Author Archives: eehines

Here are the Jobs to Cut

Posted on by
Reply

A bunch of Washington Post journalists and staffers struck the print news outlet Thursday, upset over planned buyouts of 240 job holders, and layoffs if 240 don’t agree to buyouts.

WaPo reporter Marissa Lang:

We did not come to this decision to do this walkout lightly….

No, of course not….

The union, represented by the NewsGuild, said in an unsigned statement posted on X by New York Times(!) media reporter Ben Mullin,

Despite a year and a half of efforts, Post management has refused to bargain in good faith for a fair contract that keeps up with inflation and our competition[.]

The strike announcement subheadline reads, in part,

Unfair labor practice strike protests the Post’s disregard of the law in bargaining….

Because, of course it’s always management’s fault, the union always is lily-pure. Of course…. Unsubstantiated, smear claims like this are part of what gives unions a bad name.

No, it seems to me that “the union,” with its strike, has self-identified those 240 jobs and quite a few more that can, and should, be cut.

A Brief Note

Posted on by
Reply

The Wharton Board of Advisors—the Wharton is the business school of UPenn—is demanding leadership change at UPenn in light of UPenn President Liz Magill’s House of Representatives testimony in which Magill refused to say whether calling for genocide of Jews violated any of UPenn’s codes of conduct.

So far, so good. But then the Board wrote this in its demand:

In light of your testimony yesterday before Congress, we demand the University clarify its position regarding any call for harm to any group of people immediately, change any policies that allow such conduct with immediate effect, and discipline any offenders expeditiously.

But—if there are no current policies barring such conduct, what offenders can there be?

The failure of UPenn seems goes far beyond the university’s front office.

UN Secretary-General

Posted on by
Reply

António Guterres is missing a good opportunity to keep quiet. He wrote a letter to the UN Security Council President, distributed to all of the Security Council members, a letter that is not really responsible behavior.

The worst part of his letter is his demand for a ceasefire at all cost. He knows full will the meaning of that phrase in the present context—all cost includes the destruction of Israel as a polity, as a society, as a people. Guterres doesn’t care.

Underneath that, he bleats about “reportedly” 15,000 Gazans have been killed in this war, and adds his “reportedly” claim of 40% of those 15,000 being children. Undoubtedly, several thousand Gazans, including children, have been killed. But he chooses not to cite credible sources for those figures, he ignores who has the responsibility for those deaths, and he ignores the inalienable right of the Israelis to defend themselves, to defend their very existence.

Guterres also bleated about hospitals become battle zones and the decreasing supplies of hospital and Gazan necessities.

Guterres has chosen to ignore where the responsibility for this disaster lies. Hamas has repeatedly stated that its goal is the extermination of Israel, and at least one of its leaders has promised repeated October 7s until the goal is achieved—no matter how many Gazans die in the effort.

Guterres has chosen to ignore the basic fact that the vast majority of Gazan casualties—of whatever number—are the direct result of Hamas’ use of Gazans as human shields and Hamas’ use of Gazan residential apartment buildings, schools, those hospitals about which Guterres pretends to worry as rocket launch sites, weapons and ammunition storage sites, and command centers.

Guterres has chosen to ignore that it was Hamas that chose to ignite this war, and that it is Hamas that is creating the humanitarian disaster about which he pretends to care so much with its refusal to let Gazans evacuate combat zones—zones which the Israeli government and the IDF are constantly at pains to announce before hand, at great risk to their own soldiers and at great risk of letting terrorists leave the combat zone along with Gazans.

Guterres’ performance is not well brought-up behavior.

Rebuilding San Francisco?

Posted on by
Reply

San Francisco is moving to alter certain requirements and political priorities in order to increase residential housing construction. San Francisco even has changed some actual rules so developers can build market-rate apartments with fewer requirements to provide affordable housing. One project coming out of these moves is this one:

In what would be the city’s most ambitious residential development in several years, local property developer Bayhill Ventures last month announced plans for a 71-story rental tower in San Francisco’s ailing financial district.

Cabrini Green come to San Fran, degentrifying the financial district? Only with the critical difference that this area will have even fewer police with which to enforce laws and keep folks safe than Chicago provided Cabrini Green.

It’s not certain that that outcome will be realized. However, the construction comes inside an established environment of a reduced police force; laws decriminalizing, among others, drugs and shoplifting; and prosecutors reluctant to prosecute. (Yes, I’m aware that San Francisco residents recalled an especially egregious non-prosecuting prosecutor, but his replacement is better only compared with that low bar.)

We’ll see.

“Silence is Violence”

Posted on by
Reply

That’s been the mantra of the Left for some years. It’s an extreme rendition of the obligation of folks—especially those with public influence—to speak and act against bad behavior, especially atrocities. It’s a mantra that was born in objections to the rise of, and increasing publicity surrounding, violence against women and children, increases (in publicity, at least) roughly coinciding with the time of the Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein exposures.

That brings me to 7 October 2023 and the terrorist Hamas attacks, of which rape of Israeli women and children, torture during and by rape of Israeli women and children, butchering of Israeli children were not byproducts of the heat of the moment but were deliberately used and specific tactics of the Hamas terrorists. There has been some outcry against those atrocities by major “women’s groups” that concern themselves with protecting women and children.

There also has been an ear-shattering silence from other organizations that make the same claims of concern for women and children. The Silent Ones include these:

  • Planned Parenthood
  • Women’s March
  • EMILY’s List
  • Democrat Women’s Caucus
  • National Organization for Women
  • Equality Now
  • Time’s Up
  • SOS Children’s Villages
  • World Health Organization
  • United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Women Empowerment
  • N. Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
  • International MeToo

The list goes on and is disgustingly long.

On 30 November, NOW did, badly belatedly, say that NOW condemns the use of rape as a weapon of war, but even with that, its statement was insultingly generic, with no mention of Hamas or Israel specifically. Coming as it does nearly two months after the atrocities, and only after mounting opprobrium, it’s not possible (for me, anyway) to believe NOW is uttering anything other than empty rhetoric in an attempt to cover its collective political behind.

Silence is violence is, by itself, an unprovable accusation. Silence, though, is a powerful indication of the antisemitic bigotry of these allegedly supportive but carefully silent organizations, and it is illustrative of the hypocrisy of these organizations that speak so loudly and zealously against crimes against women—or what they perceive as crimes against women—but are just as loudly and zealously silent when it comes to crimes against Jewish women and children.