A liberal church tries to run an ad on TV. They get denied. Carpetbagger writes:
ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox all declined to air the commercial. As an NBC spokesperson said, the ad “violates our long-standing policy against airing commercials that deal with issues of public controversy.”
I’ll never understand this. First, all of the networks run programming that deals with issues of public controversy. Second, the networks run campaign ads that deal with “issues of public controversy” all the time. The Swiftboat Liars can get buy ad time on ABC, but a progressive, tolerant church can’t?
Shorter NBC: “conservatives write lots of nasty letters, so we’re more scared of them.”
Mark Kleiman has some thoughts about immigration policy that include Brad DeLong’s response to your quoted Krugman article here:
http://www.samefacts.com/archives/microeconomics_and_policy_analysis_/2006/03/six_theses_on_immigration_policy.php
Sadly, the Krugman link is behind the Times’ paywall, but BDL kindly quotes the whole damn thing. One of his reader’s comments ( http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/03/north_of_the_bo.html#comment-15457506 ) nicely details my feelings about why Brad is more correct than Krugman (Why immigration gains should be counted, and why immigration’s detriments to the lower classes is overstated ) -
“The issue really isn’t that there are too many people fighting over the smallest slices of the pie. The problem is that a very tine elite is taking most of the pie. And they take a bigger proportion of it every year…”
PS I’m sorry to have composed a comment entirely out of links and explanations of relevancy. But why have an original thought when you can subscribe to potentially agreeable ideas via RSS?
PPS This comment is nearly unreadable (imcomprehensibly convoluted) but please add normal HTML linking anyways, as it would improve readability (the ability to read the words in this post). I have never heard of spambots evading CAPTCHA-based comment blocking, and I should hope MT implements /.-style URL disclosure (eg useful link! [goatse.cx] )
Mickey Kaus just posted a response to this, which is interesting, worth reading . . .
My knee-jerk reaction has always been to be supportive of immigration, but only in the way that accepts its intrinsic value and crafting arguments to support that presupposition. I just think Krugman (and Kaus) are on to something when they write about tight labor markets.
George Will, for what it’s worth came up with a good selfish argument for immigration on This Week today — basically, we need to add roughly 900,000 new workers a year to keep up with Social Security benefits. If that’s the case, then I say go for it!