Daily News Roundup, 11/2/07: Cashing In Favors

Junior Senator John Cornyn has spent his time in the Senate trying to achieve the vaunted level of Best Friends Forever with President George Bush. The slavish devotion has paid off, as Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are both turning up in Texas to raise some money for Cornyn's re-elect. And why not? Their schedules are open, since no one else wants them to campaign on their behalf.

Cheney was up first; he headlined a National Republican Senatorial Committee money party in Dallas attended by just about everyone but John Cornyn, who was stuck in Washington voting against health care for kids again. Bush will come to town next week, and I will watch with interest to see how base voters respond to the floundering native son from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Sometimes, certain details about how government works are taken for granted until we are shown, often in a brutal way, that things are not as we think they are. For instance, one might think that, with all the talk about FDA tests and regulations and inspections, all drugs released for sale and consumption in the U.S. undergo at least a moderately standardized level of scrutiny. One would apparently be wrong: A Congressional hearing revealed this week that foreign drugs and materials are scrutinized much less carefully than domestic drugs, if at all. That most foreign drug companies or materials manufacturers are not inspected adds a whole additional level of risk to the whole deal. One of the most unfortunate aspects of such a longstanding dysfunction is the amount of time it would take to catch up on some basic things, like inspections of foreign manufacturing facilities:

At the current rate, the agency would take more than 13 years to inspect each foreign establishment once — and those are just the factories it knows about, Ms. Crosse said.

This is a problem that deserves some attention.

A problem that probably deserves less attention from our legislators but is garnering plenty is this dust-up over which cable networks will carry which NFL games. I understand that cable TV specifically and broadcasting in general are matters in which the government is involved already. It is an industry that is regulated, and to say that government shouldn't have anything to do with a problem like this is unrealistic. The real problem here is the double standard in play, which the Chron's Rick Casey illustrates perfectly at the end of the cited article:

[State Representative Corbin Van Arsdale] said government involvement is appropriate because "the government is already involved in this industry, (and) you have to see that it is as competitive as it can be."

Maybe so, but the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is authorized to regulate (non-television) air pollution by corporations. That doesn't mean Texas political leaders actually let them do it.

Duly noted, Mr. Casey.

Early voting has been underway for the 2007 constitutional amendment election long enough for it to end today; Election Day is Tuesday. According to Governor Perry, at least one proposition is guaranteed to pass: Proposition 15, a $3 billion bond package for cancer research. I am glad he feels so strongly about it, but you never know. I don't think it is entirely unreasonable to think that some group called Republicans Against Cancer Welfare or something similar will buy a massive statewide media blitz at the last minute. We're going to be examining the bipartisan effort that has gone into putting Prop 15 together as we approach Election Day, but until then, here's hoping it sails to approval unimpeded.

Lastly today: if you enjoy watching TV or movies, you may notice some changes in the coming months as your favorite shows fail to come back or news about new movies trickles off to an inaudible murmur. That's because Hollywood studios and producers refused to negotiate with the Writers Guild of America, who went to bat for screenwriters in an attempt to get writers a share of profits generated by reproduced media. Now a strike is imminent. One of the biggest issues under debate is how writers are paid when shows are distributed digitally, for internet streaming or iPod viewing or something similar. In a changing industry with distribution largely driven by consumer technology, the argument that existing royalty deals don't cover where most of the money may come from in the future is reasonable, even if the disagreement over it interrupts your late-night comedy shows. Huffington Post's WGA Strike Opinion Page will be a valuable resource for those of you wishing to stay on top of this issue.