Well, Michelle Malkin's column and blog today report that top Connecticut officials think government should keep their small city newspapers from going out of business. I link it here because it is the apotheosis of bailout mentality. Not only do we forget that markets operate in sometimes brutal cycles, but also that technology disrupts entire industries and remakes them. You go with the cycles, and try to get the dislocated back in the game. You don't try to contradict market forces; it's like trying to make water run uphill. To most of us, this is old news, part of an economics class in college or a Wall Street Journal oped. But not to Connecticutt's political leadership:
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal asserted: “The newspaper is an information lifeline. It provides really an essential service.” Among the “essential services” Blumenthal thinks taxpayers should prop up: marriage notices and school sports announcements.These items are easily and effectively disseminated online. Connnecticut consumers who are passing up the newspapers who offer these products obviously don’t agree with Blumenthal that it’s “essential” to get them in dead-tree form. But Gov. Rell seems to believe that quaintness is an argument for government funding: “There’s something about having that paper and being able to sit there with your cup of coffee or your tea and read through and find out not only the news but the real feel for a community.”
I've remarked in the past how aloof our political class seems to be, interested in us only when elections come around, with only pollsters to connect our lives to theirs. Here, then, is one more data point of proof.
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