December 31, 2019

2019 Was Another One Of Those Tough Years For The "Experts"

December 31, 2019/ Francis Menton

Woodrow Wilson was the President who began the transformation of the U.S. federal government into a collection of huge bureaucracies staffed by supposedly neutral and apolitical “experts” who could run things so much better than we ordinary humans could. A hundred plus years into this, we now have dozens of massive bureaucracies staffed by these so-called “experts.”
President Trump appears to have a somewhat different view. The New York Times of December 28 has a piece by Brad Plumer and Coral Davenport that addresses how one particular group of these so-called “experts” — scientific ones — is faring under Trump. The headline is “Science Under Attack: How Trump Is Sidelining Researchers and Their Work.”
But do supposed “experts” like scientists or economists in and out of the government really have a clue what they are doing? Or are they just ordinary humans who use the cover of credentials and position to see how much power they can seize unto themselves at everyone else’s expense? Let’s consider some examples that come up here at the end of 2019. I have three good ones for today. . . .

December 29, 2019

Surely California Has Done Away With Racism By Now

December 29, 2019/ Francis Menton

Let’s face it: As much as we here in New York would like to think of ourselves as the true vanguard of woke progressivism, California has long since seized that honor from us.
Surely, then, California has done away with racism by now.
If you think that, then you must have missed the big piece in the December 23 print edition of the New York Times, with the headline “Black, Homeless and Burdened by L.A.’s Legacy of Racism.” This multi-page spread tells the tale of one Timothy Wynn, a black Los Angeles resident.
Overwhelmingly, according to this article, the main factor in Mr. Wynn’s downfall was racism.
To read this story, California has not just failed to do away with racism. Even as California loudly proclaims to the world its woke progressive virtue, it has, instead, turned into a hotbed — some might even say a “cesspit” — of racism. . . .

December 25, 2019

December 25, 2019/ Francis Menton

The most famous Christmas display in New York City is in Rockefeller Center, but they also put on a good show down on Wall Street, near where my office is located.
You may also know that the corner of Wall and Broad Streets is the very location where George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States in 1789.
It’s not just the Stock Exchange that was founded on Wall Street, but also the federal government of the United States. Don’t let the symbolism of that get lost on you.
It’s been a great year for this blog. We have broken 1 million page views (currently 1.21 million and counting) for the first time, an increase of some 60% over last year. Thanks to all readers for visiting, and especially to those who have added their thoughtful comments to the discussion. . . .

December 22, 2019

December 22, 2019/ Francis Menton

The Washington Post has gotten big play the past couple of weeks for a huge six-part series of articles about the Afghanistan war, all bearing the date of December 9. The overall title is “THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS: A secret history of the war.”
You can get the sense of the main point of the series from the headline of the first installment, “At War With The Truth: U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found.”
It’s certainly a thesis with surface plausibility, given constant government deception about many subjects.
But does the thesis that the American people have been massively deceived for years about progress in Afghanistan really stand up? I don’t buy it.
I think it’s been obvious for a very long time to anyone who looks at it critically that the Afghanistan war is not “winnable” in any conventional sense. Indeed we don’t even have a working definition of what “winning” might consist of. . . .

December 20, 2019

December 20, 2019/ Francis Menton

On Wednesday evening, the House voted two Articles of Impeachment against President Trump. The first alleges “abuse of power,” and the second claims “obstruction of Congress.” Neither is a crime.
So we now know the answer to the question posed in the title of my post of November 13, “The Trump Impeachment: What Is The Crime?” The answer is that we’re not even pretending that there is a crime. . . .
What next? If your answer is, on to the trial in the Senate, you are not fully thinking through all the posturings and maneuverings that our politicians are capable of. Just because the odds that President Trump will be removed from office might be zero, that doesn’t mean that there is only one procedural route to get to that final result.
The posturings and maneuverings began yesterday, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined to transmit the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, and indicated that she was seeking to exact some procedural concessions from that body before sending the Articles over.
In other words, we demand that the Republicans who control the Senate give us a forum to continue playing our talking points for another few days or weeks. Well, two can play this game. . . .

December 17, 2019

December 17, 2019/ Francis Menton

A few weeks ago (November 22), in a post titled “Who Is Winning The Climate Wars?”, I undertook to begin documenting the ever-growing chasm between the unhinged rhetoric of climate campaigners and the reality out there in the world.
You probably know that the UN held its annual big climate conference this year in Madrid during the first two weeks of December. That event provided the occasion for many campaigners to ramp up the volume of their claims, trying once again to stampede government representatives into agreeing to impoverish their people.
Let’s collect a few data points over the past several weeks. . . .
Bottom line: It’s not just uber hypocrites like Mike Bloomberg and his four private jets. The fact is that outside of some wildly guilty European countries and the loons of the U.S. Democratic Party far left, fewer and fewer people pay any attention whatsoever to the absurd climate apocalypse rhetoric. . . .