The Economy

Like him, I really am worried about the economy – and not just the stuff that’s been mishandled, like subprime mortgages, and other monetary slights of hand. We have seen a fundamental shift in the way of the world. We are no longer only competing against other ‘first world’ nations.

I walked into a local business today. It was a place I hadn’t been in before, but the owner knew me from TV.

I didn’t prompt him. He just looked at me and said, “I’ve never seen the economy this bad before.” Then he began to talk about business.

Like him, I really am worried about the economy – and not just the stuff that’s been mishandled, like subprime mortgages, and other monetary slights of hand. We have seen a fundamental shift in the way of the world. We are no longer only competing against other ‘first world’ nations.

If you live in Kansas and answer phones for a living, it’s impossible to compete with someone in Bangalore who will work for 20% of your pay. The same goes for manufacturing and agriculture and nearly everything else.

JetBlue has airplane maintenance performed in Central America. Reuters has financial reporters look at US companies from India. The list is endless. There’s little you can think of that can’t be done cheaper elsewhere.

Then there are the box stores. When they replace 10, 15, 20 local business, they also displace the workers from those businesses. This ‘little guy’ I spoke with, a baker, was very worried about Wal*Mart, Costco and especially supermarkets.

What is the economic impact if his handful of employees is replaced by one or two in a big store?

In the past, labor saving devices made lives better for employees. After all, the forty hour week is a relatively recent arrival. Today, labor saving devices produce higher productivity for employers and if jobs can be cut, so be it.

My bosses, bosses, boss has a legal duty to protect the financial interest of his shareholders. If he puts me first, he’s violating the law!

Globally, we are on shaky ground trying to defend our standard of living to the Indians and Chinese who are taking our jobs. Look where we are. Look where they are.

I have been through recessions before, and we’ve always recovered. I have always been pessimistic going in, but once the economy was properly repriced, growth returned. My pessimism was misplaced.

This time, I am petrified our economic engine will have to be revalued against a world that can do what we do, only cheaper (and in many countries like China, with less kvetching from the workers). It’s a very scary scenario.

Right now, I have no answers, only questions.

Silly Bill Gates

I want to write to Bill Gates. This has nothing to do with Microsoft.

Recently, Gates was in Ottawa, Canada&#185. As Reuters reports, He was asked about his children and their use of computers.

“She could spend two or three hours a day on this Viva Pinata, because it’s kind of engaging and fun.”

Gates said he and his wife Melinda decided to set a limit of 45 minutes a day of total screen time for games and an hour a day on weekends, plus what time she needs for homework.

“Up to some age, to be determined, it’s very appropriate for a parent to get a sense of what they’re seeing out there and be able to have conversations about it,” he said.

“My son said, ‘Am I going to have limits like this my whole life?’, and I said, ‘No, when you move away you can set your own screen limits’,” Gates recounted, to audience laughter.”

Bill Gates, you’re so silly. Sure, you’re the richest man in the world, but controlling your children… C’mon Bill, no one’s got that much pull!

I am told, when Steffie was very small, I claimed I’d never say “no” to her. I’d find a way to discuss and explain. I don’t remember saying that, though I don’t deny it.

What was I smoking?

You see Bill, the problem is we teach them to speak. We teach them to reason. They hear us dispute others in our conversations. Somehow, they feel they should have a free mind and free will.

I know, it sounded awfully heavy handed to me too. Why should a 9 or 13 or 19 year old child have any input when I make a decision? And yet, over time, they wear you out. They push and push and push some more until, finally, you are powerless to stop them.

Bill, it’s going to be tougher in your situation, because you’re surrounded by an army of sycophants who only know yes. They will be outweighed by your children who will only know “no.” Unfortunately, Children can’t be fired or outsourced to Bangalore.

Here’s my biggest revelation as a parent. You can’t teach experience! Your child will have to do everything you know is wrong or foolish or against their own best interests, just the way you did. From time-to-time, you will just have to sit back and watch them screw up.

I know you’re still a little naive. I’ve heard you talk about the incredible stability and security of the Windows platform. Fixing children is much more difficult. And this time, you’ve got to do it in “version 1.0”.

&#185 – When I first visited Ottawa in the late 70s, my friend Howard drove by the US Embassy and said, “That’s where the landlord lives.”

Enough Is Enough

I make a good living. It’s not enough.

I watch actors in the movies. They already have fortunes beyond my wildest dreams. Still, they’re acting for cash. What they have is not enough.

Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Sumner Redstone… these guys are working? Why? Obviously, whatever they’ve got, it’s not enough.

The exception to this universal mindset is Craig Newmark. He is Craig of Craigslist.com.

Craigslist.com is to the worst thing to ever happen to classified advertising… at least that’s how folks in the newspaper business feels. All those lovely little ads selling everything in your daily paper – they’re free on Craigslist&#185! It’s tough to compete with free.

From Reuters:

“Who needs the money? We don’t really care,” Craig Newmark said in an interview at the Picnic ’06 Cross Media Week conference here.

“If you’re living comfortably, what’s the point of having more?” Newmark said

Craig, you’re killing me. Can’t material wealth be an end unto itself?

“We both know some people who own more than a billion (dollars) and they’re not any the happier. They also need bodyguards,” he said.

Being privately held, no one knows what Craigslist’s revenue is. Even with the few categories that are monetized (a word I’m positive Craig doesn’t use), there’s more than enough cash for its 22 employees. Craig, who could easily be a millionaire many times over, still works on the site.

Seriously speaking, how can you fault him? He is a man of principles who decided not to sell out. There are far too few of those left.

But Craig, you really are giving the rest of us a bad name.

&#185 – There are some minor exceptions. Craigslist charges in certain categories in certain cities, but only enough to keep people from listing and relisting to keep atop the pile.

Who Is Andrew Breitbart And Why Is Matt Drudge Throwing Him All Those Links?

I’m a habitue of Drudge. Though Matt Drudge has a political and sometimes social agenda, the site links to news I find interesting and does it on a fast and constant basis. Drudge is mostly a collector of news rather than a reporter. Just about all his headlines point to stories on other sites.

Until recently, most of Drudge’s stories came from traditional sources. If a story was actually from the Associated Press, he’d find a website carrying it and link there. You’d be directed to a newspaper, TV station, magazine or Yahoo, which carries wire service reports.

Now, he’s started linking to lots of stories on breitbart.com. Breitbart.com looks like an automated aggregator of AP and Reuters wire stories.

Quite honestly, I’d never heard of it or of Andrew Breitbart, the person whose telephone number is listed as the contact for the web address.

I’m not in Los Angeles, but I used Google’s mapping facility to look at breitbart.com’s physical address. It looks like a residential area just off the San Diego Freeway and near UCLA.

Then I started checking his name. Here’s a quote from Andrew Breitbart on author Roger Simon’s site.

The New York Times got it right — I am amicably leaving the Drudge Report after a long and close working relationship with Matt Drudge, a man who will rightfully take his place in the history books as an Internet news pioneer. I am also excited to be a partner in an inspired new endeavor, the Huffington Post. The last time I worked with Arianna she got a guy who didn’t deserve to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery disinterred. That was cool. I admit: I like to go where the action is.

And, if you go to the Internet Archives and look at some older breitbart.com pages, they actually show Drudge’s site. Well, they all do except this one. Oops.

So, it looks like Breitbart is now somehow connected with Arianna Huffington – liberal and, once again, Matt Drudge – conservative.

Is Drudge is sending all this traffic Breitbart’s way out of the goodness of his heart?

There’s nothing nefarious here (well nothing I can see). If there’s a financial relationship between Breitbart and Drudge, traditional journalists might question the ethical connotations of linking for profit. There’s nothing I’ve looked at that says that’s what’s happening and far be it from me to judge ethics. I just don’t know.

I’m writing what I found because I saw unusual online behavior and put 2+2 together. It’s all out in the open.

For me, it was interesting to see this new website spring up and get much of Drudge’s business. That’s where my curiosity kicked in. If you can aggregate tens or hundreds of thousands of hits… or more, Google ads (or similar ads, sold by others and placed on your site) alone could make a small, automated website very profitable with little investment or ongoing effort.

Blogger’s note: While looking through more websites, trying to read up on Andrew Breitbart, I stumbled on the fact that his father-in-law is Orson Bean. If the name means nothing to you, don’t worry. If you’re my age, Orson Bean was a very witty New Englander who worked the TV game show circuit in the 60s and 70s. I was a big fan. I wondered where he went.

Another Media Prediction

After the Janet/Justin Super Bowl incident, I predicted there would be repercussions at MTV – even though MTV is not regulated by the FCC. It didn’t take long before some of the more explicit videos they play were pushed out of prime time.

Videos are no longer a big thing on MTV, so this move isn’t as significant as it might seem. Still, a change is a change. It is certainly a reaction to an upwelling of public sentiment.

Now, in light of Howard Stern’s banishment by Clear Channel, I predict he’ll soon be gone from Viacom&#185 as well.

Let me preface my explanation by saying I have no political ax to grind. What will be will be. It’s fun to make these predictions in the blog because I really can’t hide from them later. Just remember – this is only my read on the situation.

Here’s the set-up. Tuesday, Howard Stern had the ‘other’ participant in the now infamous Paris Hilton video, on-the-air. They talked, and took some phone calls. One listener asked some questions which were crude and racist, to say the least.

Wednesday evening, Matt Drudge had a short transcript of the conversation on his website. I’m glad I got to read it. I’m just as glad it’s no longer there.

I would hope Stern has the ability to monitor and censor inappropriate material before it hits air. In this case, he did not.

On Wednesday, after hearing an aircheck, Clear Channel Communications took action and issued this press release:

“Clear Channel drew a line in the sand today with regard to protecting our listeners from indecent content and Howard Stern’s show blew right through it,” said John Hogan, president and CEO of Clear Channel Radio. “It was vulgar, offensive, and insulting, not just to women and African Americans but to anyone with a sense of common decency. We will not air Howard Stern on Clear Channel stations until we are assured that his show will conform to acceptable standards of responsible broadcasting,” Hogan said.

Though America’s largest broadcasting company, Clear Channel only runs Stern on a handful of stations. Viacom is the actual syndicator of the show, and also runs it in many markets nationwide.

In this case, the tail (Clear Channel) will wag the dog (Viacom)!

Viacom is between a rock and a hard place because of statements earlier in the week. From Reuters:

Viacom president Mel Karmazin reportedly has imposed a crackdown on sexually explicit material on Infinity stations, declaring in a recent company-wide conference call: “This company won’t be a poster child for indecency.”

So, what can they do? Considering the Congressional hearings post-Super Bowl and Karmazin’s own public pledge, how can they stand behind Stern… especially in light of what Clear Channel’s CEO said?

They can’t. End of story. Hang out the “Help Wanted” sign. Stern is done.

&#185 – Stern is syndicated by Infinity Broadcasting. Infinity, in turn, is owned by Viacom.

No One Pleads Innocent

I was going to write about what TV, radio and newspapers do to a defendants court plea… and I will, but I’m pleased to add a twist.

With Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson, Phil Spector and a zillion others charged with crimes, we’re hearing a lot about defendants declaring their indignation at the charges and pleading innocent.

From Reuters:

ALHAMBRA, Calif. (Reuters) – Legendary “Wall of Sound” record producer Phil Spector pleaded innocent on Thursday to murdering B-movie actress Lana Clarkson who was found lying in a pool of blood in February at his Alhambra, California, home.

Way to go Phil… except in the United States you don’t plead innocent. In reality, the proper pleading is “not guilty,” and there’s an immense difference.

My dictionary says of innocent:

Uncorrupted by evil, malice, or wrongdoing; sinless: an innocent child.

Who wants to stand up to that standard? In fact, having done something, but for whatever reason being ‘not guilty” is a much easier defense.

If you’re innocent you are not guilty. However, you can be not guilty without being innocent. There is a distinction and it’s very important.

Until recently the Associated Press had recommended (in its well circulated style manual) using innocent instead of not guilty. The reason actually goes back to the pre-computer days of set type where the “not” might fall off or become detached from the “guilty.” With computers, that can’t happen anymore. So, a few weeks ago, AP did the right thing and began recommending not guilty as the proper term.

It will take a while for everyone to fall into line, so you’ll continue to hear innocent. But you’ll know lots of people walk without being close to innocent.