We Should Have Known Better

I was watching President Obama's State of the Union address the other night, and as he talked about all of the various things he wanted to see done about our economy, education, and debt, I couldn't help thinking that there was a time that I would have immediately been against a lot of what he was proposing. When I was younger, I stood shoulder to shoulder with most Republicans in thinking that there was no way you could tax and spend your way out of trouble. I still believe that on the spending end, but I have broken with party orthodoxy (and ultimately with the party itself) on taxes.

I have said on this blog in the past that we need to both cut spending AND raise taxes to fix our debt problems. I was for the Bush tax cuts expiring on everyone, not just the top 1 percent, and I was intrigued to see David Gregory propose exactly that to David Axelrod on "Meet the Press" today. Axelrod squirmed a bit at the mere notion of raising taxes on the middle class, and he tried to wriggle away from giving a definite answer, but it does meet the very definition of "shared sacrifice" that we all have to make, and Gregory said as much. Looking back over the past 10 years, to try to figure out how we got from balanced budgets in 2000 (for which Newt Gingrich is currently patting himself on the back while on the campaign trail, one of the few things I appreciate about him) to a $16 trillion debt in 2012, it goes beyond the simple clichés of "it's Bush's fault" or "we spent too much." I think we're slowly having a mass epiphany that the good ideas we had in the 90s went too far in the 2000s.

For instance, let's just look at the biggest elephant in the room (no GOP pun intended)... the Bush tax cuts. These get the lion's share of the blame for, as the Left loves to say, "turning a $1.5 trillion surplus into trillions in deficits." Of course, the truth is THERE NEVER WAS A $1.5 TRILLION SURPLUS. It was an estimate provided by the Congressional Budget Office when President Bush took office in 2001, and by that time, it was already becoming inaccurate, because we were in a recession brought on largely by the dot-com bubble bursting. Recessions mean that less tax revenue is coming in, certainly less than was projected, therefore bye-bye $1.5 trillion surplus.

However, at the time, we bought the numbers, so it made sense when Bush proposed that we take a third of that $1.5 trillion to pay down our debts, a third to shore up/reform Social Security and Medicare, and a third for an across-the-board tax cut. Unfortunately, soon after those rebate checks went out to everyone, it became abundantly clear that the other two thirds of that $1.5T were already gone. But our Congress, with Republicans in charge of the House and Democrats regaining the Senate due to Jim Jeffords' midterm flip, decided to keep spending as if that $1.5T was still there. I won't even get into the trillions spent on war, because the money is only part of the larger debate about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and I don't want to go there this time. The prescription drug benefit (Medicare Part D)? Yeah, let's talk about that... I've said here before that Bush and the Republicans unfairly get trashed for spending so much on the prescription drug benefit, considering that the alternative plan pushed by House Democrats would have cost TWICE AS MUCH. However, at that particular time in 2002 when this debate was taking place, we were already crossing over into red ink. Have that debate in 2012 and it becomes about having no Part D at all. But in 2002, House Republicans were willing to spend hundreds of billions because it wasn't trillions. So now we see why the Tea Party blames both sides for our debt issues.

Another reason came shortly before that, when the 2002 Farm Act was up for debate. By that time, the CBO had realized that $1.5 trillion in surplus was not coming our way, and had revised its projections down to a modest $100 billion surplus over the ensuing 10 years (factoring in deficits the first few years and economic recovery after that). How much did this Farm Act cost? Ironically... $100 billion. Today, having realized the error of our ways, we have come to term the subsidies and programs in this act to be what they truly are... a form of corporate welfare. However, I was calling this "farm welfare" in 2002, and calling for the act to be shot down to save what was left of our quickly shrinking surplus. I'm sure it was pretty much me and Ron Paul on this one, because it passed easily. Hello deficits, hello more debt.

Let's fast forward to the last couple years, as we started to get serious about tackling the debt that has swelled by over $10 trillion since that perfect storm of recession, 9/11, tax cuts, and overspending put the wheels in motion. The Left's doublespeak unfairly characterizes the Bush tax cuts as only helping the richest 1%, while people like Axelrod have to admit that the middle class got cuts too so as to oppose seeing those cuts expire. At the time, it seemed like a good idea, and we did have some pretty good economic times from 2002-2007. However, other forces imploded the economy once again, and here we are. Cutting government spending, eliminating waste and bloated bureaucracy... all good thing, but there is belief among people in Washington that there has to be a "magic bullet" approach to getting people back to work. For Republicans, that means they want to further cut taxes, or at the very least, they oppose any tax increases, especially on the rich. This holds fast to the ideology they have had since Ronald Reagan. 30 years of GOP dogma and mostly positive results tell them not to hike taxes.

Here's the problem, and it's a little thing called "the law of diminishing returns." If you're taking office in 1981 and the economy is in the crapper and the top tax rate is 70%, then it's a great idea to boost the economy by cutting taxes. Over time, that's what the Republicans did, and it led to a 25-year period in which things went very well for the U.S. economy, with the exception of brief recessions in 1990-91 and 2000-01. However, eventually you reach a point where "priming the pump" with tax cuts starts to do more harm than good. The lag time between the initial cut in revenue and the point where tax revenues ultimately rise due to economic growth becomes more than a government with a 14-figure national debt can handle. People on the Left like our old friend Paul Krugman are wrong when they say that Reaganomics ultimately failed... it didn't fail, it just reached the point where it cannot work anymore. That's where we are now. Although our corporate tax rates are too high, and I agree with the president that we can bring those rates down while forcing the GE's of the world to actually pay what they owe, thereby negating a net loss in revenue, our income tax rates are not too high. If anything, they are too low, given the size of our debt. And since we're not going to a flat tax or a 9-9-9 situation any time soon, we have to reassess things. There needs to be push and pull. We had 30 years of push, now we need to pull.

The two things standing in the way are ignorance and denial. Buoyed by 30 years of mostly positive results, the Right ignores the law of diminishing returns. The denial comes from another part of GOP orthodoxy that turned me off to being a Republican: that you must NEVER, EVER admit when you've made a mistake. Have you seen ANY Republican member of the House from 2002 say that it was wrong to pass Part D? This may be the harder of the two things to overcome. You may be able to convince someone that eventually you reach the point with our current system where tax cuts just don't work anymore, but you'll have a much harder time trying to convince them that they went too far.

There's More to the Story

The first time I ever heard of Joe Paterno was 1987. I was 8 years old, and that was the year I became a SU football fan, and what a year to become a fan. On an unforgettable October day in the Carrier Dome, JoePa brought his defending national champion Penn State team in to play the Orange. We hadn't beaten the Nittany Lions in 17 years. Well on this particular day, Don McPherson threw an 80-yard strike to Rob Moore on the first play of the game, SU scored the first 41 points of the game, and crushed Penn State en route to a 11-0 season. Then for good measure, Coach Mac's Orange went into Happy Valley the next year and spanked PSU on its home field.

Then suddenly, Paterno didn't want to play us anymore... well he tried to extend the series, but he wanted 6 games at State College and only 4 at the Dome. The story goes that JoePa wasn't happy with Penn State not being invited to join the Big East. One of the local radio stations urged us to send chicken bones to Paterno because he was too "chicken" to play us. Soon enough he would guide the Lions into the Big Ten, and after 1990, it would be 17 years before SU played Penn State again. Surprisingly, when we did, there was Paterno, still coaching the Nittany Lions. We never beat Paterno again after 1988. All told, he went 23-4 against the Orange. Suffice to say, people in Central New York didn't like him much. Local sportswriters like Bud Poliquin would paint Penn State as the college football equivalent of the Evil Empire in black shoes. And they always pointed out Paterno's familiar high-water pants. But you had to know there was always respect behind the snark.

Obviously, I'm not a Penn State person, but I've spent much of my life in Pennsylvania, so I know a lot of people who bleed Blue and White. If you don't know anyone who went to Penn State or hails from Central PA, you probably don't understand what Joe Paterno meant to that part of the world. Yeah, I know, he was a college football coach, and those who don't like college football or sports in general probably don't see the big deal or think it shouldn't be such a big deal, but college is a place where young people go to be molded into adults, and in that sense, Paterno was among the best there was at doing just that. Of course, the events of this past November forever changed the way we look at Paterno, Penn State football, Penn State University, and Central Pennsylvania. The molestation charges against Paterno's longtime assistant Jerry Sandusky shattered the image most had of the program. Far worse than the damage to the "legacy" and the "program" was the way these kids who were allegedly abused by Sandusky were scarred for life. But we should not let the events of the past two months completely overshadow 85 years of a good life that contained one sorry episode in which the coach didn't do enough to follow up on an eyewitness report of Sandusky's horrible behavior.

Yes, there are people out there today who continue to tell us that what happened to Sandusky's victims is more important than Joe Paterno's legacy. I am not overlooking what happened to these victims, by any stretch... these alleged events are why my stomach did a nice dip and roll to the right when I saw that Sandusky had the stones to put out his own statement (through his attorney) expressing his grief about Paterno's passing. Thus showing that the Worst Legal PR Strategy Ever continues. If there is someone, ANYONE, who should be completely silent today, in order to let the Paterno family and the Penn State community grieve in peace, it is Jerry Sandusky. So yes, I am well aware, constantly aware, of what happened to these victims of unspeakable abuse.

Media portrayals of Paterno's life are aware of these things as well. The theme, for the most part, has been that Paterno has his legacy of 409 wins, thousands of players, and millions of dollars of support for Penn State University, but he also has the stain of scandal on his record, and to some extent that will always be the case. But to judge a man's life solely and completely on his failure to do more when he learned about a heinous sexual act occurring in the football building is to ignore the big picture. Some people will always do this, however... some will always conveniently label a person by the most awful thing he/she ever did. For instance, President Clinton will always be seen by some as a man who lied under oath about a lurid affair with an intern in the White House, and nothing more than that.

On the other side, you have people, both within the insular community that is Happy Valley and within the greater sports community, who think that the Sandusky scandal and Paterno's removal as coach ultimately contributed to his swift decline. People today on ESPN stated that he "died of a broken heart," which is a nice way of saying, "the scandal - and firing - killed him." I'm sure there was restraint on display, and I'm glad there was, because in light of the myriad overreactions of a lot of people when the scandal first broke, it would be pretty easy for people with lingering anger to vent it at people like the PSU Trustees. They certainly have in the last couple of weeks, as PSU higher-ups seeking to do damage control faced angry donors making implied threats that their money would not be going to State College anymore. As of a few nights ago, the PSU faculty was about to deliver a vote of no confidence in the Board of Trustees, forcing all of them to resign. So there are still a lot of raw nerves in the PSU community, but in the last 24 hours, the anger of recent weeks has been replaced by grief. As it should be.

I am not out to change minds here. I know full well that people will continue to equate someone who didn't do enough to ensure that an abuser was put to justice with the abuser himself. But just try to consider that Joe Paterno meant more to a lot of people than most of us will ever be able to understand. That he passed away before this scandal fully played out is unfortunate. I don't think most of us were looking for him to be vindicated, but rather that he at least regain some measure of our respect. I hope that in the end, that comes to pass. Rest in peace, JoePa.

Sucking the Life Out of Radio

I just finished up reading Bob Edwards's autobiography. I had the opportunity to meet him last spring at a university event, and I'm not a NPR listener but I found his story very intriguing. I appreciate what he says in his book about satellite radio and how it doesn't just give Howard Stern and Opie & Anthony license to shock with impunity, but it also gives journalists like Edwards a chance to do what they want to do in order to tell us the stories they want us to hear. I for one have no interest in subscribing to satellite radio, but that isn't because I don't like what they're doing. To ignore what they offer listeners and talent alike is to be in denial about the state of terrestrial radio today.

And that state is not good... the life continues to be sucked out of the medium. I find it sadly ironic that for all of the consultant and expert bluster about how, with the rise of new media, broadcasters are not in the "radio" business so much as they are in the "content" business, and yet they continue to get rid of or constrain those who CREATE THE CONTENT! Tim Moore, a former station owner, gets it... he thinks that radio has completely taken itself out of the talent development business in the last decade by spreading PDs and talent so thin (due to layoffs) that they can't work together to improve. Nope, sorry, don't have time to coach my young talent, so I better just give them liner cards to read and be done with it. A radio legend like Lee Abrams gets it... if you're going to have DJs on your station, they need to SAY SOMETHING. But first, you have to actually ALLOW the DJ to say something, that is, besides what's written on the liner card. I know, the PPMs might drop if the DJ talks for more than 5 seconds at 7:45 on a Tuesday evening between a Tool song and the latest from the Chili Peppers... but I've already said my piece about the overuse of raw numbers in this blog. Suffice to say, number-crunchers lose the debate with people like Lee Abrams and Tim Moore on argument, but it doesn't end the debate.

And we continue to have the debate about the value of localism in radio. The latest big name to stick his foot in it is John Garabedian, the man behind the syndicated "Open House Party" program. Garabedian pretty much stated that localism was always an ideal, but listeners don't really care if their DJ is a local person talking about things of local interest. OF COURSE he would say that... he makes his money on displacing local content with his SYNDICATED program. The young audience certainly cares about the DJ actually being there in the studio, because it wasn't that long ago that the thing to do was to call your favorite DJ and request a song, or try to be goofy and get on the air. And before you think that I'm into some old-timer "get off my lawn" rant, I'm not talking about the golden age of Top 40 radio, I'm saying nighttime DJs were live and local as recently as 5 years ago.

Those who still try to do something local at night have found ways to incorporate new media into their presentations, most notably by letting listeners pick the music. Two rock stations here in Philly did variations on this theme. WYSP, before it ceased to exist last fall, joined other stations across the country in using the listener-driven system Jelli to determine what they would play next. Radio 104.5 does something similar called "Majority Rules", where they put out a theme to the listening audience (including those who are on Facebook and Twitter), and ask listeners to choose the next song that fits that theme. For instance, the other night they did "friend songs", and the choices were "Friends of P" by the Rentals, "My Friends Over You" by New Found Glory, or "My Friends" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Things like this allow a station to break away from its standard 300-song gold category and actually play songs the listeners never hear on the radio. What a concept!

Unfortunately, these events are becoming fewer and farther between with the constant downsizing by the likes of Clear Channel and Cumulus, taking away those local voices and those outlets for the listeners to feel that they are truly a part of the station. I could point to several media sources who in recent months have decried the trend away from localism and listener connection (and by throwing a bunch of hyperlinks in that last sentence, I guess I just did). More and more, it just seems like these stations are little more than brand names with budgets, and your favorite DJ is just a line on a balance sheet that might need to get crossed out so that inevitable bankruptcy can be forestalled a little longer.

And this trend, unfortunately, also applies to the online outlets for these stations. By subsuming all of its stations under the iHeartRadio banner, and adding other companies like Cumulus and Greater Media to the app, Clear Channel gets to further de-localize those stations. They are just choices under the brand name of "iHeartRadio", and therefore Clear Channel. Stations that create their own individual apps get to stand out among the pack, as the smartphone equivalent of radio presets, in the words of radio consultant Fred Jacobs. Therefore, they retain their local identity and stand on their own. Others have found iHeartRadio preferable to the individual apps because they can get lost in the shuffle if a listener downloads several of them. I find that to be a weak argument. Do I use iHeartRadio? I probably shouldn't, as anti-CC as I am, but I do. I also use other radio apps such as Nobex and Tune-In, because they carry stations from other companies, but I only know that because I read up on this stuff, and because I like to listen to a variety of stations from a variety of different cities. The average local listener does not; he/she has his/her local favorites and wants to listen to them only. Therefore, it would likely be more to their advantage to just get the individual station apps on their phone.

I know it seems like all I am doing is banging my head against the brick wall of Corporate Radio by blogging about this every so often, but at the very least, I'm getting it all out there. You have my opinion, the opinions of those who matter, and then you have the people continuing to run their companies (and the radio industry) into the ground. Do with that what you will.

I Can't Handle Another 10 Months of This

We're on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, so the news networks are prepping their "magic walls" and their "weebles"... yeah, you read that right. The coverage of the Iowa caucuses threatened to outdo the "drama" of the actual vote returns with the "drama" of the technological rollouts by CNN and other networks. I watched the CNN coverage for about as long as I could stand it, which was a few minutes after they decided it was a great idea to give Jim Bob Duggar (he of the 19 children and completely unnecessary reality show) air time.

This is what we are looking at for the next ten months... news media overload of the highest (or lowest) order. And all the media attention on what should be seen as inconsequential small state primaries assists in the idea that these small populations will decide the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States. And because of the media attention, people flip out over the slightest twists and turns and gaffes... and there are a lot of gaffes. I have to admit that these few months of the primary process can tend to be even worse than the general election season, because it's not necessarily 2 sides hurling flith and vitriol at each other, it's several sides... each representing their own candidate who is still in this race.

I know a lot of people have mentioned doing a nationwide primary process where each of 4-5 regions votes in their individual states one week at a time, rotating every 4 years to make sure that each region gets to go first eventually. Much like a lot of other things we want changed with our politics, it's a great idea but one that doesn't have enough traction (or money) behind it. As a result, the votes of 2% of the country (Iowa and New Hampshire) are enough to make candidates decide they have no shot with the other 98%. And let's face it, if this Republican race has taught us anything, it's that things can change quickly. First Michele Bachmann was the main challenger to Mitt Romney, then she fell off and it was Rick Perry, then he fell off and it was Newt Gingrich, then he fell off and it was Ron Paul, and now he's kinda slipped and it's Rick Santorum for now. And Romney could himself slide after he stuck his foot in it today and stated that he "liked being able to fire people." Mind you, it was within the context of "firing" one's health insurance provider, but still, it was something that makes for a tailor-made soundbite.

And what if it does? And what if the comment leads to a Santorum or Gingrich victory in South Carolina? Will the media immediately proclaim Romney done and the race over? Will financial backers of other candidates bail? They shouldn't. It would make a lot more sense for people to campaign nationally, not just Iowa and New Hampshire, and build their firewall in the states where they think their message sinks in best. People have sort of done that in recent years. John McCain dismissed Iowa four years ago, and people declared his campaign dead because of it. Then he won New Hampshire, where he devoted much of his time, and it was game on. Incidentally, when he edged out Romney in '08, he won a whopping SEVEN delegates. SEVEN. And yet, it meant so much. Jon Huntsman dismissed Iowa this year and focused on New Hampshire. Unfortunately, it looks like that won't matter tomorrow. Huntsman's really the only one who hasn't been near the top of the polls in recent months, and that is because he's a little more moderate and served as President Obama's ambassador to China. In other words, he's a RINO.

And so too, apparently is Gingrich now. The Leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, said as much on his show today when he declared that Gingrich used the "language of the Left" in trying to take down Romney through attacking his rich-guy, private equity firm background. Yup, that's right... Newt Gingrich, whom Limbaugh proudly stood beside in 1994 as the leader of the Republican Revolution, is now too far to the Left for the Republican Party. Which shows you how ridiculously far to the Right the GOP has gone. And yet, Romney... with his changeable "I was a moderate until I decided to run for president" views, has been all but handed the nomination by many a pundit. Why? The buzzword right now is "electability", as in Romney has the best chance of beating Obama.

I think that's hilarious. If anything, Romney is about as unelectable as Bachmann, Perry, Gingrich, OR Santorum. Four years ago, Romney was contrasted with McCain with the statement, "McCain looks like the guy who will hire you; Romney looks like the guy who will fire you." And guess what... Romney STILL looks like the guy who will fire you. And coming from a radio industry in which the biggest and worst offender of "slash-and-burn" personnel tactics, Clear Channel, is owned by Romney's former company, Bain Capital, you can see why I would NEVER, EVER vote for Mitt Romney.

But at least that's a reasoned argument. It's not hysterical... and boy have we seen lots of hysteria from the Left lately. I predicted that there would be an "Anyone Who Runs for the Republican Nomination Derangement Syndrome" from the far Left in 2012, and I was definitely right. Everyday, I see someone flipping out about Gingrich, Paul, Santorum, Romney... or sometimes more than one at a time. Hedging their bets to make sure that whomever wins the nomination has already been doused with enough gasoline for them to set ablaze. And I won't even get into Santorum's "Google problem." Not that I would EVER vote for Rick Santorum either. When he was my senator in 2001-2004, I was ashamed that he "represented" me... I was much more of an Arlen Specter fan. Given how divergent my views on social issues are from his, I have absolutely no use for him... but I would never go so far as to create a vulgar fake definition of his last name and make it a top search item on Google.

But that's what we're dealing with... and what we'll be dealing with for 10 more months. Hyperbole and vitriol of the worst kind, from hyperpartisans at both extremes of our political spectrum, courtesy of our modern media and the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision. Would an Americans Elect-inspired third party run attract the attention of the 40% of Americans who now identify as independents and cause the echo chamber to collapse on itself? I certainly hope so. As for now, I'd tune all of this out and just watch sports for the next 10 months... but at the moment, the sports media is being just as overdramatic about Tim Tebow. Looks like I'm out of luck.