Innovations like “Living Stories” from Google Labs along with better and much cheaper e-readers to replace newsprint, will ensure that much of the legacy media survives. Which, for all that media’s faults, is good.
Let’s face it; for all the talk of a “new business model” needed for the legacy media, the so-called “citizen media” isn’t it. An infinite number of untrained, amateurs MIGHT theoretically give you what the major newspapers do, just as an infinite number of monkeys might tap out all the works of Shakespeare. But how much time do you have to read through all that monkey typing? No one will ever expand the day to longer than 24 hours; our reading time will always be precious.
Too, there is the aspect of the citizen media that I’m hardly the first to point out – most of the news the citizen media “break” comprises links to the legacy media, even if it’s in a negative connotation. There’s very little generation of fresh content out there other than at the fringes, such as commenting on the legacy media’s fresh content. You hear about each and every true scoop, as with the Acorn revelations, precisely because they are so very rare.
The citizen media can be a good supplement – and it can also be trash – but at its very best, it cannot be a replacement for trained, skilled reporters working full-time at their jobs. Before you bloggers take a jab at me, tell me the last time YOU broke a truly original news story. No, not somebody else – you.
While it is certainly is good news that the state of Maryland hasn’t denied permission to developers hoping to install slots in a new casino planned in the Anne Arundel Mall, the rationale on which the decision was based and the fact that they require permission at all is deplorable.
The amount of tax revenue and number of jobs that a new casino could generate for the state should not be the basis for government getting out of the way of private business owners. The government should not be in the way in the first place.
The Maryland state lottery has been drawing money from residents since 1973 and it is sheer hypocrisy and protection of the state’s monopoly for politicians to limit the amount and types of gambling offered by private operators.
Beyond hypocrisy, the real issue is individual liberty and the proper role of the government. The question is, should governments limit the choices of individual consumers and business owners if their actions do not violate the rights of any other individuals? Certainly not. The government shouldn’t be in the business of determining if gambling should be allowed, what kinds, how much, or where it should be allowed. These rights should be left to individual property and business owners.
Statement of John Berlau, Director of CEI’s Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs, on extending TARP for small business and on Rep. Barney Frank’s plans to kill a measure providing small businesses relief from Sarbanes-Oxley:
President Obama’s announcement that he will extend TARP — the Troubled Assets Relief Program — and keep spending its proceeds could not have come at a worse time. Credit rating agencies are looking at dropping the “Triple A” rating from the U.S. because of the trillions in spending on bailouts, stimulus and other big-government programs. The rationale put forward seems to be that because we spent this for undeserving big banks, it’s only fair to spend the rest of taxpayer dollars on small businesses, But two wrongs don’t make a right, and this money belongs to taxpayers, not to the favored recipients of politicians. Whether TARP funds go to small or big businesses, it’s still government picking winners and losers, and many innovative entrepreneurs will be left out. That’s why any money paid back to the TARP should go for general tax relief or paying down debt that all small businesses and taxpayers could benefits from.
Congress could pursue a real no-cost stimulus for the economy and small business by providing regulatory relief from the mountains of red tape that provides little benefit to investors and consumers. Unfortunately, even limited bipartisan reg relief seems to be at risk from congressional Democratic leaders. The House Financial Services Committee took a step in the right direction in November when 10 committee Democrats joined Republicans in passing an amendment by John Adler, D-N.J., and Scott Garrett, R-N.J., to exempt smaller public companies from some of the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting mandates. Rushed through Congress after the Enron implosion in 2002, Sarbanes-Oxley has cost the economy $1.4 trillion according to a University or Rochester study, and costs the average public company about $5 million to comply. This has made it much harder for smaller and mid-size businesses to raise capital by going public, and hence to expand and create jobs. And it has provided no quantifiable benefits in preventing fraud or systemic risk; indeed notorious mortgage lender Countrywide Financial passed Sarbox with flying colors.
Last month, the Obama administration supported the Adler-Garret amendment exempting small firms from some Sarbox rules, and I praised the president for this support. But this week, Committee Chairman Barney Frank is trying to strip Adler-Garrett from The Investor Protection Act on the House floor. If the president wants to make good on his rhetorical committment to small business, whom he rightly calls “the engine” of economic growth, he would tell Barney Frank to let keep the bipartisan Adler-Garrett Sarbox relief in this bill.
While climate experts were off at the Copenhagen summit working on their tans (in sunny Copenhagen), the EPA pulled a fast one. As the Washington Post noted in an article that was actually quite good in providing the negatives, the agency formally announced that six gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, pose a danger to the environment and the health of Americans and said it would begin drafting regulations to reduce those emissions.
So if you think the recent poll showing most Americans reject the basis of global warming legislation, plus the scandal over “climategate,” may have derailed the Waxman-Markey legislation you may be right. But you’d be wrong in thinking the crisis has passed. The EPA was explicitly given the power by the Supreme Court to regulate greenhouse gases and could produce a web of regulations far worse than Waxman-Markey. The only recourse of opponents would be in the courts (see previous sentence) or via Congress cutting funding to the agency. And would this Congress really do that?
For more, see this Forbes piece on the issue published before the EPA announcement, and the EPA press release. This is bad news, folks!
This, I think, has to go down as one of the creepiest “editorials” written by global warming alarmists recently. Clive Hamilton, ABC News in Australia’s public “intellectual,” has an open letter to the child of someone who works for the fossil fuel industry. Here are some selections:
“Hi there,
There’s something you need to know about your father.
Your dad’s job is to try to stop the government making laws to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution. He is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways.
Because of their pollution, lots of people, mostly poor people, are likely to die. They will die from floods, from diseases like dengue fever, and from starvation when their crops won’t grow anymore.
The big companies are putting their profits before the lives of people. And your dad is helping them.
. . . . .
I am sure it’s hard for you to hear these words, but there is something you can do to help. Why not sit your dad down and have a good talk to him. Tell him you want him to stop helping the big companies that are spoiling the future for you and all the other kids at school. Tell him that the family would rather have less money if he had a different job, one you could be proud of.
Tell him that you know he will feel much happier inside if he is doing something to make Australia and the world a better place, instead of going to work every day to make it a worse one.
Your dad has lost his way, and you might be the only person in the world who can help him find it again. So talk to him.
Yours sincerely”
This is on par with the official opening video for the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen – full of nightmare visions of a child caught in a global-warming-produced catastrophe – producing earthquakes, no less. (It’s very well-produced, of course.)
Do these people have any idea what their fear-mongering is doing to the minds of children – other than making them terrified, anxious, and sleep-deprived?
According to a new poll, “Congressmen were rated as having a “low/very low” ethical standards by 55 percent of 1,017 adults across the nation.”
The same poll found that 45% of 1,017 adults across the nation had either never heard of Congress, or are big believers in grade inflation.
The shocking part is that used car salesmen only out-performed Congress by four points.
Wayne Crews and I have an article in today’s American Spectator about the antitrust crusade against Intel. Our key points:
-An FTC picking winners and losers is not capitalism. It is crony capitalism.
-Chips in “Wintel” desktop computers increasingly constitute just one subset of a vast semiconductor market. Only a small fraction of the chips in non-PC devices are Intel’s — and these devices are where the future lies.
-Regulators’ charges against Intel have changed over the years, but their verdict always remains the same: guilty. Suspicious.
-We’d be better off prosecuting the DOJ and the FTC for colluding against free enterprise.
Marginal Revolution’s Alex Tabarrok points to a proposed rule in California that would reclassify adult film actors as being subject to certain employment regulations. The unintended consequences are potentially fatal:
California’s anti-discrimination laws prohibit requiring an HIV test as a condition of employment; therefore the adult film industry’s current testing process, in which every performer is tested for HIV monthly, would be illegal. Nor would adult film producers be allowed to “discriminate” by refusing employment to HIV-positive performers. As a result, untested and HIV-positive performers would be able to work in the industry, raising the risks of HIV outbreaks–particularly since condom breakage or slippage can occur.
Sounds like regulators and activists need to think that one through a little more carefully.
The Code of Federal Regulations contains 12,834 words worth of rules concerning falconry, of all things. Pasted into a Microsoft Word document with 11 point font size, that’s 24 pages. On falconry.
Some of the rules are surprisingly permissive: “Your falconry facilities may be on property owned by another person where you reside, or at a different location.”
Other rules, less so: “(D) Regardless of the number of State, tribal, or territorial falconry permits you have, you may possess no more than 5 wild raptors, including golden eagles.”
Because clearly, owning six birds instead of five is a threat to public health and safety.
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