David Meeks has been called a long shot in the race for the Second Congressional District primary but his campaign received a boost last week from an unexpected source. Last week Meeks went to hear former speech writer to President Nixon and Ford, actor, and game show host Ben Stein speak at the University of Central Arkansas. After the lecture, Meeks went up to meet Stein as he was signing books where Stein decided to chip in to the Meeks for Congress Campaign.

“I had a campaign button on and he asked me about who I was running against,” Meeks tells the Tolbert Report. “Once I told him that Vic Snyder votes with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time and that he was the only one in Arkansas’ delegation to vote for Cap and Trade, he said he would like to contribute.”

Meeks would not disclosure the amount of the contribution but said it was below the reporting limit. He said that Stein told him that he knows how difficult it can be to run against an incumbent and wanted to help. Meeks does not expect Stein to endorse or actively campaign on his behalf.

Meeks will face Republicans Scott Wallace and Tim Griffin in the primary for a chance to take on incumbent Vic Snyder in next fall. Wallace officially announced his candidacy last week and Griffin is currently visiting the eight counties within the district over the next eight days before making his official announcement in Little Rock on November 11.

David Meeks has been called a long shot in the race for the Second Congressional District primary but his campaign received a boost last week from an unexpected source. Last week Meeks went to hear former speech writer to President Nixon and Ford, actor, and game show host Ben Stein speak at the University of Central Arkansas. After the lecture, Meeks went up to meet Stein as he was signing books where Stein decided to chip in to the Meeks for Congress Campaign.

“I had a campaign button on and he asked me about who I was running against,” Meeks tells the Tolbert Report. “Once I told him that Vic Snyder votes with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time and that he was the only one in Arkansas’ delegation to vote for Cap and Trade, he said he would like to contribute.”

Meeks would not disclosure the amount of the contribution but said it was below the reporting limit. He said that Stein told him that he knows how difficult it can be to run against an incumbent and wanted to help. Meeks does not expect Stein to endorse or actively campaign on his behalf.

Meeks will face Republicans Scott Wallace and Tim Griffin in the primary for a chance to take on incumbent Vic Snyder in next fall. Wallace officially announced his candidacy last week and Griffin is currently visiting the eight counties within the district over the next eight days before making his official announcement in Little Rock on November 11.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich offers an interesting op-ed in Salon today. The argument he makes is one that I’ve scarcely heard over the past few months: Barack Obama failed to learn the critical lesson of the Clinton administration which was never to expend too much political capital on a singular issue.

In Bill Clinton’s first term, Mr. Reich notes that he used up much of what he had to pass through a deficit reduction plan that got the economy growing again. When time came for health care he had nothing left to leverage, and health care reform bombed.

He notes,

. . . The Clinton years produced few if any major social reforms. Clinton spent so much of his initial political capital, as well as his time and energy, on deficit reduction that he didn’t have enough left to enact healthcare in 1994.

Mr. Reich sees a similarity in Mr. Obama’s efforts to pass health care reform. Too much has been spent, he fears, for too little. Meanwhile, unemployment continues to rise, and it may reach eleven percent by next year. Because of his focus on health care reform, Mr. Obama is prevented from returning to Congress for a second stimulus specifically to aid homeowners and distressed businesses, neither of which appear to be aided by the first stimulus.

He writes,

The optimist in me says Obama can pivot off a healthcare victory and launch some new initiatives that palpably and quickly spur job growth. The realist says there aren’t any such initiatives — at least none that can work fast enough to reverse the tide of unemployment before the midterm elections. Fiddles such as a new jobs tax credit can help but they won’t make much of a dent. Even with a larger stimulus, a jobs recovery would still be far off. The tangible benefits of healthcare reform are likely to be so elusive in the meantime that the public may become easy prey for demagogues on the right who blame Democrats for the economic insecurities that bedevil the nation next November.

David Meeks has been called a long shot in the race for the Second Congressional District primary but his campaign received a boost last week from an unexpected source. Last week Meeks went to hear former speech writer to President Nixon and Ford, actor, and game show host Ben Stein speak at the University of Central Arkansas. After the lecture, Meeks went up to meet Stein as he was signing books where Stein decided to chip in to the Meeks for Congress Campaign.

“I had a campaign button on and he asked me about who I was running against,” Meeks tells the Tolbert Report. “Once I told him that Vic Snyder votes with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time and that he was the only one in Arkansas’ delegation to vote for Cap and Trade, he said he would like to contribute.”

Meeks would not disclosure the amount of the contribution but said it was below the reporting limit. He said that Stein told him that he knows how difficult it can be to run against an incumbent and wanted to help. Meeks does not expect Stein to endorse or actively campaign on his behalf.

Meeks will face Republicans Scott Wallace and Tim Griffin in the primary for a chance to take on incumbent Vic Snyder in next fall. Wallace officially announced his candidacy last week and Griffin is currently visiting the eight counties within the district over the next eight days before making his official announcement in Little Rock on November 11.

Arkansas writer Gene Lyons has a terrific piece in Salon on the mainstream media’s knee-jerk defense of Fox. After the White House said it was a "fiction" that Fox News was a traditional news organization, columnists gasped in horror.

… neither the Times nor most "mainstream" pundits evaluated the claim on its merits. Most pretended not to grasp the White House’s point, and then went straight to the aiding and abetting. Many invoked the ghost of Richard Nixon. Why, to criticize Fox, claimed the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus and Charles Krauthammer, was downright "Nixonian."

NPR’s Ken Rudin recalled "what Nixon and Agnew did with their enemies list." So did CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Rudin subsequently apologized for the "boneheaded" comparison; Cooper didn’t.

Excuse me, but Nixon’s enemies list was secret. Journalists and others got subjected to illegal FBI wiretaps, "black bag" break-ins and IRS audits. White House officials even discussed murdering columnist Jack Anderson.

 

Arkansas writer Gene Lyons has a terrific piece in Salon on the mainstream media’s knee-jerk defense of Fox. After the White House said it was a "fiction" that Fox News was a traditional news organization, columnists gasped in horror.

… neither the Times nor most "mainstream" pundits evaluated the claim on its merits. Most pretended not to grasp the White House’s point, and then went straight to the aiding and abetting. Many invoked the ghost of Richard Nixon. Why, to criticize Fox, claimed the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus and Charles Krauthammer, was downright "Nixonian."

NPR’s Ken Rudin recalled "what Nixon and Agnew did with their enemies list." So did CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Rudin subsequently apologized for the "boneheaded" comparison; Cooper didn’t.

Excuse me, but Nixon’s enemies list was secret. Journalists and others got subjected to illegal FBI wiretaps, "black bag" break-ins and IRS audits. White House officials even discussed murdering columnist Jack Anderson.

 

The New York Times gets into the visit by Fox News’ John Stossel to Arkansas this week to join lobbying against health reform by a conservative advocacy group funded by the wealthy Koch family.

Most news organizations discourage participation at partisan political events. In its publicity material for the forums, Americans for Prosperity identifies Mr. Stossel a “veteran journalist.” But Fox says Mr. Stossel is not a part of its hard news division; rather, he is an analyst and host.

In its responses to the White House and other critics, Fox has said there are differences between its journalists and its opinion program hosts. But the Obama administration and others have asserted that those lines are regularly blurred.

In an interview Tuesday, Mr. Stossel said he was an activist — for “free markets.” He has long identified himself as a libertarian and has covered stories accordingly. Mr. Stossel joined Fox earlier this month , and will soon begin hosting a weekly program for Fox Business. He will also provide regular analysis on Fox News.

The article notes that a private donor will pay for Stossel’s trip (more than just expenses, I’d speculate.)

Greg Sargent, a blogger for the Web site whorunsgov.com, a Wahington Post Company Web site, wrote last week that Mr. Stossel would be effectively working “as a political activist” by attending the forums, and said it “doesn’t seem like great timing” given Fox’s feud with the White House.

Mark Feldstein, an associate professor of journalism at the George Washington University, said the relationship between Mr. Stossel and a partisan group was “pretty shameful” by traditional journalistic standards. “But I guess we’re no longer in an age of tradition,” he said.

The New York Times gets into the visit by Fox News’ John Stossel to Arkansas this week to join lobbying against health reform by a conservative advocacy group funded by the wealthy Koch family.

Most news organizations discourage participation at partisan political events. In its publicity material for the forums, Americans for Prosperity identifies Mr. Stossel a “veteran journalist.” But Fox says Mr. Stossel is not a part of its hard news division; rather, he is an analyst and host.

In its responses to the White House and other critics, Fox has said there are differences between its journalists and its opinion program hosts. But the Obama administration and others have asserted that those lines are regularly blurred.

In an interview Tuesday, Mr. Stossel said he was an activist — for “free markets.” He has long identified himself as a libertarian and has covered stories accordingly. Mr. Stossel joined Fox earlier this month , and will soon begin hosting a weekly program for Fox Business. He will also provide regular analysis on Fox News.

The article notes that a private donor will pay for Stossel’s trip (more than just expenses, I’d speculate.)

Greg Sargent, a blogger for the Web site whorunsgov.com, a Wahington Post Company Web site, wrote last week that Mr. Stossel would be effectively working “as a political activist” by attending the forums, and said it “doesn’t seem like great timing” given Fox’s feud with the White House.

Mark Feldstein, an associate professor of journalism at the George Washington University, said the relationship between Mr. Stossel and a partisan group was “pretty shameful” by traditional journalistic standards. “But I guess we’re no longer in an age of tradition,” he said.

This should be well received.

Responding to the growing furor over the paychecks of executives at companies that received billions of dollars in federal bailouts, the Obama administration will order the companies that received the most aid to deeply slash the compensation to their highest paid executives, an official involved in the decision said on Wednesday.

Under the plan, which will be announced in the next few days by the Treasury Department, the seven companies that received the most assistance will have to cut the cash payouts to their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year. For many of the executives, the cash they would have received will be replaced by stock that they will be restricted from selling immediately.

And for all executives the total compensation, which includes bonuses, will drop, on average, by about 50 percent.

… read the New York Times’ about health care in Hawaii, which has required employers since 1974 to provide good health care benefits for any employee who works 20 hours a week.

There have not been any serious efforts in Hawaii to repeal the law, although cheating by employers may be on the rise.

But perhaps the most intriguing lesson from Hawaii has to do with costs. This is a state where regular milk sells for $8 a gallon, gasoline costs $3.60 a gallon and the median price of a home in 2008 was $624,000 — the second-highest in the nation. Despite this, Hawaii’s health insurance premiums are nearly tied with North Dakota for the lowest in the country, and Medicare costs per beneficiary are the nation’s lowest.

Hawaii residents live longer than people in the rest of the country, recent surveys have shown, and the state’s health care system may be one reason. In one example, Hawaii has the nation’s highest incidence of breast cancer but the lowest death rate from the disease.