Shut Up And Drive Forward

Change is not always something our staff members enjoy.

The Chicago Sun-Times committed one of those stupid acts of senseless change on Thursday, as they made one of the most idiotic moves we've seen in years, in either business or journalism, when they fired their entire photography staff. That's saying a lot, considering some of the less-than-brilliant choices made by former employers and clients our staff members have had.

So with that frustrating thought about change percolating in our heads, we thought it more important than ever today to focus on a story about change that might actually give our readers a bit more hope for the weekend, and beyond.

We found that story, thanks in part to our resident tech geek, who pointed us towards a fantastic announcement by Tesla Motors on Thursday. With another roadtrip looming on the horizon this weekend for one of our staffers, we weren't exactly looking forward to playing the blame game with the gas pump again.

The most recent chapter of this story, in case you missed it, began last week when Tesla Motors - the all-electric, all-American car company helmed by SpaceX founder and PayPal co-founder Elon Musk - paid back it's half-billion dollar U.S. government loan nine years early. Unsurprisingly, some of our media colleagues on the right instantly found the found dark cloud under the silver lining, insisting Tesla paying back the money early was a bad thing, that America could have made more money on the loan.

Of course, as Brad Plumer of Wonkblog and Jonathan Silver of Thirdway pointed out, those detractors don't seem to get what the Federal government's clean-energy loans are supposed to be for.

At least one reason those loans exist became crystal clear on Thursday, when Mr. Musk and his company used the Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference as a venue to announce one of the most ambitious expansion programs for electric charging stations in the nation. Within six months, owners of a Tesla automobile should be able to drive all the way across the country, from New York to L.A. Within two years, drivers should be able to cover the entire country, and even into Mexico and Canada.

What's more, Musk confirmed his company's plans are on target to have an affordable, all electric car - priced around $30,000 - within three to five years.

Tesla isn't the only one racing forward.

Hybrid gas-electric cars are also making huge inroads in the U.S., with old-guard companies like Ford making evolutionary changes to how they make products and conduct business - while earning huge gains in sales. All of these advances in technology, and the secondary effects these new kinds of vehicles will have on alternative energies, reduced pollution, better transportation, and job creation only make us smile more, even as we're about to hit the road again.

We can all imagine, in the not-too-distant future, being able to hit the road for a long weekend drive, and not having to worry about gas prices at all.

When it's done right, change isn't a bad thing.

Invisible Americans

There are times when we look at the topics our colleagues in the broader media choose to cover, and then look at the topics regular Americans across the nation care about, and we have no trouble at all understanding why some Americans simply ignore news and information-based media.

We can guarantee you that today some in the media will still be talking about Rep. Michele Bachmann's announcement that she won't run for re-election in 2014, or how Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee has chosen to join the Democratic Party. Likewise, there will still be those trying to stir up ratings with "scandal" stories about Eric Holder or new stories about James Comey, President Obama's nominee to head the FBI.

There may even be a few stories about the economy, though they will likely focus on how a strong stock market and steadily rebounding housing market are helping America's recovery, even in the face of austerity.

What you're far less likely to see - other than here - are stories about how millions of Americans still need decent paying jobs, since both Republicans and Democrats continue to walk away from the issue, a story many in the media still don't find "sexy enough" to cover very often.

You're also unlikely to see piles of stories talking about the still-growing inequality in America, and how tax cuts for the rich actually make it worse. There also aren't many stories about how poor Americans are getting screwed by both Republicans and Democrats as Congress pushes towards gutting food stamps, or about how women are now the primary "breadwinners" in forty percent of American homes - not because they want to be, but often because they have to be.

Don't look for many stories on the sequester either, since statistics say it really hasn't hit DC that hard - or, more specifically, it hasn't hit people who work in the national media in DC, New York, and LA that hard.

We almost feel that the pessimistic opinion a friend of ours has been repeating for several years may be on the verge of coming true: that the news has, in fact, been cancelled.

We're willing to admit that news gathering is incredibly difficult today - especially when blind, ignorant executives in corporate media continue to gut their own companies of the people who actually create the products they're trying to sell.

Further, many of the stories we've referenced above are worthy of reading, both on their own, and as parts of larger narratives about topics like politics, government and the economy.

However, the core of those larger narratives still needs far more reporting, from media organizations much larger and more well-staffed than ours, so that issues like the millions of Americans still out of work won't be ignored by both major political parties. After all, as the Quinnipiac poll released this morning proves, what Americans really care about are jobs and the economy.

It's true that President Obama and Ben Bernanke have done a surprisingly good job keeping the economy moving forward in an incredibly difficult environment - and things are significantly better than they were four years ago.

That said, both major national political parties are still walking away from millions of Americans who are still out of work - and the media isn't paying enough attention either.

The First Step...

As the adherents of just about any twelve-step program will tell you, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

For the past half-decade, we've been among the voices trying to coax the modern Republican Party toward step one, multiple times - even before our current archive system existed. Unfortunately, to the detriment of both their own political party and the American people, the only steps the Republican party seems willing to take are off the edge of an ideological cliff.

When we read Greg Sargent's headline Tuesday - which echoed one we wrote two years ago this week - we realized parts of today's Republican Party have been on their current version of a political death march since before this century began.

With both GOP legend Bob Dole and recently retired Senator Olympia Snowe calling out the GOP as desperately in need of rethinking their priorities, we were once again reminded that the current Republican Party is in almost exactly the same position as the Democratic Party was in the mid-1980s - a comparison we've been making for years now.

Indeed, it's the same comparison Molly Ball outlined last week in The Atlantic. While the parallels between then and now are both eerie and startlingly sad, the differences remind us even more how far the GOP has fallen into their own madness.

It's not just that no progress can be made in Washington anymore, regardless of what President Obama does or says, as Steve Benen pointed out on Tuesday.

It's that even when President Obama goes so far as to put on a purely symbolic "charm offensive," the Republicans in Congress - led by the ideological extremists in the tea party wing - destroy any potential for actually governing. Greg Sargent made this point abundantly clear to anyone who may have still doubted - today's GOP is fundamentally unserious about governing.

If it weren't both a painful spectacle to behold and deeply damaging to the nation, we would almost be tempted to sit back and laugh as the Republican Party keeps on marching right over the edge, into political oblivion.

The problem is, like any other addict, when the GOP keeps falling down, they also drag down everyone else around them - and as with any other addict, until the majority of members of the Republican Party want to make things better themselves, we can keep pointing the way to the beginning of  a political recovery program but they have to take the first step themselves.

For now, we're just hoping they hit bottom sooner rather than later.