I am hating Bush more and more each day because of his socialist bailout. The free market is killing the liberal media, and Bush’s stupidity may just allow the liberal media to kill the free market.

Government aid could save U.S. newspapers, spark debate
Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:50pm EST
By Robert MacMillan - Analysis

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.

Nicastro represents Connecticut’s 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.

That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.

Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.

To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.

Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.

Providing government support can muddy that mission, said Paul Janensch, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and a former reporter and editor.

“You can’t expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it,” he said.

The state’s Department of Economic and Community Development is offering tax breaks, training funds, financing opportunities and other incentives for publishers, but not cash.

“We’re not saying ‘Come to Bristol, come to New Britain, we’ll give you a million dollars,’” Nicastro said.

The lifeline comes as U.S. newspaper publishers such as the New York Times, Tribune and McClatchy deal with falling advertising revenue, fleeing readers and tremendous debt.

Aggravating this extreme change is the world financial crisis. Publishers have slashed costs, often by firing thousands in a bid to remain healthy and to impress investors.

Any aid to papers could gladden financial stakeholders, said Mike Simonton, an analyst at Fitch Ratings.

“If governments are able to provide enough incentives to get some potential bidders off the sidelines, that could be a positive for newspaper valuations,” he said.

NEWSPAPERS ARE DIFFERENT

Many media experts predict that 2009 will be the year that newspapers of all sizes will falter and die, a threat long predicted but rarely taken seriously until the credit crunch blossomed into a full-fledged financial meltdown.

Some papers no longer print daily, and some not at all.

Even as industries deemed too important to fail are seeking bailouts, most newspaper publishers have refused to give serious thought to the idea, though some industry insiders recounted joking about it with other newspaper executives.

“The whole idea of the First Amendment and separating media and giving them freedom of control from the government is sacrosanct,” said Digby Solomon, publisher of Tribune Co’s Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia.

Former Miami Herald Editor Tom Fiedler said that a democracy has an obligation to help preserve a free press.

“I truly believe that no democracy can remain healthy without an equally healthy press,” said Fiedler, now dean of Boston University’s College of Communication. “Thus it is in democracy’s interest to support the press in the same sense that the human being doesn’t hesitate to take medicine when his or her health is threatened.”

Connecticut does not see trying to find a buyer and offering tax breaks as exerting influence on the press, said Joan McDonald, the economic development commissioner.

“It is what we do … with companies whether it’s in aerospace, biomedical devices, biotech or financial services,” she said. “If a company is developing laser technology, we don’t get into the business of what lasers are used for.”

Connecticut’s actions are not the first time government has helped newspapers. The U.S. Postal Service has offered discounted postage rates. Several cities have papers running under Joint Operating Agreements, created following the congressional Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 to keep competing urban dailies viable despite circulation declines.

But the press is not the same as other businesses, said veteran newspaper financial analyst John Morton. “You’re doing something that has a bearing on political life,” he said.

Marc Levy, executive editor of the Herald and the Press, said he would not let gratitude get in the way of reporting on local political peccadilloes.

“It’s the brutal reality,” he said. “You’d say, ‘thank you very much for helping me with that, but now we have to ask you about this thing.’”

(Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE4BU53T20081231?sp=true

The RNC is finally figuring out what the people have known for several years, that Bush is a complete failure as a leader and has no personal political convictions.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008
EXCLUSIVE: RNC draft rips Bush’s bailouts
Ralph Z. Hallow (Contact)
EXCLUSIVE:

In what would amount to a slap in the face to a sitting Republican president and the party’s Senate and House leaders, national GOP officials, including the vice chairman of the Republican National Committee, are sponsoring a resolution opposing the resort to “socialist” means to save capitalism.

“We can’t be a party of small government, free markets and low taxes while supporting bailouts and nationalizing industries, which lead to big government, socialism and high taxes at the expense of individual liberty and freedoms,” said Solomon Yue, a cosponsor of a resolution that would put the RNC — the party’s national governing body — on the record as opposing the U.S. government bailouts of the financial and auto industries.

Republican National Vice Chairman and constitutional law attorney James Bopp Jr. authored the resolution and is asking the rest of the 168 voting members of the committee to sign it.

“The resolution also opposes President-elect Obama’s proposed public works program and supports conservative alternatives,” while encouraging the RNC “to engage in vigorous public policy debates consistent with our party platform,” Mr. Bopp said.

The RNC has never played a leading policy role or any policy role except once every four years in framing the national party platform, which is quickly forgotten and almost never referred to for another four years.

See related story: Jeb Bush Senate bid a GOP remedy?

“Jim Bopp is the author of the no-bailout resolution because he wants to articulate our core principles now, not every four years when we have a presidential election,” said Mr. Yue, an Oregon member of the Committee. “This is based on the thinking that articulating political philosophy is equally important as applying it consistently.”

“Failing to do so, we have today’s identity crisis, which resulted in our losses in 2006 and 2008,” Mr. Yue said. “The bailout is a good example … In my view, if we are not going to address this, we will see more losses in 2010.”

North Dakota GOP Chairman Gary Emineth said he too has had enough of the never-ending disconnect between what the platform says and what elected Republicans do.

“It is time the party gets involved in policy issues and forces candidates to respond to the platform,” Mr. Emineth said. “Frankly the way we view the platform is a joke. We work hard to drive our principles into the platform, then candidates ignore it.”

“If the party doesn’t move in this direction, we will continue to be irrelevant. Whoever has the larger star power will continue to win, and what they stand for and believe will become less relevant,” Mr. Emineth said.

Mr. Bopp, Mr. Yue and the other cosponsors say they have the numbers to pull off this rebellion, unprecedented in the history of either party’s national committee.

“We have enough co-sponsors to take this to the RNC floor” at the party’s Jan. 28-31 annual winter meeting in Washington. “I will take it to the Resolutions Committee, but I intend to press this issue to the floor for decision.”

To the astonishment of most rank-and-file Republicans, hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts of private-sector companies were pushed through Congress last month by President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.

Just as astonishing, the Senate and House GOP leaders and the party’s presidential nominee supported the bailout of the financial industry, which in some cases took the form of the U.S. government’s gaining ownership of huge but financially troubled companies.

Nonetheless, not all RNC members — including some of Mr. Bopp’s fellow conservatives — are pleased with the idea of having it make policy instead of simply minding the campaign fundraising store.

Fellow RNC member Ron Nehring, chairman of the California GOP, expressed more reservations.

“We have to be careful not to confuse passing resolutions for action, or creating a situation where people interpret the lack of some resolution as an excuse for inaction on an important issue,” he said.

Historically, the elected GOP House and Senate leaders, plus the president and his advisers when the party controls the White House, make national party policy. The RNC’s sole job has been to raise money for candidates and to pass the party line down the food chain to state and local leaders.

The same has been true for the Democratic National Committee.

The Bopp-Yue vanguard say they are determined to change that.

“For the past eight years, the RNC has been the political outreach of the White House,” said Arizona GOP Chairman Randy Pullen, another resolution cosponsor who opposed what he regarded as Mr. Bush’s pro-amnesty immigration bill and his “economic policies promoting the ‘ownership society’ because they would eventually lead to the financial meltdown we are currently experiencing.”

“It is now time for the RNC to assert itself in terms of ideas and political philosophy,” Mr. Pullen added. “If we don’t do it now, when will we?”

Mr. Bopp, a social conservative who has served as counsel to pro-life groups, said, “We must stand for and publicly advocate our conservative principles as a party 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year.”

The RNC revolutionaries leave no doubt they mean to turn the committee into policy-producing and enforcing machine.

“In the long-run, we want to see this committee play an active philosophical-policy leadership role for the national GOP,” Mr. Yue said.

But it remains unclear whether there exist the rules or the machinery for enforcing such a resolution on Republican elected officials.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/30/rnc-pushes-unprecedented-criticism-of-bailouts/