Well at least in the poorest area of the city where schools have consistently preformed poorly. After the school board voted to let a private charter company take over administration of the schools the teacher labor union responded this way:

Leaders of the teachers union said they would file a grievance to block the transfer on grounds that the decision violates the teachers’ labor agreement and state law.

Schools that have been significantly under performing and putting minority’s students futures in peril are completely reorganized as a means to solve this problem and the unions response is to protect their own. Don’t get me wrong, this is precisely how a labor union should act. Unions should ignore the fact that their labor is clearly failing to provide a service well primarily because they derive their power not from providing excellent service but by threatening to not provide a service at all. Thus, in the face of repeated failure to educate children in poor areas of LA, it makes sense that their response it to protect the teachers and not the children. It’s precisely why i would favor a federal mandate disbanding teacher unions in the public sector.

One of the criticism against privatizing education is that introducing free markets into the system will change the overarching goal of the education system from educating children to turning a profit. Teacher unions making this argument do so while keeping a straight face even though the union’s goals are not the education of the youth but job security, increases health care benefits and pensions, and salary increases of it’s union members. If you want to talk about greed perverting the goals of education look no further than the teacher’s union.

Diatribe sends me a link to a opinion piece looking at racial discrimination in undergraduate college admissions. He outlines a very strong and convincing argument. Readers who have advocated for using the government to force companies to provide more information about their product should happily support the arguments put forth in this piece.

So it turns out the Patriots dominance in the NFL is becasuse they are cheaters. Given what I know of Patriot fans this really doesn’t surprise me.

In the preseason game against the Panthers as way of explanation for why they got trounced the panthers head coach said they didn’t want to show all their weapons. At the time I passed that off as coach out of reality with the shortcomings of his team. But now i see his wisdom. He was afraid the patriots would illegally tape all of their super secret hand signals making them weak during the season when they play the patriots for real.

Go Panthers! Been a fan for almost thirty years.

Over at personal responsibility a discussion has broken out about media coverage of differing smear tactics in the last presidential election.

As I’ve said, the MSM has been bashing conseratives lately because they’ve been the only public political figures of note for a long time; as soon as democrats start sticking their heads up, expect them to receive the same MSM smears. It’s about ratings and money; any aparent political agenda is just marketing.

I wish this were true. In regards to swift boat, by the time the second ad came out the MSM press had already gone into full force debunk the ad’s claims.

Contrast that with Rathergate. This was a so poorly forged document that bloggers within hours of the airing the story identified it as such. Yet left leaning news people at CBS were utterly incapable of seeing an obvious forgery despite that being integral to their job.

Difference in Coverage?

These instances do a fine job of showing what MSM bias means. We can say both had the same intention smearing a potential candidate to influence the outcome of the election with questionably true assertions.

In the example in which the democratic candidate’s reputation is impugned there is immediate skepticism within the MSM resulting in many editorials and news piece calling into question the validity of the ad. However, with the republican candidate obviously forged documents are not met with skepticism by CBS, a MSM news organization, but in fact are reported as fact. Thanks to skepticism of the right bloggers it took less than a day for them to expose the documents as fabrications.

Swift boat had to buy ad time. As such their assertions were already associated with advertisement hyperbole. Most everyone knows that statements made in commercials are to be scrutinized. Nevertheless the advertisements were scrutinized by the MSM for validity. On the other hand with Rathergate, you have a credible news source reporting on fabricated documents as true. Arguably new organizations assertions do not need to be scrutinized as carefully as advertisements because the point of such organization is to report avoiding overly biased information. Furthermore, it was not the MSM that discovered the forgery but non journalist that supported Bush.

One piece of propaganda is rightly labeled as advertisement and is heavily scrutinized by the press. Another piece of propaganda is labeled as fact and is not scrutinized by the press. Believe me the press leans left and has for quite some time.

Institutional Homogeny

It makes sense. One is more skeptical of things that violate their expectations. The converse is true as well. It’s called confirmation bias. News organizations that consist primarily of people with the same attitudes and opinions will be skeptical of things that violate those attitudes and opinions. MSM was skeptical of swifboat because it violated an expectation while they were less skeptical of Rathergate for it did not violate an expectation. Right bloggers were much less skeptical of swiftbaot but were skeptical of Rathergate.

News organizations have been packed with liberals for at least three decades. Ever since journalist decided to use their profession to do ‘good’ instead of report the news liberals have been clamoring to get in. This has had the unfortunate consequence of pushing the news towards the left. Homogeny in the newsroom has weakened the organization’s ability to perceive deception and maintain editorial neutrality. This weakness has manifested in declining readers and proliferation of talk radio and Fox News dominance.

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There is nothing more American than Iraqis taking care of Al Qaeda with their own hands.

“One night,” Lieutenant Markham said, “after several young people were beheaded by Al Qaeda, the mosques in the city went crazy. The imams screamed jihad from the loudspeakers. We went to the roof of the outpost and braced for a major assault. Our interpreter joined us. Hold on, he said. They aren’t screaming jihad against us. They are screaming jihad against the insurgents.”

This imagery lends itself easily to the most important scene in a movie about the Iraq war. It’s the scene when the people in Ramadi say enough and find the courage to fight back against the terrorists. It could be a great movie. Just don’t expect Hollywood to produce it. They have their hands full with anti-war films. Someone has to support Al Qaeda’s point of view.

“A massive anti-Al Qaeda convulsion ripped through the city,” said Captain McGee. “The locals rose up and began killing the terrorists on their own. They reached the tipping point where they just could not take any more. They told us where the weapon caches were. They pointed out IEDs under the road.”

“In mid-March,” Lieutenant Hightower said, “a sniper operating out of a house was shooting Americans and Iraqis. Civilians broke into his house, beat the hell out of him, and turned him over to us.”

“There were IEDs all over this area,” Lieutenant Welch said. “On every single street corner, buried under the road. They were so big they could take out tanks. When we came through we cleared the whole area on foot. The civilians told us where the IEDs were. I was with one group where a guy opened his gate just a crack and pointed out where one was. It was right in front of his house. Later we went back and had tea. He was so happy to see us.”

“One day,” Lieutenant Hightower said, “some Al Qaeda guys on a bike showed up and asked where they could plant an IED against Americans. They asked a random civilian because they just assumed the city was still friendly to them. They had no idea what was happening. The random civilian held him at gunpoint and called us to come get him.”

“People here tacitly supported Al Qaeda,” Captain McGee said, “because Al Qaeda was attacking us. But they took control of the city. They forced girls to stay home from school. They dragged people outside the city and shot them in the head. They broke people’s fingers if they were seen smoking a cigarette. They forced men to grow beards. Once they started acting like that they could only establish a safe haven by using terrorism against the local civilians.”

“Al Qaeda struck out three times,” said Major Peters. “Strike One: They killed a Sheikh and held his body for four days. Strike Two: They executed young people in public. Strike Three: They attacked the compound of another sheikh. The people here said enough. They aligned with us because they realized Al Qaeda was the real enemy. They didn’t like Al Qaeda’s version of Islam at all.”

Credit for purging Ramadi of Al Qaeda must go to Iraqis themselves at least as much as to the American military. The Americans wouldn’t have been able to do it without the cooperation of the people who live there, and the Iraqis wouldn’t have been able to do it, at least not so easily, without help from the American military.

With Al Qaeda providing a stark contrast I have no doubt democracy will succeed in Iraq. People want freedom they just need the courage to take it. Al Qaeda is happily providing the courage to brave Iraqis fed up with the atrocities.

This coverage comes from a pro-war reporter in Iraq that actually bothers to cover the war. Notice how neutral his work actually is. Sure he wants the mission to succeed, but he is unflinching in his desire to show the ugly truth about what is going on in Iraq. I trust this kind of reporting over CNN, MSNBC, or NYtimes any day of the week. He is actually doing the work of covering the war. Sadly, something not being done by large news organizations.

These reporters deserve our respect and admiration for covering a war when our so-called News Services fail to do so.

Killing Germans to worry about feminism.

Junior Lieut. Liudmila Pavlichenko, Russian Army girl sniper who killed 309 Germans, had to cancel a radio interview in Manhattan last week because a dentist pulled one of her front teeth and the resulting whistle would have been noticeable on the air waves. But in a non-radio interview with Commentator Alice Hughes, she gave her unvarnished opinion of the U.S. woman’s angle on the war:

“I am amazed at the kind of questions put to me by the women press correspondents in Washington. Don’t they know there is a war? They asked me silly questions such as do I use powder and rouge and nail polish and do I curl my hair? One reporter even criticized the length of the skirt of my uniform, saying that in America women wear shorter skirts and besides my uniform made me look fat.

Dan Pages sent me the link and writes:

Yes, 309. Including 26 snipers. That figure was as of 1942.

Just noticed that my recent post at Smith and Engels was not working properly. I fixed it.

Saving Lives:

Note, too, how German authorities found out about the planned attack. They eavesdropped on a phone call from Pakistan to Germany. This is the exact equivalent of the NSA program that is ritually, but inaccurately, described in the press as “domestic spying.” Most Democrats denounce the program as unconstitutional.

Further, it was the NSA program that brought the German terrorists to light:

The arrests were the culmination of an investigation that began a year ago, when U.S. officials alerted German authorities to e-mails intercepted from Pakistan.

The company Palm recently pulled the plug on the development of a new product called Foleo. Foleo was to bridge the gap between a Palm Pilot and a laptop computer. Most people didn’t see the use is in such hardware and consequently its mocked and poorly received by tech reviewers. Apparently the company decided to scrap the whole project even if they had spent a considerable amount of money developing it.

It’s of interest to me because I wonder how Darwin would like to manage the ‘ownership’ in this case. Should the current employees have their wages garnished until their portion of the cost of the development is paid?

Or lets say estimates by credible experts in the field calculate that the success of Foleo will require the construction of a new manufacturing plant to meed demand. Should the theoretical laborers of this new plant be required to help offset the cost of development? Currently the developer is required to assume the cost of development with the right of ownership there after. If we implement the idea that laborers should be granted ownership would you advocate for laws forcing the potential laborers to pay for the development of a product that may result from the development? Would you advocate that laborers should help pay the cost of development even when the new product fails to materialize?

Principle of Ownership

Distributing ownership amongst the working class is one of the core principles of socialism and communism. Its hard to take at face value that one favors markets and capitalism when they ardently support a principle that is anathema to capitalism. Arguably the primary principles of capitalism is that those that take risk enjoy the ownership of the fruits of that risk. This is the principle that creates the incentive needed for capitalism to constantly innovate and generate new products. This is the principle that leads to massive economic growth providing wealth to even the poorest of the poor. This is the principle that is most consistent with the underlying biology of man.

Yet, some cry bloody murder when the laborer that has not invested a single scent in product development, construction of the manufacturing plant, or the establishment of a distribution system is not granted ‘ownership’ of the Ford Explorer after using the plant’s power driver to secure one of the wheels to the axle. Is it any wonder Communism and it’s wicked half sister Socialism fails to guarantee the promise of providing wealth to everyone? Woefully ignorant of the process of taking an idea of a product and making it available to consumers they seek to rectify the so-called injustice of the laborer’s pay in proportion to corporate gains by giving the laborer a disproportionate amount of ownership in relationship to their contribution in the manufacturing of that product.