What do industries sound like when they're dying?

The Washington Post has a bracing story about the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) suing people for downloading CDs onto their computers. Not sharing anything, just downloading.

It's sad, not so much for the defendants, who are rightly appealing, but for the recording industry which views litigation as its best hope for the future.

From the reporter:

The RIAA's legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only "created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies," [attorney Ray] Beckerman says. " Every problem they're trying to solve is worse now than when they started.

From the RIAA:

The industry "will continue to bring lawsuits" against those who "ignore years of warnings," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said in a statement. "It's not our first choice, but it's a necessary part of the equation. There are consequences for breaking the law."

This is a tricky issue, and we don't know of any easy solutions. But it behooves the recording industry to come up with a better business plan than litigation.

Wait. Are we saying the same thing?

Chuck Leddy has an instructive review in the Globe of Robert Kuttner’s The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity.

One of the biggest problems in America, according to Kuttner and Leddy, is the fallout from the “deregulation craze” of the last three decades. Leddy defines this craze as the belief that “free markets will solve everything.”

Interestingly (and paradoxically) Leddy cites examples of government intervention as instances of the “deregulation craze” at work. In fact, Leddy approvingly quotes Kuttner as calling the government a “crisis enabler.” Free markets lumped in with government intervention? What gives?

Leddy, Kuttner, and many of our friends on the left-hand side of things, sometimes miss the distinction between Big Business and free markets.

Big Business and free markets are not the same, and neither are their interests. Oil companies, for example, may cry for deregulation when it suits them, but favor burdensome rules and red-tape when it might hurt their competitors.

It’s in the nature of special interest groups to oppose general principles. That’s why they’re called special. When a special interest group (like oil companies, for example) calls for deregulation, the next question should always be: deregulation of what, exactly, and for whom?

Related to this issue, Reason has an interview on their site with NYT reporter David Cay Johnston, who recently wrote Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill). Writing from the other end of the spectrum, Johnston essentially agrees with Kuttner (and Leddy) that government meddling in markets ultimately hurts people and communities.

Examples... Superstores getting tax breaks from towns, and subsequently wiping out smaller competitors. Cities raising taxes to subsidize private companies (like George Bush's Texas Rangers). Barron Hilton playing the courts until he found a judge that would undermine the plain meaning of his father's will, which had left the family's fortune to a charitable foundation.

When Big Business and Big Government get into bed together, we no longer have free markets.

I have no objection to people getting wealthy. Just get wealthy off hard work and enterprise, not getting government to pass rules no one knows about that reach into my pocket and take money out of it.

Some wisdom from Mr Johnston.

Beyond Zero-Sum

It's easy to think everything's a zero-sum game. "If the rich get richer, then the poor must get poorer." Right? That's a prevalent example of zero-sum thinking. It's also false. When human beings are involved, things are (thankfully) much more complex.

The so-called paperless office is another example of fallacious zero-sum thinking. With the explosion of digital technology, experts have been predicting the imminent arrival of the paperless office. If we send memos electronically then we'll cut down on paper use. Right? Notably, in 2002, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper exposed The Myth of the Paperless Office. We print more today than ever before.

Here's a new addition to the zero-sum folder. According to a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Generation Y, born between 1981–1995, uses libraries more than any other age group.

"These findings turn our thinking about libraries upside down ... Internet use seems to create an information hunger and it is information-savvy young people who are most likely to visit libraries."

"I'm an American before I'm a Republican"

Danforth said he remains a Republican but finds little cause for optimism among the current GOP candidates. "My party is appealing to a real meanness," he said in an interview, "and an irresponsible sense of machismo in foreign policy. I hope it will be less extreme, but I'm an American before I'm a Republican."

Party Poopers

David Broder reports,

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a potential independent candidate for president, has scheduled a meeting next week with a dozen leading Democrats and Republicans, who will join him in challenging the major-party contenders to spell out their plans for forming a "government of national unity" to end the gridlock in Washington.

Conveners of the meeting include former senators Sam Nunn (Ga.), Charles S. Robb (Va.) and David L. Boren (Okla.), and former presidential candidate Gary Hart, as well as Sen. Chuch Hagel (Neb.), former GOP chairman Bill Brock, former senator John Danforth (Mo.) and former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman.

Who would Bloomberg hurt the most? Our guess is McCain or Giuliani against either Clinton or Obama. If Huckabee won the nomination we think moderate Republican and most independent voters would opt for anybody the Democrats put up, so Bloomberg could probably count on much of that support.

Unless Huckabee gets the nod, we don't see a Bloomberg run accomplishing much short-term good.

If McCain or Giuliani gets the nomination, Bloomberg would only siphon moderate and independent votes, and hand a victory to the Democrats. In that case, Evangelical conservatives would feel vindicated in believing that the future of the GOP is theirs. It would effectually close the book on moderate Republicans representing their party in presidential elections.

A vindicated religious right would be bad news for the GOP. Indeed, the ascendency of extremism in either party would be bad for all Americans.

For background, it's worth knowing that Broder was writing about a possible Bloomberg/Hagel ticket back in August. His speculations are looking better and better...

"Imitation is suicide"

Patti Davis:

Can't we go back to respecting the privacy of religious faith and stop using God as a campaign tool? And can't we please, please, please admit that imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery; it's just an indication that the imitator is going through a serious identity crisis.

Man of Many Faces

The Boston Phoenix has some terrific pieces in the most recent issue. In "McCain Still Able" Steven Stark assesses the chances of the leading presidential contenders. (As you can tell from the title, McCain gets the best marks provided he survives his own party's activists.)

On Mitt:

7) MITT ROMNEY If Romney had run as a Northeast new-face businessman, he’d have had the persona to wage a formidable general-election campaign, putting the Democratic base at risk with the same strengths as Giuliani. Alas, he chose to run as the man of a thousand faces. Even as the nominee, it would be hard to see how he could reinvent himself once again as a centrist. And the religious issue would still be lurking.

Make it in Massachusetts

From the Tax Foundation:

Massachusetts has the fourth highest corporate income tax rate, 9.5 percent. Add that to the federal rate of 35 percent, and Bay State businesses pay a higher corporate tax rate than in any other developed nation. It's 36.1 percent in Canada, 34.4 percent in France, 30 percent in Britain and 28 percent in Sweden.

"replenish the earth"

Have you heard of Newt Gingrich's latest, A Contract with the Earth? Neither had we. Lest you think it's a work of irony, the book boasts an introduction by Harvard's E. O. Wilson, and a blurb on the back from our very own Senator John Kerry.

A taste from this surprising little book:

Americans must reach a broad-based agreement on the environment. Adversarial politics has prevented a strategic consensus from driving our nation’s environmental vision. As a result, we have become a conflicted, confused, and timid polity when it comes to environmental concerns. Historically, America has been a decisive nation. We must now take the necessary steps to return our country to a position of leadership on the environment. It is not too late to make a difference... I am convinced ... the environment is an issue that transcends politics. Americans deserve candor on this subject: why the environment is so important to all of us, and why the time has come to act on what we know.

The South shall rise again

Clive Crook has a column in the Financial Times about the growing importance of economic populism (read: protectionism), among both Democrats and Republicans, in the presidential race.

Huckabee's rise in the Republican race, in particular,

underlines ... the growing appeal of economic populism among supporters of both parties.

Democrats, and paleo-conservatives like Pat Buchanan, have regularly adopted populist positions on trade, taxes, and corporate regulation. The difference in this election cycle is to hear the same tune sung by leading GOP contenders.

Mr Huckabee is an evangelical – his faith leads him to reject the theory of evolution and to favour constitutional amendments to ban abortion and gay marriage – but he is an economic populist as well. On trade, on the tyrannical power of Wall Street and sometimes even on public spending, he sounds more like John Edwards than Mr Romney.

Baptist preacher from Arkansas. Socially conservative. Economic protectionist. Sounds like a Southern Democrat to us.

Perhaps the Republican Party is finally reaping the rotten fruits of their Southern strategy.

Family Circus

Hat tip to the BlogCabin for mentioning this USA Today piece on "family values" and American voters:

Most voters say family values in general are important to them, but a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds they don't care much about candidates' personal lives.

Babel and High Taxes

Here's an interesting link from Tyler Cowen, of Discover Your Own Inner Economist fame. In a nutshell...

European governments are able to maintain high taxes because the citizens in the various European countries are effectively held hostage by their linguistic limitations. The Dane who knows only Danish, for example, can't easily move to Slovakia for the tax advantages there. Competition based on relative tax rates is minimized by lack of language skills.

However, with the spread of common languages, like English, governments will be less able to take their taxpayers for granted. Increasingly, for example, English-speaking Danes reeling at 68% tax rates are leaving for the UK and other EU countries.

Closer to home, competitive tax rates explain phenomena like Boston's Fidelity sending operations south to Rhode Island and North Carolina.

Huckacide

Bloomberg has a good article on the intra-party conflict between Wall Street and the Evangelicals, epitomized in this election cycle by Mike Huckabee.

The roots of this tension go back to the 1970s when the GOP decided to woo Democrats alienated by the ascendancy of the McGovern wing of the Democratic Party.

At the time, it meant paying lip-service to the God-and-apple-pie folks in the South and Midwest. Work hard, go to church, be nice to your neighbors... Who can argue with values like those?

Well, things have changed. And the Evangelicals want what they think is rightfully theirs -- power.

"From Reagan on, the rhetoric from Republican presidents was always more responsive to the evangelical community than the actions that they took,'' said Thomas Mann, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "It's one of the reasons why some religious conservatives have become disaffected by the political process.''

Tax refunds can be bad for you?

Here's a smart article in the Globe about the pernicious effect of overwithholding from your paycheck. Pernicious because it prevents you from investing that money, or depositing it in a savings account, where it will accrue interest.

Running on hope -- and not much else

The Globe reports that Deval Patrick will campaign for Obama in key states, including New Hampshire.

Is that a good idea? They both have weaknesses for extravagant rhetoric (think: hope). They try to cast their lack of transferable experience as a bonus. And, despite their rhetoric, they’re both committed to the same failed policies to which Democrats have clung for the last 40 years.

By associating himself with Deval Patrick, Obama will only strengthen the impression that he’s a paper tiger.

In the last year, the citizens of Massachusetts have learned that it takes more than “hope” to govern a state, never mind a country. Let’s hope the rest of the United States doesn’t have to learn the same lesson.

Bad Architecture, Bureaucracy (and Taxes)

Move over, Prince Charles. Former Boston University president John Silber covets your title as the world's leading Architecture Crank … To be fair, there are some fascinating moments in Silber's new book…

Thus begins the Globe's Alex Beam in his review of John Silber’s latest book, Architecture of the Absurd.

That captures well the short, playful book based on a lecture Silber delivered after his induction as an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Reviews (besides Beam’s) here and here.

One of Silber’s more interesting arguments is that absurd architecture is inversely related to the stake of the people spending money on the project. Consequently, it’s largely nonprofits – museums, arts organizations and universities – that spend gobs of money (usually well over budget) on spectacular messes. Silber would probably cite MIT’s Stata Center, designed by Frank Gehry, as an apt example.

Responsibility – financial and moral – is spread among dozens and sometimes hundreds of board members and donors. At the end of the day, the people making the most important decisions have very little, if anything, to lose.

That same kind of "division of responsibility" wreaks havoc in the public sphere, too.

Ronald Reagan, Heretic

When the author of a book entitled John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father thinks that some in the Republican Party have become overly religious, you know there's a problem.

Peggy Noonan on whether Ronald Reagan would survive the Southern fried mullahs in today's GOP...

Changes at MassGOP

Last summer, a number of changes hit the leadership of the Massachusetts Republican Party.

In August, executive director Brian Dodge resigned for a lobbyist position in the DC area. He watched his party’s presence on Beacon Hill shrink to less than 10 percent. Within a decade the remarkable gains initiated by Bill Weld’s election were squandered by pandering to the religious right.

Anybody who reads the newspapers knows that such pandering is political suicide in Massachusetts. But it pays in Washington. It did for Dodge; and Romney’s certainly betting on it.

A month later, the party leadership tapped Robert Willington to fill Dodge’s shoes. He brings youthful enthusiasm, and much-needed Internet savvy to Merrimack Street. Less promising, though, is the fact that Willington cut his teeth on the (fortunately) unsuccessful VoteOnMarriage campaign.

Willington's selection is troubling because he fought to enshrine, in our opinion, a wrong-headed concept of civil marriage. Willington is young and sharp, but if he wastes political capital on right-wing social policies he'll do as well at the helm of the MassGOP as his immediate predecessor did.

"the party of Coolidge, Lodge, Saltonstall..."

Ronald Reagan … once said that he hadn’t left the Democratic Party but that it had left him; I must say I feel the same way about the Republican Party.

That sentiment, penned by the Rev’d Peter Gomes ahead of last year’s gubernatorial election, captured the feelings of many Massachusetts Republicans. It certainly captured ours. How could “the party of Coolidge, Lodge, Saltonstall, Herter, and Sargent” have fallen under the spell of a God-and-government coalition?

Even so, we continue to see evidence of the finest traditions of the Republican Party. Limited government, free markets, low taxes, personal responsibility, and individual liberty. There’s reason to hope.

We envision this blog as a resource in the fight for the soul of the GOP, in Massachusetts and the rest of the country.