Monthly Archives: June 2018

Taxpayer Money

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This is how the citizens of Missouri are seeing their tax money being used, this time by the University of Missouri.  You remember the U of M, the place where a professor demanded students attack a student reporter because he was covering a student protest.  The place where little discipline was applied to the students who answered the professor’s call. The place where the president and chancellor were forced to resign because they weren’t coddling the snowflakes enough.

With those failures, it seems that the school’s enrollment is still greatly reduced, so it decided on a public relations campaign to “restore” its image.  $1.3 million worth.  And, at the recommendation of the branding company they hired for those $1.3 million, they spent an additional

$1.8 million on marketing tied to recruiting and enrolling for the fall—which amounts to about $230 per student.

This is a waste, and it’s the wrong approach.

Mizzou placed blame on the press for the negative perception.

Because, as is the norm with such institutions, it’s someone else’s fault.  Somebody ran a scam and conned their professor into doing what she did.  Somebody ran a scam and conned the school’s management into reacting as they did, instead of taking corrective action within their house to restore free speech and quality instruction to their campus.

The school is wasting taxpayer money on image, of all things, instead of committing its energies and resources to improving its academic programs and working on actual teaching—which would include free speech, balanced approaches to teaching philosophy and literature, teaching STEM subject, teaching entering children how to think objectively and logically so they can graduate as thinking adults.

Improve the quality of its performance, and the enrollment at the school will improve.  A lot.  Playing games with image won’t attract actual students, just game players.  Or PR hacks.

What a Difference a Moment Makes

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Recall the image from the G-7 that’s gone viral:

Then there’s this one, taken in the same time frame, via Matt Dawson (@SaintRPh):

Prime Minister Shinzō Abe is absent in the second picture, so it’s not within a second of the first, but the other major players are present on the left, just as they are in the prior image.

The NLMSM has spiked that second image, which casts a different light entirely on the meeting at which the imagery was taken, and Google and Bing appear to have suppressed it, as well, in their image libraries. This is to be expected, but it’s “sobering and somewhat depressing” to see Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, via her Instagram account, pull such a stunt as this.

Jumped the Shark?

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In most venues, receiving stolen material is a felony.  Only precious journalists get a pass on that crime.

Yet self-styled media critic Howard Kurtz is worried that that pass might be getting a second look—however tenuously—from the recent arrest of James Wolfe, now ex-Director of Security for the staff of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, pursuant to which New York Times reporter Ali Watkins’ email and phone (and Twitter?) records were seized.  (Kurtz also is downplaying the importance of Wolfe, too, referring to him as a “veteran Senate Intelligence Committee staffer.”)

What triggered the arrest is the FBI’s investigation into leaks of material, some of it potentially classified, from that Committee’s deliberations.

[Wolfe]…was indicted for allegedly giving false statements to the FBI about his contacts with three reporters and for lying about giving two reporters non-public information about committee matters.

Watkins was one of those reporters, at the time apparently working for Buzzfeed and/or Politico.

Kurtz said the importance of the case cannot be overstated and could lead to some reporters’ sources “drying up.”

And

“It’s a real classic chilling effect. … It’s a crime to leak classified information. At the same time, journalists rely on these leaks to get what they think is important information,” said the MediaBuzz host, noting that some of the communications with Wolfe were through encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal.

That encryption is a strong indication that Wolfe knew what he was doing was illegal, and the recipients’ acceptance of those encrypted messages and their ability to decrypt them is a strong indication that those recipients knew they were getting illegally released material—stolen material.

Does Kurtz actually listen to himself?  Journalists rely on leaks of classified information to get their stories?  It’s a short hop from there to journalists actively soliciting leaks of classified information, but that’s a separate story.

Beyond that, I certainly hope these criminal sources get dried up.  It would be a short hop from there—but probably too far a leap for journalists—to instead actively seek out legitimate information from legitimate—and named, not hidden—sources.  It would be a short hop—but too far for journalists, apparently—to cite two on-the-record sources to corroborate “information” supplied by “anonymous” sources, like journalism standards used to require.

But a return to honest journalism would be a Good Thing, however inconvenient journalists might find that.

Gauntlet Thrown Down

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The members of the Group of Seven, just met in Canada last week, were invited to form a tariff-free trade zone by President Donald Trump.

no tariffs, no barriers…and no subsidies.

International trade doesn’t get much freer than that.

Will anyone in the G-7 have the courage to take Trump up on his offer—or to call his bluff, if that’s what they think it is?

Anyone?  Beuller?

Another Obamacare Episode

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The Justice Department has declined to defend Obamacare in the suit against it brought by a large number of States in the aftermath of Congress’ repeal of the Individual Mandate penalty tax.  Recall that Chief Justice John Roberts rewrote the law in 2012 to recreate the penalty as a tax in order to preserve the IM as constitutional, and thereby to preserve all of Obamacare as constitutional because of the inseverability of all parts of the law.

With the repeal of the IM’s…tax…that inseverability should doom the rest of Obamacare.

As a result of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision not to defend the law,

University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley said three Justice Department attorneys withdrew their names from the brief [wherein DoJ advised the court of its position].

Three Justice Department attorneys also should withdraw their names from the Federal payroll.