[Rhodes22-list] Politics - Memphis Think Tank

[brad haslett]

Yesterday I spent about three hours at the world
famous Memphis based Center for Peace and Prosperity
and Other Important Matters - also known as RP Tracks
Bar & Grill, and solved all the worlds serious issues.
 Unfortunately, no one there took any notes so it will
all have to be repeated soon.  My wife left me with
pretty explicit instructions to finish painting our
daughter's bookcases or there would be no peace and my
prosperity will suffer.  Therefore, the burden of
fixing mankind falls to you.  For those of you with
nothing better to do, here's a couple of articles. 
The first is by Nicholas Kristof, perhaps the best
current writer on all things Chinese.  He covers a
number of issues we've been discussing, trade,
education, history. The second, by Mort Kondrake,
deals with our discussion yesterday of PBS.

Excuse me while I go find the f&*#ing paint brush.

Brad





May 22, 2005
China, the World's Capital
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF 
KAIFENG, China

As this millennium dawns, New York City is the most
important city in the world, the unofficial capital of
planet Earth. But before we New Yorkers become too
full of ourselves, it might be worthwhile to glance at
dilapidated Kaifeng in central China.

Kaifeng, an ancient city along the mud-clogged Yellow
River, was by far the most important place in the
world in 1000. And if you've never heard of it, that's
a useful warning for Americans - as the Chinese
headline above puts it, in a language of the future
that many more Americans should start learning, "glory
is as ephemeral as smoke and clouds."

As the world's only superpower, America may look today
as if global domination is an entitlement. But if you
look back at the sweep of history, it's striking how
fleeting supremacy is, particularly for individual
cities.

My vote for most important city in the world in the
period leading up to 2000 B.C. would be Ur, Iraq. In
1500 B.C., perhaps Thebes, Egypt. There was no
dominant player in 1000 B.C., though one could make a
case for Sidon, Lebanon. In 500 B.C., it would be
Persepolis, Persia; in the year 1, Rome; around A.D.
500, maybe Changan, China; in 1000, Kaifeng, China; in
1500, probably Florence, Italy; in 2000, New York
City; and in 2500, probably none of the above.

Today Kaifeng is grimy and poor, not even the
provincial capital and so minor it lacks even an
airport. Its sad state only underscores how fortunes
change. In the 11th century, when it was the capital
of Song Dynasty China, its population was more than
one million. In contrast, London's population then was
about 15,000.

An ancient 17-foot painted scroll, now in the Palace
Museum in Beijing, shows the bustle and prosperity of
ancient Kaifeng. Hundreds of pedestrians jostle each
other on the streets, camels carry merchandise in from
the Silk Road, and teahouses and restaurants do a
thriving business.

Kaifeng's stature attracted people from all over the
world, including hundreds of Jews. Even today, there
are some people in Kaifeng who look like other Chinese
but who consider themselves Jewish and do not eat
pork.

As I roamed the Kaifeng area, asking local people why
such an international center had sunk so low, I
encountered plenty of envy of New York. One man said
he was arranging to be smuggled into the U.S.
illegally, by paying a gang $25,000, but many local
people insisted that China is on course to bounce back
and recover its historic role as world leader.

"China is booming now," said Wang Ruina, a young
peasant woman on the outskirts of town. "Give us a few
decades and we'll catch up with the U.S., even pass
it."

She's right. The U.S. has had the biggest economy in
the world for more than a century, but most
projections show that China will surpass us in about
15 years, as measured by purchasing power parity. 

So what can New York learn from a city like Kaifeng?

One lesson is the importance of sustaining a
technological edge and sound economic policies.
Ancient China flourished partly because of pro-growth,
pro-trade policies and technological innovations like
curved iron plows, printing and paper money. But then
China came to scorn trade and commerce, and per capita
income stagnated for 600 years.

A second lesson is the danger of hubris, for China
concluded it had nothing to learn from the rest of the
world - and that was the beginning of the end.

I worry about the U.S. in both regards. Our economic
management is so lax that we can't confront farm
subsidies or long-term budget deficits. Our technology
is strong, but American public schools are second-rate
in math and science. And Americans' lack of interest
in the world contrasts with the restlessness, drive
and determination that are again pushing China to the
forefront. 

Beside the Yellow River I met a 70-year-old peasant
named Hao Wang, who had never gone to a day of school.
He couldn't even write his name - and yet his progeny
were different.

"Two of my grandsons are now in university," he
boasted, and then he started talking about the
computer in his home. 

Thinking of Kaifeng should stimulate us to struggle to
improve our high-tech edge, educational strengths and
pro-growth policies. For if we rest on our laurels,
even a city as great as New York may end up as
Kaifeng-on-the-Hudson. 

E-mail: nicholas at nytimes.com

-----------------------------

May 21, 2005
PBS, NPR Deserve Federal Funding, But Need Balance 
By Mort Kondracke 

Beyond the ridiculous flap over alleged Republican
efforts to "censor" public broadcasting or "push it to
the right," there's a bigger question: Do we need
government-assisted public broadcasting at all any
more? 

After all, public television no longer is alone in
broadcasting high-end cultural, public affairs and
educational programming, and its share of the TV
audience has sunk to one-twentieth of the prime-time
cable average.

And National Public Radio just got a $326 million gift
from the late Joan Kroc, the largest charitable
donation ever to a cultural institution. 

So should taxpayers, through the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, continue to shell out $300
million a year to subsidize the Public Broadcasting
System and its local affiliates? 

And should NPR and its affiliates continue to get $100
million a year from taxpayers? 

The question was raised in a May 9 Chicago Tribune
editorial that followed the first of two New York
Times stories asserting that CPB's Republican
chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, was arousing the ire of
public TV and radio executives by pushing for
political balance. 

"Liberals are starting to see a pattern they don't
like at all - the beginnings of a conservative coup
that seeks to impose a right-wing agenda on public
television," the Tribune wrote. "This, after years in
which conservatives fumed about what they perceived as
a distinct liberal tilt to some PBS programming. 

"There's a way to end all the conspiracy theories and
stop dead the accusations of political meddling. Get
the federal government out of the business of funding
public television. As long as government money flows
into PBS coffers, tensions will continue about what
gets televised - and what doesn't - on those public
airwaves." 

The Tribune also argued that cable channels such as
A&E, National Geographic, Discovery and the History
Channel were matching PBS in delivering quality
programming and that PBS long ago was forced to
abandon its non-commercial character. 

I think it would be worth it for Congress to hold
hearings and decide whether to reauthorize CPB and
public funding of TV and radio, which hasn't happened
since 1996. 

On balance, I think public radio and TV can make a
good case for continued funding based on their
still-unique roles in media and some pioneering new
ventures that PBS has in the works for teaching
reading to young children and American history to
teenagers. 

But in exchange for federal support, radio and TV owe
the public balance - and that is what, in the most
modest and non-intrusive way, CPB's Tomlinson has been
trying to install. 

Specifically, believing that the PBS show "NOW,"
formerly hosted by Bill Moyers, was tilted to the
left, Tomlinson authorized a $10,000 study of the
content of the show. 

He also provided CPB startup funding for two
conservative shows, the "Journal Editorial Report,"
featuring the Wall Street Journal's editorial board,
and "Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered." 

And Tomlinson appointed two ombudsmen, liberal former
broadcaster Ken Bode and conservative former Readers
Digest editor William Shulz, to hear and investigate
complaints about PBS and NPR accuracy and bias. 

Tomlinson said that monitoring of NPR was triggered by
testimony from Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) that NPR's
coverage of the Middle East was persistently biased
against Israel. That's a complaint often raised by
others in the U.S. Jewish community.

The New York Times' coverage of Tomlinson's actions -
triggered, evidently, by complaints from within PBS
and NPR - prompted two House Democrats, John Dingell
(Mich.) and David Obey (Wis.), to demand an
investigation of possible "censorship." 

And Moyers, speaking at a liberal media reform
conference last weekend in St. Louis, alleged that
Tomlinson was trying to de-fund PBS the way Richard
Nixon once did. 

Moyers revealed where he's coming from politically by
declaring that those out to get him were "people who
are hollowing out the middle class even as they enlist
the sons and daughters of the working class in a war
to make sure Ahmed Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq's
oil." 

Tomlinson said his aim has been to save PBS and NPR,
not destroy them. "I did not think it was healthy for
public broadcasting to have the perception problem it
has," he told me. "It was exacerbated by the lack of
political sensitivity at PBS," which clung to polls
showing that the public does not regard PBS as biased,
despite the content of some shows like "Now."

"Having the hour-long Moyers show on every Friday
night without any attempt at a show from the
conservative viewpoint is kind of in-your-face to
people in the red states. You're never going to want
to take Bill Moyers off the air. I just wanted to
establish some common-sense balance."

In the meantime, the question remains: Do we need PBS
and NPR? Actually, I think, we do. NPR, despite a
liberal tilt on many issues, is the only radio source
in America with worldwide range and penetrating depth.


NPR itself, the producer of programming, receives only
about one-tenth of its funding from the government
through CPB. But local stations probably could not
survive without it. 

And PBS, despite competition from other channels
remains the standard for high-IQ cultural programming.


And both PBS and CPB have plans for new ventures other
outlets are unlikely to perform. A PBS panel headed by
former Netscape CEO James Barksdale and former Federal
Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt
envisions major initiatives in early childhood
learning, homeland security communications, public
health information and local civic affairs
broadcasting. 

CPB has authorized two $20 million initiatives: one to
foster documentaries on America's challenges in the
Islamic world and another to use various media to
teach civics and history to teenagers. 

And, while cable channels like Disney, Noggin and
Nickelodeon are improving children's programming, PBS
shows like "Sesame Street," "Between the Lions,"
"Postcards from Buster" and "Maya and Miguel" lead the
way in educational content.

Moreover, CPB has just proposed a multi-faceted
project to the Department of Education to create four
new programs to teach low-income children aged 2 to 8
how to read. 

Someday, private broadcasting may make public
broadcasting unnecessary. But that time hasn't
arrived. In the meantime, public broadcasting owes the
public political balance - without screams of
"censorship." 

Mort Kondracke is the Executive Editor of Roll Call





		
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