Of course, they could part of the cover-up.
Category: The Media
Governor Christie’s pretty bad week
Governor Chris Christie, the wunderkind of the New Jersey GOP, hit a major pothole this past week. New Jersey’s application for the Race to the Top federal education money failed by a handful of points to get NJ into the program. The proximate cause – as trumpeted by his political opponents – was a “clerical error” that had wrong numbers in a critical part of the application. The end result – New Jersey failed to make the minimum number of point to qualify by 3 points out of 500 or so. At first, the governor blamed Washington and the Dept of Education. The DoE then turned around and released a video of the NJ team’s conference that contradicted Governor Christie’s version of events. Claiming that the NJ Education Secretary had mislead him, the Governor then sacked Secretary Bret Schundler. Bret Schundler is now claiming that he told Governor Christie the truth and that he had the emails to prove it. In the meantime, the NJ Democratically-controlled legislature is making political hay after having been battered and bruised by Gov. Christie for most of the year. And the story’s not over yet…
Will this matter in the long run, though? The governor’s lost a major fight already; the property tax cap battle ended with his desired goal, a referendum on a hard 2.5% cap placed in the NJ Constitution, unattained. Instead, a loophole-riddled compromise law was enacted (municipalities may not increase property taxes more than 2.0%, save in “emergencies”, which include servicing debt…) On the other hand, one of the reasons that former-Governor John Corzine lost was that he was widely viewed as indecisive and unable to stand up to the Trenton special interest mobs. Governor Christie has famously claimed he’s governing as though he’s going to be a one-term governor, and has yet to flinch from a conflict. I doubt he’s going to back down from this one, either. In the end, New Jersey’s schools are a local concern, not a statewide concern. The NJEA may have made Chris Christie their #1 enemy, but they’re only one of his many targets. And by sacking Schundler, Gov. Christie is demonstrating he’s not going to put up with incompetence on his own team. Finally, he can come out fighting against the NJEA. Their intransigence on reform cost many more points on the application than the “clerical error” cost.
Plus, Gov. Christie’s team has demonstrated a command of new media usually found on the other side. In NJ, it’s the Democrats that are the dinosaurs. Christie is an amazing spontaneous speaker, and his powerful speeches, statements, and events pop up on Youtube almost before he’s done speaking. He has a knack for making his opponents looks like whiners. His opponents depend on control of the legacy media, and Christie is bypassing the gatekeepers (which is another reason they hate him).
Normally, New Jersey politics is, at best, a spectator sport for the parts of NY and PA that have TV and radio stations that serve NJ as well. But in this case, Governor Christie’s name has been brought up as a potential presidential contender in 2012. So, for those of you out there in the Lands of the More Free, what do you think? Is this playing in Peoria, and if so, how’s it being spun?
Edit:Â This was for the second round of funding, and the actual winners can be found here
A Useful Firefox Plugin
Clayton Cramer points to a Firefox plugin that blocks all Stevens Media (the people who make the Las-Vegas Review Journal) sites. That’s cool, but I use Safari.
Correct Usage
There is No Answer
The Inquirer is running an article on how difficult it is to spot workplace shooters, because 99.99% of people will never become workplace shooters. It’s actually not a bad article, and even acknowledges that there are legit reasons an employee might have a firearm in their vehicle, noting “Spotting a weapon in a company parking lot might not tell you much. There are many parts of the country, including Pennsylvania, where it is common for workers to stash a rifle in a pickup truck for deer hunting.” I’m glad workplace consultants are recognizing this.
The fact is, if someone is so unbalanced that they are willing to commit murder, there is no HR policy that’s going to make people safe.
A Little Gun Control?
This CBS News intern is well on her way to becoming a journalist, for sure, saying that the US could use a little more gun control, using England and Wales as the example. Perhaps one day she too can be on Journolist. How’s this for starters:
Since the 18th century, Britain has moved on from problems like taxation without representation, oppressive monarchy and overreaching empire. It has accepted its place in modern society as a progressive, First World nation.
Read the whole, sad thing. Implication is that we just can’t live up to their civilized example, because we don’t allow gun bans. Ms. Berg, you have a bright future ahead of you in journalism with that attitude toward gun ownership. I look forward to refuting more nonsense from you in the future.
I should note this comes to us via the Brady Campaign, who claims they don’t support gun bans (except scary looking guns), and that having gun bans off the table is a good thing for gun control. The articles they promote say otherwise.
Standing up for Decency
There’s an old saying that you should never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. The modern day equivalent of that should be never pick a fight with someone who has a Google Pagerank greater than 4.
All my uses of the sue happy newspaper Las Vegas Review-Journal have been squarely and certainly within the realm of fair use, but because I do not wish to support the kind of shakedown they are doing of bloggers, I have removed all links on this blog to those sewer rats. I will be the first to admit that some blogs go over the fair use line, but I am a strong believer in trying to come up with a fair and equitable resolution before fighting with lawyers begins, and before taxpayer dollars are wasted filing lawsuits. The fact that there was apparently no cease and desist letter sent, no apparent attempt to make a reasonable settlement on the fairly minimal damage likely inflicted, and the fact that this is being done in federal court, tells me they are hoping to goad people into an unreasonable settlement beyond any actual damage inflicted on them. This is dirty, even if there is a legitimate copyright claim involved.
So let me first point out some of my handy work, for the pages I’ve transformed, in the hopes of raising awareness of the Las Vegas Review-Journals reprehensible tactics, starting with my favorite:
- Reid’s Opponent on Guns
- More Criticism of Alan Gura
- Expect More Praise of Harry Reid
- The Myth Continues
So rather than having links back helping out the web presence of their crappy paper, they will always be associated with being the grimy sewer rats they are as far as this blog is concerned. I have always been conscientious about giving fair credit, and only posting as much of the story as I need to in order to comment or criticize. I absolutely support newspapers pursuing copyright violators in good faith, with an aim to recover fair costs in proportion to the harm. But I would expect decent human beings to try to resolve the situation without resorting first to life ruining lawsuits. The Las Vegas Review-Journal is engaging in bully tactics, plain and simple, regardless of whether the law is on their side or not.
Daily News Stuck in the 90s
We’ve been speaking frankly within our community about the fabricated “assault weapon” issue for nearly 10 years now. There’s no excuse for shoddy journalism like this anymore:
After the shooting, police found an arsenal of eight assault weapons – among them an SKS, every one of them legal to be purchased and owned by anyone without a criminal record.
Assault weapons are designed for warfare and, in the United States, that war is against our police. So why do politicians continue to provide material aid to the enemy?
The SKS was never an “assault weapon,” and is not an assault weapon in its standard military configuration even in very restrictive California. In their standard military configuration, they are legal in all 50 states as far as I know. I’m also going to bet that the Daily News reporters can’t tell me what an assault weapon is, other than any firearm used to shoot at a cop. I’m going to bet they can’t explain to me how it’s different than any other legal firearm, or a hunting rifle. I think this is a safe bet because they know nothing about firearms, and it’s obvious from the reporting.
We’re here, Daily News. You can learn from us. You don’t have to agree with us, but you can at least learn and get the fact rights, and have some idea what you’re talking about. But I guess that’s too much to ask.
They Don’t Even Believe in the First
I guess it’s difficult to get left wing journalists to believe in the Second Amendment, when they don’t even seem to believe in the First. There’s something rotten in Denmark.
We’re Not Nearly as Organized
Sadly, I don’t think the right will ever be able to truly beat the left at the political organization game. We’re people who tend to like being left alone. I someone tries to tell us what to do, there are a good number of us who will do the opposite just to spite them. The rest would simply ignore them. And because the left is much better at getting on board with group efforts, the members of Journolist honestly believed they could organize to control the media narrative in an effort to help Barack Obama during the presidential campaign.
Read the link if you want to be horrified at the number of outlets getting in on the effort to bury stories that could hurt Obama and an effort to publicly call any critic of Obama’s a racist.
But, here’s another notable comment from the list by Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent:
It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
I thought political violence was only a tool of the right. (Obviously I mean this rhetorically.)