Category Archives: morality

Why the AP Can’t be Trusted

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Julie Pace, the Executive Editor of the AP gave us a clear lesson in the distortionate nature of the AP‘s “news” writing and commentary. In her WSJop-ed last Wednesday, she wrote this with an entirely straight face:

On Thursday Judge Trevor N McFadden of the US District Court for the District of Columbia hears arguments on whether the government can bar AP reporters from covering presidential events. The White House has locked us out simply because we refer to the Gulf of Mexico by the name it has carried for more than 400 years, while acknowledging that Mr Trump has chosen to call it the Gulf of America.

This is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. While it’s true that President Donald Trump (R) is openly and loudly disgruntled with the AP‘s decision to continue referring to the Gulf of America by its prior name, no AP reporter is barred from covering presidential events. What has happened is that access to severely limited spaces—the Oval Office, air transport—has been released from a long-standing fixed set of reporters. Instead, those limited spaces have been opened to a rotating list (though still limited) of reporters, now including those representing news organizations that heretofore had never had access to such spaces.

That AP representation in this limited pool was the first to be replaced in the rotation is nothing more than whine-bait for the AP. This change to give other news organizations access also is entirely consistent with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s move to open the noon press conferences to previously unrepresented news outlets, a move that comes at the expense, even in this larger but still limited space, of other news outlets that heretofore had enjoyed their privileged permanent status. Now those privileged outlets must wait their turn among the madding crowd of “lesser” outlets.

And this:

The White House claims this is simply a matter of changing which news organizations have access to the president.

What she so carefully omitted here is that changing which news organizations have access to the president is not that at all, but a change to the way news organizations get access to the President. What the change actually does, is grant that access, in those severely limited spaces, to news organizations on a rotating basis. All news organizations, large and small, now have access. The change, as it applies to the AP, is that all of a sudden they’re required to take their turn among the crowd that heretofore had been so far beneath their august selves.

Pace also wrote this:

[N]o president—including Mr Trump during his first term—has ever tried to blacklist us because he didn’t like what we wrote.

And no President, still, has ever tried to blacklist the AP: AP‘s news writers and commenters still have complete and open access to the President in all areas and at all events, including taking their turn in those severely limited spaces. Pace is openly lying here, and her lie here flows from her toddler’s temper tantrum at being denied her privileged status—a status that, in her childishness, she has come to believe is her God-given right.

And this:

The White House is shutting out an independent global news agency….

This is just a repetition of the immediately foregoing. No AP writer or commenter is barred from anything; they just have to take their turn now, instead of being ensconced at the head of the line, at the expense of other outlets’ writers and commenters.

Pace can repeat her lie to her heart’s content; the repetition makes it true only in her fetid imagination, and it demonstrates the intrinsic unreliability of her organization’s output.

University Dependence on Federal Funds

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And one other matter. Against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s withholding/canceling of $400 million worth of grants and contracts for Columbia University, there are a couple of things that stand out.

One is this:

[S]ome board members deeply concerned the university is trading away its moral authority and academic independence for federal funds.

Columbia has already shed any pretense of moral authority—see below. Columbia’s dependence on Federal funding is Columbia’s conscious, deliberately done choice. The school has a $14.8 billion dollar endowment. Even if that were to be frozen—no further donations into it, the endowment’s investments would only break even—that’s enough to fund 37 years of grants and contracts at the rate of those $400 million per year Federal largesse. A lot can happen in those 37 years.

Then there’s this, from Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia:

It is really a red line for the independence of universities, for academic freedom, for shared governance.”

No it isn’t. Requiring a university to shed—to divest itself of—its antisemitic bigotry and (not or) its support for terrorists is not a threat to university independence or of academic freedom. Indeed, as Columbia’s support for that bigotry and that support demonstrates, removing them would produce a sharp increase in academic freedom, especially for the students—an aspect of academic freedom the Precious Ones of Columbia’s faculty carefully ignore.

Beyond that, there should be no “shared governance” at universities. Administrators should govern; professors should teach. Full stop.

Disingenuous Excuse-Making

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That’s what seems to be the case involving Columbia University’s interim president Katrina Armstrong and a variety of personages criticizing her decisions, or their lack, or their careful vagueness, regarding Columbia’s rampant antisemitic bigotry and overt support for “protestors” supporting terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank.

Armstrong’s waffling on those items already has cost her university $400 million in Federal grants and contracts, yet she continues to waffle.

Chief among her excuse-making supporters is Johns Hopkins Medicine International President, Charles Wiener:

She’s in a situation now where every minute, every hour, there’s no way she’ll be able to do anything that pleases everybody[.]

Armstrong isn’t there to please everybody; she’s not even there to please anybody at all. She’s there to do the right thing: put an end to the school’s antisemitic bigotry that exceeds the bounds of free speech by overtly denying others their rights to free speech and religion—even merely to attend class—and expel the terrorist-supporting “protestors,” including faculty members; have those “protestors” who are not students or faculty arrested for their trespass; and have those—student, non-student, or faculty—involved in stealing university buildings (which is what their “occupations” amount to) and vandalizations arrested and brought to trial for their criminal acts.

Full stop.

Then the newswriters of this WSJ piece offer their own shabby excuse:

Armstrong has walked a fine line between acknowledging that some aspects of the university need to change while also asserting the importance of the school’s academic independence.

No. There is no fine line here. There is no academic freedom in an environment where the school’s Jewish students are prevented by those terrorist supporters from speaking, prevented from getting to class, even physically attacked simply for being Jewish, much less speaking anyway.

Ans this:

If she cedes [sic] to White House demands over campus antisemitism allegations, she risks revolt from faculty fearing a loss of academic freedom.

More excuse-making. Faculty members who revolt over this are simply self-selecting for prompt termination. Getting them out of the way would both reduce the bigotry that so rampantly denies Jewish students their free speech rights and increase academic freedom by removing those who insist that academic freedom means being free to do things their way only.

Armstrong needs to stop waffling. Or she needs to be replaced by someone willing to make the hard decisions necessary to reduce the bigoted attacks on disfavored groups and get rid of the “protestors,” and to enforce those decisions.

Update (compared to when I wrote this): Columbia University has, finally, acceded to many of the government’s demands regarding curbing its antisemitic bigotry and support for terrorists.

Another Reason Why…

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…no member of the Progressive-Democratic Party can be trusted in any way. Elizabeth Warren (D, MA), for instance, in her letter to Businessman Elon Musk, who’s working the additional duty [sic:] of pro bono member of DOGE’s leadership, claimed that:

American taxpayers will shoulder the burden of tax cuts for Tesla, and they deserve answers about your efforts to secure massive tax breaks for billionaire corporations[.]

Here are some facts underlying Tesla’s income tax liability:

• much of Tesla’s $7.1 billion in net income last year doesn’t come from selling electric vehicles, solar panels, or battery storage
• $2.8 billion came from the sale of regulatory credits to other auto makers that need to comply with government EV mandates
• $1.6 billion in interest income on cash and short-term investment holdings. [Progressive-]Democrats can thank the Biden inflation for allowing companies to earn higher interest on their cash holdings
• Tesla recorded nearly $600 million in book income from price appreciation in its bitcoin holdings, but this is akin to an unrealized capital gain
• [Tesla] lost money every year it was in business from 2003 until 2020. All companies are allowed to carry forward net operating losses to offset future tax liabilities
• [Progressive-Democrats] exempted most net operating losses from the Inflation Reduction Act’s 15% corporate alternative minimum tax, including categories that include Tesla’s loss carry forward
• Tesla recorded $625 million from tax credits for its electric vehicles and $756 million for its solar and energy storage business last year

o these tax credits can also be carried forward to offset future tax liabilities
o Tesla had $1 billion in renewable energy tax credits on its books at the end of last year

Warren, and all of her Party cronies, are well aware of these things. Warren, and her cronies in Party, lie.

Moral Bankruptcy of Some University Managers

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The Trump administration is investigating quite a number of universities over allegations of rampant antisemitism and discrimination generally infesting them. The managers of those institutions are upset, and with their upset, they’re demonstrating their blatant moral bankruptcy.

Administrators, professors and prospective students at major universities across the country are expressing concerns about the future of higher education as the Trump administration restricts funding for DEI and investigates schools for charges of antisemitism.
School officials “are in an impossible situation with facing the unknown as to what may happen down the road,” Ohio University alumni association board member Kim Barlag told The Wall Street Journal.

There’s nothing at all impossible about doing a right thing, nothing at all impossible about moving against the bigotry rampant at those institutions. Many of those institutions’ managers are just sulking and doing the academic equivalent of holding their breath until they turn blue. Typical is this from West Virginia University via its “spokesperson” April Kaull:

[O]ur nation’s research universities cannot maintain research programs essential for continued national prosperity [unless Federal research funding is continued].

This is cynical and disingenuous, and grown adults should know better than to throw a temper tantrum. It’s perfectly straightforward for university managers to do the things promised in those universities’ bragged about policies—free and unfettered enquiry, with freedom of speech and of academics. In fine, stop the antisemitic bigotry, cut out the discrimination on any basis other than plain academic talent and performance, expel those students who routinely violate those tenets, and fire those university personnel—including tenured professors—who violate those tenets. That just takes a modicum of moral courage.

Of course, I’m being generous to suggest these personages are morally bankrupt—that implies that they had morals to begin with. Condoning, or even merely accepting, bigotry—antisemitic, racial, sexist, whathaveyou—demonstrates a complete lack of moral sense.