Editorial Boards are Addicted to Other People's Money

by Craig Cantoni

Arizona and many other states are facing huge budget deficits because of the current recession and because of spending like drunken sailors during the good times.  Yet the editorial boards of mainstream newspapers continue with their relentless and shopworn calls for new spending programs du jour and for increased spending on existing programs.  

I have always wondered how their minds work.  When editorial board members go to bed, what dark thoughts flash through their minds in the black of night?  What worries keep them from falling asleep?  And what demons give them nightmares once they fall asleep?

Judging by their never-ending spending initiatives, the answer is other people's money, or OPM.  They are obsessed with it.  They worry that the rightful owners are keeping too much of it.  Somehow, some way, their brains are wired to think that it is their civic duty, their moral duty, to spend OPM.  They are addicted to OPM, just as some addicts are addicted to opium.

The spending schemes of the OPM addicts must come to life in the middle of the night like a Frankenstein monster rising from his restraints to terrorize the local populace.  "Igor, look what I've created.  I've created a monster that will consume a billion dollars in new sports stadiums for wealthy sports franchise owners, a billion dollars in light rail that will do nothing for pollution and traffic, and billions more in unnecessary spending on a convention center, public education boondoggles and health care for illegal immigrants."      

My brain has different wiring.  What worries me the most in the dark of the night is my family's financial future.  Will my wife have enough money for retirement if I die?  Will we have the money to send our kid to college?  Will we have money for the long-term care of our elderly parents?  Will we have enough money left over to pay for our own health care needs?  

What wakes me in the middle of the night is the recurring nightmare of the Frankenstein monster stealing more than his present take of half of my family's income in federal, state and city taxes.  Much of that income is the investment earnings on our retirement savings.  I worry that the beast is insatiable and unstoppable, that 50 percent will not satisfy or stop him.

Not once in my life has it crossed my mind to take OPM, just as it never crossed the minds of my working-class parents or my poor immigrant grandparents to take OPM.  My Italian family did not sit around the dinner table or in editorial board rooms exchanging ideas on how to separate our neighbors from their money.  We did not think that was a neighborly thing to do.  We talked about helping our neighbors when they needed help, but we did not talk about robbing them.  

My grandparents immigrated to America to escape Europe's fascists, socialists, communists and other collectivists.  Little did they know that the European notions of redistribution and the welfare state would invade America's shores, with the invasion forces being led by newspapers.  At one time, newspapers were a government watchdog.  Now they have become a government lapdog.  The average working stiff is powerless to stop the great media-government juggernaut.

The latest spending scheme to be hatched in the middle of the night by local OPM addicts is to convert every public school bus in Arizona from diesel fuel to natural gas, at a cost of "only" $30,000 per bus.  To put that number in perspective, the average Arizona family earns about $40,000 per year.  That means that an average family would have to work from January 1 to September 30 to pay the equivalent of one school bus conversion.  

Are the benefits of the conversions worth the cost?  Who knows?  OPM addicts do not think in terms of cost-benefit tradeoffs, especially if the word "children" is mentioned in a spending proposal.  All it takes to jolt the Frankenstein monster to life is a dubious-sounding study from Connecticut that shows that diesel fumes are six times higher inside a diesel bus than outside the bus.

OPM addicts do not know what epidemiological studies say about the health effects of diesel fumes on bus riders.  They do not know why the fumes would be six times higher inside Connecticut buses than outside, particularly given the fact that school bus windows are kept closed during most of the school year in Connecticut's cold climate.  They do not know if the Connecticut study translates to Arizona.  They do not know these things because they do not care to know them.  They just know that that the conversions will be an opportunity to spend OPM for the unquantifiable benefit of -- let's say the magic word -- children.      

For sure, the OPM addicts do not ask why school children cannot take the public transportation that they advocate, especially when public buses are usually empty.  Or why school districts cannot share bus fleets with cities.  Or why school children cannot walk a mile to school as a way of countering America's epidemic of obesity.  Or what kind of buses private school students take to school at their parents' expense.  Why ask these questions when the objective is to spend more of OPM, not save it?          

Since most editorial board members are former reporters, they adhere to standard and overused journalism scripts.  One popular script is to ask the recipients of OPM how they feel about spending increases or cuts but to never ask the payers how they feel.  

Take how reporters cover the issue of prescription drug coverage for Medicare retirees.  Typically, they interview retirees about the sacrificies they make to buy drugs.  It never crosses the OPM-crazed minds of reporters to interview a twenty-something who works as an $8 per hour counter-clerk at the local gas mart.  They would never ask the clerk questions like this:  Are you aware that about $10 of your daily wages go to that retiree who just put $40 of gas in his 30-foot motor home?  How do you feel about that?  Does that seem fair to you?  Would you be willing to give him even more money to pay for his prescriptions?

The biased reporter script not only calls for the interviewing of the recipients of OPM instead of the payers, but it also calls for the interviewing of Republican politicians about their resistance to spending OPM.  This of course portrays Republicans as being against helping the little man.  After reading enough of such biased stories, the little man becomes oblivious to the fact that OPM is really his money.  Of course, that is the objective of the OPM addicts.

I share these dark-of-the-night thoughts with you to give you something to think about when you get into bed tonight.  Happy dreams.
___________

Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant.  He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.

Last update: 3/13/2002; 8:10:06 AM.