On Right Wisconsin, I wrote about Gov. Scott Walker’s decision to reject federal funds to expand Medicaid:
Others have raised additional pertinent objections to expanding Medicaid. Harvard University Prof. Malcolm Sparrow estimates health care abuse and fraud as “hundreds of billions of dollars a year,” with up to $60 billion per year in Medicaid fraud alone. The Wisconsin Reporter extrapolates Wisconsin’s share at $210 million in yearly Medicaid fraud. If you provide more Medicaid, you will get more Medicaid fraud. …
The only two valid reasons for expanding Medicaid would seem to be a reduction in overall health care spending and a corresponding improvement in the health of Medicaid recipients. The former will not happen. As it turns out, the latter rationale doesn’t quite pan out either.
The New England Journal of Medicine studied the state of Oregon’s 2008 Medicaid expansion, which, quoting from the study, “generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first two years.” …
The NEJM study came a year after the Cato Institute looked at the first year of Oregon’s Medicaid expansion. Expanding Medicaid unsurprisingly led to “higher medical consumption,” such as a 63 percent increase in mammograms, a nearly 60 percent increase in average outpatient visits, a nearly 30 percent increase in hospital admissions, a 15 percent increase in diabetes screening, and a 25 percent increase in Medicaid spending. The only benefit Cato found was reduced out-of-pocket patient costs; it predicted the NEJM study a year in advance by showing no significant health improvements. …
Ever wonder why small businesses are so concerned about the effects of Obamacare? It’s because small business owners pay 100 percent of the costs of their own health insurance. They see the bills and they write the checks. They know how much health insurance costs. Their employees generally do not, unless their employers tell them how much they’re contributing.
Today in 1966, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who decided to replace for the evening the tardy drummer Keith Moon and bass player John Entwistle with the bass player and drummer of the band that played before them at the Ricky Tick Club in Windsor, England.
When Moon and Entwistle arrived and found they had been substituted for, a fight broke out. Moon and Entwistle quit … for a week.
The numberone album today in 1958, and for the next 31 weeks, was the soundtrack to the musical “South Pacific” went to number one and stayed there for 31 weeks. The film version starred Mitzi Gaynor, who looked very much like my mother a few years later.
Today in 1979, Eric Clapton married Patti Boyd, the former wife of George Harrison and the muse for the song “Layla.” The song lasted much longer than the marriage.
One wonders if anyone played selections from that day’s number one British album:
Another one-hit wonder had the number one single today in 1968:
The number one single today in 1974 might be the very definition of the term “novelty song”:
The number one British single today in 1975:
(Which more appropriately should have been called “Stand by Your Men,” since Tammy Wynette had had three husbands up to then, and two more thereafter.)
Today is Syttende Mai, the 199th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution of Norway. (Which makes today more like our Constitution Day, Sept. 17, than Independence Day, July 4.)
Lake Region State College Prof. Sam Johnson explains the significance of Syttende Mai:
Having been a Danish possession for four centuries, Norway was handed over to Sweden following a military defeat of the Danes by Sweden in 1813.
The Norwegians strenuously objected to the arrangement in which they had no voice, and on April 10, 1814 they elected by popular vote a National Assembly of 112 officials, merchants, and farmers to meet at Eidsvold, Norway outside Christiania (now Oslo) to draft a constitution inspired by the American Declaration of Independence and the French Constitution.
As one representative described the assembly:
“Here was to be seen a selection of men from all parts of the realm, of all ranks and dialects, men from court circles as well as landowners, who came together in no set order for the sacred purpose of laying the foundations for the rebirth of the nation.”
Six weeks later on May 17th, the National Assembly completed its work on the Norwegian Constitution, and on the same day closed its proceedings by electing Prince Christian Frederik as King of Norway and declaring Norway a “free, independent kingdom, united with Sweden.”
Sweden’s King, Karl Johan, accepted the Norwegian Constitution of May 17, 1814 as the basis for a political marriage of convenience with Norway. He had several reasons for doing this.
One of these reasons was that he hoped the new union might be strong enough to play a role in French politics because Napoleon Bonaparte had abdicated the throne just a month earlier on April 18.
Another reason was that he dreaded the prospect of a winter war with Norway, which seemed imminent should he not recognize their document.
Therefore, he accepted the Norwegian Constitution as an appeasing gesture, though he clearly intended to take back many concessions after he was crowned monarch of the dual kingdom in 1818.
In fact, King Karl Johan deliberately began trying to restrict the constitutional powers of the Storting (Norwegian parliament), and went so far as to extend his royal prerogatives in an attempt to bind Norway closer to Sweden.
However, the Storting defended what had been won in 1814, and well into the 1820’s, the common rallying cry “Guard the Constitution” was heard at national day processions.
At best, Karl Johan was able to maintain a constitutional monarchy.
By 1830, Karl Johan gave up the idea of revising the Norwegian Constitution, as did his successors, and “Syttende Mai” celebrations became genuine festivities that included a solemn procession of elders as well as a joyous children’s parade signifying hope for the future — a tradition that continues to be a special part of “Syttende Mai” celebrations in Norway today. ..
Although Norway’s union with Sweden continued for nearly another century, the Norwegian people kept up the pressure for separation and true independence.
Finally, in 1905 with the support of virtually the entire Norwegian populace, the Storting officially dissolved Norway’s union with Sweden, and Sweden was forced to recognize Norway’s complete independence.
To this day, the exuberance of “Syttende Mai” celebrations are evident not only in Norway, but also in Canada, and the United States where more than 4.5 million Americans trace their ancestry to Norway. …
Americans of Norwegian heritage mark this special day in much they same way as they do in Norway — with music, flag waving, lots of good foods and treats, and singing the national anthem “Ja, vi elsker dette landet” (Yes, We Love This Land) with lyrics by Norwegian poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson :
“Yes, we love this country,
as it rises forth,
rugged, weathered, above the sea,
with thousands of homes and families.
Love, love it and think
of our fathers and mothers
and the saga nights that sends
dreams to our earth,
and the saga nights that sends dreams to our earth.”
The Norwegian national anthem is not this …
… it’s this:
My varied ethnic background is one-fourth Norwegian. My grandfather (from whence comes the name “Prestegard,” originally spelled “Prestegaard” or “Prestegård,” meaning, depending on whom you ask, “animal farm,” “priest’s farm” or “rectory”) was born in the Owatonna/Blue Earth area of southeastern Minnesota before his parents died and he moved in with cousins in the Brodhead area. His father, Oscar, was born in Crawford County before moving across the Mississippi River to Minnesota at some point. Oscar’s father is the original immigrant, Peter, who was from Stavanger, Norway. So I am part of the fourth Prestegard generation, or the fourth generation of these Prestegards, on this side of the Atlantic. (Similar to my mother’s side of the family; my great-great-grandfather, Paul Wellner, came here from Brackenheim, Germany.)
That is pretty much all I know about my Norwegian background. (My ethnic background is so varied that to figure out our kids’ genealogy for a school assignment required us to divide into 42nds.) Norwegians settled all over Wisconsin, proof of which can be found in this weekend’s Syttende Mai festivals in Stoughton and Westby. (Those cities’ high school teams are named, respectively, the Vikings and Norsemen.)
My grandfather visited Norway a couple times before his death in 1994. It would be interesting to know why his grandfather, Peter Prestegaard, decided to depart Stavanger — which, being on the southern end of Norway, has the warmest weather in Norway, with average temperatures above freezing all year — for a place where the average temperature never gets above zero. Fahrenheit. (I exaggerate for effect.) But I suppose instead of castigating my great-great-grandfather for his poor weather choices, I should note that, like every immigrant to this country, he had the initiative to leave what he knew for a new land where he thought he would have more opportunity.
I don’t know a whole lot about Norway without doing some research, either. (I did a paper about Norway when I was in grade school.) Norway also was invaded by Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II. The Nazis conducted heavy water experiments in Norway to develop their own atomic bomb, until the hydroelectric plant was destroyed by Norwegian commandos, known forever as the Heroes of Telemark.
As an added bonus, when the Nazis decided to move heavy water production to Germany, Norwegians sank the ferry carrying the heavy water. Norwegian civilians died in the sinking, but imagine the horror of Adolf Hitler with atomic bombs.
The wrong side is represented by Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian politician who engineered a coup d’etat when the Nazis invaded Norway in 1940. Quisling has the honor, if you want to call it that, of having his name become a noun — traitor. After the correct side won World War II, Quisling was executed. (Quisling’s American cousins started the Quisling Clinic in Madison, which employed my pediatrician, who correctly diagnosed my appendicitis on Valentine’s Day 1983.)
Unfortunately, Norway often seems to pale in comparison to its better known neighbor, Sweden, even though Norway has the second highest gross domestic product per capita in the world. Sweden made cars. The industry of Norway generally has not included automobile manufacturers.
This is the Troll, 15 of which were built in the late 1950s. Wikipedia claims the Norwegian government wouldn’t allow more to be built because of a deal for Norwegians to buy Soviet and Eastern European cars in return for the Warsaw Pact’s purchase of Norwegian fish products. Apparently good government wasn’t, or perhaps isn’t, a hallmark of Norway. (When Norway became independent of Sweden in 1905, voters chose a monarchy over a republic. The first king was Dutch.)
Norway is trying to create an electric car industry, although the main manufacturer went (surprise!) bankrupt and is now owned by Russians. Norway heavily taxes cars powered by fossil fuels. (See the last sentence of the previous paragraph.)
Norway gets international sports attention only during the Winter Olympics in skiing-related events and for curling. Soccer is popular in Norway, but Norway has been in the World Cup exactly three times, never since 1998.
One of the more interesting aspects of Scandinavian culture is the increasing popularity of authors of Scandinavian-based crime fiction — Henning Mankel, creator of Swedish detective Kurt Wallander; Stieg Larsson, creator of The Girl Who trilogy (and there won’t be any more because Larsson died after three books); Karin Fossum, Norway’s “Queen of Crime”; and Anne Holt, a former Norwegian justice minister. There was also a movie set in Norway, “Insomnia” …
… remade with Al Pacino and Robin Williams. (Neither of whom are Norwegian. The later “Insomnia” substituted Alaska for Norway. On the other hand, the lead actor of the original “Insomnia” is Swedish.)
The list of popular Norwegian music does not include ABBA, but it does include A-ha:
There are probably only two Norwegian actors you’ve heard of, figure skater-turned actress Sonja Henje and Liv Ullmann, the latter only if you like the films of director Ingemar Bergman (who isn’t Norwegian either).
If you’re being an authentic Norwegian, according to Wikipedia (and you know Wikipedia is always correct), you should celebrate today with a Norwegian feast of lutefisk (whitefish soaked in water and lye), rutabaga, meatballs, cranberries and lefse (flatbread). (I have eaten at the famous Al Johnson’s in Sister Bay once; it served Swedish meatballs with lingonberries.)
The only authentically Norwegian food I have eaten is rømmegrøt, a porridge. Mrs. Presteblog once made it. It’s very good; it can be, in my mind, breakfast or dessert. Given its ingredients — wheat flour, sour cream, heavy cream, butter, salt, sugar and brown sugar — the health fanatics might wonder how Norwegians didn’t drop dead from instantly clogged arteries after eating it.
First, for those who believe the British are the height of sophistication and are so much more couth than us Americans: This was the number one song in the U.K. today in 1986:
The chicken is not having a birthday. Pervis Jackson of the Spinners is:
So is drummer Bill Bruford, who played for Yes, King Crimson and Genesis:
I have been one of the few bloggers in this state critical of the state’s gobbling up land through the Knowles–Nelson Stewardship Fund.
Units of government already own 16 percent of land in this state. Every piece of land purchased through the stewardship fund — or, for that matter, purchased by any unit of government — extends the burden of paying for government services on the owners of the 84 percent of tax-paying land. (And Wisconsin already has the second highest property taxes per capita in the Midwest.)
If you read the news releases (which the DNR used to send to my former employer), land purchased under the Knowles–Nelson Stewardship Fund is restricted from use by those paying for it to “low-impact recreational activities.” Usually not fishing, not hunting, and never a recreational activity that involves internal combustion engines. (The horror.) Put another way, your tax dollars are paying for activities you can’t partake in unless the Department of Natural Resources approves.
The previous governor spent $86 million per year on buying land. Gov. Scott Walker reduced that to $30 million per year, which is $30 million higher than it should be. Walker’s budget proposes to increase that to $64 million over the two-year budget cycle.
WisPolitics reports the back-and-forth about simply reducing Stewardship Fund purchases:
Sen. Joe Leibham, R-Sheboygan, said the debt service on Stewardship purchases are now $1.6 million a week, adding that’s an unsustainable level. While he said he supports the aims of the program, he also said there is obviously a problem when the program has been bonding $60 million a year and the debt service on that borrowing is now $90 million annually.
“We should be proud as a state we’re maintaining a strong investment in the Stewardship Program, but we’re also ensuring this program doesn’t get further out of control,” Leibham said.
Rep. Jon Richards, D-Milwaukee, said the GOP proposal amounts to a 22 percent cut in bonding for the program while seeking the sale of 10,000 acres of land. He also slammed the money set aside for the Bearskin State Trail, saying Republicans had found money for pork in a GOP district while everyone else was getting a cut.
“Even George Orwell couldn’t say that you’re saving the program. How in the world can you say that?” he said.
The committee voted 12-4 to reject a Dem amendment to keep bonding in the program at the current level of $60 million each year.
Others are starting to question government land purchases at all. From Media Trackers:
Two dozen conservative grassroots and tea party groups on Tuesday called on lawmakers to halt the Department of Natural Resource’s stewardship program. Under the proposed state budget, the Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship Program is slated to receive $64 million over the next two years to purchase more land for the state. The purchases are to be funded entirely by bonds, which will require the state to pay for the spending in the future, with interest.Payments for existing debts incurred in previous years by the stewardship program will total $84 million over the next two years.
“Citizens should be asking at least two serious questions of Wisconsin state legislators as the Joint Finance Committee heads into a decision this week on funding for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund,” the joint statement declared.
Those questions are, “How much land should the state of Wisconsin own? And how great a debt burden should the State of Wisconsin be allowed to impose on taxpayers in order to maintain an ever-longer list of public lands?” …
The groups signing on to the press release hail from across the state, and included leaders like Kim Simac, who ran for state senate in 2011 and now works as a coalition builder among grassroots conservatives.
Since creating the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund in 1989, the Wisconsin State Legislature has authorized nearly a billion dollars in borrowing to pay for related land purchases and acquired nearly 600,000 acres of property. Today debt service alone on moneys borrowed to accommodate Stewardship purchases total over $80 million a year. Another $60 million is requested for each year in the governor’s proposed 2013-2015 biennial budget, for continued Stewardship purchases – not counting funds necessary to maintain property already owned. Yet, together, the State of Wisconsin and the U.S. Forest Service already own 3.2 million acres of this state’s land, amounting to a shocking 20 percent of total land area. …
We must now be frank as Wisconsinites: the Stewardship Fund is doing more harm than good to our state economy and job creation. A freeze in funding levels is simply not good enough. It is time that we cut the Stewardship Fund budget significantly, start paying down the debt it has created, and, wherever possible, return land to the private sector.
We call upon the Wisconsin Legislature to remove Stewardship funding from the 2013-2015 Biennial Budget. We also call upon the Wisconsin Legislature to take action that would begin restoring Stewardship lands to the private sector in order to begin to reduce the annual $80 million in debt service on Stewardship borrowing.
What has the Stewardship Fund purchased? Among other things, a golf course, reports Brian Sikma:
Wisconsin taxpayers bought a golf course for $11,134 an acre thanks to the Department of Natural Resource’s stewardship program. The program uses bonding – a form of debt financing – to purchase land that DNR bureaucrats believe should be set aside for conservation purposes. Around 5.17% of Wisconsin land is owned by the state, while nearby states like Iowa and Illinois only own respectively 0.64% and 1.14% of their state’s land.
The state purchase of the golf course land came in 2009 and was a topic of heated public debate. Two courses totaling 970 acres, including land and lakes, were purchased together for a total price of $10.8 million, or $11,134 per acre. Governor Scott Walker (R), early in his administration, sought to at least partially undo the golf course spending that happened under Governor Jim Doyle (D). …
Because the stewardship program uses bonds, which allow the DNR to spend money it doesn’t have, its total cost to taxpayers is significantly greater than the amount lawmakers have authorized it to spend. Buried in a Legislative Fiscal Bureau report on the program, its true cost to taxpayers is explained. “Debt service payments (principle repayment and interest) on the up to $1.43 billion authorized for the program could total approximately $2.2 billion” for the duration of the program’s bonds.
Bonds issued to pay for the land purchases generally run for 20 years, meaning that from 1989 (the start of the program) until 2020 (the scheduled end of the program) the bonds would run from 1989 until 2040.
The currently proposed state budget authorizes the DNR to spend $64 million on the stewardship program, or $32 million each year. But while lawmakers are mulling giving the green light to that new spending, the budget also spends $84 million just to pay off the debt from previous land purchase spending. The vast majority, $70.7 million, of that debt repayment comes from the state’s general fund, which comes from taxes.
That kind of debt financing comes out to $115,317 a day that Wisconsin taxpayers are spending just to pay off land state government already purchased. …
For comparison, the amount of money Wisconsin will spend paying for the stewardship debt is greater than the amount it will spend on some state agencies or parts of state government. The Supreme Court’s proposed budget, for example, is $63.2 million for the next two years, and the state Department of Tourism’s two-year budget was proposed at $35.7 million.
This chart shows the cumulative effect of debt for Stewardship Fund spending:
The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program assists with acquisition of land critical to outdoor recreation and tourism. Last time I looked tourism was a major industry in the state and brought in millions of dollars annually from outside the state. Is that a bad thing in your mind?
That’s right, readers. Before the DNR and the Department of Tourism came into existence, apparently no one was smart enough to figure out that Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, the Wisconsin River, the Mississippi River, the Driftless Area, the forested Great White North and most other areas of this state were worth driving to see. Road America? The Wisconsin Dells? The Packers? Who cares? If the state wasn’t making these “critical” land purchases totaling somewhere between $30 million and $86 million in land every year, the tourism industry would collapse.
On the one hand, I could suggest that people who think the government should be in the land business for what clearly is not a core function of government should declare which government spending should be cut — school funding? Health care? Transportation? Government employee salaries and benefits? — to fund land purchases. On the other hand, the government should not be in the business of buying land for something that is not a core function of government. The state is not buying land to build schools, or new roads, or fire stations. Nor is the state buying land for the purpose of future development, as cities and villages do with land within Tax Incremental Financing districts. At a time when the state budget is in nine-digit deficit by the correct measure, while the national economy (which means Wisconsin’s economy too) sucks, the state continues to buy land, even at Walker’s proposed lower level, because the environmentalist left continues to hold the state in thrall.
A couple years ago, the Tax Foundation created a Taxpayer Bill of Rights Calculator that showed how, between 1977 and 2009, state and local government spending would have increased under various spending and taxation limits — the rate of inflation, population growth, growth in personal income, etc — and how much government spending increased instead. Our lack of spending and tax controls means that state and local government spends twice as much — nearly $60 billion — per year than it would have had spending been limited to inflation and population growth. And what has that excess taxation gotten us? Debt of $84 million and growing to pay for unusable land, among other things.
The groups mentioned in this blog are correct. The correct level of Knowles–Nelson Stewardship Fund land purchases is zero.
Andrew Napolitano has sound advice for those observing the Obama administration scandals du jour, but then again it’s also appropriate for any president and his or her party:
It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should reject the calls of those who do. He argued that “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule” has been so successful that trusting the government is the same as trusting ourselves; hence, challenging the government is the same as challenging ourselves. And he blasted those who incessantly warn of government tyranny.
Yet, mistrust of government is as old as America itself. America was born out of mistrust of government. The revolution that was fought in the 1770s and 1780s was actually won in the minds of colonists in the mid-1760s when the British imposed the Stamp Act and used writs of assistance to enforce it. The Stamp Act required all persons in the colonies to have government-sold stamps on all documents in their possession, and writs of assistance permitted search warrants written by British troops in which they authorized themselves to enter private homes ostensibly to look for the stamps.
These two pieces of legislation were so unpopular here that Parliament actually rescinded the Stamp Act, and the king’s ministers reduced the use of soldier-written search warrants. But the searches for the stamps turned the tide of colonial opinion irreversibly against the king.
The same king also prosecuted his political adversaries in Great Britain and here for what he called “seditious libel” — basically, criticizing the government. Often that criticism spread and led to civil disobedience, so the British sought to punish it at its source. The prosecutions were so unpopular here, and so contrary to the spirit of what would become the Declaration of Independence, that when the British went home and the Framers wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was added, the First Amendment assured that the new government could not punish speech. …
Self-rule alone is hardly a basis for governmental legitimacy, unless it is accompanied by fidelity to the natural law and to the rule of law. The rule of law here means fidelity to the Constitution, that all laws are just and apply to everyone, so no one is excused from obeying the laws and no one is excluded from their protections.
Yet, self-rule here has been unjust and has brought us the tyranny of the majority. And that tyranny has brought us slavery, unjust wars, Jim Crow laws, domestic concentration camps in wartime, slaughter of babies in the womb, domestic spying without search warrants, torture and death by drones — just to name a few.
The reason Obama likes government and the reason it is “a dangerous fire,” as George Washington warned, and the reason I have been warning against government tyranny in my public work is all the same: The government rejects the natural law because it is an obstacle to its control over us. The natural law is divinely embedded in our souls. It is manifested by the universal yearning for freedom and justice. It consists of areas of human behavior — thought, expression, religion, self-defense, travel, acquisition and use of property, privacy, for example — in which our behavior is subject only to the exercise of our free will and not the permission of our neighbors or regulation by the government. The natural law, properly understood, is a restraint on the government.
Yet, government in America — whether it consists of Congress protecting the slave trade, or John Adams or Abraham Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson prosecuting political speech, or FDR incarcerating Japanese-Americans, or George W. Bush promising immunity for torturers and domestic warrantless spies, or Obama killing whomever he chooses with drones — has never hesitated to reject the natural law. All of these violations of the natural law were approved by the majority when undertaken. The government’s persistent and systematic rejection of the natural law is alone sufficient to mistrust government and reject Obama’s Ohio State advice.
The government that has come about by self-rule derives its powers from the consent of the governed.
Because the tyranny of the majority can be as dangerous to freedom as the tyranny of a madman, all use of governmental power should be challenged and questioned. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. If we fail to challenge government at every turn, there will be no liberty remaining for us to defend when the government tries to negate it.
Slate’s John Dickerson has the most ironic comment about Obamascandalgate:
The Obama administration is doing a far better job making the case for conservatism than Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, or John Boehner ever did. Showing is always better than telling, and when the government overreaches in so many ways it gives support to the conservative argument about the inherently rapacious nature of government. …
Though some of these scandals will allow Republicans to score points in the daily tally of who is ahead and who is behind, there is a larger benefit to conservatives that goes beyond the fall in the president’s approval ratings or the boost Republican Senate candidates may get in 2014. Those outcomes rely on further adjudication of these issues. It may turn out that President Obama had nothing to do with any of them. It could simply be rogues in various agencies. Or, maybe President Obama orchestrated the whole kaleidoscope of wrongdoing on the White House whiteboard. You don’t have to embrace either of those theories to see that it’s much easier to agree with the conservative notion that government is a mess. We have enough evidence of that already.
Conservatives argue that the more government you have, the more opportunities you will have for it to grow out of control. That is why my frequent correspondent Charles Flemming cheers every story I write about Washington gridlock. He wants less government, so he’s fine if it does nothing.
Another conservative correspondent points to economist James Buchanan, who won the Nobel Prize in 1986 for his work studying economic incentives in government. His argument was that politicians are not benevolent agents of the common good but humans acting in their own self-interest or for a special interest. “If there is value to be gained through politics,” Buchanan wrote, “persons will invest resources in efforts to capture this value.” Since Democrats and Republicans alike are sinful, each side will find ways to work that is self-interested, rapacious, and boundary breaking. Keep the government small to limit the damage.
Whether these scandals are the result of base motives or a desire to act for the greater good, the eventual result is the destruction of individual liberties. Your IRS comes down on you because you have the wrong ideology or, in the name of protecting the citizenry, the Justice Department starts listening to your phone calls.
The confluence of these moments of government overreach may not swell the ranks of conservative clubs, but it could have an effect on policy. As Sen. Lamar Alexander has long argued, conservatives believe not only in limited government, but limitations to sweeping acts by government. Large comprehensive bills like the proposed immigration reform and the Obama health care plan lead to too many unintended consequences. Alexander quotes Irving Kristol, who called himself a “policy skeptic.” His skepticism is rooted in what appears to have happened at the Justice Department, IRS, and EPA: Big sprawling government inevitably gets out of hand. Seventy-three percent of the public already says they distrust the government, according to a Pew Research Center poll. …
This moment may allow some insight into the views of those who opposed gun control legislation. During the debate over background checks, three Republicans senators who ultimately voted against the Manchin–Toomney compromise talked about “paranoia” among some gun owners about a national gun registry. The government would never go that far, these GOP senators believed, but their constituents did. Liberals pointed out that the Manchin–Toomey legislation had provisions that would have increased penalties for any kind of gun registry. They argue that rules were in place to discourage excessive behavior. Conservatives saw it a different way: The excessive behavior is inherent, so no rules will discourage it.
The articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon included his siccing the IRS on his political enemies. Liberals need to remember that if the Obama administration can sic government on its conservative opponents, a future Republican administration can do the same, or more, to its opponents.
Twenty-five years ago today, I graduated from UW–Madison with a double-major Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and political science.
Twenty-five years later, we are right in the middle of college graduation season, with thousands of college students graduating with journalism degrees.
College kids are sharp cookies, and likely are looking to land someplace more stable and secure than journalism. Someplace like the edges of the Earth’s tectonic plates.
But there still are a few delightfully demented youngsters seeking newspaper jobs, God bless ’em. They’ll bring to the nation’s newsrooms a sense of optimism and enthusiasm most newspaper veterans lost sometime during the second Bush administration. But on the down side, they’ll remind we lifers how old we are — and how much the business has changed since our bylines first appeared in print.
Nearly 20 summers ago I interned at my hometown paper, a country weekly. This was a couple years before computerized page design became common, and long before the advent of digital photography. When I describe this bygone period to our new hires, they look at me as if I am reporting live from the Paleozoic Era. “What was it like commuting via woolly mammoth? Did you write your first city council story on a cave wall?”
Back then, we printed out articles and headlines on paper. Editors then fed the printouts into a machine that coated them with wax, and placed them on pieces of paperboard the size of a news page. Ah, the smells of the 1990s newsroom: melted wax, ashtrays and unshowered police beat reporters.
That era’s tools of the trade now seem as ancient as spear heads. We shot photos on film. We used a device called a proportion wheel to size our pictures — remember, this was before you could Photoshop your face onto an image of Channing Tatum’s body in two minutes flat — and a pica pole to measure out everything on the page. Every now and then, I dig the pica pole and proportion wheel out of my desk and ask newbies to identify them. They sit silently and blink, certain I am holding artifacts on loan from the Smithsonian. …
We thought it was pretty slick in the late 1990s when we could dial up to the Internet and send our pages to the printing plant without leaving our desks. But to kids today, the sound of a 56K modem connecting — “ba donka donka donk … ksssshhhhhhhhh” — is about as modern as a pay phone.
Even the borderline burnouts still believe journalists sometimes can change how the world works. But most of the time, the world changes how we work.
I wish you good luck, class of 2013, and I ask that show your veteran colleagues due respect. Remember, one day you’ll be the dinosaur.
Here’s the thing about Ben: The “hometown paper” he interned at was the Grant County Herald Independent, where I started work May 23, 1988. Before he was an intern, he was a Lancaster High School graduate who was one of the creators of LHS’ underground newspaper, the Arrow Free Press. I did a story about the Arrow Free Press. (The next issue, the Free Press’ staff box was called the “Steve Prestegard Fan Club.) So if Ben is from the Paleozoic Era holding artifacts on loan from the Smithsonian, what does that make me?
Young journalists do not ask me for advice. If they did (other than asking them if they really, really wanted to get into this silly line of work), I would say that journalists need to do four things —
Be willing to work long and irregular hours …
… with little feedback (and what feedback you get is often negative).
Have skills in multiple media, and be technologically savvy enough to use print, audio, video, online and social media. (For that matter, journalists need to be able to use media that haven’t even been developed yet. No one had heard of the Internet in 1988.)
Be entrepreneurial. The barriers to entry in journalism are lower than they’ve been since probably the days of “Poor Richard’s Almanack.” But journalism schools still send into the world more graduates than jobs exist for those graduates and the ink-stained wretches like Bromley and myself. I was told in college that being fired (assuming it wasn’t for incompetence) was a badge of journalism honor — you know, sacrificing your job for the sanctity of your work, or some crap like that. Chances are, though, that whether by choice or not, a journalist today will be unemployed at least once during his or her career, so having freelancing skills — that is, the ability to turn your journalistic abilities into a business, with everything that entails — will become more and more important.
Would I have heeded any of this advice in 1988? Definitely number three. (I’ve always done sportscasting as a side to my regular employment. Given what a goofy profession radio is, I’m probably happy that I’ve never worked full-time in radio.) I knew number one, and probably had figured out number two. (What happens after you get a publication done? You start working on the next edition, unless (A) you’re leaving it or (B) it’s leaving you.) Having had no experience or interest in number four, the concept of being “entrepreneurial” would have sailed right over my head, and I’m taller than most people.
I’ll probably have more on this next week, when I celebrate, if that’s what you want to call it, 25 years in full-time journalism.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 