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The Associated Press's Lawrence Messina normally does a fine job of reporting, but his story of an Associated Press forum praising the extreme rightwing book "Unleashing Capitalism," a political effort intended to turn West Virginia into the same free market enterprise state that the right wingers unleashed on Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority, did not meet his usual standards.
The question also has to be asked why the Associated Press, a supposedly nonpartisan news organization, is hosting a forum where the speakers from the version in the Martinsburg Journal all seemed to come from one side of the issue.
Messina, possibly still suffering the aftereffects of celebrating WVU's Fiesta Bowl win, appears to have simply turned his taperecorder on and churned out stenography instead of a journalism report.
I'd link to the story on his fine Lincoln Walks at Midnight blog to send the hits his way, but Messina didn't post a link to it there like he normally does with his stories. Perhaps that is a subconscious admission on his part that he realizes the story was a one-sided affair.
While the Unleashing Capitalism book has its fans among the same crowd who think Mr. George W. Bush and President Dick Cheney have done an excellent job with the nation's economy, foreign policy, placing greater importance on corporations than people, deregulation of safety rules and inspections resulting in higher work place deaths, and destruction of the environment, those of us in the reality based community know that the agenda in the book has more to do with advancing a political ideology rather than advancing the state's economy.
Perhaps Messina and other journalists covering those praising the book's ultra rightwing views will do more than stenography and interview those critical of its extremism as well.
How right wing is the book? As Raging Red pointed out, the author advocates doing away with the American With Disabilities Act, minimum wage and mine safety laws.
Yet Messina and others treat the book as not having a political ideology, but simply an economics one even though much of its economic positions have already been debunked.
Here's what happens when a journalist questioned the author.
While lying in bed this morning after having hit the snooze button a few times, I was roused from my state of semi-consciousness by the sound of someone yelling at Scott Finn on West Virginia Public Radio. It's not often that people yell on public radio; that's the purview of cable television news. The person Scott Finn had angered was Russell Sobel, an economics professor at West Virginia University who has written a book called Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia Border and How to Fix It. Sobel was apparently mad that Finn had the audacity to ask him tough questions about the basis of the conclusions reached in his book. "Nobody has ever treated me this way!" he practically screamed.
My favorite part was when Sobel, objecting to the notion that his economic views might be politically biased, said [paraphrasing from memory]: "There's nothing political in this book! It doesn't discuss gay marriage or abortion or the war in Iraq - those are political issues." This prompted Finn to ask whether there are economists who would disagree with him, and Sobel scoffed: "Sure, there might be some Marxist economist somewhere, but most of them are gone now that the Soviet Union has collapsed." I was nonplussed. How dare you accuse me of being political! Only a Marxist would disagree with me! Too funny.
It seems that Sobel believes economics is above politicization, which is positively stupid, especially coming from someone with a Ph.D. in economics. Issues like tort reform, tax policy, and government regulation of, say, the coal industry are apparently apolitical, which is of course absurd. These are core political issues. Sobel insists that his conclusions are based not on politics, but on sound scientific research, as if nobody could possibly do similar research and come to different conclusions. As one of his critics pointed out, economics isn't like physics; there isn't One True Answer. And as the "debate" on global warming illustrates, even when there's virtually no disagreement within the scientific community an issue can still be highly politicized.
I don't really understand what Sobel was so upset about, since later on in the interview he said that he wishes lots of other people would write books about how to improve West Virginia's economy, because we need to have a debate about these issues. Earlier on, he seemed to be saying that there is no room for debate. It's based on scientific research, it's not my opinion!
There are ways to improve West Virginia's economy. But listening to rightwing advocates who are intellectually dishonest and hold morally repugnant views is not the way to find solutions. As we've seen from the past eight years, that's the way to disaster.
Neighboring Maryland, with its liberal reputation of having higher taxes, more intensive state regulations, and living wage laws, does better than West Virginia economically. To think going the opposite route, the same route that free market enterprises experimented on with Iraq is the way to go, is pure bunk.
I'm looking forward to Messina returning to journalism instead of stenography.
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