Category Archives: culture

That Includes You, Mr Newsom

Posted on by
Reply

California’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom claims to be worried that Party is too judgmental and toxic and that We talk down to people. We talk past people.

Then he said this:

I mean, this idea that we can’t even have a conversation with the other side…or the notion we just have to continue to talk to ourselves or win the same damn echo chamber, these guys are crushing us[.]

These guys are crushing us. Not, “We need to converse/debate/argue/talk with folks about ideas that we think help all Americans.” It’s “We need to do better at beating the other side so we can win.”

Party will remain toxic to the American idea as long as its goal is wholly independent of working toward the national weal and wholly focused instead on doing down the other side.

A Gordian Knot Solution

Posted on by
Reply

I have called, often, for the dissolution of the Department of Veterans Affairs on the basis of that agency’s, and now department’s, poor-to-nonexistent quality-level care for our nation’s veterans.

Now we get this. It’s from the end of the Biden administration, but this sort of thing is not unique to that one.

The inspector general report published Thursday confirms that a $2.9 billion supplemental request went unused because the agency failed to account for “prior-year recoveries” in its budget planning. Had the agency taken into account those recovered funds, the inspector general found, its projections “would have shown a reduced risk of a shortfall by year-end.”

And this, more generally:

The OIG review team found that Veteran’s Benefits Administration wasn’t consistently overspending in FY 2024 for either compensation and pension or readjustment benefits accounts, which were the subject of the budget request. “Realized prior-year recoveries,” which are “unspent deobligated funds,” weren’t included in the agency’s calculations, which contributed to the erroneous predictions.
“Had the realized prior-year recoveries been included in the calculations throughout the year, the monthly funding status reports would have shown a reduced risk of a shortfall by the end of the fiscal year,” the watchdog concluded.

Current VA Secretary Doug Collins has inherited this situation and the permeating VA internal culture; he has this:

It’s just a very, a department that is so bureaucratically bogged down that it has trouble doing its main mission, and that is taking care of veterans, and that’s why we’re actually working very hard to streamline processes, to get better help in place, and to have budgets and numbers that we can be accurate

To an extent, I disagree with Collins. It’s not worth the time, effort, money, or other resources to try to untangle this financial mess. It’s time for the Gordian Knot solution. Just get rid of the VA altogether, and convert the department’s current and putative future budgets to vouchers which our veterans can use to visit the doctors, clinics, and hospitals they choose and from which they’ll be able routinely to get timely care. Transfer the VA’s veteran housing mortgage facilities to HUD for execution.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

My Long-Standing Question

Posted on by
Reply

Holman Jenkins opened his op-ed with this paragraph.

In a different political universe Elon Musk’s DOGE wouldn’t be needed. A competent media would be flogging the public sector to provide taxpayers with effective, cost-efficient service. Programs would be examined for their usefulness. It wouldn’t qualify as wanton cruelty if one were determined to be obsolete, as happens in the private sector every day.

I’ll leave aside Jenkins’ journalistic self-importance in presuming members of the journalism guild to be the ones to define “effective” or “cost-efficient.” I’m interested here in his reference to determined to be obsolete, as happens in the private sector every day. Would that he would apply that to his guild, and answer a question I’ve long asked.

1. ID of “anonymous” sources
2. Explanation of why [journalism] has walked away from journalistic standard of corroborating “anonymous” sources with at least two on the record sources
3. Explanation of why we readers should believe “anonymous” sources actually exist
4. On the premise that at least some of the “anonymous” sources do exist, explanation of why we should believe what the source is claiming, given his fundamental dishonesty as demonstrated by his leak, which came at least in violation of his terms of employment if not his oath of office
5. On claims that the leaker is actually a whistle-blower, explanation of why proof was withheld from readers that he exhausted all of his whistle-blower channels before he leaked
6. Regarding 5 above, provision of that proof
7. Identification of the whistle blower, since he needs no anonymity; whistle-blower laws protect him

To which I add, most importantly, given Item 2 above, what publicly accessible, concretely measurable standard of journalistic integrity do today’s editors and news writers use?

An Irrelevancy

Posted on by
Reply

Greenpeace USA has lost the suit brought against it by Energy Transfer over Greenpeace USA’s role in blocking Energy Transfer’s Dakota Pipeline; the court ruled that Greenpeace USA’s actions in its role were illegal destructions, not free speech. Greenpeace USA then has been ordered to pay $660 million in realized and punitive damages to Energy Transfer.

Greenpeace USA argued throughout the damages assessment process and subsequently that

such a ruling could “shut down Greenpeace USA.”

That argument is indicative of Greenpeace’s cynicism and dishonesty. Whether or not any ruling would bankrupt Greenpeace USA is wholly irrelevant. What is relevant, the only things that are relevant, are these: did Greenpeace USA do the deed(s) alleged? If it did, what is the appropriate award that would make Greenpeace USA’s victim whole, and what constitutes a suitable level of punitive damage? In the latter case, was the damage Greenpeace USA inflicted enough to warrant its bankruptcy?

Notice that the latter criterion is not at all a death penalty. Bankruptcy is a means of reorganizing an entity and its debts (not their cancelation) that allows the entity to recover and prosper. So it is with Greenpeace USA. Which that entity knows full well.

Why the AP Can’t be Trusted

Posted on by
Reply

Julie Pace, the Executive Editor of the AP gave us a clear lesson in the distortionate nature of the AP‘s “news” writing and commentary. In her WSJop-ed last Wednesday, she wrote this with an entirely straight face:

On Thursday Judge Trevor N McFadden of the US District Court for the District of Columbia hears arguments on whether the government can bar AP reporters from covering presidential events. The White House has locked us out simply because we refer to the Gulf of Mexico by the name it has carried for more than 400 years, while acknowledging that Mr Trump has chosen to call it the Gulf of America.

This is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. While it’s true that President Donald Trump (R) is openly and loudly disgruntled with the AP‘s decision to continue referring to the Gulf of America by its prior name, no AP reporter is barred from covering presidential events. What has happened is that access to severely limited spaces—the Oval Office, air transport—has been released from a long-standing fixed set of reporters. Instead, those limited spaces have been opened to a rotating list (though still limited) of reporters, now including those representing news organizations that heretofore had never had access to such spaces.

That AP representation in this limited pool was the first to be replaced in the rotation is nothing more than whine-bait for the AP. This change to give other news organizations access also is entirely consistent with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s move to open the noon press conferences to previously unrepresented news outlets, a move that comes at the expense, even in this larger but still limited space, of other news outlets that heretofore had enjoyed their privileged permanent status. Now those privileged outlets must wait their turn among the madding crowd of “lesser” outlets.

And this:

The White House claims this is simply a matter of changing which news organizations have access to the president.

What she so carefully omitted here is that changing which news organizations have access to the president is not that at all, but a change to the way news organizations get access to the President. What the change actually does, is grant that access, in those severely limited spaces, to news organizations on a rotating basis. All news organizations, large and small, now have access. The change, as it applies to the AP, is that all of a sudden they’re required to take their turn among the crowd that heretofore had been so far beneath their august selves.

Pace also wrote this:

[N]o president—including Mr Trump during his first term—has ever tried to blacklist us because he didn’t like what we wrote.

And no President, still, has ever tried to blacklist the AP: AP‘s news writers and commenters still have complete and open access to the President in all areas and at all events, including taking their turn in those severely limited spaces. Pace is openly lying here, and her lie here flows from her toddler’s temper tantrum at being denied her privileged status—a status that, in her childishness, she has come to believe is her God-given right.

And this:

The White House is shutting out an independent global news agency….

This is just a repetition of the immediately foregoing. No AP writer or commenter is barred from anything; they just have to take their turn now, instead of being ensconced at the head of the line, at the expense of other outlets’ writers and commenters.

Pace can repeat her lie to her heart’s content; the repetition makes it true only in her fetid imagination, and it demonstrates the intrinsic unreliability of her organization’s output.