White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

A Cotton Wool Christmas

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It wasn’t the Grinch who stole Christmas; it was Northern Europe.

As a child born and raised in Central Africa, I was very aware of this confiscation. It outraged my mother, who was also born and raised in Africa.

We lived in British colony of Southern Rhodesia; and we were dominated by British immigrants who insisted on “dreaming of a white Christmas.” Well, tough luck.

As my mother liked to point out, not one more flake of snow fell in Central Africa than fell in the Holy Land, where Jesus Christ was born.

But we were — indigenous Africans and settlers alike — in the thrall of snow imperialism.

Being so close to the equator, snowfall was a meteorological impossibility. So those under the European cultural thumb decorated everything in sight with cotton wool. We could only dream of a cotton-wool Christmas.

Unlike my mother, my father felt no pressure from the European and North American inauthentic portrayal of Christmas as a white, cold affair. He didn't mind that the retailers edged their windows in cotton wool or that the Anglican Church went along with the Northern Hemisphere’s implication that Joseph and Mary struggled through the snow to get to the manger in Bethlehem.

The one thing my parents agreed upon was that Christmas began on December 24 and lasted for the traditional 12 days.

Not only was no snow substitute allowed in our house, but also no commercially produced ornaments; flowers and greenery were fine. As a result the whole family would go to a marshy area, known as a vlei, on Christmas Eve and cut great quantities of ferns which would be strung along the picture rails.

Decorations could be added to the green frieze, but only if we made them out of painted paper. Mostly, we stuck fresh flowers in it. It was a green Christmas.

When it came to food, my mother relented completely and we made English Christmas pudding (boiled for hours in muslin), fruit cake and pies made with mincemeat (an all-fruit mixture).

We weren't a drinking family, but a bottle of sweet sherry appeared at Christmas. My mother — who otherwise drank only tea and sometimes coffee (no water, milk, alcohol or sodas) — would take, ostentatiously, a very small glass of sherry. Having downed this half-ounce or so of fortified wine, she'd announce that she wasn't responsible for her actions, that she could feel her legs getting heavy and that she was drunk.

My brother and I watched Christmas after Christmas to see if there was any sign that there had been a physiological or psychological change in Mamma, but none was recorded.

We then ate a very English meal and listened to very English Christmas carols, like “The Holly and the Ivy” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” My mother, who hadn’t signed her separate peace treaty with Germany, wasn’t too keen on “Silent Night.”

It wasn't until I had turned 20 and was working in London at United Press International that I saw real snow. Sorry, Mamma, it beats cotton wool and it makes for a splendid Christmas, even if things were a bit different in Royal David’s City two millennia ago.

Now for some wassail. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Political Lies and Small Business

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Brace for a storm of platitudes, recycled myths, and just old-fashioned
political lies.

It will all start with President Obama when he addresses a joint session
of Congress on Thursday about the jobs deficit. Whatever he says will be
followed by scorn and abuse from the Republicans. All the hoary old claims
about the absence of leadership, wasteful spending, punitive regulation
and the need to cut taxes will be regurgitated.

The president will have a TelePrompTer full of enchantment tales. He also
will talk of cutting some taxes; maybe because he thinks this will endear
him to the undecided voters, or mollify some Republicans, or because he
consistently tries to make his way in a viciously partisan political world
by endeavoring to sound like the voice of detached reason. It will make no
friends and infuriate the Democratic core. It will be another betrayal to
them.

All of the tax ideas, presidential and Republican, will be wrapped in cant
about small business. Oh, do politicians love small business. Apple pie is
good, mom is noble but small business, and small business alone, can cause
the entire Congress of the United States to genuflect.

They love the travel agent with six employees with the same passion that
they adore General Electric. The machine tool repair and maintenance
contractor with 40 employees – he is the very embodiment of American
exceptionalism. The woman with a wholesale jewelry business that she
operates with her husband and grown daughter — they are the stuff of
American legend.

Nonsense.

If Congress knew anything about the small business world, it would
stop forcing the wrong medicine on the patient. Incorrect therapies won’t
help, no matter how vigorous the applications.

To the political establishment, small business is suffering because of
taxation and regulation. Fiddle with these twin bugaboos, the political
narrative goes, and small business will bloom like the bluebells in
spring.

Have any of these people ever talked to small business operators? Small
business has many problems, but taxation is seldom one of them. Do they
really think the garment manufacturers on New York’s 7th Avenue are on the
phone, schmoozing about the rate of corporate taxation? More likely they
are talking about why the banks won’t lend, even against collateral, to
heretofore good customers; why imports from all over Asia are laying waste
to their customer base; and why the traffic in the cross-town streets is
horrendous.

Like all small businessmen, they don’t agonize over the frustration of
having to meet OSHA and EPA standards — these are irritants. Instead,
they agonize over whether there will be enough money to meet payroll.
Taxes, if any, come once a year, but the payroll keeps the small
entrepreneur anxious all year. It is the ogre that visits every two weeks.

To many, government is the problem; but not in the way legislators think.
The problem is the growing shortage of federal and state funds. This
affects many small businesses like builders, excavators, asphalt-layers
and the service industries that owe their survival to small contracts:
social service providers, translators, software writers, and consultants
in just about everything.

If you cut budgets, you cut small business.

Then there is the “chaining” of America. Local diners, hardware stores,
pharmacies and other retailing are crushed, annihilated when the chains
move in. The chains are not inherently evil, but they are manifestly
merciless. Walmart is but one of the chains putting small business to the
sword.

If those who administer government want to know something about small
business, they should spend a weekend at a strip-mall bakery or any other
firm with less than 50 employees. The experience would radically adjust
the rhetoric. It’s too late for Thursday, but don’t believe what you hear.

–For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Political Lies and Small Business

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Brace for a storm of platitudes, recycled myths, and just old-fashioned political lies.

It will all start with President Obama when he addresses a joint session of Congress on Thursday about the jobs deficit. Whatever he says will be followed by scorn and abuse from the Republicans. All the hoary old claims about the absence of leadership, wasteful spending, punitive regulation and the need to cut taxes will be regurgitated.

The president will have a TelePrompTer full of enchantment tales. He also will talk of cutting some taxes; maybe because he thinks this will endear him to the undecided voters, or mollify some Republicans, or because he consistently tries to make his way in a viciously partisan political world by endeavoring to sound like the voice of detached reason. It will make nofriends and infuriate the Democratic core. It will be another betrayal to them.

All of the tax ideas, presidential and Republican, will be wrapped in cant about small business. Oh, do politicians love small business. Apple pie is good, mom is noble but small business, and small business alone, can cause the entire Congress of the United States to genuflect.

They love the travel agent with six employees with the same passion that they adore General Electric. The machine tool repair and maintenance contractor with 40 employees – he is the very embodiment of American exceptionalism. The woman with a wholesale jewelry business that she operates with her husband and grown daughter — they are the stuff of American legend.

Nonsense.

If Congress knew anything about the small business world, it would stop forcing the wrong medicine on the patient. Incorrect therapies won’t help, no matter how vigorous the applications.

To the political establishment, small business is suffering because of taxation and regulation. Fiddle with these twin bugaboos, the political narrative goes, and small business will bloom like the bluebells in spring.

Have any of these people ever talked to small business operators? Small business has many problems, but taxation is seldom one of them. Do they really think the garment manufacturers on New York’s 7th Avenue are on the phone, schmoozing about the rate of corporate taxation? More likely they are talking about why the banks won’t lend, even against collateral, toheretofore good customers; why imports from all over Asia are laying waste to their customer base; and why the traffic in the cross-town streets is horrendous.

Like all small businessmen, they don’t agonize over the frustration of having to meet OSHA and EPA standards — these are irritants. Instead, they agonize over whether there will be enough money to meet payroll. Taxes, if any, come once a year, but the payroll keeps the smallentrepreneur anxious all year. It is the ogre that visits every two weeks.

To many, government is the problem; but not in the way legislators think. The problem is the growing shortage of federal and state funds. This affects many small businesses like builders, excavators, asphalt-layers and the service industries that owe their survival to small contracts:social service providers, translators, software writers, and consultants in just about everything.

If you cut budgets, you cut small business.

Then there is the “chaining” of America. Local diners, hardware stores, pharmacies and other retailing are crushed, annihilated when the chains move in. The chains are not inherently evil, but they are manifestly merciless. Walmart is but one of the chains putting small business to thesword.

If those who administer government want to know something about small business, they should spend a weekend at a strip-mall bakery or any other firm with less than 50 employees. The experience would radically adjust the rhetoric. It’s too late for Thursday, but don’t believe what you hear.

–For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Winds of Change in Washington?

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They are not a gale, not even a stiff breeze — more like a zephyr really — but there are winds of change stirring Washington. There are hints that when Republicans return from their travels and their time with constituents they will be ready for some righting of their ship, which has been listing heavily to starboard.

Over in Democratic circles there are hopes that President Obama, presumably buoyed by the fall of Tripoli, will tighten his grip on the helm and begin to assert himself in ways that his party has felt that he has been missing.

The Associated Press released the results of a new poll on Thursday that showed approval of Congress has dropped to 12 percent, down from 21 percent in June, before the ugly debate over raising the debt ceiling. The Associated Press-GfK poll taken earlier this month also showed that the Tea Party has lost public support, Republican House Speaker John Boehner is increasingly unpopular and that people are warming to the idea of not just cutting spending but also raising taxes, just as both parties prepare for another struggle with deficit reduction.

Stuff happens — and when stuff happens, the political dynamic is changed.

An earthquake and hurricane, for example, has convinced people along the East Coast the cutting the funding for the U.S. Geological Survey, as has been proposed, may not be so prudent. Likewise, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration might need full funding.

Enter states in economic shock. From Maine to California, they are bracing for the impact of federal grants drying up.

At least two Republican governors, who were out in front with austerity programs, are looking less sagacious.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican Party favorite, sacrificed a long-planned new tunnel into Manhattan on the altar of economic rectitude, just before it was becoming apparent that the only way government can really create jobs is through big infrastructure projects.

Farther south, in a burst of ideological zeal, Florida Gov. Rick Scott waved off federal stimulus funds for high-speed rail and other things. So the funds traveled up the coast to be plowed into road projects in Massachusetts, much to the joy of Democratic Sen. John Kerry who crows about his state's infrastructure progress. The wily presidential hopeful Texas Gov. Rick Perry denounced the stimulus package and then pocketed $14 billion for his state.

The lesson for those who thought that statesmanship lay in placating the well-intentioned but economically challenged Tea Party movement is that surgery with a machete is doomed to terrible results when a laser scalpel is needed.

Malcolm Muggeridge, the great British essayist and popular philosopher, wrote a prescient essay on the failures of reform. Of 12 major reforms, from the Russian Revolution to the ending of Tammany Hall political domination in New York, people who were supposed to benefit were left worse off.

The latter is an issue that Obama may want to ponder as his health care reforms are implemented. Without a public option to benchmark prices, he may have covered more Americans but, in so doing, allowed for prices to further escalate.

It is by the Republicans that the larger pressure for course correction is being felt. "No new taxes," increasingly sounds about as sophisticated as what spectators to the guillotining of French aristocrats chanted, "Off with their heads!"

The public wants government to do many and mysterious things, like invent the Internet, go to Mars, cure cancer, build better highways, and keep us safe at home and abroad. Whether we enunciate it or not, we want the government to look after us in areas of health, world stature, scientific discovery, defense, and food supply and safety. Business does not do those things, and even the most rugged of individualists cannot do them for themselves.

Ergo, we have to pay for those things and the credit card is maxed out.

Tax is back on the table, if not in fashion. Tax and judicious cuts in spending.

Members of Congress also read the poll numbers. At around 13 percent, their approval ratings do not make them feel good. Nobody likes to be told they are an incompetent bum, especially incompetent bums.

So for the first time there is some feeling that the super committee, which is set to tackle the deficit problem, may actually do something before Congress allows mandated cuts — the machete to start hacking.

Just a little more wind, and a grand bargain will be scented on it. Wet a finger and hold it up in September. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Perry Peddling the Mythological Texas

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The manner of a man’s arriving is not without consequence. Tom Enders, the
German-born and American-educated head of Airbus, the European aircraft
giant, likes to do it by parachute, if it is an open-air event. People
don’t always remember what he says, but they sure remember how he got
there.

Of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, it could be said that he parachuted into the
race for the Republican presidential nomination. The manner of his entry
will be remembered, as it was meant to be.

Perry orchestrated a drum roll of media speculation, leading up to his
announcement. He assessed, contemplated, debated, discussed, examined,
explored and weighed entry. The media followed: might he, should he, would
he?

The drum roll, fed by leaks, grew louder as the declared candidates
traveled to Iowa for a debate and straw poll. Then Perry, with an
announcement in South Carolina, jumped and precision-landed on the parade
in Iowa.

Poor Michele Bachmann, left like a performing dolphin that has had its
fish snatched away. She had won the straw poll, deserved a few hours of
party adulation and had her joy cut by this man, who dropped in from the
West, all swagger and handshakes.

Perry hit the ground campaigning, when she was hoping to savor a victory
moment or two. Those famed southern manners don’t extend into Texas
politics. Ask fellow Texan, Kay Bailey Hutchison. He crushed her in a
Republican primary in Texas.

In Perry’s political lexicon Texas, and things Texan, are at once policy,
ideology and creed. But Perry’s Texas is not all of Texas, with its
alluring geographical and social diversity. It is the Texas of the
caricature — of barbecue, boots, swagger and can-do. It is not the Texas
of artists in Austin, of the symphony in Houston, ballet in Dallas or jazz
in San Antonio.

It is an inauthentic Texas, minted not on the ranches and the oil rigs,
nor the ugly, sprawling, low-income housing that surrounds the bustling
cities – a testament to an increasing chasm between rich and poor. It is
not the place where schools are failing, the prisons are overflowing, and
the execution rate is the highest in the advanced world.

Perry’s projection of Texas, which he sees as a template for the rest of
the United States, is as inauthentic as tumbleweed — an invasive species
from Russia. Perry’s Texas was created in novels, honed in Hollywood and is
part of the myth that Texas and Texans are imbued with qualities denied to
lesser breeds beyond the Lone Star State.

The problem with believing in myth, and elevating it to the the standing
of principle, is that myth is flexible and can be adjusted to reality.
Ergo the early revelation that Perry is happy to disavow difficult things,
like global warming. He says that there is a list of scientists, growing
almost daily, that say global warming is not the result of human activity.
This is cunning. It disavows responsibility without having to deny the
evidence. While the heads of most advanced governments worry about the
impact of greenhouse gases, a President Perry will not have to.

Perry has also laid down his marker as a man of faith, or at least a man
of public piety. He might want to note that the two most publicly
religious presidents of recent times, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush,
left office in low esteem and are not faring well in the first books of
history. He may want to ponder why the Founding Fathers were so anxious to
separate church and state.

Perry’s political barbecue sauce, such as berating the Federal Reserve,
may be the precursor to a string of tired, old political nonsenses, like
returning to the gold standard; quitting the United Nations; and
abrogating treaties, in the belief that every commitment abroad is an
infringement of sovereignty.

Perry has made a dramatic entry. Now we wait in trepidation; even George
W. Bush’s people are alarmed. Are we to be shown the real Texas, at the
same time proud and flawed, or the synthetic one, doctored for political
effect? — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Anatomy of the Underclass in Britain

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Societies, like soup, need to be stirred from time to time. Britain has erupted into rioting and looting because of too much welfare, too little opportunity, too few jobs, too little education, but mostly because of a kind of social calcification.

While the old British class system, born of land aristocracy and later incorporating business-derived money, exerted downward pressure on all the levels, modern Britain, which has been forming since the end of World War II, is a more liberal place.

Aspiring Britons are no longer despised by other Britons by the way they speak, as George Bernard Shaw said. Upward mobility is easier than ever, though probably less so than in the United States where it is almost a constitutional right.

However, the new liberalism in business and the arts has been at odds with a different liberalism at play in government policies. It is the liberalism of providing for the needy. The result has been the growth of a new social order: the underclass.

The state, under both Labor and Conservative governments, has sought to save ever-larger numbers of people from all the agonies of life at the bottom. But instead of achieving this it has created a new citizen, tethered to the state in all aspects of life, including health and child care; job training instead of a job; unemployment income that can last a lifetime; plus money for having babies, and arguably money for not getting a job.

Where this liberalism has failed is the one thing that it is reasonable to ask of the state: to educate the children. Public education in Britain is as ramshackle and as fraught with problems as it is in America.

If you fall through the cracks in Britain kindly hands will comfort you, pay your rent, give you money, pretend to educate you and pretend to retrain you. They will also possibly trap you at the bottom, but they will certainly trap your children.

Life at the bottom is survivable in Britain — more so than most countries, including the United States. But it is corrosive and it has produced a culture of sloth, vulgarity, casual parenthood and celebrity adulation. The life is coarse and fueled by relentless television-viewing and boozing.

These are the people who have been rioting across Britain, producing television images not reminiscent of Britain but of the intifada on the West Bank: hooded youths stoning the police and torching cars and buildings.
What to do? Liberals will call for more of what has not worked: more social initiatives, more youth centers, more a job training and remedial education. Conservatives will call for harsher treatment: more better -armed police, longer prison sentences and talk about family and morals.

More difficult to address is why so many of what was the working class have fallen to the bottom, and why society continues to stratify.

First, there is the loss of the Empire. The British were always able to change their luck by going “out to the Empire.” At one time, young people could remake themselves in distant British lands, from Kenya to Burma or Canada to New Zealand. There were incentives not to stay put but to go forth. It was a great social safety valve.

The other loss was national service — even more important to the well-being of the body politic in Britain than in America. Lacking our social and geographic mobility, the draft provided skills and launched careers. Also for stratified Britain, it reminded people in one social strata about the existence of people in other strata.

A very distinguished musicologist, Bernard Jacobson, has always benefited as a writer by his superior touch-typing skills. He was taught these by the Royal Air Force, which quickly realized that this dreamer from Oxford should not be allowed near an aircraft.

John Adams, a management and public affairs savant in Washington, was serving with British forces in Korea when word came through the radio on a tank that Winston Churchill had won the election of 1951. Bravo! Adams cheered, but the rest of his squad booed. He looked at them with new eyes. They were all Brits fighting in a foreign land, but they were of different backgrounds.

Denis Nordin, popular here on the BBC radio program “My Word,” credited World War II for liberating young Jews — cockney accented Jews like himself — to have a career in the theater. Vidal Sassoon, the hairdresser and cosmetics mogul, said the same thing.

As the underclass of Britain, modern only in that they have cell phones, rampage, the question is what will stir the pot this time? What will bring the bottom to the top the next time? – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Mysteries of Europe

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Magazines, newspapers, even the television, are urging me to get to a
beach and to read mysteries. Actually, I don’t go to the beach much; and I
can’t say I read more when I’m there.

But I do read mysteries. This has been a year when I’ve had difficulty
putting them aside.

It’s the politics of times that has driven me to the mystery section of a
bookstore: a magic larder of easy escapism where the shelves are never
bare. One reaches a point where the White House’s assertion that green
energy jobs are going to refloat the economy and cut unemployment is
certifiably fiction. Or the Tea Party’s belief that if you cut economic
activity by slashing the budget, you will, yes, create jobs as far as the
eye can see. Or, the Ayn Rand-derived idea that greed is akin to
godliness; that markets alone will cure all the ills of the human
condition, from broken hearts to stillborn children.

But what to read? Robert Ludlum, Michael Connelly and James Patterson,
the most successful mystery writers of the moment, don’t really do it for
me — although I like the idea of “The Lincoln Lawyer,” a Connelly
creation.
My real escape this year has been to Europe – but Europe through the eyes
of three skilled, American mystery concocters. I want adventure, sheer
escape, but I also want a little more: As with journalism, I want to know
a little something that I didn’t know before.

First among equals is Alan Furst whose mysteries, set largely in eastern
Europe between 1933 and 1944 (“Spies of The Balkans,” “The Spies of
Warsaw” and “The Foreign Correspondent,” among others) are on a level with
John le Carre. He gives us history in a time of foreboding, with sinister
forces at play.

If your passion is for a gutsy, sexy private eye carrying on in her
father’s tradition as a Paris flic, and you also desire a little French
slang (Did you know that “mec” is slang for “guy”?) and a lot of French
bistro life, pick up any one of a slew of novels by Cara Black. She’s the
most prolific of my three authors — all of whom were teachers before they
succeeded as novelists.

My favorite at the moment is Donna Leon, whose protagonist, Commissaro
Guido Brunetti, is with the police in Venice. Like Black, she shares the
local architecture, food and a soupcon of ancient Roman literature, as
Brunetti humors his ghastly boss, spars with his well-born wife and,
through dogged police work, unearths evil and corruption. He doesn’t do
big violence or acts of derring-do. He does solid questioning, local
travel and is sustained by grappa and coffee.

Black gives us Aimee Leduc, the very sights and smells of Paris, and plots
that are almost believable. You know she’s going to do things against big
odds; and you so want her to come out unscathed, which she does.

Leon does for Venice what Black does for Paris: complete immersion. Of
course you learn things about Venetian cuisine and the climate. But you
also learn about the diversity of regional speech in Italy; and how the
characters from Venice, or Naples, will speak to each other in their
dialect and break into “Italian” with people from other regions, or on
formal occasions.

If you want your mind to travel far away from Barack Obama, Harry Reed,
John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, et al., try reading a good
mystery: The characters are so much better formed and more believable. You
can even take the book to the beach, if you like that sort of thing.

Slash Government Spending? Think again

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From one end of this land to the other, from Anchorage, Alaska, to Key West, Fla., and from Portland, Maine, to Honolulu, you can get a round of applause by stating that the government is too big. Way too big.

But I ask you, in the name of all of those heresies that have proven to be true, is it too big? Maybe we have the government we ordered up, and it is just the size that, subliminally, we want.

The government may be less than efficient, employ too many people at high wages for low output and sometimes be maddeningly illogical. But those things are not a function of size. They are a function of the wrong dynamics in the structure of government, and they won't be cured by clear-cutting the government itself. We need a forester, not a logger.

The fact is that we the people want a lot of government and, whether we like that or not, we keep ordering up more and more. It will be a neat trick to keep it from getting bigger, just because we keep tasking it to do more. Also, we want to be first in all things from space exploration to green energy.

Do we really want the Chinese walking on the Moon, or an Indian spacecraft circling Mars?

Do we really want to buy our green-generating technologies from Norway?

Judson Phillips, founder of the Tea Party Nation, likes to list those government programs that he, with the wisdom of a Renaissance man, finds foolish. But when you add up his examples, even if he were right, they amount to a few billion dollars in a time of trillions.

Mostly, it is programs they do not understand that bring out the conservative axes. I wonder if Phillips would have supported research on the Internet (a crazy idea hardening computers against nuclear attack)?

The big program that is eating our fiscal cake, for anyone to see, is Medicare.  If you are on Medicare, you can list the waste that you are obliged to countenance. We all have stories of unnecessary X-rays, MRIs and multiple blood tests. But is that the only problem?

Suppose we were to cut the cost of Medicare in half?

Wow, that would be saving! Well, we spend between 16 and 17 percent of our gross domestic product on all medicine, including Medicare. In western Europe, that figure is just over 8 percent — some with state systems like Britain, and some with hybrid state and private systems like Germany and Holland.

Maybe, we should overcome our Europhobia and find out how they get the same things for less. If that is too much to swallow, look to Japan: It has excellent medicine for a smaller-yet bite of its GDP.

Social Security, the other great potential budget buster (it hasn't happened yet) is subject to relatively easy fixes. Calculate retirement age on years worked. A college graduate works about 44 years. Extend that.

A carpenter works at least four years longer than a college graduate, but is physically unable to work after age 65. Give him or her credit for the equivalent of time served in the workplace.

Meanwhile, new risks to society demand more government responses — not fewer. Try cybersecurity, ocean pollution, invasive species, illegal immigration, climate change, infrastructure renewal and medical research.

I want to know about new and dangerous mosquitoes carrying tropical diseases that have invaded the United States. I also want bed bugs and stink bugs to be brought under control. And I trust the government has scientists looking into these pesky things.

I also want the government to take diseases like myalgic encephalomyelitis seriously and bring hope to a million suffering Americans, and many millions more around the globe.

We got the government we have because we voted for it piece by piece. Now it is in trouble. When in financial difficulty, cut your expenditures as much as possible — and there are limits here — and then try to get a raise. In government-speak, we call that a tax increase. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Murdoch Is Felled by a Disease He Once Cured

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In the 1960s, even to an old union man like myself, British newspaper
unions had reached a point at which they were a threat not only to the
newspaper industry, but also to the freedom of the press itself.

It took someone as ruthless and sociopathic as the unions to find a way to
break their hold. That man was Rupert Murdoch and he did it with
outstanding courage, cheek and military-like planning.

In theory, the deal was simple: If the unions would not behave in the
workplace, he, the proprietor, would move the workplace.

In today’s world, this sounds easy. But in those days, trade union rights
were regarded as inviolable. A blow against one union was a blow against
all unions. “Solidarity,” in union speak, was awesome.

Yet Murdoch set out to leave London’s Fleet Street; then the physical home
of nearly all of Britain’s national papers, now the metaphorical home of
British journalism.

In secret Murdoch built the most modern printing plant of its day in
Wapping, the old dock area in the East End of London. He surrounded it with
razor wire and prison-like defenses and secretly recruited new workers
from the areas of Britain with the highest unemployment.

Nothing so bold had ever happened in British industrial relations.

To get the operation rolling, Murdoch made demands of the National
Graphical Association — the most militant of the unions — on
computerization. The union did not want journalists touching computers,
and they wanted no changes in the antiquated machinery that they used.

Strikes were frequent and often unofficial: The workers just downed tools
over almost always imagined grievances. Then they started censoring the
newspapers: They would not print newspapers with editorial material they
disapproved of. Production was said to be “lost.” This euphemism meant
that the newspapers never appeared in some markets.

If a newspaper were to run a story about communist penetration of the
unions, which was rife, the printers censored it. Sometimes they allowed a
blank space to appear, and sometimes the paper had to withdraw the
offending-but-accurate report to get printed at all.

With planning worthy of a great general, Murdoch orchestrated the move to
Wapping and sprung it on the country as a fait accompli in late January
1986. The journalists, who belonged to a less belligerent union, the
National Union of Journalists, were divided. Some “went to Wapping,”
others quit.

All of Murdoch’s titles moved, including the weekly News of the World, The
Sun, a daily, and the venerable Times and Sunday Times. Five thousand
old-line workers were sacked for honoring what the unions said was a
provoked strike.

But the press was saved, and Murdoch saved it. All the newspapers made it
to fight another day.

The unions had become arrogant, thuggish and sociopathic. They did not
care about the principles of a free press, the illogic of their Luddism or
the greater harm to society. Power and money was their thing, and they had
power: power to boss the bosses, power to set the number of workers who
worked each night, and increasingly power to determine what was printed.

Lord Rothermere, one of Britain’s newspaper barons, was once asked, “How
many people does it take to produce The Daily Mail?” His lordship replied,
“About one quarter.”

The featherbedding was awesome. Some delivery drivers got paid by three
newspapers for delivering papers when they were, in fact, working
somewhere else altogether.

So there is a fine irony that the Murdoch’s News Corp. now stands accused
of many of the sins of the unions he disciplined: sociopathic arrogance; a
desire to control the news as well as cover it; and a thuggish corruption
that reached into the highest levels of at least three British
administrations, Thatcher, Blair and Cameron; and has brought low the
world’s largest and most storied police force, the Metropolitan Police,
known as Scotland Yard.

Murdoch’s many newspapers in England accumulated so much power that they
began to dictate the news, orchestrate policy and politicians came live in
awe of the power of the News Corp. apparatus to reveal people’s private
lives, delve into their finances, and have their careers boosted or
blunted by columnists and selective reporting.

Many years ago, before Murdoch established himself in Fleet Street, one of
its legendary characters, Harry Procter, wrote an angry memoir called
“Street of Shame.” Yes, indeed. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Prime Ministers and Publishers: An Unholy Alliance

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Lord Northcliffe: The Read Baron

Lord Northcliffe

 

British newspaper publishers love prime ministers. Conversely, prime ministers love publishers. That is, if the publisher in question owns a national newspaper with a big circulation (often in the millions).

You cannot get into the club if you only own, say, the Lewisham Borough News. This is an exclusive club for those who wield real, palpable power: Witness the scandal of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. in Britain today.

The club has been operating for more than 200 years. But it was at the turn of the 20th century, with ever-expanding voter rolls, that the intimacy became really intense. Victorian prime ministers had to put up with editors and owners of journals of opinion, like The Spectator or Punch, and sometimes The Times.

Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and his Liberal rival, William Gladstone, bargained with the media of their day. But these did not sway huge swathes of the electorate in the way that was to come. General education produced millions of avid readers and improved printing technology, notably the Linotype machine, made large mass- circulation newspapers possible.

Two brothers, Vere Harmsworth and his more colorful sibling, Alfred, were the first big-time press barons. In time, they were rewarded with titles: Alfred became Lord Northcliffe and Vere, Lord Rothermere.

It is unlikely that all of the prime ministers — and all of them had to deal with the press barons — really liked the intimacy. These men mostly had huge egos, daunting agendas, and their friendship always came with a price. So, of course, did the friendship of the politicians. They sought support in elections and freedom from scrutiny in governing.

Part of the price was usually the peerage, but then there were other considerations. Lord Beaverbrook, a Canadian, wanted prime ministers to endorse his campaign for “Empire Free Trade.” Others had other interests; but the tariffs on newsprint, the subsidy of cable traffic (which made getting news from overseas cheaper), and subsidized postal rates for newspapers and periodicals were common to all.

Northcliffe lectured World War I Prime Minister Lloyd George on how to run the war — and everything else. Beaverbrook treated Lloyd George’s successor, Bonar Law, a fellow Canadian, as his surrogate in government and campaigned for him relentlessly.

After that, Beaverbrook turned his demonic energies to supporting Winston Churchill — even though Churchill was at a low period during much of the1930s. Not only was the man who was to be Britain’s greatest prime minister out of power, he was also out of money.

The newspaper proprietors, in surprising unity, came to Churchill’s aid. Churchill boasted that he made 1 million pounds from his articles in one year and retired his debts. That was an astounding amount of money, and it reflected the fact that the newspaper bosses were overpaying him enormously, according the historian A.J.P. Taylor.

The leading paymasters were Beaverbrook, who owned the Daily Express and the Evening Standard, and Brendan Bracken, the Irishman who owned the Financial Times. In Churchill they saw potential, a lively contributor, and someone who gave the best dinner parties in England. Bracken even encouraged rumor that he was Churchill’s illegitimate son, although he knew this was nonsense.

The cultivating of prime ministers was an ecumenical affair. Cecil Harmsworth King, who ran Mirror Group Newspapers in the 1960s, lectured Prime Minister Harold Wilson on everything, including his own somewhat ridiculous idea that Britain needed a bipartisan national government — as in wartime — to get it out of his its financial difficulties. Rupert Murdoch went all out for Margaret Thatcher. But he turned against her successor, John Major, and supported the Labor Party and Tony Blair. Gordon Brown failed to get Murdoch’s nod, but current Prime Minister David Cameron did. The rest, as they say, is history.

When television came along, the proprietors had a new incentive to cultivate prime ministers: licenses. The big winner here was the least pushy of the publishers, Roy Thomson, another Canadian, who owned The Times. He got the license to run commercial television in Scotland and became Lord Thomson. Like Murdoch, Thomson did not crave the company of prime ministers. He was happy to let others carry his requirements to the men in power. Murdoch has used various  intermediaries, including the American economist and free-market ideologue Irwin Stelzer.

Is it all over now? Will prime ministers shun the company of media barons?

Will the sun rise in the East tomorrow?  — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate