Lights on and nobody home

By Bill Kraus

How can it be that we live in a low-information society? We have the remnants of the once dominant newspapers, we have TV news, we have radio, and, best of all, we have the incredible internet.

What we don’t have is a unifying, widely-accepted public communication medium.

To put it as colloquially and simply as possible, we don’t have page 5 of the Milwaukee Sentinel. We don’t even have the Milwaukee Sentinel. The communication mantra when we did was that everyone in government read the morning paper, and whatever was on page one or the state news page 5 determined what everyone’s day would be like.

The operative word was “everyone,” including most of the citizenry.

There was TV news with its “if it bleeds, it leads” emphasis and its time constraints.

Radio was all over the place. From the often overlong on public radio, to the breathlessly short on commercial radio, spiced by the talk radio screamers who admit under questioning that they are really in the entertainment business.

Desperately seeking Dewey

By Bill Kraus

I cast my first vote for president in 1948. I voted for Thomas Dewey. He lost. Since he lost to Harry Truman who later became an almost iconic figure in American history I didn’t talk much about my first vote. A little embarrassed.

Then I read a book about the contributions that presidential losers have made to the betterment of the country across the years. Henry Clay was definitely the top of the “should have beens” but was undermined by bad timing.

Stephen Douglas, who knew, devoted most of his energy to stopping the secessionists and saving the Democratic party after losing to Lincoln in 1860.

Even the flamboyant bible thumper William Jennings Bryan gets credit for many of the developments he never got into office to enact but his successors from both parties acceded to.

My biggest surprise, however, was Thomas Dewey.

I don’t know who I credited with the kind of Republicanism I tried to practice, but it sure wasn’t Dewey. It should have been.

Popular ideas that go nowhere

By Bill Kraus

This list of ideas does not include anything that has to do with limiting the flow of money into political campaigns or the unpopular things (endless campaigns, 30 second messages, robo calls, etc) that are purchased with that money. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled that money is a form of speech and is protected by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution no matter how unpopular the speech may be.

Information about the sources of free speech/money is, surprisingly, almost encouraged by the same Supreme Court. Don’t ask me to explain this mild anomaly. I can’t and they don’t.

This kind of disclosure is widely applauded. It is even legislated in the case of donations to candidates themselves. Proposals to go beyond that, however, founder. The only logical explanation for this (and, be forewarned, the regulation of campaign spending is not an area where logic prevails or even exists) is that the organizations that are collecting this outside money have convinced the people who have the power to expose the contributors of this outside money that their contributors do not want anyone to know who they are, and will, what’s more, stop contributing if exposure is mandated. These incumbents have done the math and concluded that it is more important to have this money in the game even though they have no guarantee that it will be spent disproportionately on their behalf. I think their math is questionable. They don’t. They have the power to quash full disclosure legislation. I don’t.