Consumers Union: $700 bailout blogging

From the Consumer's Union web site...

$700 billion dollar bailout
Posted by mitcka at 09/24/08 04:01 PM

Treasury Secretary Paulson says this bailout is the only way to prevent real economic harm to our nation. But this is a lot of money. How much? Here are some other things that cost $700 billion.

The Defense Department last year asked for a 2008 budget of $481.4 billion to support operations around the world and in cyberspace. So the bailout will cost taxpayers more than our national defense budget for this year.

Now, to be fair to the DOD, that budget doesn't include all our spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. The total cost of the war in Iraq was estimated at $500 billion back in January by Bush's former economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey.

The Washington Post estimated the entire 2008 federal deficit at nearly $500 billion on September 10th, before this announcement. Does this mean we are about to "double down"? (9/25/08)

We spent $500 billion in 2005 to treat the ten most expensive medical conditions, according to a widely cited update by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Here's an eye opener: $700 billion is twice what we spent on foreign oil in 2007. The U.S. imported 4.3 billion barrels of oil at an average price of $72 per barrel, totaling $352 billion.

Congress adjourns this week, and this is a weighty decision to make in just a few short days. This bailout may be the best thing for Wall Street, but will it be good for you and your neighborhood?

A lot depends on what happens should a bailout get approved. Here's the statement we put out this morning describing what any bailout agreement should include to give us a fighting chance to help taxpayers, homeowners and consumers in the future.

What do you think? Please comment on this issue that will not be going away for quite a while. (And go to the site and weigh in.)

- Jon

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Mediasaurus: The decline of news media

MichaelCrichton.com |  Mediasaurus: The decline of conventional media. 

View it at http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-mediasaurus.html

Said the novelist and generally savvy guy, ten years ago:

Who will be the GM or IBM of the nineties? The next great American institution to find itself obsolete and outdated, while obstinately refusing to change? I suspect one answer would be, the New York Times and the commercial networks. Other institutions have been pushed to improve their quality. Ford now makes a better car than it has any time in my life; we can thank Toyota and Nissan for that. But who will push the New York Times? 

That answer, I think, is technology. The media has always been driven by technology, but it's surprising how many of its attitudes and terminology are very old. Stereotype and cliche are eighteenth century printers' terms, referring to metal type. The inverted pyramid story structure was a response to the newly-invented telegraph; reporters were not sure they could get the whole story in before the telegraph broke down, and so began to put the most important information first. The first image broadcast on television was a dollar sign, setting the tone for the future of that medium. 

But the modern thrust of technology is radically different, because it is changing the very concept of information in our society. 

Information is vitally important. We live by it. We are an information society. For the first time in our history, by the year 2000, 50% of all American jobs will require at least one year of college. In this environment, news isn't entertainment. It's a necessity. We need it -- and we need it to be of high quality: comprehensive and factually accurate.

My thoughts:
Crighton has made a very notable career of looking into subjects and big-picture issues, done it rather deeply and broadly. He is known for writing very good novels and being a driving force in films and, notably for me, the very good TV show, ER. (I used to watch it all the time.) He writes about a wide variety of things. As a quite outstanding author and intellect, it is hard to ignore his views. I agree with the quote above: The traditional media, while seeming too liberal across the board, cannot seem to change for their own good. My time at Tribune made me appreciate the terrifyingly sloth-like business approach.

Newspapers strangle and pink-slip their editorial, production and distribution staff first, and often to make more room for added sales people, not for better information operations or better staff. That's not a model for information improvement, it's a model for profits alone. However, as the industry has been apparently ignoring, it was a short-term view, and the model needed to change a decade ago, when Crighton was making these comments. It is a bad model for the news media because it stresses retaining a hefty, non-informational body of costs and streamlining the one place they need to make more room: editorial accuracy, vitality and quality. How can you sell more ads for something that is not attracting readers? Not a long-term plan for success. It is, though, a long-term plan. Just look around at the print media that doesn't reflect reality, or barely reflects it.

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