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USA Edition | Today Is Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
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Time To Turn Back The Clock On Broadcasting
Our nation’s endless summer of fast living, debt-driven frolic, disorderly behavior and profligate excess has come to an ignominious end. Now is the time to turn back the clock, re-steady the ship of state, renew our commitment to one another, and restore sanity and prudence to our government and institutions.
Robert Butche
Washington – Our nation is hurting today. For decades we have been living beyond our means, greedily transferring wealth from generations yet unborn to the modern equivalent of wealthy robber barons. In the doing we have prostituted our civilization, values, and culture for a few quick bucks. In the doing we have done great damage to our institutions, both public and private. Free wheeling banks have collapsed. Wall street’s sinister Ponzi schemes have left us poorer and less certain of ourselves even as the perpetrators collect bonuses and fade into the darkness of night.
This nation, this generation, this government and we the peoples have been sideswiped by reality. Our endless summer of fast living, debt-driven frolic, disorderly behavior and profligate excess has come to an ignominious end. Now is the time to turn back the clock, re-steady the ship of state, renew our commitment to one another, and restore sanity and prudence to our government and institutions.
Assessing The High Cost Of Easy Money
Restoring sanity to what evolved into our national rejection of reality will prove costly, painful and difficult. Too many free lunches have left us unaccustomed to living within our means as nation, or self. Special interests, yours and mine, have corrupted our political machinery, concealed transfer of wealth and power from the people to the empowered, and made governance an instrument of narrow vision and failed oversight.
Those who pushed this nation, and thus the world, into deregulation only beginning to find themselves under attack. Regulation is how nations create a level playing field for businesses, institutions and citizens. Regulation is fundamental to defining what we expect from one another, what constitutes acceptable social behavior, what it means to be responsible, and what best serves the interests of free citizens.
Regulation Is Inherently Political
While liberals tend to see absence of regulation as a form of class warfare, conservatives tend to view regulation as unneeded intrusion into the private sector’s prerogatives, stifling bureaucracy, or cumbersome rules and added costs that interfere with legitimate business decision making.
In the real word, both sides have valid arguments. While promulgating laws and regulations is the principal function of government, it is the nature of bureaucracy to over regulate to increase its own power. What to do?
American democracy evolved in an atmosphere of scant regulation. Where regulation was put in place it was established largely for the purpose of serving the public interest. Our romantic notions about laissez faire economics changed dramatically after the catastrophic economic collapse that brought on the Great Depression in 1929. The price of that lesson was immense, but it was not paid by us — for had we suffered the pain inflicted upon our fore bearers we surely would not have set out on a path to repeat the same mistakes.
One of the accomplishments of the New Deal era was a redefinition of the role of government in establishing sound, prudent and responsible regulation of business, finance, tariffs and private use of public assets. The New Deal era put in place regulations whose intention was to avoid ever repeating the mistakes of the 1920s.
Regulation is an imperfect activity as easily corrupted by those who seek to oppress as those who seek to gain personal advantage. Regulation comes in many flavors: Business, finance, tariffs, tax relief, and use of public property including public lands, waterways, radio spectrum and airspace. Antitrust regulations protect citizens from powerful monopolies while others deal with tariffs, airlines and airports, radio and television licensing, currency management, airlines and airports, shipping, harbors and waterways, mining, oil and gas production.
Good regulation policy extended electric power service to rural areas, established commercial broadcasting that served the public interest while providing economic benefit to investor/owners, made air service available to small communities, encouraged reliable and universal telephone service, established rules for currency exchange among banks, and established standards for nearly every human activity from road building to product labeling. Regulation is easily suborned, overtaken and misused by special interests. Some who seek to benefit society and others who seek to over regulate, to stifle innovation, constrain business opportunities, and create unfair benefits for a narrowly defined group or activity.
44th President Of The United States
In a country where politics is driven more by money than constituent interests, the Obama administration will find substantive change easier to talk about than to achieve. The problem facing the new administration is wresting control of the Congress away from the permanent power establishment in town — the lawyers and lobbyists who ply the halls of the Capitol passing out wads of cash and perks in a never-ending search for audience and influence. The outcome of legislation by special interests, both yours and mine, has seriously damaged the glue that binds us together — and our confidence in one another.
Television: The Electronic Advertising Agency
In 1982 the Congress deregulated the nation’s broadcast stations, AM, FM, television, to some degree cable, and later satellite, so that licensees might become more profitable. That done, big money soon drove family owned television stations out of the business in favor of corporate ownership that produced today’s giant media conglomerates. The model of broadcasting that has emerged has proven to be irresponsible, insular and unworthy of monopoly status.
Nearly thirty years after broadcasters were freed of responsibility to their communities, what was once a thriving television medium has become little more than an electronic advertising agency that beams 8 hours of daily commercial content into which is interspersed whatever content seems most likely to attract potential viewers.
When the new congress assembles in January change will be in the air. One of the most important issues before congress will be an assessment of legislation and regulation failures that contributed to the collapse of our once mighty economy. The industries impacted by those changes go far beyond banking and finance. One of the most important will be redefining what this nation expects from its broadcasters in exchange for their government granted monopoly status.
Until broadcasting is redefined and returned to serving the interests of all Americans, this nation will not be properly informed about where we have been, let alone wizened about this generation’s rendezvous with destiny.
