Duck Season

1) I don't understand this at all... the WaPo reports that Maryland Democrats are outraged that Republican Governor Robert L. Ehrlich wants to prevent the increase of tuition at state universities:

Ehrlich reiterated his desire for a tuition cap yesterday, telling reporters outside the State House that his radio comments were not an off-the-cuff response to a caller's question. Neither, he said, were they a politically calculated reaction to a recent poll that showed 83 percent of Marylanders opposing a proposal to double tuition over the next six years. That proposal was made by Richard E. Hug, a close ally of Ehrlich and one of the governor's first appointees to the university Board of Regents.

... so Democrats aren't even in favor of an affordable public education anymore? I understand that the Democrats only want to maintain a high level of services at the University of Maryland, but they understand how issue's like this are framed against them... don't they?

(Link via Campus Press Notes who rightly characterizes this HB2400 cartoon as cool)

2) Censorship sillyness... both The Mass Media and CBS television staffers grossly misunderstand the meaning of censorship.

On the one hand The Mass Media says that any defunding of the paper constitutes censorship? Isn't this simply absurd? If I 'Waive That Fee' I'm not censoring you, I'm just chosing not to allow you to express your free speech on my dime. Similarly, if UMass swaps to an opt-in system this is not censorship either.

By their own admission it seems a good amount of students neglect to opt-out: "To date at UMass Boston about 45% of students pay their Mass Media waivable fee each year, and this number will decrease drastically if HB 2400 passes. Some portion of the fees collected each year come from students who forgot to opt out, but if those same students forget to opt in, The Mass Media and others will lose funding."

The Mass Media's free speech rights are not dependant upon those who forget to opt-out, and would not be revoked by those people chose not to opt-in.

I'm so frustrated with The Mass Media right now. The point made above is an incredibly minor point in their editorial, an editorial I really agree with... but.... it's just such a dunderheaded point! Subtract those few sentences and The Mass Media has made a spectacular argument against HB2400, but I suppose they couldn't rest on the laurels of sound reasoning and threw in that reactionary liberal lunacy to sound more like their Indy Media friends.

Doesn't The Mass Media basically admit that it steals from people? The say that they anticipate the movement from an opt-out system to an opt-in system would defund them. Why? Because those who don't opt-out won't opt-in? Why? Implicit in their argument is that they're receiving funds from people who don't intend to give them funds.

Taking money that wasn't given to you... isn't that stealing? Well... not really, but it is kind of... it isn't honest, and for them to claim that they are the victims here just really bugs me.

CBS has an equal amount of dunderheads in their midst. In an article about the public outrage towards the mini-series 'The Reagans' a CBS staffer claims that public pressure against CBS to alter the movie amounts to censorship. That is just ludicrous. CBS has every right to make whatever kind of movie it wants to. No one is calling for a public law against saying bad things about Ronnie. What this CBS staffer needs explained to him/her is that television is an ad driven medium, and when you piss off the people they're not going to tune it, and when people don't tune in you piss off your advertisers. It is those advertisers who effectively have the final say over the broadcast. This isn't censorship, it's capitalism, it's how you make your living. Wise up.

3) Watching CBS 60 Minutes and they're doing a segment on the bootlegging of DVDs on the internet. They intervewed the President of a Peer-to-Peer networking company who said that he can't be held responsible for piracy because his company has "no way of knowing what people are downloading."

Question: Doesn't this mimic the gun industry saying that it can't be held responsible for what people do with guns?