Pangloss

And maybe you're focusing on nit-picking a figure of speech because you don't like what he has to say. This is getting us nowhere, and you know full well I'm not going to let you gang up on him like that. By all means you can address the question you put in bold above, or if you want to talk about the unions angle, here is an argument in support of the allegation that President Obama is, figuratively and not literally speaking, "in bed with the unions". Please discuss this or the cost of the Asia trip, and let's move on from the figure of speech deal. --- http://ontheissues.org/Barack_Obama.htm "Pro" (supports jackson33's statement) # Obama will strengthen unions and workers’ rights. (May 2004) # Owes unions who endorsed him; that’s why he’s in politics. (Oct 2006) # Employee Free Choice Act: right to organize harassment-free. (Jul 2008) # Fight attacks on workers’ right to organize & strike. (Feb 2008) # Give public safety officers collective bargaining rights. (Aug 2007) # Voted YES on restricting employer interference in union organizing. (Jun 2007) "Con" (opposes his point) # FactCheck: Yes, wants to limit secret balloting for unions. (Oct 2008)

Wait, is that before or after we decouple the Heisenberg Compensator?? (I think I'm going insane in the multiverse-brane!)

Saying that a politician is "in bed with" a special interest group is a well-recognized means of stating an opinion. Understandably, you asked for substantiation, and I offered it above. Would you like to talk about whether that opinion is valid based on the evidence? If you would like for us to no longer allow the use of obvious figures of speech when stating opinions, you could report the post and we can then take it up on the moderation forum, if you like. Otherwise can we not nit-pick obvious figures of speech, please?

Now we're talkin' -- you're welcome for the rope! Now, with all due respect, I'll attempt to hang you with it. ;-) The Wall Street Journal and Fox News are competing in an established market (newspapers and 24-hour cable news). In neither of these markets does the government compete. Why not? Other governments do (BBC), and if these are valuable services for the public to receive, and the existence of NPR and public radio in general suggests that the government is interested in providing services like these, then perhaps the reason they don't provide this service is that there are plenty of companies already providing it. If that's a valid argument then the obvious question arises of why there's no market for "highbrow media" to compete with NPR. The author attempts to validate this argument by first suggesting that interest in such a market exists, and second offering evidence that the special arrangement is hindering it. Neither of these offerings is scientifically valid (and therein lies the rub), but both are perfectly valid fodder for further investigation. Let's examine them briefly in more detail. First, a validation that the market could exist is offered by the simple logic that people listen to NPR. If X number of people listen to NPR, is it logical that some of those people, and perhaps (with good marketing?) others, might be interested in listening to NPR's competition, if such existed? This is a reasonable question. Second, a validation that competition is being hindered is offered by the statement that a common response to the question of whether a company could offer such a service is to ask whether NPR already provides it. The implication being that the market is saturated. The author says that this informs us that NPR should stop receiving funding because it is hampering with potential competition. He's mistaken; we don't actually know that. It could be that such ventures would fail and nothing would be added to the public's information and insight. He's lacking evidence. Not logic. What I would suggest is that further investigation is validated by this logic, and evidence is called for. Action should not be taken until supporting evidence exists. The argument is not hypocritical because it's not about all government payments. The argument is whether a major exception/protection/funding is needed in order to provide a service that is not otherwise available (e.g. "value to the public"). Furthermore, whether the author is a hypocrite has no bearing on whether his argument is true. Either the government's special provisions for NPR/public radio are valid, or they are not. What Newscorp does or does not receive is irrelevant to that question.

John mentions this in the first post, but I think it's cool that Siemens actually has a listing for this device in their online museum. Isn't that cool? If I were a time traveler I think the Web would be incredibly useful. I mean, where else am I going to get data for my replicator? (grin) I think this also answers the question of why they'd be using old technology -- they (our presumed time travelers) used a device from the time period they were visiting, like when Star Trek's Away Team outfits itself with period garb, because they thought that the device would go unnoticed! Sure, it LOOKS like a Siemens hearing aid, but it's actually a cross-time communications device! http://hearing.siemens.com/sg/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?year=1924 -------- By the way, I wonder if we're staring at the beginning of a new trend. There was another story that followed this one last week about a guy who appeared to be modern standing in a depression-era crowd. That one was more or less debunked as well (wool looks a lot like modern fabric in black and white), but it got me thinking. With more and more of our history being documented visually, it's just a matter of time before someone "spots" someone they actually recognize from the present in an old video. Only it'll be their father or grandfather or even a more distant ancestor -- it just LOOKS like the present person. Just think what the visual record of OUR time will look like a century from now -- THAT video will be crystal clear right down to the nose hairs and freckles. So if you spotted someone who looks like your next door neighbor, that would be REALLY freaky. But surely that's going to happen more and more -- so much so that I wonder if people a century from now will actually be very familiar with the problem. Just part of every day life. To look at it from another angle, one of the unwritten assumptions underlying the human experience for the last ten thousand years is that we do look something like our ancestors. But really until the last century or so we didn't know exactly how accurate that belief was -- old granny in her rocking chair might SAY we look just like our grand-dad, but, well, she's old granny, and her memory isn't what it used to be. We're about to find out, though -- over the next century we're going to come to know the answer to that question with absolute, rock-solid certainty.

Lol, true enough. Francisco's speech earlier about the root of money might be more appropriate. I don't mean to suggest a direct ideological comparison, just a suggestion of its degree of political significance. I think it will be downplayed, especially by the insulted talking heads in the media, but I think it played very well with the people, and I think maybe it has some serious staying power. I think the best line was something like "If everyone is shouting, we can't hear anything."

Ridicule is not an argument. This is an argument: "Pro" (supports jackson33's statement) # Obama will strengthen unions and workers’ rights. (May 2004) # Owes unions who endorsed him; that’s why he’s in politics. (Oct 2006) # Employee Free Choice Act: right to organize harassment-free. (Jul 2008) # Fight attacks on workers’ right to organize & strike. (Feb 2008) # Give public safety officers collective bargaining rights. (Aug 2007) # Voted YES on restricting employer interference in union organizing. (Jun 2007) "Con" (opposes his point) # FactCheck: Yes, wants to limit secret balloting for unions. (Oct 2008) And since you bring up the subject of what people think of these arguments, I'll just point out that jackson33 is hardly alone. You are in a much smaller socio-political grouping than he is, actually.

It's hair-splitting because it doesn't recognize the fact that if Fox News and the Wall Street Journal didn't bring Newscorp a profit they would cease to exist. The same is not true of NPR. If I were you two instead of splitting hairs about internal corporate financial practices I'd focus on how the loss of funding could just as effectively drive NPR out of business as if it were for-profit, and how that same dynamic causes them to be an efficient organization, theoretically undermining the WSJ author's argument that the arrangement is anti-competitive because he can't argue that a for-profit enterprise would be more efficient.

I enjoyed his rant at the end as well. It reminded me of John Galt's speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged (though mercifully shorter).

I don't have a problem with this.

You're splitting hairs that are not relevant to the discussion. Fox News Channel is part of a large vertical corporation that pays a licensing fee for its airspace. NPR broadcasts on free airspace that is potentially worth billions of dollars. Regarding your question about federal money, many companies take money when it is offered to them without basing their business model around it. There is a huge difference between Ford taking the occasional R&D incentive and General Motors being bought out by the government. This author is not being hypocritical because he is not saying that a news organization should never take federal dollars for any purpose. He's saying that NPR's funding model is antithetical to competition in a specific manner.

Fair enough, "potential" conflict of interest. I suppose the actual conflict would only be if the government were to obtain majority shareholder status while playing a regulatory role that affected the company in question. I guess it's a good thing we have quality, ethical people in charge who would never be tempted by inappropriate influences.

That was an interesting set of facts that I'd not heard before. I think Bascule's response is the correct perspective (IMO), but your point does add a bit more complexity to the picture. Thanks for bringing it up.

Yes, but there's no conflict of interest in your owning part of a company, because you can't pass anti-competitive exemptions to taxation and regulation.

Really? So you're saying that commercial radio and television stations don't pay for their air space? So why do they call them "licenses"? And why is google spending all this money on frequencies? I thought that was how it worked, but if I'm wrong by all means please correct me.

My point wasn't really that it was a good thing but that it was fair. I bet if we ratchet back the timeline far enough we can find all kinds of things that it wasn't "fair" for Marco Rubio and his team of religious zealots to do to Charlie Crist, too. But that's politics for you. The Big Game. This argument is somewhat ironic coming from the right. There's a reason we don't pass a law to stop every slimy thing politicians can do to get re-elected. I would think that small-government types would understand the advantages of letting a market correct itself when bad things happen.

Of course not. I have no reason to doubt that story, which I just read about earlier today. And if that had happened it's possible Crist might have gone ahead and pledged to caucus with Democrats if he won. As would be his right, as far as I'm concerned. And everyone would have known exactly what the deal was well in advance of the election. You want to let people who gerrymander and filibuster and cater to special interests decide what the rules for running for election to be. Well, let's be honest -- you want ONE of the two groups that gerrymanders and filibusters and caters to special interests to decide what the rules for running for election to be. Sorry, can't go there with you.

That's not the question I asked. Does Murdoch have an exclusive right to radio frequencies that he never has to pay for, the way NPR does through the public radio stations?

There were a number of new tax credits instituted. There's a $7,500 one for electric vehicles, and I believe another big one for college tuition. None of this belies a statement that he might raise taxes in the future.

I don't want to distract from ydoaPs's interesting thread, but in a nutshell it ignored the fact that stocks represent shares of actual ownership of a company, producing a conflict of interest. President Obama recognized this conflict when we took over General Motors by presenting what we might call an exit strategy (with surprising accuracy, as it turns out). Even with competition? I got the socialism angle when I read it, but it seems like competition eliminates that argument. But maybe I misread something. I agree. That does sound like another pitfall. And if the "privatized" government were to attack that problem by passing regulation against large conglomerates, would that be because it benefits the consumer or because it benefits the government's bottom line? It could be BOTH, but it would still be a conflict of interest. I'm not sure I followed this back-and-forth, but I wanted to point out that they're ripping out toll booths left and right in South Florida as I speak, replacing them with a high-tech cashless system that works regardless of speed. (Not sure if that adds to the discussion or not.)

Does Murdoch have an exclusive right to radio frequencies that he never has to pay for that could be sold to Google for billions of debt-reducing dollars? Just curious, as long as we're talking about "indirect" benefits.

It was counted -- it was added to the national debt. I don't like it either, but even if we count it that way Obama surely comes out ahead, because you'd have to add TARP to Bush's 2008 or 2009 budgets, which makes those deficits much LARGER than $1.4 trillion. Or maybe not? Honestly I'm not sure I want much more part of this deficit tallying. Accounting make me head hurty.

Yes. I think you mean Delaware, but I'm not sure I get your point.

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying there, sorry. Can you elaborate? (bascule was just pointing out that the deficit amount actually went down from 2009 to 2010, but I'm wondering if you are referring to something else.)

It actually sounds a bit like the Jeffersonian model with an unusual revenue stream.