What Happens When CBS Goes Bankrupt Too?

Government ownership of business will cause – as history has shown so many times – gross mismanagement and inefficiency. We can expect that, of course, but those are recoverable calamities. What worries me more is what happens when CBS goes bankrupt? The network news audience is dropping like a rock?

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What happens when USA Today goes under? The only major newspaper which has not lost readership, according to the latest audit, is the relatively conservative Wall Street Journal. Will Obama sit by idly while the workers at these companies lose their jobs? Are these companies institutions which have to be kept from dying a natural death? It is a bad idea, but not a ghastly idea, to have government take over a company that is making widgets. All that means to me is lower quality and more expensive widgets for the next few decades. If the nationalized company is making cars, it means that I spend extra money to keep my old car in good repair. But what if the company is in the business of creating the news, developing programs that affect ideological opinion, and defining what matters in our public discourse? What if government bureaucrats run the companies responsible for critiquing their political bosses? It is bad enough today when criticism of Obama brings a swift kick in the pants not only by your own bosses but by the bosses of their competitors. But at least this reflects no more than the predictable bigotry of the Left. What happens when criticizing Obama becomes some sort of violation of government policy? Does it seem unthinkable? Forty years ago, who would have thought that school teachers would be giving homework assignments to praise Obama? (And who would have thought that the Federal Government would be dictating so much of what schools do?) Who would have thought ten years ago that the media would collude to hide evidence of presidential malfeasance? If there is any rule to how Leftists use power, it is surely this: the Left does not respect any rules. As Barry Obama’s pals run General Motors, is anyone going to check to see how much money corporate executives contribute to Democrat candidates? That is, after all, how the Left rates the performance of UAW bosses. If Chicago bosses shake down money to fund the one-party Democrat rule in that ethically challenged city, what makes us think that the new Chicago Gang will not do just the same thing with national businesses? What will keep political hacks from filling the management officers of major corporations that our government buys? What will keep these hacks from pressuring smaller business partners from making “wise” decisions regarding which candidates, parties, and causes to support? If you are a conservative Republican CEO who does business with General Motors right now, are you rethinking how openly or generously you help those politicians who truly support? Are you balancing your career against your conscience? What about the advertising campaigns of big companies that Obama - Oops! “The Government” – owns? Do they spread a general message of hope, especially in the months before the 2010 midterm elections? Do they mimic the myths of global warming? Do they use the word “Green” in every other sentence? Do the advertising departments and ad agencies of big Obama-owned businesses begin to conform their message very closely to the Boss’s message? Once the federal government begins to buy America, there is no clear place to stop. Once Obama’s purely political minions realize that they control a huge amount of the corporate wealth of America, what will prevent them from turning that wealth into “soft” campaign contributions or, at least, ideologically bent ad campaigns which laud our Narcissist-in-Chief and explain, just like Pravda years ago, how day by day in every way our new rulers are making the world better. Power is a snowball. When checks and balances end in government, we have seen the muck that follows. When state governments become lifeless appendages of federal bureaucracies, we have seen much the same. When education becomes nationalized, censored, and uniform, then real education dies – as it most certainly has in America. But when the very livelihood of the people has now become the property of those who run government, when the very tools to criticize politicians has been purchased with tax dollars for the use of politicians, then the days of free democracy are growing dim. We are used to politicians using our money to buy our votes for them. Now we may be seeing them using our money to buy our voices for them to fill with their words. Then what will our voice be but a tiny squeak?

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