The Internet is a prime example of what Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek called spontaneous order. One single institution does not control the Internet. This is primarily what makes the Internet so great. Billions of individuals all over the world are free to spread unrestricted information on the Internet. I actually became a libertarian largely because I was exposed to ideas that I never heard before on the free Internet. Can you imagine how terrible the Internet would be if it was centrally planned by the government? A centralized institution cannot possibly know or satisfy the unique wants of billions of individuals across the globe.
Despite the lack of centralized control, the Internet exhibits a high degree of order. As the Taoist Chuang-tzu said, “good order results spontaneously when things are let alone”. Self-policing has worked to a certain degree to keep harmful content off the Internet. As it currently stands, there are no government mandates requiring search engines to remove information. Many websites already voluntarily remove information deemed inappropriate. For instance, Google routinely screens out child pornography from its search results. Facebook and Twitter encourages users to flag malicious content that violates their terms of service. While self-regulation may not be perfect, it is much preferable to government regulation.
The House version SOPA and Senate version PIPA would grant the federal government unprecedented control over the Internet. Both bills would give the federal government the power to shut down literally millions of websites. SOPA, the most dangerous version of the two, contains vague language permitting the government to shut down any website that is found to “engage in, enable or facilitate” copyright infringement. …
SOPA and PIPA threatens our free speech. These bills forcibly require search engines and other third parties to remove links to rogue websites. This is a clear violation of our constitutional right to free speech as well as a burdensome regulation that will destroy jobs. …
SOPA and PIPA would undermine the free flow of information on the Internet. This could be a dangerous slippery slope in which the federal government seeks more and more control over the Internet. The Egyptian and Chinese governments have actually shut down citizen access to the Internet over the past few years. Every authoritarian government ultimately desires to have complete control of information and communication technologies.
Psychiatrist Keith Ablow, member of the Fox News Medical A-Team:
According to the Centers for Disease Control, we’re becoming a nation of drunks. Booze hounds on benders.
New data reveals that one in every six Americans downs eight mixed drinks within a few hours, four times a month. Twenty-eight percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 binge-drink five times a month, putting away seven drinks in one sitting. And 13 percent of those between the ages of 45 and 65 binge drink five times a month, too.
News of the magnitude of this intoxication—resulting in frequently and dramatically altered states of consciousness for tens of millions of Americans—is no different than if we were to learn that a quarter of our young people were snorting half-a-gram of cocaine more than once-a-week or injecting heroin on that schedule. The psychological/cognitive effects of seven or eight drinks are no less intense, and, possibly, even more dramatic.
Think about that: A significant portion of our population wants to not be present for significant portions of every single week.
Well, think about this: The federal government mandated through threats to withhold transportation aid that states adopt the 21-year-old drinking age in the mid-1980s. The federal government last decade mandated through threats to withhold transportation aid that states reduce the legal level of drunk driving from 0.10 to 0.08. And yet, according to Ablow, “tens of millions of Americans” continue to seek “dramatically altered states of consciousness” through their favorite adult beverage(s). Federal efforts to reduce drinking appear to have been as successful as Prohibition.
And yet, as a fan of adult beverages (but you knew that), I’m skeptical. The three-martini lunch — forget that, the one-martini lunch — is something you see only on “Mad Men.” A lot of people go overboard once (or before) they reach legal drinking age, but when they mature they drink responsibly. Last decade we had a president who didn’t drink, and depending on the November results we might have another. (Mormons don’t drink, for those who didn’t know that.) I suspect post-college adults know more people who don’t drink at all than drink at Ablow’s specified binge level.
What Ablow says next is more interesting:
My theory is that Americans are on a flight from reality. Faced with painful facts—including the precarious state of the economy, the gathering storm represented by militant Muslims, in general, and Iran, in particular, the crumbling state of marriage in this country, the fact that our borders are being overrun, and the fact that our health care insurance system is in shambles (to name just a smattering of the troubles we desperately need to address)—we as a nation are drinking, drugging, gambling, smoking, Facebooking, YouTubing, Marijuaning, Kardashianing, Adderalling, Bono-ing (as in thinking of Chaz’s sad flight from reality as good), Prozacking, Twittering, and Sexting ourselves into oblivion. …
See, when you drug yourself five or ten percent of your life, that experience (or rather non-experience) can contaminate the rest of your life, too. Because suppressing your truth—including your anxiety and your resolve—for one day in 7 days is enough to tip the balance of your thinking away from introspection, away from insight and away from real involvement with others and the world around you. …
More laws could never solve this problem, by the way. A new Prohibition wouldn’t stem the tide of the clear desire of a significant percentage of Americans to anesthetize themselves a significant portion of their lives. The only antidote is the decisiveness of individuals to live their lives, to be present and to count—for real.
“To live their lives, to be present and to count — for real” involves focusing on the right things, by the way. (As opposed to the dominant culture in my hometown. Or, for that matter, Ablow‘s Facebook obsession with Casey Anthony.) “Think globally, act locally” is half-sound advice and half-silly. I hate to break this news to you, but you have no influence over “militant Muslims,” Iran, our borders (supposedly) being overrun, or, for that matter, global climate change. The world will not end if a majority of American voters compound their 2008 mistake and vote again for Barack Obama. You do, however, have the ability to influence what you do — your own life, and the people in your world. We’d all be better off if we focused on fixing our own lives instead of others’ lives.
Another thought Ablow might not want me to point out is that resorting to “experts” such as Ablow’s Life Coaches or Medical A-Team may actually make things worse. Someone with more knowledge than you is not necessarily smarter or wiser than you. (My late grandmother and father-in-law, each of whom stopped school after eighth grade, had more sense than people I’ve known with educational suffixes after their names.) Today’s popular culture appears more inclined to run to Oprah, “The View,” “The Talk,” “The Doctors,” “Dr. Phil,” “Dr. Drew” or anything involving the word “buzz” instead of using all those brain cells God gave us. Teachers, however, make their students work out things for themselves instead of telling them the answer, for a reason.
Of course, I don’t know any of the aforementioned paragraph personally. I don’t participate in the freak show that is reality TV, and the TV is off in the daytime. I do not know all the answers (or even some of the questions), but when I need advice, I know to not get it from TV.
Christian Schneider on with whom Sens. Jessica King (D–Oshkosh) and Tim Cullen (D–Janesville), supposed gubernatorial recall candidate, are hanging around these days:
If the recent controversy over collective bargaining in Wisconsin has done anything, it has lifted up a rock to expose how many cretins manage to slither below the surface of legitimate political dialogue. …
Then there’s liberal hero Ian Murphy, who impersonated billionaire David Koch while making a now-famous prank phone call to Gov. Scott Walker. Murphy, a blogger, was immediately lionized by union loyalists for supposedly “exposing” Walker’s ties to the Koch Brothers (whom Walker claims he has never met). …
On Tuesday, the 540,000 signatures needed to force a recall election of Governor Walker are due; and in advance of this momentous occasion, Democrats have sent Murphy on a barnstorming tour to drum up support for the recall. Local newspapers have photographed Murphy chumming it up with incumbent state senators, many of whom fled the state last February in order to block a vote on the collective-bargaining bill. Flyers offer attendees the chance to “meet special guest Ian Murphy of the Daily Beast, famous for his ‘Fake David Koch’ phone call.”
But that isn’t the only thing that has brought fame to Ian Murphy. In May 2008, he wrote a vile column titled “F*** the Troops,” in which he ridiculed the notion that we should honor those fighting for our country. Among Murphy’s “greatest” hits (warning: profane language):
● “So, 4000 rubes are dead. Cry me the Tigris. Another 30,000 have been seriously wounded. Boo f***ing hoo. They got what they asked for — and cool robotic limbs, too.”
● “The benevolence of America’s ‘troops’ is sacrosanct. Questioning their rectitude simply isn’t done. It’s the forbidden zone. We may rail against this tragic war, but our soldiers are lauded by all as saints. Why? They volunteered to partake in this savage idiocy, and for this they deserve our utmost respect? I think not.”
● “The nearly two-thirds of us who know this war is bullshit need to stop s***ing off the troops. They get enough action raping female soldiers and sodomizing Iraqi detainees.”
● “As a society, we need to discard our blind deference to military service. There’s nothing admirable about volunteering to murder people. There’s nothing admirable about being rooked by obvious propaganda. There’s nothing admirable about doing what you’re told if what you’re told to do is terrible.”
● On John McCain: “Again, what is heroic about involving one’s self in a foolish war, being a sh***y pilot or getting tortured? Yeah, it must have sucked, but getting your ass kicked every day for five years doesn’t make you a hero—it makes you a Bad News Bear.”
● “But what kind of world would we rather live in: one where fools are admired for being fooled and murderers are extolled for murdering, or one where we have the capacity to step back and say, ‘I don’t care who told you to do what and why; you’re still an asshole!’ Personally, I’d rather live in a world where people who act like retards are treated like retards: executed in Texas.”
And on and on it goes.
Of course, anyone who is familiar with politics sees these reptiles trolling around on message boards and on Twitter. But Ian Murphy is now headlining legitimate events thrown by legitimate Democrats, none of whom will even acknowledge his puerile radicalism. (Very little, if any, of Murphy’s past has been reported in the state media, save for Milwaukee-area conservative talk radio.)
Miss Wisconsin won the Miss America pageant on Saturday night. She clearly represents the pretty side of the state. But Ian Murphy has given everyone a glimpse of how ugly it can be, too.
The Wall Street Journal’s Holmen W. Jenkins Jr. explains “private equity,” which GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich calls “vulture capital”:
As a rule, private equity takes on the most troubled companies because turning them around offers the biggest profit opportunities. That’s why private equity tends to generate more than its share of traumatic headlines. Look no further than Ripplewood Holdings’ decision to put the maker of Twinkies into bankruptcy this week. It’s the kind of decision that, were Ripplewood’s principals ever to run for office, would get them savaged in an ad.
But guess what? Ripplewood also bought the company, Hostess Brands, out of bankruptcy three years ago, when it was called Interstate Bakeries. Ripplewood is just the latest manager to wrestle unsuccessfully with the company’s fundamental problem, a unionized workforce in an industry where competitors aren’t unionized. …
But the best antidote to foolish thinking about job creation is the work of economists Steven J. Davis and John Haltiwanger. Their painstaking research has revealed a side of America’s dynamism that isn’t always pretty. Between 1977 and 2005, years roughly overlapping Mr. Romney’s business career, some 15% of all jobs were destroyed every year, even as total jobs grew by an average of 2% a year. Job creation and destruction are both relentless, the authors showed in paper after paper. The small difference between the two is what we call prosperity.
But now Republicans are worried. To fault Mr. Romney for being involved with businesses that both grew and shrank, that created jobs and destroyed them, may be to fault him for having eaten from the tree of knowledge in a way that, say, President Obama has not. But how will his story fare in November against Mr. Obama’s simpler story, in which ravenous capitalists destroy jobs and government creates them with things like the Detroit/UAW bailout, solar subsidies and health-care mandates? …
[Romney] put his talent for calm, careful analysis to work helping American businesses adapt to the onrushing challenges of globalization and technological change. Looking back, it may even be true that his ratio of jobs created to jobs destroyed was better than the economy’s as a whole.
What does this have to do with the presidency? Perhaps not much, but one thing he didn’t learn at Bain Capital was to twiddle his thumbs because taking action might make somebody mad at him. That’s not the worst qualification to bring to the Oval Office right now.
Since the 1960s, only one American corporation has independently begun to produce steel on a large scale, and Bain Capital deserves a good deal of the credit for its success. … Though it’s impossible to say what effect Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital has had on American industry overall, he can point to at least one success story in an ailing American industry: Steel Dynamics. …
Keith Busse, now chairman of SDI, made his reputation in the 1980s as an executive at Nucor, one of the largest steel firms in the U.S., pioneering a new type of steel mill, “mini-mills,” which use electric-arc furnaces instead of blast furnaces, an innovation that giants such as Bethlehem Steel had not embraced. After he was passed over for promotion in 1993, he and two of his colleagues began discussing the possibility of striking out on their own. They saw potential in mini-mill technology, which had typically been used for applications such as automobile manufacturing, as a way to produce higher-grade steel at a much lower cost. …
Just 19 months after the initial funding was raised, in January 1996, SDI began production. Seven months later, it managed to turn a profit, and the company held an initial public offering in November of that year. Bain held on to all of its shares as the company continued to grow, using the capital raised to open two new mills of different types in 1997 and 1998. …
In 1999, Bain Capital sold its stake in SDI for $104 million, generating an internal rate of return for investors of 55.4 percent (my calculation, without dividends and consulting fees). Since then, SDI has continued to grow, and it generated $6.3 billion in revenue in 2011 while employing more than 6,000 American workers. … SDI’s technology has provided a way for American steel producers to compete. The success of SDI has even helped fuel a virtuous cycle — a true job creator, Busse has used some of his wealth to endow a range of engineering professorships and entrepreneurial-studies centers at Indiana universities.
Larry Kudlow sees a troubled “company” that needs a Bain-style revamp:
There’s a very troubled company out there called U.S. Government, Inc.It’s teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. And it badly needs to be taken over and turned around. It probably even needs the services of a good private-equity firm, with plenty of experience and a reasonably good track record in downsizing, modernizing, shrinking staff, and making substantial changes in management. Yes, layoffs will be a necessary part of the restructuring.
A quick look at the income statement of this troubled firm tells the story. Just in the past year (FY 2011) the firm spent $3.7 trillion, but took in only $2.2 trillion in sales revenues. Hence its deficit came to $1.5 trillion.
Just in the first three months of the new year (FY 2012), the firm’s troubles continued. Outlays for all purposes came in at $874 billion, but income was only $554 billion. So the shortfall was $320 billion. No hope of a self-imposed turnaround here. Indeed, both the senior management and the board of directors show no signs of making major changes to their business strategy. …
In fact, the total debt of this firm now equals its total income — an unsustainable position that suggests to many observers that future financing needs will not be met. …
Anyone operating in business knows full well that even the smartest reorganizing firms are prone to failure as well as success in our free-market capitalist system. But the customer base of the troubled U.S. Government, Inc. seems like it is desperate enough to go the takeover route.
The U.S. Supreme Court will get to decide whether the following (minus the poster’s editorial additions) is worth a $1.43 million fine:
The Federal Communications Commission fined 52 ABC stations in the Central and Mountain time zones after the aforementioned opening to ABC’s “NYPD Blue” Feb. 25, 2003. A federal appeals court overturned the fines, leaving it in the hands of the Supremes, who heard oral arguments Tuesday, reports the Los Angeles Times:
The Supreme Court seemed reluctant Tuesday to end the government’s historic policing of the broadcast airwaves and to strike down the “indecency” rules that guide prime-time TV shows.
Broadcasters use the public airwaves, and the “government can insist on a certain modicum of decency,” said Justice Antonin Scalia during oral arguments on the constitutionality of a ban on four-letter words and nudity.
“All we are asking for is for a few channels” where parents can be confident their children will not hear profanity or see sex scenes, said Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is a parent of two young children. …
Lawyers for the networks urged the Supreme Court to throw out the fines and strike down the FCC’s indecency rules. They said federal policing of broadcast content was outdated and no longer warranted. They said most Americans receive entertainment and news though cable TV or the Internet, and these media have full 1st Amendment rights. Broadcasters deserve the same rights, they said.
They also argued that current FCC policy against indecency is vague and arbitrary and should be voided on those grounds. They noted, for example, that the broadcast of “Saving Private Ryan,” the World War II movie by Steven Spielberg that portrayed the Normandy landings, was permitted, even though it included plenty of four-letter words. At the same time, other broadcasters were fined for allowing a single four-letter word.
The ABC fine is the latest in a period of fine-happiness on the part of the FCC. Before 2000, according to the Washington Post, the FCC levied fines against a TV station once, for a Kansas City station’s 1987 discussion of the movie “Private Lessons.”
After the George W. Bush administration took office, the FCC issued fines for Telemundo’s 2000 showing a couple in a bubble bath during a sexually-themed show (merely because the scene was “suggestive”), a San Francisco station’s 2002 showing of the objects of the puppet show “Puppetry of the Penis” (I kid you not), Fox’s 2003 showing of “Married by America” that included “digitally obscured nudity,” and, of course, the infamous display of one of Janet Jackson’s breasts (which I managed to miss seeing) during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in 2004.
CBS was fined $3.6 million for a 2003 episode of “Without a Trace” that featured a disappearance of a high school student tied to “very wild parties that the students have been having.” (Oddly enough, the effort to get the FCC to fine CBS didn’t take place until after the episode was repeated 13 months later.)
The millennium has brought more than the FCC has fined. Cher got away with using a certain word that rhymes with “luck” in a 2002 awards show, one year before Bono of U2 described his group’s Golden Globe Award as “f—ing brilliant.” After Jackson’s flashing the CBS audience, the FCC decided that “fleeting expletives” such as Cher’s and Bono’s could indeed be fined, though they didn’t retroactively issue fines.
The aforementioned “fleeting expletives” fine threat has resulted in TV and radio stations’ broadcasting live sports events on seven-second delays (because, you know, players might call each other rude names or object to officials’ calls), which is utterly stupid. (I would have selected another word besides “utterly” in keeping with the theme of this piece, but I have standards.)
It is interesting to note that that “NYPD Blue” scene got the fine, but other “NYPD Blue” scenes did not, including …
… or the infamous Dennis Franz shower scene, which arguably should have gotten a fine solely for aesthetic reasons. (Similar to the Madison naked bicyclist protests, you cannot un-see something.) Anyone who has lived in a house with children knows that children sometimes walk in on their parents when their parents would have preferred the door had stayed shut. If, as Roberts claimed during oral arguments Tuesday, “context counts,” the context of the scene that got the fine is completely different from my other two examples.
It probably is foreshadowing to point out that I was a big fan of “NYPD Blue” (along with other cop TV) and I am not a fan of the FCC. The fines are incompatible with what the FCC tells anyone who goes to its website:
The First Amendment, as well as Section 326 of the Communications Act, prohibits the Commission from censoring broadcast material and from interfering with freedom of expression in broadcasting. The Constitution’s protection of free speech includes that of programming that maybe objectionable to many viewer or listeners.
What is a fine if it is not an attempt at “censoring broadcast material” and “interfering with freedom of expression in broadcasting”? TV station owners whose tolerance for FCC fines reaches its limit will ultimately tell their network to stop airing FCC-objectionable material, or not carry potentially FCC-objectionable material. (There is a long history of the latter, including the boycott by Southern NBC stations of the original “Star Trek” because NBC dared to carry a series with a black actress. That boycott was about racism, however, not the FCC. The NBC station in Salt Lake City refused to carry NBC’s “The Playboy Club” when it was briefly on this past fall.)
The distinguishing factor is supposed to be that ABC, along with CBS, Fox, NBC, PBS, CW, My Network TV and other networks are available over the air, whereas HBO, Showtime, TBS, TNT, A&E and others are available only for cable or satellite viewers. That is a distinction with a decreasing difference given that only 15 percent of U.S. households get only broadcast TV.
Had I written this column a decade ago, I would have written that it’s really not the FCC’s business to decide whether my sensibilities have been offended. The fact that we now have three TV-watching children, one of whom is now up through what the networks call “prime time,” actually doesn’t change that opinion, although it makes TV-watching more of a chore.
The old “family hour,” which was supposed to feature family-appropriate TV before 8 p.m. Central time, went away a long time ago. It’s up to the producers of Fox’s “Glee,” which is on Tuesdays at 7 p.m., whether they want to have gay characters, but I’m sure parents who don’t approve of homosexuality don’t appreciate having to explain it to their kids during a TV show. (So far, I have not had to explain the purpose of Cialis, Levitra or Viagra or other “male enhancement” aids when a commercial comes up.)
Well, there’s an answer for all that: Don’t watch. In fact, you are free to not watch the following 7 p.m. shows, all of which are rated TV-14: ABC’s “The Bachelor,” CBS’ “How I Met Your Mother,” the CW’s “Gossip Girl,” Fox’s “House” and My Network TV’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” on Mondays; CBS’ “NCIS” and Fox’s “Glee” on Tuesdays; CBS’ “Criminal Minds” on Wednesdays; Fox’s “Bones” and the CW’s “The Vampire Diaries” on Thursdays; and Fox’s “Kitchen Nightmares” on Fridays; plus Telemundo’s “Una Maid en Manhattan,” on every weeknight.
(It is perhaps a little more disturbing that such TV-14-rated shows as “The Simpsons,” “Two and a Half Men” and “Family Guy” are shown between 6 and 7 p.m. by stations that don’t carry 6 p.m. news, but the answer to that is in the previous paragraph too. Then again, I watched such family-friendly shows as “The Mod Squad” and “Hawaii Five-O” when I was our children’s age; I remember being bummed because the “family hour” shifted Steve McGarrett to 8 p.m.)
More disturbing than what’s on between 6 and 8 p.m. is the cultural and parental laziness inherent in the idea that TV needs to cater to the lowest-common-sensibility denominator at some times of the day because parents don’t want to have to act as parents. Parents who want to censor what their children see and hear need to be independently wealthy because they’ll have to follow them around to such opportunities for exposure to disagreeable ideas as the school lunchroom and recess.
This is a good place to bring up the difference between government and society, a distinction not enough people seem to understand. In a diverse, pluralistic society, government is not the best arbiter between contrasting standards of personal morality. (For example, see the positions on abortion rights of 1996 presidential candidate Steve Forbes vs. 2000 presidential candidate Steve Forbes.) Should the moral standards of those opposed to alcohol force beer, wine and liquor commercials off TV? No. It should not be up to the government to tell the networks that they cannot broadcast ads for legal products, whether or not you like the presence of Cialis, Levitra and Viagra ads. (Does that apply to cigarette advertising, not seen on the airwaves since 1970? Yes.) Those with problems with such advertising of legal products need to contact the offending TV station, or the companies advertising said products, and get like-minded people to do the same.
I’m not sure where one begins trying to de-coarsen the culture, but TV reflects culture at least as much as the other way around. Actually, now I do know where one begins trying to de-coarsen the culture: with yourself and those around you. The networks respond to ratings, and if people don’t watch, TV series don’t survive.
Roberts’ request that “All we are asking for is for a few channels” without foul language or bare skin should fall on deaf ears because it’s not the government’s place to tell any broadcaster — over the air, cable, satellite or online — what content the broadcaster can or cannot show. There is that troublesome First Amendment, for starters. And as brought up here last May, the idea that the airwaves are public was correctly described by former FCC commissioner Erwin Krasnow as “a mischievous notion that has been misused as a rationalization for government regulation,” which contradicts the First Amendment.
I think I have found my favorite candidate for president.
Unfortunately, he’s not eligible, because he’s not an American. He is Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and not just because of his parents’ fine choice of first name.
On New Year’s Day, while Americans were sleeping off their hangovers, Canada achieved its goal of having the most business-friendly tax system of the Group of Seven (G-7) nations — which include, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
On January 1st, Canada’s federal corporate tax rate automatically fell to 15 percent from 16.5 percent as the last installment of a series of corporate rate cuts launched in 2006 by the administration of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. When Harper initiated his campaign, Canada’s overall corporate tax rate was 33.9 percent according to the OECD, third-lowest in the G-7. The federal corporate rate was 22 percent and the average provincial rate was 11.8 percent. Today, Canada now has an overall corporate tax rate of 25 percent, the lowest rate of the G-7 nations.
Harper’s opponents said the same thing that American politicians say when the subject of reducing business taxes come up — too much revenue will be lost, government needs the money more than individuals, blah, blah, blah. So imagine the surprise to find, according to The Globe and Mail:
Remarkably, the gradual lowering of the corporate tax rate appears to have resulted in little loss in corporate tax revenue (when compared with long-term, prerecession revenues). …
By 2010–2011, federal corporate tax revenue reached $30-billion, substantially more than the average of $25-billion in the last four years of the prior Liberal [Party] government: 2002 through 2005. Further, federal corporate tax revenue equalled 1.8 per cent of Canadian gross domestic product, a much higher percentage than the revenue produced during the recessionary years in the early 1990s. In tough-times 1992, for example, corporate revenue, with higher tax rates, fell to 1 per cent of GDP.
Economists predictably disagree on the economic importance of corporate tax rates, mostly on an ideological basis, but it makes good sense to keep this particular tax as low as possible. These taxes, after all, are a direct cost of doing business — and Canada’s corporate cuts ensure that this country will have a cross-border edge for the next two or three years at least. With a combined federal-state rate of 39.2 per cent, the United States has the second-highest rate in the world (after Japan, with 39.5 per cent).
Our 39.2-percent rate is only the federal rate. The actual rate is higher because of the added state corporate income taxes — 7.9 percent in Wisconsin’s case. When you add state rates, businesses pay from 39.2 percent (Nevada, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming have no corporate income tax) to 49.19 percent (Pennsylvania), which gives the U.S. the highest, not second highest, corporate income taxes in the world. (Other states, such as Ohio, tax not corporate income, but gross receipts, which are still taxes businesses must pay — or, more accurately, businesses’ customers must pay.)
Canada is not the only country to get the idea of reducing business taxes:
Canada can only revel in its lowest-tax status for a few months because on April 1st, Great Britain will lower its corporate rate to 25 percent from 26 percent. Britain’s rate is scheduled to fall even further to 23 percent by 2014. Over the past six years, the only G-7 nations that have not cut their corporate tax rate are France, Japan, and the United States. Japan and the U.S. have combined corporate rate over 39 percent. …
The drive by Canada and the U.K. to have the lowest corporate tax rates in the G-7 cannot be ignored. Canada is, after all, our largest trading partner, and the U.K. is our sixth-largest trading partner. Perhaps not so coincidentally, China — America’s second-largest trading partner — also has a corporate tax rate of 25 percent, nearly 15 percentage points lower than the U.S. rate.
Businesses use profits in one or more of three ways — reinvestment back into the business, increased compensation for employees, or dividends to shareholders (which comprise half of U.S. households). Any of those uses is better than giving the money to the government., particularly a government run by Democrats who see business as (1) a source of consequence-free tax revenue and/or (2) a necessary evil.
Two items passed on by the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web Today might give you pause about the second-place showing of former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R–Pennsylvania) in Tuesday’s Iowa Caucuses.
In a general election, where the focus is almost certainly going to be on economic issues, it is questionable whether Santorum’s relentless focus on social issues will play well with independent voters, especially in the crucial suburbs. It was the loss of those suburbs, where voters tend to be socially moderate but economically conservative, in states such as Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia, that gave those states to Obama in 2008. …
After all, the Tea Party and 2010 elections were largely about economic issues and the desire to limit the size, cost, and intrusiveness of government. And those issues are not Santorum’s strong suit.
There is no doubt that Santorum is deeply conservative on social issues. He is ardently anti-abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, and no one takes a stronger stand against gay rights. In fact, with his comparison of gay sex to “man on dog” relationships, Santorum seldom even makes a pretense of tolerance. While that sort of rhetoric may play well in Iowa pulpits, it will be far less well received elsewhere in the nation. …
When Hillary Clinton was justly excoriated by conservatives for her book It Takes A Village, which advocated greater government involvement in our lives, Rick Santorum countered with his book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, which advocated greater government involvement in our lives. Among the many government programs he supported: national service, publicly financed trust funds for children, community-investment incentives, and economic-literacy programs in “every school in America” (italics in original).
Santorum’s voting record shows that he embraced George Bush–style “big-government conservatism.” For example, he supported the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and No Child Left Behind.
He never met an earmark that he didn’t like. In fact, it wasn’t just earmarks for his own state that he favored, which might be forgiven as pure electoral pragmatism, but earmarks for everyone, including the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere.” The quintessential Washington insider, he worked closely with Tom DeLay to set up the “K Street Project,” linking lobbyists with the GOP leadership.
He voted against NAFTA and has long opposed free trade. He backed higher tariffs on everything from steel to honey. He still supports an industrial policy with the government tilting the playing field toward manufacturing industries and picking winners and losers.
In fact, Santorum might be viewed as the mirror image of Ron Paul. If Ron Paul’s campaign has been based on the concept of simply having government leave us alone, Santorum rejects that entire concept. True liberty, he writes, is not “the freedom to be left alone,” but “the freedom to attend to one’s duties to God, to family, and to neighbors.” And he seems fully prepared to use the power of government to support his interpretation of those duties.
The Cato Institute’s David Boaz reports that Santorum told National Public Radio during his 2006 reelection campaign (which he lost):
One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a libertarianish right. You know, the left has gone so far left and the right in some respects has gone so far right that they touch each other. They come around in the circle. This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone. That there is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.
In his book he comments, seemingly with a shrug, “Some will reject what I have to say as a kind of ‘Big Government’ conservatism.”
They sure will. A list of the government interventions that Santorum endorses includes national service, promotion of prison ministries, “individual development accounts,” publicly financed trust funds for children, community-investment incentives, strengthened obscenity enforcement, covenant marriage, assorted tax breaks, economic literacy programs in “every school in America” (his italics), and more. Lots more. …
With It Takes a Family, Rick Santorum has served notice. The bold new challenge to the Goldwater-Reagan tradition in American politics comes not from the Left, but from the Right.
Boaz adds:
He declared himself against individualism, against libertarianism, against “this whole idea of personal autonomy, … this idea that people should be left alone.” And in this 2005 TV interview, you can hear these classic hits: “This is the mantra of the left: I have a right to do what I want to do” and “We have a whole culture that is focused on immediate gratification and the pursuit of happiness . . . and it is harming America.” …
At least Santorum is right about one thing: sometimes the left and the right meet in the center. In this case the big-spending, intrusive, mommy-AND-daddy-state center. But he’s wrong that we’ve never had a firmly individualist society where people are “left alone, able to do whatever they want to do.”
It’s called America.
I think I’ll pass on Santorum. If overreaching government from the left is wrong, it’s wrong from the right too.
Experian–Simmons apparently “measures the consumer preference of various political ideologies,” including their TV watching, according to Entertainment Weekly.
EW reports that “sarcastic media-savvy comedies and morally murky antiheroes tend to draw Dems. While serious work-centered shows (both reality shows and stylized scripted procedurals), along with reality competitions, tend to draw conservatives.”
First, the shows those who identify most strongly as being a “Liberal Democrat” watch (with EW’s comments in italics):
– The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report (Comedy Central): As you might expect.
– 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation (NBC): Literate media-savvy comedies score high among Dems in general, notes Experian-Simmons senior marketing manager John Fetto. “Sarcastic humor is always a hook for them,” he adds.
– The View (ABC): Shows that skew female tend to do better among Dems, while male-friendly shows tend to do perform higher among Republicans.
– Glee (Fox)
– Modern Family (ABC): Last year, the progressive Glee and Modern Family scored surprisingly strong among both political leanings. Among conservatives this year, the shows still do fairly well, but have dropped out of their top ranks.
– It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX)
– Treme (HBO): GOP Kryptonite. Not only a Dem favorite, but so unpopular among Republicans that the report scores the show with a “*” because not enough conservatives in the study group had actually watched it.
– Cougar Town (ABC)
– The Late Show With David Letterman and The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (CBS): Dems favor late-night programming, with one big exception that we’ll see below.
Also in the mix: The Soup (E!), Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Adult Swim), Raising Hope (Fox), Saturday Night Live (NBC), The Office (NBC), Project Runway (Lifetime), Shameless (Showtime), Parenthood (NBC), Conan (TBS).
Nothing on this list is particularly surprising. I don’t watch “30 Rock” because every time I see Alec Baldwin, I want to punch him out. There was a hilarious tweet about “The View” last month that I can’t really repeat here (it involved male genitals and cinder blocks). We can’t watch “Glee” because its subject matter makes it unwatchable for young families, even though Fox puts it on at 7 p.m. Letterman’s increasingly one-sided political observations have turned me off, but then again he was funnier on NBC.
Now the “conservative Republican” list:
– Swamp Loggers (Discovery) and Top Shot (History): Gritty documentary-style work-related reality shows on cable index really strongly with conservative Republicans. Swamp Loggers is particularly polarizing.
– The Bachelor (ABC): They also tend to gravitate toward broadcast reality competition shows.
– Castle (ABC): Ranks fairly high among Dems, too.
– Mythbusters (Discovery)
– Only in America With Larry the Cable Guy, American Pickers, Pawn Stars, Swamp People (History): If you’re a Republican candidate looking to raise money, put ads on History.
– The Middle (ABC): Does well among libs, too.
– The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (NBC): “Did you hear about this? Yeah, this is true: Jay Leno is the late-night choice among conservatives… “
– The Biggest Loser (NBC)
– Hawaii Five-O, NCIS, The Mentalist (CBS): Popular crime dramas — except the left-wing Law & Order franchise — tend to draw a conservative crowd.
Also: Dancing With the Stars results show (ABC), Man vs. Wild (Discovery), Auction Kings (Discovery), Wheel of Fortune (syndi), Top Gear (BBC America).
One irony of this list is that “Castle” plays opposite “Hawaii Five-0,” which I guess demonstrates how many homes now have DVRs. One shouldn’t be surprised that cop shows are popular with Republicans. In fact, National Review recently commented on “Castle”:
You might think some on the Right might flinch at a show that begins just about every episode with a grisly murder, and the investigation often has the protagonists taking a short tour though some strange subcultures — S&M aficionados, people who like to pretend they’re vampires, soap-opera fans, rival New York pizzerias. On the other hand, the show depicts police detectives as honorable and dedicated. Criminals are rarely misunderstood victims of society but almost always greedy or unstable and undoubtedly belong behind bars. In short, the good guys are the good guys, and the bad guys are the bad guys. The cops rarely if ever enter dark anti-hero territory or bend the law (though occasionally they’ll ignore procedure) and almost every episode is self-contained: A criminal commits a murder with seemingly ingenious methods to escape detection, and the hard-charging detectives and their novelist sidekick pick through all of the evidence and chase down every lead until they get their man. Thankfully, the criminals aren’t always the predictable “the rich old white Republican did it” cliché that marked so many Law & Order episodes (sorry, Senator Thompson) though Castle has conformed to the ironclad Hollywood rule that if Ray Wise is in a television or film and a murder occurs, he did it.
I am rather surprised that reality shows are popular with Republicans because the term “reality show” is an oxymoron.
Now for the opposite lists — which shows would Democrats and Republicans not be caught dead watching? First, Democrats:
– Swamp Loggers (Discovery): What are they doing on this show, feeding Nancy Pelosi to alligators? [If they did, maybe I’d watch.]
– Dog the Bounty Hunter (A&E) and COPS (syndication): “Question authority.”
– The Ultimate Fighter (Spike TV): Conservatives can make their own “cut and run” jokes…
– The Price Is Right (CBS): Annnnd a budget-crisis joke.
– CSI: Miami (CBS)
– Kitchen Nightmares (Fox): Odd. Who doesn’t like a clean kitchen?
– Secret Life of the American Teenager (ABC Family): Not popular among stalwart Republicans either.
– Ghost Hunters (Syfy), Ghost Adventures (Travel Channel) and The Haunted (Animal Planet): Libs don’t believe in an afterlife? Or just don’t believe in shaky night-vision reality shows that claim to prove an afterlife?
Also: Operation Repo (TruTV), Swamp People (History), Hardcore Pawn (TruTV), River Monsters (Animal Planet), Deadliest Catch (Discovery), Only in America With Larry the Cable Guy (History), Storm Chasers (Discovery), Billy the Exterminator (A&E), Deal or No Deal (GSN), Forensic Files (TruTV), Dirty Jobs (Discovery).
Now, Republicans:
– Weeds (Showtime): Female-centered drama, lots of drug use and a morally murky antiherohelp make this show the lowest-ranked series among righties.
– The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report (Comedy Central): But not disliked equally. Republicans prefer Colbert between the two (maybe some pretend he’s being serious).
– South Park (Comedy Central): Aww, South Park is an equal opportunity offender! But, again, media-darling sarcastic comedies tend to be a turn-off.
– TMZ (syndication)
– General Hospital (ABC)
– Family Guy (Fox)
– Dexter (Showtime): Again, that antihero thing…
– Jersey Shore (MTV)
– The Walking Dead (AMC): Really? But it’s about the Apocalypse!
Also: Divorce Court (syndi), The Big C (Showtime), Let’s Make a Deal (CBS), Bridezillas (WE), My Fair Wedding With David Tutera (WE), Don’t Forget the Lyrics (VH1).
A few no-shows on the Republican list surprise me. “South Park” is actually quite libertarian, and the biggest targets seem to me to be PC liberals. “TMZ” is all about pop culture, but by showing celebrities in their unguarded states, it should make viewers think twice when Baldwin makes another airheaded political statement. “Dexter,” for those who haven’t seen it, is about a serial killer who murders criminals. Remembering that the show is fiction, how can conservatives be against such savings of taxpayer dollars?
As for “Jersey Shore,” the first and until now only person I have de-Friended on Facebook is a huge fan of “Jersey Shore,” which tells you everything you need to know about my ex-Friend. And I would rather stick forks in my eyeballs than watch “Bridezillas.” In fact, given the artifice of all reality TV (including my wife’s and kids’ favorite, “The Amazing Race”), it can be said that the popularity of reality TV is a sign of the Apocalypse.
Tim Nerenz suspects a conspiracy between the feds and opponents of Gov. Scott Walker, and for good reason:
Recently, the Bureau [of Labor Statistics] named Wisconsin as the state with the worst job loss in November, with a decline of 14,600. This came on the heels of 9,700 jobs BLS reported lost in October. The Badger State’s two-month total of 24,300 jobs lost led the nation in workplace suckage; and opponents of Wisconsin Governor Walker eagerly jumped on the November BLS presser to bolster their sagging effort to recall him.
One anonymous commenter on my blog site asked me (ok, taunted) what I had to say about those BLS numbers, since I had just written a piece opposing the recall. Instead of reading the BLS press release, I visited the underlying data tables (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.t03.htm) and discovered a slightly different story.
The BLS data show that Wisconsin’s workforce dropped from 3,057,800 in September to 3,055,200 in November, while the number of unemployed in Wisconsin fell from 238,600 to 223,800. Since the workforce is only made up of two parts — the employed and the unemployed — simple subtraction reveals there were 2,819,200 people working in September and 2,831,400 in November.
Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?
That’s right — the BLS data shows an increase of 12,200 jobs during those two months, not the loss of 24,300 reported to the press by the union humps who run the joint. I asked them for an explanation — two bucks says I will hear from Dick Clark again before I get any response from the humble public servants who work for me. Five bucks says no journalist will even bother to ask.
The BLS data reconciles perfectly; unemployment drops by 14,800 because 12,200 jobs are added and 2,600 leave the workforce (retire, move out of state, go back to school, etc.). On the other hand, I could find no combination of numbers that can be tortured into a computation of a 24,300 job loss in October/November. If you can crack the code, I will be happy to print the recipe here at Moment of Clarity.
Why would the BLS report something different from its own statistics?
So I am not surprised that the BLS data does not support its agency heads’ pressers. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess at possible reasons why Obama appointees at the Department of Unions might want to propagandize against the nation’s top union buster, Governor Walker. Or perhaps it was just a simple error — two months in a row. Yeah … yeah, that’s the ticket.
And don’t even get on your high horse, Demski’s; it’s not about you. I don’t care if they are Republican, Democrat, or just members of the Permanent Government Workers Party, they say whatever they want if it serves their own interest. If my Libertarian party ever took control, we would soon be corrupted too; human nature does not grant waivers to humans.
That’s why we need to shut it all down; all but the 18 essential services authorized by the Constitution. Put the Department of Labor and its Bureau of Labor Statistics high on the list of first to go. If you want accurate labor statistics, buy them from Manpower; they are a private sector firm that makes their living by accurately assessing job markets. They are not too big to fail, so they have to get it right.
With the Iowa caucuses today, Michael Barone brings up a pertinent point about the seeming weakness of the Republican presidential field:
Has one of our two major parties ever had a weaker field of presidential candidates in a year when its prospects for victory seemed so great? That question was posed to me by another journalist in conversation today.
My answer, after hemming and hawing a bit, was yes: the Democratic party in 1932. Its prospects for victory were excellent by just about any measure. The gross national product had declined by 56% in four years, the unemployment rate had risen from 4% to 24% and banks were failing and wiping out depositors. We don’t know the job approval rating of the incumbent president, Republican Herbert Hoover, since the first random sample poll was not conducted until October 1935, but it surely was a lot lower than Barack Obama’s approval rating today. …
Obviously this was a golden opportunity for the Democratic party. But its field of candidates looked weak at the time. Al Smith was running again, but his Catholicism had cost him many ordinarily Democratic votes in the South and Midwest in 1928 and it seemed possible that it might do so again. House Speaker John Nance Garner was running, an unpleasant figure from the South (which produced no presidents between Zachary Taylor and Lyndon Johnson) whose major policy was to increase taxes at a time of depression. Sharing his Southern background was Harry Byrd, who had served one term as governor of Virginia. Maryland Governor Albert Ritchie was a favorite of Baltimore newspaperman H. L. Mencken but of few others. Former Secretary of War and Cleveland Mayor Newton Baker was seen as a dark horse candidate, but he was a colorless and little known figure.
Of course we all know who the Democrats did nominate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and we know that Roosevelt turned out to be a great or at least a formidable president (a great wartime president in my view, but certainly undeniably a formidable president whatever you think of his decisions and policies). But that wasn’t clear at the time. He had served seven years as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Wilson administration and four years as Governor of New York. But many considered him a lightweight, profiting on the fact that he was a distant cousin (his wife Eleanor was a closer cousin) of Theodore Roosevelt, a president considered great enough at that time to be worthy of being depicted on Mount Rushmore and the winner of the largest percentage of the popular vote for president of any candidate between 1820 and 1920. Theodore Roosevelt had written several impressive books (his account of the naval War of 1812 is still considered authoritative) before he was elected president and had resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to serve in combat in the Spanish American war at age 39. Franklin Roosevelt had written no books before 1932 and had stayed in the same civilian post rather than enlist at 38 when the United States entered World War I. Franklin Roosevelt was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1920 when the ticket lost by a 60%-34% margin to the Republican ticket of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, and Roosevelt nearly lost the 1928 governor election to Republican Albert Ottinger. Few journalists espied greatness in him. He was “Roosevelt Minor” to Mencken, who wrote, “No one, in fact, really likes Roosevelt, not even his ostensible friends, and no one quite trusts him.” Walter Lippmann, who supported the Democratic party as editorial page editor of the New York World in the 1920s, and who had known Roosevelt for more than a dozen years, described him as “a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be president.” …
Why did the Democratic party have such a weak field (as people then saw it) in a year when its prospects were so good? One reason is that its last national administration, that of Woodrow Wilson, had left few people behind of presidential caliber; the same might be said for the Republicans this year of the much more recent administration of George W. Bush. Another reason is that Democrats won relatively few elections between 1920 and 1932 and that most of its major elected officials were either Catholics or Southerners, both of whom were widely seen as unelectable (an impression strengthened by Smith’s defeat in 1928). The situation is not quite the same as that of this year’s Republicans, but 2006 and 2008 were harrowing election years for Republicans, leaving them with a field of candidates only one of whom has demonstrated the ability to run ahead of his party any time recently. …
My point is this. The 2012 Republican field does indeed look weak, at a time of great opportunity for the party. But so did the 1932 Democratic field. We can try to learn as much about these candidates as we can, but we cannot foresee the future. We must hope that at least one of these candidates turns out to have greater strengths and virtues than are now apparent. It’s happened before.
A more recent example (as someone pointed out on Twitter Monday night) is 1992, the election that 18 months earlier seemed a waste of time given George H.W. Bush’s approval ratings after Operation Desert Storm and before people started noticing the economy wasn’t doing so well. New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and 1988 candidate Al Gore decided not to run. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was known only for giving an amazingly long-winded speech at the 1988 Democratic convention. And yet, thanks to the flaccid economy, H. Ross Perot’s third party run and Clinton’s appeal as a new-generation Democrat (sound familiar?) gave Clinton the election.
Meanwhile, David McElroy has a few things to say about some of the aforementioned last names:
USA Today released its annual poll last week of who Americans admire most. I shouldn’t be disgusted — because I know human nature — but I am disgusted. Topping the list of men is Barack Obama. Topping the list of women is Hillary Clinton.
I’m not making a partisan statement in saying this. My issue isn’t that they’re both Democrats. I’d have felt the same way when it was George W. Bush during his administration. My issue with it its that we deify politicians in this culture — instead of honoring the people who actually achieve things worth doing. …
Take a look at the list and see all the politicians. I’ve colored all the political figures in red. (And, yes, I count Michelle Obama and Laura Bush as politicians. You’d have never heard of them if they weren’t associated with politics.) On the women’s side, 80 percent are politicians and the two remaining choices are entertainers. Why do we admire these people? …
The people we really admire aren’t celebrities, are they? Isn’t it more a matter of a few hundred people in every little place seeing the difference that some man or woman makes? It could be a teacher, a pastor, a co-worker, a friend or scores of different roles. But if we all mention John Smith or Mary Jones — the people we know that we admire — there aren’t enough people who even know those people for them to make the list.
So is there something wrong with Americans to produce such a shallow list? Or are we asking the wrong questions in a media-saturated world? I suspect it’s a little of both. I think most of us have real people in real life who we admire deeply, but those real-life heroes can never make a poll such as this.
But there are some people who truly do admire the Clintons and Bush and Newt Gingrich. (Heaven help us.) I wonder if these are the people who are most engrossed in the media culture. I can’t say for sure, but I suspect those groups would correlate tightly.
I don’t admire the people on these lists. I actively distrust most of them. I’m indifferent about most of the rest. Even someone such as Graham — whose faith is similar to my own — is a mere footnote of the past in my mind.
I admire a few people, but they aren’t people you know. The public obsession with making heroes out of politicians and entertainers — and the media’s complicity in it — is a dangerous thing. As long as we believe these people are the ones to admire, we’re going to keep giving our honor to people who don’t deserve it — rather than the truly admirable people who labor without recognition all around us.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 
