Speculation and So What

Posted on by
Reply

The Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger that California’s Progressive-Democrat AG Rob Bonta, along with some dozen of other Progressive-Democrat-led States and a union, have gone into court to block may be entering “settlement” talks. The situation as it stands, from Paramount:

Paramount has warned it is prepared to move the company out of California if it can’t reach a deal with the states, with a potential move starting as soon as October 1. Tennessee is seen as a likely potential landing spot for Paramount.

October because that’s when Paramount starts owing fees to Warner Bros. Discovery related to delayed signing of the deal. Tennessee is the most likely gaining State, although there are a number of States with much more congenial business environments than those Progressive-Democrat-run States.

From Bonta:

As it stands today, the proposed Warner Bros./Paramount merger will mean higher costs, less competition, lower wages, job cuts, and fewer movies and TV shows[.]

That’s pure speculation based on nothing other than ephemeral economic studies that try to predict the future, here in an environment very much changed from the environment in which those studies were conducted. Speculation should form no basis, even in the Ninth Circuit’s region (the first stop for the inevitable appeals), for blocking a business deal.

From the union:

The Writers Guild of America also sued over the merger, saying that the deal would eliminate jobs and career opportunities for Hollywood screenwriters.

That may or may not be true, and it’ll be influenced largely by the willingness of those Hollywood screenwriters to relocate and become Tennessee screenwriters. At bottom, though, while any job loss would be too bad for those terminated, the WGA‘s plaint is a big so what. Nobody, not even Hollywood screenwriters, have an intrinsic right to any job, not even screenwriting.

Paramount, in the absence of a deal with the States that’s entirely satisfactory to Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery by COB 30 September, should make its move out of California on 1 October and conclude the merger. There’s no need for Paramount or Warner Bros. Discovery to delay past that date.

The Tennessees of our nation will greatly benefit from the revenue gains that making movies, ancillary businesses associated with movie-making, businesses supporting ancillary businesses, and further business rippling will bring to the gaining State (and in the case of Tennessee, the rippling will flow into Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South and North Carolina). Los Angeles and California can take up that loss of revenue with Bonta, et al.

Another VA Failure

Posted on by
Reply

It used American veterans’ genetic and medical data to conduct research with the People’s Liberation Army of the People’s Republic of China, which the PLA used, and is using, in its development of brain-controlled weapons. The work was done through US-blacklisted PRC companies directly tied to the PLA.

These were done before Doug Collins took over as VA Secretary, but these are irredeemable failures.

Deliberately working with the PLA on PLA weapons makes it a requirement.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

An Alternative Solution

Posted on by
Reply

The lede lays out the foolishness and government union disingenuousness simultaneously. A twofer.

Do government unions have a vested interest in saddling students with more debt? So they argue in a new and revealing lawsuit against new graduate loan limits.

The situation:

One of the biggest achievements in the 2025 tax bill was limiting the amount of federal loans that students could borrow to a total of $100,000 ($20,500 a year) for most graduate degrees and $200,000 ($50,000 a year) for professional ones. ….
Graduate programs have become cash cows for universities, and the caps could impel them to reduce prices and spending. … The caps are forcing some universities to reduce their bloated workforces. Hence, the union lawsuit….

Never mind how generous those limits remain, even for university incomes. Of course the government unions are objecting; those loans—uncapped—are cash cows for the unions, also, washed as they are through those bloat employees’ union dues.

Still, there is a solution, and it even serves the useful purpose of getting government out of the business of making loans. A tangential beneficial side effect is that what government gives away, here in the form of those loans, it must first take, here in the form of government borrowing.

One way to cap Federal student loans, a way which would render the question of caps irrelevant (and which would eliminate that small tangential vicious circle), would be to stop doing Federal student loans altogether. No loans, no caps.

Easy peasy.

Exposing Truth in Belgian Universities is a Punishable Offense

Posted on by
Reply

Nathan Cofnas, a post-doc at Ghent University in Ghent Belgium, has been suspended by the school’s Rector, Petra De Sutter. Cofnas expects to be fired, and he may well be by the time you read this. He was, you may recall, the man who exposed (former, now deceased) Cambridge Professor Jason Arday’s fraudulent activities, activities that were primarily broad based plagiarism.

Calling out an academician’s dishonesty, though, is strickly verboten in Belgium.

University Rector Petra De Sutter:

[T]he University takes the recent public statements made by a postdoctoral researcher [Cofnas] at Ghent University regarding this matter very seriously. Ghent University has decided to take appropriate action within its powers and the applicable framework.

Never call out an academic. That’s the Ghent message to academia.

“Healthcare is a right”

Posted on by
Reply

That’s the mantra of the Left and of their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, most recently articulated by Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon in her successful campaign for the Progressive-Democratic Party nomination for Senator from Florida.

She, and they, are wrong on this, though.

What is the actual right intrinsic in all of us as human beings and in particular via our Declaration of Independence, us Americans, is our right to Life. Full stop.

Health care is merely a tool in protecting that right and preserving the object of that right, our Lives. If this tool is a right in itself in the meaning of the Nixons of our nation, then so are other tools critical—even merely useful—to our ability to protect our right to Life.

These other tools include seemingly peripheral things like our right to vote to choose who we will have represent us in our government, a right currently threatened by the Left’s moves to allow illegal aliens to vote and resistance by the Left to purge voter rolls even of those accidentally registered, all of which dilute the value and effectiveness of legitimate votes. That dilution diminishes our ability to choose our own representatives in government, and that puts the quality of our lives in jeopardy, and that degradation risks our Lives.

Other tools include more directly impacting matters like barring abortion, which denies a baby’s right to its Life.

That last raises another failure in the Left’s healthcare is a right mantra. Rights are universal; we don’t get to pick and choose who has the right, and who does not. The right to Life includes the right of all babies to their Lives, whether they’ve been born or they’re still gestating. Health care is an important tool for preserving the object of that right to Life, the Lives of those babies. Healthcare is only that, though, only a tool for effecting the babies’ rights, it is not a right in itself.