Larwyn just forwarded this article from the Washington, DC Examiner. It is refreshing to see the kind of moral leadership that the Democrats can provide.
>The former first lady in 2004 pushed legislation providing tax-exempt bonds for developer Robert Congel, and another measure providing $5 million for road construction that helped a Congel project. At about the same time, he gave $100,000 to former President Clinton's foundation. Congel has also made multiple donations to Sen. Clinton’s campaigns, according to FEC records.
This story augurs ill for Barack Obama's infrastructure plans. Not that I oppose improvement of infrastructure. It is a state-level responsibility, and the federal government isn't competent to the task, nor is it honest enough.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Just Say "No!" to Television and Mass Media News
We often begin the new year with a resolution. Here is one to try: stop watching television news and stop reading mass market print media. The news is available all around us, through snippets on Yahoo!, bloggers, occasional headlines and conversation. Even if you reduce your news consumption from one hour per day to 10 minutes, you will have saved yourself confusion and error.
It is difficult to know how much of the news is factually accurate. Even if the vast majority is, the slant that it provides is misleading, and partial knowledge is often worse than none. For example, in the field of education, the business press often represents graduates of MBA programs in business schools as receiving specific, high salaries. Upon closer inspection, the individual who relies on the reports may learn (1) the surveys of graduates on which the salary numbers are based are skewed and biased so that only graduates voluntarily reporting their starting pay are included in the averages. This has the effect of bloating the numbers because students who have not found a job are least likely to report; and (2) there is considerable variability or variance about the mean, so that the mean number is meaningless. A few students might go to work for family firms at very high salaries; and a few might find jobs that pay several times the average. This has the effect of bloating the average. If one student starts at $500,000 and two start at $50,000, the mean is $200,000. If schools report the median, then there is better accuracy, but even there bias would result. For instance, if 20% cannot find a job at all, the median could be $100,000, which sounds great, but if you're one of the 20% it does you no good.
So an applicant who reads the news carefully could easily find themselves seriously misled in a major life choice. Now, multiply that over all the stories that the mass media provides. Consider the pattern of errors in the leading newspapers like the New York Times over many decades. Also consider the media's corruption in supporting incumbents in exchange for favors. You may conclude that it is better to avoid a con than to be exposed to it. Better to avoid the news since it is packed with errors and lies.
One other concern was raised by someone who posted here recently. The values that the electronic and print media communicate are corrupt. Excessive attention paid to material success, hysterical fear of stock market declines, obsession with get-rich-quick schemes, the inane opinions of movie stars and newspaper reporters, such as the eminently stupid Rosie O'Donnell (why would anyone care what she has to say on any topic whatsoever?) and the dull witted fashions and patterns of America's entertainment culture are likely to leave frequent viewers dumbed down.
So let us all resolve to avoid paying attention to the mass media. I am hoping that some of the major print media firms will fold this year. That would indeed give us something to celebrate.
It is difficult to know how much of the news is factually accurate. Even if the vast majority is, the slant that it provides is misleading, and partial knowledge is often worse than none. For example, in the field of education, the business press often represents graduates of MBA programs in business schools as receiving specific, high salaries. Upon closer inspection, the individual who relies on the reports may learn (1) the surveys of graduates on which the salary numbers are based are skewed and biased so that only graduates voluntarily reporting their starting pay are included in the averages. This has the effect of bloating the numbers because students who have not found a job are least likely to report; and (2) there is considerable variability or variance about the mean, so that the mean number is meaningless. A few students might go to work for family firms at very high salaries; and a few might find jobs that pay several times the average. This has the effect of bloating the average. If one student starts at $500,000 and two start at $50,000, the mean is $200,000. If schools report the median, then there is better accuracy, but even there bias would result. For instance, if 20% cannot find a job at all, the median could be $100,000, which sounds great, but if you're one of the 20% it does you no good.
So an applicant who reads the news carefully could easily find themselves seriously misled in a major life choice. Now, multiply that over all the stories that the mass media provides. Consider the pattern of errors in the leading newspapers like the New York Times over many decades. Also consider the media's corruption in supporting incumbents in exchange for favors. You may conclude that it is better to avoid a con than to be exposed to it. Better to avoid the news since it is packed with errors and lies.
One other concern was raised by someone who posted here recently. The values that the electronic and print media communicate are corrupt. Excessive attention paid to material success, hysterical fear of stock market declines, obsession with get-rich-quick schemes, the inane opinions of movie stars and newspaper reporters, such as the eminently stupid Rosie O'Donnell (why would anyone care what she has to say on any topic whatsoever?) and the dull witted fashions and patterns of America's entertainment culture are likely to leave frequent viewers dumbed down.
So let us all resolve to avoid paying attention to the mass media. I am hoping that some of the major print media firms will fold this year. That would indeed give us something to celebrate.
Ben Stein's "How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?"
I was just reading Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws and he makes the point several times, with which Jefferson and other of the Founding Fathers agreed, that luxury and ostentation threaten democracy and republican government. Consumerism has had an uneasy relationship with republicanism as Americans have increasingly fixated on consumption at the expense of participation in public institutions. This is manifested in myriad ways. Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone
suggests that community has shriveled. Putnam is a statist, but the shriveling of participation in families, groups, and public affairs has occurred alongside a considerable increase in the scope of government since 1950 and especially since the 1960s. The view of government as a consumption good--a provider of programs and Social Security benefits--leaves the public as apathetic toward public participation as it is grasping toward government programs as participants in special interest lobbies.
Stein's point is well taken. A public that values a movie or rock star over a soldier defending their liberty is one that participates in a failing republic.
The following appeared in CatholicCitizens.org :
>How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
1/9/2009 10:55:00 AM
By Ben Stein
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end..
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad .
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.
Read the whole thing here.
suggests that community has shriveled. Putnam is a statist, but the shriveling of participation in families, groups, and public affairs has occurred alongside a considerable increase in the scope of government since 1950 and especially since the 1960s. The view of government as a consumption good--a provider of programs and Social Security benefits--leaves the public as apathetic toward public participation as it is grasping toward government programs as participants in special interest lobbies.
Stein's point is well taken. A public that values a movie or rock star over a soldier defending their liberty is one that participates in a failing republic.
The following appeared in CatholicCitizens.org :
>How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
1/9/2009 10:55:00 AM
By Ben Stein
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end..
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad .
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.
Read the whole thing here.
Montesquieu on the Democrats
From Book VIII, section 2 of The Spirit of Laws:
"The people fall into this misfortune, when those in whom they confide, desirous of concealing their own corruption, endeavor to corrupt them. To disguise their own ambition, they speak to them only of the grandeur of the state; to conceal their own avarice, they incessantly flatter theirs.
"The corruption will increase among the corruptors, and likewise among those who are already corrupted. The people will divide the public money among themselves, and, having added the administration of affairs to their indolence, will be for blending their poverty with the amusements of luxury. But with their indolence and luxury, nothing but the public treasure will be able to satisfy their demands.
"We must not be surprised to see their suffrages given for money. It is impossible to make great largesses to the people without great extortion: and to compass this, the state must be subverted. The greater the advantages they seem to derive from their liberty, the nearer they approach towards the critical moment of losing it. Petty tyrants arise who have all the vices of a single tyrant. The small remains of liberty soon become insupportable; a single tyrant starts up, and the people are stripped of every thing, even of the profits of their corruption.
"Democracy has, therefore, two excesses to avoid--the spirit of inequality, which leads to aristocracy or monarchy, and the spirit of extreme equality, which leads to despotic power, as the latter is completed by conquest."
"The people fall into this misfortune, when those in whom they confide, desirous of concealing their own corruption, endeavor to corrupt them. To disguise their own ambition, they speak to them only of the grandeur of the state; to conceal their own avarice, they incessantly flatter theirs.
"The corruption will increase among the corruptors, and likewise among those who are already corrupted. The people will divide the public money among themselves, and, having added the administration of affairs to their indolence, will be for blending their poverty with the amusements of luxury. But with their indolence and luxury, nothing but the public treasure will be able to satisfy their demands.
"We must not be surprised to see their suffrages given for money. It is impossible to make great largesses to the people without great extortion: and to compass this, the state must be subverted. The greater the advantages they seem to derive from their liberty, the nearer they approach towards the critical moment of losing it. Petty tyrants arise who have all the vices of a single tyrant. The small remains of liberty soon become insupportable; a single tyrant starts up, and the people are stripped of every thing, even of the profits of their corruption.
"Democracy has, therefore, two excesses to avoid--the spirit of inequality, which leads to aristocracy or monarchy, and the spirit of extreme equality, which leads to despotic power, as the latter is completed by conquest."
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