URLs du Jour

2018-12-12

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  • At the NYPost F.H. Buckley explains Why ‘No Hate Here’ signs are actually pretty hateful.

    Someone came up with the label “virtue signaling” to describe the psychological impulse behind these signs. The idea is that people who put them up want to tell you how noble they are. But that doesn’t sound right. Virtue-signalers aren’t in any way in doubt about their own virtue. What they really want to do is signal how depraved others are.

    It’s about vice signaling, not virtue signaling.

    Um, good point, I think. But if you think otherwise, please feel free to purchase our Amazon Product du Jour via the link at right. (No, your right.) In case you were wondering, the languages are (allegedly) English, Urdu, Korean, Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish.


  • At the Daily Signal, Rachel Greszler notes the latest bit of Congressional crony capitalism: Congress Shouldn’t Prop Up Some Newspaper Companies at the Expense of Employee Pensions.

    Under the Save Community Newspaper Act of 2018 being considered in both the House and Senate, a select group of community newspapers would be allowed to use an excessively high discount rate of 8 percent as a means of lowering their pension contributions. (An updated Senate version of the legislation, not yet available online, provides a broader definition of community newspapers and more relief through a retroactive date of enactment.)

    Yes, it's one more bit of special-interest legislation, and the article goes into detail on the likelihood that ordinary taxpayers will eventually wind up footing the bill.

    Slightly interesting in that it's being pushed by a group called the News Media Alliance.

    Treasurer of the News Media Alliance is one Kirk Davis, CEO of Gatehouse Media.

    And among the (many) papers owned by Gatehouse media, is my local one, Foster's Daily Democrat.


  • James B. Freeman of the (possibly paywalled) WSJ debunks a lefty talking point: U.S. Income More Equal than Advertised.

    Remember the 2014 bestseller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by French economist Thomas Piketty? Beachgoers in the Hamptons couldn’t be seen without it tucked under an arm if they wanted to be regarded as serious people concerned about the plight of the less fortunate. The dismal tale of exploding inequality and capitalist failure has been a recurring theme in political chatter ever since. But a new report highlights just how poorly Mr. Piketty’s thesis has held up under further study.

    This column should note that some scholars saw problems right from the start. In a 2014 Journal op-ed, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein ticked off a series of fundamental errors, including those related to Mr. Piketty’s practice of comparing the incomes of top earners with total national income. “National income excludes the value of government transfer payments including Social Security, health benefits and food stamps that are a large and growing part of the personal incomes of low- and middle-income households,” wrote the Harvard prof.

    One of my progressive Facebook friends condescendingly tossed some Piketty-based propaganda at me a couple weeks back; wish I'd had this Freeman article around to rebut.


  • Occasionally the right-wing response to the various rumors about Mueller's investigation of Trump/Russia seem to be hopelessly rosy about Trump's outcome. But Megan McArdle of the WaPo is no GOP hack, and she asks and possibly answers: Who’s most at risk from the Russia investigation? It just might be the Democrats..

    But the greatest danger may be the one facing Democrats: that the investigations end up with not quite enough evidence to justify impeachment — and the Democrats nonetheless go ahead and impeach Trump anyway. If the Mueller investigation ends without a credible, direct link between the president and Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Democratic base would still clamor to impeach him over the campaign finance violations that prosecutors have connected to the hush-money payments. If the activists clamor loud enough, impeachment may well happen simply because no one in the Democratic caucus wants to be the one who breaks the bad news to them.

    The result would be a replay of the Clinton impeachment, only with each team taking the other side of the field. Democrats would have their own Lindsey Graham problems — Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) trying to explain why Trump’s behavior is worse than a president having sex with a 22-year-old White House intern and then concealing the affair with a spot of perjury. But those arguments, no matter how ingenious, wouldn’t travel well outside of the left’s ideological bubble. Explaining that everything has changed since the #MeToo movement arrived wouldn’t be much help.

    I don't care much about what happens to Trump, but I care about what happens to the country. Where's MoveOn when you need them? Well, about where you would expect.


  • And at Reason, Jacob Sullum looks at the bad news around Trump's pick for Attorney General: William Barr’s Never-Ending War.

    William Barr, Donald Trump's nominee for attorney general, believes the president has vast, unilateral authority to protect national security, which he says is threatened by the distribution of psychoactive substances the government has decreed Americans should not want.

    Those positions are a dangerous combination that is apt to encourage the worst instincts of a president who portrays himself as tough on crime, promises to stop the flow of illegal drugs, and revels in pointless military displays. With Barr as attorney general and Trump as president, we may see an increasingly literal war on drugs in which aggression masquerades as self-defense.

    Worse than Jeff Sessions? Sigh, probably.


Last Modified 2024-01-24 11:52 AM EDT