Calling John Galt

Thumbs down to a handout

Will the last free-market enthusiast in the media turn off the light on the way out?

Wait!  Not so fast!  There is hope!

From Slate:

When President Barack Obama told the Toledo Blade last week that he hoped that the faltering newspaper industry would recover because “fact-based” and “investigative reporting” are “absolutely critical to the health of our democracy,” even some of the cynical bastards who staff the nation’s dailies swooned.

Of course, the president didn’t pay anything more than lip service to the newspapers. He remained, in the Blade’s words, “noncommittal” about the bills, including one by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md., introduced early this year that would allow newspapers to reorganize themselves as nonprofits. “I haven’t seen detailed proposals yet, but I’ll be happy to look at them,” Obama said.

The good news is there are journalists, like Jack Shafer (author of the Slate piece), who see this as a threat:

Here’s hoping that the White House’s detailed-proposals czar keeps the Cardin bill out of Obama’s hands. The last thing newspapers need is the sort of help from the government that turns them into NPR, endlessly begging for contributions, pursuing wealthy philanthropists, and standing in line for government handouts.

Shafer also quotes from Donald Kimelman from the Boston Globe:

Why should the tax laws give an advantage to newspapers over other kinds of media? How will the recipients of philanthropic dollars avoid having their news agendas distorted by donor preferences? Would the crutch of donor support hinder the search for new commercial revenue necessary for news organizations’ long-term viability?

Of particular interest is the recognition that the newspaper industry has already suffered from the Unintended Consequences of other interventions.

I haven’t done this piece justice… so please click through and read it for yourself.

Here’s to the hope that journalists can turn use these same notions to be just as critical of other bailout and spending plans, that have their own Unintended Consequences.

Geithner lays the blame on all of us

“We’re in this situation because we, as a country, had been spending above our means.”

That was Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in his “first morning-show interview” on Good Morning America. (It’s as close a direct transcription as I could muster without a DVR, and will be adjusted accordingly.)

UPDATE: Actual transcript:

We got into this because we borrowed too much. We lived beyond our means. Both as a country, many businesses did it, many families did it. Obviously, the financial sector did that. And part of what’s going to make this so hard to get out of this is we have to go back to a point where we’re saving more.

Had *I* been the interviewer, I would have been inclined to ask the Secretary:

When you say “we as a country,” what you really meant to say was “government, and the politicians who spent money they didn’t have in an effort to buy our votes,” right?

Stossel moves to Fox

John Stossel is leaving ABC News at the end of the month to join Fox News and the Fox Business Network.

28 years is a long time to stay in one place, so it may just be a new opportunity and nothing more sinister than that.

It’s been fascinating to watch his evolution as a journalist. He started as a decidedly anti-business consumer crusader, but had a self-described epiphany that government is a monopoly in and of itself – and it often more dangerous to citizens than the businesses we’re supposed to hate.

In the last few years, Stossel has openly cited F.A. Hayek and others on matters of economics, free markets and liberty.

However, I personally am not happy to hear of his switch. Here’s what I wrote in the comments:

John, I am disturbed.

I’m a big fan of yours, and considered it a high honor when the radio hosts here in town referred to ME as “The John Stossel of Birmingham.”

I remember the old John, and the transformation to the new John – who was simply the same John with the honesty to challenge his assumptions and live with the consequences.

I am not disturbed for you, but rather for ABC. For me, it meant a LOT that they would let you do your own thing, it was a sign of integrity that other networks did not seem to have evidence to back up.

In a month, the closest thing ABC News will have to a calls-it-as-he-sees-it presence is Jake Tapper, who calls things about as even-handedly as any high-profile political journalist in this generation. But there will be no contrarian, no voice of conscience challenging the assumptions of the group-think rampant in so many newsrooms.

You gave ABC credibility they will not be able to showcase in any other manner. And your departure to Fox will only reinforce a set of prejudices and idiotic notions for the very people who need to listen the most.

I wish you the best, and will watch with interest. But I can’t help think of the nay-sayers and gain-sayers who will never be exposed to your talent for humanizing the effects of an inhuman leviathan. The street preacher has left the neighborhood for the safety of an altar where he will be gladly received — but who will save the unwashed and the lost?

Why Journalists Should Never Teach Logic

This piece ran in The Independent from London:

They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunisations that could end up saving their life.

In the week that Britain’s National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an “evil and Orwellian” example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.

The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.

So, the mere fact that people will line up for something that is free is somehow proof that it ought to be publicly paid for?

Let’s think about this for a second.

If I set up shop in the LA Forum for a week offering free automobiles, how many people would come from hours away? Would the teeming throngs constitute “proof” that we should socialize transportation?

If I set up in the LA Forum for a week offering free steaks and beer, how many people would show up? Would the numbers arriving be prima facie evidence that the government ought to pay for everyone’s lunch?

If there were a gun show in the LA Forum sometime in the near future, and vendors started offering free ammunition, I wonder what Guy Adams would write…

Media Malpractice

This piece from the Foundation for Economic Education clearly shows how the fourth estate is falling down on the job, and can’t seem to report anything involving economics with any real context.

What amazing magical powers our benevolent government has! It stimulates when it spends, unlike what happens when the rest of us spend. I suppose the difference is that when you and I spend, the money comes from somewhere.