Of Which the Press Demonstrates the Need

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The need, that is, for a Web site that identifies misleading, distorting, outright lies that the press has such a penchant for. Examples were provided by the “news” pages of The Wall Street Journal, and a second example was provided by the WSJ‘s editors in the very same edition.

From the “news” page, this article ostensibly describing the Web site, which the Trump administration made live earlier this week:

For years, Trump has used social media—particularly his platform, Truth Social—to reprimand the press for negative coverage. The new government site reflects a more coordinated, formalized approach to criticizing members of the press.

No, for years, Trump and others in his administration have called out the naked bias of the press and social media as both moved to suppress coverage of Conservatives; the naked bias of outlets that insist there are not two sides to every story and that announce that their “news” pages will take sides in reporting, no longer even trying to do balanced reporting; and outright spiking of stories unfavorable to the Left or to Progressive-Democratic Party politicians.

And this “news” page:

President Trump has made no secret of his disdain for renewable energy.

It’s hardly disdain for renewable energy when the Trump administration is actively pushing an all-of-the-above energy production industry, which includes pushes for renewables—just in parallel with traditional sources and nuclear power sources rather than exclusive of them. Cutting subsidies for wind and solar and for battery-powered vehicles is hardly disdain; it’s simply putting all sources of energy on a more level competition field.

Then there’s this from those editors:

Lawmakers are doing a public service by trying to get to the truth on whether the Trump Administration killed defenseless survivors of a drug-boat strike.

There’s a world of difference between killing survivors in a second strike and targeting them with that second strike. It’s telling that the editors not only chose not to acknowledge both interpretations, they chose to not explain why they ignored the one and accepted only the other. Of course, the Washington Post story they cite, while noting the story had only anonymous sources, also only mentioned killing, without its own distinction between the two interpretations.

A second strike, as the editors know full well, would have been entirely justified if the goal was to destroy the boat and its cargo—cocaine floats, as the editors also know full well—and the first strike didn’t succeed in the destruction. The deaths of any first-hit survivors from the second blow would have been tragic, but would have been collateral damage, and so entirely within US and international law.

Japan is Learning the Reasons

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Reasons for ceasing doing business with and within the People’s Republic of China, that is. In response to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks that a PRC attack on the Republic of China (Takaichi referred to “Taiwan”) would trigger a Japanese defensive response,

China has unearthed its old playbook of informal coercive moves. Unlike clear-cut export controls, these disguised measures are harder to manage and pose escalatory risks. Governments and companies must grapple with how to respond.
Since Nov. 14, China has issued a series of escalating restrictions: cautioning tourists and students against travel to Japan; postponing the release of at least two Japanese films; and reinstating a blanket ban on Japanese seafood imports.

The WSJ‘s op-ed authors, Victor Ferguson and Audrye Wong, Hitotsubashi University Assistant Professor of International Relations and USC Assistant Professor of Political Science, respectively, claimed

It is hard for governments and companies to respond to such disguised measures effectively and cohesively.

It’s only hard politically. It’s completely straightforward as a practical and economic matter. It’s time for the Japanese to suck up and grunt through the unavoidably disruptive period of disruption and discontinue doing business with PRC-domiciled companies, with the PRC government, and business of any sort inside the PRC.

No Government Bailout

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Not even by city governments, and not even for this.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors noted that

The New York Housing Conference, a nonprofit that promotes so-called affordable housing, warns in a new report that landlords will need $1 billion in government aid to avoid default. “A significant number of affordable housing buildings in New York City are experiencing operating deficits, where rents are not covering expenses,” the report says.

The buildings are publicly financed, and their costs are skyrocketing—costs ranging from insurance to maintenance to unpaid rents.

This is the problem with government paying for stuff, no matter how glitteringly wonderful the intent might seem.

The city government, the State government, the Federal government—none of them—should be forking over any more of the taxpayers’ money for this sort of thing. The best way to solve this kind of shortfall does not include throwing ever more money into the ever expanding maw of city resident dependency.

Instead, cut the buildings’ costs: get out of the way of rent collections, greatly reduce insurance regulations, property taxes (even public housing must pay these), zoning requirements. Lower sales taxes that drive up the cost of maintenance supplies. Let the market determine wage rates, not bureaucrats snug in their government job sinecures.

College and Basic Arithmetic

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As Allysia Finley noted in her Wall Street Journal op-ed,

Kids in elementary school learn—or are supposed to learn—how to add fractions and round numbers. But many students at the University of California, San Diego—a top public university ranked sixth nationally by US News & World Report—can’t do either, according to a new analysis from the university. Read, and weep for the future of America.
Roughly one in eight freshmen lack rudimentary high-school math skills, defined as geometry, algebra, and algebra 2. It gets worse: students who had been placed in a remedial high-school math class in 2023 had roughly fifth-grade-level abilities. Only 39% could correctly round the number 374,518 to the nearest hundred—a third-grade skill.

The absolutely wrong answer is what UCSD is doing—setting up its own remedial arithmetic classes for its entering freshmen.

No.

Colleges/universities are not places for remedial education. They’re places in which to extend legitimate high school education. The managers of the so-called higher education institutions need to take two steps to reinstall that purpose and capability.

The first is to reject from admission who cannot do proper math—at the very least geometry (including executing proofs) and trigonometry, and then basic differential and integral calculus (Finley accurately described the current nominal requirement, but it’s much too light: algebra is a junior high level of arithmetic)—and dismiss those mistakenly admitted. One way to reduce the latter is to go beyond SAT and ACT scoring, which have dumbed down their math sections, and administer their own mathematics tests, emphasizing geometry, trigonometry, and calculus.

The other step is to start tracking high schools whose applicants cannot do that basic math, and simply reject out of hand applicants from those high schools that have not taught math to that basic level. Those high school administrators will have demonstrated that they do not take education seriously, and so their schools are not worth the trouble of consideration.

Campus Extremism

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Robert George, multiply-titled Professor at Princeton University, had some thoughts on how to deal with this.

So what should we do? The answer isn’t complicated, but acting on it will take determination and courage. Colleges and universities must return to offering a rigorous liberal arts education that refuses to engage in indoctrination and challenges groupthink. College courses must actively cultivate the virtues of curiosity, open-mindedness, intellectual humility, analytical rigor, and above all, dedication to the pursuit of truth.

He added this:

This might seem like an unattainable ideal, but it isn’t. I’ve seen firsthand that it’s possible. Twenty-five years ago, Princeton University authorized me to establish and direct a program in civic education dedicated to helping young men and women become determined truth seekers, courageous truth speakers, lifelong learners, and responsible citizens.

He succeeded in his small world, and he cited a number of examples at other schools. But these are anecdotes, not a general trend of success. At many of the other schools he touted, antisemitic and terrorist-supporting riots mostly peaceful protests seized buildings and common grounds, vandalized the buildings and generally prevented the sort of free-exchange of ideas George touted. Those destructive disruptions occurred while school managers meekly watched and many of the schools’ professors participated in the disruptions.

No. The only way to achieve George’s ideal, extremely worthy that it is, is to remove from schools those school administrators and professors, whether ideologues or simply too timid to oppose ideology over education. Both kinds are worthless wastes of payroll.

The detritus must be removed before cleanup can begin.