Tag Archives: responsibilities

An Alternative Question

Posted on by
Reply

A writer to The Wall Street Journal‘s Thursday’s Letters section responded to Alicia Finley’s column A Good Man for US Manufacturing Is Hard to Find, writing,

Ms Finley says “a good worker, like a good man, can be hard to find these days” and that women struggle to find “suitable mates.” Perhaps that is because they largely want men who make more than $150,000 a year as “professionals.” Why would men want to enter “blue collar” professions only to be rejected by women?

An alternative question, and a more cogent one, I claim, is this: What self-respecting man, blue- or white collar, would want a self-identified gold digger for a wife?

Yes, And?

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are in a tizzy over President Donald Trump’s (R) moves to freeze or cancel altogether Federal funds and grants to universities unless and until those institutions start acting concretely and seriously against the antisemitic bigotry rampant in them. The editors are upset because those fund freezes/cancelations include funds heretofore aimed at NIH sponsored projects.

One regrettable result is that important medical research is getting scrapped.
…
Because of Columbia University’s deep research bench of neurologists, the school in 2022 took over management of the study’s government funding, which is disbursed to some two dozen other sites across the US. A Columbia lead researcher says the study’s funding is now ensnared in the fight between the university and feds over its handling of anti-Israel protests.

Columbia medical professor José Luchsinger:

It’s a pity that all the institutions across the United States, the investigators in these institutions, the staff in these institutions, and the study participants in these institutions are being held hostage to a situation that is occurring in Columbia only[.]

Indeed, it is a pity. Columbia should stop holding all that hostage, should stop namby-pambying around, and should get serious about ending the antisemitic bigotry rampant in its student and professor populations and within its management teams—and then act on that newfound seriousness and get rid of the bigots among its students and professors and university managers.

It is a pity, too, that there even is a fight between the university and feds over its handling of anti-Israel protests.

This is a cynical mischaracterization of what’s going on, and the editors should know better, even if Luchsinger pretends not to. What is there to fight about? What’s going on at the universities is not “anti-Israel protests,” it’s naked antisemitic slurs, intimidations, threats, cutoffs of others’ right to speak in favor of Jews and Israel or just to speak conservatively. Mixed in with those bare assaults (can’t call them bare-faced, the bigots cower behind masks) is overt support for Middle East terrorists and terrorism.

But the editors favor spending money on medical research, which is important when spent efficiently, over getting rid of the bigotry and terrorist support so rife in these institutions. The editors ignore the simple fact that the bigotry and terrorist support not only threaten the institution population at large, but also that very research by making those institutions unsafe for anyone.

Forced Out?

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal is claiming that Dr. Peter Marks, [t]he Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, has been pushed out or forced out, depending on whether you’re reading the headline of the lede. The news writer, though, gave the fact of Marks’ departure in the second paragraph:

He submitted his resignation after a Health and Human Services official earlier in the day gave him the choice to resign or be fired, people familiar with the matter said.

Even stipulating the description to be accurate—it is carefully sourced to anonymity—Marks’ decision plainly was a wholly voluntary choice.

He could have held out for being fired, but he chose otherwise. He voluntarily resigned. Pressure might have been applied, but he easily could have resisted the pressure.

This distortion isn’t unique to the WSJ; it’s a broad and hoarily held misrepresentation by the press at large.

Apart from that, there were valid reasons for wanting Marks to go, and he made crystalline one of them in his resignation letter.

It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies[.]

Those aren’t the words of someone who’d be gainfully employed any further; firing him would have been a legitimate response. He was given a choice, though, and he voluntarily chose.

Nobody forced him to make that choice. Nobody pushed him in one direction or another.

Misplaced Understanding

Posted on by
Reply

A woman wrote to a financial advisor with the following problem. She had just linked up with an old high school woman chum and the two were having lunch together; the writer, at least, having a good time catching up on things with her apparently reconnected-with friend. When the check for the lunch came, this happened:

Since this was not a “date” it should have been assumed we would split the bill, right? I never carried cash (still don’t) and pulled out my Amex card to pay my half. To my complete surprise, she stood up and declared (I will NEVER forget this), “Oh, thank you so much for paying! It was great to see you!” and out the door she went.

What to do, she asked the financial advisor, especially now that the incident is in her past but she’s having trouble putting it behind her.

The advisor led off with this:

Your friend could have genuinely believed that you were picking up the tab. It may have been presumptuous, but it could have been a misunderstanding; her mistake was to jump to conclusions prematurely in good faith.

He had this, too:

Your friend sounds like a good egg. [She’s a teacher, and that’s hard.] For all our analysis and reflecting on past matters of financial etiquette, I have a feeling that if we met our respective friends again [the advisor had a similar experience], neither of them would even remember.

No, and no. The first is just rationalization for the subsequent advice. The advisor ignored the fact that the “friend” exited the conversation, the table, and the restaurant as soon as she made her “thanks.” Had the other woman truly misunderstood the treat vice dutch nature of the get together, she would have remained, engaging in further conversation while the credit card was taken away then returned a short time later with the receipt to be signed. Then the two would have left the restaurant together.

Too, of course neither of the two “friends” would remember; they’re the ones who skated.

Here, the woman’s “friend” knew exactly what she was doing; that’s why she didn’t tarry after her words of thanks.

My own advice: forgive the boorishness, but don’t forget it. Evaluate the potentially rebudding relationship, and make a conscious assessment of whether continuing the relationship is worth the other woman’s boorishness. If there’s to be another shared lunch, decide in advance whether the woman will pay; it will be a dutch treat; or the other woman will pay that time, it being, in a way, her turn.

Hurt Feelings

Posted on by
Reply

Lots of ex-Federal employees are feeling the pain of being terminated. Many in the private sector think that’s unimportant, and they’re correct to think so.

Catherine Byrd, who owned and ran her own business before she retired:

I don’t feel bad for them a bit. I’ve worked in the private sector all my life[.]

She noted that she’d been fired a number of times in her early working days, and said,

You know what you do? You go out and find another job, and there are plenty of jobs to find.

As indeed there are, even if not in an area that lets the fired bureaucrat follow his bliss.

And so, we get the hurt feelings of government employees who have been terminated. Recently fired Meredith Lopez is upset over the alleged general callousness toward federal workers being fired.

I think people forget that working in public service is not just a job, it can be a calling for many people[.]
For me, it is really about the ability to help people and communities on a personal level[.]

Judy Cameron is upset at the very concept of being fired from her government job.

All I know is I did not appreciate being fired. Let me do something wrong to fire me… It was just “Oh here, let’s kick you out like trash.”

And, of course—because that’s where the clicks and eyeballs are—the press hypes these things while ignoring the fact that none of them incur an obligation on the part of any employer, much less the government, to retain folks just because those folks want a particular job.

No. A government employee needs to be terminated if the job position itself is duplicative, excess to the government’s objective needs, or otherwise unnecessary. Recall, during the Obama Shutdown of 2011, the EPA acknowledged that most of its employees were unnecessary, furloughing 90% of them for the duration of the shutdown.

A government employee needs to be terminated if his performance is subpar as measured objectively, which requires a cessation of inflating annual reports and the even harder step of eliminating union objections to terminating for merit reasons.