Free Republic

I have read BusinessWeek regularly for 30 years. I began reading it on the advice of the late Michael Harrington, the socialist agitator and author of The Other America. Mike used to pepper his speeches calling for capitalist reform with supporting evidence from this eminently capitalist journal, which he regarded as the best of the newsmagazines. BusinessWeek became my window into what Marx called "the relations of production." In the 1980s, it was the place to follow the debate over deindustrialization and the Japanese challenge; in the 1990s, it was the best source on globalization and the new cyber-economy. And...

September 29, 2006 -- BUSINESS WEEK'S new Edit or-in-Chief Steve Adler is slashing and burning. In its second round of cutbacks in less than a year, the McGraw-Hill flagship lowered the boom on 12 editorial staffers and bid adieu to two other veterans. Mark Morrison, a former managing editor who had spent 32 years at the weekly, is retiring. Come January, he is going back to Austin, Tex., to teach journalism at his alma mater. Morrison was at one point considered a possible successor to Steve Shepherd as editor-in-chief, but when the nod instead went to Wall Street Journal veteran...

Investors Fleeing GOP Investors at all income levels are increasingly turning away from the Republican Party, endangering the GOP's hold on power. According to pollsters, 35 percent of voters belong to the "investor class," which includes not only wealthy individuals but also union members, mutual fund holders and a growing number of minority-group Americans. They comprise a group that helped put Republicans in power "but now seems restless," Business Week reports. President Bush got the votes of 61 percent of investors in 2004, but now only 43 percent give him a favorable job approval rating, according to a recent Zogby...

The activity du jour for Business Week’s Capitol Hill correspondent Eamon Javers seems to be systematically “outing” conservative columnists as corporate shills. On January 13, BusinessWeek’s web edition ran an article by Javers deceptively titled, “A Columnist Backed By Monsanto.” The article begins, “Michael Fumento's failure to disclose payments to him in 1999 from the agribusiness giant has now caused Scripps Howard to sever its ties to him.” What Javers is talking about is that the Hudson Institute, the conservative organization that employs Fumento as a senior fellow, received a book grant of $60,000 from Monsanto in 1999. The “payment”...

Berman was supposed to be part of the Blackwater team that was in Fallujah on that ill-fated day. But a last minute schedule change placed him in the south of Iraq at Camp Bucca, near Umm Qasr. On the highway to Baghdad the following day, Berman received the phone call: A Blackwater detail had been hit. Four men were dead.

Today's example of MSM bias: this Business Week article by Leo Hindery, Jr., titled "Tragedy and Telecom." The article is subtitled, "How the Bush Administration's antiregulation stance contributed to the post-Katrina communications collapse -- and what should be done now." Mr. Hindery's indictment of the Bush administration is the latest effort to blame the President for just about everything associated with Hurricane Katrina. Its reasoning is so fragmentary, however, that Hindery never does explain why "the Bush administration's antiregulation stance" had anything to do with the hurricane or its aftermath. That doesn't stop Hindery from dropping the usual snide comments....

A number of interesting updates on recent stories covered here: --- Alan Colmes wisely took the opportunity to question Bill Clinton on future talk radio plans, according to Radio & Records and All Access today. Clinton scoffed a bit, pouring some cold water on recent reports, but left the door open for a potential program.

Will former President Bill Clinton soon take to the nation's airwaves? This potentially earth-shattering radio industry announcement was buried in a lengthy Business Week report on the future of Clear Channel Communications, America's largest station owner and program syndicator.

Demography, as the saying goes, may be destiny. But an archaic system of representation that includes a winner-take-all selection of electors and eschews proportionate representation at the local level is denying a voice to political minorities. Are you perchance one of the 2.4 million hardy Democrats living in Texas? You might as well hang up your political spurs. Since the Reagan era, Texas has become solidly Republican. Or perhaps you're a GOPer in New York or California, home to a combined 8.5 million members of the Grand Old Party. Tough luck, pal. Many of the distortions can be traced to...