The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has announced that it will be cutting its Washington Bureau now that it’s long time Washington correspondent, Sylvia Smith, is retiring. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the Journal Gazette won’t continue to do good journalism, but I think it is a symptom of the decline of journalism.

David Cay Johnston has an outstanding blog post entitled “It’s Scary Out There In Reporting Land: Beats are fundamental to journalism, but our foundations are crumbling.” Among other things, he talks about the corrosive effect of cheap news.

“So why is there so much crime on the news every day?” Diane, who was cutting Frank’s hair, asked.

“Because it’s cheap,” I replied. “And with crime news you only have to get the cops’ side of the story. There is no ethical duty to ask the arrested for their side of the story.”

Cheap news is a major reason that every day we are failing in our core mission of providing people with the knowledge they need for our democracy to function.So why is there so much crime on the news every day?” Diane, who was cutting Frank’s hair, asked.

“Because it’s cheap,” I replied. “And with crime news you only have to get the cops’ side of the story. There is no ethical duty to ask the arrested for their side of the story.”

Cheap news is a major reason that every day we are failing in our core mission of providing people with the knowledge they need for our democracy to function.

Another interesting take on the decline of journalism came from Fred Clark who cites the pretense of objectivity among journalists as a fundamental flaw. He says that pretending that one doesn’t differentiate between good news and bad news is incoherent and disingenuous. A commitment to the truth requires commitment to the good.

The claim is disingenuous because, again, newspapers are constantly reporting on the days’ news as being either good or bad. This is not — as the pretense pretends — a matter of “taking sides,” but of acknowledging them. It is an inseparable and unavoidable aspect of the newspapers’ commitment to accuracy.

The pretense that journalism requires — or even allows — neutrality or indifference to good and bad is just that, a pretense. A lie. A vain lie in at least two senses of the word. It is a lie told out of vanity and arrogant self-flattery, and it is a futile lie due to its nonstop refutation by the newspapers themselves.

He continues that, if we accept the premise that we can’t know what is good, then we must also accept the premise that we can’t know what is true, in which case, newspapers have no use. And that is, in fact, the road we’ve been going down where newspapers make no effort to find the truth, resorting instead to a kind of he-said, she-said stenography. The kind of “Some say the moon is made of green cheese, others disagree” reporting.

The miserable flaccidity of this refusal to discern or report the actual facts of the matter is, in my opinion, the only truly terminal disease facing the newspaper industry.
. . .
No matter how true something can be proven to be, once it is disputed journalists will cease to treat it as something that has already been verified as true and verified. They will begin treating it, instead, as something “controversial.” And that which is deemed controversial is no longer reported as true — regardless of the facts and the evidence proving it to be so or the utter lack of facts or evidence suggesting otherwise.

And, finally, just because I’m on the subject, Atrios had a recent post about the resistance to the blogosphere by the traditional press. The press regarded itself as something special, just because. And, pretty much, only employees of big media companies really deserved First Amendment protection as “the press.”

The Journal Gazette was my launching point for this little diatribe simply because the story about the closing of the Washington office was on my feed reader. As newspapers go, the Journal Gazette actually tends to do a better job than most of the Indiana papers I read.

The doctors in this article by Jeff Wiehe about drug company money flowing to doctors seem to think that the drug companies are awfully poor businessmen. They insist that the drug company money has absolutely no influence on them when they take it. They don’t come out and say that the drug companies are chumps, but, to me, that would seem to be the natural extension of what they are saying. The drug companies are spending piles of money on these doctors and getting no return on their investment.

I’m sure most of these doctors are honest and trying hard to do right by their patients. But, as someone or other once said, “the power of gold over the hearts of men surpasses all understanding.” If you’re getting fat checks from a company, I have to think that at least makes you think favorably toward that company. Maybe such favorability results in prescriptions for those cases that are right on the line – gives the drug company the tie breaker, so to speak. Maybe those good thoughts subconsciously sensitizes the doctor’s brain to recognize problems that can be treated by a drug. Obviously these drug companies believe that paying these doctors is a good investment. We should at least consider the possibility that they’re right.

Per Fox59, the Washington Post is reporting that Indianapolis’s Don’s Guns ranks #3 in the nation with respect to firearms traced back to crime.

Don’s Guns and Galleries in Indianapolis has the third-highest number of gun traces, about 1,910 firearms. Owner Don Davis, 77, said he is not surprised that a large number of guns are traced back to his 37-year-old store.

“I sell a couple thousand guns a year,” Davis said. “I sell guns to rich people and to poor. Poor people need protection, too. There’s no gun that leaves Don’s Guns that hasn’t been okayed by background checks.”

Don’s has been on this list before. Between 1996 and 2000, before gun tracing data were hidden from the public, Don’s was No. 2 in the country, according to a list ranking gun stores by traces compiled in 2004 by the now-defunct Americans for Gun Safety Foundation. Over that period, 2,294 guns were traced to Don’s.

I am shocked, shocked to see Don’s make the list. I recall a commercial from the 80s with Don saying something like, “No money down, no credit checked; just come in here with your smilin’ face, and I’ll sell you a gun.”

December 20, 1860 was the day, 150 years ago, when South Carolina voted to secede (I think they should go with “First in Treason” license plates.) As the 150th anniversary approaches, I think it’s interesting to look at what the national discussion looked like leading up to the war. Here is one gem I ran across from the Richmond Daily Dispatch in which the paper takes exception to a conservative journal in New York describing slavery as an evil.

No, no, says the Richmond Daily Dispatch:

As to the South, the time has long gone by when anybody considered it an evil. In what respects is it an evil — moral, social or political! Compare the people of the Southern States with those of any other community, and we challenge all history to produce a higher- toned population, more honest, honorable, humane, and just in all the relations of life. Take the single State of South Carolina, in which there has not been a divorce since the foundation of the government, and show what respect slavery has proved a moral and social evil to the whites on the one hand, or, on the other, to the blacks, who, under slavery, have become elevated from savage barbarians to civilized and Christian men, and are most of them far superior in character to the abolition senators, editors and orators of the country. . . . There is no community in the world more prosperous, nor in which everybody, high and low, great and small, have as much to eat and wear, and are as happy and contented, as in the Southern States of America. To admit that slavery is an evil is, of course, to justify efforts for its removal. The South makes no such admission.

But remember, secession was about limited government, not slavery – so say the apologists of today. I have no interest in blaming the people of 150 years ago for their sense of right and wrong. I am sure that our time and place will have plenty to apologize for in 150 years. But, I do have a lot of interest in blaming people of today who seek to embrace and whitewash the pre-war South with little interest in acknowledging the problems that made the Civil War necessary and make it a net positive that the South was the weaker side and, fortunately, lost decisively the war it started.

. . .

Another interesting tidbit – this letter from the hapless President Buchanan complaining about the do-gooder Northerners and their irresponsible inspiration of notions of freedom in Southern blacks.

The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of Slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed. I have long foreseen and often forewarned my countrymen of the now impending danger. This does not proceed solely from the claim on the part of Congress or the Territorial Legislatures to exclude Slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of different States to defeat the execution of the Fugitive Slave law. All or any of these evils might have been endured by the South without danger to the Union, (as others have been,) in the hope that time and reflection might apply the remedy. The immediate peril arises not so much from these causes as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the Slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves, and inspired them with vague notions of freedom.

The push for Sunday alcohol sales in Indiana continues. The Journal & Courier has an editorial that supports the measure, urging fairness by lifting restrictions on package liquor stores in selling other merchandise at the same time the General Assembly lifts restrictions on selling cold beer at big box stores. They also think any measure should be delayed long enough to give small package stores time to adjust their business models.

What won’t happen in a couple years isn’t, generally speaking, too worthy of comment; but I guess the announcement from Evan Bayh that he won’t run for Governor bears mentioning. To me, this is only significant inasmuch as it affects who actually does end up running. Bayh could have won and – depending who runs – kept someone worse out of the office; but beyond that I don’t think he has much to recommend himself for the job.

I didn’t pay a lot of attention to him prior to his becoming Senator. Mostly what I know is that he used his family name and connections to become Indiana’s Secretary of State, use that as a launching ground to become Governor, and then get into some pissing matches with the state Senate. Speaking of which, I’d be hard pressed to say that former Gov. Bayh was a better influence on Indiana government than his rival at the time, Senator Bob Garton.

But, like I said, I didn’t pay much attention to him as Governor – I was in college for most of that period. I’m sure my luke warm memory of him is colored a great deal by my recollection of him as a Senator. And a great deal of that has to do with my disappointment in him for voting in the Bush tax cuts back in 2001. The federal budget was in pretty good shape back then, and I regarded these tax cuts as wasting a great chance to continue making progress paying down the national debt. At the time, if you’ll recall, the rationale for the cuts was that the government was just bringing in too darn much money. One advocate at the time addressed my concerns about the debt by saying that we ran the risk of paying it down too quickly.

Anyway, Bayh voted for the tax cuts and repealing the estate tax. Since then, I’m at a bit of a loss to say what he got up to during his tenure other than appear on news shows from time to time to make solemn noises about the deficit, so long as there was no threat of imposition on the wealthy or interruption of the flood of money into military expenditures.

I don’t know, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention and have the guy all wrong. But, it’ll be interesting to see what impact this has on his wife’s board member gigs with pharmaceutical and insurance companies and whatnot.

Rumor has it that the Governor is going to take another run at vouchers. One aspect to voucher legislation I would like to see is a provision that allows public schools to reject or eject students based on the same criteria available to private schools. I don’t know if that means restricting the ability of private schools that take vouchers or enhancing the ability of public schools. But, if we’re going to pretend vouchers are good because they create competition, the playing field has to be level. That means not leaving public schools as nothing more than a dumping ground for difficult, expensive to educate students.

On the other hand, if we’re going to stick with the “every kid should have an education” policy choice; then we’re going to have to live with the fact that easy-to-educate kids subsidize the hard-to-educate kids. Vouchers – where we pretend that kids are widgets with associated expenses that are fixed and equivalent – disrupt that subsidy.

There had been some discussion around here a week or two ago about State GDP, so I thought I’d post a link to this recent Urbanophile post that discusses some recent numbers with handy maps.

All is not well most places, really, but because we’re occasionally asked to emulate labor practices of the South because that region is supposedly doing better than the rest of the country, I wanted to note that the South doesn’t appear to be doing notably better than other places and, some parts of the South by some measurements are doing worse:

Some of the fast growing Sun Belt states added people at a faster rate than they grew economic output. Georgia in particular is worth noting, because even metro Atlanta has been showing declining real per capita GDP. In fact, Georgia actually declined by more than Michigan did on this metric, so obviously all is not well down there. Texas, despite its vaunted jobs engine, is expanding almost totally horizontally. It is 9th lowest in the US on real per capita GDP growth, with a nearly flat 2% performance over the last decade.

(emphasis added).

You know that old political cliche about how individuals know better how to handle their money than the government does? Well, maybe not. How well government manages your money is certainly open to question, but your average Hoosier isn’t really all that well equipped to make decisions about their money.

The Indianapolis Star has an article discussing a nation-wide report by “The Investor Education Foundation of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority” finding, among other things, that Hoosiers are not, by and large, financially literate. (I think this is a symptom of the larger issue that lots of people are basically innumerate. We need to do a better job of learning our math.)

Results of a nationwide study released Wednesday suggest that residents of Indiana, on the average, are less financially literate than other Americans and that 68 percent of Hoosiers find it hard to pay their bills every month.
. . .
About two-thirds of Hoosiers and most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and don’t have savings for an emergency. A similar number does not bother to comparison shop for the best interest rates and features of credit cards.

And 28 percent of Hoosiers have borrowed money from payday lenders and other high-interest-rate sources in recent years, which is higher than the national average of 24 percent.

The article doesn’t do a very good job of explaining whether some of these factors are a function of people not knowing any better versus not having any other realistic options. But, from personal experience collecting debts, it’s a little amazing how many people just have no clue about the concept of interest. (My standard explanation is that you’d rather have $100 today than $100 in ten years, and interest is designed to compensate you for having to wait.

The study is here. I haven’t looked at it yet.

Mike Kole posted a Reuters chart that ties into my recent post about Social Security not being the problem.

Mike had a different point to make about how we should cut spending; but I think this graph says a lot about how funding of government expenditures has changed over the past 50 years. Note the sharp decrease in the share of federal revenues represented by corporate and estate taxes. Income taxes have dropped some but not in the same proportion as corporate and estate taxes. And those payroll taxes (social security and comparable taxes) have really been asked to pick up the slack. Given that those taxes are only on the first $107,000 or so of income, if there is class warfare in this country, it’s reasonably clear who has been winning in post-World War II America.

Also, keep this post in mind the next time someone uses payment of federal income tax as a sort of stand-in for a person’s overall tax burden while advancing the argument that the rich are over taxed and the non-rich aren’t doing their fair share.