Let me make this perfectly clear from the get-go: whether or not The Muscovite Candidate is seated in Congress on January 3rd is not the real issue here. Santos is nothing more than a harbinger at best, a red herring at worst. The guy lied. He was exposed, stripped naked in the glare of reality's limelight. The best we can do is hope he doesn't think morals are mushrooms and scruples are money in Russia. The GOP is gonna seat him whether America likes it or not.
Unless the incoming Speaker of the House (whomever that may be) decides otherwise, pathological liar George Santos will have access to classified national security information after he is sworn in tomorrow. Federal legislators are not required to get security clearances. They have always been assumed to [be] people acting in good will and are loyal Americans. Perhaps this needs to change.
Sleep well tonight, America.
There is nothing that can unwind the election....although I'm sure if this was a Democrat, the GOP would be screaming bloody murder....but it doesn't freakin' matter. It's over.
But not entirely; two significant issues are still hanging out there: journalistic integrity (or lack, thereof) and political chicanery. Both of these are dangerous to any future for American democracy. Both damage the election process while undermining confidence in that process. Both are, unfortunately, very subtle subterfuge, and are easily buried in the mulch of politics as usual.
Mr. Santos has admitted that he fabricated key parts of his educational and professional history, after a New York Times investigation uncovered discrepancies in his résumé and questions about his financial dealings. Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether he committed crimes involving his finances or misleading statements. Now, new reporting shows that his falsehoods began years before he entered politics.
That's my highlight in yellow because that line jumped right off the page for me. The line makes it sound like the NYT was breaking the story, that their reporting alone had uncovered this deception when, in fact, they did not. The NYT, who should've reported the questions being raised back in 2020 or again in September 2022, merely jumped on the currently rolling bandwagon. Anyone wanna explain that to me?
It’s possible that the Leader’s reporting fell into a void in part because there are fewer papers to cover the news than in the past. The number of journalists has declined by 60 percent since 2005, according to government statistics.
Research from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University this year found that on average two newspapers are disappearing in the United States every week. The nation has lost more than a quarter of its newspapers since 2005 and is on track to lose a third by 2025. There are now more than 1,600 counties with only one newspaper, typically a weekly.
This tidbit stopped me dead in my tracks. With all the access to media and information, how is it possible the number of journalists has declined by 60% since 2005? One would think newspapers would support remote access for reporters on the ground.
This past week, there's been a lot of attention paid to the lack of local reporting. It is entirely possible that giant conglomerates owning major news organizations dismiss local reporting as unable to generate significant amounts of income. It is also possible that local reporting cuts into advertising revenue for any number of un-great reasons causing advertisers to flee, making newspapers financially unsustainable.
In the case of The North Shore Leader, explained owner Grant Lally, many of the reporters and contributing staff are students and retirees.
Local news doesn’t get much more local than the Leader. A weekly published and primarily run by Grant Lally, an attorney whose parents bought it in the late 1990s, most of the newspaper’s staff works part time and holds down other jobs to pay the bills. “Nobody can survive on local papers alone,” Lally said in an interview.
Lally was particularly well-prepared to cover the race for New York’s 3rd District. He had run for the seat himself in 1994, 1996 and again in 2014. A lifelong Republican, Lally was George W. Bush’s floor manager in Miami during the 2000 presidential election recount.
The Leader’s staff, which includes students and retirees, all are steeped in the largely wealthy local communities on the North Shore of Long Island, which gives them access to local political gossip. “We can boil that down very quickly,” Lally said.
That newspapers and journalists are disappearing cannot be ignored. If only the BIG stories are reported, guys like Santos will continue to exploit that fissure in the system. That should come as no surprise to anyone.
When big news is not covering the elections on the ground, one still has to get information about candidates and platforms. We already know BIG money is running garbage ads on both sides. Fact has given way to spin, shoring up whatever bubble the algorithms think you're in. Social media's not gonna give you an even picture of candidates; it's gonna give you what you wanna hear. Who is gonna know the truth?
One can only hope the nominating parties are investigating their candidates thoroughly. One might hope, after the debacle of Feckless Loser, the GOP and the DNC would be paying close attention to the person wearing the party colors. Clearly that was not the case in Georgia where they nominated and ran a marginally cogent sexual predator for Congress. Let's not forget to mention his inability to form a coherent sentence in a press conference. One would've thought that listening to him during the primaries would've sounded a deafening warning claxon to the party, but alas; it did not.
Perhaps even scarier is that 49% of Georgia's voting population voted for this clown.
The failure of the machine to vet guys like Santos or Kistner (MN2 loser) or Walker (GA Senate loser) should be a warning shot across the bow of all voters. One cannot rely on a political party to tell you the truth about any one candidate. Trusting the downline of names listed by your party, filling in circles on the ballot without recognizing those names, without knowing what those candidates represent, without doing a bit of googling on your own does not give you a "Hey, I-didn't-know-that's-what-he/she-believed" hall pass; just the opposite. You own your vote.
For the record, the failure of the press isn't gonna bail you out here, either. While the Washington Post does a great job fact-checking lots of stuff, they didn't do squat here. Of course, some say Santos was within the purview of the New York Times and Newsday; it's safe to say both papers failed to cover news important to their local readership. In turn, both must be held accountable for that.
Along with the voters.
What can you do? Support your local paper. Read it. Write to the editor. Maybe contribute an op-ed piece or a letter to the editor. Pay attention to your local caucus. Write to your Congressclown. It's easy enough to do...every one of their websites has a contact form. And even if you write how much you hate what they're doing, it gets read.
I've said this a hundred times: silence is complicity. You cannot draw the drapes and pretend this doesn't impact you. Guys like Santos will have access to classified information about this country. If you're okay with the very real possibility he's capable of selling information, sit back, relax and do nothing. We already learned the hard way on January 6th, 2021, that not every elected official in this country has our best interest at heart.
What you do with this information/rant is up to you. We can only hope We, the People, are committed to the preservation of democracy.
The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
We lost one of the great icons of news media this past week.
Women in news really do stand on her shoulders.
Ms Walters provided a great roadmap to success in just about any endeavor:
Do your homework.
Choose your battles.
don't be the one who complains about everything.
Barbara Walters (1929-2022)
We need to make sure our support of local journalism includes our dollars. Especially the small, neighborhood presses. They are the ones to cover local city council and school boards, where all politics begin. Reporters need to be paid and ad sales can't cover all of this.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree, but also understand the conundrum of paper v. electronic. Getting people to pay for online news is tough. There is no easy answer.
DeleteVery scary when one knows that the local newspapers don't have the money as do the large ones and the small ones are going down. But who is controling the large ones?.When the press is controlled by someone else, we better know who that is.We live in a Democratic country for now and people like Santos have their rights even though it is their "wrongs" that create the problems like trump's lying.
ReplyDelete