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Canada's Quiet Revolution Against Cable

Americans are dimly aware of Canada’s existence, their propensity to say ‘eh,’ and not much else.  But while we were busy  shutting down our government to preserve the right to go bankrupt when we get sick, Canadian lawmakers have  been up to something that American cable operators are watching with nervous interest. 

In 2004, Senator John McCain noted that our cable TV packages give consumers “all the choice of a Soviet election ballot.”  Most customers don’t realize that you pay for each channel on your box:  C-SPAN: $0.06/month.  Comedy Central: $0.18.  MSNBC: $0.21.   And the king of the lineup, ESPN: $5.54.  Your grandmother’s paying nearly $70/year for ESPN, whether she watches or not.

Content providers like Disney sell their channels as bundles, packaging really popular channels like ESPN with also-rans (Soapnet).  This allows Disney to add new channels at a whim, and charge for them, all while continually ramping up the price for the package.  This buy-everything-or-nothing approach is passed on to cable customers.  The content providers win.  The cable companies win.  Grandma pays for College Gameday.

Which takes us back to Senator McCain, and his 2006 effort to break up this bundling practice.  The bill failed to emerge from the Senate Commerce Committee, losing on a 20-to-2 bipartisan vote.  Why were senators so united on the side of the media conglomerate, and so against grandma?

Perhaps it something to do with how adept Disney is at gladhandling politicians.  In February 2005, Disney flew the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Joe Barton (and his wife) down to DisneyWorld.  From February 5^th to the 7^th, Disney spent $3,354 on the Bartons lodging, $1,616 on airfare, and $1,200 for meals.  At that price, I hope Mickey was personally feeding the good couple from Texas.  Of course, this is chump change for Disney, but it ensures that politicians vote the right way on the right votes.  Or as McCain described it:  “They beat me like a drum.”

Which brings us back to our friends in Ottawa.  “"We don't think it's right for Canadians to have to pay for bundled television channels that they don't watch. We want to unbundle television channels and allow Canadians to pick and pay the specific television channels that they want,” explains Canada's Interior Minister James Moore.   Note that the Conservatives hold both the majority in Parliament and a good understanding of the true definition of Conservatism.  Sounds like free market, Adam Smith stuff to me, eh?

The clout of moneyed interests is at the root of Washington’s dysfunction.  While we’re distracted by heated debates about gay marriage, abortions, and the War Against Christmas, the votes that would save the 77% of American cable and satellite households hundreds of dollars a year are quietly killed in committee.  

Think about that the next time you reach for the remote.

Note: This post was inspired by an article I read in the August 26, 2013 edition of The New York Times entitled “To Protect Its Empire, ESPN Stays on Offense.”  

A Nihal Fall

The Northeast exhibits a wild spectrum of weather—rain, humidity, snowstorms—without the mortal danger posed by hurricanes or tornados.  But variability also has a downside:  rarely is the weather perfect.  July’s humidity feels like you’ve been basted in motor oil.  And a vicious January cold snap can leave you wistfully reminiscing about the previous July’s basting. 

But for a few days each fall, the climate gods smile.  The native conditions are still grounded in warmth, providing trees and grasses with a last chance to make some food out of sunlight.  In September, shorts and t-shirts still rule the day, with apple picking and Mets late season collapses setting an annual backdrop for summer’s last gasp.  At night, the air feels drier, and is just chilly enough to sleep with the windows open while seeking refuge under a down comforter.

With some luck, October gets its share of this weather, ideally on a weekend.  On those days, I’d fire up my John Deere lawn tractor, set to blow the leaves which have fallen in my backyard into the woods behind.  The leaves singed by my blade, the tractor’s exhaust, and the freshly-mowed lawn clippings all combine to deliver a smell that encapsulates fall.  Although the sun seems to set just a bit too early, it lends an encompassing red glow to the chore’s final act.

The killing frost isn’t far away, and that’s a good thing. I’ll pull my unfashionable green parka out of the closet, ready to bask in my favorite season, winter.  Local TV weathermen, banished into irrelevance by the temperate fall weather, fire up their graphics machines and rub their hands in anticipation of the metaphors which will allow them to compare a 10-inch snowfall to Armageddon.   

Fall always seems short, compressed on both sides by its more noisy siblings.  But those few days on which the season performs a solo on the climatic stage seem to redefine perfection. 

Fall 2007.  Minuteman National Park. Concord, Massachusetts.

On American Exceptionalism

In a September 11th New York Times op-ed, Russian President Vladimir Putin challenged one of the bedrock assumptions Americans make about ourselves: that we’re somehow different and special.  “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation,” wrote Putin.  “We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

High minded words from the Russian strongman, but I wondered if there was any truth to what he was saying.  After all:

The Longfellow Bridge used to connect Boston to Cambridge, but Cambridge-bound traffic is blocked—for 3 1/2 years!—while the 1,700 foot bridge is rehabbed.  I wonder if the Army engineers who took 10 hours in 1945 to build a 1,000 foot bridge across the Rhine would consider our modern timetables exceptional?

This fall, some in Congress are gearing up to hold the nation’s creditworthiness hostage unless their demands to defund Obamacare are met.  It’s certainly a flawed law, but it’s an unexceptional strategy to suggest that America default on US Treasury Bonds unless some politicians get their way.  Sort of like pointing a loaded gun at a kid who won’t eat his peas. 

For exceptionalism these days, we breathlessly wait for the latest product announcement from Apple.  And it’s true that the innovation from Silicon Valley is the envy of the world.  Just as Hollywood remains peerless in the global entertainment industry.  But while this sort of exceptionalism grabs the headlines, it’s tangential to the daily life of the average American.  Sure, my iPhone allows me to pass the time as my morning train takes 20-30 minutes to trundle 9 miles through the congested one-track tunnel between Newark and New York, but I’d rather have back the 13 minute ride and Motorola StarTAC of my youth. 

Above all, it seems to me that the truly exceptional wouldn’t continually point to themselves and say “Look at me.  I’m exceptional.”  One need only YouTube “Rafael Nadal Press Conference” to see how the exceptional carefully measure their words about themselves.  Instead, the exceptional leave it to others to either acknowledge or disparage the exceptionality.  And by that test, according to Putin, we’re still exceptional.   

And yes, I’ll be upgrading to the iPhone 5s.

The Case for Intervention in Syria

The Case for Intervention in Syria

While my instinct is to recoil at the idea of getting involved in yet another Arab country, President Obama has got it right.  Chemical weapons are a particularly horrific weapon to use on armed forces, much less on a helpless civilian population.   A strike against the soft targets of the al-Assad regime would deliver a simple and powerful message: the cost of using weapons of mass destruction far outweighs their tactical benefits.

It’s also been a while since we’ve seen our branches of government act with such an acute sense of the national interest.  In a matter of days, debates kicked off, key votes were scheduled, and the Congressional leadership has thrown its support behind the President, prioritizing the national interest above petty partisan politics.  

I wonder which issue our newly energized leadership will tackle next?  Figuring out how the Japanese spend 50% less per capita on healthcare, yet manage to live four years longer?  Getting Detroit (once our third largest city) back on its feet?  Understanding how Switzerland can have more guns per capita than the US, yet a sixth of the per capita deaths by guns? Attracting and retaining the very best immigrants from around the world?  Repairing the 1 in 9 American bridges that are structurally deficient? Figuring out how poor kids can be nudged toward studying hard and not getting pregnant out of wedlock? Gosh, it’s going to be exciting to see which of these issues—each clearly as intractable as the Syrian Civil War—will be tackled by our newly courageous and decisive leaders.

I’m also looking forward to seeing how our military investment (each Tomahawk missile fired at Damascus costs $1.2 million) pays dividends for America.  Surely the civilian population will understand and appreciate our efforts to punish the al-Assad regime, even if a few folks are lost to “collateral damage.”  Sure, we’ve made some mistakes, but the Iranians long ago forgave us for our 1953 overthrow of their democratically-elected government, didn’t they?  And after we’ve tipped the balance toward the rebels, I’m sure they’ll forget their caveman-like interpretation of religion and ancient sectarian rivalries to become a bright beacon of representative democracy and a close ally of the United States.  “The Canada of the Middle East,” to coin a phrase. 

The speed at which America makes war is impressive, isn’t it?  I guess that’s what the President was referring to when he campaigned on the “fierce urgency of now.”  

On Defense and Offense

On the evening of Sunday, May 1st, I was at the Mets/Phillies game in Philadelphia. I was sitting 10 rows behind third base, allowing the camera to share my frustrations as a Mets fan with the stadium and the national audience on ESPN:

Click to Enlarge

But the big story that night wasn’t how I survived 14 innings wearing a Mets cap amongst home fans that pride themselves on setting the global standard for alcohol-inspired thuggery. Instead, that was the same night that Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan. Chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A” were taken up a few times by the assembled crowd, although I can report that media-fueled stories of Mets and Phillies fans linking arms in harmony were exaggerated. A Philadelphia fan has enough hatred in his tank to deploy it simultaneously against Osama and David Wright.

I later learned that rabid Mets fan and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie* was also in the crowd. I wonder if he savored the irony of how America can flawlessly plan and execute a secret military mission 7,000 miles from home, but can’t figure out how to build a new transport tunnel between New York and New Jersey. The last tunnel for cars was built in 1957. The last one for trains in 1910. 1910—two years before the Titanic sailed. But we got Osama, didn’t we? Back pats and chest thumps all around!

Killing Osama bin Laden, however satisfying to all of us, is nothing more than the government playing defense. Providing universal access to education, mobility and basic health care to a country that is expected to add 100 million people by 2050 is critical to ensure that Americans’ standard of living continues to increase. That’s the government on offense, and don’t let dead-end tea party rhetoric fool you: read any economics textbook, and you’ll learn that it’s a role that only the government can play.

It takes a New Jersey Transit train thirty to forty-five minutes to travel the nine miles of overburdened, congested tracks between Newark and New York. That's plenty of time for me to read about the details of the Abbottabad raid (my favorite: the $80,000 Navy SEAL dog that wears a wireless headset to communicate with its master). But as we crawled along due to yet another unscheduled, inexplicable delay, I also seethed about how my government can put a bullet through the head of a terrorist, but can’t guarantee that I’ll be at work for a 9am meeting. We need the capability to do both, but which do you think is more relevant to our long-term economic prosperity?

The Mets managed to push across a run in the top of the 14th inning that night, sending both the Governor and I home happy. Here’s to hoping he took away the lesson that you can play defense for 14 innings, but you’re not going to win unless you manage to put together a successful offense for at least one of the frames.



* Editor's Note: This month at a town hall in Manalapan, New Jersey, Christie was asked if he believed in evolution. He refused to answer. So never mind about the trains--New Jersey's got bigger problems.