Ever Wonder About Media Bias?

Why would any broadcast company tend to ignore certain tendencies of our national life?

As newspapers decline in importance, we keep looking toward the electronic media to give us the kind of information that we need to have, in order to make intelligent decisions. And yet, it seems, that every day we find ourselves watching Suzy Cutie and Howie Handsome on the Idiot Box, telling us about kittens caught in trees, and the valiant efforts of local fire crews coming to the rescue.

Is there a dumb pill out there?

No.

There is a reason why major newsrooms fail to provide information that you and I need to have to make intelligent decisions. The reason? The Federal Communications Commission.

Let's look at some of the language found in FCC Form 396 (pdf):

"Broadcast station licensees are required to afford equal employment opportunity to all qualified persons and to refrain from discriminating in employment and related benefits on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, and sex. See 47 C.F.R. Section 73.2080. Pursuant to these requirements, a license renewal applicant whose station employment unit employs five or more full-time station employees must file a report of its activities to ensure equal employment opportunity. If a station employment unit employs fewer than five full-time employees, no equal employment opportunity program information need be filed. If a station employment unit is filing a combined report, a copy of the report must be filed with each station's renewal application.

"A copy of this report must be kept in the station's public file. These actions are required to obtain license renewal. Failure to meet these requirements may result in sanctions or license renewal being delayed or denied. These requirements are contained in 47 C.F.R. Section 73.2080 and are authorized by the Communications Act of 1934, as amended.

"DISCRIMINATION COMPLAINTS. Have any pending or resolved complaints been filed during this license term before any body having competent jurisdiction under federal, state, territorial or local law, alleging unlawful discrimination in the employment practices of the station(s)?

"If so, provide a brief description of the complaint(s), including the persons involved, the date of the filing, the court or agency, the file number (if any), and the disposition or current status of the matter."

"Discrimination Complaints."

A Silver Bullet. Apply for a broadcast job, and if you find that Lisa Takagawa got the job and you didn't, you may have a case for a discrimination complaint. If your name is Sam Jones. Or Luis Ortega. Or, if you find out that Lisa is heterosexual, and you're not. It was close to thirty years ago, when I got hit with a discrimination complaint. A young man alleged that I gave full-time employment to a young woman, because she would "do me" and he wouldn't. Imagine the embarrassment that a General Manager of any broadcast company would need to feel, to be required to provide a brief description of this complaint?

Why would a federal agency want to have this type of embarrassment filed?

Well, they spell it out later, in their form:

"The FCC is authorized under the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, to collect the personal information we request in this report. We will use the information you provide to determine if the benefit requested is consistent with the public interest. If we believe there may be a violation or potential violation of a FCC statute, regulation, rule or order, your request may be referred to the Federal, state or local agency responsible for investigating,prosecuting, enforcing or implementing the statute, rule, regulation or order. In certain cases, the information in your request may be disclosed to the Department of Justice or a court or adjudicative body when (a) the FCC; or (b) any employee of the FCC; or (c) the United States Government, is a party to a proceeding before the body or has an interest in the proceeding. In addition, all information provided in this form will be available for public inspection. If you owe a past due debt to the federal government, any information you provide may also be disclosed to the Department of Treasury Financial Management Service, other federal agencies and/or your employer to offset your salary, IRS tax refund or other payments to collect that debt. The FCC may also provide this information to these agencies through the matching of computer records when authorized. If you do not provide the information requested on this report, the report may be returned without action having been taken upon it or its processing may be delayed while a request is made to provide the missing information. Your response is required to obtain the requested authority."

A broadcasting license is worth millions of dollars. A broadcast station's newscasts can form a basis for a discrimination complaint. There are a lot more rules about who you can hire, and more importantly, how you can hire, that I haven't posted here. Maybe later.

But you wonder why broadcast TV and radio fail to inform the public?

One last thought; broadcasters have no "freedom of expression" guarantees. Since radio and television stations receive grants of authority to broadcast from the federal government, the language and ideas expressed must meet the standards of communication set out by the Federal Communications Commission.

No wonder they want to control the internet.

Register for Dorchester

'Standup Economist' to speak during Friday night session


The famous (or is it infamous?) Dorchester Tent Show may not be the funniest nor most provocative part of this year's conference. Why? Because Yoram Bauman, Ph.D, better known as the "Standup Economist," will address the Dorchester Conference during the event's Friday evening session.


Dr. Bauman, "the world's first and only stand-up economist," performs regularly at colleges, companies, and comedy clubs. He has appeared in TIME Magazine, on PBS and NPR, and on YouTube, where his videos have over a million hits.



"Dorchester has always been a place where we try to make politics fun," stated Dorchester President Grace Ishida. "We think delegates will enjoy the intellectual sense of humor that Dr. Bauman brings to discussions about economics and public policy."


Bauman is the founder of Non-Profit Comedy, a series of benefit shows that has raised almost $100,000 for local non-profits. He has a BA in mathematics from Reed College, a PhD in economics from the University of Washington, and spends his non-comedy hours teaching in the University of Washington's environmental studies program.

Go here.

My Expectations

Briefly.

I expect the current financial bubble to burst during the Second Quarter of this year.

There are too many concurrent antecedents to the forthcoming burst to be ignored.

Greece is not going to be the cause of this pop. Greece will be the victim. Liquidity will be blamed. As in, not enough. But this isn't, and won't be true. There is plenty of liquidity. The problem will be, as it was in the Weimar Republic, currency devaluation.

In my last post, I put up a video of a mathematician talking about the simple math that leads to doubling of value; whether that value is one of debt, or growth. The amazing thing is, I heard, tonight, Governor Romney complaining about a sixty percent increase in government spending during Senator Santorum's tenure in the U.S. Senate. Taking a look at the math, it's obvious that government spending, during Senator Santorum's tenure as a U. S. Senator, was less than seven percent, per year.

How effective would Governor Romney's objection had been, if he were to have said, "you know, when Senator Santorum was in the U. S. Senate, growth in federal spending occurred at under a seven percent annual rate!"

Paper tiger.

But, let us not parse the knowable. Let's think about the unknowable.

What will be the value of an ounce of gold next year? What will be the price of gasoline next year?

When President Obama was elected, the price of gold was $700.00 per ounce. The price of gasoline was $2.00 per gallon. The majority holder of debt for U.S. debt was China. Today, it is the United States. Imagine the poverty that has been imposed upon U.S. citizens by the current administration. We have move back, each and every one of us, by more than fifty percent, in JUST THREE YEARS.

Not ten years. Not twelve years.

Three years. And the bad things about monetizing debt are still standing off-shore. We haven't yet experienced the effects of excess liquidity, since the markets have been extraordinarily defensive in their asset allocations. We have parked most of our national economy in deep water, waiting for the flood. (And, worse yet, all of our retirees who have made investments are slowly being robbed of their capital, as markets seek to trade on dips.)

Nobody loves the rich. They have stuff and money, and stuff. It's easy to hate the rich, since, if you hate the rich, chances are you're either the spawn of the rich, or wish to be rich yourself. Envy is a hellofan attitude. "They have stuff that we want to have." Well, yeah! Hella! Want me some rich guy stuff!

I don't know how you're getting ready for the next bubble-burst. I'm planning acquisitions. Why? Because, when bubbles burst, some are able to make money, some aren't. In 2008 I made money. Have for three years. I depend upon my clients to understand why I'm spending their money, and what the benefits for those expenditures are. They are stated. My clients give me their money, freely. I don't have the authority to work in their own best interests as a mandate provided by the government. They can choose not to use my services. They are free.

After years of Solyndras, isn't it time we look at the mandates our government has imposed upon markets, and more importantly with the imposition of ObamaCare, ourselves, that we take a look at the success ratio of government investments to outcomes? Governments suck at investments.

People don't. Unless they are idiots. (See, equity holders in Washington Mutual.)

Time to tuck in. Gold coins that I bought years ago at thirty dollars each are now worth $1700.00 per ounce. Silver I bought for face value is now worth $33.50 for ten dimes. Money has value. Good money drives bad money out. Gresham's Law. I'd gladly pay you Tuesday, for an hamburger today.

Be smart. Look for alternatives.

Growth

Math is a peculiar thing. It can be used to help elucidate (explain) a problem. Take a thing, like a budget. And say you have a budget for projects that don't make any economic sense, but advance an agenda.

Contrast these projects, that don't make any economic sense, with projects that make economic sense. What is the difference between these two projects? For example, let's look at a project that makes no economic sense, and contrast it to a project that makes economic sense.

What would a good example of a project, that works to advance an agenda, be? How about a cellulosic ethanol?

What a grand idea! Instead of relying upon food for alcohol for creating a cheap combustible like gasoline, let's instead create a fuel, less efficient than that of the cheap combustible--gasoline--and give it agenda credits; it is less reprehensible than the production previous agenda. That is, the part of the fuel isn't petroleum-based may have less of a negative impact than the current part of fuel that isn't petroleum-based. Of course, I'm writing about ethanol, not from corn, but what is called "cellulosic ethanol," ethanol from agricultural products that aren't involved in the food chain. In many instances, this cellulosic ethanol would be created from the waste products of the timber industry. Out here, in the Northwest, we call them chips. Chips are important, since that's where we get paper.

The argument against petroleum-based fuels began during the Carter administration. Trends are important, and an important, new trend, that had been discovered during the years leading up to the Nixon administration; the environmental impacts of life.

The impacts of life. That we exist, means we impact the world around us. That would be, in my day, a "no duh" statement. Obvious. Simple. We exist, we impact the world around us. 

Living was dirty in the 1960's. Not as dirty as it had been during the rise of the Industrial Age. Not as dirty as it was in the industrial cities of any other country. But taking the trip across the bridge into New Jersey from New York meant one came nose-to-smell in contact with chemical refineries. It was a nauseous moment. If you were living around Albany at the time, you probably remember our friend, Wah Chang. Now, multiply it by an order of magnitude. New Jersey, frankly, stunk. Not the momentary Wah Chang kind of stink. But a malodorous, living, yellow stink. Pollution was a driving force behind a series of laws that were required to gain control over the problem of the Commons.

Portland is an interesting example of how easy it was to gauge pollution in the city. Sundays (for me) required driving cross-town, from Beaverton to the East Side. At the time, the only road available was Barbur Boulevard. And Barbur has one of the nicest views of Mount Hood of any thoroughfare in the city. On bad pollution days (during the early 1960's), you couldn't see the mountain. That is, the pollution in Portland was visible. Advocates of pollution control were simply describing the problem; visibility.

Is the loss of one of our most important views something that should be corrected,through regulation, or not?

In the 1960's, we became aware of the pollutants we were putting into our air, and water.

Issues about water quality were being similiarly addressed. The Cuyahooga River had been a source of environmental concern for years. The various states, in this case, Ohio, failed to act.

(Map from Wiki, here.)

The Cuyahoga was an Ohio River. Prior to the Nixon Administration, riverways were the sole province of the state. And Ohio failed to act. Ohio was an industrial state. Shared costs of the state (public costs), from which industries were thriving under industrial development, included the costs of that industrialisation; that is, while a burning river was obviously a bad thing, local politicians were unable to act. 

The problem of a burning river is, you can't ignore the public costs of industrialisation. Some societies deal with public costs (externalities), and some don't. I shudder to think about dousing myself in the Ganges River. There are waterways around the world that I would choose not to swim in. The Cuyahoga was a river that, in the 1960's, met that criterion.

Some of the biggest employers in Ohio were General Motors, Armco, Cyclops, Jones & Laughlin, National, Pittsburgh, Republic, Sharon, U.S. Steel, Wheeling and Youngstown Sheet & Tube

Coal was king, kiddies. And coked-steel was strong. And Ohio made a lot of steel.

The process was a dirty process. States were unwilling to address the problems. And there were competing political problems. Why would a state, or a municipality, attempt to regulate an industry that would put the local, domestic products into an unfavourable competitive state against other states, or foreign sources of steel? The problem of pollution became known as an external cost in the production of steel. In economic analysis, an external cost is one placed upon a person, or persons, who didn't agree to accept the costs imposed. That is, since pollution, especially in the case of the Cuyahoga, was imposed upon people who didn't want their property burned by a river polluted with industrial waste, the cost of the pollution was "externally" imposed upon them.

But no mayor, and no governor, was willing to place their local fief in a less competitive environment, when it came to the production of industrial goods. It would take the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act to place rules that made the protection of our air and water a responsibility of government.

An expansion of the meaning of "interstate commerce." But, in my opinion, based upon fairly decided law. An example of this would be Missouri v. Illinois, 180 U.S. at 241. "The Court indicated that states, having given up the powers of independent sovereigns to make war and to conduct diplomacy, must be able to turn to the federal government for protection from trans-boundary pollution, rather than force their citizens to rely on state private nuisance actions."


As a Republican of the time, the lack of state and local protection of air and water quality was an obvious error in prior law. And it was clearly an issue that, under our Constitution, was clearly the type of problem that required federal involvement. For me, the clearly Constitutional question was, "does the Constitution allow for Federal involvement in this case?"

There's a good chance that Constitutional doctrine didn't, or wouldn't, have allowed this expansion of Federal authority in this case. It did involve navigable waterways. Navigable waterways were defined in 1824. These are old Commerce Clause cases. Restraint was called for.

But, not the restraint of government. Instead, an extension of government was called for. Authority for trans-state pollution needed to be imposed. The rules of the EPA act were clearly defined, and Constitutional for the act passed in 1969.

What occurred since has been an expansion, based on sound Constitutional and legal theory, that has surpassed the intent of the framers of the original EPA act. What was based upon a theory of waterways, has been extended to embrace all forms of contiguity. It's now not enough to have a clearly defined waterways act, but now the EPA has used its regulatory powers to assert itself over air quality.

I'm not sure that the EPA, which had a limited mandate to provide rules under which certain combustible machinery was regulated, in order to reduce visible pollution, extended to cover the range of possible causes of "pollution," that it wishes to control today. Agencies tend to push the boundaries for their mandates. The greater the control an agency is able to confer upon itself, the greater the funding available, and necessary, for that agency.  Imagine being an assistant to the Secretary for Wartime Sourcing for Secondary Products.

If you can assert that Secondary Products are more valuable than Primary Products, you're going to end up with more money for your agency. And, you're going to be invited to more cocktail parties. If, instead, it turns out that being the Secretary for Wartime Sourcing for Primary Products is, instead, more vital, then the Secretary of Primary Products will be invited to more cocktail parties, than the Secretary for Secondary Products.

This is Washington.

It, absolutely, has nothing to do with the needs and concerns of our nation's citizenry. The game being played in state houses and city halls is the same game being played in our nation's capital. Being more important is the goal. Having more authority is the goal. Leadership has been reduced to pandering. "Here's something you should know!" is more likely a pitch, offering more for less, and trading on the worst impulses of the public.

It's called Populism for a reason.

But here is an important point: you cannot extend your promises beyond your ability to pay for them. I'm reminded of the story of a certain frog, and the result of the findings that one particular frog had been filled with shot.

What is the commons?

I've alluded to this a couple of times in this essay, and it's worthwhile for you to find out. The document that the Left refers to when invoking the Commons is an essay by Garrett Harding. The take-away line is this, "Perhaps the simplest summary of this analysis of man's population problems is this: the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density."

The narcissism of this statement alone should lead one to condemn the author and his entire thesis.

What a bone-headed statement. What intellectual delirium must this man laboured under to conjecture such a line?  For those of us who live in Oregon, only two percent of the state is in a condition that can be called "developed." Fifty percent of this state is defined as "frontier." OMG! Yes, we must begin to kill babies!

And the increase in development projected for Oregon is, by 2024, four percent of our state will be developed.

All of this "sky is falling" rhetoric is boring, it's stupid and uninformed, and is akin to Druid Priests chanting against the darkening sky. Futile, defenseless and moronic. But when you hear these claims on a daily basis, from your newspaper, your television set, what are you to believe? And, when you throw in boring, stupid and uninformed, you end up with a major dose of apathy. WTF care? You know it's propaganda, you know it's probably full of BS. Why make waves disagreeing? Why worry about confronting teachers, elected officials, newspaper guys, the television talking heads, the morons down at the labour hall, the cool chicks at the Women's Center?

Here's why.

Government spending is increasing at a rate higher than seven percent a year. Seven percent federally, seven percent at the state level. And seven percent at most county and local levels. Private sector growth is occurring around one-point-five percent.

What happens when spending growth increases by seven percent for ten years?

Cancelling My Amazon Account

Ms. Jamie Gorelick has just been added to the Board at Amazon.

I'm done.

Prop 8

There is nothing that I can see in Proposition Eight, California's act that prohibits marriage between same-sex couples, as violating the principles of the Constitution.

Perversity is not a crime. Being viewed as perverse isn't actionable as a crime. One of the fundamentals of civilization is, that to be a crime, there must be harm. And not just a civil harm, but a criminal harm.

I read Rousseau as a college student. Having the freedom to choose what to do with yourself is a natural freedom. Whether you choose to paint yourself pink and yellow and prance about your bedroom is as natural a right as it is to pray to God. What right have I to tell you not to paint yourself pink and yellow and prance about your bedroom? The freedom to express yourself is a Constitutional right. The freedom to act in a manner that offends, is a Constitutional right. The license to marry is a contractual obligation that is recognized by the state. The state defines the conditions under which such a license is issued. Just as I must be able to pass a vision test, and a driving skills test, the state has under its jurisdiction the authority to issue rules to which one must abide, in order to gain the license of that state, to enter into a state of matrimony.

States don't have the authority to limit our freedom of speech, our freedom to express ourselves, or our freedom to choose much of our own lives. It does have the authority to tell each of us whether or not we can drive a car, build a dam, or shoot our neighbors. It does have the authority to tell us whether or not our children must attend school. It has authority over our lives that we may object to.

And all of this authority comes from the same place; the laws a state passes and then enacts.

Again, the Ninth Circuit attempts to wander from the tested waters of jurisprudence.

Good luck in the majors.

A Lullabye