Battered Jounrnalist Syndrome

Truly saddening.

Asked in his Monday briefing if the White House would consider bailing out the newspaper business, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters the government may not have the power to reverse the industry’s decline.

But Gibbs wasn’t just sympathetic — he also twisted the knife a little, digging into reporters who questioned the Obama administration’s commitment to cutting spending.

“You guys didn’t think $100 million meant a lot a few weeks ago,” Gibbs said. “But looking at some of the balance sheets, $100 million seems to mean a lot.”

No mater how hard they try, it looks like the Dear Leader wont ride to their rescue after all.

And not only is there no delicious government cheese for those poor degenerate journalists, the Dear Leader repays their servitude with derision!

Its OK Barry, I'm sure they still love you.

The perpetual campaign.

Strait from Chicago, where BHO cut his political teeth, this is what a perpetual campaign looks like:



Because after all, how would all that delicious government cheese taste if the unwed/unemployed mother of 6 who is feeding it to her child didn’t know who was paying for it?
BTW, my wife got this from when she was working at an inner city hospital.

The Stimulus

Will it pass or will it fail? I don’t know .... it looks like what’s currently in the pipeline seems to be too big a piece of shit for even Susan Collins to vote for.

It is cute to see the left in an all out meltdown throwing tantrum after tantrum because those nasty “obstructionists” are getting in the way of the Obamessiah’s master plan.

Oh well.

Its like I said before, nothing I have seen from either group addresses what’s really wrong with the US economy; namely we consume more than we produce and until that’s dealt with, any fix will be a short term fix. We are in a period that is more of a correction rather than a recession.

Government Cheese for the Press

With a trillion or so dollars of ripe government cheese out there and the media going into a meltdown it was only a matter of time before they started to float some ideas out about how they could collect some payback for their hard work this last election cycle.

First in Connecticut

Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.

You know NPR is on board.

Is The New York Times any less critical to our society than, say, General Motors? Robert Picard, a professor of media economics and director of the Media Management and Transformation Centre at Jonkoping University in Sweden points out that the Swedish government stepped in explicitly to preserve public discourse.

And the budding grad students at Colombia University want to be sure that the $200,000 that mommy and daddy spent on their masters won’t be wasted working the register at Borders.

So, over in the land of Freedom Fries and Jerry Lewis…there’s a new news policy afoot. President Sarkozy is going where the U.S. government has thus far feared to tread: he’s bailing out France’s newspapers.
In the meantime, will any of this prove instructive for the U.S. government and its news industry? Probably not (socialism! socialism! socialism!). But vive la différence, and everything.

Change, thats what its all about, good and fucking hard.

On Kenya and Cook County.

From John Kass today.

Back in 2006, Obama visited Kenya and railed about wholesale political corruption there that robbed the people of their right to honest government.

Then, he was campaigning for president of the United States as a reformer, though he forgot to mention that if elected, he'd bring half of Chicago's Daley Machine to the White House.

Excellent observation! In my numerous travels, I am sometimes asked why Chicago has such a reputation for corruption, and why, if it is as bad as is claimed, who don’t the voters throw them out of office or why don’t the politicians go to jail.

Simple, Cook County has mastered the art of leveraging public services, patronage employment, and media collusion to make the most seamless and ruthless political machine this country has seen. Sure some people would argue that the machine style politics as practiced in Chicago is endemic to all large urban areas, but Chicago is quite unique in that it has lasted nearly unscathed to this day and shows little if any sign of going away.

Everyone gets a piece of the action, and in turn they are all taken care of with jobs, earmarks, scholarships, perks for friends and families and most importantly big county and city contracts.

The unions support the machine because although Cook County has been hemorrhaging industrial union jobs due largely to burdensome tax policies and gentrification of formerly industrial areas (see Vienna Beef), the city has expanded its own workforce, all union naturally, and more importantly, has unanimously sided with the unions during contract negotiations that between union contractors and the respective union. The unions play ball with the machine, and they have a powerful ally when it comes time to negotiate pay and benefits with the non governmental employers.

You do campaign work for a politician, and are now qualified for a cushy municipal job. Are you an engineer? Campaign for me and I will get you a job at the Metropolitan Sanitary District (personal note here, I applied and tested for a spot at the MSD and out of 900 candidates, I was one of only 6 who scored a 100% on the exam, and the only one who had greater than 100% after my professional certifications were taken into account and DID NOT get the job. The job was relisted due to lack of qualified applicants, and was given to an alderman’s son in law). Is your son in school and needs some summer work? Campaign for me and he can work for streets and sanitation during the summer.

Support me and convince your congregation to support me, and I will make sure that the legislature allocates money for your congregations. Much like the $200,000 Michael Pfleger received from The Dear Leader.

Finance my campaign, and I will make sure that the neighborhood you want to redevelop is reassessed by the county every year until the holdouts can no longer afford the increase in property taxes and you can buy them out for a song.

And the gangs! Most people are not aware that street gangs in Chicago play a very active roll in politics. Although they cannot vote because most of them are felons, they can intimidate rival politicians and act as political muscle for politicians who court them. The Black Stone Rangers (now known as the El Rukins) and the Gangster Disciples received boatloads of federal state and local money under the guise of reaching out to local community anti-poverty groups in the 1960. Jesse Jackson used El Rukin muscle to man many of his protests (did you know that Jesse’s half brother is an El Rukin, and is jail). Former Gangster Disciples bossman Larry Hoover founded 21st Century V.O.T.E and had the support of former Cook county Commissioner, and Obama crony, John Stroger. A survey by researcher Andrew Papachristos found that 4,500 Chicago gang members claimed to have received monetary compensation for campaign work for politicians.

Basically, everyone gets a piece of the action, and consequentially everyone helps the machine propagate itself. The part about all this is that it’s all quietly understood so no one has to talk about it. My cousin worked for the CHA back in 2000. When Al Gore came to town for a rally in Daley Plaza, everyone in his department was given a ½ day off for an administrator in-service. The half day would provide anyone who wanted with ample opportunity to go to the Gore rally, which my cousin blew off to go fishing with me instead. He was not approved for overtime for the next 6 months, despite the fact that everyone else in his department was putting in between 5-10 hours a week. The understanding was that by being an employee of the city, you read between the lines and do what’s good for the continued survival of the machine and having Daley’s brother in the White House (he was Gore’s chief of staff) .

Young voters and self styled “progressives” support the machine …. Do I really have to elaborate here?

What about the legal system stepping in? Fat chance as the county prosecutor is just another machine hack, this time in the incarnation of Anita Alvarez. The feds do come in about every 15-20 years, Operation Silver Shovel, and clean house, but even when a Cook County machine politician is convicted and sent to jail they still try to pick up right where they left off after their release.

Real reform will come when a prosecutor has the enough time and resources to spend a decade dealing with the corruption, much like Patrick Fitzgerald is doing now. I think it’s a safe bet that The Dear Leader will either fire him, or promote him out of the trenches where he is tearing Obama’s political allies to pieces and give him a do nothing job at the Department of Justice.

And while the machine manages to dole out enough goodies to its supporters to keep getting itself elected, it does that off the backs of people like me who eventually get fed up and move the fuck out. Lower taxes, cheaper homes and better schools beat out any back scratching that the Democratic Machine could dole out.

And the media? The press here in Chicago may make a wave now and again, but a target rich environment like Chicago could be Pulitzer material for a decade; problem is no one has the balls to do as often as it needs to be done.

Remember this the next time Obama talks about cleaning up Washington and his political roots in Chicago. He swam in a cesspool of corruption with lifeguards like Richard Daley, Emil Jones, and Todd Stroger

Redistributive Wealth In Action

Be careful what you wish for:

On my way to lunch recently, I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read "Vote Obama; I need the money." I laughed. In a restaurant my server had on an "Obama 08" tie. Again I laughed. Just imagine the coincidence. When the bill came, I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Barack-Obama-redistribution-of-wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need—the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight. I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful. At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment, I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more. I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

(H/T: A Chicago Blog )

A Big Pill

Although I never cared much for Ron Paul on a lot of issues, his former economic advisor Peter Schiff was spot freaking on in 2006:

Whether it starts in 07 or 08 I think is immaterial. I also think its going to also not just for quarters but for years. The basic problem with the US economy is we have too much consumption and borrowing and not enough production and savings and what’s going to happen is the American consumer is basically going to stop consuming and start rebuilding his savings especially when he sees his home equity evaporate.

And when you have the Economy 70% consumption you can’t address those imbalances without a recession. Rather than the recession being resisted, it should really be embraced because the disease is all this debt financed consumption. The cure is that we stop consuming and start saving and producing again, and that’s a recession. Sometimes medicine tastes bad but you gotta swallow it.

To which our newly ordained Dear Leader says:

The government will do ``whatever it takes'' to revive the economy, Obama said. That means ``we shouldn't worry about the deficit next year or even the year after,'' he said, adding that in the short term, ``the most important thing is that we avoid a deepening recession.''

I don’t know if this is the most prudent course of action, later on in the video Schiff makes the case that we need to get the deficits under control, otherwise inflation will explode and do more damage than to the economy than any correction. Unfortunately as spot on as Schiff was, I think that people will continue to ignore him at our peril.

No one wants to acknowledge the hard truth that we have collectively been living beyond our means for the past 20 years, it will only get harder to correct this imbalance the longer we allow it to continue.

Wake up ... Wake Up ... Wake Up

AIG, Amex, The Big 3, the cities of Detroit, Phoenix, Philadelphia all want in on some of tat delicious tasty rich and sweet goverment cheeze.

After reading about all these handouts, I dont know why Bone Thugs-N-Harmony popped into my mind.

Wake up, wake up, wake up
it's the 1st of the month
To get up, get up, get up
so cash your checks and get up

Government Cheese Spreads

Another bailout for another industry, this time the Big Three.

I hear a lot of people saying that this has to be done or GM, Ford and Chrysler will go bankrupt but I don’t hear any of these people also explain why this is the worst of all possible outcomes.

The Big 3 will remain at a significant competitive disadvantage if they cannot get out of their long term pension liabilities with the UAW. The worst of all possible outcomes is having to do this again in 15 years.

Bailing them out just allows them to continue implementing a failed business model that will have to be abandoned eventually anyways. As much as it will suck for all those retired and soon to be retired UAW members who have been relying on their pensions to see them through retirement, it has to be done sooner or later.

If the Big Three were smart, they would take part of the money and give it to the UAW and say here, you manage the pension fund for now on.