From The Nation:

Ever since deregulation caused a worldwide economic meltdown in September 2008 and everyone became a Keynesian again, it hasn't been easy to be a fanatical fan of the late economist Milton Friedman. So widely discredited is his brand of free-market fundamentalism that his followers have become increasingly desperate to claim ideological victories, however far-fetched.

A particularly distasteful case in point. Just two days after Chile was struck by a devastating earthquake, Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens informed his readers that Milton Friedman's "spirit was surely hovering protectively over Chile" because, "thanks largely to him, the country has endured a tragedy that elsewhere would have been an apocalypse.... It's not by chance that Chileans were living in houses of brick--and Haitians in houses of straw--when the wolf arrived to try to blow them down."

According to Stephens, the radical free-market policies prescribed to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet by Milton Friedman and his infamous "Chicago Boys" are the reason Chile is a prosperous nation with "some of the world's strictest building codes."

There is one rather large problem with this theory: Chile's modern seismic building code, drafted to resist earthquakes, was adopted in 1972. That year is enormously significant because it was one year before Pinochet seized power in a bloody U.S-backed coup. That means that if one person deserves credit for the law, it is not Friedman, or Pinochet, but Salvador Allende, Chile's democratically elected socialist President. (In truth many Chileans deserve credit, since the laws were a response to a history of quakes, and the first law was adopted in the 1930s).

It does seem significant, however, that the law was enacted even in the midst of a crippling economic embargo ("make the economy scream" Richard Nixon famously growled after Allende won the 1970 elections). The code was later updated in the nineties, well after Pinochet and the Chicago Boys were finally out of power and democracy was restored. Little wonder: As Paul Krugman points out, Friedman was ambivalent about building codes, seeing them as yet another infringement on capitalist freedom.

As for the argument that Friedmanite policies are the reason Chileans live in "houses of brick" instead of "straw," it's clear that Stephens knows nothing of pre-coup Chile. The Chile of the 1960s had the best health and education systems on the continent, as well as a vibrant industrial sector and rapidly expanding middle class. Chileans believed in their state, which is why they elected Allende to take the project even further.

After the coup and the death of Allende, Pinochet and his Chicago Boys did their best to dismantle Chile's public sphere, auctioning off state enterprises and slashing financial and trade regulations. Enormous wealth was created in this period but at a terrible cost: by the early eighties, Pinochet's Friedman-prescribed policies had caused rapid de-industrialization, a ten-fold increase in unemployment and an explosion of distinctly unstable shantytowns. They also led to a crisis of corruption and debt so severe that, in 1982, Pinochet was forced to fire his key Chicago Boy advisors and nationalize several of the large deregulated financial institutions. (Sound familiar?)

Fortunately, the Chicago Boys did not manage to undo everything Allende accomplished. The national copper company, Codelco, remained in state hands, pumping wealth into public coffers and preventing the Chicago Boys from tanking Chile's economy completely. They also never got around to trashing Allende's tough building code, an ideological oversight for which we should all be grateful.

Thanks to CEPR for tracking down the origins of Chile's building code.

From Adbusters:

From The Nation:

Secularism of the Senate notwithstanding, "reconciliation" is at root a religious concept, an article of faith central to Christian theology. This perhaps explains why, at this point in the health care brouhaha, cantankerous Republicans have chosen to perch their high horse at such a precarious altitude.

As one of the Seven Sacraments, reconciliation is about as close to bedrock as one can get in the Roman Catholic tradition and indeed, it is one of the better-known--if not fully understood--foundations of Catholic doctrine. Also known as penance, forgiveness, and confession, reconciliation is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The action of restoring humanity to God's favour, esp. as through the sacrifice of Christ; the fact or condition of a person's or humanity's being reconciled with God." The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, "It is called the sacrament of Reconciliation, because it imparts to the sinner the love of God who reconciles." For Catholics, the quintessential reconciliation was Christ's crucifixion, that ultimate penance paid by mankind to deliver itself to the bosom of the Creator. The act of confessing one's sins to a priest--and the subsequent absolution--is a smaller recapitulation of this seminal event.

In Washington, we can see senatorial reconciliation as a sacrament of returning lawmakers back to the good graces of the electorate. No mundane piece of parliamentary procedure, then, the reconciliation of health-care reform is a necessary step for a wayward legislative body that for too long has been totally out of touch with its higher authority; i.e., those pesky voters. In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, 37 percent of respondents said that Congress was most responsible for the health-care hold-up, compared to the 5 percent who blamed President Obama (56 percent place equal responsibility on both).

Of course, the best part about reconciliation is that it serves to wipe a conscience clean. When the priest says to the sinner, "I absolve you from your sins," he's cleared from guilt, regret, and ruefulness, and can return to his everyday life and his everyday responsibilities. For a government that's lost the approval of the governed, getting something done--governing, that is--may prove to be perfect penance. Serendipitously, it just so happens that a procedure called reconciliation is the way to do it.

From The Slate:

Our homes and workplaces, we're told, are trying to kill us. Recently, a University of Arizona microbiologist named Charles Gerba, author of hundreds of scientific papers about household microbes, gave a terrifying lecture at the offices of the Food and Drug Administration. Gerba—who, incidentally, has a child with the middle name Escherichia—that's what the "E" in E. coli stands for—explained that a kitchen sponge and sink are home to thousands of times more bacteria than a toilet seat. Plus, 10 percent of household dishrags contain salmonella. After playing with other children, toddlers have more fecal bacteria on their hands than does a person exiting a public toilet stall. Those toilets, by the way, aerosolize so many droplets with each flush that Gerba compares their dispersion to "the Fourth of July." And every public swimming pool he's ever tested has contained disease-causing viruses.

In response to these kinds of data, more than 700 products promise to help consumers kill bacteria, molds, and viruses in their homes and workplaces, from ultraviolet lights meant to kill toothbrush bacteria, to dishwashers that superheat silverware, to specially treated doormats. Three-quarters of all Americans use six or more antimicrobial products each day.

Even before the H1N1 outbreak, alcohol-based sanitizers like Purell enjoyed 53 percent annual sales growth, and Americans spent $117 million per year on them. With the advent of the H1N1 influenza pandemic last year, national germ-phobia kicked into even higher gear. The Centers for Disease Control's flu information Web site recommends regularly disinfecting kitchen counters, bedroom furniture, toys, and any other "surfaces." (In marketing terms, consumers were asked to increase their daily number of "wiping events.") Public-health authorities advised exhaustive, frequent hand-washing with hand sanitizers to fight flu. Soap and sanitizer manufacturers targeted massive ad campaigns to encourage more frequent hand-washing. Such products, their makers promise, can help families stay safe from the filth around them. Purell's slogan wistfully calls upon us germ-phobes, presumably paralyzed by fear, to "imagine a touchable world."

Yet the data tell a less compelling story about sanitizers like Purell. In 2005, Boston-based doctors published the very first clinical trial of alcohol-based hand sanitizers in homes and enrolled about 300 families with young children in day care. For five months, half the families got free hand sanitizer and a "vigorous hand-hygiene" curriculum. But the spread of respiratory infections in homes didn't budge, a result that "somewhat surprised" the researchers. A Columbia University study also found no reduction in common infections among inner-city families given free antibacterial hand soap, detergent, and cleaning supplies. The same year, University of Michigan epidemiologist Allison Aiello summarized data on hand hygiene for the FDA and pointed out that three out of four studies showed that alcohol-based hand sanitizers didn't prevent respiratory infections. Then, in 2008, the Boston group repeated the study—this time in elementary schools—and threw in free Clorox disinfecting wipes for classrooms. Again, the rate of respiratory infections remained unchanged, though the rate of gastrointestinal infections, which are less common than respiratory infections, did fall slightly. Finally, last October, a report ordered by the Public Health Agency of Canada concluded that there is no good evidence that vigorous hand hygiene practices prevent flu transmission.

Why, then, do so many people think widespread use of hand sanitizers like Purell are the cornerstone of flu prevention? To be sure, hand-washing can save lives in medical settings. In 1847, Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that washing one's hands with chlorine between deliveries practically eliminated fatal infections among laboring women. (His colleagues ignored him and later committed him to a mental hospital, where he was beaten to death by guards.) Today, numerous modern studies show that in randomized trials, meticulous hand-washing, when coupled with other infection control measures like surgical draping and universal gloving, reduce the rate of life-threatening infections during surgery and intensive care unit stays.

But in hospitals, outside of these clinical trials, just half of doctors and nurses regularly clean their hands before patient care, despite widespread publicity. More worrisome: In hospitals where massive educational efforts have increased hand-washing rates from 40 percent up to 70 percent, there has been no overall reduction in infection rates. Even in highly regulated places like hospitals, the promising benefits of hand-washing remain largely unrealized.

Now, that doesn't mean we should give up on hospitals. But we need to be realistic about what Purell can do to fight flu in the home and in public. To begin, the influenza virus mostly spreads via tiny droplets in the air (for example, from sneezes)—not by dirty hands or surfaces—which limits the role of Purell. It probably wouldn't matter even if flu transferred though hand contact, which is how most cold viruses spread. Though Purell kills them in the lab, hand sanitizers don't stop their spread in the real world. The average child touches his or her mouth and nose every three minutes, and both adults and children come in contact with as many as 30 different objects every minute. Even hospitals can't get staff to use Purell before seeing patients; it's impossible for day care staff, parents, or teachers to wash a child's hands 20 times each hour.

Purveyors of antimicrobial products are happy to indulge our worries about germs surrounding us. During the H1N1 pandemic, public-health agencies encouraged their marketing pitches despite evidence the products do little to help. It's likely that hand-sanitizer users falsely believed they were protected from flu and thus deferred vaccination, which is by far the more effective way to prevent its spread. According to the Centers for Disease Control, only one in five Americans was vaccinated by early 2010—and just one in four health care workers and high-risk patients got the shot.

So you can believe all the germ hype and end up like the obsessive-compulsive billionaire Howard Hughes. Or you can follow the data and get a flu shot, wash your hands sensibly after using the bathroom and around meals, and stop wasting money on hand sanitizers.

Unless, of course, you work in a hospital.

From The Nation:

In 2006 The Nation reported on a little-known group of students working to get their classmates involved in progressive campaigns on the ground level. They called themselves SNAP (Students for a New American Politics), and given that they were entirely student-run, Nation writer Sam Graham-Felsen expressed concern that once the six highly motivated founders graduated, the group might simply fizzle out.

Now, four years later, the concern has been addressed affirmatively and replaced by the broader question of how SNAP can maximize its growing influence. SNAP endorses ten progressive Congressional candidates each cycle, then chooses twenty students from across the nation with an interest in progressive politics to work on these campaigns throughout the summer. SNAP provides up to $2,500 per fellow for their work. The group raises funds throughout the year to raise the money.

SNAP Executive Director Rhiannon Bronstein, a junior at Yale, believes that the fact that most students can't afford to volunteer with a campaign is the biggest obstacle holding back the progressive movement. "The fellowships are a way to jump start students' involvement in progressive politics, who otherwise don't have a chance to take an unpaid internship," Bronstein says. For many students, the experience is a stepping-stone to a career in politics. Aja Davis, who was a fellow in 2006 for Ned Lamont Jr.'s campaign, describes her experience in those terms. Davis was one of three interns on the campaign. She lived in the campaign house and was "immersed in the campaign 24/7, which was something I would not be able to do under any other circumstances," she says.

There is no doubt that SNAP's fellowships provide invaluable training for students who want to enter politics, but they also shape the future of politics by electing progressive leaders to Congress. Congressional candidates are endorsed based on their progressive politics and the closeness of the race. SNAP fellows arguably do make a difference. In 2008 three of the nine endorsed candidates went to recounts. All three won the election.

Given its early success, the organization is looking for ways to expand its impact. This year they are focusing on building stronger relationships with both fellows and candidates and maintaining them after elections are over. SNAP hopes to get in contact with previously endorsed candidates and "spend more than one summer with them" by pushing their progressive agenda while in Congress and helping on re-election campaigns. And once fellows return to their campuses, SNAP wants to keep them mobilized and active in progressive politics. SNAP has also begun floating the idea of hiring a professional staffer. Being student-run is both a blessing and curse for SNAP. Having no permanent staffers means no overhead, so all money raised goes directly to supporting fellows. But being entirely student-run also limits the amount of time and energy spent on developing and expanding the organization.

For now, SNAP will continue to provide firsthand campaign experience, which is otherwise not financially possible for students, while helping progressive leaders get elected. But the influence of this group is not just in the immediate future of an upcoming election; rather, SNAP is also filling the void of training tomorrow's grassroots organizers, who receive invaluable training regardless of whether their candidate wins the race.

Ever since Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel and associate publisher Peter Rothberg happened on the group during a campus visit to Yale University in 2006, The Nation has supported SNAP, recently hosting a fundraiser for the group in the magazine's New York office. The more money the group raises, the more organizers it can dispatch to the field, so please consider contributing. To find out more about SNAP's summer fellowships, click here.

From The Las Vegas Review-Journal:

David Letterman said no.

It was 1993, and after having been embarrassed by NBC, Letterman famously packed up, moved to CBS and carved out his own place in late-night.

And the fact that Jay Leno refused to follow Letterman's example when presented with the almost exact scenario 17 years later -- 17 years he would have spent toiling in various Knock-Knocks and Giggle Shacks across the country had Letterman not taken the high road -- tells you pretty much all you need to know about the man.

But it's only one of several reasons I won't be watching when he resumes hosting the forever-tainted "Tonight Show" (11:35 p.m. Monday, KVBC-TV, Channel 3). And it's one of several why you shouldn't, either.

If you've ever been screwed over at work, don't watch "The Tonight Show." Conan O'Brien passed up lucrative offers, waited five years and moved, along with his staff, across the country to take over "The Tonight Show," but NBC never really gave it to him. By putting Leno on in prime time, with more fanfare and better guests -- not to mention giving viewers who just wanted to watch any talk show the chance to do that and get a decent night's sleep -- NBC set Conan up to fail from the start.

If you have any business sense whatsoever, don't watch "The Tonight Show." During his last two weeks on the air, Conan stopped being intimidated by "The Tonight Show" and started making captivating television. While Leno's ratings ticked up slightly, Conan's surged. Then there was the "Evita"-style scene with hundreds of Conan fans rallying for hours in the driving rain outside his studio. By contrast, Leno played The Mirage two days earlier, only doing one show instead of his customary two, and the venue had to offer half-price tickets. And NBC still dumped its newly minted folk hero in favor of the weasel with whom only 4 percent of Oprah's audience, some of the most forgiving viewers in the world, sided.

If you've ever been bullied, don't watch "The Tonight Show." Between slamming Conan in the press when he's contractually forbidden to respond and the tacky "Get back to where you once belonged" commercials for Leno, NBC's behavior has bordered on the shameless.

If you've ever actually been fired, don't watch "The Tonight Show." For someone who considers himself a man of the people, Leno's whining about how NBC "fired" him twice has been surprisingly tone deaf. Especially considering he doesn't even need the job, as he boasts of living solely off his stand-up money. Millions of Americans, including Conan, have genuinely lost their jobs over the past two years; Leno had his start time moved forward, then back, by 95 minutes.

If personal responsibility is important to you, don't watch "The Tonight Show." When his manager at the time maneuvered Johnny Carson into retirement, Leno said he was shocked. When his move to prime time put a thousand or more people on other shows out of work, that was all NBC's doing. And when it was announced he'd be replacing Conan, that was the fault of the network. Or the affiliates. Or Conan. Honestly, Leno cries "Not me!" more than those kids in "Family Circus."

If you care about honor, don't watch "The Tonight Show." When "Joey" -- NBC's previous modern benchmark for disastrous programming -- tanked, Matt LeBlanc didn't shove Steve Carell aside and take over "The Office." Just as Conan didn't try to steal his old "Late Night" job from Jimmy Fallon. They just went away. That's what grown-ups do.

If you enjoy originality, don't watch "The Tonight Show." "Jaywalking"? Stolen from Howard Stern. "Headlines"? That's Letterman's "Small Town News." Leno's "Don't Try This at Home"? You might remember it as Letterman's "Stupid Human Tricks." Even the "Green Car Challenge," the Jar Jar Binks of late-night bits, is a watered-down version of "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car," a recurring segment on Britain's "Top Gear," of which Leno is an admitted fan.

If you've ever taken a risk, don't watch "The Tonight Show." Sure, some of Conan's bits struck out, but that tends to happen when you swing for the fences. Leno, meanwhile, has been content slapping out singles for years, and you just know he'd still be making fun of Monica Lewinsky and O.J. if he thought he could get away with it.

If your attention span is longer than a drunken Snooki's, don't watch "The Tonight Show." Between all the feel-good patriotism of the Olympics and that bowing-down-to-Letterman Super Bowl spot, NBC is counting on viewers to have put the whole Conan mess behind them. But if you need a 21st-century rallying cry, forget the Alamo. Remember Conando!

I'm not suggesting you watch Letterman. Or Jimmy Kimmel. Or even George Lopez.

You could catch up on your DVR list. Talk to your significant other. Read a book, if you're desperate.

Just, for the love of all that's good and decent in the world, don't watch "The Tonight Show."

From Wall Street Journal:

The debates often take place on barstools and can devolve into a bleary tedium: If Babe Ruth were alive today, would he still be among the greatest to have ever played baseball?

Such what-ifs are no longer limited to happy hour and disrupted by last call. In recent years, statisticians have created time machines to answer a wide range of historical hypotheticals, from how today's Supreme Court would have voted on Roe v. Wade to what sort of scientific papers Einstein might write today.

These inquiries derive from statistical techniques that aren't all that new. But their full force has been unleashed through leaps in number-crunching computing power. They have helped better explain how the past and its crucial players, from baseball sluggers to judges, would stack up in the present. Even if they are far from perfect as a result of some tricky assumptions, they are a lot better than guesswork.

Click above to see how U.S. leaders from different eras compare with one another.

"The famous statistician George Box once wrote that 'all models are wrong, but some are useful,' " Kevin Quinn, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied changing attitudes of Supreme Court justices, said in an email. "I think that is a useful way to approach what we're doing."

Prof. Quinn and Andrew Martin of Washington University's law school used the time-machine techniques to track judges' ideological evolution and compare them to each other. The researchers were trying to identify where on the political spectrum, for each case, the judges and possible verdicts would lie. Then they would use that information to estimate the probability of how each judge would vote in each case. In that way, they used judges' past votes to construct a numerical model of probabilities that they could then apply to cases the judges never heard.

But how would the researchers compare two justices -- say Hugo Black and William Rehnquist -- who never served together? One answer was Justice Potter Stewart, who served with both and thus becomes a good reference point. By placing Justice Stewart on an ideological spectrum, they could compare him to both Justice Black, who was more liberal, and Justice Rehnquist, who was more conservative.

Such overlaps to bridge the gap between far-flung eras is at the core of these statistical time machines. They make use of a kind of bucket-brigade technique called Markov chains that allows the past to be compared to subsequent events that ultimately reach the present.

The results of the Supreme Court study are striking reminders of how unpredictable justices' ideology can be over time, which many presidents have discovered. For example, William O. Douglas began his career as a liberal, moderated for several years and then became more liberal. Overall, their model had a good success rate, and was able to accurately classify three out of four votes.

In a related paper, Georgetown University political scientist Michael A. Bailey tried to characterize the political leanings of the other branches of government beyond the judiciary. He plotted justices alongside presidents and members of Congress, using Supreme Court cases as points of comparison.

The challenge was finding overlaps between the distinct branches of government. Prof. Bailey found them in congressional votes and public statements by presidents about court cases.

Such expressions of sentiment provided data to bridge the gulf between governmental branches, and also between politicians separated by decades. The study also helped devise an ideological scoring system that could track subtle changes in governing philosophy. For instance, Prof. Bailey's numbers show President Ronald Reagan becoming more conservative during his term, while President Bill Clinton also moved to the right. And every president was more partisan than the other federal branches.

These analyses are far from final words on political history. The greater the interval of time between two eras being compared, the more statistical errors introduced. And some judges don't fit neatly on a spectrum, such as someone who is economically conservative and socially liberal. Prof. Bailey's analysis also excludes cases on foreign policy and other issues, which leaves out many important functions of government.

Still, keeping in mind such caveats, these time machines can reveal how successful presidents have been at nominating Supreme Court justices who reflect their world views. Despite his difficulties with the Harriet Miers nomination, for example, George W. Bush has done well in this regard -- if his nominees don't change much. The analyses also provide a measure of how closely court ideology corresponds to that of the House of Representatives.

The analyses can also provide strong clues to how today's justices would have voted on abortion. The current court would have issued a 5-4 decision in Roe v. Wade that would have allowed states to ban abortion, the research shows -- though Prof. Bailey warns that such results should be taken with "a huge grain of salt and perhaps a tongue in cheek."

Such time machines don't have to be applied only to people. David Blei, a computer scientist at Princeton University, has been studying a vast trove of scientific journal articles. His system identifies topics from scratch and assigns topic scores -- say, 80% neuroscience and 20% philosophy, or 40% biology and 60% chemistry. Any papers that have the same topic scores could then be grouped together, even if they are decades apart and keywords or concepts didn't yet exist. (Think of quarks or H1N1.)

Here the critical bridge -- the necessary overlap to relate past decades to the present -- were keywords that were associated with others before they faded. In other words, they performed the same bridging function Justice Potter Stewart did. Such techniques connected an 1880 paper on orangutan brains with a 1976 paper on monkey brains.

That technique helps dig up research that was ahead of its time. For instance, these very time machines, including Dr. Blei's, make use of so-called Bayesian statistics, which were developed decades before there was sufficient computing power to use them fully. "Part of science is uncovering long-forgotten discoveries," Dr. Blei says.

For sports, the time machines can help settle the debate between nostalgic fans and those who insist the games have never been played better. A paper a decade ago attempted to bridge the gap between baseball players over the past century. Co-authors Shane Reese and Scott Berry found that performance was improving, but not uniformly. For instance, baseball players' improvement in hitting home runs was much more dramatic than their batting-average gains -- perhaps because of steroids, which wasn't controlled for.

Researchers for Baseball Prospectus, a sort of think tank for the diamond, also quantified how the sport got more difficult over time. The analyses found that Babe Ruth would continue to shine in today's game.

Mr. Ruth would have had a lower batting average, but he would have hit 199 more homers, making him the greatest home-run hitter ever. End of debate -- nearly.

From The Nation:

President Obama spent most of December 4 touring Allentown, Pennsylvania, meeting with local workers and discussing the economic crisis. A few hours later, the state's former governor, Tom Ridge, was on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, offering up his own recovery plan. There were "modest things" the White House might try, like cutting taxes or opening up credit for small businesses, but the real answer was for the president to "take his green agenda and blow it out of the box." The first step, Ridge explained, was to "create nuclear power plants." Combined with some waste coal and natural gas extraction, you would have an "innovation setter" that would "create jobs, create exports."

As Ridge counseled the administration to "put that package together," he sure seemed like an objective commentator. But what viewers weren't told was that since 2005, Ridge has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power company. As of March 2009, he also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock, according to SEC filings.

Moments earlier, retired general and "NBC Military Analyst" Barry McCaffrey told viewers that the war in Afghanistan would require an additional "three- to ten-year effort" and "a lot of money." Unmentioned was the fact that DynCorp paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone. The government had just granted DynCorp a five-year deal worth an estimated $5.9 billion to aid American forces in Afghanistan. The first year is locked in at $644 million, but the additional four options are subject to renewal, contingent on military needs and political realities.

In a single hour, two men with blatant, undisclosed conflicts of interest had appeared on MSNBC. The question is, was this an isolated oversight or business as usual? Evidence points to the latter. In 2003 The Nation exposed McCaffrey's financial ties to military contractors he had promoted on-air on several cable networks; in 2008 David Barstow wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for the New York Times about the Pentagon's use of former military officers--many lobbying or consulting for military contractors--to get their talking points on television in exchange for access to decision-makers; and in 2009 bloggers uncovered how ex-Newsweek writer Richard Wolffe had guest-hosted Countdown With Keith Olbermann while working at a large PR firm specializing in "strategies for managing corporate reputation."

These incidents represent only a fraction of the covert corporate influence peddling on cable news, a four-month investigation by The Nation has found. Since 2007 at least seventy-five registered lobbyists, public relations representatives and corporate officials--people paid by companies and trade groups to manage their public image and promote their financial and political interests--have appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Network with no disclosure of the corporate interests that had paid them. Many have been regulars on more than one of the cable networks, turning in dozens--and in some cases hundreds--of appearances.

For lobbyists, PR firms and corporate officials, going on cable television is a chance to promote clients and their interests on the most widely cited source of news in the United States. These appearances also generate good will and access to major players inside the Democratic and Republican parties. For their part, the cable networks, eager to fill time and afraid of upsetting the political elite, have often looked the other way. At times, the networks have even disregarded their own written ethics guidelines. Just about everyone involved is heavily invested in maintaining the current system, with the exception of the viewer.

While lobbyists and PR flacks have long tried to spin the press, the launch of Fox News and MSNBC in 1996 and the Clinton impeachment saga that followed helped create the caldron of twenty-four-hour political analysis that so many influence peddlers call home. Since then, guests with serious conflicts of interest have popped up with alarming regularity on every network. Just examine their presence in coverage of the economic crash and the healthcare reform debate, two recent issues that have engendered massive cable coverage.

As the recession slammed the country in late 2008 and government bailouts followed, lobbyists and PR flacks took to the air with troubling regularity, advocating on behalf of clients and their interests while masquerading as neutral analysts. One was Bernard Whitman, president of Whitman Insight Strategies, a communications firm that specializes in helping "guide successful lobbying, communications and information campaigns through targeted research." Whitman's clients have included lobbying firms like BGR Group and marketing/PR firms like Ogilvy & Mather, which in turn have numerous corporate clients with a vested interest in shaping federal policies. Whitman is a veteran of the Clinton era and when making television appearances continues to be identified for work he did almost a decade earlier.

According to its website, Whitman Insight Strategies has worked for AIG to "develop, test, launch, and enhance their consumer brand," and continues to assist the insurance giant "as it responds to ongoing marketplace developments." Whitman Strategies has also posted more than 100 clips of Bernard Whitman's television appearances on a YouTube account. During a September 18, 2008, Fox News appearance to discuss Sarah Palin, Whitman proceeded to lambaste John McCain for proposing to "let AIG fail," saying that this demonstrated "just how little he understands the global economy today."

On March 25, 2009, in the midst of a scandal over AIG's executive bonuses, Whitman appeared on Fox News again. "The American people were understandably outraged about AIG," he began. "Having said that, we need to move beyond anger, frustration and hysteria to really get down to the brass tacks of solving this economy," he advised the public. In neither instance was Whitman's ongoing work for AIG mentioned.

Another person with AIG ties is Ron Christie, now at the helm of his own consultancy. While working at Republican-leaning firm DC Navigators, now Navigators Global, from 2006 through September 2008, Christie was registered to lobby on behalf of the insurance giant, lobbying filings show. During that period, AIG shelled out $590,000 to DC Navigators.

On September 18, 2008, Christie went on Hardball to discuss the government's response to AIG's near implosion days earlier. He was introduced only as a Republican strategist. As Chris Matthews mocked a presidential press conference on the financial crisis held earlier that day, Christie interrupted to say President Bush was "smart to have gotten a former person from Goldman Sachs who is a very bright man, who understands the markets and liquidity." Christie was referring to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who had once been the chair and CEO of Goldman Sachs and who played a pivotal role in the AIG bailout. "This is not a political sideshow. This is putting the right person in his administration to deal with this crisis," Christie said.

Bigger players were on AIG's payroll, too: shortly after receiving its first bailout, in 2008, AIG hired PR mega-firm Burson-Marsteller to handle "controversial issues." In April 2009, B-M hired former White House press secretary Dana Perino, already an established TV pundit. A month later she was picked up as a contributor to Fox News, where she has had occasion to discuss the economic meltdown.

This past July, for example, Perino joined a roundtable on Fox Business Network's Money for Breakfast, which briefly noted her affiliation with B-M but neglected to mention its link to AIG. When a fellow guest commented that AIG had been "highly regulated" before the crash, Perino pounced, suggesting that current financial reform efforts demonstrate how "Washington has a tendency to overreact in a crisis." When Gary Kalman of USPIRG suggested that regulations had, in fact, been rolled back for decades, Perino scoffed, "I don't think there are many business people who would actually agree with that."

(Whitman, Christie and Perino did not return requests for comment.)

Another conflict of interest plagued the televised debate over how to reform healthcare. Terry Holt, once a spokesman for the Republican National Committee and for House minority leader John Boehner, has also been, on and off since 2003, a lobbyist for the health insurance trade group America's Health Insurance Plans. When he and three other Republican operatives formed communications and lobbying firm HDMK in 2007, one of their first clients was AHIP.

On March 5, 2009, Holt, introduced simply as a Republican, told MSNBC anchor David Shuster that the Obama administration was "going to, you know, cut Medicare benefits for something like 11 million seniors to start this big healthcare reform project." By October AHIP was running ads in several states against the health reform bill that asked, "Is it right to ask 10 million seniors on Medicare Advantage for more than their fair share?"

Holt also made several appearances to discuss healthcare policy on CNN, where his affiliation with insurers was cited on several occasions, starting in September, though not during a September 14 appearance on The Situation Room, when Holt discussed healthcare reform efforts. The network subsequently experienced a small scandal in October when blogger Greg Sargent revealed that political analyst Alex Castellanos, a frequent commentator on CNN, had been helping craft attack ads for AHIP--including the one that referred to the "10 million seniors" losing Medicare benefits--while discussing healthcare policy on air, identified only as a Republican strategist.

When I interviewed Holt recently, he told me that there was one occasion when his work for AHIP was not mentioned on CNN, and that afterward, a producer contacted him to discuss his work for the trade group. Holt said that he believes that cable appearances "operate best with maximum transparency."

"When you're addressing the public, it's a reasonable expectation that they be fully aware of your perspective--where you're coming from--and I see my obligation as informing the news organization that's asking me to appear or to comment about my standing and letting them be the judge," he said.

Democratic lobbyists and corporate consultants have also made appearances to discuss health reform with no reference to their pharmaceutical or insurance company clients. On September 24, 2009, Dick Gephardt appeared on MSNBC's Morning Meeting, where he labeled the public option "not essential." Gephardt was asked by host Dylan Ratigan to discuss healthcare reform in light of his experience as a Congressman during the Clinton effort in 1993 and now simply as "an observer through this process." There was no mention of his work advising insurance and pharmaceutical interests through his lobbying firm Gephardt Government Affairs, nor any mention that Gephardt is a lobbyist for NBC/Universal.

Likewise, Tom Daschle dropped by MSNBC on May 12 and July 2, 2009, and NBC's Meet the Press on August 16, 2009. At each appearance he discussed healthcare reform with no mention of his work on behalf of lobbying firm Alston & Bird, which advises insurer UnitedHealth Group. Only during a December 8 appearance on MSNBC's Dr. Nancy was Daschle finally confronted, albeit with kid gloves, about how his simultaneous work for lobbying firms on behalf of health insurers and meetings with administration officials on healthcare reform appeared to be at odds. "I certainly want to be appreciative of perception, so we're going to take great care in how we go forward," Daschle promised. A month later, on January 11, the former Senate majority leader returned to MSNBC to discuss healthcare with Andrea Mitchell. In the nearly ten-minute interview, his insurance work went unmentioned.

As of this writing, healthcare and financial reform legislation have largely stalled. And although it would be foolish to argue that Daschle's TV appearances sank the public option or that Dana Perino's punditry fatally wounded a proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, there can be no doubt that there is a cumulative effect from hundreds of appearances by dozens of unidentified lobbyists and influence peddlers that helps to drive press coverage and public opinion.

Janine Wedel, an anthropologist in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and author of the new book Shadow Elite, told me in a recent interview that while these influence peddlers are not necessarily unethical, they "elude accountability to governments, shareholders and voters--and threaten democracy."

"When there's a whole host of pundits on the airwaves touting the same agenda at the same time, you get a cumulative effect that shapes public opinion toward their agenda," she said.

Frequent television news commentators are also often given access to policy-makers, who may find that they are meeting with not just a TV pundit but also a paid lobbyist. This past March, for example, the White House held an exclusive "communications message meeting" for high-profile Democratic strategists with top presidential aide David Axelrod. Of the eighteen attendees, almost all television regulars, a third were lobbyists or public relations flacks, such as Kelly Bingel, a lobbyist for AHIP and a partner at mega-firm Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, and Rich Masters, a partner at PR/lobbying outfit Qorvis Communications, where he works on behalf of trade group Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

Ultimately, no matter how often or how cleverly lobbyists and PR operatives have used cable news appearances to their business advantage, it is hard to fault them for the practice. In many cases, they have made no attempt to hide their work for corporate clients; some, like Terry Holt, have gone out of their way to inform producers and bookers of the work they're doing on behalf of clients.

This leaves final responsibility in the hands of the cable news networks that invite lobbyists and corporate flacks on the air and fail to identify their affiliations. This past fall Aaron Brown, host of CNN's NewsNight from 2001 until 2005, when the network pushed him out, and currently a professor of journalism at Arizona State University, told me that he didn't think the problem was a lack of standards but a lack of enforcement. Bookers--"young, inexperienced people under a lot of pressure"--are unlikely to ask guests about potential conflicts of interest. "I think they're often derelict in vetting," says Brown.

For Brown, though, the lack of disclosure is symptomatic of larger problems in cable journalism, rooted in the shift to putting numerous analysts and strategists on television as an easy, inexpensive way to fill time. It's "a lot cheaper than sending a correspondent to Afghanistan," he says.

"What I find unconscionable about this is that it's not like a struggling newspaper is looking for an inexpensive way to do journalism because they have no money. These are highly successful profit centers for the corporations that they're spawned from," Brown said.

Jeff Cohen, who helped found the nonprofit group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), echoes some of Brown's critiques. Cohen worked for MSNBC for several months in 2002 and published a book in 2006, Cable News Confidential, about the experience. When I asked him why men like Gephardt and McCaffrey could go on television with no reference to their consulting and lobbying, Cohen explained that, based on his experience at MSNBC, "these regulars get introduced the way they want to be introduced.

"This is the key: Gephardt will always be the former majority leader of the House. Period.... These guys know they won't be identified by what they do now but instead by what their position was years or decades ago," Cohen said.

Some of this has changed in recent months, with CNN starting to identify the industries some analysts work for. For its part, Fox News has long identified the lobbying or PR firms of some--though not all--guests, but the network does not give viewers any information about the kinds of clients these firms represent. (CNN would not return calls, and Fox News did not provide comment.)

Then there's MSNBC, the cable network with the most egregious instances of airing guests with conflicts of interest. Only on MSNBC did Todd Boulanger, a Jack Abramoff-connected lobbyist working for Cassidy and Associates, go on a TV rehabilitation tour with no identification of his work, all while he was under investigation for corruption (he pleaded guilty in January 2009). Only on MSNBC was a prime-time program, Countdown, hosted by public relations operative Richard Wolffe and later by a pharmaceutical company consultant, former Governor Howard Dean, with no mention of the outside work either man was engaged in. And MSNBC has yet to introduce DynCorp's Barry McCaffrey as anything but a "military analyst."

When I spoke with MSNBC in mid-January, the network seemed eager to prove it is fixing the problem. David McCormick, the ombudsman for NBC News, deals with questions about standards and practices at MSNBC. (Both organizations use the same policies-and-guidelines booklet, which McCormick helped develop; CNBC has more stringent disclosure requirements as a result of SEC rules.) McCormick told me that the issue of conflict of interest has been on his mind of late. He said that MSNBC intended to contact its guests and brief them on its disclosure policies, adding that "trust is a huge part of the business" and that the network relies on guests "to let us know of any potential conflicts."

"We've been talking to our folks for a number of years about the importance of transparency and letting the viewers in on where folks--it could be contributors, analysts or experts that we don't pay--fit into the mosaic of a story," said McCormick. "Are we perfect about it? No."

In fact, potential conflicts of interest have been a topic of concern for more than a decade. An October 1998 copy of the "NBC News Policies and Guidelines" devotes an entire chapter to "Guests/Analysts/Experts/Advocates." It states:

It is essential that our viewers understand the particular perspective of all guests, analysts and experts (whether paid or not) who appear on our programs....
 Our viewers need all relevant information so they can come to their own conclusions regarding the topic at hand. It is not enough to say: "John Doe of XYZ Foundation."...Likewise, it may not be enough to say Jane Doe, NBC consultant or analyst.... Disclosure may be made in copy or visually. But it must be done in a clear manner.

McCormick told me that financial conflicts of interest were "in the same category as ideological or political interests," but also suggested that MSNBC's practice of posting information about guests on its website was an adequate way to air potential conflicts of interest. McCormick emphasized that this reform was "a work in progress."

A few days later, on January 22, I happened to catch MSNBC's Morning Joe. Mark Penn, identified only as a Clinton administration pollster and Democratic strategist, was suggesting that the Obama administration put healthcare reform on ice. Unmentioned: Penn's role as worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller, which has an entire healthcare division devoted to helping clients like Eli Lilly and Pfizer "create and manage perceptions that deliver positive business results."

At times, it begins to seem as though the problem is beyond fixing, an unfortunate but unavoidable reality of our media and political landscape, in which the lines between public service and corporate advancement are so blurred. It is clear that the pressure applied on the networks so far has not resulted in systemic change. Even in the aftermath of increasing scrutiny--particularly after David Barstow's Pulitzer Prize-winning exposés in the Times--General McCaffrey continues to appear on television without any caveats about his work for military contractors. As Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald has observed, none of the networks involved in the scandal have ever bothered to address Barstow's findings on air, and they noticeably omitted Barstow's name from coverage of the 2009 Pulitzers. "It's almost like a mysterious black hole that this issue, which is enormous, is getting no attention from the offenders themselves," the Society for Professional Journalists' ethics committee chair Andy Schotz told me recently.

Jay Rosen, a media critic and journalism professor at New York University, has a different take. "More disclosure is good--I'm certainly in favor of that--but why are these people on at all?" asks Rosen. "They have views and can manufacture opinions around any event at any time."

Rosen echoes something Brown mentioned to me. Watching cable news cover the 2008 election with more analysts crammed at one table than ever before--as if to ask, "How many people can we put on the set at one time?"--Brown said he was "amazed how little they had to offer." He went on, "We live in a time where there are no shortages of opinions and an incredible deficit of facts."

From Financial Times:

On Saturday I wrote about the paper by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff about the chilling effect high levels of debt seem to have on economic growth. Now I’m not so sure. David Hendry, the Oxford econometrician who, for his sins, taught me econometrics (actually, he mostly taught me to spot bad econometrics), writes to point out that:

The UK became a dominant world power with [debt/GNP] ratios between 1 and 2; and the UK grew at its fastest when its debt/GNP ratio was highest, not that any causality can be ascribed to that. But essentially there is almost no relationship I can find, having tried over many years, between debt/GNP (or changes etc.) and growth, unemployment, or inflation over 1860-2000. (see Hendry, DF (2009) `Modelling UK Inflation, 1875-1991′, Journal of Applied Econometrics, 16, 255-275; and Castle, JL and Hendry, DF (2009)`The Long-Run Determinants of UK Wages, 1860–2004′, Journal of Macroeconomics, 31, 5-28 ).

Well, this is beyond my pay grade. I’d back Ken Rogoff in a chess match against Hendry any day, but not so sure about the econometrics. One possible objection is that the definition of “high debt” used by Reinhart and Rogoff (90 per cent of GDP) looks a bit arbitrary. Hendry has numerous more technical concerns.

Here are the graphs Hendry sent me for UK debt ratios and economic performance:

Here are Reinhart and Rogoff in their own words. Here is my previous column about David Hendry’s research. Reinhart and Rogoff will hopefully respond; I’ll get to meet Carmen Reinhart at the Royal Economic Society annual meeting soon, and quite possibly David Hendry will be there too.

From The Guardian:

This may be the shortest thread ever. I was prompted by an exchange in comments to wonder whether it was really true, as A. N. Whitehead claimed, that everyone thinks their own beliefs are the summit of western philosophy. So the challenge is a simple one. Name three people, preferably contemporaries, whom you honestly believe are smarter, better educated, and more honest than you are, but who disagree with you about God. So atheists must name believers, and vice versa. It would be nice if these people were well-known enough for their names to mean something, but I don't think that's essential, and, let's face it,most of us don't know anyone well-known personally, and journalists only know them professionally.