Category: media and media people

Categories
media and media people political challengers

The Ron Paul Problem

Prior to the Iowa Straw Poll, its credibility and repute were proclaimed throughout the land. The Washington Post characterized it as “arguably the first major vote of the 2012 presidential contest.”

Then came Saturday’s results in Ames: Michelle Bachman and Ron Paul finished first and second, respectively, with Paul only 152 votes and less than a percentage point behind Bachmann, no other candidate coming anywhere close.

So, mainstream analysts now call it a three-way race — with Mr. Paul not one of the three!

A story in USA Today postponed mere mention of Congressman Paul till the 13th paragraph: “Candidates Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain are also seeking the Republican presidential nomination.”

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” GOP strategist Mike Murphy laments that “If 75 people had changed their minds, [Ron Paul] would have won the Iowa straw poll, which would have kind of shaken up the race and it would have put the straw poll out of business forever.”

Out of business? Forever? What sort of electoral contest should or would be abolished if a certain candidate wins?

Murphy’s statement generated neither rebuttal nor even any notice from the folks on the program.

“One reason the bipartisan establishment finds Paul so obnoxious is how much the past four years have proven him correct — on the housing bubble, on the economy, on our foreign misadventures, and on our national debt,” wrote Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney.

In other words, time to ignore him.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Frummious Bandersnatch

Columnist David Frum buys what Washington’s establishment is selling. Consider the seven theses of his recent screed, “Wake up GOP”:

  1. “Unemployment is a more urgent problem than debt.” Maybe. So what are you going to do about it — accumulate more debt to fund unstimulating stimulus packages, as mass unemployment calcifies?
  2. “The deficit is a symptom of America’s economic problems, not a cause.” Sure, the deficit is worse because of decreased revenues. But deficits were high before the bust, and debt was increasing. Deficits are a symptom of a governance problem.
  3. “The time to cut is after the economy recovers.” So why didn’t politicians — Frum’s beloved Republicans, while he was personal manservant to George W. Bush — cut spending before the bust?
  4. “The place to cut is health care, not assistance to the unemployed and poor.” The place to cut is over-spending everywhere. Pentagon. The medical-industrial complex. “Discretionary spending.” And start by freezing the baseline spending. And cut federal salaries across the board.
  5. “We can collect more revenue without raising tax rates.” Uh, maybe “we” shouldn’t raise revenues! And yet establishing a simpler, flat income tax rate probably would raise revenues, so . . .
  6. “Passion does not substitute for judgment.” Yes. And it’s about time Frum showed some of the latter.
  7. “You can’t save the system by destroying the system.” If the system has put America on a crash course with disaster, then that system must be replaced. With a better one.

It’s arguments like Frum’s that stand in the way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies

A Surplus of Slant

The Washington Post Metro section headline seems to tell a story: “Virginia taxes yield $311 million surplus.”

Odd, though: Virginia’s legislators didn’t raise taxes; they cut spending. The article, thankfully, reveals this, reporting that there was “no general tax increase” and “hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts.”

But if you just read the headline and moved on, you might have been misled.

Later that day, CNN charges Congresswoman Michele Bachmann with “again” characterizing “a settlement to black farmers as fraud.” No explanation as to why. Then CNN presents John Boyd (or Dr. John Boyd?), president of the National Black Farmers Association.

Boyd denies all talk of fraud. “I just don’t understand why people like Ms. Bachmann . . . have continued to criticize this settlement,” he explains, before figuring it might be to “divide and conquer America.”

Rep. Bachmann is shown saying 94,000 people were given settlement money even though the census showed only 18,000 black farmers. But CNN avoids that obvious math problem. CNN also neglects the testimony of Jimmy Dismuke, a black farmer who claims the lawyers told potential plaintiffs that “if you had a potted plant, you can be a farmer.”

Then CNN anchor Kyra Phillips asks, “Do you feel that she’s racist?”

Boyd responds, “She’s going to have a hard time proving to America that she’s not racist if she continues to make these kinds of comments.”

Media folks are going to have trouble proving to America that they don’t slant the news.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

Cheaters Never Prosper?

The cheating scandal in the Atlanta Public Schools is ugly — 178 administrators, principals and teachers were caught changing answers on standardized tests. Nearly 80 percent of the schools investigated were found to be guilty.

One school held weekend pizza parties to organize the fraud. Former Superintendent Beverly Hall — named the National Superintendent of Year in 2009 — “is accused of encouraging the cheating.” Hall made hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses for the fraudulent test scores.

Meanwhile, one teacher fearing retaliation if she blew the whistle, declared, “APS is run like the mob.”

Yet much of the media spin is excuse-making:

  • On NBC’s Nightly News, Brian Williams called it “the risk of high-stakes testing.”
  • CBS Evening News informed us that, “Educator Diane Ravitch blames it on a federal law that links funding with test performance.”
  • ABC News reported that, “Many in the community are pointing the finger at No Child Left Behind, the federal policy that made test scores king.”
  • One expert said, “[S]ome educators feel pressured to get the scores they need by hook or by crook.”

I’ve been a consistent critic of No Child Left Behind and deplore the federal micro-managing of schools. But cheating is wrong. And the fault lies with the cheaters — not with those demanding better performance.

Paul Landerman, a former Atlanta teacher fired for reporting the cheating, told NBC, “The greatest value inside that system is loyalty to the system.”

System first. Your kids? Somewhere after that.

That’s the opposite of Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies too much government

What a Deal!

David Brooks, writing in the New York Times on Independence Day, cajoles Republicans to accept the deal that allegedly now faces them: Raise a few taxes (just a few!) in exchange for the Democrats going along with “a debt reduction measure of $3 trillion or even $4 trillion.” After all, he writes,

If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases.

And then Brooks goes off on how unreasonable the Republicans have become, how abnormal.

Well, we can only hope.

There’s good reason for recalcitrance in the Republican party. Our beloved congressfolk do not have a revenue problem, they have a spending problem. They keep increasing spending, year by year, no matter what the revenue actually is.

Increasing revenue — which is still not certain even if marginal tax rates get upped or “loopholes” get closed — does not solve the base problem, which is spendaholic politicians.

Besides, the “trillions” in cuts are in the future, while the taxes would be immediate. We’ve been burned on such deals before, like Lucy and Charlie Brown’s football.

There was a reason the New York Times chose Brooks for its “conservative.” He can always be counted to chatter “kick the ball.”

Don’t fall for it, Charlie Brown.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

World Policeman on the Take?

The United States of America is at war in Afghanistan and Libya and has nearly 50,000 troops remaining in Iraq. We have 702 military bases in 63 countries around the world.

We’ve become the world’s policeman.

This mission comes with a hefty price tag — most importantly, in the lives of our soldiers. Secondarily, but not inconsequentially, in dollars. Last year, we spent $685 billion for our worldwide presence, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now we’re adding Libya to the bill.

So, how do we pay for all this policing?

Over the weekend, in a visit to Iraq, U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher suggested, “We would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the megadollars we have spent here in the last eight years.”

We can hope, but Sean Hannity went a misplaced step further: “We have every right to go in there [into Iraq and Kuwait] and, frankly, take all their oil and make them pay for the liberation.”

Heavens! Rescuing someone doesn’t give us the right to take others’ money or oil or anything else.

Now, were a liberated nation to choose to repay us, that’d be nice. Kuwait did actually pay more of the financial cost of the Gulf War than we did.

But face it: Policing the world is just not cost-effective. Making it pay by turning a liberation crusade into an excuse for looting? That’s not police activity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
folly media and media people

A Brief Against Weiner

Congressman Anthony Weiner: Insert joke here.

Perhaps because I pronounced his name as “whiner” rather than “wiener,” I didn’t titter as much as the rest of America did upon the Twitter release of his notorious underpants photo.

Weiner stonewalled for as long as he could. Was the photo in question of his own dear, downstairs corporality? He couldn’t “say with certitude.”

Yesterday’s overdue confession that he’d fouled up a direct message on Twitter, sending it publicly, instead — and then lied about it — confirmed nearly everybody’s suspicions. (Everyone it seems except too many slanted lame-stream media folks, who instead attacked the now magnificently vindicated Andrew Breitbart.) Weiner admits to having sent inappropriate messages and photos to attractive, younger women.

But, alas, Weiner’s mea culpa was accompanied by his insistence that he would not resign.

For lying about his accounts being “hacked” — and thus cry-wolfishly raising national security issues — and for proving himself an utter idiot at a simple messaging system, he should. That is, he should resign for falsely reporting a crime (and it is a crime to hack someone else’s online accounts), and for utter, bumbling incompetence.

Demonstrating humiliating incompetence at Twitter should remain a prerogative of private citizens, not politicians.

And it’s not as if he couldn’t land on his, er, feet. He could join one of the newer news comment shows, become Eliot Spitzer’s new partner on, perhaps, Weiner/Spitzer.

It has a ring to it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people too much government

Show Me the Way to the Next Hookah Bar

I could never emulate the economist Irving Fisher — and not just his use of index numbers. He was a perfervid purist. He didn’t just defend “the success” of Prohibition, he looked forward to the day when coffee, tea and bleached flour would be outlawed, too.

Hey, I love my coffee. You’ll have to pry my cup from my cold, dead fingers.

Of course, many forms of purism are obviously hygienic. But take purity beyond persuasion, into force, that’s not safe for anybody. And fraud? Weasel-wordy purists aren’t against lying for the cause, either.

Take the hookah.

Hookahs are to tobacco-smoking what bongs are to marijuana-smoking: A water-filtration-based, easy-to-share drug delivery system. In “Putting a Crimp on the Hookah,” the New York Times quotes one hookah smoker as saying he’s unconcerned about the health effects, since he only smokes it about once a month. The author then states “But in fact, hookahs are far from safe.” As Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine points out, both can be true. Tobacco smoking isn’t exactly healthy. But occasional imbibing of water-filtered smoke is almost certainly better for you than regular cigarette use.

The New York Times focuses on the next leg of the “ever-shifting war on tobacco,” the prohibition of “hookah bars.” Though there’s some talk of protecting second-hand smoke victims, it’s pretty obvious that this war is really about squelching a “vice” by force.

Which is itself worse than vice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people

Pogue Privacy “Paranoia”

Apple customers recently learned that the cellular versions of their iPhones and iPads are storing detailed tracking information about users in an unencrypted format.

Ace New York Times tech reviewer David Pogue belittles anyone concerned about the threat to privacy. He himself has “nothing to hide,” lacks the “paranoid gene.” In conclusion, “So what?”

Chiming in online, reader “Diana” avers that “Privacy is dead. It is time to get over it” — a familiar yet incoherent sentiment which assumes that privacy is an all-or-nothing commodity.

If there were a spate of break-ins in a neighborhood, would anyone feel justified in blithely asserting, “Security is dead. It is time to get over it”? Would you be making a pointless fetish of security by continuing to lock your front door or improving the lock? Should everyone suffering under dictatorship be instructed that their freedom is dead, get over it?

The costs of breaching privacy can be minor or great. With respect to unencrypted and archived tracking data, the practical costs of the vulnerability may be zero until the wrong person with the wrong motive exploits it. The danger may be a lot greater in other countries.

It’s appropriate to debate how great an apparent threat to privacy may be, and the best way of countering that threat. But it is wrong to assume that institutionally persistent but unnecessary assaults on personal privacy are either irreversible or silly even to notice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets media and media people national politics & policies

What’s Going Up

When it comes to government policy and the politics that supports it, why people advocate what they advocate can get complicated.

It’s obvious that people don’t always vote their wallets, their narrowly perceived “self interest.” But it’s just as obvious that even the biggest advocates of “sacrifice” and “public spirit” often come off as greedy and narrowly pandering to at least some interests.

And then there’s the issue of fuel to throw on the fire of ideology.

Gasoline, especially, leads to some bizarre expressions of opinion.

When gas prices rise, people talk “conspiracy.” Chris Cuomo makes the case that “speculators” drive fuel prices up — though I notice that neither he nor his guest seemed much inclined to use actual economic analysis to explain anything. “The facts” Cuomo makes much of are embarrassingly superficial.

Two U.S. senators now push for regulators to “apply the breaks” on speculators. Current prices are, as one of them puts it, “unwarranted.”

In past decades, I remember some prominent politicians talk about adding huge taxes to gas, “just like in Europe,” to discourage consumption and “encourage green energy” and thereby “save the planet.”

I don’t hear those notions often, anymore. Could it be that none of us wants to pay more, so when gas prices rise, we forget our ideologies and other fine notions and just yearn (or scream) for cheaper gas?

Not exactly a rational attitude towards policy. But maybe not that mysterious, either.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.