Joe Cool

Washington rewards failure. It’s time to send career politicians home

· Fox News

Washington, D.C., is broken. I don't think that's a controversial statement anymore. Eighty-three percent of Americans support term limits on Congress — and even more Alaskans do — and approval of Congress sits at around 12%. People aren't wrong to feel that way.

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I say this as someone who's been there. I went to Congress to carry on the legacy of my Republican predecessor, Don Young, who spent decades putting Alaska first by working across the aisle and delivering real results. What I found was different: a place more focused on staying in power than getting things done, on trading stocks than passing laws, on keeping donors happy than keeping constituents afloat.

SENATE PLOTS PERMANENT END TO GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS WITH BIPARTISAN PUSH

Congress has become a performance. And working people are paying for it.

Corruption dominates. Our officials trade stocks while having access to insider information. They take meetings with the special interests bleeding working people dry. And while they're cashing in, their constituents are facing skyrocketing prices.

I see it everywhere I go in Alaska. This used to be a place of abundance. Now, in every city, town and village, I hear the same thing: groceries and gas are through the roof, buying a home feels impossible, and people are choosing between heating their houses and putting food on the table. That's not a red problem or a blue problem. That's what happens when the people making decisions in Washington have stopped feeling the consequences of those decisions.

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The reason immigration hasn't been fixed in decades isn't that it's too hard for us to wrap our heads around. It's that the system rewards politicians for fighting about it, not solving it. The same goes for the cost of living, drug prices, housing — you name it. Career politicians have every incentive to keep the fight going and no real deadline to deliver.

That's the problem term limits fix.

I'm calling for 12-year term limits on Congress. To those who serve in the House of Representatives or the Senate, if you can't get something worthwhile done in 12 years, it's time to go home. This isn't radical. It's accountability. The kind every working person in this country already lives with.

SENATE PLOTS PERMANENT END TO GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS WITH BIPARTISAN PUSH

The only people who don't support term limits are the ones who benefit from not having them. The career politicians who've turned public service into a career advancement strategy. The committee chairs who've been in Washington so long their biggest donors are the industries they're supposed to regulate. The members who go to Washington and come home three times richer than when they left.

My time in Congress made it crystal clear to me that the system is rigged. Most members of Congress aren't there to deliver; they're there to stay in office and get rich along the way. The result is exactly what you'd expect: partisan gridlock, institutional rot, and corrupt policies engineered to benefit the same powerful special interests that fund the machine.

You can't fix the cost of living without first fixing the people in charge of fixing it.

I've called on Alaska to lead by passing term limits at the state level to open a legal pathway through the courts. As Alaska's next senator, I'll fight to pass them federally. Alaska has led the country before on government reform. We can do it again.

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Term limits won't solve everything. But they will force Congress to work on our timeline, not theirs. They'll replace career politicians beholden to donors with representatives who actually have to deliver, because they know the clock is running. And they will help ensure that the voices of hardworking Americans are heard at the highest levels of government, not the voices of wealthy elites.

Working people across this country can't afford more of the same. We need a system that works for them, not career politicians and the shady special interests who keep them in their seats.

Red or blue, we all benefit from a Congress that has a deadline.

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Novak Djokovic breaks Roger Federer's Wimbledon record, reaches quarter-finals

· India Today

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Pac-12 commissioner says it’s ‘inappropriate’ to release media revenue figures

· Yahoo Sports

Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

The new-look Pac-12 is preparing to kick off its first year as a full-fledged conference after holdovers of the former league, Oregon State and Washington State, operated as a twosome under the Pac-12 banner following the conference’s practical dissolution after the 2023-24 season.

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Beginning this upcoming season, the Pac-12 will feature Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Gonzaga (basketball), Oregon State, San Diego State, Texas State, Utah State and Washington State. The league will also begin a new set of media rights deals with CBS, The CW, and USA Sports. CBS will broadcast a few of the league’s marquee games, with the vast majority of inventory landing on The CW and USA Network.

Considering the breakdown of its media distribution, it’s fair to say the Pac-12 has solidified itself as a mid-major conference. Still, the Pac-12 is likely in a position to pay its member schools more than their previous homes — mostly in the Mountain West and Sun Belt — could have afforded to pay.

We won’t know exactly how much that is until some of the public schools in the conference file their financials because, at least according to Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould, it is “inappropriate” to publicize media revenues earned from the conference’s new set of rights deals. Appearing on a recent episode of the Bald-Faced Truth Unfiltered show with independent college football reporter John Canzano, Gould explained her reasoning.

“I think there’s a long history in our business of a lot of folks — whether it’s the media, whether it’s industry people — kind of focusing in on media rights numbers. And I would say a couple of things,” Gould began. “Number one, media rights are one piece of the overall distribution. All money is green. All money can be spent. I personally think, number one, that it’s incredibly inappropriate to be releasing numbers of agreements that we have with media rights partners that are very complex and have rights fees included, have marketing commitments included. They’re not simple agreements. But I would also say, in addition to the confidentiality of the agreements we signed with our media rights partners, we prefer to focus on our entire business enterprise and the overall number that our members will get at the end of the first year, FY27. That is really the more important number than the media rights number specifically.”

A skeptic, of course, would disagree with this premise. Media rights revenue for major conferences tend to find ways to leak out after they’re signed, in no small part because conferences want to brag about the money their schools will be receiving, which can help efforts like recruiting. The value of the Big Ten’s broadcast deals, for instance, was reported the same day the deals were announced.

It would stand to reason, then, that the Pac-12’s media rights deals are valued lower than the conference would like to let on.

The full distribution, however, could paint a more favorable picture. As Gould alludes to, those figures include revenues generated from the conference’s “entire business enterprise,” which includes revenue generated from Pac-12 Enterprises, the conference’s production arm that houses assets retained from the old Pac-12 operation. It’s unclear exactly how the conference plans to monetize those leftover assets, but it could help supplement lackluster media deals.

Eventually, we will see a fuller picture of what the new-look Pac-12 schools are earning. For now, it’s safe to assume that the schools that joined did so because there was upside, though it may not be fully realized yet.

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