Category Archives: politics

Reporters’ Contempt for Ordinary Americans

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High-profile media figures gathered for their 2024 Campaign Journalism Conference at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics a week or so ago. One theme of the conference was the journalists’ concern about the perception of condescension, of looking down your nose at us Americans that we Americans have of the journalism guild and its members.

CNN journalist Jeff Zeleny was one expressing that concern.

So one thing I think the media has done incorrectly in terms of describing Trump voters as interviewing people only after Trump rallies. The vast majority of Trump voters have never gone to a Trump rally, have never, you know, stood in line for hours and hours and hours. And for those of you who’ve covered Trump rallies, you’ve seen some of the same people at rally, after rally, after rally. These are groupies. These are people who are going for the show, for the rock concert, if you will. So I think talking to voters who are interested enough and following things along, but not as obsessed with, you know, the candidate on either side that it sort of tends the view.

Some of those some of the people do attend multiple Trump rallies because they’re groupies interested in the show. An unknown number of them, even unknown by the august Zeleny. Many more, though, attend multiple Trump rallies, not because they’re obsessed, but because they are interested enough and following things along, and want to hear things straight from the horse’s mouth. And they—we–can’t trust the media to present his rallies honestly and with balance. Zeleny chose to claim the one set of frequent attendees were the whole of the frequent attendees, completely ignoring even the possibility of the other set’s existence.

And this bit by Ana Ceballos of The Miami Herald:

…DeSantis never made “small talk” with reporters….

He won’t hobnob with reporters. What a precious whine. More seriously: why would he make “small talk” when journalists are just going to print some of those off-the-record small talk remarks whenever those remarks are convenient to the journalists’ predetermined narrative, all the while attributing them to leaks by “a person familiar with the exchange” or a “high official?”

(Aside: there was a time when editors required at least two on-the-record sources to corroborate anonymous “person familiar” or “high official” claims. Editors have long since walked away from that standard. What concrete, measurable, publicly available standard of journalistic integrity do editors use today?)

Ceballos went on, on the subject of a claimed desire to build trust of the journalist by the staffer and/or politician:

They [DeSantis’ staffers] don’t often get on the phone, either, because they want everything in writing just in case they can attack you for it. So it’s really difficult to even have candid conversations with them and just an on-background, off-the-record conversation.

Yeah. It couldn’t possibly be because they need the written record so they can defend themselves or their administration when journalists leak and distort the on-background, off-the-record remarks in order to attack them. Trust goes both ways.

A canonical example of that lack of trustworthiness, that deliberate distortion, that contempt for us in thinking we’re too grindingly stupid to decide for ourselves how to interpret what we hear, is in their presentation of Trump’s Asheville, NC, speech late in his 2016 campaign. “Journalists” covering the speech, and others merely repeating what their fellows wrote, accurately quoted Trump as saying that there were “good people on both sides of the argument.” But the lie, and the contempt for us inherent in their lie, was in the “journalists'” decision to strip off the context of Trump’s remark and to claim that Trump was talking about the rioters that rioted. Even a casual perusal of the transcript of that speech—unneeded by all those who were present and heard what Trump actually said—demonstrates that far from drawing equivalence regarding the rioters, Trump was plainly talking about the debate over whether certain statues should be torn down or relocated.

The attendees at the Campaign Journalism Conference also seem to have ignored the press’ penchant for rewriting history to attempt to erase their past distortions when they’re caught out. News outlets routinely rewrite headlines when their inaccuracies are exposed, doing it on the sly without fanfare, expecting that we’re too stupid to notice. They do the same with later-exposed errors in the body of their articles, and for the same reason. This is nothing but naked revisionist history that would make any propagandist proud. The honest, the respectful, thing for these outlets to do would be to acknowledge their errors with the same prominence in which they made them and print their correction—their errata, if you will—at the head of the article in which the error was made, while leaving the article and headline otherwise intact.

One more item the conference attendees seem to have ignored: The New York Times‘ front-page announcement during Trump’s 2016 campaign that there should be no more objectivity in news reporting vis-à-vis Trump; journalists should take sides. This was followed by a broadcast news media anchor claiming in all seriousness that there are not two sides to every story. Only one side, very often, was fit to be presented.

The “news” media mavens’ contempt for us ordinary Americans is no perception. They really are contemptuous of us. Zeleny put that on clear display; so did Ceballos. These “journalists,” in their oh-so-much-smarter-than-us obliviousness, their breathtaking thin-skinned-ness, can’t even recognize the contempt they have for so many Americans in their own remarks. This is reminiscent of a politician’s claim that millions of Americans are irredeemable and deplorable. And of another politician’s claim that 15% of us are just no good.

This is what passes for journalism today. This is the actual contempt for us that journalists have.

A Step in the Right Direction

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But it’s a small step, and much more needs to be done. A bill has moved through the Texas legislature—it’s now on Governor Greg Abbott’s (R) desk—that would create a $200 annual registration fee for battery vehicles.

State Senator Robert Nichols (R), who sponsored the bill in the Senate:

As more of these vehicles drive on Texas roads, there are concerns about how they contribute to the funding of the roads which they use. Currently, Texas uses the gasoline/diesel fuel tax to fund transportation projects; however, with the growing use of EVs, the revenue from the fuel tax is decreasing, which diminishes our ability to fund road improvements for all drivers.

That’s a necessary step in maintaining funding for Texas’ roads and bridges, but it’s insufficient because wear and tear of our roads and bridges isn’t the only cost imposed on us by battery vehicles.

Battery vehicle owners also should be the only ones to pay for the environmental damage their vehicles inflict on Texas’ land. Battery vehicle batteries, at their end of life, cannot be recycled; they can only be “disposed of.” Major components of those batteries, like lithium, cobalt, and nickel are enormously toxic, requiring the dead batteries to be carefully disposed of, lest that environmental damage get widespread.

Serious environmental damage also occurs at the beginning of the battery production cycle, even if much of that start damage doesn’t occur in Texas: mining lithium, cobalt, and nickel, along with copper, is even more environmentally damaging than battery disposal, from the destruction caused by the mining itself to the highly toxic mining waste byproducts—tailings—that are thrown off by the mining.

Much, if not most, of the lithium, cobalt, and nickel mining, along with a significant fraction of the increase in copper mining, is done for the sake of these batteries. The only ones who should be paying these environmental costs are the battery car owners. No one else.

Battery car owners are getting off light under this fee.

Some Economic Data

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The GDP data are long-term troubling, never mind that the latest GDP number of (inflation-adjusted, yet) 1.1% has a nugget of favorability:

…falling inventories contributed an outsize share to the decline in growth from 2.6% in the previous quarter.

One interpretation of falling inventories is that customers are buying up those inventories, finally, and the drop would seem to stimulate increased production and inventory replenishment—which would be jobs, which would be future spending, which would….

However.

Gross private domestic investment fell 12.5% in the quarter, driven by declines in business equipment (down 7.3%) and residential housing (down 4.2%).

The latter is reduced construction jobs, but its effect is pretty diffuse in this context. What’s long-term troubling is that decline in business equipment, along with the drop in general business investment. When future physical plant—business equipment investment and outright buying—is falling off, businesses that rely on that equipment for production don’t produce, and they have no need for employees to operate that non-existent equipment. Further, businesses that would purchase the output for use in their own production or for resale cannot do so. That sort of shortfall feeds into a feedback loop that’s just the opposite of that inventory replenishment loop. The replenishment loop cannot get started.

There’s also this misunderstanding that underlies the Left’s view of economics, sadly repeated by the Wall Street Journal‘s editors, who should know better.

A characteristic of the post-pandemic recovery has been that business investment often hasn’t kept pace with robust consumer demand, and now it looks like investment might fall behind again.
This runs counter to the theory Keynesians used to sell their pandemic-era spending blowouts—that stoking demand [with a temporary spike in government deficit-causing spending] would stimulate more supply. It hasn’t.

Keynes’ theory is badly distorted by today’s so-called Keynesians, who push sharply increased government stimulus spending in itself as the solution. Keynes did, indeed, include that form of stimulus in his theory, but, critically, he also included in his theory the absolute need to repay as quickly as possible the government debt incurred by that temporary spending spike.

Those conditions do not obtain today. Increases in government spending, including spikes in it, are not temporary, and the resulting government debt does not get paid back at any time. The debt doesn’t even get reduced.

And so here we are, with high inflation (falling only in relation to last year’s enormously high rate; price levels still remain very high relative to an ordinary American’s paycheck) and falling production. That combination is going to lead to a fall-off in demand to match the falling production, and that’s the stuff of recession.

Yet More Reasons

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American and other businesses foreign to the People’s Republic of China really need to stop doing business in the PRC or with businesses domiciled in the PRC. That nation is making it increasingly dangerous—physically and legally—for foreign business’ employees even to be present there.

Hiroshi Nishiyama, a veteran Japanese executive at Astellas Pharma Inc and a prominent member of his country’s business circle in China, spent late March wrapping up his assignment there and preparing to head home.
He never made it. Mr Nishiyama disappeared on what was supposed to be his last day in China. A few days later, China’s Foreign Ministry said he had been accused of espionage and detained.

No warning. No heads up to Astellas. Not even a prompt notice to Astellas as soon as Nishiyama had been “detained.”

Nishiyama’s fate is all too typical of what might befall foreign businessmen.

In recent weeks Chinese authorities have questioned staff at US consulting firm Bain & Co and raided the office of American due diligence firm Mintz Group and detained all five of its employees in mainland China.

The PRC also is moving to expand—and attempt justification for—its reach regarding these employees of foreign businesses.

China also passed an expansive update of an anti-espionage law that will tighten state control over a wider swath of data and digital activities, raising the risks that ordinary business behavior could be misconstrued or misrepresented as spycraft.

Rule by law rather than rule of law: the PRC government passed this law explicitly so it could coerce foreign businesses—and the governments of the nations where those businesses are domiciled—into expensive, and dangerous, concessions, particularly concerning technology transfers.

These moves provide yet further reasons for all foreign businesses to simply walk away from the People’s Republic of China; do no further business there at all.

Anheuser-Busch’s Messaging

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A letter writer to Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section offered a solution to Anheuser-Busch’s marketing fiasco of recent weeks.

A-B should produce a series of cans and bottles featuring labels highlighting soldiers, athletes, teachers, construction workers, etc. I’d start buying again, and I am sure many others would do the same.

I’m not sure I would. A-B’s managers spoke from their heart the first time and said what their values are. This time around, they would only be putting out those subsequent cans in response to the hue and cry over the former. There’s no possibility of taking the change as sincerely done with the current managers in place.

And no, putting a couple of lead marketers on temporary leave doesn’t cut it. The CEO approved the marketing switch, too, if only by being the one in charge. And his subsequent statement, which was in the main a non sequitur, only demonstrated that he agreed with the prior marketing move.