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One
good thing about a few stalwarts from the golden
age of print journalism still hanging around is
this:
Some
MainStream Media outlets like WaPo and NY
Times still have journalistic resources
sufficient to assign stories before a siren goes
off.
This
condition stands in stark contrast to the “if
it bleeds, it leads” mantra of network, cable
and on-line “news.” “Screen view/web page
view”-driven media takes an hourly pulse of
the stories that “Running Hard as They Cans” are
viewing and then allocates resources to feed the
public “more of what they want.” Anyone in
Blacksburg can attest to the herd mentality of
“journalists” in search of a superficial and
emotional new angle on tragic, overexposed but
poorly understood event.
Here
are some recent MainStream Media sightings that
reflect old-school, pre-planned coverage.
Learning
from Tax Time
The
Ides of April have passed and a lot could be
gleaned from the “in depth” stories assigned
in anticipation of reader interest in taxes
around the 15th of April. According
to published reports the federal government did
not collect about $100 billion in taxes that
would have been due had the money not been
stored sheltered offshore tax havens. In
addition, IRS lost another $345 billion from
underreported tax liability – aka, tax fraud.
As
Everett Dirksen would have said, a $100
billion here, $345 billion there, and pretty
soon you are talking real money.
Half
a Trillion is enough to finish the “mission
accomplished” job in Iraq or to do what Russia
was not able to do in Afghanistan. Some
would hope that this money could be used to
assure that Katrina I “rebuilding” does not
set up a new generation of victims for Katrina
II. Real dreamers would like to see half a
trillion dollars used to intelligently address
the Mobility and Access Crisis and the
Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis by
supporting the evolution of fundamentally
different (aka, functional) human settlement
patterns. Both
the tax shelter and the tax fraud numbers are
new records and they are a barometer of the
times. They are a measure of greed, but they are
also a measure of disrespect for government and
the rule of law.
These
tax evasion totals also indicate that the
economies of First World nation-states have
outgrown a tax on “income” as a primary
source of governance support. This is due to the fact
that income is so easy to hide – especially
for the top five percent of the economic food
chain.
Since
Mass OverConsumption is driving an imbalance of
trade payments, growing energy import dependency
and climate change, it seems logical to shift
from a tax on income to a tax on consumption. It
would appear especially smart to tax consumption
of goods and services that make the world a less
good place. One attractive candidate would be a
tax on carbon. Federal
tax day provided a good reason to examine the
impact of the current trend of housing deflation
on the economy and on municipal tax revenues.
Deflating residential real estate values
provides a good reason to consider shifting the
municipal tax burden away from the value of real
estate improvements. The taxes and fees to support
Cluster-, Neighborhood-, Village- and
Community-scaled governance
should be based on the cost of providing
services, not on the value of improvements. A
tax on land based upon the cost of providing
public services would be a step toward a fair
allocation of the cost of location variable
goods and services. This would lead to the
evolution of functional human settlement
patterns which are the only solution to the
Mobility and Access Crisis and the Affordable
and Accessible Housing Crisis. (See "Beyond
the Clear Edge," 26 May 2003.) Who
Is Paying What Compared to the Good Old Days? One
of the more interesting graphics published on 15
April was in a story by Kevin Hassett titled
“Show Me the Money: Why We Pay Without a
Whimper” (Outlook, Page 1, WaPo.) 
(Chart
credit: Kevin Hassett as
published in the Washington Post) Based
on Department of Labor data, adjusted to 2005
dollars, the graphic shows that from 1983 to
2003, the total amount paid in taxes for households
earning $50,000 and $150,000 changed in
significant ways. For lower earning households
the percentage of income devoted to taxes went
up as did the amount spent on housing, while the
amount “left over” for education, leisure,
services, charity and savings went down. For
higher income households, taxes remained at
about the same level while education, leisure,
services and savings went up a lot. Interestingly,
money spent on mobility and access went down for
the lower earners and up for the higher earners.
This may reflect spacial disaggregation of
higher income households. Transport numbers are,
of course, wildly subsidized and thus household
expenditures do not reflect the true cost of
mobility and access. The
most interesting fact is that the total tax per
household did not change much over the 20-year
period. It is clear that the complexity of
society and thus the need for governance
services increased during this period. Many
believe that the inefficiency of governance grew
worse. With the gross increase in the cost of
health services, much of it paid for by public
programs, it would be interesting to see what
programs were cut. Maintenance of infrastructure
is a good candidate. These
numbers document what seems obvious to many: The
costs and demands for governance services per
capita both went up while the quality of service
went down. In this case “holding the line on
costs” is not a win-win.
Also
of interest is the fact that by this
admittedly gross measure, Elephant Clan claims
of lowering the taxes on their core supporters
– the top of the economic food chain – is
not supported.
In
his last two columns at Bacons Rebellion
“The
Party’s Over?” and “I
Think We should See Other People”, Norman
Leahy has examined some of the fault lines in
the Elephant Clan. It
appears that the three main components of the
Elephant Clan’s “conservative” platform
are:
This
later group might better be called the “big
spender conservatives.” Elephant Clan leaders
recognize that politics has been monetized and
regardless of the feel- good issues, they need
big donors to hire consultants, buy ads and pay
for other requirements of a 50.5 percent
victory.
Big conservative donors are ones with
lots of resources to conserve but they are also
the ones who benefit from big government
projects, contracts and programs thus the
expansion of government and public debt during
the Reagan and Bush presidencies.
Hassett’s
graph suggests that Leahy’s three component
big tent for the Elephant Clan really does have
some weak poles. The weakest pole is that
Elephant Clan control does not produce the
advertised results for the majority of
well-to-do conservative donors. "Big"
donors make a lot more than $150,000 a year but
there are not enough of them to make much
difference in the voting booth.
Learning
from Earth Day
No
place is old line MainStream Media’s
time-sensitive coverage more in evidence than on
Earth Day. Editors and publishers can read the
polls. They know that citizens are becoming more
and more concerned about “the environment”
– the Bay, water quality, air quality, gas
prices, power lines and Climate Change.
Many
citizens would like to feel they are doing
something about “the environment.” Somehow
they believe that if they do the right thing
then baby polar bears will not drown, gas prices
will not go up as fast, there will be more crabs
from the Bay to eat and Nags Head will not be
underwater as soon.
WaPo
devoted the whole left side of page one of Metro
section on 21 April to ten things households and
individuals can do to support “Earth Day All
Year Long.” It is a fine list. Every idea is a
good one but few are easy and all run counter to
Business As Usual advertising, which, along with
the President, suggests that the patriotic thing
is to go shopping. (See “Soft
Consumption Paths," 7 Aug 2006).
We
recall an old New Yorker cartoon with one
rotund executive telling another at a cocktail
party, "We have been in favor of historic
preservation ever since it started to pay.”
You may have seen the Wal*Mart ad for energy
efficient light bulbs. It is a good thing those
corkscrew fluorescents are not cheap. If they
were inexpensive, they would never get shelf
space.
As
we noted above, most of the ten are not easy,
and no one suggests what “Running as Hard as
They Cans” are going to give up to accomplish
these tasks. In addition, most who have given
the topic any thought could come up with many
similar actions to recommend.
The
core problem is that if “everyone” made a
good faith effort to do every item on a
composite list of similar actions... But wait, “everyone” will not
even buckle their own seat belt, much less:
-
Turn
off the water when brushing their teeth, get
a new toilet and stop watering their lawn
-
Swap
out most of their lightbulbs
-
Get
an energy audit
-
Buy
locally grown food
-
Unplug
all electronic devices that drain
electricity when not in use
-
Trap,
store and use storm water
-
Reduce
lawn fertilizer
-
Insulate
the water heater
-
Change
your commute (now there is a really good
idea!)
-
Clean
up after your pet.
The
ideas are well presented with relevant facts and
sources for more information. Many of these
commonsense suggestions are not easy to do,
however, and even if “everyone” did them, it
would not make much difference without systemic,
fundamental, society-wide changes.
From
60 to 70 percent of the US of A's petroleum is
consumed by transport. “Changing” the
commute is not the answer. Changing settlement
patterns so most people are where they want or
need to be most of the time is the answer.
From
60 to 70 percent of the total energy consumption
is for building, heating, cooling, lighting and
providing mobility and access for the current
human settlement patterns. The only way to
achieve significant reductions in energy
consumption is the evolution of functional human
settlement patterns.
This is not a new
realization. In the early 80s the
developers of Burke Centre cooperated in a
federally funded study of the Landings
Neighborhood in Burke Centre. The consultant
produced a long list of suggestions. Not one of
them would any of the builders follow because
the builders, correctly, believed to do so would
put them at a disadvantage in market because the
suggestions were not what buyers wanted. (See
“Whale
on the Beach,” 28 Aug 2006.)
MainStream
Media has a moral, ethical and journalistic
responsibility to provide "news." By
"news" we mean the information
citizens need to create and maintain a democracy
with a market-based economy.
At
the same time, the MainStream Media have a legal
obligation to stockholders to maximize profit.
In the current context, where 70 percent of the
economy is consumer spending, that means
MainStream Media supports and is a major
contributor to Mass OverConsumption. MainStream
Media support Mass OverConsumption by not
questioning the validity or impact of
advertising and by avoiding effective challenges
to the safety and happiness Myths that drive
Mass OverConsumption.
MainStream
Media coverage of governance and human
settlement pattern-impacting issues meet the
legal challenge but do not meet the moral and
ethical challenges. The coverage of mobility and
access, affordable and accessible housing, land
conservation and other aspects of reality do not
provide the information necessary for citizens
to make intelligent choices in the voting booth
or in the marketplace.
Stay
tuned for alternative choices.
--
April 30, 2007
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