Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.
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Too Much Truth
Both what to report and when to report it can be legitimately debated in an editorial room. But not whether to accept demands to conceal “unflattering” truth for the sake of being allowed to report at all.
That’s the “dilemma” some news organizations face when they wish to report from within a country whose government will deny access unless they toe the line.
The reportage by longtime Reuters journalist Paul Mooney, who specializes in China, has apparently been too candid. The Chinese government has denied him a visa. His career there may be over. What should Reuters do?
Not what Bloomberg News did when its reporting incurred the displeasure of Chinese officials. Bloomberg spiked an investigative report about the financial ties between billionaire businessmen and Politiburo officials, for fear of being ejected from the country. Bloomberg insists that it has merely delayed the story. But the motive is clearly a desire to appease the Chinese government, which has already blocked the Bloomberg News website inside China and refused new visas to Bloomberg journalists.
Instead of killing or deferring disapproved journalism, any news outfit threatened with expulsion by an authoritarian government should publish its honest reports and let the chips fall where they may. If kicked out, it should seek other ways to report on the country. Covert communiqués from careful Chinese citizens. Secondary sources if necessary. That’s better than actively cooperating with wrongdoers to hide their sins.
It’s really not too different from crime reporting. Crime bosses don’t like a nosy press, either.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The biggest story of the week is turning into the biggest story of the month, the year, perhaps the decade. The much-heralded, much-despised “Obamacare” reform has had a great fall. What are the chances for the king’s henchmen to put it back, intact, on the wall? Not high, not at all.
Click on over to Townhall, then back here, for a bit more reading.
Chiefly, you may want to look up the Wikipedia entry on Humpty Dumpty. Did you catch yesterday’s posted (linked) Obamacare video?
The folks at Reason magazine have been doing a good job keeping up with the latest in Obamacare stories — and yes, those stories are getting bizarre.
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Video: Obamacare in One Lesson
This is a pretty good breakdown of what Obamacare is/was and why it was a bad idea from the start:
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Jean-Baptiste Say
The laws of Mahomet have prohibited loan at interest; and what is the consequence in the Mussulman dominions? Money is lent at interest, but the lender must be indemnified for the use of his capital, and, moreover, for the risk incurred in the contravention of the law.
School authorities in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, decided not to require students of all ages to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. They said they couldn’t find time to put it in the schedule, etc., thereby both disappointing and puzzling local veterans, who were the ones who brought the issue up.
The “time” excuse was just that, of course. What the real reasons for the decision are, I don’t know, and will let others guess.
On the bright side, there are reasons not to require recitation of the Pledge. My qualms center on how un-American it seems. Veterans today often talk up the Flag, and the Pledge, etc., but the Founding Fathers took allegiance seriously, and they didn’t secede from Great Britain to pledge their sacred honors to a symbol — a fighting banner too easily unanchored from the best part of the short declaration, “with liberty and justice for all.”
Besides, the Pledge was written in the late 19th century by Francis Bellamy, a Christian socialist who targeted the Pledge at those sectors of society that he most feared: immigrants, anyone prone to “radicalism.” And yet when I read his political agenda, I see the very radical ideas that corrupted American politics away from limited government.
Worse yet, Bellamy devised an ominous salute to go with his recitation. (Thankfully, that was modified to the hand-on-heart gesture in 1942, when Congress officially adopted the Pledge.)
I’d rather students learn about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Substance, not symbol; law, not fiction.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Jean-Baptiste Say
Henceforward, it will be reckoned no more avaricious or immoral to take interest, than to receive rent for land, or wages for labour; it is an equitable compensation adjusted by mutual convenience; and the contract, fixing terms between borrower and lender, is of precisely the same nature, as any other contract whatsoever.
America has a problem: obstinate politicians, the Obstinacy in Chief, especially.
Almost any policy high-lighted at some point in the last few years could serve as an illustration of this point, but let’s choose the once-popular “green” pro-ethanol policies.
George W. Bush pushed ethanol, and Barack Obama doubled-down on the subsidy, making it a centerpiece for his low carbon-footprint notion.
It has not worked.
What it has done is create what environmentalists are now calling “an ecological disaster.”
How?
It created a land rush that swallowed vast tracts of land sporting alternate uses, including millions of acres of conservation land, including wetlands. And the huge amounts of insecticide and fertilizer used in the effort have poisoned wells and water supplies as well as rivers and the Gulf of Mexico.
All to plant more corn than the market demands.
But is it doing what the government wants, and Obama demanded — the whole reason for this goofy program after all?
“The government’s predictions of the benefits have proven so inaccurate,” write Dina Cappiello and Matt Apuzzo for the Associated Press, “that independent scientists question whether it will ever achieve its central environmental goal: reducing greenhouse gases. That makes the hidden costs even more significant.”
Over-production, higher costs, externalized burdens — typical for a government subsidy. But what can we do about it?
In early 19th century Britain, Richard Cobden and John Bright started the Anti-Corn Law League, which successfully opposed the biggest protectionist program of the age. We could use another such vital force, this time to oppose the idiotic subsidies that raise food prices internationally as well as wreak havoc on land in the Mid-West.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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P. J. O’Rourke
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.” The Ten Commandments are God’s basic rules about how we should live — a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts.
The first nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law. But then, right at the end, is “Don’t envy your buddy’s cow.” How did that make the top ten? What’s it doing there? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose as one of those things jealousy about the starter mansion with in-ground pool next door?
Yet think how important the Tenth Commandment is to a community, to a nation, indeed to a presidential election. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t be a jerk and whine about what the people across the street have — go get your own.
The Tenth Commandment sends a message to all the jerks who want redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, more government programs, more government regulation, more government, less free enterprise, and less freedom. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell.
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President Warren G. Harding
I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights!