Tag Archives: Elon Musk

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What Should You Pay for Accurate News?

                                A.I. Image

Junk news and clickbait may be free, but most reliable and credible news is not. Fake news exacts its own costs.

Access to real journalism is not free. There is a need to budget  for being a reasonably informed citizen of the United States. While libraries and occasional internet sites allow free access to good information about politics, medical research and important trends, a person has to work more to track it down. A decent library is the exception, but the desire for convenience means that we tend to curate our own collections of resources, unwittingly settling on sources that monetize their existence by using “news” as bait. “Paid” stories appearing on the fringes of news websites are the most obvious cases of pseudo journalism. The first “sponsored” listings on a Google search are an obvious example.  Some who have paid to have top billing may offer credible information. But their content is usually selling their own products or services.  Ideally, journalism serves the public interest with the best versions of the truth; junk news serves some private interest.

Information has value. Especially in these times we need to consider paying the researchers, authentic journalists and news aggregators who must make a living for their efforts. The last election suggests the cost to the republic when voting is effected by of a ton of paid advertising and misinformation. Elon Musk alone supported the GOP to the tune of nearly $300 million in the last election. That included a brazen public offer to pay for votes for Donald Trump. We know he contributed to a mountain of false claims delivered to people who apparently never bothered to check their veracity.

We pay an electricity provider for light. We should be willing to budget some money to pay for information that will bring hard truths out of the shade.

We need to budget for high-quality news.

A reasonable budget for high quality news and information probably starts at about $200 a month, or $2400 a year. That’s the cost of access to several reliable sources within the information society. Everyone’s interests and resources will vary. The list below is one suggestion of a good mix: not unreasonable for some family budgets, but not all. To be sure, “information” is not a typical item to fold into family expenses. And yet most of us can not function without expensive smart phones, cable access, and an internet platform. It is useful to remember that a chunk of family money goes to costly travel and entertainment, money that may be spent in a shortsighted exchange of the pleasant for the essential.

Here’s one reasonable breakdown of some useful expenses, which will vary somewhat based on a family’s interests.

AP

-Free and worthwhile: Library sources, and digital forms of Wikipedia, The Associated Press, and opinion websites like Vox or Politico. Scholastic for children offers a host of age-graded magazines on a range of national and international topics. Many are available in school libraries.

– A good newspaper, about $35 a week for hard copies . There is a good reason to  have physical a copy of a newspaper sitting on the family breakfast table. A parent can do no better than make “the daily miracle” of a newspaper ready available to their word-thirsty children. Children naturally like the variety of a newspaper. Scrolling a mashup of headlines on their digital devices does not cut it.

A quality newsmagazine. A hard copy of the weekly The Atlantic is about $80 per year

-Cable access (40 Basic Channels, including some good news sources) about $50 per month.

BBC$2400 a year may seem like an expendable budget item. But not paying to be as informed as you can be comes at a price, including the current rueful state of American national politics.

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Fit For Service?

Donald Trump was elected to be the next president by a plurality of the nation’s voters, who apparently wanted lower food prices even more than they wanted competence.

Those working in a governmental capacity need to be “fit for service,” meaning capable of representing the interests of the public they have sworn to serve. Taxpayers have a right to expect that they will be treated fairly by those officials who will be paid from public funds. Does this prohibit the election of a felon also convicted of sexual harassment? Apparently not. This particular felon was elected to be the next president by a plurality of the nation’s voters who probably wanted lower food prices even more than they wanted competence. His immediate task is to select department and agency heads that can administer the vast number of workers and tasks that have evolved over the years. The Department of Defense, for example, has almost three million employees. The Department of Transportation is smaller, but oversees 11 agencies, covering vital areas including aviation, highways and railroads. No corner of American life is neglected for oversight of a federal agency.

The federal establishment is so vast, and because this is politics, it seems improbable that any president could consistently make appointments of people who are fully versed in the needs of stakeholders they are meant to serve.  This is because every president taps friends and supporters for plum agency and overseas positions. Luckily, there are also real experts with career-long work already in staff support positions.

It is also useful to think counterintuitively for a moment. Most administrative agencies are actually needed by the businesses and groups they regulate. They serve in part to reassure  citizens that important governmental functions are monitored. As political scientist Murray Edelman pointed out years ago in The Symbolic Uses of Politics, agencies like the FAA or the department of Agriculture have useful symbiotic relationships to the businesses they ostensibly regulate. The perception may be that the agencies serve all Americans. The reality is that they often foster policies favored by special interests, sometimes at the expense of the larger public. Laws passed in Congress and enforced by the agencies are often written by interest groups themselves. Writing in the 1960s, Edelman’s point was that organizations need the legitimacy of an apparent watchdog who can share in the blame if a key function goes off the rails. Businesses are anxious to win government certifications. FDA approval of a prescription drug, or FAA certification of an airplane can act as a buffer for complaints from citizens or public interest groups.

It is also true that agency heads come disproportionately from the enterprises they would regulate. For that reason, many fit the characterization of being potential wolves guarding a henhouse. Will Elon Musk, a co-chair of an invention called the Department of Governmental Efficiency, be a fair arbiter of how many staffers remain at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration? The agency sets standards for auto safety, including Musk’s Tesla vehicles. And how will NPR, Amtrak and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—all quasi-public enterprises–fare against the world’s richest man and the and billionaires lined up behind Trump?

The question of fitness for office promotes reasonable queries about those selected to lead various major departments and agencies. The problem is complex, with some  disturbing results.

The final cabinet is still evolving. But had Matt Gaetz continued as Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, he would have carried a legacy of open legal challenges arising from charges of statutory rape, using illegal drugs, and accepting gifts prohibited by congressional rules. The idea of Gaetz as the nation’s face of law enforcement left many Americans aghast.

And the list goes on and on. Pat Bondi as the present Department of Justice nominee has also been a lobbyist for private prison companies sued by the Justice Department for polluting. Dr. Mehmet Oz as the nominated head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid has been accused of promoting dubious medical products on his TV shows. And Pete Hegseth, who has an impressive record as a soldier, still comes to the position of Secretary of Defense as a Fox News host, along with allegations of a sexual assault and a clear record of alcohol abuse. He has the usual MAGA list of aggressive opinions: that Muslim Americans represent “an existential threat;” that the military could be used against other Americans in places like Seattle, that Mexico might be a legitimate target for unleashing American firepower, and so on. Even Trump allies wonder if Hegseth is up to leading one of the most consequential federal departments.

We can wonder if gross incompetence posed by some of Trump’s nominees is greater than the external threats that he loves to promote. In this bewildering new government, even very supportive NATO allies Canada and Denmark are potential adversaries. There is shame in misusing American “leadership” in this way, and we will pay a price. Attacking our friends has all the grace of shouting insults to neighbors across the backyard fence. More crucially, it gives our enemies openings they can exploit.