Buried in an innocuous supplemental federal appropriations bill signed early on 31 March just as President Obama flew overseas for a G-20 Summit is a provision which enables the federal government to nationalize any print newspaper with a circulation over 5000 which publishes more than four days per week.

 

Many in the nation's ailing newspaper business hailed the provision as a "godsend" for an industry rocked by recent shutdowns, mandatory furloughs, and chapter 11 bankruptcies.  Among the bill's provisions:

 

• a guaranteed "living, professional wage" for all salaried workers such as reporters, editors, and photographers

 

• subsidies which allow the papers to maintain "appropriate page count and section thickness for the local market"

 

• subsidies which allow the papers to declare all advertising "optional and free," or publish advertising and donate any proceeds back to a government "Civic Fund"

 

Some critics of the legislation worry that putting newspapers under government control would interfere with the constitutional press functions as disinterested observers and critics of current government and politics.  "They're going to be reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them," said one editor, under condition of anonymity.  "The whole thing smacks of 'Pravda.'"

 

But others disagree.  "If this had happened during the Bush Administration, we might have had reason to worry.  We would have had to be in NPR mode.  But under this current administration, there shouldn't be any problems."

 

Another editor from a different paper agreed.

 

"Under the bailout program, newspapers will have to examine themselves for bias.  But we do that now anyway.  We regularly examine ourselves for bias, and have never found any."

 

"The whole 'bias in newspapers' thing is ridiculous," stated another editor.  "Newspapers and the people who run them are moderate, right-down-the-middle.  The only people who ever talk about bias are ignorant right-wing nuts.  God, I hate Sarah Palin."

 

To read the entire text of the bailout legislation, click here.

 

 

What price would you put on your children?  I'm not talking about some vague concept like "all my heart" or "they are priceless gifts from God."  I'm talking hard dollar figures here, concrete price tags.

 

We Americans are blessed that most of us never even remotely consider this possibility.  Others in the world are not so lucky (or so finicky?).  Many people living today have not only been confronted with that question, they have answered it with a specific dollar amount.

 

In the years immediately before Saddam Hussein was deposed from Iraq, he found numerous Palestinian parents willing to sell him their children as suicide bombers recruited to kill Israelis.  The price hovered around $10,000 for the longest time, but as the heat from UN weapons inspectors became more and more intense, Saddam had his agents pass out checks for $15,000 and even a reported high of $25,000.  Of course, that mean old George Bush stepped in and spoiled that party.  I don't know what Iran pays, if anything, but it would appear in recent months that the bottom has fallen out of that market.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,48822,00.html

 

 

There are numerous reports of Afghan parents selling their children for myriad different purposes.  Young girls are sold into forced marriages; sons are sold into families which can't bear male children.  The going rate in this buyer's market seems to hover around $1000 per child.  For the impoverished parents, the motivation here is often to save the lives of the remaining children in the family.

 

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/3901941/Afghan-parents-selling-their-sons-to-survive.html

 

In many parts of the world from Mali to Burma, children are sold for much, much less -- usually less than $100, almost always less than the local cost of one cow or a few goats.  These children are sold for anything from use as sex slaves to use as grunt labor.  For the purposes of our thought exercise, I'd like to ignore the vast numbers of children who are trafficked by strangers, and focus on the children who are sold by their own parents.  We are often told that these parents are lied to, and told that the children they sell will be treated well; well-fed, well-clothed, and well-schooled.  Do the parents really believe it, or is that a little formal kindness, like the words which pass between people when a dog is turned over to the vet to be put to sleep?

 

Luckily, we Americans aren't so callous as to send the kids off to kill themselves or to break their backs laboring for strangers, especially not for a few dollars.  We Americans love our children.

 

But somehow, we've become very comfortable with a different method of slavery.  An $800 Billion stimulus package of political payoffs?  Sure.  Double the National Debt to over 15 Trillion?  Okay.  A 12% increase in federal spending, as more and more Americans are losing their jobs?  Why not?

 

And this isn't really slavery; just a gradual loss of opportunity and freedom.  They can live with a 60% tax rate, can't they?  Can't they thrive in an economy where the debt is nearly one third of the gross domestic product?

 

Yes, we'll sell children into slavery.... but we must first have a little formal kindness, we must first hear some fine words like "hope" and "change"....

 

Besides, these children we're selling haven't even been born yet.

A miniature controversy was recently stirred up when a faux-journalist and “activist” approached Jim Calhoun, the basketball coach of University of Connecticut, regarding his salary. You see, Jim Calhoun, like a lot of major-sport coaches at public universities, is the highest paid employee at the school.  In fact, in most states the highest paid state employees are usually university basketball and football coaches.

 

The wannabe pointed out what he assumed was the self-evident injustice of Coach Calhoun receiving about $1.6 million$ as so many are hurting in today’s economy, and the state is running a deficit.

 

At first Coach Calhoun attempted to brush it off with a little joke, and then he got quite perturbed, telling the heel-nipper to “shut up.” As the incident gained attention, a few “leaders” in the Connecticut state legislature chimed in to chide Coach Calhoun, hoping to gain a little reflected status and populist street-cred.

 

I'm sorry, Coach, but you committed a foul.  A good foul, like when one of your players who isn't in foul trouble keeps one of the opponents who isn't in the bonus from going to the basket unopposed.  The kind of foul you don't mind from one of your players because it shows you that the kid is playing aggressive defense, but a foul nonetheless.

 

But, Coach, you are a state employee, and your salary is always fair game for public discussion.

 

Let me make something exceptionally clear.  I am a pragmatist, a capitalist, a conservative, and an American (and I shall never apologize for being these).  As such I support people making whatever money they can doing legal and honest things.  If someone wants to pay you 10 million a year to play tiddly-winks or to coach horseshoes, take it!

 

I'm sure that if you had some time to think about it you might have said something like, "My salary is a matter of public record, and it represents the value that my employer voluntarily put on my services based on my record of achievement."

 

That would have shut a lot of people up.  Especially the part about "voluntarily."  The legislators who represent us in Washington and at our state capitols don't get their pay voluntarily, they confiscate it through taxes.  Our representatives should also be a little embarrassed to hear someone speak about achievements.  Basketball coaches like Jim Calhoun can point to objective measures of achievement such as won-loss records, national rankings, and number of championships.  Our legislators seem to only be able to point at each other.

 

Ordinarily, most Americans don't obsess over the possibility that somewhere someone else has earned more and has more.  But these are trying times, and people are hurting.  It's tempting to feel that if only someone else had less, we could have more.

 

So the flopper -- the "activist blogger" -- pulled a Michael Moore and got a successful person to act uncomfortable in public about being successful.  Maybe next week he'll really wise up and decide to do some good, like confronting the state legislators about the deficit.