "do you believe religious people are hypocrites?")

Q: What was behind the Notre Dame speech? How did it happen?

A: There wasn't much evolution. The president thinks when there's a challenging issue, it's best to confront it head on. (applause). Americans can handle it. There's going to be points of disagreement.

Q: Have you been surprised by the level of scrutiny and criticism by the faith-based initiative?

A: There will be bumps in the road. In the 24-hour news cycle, any time there's a conflict it will be scrutinized.

Q: When it comes to Washington, the president has made efforts to reach out to Republicans, is there a same dynamic to break down barriers of faith?

A: There can always be one point of concurrence with people. We have conservatives and Evangelicals who are engaging with us, who disagree with us 60 percent of the time.

Q: In his inaugural address, President Obama said: "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth." But how do you meet the challenge of bringing them all together?

A: Cancer does not recognize a belief. We have common areas of agreement. We can connect people across those lines. But we're not asking people to check their religion at the door.

//End//

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