Tag Archives: responsibilities

In Which the New York Times and the BBC Miss Again

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It seems the women journalists in the pay of the BBC were being paid significantly less than their male colleagues, to the point that Carrie Gracie, BBC’s China Editor, resigned her position in protest (I’m citing a New York Times report about the BBC.  Why that’s important, rather than citing a BBC report directly, will come clear in a bit).  Gracie has returned to London, still a BBC journalist, but there she’ll be paid the same as her male colleagues.

And how did that equal pay come about, you might ask?

According to “the organization” (presumably a BBC mucky-muck or BBC mucky-muck’s spokesman),

The BBC has agreed to pay cuts with a number of leading BBC News presenters, and others have agreed in principle[.]

Jeremy Vine, one of the high-powered, and highly paid, journalists getting his pay cut, agreed with the move, and he did so in all seriousness.

I think it needs to be sorted out, and I support my female colleagues who have rightly said they should be paid the same when they’re doing the same job.  I think the BBC’s on it, and this story is part of it.

Wow.  Just wow.

If Gracie really is the doing substantially the same work as her colleagues, why shouldn’t she get a pay raise to get to substantially the same pay?  That’s how bad it is, folks.  This is the Left’s mindset.  It doesn’t even occur to them to raise the pay of the lower paid.  All they can think of is to cut the higher paid.

Hold back the successful.  Don’t push forward those behind.  Instead of a win-win outcome, the Left prefers the everybody loses outcome.

On second thought, the NYT, which was as silent on the pay cut/pay raise question as the BBC, and the BBC didn’t miss.  This is what progressives, the Liberal NLMSM, and the US’ Progressive-Democratic Party want.  Hold back the ones ahead, don’t help the ones behind catch up.

Another Reason

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Now it’s just getting petty.  For the period surrounding this year’s Super Bowl, P Boston is banning anything to do with Philadelphia from the city.

Boston is banning cheesesteaks, Philadelphia cream cheese, beers associated with Philadelphia.  One Boston-based bakery chain even has cut ties—permanently—with its Philadelphia cream cheese distributor.

Boston is getting hysterical, too.  In addition to banning foodstuffs, that city is banning people: Will Smith and Sylvester Stallone, one because he was raised in Philadelphia, the other because he set the Rocky series of films in that city.  Even bald eagles—can you believe it?—are banned from the Esplanade.

This is another reason not to bother with the Super Bowl, at least for this year.

Withholding Evidence

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Ex-Vice President Joe Biden (D) appears to have confessed to it.

Biden said a Congressional “gang of twelve” met with Obama White House officials on the matter and laid out what they knew.

Biden’s and Obama’s reaction?

“The president and I sat there and said ‘what the hell are we going to do?'” Biden said. “You go out there and unilaterally say ‘this is what’s happening,’ you’re going to be accused of…trying to tip the election.

So they sat on the information—us uninformed voters are just too grindingly stupid to be trusted with this sort of information, the Progressive-Democrat says.

The former Delaware senator said he and Obama were concerned that describing alleged Russian involvement to a higher extent “could be used as a weapon against” nominee Hillary Clinton.

Biden added,

The die had been cast here. This was all about the political play[.]

There it is, straight from the Progressive-Democrat’s mouth.  Party politics was more important than pursuing a possible Russian interference, more important even than letting us voters know about the potential.  The withholding is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s own attempt to “tip” the election.

All for the sole reasons of protecting his BFF’s (ex-President Barack Obama (D)) reputation and of protecting their Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Remember this duplicity in the fall.

It’s Somebody Else’s Fault

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Recall the 50,000 “missing” FBI text messages between FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok that just by coincidence happen to have been exchanged in the most critical period of interest to Congressional investigations.

It turns out that not only has the FBI “lost” these emails, they tried to cover it up [emphasis added].

[A] pair of Republican senators [Senators Ron Johnson (R, WI) and Chuck Grassley (R, IA)] pressed the Justice Department’s watchdog [Inspector General Michael Horowitz] to explain why he did not inform them last month that the FBI “failed to preserve” five months of text messages between Strzok and Page.

It gets better: the FBI now is claiming that

the Samsung 5 mobile phones it provided to employees “did not capture or store text messages due to misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities.”

Right.  That must be it.  On the other hand, there’s still that beachfront property north of Santa Fe….

No, this smacks of evidence tampering to me.  Especially since what those emails might have shed some light on concerned things exposed by the emails that have been turned over, things like FBI agents’ “secret society” and the “secret meetings off-site” that they were holding, and the “back up plan” and “insurance” that Strzok and Page in particular seem to have been hatching.

Or, it really is all Samsung’s fault; their bug must have been produced while writing software in the distracting environment north of Santa Fe.

A Tool

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Facebook’s management is beginning to realize the impact Facebook can have on our national society and on the politics of our society.  Product Manager Samidh Chakrabarti:

If there’s one fundamental truth about social media’s impact on democracy it’s that it amplifies human intent—both good and bad[.]

But in their hubris that same management is presuming to dictate to us how we will be allowed to use it.

[W]e have a moral duty to understand how these technologies are being used and what can be done to make communities like Facebook as representative, civil, and trustworthy as possible.

No.  Facebook technology is like any other tool, neither good nor bad in itself, but useful or destructive in from the way it’s used.  Like any large power tool, it certainly can be dangerous—but it’s on us to use it correctly and safely.

It’s certainly not on producers of technology, including of tools like Facebook (or Twitter, come to that, or Instragram, or Snapchat, or…), to take it on themselves to censor what they provide or omit.  That’s the responsibility of us as individuals.  Facebook’s management team has a responsibility to publish a serious, honest owner’s manual—just like Black & Decker has a responsibility to publish a serious, honest owner’s manual for its chainsaws.  But Black & Decker only has a responsibility vis-à-vis its saws to make them effective and safe.  Facebook management has the same responsibility—neither more nor less—to do the same with the tool known as Facebook.

It’s time they stopped condescending.  It’s time they stopped presuming to manage our outcomes for us.