Obama’s Public Works, FCC Diversity Mandates and the Auto Bailout

1. POLITICS

President-elect Obama promises the largest spending program on public works programs since the 1950s.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on why throwing money at infrastructure programs won’t create a healthy economy:

 

“JOBS, ROADS, BRIDGES, SCHOOLS, BROADBAND, ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS, ENERGY…blares the Drudge Report. It’s President-elect Obama’s weekend plan—not to produce, but to transfer yet more of the nation’s dwindling wealth to those with political pull…Genuine leadership does not consist of promising to take yet more of other people’s stuff and giving it to corporations, government contractors, the GAO and other federal agencies that should’ve already been energy efficient; [to direct it to]  wasteful ‘renewable’ energy plans, drafty school buildings, inferior broadband schemes, medical-record ‘computerization’ that can’t work anyway because of still other government regulation. New candidates are sure to pop up next week.”

 

 

2. TECHNOLOGY

Obama tech advisor Henry Rivera endorses a proposal to expand minority ownership of TV stations.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Information Policy Analyst Ryan Radia on why the proposed “diversity” reform is unnecessary:

 

“The S-Class proposal, like other media reform proposals, falsely assumes that current owners of media outlets are failing to meet the demands of their audience for a diverse range of content. The proposal also ignores the fact that consumers already enjoy an abundance of voices from all viewpoints…The reason we aren’t seeing more of the programming that media reformistas desire is not because there’s a paucity of small and distressed station owners, but because most television viewers simply don’t care for the same kind of content as the folks at the Media Access Project.”

 

 

3. BUSINESS

Members of Congress work to finalize a bailout package for U.S. car makers.  

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer on what form future aid packages will likely take:

“…here’s one prediction: this $15 billion stopgap is all the automakers will get in direct aid-as-aid. It isn’t that Congress will suddenly become convinced that bad companies should be allowed to fail. Rather, it’s that other concerns will take precedence and can serve the function of an auto bailout anyway. Thus, I’d suspect that future aid to automakers, direct and indirect, will flow under other labels. Two likely vehicles: infrastructure stimulus and health care reform. An infrastructure bill could and probably will include grants and loans to help build ‘green’ industry. Cash-desperate automakers will take them. Health care reform, if it strengthens the individual market and shifts some obligations, subsidies, and incentives from businesses to individuals, could also let automakers welsh on commitments they’ve made to union healthcare trusts and save money that way.”

 

 

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