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  • Leftwing Journalism (Addended)

    George Rebane

    Reading this morning’s (28apr22) Union, I was both startled and disappointed when I came to the paper’s weekly Hits & Misses column (here).  Publisher Don Rogers usually places his contributions at the bottom, and there we saw –

    MISS (from Publisher Don Rogers): To the kind of free speech as uttered by bullies, liars, abusers, propagandists, trolls, rumor-mongers, gossips and other asses lurking in social media, including the new owner of Twitter.

    Now, it’s been no secret for decades that there is a great asymmetry between the reportage from our neighbors on the Left and Right.  (The published literature on that could fill a library.)  We have covered this phenomenon going on 15 years now.  Recent leftwing journalistic atrocities include the multi-year unabashed and still ongoing reporting of the Great Russian Collusion for which there is not a shred of evidence.  In a similar vein, material events of national importance are thoroughly buried in what is now correctly known as the lamestream media.  An example of that is the Hunter Biden laptop scandal which revealed influence peddling that included payoffs to the “Big Guy” principal, now in the White House, whose influence was peddled.

    Such evidence-free, evidence-hiding journalistic behavior is to be expected in the national press, but not so much from local outlets in markets where the writers and readers know each other.  This is why I was surprised to read Don’s pre-emptive swipe at Elon Musk.

    Readers may recall that I consider Don Rogers a respected friend, among the many I have on the port side.  However, his published Miss is so out of character of the man I know on two counts.  First, Musk’s stated intentions to open up Twitter to uncensored free speech should be welcomed by all who support our First Amendment, especially those who supposedly deal in ‘Truth’ as journalists claim in their code of ethics.  And second, Musk has yet to do anything at Twitter that would justify anyone to categorize him on Roger’s list of misfit communicators.  So why launch such a pre-emptive editorial attack that looks so much like gratuitous pandering to the county's growing progressive faction?

    In expressing all this consternation, I am reminded that The Union is a privately owned enterprise, and has wide latitude in what kind of news and editorial content it is free to publish.  I don’t think that the above Miss crossed any libel lines, but I do think that Don Rogers does step over the bounds of editorial prudence when he joins the ranks of the country’s leftwing lemming chorus, all howling their imagined portents of Elon Musk single-handedly about to bring American democracy to an end by opening up Twitter to free speech.

    Addendum:  Leftwing journalism cannot survive as a co-equal in an open market of ideas.  In such an environment, collectivist thought withers away into a dry shell of an echo, infrequently encountered and never taken seriously by those open to the greater wash of ideas that inundate the public square.  This is to be corroborated by the establishment of a very visible crutch that will henceforth support the already limping lamestream.  The Biden administration will seek to ensconce a permanent Ministry of Truth (aka Disinformation Governance Board) to oversee and variously censor ideas, opinions, happenings, and facts that counter the neo-Marxist narrative of socialism that has become the dissonant chorus from the Left. (more here and here)  The leader of these quenchers of free speech will be Nina Jankowicz, a renown incompetent in all but partisan zealotry, which she has demonstrated throughout her career (more here).  This woman is the carefully chosen poster-child for fettered discourse in the land.

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  • Doing Healthcare Right

    George Rebane

    There’s no doubt about it, we don’t do healthcare right.  As every leftwinger likes to point out, we pay more for healthcare per patient and per capita than any other developed country with liberal governance.  Their solution is to nationalize America’s healthcare industry – aka adopting a ‘single payer’ system.  Given our inability to do bureaucracies right, every proposal to nationalize winds up raising our cost of healthcare and hiding such increases under variously camouflaged wealth transfer, money printing, and federal borrowing programs.

    None of the proposed solutions are sustainable in the sense that they are able to keep a constant level of healthcare services within a non-increasing total cost share of GDP.  As documented numerous times in these pages, this is nothing new.  Even the progressives’ poster-child countries for nationalized healthcare have not been able to fashion or operate sustainable healthcare systems – they’re all reducing services and/or eating up bigger shares of their GDP.  None of these systems can last forever, as they continue kicking the cost can down the road.

    Our private, semi-subsidized healthcare system is still the best in the world for delivering clinical care, new medicines, technology advancements, and innovative medical procedures.  Where we screw up badly is how we handle all the back-office stuff confirming the levels of delivered care and arranging for their payment through multiple agencies and from multiple sources.  That bureaucracy is enormously costly and screwed up to a fare-thee-well.  And folding these legacy processes and procedures within today’s bureaucratic mindset into a nationalized structure promises to deliver chaos on steroids.

    McKinsey & Company, through its Center for Healthcare Reform, has completed a massive study of our healthcare industry, and identified specific improvements through which we could save more than $250,000,000,000 annually.  They have published their findings in a 76-page report titled ‘Administrative Simplification: How to save a quarter-trillion dollars in US healthcare’.  This is probably the most important new finding to come along that can move the healthcare debate off dead center and save enormous amounts annually.  You don’t have to read the entire thing to get the important details of how and where these savings will be realized.  The report begins with a 6-page executive summary with graphics that gets you up to speed.  Read it so that you’ll know what you’re talking about the next time you decide to sound off about healthcare reform.  (H/T to correspondent)

     

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  • Should They Still Honor Your Wishes?

    George Rebane

    Many people of means make charitable donations and bequests with caveats attached that they are told will be honored after they die.  But not all people think that should be so.  The practice of subverting the will of the dear departed has a long history.  The Ford Foundation, founded in 1936 by Henry (died 1947) and Edsel (died 1943) Ford, is a good example of such radical repurposing that many such bequests have suffered.  In the Ford Foundation case, the transformation started soon after Henry’s death and was directed by its trustees so far afield by 1976 that its then chairman Henry Ford II resigned in disgust.

    So, here’s the question – to what extent should the departed donor wishes to charities be honored?  We here consider only cases where the donor conditioned his donation subsequent to receiving bona fide and legal assurances in writing that his monies would be managed and dispensed according to his agreed upon wishes.  In short, the donation/bequest was made as part of a two-party contract.

    Historically, there has been a debate in how much and for how long charitable organizations should honor their donors’ wishes.  As early as 1789 Thomas Jefferson weighed in to James Madison his strong opinion on donors setting aside real estate in perpetuum for a designated religious or charitable purpose.  Jefferson said, “The Earth belongs to the living, and the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.”  It might be a stretch, but one can see that sentiment applied to land, the desired uses of which may change over the passing decades as the country grows.

    Leftwing political theorist Emma Saunders-Hastings teaches at Ohio State that philanthropy is a “deeply political activity” which gives the rich an outsized sphere of influence in a democracy, especially “in public life and by putting in place paternalistic relationships between donors and their intended beneficiaries."  In sum, it promotes inequalities that should have no place in democracies.  In her recent Private Virtues, Public Vices (2022) she argues against the notion wherein ‘donors claim to know, better than gift recipients, how their monies should be spent, placing donors’ ideas about what is best ahead of those of the beneficiaries.’

    To many of us such a view about perpetuating donor values is a natural and acceptable given.  Donors give to an institution either because they believe in the concordance of their values with those of the institution, or they believe the institution is trustworthy and capable of promoting the donor’s values as prescribed and agreed upon.  Saunders-Hastings also has problems with the lion’s share of large donations coming from the rich whose values are definitely not those of the common folk, and therefore will perpetuate inequalities into the indefinite future, unless … .

    Saunders-Hastings appears also being blind to a fundamental tenet of the nature of mortal humans.  Most people who are capable of enduring works see these as an extension of their being for those still living after they die.  Those with charitable instincts often see their wealth as delivering a twofer after they are gone – continuing to provide for a common good, and serving as a living memorial to a life well-lived and wealth well-placed.  To date, America has benefitted greatly from such donors of a wide range of means, who are not necessarily the claimed out-of-touch plutocrats. (more here and here)

    But we return to the main question – when the donated money was left in trust, is it ever ethical for society to then later violate that trust; and, if so, under what conditions should that be possible without communicating fraud to potential donors and shutting off the funding of good works?

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  • What is Faith?

    So, what is faith?  “Faith is believing in something you know isn’t true. — Tom Robbins, author.  Think about it: If the “something” you believe in is actually provably true, you wouldn’t need faith.”  So writes Tom Durkin in the 14apr22 Union.  From this I can’t really tell if here we have the misguided quoting the more misguided.  Robbins is clearly off the rails.  Belief in a tenet (proposition) is the assessment of its verity which can measurably vary from 0 (certainly FALSE) to 1 (certainly TRUE), where either extreme will reject falsifiability (i.e. new evidence) in the mind of the believer.

    Robbins definition is cognitively impossible (i.e. insane).  However, in our daily round we all operate heavily on the basis of faith, since many/most(?) of the things in our knowledge base we hold to be true are really based on the fidelity of the intermediaries who brought that knowledge to us.  By experience or experiment we have confirmed a fairly small share of our knowledge base.  Technology today allows us to reason correctly in such unreliable environments through the use of belief networks, whether applied formally or informally.  Beliefs between 0 and 1 are falsifiable by the incorporation of new evidence.  So, in the correct common usage of ‘faith’, we understand it to consist of beliefs which cannot be falsified.

    And as we conclude this reflection, we must always remember that beliefs are subjective, and therefore vary in their measure of verity from person to person (depending on the series of belief networks they have solved in traveling their particular world line).  What to one individual may be compelling evidence to support/reject a tenet, may not be at all acceptable to another.  Thus endeth the epistle for today.

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  • Scattershots – 21apr22 (updated 24apr22)

    George Rebane

    Re Rise Gold’s opening of the Idaho-Maryland mine, Union columnist Terry McLaughlin writes an excellent summary of the cost/benefit factors in the newspapers 21apr22 edition.  I’ve been on the fence leaning toward opposition of the project.  Terry’s clear, complete, and concise column helped me resolve toward opposing the project.  It’s definitely worth a read (here).

    2017 corporate tax cuts have now demonstrated that they paid for themselves.  Beyond they gave the economy a boost, raised real wages for middle class, and attracted more capital investment to increase the nation’s productive capacity.  As a collateral benefit, the rate reduction also greatly reduced the usual tax avoidance stratagems that always accompany high tax rates.  In short, the working of the Laffer Curve has again been demonstrated, as has been the error of all predictors – starting with the CBO – of massive government revenue losses.  Now, you’ll hear none of this from the lamestream media where all you’ll get is that the anti-American Biden wants to raise corporate rates to some progressive ‘fair share’ level.  This is guaranteed to take us back to slow and no growth, especially when combined with the rest of Democrats’ butt stupid economic nostrums. (more here and here)

    [22apr22 update] ‘If I were the Devil’ broadcast on 5 April 1965 is one of Paul Harvey’s most memorable commentaries.  The legendary radio commentator (syndicated from 1951-2008) looks more than a half century into the future and nails it.  He spelled out then what we all have experienced as the signs of our time.  Definitely worth a listen today (here) as we contemplate our nation’s downward spiral.  (H/T to correspondent)

    [24apr22 update]  The recent Earth Day should be remembered for marking 52 years of utterly failed predictions by the climate hysterics.  Doesn’t that just frost your external plumbing?  (more here and H/T to reader)

    EarthDay2022_wide

    ‘How America Became La La Land’ describes Victor Davis Hanson in some detail.  I would really like to see some of our leftwing readers respond to ANY of the points that VDH makes.  If the past serves the present, that is not to be; for they are all blind or ensconced in Terminal Denial Land.

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  • Sandbox – 20apr22

    [Had a wave of nostalgia reading ‘The Last of the Afternoon Newspapers’ by Peter Funt.  The last two are located in Livingston, Montana serving about 4,500 readers.  During my 10-13 age in Indianapolis, I had two paper routes – first one in the city where I carried a large canvas bag of papers strapped across my shoulder, and second one in the suburbs where much bigger saddlebags were permanently on the back rack of my balloon tire Schwinn.  As a kid I worked hard for the $5/week that sometimes was left over from my collections after I paid the Indianapolis News route manager for the newspapers I ordered and sold – every kid was a little businessman who was assigned a territory in which he had to market, deliver, and collect.  It was one of my early lessons about the real world of business.  Have any RR readers had a paper route somewhere in their past? gjr]

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  • Central Bank Digital Currencies a’comin’?

    George Rebane

    The powers that be have quietly initiated the process to change all fiat monies into central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).  Plenary sessions among the G7 have demonstrated that most countries are ready to change their money into ‘programmable crypto currencies’.  The US and UK are leaders of this movement as the means to enlarge the power of governments and control the inevitable destruction of their circulating fiat monies.

    To understand how CBDCs work, consider that when implemented, we will all have personal accounts with our country’s central bank (e.g. our Fed) which will then enable control of the amounts, dispensing, and programming the use of the new nationalized crypto currency.  This essentially follows what Red China is doing now (‘the Chinese model’).  The totalitarian gorilla in the room is the programmability of CBDCs.

    Depending on TBD laws, regulations, and power-motivated propensities, your particular CBDCs can be programmed to enable and/or deny you, on a day-to-day basis, the freedom to use the money as you will.  Say, that the government doesn’t want you to consume a certain product (e.g. fatty foods) because you are overweight.  It can then make your CBDCs unable to pay for such prohibited products and services.  The same can be said for travel restrictions – the government, or even the permitted airline, can make it so that you cannot purchase tickets that take you to a destination proscribed for you personally.

    In essence, CBDCs will then no longer be money in the sense that today’s money is fungible as a store of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange.  Your particular CBDCs will then become the equivalent of government-controlled vouchers purposed dynamically for what your employer or a state agency grants you privileges.  Are you beginning to get the picture?  (more here, here, here, and here)

    PS. The astute reader will realize that programmable CBDCs can totally collapse the ‘property side’ of the Bastiat Triangle, thereby also collapsing the ‘security’ and ‘liberty’ sides. Can everyone imagine work-around black markets and barter economies?

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  • ‘Poking the Bear’!?

    George Rebane

    It appears that under the leadership of our pusillanimous president the west has quietly buried MAD (mutually assured destruction).  Today we tremble in fear of the Butcher of Moscow every time he even hints that he has nuclear weapons which he might use if we don’t let his genocide in Ukraine continue unhindered.  So, what does he think we keep in all our land-based and seagoing silos, bagels?

    For decades MAD, augmented by forceful US military interventions, held back the Soviet bear.  None of the communist dictators waved their nuclear warheads in our faces, because they knew we would just wave back with ours – both knew not to play a lose-lose game.  That didn’t mean that the communists didn’t try to surreptitiously stick nukes under our noses.  But when discovered, they always understood the meaning of MAD and pulled back. 

    Both were satisfied to continue advancing their foreign policies by propaganda and the kind of brushfire wars that George Kennan outlined in his 1946 ‘Long Telegram’.  And in these, we didn’t just send in weapons and other military aid, we and our allies often put boots on the ground.  When necessary, we demonstrated our ability to kick the bear in the butt and not just poke him.  Under US leadership we did this until the USSR collapsed in spite of its decades long attempts to demonstrate the glories of communism and make it work.  Today no more.

    Under the clearest moral imperative since Hitler’s 1939 blitzkrieg invasion of Poland, we balked and prevaricated in full knowledge of Putin’s intent to invade Ukraine (as now admitted by our CIA), and continue to do so in the face of the ongoing slaughter of the innocents.  We have yet to send in the heavy weapons that Ukraine needs to counter the Russian (Red) army’s fielded heavy weapons and their air/missile superiority.  Every time we even intimate that we will do so by calling Putin a war criminal, he rattles his nukes and Team Biden dives under their desks.

    I would love to hear our leader strap on a pair of balls and respond to Putin’s threat of ‘uncertain consequences’ with a public guarantee of some uncertain consequences of our own should he continue to irritate the Eagle.  According to Rebane Doctrine, one such uncertain consequence would arise were we to promise to supply Ukraine with tactical nukes if Putin would ever pop one of his on Ukrainian territory.  The bottom line here is that we should exhume MAD, a mutually understood and implemented foreign policy strategy that for decades proved its war-limiting mettle, and as a reminder, bears that behave badly should always be poked.

    Without MAD, none on Bumblebrain’s A-team has a clue on how to stop Putin from taking the next hunk of neighboring territory after he’s allowed to negotiate a ‘peace’ that further decimates Ukraine.  Why would he not?  As with all tyrants whose regime beggars its citizens, Putin must always have a foreign aggressor against which to rail, and explain to his people why they are in dire straits.

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  • He is Risen!

    George Rebane

    Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

    HeIsRisen

    For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all Creation.

    This is RR’s annual message celebrating Easter.

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  • ‘Separation of church and state’

    George Rebane

    On this Thursday of Holy Week my bride Jo Ann, who is a member of the Union’s editorial board, had her ‘Hit’ published in the 14apr22 edition of the newspaper’s weekly Hits & Misses column.  It read – “Hit to celebrations this week of Easter and Passover.  These observances in our community help maintain our culture and remind us of our country’s Judeo-Christian roots.”

    Well, this did not sit well with Laurent Clark, a local anti-American progressive, who definitely considers Jo Ann’s sentiment one root to far according to today’s secular humanist tradition police.  Ms(?) Clark responded today with her letter titled ‘Separation of church and state’ (here) –

    This week Ms. Rebane has used The Union’s “Hits and Misses” section to foist her brand of religion on everyone in the vicinity, doing so with a subtle comment that the Easter and Passover celebrations,“help maintain our culture and remind ‘us’ of our Judeo-Christian roots.” … “Us” may remind her that she overstates her opinion by inferring that all of “us” are encompassed within her religious ilk. She further suggests that “us” as a culture should be thankful for those alleged “roots” — an arguable stretch of an opinion. … She might better refer to her brand of religion as a group, sect, clan, etc. and recognize that the rest of “us” may have our own sect, clan, or group, to worship within, as we please … or not.

    One is hard put to discover any ‘foisting’ or even anything about "her brand of religion" in Jo Ann’s hit.  We also note that those who did well in American history are familiar with the role Judeo-Christian tradition played in our country’s birth and beyond.  And the last time I looked, The Union was already a privately owned media outlet and not an inseparable mouthpiece of the state, allowed to still practice what passes for vestiges of free speech in today’s America.  But it is revealing to note that progressive statists today consider all organs of the Fourth Estate as responsible for hewing to the Left's socialist narrative.                    

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35 comments on Leftwing Journalism (Addended)