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Saturday, September 13, 2003 :::

Rights and Reason: UAW Demands Irrationality

The United Auto Workers is currently negotiating with each of the Big Three U.S. automakers--an unusual arrangement, given that the union typically negotiates with one automaker first, than uses that contract as a model for the other two. The biggest issue facing the automakers is the rising cost of providing healthcare for UAW workers. The union is opposed to any proposal that would require its members to pay any additional share of health costs. This puts an enormous financial strain on the automakers and will likely result in some job cuts.

The UAW makes no apologies for its position. In fact the UAW's leadership supports abolishing the free market in healthcare altogether and adopting socialized medicine. It's an interesting position for a union to take: force healthcare providers to work for the government. No doubt if that were to happen, the UAW and its allies at the AFL-CIO would seek to unionize the physicians and further raise the cost of healthcare by holding the government hostage. As things stand now, neither the UAW nor the AFL-CIO have said anything in support of protecting physician rights under the present managed-care system.

The principal effect of today's government-sponsored managed care system is the widespread entitlement mentality seen by groups like the UAW. They feel they have a right to health care without having to actually pay for it directly. First they shift the cost to their employer. When that doesn't completely work, the costs are shifted onto the physicians through schemes such as the FTC's bogus "antitrust enforcement" policy that forces doctors to surrender their right to negotiate with HMOs. Ultimately, the costs get shifted to the taxpayers at-large, who are forced to subsidize the inefficiencies and losses of the managed care system.

The UAW, of course, feels no obligation to act rationally or responsibly. They have no need to. Unlike physicians, auto workers are represented by a union with monopoly bargaining power, entitling them to exercise political power over their employers. Where one can use force to obtain one's objectives, the need for rational action becomes moot. But that does not change the fundamental instability of the system. The sooner the UAW realizes its demands will only lead to economic collapse, the sooner they will act rationally.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 3:25 PM | link | donate |

Crime and Punishment: Calif. Man Nabbed in SUV Dealership Fires

The AP reports fed's nabbed an alleged environmental terrorist:

Federal agents arrested a 25-year-old member of a co-op dedicated to peace and environmentalism in connection with arson fires and vandalism that did $1 million in damage to a Hummer dealership.

Joshua Thomas Connole, of Pomona, was arrested at home Friday, said Cpl. Rudy Lopez, a West Covina police spokesman. He was booked for investigation of felony arson and vandalism and jailed $825,000 bail.

The fires Aug. 22 gutted a parts warehouse and destroyed 20 Hummer H2 sport utility vehicles at a West Covina dealership. Another 20 Hummers and several Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs were badly damaged by fire and spray paint.

Three other dealerships and at least four privately owned vehicles in the area also were damaged during the vandalism spree.

Words such as "ELF," "Fat, Lazy Americans" and "I (heart) pollution" were painted on the SUVs.

"ELF" stands for Earth Liberation Front, a loose association of militant environmentalists. The group, which has taken responsibility for other acts of arson and vandalism, claimed in an unsigned e-mail that the SUV fires were "ELF actions."

If proven guilty in a court of law, I hope Connole gets the max. He will have deserved it.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 10:45 AM | link | donate |

Friday, September 12, 2003 :::

Random Knowledge: Winning the Pulitzer

Below Nick asks how one nominates someone for a Pulitzer Prize. Actually, all you have to do is submit a nomination form to the Pulitzer Prize Board. Anyone can submit a nomination, but the nominee's work must appear in a daily, Sunday, or weekly newspaper published in the United States. Pulitzer finalists and winners are determined by Columbia University on the advice of the Pulitzer Board.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 8:24 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Two Years and Many Lawsuits to Go

I'm not a fan of Gregg Easterbrook, who writes for The New Republic and ESPN.com. Easterbrook has a notorious anti-property rights streak that applies to any business that personally offends him (notably SUV makers and the NFL). Nevertheless, he makes an excellent argument about the latest round of litigation by survivors and families of New York's 9/11 victims:

Families who have taken the federal compensation have, so far, received average awards of $1.6 million, tax-free. Families of the United States personnel murdered by Al Qaeda in the Kenya and Tanzania terror attacks of 1998 received, on average, nothing. Families of the several hundred United States military personnel killed in Afghanistan fighting to destroy al Qaeda, and killed in Iraq fighting at least in part against terrorism, received, on average, $9,000, taxable.

Now some 9/11 families are saying $1.6 million isn't enough. Set aside whether they should be receiving anything from taxpayers, given the myriad other circumstances in which Americans die in various horrible events every bit as traumatic and devastating to their families, who receive nothing at all. Assume for the sake of argument that something about 9/11 justifies offering victims' estates a very large special payment. Yet some 9/11 families are saying very large is not large enough. This is greed; it is employing the memory of lost loved ones for gold-digging.

But we need a lawsuit to find out the truth, some families say. Every single person in the world already knows the central truth of 9/11, that United States airport and airplane security was poor. There isn't any hidden secret about how knives got through shoddy security checks, or flimsy cockpit doors were kicked in. We were all going through those checkpoints and riding on those planes, all as a society sharing the risk--including the federal judge who himself was getting on those planes though he now says it could have reasonably been foreseen they would be crashed into buildings. How odd he himself didn't foresee it.

And if Easterbrook hasn't offended you yet, just look at his conclusion:

If the families for whom $6.1 million is not enough persist in their avaricious desire to sue--and if the lawyers who would get shares of court awards, but get no shares of federal fund awards, persist in their ghoulish desire to encourage such suits--the country's two largest airlines, and largest aircraft manufacturer, may fail. This will cause significant harm the United States. And it seems unlikely that the dying thoughts of the noble victims of 9/11 were, "I hope my survivors really screw the United States for money."

A related issue is the question of whether any new structures may be built on the "footprints" of the two World Trade Center towers. The most vocal group of survivors and families want an absolute prohibition--including utility and support structures--on all development to preserve what they call the "sacred" character of the space. My position on this is that if these folks want to buy the land, buyout WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein, and preserve the footprints as an eternal monument to death, then let them. But the government should not be using its power to force that outcome, as is happening now under the leadership of New York Gov. George Pataki and former city mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 6:51 PM | link | donate |

Antitrust News: Breaking the Glass Monopoly

The Justice Department's Antitrust Division is cracking down on price-fixing in the glass market. Well, part of the glass market anyway:

Three Fort Worth companies, who own and operate retail automotive replacement glass stores, today were charged with participating in conspiracies to raise and maintain the prices of automotive replacement glass in the central North Texas and Lubbock areas of Texas, the Department of Justice announced.

Windshield Sales and Service Inc., Windshield Sales & Service of Dallas Inc., and Mesquite Auto Glass Inc. were charged in U.S. District Court in Lubbock, with conspiring with others in central North Texas from February 1998 until May 1998 to raise and maintain prices for the purchase of automotive replacement glass. Additionally, Windshield Sales & Service Inc. was charged with conspiring with competitors to raise and maintain the prices of automotive replacement glass in the Lubbock area from March 1998 until May 1998.

Automotive replacement glass is sold to retail customers for the replacement of windshields, side glass, back glass, and other types of automotive glass in pick-up trucks, passenger vehicles, and other vehicles.

"Today's charges reflect the Division's commitment to prosecute those who seek to deny the benefit of competition to American consumers," said James M. Griffin, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division's Criminal Enforcement Program.

Griffin's statement needs emphasis. The Government has brought criminal charges against these companies on the grounds that they "deny the benefit of competition to American consumers." There is no law mandating corporations provide this benefit. The Sherman Act only prohibits restraints of trade, and by any objective standard, a restraint requires an act of force; here the only allegation is that the defendants voluntarily agreed to charge the same prices. Aside from the obligations of contract, no competitor could force another to take any action against their economic self-interest.

But even if you believe price-fixing is wrong or unethical, ask yourself whether it should be a criminal action. In this case, only corporations stand to be convicted, incurring a maximum fine of $10 million. But individuals have been convicted of criminal price-fixing in this market, and they received jail time. Can we really justify denying a man his freedom over how he chooses to price his own products for sale to consumers? Should the government invoke criminal law simply because it disagrees with the prices in a particular market?

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 6:29 PM | link | donate |

Communication Arts: Cox and Forkum

I grew up reading editorial cartoons. As a paperboy delivering the Buffalo News, first thing I did when I got a my load of papers was look to see Tom Toles' take on the world. Yet as an adult, it's been a long time since I found something Toles produced that I respected, and more often then not I find the medium to be little more then a vehicle to transmit a screed. That is, until Cox and Forkum.

Their latest is utterly brilliant in thought, form, and execution. I'll just leave it at this--it's more than a cartoon--it's an experience. You will be moved.

How does one nominate someone for the Pulitzer prize? I really want to know. And why aren't these guys in every major paper in America?

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 4:45 PM | link | donate |

Capitalism and the Law: 'Nike' means �victory� no more

Skip Oliva examines the Nike free speech case settlement at Initium.

In settling with Kasky, Nike has ratified the constitutional segregation of commercial speech, even if the settlement technically admits no legal fault and establishes no formal legal precedent. We have seen time and again how a single settlement empowers the parasites of the American trial bar to file greater and bolder complaints. It is only a matter of time, perhaps just days or weeks, before other major companies (including those that filed briefs in support of Nike) find themselves at the mercy of California�s citizens, each of whom possess the power under state law to sue any company they dislike for whatever reason.

Defenders of Nike�s decision will offer pragmatic arguments. They�ll claim the cost of refuting Kasky�s claim through discovery, trial, and another round of appeals is too much for Nike to bear, and that it�s in the best interest of Nike and its shareholders to pay Kasky off now and live to fight another day. This form of pragmatism is known as appeasement: If we give our enemy what he wants now, maybe he�ll leave us alone.

Yet reason dictates that appeasement almost always leads to more appeasement, and ultimately to wholesale capitulation. Whatever short-term benefit Nike gained from this settlement will be lost under the weight of the numerous lawsuits that are sure to come from other opponents of the company. Nike�s own press release justifying its settlement with Kasky underscores this point: Nike says that due to the difficulties posed by the California law, it has decided not to issue its corporate responsibility report externally for 2002 and will continue to limit its participation in public events and media engagement in California. What could possibly be more important to Nike than its freedom to participate in public events and media engagement in California, or any other state in the union?

If I owned Nike stock, I'd sell it, on the grounds that a company of Nike's resources that does not defend its right to communicate in a free nation does not take itself or its responsibility to its shareholders seriously. Nike's freedom ought to be a paramount concern. Nike's failure to see the case brought against it to its proper end is a serious moral breach that will wreak economic havoc against both it and anyone else who speaks from an economic motive.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 2:07 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Essential Stern

For once, Howard Stern won one before the Federal Communications Commission. The issue wasn't whether Stern's morning radio program contained obscenity, but whether Stern could interview Arnold Schwarzenegger without violating the "equal time" rule. Under longstanding policy, if a broadcast television or radio outlet interviews one candidate in a political race, it must offer equal time to all opposing candidates. This is allegedly done to protect the "public interest" in balancing political views.

The equal time rule does not apply to "news interview" programs, such as Meet the Press or the NBC Nightly News. Thus, Stern applied for classification as a "news interview" program to free him from the equal time rule. The FCC granted this request, incurring the wrath of self-proclaimed media watchdogs, such as the Media Access Project's Andrew Schwartzman, who told the Washington Post, "[The FCC has] removed the notion that a bona fide news interview show is supposed to apply to journalists. If Howard Stern is a real journalist, real journalists should be upset."

Schwartzman's argument is deftly handled by former Reason editor Virginia Postrel:

God forbid that people get their "news and information" (as the local news shows put it) from sources other than government-certified journalists. This contempt for unorthodox sources is particularly disingenuous coming from [Schwartzman] whose organization supposedly "promotes the public's First Amendment right to hear and be heard on the electronic media of today and tomorrow."

The very silliness of having to declare Howard Stern a journalist reveals how ridiculous and antithetical to the free flow of ideas our broadcast regulation is. As [CBS late night host Craig] Kilbourn points out in his [New York] Times op-ed, cable shows don't suffer from the same constraints. Like print, they're free to provide whatever interviews, information, and entertainment, they think will serve their audience, without government editors telling them what to include or omit. That's called freedom of speech and the press. It ought to apply to radio and over-the-air TV as well--with no Stern exceptions needed.

Because airwaves are still considered "public" property, rules like the equal time policy continue to exist. But that doesn't mean all non-broadcast media are immune from regulatory censorship. As I've discussed for months, the Justice Department's antitrust prosecution of Village Voice Media and NT Media was designed specifically to expand regulatory control over so-called "alternative" publications. In that case, the DOJ defined alternative media as akin to an "essential facility," which under antitrust doctrine means the Government can arbitrarily deny First Amendment protections to the acts of alternative newspaper publishers.

The theory is simple: Once a media form becomes profitable and widely-used, the Government seeks to regulate it as "essential" to the public interest. In other words, property rights exist until enough consumers demand access, then the "public interest" supersedes any private property right. And of course, the public interest can only be determined by government regulators, preferably lawyers, and not the public itself through the free market.

And as Postrel notes, the established media market often has an interest in supporting regulators. Holding certain programs to the equal time rule creates an effective barrier to entry for those who would compete with established media. If Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, can't go on Craig Kilbourn's show to promote his candidacy, he's forced to use conventional media outlets that may not get his message across as effectively.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 1:53 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Kennedy: I'll Defeat School Voucher Bill

Consider this lead from the AP:

Sen. Edward Kennedy plans to do everything he can to defeat the proposed use of school vouchers in the nation's capital, his spokesman said Thursday.

Leave aside whether or not you think vouchers are a good way to challenge the public school monopoly. Why is it you never read about a senator who "plans to do everything he can" to abolish the Department of Education or bring the free market to education? And why did the AP lead its story with Kennedy? Isn't the real prime mover of this story those who are pushing the school vouchers in Congress. Why, as a barrier to vouchers, does Kennedy lead, and not voucher proponents?

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 11:44 AM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Nike Settles Free-Speech Case

This has to be one of the most appalling, disgusting compromises I have ever seen:

(Reuters) - Nike Inc. said on Friday it will settle a lawsuit that had become a constitutional battle over whether free-speech rights protected a publicity campaign by the company to counter accusations that Asian sweatshops made its footwear.

Beaverton, Oregon-based Nike, the world's largest maker of athletic shoes, said it will pay an additional $1.5 million on workplace-related programs over the next three years. The sum will be paid to Fair Labor Association, a Washington D.C.-based group that promotes workers' education and economic welfare.

The lawsuit was filed in 1998 by Marc Kasky, a San Francisco consumer activist, under a California consumer protection law aimed at eliminating unfair competition and false advertising.

The lawsuit claimed Nike misled the public about working conditions for its Vietnamese, Chinese and Indonesian laborers, and that its statements amounted to false advertising.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June cleared the way for the suit to proceed by refusing to decide whether the U.S. Constitution's free-speech rights protected Nike's publicity campaign.

Nike was 100% in the right. There was no reason for it to settle. But by settling this suit, it has put speech with an economic motive into an intellectual ghetto.

What a bunch of cowards. I'll have more to say on this later.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 10:06 AM | link | donate |

The War: The Other Sept. 11

Leave it to the New York Times to equate the motives behind the 9/11 attacks and US foreign policy:

Death came from the skies. A building --a symbol of the nation-- collapsed in flames in an act of terror that would lead to the deaths of 3,000 people. It was Sept. 11.

But the year was 1973, the building Chile's White House, La Moneda, and the event a coup staged by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Now, after decades of silence, Chileans are protesting in the streets for the reversal of amnesty laws that block prosecutions for the killings after the coup. The face of Salvador Allende, the overthrown Socialist president, is everywhere, and now behind La Moneda is a new statue of him wrapped in the Chilean flag. Chile's president, Ricardo Lagos, is proposing a truth commission to look into reports of torture, special judges to find the disappeared, new pensions for victims' families and an amnesty program for former soldiers who tell where the bodies are buried.

Chile is not the only country in South America focused today on the crimes of decades ago. In Peru, the truth commission investigating the guerrilla wars of the 1980's and 1990's just released a report concluding that more than 69,000 people were killed or made to disappear. In Argentina, a new president has just annulled two amnesty laws that the military forced through Congress after the "dirty war" ended in 1983.

In the United States, Sept. 11 will forever be a day to remember our victims of terrorism. Yet our nation's hands have not always been clean, and it is important to recall Chile's Sept. 11, too.

I wonder what the position of the New York Times if its editors covered the American Civil War. After all, the Confederate states did democratically vote to secede from the Union. Would the Times acknowledge that racial slavery was immoral and no vote could ever legitimize it? One would hope. But why then does the New York Times refuse to grant the same premise to those who would use elections to establish socialist dictatorships?

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 9:55 AM | link | donate |

Thursday, September 11, 2003 :::

Remembrance and Resolution: Tonight in NYC

Photo found at Yahoo News.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 11:16 PM | link | donate |

The War: Foreign Views of U.S. Darken Since Sept. 11

The New York Times reports the world is not so impressed with us.

In the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, the view of the United States as a victim of terrorism that deserved the world's sympathy and support has given way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.

"A lot of people had sympathy for Americans around the time of 9/11, but that's changed," said Cathy Hearn, 31, a flight attendant from South Africa, expressing a view commonly heard in many countries. "They act like the big guy riding roughshod over everyone else."

Riding roughshod over a poor soul like Saddam Hussein, a genteel man who never did anything to bother anyone.

Yet I�d be remiss if I didn�t point out that the Times found people who support the US.

Even at this low point, millions of people still see the United States as a beacon and support its policies, including the war in Iraq, and would, given the chance, be happy to become Americans themselves.

Some regions, especially Europe, are split in their view of America's role: The governments and, to a lesser extent, the public in former Soviet-bloc countries are much more favorably disposed to American power than the governments and the public in Western Europe, notably France and Germany.

[ * * * ]

Still, a widespread and fashionable view is that the United States is a classically imperialist power bent on controlling global oil supplies and on military domination.

Have you ever seen photos of what passes for fashion on the runways of Paris these days?

That mood has been expressed in different ways by different people, from the hockey fans in Montreal who boo the American national anthem to the high school students in Switzerland who do not want to go to the United States as exchange students because America is not "in." Even among young people, it is not difficult to hear strong denunciations of American policy and sharp questioning of American motives.

"America has taken power over the world," said Dmitri Ostalsky, 25, a literary critic and writer in Moscow. "It's a wonderful country, but it seized power. It's ruling the world. America's attempts to rebuild all the world in the image of liberalism and capitalism are fraught with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world."

Why am I not the least bit surprised that a Russian literary critic and writer sees liberalism and capitalism on par with the Nazi�s racial socialism? And I wonder if Dmitri Ostalsky has ever heard of Chechnya.

[W]hile the United States probably feels more threatened now than in 1989, when the cold war ended, Europe is broadly unconvinced of any imminent threat.

"There were deep structural forces before 9/11 that were pushing us apart," said John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics." "In the absence of the Soviet threat or of an equivalent threat, there was no way that ties between us and Europe wouldn't be loosened.

"So, when the Bush Administration came to power, the question was whether it would make things better or worse, and I'd argue that it made them worse."

"In the cold war you could argue that American unilateralism had no cost," Professor Mearsheimer continued. "But as we're finding out with regard to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, we need the Europeans and we need institutions like the U.N. The fact is that the United States can't run the world by itself, and the problem is, we've done a lot of damage in our relations with allies, and people are not terribly enthusiastic about helping us now."

I often hear that we must not blindly support the Neo-Cons because their vision is in fact to run the world. But is it? I think it is wholly legitimate for the US to respond aggressively to those who plot and act against it. After all, it is an axis of evil that threatens us. There is no honest motivation behind this axis. The Bush Administration has made things worse, not because it has unabashedly worked to protect America wherever she is threatened, but precisely because it hasn�t. The threat of North Korea remains unchecked. The threat of Iran remains unchecked. Al-Qaida is broken, but not eliminated. Our so-called allies in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan deal with to us with two faces. And we demand that Israel not defend itself from the terrorists that kill its citizens.

How did we slip so far out the world�s favor? I say, it is because of men like John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science. One can forgive the man on the street though. One can not forgive the intellectuals�especially ours.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 6:32 PM | link | donate |

The War: Going Full Roman

I contemplated writing a poetic tome to 9/11 so as to mark the day, but frankly, I just didn�t feel it in that way today. That hasn�t stopped others from trying.

The snip below is from a post by James Lileks, (whom I do not know) at his website that is getting a lot of mention in the blogosphere. Lileks writes about how he was once fooled into thinking that the world was coming to an end as a youth, and how he is "resigned, in advance, to the loss of an American city by a nuclear weapon."

Then he writes this:

I�ve no doubt that if Seattle or Boston or Manhattan goes up in a bright white flash there will be those who blame it all on Bush. We squandered the world�s good will. We threw away the opportunity to atone, and lashed out. Really? You want to see lashing out? Imagine Kabul and Mecca and Baghdad and Tehran on 9/14 crowned with mushroom clouds: that�s lashing out. Imagine the President in the National Cathedral castigating Islam instead of sitting next to an Imam who's giving a homily. Mosques burned, oil fields occupied, smart bombs slamming into Syrian palaces. We could have gone full Roman on anyone we wanted, but we didn�t. And we won�t.

Which is why this war will be long.

[. . .]

Two years in; the rest of our lives to go.

And what kind of lives will we lead?

Forget the poetry. I want to know why would it have been wrong for the president to stand at before the world and say that the militant calls for Islam, that is--submission--would not be headed by a rational, free, proud,and just people? Why would have it have been wrong to go "full Roman" against those who have dedicated themselves against us and brought battle to our people on our own shore? Better yet, for us to go full American.

And why, if Seattle or Boston or Manhattan stand threatened, don�t we hunt down those who threaten them? My days of personal deep reflections are spent wondering why I am not in the Marine Corps like I once was so I can personally bring battle to my enemies. Be in a place where I can use my mind and body to fight for and protect my home and my values. I read things like Lileks� essay and it makes me fear for America. Not from what some enemy might do, but from the resignation of my own countrymen.

It has been said that America will go down not in a bang but a whimper. I wonder sometimes if we are hearing the first sniffs.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 4:40 PM | link | donate |

The War: Scoring America's progress since 9/11

The Patriots for the Defense of America have released a scathing scorecard on the progress of the war, giving the Bush Administration�s efforts a D+.

Contrary to the leading pro-war voices, we will find that on many important fronts, American policy is failing miserably. Contrary to those who characterize America�s war as overly aggressive or unilateral, we will argue that the war has hardly begun. And contrary to those who argue that war is anathema to morality, we will argue that at root, the American reluctance to commit fully to war stems from a failure of moral clarity.

I agree. Despite a clunky grading methodology (the Patriots acknowledge that questions of life and death can not be graded on a five-part scale, but employ it nevertheless) their report offers several astute observations. I found this point on the administration�s Iraqi reconstruction efforts to be perhaps the most salient:

[I]t is not the rebuilding of Iraqi economic infrastructure, but the rebuilding of a government charged with the protection of Iraqi lives and property that should be a concern for American occupiers. As recent attacks on oil pipelines have demonstrated, insurgents will destroy any rebuilt infrastructure in the attempt to foil American success. It is the insurgents, then, who need to be targeted by a strong, American-led, military government. It was wrong to portray the Iraq war by the moniker �Operation Iraqi Freedom,� because its aim should have been to protect American lives. But if we intend to stay in Iraq, it is a government protecting Iraqi freedom that will be required, not one concerned with the impossible and undesirable task of creating and running a centrally planned economy.

This point reminds me that historically, the Marshall Plan is overrated. While it is remembered for providing American funds for the reconstruction of Europe, what is forgotten was the importance of the American-led effort to reconstruct German political institutions in allied control and the importance of NATO. The Marshall Plan applied to East Germany would have born no fruit.

The Patriots are also critical of the Bush administration�s prosecution of the war in Afghanistan.

From the beginning, the United States chose to fight a proxy war in Afghanistan, by exploiting the assistance of the Northern Alliance, rather than taking direct military control of Afghan territory. The inevitable result of this policy has been continued control of the vast majority of the country by a hodge-podge of warlords. This has meant that the pro-American Karzai government controls little beyond the region of Kabul. It has meant that warlords have been free to oppose the central government, fight among themselves, and permit the presence of terrorist groups often under the influence of foreign powers. Examples of this last include the resistance of the Iranian-linked forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in western Afghanistan, and the continued infiltration of Taliban forces into southern Afghanistan from Pakistan.

The Patriots go on further to examine US policy in Iran, North Korea, which either have or are on the threshold of having nuclear weapons, and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Palestine, all breeding grounds of terrorism, as well as questions surrounding our military readiness and dealings with the UN and other nations.

The lesson of 9/11 is that the US can ill afford to underestimate the threats arrayed against it. Yet despite two years passing since the attacks, the US remains adrift with an ad hoc foreign policy without coherent theme or execution. Islamic theocracy and communist dictatorships still continue to threaten American safety. Both are animated by the use of brutal force to achieve their ends. The American response ought to be unequivocal�we must see every threat before us and refuse to yield in the face of it. Ultimately, this is a question of moral clarity, a clarity that at this point, America seems to lack.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 2:06 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Protester Suicide Mars Cancun Trade Talks

This news report by Alistair Bell and Kieran Murray of Reuters shows the latest insanity offered by the anti-capitalist zealots:

A South Korean protester killed himself during a clash with riot police protecting ministers meeting on Wednesday in the Mexican resort of Cancun to jump-start stalled world trade talks.

The middle-aged farmer, named by friends as Lee Kyung-hae, climbed onto a high security fence during a violent protest against the World Trade Organization and waved a banner that read "WTO Kills Farmers."

He then stabbed himself in the chest and later died in hospital. A friend said his suicide was an "act of sacrifice" to show his disgust at the WTO and its policies.

About 5,000 activists joined the protest and about two dozen broke through eight-foot-high metal barriers to attack police on the edge of Cancun's upscale hotel zone.

"We are going in. We are going in," a South African trade unionist screamed through a loudspeaker, urging protesters to storm a long strip of beach hotels and fast food restaurants.

Demonstrators threw chunks of paving stones, sticks, metal bars and bottles at police, who fought back with batons and tear gas. More than a dozen people were inured as police held off the protesters.

The WTO kills farmers? The WTO is a series of negotiated agreements designed to open trade between nations. Suicidal farmers kill themselves.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 10:42 AM | link | donate |

Foreign Policy: An Israeli Voice States the Obvious

For the last year or so Arafat has been confined by the Israelis to his Muqata building in Ramallah. (Or, he could leave, but the Israelis wouldn't allow him to come back.)

The question of whether or not to exile Arafat is debated regularly in Israeli media. The argument against usually runs that Arafat, even outside the Palestinian territories, would still lead the terror war against Israel.

Finally, the Jerusalem Post offers a solution that would prevent Arafat from having any further contact with terrorists, (except maybe the ones who are done with their 72 virgins).

::: posted by John Bragg at 7:07 AM | link | donate |

Wednesday, September 10, 2003 :::

Intellectual Activism: Advance Capitalism--Intern with CAC!

The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism seeks motivated interns to assist CAC with its activism goals. We are looking for students to help with research, fundraising, web design, and grassroots activism. Digital internships are welcome and time commitments are flexible.

For more info, contact CAC here.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 5:28 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Facing North Korea

I have written an op-ed on the North Korean crisis at Initium. It is in response to some criticism CAC has received for some of John Bragg's postings on the topic.

John's position was that negotiations and bribes with North Korea made sense if they led to even a reduction in North Korea's weapons capabilities. While North Korea has not been much of a focus for me, and without much thought, I agreed with John that talks that led to a reduction or postponement of the North Korean threat were a step in the right direction.

But after examining the past history of US-North Korean negotiations with my own eye, I have come to the position that it was the very act of our negotiating with North Korea that gave them the advantage they needed to consolidate their weapons program and their grip on power. So I now say this: North Korea can not be negotiated with by its very nature, period.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 2:23 PM | link | donate |

Tuesday, September 09, 2003 :::

News of the Weird: FBI Probes Man Who Shipped Self to Dallas

This AP report takes the cake:

Charles D. McKinley had himself shipped from New York to Dallas in an airline cargo crate, startling his parents � and a deliveryman � when he broke out of the box outside their home.

"My husband asked him, `Man, what are you doing in this crate?' He said he was coming home," his mother told KDFW-TV in Dallas.

Federal officials want to know how the stowaway bypassed airport security.

Security? What security?

The dumb thing is the AP reports it cost $550 to ship the package--the cost of a first class ticket.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 9:08 PM | link | donate |

Capitalism and the Law: Girl, 12, Settles Piracy Suit for $2,000

Ted Bridis from the AP reports:

A 12-year-old girl in New York who was among the first to be sued by the record industry for sharing music over the Internet is off the hook after her mother agreed Tuesday to pay $2,000 to settle the lawsuit, apologizing and admitting that her daughter's actions violated U.S. copyright laws.

The hurried settlement involving Brianna LaHara, an honors student, was the first announced one day after the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) filed 261 such lawsuits across the country. Lawyers for the RIAA said Brianna's mother, Sylvia Torres, contacted them early Tuesday to negotiate.

"We understand now that file-sharing the music was illegal," Torres said in a statement distributed by the recording industry. "You can be sure Brianna won't be doing it anymore."

Brianna added: "I am sorry for what I have done. I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love."

The case against Brianna was a potential minefield for the music industry from a public relations standpoint. The family lives in a city housing project on New York's Upper West Side, and they said they mistakenly believed they were entitled to download music over the Internet because they had paid $29.99 for software that gives them access to online file-sharing services.

The RIAA said this week it already had negotiated $3,000 settlements with fewer than 10 Internet users who learned they might be sued after the RIAA sent copyright subpoenas to their Internet providers. But lawyers negotiated those settlements before the latest round of lawsuits, and the RIAA had said any further settlements would cost defendants more than $3,000.

Even in the hours before the settlement was announced, Brianna was emerging as an example of what critics said was overzealous enforcement by the powerful music industry.

The top lawyer for Verizon Communications Inc., William Barr, charged earlier Tuesday during a Senate hearing that music lawyers had resorted to a "campaign against 12-year-old girls" rather than trying to help consumers turn to legal sources for songs online. Verizon's Internet subsidiary is engaged in a protracted legal fight against the RIAA over copyright subpoenas sent Verizon customers.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also alluded to Brianna's case.

"Are you headed to junior high schools to round up the usual suspects?" Durbin asked RIAA President Cary Sherman during a Senate Judiciary hearing.

Durbin said he appreciated the piracy threat to the recording industry, but added, "I think you have a tough public relations campaign to go after the offenders without appearing heavy-handed in the process."

Protecting your property rights is heavy handed? I wish I had an available 12-year old I could loose on Sen. Durbin. On the contrary, the RIAA's pursuit of young Brianna was a public relations coup. Now people will begin to grasp that IP theft is no laughing matter.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 8:55 PM | link | donate |

Antitrust News: FTC Strikes Again

Today the Federal Trade Commission announced its 13th settlement in the past 18 months with a physician organization over charges of illegal negotiating with health insurers. Actually, today's settlement is with nine groups of physicians and hospitals in "a large region of south Georgia" that acted together. There's nothing new in this settlement. The FTC does not allege any fraud, force, or actual coercion took place, only that the physicians (and hospitals) entered into voluntary negotiations with insurers. In some cases, the negotiations were successfully concluded as long as eight years ago. But no matter, the FTC has now decided any and all contracts negotiated by the Georgia groups are null and void, and from now on, physicians and hospitals will enjoy no right to act in their own economic self-interest without FTC permission.

You can access copies of the FTC's public records of this case here.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 3:44 PM | link | donate |

Capitalism and the Law: "Hackers not Lawyers"

Andy Kessler has an article at the Wall Street Journal that I don't agree with:

As of yesterday, record companies--via the Recording Industry Association of America--have sued more than 250 of their customers, sent subpoenas to Internet service providers demanding the names of flagrant file-sharers and even threatened to unleash worms and viruses on file-sharing Web sites.

But c'mon, no one outside the insurance industry really thinks it's a great long-term strategy to scare your customers. Alienate 16-year-olds, and all you'll ever sell are Rolling Stones albums to boomers.

Isn't it the RIAA's point that the pirates they are pursing in the courts are not their customers?

Fifteen years ago, the software industry had a huge piracy problem, one of the main reasons being that Microsoft Word or Excel cost hundreds of dollars. Borland cut the price of its Quattro Pro spreadsheet program to $79, and people bought it instead of copying it. Sales went up. Economists call this elasticity.

The same thing may happen in the music biz. The vast majority of music listeners are honest, property-loving citizens, and my guess is we would all gladly pay a fair price for music. Ten dollars per album may still be high--who knows? The industry still needs to figure out how to transition to an online-only model. Without shiny discs, and the markup brigade, they can charge 50 cents a song and $5 an album and still make as much as they do today via stores. It shouldn't be that hard--the cellphone industry does $1 billion a year in ring-tone sales. Surely the music industry can sell songs online in even bigger numbers.

Long term, the music industry needs technology, not lawyers, to fix its problems. Hire a few of those hackers you are now threatening with jail time. Don't sell dumb data, sell software. Each song or album could eventually come with its own code, its own little operating system, to play the song on the next generation of players.

Yes, price, packaging, and quality affects record sales. But failing to find the price, packaging, and quality one desires does not give one license to steal.

I agree that the way music is sold will change, shifting from the album CD to the Internet single song model. Yet with either model, piracy will still be a problem. I know people with 1,000 songs on their hard drive. If under the Internet model, songs sell for $0.50 a pop, that�s still $500 dollars. I question why a teenager would pay $500 for something he can pirate for free, if he thinks he can get away with it. And it�s precisely that point that makes me think that RIAA�s strategy is correct--they need (and have a right) to protect their property from theft. That means little pimply pirates need to feel some heat, so as to remind them that theft is wrong and that it will not be sanctioned.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 9:28 AM | link | donate |

On Politics: Libertarians Run Amok

If you want an example of the difference between libertarianism and Objectivism, look at this website. I'm not saying all, or even most, libertarians think that way, but no Objectivist would ever support such a thing.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 12:21 AM | link | donate |

Monday, September 08, 2003 :::

The War: Canada staging ground for terrorists

CBS's 60 Minutes reports Canada is a staging ground and fund-raising base for terrorists.

Last month, Canadian authorities arrested 19 foreign students suspected of ties to al Qaeda.

One of the students attended a Canadian flight school and liked to fly over the local nuclear plant. Others were apprehended outside a nuclear facility in the middle of the night.

With the second anniversary of 9/11 approaching, the arrests serve as a reminder that Canada and the United States share a 5,500 mile border that is largely unguarded.

As 60 Minutes first reported over a year ago, Canadian intelligence admits the country has become a sanctuary, staging ground and fund-raising base for hundreds of terrorists from all over the world.

They are drawn to Canada by its liberal immigration and refugee policies, and they have transformed Canada into a potential launching pad for attacks against the United States.

Read the whole report. Kinda kills Micheal Moore's claim that Canada's welfare programs keep it all warm and fuzzy while capitalist America is needlessly violent.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 3:17 PM | link | donate |

CAC News: Media Appearance

Tonight at 8:30 p.m. EDT I'll be a guest on the Steve Czaban Show on Fox Sports Radio discussing antitrust issues in college sports, notably Maurice Clarett's potential antitrust suit against the NFL, last week's congressional hearing on the Bowl Championship Series, and the NCAA's appeal of a federal judge's injunction of a college basketball scheduling rule.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 2:43 PM | link | donate |

Capitalism and the Law: Recording Industry Sues File Swappers

David McGuire of the Washington Post reports the RIAA has brought suit against 261 people accused of trading copyrighted songs on the Internet.

The lawsuits, which were filed in federal courts across the country, are the RIAA's latest tactics in its war against the illegal file sharing that record companies blame for plummeting CD sales.

In June, the RIAA promised to sue hundreds of Internet users suspected of illegally trading music using file-swapping services like Kazaa and Morpheus. The association in August clarified that it only would target the most egregious file sharers.

RIAA President Cary Sherman in a teleconference today characterized the people who were sued as "major offenders" who distributed about 1,000 copyrighted music files on average.

Good. But I wonder what the average number of pirated songs there are per pirate. Is 1,000 songs all that much beyond the norm?

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 1:34 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: The Green Disease

Steven Reinberg of HealthDayNews reports on the toll of West Nile virus:

The West Nile virus surged again across the western half of the United States last week, doubling its death toll and almost doubling the number of people infected by the mosquito-borne virus.

According to the latest U.S. government statistics reported Thursday, there have now been 43 deaths and 2,267 human infections in 35 states this year. Exactly a week ago, those tolls stood at 21 deaths and 1,442 cases of infection, which was double the numbers from the previous week.

Colorado remains the hardest-hit state, with 940 cases and 11 deaths, according to the latest figures on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site.

Nebraska now has 326 cases and has had eight fatalities. South Dakota has the third-highest number of cases, 250, but only three deaths. Texas and Wyoming round out the Top 5 list, with 164 cases each.

Bin Laden killed 2700 on 9/11. How many people have died as a result of environmentalist policies, and just how many will have to die before the DDT ban is lifted?

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 11:21 AM | link | donate |

The Culture: 'Lazy' Germans Urged to Work More to Revive Growth

Reuters reports that Germans are lazy:

Long lauded for their Teutonic efficiency and hard work in rebuilding the country after World War II, Germans are now among the world's top slackers and politicians and industry leaders say that must change to kickstart the sagging economy.

"We need longer and more flexible weekly working hours -- 40 hours instead of the average of 37 hours is more reasonable than lower income. It would improve the competitive position of firms and bring more innovation and investment," said Ludwig Georg Braun, president of the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

According to International Labour Organization statistics, the average German worked 1,444 hours in 2002, compared to 1,815 hours for the average U.S. worker and 1,707 for the average Briton. Only the Norwegians and Dutch worked fewer hours.

Germans also have more holidays than most other nations -- 30 days leave is standard plus about 12 public holidays.

The Cologne Institute of the German Economy (IW) estimates the average German takes off about another 12 days a year due to sickness, training, maternity and other leave entitlements, meaning most people work the equivalent of a four-day week.

Noting that German growth could be 0.5 percent higher than usual next year as several public holidays fall on weekends, Economy Minister Wolfgang Clement has said Germany is at the limit of what it can afford in holidays and working hours.

Hagen Lesch, an IW labor expert, said if the working week were extended by an hour, economic growth next year could be 3.1 percent, double the institute's current expectations.

Hans-Werner Sinn, head of the influential Ifo institute, says an increase in the average working week to 42 hours would restore German competitiveness lost in the past two decades.

Trade unions have slammed such calls, saying an increase in the working week of just an hour could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and that the debate ignores productivity.

Why does the state (German or US) regulate how many hours a person may work in the first place? Clearly that ought to be freely negotiated between employers and workers. Rather than lobby for a longer work week, the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce ought to simply lobby for the right to define your own work habits, free from regulation. I wonder the odds of the lazy Germans figuring that one out.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 11:14 AM | link | donate |

Capitalism and the Law: U.S. Colleges Institute P2P Education

Bill Holland of Billboard reports on efforts to educate college students on IP rights:

Incoming freshmen at colleges across the U.S. are getting a primer this month in an unexpected subject: The legal ramifications of file sharing.

It's a clear sign that last year's Recording Industry Assn. of America initiative to work with U.S. colleges and universities on combating campus peer-to-peer piracy is bearing fruit.

During a conference call Sept. 2, the co-chairmen of the Joint Higher Education and Entertainment Group cited as a sign of progress the P2P education and enforcement policies initiated this year by university administrators across the country. The joint group kicked off last December.

Recent newspaper stories have documented freshman orientation programs that include P2P policies and warnings at several universities, including American University in Washington, D.C., and many University of California campuses.

In addition, Colby College, University of Denver, Stanford University, University of Utah, Columbia University, University of Rochester, University of North Carolina and Harvard and Yale have instituted education initiatives or e-posted campus P2P policies.

"Just a year ago, you didn't see these efforts," says group co-chair Graham Spanier, president of Penn State University. "The progress in charting solutions and in awareness has been dramatic in recent months."

Spanier shares chairman responsibilities with RIAA president Cary Sherman. The two attribute greater campus awareness of the issue to better communication between the RIAA and higher-education institutions.

But certainly the greater responsiveness has been motivated in large part by the RIAA lawsuits this spring, some of which were directed at students on college campuses. At least 10 universities have been served with subpoenas calling for the identity of egregious infringers.

"Universities don't want their students to be sued," Spanier says. "We're working hard to prevent that. We're also sympathetic to the losses in the music industry."

Sherman said he is gratified by the attention copyright violations are getting on campuses. "There's a world of difference this year just a year ago in terms of the seriousness universities are taking this issue," he says.

It's high time universities take IP theft seriously. I see this though and it makes me wonder:

Spanier says that at Penn State, which has a student body of 83,000, the policy is to warn a student twice about what officials consider serious infringement, and, if it occurs again, "we shut them off." Further violations could lead to expulsion.

"Could lead to expulsion?" The theft of IP means one does not have respect for the principle that ideas are property. How can such a fundamentality corrupt view be so tenderly punished? I suspect Penn State is showboating. If it were really serious about IP theft, it would expel students on the second violation, no questions asked.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 11:05 AM | link | donate |

The War: Last Service Held for 9/11 WTC Fireman

Lukas I. Alpert of the AP reports:

Firefighters in formal dress and others in work attire were among hundreds of people who gathered Sunday to pay respects to Michael Ragusa, the last firefighter killed in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center to receive a memorial service.

The 29-year-old's remains have never been identified, so his family chose to bury a vial of blood he had donated to a bone marrow center. A funeral was scheduled for Monday.

I find the vial of blood of the lost firefighter to be a powerful statement. Let not one drop of blood shed on September 11th go unpunished.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 10:54 AM | link | donate |

Antitrust News: Sanction of the Victim

On Friday Microsoft settled an antitrust suit with Be Inc. which was pending in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland in Baltimore. Be will receive a payment from Microsoft, after attorney's fees, in the amount of $23,250,000 to end further litigation, and Microsoft admits no wrongdoing.

Be contended that Microsoft violated California and federal antitrust laws by negotiating deals with computer manufacturers to use Microsoft's operating system exclusively, cutting out Be's competing operating system.

According to Microsoft's press release, "both parties are satisfied with the agreement and believe that it is fair and reasonable".

Business leaders deserve great credit for the wealth and opportunities they create. The also deserve to be held to task when their actions destroy wealth. Microsoft just paid $23 million in rent to a bankrupt competitor to settle a baseless suit. It makes one wonder just how practical Microsoft's strategy of fighting antitrust suits against it without fighting the antitrust laws themselves.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 10:35 AM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Bush's Ideology

Virginia Postrel on the president's speech:

Bush's rhetoric continues to have two major problems, neither of which is likely to disappear. The first, and most obvious, is that he says the enemy is terrorism rather than Islamicism using terrorism as a weapon (including against Muslims). The second, less obvious, is that he says we are fighting to defend democracy, when in fact we are fighting to defend liberalism (or liberal democracy). Iran is a democracy, in the normal sense of holding real elections, but it is not liberal.

The fundamental conflict is over whether the systems of limited, non-theocratic, individual-rights-bsed governments that developed over centuries in the West are good or bad. Outside of the academy and other intellectual circles, however, American political discourse has literaly lost the words to describe what the "civilized world" has in common. We think "liberal" means Hillary Clinton, when it also means George Bush.

These problems, however, are not simply rhetorical. The administration's inability to take on certain sources of Islamicism--most notably Saudi Arabia--has hampered America's credibility since the start of the post-9/11 era. As for democracy-vs.-liberalism, the truth is President Bush has not demonstrated he supports individual rights as the moral basis of society. His domestic policies have been largely geared towards ratifying the destruction of individual rights in key areas, such as health care and education, and he has done nothing to curb the one major governmental abuse under his direct control, the tyranny of regulators (such as the FTC).

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 10:02 AM | link | donate |

Sunday, September 07, 2003 :::

Rights and Reason: High Noon for Campaign "Reform"

Tomorrow the Supreme Court will hold a special session (technically the last meeting of the October 2002 Term) to hear McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, the umbrella name for numerous challenges to the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act (aka McCain-Feingold). The Court has scheduled four hours of oral arguments. Former Solicitor General Kenneth Starr will open for the law's opponents. Incumbent Solicitor General Ted Olson and his predecessor, Seth Waxman, will lead off for the law's defenders. Tomorrow's arguments are essentially the All-Star Game of appellate jurisprudence.

For all the lawyers and briefs the BCRA challenges have attracted, the fundamental issue is quite simple. Congress claims the right to restrict and regulate political speech on the grounds that it prevents the "appearance of corruption," and that such motive is itself a valid governmental objective. This argument is completely without merit for numerous reasons, the key one being that the "appearance of corruption" is nothing more than a faith-based standard. In other words, it permits the government to initiate force in the absence of objective proof that rights are being violated. BCRA grants government agents the power to decide what acts of political speech are valid and which offer the "appearance of corruption". Such a standard can never be reasonably enforced, because it is facially non-objective. Speech and activities that I would consider illegal under BCRA will radically differ from that others, including the law's enforcers, would consider illegal. This is the trap America fell into with antitrust, and unlike the Sherman Act, the Supreme Court should not try to invent a rationale after the fact to justify Congress's clearly unconstitutional act. BCRA should be struck down, and the precedents giving rise to its creation should be overruled without delay.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 2:43 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Monsanto's French GM Maize Crop Attacked

This from Reuters:

An experimental genetically modified (GM) maize crop in southern France, owned by U.S. seeds giant Monsanto, has been attacked and destroyed, police said on Saturday.

Police did not say who was behind the attack on the approximately half hectare field, isolated in a forest in Magnesq, but added that it had occurred a few hours after an anti-GM demonstration on Friday.

Another of Monsanto's GM fields, also in the southwest of France near Toulouse, was destroyed in July.

While GM crops are common in the United States, France and other European countries are dubious about using the new genetic technology in agriculture. France grows experimental GM crops on around 100 sites, all approved by the farm ministry.

Supporters say the crops could lead to the development of hardier strains to help feed the world's poor. Opponents say they could trigger an uncontrolled spread of modified genes, harming the environment and people's health.

Supporters of the crops also say the opponents claims are utterly without merit. Yet here we have the spectacle of environmentalists committing thousands of dollars of damage in the name of their specious philosophy.

Greens out-fundraise pro-technology advocates by several orders of magnitude, enjoy popular sympathy, and have people to lobby every level of government. This criminal act is but the tip of the iceberg. I expect things to get much worse.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 12:12 PM | link | donate |

The Culture: Defining Media

Matt Welch, an associate editor at Reason, pens a telling article for the Columbia Journalism Review on the state of "alternative" media, specifically the so-called "alternative newsweekly" papers such as the Village Voice and the Washington City Paper. Welch finds an industry that has matured to the point of stifling uniformity:

This February, I attended my first Association of Alternative Newsweeklies conference, in the great media incubator of San Francisco. It's impossible to walk a single block of that storied town without feeling the ghosts of great contrarian media innovators past: Hearst and Twain, Hinckle and Wenner, Rossetto and Talbot. But after twelve hours with the AAN, a much different reality set in: never in my life have I seen a more conformist gathering of journalists.

All the newspapers looked the same � same format, same fonts, same columns complaining about the local daily, same sex advice, same five-thousand-word hole for the cover story. The people were largely the same, too: all but maybe 2 percent of the city-slicker journalists in attendance were white; the vast majority were either Boomer hippies or Gen X slackers. Several asked me the exact same question with the same suspicious looks on their faces: "So . . . what's your alternative experience?"

At the bar, I started a discussion about what specific attributes qualified these papers, and the forty-seven-year-old publishing genre that spawned them, to continue meriting the adjective "alternative." Alternative to what? To the straight-laced "objectivity" and pyramid-style writing of daily newspapers? New Journalists and other narrative storytellers crashed those gates long ago. Alternative to society's oppressive intolerance toward deviant behavior? Tell it to the Osbournes, as they watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Something to do with corporate ownership? Not unless "alternative" no longer applies to Village Voice Media (owned in part by Goldman Sachs) or the New Times chain (which has been involved in some brutal acquisition and liquidation deals). Someone at the table lamely offered up "a sense of community," but Fox News could easily clear that particular bar.

No, it must have something to do with political slant � or, to be technically accurate, political correctness. Richard Karpel, the AAN executive director, joined the conversation, so I put him on the spot: Of all the weeklies his organization had rejected for membership on political grounds, which one was the best editorially? The Independent Florida Sun, he replied. Good-looking paper, some sharp writing but, well, it was just too friendly toward the church. "And if there's anything we all agree on," Karpel said with a smile, "it's that we're antichurch."

I assumed he was joking � that couldn't be all we have left from the legacy of Norman Mailer, Art Kunkin, Paul Krassner, and my other childhood heroes, could it? Then later I looked up the AAN's Web site to read the admission committee's rejection notes for the Florida Sun (which was excluded by a vote of 9-2). "The right-wing church columnist has no place in AAN," explained one judge. "All the God-and-flag shit disturbs me," wrote another. "Weirdly right-wing," chimed a third.

Welch's description of AAN's ideology is especially interesting in light of the Justice Department's recent antirtust settlement with Village Voice Media and NT Media, the nation's two largest alternative newspaper chains. In that case, the DOJ defined an "alternative newsweekly" as a paper that exhibits an "anti-establishment" viewpoint, although that phrase is never itself defined. This was one of several hints in the DOJ's filings that they considered a newspaper's ideological slant grounds for inferring market power, a standard that contradicts the traditional First Amendment requirement that government regulation be "content neutral" with respect to speech.

In my own filings in the Village Voice-NT Media case, I questioned the government's vague market definition. According to the final judgment, an alternative newsweekly need only meet two of the following requirements: published in a market already served by one or more daily newspapers, published weekly and at least 24 times annually, distributed free of charge, not owned by a daily newspaper publisher, and a not focused exclusively on one specific topic.

I argued that blogs would be considered alternative newsweeklies by these standards, a point the government never refuted or denied. Welch, however, understands my argument, and elaborates in his CJR article:

The average blog, needless to say, pales in comparison to a 1957 issue of the Voice, or a 1964 Los Angeles Free Press, or a 2003 Lexington, Kentucky, ACE Weekly, for that matter. But that's missing the point. Blogging technology has, for the first time in history, given the average Jane the ability to write, edit, design, and publish her own editorial product � to be read and responded to by millions of people, potentially � for around $0 to $200 a year. It has begun to deliver on some of the wild promises about the Internet that were heard in the 1990s. Never before have so many passionate outsiders � hundreds of thousands, at minimum � stormed the ramparts of professional journalism.

And these amateurs, especially the ones focusing on news and current events, are doing some fascinating things. Many are connecting intimately with readers in a way reminiscent of old-style metro columnists or the liveliest of the New Journalists. Others are staking the narrowest of editorial claims as their own � appellate court rulings, new media proliferation in Tehran, the intersection of hip-hop and libertarianism � and covering them like no one else. They are forever fact-checking the daylights out of truth-fudging ideologues like Ann Coulter and Michael Moore, and sifting through the biases of the BBC and Bill O'Reilly, often while cheerfully acknowledging and/or demonstrating their own lopsided political sympathies. At this instant, all over the world, bloggers are busy popularizing underappreciated print journalists (like Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Steyn), pumping up stories that should be getting more attention (like the Trent Lott debacle), and perhaps most excitingly of all, committing impressive, spontaneous acts of decentralized journalism.

Antitrust lawyers are obviously not trained in the art of thinking dynamically; their principal job in fact is to conjure narrow, arbitrary market definitions in the pursuit of new cases. In the Village Voice case, the DOJ argued that readers were denied their right to receive the benefit of competing alternative newsweekly content. The DOJ never, for one second, considered that consumers were already receiving superior content via blogs or other decentralized media outlets.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 12:05 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Whose Money is It?

The union representing D.C. teachers is up-in-arms after the school board rescinded a 9% pay raise due to budget constraints. Local politicians are falling over each other to defend the union, a major source of political support in the nation's capital. One of the more telling statements of union support came from Adrian Fenty, a member of D.C.'s city council, who suggested the city should abandon efforts to provide private school vouchers to parents (a policy backed by Congress) in favor of reinstating the teachers' raises:

"At a time when the city struggles tremendously to give its public school teachers the pay raises they deserve, I cannot understand why the mayor wants to divert public money to private schools."

What Fenty is saying, essentially, is that the money belongs to the teachers. But "public" money is by definition funds taken from citizens through forcible taxation. The proposed voucher plan would put the disposal of some of those funds in the hands of parents to decide what school is best for their children. Fenty and the union, however, view the confiscated tax dollars as their property, to be disposed of despite the wishes of parents or what's best for their children.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 11:51 AM | link | donate |

The Courts: Estrada Withdraws

Miguel Estrada's decision to withdraw his nomniation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was long overdue; not because Estrada should not have been confirmed, but because it's been obvious for months that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist would not break the Democratic filibuster preventing a Senate vote. Estrada--and every other Bush judicial nominee now being held up--should have withdrawn from consideration months ago, both for the sake of their personal integrity and to deny the Senate Republicans and the White House the use of a political issue they refuse to act upon.

Frist remains unwilling to use the so-called "nuclear option" to bring filibustered judicial nominees to a vote. This option entails simply calling for a vote despite the Democrats' announced filibuster. Under the normal rule, a filibuster continues until three-fifths of the Senate, 60 votes, invokes cloture. But Frist and the Republican majority could simply override that requirement and bring a nomination to an immediate vote. When the Democrats object, the Republican president pro tem of the Senate overrides the objection, and the majority sustains that decision on appeal. Then the majority votes, presumably to confirm the nominee.

Frist won't employ this option because it threatens to destroy what remains of the Senate's "collegiality". Much of the Senate's ordinary business requires unanimous consent; Democrats could bring the Senate to a halt simply by objecting to otherwise routine procedures. Frist is unwilling to risk this.

But what exactly is Frist trying to preserve? His biggest legislative priority right now is the Medicare prescription drug benefit plan now in a House-Senate conference committee. Frist considers this bill more important than confirming a single judge, or even a handful of judges. But this is poor prioritization. Confirming judges is an essential function of the Senate, in that it permits the continued functioning of the nation's judicial system. The prescription drug benefit, in contrast, is an unconstitutional redistribution of wealth designed to bolster the president's reelection prospects with a narrow interest group.

More importantly, Frist's nonaction on Estrada tells the country that he is willing to tolerate the type of collectivist profiling the Democrats are now using against the president's judicial nominees. Estrada was targeted for filibuster because he met a certain profile: a young, conservative Hispanic with Supreme Court potential.

The Democrats argue they opposed Estrada on ideological grounds. But there was no ideology present in the dispute over Estrada's nomination. There were some vague allusions to single-issue litmus tests, like abortion, but no Democratic senator ever offered an integrated ideological argument against Estrada's confirmation. Instead, there were repeated statements that Estrada is an "extremist," but that's a smear, not an argument.

The Democratic filibuster of Estrada violated the basic principles of parliamentary law. The filibuster exists to prevent the majority from imposing its will without adequate time for debate. The Democrats, however, never debated Estrada's nomination; they merely smeared it as part of a public spectacle. For that reason, the Republican majority was under no duty to protect the minority's debate rights under Senate rules, and accordingly should have forced a vote despite lacking the three-fifths majority to invoke cloture.

There are, of course, several more judicial nominees under filibuster. Unless Sen. Frist and his colleagues are willing to risk their personal political agendas to do their constitutional jobs, these nominees should follow Estrada's example and get out while they still can.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 11:43 AM | link | donate |

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