Tag Archives: Journalism

Connecticut Representative John Larson Proposes Plan To Destroy Social Security In Order To Save It, by Dale Coberly Connecticut Congressman John Larson introduces H. R. 860, Social Security 2100 Act which will cuts taxes, strengthen benefits, prevents anyone from retiring into poverty, and ensure Social Security remains strong for generations. larson.house.gov It sounds good, but of course he wants it to sound good. In the past we have had to be...

I Think, Therefore I Know: San Francisco Edition Strange as it may seem, the biggest stumbling block on much of the left may be a crude philosophical error, dogmatic subjectivism.  This is a position that holds that subjective experience is the highest form of knowledge, whose claims can’t be challenged by “lesser” criteria like logical analysis or empirical observation.  To the extreme subjectivist, if I feel something to be true there is no legitimate...

Elliott Maraniss It’s with more than average interest that I just read a review of David Maraniss’ new book about his father Elliott, A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father.  I knew Elliott during my years in Madison as a contributing writer to his newspaper, the Capital Times, and as an informal sounding board for his thoughts on the New Left.  The period in question was the early 1970s. First, Elliott was the most visibly nervous person...

The New York Times: A Propaganda Machine for Trump The Times thinks it’s leading the forces of reason and light against Donald Trump, but it doesn’t have a clue.  Every day their front page is festooned with the latest noxious Trumpian remark, followed by paragraphs of commentary on how unprecedented it is for a president to talk this way and how appalled most politicians and political observers are.  They think Trump is making one mistake after...

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Kevin Drum Talking ’bout my generation Kevin Drum has a funny but also genuinely interesting post on how boomers are not really to blame for messing up America (he half tongue in cheek blames the silent generation). I don’t think the defensiveness is entirely an act. He does concede Now, if you want to blame boomers for welfare reform, sure. Bill Clinton was (barely) a boomer. If you want to blame...

(Dan here….)  Via the New York Times comes an article on the Social Security shortfall.  No explanations given for what the shortfall context is, and not till the end was a fix suggested.  In comments calling SS a ponzi scheme (with no explanation) was common, or with the fix mostly was about lifting the cap.  Only one commenter referred readers to a Bruce Bartlett article from 2013 on the matter, From an e-mail by Dale Coberly Forgive me,  I have...

This month marks the centenary of the Treaty of Versailles, one of the agreements that brought World War I to a close. In a sense, the tables have turned. Whereas the treaty imposed huge reparations on Germany, today’s Germany has taken the lead in imposing a large debt obligation on its fellow eurozone member Greece. Although the creditor-debtor cards have been reshuffled since 1919, the game remains the same. Creditors want their pound of flesh, and debtors want to avoid giving it....

Interesting there is not a peep on this in the US and literally hundreds of thousands of women gathered in the streets of the Swiss cities. 40,000 in front of parliament in Bern and the same was repeated in the cities of Lausanne, Geneva, and other places. It is said the turnout is greater in numbers than the protest in 1991. Much of the same inequalities are recognized in Switzerland as they are in the US. Women lose is salary if they take time off. This...

The North Korea Food Shortage Deepens Yeah, I know, the Iran situation is more in the headlines, but nobody knows anything and everybody is shooting off their mouths.  I shall comment on that one when things settle down a bit. Instead I shall provide info less widely reported coming out of nkecon  on the still-unreported-in-MSM story about the increasingly bad food situation in North Korea (DPRK). There are multiple reports.  Drought has hit the...

For those [journalists] who want to keep their jobs, police raids and prosecutions are reminders when self-censorship isn’t enough to prevent their investigating abuses of the law, war crimes, fraud and corruption. The first home truth is that truth is loss-making for an enterprise; pauperizing for its reporter. The second home truth is that in wartime – that’s now – truth-telling may be a criminal offence which will get the reporter time in jail. Dances with BearsHOME TRUTHS AND PRESS...