george zornick

September 2012 interview with PBS:

We will also talk about some of the tough decisions the president has made over the past four years to move this country forward. It wasn’t always politically popular, but it was the right thing to do, from saving the auto industry, or beating back fierce lobbying by the big banks and Wall Street to pass Wall Street reforms.

The Wall Street Journal, today:

Banks still seen by some as “too big to fail” are hiring influential players, including Tony Fratto, Stephanie Cutter and Ed Gillespie, to “deflect regulatory pressure.”

At 3 p.m. today, I’ll be joining a Nation video live chat called “Who Is Buying the Election?” Here’s perhaps helpful a list of things I’ve been reading this week along those lines. Come by the chat with some thoughts + questions!

‘Super PACs’ Finally a Draw for Democrats, NYT, 9/27

With the election just weeks away — and millions of dollars in advertising time booked but not yet paid for — Democratic super PACs are finally drawing the kind of wealthy donors who have already made Republican outside groups a pivotal force in the 2012 campaign.

President Obama flips money script on Mitt Romney, Politico, 9/21

Headed into the home stretch of the 2012 presidential race, it is Obama who looks to have an edge, thanks to an awakening donor base, aggressive summer spending on ads and ground game, and a Romney hoarding strategy that left him with plenty of cash in the bank, but not much to show for it. 

Sheldon Adelson: Inside the mind of the mega-donor, Politico, 9/24

Blunt and chatty during a two-hour interview in his owner’s suite at The Venetian resort on the Las Vegas strip, Adelson said he will continue to ante up — “whatever it takes” to defeat President Barack Obama, as he repeatedly put it. “I don’t believe one person should influence an election,” he said as he dined on salmon and mixed vegetables in his conference room, with a napkin tucked over his lavender tie. “So, I suppose you’ll ask me, ‘How come I’m doing it?’ Because other single people influence elections.” 

Don’t sweat the Super PAC cash, Washington Post, 9/21

These people have tens of millions of dollars to spend, but there’s no guarantee that they have any sense of what makes a campaign effective, or what kind of ads would work best against a candidate who is familiar to nearly 100 percent of Americans. What’s more, they don’t have the capacity to run a ground operation, and because they can’t coordinate with the campaigns, they can’t tailor their message to what Team Romney wants.

Super PACs get new use — as lobbying arms on Hill, Politico, 9/25

From autism research to dentists, a growing number of issue-based organizations are preparing to use these powerful political committees not for their prescribed purpose — advocating for the election or defeat of candidates — but as de facto lobbying arms on Capitol Hill. 

After last night’s debacle in Seattle, riled-up commentators and fans are calling for a boycott of the league until the referee lockout is ended. (Boycott the NFL Now!, says the Huffington Post). 

It’s certainly a justifiable emotional reaction, and maybe you’re on better moral ground too. But if you think boycotting the NFL will hurt their wallets—and thus precipitate a deal—you’re wrong. 

The problem is that the league has already been paid, or is contractually promised, a vast, vast majority of the revenue for games that haven’t happened yet. Consider:

(1) In December, the NFL signed a $27.9 billion deal with Fox, CBS, NBC through 2022. They already have contracts locked in with ESPN and DirecTV. So they’re getting that money. The networks have already agreed to pay the NFL for the right to air football, and they plan to compensate themselves by selling advertisements during the games —so a fan boycott of the broadcasts would only hurt the networks. And that’s if they haven’t already sold most of the ads at pre-determined rates for this season, which they likely have. 

(2) Alternately, you could not attend the games. But most NFL franchises have already sold out the season, and thanks to revenue sharing, that money supports the ones who haven’t. Moreover, even if a team hasn’t sold out their home games yet, they’ve got to be pretty close. Most stadiums are majority-season ticket holders: in Carolina, for example, season tickets take up all but 7,000 of the 73,000 seats. So that money’s locked in too. The ones really hurt by game-day boycotts would be the low-wage vendors in and around the stadium who depend on those eight Sundays of the year to generate sales. 

Those are the two main ways fans can boycott the league, and neither would be effective. There are other revenue streams, like merchandise, but that’s not too vulnerable to this momentary fan unrest. Nobody buys a jersey every week. 

I would actually argue that, aside from being impotent, a boycott actually helps the league. The main thing forcing the NFL into bargaining now is the embarrassment of what’s happening on the field. They’d probably prefer you don’t actually watch. 

Are you more careful about what you say now than when you were younger?

[…] You are going to be misquoted, misjudged, or whatever, but this started early. Joe Klein said Do the Right Thing was going to incite riots.

In New York Magazine, actually.

Your man did me, you know. Like, this is going to hurt David Dinkins’s bid to be the first African-American mayor. I remember this one line: Opening this weekend, “in not too many theaters near you, one hopes.” So it is not new.

And now the president says it’s the film he took his wife to on their first date.

Yeah, I’d say Joe Klein maybe had that wrong.

(via).