The Porn Industry Wants a Bailout

At first, I had a good laugh when CNN's Campbell Brown reported that the porn industry was seeking their share of the federal bailout money. Perhaps I should call that the federal cash cow.

Specifically, Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild, and Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, are seeking five billion dollars to help the porn industry survive. That in itself is comical.

But CNN estimated that this thriving business brings in somewhere between three and thirteen billion dollars a year. From a taxable revenue perspective, that's hard to ignore. The business itself is distasteful to many, but supported by many also.

Francis mentioned that porn DVD sales are down twenty percent from last year. That's a sizable loss, and a taxable loss, too, for local governments. Small rural towns to large metropolitan areas are scrambling lately to find precious dollars to keep their operations alive. A revenue loss of any kind can hurt, particularly when viewed on a cumulative basis.

Something that Francis also said rang the liberty bell: he pointed out that the bailouts of banks, brokers, the auto companies, etc., are a form of nationalization and leading the country away from being a capitalist society.

I can't argue with that point. The federal government (us taxpayers) will own controlling shares in many of these bailout ventures. That's nationalization, folks. Whether it's done in a hostile manner, like Venezuela's Chavez, or a sympathetic Uncle Sam coming to the rescue, it's leading us down a slippery slope. At the same time, this is converging with the socialistic policies many states have enacted, the so-called Nanny States, whereby your freedoms are being eroded to conform with a small group's twisted agenda.

This otherwise humorous news story painfully points out the gravy train mentality in our country. My other article here on Associated Content, "U.S. Mayors Submit Outrageous Infrastructure Stimulus Plan", exposes the tremendous portion of pork that politicians inserted into this 800+ page document.

The country is in drastic need of an infrastructure overhaul--Our bridges, highways, cities, utilities, etc., are old and crumbling.

Pork will not get us on the road to recovery. I truly hope the "Earmark Czar" that Obama will appoint can get the job done and put a red line through this wasteful nonsense.

I'm not defending Francis or Flynt, nor any of the others moguls in this business. Do they "deserve" a share of Uncle Obama's trillion dollar bailout plan? I think not. Neither do the pork barrel politicians that want to waste more of our money.

How about a DVD entitled "Pork Gone Wild"? I guarantee that it would contain disgusting, distasteful, lurid episodes of our wonderful elected officials going wild with our tax dollars.