Tag Archives: morality

No Quick Fixes

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Some of you may have noticed that the “media industry”—newspapers and broadcast/cable news outlets—is losing credibility.

Only 16% of Americans said they have a “great deal or quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers in 2022, a 5% drop [or maybe, a 5 per centage point drop] compared to the 2021 findings, according to Gallup. It was the lowest number to give those answers since Gallup started asking about newspapers in 1973.
Television news has Americans even more concerned in 2022, as a dismal 11% told Gallup they have a “great deal or quite a lot” of confidence in the industry. This is down 5% […] from the 16% who were confident in TV news last year, a record-low total.

Joe Concha on the matter:

They can improve the situation by not injecting so much opinion into what should be straight reporting. And also by not automatically and blatantly taking a side on big issues such as the recent abortion ruling, or serving at the pleasure of one major political party like we saw by calling Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Instead, you might see some trust resorted, but it’s a hard bell to unring

Ben Smith, co-founder of Semafor, a global news company that is expected to launch later this year:

We’re hoping that a commitment to transparency and openness to a range of views can help close that gap over time[.]

Hope isn’t much of a solution, here, not when it’s too late even for Concha’s solution: the same crop of dishonest journalists and media outlet editors and publishers would still be in place.

No, the required solution must include—must begin with—a significant fraction, a strong majority, of journalists must be terminated, and all of the media outlet managers and their deputies, and and all of the editors and their deputies, must be terminated, their ties to media “news” outlets completely severed. These are the ones proximately responsible for the distortions and outright lies they write, the editorial decisions they make to publish those stories and to minimize others or to spike them altogether. These are the ones that engage in rewriting their past stories rather than leaving them intact and publishing corrections to them. The incumbents can never be trusted, no matter the bodice-ripping mea culpas that might spill from their lips or pens.

It will take a considerable amount of time to accomplish—the firings needn’t take any time at all, but finding replacements—both capable of reporting and honest enough to do it objectively will take time.

Accused Means Guilty?

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The Department of Veterans Affairs has failed again. Kenneth Harrelson, a US Army veteran, medically retired after a bit under five years in, and his family are getting their VA benefits cut off because they’ve been accused of a crime. Conviction be damned; the VA don’t need no stinkin’ conviction.

The federal government plans to suspends or terminate benefits to a military veteran and his family as a result of him being charged in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot.
The Department of Veterans Affairs informed the veteran, Kenneth Harrelson, and his wife in a June 13 correspondence that such actions are the result of the Justice Department telling the agency that Harrelson has been charged with “indicted and charged with Seditious Conspiracy….”

What he loses as a result of the VA’s action—which comes at the request of the Biden/Garland DoJ, to which the VA has no obligation to submit—even though the man is innocent, since no trial has been held and so no conviction is possible:

  • suspend payment of “gratuitous benefits” pending disposition of the criminal proceedings

Even though the VA knows he’s innocent [emphasis added]: If convicted, gratuitous benefits are forfeited…. Gratuitous benefits are things like burial in a national cemetery.

  • suspend “compensation benefit payments” starting Sept. 1, which is the first day of the month following a 60-day due process period

Regardless of whether that due process period includes even the start of his trial, much less its completion and conviction.

Guilty by accusation—off with his benefits. Congressman Louis Gohmert (R, TX) has the right of it on this:

This is what you have when vindictive leftists get in charge of major parts of the government[.]

Happy belated–suspended–Independence Day, guys.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

The Uniter Says…

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…to Hell with bipartisanship. Again.

Last time, President Joe Biden (D) wanted an “exception” to the Senate’s filibuster rule so he could get passed the Progressive-Democratic Party’s voting “rights” legislation on strict party lines—no bipartisanship wanted.

This time, Biden wants an “exception” to the Senate’s filibuster rule so Party can codify Roe v Wade in the law.

If the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights, it should be we provide an exception for this[.]

The Senate’s filibuster rule forces compromise and bipartisanship—a measure of unity—in legislation by requiring at least 10 members of the minority party to agree to the legislation.

To Hell with bipartisanship, Biden says. Pass Party’s legislation. Unification means everyone does it Party’s way.

Federal Abortion Clinics

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Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) has is pushing an idea from the Progressive-Democratic Party center:

We have some ideas coming from Senator Warren’s signed letter along with 25 other Democratic senators asking President Biden to explore opening health care clinics on federal lands in red states in order to help people access the health care and abortion. Services that they need.
…
…explore just how much we can start using federal lands as a way to protect people who need access to abortions in all the states that either have banned abortions or are clearly on the threshold of doing so.

Paid for with what funds? This is just another attempt by the Progressive-Democratic Party to have us American taxpayers pay for abortions. It’s yet one more reason we citizens need to get out, vote, and elect majorities to both the House and the Senate and to the State legislatures and to the city and town governances. And to turn the Progressive-Democrat out of the White House in 2024.

The Fed and Equity

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And, no, I’m not writing about house ownership type equity. This concerns the Fed’s potentially increasing role in “social equity.”

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board expressed concern about Progressive-Democrats trying to legislate into the Federal Reserve’s mandates the matter of “racial equity.” They’re correct as far as they went, but they based their concern on the Fed’s existing workload and on the question of how to assess “racial equity” in the Fed’s pronouncements and enforce the concept in its controls.

The Editors, though, missed the most important distinction and problem.

Whether or not “racial equity” is a matter to be taken seriously, it’s a political matter only, and so belongs only to the political branches of our Federal government—Congress and the White House.

The matter has no place in any Central Bank, including ours. The Federal Reserve’s function, in particular, is to protect our currency by protecting our economy—by working, under its existing statutory instructions, to maintain stable pricing, maximum employment, and moderate long-term interest rates (which means working to maintain stable pricing, since employment and interest rates fall out of that).

The Fed has no business or place in the political environment.