Re: [IRCA] Off topic and even more so, but I still like it

[Alan Bosch <labosch@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles:

Very nice reply -- and interesting history, especially about you and the 
VOA.  Kim Elliott, their current audience research guy, lives about half 
a mile from me and is in our Arlington ham club.  I have taken the kids 
from the club at Thomas Jefferson HS  to visit their HQ downtown, and am 
halfway thru Alan Heil's history of the organization..

Looks like you and I are on the same wavelenght basically, though I am 
less sanguine about the superiority of private sector efficiency -- 
especially when it comes to economies for the public.  The nuclear 
industry provides lots of examples -- like Davis-Besse in OH. 

I should note that money which goes into Federal projects doesn't just 
evaporate.   It  goes  to contractors for equipment, wages (and thus 
taxes), boosts local economies, and creates valuable infrastructure  
(which, sadly, is all too often not maintained).  And that system does 
have controls in place for overcharging, excessive profit-taking, 
etc.all to often not operative or effective in  private sector work -- 
despite the occasional howler like those old $600 toilet seats for NASA. 

My big gripe with NPR is their mindless evolution toward the standards 
of commercial broadcasting these days.  Our WETA here recently dumped 
about 8 hours per day of classical music in favor of talk radio (read 
ratchet-jawing) and is licensed for IBOC testing -- from an antenna 
about 1/2 mile east of my house.  I am busily composing in my head a 
really withering reply to their latest membership renewal request.

Good conversing with you.

AlanB





. 

Charles A & Leonor L Taylor wrote:

>Alan Bosch wrote:
>
>> Hello there, Patrick, Eric, et al.:
>>
>> A question from a newbie -- was it socialism when the Federal government 
>> helped electrify the Tennessee by energizing competition at a time power 
>> trusts were charging citizens $1 a foot to bring power from the roadside to 
>> the farmstead in a massively depressed region?
>>
>Al,
>
>I'm a fan of the IOU's, the investor-owned utilities. That said, yes TVA is 
>socialism, and by the textbook definition. But I can see from history that if 
>folks from that area wanted electricity, they'd wait a while more because the 
>IOUs had a number of reasons for avoiding wiring the rural areas. In retrospect, 
>the reasons weren't valid, but the IOUs still didn't see their reasons were 
>invalid. Nowadays, in doing the job for the first time, they'd do it better than 
>TVA.
>
>First time around, IOUs refused and so TVA along with the RECs, the "Co-ops," 
>were legislated. If I were around then, I'd try to admit that my company was 
>wrong and the situation had forced "socialism." But I'd have a mighty sore spot 
>there and dasn't speak up for fear of going off like a cannon and making the 
>usual fool of myself.
>
>BUT REMEMBER, caged there is the proviso, very important, that if my IOUs had 
>been willing to do the job the first time around, they'd done it better.
>Often times, free enterprise doesn't want to do it because they don't see  
>profit; but in instances they're wrong.
>
>I served 32 years inside the bowels of the federal government, last 16 at Voice 
>of America. At least at the transmission end of the chain of broadcast, the US 
>government has been very inefficient and wasteful of money. The old continental 
>US VOA plants were owned and staffed by Crosley (WLWO, Bethany) and CBS
>(KCBR, Delano) and some others. Coming into VOA long after the privately-owned 
>transmitter plants were federalized, I'd have to say they did the job 
>efficiently and with the proper increase in contract cost to make a profit, 
>still would have beat the government at doing it well. The lore of the old KCBR 
>still figures big around the Delano Transmitting Station in terms of photos of 
>that era, and in records kept, and stories told of the personnel (all the 
>original personnel were "federalized" and also have passed away or retired). As 
>an alumnus of Greenville Transmitting Station who served out at Delano for two 
>years, I cannot possibly deny that the old networks did the job much more 
>efficiently than the Federal government.
>
>Please forgive the typos and errors above. I'm trying to come up to Eric 
>Bueneman N0UIH's standards for spelling, grammar and lack of errors.
>
>Charles
>
>> I don't  think so.
>>
>> I do think there is a solid place for governmental initiatives in behalf of 
>> the public good when business can't or won't bring needed services into 
>> being.  (And Heaven knows commercial broadcasting in the US is providing only 
>> the most superficial of public services -- but a boatload of noise pollution.)
>>
>> That's not socialism, gentlemen, it's progressivism.
>>
>> AlanB
>> Arlington, VA
>>
>>
>>
>> Patrick Martin wrote:
>>
>>>Eric,
>>>
>>>As much as I don't like IBOC, I don't think the government should own
>>>businesses. We have free enterprise in the US, and it should stay that
>>>way.
>>>
>>>73s,
>>>
>>>Patrick
>>>
>>>Patrick Martin
>>>Seaside  OR
>>>KAVT Reception Manager
>>>
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>>>
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>
>
>-- 
>         
>          ------
>Charles A & Leonor L Taylor
>Greenville, North Carolina
>
>  
>
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