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While watching yet another production of Hamlet I discovered that the play is custom made for over acting. It as if the Bard created a production for showcasing inept actors. A great production of Hamlet is about as rare as an honest politician.
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190 pages. TurboTax cranked out 190 pages of tax forms, schedules and worksheets just for little ‘ole me to satisfy Uncle Sugar and Governor Arnie.
190 pages for one man. One small rain forest of paper.
This is the symbol of socialism (I would say the ‘poster child’ but posters require paper, and I’m fresh out of the stuff).
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Everybody is the media.
Like any ecosystem, the media cannot be destroyed, but it does evolve. Subjective are all opinions if new ecosystems are preferable to older ones (for example, would Greenland prefer to be green again, as when it was first discovered). Bacteria thriving in a cesspool might well object to humans adding disinfectant.
Likewise with liberals, reporters and the media. Being a fan and occasional participant in the old media, I marvel at how the bacteria therein are rapidly being eaten by a new bug.
Editors attest that people are hungry for content. In days gone by that content came from a small set of providers. Before FM radio was wide spread, people received their daily world view from three major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC and the Communist Broadcasting System), whatever local newspapers existed (two if you lived in a big town), and a spider web of rumor passed along by friends, family and traveling salesmen (who also passed along many cases of pregnancy). The media microorganism was hearty and it readily converted facts into a smelly and somewhat toxic paste for the public. Then FM radio emptied the AM bands, and in a fight for survival, the amplitude airwaves turned to talk.
The media ecosystem was forever altered.
This cannot be ignored. Some surveys indicate that American’s think of themselves politically as slightly right of center, whereas university studies have quantified that the old media is largely left. The slightly conservative citizenry knew they were being brought bogus bulletins and broadcasts, but lacked a cheap means for promoting alternative insights. Center-right mavens discovered the empty and inexpensive AM bands, and there they found their own idyllic pond. A new bug was born and it soon evolved into an organism that stole food from the old organisms.
Such is the nature of ecosystems. Small, furry mammals have better survival odds than dinosaurs when their ecosystem suddenly changes.
The funny thing about people and other organisms is that genetic code is very unique for each individual. Old media may be to the left of Mao and talk radio may be to the right of Attila, but every audience member is their own species. Both of the primarily political parties, and the old media are found of false dualities: left vs. right, Republican vs. Democrat, sane vs. Chuck Schumer. Such bogus bifurcation is a natty narrative; simple yet entirely insufficient.
Next, the Internet became universal, and the media ecosystem suddenly changed again with the influx of several billion new bacteria. You.
Old media microbes are vanishing as if the body politic just received a double cheek full of antibiotics. Network news programs have falling ratings, accelerated to breakneck speeds by Diane Sawyer (ABC needs to get their money back on that failed investment). Some 24 hour news channels are evaporating in a cloud of their own boorish ineptitude (that would be MSNBC and their gracious and unbiased hosts Keith “Ag School” Oberman and Chris “Sciatica” Matthews). Newspapers, caught between high per-unit costs and declining ad revenues, are going bankrupt faster than politician morals. Food in the media ecosystem is being swallowed by the ravenous new species, internetum upsetium.
Now the original media bacilli wants a new food source. You.
An odd collection of voices are rising with the abhorrent suggestion that the government bail-out the old media. Since the media’s primary mission is to investigate the government, The People ratified The Bill of Rights with the intent of separating government and press. For a couple of centuries, the two constantly fought and denigrated one another when not copulating. It was an ugly but semi-functional relationship. Like a horny lad, the government attempted to romance and set up residence in the media’s drawers. Like a young lass, the media teased the government, letting it cop the occasional literary feel while getting a free ride with insider info. The rest of the time was spent in antagonistic reprisal, which largely keep them off the streets and out of trouble. Now the older media is dying off, and some think the right response is to arrange marriage between the troubling government and media teens.
We all know how well teenage shotgun marriages work out.
As is often the case, false woes are erected in order to panic the populace. Some claim that without local newspapers, there will be no checks on local government. Oddly local weekly newspapers, ones that still have plenty of advertisers, conduct some of the better investigative journalism in the modern era. Add in local television, whistle blowers, and the new legions of internet enabled part-time investigators, and there appears to be plenty of compensation. What reporters are really worried about is the pay cuts they’ll take to work for the weeklies.
Journalist fearing breadlines is understandable and forgivable. What isn’t are the anti-intellectuals called “progressives” who actively promote government funded – and hence, controlled – media. No less than The Nation (and there are none less than that rag) have called for $60 billion in newspaper resurrection and other forms of corporate welfare. In the name of “quality journalism”, as opposed to the type you create and consume, they incorrectly assumed that a lack of major media means a lack of journalism.
As noted above, a lack of major media means a lack of center-left hack reporting. In other words, The Nation seeks to keep their philosophical mouthpiece in place. It is difficult to push a leftist agenda when The Nation is one of it’s few remaining voices, and one I suspect is falling as fast as newspapers. It is even harder when the center-right populace, outfitted for information and furiously blogging their fingers to bony nubs, routinely contradicts The Nation’s weekly waste.
Despite some short-term shortcomings, more voices and more investigators means better journalism. If nothing else, the Internet cross connects data, making it easy for even inebriated reporters (forgive the redundancy) to find information. Many journalists admit to reading the Drudge Report every morning to triangulate what is important to know that day. With several million perpetually publishing people, many experts in their own fields and many with insider information, news outlets have a greater scope of information than they had before, and their reporting is fact checked by the public. The American media ecosystem is not dying – it is changing and getting stronger.
Everybody is the media. Now get to work.
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I’m not sure when it happened, but I know for certain what happened.
The People lost control of government when they lost control of their money. After all, people not in control of their earned wealth are called slaves. At some point in American history The People lost control of their money, and that occurred when the Federal government began eating most of it.
Solid is the philosophy of local. Local taxes solving local problems provides, if nothing else, local control. From experience I can attest that grabbing a local elected official by the lapels and instructing him on what to quit doing produces the desired results. Doing the same to your Congress Critter, less so. Hence, when control over taxes and spending shifted from your county commissioner to 535 competing and corrupt(able) conmen in Congress, control over your wealth and your destiny disappeared.
Veronique de Rugy, the ever alert number cruncher for Reason magazine, cobbled together some statistics for which I lacked the gumption to gather (click the chart to enlarge). As things stand today – and which is hopefully a temporary condition – the Federal government absorbs more than 60% of all government revenues. It in turn spits out about half a billion bucks (about 19% of revenue) to the states in all manor of pork and social engineering. The net effect is that no state and likely few localities get more than they pay, especially since Uncle Sugar always takes his cut off the top.
This creates the unseemly situation of 535 elected employees jousting to steal as much tax money as possible. It also explains Barack Obama bringing Chicago-style bully and bribe politics to Washington, though this merely deepened that cesspool. An effect of this untidy scheme is that federal money defines action. Whatever cabal is in power uses your tax money not to improve your locale, but to make you and your neighbors do the cabal’s bidding (see the earlier slavery definition). Complaining to congressmen is useless as they reliably blame the other 534 grandstanding gangsters who are allegedly more evil and intellectually deficient.
Grabbing your congressman by the lapels does no good, though sudden crotch kicks might.
The trend line is unpromising. Aside from the Reagan years when the number and total dollar amount of federal grants to states dropped – and which incidentally ushered in the longest running era of prosperity in modern memory – Federal largess with your lucre has been accelerating, and took a tremendous spike with the 2010 projections. In constant dollars, the degree of Federal financial manipulation of states has grown from about $25 billion in the post-war years to half a trillion today, or about a 20 fold increase.
Looked at from an angle of clarity, you have 1/20th the control you once had over your state and by proxy your local government.
Aside from armed insurrection or the Supreme Court finally conforming to its oath of office, there is little hope for change, especially with the current Hope and Change merchant in charge. Indeed, most of his unstimulating stimulus is in the form of expanded grants to state governments with the express purpose of growing state employee roles. Your representatives, if I may misuse the word, hungrily grab every stack of such cash while bemoaning the culture of corruption that is Congress, unable to see that they are at best a tapeworm in that intestinal tract.
I have wondered of late what the cure might be, and I think there is one, albeit an audacious and somewhat dangerous display of federalism. In theory (remember, theory and practice are entirely different creatures) a state could:
* Itemize unconstitutional Federal programs and programs for which it chooses not to accept federal fund.
* Calculate their residents’ share of the overall tax burden.
* Unilaterally declare that their residents are not liable for said taxes (i.e., tell their residents that they can shave xx% off their final calculated Federal income taxes).
* Bar all IRS agents and federal judges from the state that dare audit or arrest a citizen for taking that deduction.
* Levy fines against the Federal government for not refunding pre-paid taxes, and since the Feds will never pay the fines, follow-up by allowing in-state companies to reduce employee Federal income tax collection by protection of state law.
Predictably, this would devolve in two ways. The Federal courts would rule the whole thing illegal and demand that the renegade state submit to the power of Federal law. Of course, since there are fundamental questions about the constitutionality of the programs in question and the whole ugly issue of Federalism, a state could initially thumb its nose at the judges. The only action that the Federal government could then take would be military.
There lay the complication. Would any President order the military to take action against a state to enforce tax collection? In theory they could not for the writ of the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the use of the military for law enforcement. The other branches of the Federal government combined wouldn’t have the firepower to subdue but the smallest of states. If a big joint filled with rough and independent minded people – let’s say Texas – were the instigator, then the Feds would have no choice but a full invasion.
Which would not work. First, it is doubtful any sitting president – not even Obama the Omnipotent – would militarily invade a state. Doing so, especially in these cantankerous times would invite all-out civil war. If the instigating state also had a significant military presence, and given the fidelity the military has to The People over the president, odds are whatever military tools were in state would instantly belong to that state.
Imagine tea partiers with nukes.
It is an ugly scheme and one I hope nobody takes. Yet being a student of history and knowing how free people will fight to stay free, this is not an unimaginable outcome. Heaven help us if Texas elects Ted Nugent for governor … it might just come to pass.
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I admit to having odd inclinations, the least weird of which is donating blood.
(Squeamish people … cowboy up. I’ll talk you into bleeding like I talk everybody into it).
About four times a year I clomp over to the Red Cross offices and flirt with some nice young gal who assaults me with long needles. We talk about anything aside from politics and exes, since agitating someone with sharp implements is never good policy. Being an expert bleeder, I’m out of the chair and eating my weight in post-spew cookies in record times (truth be told, one of my motivations for giving blood are the cookies, an almost innocent sin).
Now here is where you come in. You will donate blood, even if you are the biggest wimp since the last person I dragged to the donation center (she actually whimpered). Know how I know this? Because I know you will read the next paragraph.
Here is what I want you to do: Imagine the person you love most in the world has been seriously slammed in an auto accident, is laying on an emergency ward table, and the doctors says to the nurse “What do you mean we’re out of blood?”
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