Journalism blog dedicated to stories that either receive little attention in the media or don't get the attention they deserve. With the exception of outrageous conduct that screams for condemnation, all Bullwork of Democracy reporting strives to be unbiased. Tweeting @cccheney
While facing impeachment over a criminal conspiracy that included a break-in at the Democratic Party's national headquarters, President Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974. President Donald Trump is making calls out of Nixon's playbook, blaming the news media and leaks of sensitive information by government officials for his failings. /bullworkofdemocracy photo illustration
"The press is the enemy."
"It's always the son-of-a-bitch that leaks."
"The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press."
These are all quotes from the president of the United States, but they were not uttered by the current leader of the free world. All of these comments were made by Richard Nixon, the first and only U.S. president who resigned his office in disgrace.
Since taking the oath of office less than a month ago, President Donald Trump has been channeling Nixon, railing against the press and leaks from within his own administration.
Trump says any poll that casts his performance in a negative light should not be believed, calling them "fake news."
When The Washington Post revealed Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had held policy-related discussions with a top Russian official before Inauguration Day, the billionaire businessman claimed the biggest concern was leaks from his administration not the undermining of President Barack Obama while he was still in office.
Flynn apparently discussed American sanctions against Russia with the Russian ambassador to the United States, which the FBI concluded made the national security adviser prone to blackmail from the Kremlin. Trump knew about the blackmail threat for at least two weeks, according to U.S. officials. But he kept Flynn as his national security adviser and only fired the retired general after the Post story was published.
The depth and breadth of the Flynn cover-up is a mystery, for now. The truth will come out eventually.
One of the truths that came out of Nixon's disastrous second term as president is a cover-up is almost always worse than the original crime.
There are many troubling similarities between Nixon and Trump. Just one month into the 45th president's first term, the scariest potentiality is that Trump is even worse.
Defying President Lyndon Johnson's administration in 1968, legendary CBS journalist Walter Cronkite had the courage to tell the truth about America's disastrous war in Vietnam. /CBS News video
Nothing is more patriotic than speaking truth in the face of power.
Journalists in the so-called mainstream media are not inclined to defend themselves against misguided assaults on their integrity and commitment to telling the truth, even when their reputations and lives are under threat.
With powerful politicians peddling alternative facts, these are dark days for the free press, which has served as a bulwark of democracy in the United States for more than two centuries. The professionals who staff newsrooms at America's best news media organizations such as The New York Times need to accept that producing high-quality editorial content is no longer sufficient to ensure continuation their pivotal role in American society.
When the president of the United States declares war on the news media, journalists have a patriotic duty to defend themselves. When President Trump and his sycophantic supporters attack members of the press, it is not just journalists who are under siege; one of the pillars on which democracy stands is under assault.
When I decided to pursue a journalism career more than two decades ago, my grandest aspiration was to work at CBS News, The New York Times,The Washington Post or Time Inc., David Halberstam's powers that be. My dream came true on a modest scale in the first week of April 2013, when I started working weekends as a digital media producer at WBZ, the CBS News affiliate in Boston.
A couple of days after joining the WBZ staff, terrorists detonated two bombs along the route of the Boston Marathon. On television, radio and online, WBZ journalists provided world-class coverage of the heinous crime and the manhunt for the perpetrators that followed. I witnessed firsthand the professionalism and dedication of journalists employed in one of the bastions of the "mainstream media."
On April 19, 2013, WBZ was the first news media organization to broadcast live video of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the boat where he had taken refuge after a shootout with police in Watertown, Mass./ Massachusetts State Police image
Despite my devotion to journalism, I know even the best U.S. news media organization are far from perfect.
In addition to participating in coverage of the Marathon bombings, one of my most memorable experiences at WBZ was having lunch in the station's cafeteria with Jack Williams. The veteran newsman told me about how CBS had treated his friend, Walter Cronkite, at the end of his career.
Cronkite was still "the most trusted man in America" when CBS replaced him as anchor of the evening news with Dan Rather. As he recounted the succession story, Williams could barely control his disgust. Cronkite had plenty of journalistic "life in his tank" when CBS executives forced him into retirement, Williams told me.
Here is the key fact about the best news media organizations: for every misstep that reputable journalists make, there are thousands of examples of high-quality information provided to the American people.
Here are just a few examples of courageous and groundbreaking journalism generated at news organizations that Trump and his supporters are gleefully tarring as the "dishonest mainstream media" in America:
In 1954, CBS News icon Edward R. Murrow challenges Red Scare demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy. /CBS News video
In 1963, Eric Sevareid of CBS News interviews "Silent Sprint" author Rachel Carson for a CBS Reports documentary. Under pressure from the industrial chemical industry, three of the documentary's five commercial sponsors withdrew from the broadcast about Carson's book, which exposed the dangers of pesticides and revolutionized humanity's views of the environment. CBS aired the documentary despite the financial blow. /CBS image via Getty Images
In June 1971, Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham and the newspaper's editor, Ben Bradlee, are elated as they depart U.S. District Court after a federal judge upheld their right to continue publishing the Pentagon Papers. The documents, which had been obtained from whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, exposed years of U.S. government deception about the war in Vietnam. /AP photo
Bradlee talks with reporters Bob Woodward, left, and Carl Bernstein in the Washington Post newsroom. Woodward and Bernstein exposed a criminal conspiracy in the White House that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. /Image via Outside the Beltway
In 1975, New York Times photo journalist Dith Pran and correspondent Sydney Schanberg stayed in Cambodia when other members of the news media fled the country's Khmer Rouge reign of terror. Both men were captured and Pran endured several years in brutal work camps. After Schanberg escaped, he earned a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Cambodian genocide. /New York Times-AFP image
After publishing 600 stories in 2002 about sexual abuse perpetrated by priests, The Boston Globe was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. The Globe's coverage included the revelation that the Archdiocese of Boston's leader, Cardinal Bernard Law, had allowed a pedophile priest to prey on parishioners for years. /Boston Globe image
In the series, "My Reality: A Hidden America," veteran journalist Diane Sawyer exposes the undeniable truth about income inequality in the United States. Millions of hard-working, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens are getting screwed while the wealthiest Americans bank an ever-increasing portion of the nation's treasure.
There are several drivers of the transformation of The American Dream into The American Nightmare that are largely out of the citizenry's control, including automation of workplaces that make traditionally secure jobs obsolete and low-wage labor competition from countries such as China. However, income inequality in the wealthiest nation on Earth is largely a self-inflicted wound.
In a rare case of billionaire candor, mega-investor poster boy Warren Buffett gave an honest assessment of U.S. income inequality back in 2006: "There's class warfare, all right; but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
Sawyer's documentary series is shining light on the American casualties in this struggle that pits the rich against middle class and working class citizens.
Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry, a former Texas governor and a longtime conservative government standard-bearer, visits Trump Tower in New York during the president-elect's Cabinet hiring spree in December. /Getty Images photo by Drew Angerer
Conservative Americans found an unexpected haul of presents under the Christmas tree this year: a bigly box bursting open with a business-tycoon president-elect and a Cabinet stuffed with billionaires and plutocratic ideologues.
Several of the executive-department nominees are more akin to a wolf pack guarding the whole farm than a fox guarding the hen house.
Trump's nominee for Housing and Urban Development secretary, Ben Carson, is a retired neurosurgeon and former Republican primary-season rival of the president-elect. He has no public housing experience and a self-help ideology that seems ill-suited to providing an essential safety-net service. /Getty Images photo by Andrew Burton
Trump's nominee for Education secretary, Michigan Republican Party bigwig billionaire Betsy DeVos,
has no experience in public education, including with her own children. She favors private-school vouchers and charter schools as solutions--and likely poison pills--for struggling public schools.
Trump's nominee for Energy secretary, two-time GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry, has advocated dismantling the department. While calling for the agency's demise in an epic 2011 debate gaffe, he forgot the department's name.
Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, favors a free-market approach to medicine that includes slashing HHS regulations and privatizing Medicare.
Trump's nominee for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, E. Scott Pruitt, has been a fierce critic of the EPA in his current role as Oklahoma attorney general. Pruitt is among the named petitioners in a 25-state lawsuit against the EPA over greenhouse gas regulations.
As the country embarks on Republican government in the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority of statehouses, a host of hurdles that require united effort confronts the apparently partisan Trump administration: healthcare reform; national governments that threaten global security such as North Korea; external economic threats from powerful competitors and volatile global markets; internal economic challenges including a dilapidated infrastructure, an aging population, a skewed concentration of wealth, and disruptive waves of automation that upend the workforce; roiled race relations; immigration reform; and climate change.
Tackling these hurdles from the right, or any single-minded approach, is doomed to failure measured in blood and national treasure.
Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin gained multiple advantages in the U.S. election that elevated Donald Trump to the White House, including the defeat of a potentially formidable adversary: Hillary Clinton. /image via itv.com
Evidence and logic show the Russian Federation government was involved in hacking efforts that were designed to impact the 2016 U.S. election.
The evidence of Russian meddling is compelling, and it was convincingly presented last week by Eugene Kiely for FactCheck.org:
All U.S. intelligence agencies and at least three companies have investigated election-related hacking such as the cracking of John Podesta's email account and concluded that the Russian government was involved
CrowdStrike, the company hired to investigate the May 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee, concluded that "two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries" were responsible for the electronic espionage
Fidelis Cybersecurity, another Internet security firm, not only concurred with CrowdStrike's findings but also declared "this settles the question" of Russian government involvement in the DNC hack
On Nov. 17, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before a House committee, stating the utmost care was taken before the U.S. intelligence community identified the Russian government as the source of election-related hacking: "We gave considerable thought to diming out Russia."
Logically, the case is just as convincing. Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin had powerful motives to push for a Donald Trump victory:
Hillary Clinton, who had foreign policy experience as secretary of state, would have likely been an adversary on the world stage if she had become president.
Donald Trump, who has no foreign policy experience beyond financial dealings, has signaled willingness to cooperate with Putin, including openness to recognizing Russia's annexation of Crimea and fighting in tandem against ISIS in the Middle East.
The chaotic spectacle of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, including Clinton winning the popular vote, is a huge PSYOP victory for Putin. The hacking exposed dirty tricks and fueled unsubstantiated suspicion of vote rigging.
On Oct. 7, the Department of Homeland Securityreported the agency was "confident" that the Russian government was involved in hacking attacks on the U.S. election. /www.dhs.gov
Editor's Note:There has been little in-depth coverage of the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation in North Dakota. Recent images from Cannon Ball, N.D., where "water protector" demonstrators are camped near the pipeline's path, shine light on the struggle over completion of the 1,172-mile oil artery.
On Nov. 20, law enforcement officers fire a water cannon to douse Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) demonstrators at a state highway bridge in Cannon Ball. The temperature was about 26 degrees F and several protesters were injured, Youth Radio correspondent Avery White reported. /Avery White photo
In late November, musician, author and photographer D. Randall Blythe visited one of the "water protector" encampments in Cannon Ball. He wrote about what he witnessed for Rolling Stone. /David Rollingcloud photo
Blythe volunteered to participate in "direct action" demonstrations involving face-offs with law enforcement. The Lamb of God frontman witnessed a police line stand-off at Turtle Island near the Dakota Access Pipeline's proposed crossing of the Missouri River. The Sioux tribe relies on the river as a water resource. /D. Randall Blythe photo
"The ridge line at the top of the hill became crowded with heavily armed police officers and men in tactical gear staring down at us. I saw rifles, grenade launchers, safety-orange shotguns, large pepper-spray canisters resembling fire extinguishers and a few water hoses that were rolled out. Hooded men with binoculars and video cameras walked the hilltop, filming and scanning our faces constantly." --Randy Blythe for Rolling Stone
During the clash with protesters on Nov. 20, law enforcement fired water cannons and non-lethal projectiles at protesters. A Native American security guard told Blythe that he collected these non-lethal rounds, which include a buckshot beanbag, from the scene of the confrontation. /D. Randall Blythe photo
Medics have treated several demonstrators for head wounds that are likely the result of law enforcement officers firing non-lethal rounds at protesters. /August White image
Military veterans observe the police-barricaded bridge near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation that has become a demonstration flash point. More than 2,000 veterans are vowing to serve as human shields to help block eviction of the demonstrators from their camps. /Associated Press photo via voaanews.com
Veteran Trek Kelly of Venice Beach, Calif., is among the veterans supporting DAPL demonstrators facing eviction. /Reuters photo
With a Dec. 5 eviction deadline from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers looming, DAPL demonstrators also are facing brutal weather conditions as winter bears down on their camps in Cannon Ball. /Reuters image
CNN reported today that there are thousands of Dakota Access Pipeline protesters hunkered down in frigid winter conditions at the Sacred Stone Camp in Cannon Ball, N.D. /CNN image
This weekend, more than 2,000 military veterans, including U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, are vowing to serve as human shields for Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protesters at the Sacred Stone Camp, Reuters reported today.
The protest camp is within a couple miles of the energy project's last unfinished segment. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has set a Dec. 5 deadline for protesters to leave Sacred Stone Camp or face arrest.
The Corps decided last month to delay the final unfinished leg of the pipeline project, which features tunneling under Lake Oahe, a drinking water reservoir for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. The Corps said the project pause is necessary because "additional discussion and analysis are warranted" on several grounds, including "the history of the Great Sioux Nation's dispossessions of lands" and the resource value of Lake Oahe to the Standing Rock Sioux.
Despite the delay, the Dec. 5 eviction deadline has set the stage for another confrontation over the 1,172 mile long pipeline, The project price tag is pegged at $3.7 billion.
In August, hundreds of DAPL protesters were based at the Sacred Stone Camp. /KFYR-TV image
In spring 2016, a Google Maps image shows the barren and sparsely populated landscape at Sacred Stone Camp.
During a cold late-fall night in Standing Rock, N.D., police target a water cannon at protesters who have been trying to block completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Nov. 20, 2016, clash also included police firing tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, Youth Radio correspondent Avery White reported. /Avery White photo
In the 21st century, there should be no more Native American treaty violations or disruption of natural resources on Reservation land. The Dakota Access Pipeline is an affront to both of these fundamental deal-breakers.
The pipeline cuts through land promised to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in an 1851 treaty. The petroleum project also poses an environmental threat to the tribe's primary water source--the Missouri River--which runs along one side of the tribe's Reservation.
The drumbeat of human rights abuses against Native Americans--muted for a generation since conflict rekindled during the 1970s at Wounded Knee in South Dakota--is back with a vengeance with the Dakota Access Pipeline.
In October 2016, armed soldiers and law enforcement officers move in formation during the eviction of protesters who had camped on private land in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Associated Press reported at least 117 protesters were arrested and at least one was injured. /AP photo by Mike McCleary
American indigenous people have been on the receiving end of violence on a societal scale since the arrival of the first European colonists in the early 1600s. Accounts and accusations of germ warfare against Native Americans begin in the Colonial period, with war crimes including mass executions and concentration camps accelerating through the 1800s, then closing with The Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.
The U.S. government has been signing treaties with American indigenous people since the founding of the country, reaching a pact with the Delaware Nation in 1778. Many thousands of Native Americans were segregated into Reservations under hundreds of these treaties, which grant the right of self government to indigenous people, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.
Ever since the first treaties were negotiated, Native Americans have variously staved off or succumbed to incursions targeting treaty-protected territory. Greed is always the motive: land grabbing and resource robbing have driven the exploitation for centuries.
The Dakota Access Pipeline traverses more than 1,100 miles of environmentally sensitive terrain, including two dozen river crossings: full illustration. /New York Timesgraphic, above; Washington Post graphic, below
In September 2016, thousands of protesters march to a burial ground site that bulldozers disturbed during construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Cannon Ball, N.D. /Robyn Beck photo via Getty Images
During the Nov. 20 clash, police fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets on protesters near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota. With the temperature around 26 degrees, hundreds of protesters were treated for hypothermia, tear-gas inhalation, and rubber-bullet injuries including head wounds, according to sacredstonecamp.org. One tribal elder went into cardiac arrest; but medics performed CPR and resusitated him, the website reported. /ABC News image
Rachelle and Bella Bond shown in an image posted on Facebook. In June 2015, Bella "Baby Doe" Bond's body was found on Deer Island in Winthrop, Mass. Rachelle Bond has pleaded not guilty to an accessory to murder charge in the killing of her infant daughter. Her boyfriend at the time of the infanticide faces a first-degree murder charge. /Image via bostoncbslocal.com
If there is any job in state government harder than police officer, it is child-protection service worker.
In news story after news story, even reputable journalism organizations tell only part of the sad tales of the neglected and abused children whose lives are entrusted to state agencies entrusted to protect at-risk kids. An overly simplistic narrative is repeated like a mantra in the media across the country: "The state dropped the ball."
Investigation of N.H. child-protection agency: Swollen case loads are key driver of child-protection service worker turnover and under-staffing. /N.H. Department of Health and Human Services graphic
Here is what the public does not hear or learn in most news stories about the parent-betrayed innocents who have no hope other than the assistance and protection provided by state departments of child and family services:
Personal responsibility: Every one of these children belongs to A FAMILY, not just their biological parents. The front line of defense for neglected and abused children is their family: parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and other adult relatives. The next time you see a news story about state officials failing to protect neglected and abused children, two of the top questions begging answers are, "Who failed these children in the first place? And how many family members are willing to step to the plate and start swinging to protect their kids?" In nearly every family tormented with violence, sexual abuse and neglect involving a child, there is at least one relative who could intervene decisively.
Collective responsibility: The general public gobbles up the incomplete and misleading narrative that media outlets usually publish whenever the state "drops the ball" and fails a child who is harmed or killed. Yet the vast majority of citizens fail to look in the mirror. If taxpayers really care about having state officials intervene to protect neglected and abused children, the agencies assigned to do the job must be fully funded and staffed. A 2003 federal General Accounting Office report listed average case loads for child welfare and foster care workers nationally at 24 to 31 children, twice the case-load level that the Child Welfare League of America recommends. Here in New Hampshire, the Division for Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) has been woefully underfunded and understaffed since the Department of Health and Human Services budget was slashed during The Great Recession. In a staffing report released in October 2016, the average monthly case load for a New Hampshire DCYF protective-service worker was pegged at 54. From December 2015 to July 2016, one third of DCYF's protective-service worker positions were vacant or held by workers in training or on leave.
Unrealistic expectations: Anyone concerned about their personal safety is unlikely to apply for a child-protection service worker job and unlikely to stay in the role for very long. Police officers hate to go on domestic disturbance calls--for good reason. Emotions run high in domestic disputes, especially when children are involved. Police officers are at high risk of injury or death when they respond to domestic disturbance calls, and they carry several weapons to defend themselves along with body armor equipment. In most states, child-protection service workers are not allowed to carry weapons when they visit a troubled home. Fear of death or serious injury may not be a daily concern for all child-protective services workers, but brutal stress and dealings with evil perpetrated on children is on the daily.
Social and behavioral determinants: Coming to grips with the roots of child abuse and neglect is the daunting task facing nearly all of American society: every citizen, government agencies, healthcare providers, educational institutions, law enforcement and the courts. Prevention is under-resourced, particularly substance-abuse treatment and mental health services.
In September 2015, police were sent to the Manchester, N.H., home of Kaitlin Paquette, 22, and her 21-month-old daughter, Sadence Willott. Paquette is facing second-degree murder charges in the bludgeoning death of the infant. The young mother's troubled life illustrates some of the social determinants that are root causes of child abuse and neglect. /image via patch.com
I loathe apologists, and this post is not intended to make excuses for state officials who are untrusted to protect abused and neglected children. I have witnessed state officials "drop the ball" and put children in harm's way, including a Rockingham (N.H.) County judge who slept through portions of a child-custody hearing in which child sexual abuse was alleged.
But I also loathe overly simplistic journalism that amounts to misinformation, people who shirk personal responsibility, taxpayers who lack the conviction to pay for services they claim are essential, and missed societal opportunities to alleviate the suffering.
In August 2015, Vermont case worker Laura Sobel, left, was shot and killed while leaving her office. The woman accused of pulling the trigger, Jody Herring, was allegedly upset over losing custody of her 9-year-old child and also is suspected of killing three family members. /Image via nbcnews.com
U.S. healthcare service delivery is not the best in the world.
This week, the privately funded and nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund (CF) released an international survey that evaluates the delivery of healthcare services and measures of health in 11 industrialized countries, including the United States. The key findings of the international survey should be sobering for Americans:
Citing unaffordable costs of care, 33 percent of U.S. adults reported going without medically advised care, skipping visits to a doctor when they got sick, and not buying prescribed medications. In contrast, only 7 percent of U.K. and German adults reported similar difficulties linked to cost of care.
Low-income U.S. adults fared the worst in the CF international survey in terms of foregoing medical care because of cost, with 43 percent of respondents reporting they had skipped getting care because they could not afford it. Low-income adults reporting similar struggles with cost of care in the other 10 industrialized countries surveyed range from 8 percent in the United Kingdom to 31 percent in Switzerland.
The United States also is an outlier for poor health compared to other industrialized countries, the CF international survey shows. Americans had the highest rate (28 percent) of suffering from multiple chronic conditions.
For decades, opponents of attempts to fundamentally improve the delivery of healthcare services in the United States have spewed patriotically correct rhetoric, claiming that American healthcare is the best in the world. These largely false claims have been largely politically motivated.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) has attempted to make meaningful reforms, and opponents of Obamacare have vilified the law as a nefarious example of government over-reach that undermines the American healthcare sector's greatness.
Now, with Republicans in control of the White House and Congress, efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare are at the top of the political agenda in Washington. Brace yourself for a tsunami of bullshit from politicians seeking to score political points.
Brace yourself for false claims that Obamacare is undermining the greatness of U.S. healthcare services. Any such claims will be largely untrue and designed to achieve political gains that are petty compared to the interests of the American people at stake.
While certainly flawed in some areas such as making healthcare services affordable for all U.S. citizens, Obamacare is a leap forward from the status quo when the law was adopted in 2010. For example, Obamacare makes it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, and it allows families to keep their children covered for medical expenses until they reach age 26.
The politics at play in efforts to reform the U.S. healthcare sector should be sickening for Americans. The economics should be infuriating.
In 2010, when the PPACA was adopted, U.S. citizens spent about $2.6 trillion on healthcare services. Although the pace of ever increasing U.S. healthcare spending has slowed since Obamacare became the law of the land, healthcare spending is projected to account for 20.1 percent of economic activity in the country by 2025.
In a prepared statement accompanying the release of the international survey, CF President David Blumenthal, M.D., highlights the economic bottom line: Americans are getting ripped off.
"The U.S. spends more on healthcare than any other country, but what we get for these significant resources falls short in terms of access to care, affordability and coordination," he says. "We can learn from what is working in other nations. If we're going to do better for our patients, we need to create a healthcare system that addresses the needs of everyone, especially our sickest patients and those who struggle to make ends meet."
A research paper that features more details and analysis of the CF international survey has been published in the journal Health Affairs.
