Wednesday, March 27, 2013

A Brave Newhouse Squirrel...

...gets his nuts cut off.

NOLA Media Group's Baton Rouge bureau head out after six months on the job

"Sanchez has posted a farewell letter, saying, in part, "In the end, it came down to leaving one of the boldest experiments in American journalism today in favor of my family, still living in Texas. In short, there was no choice."

Dude...I've been to Waco...whoookkk!!!  You can have it.

It was a bold experiment to put an ultra-conservative managing editor from Texas in charge of the Baton Rouge bureau? 

Tut-tut. 

I think it's a bolder experiment to let James Varney write an editorial column.  The last Varney column I tried to wade through was this gem where he put his economics professor's hat on and suggested that the genius of George W. Bush's economic policies simply set too high of a standard to possibly be acknowledged by the general public.  Apperently the W was overwhelmed with "9/11, Katrina, and the housing and banking crisis" to really let his brilliance shine through. 

I guess the matter of the blank check the Bush administration issued to fight the Iraq war and occupy Afghanistan seemed to have slipped Varney's mind...there was that little item.  Oh, and I think Obama actually inherited the housing and banking crisis that was plunging in a downward spiral when he took office in January of 2009.  Varney ignores that little factoid and points out that all Obama had to deal with was "the Euro, the Japanese tsunami, and two years of a divided congress".  

Well....another little factoid...did you know that little Euro crisis he is downplaying cost the American taxpayer 13 trillion dollars that was doled out by the Federal Reserve in monetary swaps?  That's more than the entire amount paid out by medicare and medicaid since both programs were created by LBJ in the 60's.  It damn near matches our annual GDP for 2013.  It dwarfs "9/11, Katrina, and the housing and banking crisis" combined.  Granted the "Euro crisis" was brought on by the American "banking crisis" but it cost the American taxpayer infinitely more than the "housing crisis" did.      

However, Varney is right about one thing, W. Bush does not deserve the exclusive blame for the "banking and housing crisis".  No...W's father and the republican party are mostly, yet not exclusively, to blame for that crisis which began with the death of the Glass-Steagall Act in the late 90's.      

I stopped reading the column at "Let's turn now to some other areas.  Economics could just as easily be called the whiplash as the dismal science.  There are always threads, always numbers that can be highlighted or dimmed, depending on the picture one wants to present."  

Yuppers....that's exactly what I was thinking as I was reading the preceding paragraphs of his column.

James, don't overstep your cranial boundaries, man....take a note from Mr. Gill's playbook (he is a master)....only pontificate about shit of which you have may have some unique insight.   I really don't want to hear your macroeconomics theories no more than I want to hear Sanchez's opinion of President Obama....you both have no fucking clue.  
I would like to hear what you think about the lights going dark on the CCC, though....seriously.  

Having got that out of my system...I actually took a screen shot of Sanchez's major faux pas right after it happened.  I think I may have even been the first asshole to call him out.  Anyhoo....here is that link:

http://www.theamericanzombie.com/2013/01/excuse-me-for-one-second.html 

I think we finally understand what the new Newhouse philosophy is all about..."Clicks and Swinging Dicks".  Sanchez just took it one step over the line.  

Adios amigo.  

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I may be grossly misinformed about the lights going out.

First, I'd like to say that as far as lights themselves go, enough light for safety, and no more than that, is in my opinion the best option.

Light pollution stops you from being able to see the stars, and it can make life harder for nocturnal animals. We already impose on the natural world a lot.

Illuminating the night for our safety and pleasure deprives us all of the night time as an ecological and psychological space that has intrinsic value.

But the other issue with the lights is about money. If the cost of the lights that went off was about $60 000 a year, and millions of tolls have been collected, shutting off the lights as a cost cutting measure was a trick to create a sense of disaster, so that someone could keep their cash cow mooing.

Where is that money going, who's got a piece, and why is a theatrical stunt about the lights being deployed right now?

On the bridge and ferry issues, I'm open to hearing other people's positions. But my own is that a diversity of transit options is always worth supporting.

A certain amount of redundancy in a system is useful, so that the temporary failure of one option for whatever reason (flood, bomb scare, etc.) does not require expensive and disorganized emergency fixes.

If the bridge tolls are supporting the ferry, I'm cool with that, but a clear picture of how that is working might be helpful, and if the ratio of the cost of the bridge vs. the cost of the ferry has gotten seriously out of balance, some adjustment in the split of who is paying and who is not paying may be in order.

I'd also like to hear from people about why the way things are now has developed, so that the most vulnerable users of the system don't end up SOL and unable to get to their jobs or back to pick up their kids from school.

I would not want to destroy the most struggling people's fragile lives for the sake of a dollar here, a dollar there, when those dollars middle class people are fussing about might otherwise go to frivolous things like fluffy coffee or an extra drink at the bar on a Friday.

Low income people subsidize us all in many ways, because they are often working their asses off at unwaged work that we all rely on to keep families and communities healthy. I'd rather "pay" them with a low cost transit option so they can keep their jobs than have their old folks die in their homes or their kids out rambling the streets.


Ricardo said...

Last week I noticed that former T-P Wingnut cartoonist Steve Kelley's lake shore house was vacant and then had a For Sale sign on it. Don't these things normally happen in three-s?

Anonymous said...

AZ, I'm with you on the Euro and banking crises, but I have learned to my dismay that a lot more people get a lot more worked up about stunts like the CCC lights than about the systematic, gargantuan-scale ongoing plunder of the Fed and Treasury. I can't really understand that, but it's clearly the case.

FWIW, I do think that making regulatory capture-enabled megatheft a partisan issue is part of the game plan from both parties for keeping the discussion superficial. This is not a Republican or Democrat thing; it's a campaign finance / corruption thing. Both parties are happily feeding at that trough and will continue to do so at taxpayer expense until the taxpayers start asking some meaningful questions.

Anonymous said...

"those dollars middle class people are fussing about might otherwise go to frivolous things like fluffy coffee or an extra drink at the bar on a Friday."

ah, thanks for making yourself the psychic and judge on how i should spend or save my money. 'preciate 'cha.

get real. you dont know how we spend our money and it's none of your business whether we spend it on a coffee, a beer, or a diaper.