Author Archive

Bob Maistros

Talking point of the day:

National Public Radio Senior Vice President Ron Schiller, in the damning surreptitious video that got him fired:  “The challenge right now is that if we lost it (federal funding) altogether, we’d have a lot of stations go dark.”

NPR: a little behind the times.

NPR media reporter David Folkenflik on the air Wednesday. “The fear is that up to 100 stations could go dark without it.”

Dave Edwards, NPR chairman, to the Associated Press: “It is absolutely true that without federal funding, a lot of our public radio and public TV stations in the system could go dark, and that will happen in some of the smallest communities we serve.”

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D/OR), founder and chairman of the House Public Broadcasting Caucus, quoted (directly and indirectly) in today’s Wall Street Journal: “without federal funding, some stations in smaller communities, where donations are harder to attract, ‘could go dark.’”

Well, at least they have their lines down.

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Bob Maistros

So once again they’re playing chicken in DC over a government shutdown.

Like a shutdown for a few days, while partisan bickering goes on and the Democrats try to play the media card, portraying Republicans as heartless scum who want to kick Grandma down the stairs, starve children, leave veterans destitute, close parks and halt “vital” services.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Listen here.  They don’t know from shutdowns.

Go ahead. Make my day.

I’ll tell you about shutdowns.  The empty storefronts here even in our relatively affluent Ashburn, Virginia community as restaurants, gyms and retail establishments close their doors for good.  The notices many of my friends are getting that their jobs won’t exist anymore.

Important clients who suddenly disappear – no more emails, no more calls, no more answers to inquiries, no explanations, and no more projects.  Factory gates chained shut as operations and jobs are moved to another part of the country or world.  Planned investments that are simply canceled for lack of funds and market prospects.

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Bob Maistros

The Brits have a great word for it.

Gobsmacked.

Derived from the action of slapping one’s hand to one’s mouth in utter shock, surprise and frequently, dismay.

Gobsmacked.

Indeed.

It was my only possible response at hearing that the Obama Administration had decided, all on its lonesome, to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act as cases challenging its constitutionality wind their way – in parallel to challenges to California’s Marriage Amendment – to the nation’s highest court.

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Bob Maistros

Teachers and other government employees lying to their supervisors, calling in sick to attend protests aimed at lining their nests at the expense of taxpayers?

Fire ‘em.  It’s a no-brainer.  Sure, you’ll probably have to jump through some hoops and work through union procedures.  At least suspend them.  That’s not even a hard question.

Time for the pink slips.

But at least the teachers and other employees can be excused to a certain extent for looking out for their own interests.  They want to keep the gravy train running.  I get it.

The public employees who should really be shown the door – not only in Wisconsin but in Indiana as well – are the senators who have taken it on the lam to deprive their bodies a quorum on votes to remove bargaining rights for state workers.

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Bob Maistros

Suppose I were to suggest a 100-meter race between Usain Bolt and a Maserati – with the Jamaican world-record holder having to wait in the blocks a full second after the starting gun.

How about if I were to propose a tug-of-war between Arnold Schwarzenegger (in his prime) and a Hummer – with the Austrian Oak competing with one hand tied behind his back?

If I only had a REAL brain.

What about this:  Aretha Franklin matching a foghorn decibel-for-decibel – without a mike?

Absurd, you would respond.

Silly, you might say.

Maistros is losing it, you might think.  (OK, you’ve been thinking that anyway.)

So why is it that the whole world is so accepting of the notion that IBM’s “Watson” computer fairly defeated two former champions in a Jeopardy match?

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Bob Maistros

Wow.

It seems like mere moments since the Congressional Budget Office released one shock-and-awe sort of prediction – that the budget deficit would hit an incredible, inedible (as in hard to swallow), record $1.48 trillion in this very fiscal year, 2011, which really began on October 1, 2010.

So yesterday.

Real money.

Turns out, according to the President of the United States, one Barack Hussein (“Roll the Printing Presses”) Obama, this year’s actual budget deficit will be $1.65 trillion.

To allow for a little perspective on this matter:  when I was a young but preternaturally aware child of eight years old, the entire federal budget was $100 billion (and the government’s hitting that figure raised a major fuss).  It didn’t clamber up over $170 billion for another seven whole years, driven by LBJ’s “guns and butter” combo of the Great Society and Vietnam.

And it was sometime in that era that legendary Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen is said to have uttered his humorous observation, “A billion here, and billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

Real money, huh?  These days, $170 billion is a rounding error in the federal deficit.

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Bob Maistros

When AOL climbed back into the business headlines this week with its pickup of The Huffington Post, all eyes were on the colorful visionary who lent her moniker and outsized aura to the ueber-blog – Arriana Huffington.

But perhaps an even bigger part of the story bears a name you’ve probably never heard of if you operate outside of New York City business circles:  Kenneth B. Lerer.

Vindicated.

For Kenny, my onetime boss and HuffPo’s chairman and co-founder, the site’s big-dollar purchase by AOL is revenge served cold, and very sweet indeed.  After all, the Internet pioneer – then styled AOL Time Warner, and since spun off to regain its independence – showed him the door after the infamous, sad-sack merger, when the long knives from the Time Warner executive suite marked him for career extinction.  And he comes back having virtually remade two industries – public relations and journalism – and played a major role in establishing another.

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Bob Maistros

Obamacare is stuffed full of costly, ugly mandates – not just the individual mandate to buy insurance, but as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels pointed out in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, lots of expensive demands on states, not to mention insurance companies, employers and providers.

So the key question:  what to replace it with?

Take your medicine, says Washingon.

The GOP’s answer? Replace some, not all, of the bill’s mandates with their own mandates.

The Republicans would keep some of Obamacare’s really dumb burdens on insurance companies, styled as consumer protections – including a ban on exclusions for pre-existing conditions and the requirement to allow children up to 25 years of age to remain on their parents’ policies.

Moreover, the GOP plan would engage in its own interventions, including medical malpractice reforms, prohibitions on canceling policies, paying states that reduce premiums and the number of uninsured, and ordering the sale of health insurance policies across state lines.

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Bob Maistros

The great political philosopher Hannah Arendt – having observed the Adolf Eichmann trial and been appalled by Nazi horrors perpetrated by small men acting “normally” – coined the phrase “the banality of evil.”

In undercover videos taken by activist group Live Action at Planned Parenthood clinics in New Jersey and Virginia, we’re seeing banality done one better.  The videos demonstrate evil’s downright giddy side.

Let's get this party started.

A lot of attention has been paid to especially sinister aspects of the exposé such as the principals’ discussions of services for underage prostitutes and illegal aliens.

OK, sure.  All that spices up the story somewhat.

But the facet that stood out to me was just how routine — and even gleeful — the provision of abortion services appeared for the Planned Parenthood employees.

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To the tune of “Let it Be” with apologies to Lennon and McCartney:

Bob Maistros

When I find the world in times of trouble,
Brother Jimmy comes to me
Speaking words of weakness,
Let it be.
In Egypt’s hour of darkness
His example stands right out for me
Spurning our uniqueness
Let it be.

What? Me intervene?

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Though they Wikileak us, let it be.

And when freedom-desiring people
In Iran or China grieve,
And there’s an uprising,
Let it be.
For though they are inspiring
They will never hear a word from me,
Answer’s unsurprising.
Let it be.

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