Tag Archives: big government

We should be paying more to watch sports on TV

Politics, Sports, , , , , , , , ,

So says Kevin Drum of Mother Jones. After reading a Los Angeles Times piece stating that sports channels account for almost half of the average cable TV bill, Drum advocates a consumer revolution:

The obvious answer, of course, is to offer channels on an a la carte basis—or perhaps on a semi-a la carte basis—but both the content providers and the cable companies fight this tooth and nail. Here’s the excuse:

National and local sports networks typically require cable and satellite companies to make their channels available to all customers….The idea of offering channels on an “a la carte” basis used to be sacrilege to the industry. Executives argued it would not lower prices because networks would just charge more to make up for the loss of subscribers.

You know what? That’s exactly what would happen. People would start to understand just how much they’re paying for sports programming and they’d be appalled. Many wouldn’t subscribe, and sports fans would be forced to pay the actual cost of their sports programming without being subsidized by the rest of us. This is exactly how it should be. There’s no reason that, for all practical purposes, every single person in the LA area should be forced to pay a tax to the Lakers and Dodgers even if they don’t care about basketball and baseball.

Not that I disagree with him, but it’s funny to what extent his sentiment sounds eerily similar to that of Tea Partiers and their ilk — namely, it’s outrageous that I should pay for them. Of course, the content is quite different — welfare checks would be quite a bit more foundational on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than, say, the ability to watch the Lakers at home in high definition — but the philosophy is strikingly similar.

In fact, even the apparent gap in importance between these two examples is somewhat irrelevant, since the entire debate on the role of government is centered on what, exactly, is reasonable or necessary. In other words, even for something as seemingly trivial as sports programming, it would be easy to mount a rebuttal of à la carte programming on cultural grounds: sports, it could be said, facilitate a common social experience, a kinship with fellow citizens, and so on, to such an extent that the costs of broadcasting sports matches should be socialized to the broader population, whether they decide to watch or not.

This may sound ridiculous to many of us, but clearly fiscal conservatives feel very similarly in relation to many facets of government spending such as Medicaid, unemployment distributions, and so on. Again, this is not to justify the archetypal fiscal conservative’s point of view, but just to point out that, even for liberals such as Kevin Drum, there is always a line beyond which the people must “revolt” against undue expenditures that subsidize those other people. The only questions are where the line should be drawn, and which group of “other people” to target as benefitting from unfair subsidization.

The problem with David Brooks

Media, Politics, , , , , ,

His column in today’s New York Times, “The Party of Work,” makes a lot of good points before crashing and burning in the conclusion (excerpted here at length):

The Pew Research Center does excellent research on Asian-American and Hispanic values. Two findings jump out. First, people in these groups have an awesome commitment to work. By most measures, members of these groups value industriousness more than whites.

Second, they are also tremendously appreciative of government. In survey after survey, they embrace the idea that some government programs can incite hard work, not undermine it; enhance opportunity, not crush it.

Moreover, when they look at the things that undermine the work ethic and threaten their chances to succeed, it’s often not government. It’s a modern economy in which you can work more productively, but your wages still don’t rise. It’s a bloated financial sector that just sent the world into turmoil. It’s a university system that is indispensable but unaffordable. It’s chaotic neighborhoods that can’t be cured by withdrawing government programs.

For these people, the Republican equation is irrelevant. When they hear Romney talk abstractly about Big Government vs. Small Government, they think: He doesn’t get me or people like me.

Let’s just look at one segment, Asian-Americans. Many of these people are leading the lives Republicans celebrate. They are, disproportionately, entrepreneurial, industrious and family-oriented. Yet, on Tuesday, Asian-Americans rejected the Republican Party by 3 to 1. They don’t relate to the Republican equation that more government = less work.

Over all, Republicans have lost the popular vote in five out of the six post-cold-war elections because large parts of the country have moved on. The basic Republican framing no longer resonates.

Some Republicans argue that they can win over these rising groups with a better immigration policy. That’s necessary but insufficient. The real problem is economic values.

If I were given a few minutes with the Republican billionaires, I’d say: spend less money on marketing and more on product development. Spend less on “super PACs” and more on research. Find people who can shift the debate away from the abstract frameworks — like Big Government vs. Small Government. Find people who can go out with notebooks and study specific, grounded everyday problems: what exactly does it take these days to rise? What exactly happens to the ambitious kid in Akron at each stage of life in this new economy? What are the best ways to rouse ambition and open fields of opportunity?

Don’t get hung up on whether the federal government is 20 percent or 22 percent of G.D.P. Let Democrats be the party of security, defending the 20th-century welfare state. Be the party that celebrates work and inflames enterprise. Use any tool, public or private, to help people transform their lives.

Emphasis mine. This is classic Brooks-ian thinking: decrying the failure of the Republican Party to measure up to its potential, admirably encouraging them to reform, and meanwhile forgetting that his prescription for success is exactly what the Democratic Party has been doing for years — and the precise reason they won again this year.

I bolded that last portion because it sets up such a clearly ridiculous straw man: the Democrats as the unimaginative defenders of the “20th-century welfare state,” while the Republican Party “celebrates work and inflames enterprise.” How can he attempt such a tried-and-failed GOP talking point immediately after acknowledging that “the basic Republican framing no longer resonates” for so many Americans? When Brooks says to “use any tool, public or private, to help people transform their lives,” he’s taking a page straight out of the Democratic playbook. This makes his characterization of the Dems as the “party of security” (whatever that means, exactly) all the more ridiculous.

A comedian’s take on Hurricane Sandy

Politics, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Nato Green gives it a shot for The Rumpus:

Disasters are live-action infomercials for big government. A crisis will flex and strain the muscles and tendons of big government until government’s nipples bleed under their racing tank-top: the taut glutes of regulation, the shredded abs of infrastructure investment, the rippling quads of highly-trained and well-paid unionized workers with real safety standards.

At one extreme you have the ripped, disciplined, and prepared Michael Phelps of government springing into action. At the other extreme you have the malnourished, drug-addled, and skittish government wholly unable to prepare or respond to a disaster. Think Haiti after the earthquake.

There are plutocrats who in their pillow talk believe that if you are poor enough to be hurt by a storm, then that is the natural consequence of your foolish choice to be poor. If natural disasters create the occasional Malthusian spike in immiseration and death, then it will be good for dividends. At best, human suffering that doesn’t affect me is not my problem. The stalwarts of the 1% would gladly replace FEMA with the Federal Country Club Maintenance Administration.

Right now the merit of big, burly, over-reaching, centralized, government contrasts sharply with the exuberant villainization of all things public by both parties. Both parties love austerity while loathing debt, spending, regulation, public workers, and taxes. Both candidates wring their hands about the debt and compete over who is most on the free enterprise system’s nuts. The difference between Obama and Romney is in degree.

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman urges us to consider the case of FEMA:

Like Mr. Clinton, President Obama restored FEMA’s professionalism, effectiveness, and reputation. But would Mitt Romney destroy the agency again? Yes, he would. As everyone now knows — despite the Romney campaign’s efforts to Etch A Sketch the issue away — during the primary Mr. Romney used language almost identical to Mr. Allbaugh’s, declaring that disaster relief should be turned back to the states and to the private sector.

The best line on this, I have to admit, comes from Stephen Colbert: “Who better to respond to what’s going on inside its own borders than the state whose infrastructure has just been swept out to sea?”

Look, Republicans love to quote Ronald Reagan’s old joke that the most dangerous words you can hear are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Of course they’ll do their best, whenever they’re in power, to destroy an agency whose job is to say exactly that. And yes, it’s hypocritical that the right-wing news media are now attacking Mr. Obama for, they say, not helping enough people.

Back to the politics. Some Republicans have already started using Sandy as an excuse for a possible Romney defeat. It’s a weak argument: state-level polls have been signaling a clear and perhaps widening Obama advantage for weeks. But as I said, to the extent that the storm helps Mr. Obama, it’s well deserved.

The fact is that if Mr. Romney had been president these past four years the federal response to disasters of all kinds would have been far weaker than it was. There would have been no auto bailout, because Mr. Romney opposed the federal financing that was crucial to the rescue. And FEMA would have remained mired in Bush-era incompetence.

So this storm probably won’t swing the election — but if it does, it will do so for very good reasons.