You might think after the 2010 elections, three rounds of recall elections, and the 2012 elections, Wisconsinites would be sick of politics.
One, however, apparently is not: Reince Priebus, former chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party, and now chair of the national GOP. At the state convention last weekend, Priebus said, according to Wisconsin Report:
“When we talk about the growth and opportunity plan, we’re talking about being a permanent party, a party that understands we’re in permanent politics all the time,” Priebus told the hundreds gathered at the Republican Party of Wisconsin‘s Republican State Convention at the Patriot Center in the Marathon County village of Rothschild.
“The other side is engaged in a permanent, across-the-board campaign that started five years ago and never ended….We are becoming a granular, coast-to coast-operation that will go toe-to-toe and surpass our opponents, but it’s got to start now,” said Priebus, key-note speaker for the weekend event. …
Part of that growth, he said, hinges on changing the presidential nomination process, including halving the number of primary debates – “a travelling circus” – and moving the national convention, where the presidential nominee is officially named, from August to June.
That announcement led Priebus to answer attacks from within the party that he’d become “too establishment.”
“It’s not an establishment takeover; it’s using your head,” the Kenosha native quipped.
The thought that comes to mind is a quote from some wit about most people’s (supposed) attitude about their employer’s management, that they want them to stop managing them. While replacing idiot Democrats with Republicans would be preferable, what would be most preferable is for government to stop trying to run, or ruin, our lives. Politicians are not your friend, whether they have a D or an R after their names. Political parties are not run in your best interests; political parties are run in their best interests.
Why, for instance, should voters choose Republicans when they appear to offer very little different from Democrats? The state budget is now cash-balanced (as opposed to correctly balanced, as in according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), but nearly all of Gov. James Doyle’s $2.2 billion tax increase remains in place. The state still buys tens of millions of dollars of land for no reason and no use (the Knowles–Nelson Stewardship Program). Government-employee unions still exist. The job-killing Department of Natural Resources still exists unchanged. State and local governments, all 3,120 of them, still employ far, far, far too many people, and nothing at all has been done to reduce Govzilla’s sucking the marrow out of us Wisconsinites.
Now that a few weeks have passed since the Boston Marathon bombings, it should be clear that, from the failure to catch the brothers planting their bombs before the race to their (probably unconstitutionally) locking Bostonians in their houses (those houses they didn’t raid, that is) to find the one surviving brother, government screwed up much more than it did well. The only people who appear to have done their jobs well are the first responders after the bombs went off. Recall that the surviving brother was caught only after the stay-in-your-homes order was lifted.
The lesson that has been repeated time and again is that politicians, regardless of party, will work to consolidate their power unless they are prevented from doing so. That is why we have a Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. That is why we need a Taxpayer Bill of Rights in the state Constitution. Government does much, much, much, much more to us than for us, particularly in an overgoverned state like Wisconsin.
I posted last week about global climate change and the silliness of trying to predict same, since the meteorologists cannot get even forecasts five days in advance correct.
Mike Smith, a meteorologist, found something interesting:
Anthony Watts has an article about a recent paper that purports to tie computer model simulations (what else?) to changes in hurricane intensity. While that is a topic of interest, what struck me was this graph showing actual temperatures (red) for the last 50 years and, in blue, what the climate models hindcast the temperatures to have been if humans had not been adding CO2 to the atmosphere. For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume they are correct.
In the original paper, authors Holland and Bruyere explain their finding that the bulk of human-caused global warming occurred “in the past four decades.” If you view the above graph (the red lines) you see temperatures rise rapidly from about 1970 to 2000 (of course, temperatures have flattened since). According to the authors, had humans not injected so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (blue lines), temperatures would have been stable or have fallen slightly.
So, what was the world like in the late 1960’s and 70’s?
Does the word “famine” mean anything to you?
Take a look at two of the best-sellers of that era:
They suggest a system of triage in which the United States must “divide the underdeveloped nations into three categories: 1) Those so hopelessly headed for or in the grip of famine (whether because of overpopulation, agricultural insufficiency, or political ineptness) that our aid will be a waste; these “can’t-be-saved nations” will be ignored and left to their fate; 2) Those who are suffering but who will stagger through without our aid, “the walking wounded”; and 3) Those who can be saved by our help.”
The Paddocks were aware that their policy of abandoning food aid to the “hopeless countries” for example India and Egypt, would lead to an immediate worsening of the situation there, but they wrote “to send food is to throw sand in the ocean.” Using the triage system they hoped to avoid a broader catastrophe and stabilize the global population.
Early editions of The Population Bomb began with the statement:
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…
Much of the book is spent describing the state of the environment and the food security situation, which is described as increasingly dire. Ehrlich argues that as the existing population was not being fed adequately, and as it was growing rapidly it was unreasonable to expect sufficient improvements in food production to feed everyone. He further argued that the growing population placed escalating strains on all aspects of the natural world.
Why were so many starving? Why were the forecasts for more starvation becoming more dire by the year? Because world temperatures had been falling since about 1944 (see graph above). The growing season had shortened to the point that world agriculture could not support the world’s population which, in 1970, was 3.7 billion.
The population of the world today is just over 7 billion. But, “famine” is rarely in the news*. Why? Two reasons: The Green Revolution and the fact that temperatures warmed. The growing season has lengthened to where we can feed the world.
Had temperatures continued to fall, causing the growing seasons to continue to shorten, there would have been starvation on a scale unprecedented in world history. Let that sink in for a moment. Hundreds of millions more people in grinding poverty going to bed hungry every night.
I constantly ask climate scientists, including in articles on this blog,”What is the ideal temperature for humanity?” I never get an answer. One would think this temperature would have been determined, or at least estimated, decades ago. Yet, the “consensus” is we are currently too warm.
What’s that? You say the world still has starving people in it? Smith has an answer:
Of course, there are hungry people in the world but it is not due to a shortage of food. Per capita food production (measured in calories) is more than adequate to feed the world’s population especially if we stop using food grains (corn, for example) for fuel.
Or if countries replace their bad governments with better governments. (Pick your favorite Eastern European country under the late Warsaw Pact.)
Is climate change occurring? Obviously, because climate change has occurred as long as anyone can count. Are human activities contributing to climate change? Human activities change the environment, and that’s pretty necessary for human survival, unless you don’t care about eating. Neither of those statements requires you to be an acolyte of Al Gore or Thomas Friedman, who hypocritically pontificate about the need to starve and bankrupt people to prevent global climate change from the comfort of their five-digit-square-foot houses.
People forget or ignore history. The Industrial Revolution pumped who knows how many tons of unfiltered pollutants into the sky. Earth survived that. Watch any TV show based in Los Angeles in the 1960s or 1970s and you’ll see something less than a clear sky. The American sky is clearer, and American water is cleaner, than other industrialized countries’ air and water. (See: China.) You know what affects the climate the most on Earth? The sun. Read a few of these links for evidence.
The idea that mankind — too many people, people using fossil fuels, and/or people engaged in too much economic activity — is destroying Earth is not only not backed up by evidence, but impugns the credibility of those who make those claims. They’re in it for the power to control others’ lives to fit their own misbegotten ideas of the proper way to live.
The number one British album today in 1972 was a Tyrannosaurus Rex double album, the complete title of which is “My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair … But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows”/”Prophets, Seers & Sages: The Angels of the Ages.” Really.
The number one single today in 1956 was this artist’s first, but certainly not last:
The number one single today in 1962:
I’m unaware of whether the soundtrack of “West Side Story” got any radio airplay, but since I played it in both the La Follette and UW marching bands, I note that today in 1962 the soundtrack hit number one and stayed there for 54 weeks:
I have written a lot in this space about the Corvette. (And by the way, my birthday is one month from today.)
The Corvette is a car that by conventional business standards probably should have been discontinued after its third year, when just 700 of them were sold. But 1955 was the year the Corvette got an actual engine, Chevy’s first V-8, after it got an engineer who actually cared about the car, Zora Arkus-Duntov.
The rest, as they say, is history. Except that GM’s other divisions wanted Corvettes too, or at least cars like Corvettes — two-seat sports, or sporty, cars. (Well, except GMC, although one could easily put together a two-seat pickup truck with a big V-8 and manual transmission. Styling might leave something to be desired, though, but imagine the cargo space.)
Every other GM division apparently got the two-seat bug in 1954. The list begins with the Pontiac Bonneville Special …
… powered by a bored-out Pontiac straight-eight.
One of the remaining Specials sold for $2.8 million. That is not a misprint.
That same year, Oldsmobile trotted out its own two-seat concept, the F-88.
The F-88 was designed the same time as the initial Corvette, but was powered by an Olds V-8 of 250 horsepower, 100 more than the initial Corvette six. After it appeared in GM’s Motorama, it became the personal transportation of the legendary Harley Earl, GM’s chief designer of the time. One of its duties was to represent GM at the grand opening of Road America in Elkhart Lake in 1955.
The lone surviving F-88, by the way, sold at an auction for $3.24 million. That is not a misprint.
Buick’s contribution was the Wildcat II, slightly smaller than the Corvette, and again with a stronger motor, a Buick 322 V-8.
The Wildcat is in the foreground; the F-88 is in the background.
Cadillac had multiple efforts at its own two-seater. In 1954 Cadillac unveiled the El Camino coupe …
… both powered by Caddy V-8s. Each was 200 inches long, or a full two feet longer than the same year Corvette, so they weren’t intended as Corvette competitors, but they weren’t designed for production either.
Cadillac LaSalle II coupe concept
One year later Cadillac created two LaSalle II concepts — the pictured roadster and a four-door with suicide doors, a few inches longer than the ’55 Vette. The engine was an experimental aluminum V-6. The first GM V-6 was in a Buick nearly a decade later, and by the time Cadillac got a V-6, well, recall the difference between wanting something and finally getting it.
None of these cars reached production; none was ever intended to reach production. The Bonneville became the top-of-the-line Pontiac (my mother-in-law owns the last Bonneville); the Wildcat became a sporty full-size Buick; the El Camino became, of course, a Chevy cartruck, or “coupe utility”; and despite numerous proposals, Cadillac never used the name “LaSalle” for one of its models.
That more or less ended Olds’ and Buick’s attempts at Corvette-style cars. A decade later, however, Pontiac put together a car smaller than the Corvette, powered by Pontiac’s overhead-cam six, the Banshee. Motor Trend Classic sets the scene:
Imagine yourself as the general manager of Chevrolet in 1966. You’re at the wheel of the largest division of General Motors, with total passenger car production in excess of 2 million units under your watch. Things are good, right? Not so fast. In 1966, Chevrolet was taking a beating on several fronts, and there was a sense that the competition was beginning to eat USA-1’s lunch. The greatest hit came from Ford’s Mustang. Without any direct competing model to consider (the Camaro was still a year away), a million Mustang buyers skipped past Chevy showrooms, where boxy Chevy II Novas and reputation-tarnished Corvairs were the only lines of defense.
In this context of mounting hostility from Ford and the rest of Detroit, the last thing Chevy wanted was more competition from within General Motors. And that seems to be where the story of the Pontiac XP-833 begins — and ends.
The sleek silver two-seat Banshee sports car on display was poised to enter production in 1966, but obviously never reached that goal. Some say its demise was a direct result of complaints from Chevrolet that it would bite deeply into Corvette sales. That assumption makes sense in light of the fact the XP-833 was a fiberglass-bodied two-seater, just like the Corvette. And with annual Corvette sales in the low 20,000-unit range, there wasn’t much room for competition.
This car was at an Iola Old Car Show during a tribute to Pontiac (R.I.P.). It is smaller than any Corvette, and powered by a six, not a V-8. John DeLorean (yes, that John DeLorean) headed Pontiac at the time.
Should the Corvette team have been frightened by Pontiac’s proposed lower-cost sports car? The likely answer is yes. While it would have snared a good number of potential Mustang buyers, its similar theme would have also been attractive to the lower end of the Corvette buyer demographic. Adding the XP-833 to Pontiac showrooms nationwide, especially at the height of GTO mania, would have resulted in excitement you could have seen from outer space. And with the possibility of options like disc brakes, performance-suspension goodies, and that big 421 riding the XP-833’s miniscule 91-inch wheelbase, maybe the 427 Corvette (half a foot longer) wouldn’t have seemed so hot after all.And so it was when DeLorean, [Pontiac engineer Bill] Collins, and the rest of the team unveiled the XP-833 to top GM executives in mid-1965. Permission and funding for further development were denied; the XP-833 program was over. …
The Banshee offers a rare glimpse of what might have been. And if any comparison to the nearly 66,000 Solstices sold between 2006 and 2009 can be made, perhaps Pontiac’s concept of an affordable two-seat sports car wasn’t off base after all.
The Solstice, and the companion Saturn Sky, were smaller-than-Corvette two-seaters. There was, however, a Cadillac “Corvette,” the XLR, built on the Corvette platform, but with the 32-valve Northstar V-8 (and, disgracefully, an automatic) instead of the Corvette small-block. Where the Corvette has sold in the tens of thousands every year, the XLR sold in the thousands.
Before that was the Cadillac Allanté, another two-seater that was more like a Mercedes–Benz SL than a sports car.
So why did the Corvette avoid inside-GM competition, let alone GM’s usual badge engineering? Part of it was perhaps corporate politics. Corvette has always had high-level backers within GM’s Byzantine management structure. Part of it also was perhaps GM’s realization of how much money the Corvette, even with five-figure yearly production levels, made for GM, and GM was therefore reluctant to create an in-house competitor that wouldn’t have necessarily made more money for GM.
Chevrolet (which was purchased by GM 95 years ago yesterday) has always been the most-things-to-most-buyers division of GM. The 6,000 or so Chevy dealers in the late 1970s sold everything from the minicompact Chevette to the land yacht Caprice, plus trucks and SUVs. The Corvette by rights should have been built by Pontiac, the “excitement division” (though it wasn’t when the Corvette was built), or even Cadillac for exclusivity. It’s been suggested more than once that Corvette should be split off into its own division. (Only about one-third of Chevy dealers are reportedly getting the new Corvette.)
The other reason is that, for all the occasional criticism of way-out-there styling (the C3), the Vette’s being more expensive than other Chevys, and Chevy’s refusal to green-light a mid-engine Corvette, Chevy actually got the Corvette right as an affordable (by the standards of the genre) supercar. Consider this from Corvette Online:
Some interesting facts:
Most expensive Corvette in constant dollars? The 1989 C4, at $59,216
Least expensive? $24,004 for the 1954 Corvette
Over its lengthy run, the MSRP of the C3 nearly quadrupled, and even adjusted for inflation, it still rose more than $10,000
The switch between C3 and C4 saw the biggest run up in real cost, jumping 15.5% from 1982 to 1984
On average, the adjusted cost of buying a Corvette has gone down since the dawn of the C4 era, from the mid-$56,000 range to $51k for the C6
If not for Zora Arkus-Duntov, who turned the Corvette into an actual sports car, and Bill Mitchell, who designed the most recognizable Corvettes, perhaps the Corvette would have died after a few years. Or perhaps the Corvette would have died after faring badly against inside-GM competition. Instead, the Corvette remains America’s sports car.
One of the most salutary developments in American business is the growth of the microbrewery.
Tom Acitelli explains how the growth of microbrewing proves the converse of the phrase “if you want less something of it, tax it”:
Today there are more than 2,300 breweries in the United States—where beer production is second only to China’s—but it wasn’t long ago that American beer was an international punch line. Embodied by yellowy lagers in aluminum cans, nearly all domestic beer was made by a handful of breweries like Miller and Anheuser-Busch. As recently as 35 years ago, there were fewer than 50 breweries in the whole country, and the fastest-growing type of American beer was light, which Miller introduced in 1975.
The story of the U.S. ascent to the top tier of world beer began in the late 1970s, when brewing was liberated from government taxation and regulation that had held it back since Prohibition.
In 1976, Henry King, a gregarious World War II hero whose favorite drink was a whiskey-based Rob Roy, trained the attention of his U.S. Brewers Association, the industry’s biggest trade group, on Congress. The brewing industry had been trying unsuccessfully for years to get Washington to lower excise taxes on beer produced by smaller brewers.
King was determined to change things. In an impressive feat of bridge-building, he lined up support from the industry’s labor unions as well as its owners. Steelworker and glassworker unions called in favors; the big brewery owners wrote personal checks. These owners, whose excise taxes would remain the same, figured that by helping their smaller brethren, they would ultimately help themselves by inspiring more beer consumption in an American alcohol market suddenly awash with California wines.
Brewer Peter Stroh—whose family name was a mainstay of Midwestern beer—lobbied a fellow Michigander, President Gerald Ford, to sign the bill that King’s efforts finally steered through Congress. H.R. 3605 cut the federal excise tax on beer to $7 from $9 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels produced, so long as a brewery produced no more than two million barrels annually. (There were few breweries that did, which was another reason King’s association went to bat for the tax cut.)
The tax cut unleashed a revolution in American brewing. Hundreds of smaller breweries began to open across the country selling what came to be called craft beer. But as significant as the numbers was the rise of American brewers and consumers as the industry’s tastemakers. …
Some of the stars of American craft beer, such as Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada and Sam Calagione at Dogfish Head, got their start with home brewing—an activity that until the late 1970s was illegal in the U.S.
The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 legalized home winemaking, but, because of an oversight, did not legalize home-brewing of beer. Stores that sold supplies for winemaking also sold supplies for making beer at home, and the government did little to enforce the anti-home-brewing law. …
Gradually, though, the secretive home brewers grew bolder. In the 1970s—about when Henry King was lobbying Congress to cut the beer tax—home-brewing clubs in California, where America’s craft-beer revolution began, joined with trade groups representing the winemaking shops that sold home-brewing supplies. They lobbied California Sen. Alan Cranston to introduce legislation legalizing home-brewing at the federal level.
Cranston introduced legislation that was reconciled with a House bill in August 1978. President Carter signed the law that October, and it took effect the following February. Home-brewing of up to 200 gallons a year per household was suddenly permitted.
Following the federal example, state legislatures also began rewriting their bans on home-brewing, and it is legal now in every state except Alabama. The result: Home-brewing took off, helping to spur the movement toward craft beer that had been touched off by the beer tax reduction.
Keep all this in mind the next time you read about a state legislator wanting to increase alcohol taxes. Keep this in mind as well when you read calls for higher taxes, as Acitelli concludes:
The rise of American beer wasn’t an accident. It was spurred by efforts to cut taxes and regulation that unleashed entrepreneurship. Too bad Washington doesn’t raise a toast to that idea more often.
Hot Air passes on a Huffington Post (or is it Puffington Host, Mr. Taranto?) report that half of the staff of the Los Angeles Times has threatened to quit if the Koch brothers — who by the way employ more than 2,000 Wisconsinites, most at Georgia–Pacific — purchase the Times.
At a Los Angeles Times in-house awards ceremony a week ago, columnist Steve Lopez addressed the elephant in the room.
Speaking to the entire staff, he said, “Raise your hand if you would quit if the paper was bought by Austin Beutner’s group.” No one raised their hands.
“Raise you hand if you would quit if the paper was bought by Rupert Murdoch.” A few people raised their hands.
Facing the elephant trunk-on, “Raise your hand if you would quit if the paper was bought by the Koch brothers.” About half the staff raised their hands. …
As Tribune Co. emerges from a four-year bankruptcy, the predominantly Democratic city is quivering at the rumor that libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch may be interested in buying the LA Times. The brothers are believed to be the only group prepared to buy all eight Tribune papers, including the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant, as a package — how Tribune would like to sell them.
The ownership that most Angelenos seem to favor is a coalition of LA billionaires who have expressed interest, led by former Democratic mayoral candidate Austin Beutner and including prominent Democratic donor Eli Broad.
Many say local ownership is preferable because there’s more accountability and involvement. Local owners know and care about the city. Because they live here, they’re concerned and accessible. They won’t tarnish the paper, because they have local reputations to uphold. It would restore the family feel that the paper had for more than 60 years under the founding leadership of the Chandler family.
However, local ownership can have a dark side. Until the 1960s, the Chandlers used the Times to promote real estate development and Republican ideals. Similarly, when local real estate investor Doug Manchester bought the San Diego Union Tribune in 2011, he turned it into a platform for local business interests. To the dread of most Angelenos, Manchester has expressed interest in buying the LA Times, though he’s not considered a frontrunner.
The rest of the Puffington Host piece is a slurry tank full of speculation about how the Kochs might turn the Times into their own libertarian mouthpiece, vs. how other potential owners might turn the Times into their own fill-in-your-favorite-pejorative mouthpiece. (Including support of, horror of horrors, business and development. The irony of “a coalition of LA billionaires” being considered more acceptable is lost on the Puffington Host.)
Brent Bozell, president of Media Research Center, appeared on The Kudlow Report, Wednesday on CNBC to point out the double standard in the media when outrage is expressed over the politically conservative duo owning the newspaper.
“If you’re going to say that a known conservative entity like the Koch brothers should not be getting into the business of dictating what a news operation should do, what does that tell you about Warren Buffett?” alluding to the multi-millionaire, Democratic Party supporter and activist who owns many newspaper companies.
The useful part of the Puffington Host piece is the history of the Times as what was considered a conservative newspaper under the Chandlers. (The Los Angeles PBS station did an excellent documentary on the Chandler family.) The Times helped launch the political careers of, among others, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The Times was not taken seriously nationally, however, until, under publisher Otis Chandler, the Times stopped letting ideology determine its news coverage. (The same applies to the Tribune when its publisher was the isolationist Robert McCormick.)
I can’t comment on the other potential owners save one, but it’s pretty obvious that the Kochs didn’t amass their wealth by letting their personal views get in the way of making the right business decisions. (Ditto another potential owner, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.) The opinion page (and the Times’ is about as liberal as it gets) is one or two pages out of a daily newspaper. (And the Southland already has a pretty conservative/libertarian opinion page at the Orange County Register.) A newspaper gets a reputation for good or ill based on how it covers the news of the area it serves, not for the ideology of its owners, or what’s said on its opinion page.
Here’s an Economics 101 lesson for liberals and the media: A business product or service is purchased when the buyer and seller agree on price for what the buyer gets. If the buyer doesn’t want it for the seller’s price, the seller doesn’t sell. Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are successful because readers and advertisers like what they’re buying. The Kochs are successful because their companies’ customers like their companies’ products and services. (Particularly in the case of Fox News, which is getting higher ratings than the better-established CNN or MSNBC.)
What about the Times staffers? (None of whom are entitled to their jobs, because no one is entitled to their preferred job, or in fact any job.) Hot Air answers:
Call their bluff. Wherever you stand politically, we can all agree on that, right? If you’re a liberal, you want to see the fair, balanced, impartial LA Times newsroom rise as one and walk out in protest of having to work for libertarian oligarKKKs. If you’re a conservative, you want them gone for different reasons, partly as a smoking gun of bias and partly because it’ll clear the decks to hire more neutral reporters. And if they don’t walk out, that’s okay — their cheap bravado will have been exposed in all its cheapness.
Here’s another econ lesson: The value of an employee is how much it costs (financially and otherwise) to replace that employee. If the Puffington Host’s prediction is correct that half of the Times newsroom would depart, here’s one possible (though hysterically argued) result:
Perhaps one brave Times reporter would go public with a story killed by the new owners. She would lose her job, and it would be written about in The New York Times. And, it would pressure the LA Times owners to be more objective. But many of the people working at the Times support a family or are still developing their careers and can’t afford to lose their jobs — especially in a town with few job opportunities for newspaper journalists.
If half the staff quit under Koch ownership, that would leave half as many people likely to stand up to the owners — probably the half that would be more likely to do so. Not to mention, it would be a tremendous loss of talented journalists who have built a wealth of LA knowledge and relationships over years of experience.
Care to guess how long it would take the Times to replace half their staffers? Given that journalism schools keep pumping out more graduates than journalism has jobs, not very long at all. (I might even take a job offer were it not for the fact that anymore California ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.)
There are people who work for much smaller publications than the Times who do work that as good, if not better. The Times also is likely to have more newsroom staffers than it actually needs, particularly given that it is a — surprise! — union newsroom. Losing institutional memory of Los Angeles would not be a good thing, but to claim that half of the newsroom’s choosing to leave would be “a tremendous loss of talented journalists” is an assertion without evidence.
The other obvious point is belief without evidence that the Kochs would automatically be bad newspaper owners is based on their politics. That is, as usual, a way to dismiss any viewpoint left of the Puffington Host’s as illegitimate. That opinion ignores the fact that there are millions of Californians whose political views are closer to the Kochs’ views than the views expressed on the Times editorial page.
Perhaps the Kochs should purchase the Times and watch some number of its staffers leave. (Or if the Times purchase doesn’t work out, perhaps the Kochs can look at two other media companies not doing very well these days: Journal Communications, my former employer — a place that was better to work at under employee ownership than as a publicly traded company — and the publisher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or Lee Newspapers, publishers of the (formerly conservative) Wisconsin State Journal, La Crosse Tribune and Kenosha News.) When I was in UW journalism school, “journalist” was defined as “an out-of-work reporter.”
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 