Forgetting The Bush Record, Perino Criticizes Obama Administration For ‘Creating’ Their Own News
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on March 6th, 2010 5:38 am by HL
Forgetting The Bush Record, Perino Criticizes Obama Administration For ‘Creating’ Their Own News
Last night on Fox News, former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino criticized President Obama because he hasn’t held a “primetime” press conference since last July. “I don’t think that there’s any way…I would have gotten away with that with the White House press corps,” she complained. Host Greta Van Susteren noted that last […]
Last night on Fox News, former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino criticized President Obama because he hasn’t held a “primetime” press conference since last July. “I don’t think that there’s any way…I would have gotten away with that with the White House press corps,” she complained.
Host Greta Van Susteren noted that last year, Obama actually conducted more one-on-one interviews that Bush or President Clinton had combined in the same time frame. But seeming to look for another line of attack, Perino pointed to a video the White House put out yesterday on the Travel Promotion Act and suggested that it indicated the administration is “repressive”:
PERINO: But there was an incident today where the President signed the Travel Promotion Act — not a huge bill by any stretch of the imagination. But usually, that is something that the White House press corps would get to cover. They didn’t today. And then later on in the day, the White House decided through its own media — they have a robust new media shop and they’re creating their own news and they’re posting it, and all the networks said that they’re not going to show it. But creating your own news is something that happens in repressive regimes. And a democracy is — it is critical to have a good, strong free press in a democracy.
Watch it:
Transparently posting news videos on the White House website is one thing; secretly producing “fake news” videos promoting an agenda and distributing them for local news broadcasts is quite another, which is exactly what the Bush administration did:
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production.
In fact, the Government Accountability Office found that the Bush administration practice amounted to illegal “covert propaganda” — a ruling the Bush White House subsequently disregarded. The Bush team also famously paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams to promote No Child Left Behind “on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.” The propaganda also spread abroad as well. The Bush Pentagon got caught planting positive coverage in Iraqi newspapers during the height of the insurgency.
Summing up “the heart of the Bush presidency,” journalist Ron Suskind reported that a senior Bush official once criticized him for living in “the reality-based community” after Suskind had written a piece critical of the administration. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” the official said. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”
By Perino’s standard, it seems the Bush administration constitutes a “repressive regime.”
Mitt Romney Refuses To Say If The Foundation Of The Massachusetts Health System Is Constitutional
In recent days, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) has tried to simultaneously tear down President Obama’s proposals to reform healthcare, while defending his own legacy of reforming healthcare in Massachusetts. Romney’s health plan includes an expansion of Medicaid using $385 million in annual Federal money, as well as an individual mandate and a sliding scale […]
In recent days, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) has tried to simultaneously tear down President Obama’s proposals to reform healthcare, while defending his own legacy of reforming healthcare in Massachusetts. Romney’s health plan includes an expansion of Medicaid using $385 million in annual Federal money, as well as an individual mandate and a sliding scale of subsidies. Today, 98% of Bay State residents have quality, highly regulated coverage. Defending his plan last night, Romney told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that the only way the Massachusetts “system can work” is by having an individual mandate.
Fighting to kill health reform, the right-wing has attacked the individual mandate as unconstitutional. Along with a cadre of Republican Congressmen, Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC), John Ensign (R-NV), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) have said that the individual mandate violates the constitution. Similarly, as a ThinkProgress investigation has found, insurance company lobbyists have orchestrated an effort to use state legislatures to pass resolutions condemning the individual mandate as unconstitutional. An individual mandate is absolutely necessary for health reform to work. Simply put, the right has hoped to kill health reform by undermining the individual mandate.
Today at the Press Club, Romney again tore into Obama’s efforts on health reform. After the speech, ThinkProgress caught up with Romney to ask him about the constitutionality of the individual mandate. Romney refused to answer if the individual mandate, which underpins his own Massachusetts system, is even constitutional:
TP: What do you think about the current effort to declare the individual mandate as unconstitutional?
ROMNEY: You know I’ve got a long discussion that I could give you on that, but I’m in too harp hay of a hurry right now but I think we have that on the site.
TP: Do you think it’s constitutional though, I mean just as a quick answer.
ROMNEY: I think I’ve answered that the best way I can right now which is it’s a big topic and I’m happy to discuss it at length but I just can’t do it in the hall going to the elevator.
TP: Well I mean it is constitutional though, right?
Watch it:
On Romney’s website, there is no mention of the individual mandate. During the 2008 Republican primary, Romney famously crept to the far right, flip flopping on many core issues to appease the right-wing base. With Romney refusing to state if the core foundation of his own health plan is even constitutional, Romney is again pandering to far right conservatives.
Last year, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), a close ally of Romney, said the Senate health reform bill “mirrors” the Massachusetts system Brown and Romney helped enact. And as Igor Volsky details, the current version of reform Congress is preparing to enact still resembles the Massachusetts plan, except that Obama’s reform proposals do far more to control costs. However, Romney is making a political calculation by attacking health reform. With Romney refusing to state if the core foundation of his own health plan is even constitutional, Romney is again pandering to far right conservatives.
