Today’s Links: July 13, 2012

OPINION

DEREK THOMPSON: “The End of TV and the Death of the Cable Bundle
“Every year, 100 million homes pay for a bundle of cable channels. […] For these millions of households — who don’t watch live sports; or only want HBO; or only need their Law & Order, ANTM, and Daily Show fix; etc — an à la carte option for television would almost certainly be cheaper. But à la carte would blow up television, which has been the most dependable and lucrative business model in modern entertainment history. The Internet gutted the music industry. Print journalism has been forced to innovate or die — or, sometimes, both simultaneously — in response to the Web. The American movie industry has survived fundamentally because it learned to diversify away from the terms ‘American’ and ‘movie industry’ — most of their revenue now comes from overseas and ‘merchandise-able’ franchises. But the cable bundle is still basically the cable bundle, and it is still growing by hundreds of thousands of subscribers a year. Innovation is an answer to a problem. As long as cable providers don’t have a revenue problem, they have less need to innovate.”

ANTHONY RANDAZZO: “The Fed’s Harmful Monetary Policy
“Today’s monetary policy debates sound increasingly like the process of trying to get a picture on the wall centered and straight: ‘A little more to the left.’ ‘No, that’s not helping, more to the left.’ ‘Yes, that is helping.’ ‘No, that is making it worse, back to the right.’ Depending on your perspective, the picture is either crooked or straight. And when a host of people is noisily debating whether the frame should be tilted left or right, the sound can become downright unhelpful. The same goes for monetary policy.”

GROVER NORQUIST & PATRICK GLEASON: “President Obama, Mitt Romney and Truth in Outsourcing
“The crucial factor in any employer’s decision to move, relocate or expand facilities and create jobs is policy. Obama and his supporters may want to distract with baseless allegations about Romney’s business dealings — but there is concrete evidence that a number of policies imposed or supported by the White House and Senate Democrats have led to the outsourcing of thousands of U.S. jobs. Consider the five-year Farm Bill, approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate on June 21. One egregious aspect of this unnecessary $969-billion legislative monstrosity is the fact that it maintains Washington’s arcane and counterproductive sugar policies.”

NEWS

IMMIGRATION – FAIR Misleads Sheriffs
“The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the anti-immigrant hate group behind draconian immigration enforcement laws in Arizona, Alabama and elsewhere, appears to have misled law enforcement officers about a training program it’s sponsoring in Texas, Hatewatch has learned.”

GAMBLING – Legalize Sports Betting in California? Voters Say Yes, Field Poll finds
“Californians overwhelmingly want the right to gamble on sports events in their state, too, judging from Field Poll results released Thursday.”

INTERNATIONAL – FBI Targets Chinese Firm Over Iran Deal
“The FBI has opened a criminal investigation targeting a leading Chinese telecommunications firm that allegedly conspired to illegally ship hardware and software purchased from U.S. tech firms to Iran’s government-controlled telecom company, a violation of several federal laws and a trade embargo imposed on the outlaw Islamic nation, The Smoking Gun has learned.”