Fake News Works

art credit: zero hedge

Dave Merrick published a piece yesterday in the Canada Free Press on why “Fake News Works,” and it hits the nail on the head. The entire essay is here. Below are some extracts:

I have watched many lawyers imitate the following scenario when addressing a witness on the stand ... “Isn’t it true that you saw Mr. So-and-so get into his car and drive away after he committed the murder?” To which the opposing attorney will, if he is earning his wage, instantly respond, “OBJECTION! Counsel is leading the witness, your Honor! We don’t know that Mr. So-and-so committed any murder!” To which the examining attorney will just as instantly return with: “I withdraw the question, your Honor.” But the seed was planted, nonetheless. And that was all the attorney wanted to do. Jurors are impressionable - because they are people. He planted his seed to shape an opinion.

. . .

Professional politicians and their allies the liberal media . . . fully anticipate the naïveté, short attention spans and impressionability of their audiences, who no longer put forth any effort to make sure of anything (beyond perhaps doing an occasional appeal to an obviously left-leaning Snopes). (I encourage my readers to verify the accuracy of Snopes, especially “fact checker” Kim Lacapria).

YouTube is overflowing with video examples documenting liberal liars, starting with our former chief executive and including ‘news’ journalists, lying their heads off. Most people will never take the time to go looking for these mini-documentaries that only take a few minutes to review. [click here and scroll down for those videos] 

. . .

And lies distract us from the really important things that can destroy us as a nation.

The time that is wasted in a nation fumbling around with ‘scandals’ that don’t even exist is more time for the cancer of simple division and its festering rancor to continue in disintegrating what’s left of our unity and strength. As I have said many times, Donald Trump has got to be the single most slandered and berated president in all of American history. Everybody, from an outraged liberal media/ entertainment industry trying to regain its control - to nearly every second rate, has-been actor or musician pursuing a mother lode of free press - has of late climbed aboard the “I Hate Trump” train like sucker fishes hanging on a great white shark.

. . .

Now, finally, the authors of fake news are beginning to be exposed for what they are: sheep in wolves’ clothing who lie for a luxurious living.

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Question of the Day

Via Bookworm Room:

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Minimum wage updates: paging Mayor Jackson!

 art credit: The Tunnel Wall

The Washington Post reports that the state of Maine’s House voted on a bill to reduce the minimum wage for tipped restaurant workers. An earlier Cleveland Tea Party blog reported on Mayor Frank Jackson’s hopes of increasing the minimum wage for City of Cleveland employees.

Today, Thomas Lifson at American Thinker has more on the minimum wage debate:

Minimum wage laws are a perfect example of feel-good statism, in which the professed goal is noble, but the execution inevitably fails and makes things worse.  The state can no more repeal the law of supply and demand than it can the law of gravity.

But don't tell that to the Seattle City Council, which just commissioned a new study intended to get the answer it wants, from a scholar who has contended, in effect, that supply and demand don't really work at the bottom of the wage scale.  The wonderful thing about working with numbers is that by choosing baselines, time periods, and sample bias, you can find almost whatever you want.  As a graduate student who got a Ph.D. in sociology, I saw this clearly and was sickened by people openly proud of the ways in which they got to the conclusions they wanted for ideological reasons.  Nobel laureate Ronald Coase famously summed it up: "If you torture the data long enough, it will confess."

Will somebody tell Mayor Frank Jackson?

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Mayor Jackson proposes increase to minimum wage for Cleveland employees

Photo credit: Washington Retail Assoc.

Cleveland.com reports that Mayor Frank Jackson intends to raise the minimum wage for City employees, so that in order to

raise up the earning power of the bottom end of the workforce. 

The change would affect as many as 500 employees in a wide array of jobs, ranging from clerical and custodial staff to park and recreation workers to police and fire cadets. The workers are both full time and part time, union and non-union. 

InfoWars reports on the actual results of the city of Seattle’s decision to raise the minimum wage:

Helping the “forgotten man” was an important and successful message for President Donald Trump in his election campaign.

He tapped into the anxieties of many Americans who are struggling to find work and are watching as traditional industries disappear or are gobbled up by automation.

While some of this development has been natural, much has been artificially created by bad policies. In particular: the minimum wage.

A bombshell report was released Monday about the impact of minimum wage hikes in Seattle, Washington. The study, conducted by economists at the University of Washington, showed that minimum wage laws significantly decreased employment for lower-income workers.

Additionally, the report found that average hours for low-income employees had also declined since Seattle’s $13 minimum wage law began being implemented in 2015.

Another idea that sounds good at first, until you consider the consequences, both intended and unintended. Speaking of consequences, elsewhere we read that Jeff Bezos’s purchase of Whole Foods will be followed by replacing employees with robotics in the warehouse.

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Military show at IX Center

This blog linked to the Cleveland.com story about the Military show currently at the IX Center. Here are a few photos by CTP’s roving photographer (and his FB gallery is here.)

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Trumpcare: Senate version -- is Portman against it

photo credit: Pat J Dooley Photography

Update: The photographer points out that the flying banner may be a message TO Senator Portman, not sponsored BY Sen. Portman. If so, apologies to the Senator, and here's hoping he considers it.

[Apparently] Senator Rob Portman hired an advertising plane this afternoon to circle the downtown Cleveland area. He is coming out of the gate opposed to the newly-revealed/leaked Senate version of President Trump and Secretary Tom Price’s healthcare bill. If Portman is opposed to the bill, it is probably a pretty good start to the process of repealing Obamacare.

Conservative Treehouse jogs everyone’s memory: 

The original (’09/’10) ObamaCare bill was 2,700 pages and most of the toxic takeover construct was intentionally and ambiguously deferred to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius where she added an initial 74,000 pages of regulatory and compliance rules and procedures. [Those HHS regulations now total 673,448+ pages and growing.]

Conservative Treehouse also has a fascinating analysis of the Trump healthcare plan. His blog post is worth reading in full, but here’s the very short précis:

Under Trump’s long-term (3 step) approach – the non-government healthcare market, the majority of the population, will break free from almost all of the ObamaCare government regulations; and the insurance market will be empowered to provide an insurance product that fits the individual needs of the person purchasing the insurance.

♦Dual System Approaches – Much like Secretary Mnuchin is proposing leaving government (via Dodd-Frank) attached to the “too-big-to-fail” group of banks and cutting all else loose from the regulations, so too is Secretary Price proposing to leave government attached to the “at risk population” (Medicare and Medicaid), the group 99% of all political talking points are structured around, and cut everyone else loose from the regulations.

•Step #1 establishes the ability (decouples ObamaCare).   •Step #2 allows HHS to frame the parallel system (deregulation). •Step #3 establishes the broader parameters for the non-government health insurance market.

The full pdf file of the Senate bill is here. 

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The Consumer Financial Protection Czar and the Trump Administration

The Wall Street Journal has a report about the ill-advised Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and its director Richard Cordray. (The article link is to the CETUS website, since WSJ articles are usually behind a paywall). Cordray was appointed by the Obama administration in 2012 to head up this agency. Prior to that appointment, he had been Ohio Attorney General but had lost his Senate race against Mike DeWine.

In 2011, Cleveland Tea Party’s Ralph King pointed out that the position of the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is, “in more accurate terms Consumer Financial Protection Czar”:

The director of the CFPB is empowered to regulate almost any industry for any reason and cannot be removed for any reason other than malfeasance. The position is a five-year term, so the next president will have to deal with Cordray regulating our economy, despite the president’s wishes.

And now that next president, President Trump is having to deal with it. And the Wall Street Journal (article titled “Trump to Cordray: You’re Not Fired”) reports that the “Treasury Department has made an excellent case for dismissal.” Further in:

The problem is that Mr. Cordray won’t accept curbs on his power. Dodd-Frank states that the President may remove the director only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” rather than at-will like other agency heads. Yet the report enumerates a litany of ways in which Mr. Cordray has flouted the law.

Treasury notes the “CFPB has avoided notice-and-comment rulemaking and instead relied to an unusual degree on enforcement actions and guidance documents.” The Administrative Procedure Act requires regulatory agencies to issue formal rule-makings, or at least formal guidance, to explicate law. Mr. Cordray says “facts and circumstances” guide the bureau’s legal interpretations.

. . .

Mr. Cordray’s term doesn’t end until July 2018, and implementing Treasury’s reforms as well as attendant rule-makings could take more than a year. Meantime, Mr. Cordray can continue shaking down businesses with enforcement that he hopes will propel his expected campaign for Governor in Ohio.

Some take-aways: The WSJ may point out the excellent case for Cordray’s dismissal (not to say the elimination of the agency itself), but it’s not about legal niceties, it’s all about politics and power. Mr. Trump is still surrounded by hostile deep state operatives, bureaucracies, and Congressional Uniparty opponents who ignore Obama Administration scandals and refuse to respect existing laws  (think Lynch, Comey, and the FBI; or Susan Rice unmasking of political opponents; or Lois Lerner’s IRS scandal, and on and on)….  So it may be obvious that Cordray and the CFPB are on the wrong side of the law, but The Uniparty and Corporate Media don’t much care. Trump is probably choosing his battles.

I decided to blog on this not only because the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and its director represent more of the swamp to be drained, but also because Richard Cordray may very well run for Governor of Ohio. Voters should know what he’s been doing. The full WSJ report is here.  

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