Truth in Advertising on the Newspaper Bailout

April 8, 2009

pravda

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

You may have heard that Sen. Benjamin Cardin is proposing a government bailout of the newspaper industry.

Some enterprising legislator who loves free speech should propose an amendment to the bill stating that any newspaper accepting its terms shall be required to change its name to PRAVDA. Truth in advertising!

Actually, “bailout” may not be technically the right term. Cardin swears his plan involves “no infusion of federal taxpayer money.”

Note the word “federal.”

Instead of handing out cash, which would make government the de facto owner of America’s newspapers (as the examples of GM and AIG show all too clearly), Cardin would allow newspapers to reorganize as nonprofit “educational” institutions. But since the law already allows nonprofits to publish and distribute their own newspapers if they want to, the only possible rationale for Sen. Cardin’s proposal is that it allows newspapers to continue charging money to cover their costs while also recieving tax-free subsidies.

And who would be doing the subsidizing? Even if government (at the state and local level) doesn’t do it directly, it’ll do it indirectly. Politicians have lots of wealthy friends who would love to have their own pet newspapers.

In fact, Cardin’s proposal is actually worse than a direct government subsidy. At least a direct subsidy would be on the books and subject to disclosure, oversight, and some level of accountability.

Cardin invokes the old Jeffersonian saw that it would be better to have newspapers without government rather than government without newspapers. Yes – but either of those would be better than having government newspapers.

Even though the proposal is obviously going to go nowhere because it fails the laugh test, you’ll still get a lot out of reading Michael Kinsley’s deconstruction of it:

Few industries in this country have been as coddled as newspapers. The government doesn’t actually write them checks, as it does to farmers and now to banks, insurance companies and automobile manufacturers. But politicians routinely pay court to local newspapers the way other industries pay court to politicians. Until very recently, most newspapers were monopolies, with a special antitrust exemption to help them stay that way. The attorney general has said he is open to additional antitrust exemptions to lift the industry out of today’s predicament. The Constitution itself protects the newspaper industry’s business from government interference, and the Supreme Court says that includes almost total immunity from lawsuits over its mistakes, like the lawsuits that plague other industries.

Kinsley notes that just as capitalism built newspapers, it’s now destroying them in order to build something better:

But will there be a Baghdad bureau? Will there be resources to expose a future Watergate? Will you be able to get your news straight and not in an ideological fog of blogs? Yes, why not — if there are customers for these things. There used to be enough customers in each of half a dozen American cities to support networks of bureaus around the world. Now the customers can come from around the world as well.

There’s a good Michael Kinsley who writes about issues and an evil twin Michael Kinsley who smears his opponents with reckless disregard for truth; this column is  about as good as the good Kinsley gets.

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Posted by Greg Forster

Even on April Fool’s, Gadfly Says Earth Is Round

April 1, 2009

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

The annual April Fool’s edition of the Gadfly is pretty good this year. It includes, among other things: 

  • A letter from a school superintendent on how to spend stimulus money (“We’re slated to get millions of dollars from this windfall, which, and I say this in an entirely non-partisan way, we should definitely remember come November 6, 2012″)
  • The new Norris Is Power Program chain of learning-through-violence charter schools
  • The push for 22nd Century Skills (“it’s never too soon”)
  • An update on the “Narrower, Nambier-Pambier Approach to Education” initiative

That last item contains the initiative’s recommended academic standards for various subjects. In science, the standard is: “Students really just need to know that the earth is round. That debate is old enough it should be a cinch.”

A round earth, you say? Hmmmm.

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Posted by Greg Forster

Obama’s Courage, and “Courage,” on GM

April 1, 2009

obama

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

On Monday, Jay praised the president’s “courage” because the media were reporting that the administration was talking about bankruptcy for GM. I posted a comment to the effect that the media reports cited unnamed sources, and nobody should be praised for “courage” until somebody stood up and said “bankruptcy” in front of TV cameras.

Right after that, what does the president do but get up and say “bankruptcy” in front of TV cameras?

So, credit where it’s due. It was a bold move.

But there are two kinds of courage: the courage of the man who is resolved to do a hard thing because it’s right, and the courage of the man who is resolved to do a hard thing because it’s necessary to save his own skin.

We’ve yet to see which kind of courage this is. In today’s Journal, the indispensable Holman Jenkins makes the case that the president is bluffing because he needs to create the impression that he’s serious about bankruptcy.

Whatever else we may say about the president, he knows one thing the Clintons don’t: even if the only thing you care about is your own survival, you still have to take risks periodically. If you always do the “safe” thing, you’ll end up less safe.

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Posted by Greg Forster

PJM Column on Milwaukee Study

March 30, 2009

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

This morning, Pajamas Media carries my column on the results of the new Milwaukee studies released last week by the School Choice Demonstration Project:

It’s bad enough that everyone seems to be ignoring the program’s positive impact on public schools. About four-fifths of the students are still in public schools. Why look only at the results for the voucher students, only one-fifth of the total? If you had a medical treatment that would help four-fifths of all patients suffering from some horrible disease — and what else can you call the present state of our education system but a horrible disease? — that would be considered a fantastic result.

But it gets worse. These results don’t just show that the program improves education for students in public schools. They also indicate that the program improves education for the students who are using vouchers.

1 Comment | competitive effects, research reports, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Get Lost – The Island Prime

March 27, 2009

horace-young-ben

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Jay was in town here yesterday and of course we talked about Lost. At this point neither of us had seen this week’s episode yet.

He shared with me his theory that 1) Daniel is wrong about the idea that you can’t change the past, and 2) during the flashy thing last week, when Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid vanished off Flight 316 back to 1977, the rest of the plane shifted to an alternate timeline where events had been changed.

Guess that theory got a boost from this week’s episode, huh? We both had the same reaction – too bad he didn’t mention this theory last week. (Jay, you might want to give up your obsession with the lack of narrative unity in what is, after all, a serialized TV drama rather than a book or a movie. It’s distracting you from your true calling as our house NostraGreenedus.)

For discussion of this theory, we’ll call the original timeline T and the alleged new one T prime.

On the question of whether the past can be changed by anyone, I was skeptical. Yes, it’s theoretically possible that Daniel is wrong. But that would require a stunning lack of storytelling integrity on the part of the show’s writers. Jay had already lost enough respect for the writers (see last week’s post) to think that they will play that kind of arbitrary game with the rules of the narrative universe, but I didn’t think so. So far, at least, they haven’t done anything like that (Jay’s critique notwithstanding).

As for Flight 316 shifting to T prime, here was his evidence based on last week’s episode:

1) As the plane approached the Island, you could hear “the numbers” being read over the radio. Somehow, I missed this, even though I saw that episode twice. But last night I checked with my wife and she says she heard them, too. But in T, the transmission of the numbers was changed by Rousseau into a distress call some time after 1988, then shut off entirely in 2004.

2) The plane landed on a runway on the “other island.” But there was no runway on the “other island” in T. We know this because in Season 3, the Others were building it (they made Sawyer and Kate work on it).

3) When Sun and Frank arrive at the abandoned Dharma camp, it’s ruined (as we would expect) but it’s still a Dharma camp rather than an Others camp. It still has Dharma signs all over it. And it still has the old Dharma photographs hanging on the wall (one of which Christian showed to Sun). None of that was present in T.

There’s a problem with the second piece of evidence – there may have been no runway in 2004, but Flight 316 arrived in 2007. The Others could have built it in the interim.

The other evidence, however, seems convincing. It’s theoretically possible that somebody reinstated the radio transmission of “the numbers” between 2004 and 2007. But it seems a lot less likely than that we’re in an alternate timeline. And all the Dharma stuff still being in the camp the Others took over would be a shocking oversight if it were accidental.

And of course Sayid shooting the young Ben in this week’s episode makes it all the more plausible.

My defense of the writers’ integrity as storytellers is looking pretty vulnerable. Shifting the rules this arbitrarily would be pretty lousy craftsmanship on their part.

But remember, Ben may not be dead. Yet.

I’m hoping Desmond will show up and kill him.

2 Comments | Lost | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

NR’s Must-Read on Big Business and Big Government

March 27, 2009

nr-bedfellows-cover

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Folks, you simply must read Jonah Goldberg’s cover story in the new NR on how big business loves big government.

I know, I know, to most readers of JPGB it is not likely to be news that big business loves big government. But the article contains a whole slew of fascinating information that I never knew before, covering everything from a hundred years ago to the present day. And it’s very powerfully presented and argued – better than I’ve ever seen on this topic. The article is as delightful to read as it is informative.

There are revelations in the article about Upton Sinclair and the creation of government regulations for the meatpacking industry, and about how TR reversed his position on “trusts” after he left office, that floored me. Back when his book came out, Goldberg said he had to cut huge swaths of the original manuscript – I forget how much he said, but if I recall, it was definitely more than half – because the book was just too long. He was lamenting how much fascinating, little-known historical stuff wouldn’t go into the book and hoped that it would eventually be useful elsewhere. I think he’s getting some of that good stuff into circulation with this article.

Here’s a sample, from the opening:

Honesty and marital necessity require me to state that everything I know about prostitution I have learned from a distance. That said, based on what I’ve gleaned from reading and from films of dubious artistic value, it seems to me that the farther you move up the prostitution price range, the more elaborate the lies become….The relationships grow not only more complex but more reciprocal — and, most of all, the real lies aren’t what the hookers tell the johns, but what both parties tell themselves.

That’s something to keep in mind as we watch the spectacle of American big business and the Democratic party seducing each other once again.

It’s for subscribers only, alas. His syndicated column today takes on the same subject but is much, much less interesting – there’s not much in it that JPGB readers won’t already know. Besides, online subscriptions to NR are cheap and you should have one anyway.

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Posted by Greg Forster

Fordham Splits the Baby

March 24, 2009

hemisphere

Extremist position #1: The earth is flat.

Extremist position #2: The earth is round.

Reasonable middle ground: The earth is a hemisphere.

HT Math Is Fun

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Fordham has just released a new report on how voucher programs should be regulated. Their methodology seems to be that they don’t care about finding the truth, they only care about finding “middle ground.” It doesn’t matter whether a policy makes any sense, as long as falls 50% of the way between the policy on the right and the policy on the left, it must be the best policy.

They collect opinions from a bunch of education experts and then propose, as their preferred policy, something that falls roughly in the middle of the spectrum – they want to subject different voucher schools to different levels of regulation based on how many voucher students each school has. Naturally, since their proposal isn’t guided by any principle other than that of political triangulation, it accomplishes neither the goals held by one side nor the goals held by the other side, and will therefore please nobody. But no one can accuse Fordham of not seeking middle ground!

They’re just like Solomon splitting the baby – except that Solomon’s proposal was a ruse. Fordham really wants to actually take out their knives and split the baby.

Inspired by their example, I’ve decided to end the age-old debate over the shape of the earth. Some people hold the earth is round, which has the merit of providing a parsimonious explanation of the observed data. Other people hold that the earth is flat, which has the merit of being an ancient, time-tested view. But this tired old debate between two extremist positions is getting us nowhere.

First I convened a panel of experts, some from the National Astronomical Society and some from the Flat Earth Society. The experts achieved consensus on the following important points:

  • The shape of the earth is an important subject.
  • The earth is not cubical.
  • The earth is not made of green cheese.

Unfortunately, we were not able to achieve consensus on one issue: the earth’s actual shape.

To move beyond this tired old debate and find reasonable middle ground, I propose that the earth is hemispherical – flat on one side and round on the other. Since this position is 50% of the way between the two extremist positions, it must be true. QED.

Now we move on to the next great debate: which side do we live on, the flat side or the round side? I’m convening a conference in the Antipodes to begin exploring new research on this question.

17 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Steyn Nails the Buildingpalooza

March 23, 2009

fancy-church

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

In the back of the new National Review, Mark Steyn’s column absolutely nails the giant new gusher of money for school buildings. Subscribers can read it online; for everyone else – well, for everyone else, online subscriptions to NR are cheap and you should have one. But here’s a taste, just in case you don’t believe everything I say implicitly:

Steyn follows up on the supposedly awful school bulding in Dillon, S.C. highlighted recently by the president and finds a number of holes in the story, such as:

Incidentally, you may have read multiple articles referring to the “113-year-old building.” Actually, that’s the building behind the main school — the original structure from 1896, where the school district has its offices. But if, like so many people, you assume an edifice dating from 1896 or 1912 must ipso facto be uninhabitable, bear in mind that the central portion of the main building was entirely rebuilt in 1983. That’s to say, this rotting, decrepit, mildewed Dotheboys Hall of a Gothic mausoleum dates all the way back to the Cyndi Lauper era.

He then moves on to the larger issues:

If a schoolhouse has peeling paint and leaking ceilings, what’s the best way to fix it? . . . Dillon, S.C., is a town of about 6,000 people. Is there really no way they can organize acceptable accommodation for a two-grade junior high school without petitioning the Sovereign in Barackingham Palace? . . . The issue is not the decrepitude of the building but the decrepitude of liberty. Maybe the president can spend enough of our money to halt the degradation of infrastructure. The degradation of citizenship will prove harder to reverse.

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Posted by Greg Forster

Obama Compares AIG to Suicide Bombers

March 20, 2009

obama

Photo from the LA Times

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

A while back, a certain secretary of education compared the teachers’ unions to terrorists and got in super-major hot water. Remember?

I just wanted to put that on the table so everybody bears in mind the standard for civil discourse that was established during that episode. Of course that standard would apply equally to both parties, right?

The LA Times is reporting that at a California town hall meeting, President Obama compared AIG to a suicide bomber:

Well, OK, that all made sense, but then he compared AIG to a suicide bomber, and at that, we really perked up.

“Same thing with AIG,” Obama said. “It was the right thing to do to step in. Like they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger, you don’t want them to blow up, but you’ve got to ease them off the trigger.”

And the president held out his arm and pantomimed a hand on a trigger, and we were rapt, waiting for what would happen next.

But then he called for a final question from the crowd.

HT Campaign Spot.

When he’s off the teleprompter, he’s really off the teleprompter.

Steyn is telling Hugh Hewitt that now he’s recycling all the jokes Frank Sinatra used to do about Bob Hope’s reliance on cue cards as Obama teleprompter jokes, and they’re going over really well.

3 Comments | economics, politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

School Boards and the Media

March 18, 2009

mark-steyn

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

I’ve argued before, against federalism cops and state-level ed reformers alike, that the biggest monkey wrench in the government school system is the local school board. The union demands that do the biggest damage to children – the uniform, performance-blind pay scale and the extraordinary obstacles to firing bad teachers – are enforced at that level. And while higher levels of government set the broad budget outlines, it’s the school boards that manage the budgets at the detail level – making them the primary people to blame for the tremendous wastefulness and zero accountability of the system.

And (as I argued to the federalism cops) that’s what we should expect, because local power is structurally more susceptible to these problems than state or federal power. If you run a scam at a high level, the scam is big and that means the suckers (that’s you and me) are more likely to 1) notice and 2) be willing to pay the price to stop it. But if, like the unions, you have your tentacles in thousands of tiny little school districts across the country, you can steal a little here and a little there and end up with a much bigger pile of swag, all while flying under the radar.

Well, yesterday Mark Steyn posted on NRO’s Corner about his experience serving on a school board subcommittee. Two stories he told got me thinking about a new aspect of the school board problem.

Story #1:

After one somewhat difficult meeting, I got back to find a telephone message from the reporter at the local paper: “Hi, Mark. I couldn’t make School Board but I have to file my story this evening. Did anything happen that I need to know about?”

Happily, no. And her non-attendance proved no obstacle to filing a bland happy-face report on the event.

Story #2 (the subcommittee was negotiating with a nearby town to build a joint high school):

On another occasion, I absentmindedly forgot it was a public meeting and launched a blistering attack on a neighboring town. As the evening ended, the nice lady reporter said to me, “Don’t worry, Mark. I won’t put any of those controversial things you said in the paper.”

School boards get a free ride from the relevant media. The broadcast media don’t have time to cover them – they’re too busy with more important stories, like whoever is the new Brangelina this week. And the local papers are at best too lazy to do their jobs (note that in Story #1 it was a “difficult meeting” about which the reporter filed a “bland happy-face report”) and at worst too cozy with the board members – who are, after all, the reporters’ neighbors and pillars of their communities – to report a big story even when it bites them right in their assignments.

4 Comments | journalism, teacher union | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

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