Sticking up for little guys and the $0.00 Internet
My friends and associates, Denny Hatch and Jim Overly, have been sending me links to articles about the “information wants to be free” mindset that’s been spawned by the Internet.
Jim, a retired member of the State Department’s Foreign Service, helps monitor websites for the daily Government Policy Newslinks report. Denny is a direct marketing industry guru who writes Denny Hatch’s Business Common Sense, a webpage that’s read by an ever-widening circle of appreciative readers.
One of the articles they sent to me, from Wired.com, seemed to hit the nail on the head. See Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business (Feb. 25, 2008). But see also the Los Angeles Times’ Free news online will cost journalism dearly (Dec. 26, 2007) and The New York Times’ Why you should pay to read this newspaper (Oct. 24, 2005).
I re-read those articles yesterday (April 15) after a group of self-described “good government” groups sent letters that asked the House and Senate leaders to start posting committee votes on various congressional committee websites. They noted that roll call votes occurring in the House and Senate are published in the Congressional Record which is posted the following day on Thomas, the Library of Congress website that’s been operating since 1995.
But getting information about votes cast in committees is a different—and very expensive—matter, they said.
“Currently, other than visiting a committee’s office, timely information regarding recorded votes is available only for a fee by a few providers. Congressional Quarterly, for example, posts to a website available to subscribers the votes recorded during committee mark-ups within 24 hours after they are cast along with a synopsis of the mark-up at a cost of $4,215 per year. National Journal subscribers pay $2,000 to review votes and synopses of ‘key’ mark-ups and Gallery Watch emails its clients and posts to its site customized information about committee votes and proceedings within 48 hours at a cost of approximately $5,000 per year,” they said.
The letter’s signatories included some major lobbying organizations with multi-million dollar operating budgets and can easily pay, and probably do pay, the subscription fees.
They assured the congressional leaders who received their letter—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio)—that they were only interested in sticking up for the “individuals, nonprofit organizations and small businesses whose interests might be affected by committee votes—who cannot visit committee offices and do not have the financial resources to pay private organizations to track this information.”
We are drowned by the tears from these crocodiles. When news-gathering organizations like Congressional Quarterly and National Journal lose subscription revenue, they stop gathering news, they stop adding value to the information they collect with their analysis and interpretation, and ultimately they leave the news-gathering field altogether and create a vacuum that will be eagerly filled by “good government” lobbies. Do you really want your news about congressional voting behavior dished up by the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO, the National Education Association, the National Organization for Women, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the letter’s other signatories?
If they were really interested in protecting the interests of the little guy, they would simply dip into their multi-million dollar treasuries and contribute a few dollars to gather information about congressional committee votes and post it on their own website. Their brethren elsewhere in the “good government” industry, with the help of a few sympathetic congressmen, are already doing this with the Open CRS website that exposes and distributes thousands of Congressional Research Service reports which are not otherwise available for public distribution.
Your tax dollars at work on the U.S.-Mexico border
Millions of taxpayer dollars are allocated each year to help Mexico train and equip its military for drug enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border. But the training (reportedly at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga.) and equipment, including assault weapons and night vision devices, has wound up in the hands of paramilitary groups that protect drug traffickers and engages in kidnappings on both sides of the border.
The migration of U.S. funding from drug interdiction to drug smuggler protection is so bold, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) said in a press release yesterday (April 15), that a paramilitary group called Los Zetas advertised its recruiting phone number on a publicly displayed banner that was hung from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
Add comment April 16, 2008