About every two years or so I start listening to talk radio in the car again, as opposed to nothing. This usually lasts about a month before I start to disintegrate my steering wheel from overclenching frustration. The two local offerings are 97.1 Fox and 90.7 NPR. Although I am ever so slightly more likely to be ideologically aligned with Fox than NPR, the latter is order of magnitude more professional. Fox is not one to let trivial remarks from the opposing camp pass by unroared upon. The melodrama that comes out of these people’s mouths is quite embarrassing. From Sean Hannity’s perspective, every single news item is somehow construed as a literally violent assault on Western Civilization. By comparison, NPR is a model of dispassionate reporting and level headed commentary, even if I basically never agree with any of their respected guests.
When Fox happens to stopped-clock their way into saying something correct, their reasoning is reliably The Worst. For example, I think it was Dana Whoever, that was complaining about red light cameras. Aha, common ground, I too enjoy complaining about red light cameras! However, one of Dana’s key points: the use of cameras should be avoided because its “probably costing police jobs, just like ATMs are taking away bank teller jobs.”
what what what
A) If the police departments are rabidly in favor of keeping cameras, rest assured, their union is not losing any sleep over mechanization.
B) If we could get the same amount of policing at less cost by using cameras, bravo! Just like firing a teller and installing an ATM is good! Now I don’t have to park and walk into the bank, and in any case, the ATM manufacturer is employing people too.
C) If anything, this is adding police jobs, because the same number of officers are patrolling, but now there are people reviewing thousands of photos, and the revenue justifies their salaries.
D) These jobs should not exist in the first place! I don’t WANT officers, human or otherwise, giving out traffic fines. This is all a dead weight loss operation that is getting deader and weightier.
Later on, I hear Laura Ingram, vitriolic hag by day, and out of hearing range by night, griping in her usual sulky tone about environmental regulations that are increasing construction costs. Its a legitimate point, if material costs go up due to government mandate, less buildings are erected, less construction workers hired, less payroll tax collected, more unemployment benefits go out, fewer locations means rents are higher on the margin, so fewer businesses are formed, and so on. Altogether, the implosion of Federal debt looms closer. Let tenants decide how green of a building they are willing to pay for, and the commercial real estate market will swiftly follow. This is not Laura’s tact though.
She ends one tirade with “…of course we need requirements, we can’t have poisonous products around, but it needs to be common sense requirements, not this Green fantasy micromanagement.”
From this I instantly gathered that Ms. Ingram has no real philosophy. Whatever her opinion of reasonable Federal environmental laws is as arbitrary as Obama’s. What she really wants is just to scream about it ad nauseum. If there was a consistent underlying logic to public policy, like say respecting private property, that trumped all other concerns, then a simple check against this baseline principle would pass/fail any (all) proposed law. But the livelihood of Ingram et al, is based on pitting one vague gut feeling of appropriate restriction levels against another. She doesn’t want a clearly defined mission statement for government, she wants a world run by a morass of populism, compromised expediency, euphemised protectionism, and hair-trigger demagoguery. Because that is a world she can contribute to, if only by being the screamiest and disgustedest.
Meanwhile, NPR is airing a thoughtful interview with a West coast professor who thinks teacher salaries should be increased, by cutting administrative spending, since he considers it politically unfeasable to raise general education spending right now.
Wow, I agree with a fraction of that! And no one acted like their political adversaries were trying to murder their children in the dark of night.
So, yes school district administrative budgets should be mercilessly slashed, great point! Redistributing it to teachers is neutral. If it were politically feasible to throw another blank check at education, I would fiercely oppose this. In the long run, this shouldn’t be a public debate at all, and privatized schools could determine their own compensation levels for teachers and administrators, etc.
But the point is, I would MUCH rather talk to this guy, than endure the emotionalized browbeating that passes for debate from the conservative station.
Al Jazeera is where its at.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. Conservative media is becoming more sensationalized biased than objective reporting.
Cares more about ratings than journalistic integrity.