August 4, 2006
DI Column Up: Iconoclastic Reactionaries
You can read my latest and last DI column for the summer here.
Enjoy.
P.S. Yes they mispelled my name. Again.
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The problem with the battle of the iconoclastic reactionaries
Jon Bambenek
Posted: 8/4/06
If society is "a group of reasonable beings united among themselves by a love having the same object" as St. Augustine suggested, we are witnessing the very violent murder of American society in our day and age. Political discussion has become so unreasonable, and the public mind so small, that we can no longer discuss ideas or events, we can only discuss people. We have become so fractured that in no way can Americans be described as having a love for the same object. This campus, a place of supposed open discussion, is no exception.It is on the twenty-four hour news channels and the blogs, which have done little but to exacerbate the problem, where people can no longer challenge ideas, they must attack the people behind those ideas as absolute moral evils to be annihilated.
Likewise, instead of presenting messages, we present messengers. Cindy Sheehan lost a son in Iraq; therefore, her ideas are beyond reproach. Ann Coulter is right because she sells lots of books. Yet neither advance ideas; they are defined by what they are against.
When people talk about privatizing Social Security, the voices that challenge the policy on economic grounds are drowned out by the voices who claim that it is a sinister plot to kill off old people. For those who discuss immigration reform, those who disagree with amnesty are not people with a different perspective, but xenophobes who are stirring anti-immigrant furor. Individuals who voice criticism of the war in Iraq, no matter how legitimate, are labeled as traitors and terrorist sympathizers.
Have we run out of ideas? Have we, as a country, become so superficial that we've bought into the idea of style over substance so completely?
The lines have not only been drawn with politics, but with race as well. There are African Americans, Caucasians, Latinos, and nowhere does anyone talk of simply "Americans" without qualifiers. We have black culture, white culture, and Latino culture, but nowhere do we have a common culture. We are not a society; we are several societies that by an accident of geography occupy that same chunk of dirt on a map. And like all divisions, we look upon the "other" with suspicion, disdain and fear.
There exist millions of little lobbying groups insisting that politicians give them what they want, or they'll declare that politician as a target to be destroyed. No one, at least those who show up on TV and command a small army of bobble heads, can fathom this simple idea: There are 300 million people in this nation, and sometimes their needs and wants matter too. Policy and politics are more than single issues considered in a vacuum.
In an arena where there is only good and evil with no middle ground, no real synthetic thought can take place. We are left with the Roman Colosseum, not a public square. It is the perennial battle of the iconoclastic reactionaries of all political stripes. The solution to bridge one warring faction with another is not moderate thought, but simply thought itself.
That leaves one of several options to us. We either learn to grow up and discuss ideas like adults, we retreat into our "communities" and the nation splinters, or we pick up guns and the last man standing wins. I'd prefer if we just grew up. © Copyright 2006 The Daily Illini
Posted by John Bambenek at 8:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 16, 2006
Yet Another Journalistic Fraud?
It appears another drive-by media attempt to discredit the President and advance the claim that Republicans are trying to usher in a new era of fascism has fallen flat on its face. Claims by USA Today using sources with “direct knowledge of the program” that the NSA has been collecting massive databases of phone calls don’t appear to match with the records of two of the three apparent participants, Verizon and Bell South.
Sure, they could be lying but that would be stupid considering they’re going to be on the frontline for litigation over this issue as it is easier to sue a company for breach of privacy then getting anything out of the NSA. If they took the time to search their records (as it appears they did) all they would have done was generate more evidence for such a relationship. However, it appears now that there really was no relationship at all, or for that matter, any requests by the NSA in the first place. Some of the bitter-enders will still insist the program exists and there is a massive cover-up, just like some continue to insist that 9/11 was staged despite the release of flight recorders, telephone calls, and video feeds that show the opposite.
Once again, we are faced with an “objective” journalistic medium that didn’t do enough footwork to verify the claims that were made before it splashed them on the front page and riled the population. The irony is that it appears the population would support such a database if it existed.
Time after time there are those who continue to make up claims (i.e. KoranGate and RatherGate) in the media who never seem to be held to account on their frauds. If the media wishes to continue to be seen as a serious medium of information (and more and more people are turning elsewhere for news) it needs to take seriously its responsibility to report accurately the news instead of pandering to the worst elements of the left.
Posted by John Bambenek at 10:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 13, 2006
Is Big Brother watching?
The latest controversy about the NSA spying on Americans once again takes facts, twists them to the breaking point, and then panics that the sky is falling. The sole source for this program has been the USA Today article that alarmingly says the NSA is spying on Americans.
The program was voluntary
According to the USA Today article, giving the information to the NSA was not required. In fact, one carrier (Qwest) declined to participate. This means that the federal government did not require these companies to participate, it merely asked them. In fact, it paid the companies for the information and it was provided “under contract”.
The NSA's domestic program began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the sources. Right around that time, they said, NSA representatives approached the nation's biggest telecommunications companies. The agency made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks.The agency told the companies that it wanted them to turn over their "call-detail records," a complete listing of the calling histories of their millions of customers. In addition, the NSA wanted the carriers to provide updates, which would enable the agency to keep tabs on the nation's calling habits.
The sources said the NSA made clear that it was willing to pay for the cooperation. AT&T, which at the time was headed by C. Michael Armstrong, agreed to help the NSA. So did BellSouth, headed by F. Duane Ackerman; SBC, headed by Ed Whitacre; and Verizon, headed by Ivan Seidenberg.
With that, the NSA's domestic program began in earnest.
The government is not prevented by any law from buying records that companies willingly will sell. If those companies violated their privacy policy, an entrepreneurial lawyer will have a cause of action in litigating the phone companies for their breach of privacy policy. However, the government is not “spying” when it buys records that are put out on the common market, even if there is only one buyer.
Data-mining in not spying
Once again, data-mining is not the same as spying. What the NSA received was a list of phone calls with call durations and source and destination phone numbers. That’s it. Spying would be listening to the call. Spying would be recording the call. This was not spying.
The continuing use of the most inflammatory language possible indicates an agenda and an attempt to drum up fear that “Bush will kill us all”
Don’t believe everything you read
It is important to note that the first draft of these so-called scandals that get run by the MSM tend not to hold up much more than a week after being scrutinized. The press has to gain readership to raise their advertising income. They tend to do this two ways, by making their readers afraid or making their readers angry. This influences how they write their stories.
In this case, the inflammatory language is misleading and the legal question rests not on whether or not warrants were needed, but whether or not the phone companies should have sold the information in the first place. Certainly in the complete absence of any coercion.
Posted by John Bambenek at 5:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 15, 2006
For the Love of All That is America, Learn What The First Amendment Is…
Throughout the cartoon controversy people on both sides talk about free speech and a free press. While in general, these can be construed as the freedom to say what you want, people are conflating Constitutional protections with the idea that one shouldn't face any consequences to their speech.
Free speech, but more specifically, the Constitutional protection of free speech has absolutely nothing to do with private individuals and what they can do. The First Amendment is not a protection from your fellow citizens (or foreigners). It is a protection against what the government can do, and the government alone.
When the Dixie Chicks protested that people were boycotting their music, they claimed Free Speech. No one said they didn't have the right to say what they did; they were saying they weren't going to continue giving them money if they wanted to engage in that behavior. This is perfectly legal and why our country is so great. We don't need the government to create hate speech laws here; the free market system largely takes care of the problem. Yes, you have a right to say stupid things, but that doesn't mean you have the right to continue to get subsidized by the public if you do. This is the lesson that the creators of "Book of Daniel" learned.
When Islamic radicals (who are the minority) burn down embassies and threaten violence, it is shameful behavior. You don't protest the stereotype of being a fanatical murder by being a fanatical murder. However, Muslims hacking websites is not a Constitutional issue. There are laws to prevent it, sure. It's bad behavior, sure. But it is not an attack on the First Amendment. It is high time people on both sides realize what the First Amendment is and what it is not.
Posted by John Bambenek at 10:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Why I'm Sick of Talking Politics
It's crap like this. Why is this front page news? Why does the NYT need to fantasize over a grand jury to investigate an accident? He was hunting, someone got shanked. It happens, and if nothing else the NRA is pissed because there is another data point out there on why all guns should be banned.
Making jokes is one thing, but Democrats trying to make it a political issue is just stupid. I seriously feel dumber for having read those articles. Any time there is bad news, they blame Bush. Doesn't matter what it is.
Posted by John Bambenek at 8:24 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 22, 2006
Time-Gate? The Media is Learning the Wrong Lesson
Time Magazine apparently has an exclusive that there exists pictures with President Bush and Jack Abramoff together. Skipping past the irrelevancy of what these pictures are supposed to present, there is one immediate thing that comes to mind.
TIME has seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed. While TIME's source refused to provide the pictures for publication…
Rathergate of fond memory provided what should have been a valuable lesson to the media to make sure they don’t use forged documents to try to prove a partisan point. However, the lesson they have learned is to provide less visibility and accountability, not more. If the pictures never make it to the public, then they can’t be refuted. This comes from an industry supposedly trying to expose truth, and instead they are concealing it.
There is one important question that any hack journalist would have asked when a resource showed but refused to disclose pictures such as these: why? That question goes unaddressed in the piece. There is no mention of how the source got them, even in general terms, why the source is hiding them, or why the reporters think they are legitimate. Apparently the public is supposed to just “trust” them. The media has become so afraid of bloggers and the public that they are afraid to give them any information which could be used to refute them. The only reason not to provide the pictures from Time’s perspective is because they can be easily refuted, despite the fact they are irrelevant anyway (the President is in thousands of pictures every year, that doesn’t mean that every photo-op is with his closest friends).
Cases of media bias are clear cut, such as the AP Style Guide clearly suggesting using anti-abortion instead of pro-life in order to push “abortion rights” and use pro-choice approved propaganda terms. In this case, the Democrats are trying to push the point that Republicans and only Republicans have corruption problems.
They are desperately trying to stick Abramoff to Bush to use as a template in the 2008 elections conveniently forgetting record-breaking corruption of a certain previous Democrat administration. In short, the Democrat party platform has become, ”We can’t beat them so let’s try to indict them”.
And it appears that Time Magazine is playing along.
Posted by John Bambenek at 7:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 12, 2006
AP Media Bias - Uncovered
Here's the title of the story, "Corporate Taxes, Gov't Spending Hit Records".
Here's the quoted first paragraph, emphasis mine:
The federal government posted the first budget surplus for December in three years as corporate tax payments hit an all-time high, helping offset a record level for spending, the Treasury Department reported Thursday.
The first paragraph says the government is running it's first surplus in three years and they focus on something else. We wouldn't want to deprive the Democrats of the "record surpluses to record deficits" motto, would we?
Posted by John Bambenek at 2:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 28, 2005
The Economy - By the Numbers
Holiday Sales up 22% From Last Year
Which is it? Both can't be true at the same time. Either sales are up or sales are down. Looking at the articles and all the associated articles, it appears that sales are up (20+%) across the entire market. The negative numbers are specific sectors or sub-sections (enclosed malls). It appears that the negative articles are written such as to indicate that the market and economy are doing much worse than they really are. This isn't the first time.
There is a significant amount of "talking down" of the economy. You can see this in the housing bubble theories, companies not doing enough, and the dire predictions of a weak holiday season (since proven untrue).
Unemployment is at 5.0%, despite two hurricanes. This is roughly half the rate of unemployment throughout most of Europe. Current income is up, GDP is growing (3.8%), and the stock market is up. Despite this, pundits insist that doom and gloom is coming even though economic indicators will continue to show increases.
Let's be honest a moment, it isn't the Republicans campaigning on a bad economy, it's the Democrats. It's in their campaigns that the economy is in the tank and everyone is suffering despite the complete lack of any evidence to support it. Income is up. Home ownership is up. Unemployment is down. Home values are up. Almost every traditional indicator shows that the economy is growing, yet the perception is fostered that we are heading towards the Great Depression.
This trend in reporting shows two things. Democrats are beyond using facts to scaremonger voters about the economy. Instead of coming up with a platform to better America, they spend their time telling America how bad things are. Facts be damned. Second, it shows that the press, once again, is in the tank with the Democrats agenda and is carrying the water for them. The story is a roaring economy, but they search and scour for some shred of evidence to talk it down. Objective reporting or campaigning? I think the answer is clear.
Posted by John Bambenek at 12:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 21, 2005
Photoanalysis - X Marks the Spot
I'm liveblogging as I do this... thanks to Political Teen and Right on the Right for letting me know and getting me hi-res video.
Here's Drudge's Story and Malkin's Coverage.
So far the biggest problems are the color of the ticker, Cheney's suit, and the text are very close to the same, which makes it very hard to pull out the text. The X appears to be exactly centered on the screen, however. Possible it is some automated message, whatever the text says will show that for sure... still working on that frame by frame.
12:00 AM CST
The X is definitely centered, but the text most certainly is not. That implies (but doesn't gaurantee) human interaction, at least for the text. An automated message that takes the effort to center the X would most likely center the text... the most obvious text that comes out is the word "black" at the end.
12:10 AM CST
Right now I'm working on enhancing and enlarging the video. For whatever reason the pictures I get out aren't as good, so I'm working with video editing to try to see if I can get something.
12:15 AM CST
Over the "Wrong" on the second line of the tag line is a character that is below the rest... but only one character... either non-english, a 2nd line with a very out of place character, or something not of the a-z alphabet.
12:28 AM CST
Here's first image, will clean this up more to pull out letters and remove noise.
12:33 AM CST
The letter hanging down is a g, the word is "begins" and it just uses a typeface that has g hanging low.
1:07 AM CST
So This guy beat me to it.
"Transition begins after 5 frames of black". Just an automated message then.
9:56 AM
A quick explanation for people curious how this worked. Essentially you grab two frames, switch one to negative and overlay them. The same pixels should cancel and reveal what has changed. I was working on getting this when The Dan Report posted the finished solution.
Posted by John Bambenek at 11:50 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 7, 2005
Hurricane Katrina: The Wall Street Journal Blames the Locals
Today the WSJ laid blame squarely on the mayor and governor where it belongs. They largely agree with my own assessment.
UPDATE:
Apparently the MSM is starting to pick up on the non-executed plan by the locals that let people die, ABC gets it. (HT: Captain's Quarters)
Posted by John Bambenek at 5:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 25, 2005
More AP Bias
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A former state senator pleaded guilty to mail fraud Thursday and admitted accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from three companies that had an interest in bills before the General Assembly.
This was the header to an AP article just recently that hit the wire. No where in it does it indicate that this guy was a Democrat. You had to go to an old article by the Boston.com.
AP, dropping the ball again when it is their boys that are caught up in corruption.
Posted by John Bambenek at 11:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MSM Refuses to Take Genocide in Darfur Ad
Think Progress has the news that NBC, CBS, and ABC affiliates are refusing to run Be a Witness ads covering the genocide that is going on in Darfur. They haven't covered any of the news during the year except for token sound-bites because apparently Natalee Holloway takes precedence.
Turns out that for every 100,000 dead in Sudan, the issue gets 1 minute of press. To add insult to injury they won't let people even pay them to cover it.
Posted by John Bambenek at 9:08 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 17, 2005
Great Post on NYT Bias
You can find it at Countercolumn
Posted by John Bambenek at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 15, 2005
Cindy Sheehan and the Iraq War
I don't want to get dragged into this quagmireof Cindy Sheehan, I haven't blogged about it and I'm not going to. I agree with Chrenkoff (HT: Michelle Malkin) that this is a game that should not be played. If that faction of the Left wants to grab any club they can find to beat Bush with I have confidence that the American people will recognize it for what it is. All I know is that it's undermining the troops (HT: Cao's Blog) and Iraqis aren't too fond of it either. There are some games that shouldn't be played, some things that shouldn't be exploited, and some things left alone.
This has brought out the worst on both sides and really needs to stop.
UPDATE:
Wizbang and others are starting to agree.
Posted by John Bambenek at 11:01 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 21, 2005
NYT: Christians Are Blue-Collar Idiots
Dawn Eden takes the New York Times to the mattresses over the article suggesting Christians are working class nobodies... (from the side of the political spectrum supposedly defending the working class).
Posted by John Bambenek at 2:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 20, 2005
Reuters Distorts Vatican View on Fertility Treatment
Vatican may campaign abroad against IVF - expert
The Roman Catholic church is liable to launch a global offensive against infertility treatment following its victory in an Italian referendum last week, a leading expert said on Sunday.
Um, IVF is one type of infertility treatment and there are many others, including things like fertility drugs and hormone therapy which do not fall afoul of the Vatican or Catholic teaching.
Let's be direct. When I bring my child into the world, I don't want to say it started by me looking at some porn in a side room of the doctor's office while masturbating into a dixie cup so a doctor can make a cocktail in a petri dish to inject into my wife. That's just not such a fun story to tell your kids when they are older. "Well, son, Vasoline and Playboy had much more to do with your conception..."
The other irony is that the Church is accused of wanting its members to breed like rabbits, yet somehow isn't for "infertility" treatments that would yield to more kids. Strange, isn't it? Which stereotype is it again?
Here is what the Cathechism has to say on the issue:
2375 Research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged, on condition that it is placed "at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, and his true and integral good according to the design and will of God."[165]
2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses' "right to become a father and a mother only through each other."[166]
2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that "entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children."[167] "Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses' union .... Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person."[168]
Emphasis mine.
It's just THIS FORM of infertility treatment that is condemned, not all forms. And there is more than one treatment but you wouldn't know that from reading this news article.
Posted by John Bambenek at 2:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 6, 2005
Media Bias Revealed: Party Only Matters When it's a Republican
The former Speaker of the House of Massachusetts was charged for perjury in a recent probe. They mention his party once not connected with his name (the phrase "the Democrat from Boston") in paragraph 4. Compare this with the latest news on Tom DeLay the not only mentions the word Republican 6 times, but it also puts it in the title with his name.
Food for thought... if Tom Finneran was a Republican, would that fact be mentioned more? I think we all know the answer to that.
Posted by John Bambenek at 1:56 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
May 18, 2005
Blaming Karl Rove is so 2004 Apparently...
The press has demonstrated why a growing number of people don't believe in the free press. In response to the Newsweek controversy of reporting a false story about Koran flushing (KoranGate), you'd think they'd be apologetic. Oh no, the MSM went on full offensive against the White House, despite the fact the truth is on the President's side.
The press corps became unhinged when Scott McClennan suggested Newsweek help repair the damage. "Who made you the editor of Newsweek?"
Today, MSNBC's own blogger suggests that the proper way to quell the controversy is for Scott McClennan to resign. Somehow Scott is responsible for Jeff Gannon getting a pass into the news room. But the most damning thought of the whole post is that somehow Gen. Myers and Scott McClennan's statements are irreconcilable. He admits the absurdity of desecrating a Koran in order to get people to talk.
Gen. Myers said the riots were related to the ongoing political reconciliation process, Scott McClennan said the Newsweek story lead to the loss of lives. Let me check something.
Those look like Koran's they are holding in a peaceful protest against the Newsweek article. Here's a phrase that might help; "fueling the fire". Sure, there were riots before the Newsweek article ran, but once that article did run the radicals took it and showed it to the people saying "the Americans really ARE desecrating our Koran's, even the American media says that".
Apparently though, because Jeff Gannon was in the press room (hint: I can get a press pass into the press room) the administration can no long complain about Newsweek running false and inflammatory articles that provide aid and comfort to the enemy. How many people died because of Jeff Gannon again? It's as if Keith Olbermann is asking us to boycott Newsweek's advertisers, or for that matter, boycott GE itself.
Blaming Scott McClennan for Newsweek running a false story that shouldn't have passed the smell test was like CBS blaming Karl Rove for running forged documents to prove Bush didn't do his Guard duty. The public is watching, and the trust in the MSM has just gone that much lower. There is no point to having a free press in this country if the press, instead of informing the public with real information, is going to be a sounding board for Al Qaeda. At least of we outsource the media to Al Jazeera we know what to expect.
This article first appeared at Ravings of John C. A. Bambenek
Posted by John Bambenek at 9:16 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 17, 2005
On Dealing Seriously With Journalistic Fraud
In the light of KoranGate and the meme of "Fake but Plausible" we should take a moment to reflect on the story that blew the top on fraud in Journalism, RatherGate. Yes, that story where obviously forged documents were used to try to discredit the President during an election (you know, the ones that had P.O. Box 12345 in the header). CBS took seriously the allegations as well did the rest of the journalistic community.
Today, the journalistic community has expressed its righteous indignation that one journalist has so given into the Democrats that he ran a false story by awarding Dan Rather the Peabody Award. It's good to know that media organizations take bias and fraud seriously.
Posted by John Bambenek at 4:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Newsweek Kills People, Tells the World To Piss Off
The hubris, the absolute hubris of Newsweek over this... From Drudge:
"Mike was told he would not be sacrificed, we are stading behind him 100%," a top magazine source told the DRUDGE REPORT. "We do not, I repeat, do not let this White House, any White House, make our staff decisions for us." The top source claims an emotional Isikoff offered to resign from the magazine over the weekend....
Guys, you ran a false story you didn't even bother to fact check and 17 people died because of it. 17 fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters won't be coming home to their families because of YOUR failure to do basically journalistic work. Isikoff appears to have a conscience in this story and I do feel sorry for him because it's obviously a horrible thing to realize what you have caused but the management of Newsweek sticking their middle-finger up at the world and to America only demonstrates that treasonous and seditious nature of the MSM (and Newsweek in particular) over KoranKate
Posted by John Bambenek at 9:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 16, 2005
KoranGate: What did they know and when did they know it?
I first got wind of the flushing Koran story at IIMPR when Naomi Klein was talking about strategic leaking and how torture is meant to cause fear and not effective at interrogation which is largely correct ( read more here). She then mentioned the flushing Koran story. My first thought was that any chump would know fear wouldn't be the reaction to a desecration like that, rage would be. If someone flushed a Bible I wouldn't be afraid that someone would grab me in the middle of the night, I'd be outraged. And that's exactly the reaction that took place. We learn that it WAS strategic leaking, but of a different kind.
Read the news here, here, here. and so on. A retraction was finally published. It was revealed that the accusation came from one solitary anonymous source who couldn't corroborate his claim. I think this guy knew full well what the reaction would be and he strategically leaked it to cause the riots and realized that Muslims would be skeptical of any backtracking. Newsweek is investigating, but just like Rathergate, heads really need to role. Dan Rather just made a false run at a sitting President with crap. This time people died because of MSM politics (as Michelle Malkin puts it Newsweek lied and people died. They're so desperate for ANYTHING, they'll run with it with shobby reporting. They'll take any accusation from any disgruntled government figure who wants to beat on the man. There needs to be a real investigation here.
This story is just another episode in a long trend of the seditious liberal media. We had the false story that all the Iraqi museums were looted only to find it was more like a few dozen pieces probably by museum workers. We found Dan Rather ran with forged documents. We find Newsweek ran with a spotty source. We had Seymour Hersh take evidence of an ongoing criminal investigation where people were already indicted and publish it in the press as breaking news. We've had plagarists and we've had circulation number embellishments.
At IIMPR people complained about the lack of trust in the media. That lack of trust has been earned by these high profile stories where it turns out the reporters lied, misrepresented, or didn't do their job. Newsweek needs to be held accountable that's why I'm asking that everyone link (i.e. Googlebomb) to Newsweek with the word "Korangate" in the title.
More here.
Posted by John Bambenek at 5:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 6, 2005
I'll Be Liveblogging "Can Freedom of the Press Survive Media Consolidation" Talk May 10-11
The U of Illinois is having a conference titled Can Freedom of the Press Survive Media Consolidation? - A Conference Featuring Artists, Journalists, Media Executives, Policy Makers, Activists, and Scholars.
Here are some of the guests:
Rep. Bernie Sanders
Danny Goldberg of Air America
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now
There doesn't appear to be anything close to representing a conservative that's affiliated with this thing, but I don't know all the names. I'm going to withhold judgement until I'm there to see how bad this is. But I will be there liveblogging the event if there is wireless that I can get on. If not, I'll be near-time blogging.
Stay Tuned.
Posted by John Bambenek at 2:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 5, 2005
MSM Continues Anti-Walmart Jihad
At Wal-Mart, Choosing Sides Over $9.68 an Hour
The ongoing media and leftist jihad against Walmart continues. They continue to bash on Walmart for paying low wages but the odd thing is, I'm not sure why they never seem to mention places like McDonald's, factories, college-town jobs, or countless others who pay minimum wage whereever possible. The assumption is that either minimum wage should be raised because it's unlivable, or that Walmart should just pony up more. It's time I beat this myth down.
You can't make a business pay taxes. Sorry. Business do one thing, and on thing only. The provide a service and pass the costs down to the consumer with some profit. If you artificially increase costs (i.e. telling them they have to pay more, raise taxes on them), they do two things: cut costs elsewhere (like firing people) or raise prices. A business that cannot recoup its costs when setting prices has a technical name... "bankrupt".
Now, in particular, raising wages across the board does two things. Either the cost of living increases because everyone who has to pay more on labor will pass those costs down with increased prices or they will simply employ less people. It's just that simple. What's worse, having people who make 80% of what's needed to live and have reasonable unemployment, or have some more people have enough but the rest make 0%. But there is another solution...
No matter what you do to a business, tax them, sue them, whatever, those costs are passed down to the consumer eventually and the consumer can't pass those costs off to anyone. They make what they make. The solution here to address people who can't get by on minimum wage is to LOWER the cost of living instead.
How can you do this? Tort reform is a part, and I don't mean simply capping damages. The problem with suing a company, let's say a doctor, is that they don't really pay in the end. (Sure, lost time defending and all that, but they don't cut the check). Liability insurers that no matter what a company does aside of outright murder can be reduced to a predictable line item so they can set prices.
Phillip Morris pays X amount of insurance a year to cover tobacco settlements. They pass that premium down in covering that cost in sales. Doctors do the same thing, they figure out their premium and other costs, then set prices. A could start would be to find a way to make companies instead of consumers pay for the **legitimate** harms they cause (and there is a healthy amount of illegitimate cases going through the courts to make companies pay for other people's bad uses of their produce which is another problem).
The solution here is to reduce the cost it takes for companies to make their products and the savings is made up for by consumers who can much more easily get by. It's simple economics. So let's stop with the Walmart jihad and deal with the problem now.
Posted by John Bambenek at 6:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
