Tax-Free Ads

The more we wade into this health care debate, the more we uncover things that simply astound. In an article about curbing prescription drug ads on television, there's this nugget:

Meanwhile, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has introduced a bill called the Say No to Drug Ads Act. It would amend the federal tax code to prevent pharmaceutical companies from deducting the cost of direct-to-consumer drug advertisements as a business expense.

“You should not be going to a doctor saying, ‘I have restless leg syndrome’ — whatever the hell that is — or going to a doctor saying, ‘I have the mumps,’ ” Mr. Nadler said in an interview. “You should not be diagnosed by some pitchman on TV who doesn’t know you whatsoever.” [...]

Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said last month that legislators would consider ending the tax break for drug ads as a way to raise money to pay for the health care overhaul. But, after lobbying from broadcasters and newspapers, Mr. Tauzin said, legislators quickly abandoned the idea, concluding that such a measure would not raise significant money.

With lawmakers still fighting over how to finance health care reform, Mr. Nadler said he hoped his bill might find an audience.

“On First Amendment grounds, I am not going to say we will ban” drug advertising, said Mr. Nadler, who represents parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. “But they should not be able to get taxpayers to subsidize it.”

Meanwhile, Representative Daniel Lipinski, Democrat of Illinois, is pushing his own bill that would end the tax deduction for drug company spending on advertisements.

Drug companies get a TAX DEDUCTION for running ads for their drugs. Is this true of Frosted Flakes? Audi? Xerox? Does any other company in America get subsidized for airing commercials to get America to buy their products? It's not "significant money," though, so ending this direct payout from taxpayers to drug companies got shelved.

Set aside for a second the hypochondria that a nightly barrage of ads telling you that you have restless leg syndrome or iron-poor blood or any of a thousand ailments induces. Set aside the self-medication and the boiling down of complex medical issues into 30-second spots showing couples running through a field. Set aside how drug ads increase demand for medications and thus the costs. Set aside that some of these ads run before the Food and Drug Administration even completes their studies of the side effects. You mean to tell me that I'm helping PAY for these things, too?

Fun fact in the article: only the United States and New Zealand allow direct-to-consumer drug advertisements.

...and here's the part where I revise and extend my remarks, as the deduction under discussion is about business expenses and not a straight tax deduction. Maybe I should put a big blinking banner at the top of this one saying IGNORE. They ain't all gems, folks. I will take solace in the fact that, contra Mitch Albom, I know what marginal tax rates are. But just a little solace.

I think the point of having advertisements for prescription drugs at all can still be debated, however, for reasons described above.

I Want My Consultant Check, Obama Campaign

Last night I said that Joe Biden's answer about John McCain's health care plan should be an ad. Today, it's an ad:



"The McCain Health Tax" is a good name for it. It's a $3.6 trillion dollar tax, by the McCain campaign's own estimates. And the goal of it is to eliminate the employer-based health benefit system, to tax it so much that employers won't want to provide it anymore.

Now, some might say that is something we ought to do. But it's replaced with the wilds of the individual health insurance market. Which is prohibitively more expensive than the $5,000 refundable tax credit McCain's going to offer. Businesses pay less for health care because they pool their employees for a better bargaining position. McCain's plan is the insurance industry's version of union-busting.

McCain's philosophy on health care is that Americans have too much of it, and if they only knew the costs, they would purchase less. So, 47 million luckie-duckies without health insurance, and the other 40 million who are underinsured, take note - John McCain wants you to be more frugal. Comparison shop for that leg surgery. Maybe find a discount MRI. (Not that McCain's ever done this - he's been on government-run health care his entire life and hasn't complained too much about it.)

Until now, I don't think it's been made clear how truly radical McCain's health care plan really is. Bush just ignored the problem. McCain wants to actively make it worse.

Campaign Update: CA-04, CA-11, CA-46, AD-26, AD-30

Here are some things happening around the state:

• CA-04: The most important debate evah is tonight! No, not that Biden-Palin thing, it's Calitics Match candidate Charlie Brown and Tom McClintock in Oroville. Meanwhile, the air war has begun in earnest. Brown is up with a 60-second ad featuring a local family as a third-party endorser, explaining their struggles to stay ahead in this economy and how Brown is the right choice. I think it'll play well (Brown has an American Jobs Plan which includes investments in infrastructure and green jobs, which is key to the needed reindustrialization of society). On the other hand, Tom McClintock has decided to use Grandpa Fred.

"The financial crisis our nation faces is complicated, and I don't think anybody's got all the answers," Thompson, a well-known actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee, says in the commercial. "But I'll tell you one thing. I'll feel a lot more confident with Tom McClintock working on it, rather than some amateur."

Shorter Grandpa Fred: "All this book-learnin' and financializin' is hard to figger. Pick the guy who's never voted Yes on a budget in his entire career."

• CA-11: If you want to know why Dean Andal isn't getting any traction in his race against Rep. Jerry McNerney, this quote says it all:

Elected in 2006, McNerney is in a better position for reelection than many expected. But he sits in a district that gave President Bush 54 percent of the vote in 2004, a sure sign that the freshman Democrat ought to be looking over his shoulder.

His Republican opponent, former state Assemblyman Dean Andal, may not be in a position to capitalize, though. The Lodi News-Sentinel reported that an Andal spokesman took the curious position that “it would be inappropriate of Andal to comment on the bailout bill, because he is not in office.”

Yes, it would be terrible to actually give your viewpoints on national issues during a political campaign.

• CA-46: You know that Calitics Match candidate Debbie Cook is gaining traction in her race against nutjob Dana Rohrabacher by this - Rohrabacher has gone negative. He's sent an attack mailer that takes a Cook comment about gas prices out of context and really goes to great lengths to greenwash himself. He mentions his sponsorship of a bill to completely eliminate environmental review for solar projects, which is irresponsible but which he is trying to cynically use as proof of his green energy bona fides. It also calls Cook an extremist liberal who opposes drilling.

What's hysterical is that Rohrabacher sent the mailer to everyone in the district but Democrats, meaning that Greens got it. And I'm told by the Cook campaign that they received numerous calls from Green Party members saying that they were voting for Debbie BECAUSE of the mailer!

In other news, Rohrabacher is certifiably crazy.

According to a September 25, 2008, Pasadena Weekly article by Carl Kozlowski, Rohrabacher believes that the Los Angeles Police Department has for 40 years hidden the fact that Sirhan Sirhan, the lone man convicted of shooting Kennedy, worked as part of a "real conspiracy" of Arabs [...]

In early 2007--39 years after the killing and right around the time that he blamed global warming on dinosaur flatulence, Rohrabacher decided to solve his murder mystery for "the Kennedy family."

Anyone familiar with Rohrabacher knows this story is now headed for unadulterated, wacky bliss.

At some point, Sirhan sent Summer Reese, one of his lawyers, a letter telling her that "a Diana was coming to see him."

Reese told Kozlowski, "Sirhan didn't know it was the congressman because his visitor was presented as a woman."

Rohrabacher. Undercover. In drag. Using the name Diana?

Perhaps this sheds light on why ex-Congressman Bob Dornan (R-Garden Grove) liked to call Rohrabacher "a fruitcake."

I actually know Carl, maybe I'll track him down and interview him about this.

• AD-26: I've noticed a lot of Republicans afraid to debate this year. Here's another example.

Stretching from Turlock to Stocton, the 26th Assembly District is fairly even in voter registration and is a target on both party’s lists. So why would one candidate take a pass on a critical opportunity to face his opponent and make his case to voters? That is the question being asked by Democratic candidate John Eisenhut who was at a League of Women Voters debate in Modesto Friday night. His Republican opponent, Bill Berryhill, had a “scheduling conflict.”

In a conversation with Eisenhut the night after the debate he said that Berryhill didn’t want to debate him. This in spite of Berryhill being quoted by the Modesto Bee saying,

“People deserve some dialogue and to know where we both stand.”

• AD-30: Fran Florez runs against Sacramento in this solid new ad. Is she also running against her own son, State Sen. Dean Florez?

Have You No Decency, Sir?

Yes, I'm fully aware that the answer is no. But today's events in the Obama-McCain campaign maybe put Mr. Maverick in the most dishonorable light yet.

The McCain campaign started by whining incessantly at a comment made by Joe Biden about the Republican Party's extremism on medical research and science:

“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy…and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect,” he said. “Well, guess what folks? If you care about it, why don't you support stem cell research?”

That's a perfectly factual statement, and yet it was called "a new low." This goes along with the hissy fit over a common analogy uttered by Barack Obama today.

(Oh, and Biden's right - the Republican ticket is going to have to defend their unpopular, extremist viewpoints. Tough.)

But if you want to talk about new lows, take a look at this new ad.



The Obama vote that McCain is actually talking about was designed to teach kids how to avoid sexual predators. I don't know if McCain is going for the pro-rapist vote or what, but it would sure fit a pattern:

I shit you not. This article doesn't mention her by name, but check the dateline: Palin was mayor of Wasilla.

That means that under her leadership,

the Wasilla police department [did] charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.

That police chief was Charlie Fannon, Palin's appointee. One can only assume that she supported Wasilla's policy of billing rape victims for their own rape kits--the kits police and hospitals use to collect evidence after a rape--not only because Fannon was her appointee, but also because this was four years into her tenure as mayor and because, let's be honest: in a town of that size, the mayor doesn't get to plead ignorance of policies or public statements of her own chief of police.

The entire ad is ridiculous, actually. It cites articles that describe McCain as far worse on education policy than Obama. But to try and fearmonger to parents that their kindergardeners would be taught sex education when the bill in question would protect kids from sex predators is about the most shameful situation in this entire election cycle.

Here's the Obama campaign's response:

"It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls - a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn't define what honor was. Now we know why," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

But again, until the media fits this into a well-worn narrative of McCain being a compulsive liar, which is patently the case, he will not be punished for these actions. He is appearing as dishonorable as anyone to ever chase the White House. That is an objective truth, and it needs to be reflected in the coverage.

UPDATE: I know that there are about 8 of us that desire this, but Obama's speech on education, actually an articulated and comprehensive policy instead of 30 seconds' worth of soundbites, is here.

F-R-E-E That Spells Ripoff

A word to the Fountains of Wayne-like indie dudes singing about how their lives are miserable because they didn't join up with FreeCreditReport.com: we're on to you.

As you may know (but obviously not enough do), Free Credit Report is a bait-and-switch campaign from the private credit bureau Experian. The omnipresent ad campaign offers the debt-ridden a "free" credit report service to help them regain good credit, barely mentioning that it only comes with enrollment in the never-explained "Triple Advantage" program. Also never explained is that, thanks to 2005 federal law, anyone can get an actual free credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com.

MSNBC.com's Red Tape Chronicles gave a definitive take down of the scam in 2006, one year after Experian was "slapped on the wrist by the Federal Trade Commission for misleading consumers." Reporter Bob Sullivan said, "it’s amazing that FreeCreditReport [dot] com is allowed to continue operating." Perhaps it's not so amazing that MSNBC, like several other cable channels, continues to air those misleading Free Credit Report ads, ad naseum.

I'd love to see a study showing the relationship between the ads on broadcast or cable news, and the stories done on those companies. Actually I don't think I need to see that, I can figure it out for myself. Hence the ads for Lockheed Martin and Boeing on Meet the Press. I am rarely in the market for a sophisticated weapons system, but that's not the point of the advertising.

UPDATE: I guess Smart Car doesn't advertise on MSNBC. I just saw a news story on them explaining that the low-emission vehicle got a 5 out of 5 on side impact tests but did have a problem with the side door unlatching(!) So it got a perfect score, but the lede was that Smart Cars are unreliable and dangerous. When was the last time you saw crash test reports about Pontiacs, Fords, Mitsubishis, or indeed any other vehicle? What you see on the news includes a whole host of different factors, including laziness and whether you have enough video for the story. But certainly, not pissing off advertisers and pissing off their competitors plays a role.

Selling Climate Change

Some have criticized this effort by Al Gore to raise awareness on the need to seriously alter our climate policies, on the grounds that it's a big media campaign and that Republicans are involved, blurring the lines on the issue. As for the type of campaign, it's apparently got a online organizing and alternative-media component as well. And I do think that progressives need to use the marketing tools we've seen conservatives use over the years. People still get most of their news and information from television, after all. And as for the partisan issues, I say that if you can bring Republicans around to the right side of an issue, go ahead and do it; Al Gore is not likely to compromise on the issue, he's staking out his ground and demanding everyone comes to him. Plus, I agree that in this case, it's both sides who are being timid:

"This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public's sense of urgency in addressing this crisis," Gore said. "I've tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it."

Reorganizing the way we live and finding a new energy infrastructure is a big step for any politician to take. The people must lead.

(That's not to say that there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans on this issue, John McCain has an abysmal environmental record punctuated with attempts to blur the issue, and he shouldn't be allowed to get away with that.)

Unbelievably Meta Post Of The Day

This is an amazing piece on the value of full-text RSS feeds for both consumers and producers alike, even though it basically allows you to see an ad-free version of your own site, and ads are typically the sole revenue stream. The short version: people will only read your RSS feed if you offer full text, and the people doing the reading (who are often producers themselves) are more likely to forward stuff around and link to your site directly, therefore raising your page views.

I love RSS feeds, but I also have this crazy obsession with keeping the number of unread stories low, so I find myself frantically reading through them sometimes, instead of internalizing the content, and I have to slow it down. I probably have about 100 active RSS feeds going. And as the author says, you can browse RSS feeds offline, and catch up on all your blogs if you're not around WiFi or if you're on a plane. I've done that as well.

Why I Now Use Facebook

You knew that when Rupert bought MySpace he wouldn't be content with their umpteen revenue streams and would seek to make bank off of people's profiles.

MySpace, the world's largest social networking site and work procrastination tool, will finally start capitalizing on all that personal information its users have been innocently (or, as is the case with many profile photos, not-so-innocently) putting into their profiles.

The New York Times reports that executives at Fox Interactive Media, the New Corporation unit that owns MySpace, have been tinkering for about six months with technology that can tailor ads to the personal information of its 110 million active users.

The company plans to unveil its "completely new paradigm" of online advertising to investors today.

"We are blessed with a phenomenal amount of information about the likes, dislikes and life's passions of our users," said Peter Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media.

Of course, privacy advocates are miffed that these stated life's passions are being used to sell stuff to the passionate folks who naively entered the information without knowing what it would be used for.

"Miffed"? I'd say a little more. There's not even an opt-out for this that I can see. In Rupert's world we're all supposed to be good little consumers while he gets rich off our likes and dislikes. Some would say that the problem is commidifying these Web 2.0 sites necessarily forces you to break that trust with the user. Of course, MySpace was already raking in $40 million a month before this change. Not buying it. Selling people's personal information to make a buck goes too far. MySpace is kind of yesterday's hangout, anyway.

Ad Policy

Now that I've begun to receive a couple Blogads, allow me to present to you, the reader, the D-Day ad policy:

I don't have an ad policy.

I believe my readers are adult enough to look at an ad, and accept or reject it on the merits. It's called the marketplace of ideas.

If you want to give me money that I can funnel to building a progressive majority and passing progressive legislation, I don't care what wacky idea you're pushing.

This has been the D-Day ad policy. Good afternoon.

The Power Of Progressive Activism

In one day, John Aravosis at AmericaBlog went from defining a problem (some really violently homophobic Snickers ads from the Super Bowl) to digging up information on the creators of the problem (the owners of Snickers are billionaire Republican activists), to marshalling support in opposition to the problem (HRC and GLAAD came out against Snickers and Mars Inc.), to getting Snickers to pull the website where the ads lived, and a personal apology from the company for their offensive advertising (me, I think all advertising is offensive, that's why I own a TiVo).

Aravosis is the best we have at building grassroots acitivist campaigns online and getting results. The time frame on this one is incredible. Great work by AmericaBlog.

And it shows that the progressive message is a force in getting desired results. Matt Stoller writes about how the progressive movement proved more powerful than AIPAC in walking back John Edwards.

On January 23, Raw Story published a speech by John Edwards in which he used extremely bellicose language to describe Iran. It was a shocking display of ignorance on the part of Edwards, and the conference itself was composed of neoconservative hawks itching for action against Iran. Steve Clemons dubbed it a 'war party'. Supporters of Edwards, of which I considered myself one until that moment, had a real awakening as to whether he had genuinely learned lessons from his war vote in Iraq.

Over the next few weeks, progressives picked up the speech, and confronted Edwards in various venues, including the blogs and the American Prospect. He was also accosted by supporters, staffers, and advisors, all of whom found themselves with the same level of pause. He has walked back his rhetoric, for which he deserves credit (and a bit of scorn). And then on Meet the Press, according to Digby, John Edwards performed admirably.

This is some powerful stuff. I have always had suspicions of John Edwards, but it doesn't really matter if any of us trust him on a personal level. The issue is what are the structural constraints upon someone's behavior. And now Edwards, because of the blogs and new media outlets like Raw Story, will be confronted with his Iran comments repeatedly, and walked back against hawkishness. These constraints will apply to any candidate, and it's going to be interesting to watch as the public begins to feel its oats around its newly empowered state [...]

So what we saw with Edwards, a brutal assault on his credibility after he kowtowed to AIPAC, was not an isolated pattern. It's what happens when progressives get organized and work to beat back corrupted ideas that flourish in secret. It's what happens when we genuinely listen to Howard Dean and take power for ourselves. We should consider this in 2008, as we move forward. Debate makes our party and our country stronger. Let's not pretend that positivity is a good thing - criticism walked Edwards back from insane rhetoric on Iran. If we can figure out the funding and racial bridges, it can do a whole lot more when the next President takes office.

One point here I think is very right. When the Clintons did their Third Way bit in the 1990s there was nobody on the left credibly constraining them and pushing them in a more liberal direction. Even if Hillary is nominated and elected, the rules of the game have changed. It's not about the candidate so much (although that's incredibly important) as how the progressive movement can be a lever to push people out of the default ways of thinking. People are getting active in their democracy, and once that starts it's very hard to stop. So there's going to be pressure from the left in ways I don't think anyone's really seen in the modern age, not on a national level. Nobody's going to give up fighting fights that need to be fought.

Teach Me To Read!

Via Roy Edroso, here's a bit of whining from James Lileks.

If Madison Av made a commercial about a homecoming vet, the Times piece didn't discuss it. And if they didn't make such an ad: I'm not a bit surprised.

The thing is, two years ago there was a homecoming vet ad. In fact, it was for Budweiser, and that's all it was: a vet walking through an airport and everybody cheers.

Typical conservative saying "Why hasn't this thing that already happened, happened? Figures!"

Not only that, but in the excerpt of the New York Times article which sparked this whine-fest, right there in the first paragraph, is a REFERENCE to the aforementioned homecoming vet ad!

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.

So let's recap. Lileks is upset because (a) Madison Avenue doesn't make patriotic commercials and (b) The New York Times doesn't talk about them. In fact, (a) Madison Avenue does make patriotic commercials and (b) The New York Times talks about them in the first paragraph of a story that's IN HIS BLOG POST.

Now I know why I avoid James Lileks like the plague.

P.S. Everyone's talking about the undercurrent of violence (and in some cases homophobia) in Super Bowl ads, but the oddest one to me was the ad that listed a bunch of accomplishments of black people and then showed a Coke bottle. "Black people are important, drink Coke" would be the short version.