The
view from outside Poor Richard's
The
view from outside Poor Richard's
Eric Whitney,
Sean Paige, John Weiss
Sean
makes a point on content to Lotus
Lotus
listens to Sean answer a question
Jeff
reads Lotus' list of questions
Richard
Skorman Laughs at Sean's point about unfair competition
This was an interesting meeting, not because I found any new areas where I agree with Paige, I knew there were several, but because of a peep inside the GAGzette workings. He said Chuck Asay was glad to go and was offered to stay with less severance package, but chose to leave and was glad he did. Paige said he was glad to leave too, and Adrian Stanley was VERY happy to leave. He said about 8 times that he disagrees with the family that owns the paper on editorial issues, but it seemed like an apology as much as a change of opinion. He kept saying it's his job to portray the libertarian ideology of the owners, but it sounded like an excuse for his hardline, and I consider conservative, positions on things.
He said the would do away with the "experiment" of having a blog for comments on the paper's website. He has o use for the internet and thinks all websites are blogs, and since bloggers produce no news content and can post anonymously, he sees no benefit to blogs. No one pointed out that his blog software on the GAGzette allows anonymous blogging, but many do not, like the Pueblo Chieftain, which has a raucous debate on everything, but each person's profile shows who they are, and you can write them offline. He doesn't show up very often on his blog, but George Lewis, his assistant and Monday editorial writer, does fairly often. I know he does read the blog regularly, because he addressed several points to me specifically, that are germane ONLY to things I have written on that blog.
He called libertarians that think all public roads should be private "wackos", and said he supports the interstate highway system, for example, as a public works benefit that is worth the violation of pure libertarian ideals. That appears to be for the economic benefits of commerce and not the public's benefit.
I asked where he draws the line between "free market" driven economy and antitrust consolidation and monopolies, and if he thinks that changes when talking about the free press, and specifically the antitrust crime of the GAGzette buying the Sun and closing the doors, leaving this market of 500,000 with just one daily paper. He made the excuse that a lot of towns would like to have more than one paper, and that business is bad for all papers because of the Internet, which he detests, and that even in places like Denver, with 2 dailies, they work together to cut costs, like the weekend editions the RMN and Post, put out together.
He said places like Craig's List, which advertises for each regional market, takes away from the newspaper's main revenue of advertising dollars. No free market there.
He directed one comment to me about "Big Oil" and the renewable energy market, which he said was is going great because of the "free market" and NOT because of government mandates, which aren't needed. He warned to"beware of 'BigWind' and 'Big Solar' when those industries get a lot of power. Lotus, who owns Rocky Mountain Solar, pointed out that because of the inordinate power of "Big Oil" that government mandates are the only thing will start the renewable energy markets and they are resisting with all their power and cash now, so that's the reason why this national trend needs to be supported by mandates.
Sean kept pointing out the problems with "Corn based" Ethanol and poo pooed the idea that Cellulosic Ethanol would take off. He stated he was against national quotas being set, because, maybe Alabama could satisfy itself better with "tidal energy" than Solar and shouldn't be made to get a percentage from Solar in a state with less Solar than we have. No one is suggesting that, so it was a red herring against mandates.
There was very little time for questions because Sean would filibuster each answer to every associated issue he could think of, but started out with considerable apologies about being too harsh and positions that were too harsh. He said George Lewis isn't as hard on editing letters to the editor as he is and he thinks they should all be edited more closely. John Weiss confronted him on the fact that the GAGzette is infamous for editing letters, not for space, but for political content, and he denied doing that. He pointed out that with one very long letter from a local politician, he only edited out the slander of himself.
I gave him the promised Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse (with target painted on it's ass) that I had been promising in all the debates of species protection on the GAGzette blog.