It may take 27 years to undo the damage Beck caused in 27 months
It's great that Glenn Beck is leaving the carnival at Fox News Channel, but undoing the real damage on issues from climate change to high-speed rail could take years
It may take 27 years to undo the damage Beck caused in 27 months
It seems like yesterday that Glenn Beck was the king of all right-wing media -- maybe because it was yesterday, practically. It was just last summer, after all, that Beck graced -- OK, maybe that's not the right word -- the cover of the New York Times Magazine and made national headlines with that big rally on the Lincoln Memorial, a molecule in the giant shadow cast there by Martin Luther King, That was supposed to be the zenith, but I could tell it was the beginning of the end, that Beck was flailing about in search of the next new thing. I saw the vacant stares when Beck proclaimed that his much hyped event had "nothing to do with politics, everything to do with God." There were maybe 100,000 of them, lining the woody banks of the Reflecting Pool, arms folded, watching the planes descend into Reagan National as their leader struggled to hold their attention. Beck was already bleeding TV viewers -- losing more than a third of his audience -- and soon came the stunning news that he was getting yanked from the radio airwaves in Philadelphia and New York.
And now it's (sort of) over, just like that. Beck's descent was so steep and so fast that yesterday's news that his main platform, his nightly show on Fox News Channel, will end this year, probably this summer, wasn't even that shocking. Beck, whose shtick always remained rooted in his past as a "Morning Zoo" shock jock of the '80s and '90s, could never recreate the "shock" of taking on Barack Obama in early 2009 when that backlash was looking for a spiritual guru. Night after night, his rants grew more frenetic -- insulting all of Reform Judaism one night, outlining a conspiracy to create a Muslim "caliphate" the next, or calling trains yet another government plot to control your life.
The crazier that Beck got, the more viewers and advertisers he drove away, until eventually it was too much for his beleaguered bosses at FNC, who may have lost as much as $40 million on the whole fiasco. Liberals, especially those who organized a high successful advertiser boycott of Beck's program, celebrated the news as a victory against political hate speech.
But I think that progressives might want to hold off on that victory lap -- unless it's to get in better shape for the long battle ahead.
Because the truth is that Beck's ouster isn't really the end of the nightmare, but just the beginning of the end. Over the last 27 months, Beck -- and let's be clear that he had a lot of help from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity and Rand Paul and all the folks in the Tea Party Movement -- managed to do incalculable harm to the American body politic, that Beck was exactly like Tom and Daisy Buchanan in "The Great Gatsby" who "smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.."
You'll probably hear a lot about how Beck coarsened the political debate and how his words may have incited violence, but I think the wreckage is a lot more substantive, to actual policies that affect Americans every day. You see, there was a reason that Beck was so fond of a political theory called the Overton Window-- so enamored, in fact, that he made it the title of his (officially) fictional "thriller" novel last summer. The Overton Window is a notion that you can radically move the parameters of political debate by pushing talk to the outer limits, so that ideas that were once deemed as extreme suddenly appeared to be normal.
Ironically, no one mastered the use of the Overton Window better than Beck. With all the focus on the leading edge of Beck's craziness -- the "caliphate" stuff, the flirtation with "the FEMA camps," or President Obama's "deep-seated hatred" of white people -- it's easy to foget how he rationalized once out-there ideas to millions of American conservatives, and how those ideas became ingrained in the Republican agenda that has thwarted progressivism from virtually the day Obama took office.
Let's take the example of climate change. There was a time when mainstream Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Tim Pawlenty thought that manmade climate change was a real problem and that government had a role in fixing it. Then Beck and friends on Fox News Channel and talk radio in went to work. Beck's role in all this remarkably cynical, as he told USA Today Weekend that he personally believed in climate change -- "you'd have to be an idiot not to notice the temperature change," he said -- but said the complete opposite on the air. "Americans know this global warming thing is a scam," he proclaimed on the radio. In 2007, 62 percent of Republicans believed in man-made climate change, but by late last year 53 percent of GOP voters said there is no evidence for it. In Delaware, a band of Beck aficionados called the Delaware 9-12 Patriots played a key role in ending the Senate ambitions and political career of moderate Republican Mike Castle, largely because Castle had voted for the anti-global warming plan known as "cap and trade."
Do you think other Republicans took notice of Castle's fate? Last month, the House Energy and Commerce Committee was asked to accept an amendment to a bill confirming that man made climate change is real. The voted among the GOP majority was unanimous -- 31 votes against global warming.
But then, Beck has the GOP going off the rails on a crazy train, literally. In other industrialized capitals from Paris and Beijing, high-speed rail is seen as a futuristic way to grow the economy with the kind of a zeal that a very different America once held for its space program. But now the political tide has turned against high-speed rail, with talk radio leading the charge characterized scheduled train service as a form of totalitarianized mind control. Earlier this year, Beck summed up the far-right mantra on trains earlier this year when he said: "The trains run on time and there’s a schedule -- and you’ll obey us and go where we want.” It would be laughable -- except it came just as newly elected Tea-Party-darling governors Scott Walker in Wisconsin, John Kasich in Ohio and Rick Scott in Florida killed high-speed rail projects that would have brought federal dollars, and more importantly jobs, to residents of their recession-battered states.
You could go on and on -- the talk-radio jihad against big government that has put gutless Democrats so on the defensive that they no longer fight to protect vital programs but only over whether to agree to "steep" spending cuts or "draconian" ones, or the fear-mongering on terrorism and Gitmo that made quivering congressmen afraid to house terror suspects in our maximum security prisons. Don't think that Beck's nightly burst of insanity didn't have a lot to do with these things, because they did.
Don't believe me? Then ask a fellow in South Carolina named Bob Inglis who was a Republican congressman until he told his constituents to "turn off Glenn Beck," and lost a primary to an upstart who got 71 percent of the vote. Why do you think the Republicans in Washington remain in lock step, even as 90 percent of what they stay in lock step for is bat-guano crazy.
When people look back on this peculiar time in American history and talk about Glenn Beck, and they will, I'm sure there'll be a lot about all the wacky stuff -- the apocalyptic hyping of "God, gold and guns" and the way out conspiracy theories, the leading edge of the buzzsaw and he moved the Overton Window to the far right corner of our national house divided. I'm more worried about the rising temperatures and sea levels, the falling behind other developing nations like China on everything from infrastructure to alternative energy to education, the repeated blows to America's civil liberties and the destruction of a social safety net it took 75 years to build.
The solutions to these problems are out there, but they are stymied by a two-year explosion of madness, the right-wing backlash, which I reported on my book that is called "The Backlash," and it was Glenn Beck that lit the fuse. Yes, his reign on the Fox News Channel may last little more than 27 months. But it may take the rest of us 27 years -- or more -- to undo all of the damage.
===]]] but gosh forbid if they ever did any reporting on cost benefit analysis or where the money to fund this junk would come from [[[===
--snip--
Each dollar spent on a high-quality early childhood program in the Chicago Public Schools yields $4 to $11 in benefits to the economy, according to a new cost-benefit analysis. (Full disclosure: Barbara Bowman, Chicago’s Chief Early Childhood Education Officer, who oversees the program, was a key advisor on our early childhood education report.)
According to a press release from the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study, researchers evaluated the effectiveness of the federally funded Chicago Child-Parent Centers (CPC) by surveying former students and their parents, and analyzing students’ education, employment, criminal justice and child welfare records for the participants through age 26. Since the program was first established in 1967, researchers have been able to follow the effects of the intervention over time. Their work includes a previous study, which found that “children who had been enrolled in CPCs were more likely to go to college, get a full-time job and have health insurance. The same students were less likely to go to prison and less likely to suffer from depressive symptoms.”
--snip--
— Talking point sleuth
Glenn Beck is a joke. And yet, 10 years from now, "The Overton Window" will still be higher on the Amazon list than Will Bunch's newest release, which will be titled "The Unfair Return of American Prosperity -- How President Marco Rubio and the Koch Brothers Deceived Every American into Thinking They Are Employed and Earning a Paycheck, When Really They Are Not, Because Keith Olbermann and Senator EJ Dionne Told Me So."— Mr. Smith- ===]]] but gosh forbid if they ever did any reporting on cost benefit analysis or where the money to fund this junk would come from [[[===
--snip--
The Power of Measuring Social Benefits, ... attempts to test the proposition that effective social spending generates benefits to recipients and the larger society. The initiative is part of a larger effort to help place the nation on a sound fiscal footing by using evidence-based research and cost-benefit analysis to strengthen social policymaking.
Researchers followed young children through adulthood, demonstrating that a carefully designed preschool experience increased the potential for high school graduation and stable employment and income. They also found that a successful preschool experience boosted the amount of federal taxes paid by adults. In addition, the Perry Project saved the government money over time because participants were less involved in the criminal justice and welfare systems than children who did not have the preschool experience. The economic return on preschool was about $16 per $1 invested; 25 percent of total benefits were to the participant and 75 percent to society.
“The financial and human gains from worthwhile social programs can be quite considerable,” said Dr. Richard Zerbe, director of the Benefit-Cost Analysis Center at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs, a MacArthur grantee. “To be able to increase support to the worthwhile programs and to decrease support for those that do not work cannot only result in considerable social savings but can improve human life significantly. Benefit-cost analysis can help us do this.”
--snip--— Talking point sleuth - --snip--
Investments in high quality Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs
consistently and conservatively generate benefit-cost ratios exceeding 3-to-1 or
more than a $3 return for every $1 invested.
ii
ï‚· A 2005 cost-benefit analysis of high quality prekindergarten conducted by the Bush
School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University found that for
every $1 invested, at least $3.50 was returned specifically to Texas
communities.
iii
A Look at Specific Ground-breaking Early Childhood Education Programs
The returns are higher for intensive research-based ECE programs
iv
ï‚· Perry Preschool Project $8.74 return for every $1 invested
ï‚· Abecedarian Early Childhood Intervention $3.74 return for every $1 invested
ï‚· Chicago Child-Parent Center Program $7.14 return for every $1 invested
--snip--— Talking point sleuth - Whether or not one believes the Perry findings are valid, there are several facts that should prevent legislators from basing policy recommendations for universal preschool on the study. First, in more than 40 years, no other program or study has produced results as dramatic as those found for Perry. That suggests that there may have been unique conditions at the Perry Preschool that simply cannot be duplicated. Certainly, as a general principle, science requires an experiment to be replicable before it can be considered valid. Policymakers should be no less cautious when it comes to applying findings to millions of children.
Second, benefits were obtained only for severely disadvantaged children at risk of "r-tarded intellectual functioning"; it is simply inappropriate to generalize the effects of Perry to all children. This is particularly important given the studies that suggest that preschool may actually be harmful to many mainstream children.
Third, Perry children may have outperformed children in the control group, but they still fared poorly compared with mainstream children. For example, nearly one-third of participating children dropped out of high school, nearly one-third of the children were arrested, and three of five participating children received welfare assistance as adults.— RG - "Tens of millions of American working poor. Tens of millions of American children born into poverty. Tens of millions of American seniors who rely on Medicare to stay alive." Those are alot of poor people. Apparently, your beloved social safety nets have created a cycle of dependancy. Well done.— RG
- Nice one Mr Smith! Very Funny!— camtheman
- --snip--
A number of researchers and policy makers have recently argued that the most effective way of dealing with long-run disadvantage and the intergenerational transmission of poverty is through early childhood intervention and in particular policies aimed at supporting the family in early childhood development. In this paper we carry out a randomised evaluation of one such programme aimed at improving the skills and parenting strategies of parents, particularly those who find their child’s behaviour difficult or challenging. Our evaluation shows that the treatment significantly reduced behavioural problems in young children when measured 6 months after the intervention. Furthermore our detailed cost analysis, combined with a consideration of the potential long-run benefits associated with the programme, suggest that the long-run rate of return to society from this programme is likely to be relatively high.
--snip--— Talking point sleuth - TPS I would bet that there are more that are non working poor than working poor. Children born into poverty, it's my fault they can't keep their legs together?— TKL008
- ===]]] but gosh forbid if they ever did any reporting on cost benefit analysis or where the money to fund this junk would come from [[[===
--snip--
This summary brief highlights three reports: the first from Art Rolnick, Senior Vice President and Director of Research at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank; the second from James Heckman, Nobel Prize winner in economics from the University of Chicago; and the latest report from the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation on the longitudinal study of the Perry Preschool Program. These reports characterize the economics of investing in early education by examining state economic subsidies, skill development for individuals in the broader economic picture, and specific new findings from a path-breaking early education program.
[...]
Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewald of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank published a paper examining the returns on investment of early education in Minnesota. The findings have had such broad appeal that the authors have been invited around the country to discuss their findings.
[...]
Rate of Return: The report considered several studies of model programs and, when considering the Perry Preschool program, found a return on investment of 16 percent, with 80 percent of the benefits going to the general public. The data about model programs—such as Perry Preschool yielding more than $8 for every $1 invested—is one way of describing the investment. Rolnick and Grunewald’s use of the rate of return clearly shows the benefits of the investment compared to other investments.
--snip--— Talking point sleuth - http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/nobel-laureate-james-heckman-responds-to-cato-stimulus-analysis/ — RG
Comment removed.- ===]]] Apparently, your beloved social safety nets have created a cycle of dependancy. Well done [[[===
Poverty rates among the elderly are much, much lower than they were before the development of Medicare. Overall poverty rates are much, much lower than they were before the Great Society.
Just think, RG, without all that social welfare, that "parasite class" would be significantly larger. Of course, you would be able to continue freeloading while paying somewhat less in taxes - so there would be an upside.— Talking point sleuth - "Poverty rates among the elderly are much, much lower than they were before the development of Medicare. Overall poverty rates are much, much lower than they were before the Great Society."
Because society overall became wealthier. Its amazing how often you put the cart in front of the horse. The safety nets did not create less poverty, more wealth decreased poverty and allowed for funding of safety nets. Do you think you could just implement SS and Medicare in somalia and expect that poverty rates would go down?— RG - Apparently RG thinks that intergenerational poverty only began existing after social welfare programs were started.
It must be interesting to go through life so completely ignorant of history, facts, or anything not accounted for in extremist, libertarian Utopian fantasies.— Talking point sleuth
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