Category Archives: ethics

“Gatekeepers of Political Discourse”

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That’s how even The Wall Street Journal terms the press. This, as it notices the decreasing control influence the press has on what us average Americans are allowed to know about the political doings of our politicians.

A new media landscape has emerged. The traditional gatekeepers of political discourse—TV networks and newspapers—are shrinking in influence as Americans turn to many more outlets for information.

This comes especially in the wake of the last eight-ish years of naked bias by the press, a period wherein The New York Times has openly announced that there can no longer be objectivity in news reporting, newspapers must take sides, and a major broadcast news anchor announced that there are not two sides to every story; there can be only one side to many. In furtherance of those decisions, the press actively proselytizes on its news pages for its chosen candidates and party while actively suppressing stories that provide different information or that show their denigrated party and candidates in a good light. The press also suppresses stories that cast its chosen party/candidate in a negative light.

Beyond politics, the press actively spikes writing that contradicts its settlement of climate “science,” with the Los Angeles Times saying that it would no longer publish letters to the editor that disputed the LAT‘s determination of the proper discussion.

It’s no wonder that us average Americans no longer take the press seriously and are moving away from it toward other sources—including straight from the horse’s mouth in the podcasts that are becoming ubiquitous, and on some social media outlets like X, Truth Social, even the dangerous TikTok. If we can’t entirely trust these alternative outlets, we can at least hear what the candidates—and other guests—are saying, without the gatekeepers’ censorship filter.

Republicans Should “Embrace Bipartisanship”

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That’s what current and outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) insists Republicans should do once they take office next January.

My question to Schumer is this: will you have your Party Senators work with Republicans on bipartisan legislation, or will you and your Senate—and House—colleagues continue to insist that Republicans work with your Party?

Three guesses on Schumer’s answer (assuming he deigns answer at all), and the first two don’t count. Keep in mind, too, as you work out that third answer, that Schumer is the one who stood on the Supreme Court Building steps and threatened—by name—two Supreme Court Justices with severe consequences because those two didn’t “work with” his activist Justices on our Supreme Court.

A Victory

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Last Tuesday is shaping up to become a solid Republican electoral victory.

Former Republican President Donald Trump has won a solid Electoral College and popular vote win, and the Electoral College win may grow, with Arizona and Nevada still uncalled as I write Wednesday afternoon. If Trump gets them all, he’d have 312 Electoral College votes. His popular vote lead, 51% to 47.6%, or 4.8M votes, is unlikely to change much.

The Republicans have taken the majority in the Senate, with Senate races having been called for 52 Republicans. That margin could grow with 4 Senate races yet to be called. It’s unlikely to expand to 56 Republican Senators, though, as only 2 of the uncalled races currently have Republicans leading. Even so, the shift to the current solid majority is a major victory; a shift to 54 would be even more so.

The Republicans can still retain their House majority, given the number of uncalled races; however, it’ll remain a slim majority, which will allow the Republican Chaos Caucus to retain their outsized power. On the other hand, the Republicans are on the threshold of losing their majority to the Progressive-Democrats, which would render the Chaos Caucus irrelevant.

More importantly than a Republican victory, though, this is a victory for our nation. That’s not because the Republicans won or the Progressive-Democrats lost; rather it’s the solidity of the victory that creates the national victory. With that broad mandate—especially if the voters choose to keep the Republicans in the House majority—there now comes the possibility of putting the divisiveness of the last 16 years behind us. There now exists the possibility of our nation coming back together as a nation, and a culture, of Americans.

That possibility depends on how effectively the Republicans govern. It also depends on the Progressive-Democratic Party’s willingness to accept its defeat and work with Republicans on getting some things done and other things undone rather than being the knee-jerk obstructionist, anti anything Republican Party they have been (that the Republicans need to stop being similarly obstructionist is a part of their ability to govern objectively).

It also depends on the intrinsically mendacious press recognizing its own failures of the last several decades, made overtly manifest in the last couple of decades, and taking publicly and concretely measurable steps to rid itself of its dishonesty and return to its Fourth Estate role of objectively reporting all the news in its stories and all of the stories, while keeping its opinions out of that news reporting and in its opinion pages.

A Union Win and a Business Loss

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The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union ratified the contract its managers lately extracted from Boeing.

The union got

• 38% wage increase over the next four years for its members
• $12,000 ratification payment for each of its members
• guaranteed annual bonuses for each member ranging from a minimum of 4% to as high as 6% (the guaranteed nature defeats the purpose of bonuses, and converts the payments to an annual Christmas present)
• 401(k) Boeing match of 100% of each member’s first 8% of pay plus an automatic 4% Boeing contribution
• requirement for Boeing to build its next airplane in the union shops of the Seattle area

What did Boeing get in return? The company gets to restart its commercial aircraft production in the Seattle area, and so to survive.

That’s one outcome of the legalized extortion that is union strikes.

News Bias

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The Washington Post has a problem, and it seems to stem from the paper’s (owner Jeff Bezos’) decision to not endorse a Presidential candidate this year or, so far, in any subsequent election cycle..

The wave of customer defections after the controversial decision…has further eroded an already shrunken base of Post subscribers and heightened feelings among some staff that the paper faces an existential crisis.

Amanda Morris, WaPo “disability reporter:”

Please don’t cancel your subscriptions. It won’t impact Bezos—it hurts journalists and makes another round of layoffs more likely[.]

In keeping with guild solidarity, players from The New York Times, The Atlantic, and others chimed in, with their precious #WhyISubscribe.

250,000 have become ex-subscribers since The Decision; that’s 10% of the paper’s subscriber base.

Since the editorial room had intended to endorse Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, it seems likely that the vast majority of those cancelations are by the paper’s strong Left readers.

This would seem to show how politically unbalanced the WaPo‘s readership is. That, in turn, seems a strong indication of how biased the paper’s news room has been.

That bias is executed by the news room writers’ and editors’ decisions of which facts to include and which to omit in their news writings, what and how much personal opinion to include or try to sub rosa embed in the pieces, what stories they choose to write and what stories they choose to downplay or outright spike.

Maybe if those writers and editors can learn to be objective and balanced in news pieces and carry out their opining on the opinion pages, or if Bezos can replace his current news room with a crew of writers and editors who will and who will back up their anonymous sources with at least two on-the-record sources (which used to be a journalistic standard of integrity), the paper can begin to start being a credible source of actual news.