Let's license newspapers

The Advocate likes the proposal for having city bureaucrats pick certain trash-hauling companies and the area(s) where they could do business. Yesterday's editorial Trash collection ideas are not a waste proclaimed that "at first glance, there are a lot of benefits."

The Advocate appears to be ready to hand over yet another freedom to the Magic Nanny. Such a change would take us one step closer to the licensing of other types of businesses - say, um, newspapers.

If we sink to government-supervised trash collection, the stretch to Magic-Nanny-governed newspapers is closer.

Local bureaucrats could authorize the Columbus Dispatch to report news and sell ads in the western part of Licking County to center of Granville. The Advocate could do business from that line to Hanover, where the Zanesville Times Recorder would begin its territory. The Advocate could report news and sell ads as far north as Van Atta and south to Hebron, where the Mount Vernon News and the Buckeye Lake Beacon would take over.

Bureaucrats could set the price of all these newspapers while mandating delivery times and ad rates. The Nanny could require every household to subscribe by simply folding the fee into local water bills. Readers could purchase only their assigned newspaper, no matter how bad it is - and however terrible, you could count on it getting worse when government takes charge. Never mind that, government would set it up so each news "provider" would profit. A lot.

Added to the cost of the newspaper would be the expense of supporting another layer of government bureaucracy with its legions of license-issuers and enforcers, so the price - but not the value - would have to increase, though government would take great pains to hide that fact.

As an added benefit to citizens of Newark in general and the Diebold regime in particular, Gannett's contract would require this company to move its printing operation out of Newark to save wear on city streets; no more big trucks hauling newsprint in and USA Todays out. The damage by trash trucks to city streets might not be as great as Gannett's semis, a consideration which so far seems to have escaped Advocate editorialists - along with advantages of a free and competitive marketplace.