One of the things I paid no attention to this week was the shocking (SHOCKING, I SAY!) expose by Tucker Carlson’s vanity project in which they have unearthed ALARMING ANONYMOUS INSIDER REPORTS that a liberal media advocacy group is investigating Republicans AND MAYBE POSSIBLY ACTING ON THAT INFORMATION. No. Really?
No one could have predicted that, what with their mission statement, and all (hidden on their website under the “ABOUT US” link):
Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation — news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda — every day, in real time.
I’m gobsmacked.
Suffern ACE
And they did it so secretively. What with that web page that was so hard to find, and all.
scav
2004! Holy Response Time Batman!
mclaren
It’s a sinister conspiracy. A conspiracy, I tell you! A CONSPIRACY!
General Stuck
I read this a few days ago, and just shook my head at the stoopid. I don’t know anything about the tax exemption thing, but this is just another pathetic GOP effort to shut down the next boogyman liberal group saying bad things about wingnuts.
I guess it’s just Media Matters turn to get the ACORN treatment. Blame it on the seedy side of the internet effect and bored republicans.
jl
Is that fake fat cop who keeps pointing the radar gun at me par of this plot?
Is that really a radar gun, or something else ! ?
Glad I have my lead undies on. Whew!
MikeJ
Yeah, I’ve noticed an uptick in faux outrage about them spilling through the buffers I keep between myself and right wing media. Like I’ve seen three or four instances of wingers complaining about them in the past week.
Makes you wonder who they have the fat dossier on.
burnspbesq
When you run out of material, back away from the keyboard and go listen to Little Feat. This is a double bacon yawnburger with an extra helping of mundane sauce.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: From you, that is hilarious. No offense intended, really.
Spaghetti Lee
Call me crazy, but I actually prefer my wingnuts to be raving, bloodlust-fueled half-cavemen than prissy pants-pissing vaudeville acts like Carlson. “Oh dear, liberals on teh internets saying mean things! Oh, someone fetch my smellingsalts!”
Man the fuck up, Tucker. And I mean that in a completely non-heteronormative way.
Warren Terra
I liked the evidence that the Obama campaign might have read a press release put out a month or three previously by Media Matters. Conspiracy!
burnspbesq
If you were wondering how moving apparel manufacturing back to the United States would affect prices, Land’s End has the answer for you in its new catalog.
Sixty dollars for a plain gray cotton sweatshirt.
Steve
I think they were hoping to follow up on the smashing success of the Journolist episode. You know, where they publish a lot of not-too-interesting revelations and then everyone keeps saying in unison, “JOURNOLIST! OMG THEY R DISCREDITED!” Except Media Matters truly doesn’t care.
PurpleGirl
@burnspbesq: So how much was it before?
Villago Delenda Est
Yawn. Tucker Carlson is such a tool. Like Media Matters bothers to hide what they’re doing…they’ve got a perma hardon for Faux, and with good reason…I’m half surprised that Xinhua News Agency hasn’t sued Murdoch for look and feel infringement.
Martin
@MikeJ:
GOP enthusiasm is down. Time to manufacture a new enemy.
David Koch
This is like Germany 1939!
Soonergrunt
@mclaren: Recognized your own work product, have you?
PurpleGirl
@efgoldman: Yup, very true. Apparel with a brand name is overpriced no matter where it’s made.
kdaug
@General Stuck:
I think that’s a ding.
Flailing is an ugly thing.
I expect it to get worse.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Because no one would pay?
El Cid
@burnspbesq: Of course, on occasion, people other than Lands End makes clothes in the U.S.
amk
in real fucking time, no less. fucking paranoids.
Recall
Do they have team of monkeys working ’round the clock on this?
FuriousPhil
A group that seeks to discredit and repudiate false claims by Republicans? Isn’t that the internet?
Do they do this when Republicans make up shit about other Republicans too? Fair and balanced! We demand equal time!
The Obama campaign has something like this, and I’ve been tempted to sign up. Feels like I’m pissing on a house fire sometimes though. Somewhat heartened by the comments on CNN and other MSM sites though, seems like the charade is wearing thin. Facebook comments are an entirely different animal though.
GregB
We need to stop these proxy wars and have an ultimate fighting match set up between the Koch Brothers and George Soros.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Well, I don’t fucking know then. And this is odd for me.
Martin
@burnspbesq: I don’t buy that. There’s not much in the way of large scale textiles left in the US, so you have to work through smaller outlets that lack any real economy of scale or efficiency. If that work comes back, that will change and prices will drop – probably a fair extent.
Now, that doesn’t mean that prices will be as low as indonesian made clothing, but I don’t think $60 represents anywhere near a median price for that item made in the US.
In somewhat related news, the focus on Apple/Foxconn is helping to drive up wages at Apple’s assemblers. They’re getting another 25% raise. What people don’t realize is that now HPs assembler, and Samsungs, and Sony’s, and Acers, are also getting a 25% raise. Until recently, Apple didn’t have the ability to move all of those other companies wages upward, but now they do. Apple can just absorb those costs, but the other companies can’t, so expect to see the price of PCs and such go up a bit. I don’t expect this will bring any more jobs to the US, but it won’t hurt. It helps close the gap a bit at least.
amk
Did they turn on the light themselves ? That would be a place to start.
R Johnston
Tucker’s unsourced two-and-a-half year old email memo wasn’t just “hey, let’s monitor bias in the media.” It was Michelle Malkinesque, countertop leering creepy.
Of course it was also almost certainly a fake, being an unsourced two-and-a-half year old email memo. The only question is whether someone on Tucker’s staff faked it or whether an O’Keefe type faked it and forwarded it anonymously.
Forging email is spectacularly easy to do, especially if someone as retarded as Tucker Carlson is going to be charged with detecting the forgery.
Debbie(aussie)
Sorry to go ot, but I just wanted to thank those who spoke to my comment yesterday regarding the US and possible split along fundie lines. Much appreciated. So hard to be in differnt time zone without insomnia (at least at the mo).
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
@efgoldman:
1944. Here it is at manybooks.net.
Mnemosyne
Apparently David Brock is kind of an asshole to work with. What makes him worse than Andrew Breitbart or Bill O’Reilly or, heck, Tucker Carlson, I’m not sure, but for some reason we’re all supposed to care deeply about Brock’s assholishness rather than his work.
burnspbesq
@PurpleGirl:
$40.
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
I would have guessed $45, knowing Lands End prices. It doesn’t seem like that much of a premium, but I’m not really in the market for a gray sweatshirt right now.
Paddy
Hmm, might it have anything to do with the preview copy of “The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine” I received in my mail today? Writen, btw by Mr David Brock and a MM colleague?
Fox ramped up the MM “discrediting” about a month ago and now Bow Tie Boy and his HuffPo wanna be chime in? Not that it sounds coordinated or anything…
BTW, the book comes out Tuesday.
Paddy
@MikeJ: See my comment at 39.
Petorado
I worked with a reporter from Media Matters for a period of roughly six months on some natural resource issues in which my organization had great expertise. I’ve worked with a lot of reporters over the past decade and a half and the MM researcher was the most dogged, thorough, curious, and professional person I’d seen. I’d always thought well of those guys, but all of us that interfaced with this reporter were just blown away. Those guys are the real deal, so I can see how poor Tucker would be having some sleepless nights with them on his tail. Good on Media Matters for afflicting hacks like Carlson.
Judas Escargot
In other news: Tucker Carlson is a fucking worthless douchebag who’d be the “key holder” for the restroom at a truck stop or a gas station if it weren’t for his mommy’s connections.
Ok, I feel much better now.
cthulhu
I think it is fine to question David Brock’s behavior to a point. Obviously this was a guy who was willing to sell his soul out to the conservative noise machine in the past. And certainly I have little sympathy for a boss who’s borderline abusive to his employees.
BUT, given this is coming from a) from Tucker Carlson and b) with no one really on the record, one suspects far more smoke than fire. And I really don’t get the significance that the MSM picks up MM’s stuff. MM largely does debunking and expose. Frankly, the MSM should do more of that. The type of conspiracy we should be concerned about would be, oh, I don’t know, NYT reporters pumping up questionable intel in the run up to a potential war. But maybe I’m crazy to think this way.
WaterGirl
@Martin: If you get a chance, could you explain why all of the wages go up because Apple raises theirs?
GregB
@Debbie(aussie):
Hey, how can you sleep while your bed is burning?
By the way, is Garrett still in the Australian government?
Debbie(aussie)
Yes GregB, he is :) Demoted recently from environmental minister now minister for education early childhood and youth.
Martin
@WaterGirl: Everyone uses shorthand to say that the Foxconn employees are Apple employees, because they’re assembling Apple’s products, but they’re really Foxconn employees. Apple is only recently Foxconn’s largest contract. For the last 10 years, almost every Intel logic board, HP computer, Kindle, XBox, PS3, Wii, Sony device, Samsung device, and so on were made by the same employees at Foxconn. Nobody gave a shit about those employees doing the same work at the same low wages until Apple arrived – for whatever reason. Same goes for Pegatron and the other assemblers.
Apple drives a hard bargain with Foxconn on price because Foxconn is also assembling the products for Apple’s competitors, often in the same building, and if HP can get their machines assembled for a lower price by the same assembler, that makes them more competitive when you go to buy the item. But Apple was only a fraction of the contract work for these guys for quite a long time. If Apple pressured them to raise wages (because they were being pressured in the press) then Foxconn needs to raise wages for everyone – for all the employees also making HP computers and Intel logic boards and so on. One of the benefits of the assemblers is that if Apple’s sales go down, the employees can move off of the Apple lines and onto the HP ones – but their wages can’t go up and down daily based on what they work on – that’s not how these companies operate. So Apple’s ability to press for higher wages really depends on how important they are as a contract, and whether Foxconn is willing to lose other companies to keep Apple. If Intel doesn’t want to pay the higher wages, they may go to Pegatron instead.
But Apple’s gotten MUCH larger. They’re now so large that many companies almost can’t survive without keeping Apple as a customer. And that gives Apple some new power. And the publicity around their assemblers puts even more pressure not just on Apple to push, but also on everyone else to push too. So Apple pushes Foxconn to raise wages, Foxconn complies out of fear of losing Apple, and those wages spread out to the Foxconn employees that work on everyone else’s products as well. Now, Intel could go and find another assembler, but odds are that Apple is also one of their largest contracts as well, and Apple is going to push their wages too to similar levels as Foxconns.
These huge assemblers have basically commoditized labor for electronics companies. They benefitted from low wages across the entire sector, and when wages get lifted, they pretty much get lifted for everyone.
The effects on consumer prices are really based on margins. Most consumer electronics companies have relatively thin margins. Amazon’s margins on the Kindle are zero, or even negative. Every additional dollar in labor they need to pay is a dollar of straight up loss for Amazon. For others, their margins are often 5%-10%. They can absorb some labor costs, but not much, and they’re likely to raise prices as a result. Apple’s got huge margins. Even if the cost to assemble an iPhone goes up $20, they’ll still make a ton of money on the device, so they aren’t too worried about that, but $20 is all RIM makes on a Blackberry and it’s $20 more than what Amazon makes on a Kindle.
And Apple might even benefit some from this move if they’re willing to trade some of their profits to push everyone else’s costs up. They do that ALL the time. Apple is extremely aggressive with their supply chain and they are all too happy to price everyone else out of the market, or simply to buy the entirety of what the market is producing. They’ve basically cornered the flash memory market and much of the SSD market as well, the touch panel market, the high-end battery market, and the aluminum machining market. Several years ago they put a few billion dollars out to buy worldwide production of flash memory for 6 months in order to keep up with iPod demand. Competitors had to cancel products because they couldn’t get components at all. They might actually be cornering the assembly market now.
If so, and your interest is in seeing higher wages for these workers, then this is likely good news. There’s a lot of pressure building on Apple to address this, they have headroom in their profit margin to do so, and they know that the move will come mostly at the expense of their competitors. If your interest is in cheap electronics, this is likely bad news, because Apple might be gaining even more control over the market (and let’s not lose sight of the fact that all of these companies have the capacity to take assembly back in-house if they want control). If your interest is in seeing jobs come back to the US, this probably won’t make any real difference because the benefits of being in China aren’t the labor costs, but the speed with which they can bring product to market. We’re going to have to bring more of these component manufacturers back to the US first.
Shalimar
@WaterGirl: Apple isn’t raising their wages, the Chinese company they contract with for alot of their products is. And the other companies share the same contractor to at least some degree.
MonkeyBoy
umm, the Media Matter book “The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine” is going to be release soon so Fox and allies have heavily upped the attacks on Media Matters in an attempt to poison the well or defuse the book for the right wing.
If you go to the book’s Amazon Tags page, you can see a lot of wingers have been active. If you like to vote up or down tags I would recommend voting up the crazier tags such as takeyourglockto workday, and herrgoebelscall youroffice because they show how unhinged Fox supporters are.
Nerull
Using Lands End as an indicator of actual cost changes makes about as much sense as using Monster Cable. The cost of their products is not determined by manufacturing costs, but by marketing departments.
WaterGirl
@Martin: Wow, Martin. The breadth of your knowledge never ceases to amaze. Thank you so much!
Shalimar, I also appreciated the cliff notes version.