The federal government has wasted billions of dollars over the years trying to prop up decrepit smokestack industries in which the U.S. had long ago hopelessly lost its competitive advantage. Sexiest congressman alive, Henry Waxman, now wants to shift the government’s focus toward protecting one of our smokescreen industries.
Yes, that’s right. Waxman thinks the government ought to be bailing out newspapers. When one considers how much free advertising Democrats get in the dead-tree media, I’m not surprised that he would take this tack. But the idea is not only stupid, it’s dangerous. Stupid, because you’re not going to be able to force people to buy something they don’t want (unless it’s health care insurance, of course), and with the rise of alternative media (most of which is free), in conjunction with a growing aversion among readers to the liberal bias in the mainstream press, newspapers are never going to regain anything remotely resembling their historical popularity. Dangerous, because a press dependent on government support is not going to be a free press (“Exclusive: Henry Waxman’s Photo Being Used to Scare Children Into Eating their Peas” – ain’t gonna see that headline if Waxman’s subsidizing your daily rag’s newsprint).
H/T: Dan Riehl
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(“Exclusive: Henry Waxman’s Photo Being Used to Scare Children Into Eating their Peas”
Henry Waxman's Photo Causing Children (And Others) to Throw Up Their Peas.
There, fixed that for you.
Anytime, anytime, the government forms a partnership with a private business or industry it holds the figurative majority stock in the company or companies. It has the power to force the private businesses involved to do whatever it wants done [as Ayn Rand so eloquently put it 'at the point of a gun']. And the company or companies can do nothing about it. This is most especially true when the government is holding the purse strings. Once the weed of government germinates inside of a company or industry, it feeds off them and its growth is uncontrollable because they've got might on their side. All controlling power eventually and inevitably accures to the government and the employees are absorbed into the Borg-like Collective.
And those working or owning the private businesses involved in such an arrangement who are in favor of the 'collaboration' all end-up becoming enslaved to the government. Many are willing to do this. And, I suspect, because, in this case the vast majority of people in the news business are Leftists, they will happily sit there while their shackles are applied. They will be overjoyed morphing into apparatchiks.
This has become a normal event these days.Those working or owning the private businesses involved in such an arrangement who are in favor of the 'collaboration' all end-up becoming enslaved to the government.
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