Tag Archives: politics

“Journalists,” Redux

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Recall the kerfuffle over an idle tweet in which a George Washington University Associate Professor, in a mildly snarky tweet, likened New York Times Precious Columnist Bret Stephens to a bedbug.  The Prof was riffing off a headline announcing that the NYT building was infested with bedbugs.

Stephens chose to take offense, and not only did he email the Prof about it, he CCed the Prof’s Provost in a clear attempt to intimidate the professor into silence.  Or into something.  In the meantime, Stephens has earned for himself a new nickname: #BedbugBret.

But there’s something far more important here, and it goes back to the (lack of) integrity in the journalistic industry.

The Prof makes a closely related best in his op-ed in Esquire:

Bret Stephens seems to think that his social status should render him immune from criticism from people like me. …
Stephens…reached out believing my university would chastise me for provoking the ire of a writer at The New York Times. That’s an abuse of his social station.

But it’s much more than an abuse of station—a station that does not exist, properly, in the United States of America, where all and each of us are equal under law and before God.

This is an abuse of the industry of what used to be journalism.  This is a naked claim that journalism and journalists are too high and mighty for the petty rules of ordinary Americans, and we commoners have no business—no right—to tease, much less criticize, any member of the aristocracy of the press, our Betters.

The professor’s university also responded, directly to Stephens:

Stephens, though, as far as I can determine, has not reached out to the Provost or otherwise responded to his invitation to face the objects of his contempt on their turf. He seems willing only to face a single man in the comfort and safety of his own.

Stephens exemplifies the fundamental dishonesty of the press, and of the NYT in particular.  And, apparently, the cowardice of the bullying industry.

Humans or Votes?

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You’d think these terms wouldn’t be alternatives to each other, rather, one would describe a single attribute of the other having reached a requisite age and citizenship.

But no.

Jason Riley described, in his Tuesday The Wall Street Journal op-ed, how the New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio administration has chosen to work hard to eliminate all standards for entry into what used to be the city’s elite schools, schools that especially benefitted the city’s poorest students, most of whom happen to be minority children.

Riley closed his piece with this plaintive question:

You’d think that the main objective of the inequality-obsessed would be to help more minorities meet high academic standards, but Mr de Blasio and his fellow progressives would rather eliminate the standards altogether. I’d call that giving up on minority kids. What would you call it?

I call it what it is. Those kids aren’t human beings in the eyes of the Progressive-Democrats, they’re only a crop of newly-sown votes to be kept and nurtured in the welfare cage hot house until they’ve ripened and become ready for harvesting.

In Which the City of New York Might Get One Right

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The city’s Department of Social Services, through a subordinate agency, is proposing a rule that would require those homeless residing free of charge in a city facility to save against a future in which they live in their own home.

The rule would mandate that residents deposit 30% of their earned income into a savings account that the city’s Department of Social Services would manage. Shelters residents would have access to the funds when they move into permanent housing.
“Our goal is to assist New Yorkers with saving in order to more effectively help them plan for the future and get back on their feet,” said a spokesman for the Department of Homeless Services….

It’s possible to quibble over who it is that will manage those saving accounts, but the principle is eminently sound.  Beneficiaries of government welfare should earn their “benefits” and learn to stand on their own.

Of course, this is of a piece with requiring other welfare recipients to get a job, get training for a job, or provide a measure of community service, though, so expect the Left to raise a hue and cry over the unfairness of this proposal, too.

Oh, wait….

Councilman Steven T Levin, a Democrat who chairs of the council’s Committee on General Welfare, questioned the efficacy of the rule.
“It’s really looking at the wrong issue,” he said. “The idea of people having a savings account, that’s not one of the things that needs to happen in order to end the homelessness crisis in New York City.”

He added:

What’s really needed is for us to be very aggressive on our subsidized-housing options upon leaving shelter[.]

He wants more “rental assistance vouchers,” more subsidies—more entrapping handouts, instead of liberating help to escape from welfare.  He does natter on about helping residents consolidate or reduce their existing debts, which would be useful also, but he presents these as alternatives; he doesn’t want them done in addition to the savings accounts.

That’s Not Your Money

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Echoing Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s claim that there’s plenty of money, it’s just in the wrong hands, more Progressive-Democrat Presidential candidates are moving toward taxing the mere existence of that money.

For the richest Americans, Democrats want to shift toward taxing their wealth….

After all,

At the end of 2017, US households had $3.8 trillion in unrealized gains in stocks and investment funds, plus more in real estate, private businesses, and artwork[.]

Gimme that money, say the Progressive-Democrats. You didn’t earn that. And besides, whether you did or not is irrelevant. We have better uses because just shut up.

Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR) has given the game away.

The whole tax system is stacked in favor of the tax-avoidance crowd[.]

Because it’s government’s money, not private money.  Never mind that were tax rates not so usuriously high, no one would have to work hard to pay the minimum the law requires (honest efforts that guys like Wyden, in wide-eyed innocence, call “tax avoidance”).

Aside: the article opens with this:

The income tax is the Swiss Army Knife of the US tax system, an all-purpose policy tool for raising revenue, rewarding and punishing activities, and redistributing money between rich and poor.

Which is what I’ve been saying, along with many others, all along. Our tax code is for social engineering not so much for raising revenue for Constitutional purposes.  And that’s a fatal flaw.

Second aside: Progressive-Democrats ignore how much more taxes the Evil Rich pay than the rest of us, as illustrated by this graph from the same article. It’s never going to be enough because you’re still talking—shut up, I said.

Pro-EU

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Too many Brits in Parliament plainly favor the European Union over their own nation.  That’s what opposition MPs seem to do, as they look to block a no-deal departure from the EU by Great Britain, even expressing a willingness to bring down the government to achieve that end.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants a (new) deal, for all that he’s willing to take Great Britain out of the EU on schedule if Brussels continues to refuse to negotiate at all, much less in good faith. The MPs’ obstruction serves only to undercut such leverage as Johnson might have in these post-May efforts.

The most that can happen from their obstruction is the preservation of May’s Northern Ireland border agreement that gives open and unfettered entry into Great Britain. This destroys British sovereignty by eliminating its control over its own border—which was a major motivation for the Leave vote.

Since those MPs know this full well—after all, they’re highly intelligent and at the top of their respective parties—their motive can only be their favoring the EU and subordinating their own nation and its sovereignty to that continental entity.