The Choate-Weinberg Report

NPR Is A Symptom Of Bad Government

While it is true that most media stories are “inside baseball” for people like me, it is also true that not only do I own, control and create media, I am a consumer as well.

Perhaps I cast a more jaundiced eye on my chosen profession than many, but I watch, listen and read as much or maybe more than most consumers.

All of that is a long way of getting around to saying that I, too, have my favorite commentators and among those are Juan Williams, late of National Public Radio.

I’ve never met the man and might not even recognize him in the street.

But he is a thinking man’s liberal who gives his honest opinion when he is asked and that is often as a contributor to Fox News Channel. That he was frequently on shows like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren, apparently has been a source of irritation to his day-job employers at NPR.

You see, apparently, freedom of speech doesn’t apply to taxpayer-funded liberal think-tanks which is exactly what NPR is.

I have never owned or run a radio station with the kinds of budget that NPR has but we have more listeners to our stations in Winnemucca, Elko and Ely than many big-city NPR stations have.

Last week, Williams was on the O’Reilly Factor and the following conversation ensued:

Williams said: “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”  Williams also warned O’Reilly against blaming all Muslims for “extremists,” saying Christians shouldn’t be blamed for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

NPR fired him for that.

Now if NPR was run by me (there’s a visual for you), that would be one thing.  I once fired Gordon Liddy from our stations (actually his show) because I didn’t like something he said.  I once—actually several times—dismissed Rush Limbaugh because I didn’t think his show was a good business deal for us.

But I don’t get tax dollars with which to run my business.

If I have a particular viewpoint, if Rupert Murdoch has a particular viewpoint, if the late H.L. Menken had a particular viewpoint we all understand(stood) one thing.  Freedom of the press is largely for the man who owns one.

NPR and PBS don’t own theirs.  We, the taxpayers, do. The taxpayers were the midwives at their births and have funded their upbringing ever since.  I was there because my father played a huge role in the development of public television and a smaller role in public radio.

Now if NPR wants to raise all of their own money, I have no problem with their firing of Juan Williams.

But they want us to support them with our tax dollars.

NPR and PBS were founded back in the day when you could legitimately claim a lack of diversity in radio and television.  That was one of the things—the other being the educational potential of television—which intrigued my father.

There were three TV networks—even Fox had yet to be born—and three radio stations in most towns.  Even Spiro Agnew pointed out that the news was decided by the nattering nabobs of negativism who controlled what the news was.

PBS has the temerity these days to run an ad campaign which says “if PBS doesn’t do it, who will?”

How’s this for an answer?  Discovery Communications, NBC Universal, Disney, CBS, Viacom, C-SPAN and 500 other networks including not one but seven full-time news or business networks.  We’ve come a long way from the time that Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street Week was the only business show on TV. 

So why are the taxpayers still funding this mostly liberal drivel?  Well, the answer is always, it’s not very much money.

But , nonetheless, it is the same money with which the taxpayers bought most of General Motors, AIG and use to keep 90 per cent of the land in Nevada. 

On November 2, you can strike back.  Consider the firing of Juan Williams another good reason to go to the polls and vote a loud “NO!” on government funding and control of most things.

Public Broadcasting, funded by tax dollars isn’t the problem.  It’s a symptom.

FRED WEINBERG

Reid: Crotchety, Out Of Touch And A Bit Crooked

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Sharron Angle mopped the floor with Harry Reid at last week’s debate but the fact is she did a thoroughly workman-like job of making him look like what he is: a crotchety old man who has completely lost touch with the state which sent him to Washington.

Certainly her mission was to step out of Harry’s sleazy commercials painting her as nuts and extreme and show herself to be what she is: a 61-year-old grandmother who—like most Nevadans—sincerely believes our government is headed down the wrong track and that the train needs to be stopped before we have a disaster.

That, she did.

This gives Harry a big problem.

His big argument is from the movie Animal House: Remain Calm! All Is Well!

With the highest unemployment numbers in the nation, we know damn well it is not.

His next argument comes for and from the so-called republicans for Reid. “I deliver for you!”

Unlike the postal service, however, Harry only delivers for his close personal friends.  MGM’s CEO, Anderson Dairy’s CEO, R&R Advertising’s CEO, Arcata Engineering’s CEO.  The rest of Nevada? Not so much.

His final argument is that we’ll lose his awesome power.

And the logical retort is, “So what?”

The debate showed that Sharron isn’t nuts.  None of Harry’s so-called affirmative arguments are working.

What’s an aging political hack to do?

The other issue which Sharron finally brought up was the fact that in 24 years in the Senate he seems to have become wealthy.

He stuttered a bit and called that a “low blow”.  He pointed out that he was a “successful” lawyer and made good investments.

Well, Harry’s legal career was so short, we don’t know how good a lawyer he might have become but the way we see his biography, he was the Henderson City Attorney in the 60s and spent three years out of public office between 1974 and 1977.  So either he was Denny Crane of Crane, Pool and Schmidt for three years or he had a lot of friends.

As far as his “investments” go, I suggest you Google “Harry Reid Land Deal, 2006” and thoroughly read the results.

You will discover that not only was Sharron’s point not a low blow but that Reid is lucky that he hasn’t had to face a Federal Grand Jury over those very questions.

The truth is that Harry’s days as a political master of the universe are coming to a close.

People don’t like to have their elected officials screw them and that’s what Harry has spent a long time doing.

This is only partly about his liberal politics.

While that would be reason enough to 86 him from public office, this is about his arrogance in serving his friends and ignoring everyone else.

The Los Angeles Times looked at the relationship Reid has with Ely and reported he actually had the nerve to ask the fellow who runs the Ely Railroad—a tourist attraction owned by the city, “If I got the $10 million(to rehabilitate the tracks), could you take down half the signs in Ely?” He was referring, of course, to the “Anybody BUTT Harry Reid” signs which sprang up by the hundreds after he killed the coal-fired power plants there.

We’re not surprised.  And we won’t be surprised when we can call Angle, Senator Angle.

FRED WEINBERG

Harry's "Friends" Are A Good Reason To Vote For Angle

John Smith, of the Las Vegas Review Journal, wrote a column last Sunday in which he pointed out that while Sharron Angle may be in a dead heat with Harry Reid, she’s getting crushed in the Nevada endorsement sweepstakes.

He, of course, is referring to the so-called “republicans for Reid” group.

What he fails to understand is the actual mindset of what Bill O’Reilly calls “the folks”.  Us. You and me.

One of the reasons that, assuming things continue as they are, Sharron Angle will unseat Harry Reid on November 2 is that there is a “republicans for Reid” group in the first place.

She won the primary election because a lot of Republican (you’ll note my use of capital letters here) voters have, simply put, had a sack full of the Sig Rogich, Bill Raggio, Dawn Gibbons, Jim Murren, Michael Yackira grab whatever you can, stick it in your pocket and pretend you actually have political principals while you are pretending to be a Republican philosophy.

That list of republicans for Reid may have a few people who are genuinely concerned about the future of all the voters, but most of them are trial lawyers, lobbyists, gaming executives and members of the political chattering class who have used Harry all of these years to carry their water and see no downside to being against Sharron Angle—even if she wins. And, because it is unlikely that Sharron will carry their water, there may well be no downside.

Take the putative state Senate minority leader Bill Raggio.

He’s 83 years old, termed out after this legislative session and has a lot in common with Barack Obama.  He, too, never met a tax he didn’t like.

He also barely won a very bitter battle against Sharron Angle over his seat.

Smith said that he is “arguably the most respected Republican in Nevada politics”.

I’ll take up that argument.

He’s the Nancy Pelosi of the Nevada GOP.  Nobody but Angle dared cross him.  And now that she’s a few weeks from beating Harry Reid, he’s arrogant enough to believe that his “endorsement” is going to cause the same voters who have already made the considered decision to get rid of Reid change their minds?

Give me a break.

What Nevada voters are saying is that they are sick and tired of being told who to vote for by people whose wallet depends on the outcome of an election.

For too many years, Nevada politics has been about the people who have been getting more by suckling at the public teat.

Hundreds of millions of no bid government dollars going to Harry’s favorite advertising agency.

Gaming licenses going to friends.  Hands being gently slapped when those friends went too far.

Big pieces of government land going to other friends.  Large profits being made on the sale of those lands.

Clark County Commissioners going to prison.  Nothing much changing.

Harry, himself, isn’t responsible for all of that. Not singlehandedly.

But he represents the interests of the people who are.  Including himself.  After all, he’s never had a job off the government payroll yet he’s wealthy.

And many of them—as many who dared—endorsed him.

You can tell an awful lot about somebody by the company they keep.

In my humble opinion, the mere voters of this state have looked at the people who say they want Harry re-elected and come to the conclusion that a vote for Angle is a twofer. 

You not only get rid of Harry, but you get a chance to tell these clowns where they can put their endorsements.

FRED WEINBERG

Maybe It's Time To Throw Them ALL Out

It took the home of the 15¢ hamburger to show how expensive Barack Hussein Obamacare is going to be.

Ever since Nevada’s Patron Saint Harry Reid decided that Obamacare was an essential part of his legislative agenda (the public sentiment be damned) businesses large and small warned Congress that what was included in the 2900 pages most of them had not read was toxic.

Last week, McDonalds told the world—and the Obama administration—that it would be forced to drop its mini-med plans it had specifically developed for its 30,000 mostly young, mostly part-time workers.

Why?

Well, it seems that in that 2900 pages, one of the toxic provisions which was not read my most of Congress and the administration is a provision which sets minimums which must be covered—never mind what people actually want to buy.

What McDonalds had developed was a plan which cost $14 a paycheck that covered most of what mostly young, mostly part-time people actually needed.  It is not—by any means—what Congress grants itself that we pay for.

But it is what makes health care—with limits—affordable to people who may work 20 hours a week for minimum wage.

And, having exposed Obamacare for what it actually is, two things happened when McDonalds pointed this out in public.

First, Senator Jay Rockefeller—a blowhard Democrat—opened an “investigation” into the McDonalds plan.  Anything which has “limited” benefits can’t be any good, right?

And, second, the White House put its collective finger in the wind and suggested that they will gratuitously “waive” the requirements of the law its occupants probably had not read so Micky D’s could go on offering an affordable alternative to its employees.

Isn’t that special.

You can now officially embarrass the White House into waiving the requirements of what it describes as its signature legislation because some clowns (Obama, Reid and Nancy Pelosi among them) had not read a bill they jammed down our throats.

Next up will be Wal Mart.  And every other business which has gone out of its way to work with its employees amongst the terrible economics of health care to find a way to help them out.

The problem here is not that we can’t do something.

McDonalds and Wal Mart already have.

The problem here is that Barack Hussein Obama always thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room and, as a result, mere employers know nothing.

This is what happens when you elect someone to run the country who has never run a candy store much less a city or a state.

The person who knows nothing—it turns out—is the young President who has actually never even held a real job.

But he’s not the only culprit.  There are 100 Senators and 435 Congressmen led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who think it is more important to investigate steroids in Major League Baseball and make sure musicians get paid by radio stations for playing their music than getting healthcare right or dealing with the nation’s tax structure.

Lest you think this is a partisan rant, let me assure you, it is not.

Simply put, if we threw the baby out with the bathwater in November, I can live with that.

The America which needs to be “fundamentally transformed” resides mostly between the Capitol Building and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

If we lose some of the few good guys left in the crossfire, well, that’s the nature of war.

FRED WEINBERG