Category: Politics

Who, What, When and Where are surpassed in Journalism by the feelings behind Why!

Think critically. Insist news is only who, what, where and when.

When I  was an undergrad ( as my daughter says back in ancient times ) I took an entry level journalism class and wrote previously for a high school newspaper. The class and newspaper faculty advisor, drilled into my head, always put in news pieces only who, what, when and where. Why is for your audience. Facts are who did what. Where and when did they do it.

There is a problem in journalism, when why is interjected. Why someone acts maybe undiscoverable. Think about that. What sources really know why? If the actions of many are questioned, (ie stock movement) I contend it is impossible to ascertain. You may identify contributing factors. you may interview some buyers and sellers and cite the most oft listed reason as the reason why for the stock movement.

What you have listed as the reason is still subjective. If you accept that a thorough job was done of interviewing most of the sellers and buyers of a stock, you are still left with a question. Can the interviewees be believed? Some interviewed may not have given the sale or purchase much thought. Some maybe swayed by how the interviewer asked the question. Some may just not tell the interviewer the truth for any of an unknown number of reasons. Who did it. What  was done. Where it happened and when is much less subjective and more verifiable. Sure, a seasoned reporter may have to sift through accounts to determine, who actually witnessed an event. After sifting, some will think they saw something they did not really see. However multiple witnesses where available or dissection of individual accounts can frequently sort the wheat from the chaff. This is why in Court cross examination is so important. Reading requires one to critically think.
Today we are given conclusions, why. In some instances one can glean the who, what, where and when from a thorough reading or listening to a journalistic piece, but not always. This is because the proper pleasing narrative is more important than the actual facts.

What does this mean? Eyes reading an article or clicks in the digital realm are more important than facts.

Hasn’t it always been so? Yes, but what is different? I postulate and this is my why ;that the reading public believes journalists only report facts, so they squelch their natural urges to question, to think critically.

what should a reader take from this article? Don’t depend on headlines, read any article critically. Ask who, what, where and when? Is it in the article? How many sources were consulted or witnesses interviewed? Are the conclusions supported at all? Is there more than one explanation? If you just assess the who, what where and when, is there even a need for the why?  Can the why be supported? If yes, do you understand the subjective nature of why is separate from news.

Today, the why is a reason to call out any disagreeable conclusion as misinformation. Is it? Can people with a different perspective, see the why differently?  Is the author intellectually honest? Are sources cited? If sources uncited, how many sources or witnesses are there?  Read critically! If there are too many unanswered questions, why do You believe it? AmI biased or not open to new facts or other views

Do self examination. Think critically. Insist news is only, who, what, where and when. Why is subjective.  Don’t just know have evidence. Knowing without facts is faith. Some values are only supported by faith, but understand that!

“There ought to be a Law”. Think before you suggest.

The Constitution is a living document, which must be interpreted in accordance with the times to remain relevant. This is the continual drone of Washington’s political elite. This phrase is championed by Democratic Party nominated activist judges as well as those activist judges are nominated by RHINOS.  Lest anyone doubt, the constitution has a method for updating its language, built in.  It is the amendment process. It is difficult to accomplish since it requires super majorities. This was done precisely so that the latest fad can’t change the balance of power  and remove natural right.

It is a shame the judiciary has been permitted to distort the federal system.  Stare Decisis has been used to make permanent this judicial activism.  Courts bypass the enumerated powers limitation by citing the public welfare clause or misusing the interstate commerce clause sometimes for a good cause., but bad law even when well intended leads to future unintended consequences.  One need only read some of the cases applying the Civil Rights Act to private clubs to see the intellectual jujitsus employed by the Court  to reach a desired result. Ketchup moving through interstate commerce as a basis for utilizing the Interstate Commerce Clause, Really?  What’s next penumbra’s of amendments? Oh, that’s been done too. See Roe vs Wade.

The next time you hear “there ought to be a law, you should ask; is the proposed law a legitimate exercise of the power of the federal government or of any government?

Does any proposed law, fall under an enumerated federal power?  Does it violate any guaranteed personal freedoms. If it is a safety or educational issue, is it better addressed by a government closer to the people?

Yes, government is a use of force and as such must be used sparingly. If you use it continually, then you risk mob rule or tyranny of the majority. Tyranny isn’t limited to single dictators!

States joined together to form our union.  Our Founders believed the states that formed the federal government were closer to the people and should wield governmental authority unless it is given to the national government by a listed power.

Federal power is limited. Witness the 10th amendment. If federal power is interpreted too broadly, the tenth amendment is meaningless and the Constitutional intent is defeated.  If you want a more powerful federal government, secure enough support to amend the document.  It has been done.

So the moral of the story is; think before you say, “ there ought to be a law”.

If you are a liberal, a conservative; how will you feel, when your adversary controls government and wields that same power in a manner you believe damages you or limits your individual freedoms? Before you bellow “ there ought to be a law “, ask critical questions.

If you feel there is no power enumerated for your law and is there enough consensus, then do the right thing, amend the constitution?  If there is not enough popular clamor to amend, enjoy your God given, natural rights or use your liberty to be the change in your area, you want. Persuasion and private action may better serve your cause rather than the use of government force.

Liberals can find a fascist, nazi or racist in anything! Are you an unrepentant nazi, fascist or racist?

Have you read about things or imagined what you might see, while walking home on Mulberry Street?  Don’t!  It is verboten. Have you properly considered the racial implications of reading such provocative text? If not, then you are promoting and spreading your unconscious racism to the next generation. See this link . Don’t worry, woke publishers and the left have come forward to save you from your unconscious racist tendencies.  Are you spreading your racism by teaching what your white dominated school board demands?  If so, see this woke teacher.   Woke teacher

Hey liberals, ever hear of confirmation bias?  It means, that when you read with a preconceived idea that content  exists within a writing, it is more likely you will find that content in what you are reading.  I know intent no longer matters to you. I am told repeatedly that only the educated, “ woke “ should be allowed to share their thoughts because allowing the unwoke to speak will offend someone, somewhere. Well be on notice, many like me are already offended by your new “ woke “ speech rules. It offends me and I see it as a limitation of my God given right to freely communicate my thoughts with my contemporaries, which you have no right to prevent.

I see many liberals with bumperstickers that say Coexist. (See definition, click on the blue word. ). Coexistence is different from domination or  elimination. Please reread the definition.  Live together peacefully does not happen, if you insist that I cannot speak or that all writings must conform with your views or be eliminated as offensive. (No, you can’t do an end run on this by referring to your cancel culture as a set of common sense safety rules necessary to prevent your intentional or unintentional infliction of emotional distress).   If you continually seek to find oppression in every writing and spoken word, then perhaps, you are the one with a confirmation bias problem. Please don’t fall to the sin of hubris.
Hubris
All of us see the world as we observe it.  We, because we are human, have limited ability to observe and imperfect powers of communication. This means you may believe you know my thoughts and motivations, but you don’t, because you cannot. You and I are each limited by our physical human form.  Additionally, you may not even share common values with me. You may attempt to persuade me, but you may not eliminate my right to think or speak, even, if your observation leads you to believe I may be incorrect. If you believe me wrong create more speech, persuade.  If you are damaged personally by my speech you may seek societal redress in our Courts.

please consider the role of confirmation bias before you seek to erase speech or writings.

How the death of personal responsibility means an end to your freedom and ultimately your choices

Choice is difficult. It requires critical thinking and doesn’t provide for a guaranteed outcome. It allows failure. It also allows for growth. So remember the next time you are in a quandary and believe government is the answer. Somewhere out there countless others are prepared to solve your problems for you and make your life safer and insure your mediocrity too! It won’t cost you too much, just a choice. Choice and freedom are a small price to pay for guaranteed minimal growth and mediocre achievement! Perhaps even a universal income, so all can starve uniformly!

The government is the only entity big enough to solve this problem! There ought to be a law! This whole thing is caused because “they” won’t listen, so  “we” have make them listen. What do these three rallying cries have in common? They all are a cry for help requesting the aid of the “ mob “ through government force to assist them in their never ending tolerance.

What is being said is simply this; we can’t fathom a way out of this time, so let’s allow the majority through government to impose a solution. While in the economic marketplace the individual decisions ( proposed by the exercise of individual choices, the market )allow for frequently unforeseen, unpredictable, sometimes even confusing and multiple different outcomes because the country has a vast and differing political and social landscape. Surrender to the government is easier and produces a single hydra ( multi headed )solution, which seldom satisfies anyone, is seldom if ever reevaluated for efficacy and results in  one winning group imposing it’s will over all others. Many times these half measures endure for years without any review.

An example business the  is the FSLA. A 1930’s government solution born in a long gone era, which still works it’s 1930’s magic in our times.  Ask your accountant about it’s role in today’s more fluid economy. Ask about the weekly pay standard and hourly rate preferences housed ina law, which works to promote uniform countrywide standards enabling government withholdings among other similar beast feeding solutions . Of course they limit use of  different standards more useful to today’s marketplace, but they provide for a certain method to feed the beast ( the federal government) and  promote an outdated overtime standard, which favored dying  “ union shops “ champion. There is one complication, the union shop has been drastically reduced, yet the law remains! For Congress is akin to the ‘fickle finger of fate”, it writes and moves on. It never looks back. It reduces options and is built upon until it not only reduces options, but eliminates opportunities for the birth of entire industries. It serves it’s purpose. It protects those, who seek protection and eliminates unwanted competition along with choice as well as your personal liberty. Don’t like employer based healthcare? Say thank you government, then lookup it’s origins.

How does this “ let the government do it affect me?” It limits your choice. Limiting your choices, ultimately limits your opportunities! Government rules are the gold standard for those, who don’t want to overly tax their gray matter. What else does it do? It limits your opportunity to give and get advice. Your payoff is: you get no new service industries, which might recommend alternative and better courses of action because the mob “elite”has decided the  best path for you. Some will still lose. Sometimes even the lamest trap catches game. The government approach takes not only options but option presenters off the table. Everyone gets the few acceptable common choices, so the few, who will still find other ways to be swindled, are protected to an extent because education is not a meaningful option and of course the many have reduced opportunities.

Don’t get me wrong, a landscape that permits many choices can be a challenge and requires time and critical thought and may even seem overwhelming at times. It may require more than a thirty second perusal to decide a path to follow. Inconvenient! There will be  some, possibly many,  who will lose under an approach that allows more innovation. We do have courts and information sharing systems to help sort out solutions as well as those,who peddle the modern day equivalent of snake oil. We should also be able allow or “tolerate” to use the left’s now meaningless vernacular, more choices.

Most uses of government result in fewer choices and less freedom. Eventually after government decides what treatments are “ safe enough “ which doctors know enough, what businesses are essential enough, it will decide for you what thoughts you should be allowed to express and in what you must believe. Hail the advent of 21st century back door of the re-educational gulag under the guise of “ real “ democracy. Remember, tyranny can be by many just easily as by one. It is why Marx theorized of a stage, where there was a “dictatorship of the proletariat” Government solutions are advanced now by both political parties, but championed by the Democrats, whose elites understand “your”limitations.

You must wear a mask because to do otherwise jeopardizes your neighbor’s health.  Others are just too uninformed to act to protect themselves and the traditional family is an outmoded and useless remnant or the oppressive and patriarchal past, which will not care for you like only your government can! Therefore the experts have have recommended and your betters have decided for you! You need no longer pay attention to those pesky mortality tables, so you know, who the vulnerable are. They can only be deciphered by epidemiologists. The  vulnerable and those closest to them are too feeble or lack the expertise to isolate the vulnerable. It is better for the elite minds from both parties to shut down 40% of commerce and send out $1200.00 government checks with a nice note to remind you, who voted for it. So make certain re-elect the most recent incumbent.

Besides I don’t live in the Caribbean or any country or even a state that survives on tourism or hospitality, so I don’t have to face the poverty and death caused by a ludicrous policy that allows a virus to run rampant at a lower level in my community indefinitely until there is sufficient immunity to finally oust it.

Choice is difficult. It requires critical thinking and doesn’t provide for a guaranteed outcome. It allows failure. It also allows for growth. So remember the next time you are in a quandary and believe government is the answer. Somewhere out there countless others are prepared to solve your problems for you and make your life safer and insure your mediocrity too! It won’t cost you too much, just a choice. Choice and freedom are a small price to pay for guaranteed minimal growth and mediocre achievement! Perhaps even a universal income, so all can starve uniformly!

 

Have you Surrendered? Do you purport to be Libertarian or Conservative?

Remember, life is guaranteed to be safest securely snuggled deep within the confines of your favorite cave under a rock.  It is also extremely short. (Generally about 3 days before you expire from lack of water, but it’s awfully unsafe to venture outside and extremely stressful to carry back water, so stay safe!) Life will be short, unfulfilling, but guaranteed, safe and with no exasperating social relationships or progeny

Are you a small government Libertarian or Republican?  Have you found yourself uttering phrases like “bend the curve” and “social distancing”  Have you found yourself saying; “we have no choice, but to shut it all down” or “our Governor had no choice to keep people safe”!  I have been exchanging retorts with individuals on the left coast.  I cited data, which said the young and healthy have little” to fear from this virus.  They will experience light symptoms and post infection be able to return to their normal activities.    Meanwhile the coasts are awash in ” We’re all going to die and see the young are dying too” their comments reinforced by an enabling media too cowardly or greedy to inform.  It always amazes me how even on the hated right wing media ,print stories about a young worker or more sensational still a young doctor, nurse or healthcare worker, who died after hospitalization from “the virus.”  While my initial inclination was to make a flippant comment; what another influenza outbreak?  Understand, we had a difficult flu season here in NW Ohio.  I didn’t say anything like that, deciding this medical  topic hits a raw nerve, so people’s sensitivities should be respected.

The next comments especially from the Libertarian or Small government Republicans baffle me even more.  I have heard; “the government should just shut it all down” or even more uninformed, “the President should just shut the country down with a national stay at home order.”

Why does this distress me?  These people declare a belief in federalism, limited national government.  Is it alright that they support governor’s stay at home orders? Yes, but that viewpoint is not mine, I have a different public policy point of view! Support for a governor’s order at least shows a basic understanding of the concept of federalism. Your federal government is a government of limited powers.  It is based upon the concept that states bind together and grant limited authority to  the national government.  That branch of government is granted enumerated powers(THOSE SPECIFICALLY LISTED IN THE CONSTITUTION ).

Before the bicoastals go crazy let me explain. The Health and Welfare Clause is not grant of power.  Our Supreme Court sometimes uses it as a grant of power when it wants to legislate.  The power to legislate is a power the Court  does not have!  Congress makes the laws within the limits afforded it under the enumerated powers in the  Constitution.  Congress is limited too!  The Executive enforces the laws congress makes. (not just the ones the sitting executive/ president likes).  The Courts decide conflicts that arise between citizens within their limited jurisdiction.  When differences in rulings occur, a higher court settles the differences with the Supreme Court acting as the final arbiter of  inconsistent outcomes.  The Supreme Court and Appellate/intermediate level courts don’t create laws.  If it wasn’t considered by Congress and is within the scope of an enumerated power, then the Court should not decide the matter it must defer!  If  the law does not speak to this matter in dispute, then  the Congress has to decide whether a matter should be the subject of a law or not.  This is the dreaded Political question.

Politics has taken on a bad stigma.  It simply stated is who gets what, when and how.  We elect representatives to act within the scope of their authority and make political decisions, not judges and not Presidents.  The idea that government should be the economic manager is a 20th century idea.  We used to believe that the market would use its price structure to direct resources where they could best be used.  Now we have legislators, executives and all knowing judges deciding how resources, human, financial and even commodities should be allocated.

This phenomenon is never as obvious as during a crisis.  Despite data demonstrating that certain classes of individuals are more vulnerable to serious disease complications and that others will experience a short light illness and possibly be asymptomatic (approximately 79% of citizens should expect this light illness), we continue to listen to “the everyone is going to die” retorts emanating from the authoritarians.  We encourage our governors to make broad, sweeping limitations on our businesses and personal freedom.  Result, not a targeted sequeser of the vulnerable, their caretakers and members of their households with a limited targeted relief response, but instead mass hysteria, media sensationalism and mass hysteria as well as an economic shutdown of an estimated 31% of the national economy along with a 2 trillion dollar government giveaway program, which may begin to mitigate a portion of the economic chaos the public health response has wrought.

Yet you hear no one saying the “public health( Emperors ) professionals have no clothes”. Now with free money in play, when will it be “safe” to reopen the 31% of our shuttered economy.  Please note we already have 69% still working as essential without respect to whether they are health or age vulnerable.  I guess as long as the public has toilet paper and hand sanitizer and McDonald’s takeout, it doesn’t matter about the health of these expendables. How quick would you be willing to return, if you were being paid and told you would possibly die, if you return to work?  People still work with an eye toward incentives.  It is why price still rations scarce goods and services in a free market.

This entire episode will be judged by history.  How many could have been saved had two trillion dollars been otherwise directed, but stay safe!

Remember, life is guaranteed to be safest securely snuggled deep within the confines of your favorite cave under a rock.  It is also extremely short. (Generally about 3 days before you expire from lack of water, but it’s awfully unsafe to venture outside and extremely stressful to carry back water, so stay safe!) Life will be short, unfulfilling, but guaranteed, safe and with no exasperating social relationships or progeny!<H1>