Taxpayer-funded super bowl ad

While we’re talking about super bowl ads, did anyone else notice the ad for the 2010 US Census? The $3 million* for that 30-second spot was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a.k.a. the stimulus plan. In fact, $100 million of the $1 billion given to the 2010 census by the stimulus plan was earmarked for additional advertising, making for a total of $258.7 million in paid media advertising, according to this document on the census web site.

Anyone know if a taxpayer-funded advertisement has ever appeared during the Super Bowl before? (Perhaps one of those “Just say no to drugs” ads from the 80’s?)

Like so many other recipients of stimulus funding, this advertising campaign seems like a complete waste of money. Advertising Age says the television spots are “misguided, misleading and miss the point.” But at least we can say that this project created jobs…for Ed Begley Jr. and a handful of other semi-obscure actors.

*according to Wikipedia

Green Police

While we’re talking Super Bowl ads, what’s one to make of this:

Before the Audi appears, you’d think this was a spot from the RNC or some Ayn Rand Appreciation Society. I don’t think I’ve seen a stronger satirical indictment of the environmentalist movement.

Much Ado About Tebow

Now that the Super Bowl is over (sorry Colts fans), can we talk about the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad? Listening to the critics the past two weeks, you would have expected a super provocative anti-abortion spot. Instead, we get a cutesy spot that sold precisely two things: (1) motherhood and (2) Tim Tebow. Abortion isn’t even mentioned; Mom Tebow doesn’t even say something like “I had to make a choice, and I chose to keep Timmy.” She just talked about how difficult her pregnancy was. The old Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation “Life: What a Beautiful Choice” ads were edgier. Frankly, I think the most controversial part of the Tebow ad was the Focus on the Family tag at the end. The manufactured controversy over this ad, which probably was related to CBS’s rejection of a sitcom-y ad for a gay dating site (hands meet in bowl of chips, making out ensues), seems out of proportion to what actually appeared on television.

Also, GoDaddy just needs to Go. Enough teasing already.

Used Coats

Politico and 538.com are reporting that former Senator Dan Coats is planning a comeback against Senator Evan Bayh this year. Coats was Indiana’s Senator from 1989 to 1999, first having replaced Dan Quayle as senator when the latter became vice president. Coats has worked as ambassador to Germany under George W. Bush and as a lobbyist in the meantime. The lobbying job might get him in a bit of a pickle, as Coats has been registered to vote here in northern Virginia for most of the past decade, not Indiana. But we’ll see how forgiving Hoosiers are.

If he makes the ballot, Politico considers Coats the GOP frontrunner against John Hostettler and Marlin Stutzman.

The Intellectual Divisions of the Right

Responding to another author, Jonah Goldberg celebrates divisions on the Right:

My own view is that the Right is intellectually healthier and more creative because its dogma remains unsettled (yes, I’ve written about this a zillion times). The Right is divided between those who are (in Irving Kristol’s formulation) anti-left and those who are anti-State. Those who believe that the government is bad because it’s working from leftist assumptions, and those who believe that the government is bad because it is the government. (Most conservatives share both outlooks to one extent or another, but usually fit more into one camp than the other. If you’re wholly in the government-is-bad camp you’re more properly a libertarian, but still on the right). There are those who believe that liberty is an end and those who believe that liberty is a means. For more than a half century now, modern conservatives have been debating and redebating the question of where to the draw the lines between freedom and order, liberty and virtue. And because that line continually needs to be redrawn given the evolution of attitudes, changes in technology, etc, conservative intellectuals (though not necessarily conservative activists, politicians and the like) are constantly revisiting first principles and philosophical assumptions or are at least capable of acknowledging the good faith of their philosophical opponents). I do not think you can say the same thing about liberals (again, as a wild generalization). What unites most, if not all, factions of the Left, from socialists to DLC moderates is a dogmatic acceptance that the government should do good when it can and where it can. Hence the debates on the left tend to be procedural, wonkish, and technical or rankly political. The Right has such arguments as well, of course. But they do not define and dominate political discussions the way they do on the left. And that’s because our dogma is still unsettled.

Sounds about right.

The union paradigm explained

In a post about teachers’ unions’ opposition to merit pay, Megan McArdle made some very incisive comments on why unions work the way they do:

The unhappy corollary of this is that the metrics [for determining employee compensation] will not only tend towards simplicity and ease of measurement; they will also tend to reward mediocrity. Again, this is not an accident of history. A collective bargaining unit run by a “majority rules” system is always going to look for a system that rewards the median or modal worker, not the best…

Unions are set up to minimize frictions and maximize benefits for the bottom 55%. That’s how they work everywhere–in schools, and out. That’s how they have to work. No amount of cajoling, no number of white papers, is going to change that.

In Case You Missed The State of Our Union

And I did, but according to the transcript, we’re on a roll.

The state of our Union is . . .

• 2010: Strong
• 2008: Strong
• 2007: Strong
• 2006: Strong
• 2005: Confident and Strong
• 2004: Confident and Strong
• 2003: Strong
• 2002: Never been stronger
• 2000: Strongest it has ever been
• 1999: Strong
• 1998: Strong
• 1997: Strong
• 1996: Strong
• 1995: Stronger than it was two year ago
• 1994: Growing stronger

From Time to Time

The State of the Union is a wonderful occasion to drag out one of my favorite quotations from The West Wing.

When one staffer acts surprised that the President is not Constitutionally required to give a State of the Union speech before Congress, another staffer wryly notes, “He’s required to give Congress information regarding the state of the Union. If he buys Congress a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, he’s fulfilled his Constitutional responsibility.”

All the more reason to watch something else.

Pro-Choice or Pro-Abortion?

Pro-choice groups are expressing outrage over a commercial set to air during the Super Bowl, which stars Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam. The commercial tells the story of how Pam Tebow was advised to have an abortion for medical reasons, but chose to continue her pregnancy.

It is fairly obvious that this ad promotes a pro-life point of view. It is also sponsored by Focus on the Family–the conservative Christian organization founded by that boogeyman of the left, Dr. James Dobson. (Focus states that the ad was funded directly by donations made by several “very generous friends.”) However, it would appear that the ad simply celebrates the choice made by Pam Tebow, and does not promote any political proposition. The ad seems designed to win hearts and minds and encourage people to choose life. If groups such as NOW are in fact pro-choice as they label themselves, rather than pro-abortion, why do they object to the celebration or promotion of a particular choice?

Instead, the groups objecting to the Tebow ad seem to be reacting like a national beef cattle association might react to an ad promoting the benefits of a vegetarian diet. Which raises the question, are these groups really promoting choice, or are they promoting abortion?

State of the Union Show

As you know, I’m not a fan. Tonight, I’ll be watching the Metropolitan Opera’s rebroadcast of Der Rosenkavalier in HD, and between opera and political bloviating, there’s really no contest (find your local theatre here, though I’m readier to recommend the encore rebroadcast of Carmen next week — go see it!).

Nevertheless, some of you may be excited to see the address tonight, for reasons that completely escape me. So I have a few questions for you avid viewers. 1) Do you expect the president to say anything surprising, informative, or useful? 2) If so, is there anything you can gain from watching the speech live that you could not glean more quickly and easily from the media or a transcript of the speech? 3) What is the value-added by receiving this content (if there is any) immediately?