21 Comments

1. MarkJ:

Proposed new masthead for the New York Times if Obama bails out the newspaper industry:

“All the news that’s officially fit to print.”

May 10, 2009 - 4:02 pm 2. sirius_sir:

…in a choice between a country without a government or without newspapers he’d choose one without a government.

Of course under Obama’s plan, there’d be no need to choose.

May 10, 2009 - 4:11 pm 3. Alan:

“We need not be like our opponents and face the false choice between a country without a government or without newspapers. Therefore, I am proposing legislation that will give us government newspapers.” BO, 2009

May 10, 2009 - 4:16 pm 4. Robert:

President Barack Christ is thinking of bailing out the Ruling Class Media such as the New York Times, LA Times, etc. Yippeee! Now America gets to have its own state-run media just like Pravda!

Here’s your leftist drivel from your new state-run media!
Islam is a religion of peace!
High Black crime rates is due to White Priviledge! Yes impoverished Whites of West Virginia, you have White Priviledge! Asian immigrants from China and Vietnam, you have White Priviledge! Cambodians who have escaped genocide in Cambodia, you have White Priviledge!
Fat people need food stamps! Socialism breeds success! The UN Human Rights Council supports Liberty!
Blah! Blah! Blah!

May 10, 2009 - 4:44 pm 5. hdgreene:

Fortunately for the Obama Administration they can, with the help of the press, blame all the recent job losses on the Bush Administration. And with so much slack in the economy they can create a “recovery” through massive deficits and spending increases. But actually, it will be a credit funded Fling rather than a recovery. In this situation it will be the job of the press to both blame joblessness on Bush and to point out that a jobless recovery is both unavoidable and not so bad (we are switching over to a green economy; People have more time to spend with their family and return to school for new skills like grant proposal writing; we are laying a stronger foundation etc).

Even before the November election small and mid-sized companies began acting on their fears of what Washington will be like with the left Democrats in power — basically by shedding workers and inventory and shelving plans for future investment. The turn towards Crony Capitalism in the first few months could only verify the fears. The attack on hedge fund managers by Obama was bad all by itself. But the targets were, by and large, his supporters and a big source of campaign cash for Democrats. This tells us “protection” will indeed be costly. Still, look for the Democrats to channel some “make good money” toward these hedge funds from the government TARP funds. In a sense, the media splash Obama caused gave the hedge funds cover for turning over their investor’s money to the UAW — another strong supporter of the Democrats. A little “make good money” should keep these managers on board with both the party and the fling.

But small and medium firms know they will not be able to play at the billionaire level. They will have to pay more “protection money” to the politicians, to be sure, but they won’t get much protection. The cost of credit will likely go up, so they won’t be planning new investment. The government may force unions on them and legislate pay raises so they won’t be doing much hiring. Huge portions of the economy will be targeted by liberal Democrats for “change” and these sectors will be even more gun shy. And of course, they all face large tax increases.

Still, with Trillions of dollars spent on the “fling” it should produce something like a recovery — which might even look robust for three or four quarters while the considerable slack in economy is taken up. This may well get the Democrats through 2010. But they will need a lot of help from the press in shaping the narrative, since unemployment will be high. As long as it is coming down, however slowly, they should succeed.

But there may be another problem. With the uncertainties that small and medium sized firms face, they may actually shrink capacity. A year from now they might be dealing with Union Organizers, New health and safety requirements and a raft of new regulations. So if you can shed workers and cut costs while raising prices, that might be an attractive short term proposition — one that the massive fiscal stimulus of the fling economy makes possible. If enough businesses make this decision at the same time, the hang over from the Obama Fling will arrive quickly in the form of high inflation and high unemployment in a shrinking economy.

Even large corporations might well stay on the sidelines to see which way the political winds will blow. One of the costs of Crony Capitalism is that the risk premiums for investments go up. The more investors worry about expropriations, the quicker the investment has to pay off and the more sure the returns need to be. To keep “the fling” from producing inflation, investors have to invest. The US may be losing a lot of its glow.

The stimulus trillions might act like economic crack: we’ll need to keep taking it — and more of it — just to keep total depression away (in this scenario we will, of course, fail). It will be interesting to see the press spins that. How long will they keep the nation in denial?

May 10, 2009 - 6:03 pm 6. Fat Man:

Some people might fear having BO as their boss. The MSM in the US, has a thrill running down their collective leg.

Or is that up?

May 10, 2009 - 6:03 pm 7. E. Nigma:

Well, I think MSNBC is the working model. Even CNN isn’t as obnoxiously ridiculous.

So imagine all of the networks modeled on MSNBC. Would anyone actually bother to watch this sort of thing? How bad could it really get?
It would be the really bad newspapers that would be the real joke. Millions of pages of newsprint, and none of it fit to read. The loss of the newspapers would be sad, but Jefferson, of course, never foresaw the Internet.
So what I think is likely is a set of new taxes on the Internet, to subsidize the Old Media that many so thoroughly dismiss. The playing field must be leveled, according to all the smart people. I wonder how the left wing bloggers will like that?

And yes, the “stimulus” is like economic crack. They will need much more of it after the 2010 elections. The cronyism will get MUCH worse.
And I, for one, don’t foresee the Republicans getting organized enough to capture enough seats in 2010 to make any difference, especially in the Senate. In fact, they might even lose another seat or two (net) in the Senate in 2010.

May 10, 2009 - 6:33 pm 8. novanglus:

When he nationalizes the print media, will it be named:
A) Ministry of Truth
B) его слово
C) People’s Daily DIgest
D) правда и социальная справедливость

May 10, 2009 - 6:44 pm 9. cellec:

So my own government is planning to take the money it extracts from me via taxes, and spend it trying to keep alive an institution that promotes a false, guilt-driven fiction about the nature of the country I call home?

Put more succinctly, my own government is going to force me to support the likes of Chris Matthews, Keith Olberman and Bill Moyers whether I like it or not.

Pathetic.

May 10, 2009 - 7:01 pm 10. whiskey:

What you guys don’t get is that the Print and Broadcast media, with the exception of Talk Radio, are female dominated uber-liberal bastions of well, SWPL Yuppies.

Most men do not read newspapers. Which long ago abandoned serving men and focused on upscale women. Look at the stories the NYT runs, relationships and stuff like that, status-mongering about weddings, and so on. The Sports Pages long ago became an outlet for politics and liberal criticism of men, driving subscribers away.

My blog has a new entry describing how men are affected strongly and women not very much, in fact gaining under Obama.

While the Media reaches women, men tune out, and the more newspapers and CBS’s Katie Couric worship Obama as a living god, the more men hate him. That’s without the job loss, and Obama as the “Big Man” beloved of women that engenders male jealousy.

Newspapers won’t help Obama. Neither will TV, all men watch is sports and History Channel.

May 10, 2009 - 7:03 pm 11. Mad Fiddler:

This old joke seems to sum up the situation in the U.S. for those who are trying to sort out what is REALLY going on:

Guy’s wife dies, and he’s trying to explain to the Insurance company how come he’s submitted another claim for spousal death benefits.

Agent: “Says here your first wife died fifteen years ago. What was the cause of death?”

Husband: “She ate some poison mushrooms.”

Agent: “Okay, the next claim is for your second wife’s death ten years ago. What happened to her?”

Husband: “She ate poison mushrooms.”

Agent: “Mmmm. Now your third wife has died. You said here it was a fractured skull?”

Husband: “She didn’t like mushrooms.”

May 10, 2009 - 8:38 pm 12. Mad Fiddler:

“News” – meaning an accounting of significant contemporary events which will affect all manner of transactions, prices, even to the point of survival of some and death for others – has always been the province of the wealthy.

And governments.

Well, why should peasants have first crack at reports of events they can neither comprehend nor control? Why should they be exposed to needless worry over such inutile information?

I’m satisfied reading about unfolding events a few hours after the NSA and George Soros have ruminated on them. Hell, even when I was making pots of money in my “peak earning years” I bought bread from the used bread store, and meat that had been reduced for quick sale.

May 10, 2009 - 8:40 pm 13. Mad Fiddler:

(Bakery outlet store)

May 10, 2009 - 9:02 pm 14. JAK:

ezralevant.com/2009/05/close-encounters-on-parliament.html

Classic.

May 10, 2009 - 9:50 pm 15. Mad Fiddler:

Novanglus, WRT nationalized print media -
it’s just one pebble in the avalanche of bullshit from this administration.

We might be a few months behind actual events. Maybe all the important things we’re fretting about may have already taken place, and the decisions already made.

Imagine if we were watching “live” video feed from a human colony on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. All the action we see took place and was sent rippling through the space-time fabric four years ago. We’re seeing it now, and for us the events haven’t unfolded.

In fact, though, all the crises have already played out and resolved for better or for worse.

And nothing we do here and now can affect them.

Dark Vision.

There are currents flowing in the affairs of our world propelled by the inertia of two millennia of Christians trying to fulfill their understanding of God’s charge, opposed for the last 1400 years by Mohammed’s edict to the faithful to subjugate Dar-al-Harb and impose Shari’a upon the infidel, along with hundreds of thousands of Idi Amins and Robert Mugabes who want to lord it over their own people by murdering anyone who stands in their way, and along with the other hundreds of millions of people that probably would just like to be left alone but they’ve been stampeded by Communists, Nazis, Fascists, Peronistas, Mobsters, Sendero Luminoso, Khmer Rouge, Ton Ton Macoute, and Rush Limbaugh in a tutu.

Maybe that’s why trying to get a Liberal to re-examine even a single item in the Encyclopedia of Approved Dogma is like trying to sweet-talk Halley’s Comet out of its orbit.

Cosmic Inertia.

No need to be discouraged. We just have to live our lives joyfully, and make them wonder how we manage to extract so much happiness out of a life that doesn’t bow down to *their* dictates.

May 10, 2009 - 11:41 pm 16. Bob Smith:

Dropping the hint is actually free, but the message it sends is priceless.

I assume the message is “propagandize for me unconditionally or I let you all get laid off”.

May 11, 2009 - 12:04 am 17. KimW:

Some years ago, I was studying History and was very impressed by a comment made by my tutor, to the effect that the first persons ever to oppose Hitler were Germans. Germany, a civilized, educated and industrialised country, with a democratically elected government, went from that to “Nazi Germany” in only a few years. Freedom is so easy to loose and it’s loss can be so insidious.

May 11, 2009 - 2:58 am 18. Doug Loss:

When you talk about “crony capitalism” you’re in essence sugar-coating what the actual situation is. The proper term is “fascism.” Not fascist-lite, or fascist-like, or tending towards fascism, but the real thing, full-blown.

May 11, 2009 - 5:46 am 19. Jack:

cellec: Put more succinctly, my own government is going to force me to support the likes of Chris Matthews, Keith Olberman and Bill Moyers whether I like it or not.

It’s just like the auto industry. The message to the taxpayer is priceless too. “One way or another,you’ll pay for goverment-approved products.” Free markets can’t be trusted; afterall people may make the wrong choices.

May 11, 2009 - 8:00 am 20. veracious:

Cellec,

Yah, our own money being used to undo our _vote_ of no, to US newspapers. I realized long ago, that one of the most important votes we have in our Constitutional Republic, is our financial vote. Wish more USAis would get a clue.

MadF,

Interesting and Vonnegut like. Come to think of it, the Kurt V. approach to what we now know happened recently, would be very right.

May 11, 2009 - 1:22 pm 21. Pascal:

Thursday, February 19, 2009 was the last time I posted at my own site.
The Ministry of Truth: Almost There .

My absence here and my not posting there since then are related.

I’m not particularly clairvoyant. The symptoms of and evidence for the threat have long been showing themselves; simply few would address it. Disgustingly so.

Nobody really seems to give a damn that the noose is tightening. Some of the members of the old media are invested and infested in the new. I know this for a fact.

Watch your back W.

May 12, 2009 - 7:24 am

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