And Big Media Wonders Why We Don't Trust Them
Tamara Baker versus ABC's The Note concerning Howard Dean, George W. Bush and damned near everything!
by Tamara Baker

Dec. 4, 2003 -- SAINT PAUL, MN (apj.us)

Gentle Reader:

The following was sent by Yours Truly to the folks at ABC's The Note website. I thought you might enjoy seeing it as well.

On December 3, 2003, you reamed out Dean for (among other things) his 'error-filled' explanation of why he (like every other freaking governor, including Bush) had his records sealed after he left office.

The errors, my dears, lie with y'all, not him.  You assume a bunch of things that just aren't so. 

The first wrong assumption:

1) Bush's records are, indeed, readily accessible, as the Bushistas claim.  They're not.

The following incident is typical of what happens when somebody actually tries requesting some of the Bush records:

Publication of Berlow's article prompted the Chronicle to file a similar open records request, asking for all of Bush's death-penalty clemency memos, as well as all death-penalty memos prepared for Gov. Rick Perry by General Counsel Bill Jones.

Instead of releasing the documents, J. Kevin Patterson, Perry's assistant general counsel, appealed our request to the AG's office, asserting that both Bush's and Perry's memos (including those already disclosed) are "privileged" attorney-client communications and therefore legally exempt from public disclosure...

On Nov. 30, 2002, in the next-to-last open records decision penned by then-Attorney General John Cornyn, he opined that whether a document will be considered privileged attorney-client communication -- and thus exempt from public disclosure -- depends more on the facts surrounding the document's creation rather then on the document's content. As such, whether the document contains "factual information" that would otherwise be public matters less than a determination of whether the document was: 1) intended as a "confidential" or privileged document, and 2) whether the document's confidentiality has been maintained...

Guess what?   This means that the Bushistas (who still run the Texas Lege) can basically say that everything they want to hide is privileged.

Don't believe me?  Check this out, from the same article:

In the future, if Gov. Perry, for example, decides that a document out of Gov. Bush's files -- an opinion by Al Gonzales might be a good example -- should be treated as confidential, it will now be submitted to the attorney general for a ruling (the same attorney general who just endorsed the idea of attorney-client privilege for state officials). In the past, there was a presumption of openness -- and with all due respect to his position, the governor would have been told to go fish. Now -- gradually, and then abruptly -- Gov. Rick Perry has laid his hands on the keys to Gov. George W. Bush's filing cabinet...

"They're trying to get around the open records law," commented a prominent Texas academic archivist (who asked to not be identified), when informed of the changes in progress. That opinion is held by others as well. Steve Hensen of Duke University, who was president of the Society of American Archivists in 2001, notes similarities between what is happening in Texas now and the firestorm in Washington when, shortly after taking office, President Bush took authority for disclosure of prior administrations' papers out of the hands of national archivists and transferred that power to the White House. The presumption was that the second Bush administration wanted to protect the first Bush administration -- but there were also classified Reagan administration files scheduled for disclosure that were suddenly made subject to presidential veto, in perpetuity. The same secrecy two-step is now under way in Texas...

The Bush papers were originally estimated to require three to four years for processing in Austin, but the principal archivist on the project, Tonia Wood, believes now that the work will take closer to five years to complete...

As time passes, one eventuality becomes clearer and clearer. Part of the agreement reached with the president is that, once cataloged, the Bush files will go where he wants them. By the time processing of the documents is complete in Austin, there'll be a George W. Bush Presidential Library somewhere, or certainly plans for one...

Now that we've exploded the Bush's-records-are-open-to-anyone myth, let's look at the second wrong assumption:

2) Bush freely and willingly released the records.  (Er, not quite.)

The truth is that he released them only because he was forced to release them after legal action, as the article quoted above shows.

The third wrong assumption:

3) Everyone thinks that Dean should go against nationwide gubernatorial precedent and release the records. 

His Republican successor in Vermont doesn't think so, and defends Dean thus:

Governor Jim Douglas says that he doubts that Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is trying to conceal any major secrets in the gubernatorial records that have been sealed for a 10-year period. Douglas says there's a good reason why some records are taken out of public view for a number of years.... Douglas says he's not sure what the appropriate time frame is for a governor to seal their records. He says a six-year period was chosen for Madeleine Kunin because she had been in office for that amount of time. 

In other words, since Dean was governor of Vermont for eleven years, a ten-year period is, if anything, short by a year.

Any questions?  I didn't think so.

Now, on to another of your assumptions:

You Note folks have been wondering out loud for months about how Dean, to your eyes, is getting off scot-free with regard to scrutiny.  Oh, come now. 

Examine, if you will, how Candidate Bush in 1999 got a free pass from Tim Russert (aka Employee of GOP stalwart Jack Welch) on NBC's Meet the Press on the very same question (troop strength) that Russert would later harangue Dean about.  (Note, also, that Russert this June ambushed Dean with bogus, Bushista numbers especially on Bush's tax cut.)

It's not just Dean that's been getting bashed while Bush gets free-passed.  During the last election cycle, the US press gleefully and uncritically printed as fact every single talking point the RNC saw fit to toss their way about Al Gore, while giving Bush the journalistic equivalent of fellatio.  

The US press, which had spent the better part of the past decade working with the Republicans to get Americans worked up over an old Arkansas land deal where the Clintons did nothing wrong other than losing their shirts, suddenly decided that Al Gore's earth tones were a bigger story than Bush's raping the Harvard endowment fund.  Or UTIMCO.  Or Harken.  Or Arbusto.  Or deserting his Air National Guard unit for nearly two years during Vietnam.  

Why is it that business deals of Democrats are always suspect, but business deals of Republicans are always A-OK? 

Is it, perhaps, for the same reason that Gary Condit was hounded out of office in disgrace, while Joe Scarborough retired and grabbed a cushy berth at MSNBC/GOP? 

Or why someone like Howard Kurtz loves to point out to the entire nation when even minor Democratic pols can't keep their zippers zipped, but is oddly silent when Philip Giordano, the Republican mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut and Joe Lieberman's rival for his Senate seat, gets thrown in prison for child molestation?

The real question isn't "Why are Dean's people backing him despite his alleged gaffes?"  The real question is "Why has the US corporate media, ever since 1999, treated Bush far more gently than ANY Democratic candidate of the last thirty years?"

I think you know the answer.

We Deanizens certainly do -- which is why we know better than believe, without checking and double-checking, a single word you say.

Sincerely,

Tamara Baker