Browsing PBH By Articles

Unnecessary Whining: Gratis With The Wealthy

The Article: Why the Obscenely Wealthy Whine When They Have It So Good by Frank Joyce in AlterNet.

The Text: So, Mitt Romney now tells Sean Hannity he was “completely wrong” about the 47%. On the surface that looks like a typical etch-a-sketch campaign pivot. But I think there is more to it than a little clean up in aisle three.

My theory is that after careful research and analysis, the smartest guys at 1% World Headquarters reached a disturbing conclusion. They decided that the whole fiasco needs to be contained as much as possible because it has the potential for serious damage well beyond the November election.

How? Let’s see.

Continue Reading

Privatizing TLC: From Intelligent Life To Honey Boo Boo

The Article: How the Privatization of NASA’s The Learning Channel devolved into a for-profit channel pushing Honey Boo Boo in Little Green Footballs.

The Text: Romney in the first debate with Obama and the GOP for years have called for PBS to be defunded for many reasons but they hate it’s left wing educational content and the fact its financed by the tax payer (so they claim, I think they hate it because it tilts leftwards).

But a public funded example of PBS like station being defunded and privatized existed before. What can we learn from that?

People forget or did not know that once upon a time The Learning Channel

was founded in 1972 by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and NASA as an informative/instructional network focused on providing real education through the medium of TV; it was distributed at no cost by NASA satellite. Then it was privatized in 1980 (See Reaganism) and was then named the Appalachian Community Service Network. In November 1980 this name was changed to “The Learning Channel”, which was subsequently shortened to “TLC.”

From then on we have a sad decline to the abomination of child and poverty exploitation of the TLC’s current hit freak show “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”.

The channel back then mostly featured documentary content pertaining to nature, science, history, current events, medicine, technology, cooking, home improvement and other information-based topics. Low ratings and low profits. Smarts don’t sell.

By the early 1990s, The Learning Channel was a sister channel to the Financial News Network (FNN) which owned 51 percent of the channel with Infotechnology Inc. After FNN went into bankruptcy in 1991, the Discovery Channel’s owners went into talks of buying The Learning Channel. An agreement was made with FNN and Infotech to buy their shares for million. The non-profit Appalachian Community Service Network owned 35 percent of the network, and was also bought out.

The Learning Channel continued to focus primarily on instructional and educational programming through much of the ’90s but began to air shows less focused on education and more themed towards popular consumption and mass marketing; these would be later expanded.

In 1998 the channel began to distance itself from its original name “The Learning Channel”, and instead began to advertise itself only as “TLC”.

So when Mitt Romney and the Republicans talk about how much better off PBS would be de-funded, remember what privatization did to TLC and how TLC went from NASA beaming information into student classrooms to the disgraceful programs it runs today (many of which exploit children).

I am not saying we should not be capitalists and should be against the for profit model – but we should wake up from the delusion that the private sector can do it better. In some cases, the private sector does it worse and is worse.

This will be the last I will write on the Honey Boo Boo topic. I needed to vent.

The Truth About Jobs

The Article: Truth About Jobs by Paul Krugman in The New York Times.

The Text: If anyone had doubts about the madness that has spread through a large part of the American political spectrum, the reaction to Friday’s better-than expected report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics should have settled the issue. For the immediate response of many on the right — and we’re not just talking fringe figures — was to cry conspiracy.

Leading the charge of what were quickly dubbed the “B.L.S. truthers” was none other than Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric, who posted an assertion on Twitter that the books had been cooked to help President Obama’s re-election campaign. His claim was quickly picked up by right-wing pundits and media personalities.

It was nonsense, of course. Job numbers are prepared by professional civil servants, at an agency that currently has no political appointees. But then maybe Mr. Welch — under whose leadership G.E. reported remarkably smooth earnings growth, with none of the short-term fluctuations you might have expected (fluctuations that reappeared under his successor) — doesn’t know how hard it would be to cook the jobs data.

Continue Reading

The Antonin Scalia Bot Strikes Again

The Article: Scalia says outlawing “homosexual sodomy” is a no-brainer by Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon.

The Text: Antonin Scalia isn’t sweating it. At a book reading and lecture at Washington’s American Enterprise Institute this week, the 76-year-old associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and self-described “textualist” entertained the crowd by rattling off a litany of his top judicial no-brainers.

“The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion,” he said. “Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.” And then he went to bed that night and slept like a baby.

Scalia’s breathtaking nonchalance doesn’t come as any huge surprise to anyone familiar with the Roe v. Wade–opposing, affirmative action–blocking, death penalty–loving Reagan appointee’s strict interpretation of the Constitution as an immutable template of American justice. In the past, he’s argued that “the risk of assessing evolving standards is that it is all too easy to believe that evolution has culminated in one’s own views.” He affirmed that belief at the Enterprise Institute Event, contrasting his style with those justices who would believe “‘the Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean.’ No kidding.” And he reiterated that citizens who believe in change on such issues as abortion or the death penalty should take it up with their elected officials — or go ahead and try to change the Constitution, adding darkly, “It is very difficult to adopt a constitutional amendment.” Surprisingly, he didn’t finish this statement with a sinister BWAHAHA flourish, but it was implied.

It takes a special kind of man to shrug off challenges to death penalty and abortion restrictions with nary a care in the world about how his interpretations of text might affect real human lives, and to use the phrase “homosexual sodomy” in 2012. Give him this, though: He’s consistent, down to his language. In 2003, when the Supreme Court struck down Texas sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas, paving the way for a more widespread dissolution of similar statutes in other states, Scalia wrote the dissenting opinion. At the time, he argued that “nowhere does the Court’s opinion declare that homosexual sodomy is a ‘fundamental right,’” adding, “It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed. Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”

I’m not a Supreme Court justice, but sorry, who here was taking sides in a culture war? Who here thought “evolution has culminated in one’s own views”? Because I’m seeing a pot that couldn’t begin to fathom how black he was. Still can’t. And nine years ago, Scalia crowed in his dissent that “we need not fear judicial imposition of homosexual marriage,” so one may wonder if today, underneath his swagger, he’s just a teensy bit fearful about those homosexuals and their homosexual sodomy getting homosexual married all over the place. Oh, the times, they are evolving.

Scalia may be a relic, not merely ferociously determined to refuse to modernize but equally committed to making it look easy. But you’ve got to hand it to a man whose devotion to what he perceives as our country’s founding values is so rock solid that he’s content to be living fully in the 18th century.

2012: Free Versus Slave States, Not Red Versus Blue

The Article: Forget Red vs. Blue — It’s Slave States vs. Free States in 2012 by Michael Lind in AlterNet.

The Text: Every now and then someone highlights the overlap between today’s Republican states and the slave states of the former Confederacy. As clichéd as the point may be, it remains indispensable to understanding what is happening in American politics today.

The core of today’s Democratic party consists of the states of New England and the Great Lakes/Midatlantic region that were the heart of the Union effort during the Civil War. The core of today’s Republican party consists of the states that seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America.Don’t be misled by the contemporary red state-blue state map which makes the mostly-red Prairie/Mountain states look as important in the Republican coalition as the South.

As the cartogram shows, in terms of population and votes the South vastly outweighs the thinly-populated Prairie/Mountain states, even though the latter get disproportionate representation in the U.S. Senate and the electoral college. The cartogram provides a pretty good reflection of the situation perceived by conservative white Southerners, by depicting a besieged South encircled and on the verge of being crushed by multiracial, polyglot, immigrant-friendly, secular humanist, progressive Blue America.

Continue Reading