Author Archives: eehines

Political CYA

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors waxed opinionated on the matter of government efforts at stifling free speech, centering their wax-on piece on Sundar Pichai’s letter (formally written by an Alphabet lawyer) excusing (the editors generously called it a mea not-so-maxima culpa) Alphabet’s Google’s (read: Pichai’s) mistaken role in censoring Conservative podcasts—purging them from YouTube—during the Wuhan Virus (my term; the editors continue to euphemize with “Covid-19”) situation. The editors also nattered on about the hypocrisy of the Left’s getting on the Trump administration over the Kimmel business compared with the Left’s downplaying of the Biden administration’s role in that Alphabet (et al.) censorship.

What interests me about this editorial, though, is this bit from the penultimate paragraph:

Progressives intimidated companies into believing that if they failed to toe the line on certain issues, enforcement could follow.

This is those companies’ managers—including Mark Zuckerberg, of Meta, whom the editors also cited—conscious choice to be “intimidated.” I’ve written elsewhere in this blog about the flaccid-kneed nature of senior managers, at the pinnacle of their professions, who allow themselves to be so easily managed by others. Men and women of good character would have refused to kowtow and challenged in court any enforcement that might have followed, and won easily (if initially expensively, but long-term much more cheaply) on free speech grounds.

And the editors’ close:

Alphabet’s letter to Judiciary is notable for its commitment that the company “has not and will not empower fact checkers to take action on or label content across the Company’s services.” That’s good to hear, but Google would have done better if its accounting had come before the electoral winds shifted. The company’s letter is an admirable statement of principles. Let’s hope it sticks.

This is a sham shift, not at all a statement of principles. This is merely a political CYA claim, done at the convenience of political winds. There’s no reason to believe it will stick. Pichai already has amply demonstrated the strength of his character, and tomorrow may bring an administration of a different feather.

Yes and No

Posted on by
Reply

A letter-writer in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wrote,

As he [Joseph Schumpeter] wrote in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: “Every successful corner may spell monopoly for the moment.” Yet technological change upends whole industries, creating new, previously unimaginable services and “goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization.” Each dislodges the monopoly position of incumbent firms wedded to the old ways of doing things.

Not entirely.

I submit that the real problem, the one of which the above is merely symptomatic, is the fact that the monopoly’s moat is as much a barrier trapping the monopolists inside, limiting their ability to innovate, as it is a barrier keeping competitors in the monopoly’s established, old ways, venue from getting started.

From this, other startups, in closely associated but not the same venues as the monopoly, not being stultified by the safety that moat seems to provide, easily can out innovate and bypass the both the monopoly’s moat and the monopoly.

Wrong Answer

Posted on by
Reply

This time it’s Jason Riley, of The Wall Street Journal, who’s missing the street for the potholes. He wrote in his Tuesday op-ed,

The latest results from the National Assessment of Education Progress were released earlier this month, and they weren’t pretty. High-school seniors recorded the worst reading scores since 1992, and math scores were the lowest since the current test began two decades ago. Elementary-school students have also lost ground. Just 31% of eighth-graders scored at or above the proficient level on the science assessment.

And,

The ramifications extend far beyond our borders. The Program for International Student Assessment exam is a global assessment of 15-year-old pupils. In 2018 only 8% of US test-takers scored in the top tier in mathematics, compared with 15% in Canada, 18% in Japan, and 29% in Hong Kong. Today’s students will populate tomorrow’s labor force, and employers who rely on workers with math, science, and engineering backgrounds have been complaining for decades that too many Americans are uninterested or ill-prepared to fill these jobs.

 

But then he wrote,

Which brings us back to Mr Trump, who wants to make it harder for US companies to hire foreign nationals. On Friday the president announced that he was imposing a new $100,000 fee on applicants for H-1B visas, designated for skilled migrants who disproportionately specialize in science, technology and math occupations.

It’s true enough that we benefit from suitably skilled foreigners who enter our nation legally—those immigrants and Riley’s “migrants.” But the problem, which seems to have blown right by him, even as he wrote it, is identified by those employers…complaining for decades that too many Americans are uninterested or ill-prepared to fill these jobs.

The answer to the problem is not making it easy for qualified immigrants to enter our nation legally, even as that helps at the margins. The answer is to fix our education system. That must begin with eliminating, root and branch, the rent- and fee-seeking teachers unions who collect massive dues and lobby (too successfully) for government money while they work just as assiduously to block local, State, and Federal efforts to improve the public school systems those unions hold in thrall. An early move in this beginning step would be to recognize that teachers and their unions who work for public schools are public servants and public service unions just as are the civil servants and their unions working for any other arm of government, and bar them from striking, just as many civil servant unions are barred.

Our education system would be further improved by getting those unions and their hip-pocket politicians at the various levels of government out of the way of voucher and charter schools and home schooling, accepting that competition works toward product improvement in education as well as it does in industry.

At that point, the cherry on top would be to have local, State, and Federal funding not go directly to the schools, but instead follow the student to the school or home to which he transfers, or with which he stays after having transferred, for use then by the school or parent receiving the student.

The Press in the Pentagon

Posted on by
Reply

SecDef Pete Hegseth is severely restricting the press’ access in the Pentagon and what the press can print about the doings in the Pentagon.

The policy would require credentialed reporters to sign a pledge agreeing not to publish information unless it has been cleared for release. That would include materials that have already been unclassified. Journalists who refuse could lose their access.

After all,

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth defended the change and said it was designed to curb leaks and protect information at the Pentagon.
“Time and time again, classified information is leaked or peddled for political purposes to try to make the president look bad,” said Hegseth at a news conference in June.

He’s right about that, and it’s too bad the press has become addicted to leaks, especially given that the leakers are themselves intrinsically dishonest, instead of being willing to do the hard work of original investigative reporting.

The uproar over the restrictions is, though, justified, in one respect. The prevention of leaks getting published at the expense of national security could be more efficiently achieved in a different way.

That way would have the SecDef expand the various Pentagon Public Affairs Offices, with the Public Affairs Officer in the SecDef office controlling the PAOs below. This expansion and hierarchical nature of the PAO structure would be necessary due to the following. Restrict all journalists from all of the Pentagon—no wondering the halls, no ducking into unlocked offices, and so on—other than the PAO offices and any gatherings and meetings to which the press or specific journalists are explicitly invited.

Any DoD person, civilian or military and of any rank, a journalist encounters during duty hours and who is asked a question by the journalist, must be required to answer the question by directing the journalist to the nearest Public Affairs Office while saying nothing else in response to the question. The flip side of this is that the journalist must get responses from the PAOs within an hour of asking his questions, whether those responses are answers or decisions not to answer.

If the person is not on Pentagon grounds and is off-duty, he must make clear to the journalist that he is not speaking for DoD; he is solely expressing his personal opinion. Journalists who do not make note of that early in their publications should lose their Pentagon access.

Similar rules should be applied to all US military installations around the nation and the world as well as to all civilian facilities that are operating under DoD contract.

The Party that Invented Political Weaponization

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democratic Party politicians have been bleating for most of this year about the alleged weaponization of the Department of Justice. However, Party invented that weaponization with ex-President Barack Obama’s DoJ and his Attorney General Eric Holder, who swore fealty to Obama with his “I’m his wingman” oath, and then proceeded to use his AG office to go after us American citizens for daring to disagree with Obama’s pen and phone activities. Obama expanded that weaponization with his use of the IRS to go after Conservative nonprofit political organizations.

Biden expanded, while particularizing, that Party weaponization with his DoJ and its subordinate FBI categorizing concerned mothers as domestic terrorists and traditional Catholics as far-right extremists that bore watching. He and his followers engaged in explicit, politically motivated prosecutions of Trump over the riots at the Capitol and over his concerns about election integrity in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Trump has been attacking political opponents during his second term? Or is he going after wrong-doers who happen to be, also, in the other party?

Whatever those answers might be, here’s Party’s House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D) promising more, explicitly more, Party weaponization with promised attacks, not just on Trump, but on anybody “doing the bidding of the Trump administration.”

One thing to understand as people who are flirting with the Trump administration, or doing the bidding of the Trump administration, or engaging in the “pay to play schemes” of the Trump administration, the statute of limitations is five years…there will still be accountability to be had. And that process begins now, but it will not be complete until there is an independent Department of Justice and certainly an independent House of Representatives in Democratic hands.

In Democratic hands—my irony meter pegged hard.

This is the level of integrity Party has on offer for 2026, 2028, and in the out years.