Tag Archives: NPR

Pot, Meet Kettle

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On January 24th, The Guardian posted the following headline:

Tim Scott’s behaviour around Trump is ‘humiliating’, says the Rev Al Sharpton

Not only is the criticism undeserved, the fact that it comes from Al Sharpton is ridiculous.

Just to refresh your memory, here is part of an NPR article from August 2013:

It was 1987 when a black teenager, Tawana Brawley, said she had been raped and kidnapped by a group of white men in Dutchess County, N.Y.

Her story of being attacked, scrawled with racial slurs, smeared with feces and left beside a road wrapped in a plastic bag made front pages across the nation — especially after the Rev. Al Sharpton took up her case.

But, as The Associated Press reminds readers, “a special state grand jury later determined that Brawley had fabricated her claims, perhaps to avoid punishment for staying out late.”

In 1998, Steven Pagones, who was the county prosecutor at the time, won a defamation suit against Sharpton, Brawley and Brawley’s attorneys. They had accused Pagones of being among Brawley’s attackers.

“Sharpton has since paid off his [$65,000] debt with money raised by his supporters,” the Village Voice says. Brawley was ordered to pay $190,000.

It’s been 15 years. With interest, the judgment against the now 40-year-old Brawley has grown to more than $430,000. Finally, the Poughkeepsie Journal reports, Pagones is receiving some of the money: $3,700, or about 1 percent of what he’s now owed.

Snopes also notes:

Sharpton himself owes New York state $806,875 and has federal liens for unpaid personal income taxes against him totaling $2.6 million, records show.

The Harlem-based NAN owed $813,576 to the federal government at the end of 2012, according to the most recent filings for the group.

Sharpton’s company, Rev-Al Communications, owes $447,826 to the state. His Bo-Spanky Consulting firm has only $18.21 in outstanding debt, according to state records.

This is the person who is criticizing Tim Scott. This is also The Guardian giving credence to that criticism. Always consider the source when it comes to news.

 

Let’s All Spy On Our Neighbors

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In an article I wrote on January 16th, 2013, I said the following, “Back in the early sixties when folk music was the rage, there was a group called the Chad Mitchell Trio that recorded a song called “The John Birch Society.” It was a great song. Some of the lyrics stated:

Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society

Here to save our country from a communistic plot

Join the John Birch Society holding off the Reds

We’ll use our hand and hearts and if we must we’ll use our heads

Do you want Justice Warren for your Commissar?

Do you want Mrs. Krushchev in there with the DAR?

You cannot trust your neighbor or even next of kin

If mommie is a commie then you gotta turn her in.”

I don’t necessarily agree with the slam on the John Birch Society, but unfortunately what they were singing about back then is happening today.

On January 4th, Newsbusters posted the following:

Wednesday’s edition of the PBS NewsHour featured veteran journalist Judy Woodruff cheering on an obsessive group of “citizen investigators” who have teamed up with the media’s favorite domestic surveillance organization to turn in people who entered the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021: “How citizen investigators are helping the FBI track down Jan. 6 rioters.”

One suspects these unlabeled, left-wing activist “Citizen investigators” would have been condemned as troubling vigilantes by PBS if they were crowdsourcing video for Black Lives Matter rioters and thieves in 2020.

Host Amna Nawaz: The federal investigation into 2021’s January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is the largest FBI operation in history. More than 1,200 people have been charged and over 900 convicted so far, and hundreds more charges are expected before the investigation concludes. But it has stretched the bureau’s resources, and it’s often had to rely on the work of a bipartisan group of citizen investigators who came to be known as sedition hunters….

“Sedition hunters.” The tolerant left’s lexicon certainly sounds McCarthyite these days. This is a “public broadcasting” trend. NPR touted the “sedition hunters” last year at this time.

Woodruff interviewed someone who spends her every waking hour playing detective, seemingly determined to put everyone who walked into the Capitol on January 6 in prison. She won’t give her name, or show her face, but she exposes everyone else.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is chilling.

Bias Is Not Only How You Tell The Story–It’s The Stories You Choose Not To Tell

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On Sunday, Newsbusters reported the following:

In the last Congress, PBS and NPR enthusiastically broadcast every moment of live coverage requested by Nancy Pelosi’s “Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.” But in 2023, they won’t offer live coverage of Republican-led events. In fact, they often ignore them altogether.

On Wednesday morning, House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer held a dramatic press conference to release new bank records showing how President Biden’s family was awarded millions in foreign payments while he was Vice President. Not only did PBS and NPR skip live coverage, they skipped all coverage — including “Week in Review” packages on PBS NewsHour and NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, as well as Washington Week on PBS. 

On the NewsHour on Wednesday night, co-host Geoff Bennett even conducted an eight-minute interview with House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries, and there was no question on the Biden financial scandals. Instead, questions like this: 

BENNETT: This is your first time on the NewsHour in your capacity as House Democratic leader. And I want to take the occasion to ask you, one, how you view your role, and, two, what Democrats hope to achieve even while in the minority right now.

The article notes:

Back in March, we noted PBS and NPR audaciously ignored when the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hearing of the new Congress with Attorney General Merrick Garland, despite a dramatic grilling by Senate Republicans…or because of it.

But on May 2, the same Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing into the ethics of federal judges, especially Supreme Court Justice Thomas. On that night, the PBS NewsHour devoted almost nine minutes to that event, summarized under the loaded transcript headline “Senate probes Supreme Court ethics after questionable financial dealings by justices.” PBS at least mentioned liberal former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, briefly referencing her outburst against then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016 as an example of lack of impartiality.

They touted a recent PBS/NPR/Marist poll, finding more than six in 10 Americans said they have little to no confidence in the court.

Keeping Americans in the dark about the Biden family scandals is a contribution to President Biden’s campaign for re-election. While we probably can’t change the lack of reporting on the various scandals by the mainstream media, we can encourage people to find news sources that tell the whole truth.

Interesting, But Don’t Expect Anything Earthshaking

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On Thursday, Just the News reported that U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart has given he Justice Department one week to deliver a redacted copy of the affidavit used to justify the FBI’s unprecedented search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

The article reports:

U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart also said at the hearing on that matter that he will decide after the department has completed its redactions whether he wants to make his own.

Reinhart, who approved the warrant for the FBI’s raid last week, also said that if the media or the government object to his proposed redactions, they can file an appeal and that the affidavit will remain sealed during any appeals.

The government argued that unsealing the affidavit would “provide a roadmap” of the ongoing investigation. Prosecutor Jay Bratt said the country is in a “volatile” state and releasing the names of those involved in the probe may “chill” other witnesses. 

“This is not a precedent we want to set,” he said.

Reinhart at the hearing also unsealed more minor documents containing general information, according to NPR.

The Justice Department also argued that redacting the affidavit would leave no substantive information to release and pointed out the search and release of the warrant last week had already resulted in death threats against FBI agents.

I admit that this sounds as if some people might actually be held accountable for using the FBI and Department of Justice for political purposes. However, don’t get your hopes up. We believed in Mueller (for a while), we believed in Barr (for a while), and we believed in Durham (for a while). The deep state has many ways of protecting itself, and there is no reason to believe that protection is weakened. I suspect that when we see the affideavit it will have many redactions (or at least enough to hide what actually happened).

Getting The Numbers Right

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On Wednesday, NPR reported that there have been 27 school shootings this year. Reason posted an article on Thursday explaining why that number is misleading and inaccurate.

The article at Reason reports:

The problem here is that three very differently defined terms are being used somewhat incautiously and interchangeably: school shooting, mass shooting, and mass school shooting. Uvalde was a mass school shooting; the 26 previous tragedies at schools this year were not.

…The difference is significant. Education Week, which tracks all school shootings, defines them as incidents in which a person other than the suspect suffers a bullet wound on school property. Many of the 26 previous shootings involved disputes between students in parking lots, or after athletic events, and all of them resulted in one or zero deaths. These deaths are still incredibly tragic, of course. But they are fundamentally unlike what happened in Uvalde.

Uvalde is a mass school shooting. This is defined in different ways too: an incident in which at least four people (some counters make it three) are shot and/or killed. The Gun Violence Archive counts incidents in which at least four people were shot. Under this definition, many incidents of street crime and domestic violence count as mass shootings, even if no deaths result. A stricter tally of mass school shootings, conducted by criminologists for Scientific American, only includes incidents where the shootings resulted in at least four deaths. Using their criteria, the number of mass school shootings in the U.S. since the year 1966 is 13. These crimes claimed the lives of 146 people in total.

Obviously, 13 incidents in the last 56 years is a very different statistic than 27 incidents in the last few months. The two figures are so far apart because they measure separate things. One-off gun incidents are a serious problem in the U.S., and those taking place at schools are no exception. Mass casualty events, on the other hand, constitute less than 1 percent of all gun deaths. Suicides and non–mass-casualty murders—usually carried out with handguns rather than assault rifles—constitute the overwhelming majority of gun crimes.

I can’t  help but wonder if NPR is purposely misleading Americans. What happened in Uvalde is horrific, but it is sad that many political operatives are using the events there to further an agenda that will take away the rights of innocent Americans.

A New Low In Civilization

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The American Thinker posted an article today with the following headine, “NPR says babies aren’t babies until they’re born.”

The article reports:

National Public Radio’s supervising senior standards and practices editor Mark Memmott recently published a “guidance reminder” instructing the non-profit media organization’s employees in how to frame abortion news.  Memmott wrote:

The term ‘unborn’ implies that there is a baby inside a pregnant woman, not a fetus. Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses. Incorrectly calling a fetus a ‘baby’ or ‘the unborn’ is part of the strategy used by antiabortion groups to shift language/legality/public opinion.

Your tax dollars support NPR.

The article concludes:

A baby is a fetus, though he looks like a baby and functions like a baby and has a beating heart (I mean an “embryonic pulsing,” to quote a recent article in the New York Times), two arms, two legs, and a pair of eyes?  Even though he is an inch or two from being outside the womb, and even though as soon as he makes it outside the womb, he magically turns into a…”baby”?  If a fetus is born weeks — or even months — early, he instantaneously and miraculously morphs into a “baby”?  Must be the air.

What if what NPR calls a fetus identifies as a baby?  What then?  Huh?  How do you handle that, Mark Memmott?

Those who supported slavery and those who support abortion share the vehement belief in dehumanizing those they don’t consider equals.  The Three-Fifths Compromise of the early days of the republic had slaves counted as three fifths of a human being.  Though it sounds horrible, in reality, this was done to lessen the power of the slave states and help bring about the abolition of slavery.  Should there be a Three-Fifths Compromise with pro-abortion types?  If they agree to consider “fetuses” as at least three fifths of a human being, they’d be closer to a moral position than they are now.

All slaves were babies at one time.  Thank God that not all babies grow up to be slaves.

 

The Death Of An American Hero

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Yesterday NPR reported that Tony Mendez, the man behind the 1980 rescue of six American diplomats trapped in Iran by the Iranian revolution, has died. The six diplomats were hidden by the Canadian Embassy until the CIA was able to smuggle them out of the country. The story was the basis for the movie “Argo.” The full story was not really told until the movie was released in 2012.

The article at NPR reports:

Tony Mendez became a legend inside the CIA with his daring 1980 rescue of six American diplomats who were given shelter by the Canadian Embassy in Tehran after the U.S. Embassy had been stormed by Iranian revolutionaries.

But the “Canadian Caper” remained classified for nearly two decades, and Mendez didn’t receive full acclaim until the Oscar-winning movie Argo, came out in 2012, with Ben Affleck portraying him.

Mendez, who was 78 and had Parkinson’s disease, died Saturday at an assisted living facility in Frederick, Md., outside Washington, according to the International Spy Museum, where Mendez was a founding board member.

“He was a legendary intelligence officer,” said the museum’s Executive Director Chris Costa.

The movie tells the story of how Tony Mendez posed as a film director with a crew scouting locations in Iran for a movie. He then gave the diplomats phony identities as part of his crew and smuggled them out of the country as his film crew. The crew flew out on a commercial airline. It is an amazing movie, and Mr. Mendez deserves a tremendous amount of credit for pulling off the scam. He was a true American hero.

A Lie Can Travel Half Way Around The World While The Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes

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The above quote is from Mark Twain. He definitely knew what he was talking about. In America there are six major companies that control our media. Five of them lean left, one tends toward the center right. That is called balance. The alternative media is really the only chance most Americans have to get a balanced picture of what is actually happening.

The Washington Examiner posted an editorial today which listed the stories major media had misreported regarding the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.

Here is a summary of those stories:

“Accuser’s schoolmate says she recalls hearing of alleged Kavanaugh incident,” NBC News trumpeted on Wednesday and Thursday. The casual reader would believe that someone had corroborated the accusation against Kavanaugh. Instead, the piece was based on a tweet, which was later retracted, by a woman who admits, “I do not have first hand knowledge of the incident.”

NPR followed up on the schoolmate’s claim, reporting that she says she has “no idea” if the assault happened or not. That misleading and suggestive NBC News headline is still drawing in duped readers, popping up on social media and Google News homepages.

On Sept. 20, the Guardian published a salacious article claiming that a “top professor at Yale Law School” told students last year that it was “not an accident” that Kavanaugh’s female law clerks all “looked like models.” This professor also reportedly said she “would provide advice to students about their physical appearance if they wanted to work for him.”

It’s not until the 10th paragraph of the story that Guardian readers are told, “There is no allegation that the female students who worked for Kavanaugh were chosen because of their physical appearance or that they were not qualified.”

CNN, MSNBC, and Politico circulated a dishonestly edited video this week of Kavanaugh saying in 2015, “What happens at Georgetown prep, stays at Georgetown prep.” The remark came in the larger context of a joke, but MSNBC and CNN viewers weren’t shown that. Neither were Politico’s readers. Audiences are left instead with the impression that Kavanaugh was somehow admitting bad behavior.

These are only a few examples of misleading stories. There are some real questions as to what happened 30-some years ago. There are some real questions as to the timing of introducing this story into the confirmation process. There are also some real questions as to whether or not we will ever know the entire truth about this matter. The accuser has stated that she can’t remember where or when this incident happened–she just knows it was Judge Kavanuagh. How good is your memory on 30-years old incidents.

When The Media Does Not Tell The Truth, It Puts All Of Us At Risk

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Tommy Waller at the Center for Security Policy posted an article today about a recent media story that totally misinformed the public. The media story in question  was a two-and-a-half-minute segment on an NPR show discussing the threat of an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) strike from North Korea.

Exactly what is an EMP strike and how does it work? Our electrical grid, satellites, computers, etc. all depend on an even flow of electricity. If you disrupt that flow and burn out a significant amount of the equipment that distributes that electricity in the process, you can cause some serious problems to America. It could be months before food, water, gasoline, natural gas, electricity, etc., could be delivered to the people impacted by an EMP. Detonating a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere will disrupt the electronics for a large area. There is some discussion about how large that area would be, but think of the impact of wiping out the electrical power and the equipment that distributes it in a large section of America.

A website called future science details a brief history of the impact of an EMP:

Starfish Prime

On July 1962, a 1.44 megaton United States nuclear test in space, 400 kilometers (250 miles) above the mid-Pacific Ocean, called the Starfish Prime test, demonstrated to nuclear scientists that the magnitude and effects of a high altitude nuclear explosion were much larger than had been previously calculated.  The detonation time was July 9, 1962 at 09:00:09 Coordinated Universal Time, (which was 8 July, Honolulu time, at nine seconds after 11 p.m.).  The coordinates of the detonation were 16 degrees, 28 minutes North latitude, 169 degrees, 38 minutes West longitude.7  The actual weapon yield was very close to the design yield, which has been described by various sources at different values in the very narrow range of 1.4 to 1.45 megatons. 

The Thor missile carrying the Starfish Prime warhead actually reached a maximum height of about 1100 kilometers (just over 680 miles), and the warhead was detonated on its downward trajectory when it had fallen to the programmed altitude of 400 kilometers.  The nuclear warhead detonated at 13 minutes and 41 seconds after liftoff of the Thor missile from Johnston Island.9

Starfish Prime also made EMP effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometers (898 miles) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a telephone company microwave link.7

Starfish Prime was the first successful test in the series of United States high-altitude nuclear tests in 1962 known as Operation Fishbowl.  The subsequent Operation Fishbowl tests gathered more data on the high-altitude EMP phenomenon, especially the Bluegill Triple Prime and Kingfish test of October, 1962.8

The EMP damage of the Starfish Prime test was quickly repaired because of the ruggedness (compared to today) of the electrical and electronic infrastructure of Hawaii in 1962.  Realization of the potential impacts of high-altitude nuclear EMP became more apparent to some scientists and engineers during the 1970s as more sensitive solid-state electronics began to come into widespread use.

The relatively small magnitude of the Starfish Prime EMP in Hawaii (about 5600 volts/meter) and the relatively small amount of damage done (for example, only 1 to 3 percent of streetlights extinguished)10 led some scientists to believe, in the early days of EMP research, that the problem might not be as significant as was later realized.  Newer calculations7 showed that if the Starfish Prime warhead had been detonated over the northern continental United States, the magnitude of the EMP would have been much larger (22 to 30 kilovolts/meter) because of the greater strength of the Earth’s magnetic field over the United States, as well as the different orientation of the Earth’s magnetic field at high latitudes.  These new calculations, combined with the accelerating reliance on EMP-sensitive microelectronics, heightened awareness that the EMP threat could be a very significant problem.

As late as the 1980s, some distinguished scientist published articles which cast doubt on the magnitude of the E1-EMP.  Those scientists did not have access to some critical classified information that has subsequently been declassifed.  This primary mistake that these scientists made was apparently a large underestimation of the coherence of the pulse.  The initial electrons are knocked out of atmospheric molecules almost simultaneously over a large region.  The electrons then spiral almost simultaneously around the Earth’s magnetic field lines.  This results in a very narrow pulse of extremely high field strength, but one that last for less than a microsecond.  Each high-energy electronic emits only a very weak pulse, however a typical nuclear weapon produces about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ten septillion) of these high-energy electrons all spiraling around the geomagnetic field lines simultaneously.

We have the information showing the dangers of an EMP. Although much of that information is classified, enough of it is available to scientists for them to understand the risks.

However, not all scientists are paying attention.

The Center for Security Policy article reports:

At 5:10AM ET on 27 April 2017, the Morning Edition program at National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast a segment titled “The North Korean Electromagnetic Pulse Threat, Or Lack Thereof.”  An audio recording of this segment can be found here:   http://www.npr.org/2017/04/27/525833275/the-north-korean-electromagnetic-pulse-threat-or-lack-thereof

The 2 minute 26 second segment was in response to an interview of Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey from 26 April, where Ambassador Woolsey discussed the EMP threat posed by North Korea:  http://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/525675203/former-cia-director-james-woolsey-on-trumps-first-100-days)

In the 27 April broadcast, NPR’s science editor – Geoff Brumfiel – gave prominent treatment to Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.  Mr. Lewis not only dismissed the North Korean EMP threat but ridiculed it by laughing out loud at the comments of a former Director of the CIA discussing a real, present, and existential threat to the nation.

Mr. Lewis, who claims to be a nuclear expert, has been denigrating EMP for the last 6 years.   Aside from his brief time as an intern the Pentagon, he has never served in the DOD or intelligence community and his formal education is in policy studies and philosophy rather than engineering or nuclear weapons design.  Yet NPR’s editors thought it appropriate to champion not only his “analysis” but his obtuse laughter at a sobering subject that is one of the most important of our time.  It is clear by the way Geoff Brumfiel edited this broadcast that he sought to denigrate not only the topic of EMP, but also James Woolsey, the U.S. Military, and the U.S. Congress – since the Ambassador has warned for years about the EMP threat and the DOD and Congress have appropriated billions of dollars to protect America’s strategic forces against it.

This is an example of irresponsible journalism.

The article at the Center for Security Policy continues:

Evidently, National Public Radio, an organization whose operating expenses are paid in part by the U.S. taxpayer, considers it appropriate to promote ridicule of anyone concerned with the threat from Elecromagnetic Pulse, when the nation’s most informed authorities on EMP consider it to be a real, present, and existential threat to the country and it’s population.

In response to this abject failure in journalism, Center for Security Policy founder and president – Frank J. Gaffney Jr. – recently authored a formal letter to Senator Roy Blunt and Congressmen Tom Coles, who serve on their chambers’ respective Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittees.   This letter calls on these men and these subcommittees to hold NPR accountable for dereliction of its public trust.

We encourage all Americans who are concerned about EMP to join Frank, The Center for Security Policy, and The Secure the Grid Coalition in holding to account National Public Radio.  We encourage you to inform your own elected representatives of this journalistic malfeasance and to confront NPR directly through messages to its Ombudsman and Management by submitting your own comments at the following link:

https://help.npr.org/customer/portal/emails/new?i=1&s=Morning%20Edition

The article at the Center for Security Policy reminds us that we need to beef up our missile defense programs to protect us from this threat. We also need to remember that when North Korea (or Iran) blows up a missile in mid-flight, it may not be an accident–it may be a practice run.

How Much Is Big Bird Actually Worth?

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Steven Hayward posted an article at Power Line today about President Trump’s plan to cut funding for Public Broadcasting. The article illustrates the fact that in some cases, executives of nonprofit organizations make salaries that don’t sound as if they are appropriate for an organization that is nonprofit.

The article reminds us of two conflicting statements made by NPR about their budget:

On average, less than 1% of NPR’s annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB [the taxpayer-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting]  and federal agencies and departments.

…Federal funding is essential to public radio’s service to the American public. Its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR. . . Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalism—especially local journalism—and eventually the loss of public radio stations, particularly in rural and economically distressed communities.

Both of those statements cannot be true. I have no idea which one is.

The article further reports:

According to tax filings — the most recent of which covers 2014 — then-president and CEO Melvin Ming was paid more than $586,000 in salary and benefits in the nine months before retiring, which included a $37,500 bonus and $18,700 in benefits. The year before that, Ming cleared $672,391 in salary, bonuses and benefits.

That’s five times the average pay for CEOs at nonprofits, according to Charity Navigator. (It’s twice as much as the CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets paid.)

The average compensation for the other 10 top officials at Sesame Workshop in 2014 was a very handsome $382,135 — which is about six times the median household income in the U.S.

Big Bird is big business. The article states:

Last year, Sesame Workshop had $121.6 million in revenues. Of that, $49.6 million came in distribution fees and royalties and $36.6 million in licensing of toys, games, clothing, food and such. In 2014, only 4% of its revenue came from government grants.

I suspect there are other programs on Public Broadcasting that would do quite well if they chose to market items related to their television shows. I truly think it is time to give the free market the chance to work its magic in the area of Public Broadcasting.

Why It Is Important To Check The Accuracy Of News Sources

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This is not a perfect blog. Over the years I have been fooled a few times by stories that were not accurately reported by my sources, but generally I have checked the source before I reported anything. However, political bias is very subtle and can be difficult to spot. There are also many forms of political bias. Recently NPR posted a map that convinces me that they are either totally ignorant of geography or supporting an agenda I totally disagree with.

An article at Breitbart.com today reports the following:

National Public Radio (NPR) published a map that erases the existence of Israel and replaces it with “Palestine,” a watchdog group reported.

The map, which has since been removed by NPR, accompanied a feature on health titled, “What Are You Afraid Of In 2016? Globetrotters Share Their Fears.”

In November, media monitoring site HonestReporting pointed out that CNN Money also published a map of the Middle East that did not include Israel in an article titled, “Beyond ISIS: 2016’s scariest geopolitical hot spots.”

“It is completely unacceptable for NPR to publish an image that erases Israel from the map. That nobody at NPR recognized just how problematic this image is on multiple levels speaks volumes about the deficiencies in the editorial process,” HonestReporting’s Managing Editor Simon Plosker said.

“NPR should do the right thing and either restore Israel to its legitimate place or come clean and acknowledge that the map, in the context of the article, is meant to signify a fear of the Muslim world. Given this choice, NPR should consider removing the image in its entirety,” he added.

This is the map:

NPR map erases Israel

There are other mistakes in the map, but to omit Israel is simply inexcusable. It is interesting to note that in the grand scheme of things, Israel is probably the safest place for Americans in the Middle East.

The Unintended Consequences Of Accountability

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This article has two sources, an article in the U.K. Telegraph posted on March 30 and an article posted at Real Clear Politics yesterday.

As the British government struggles to keep pace with the expenses involved in providing a safety net for its citizens, some government programs are being phased out and combined with other programs. One of the programs under scrutiny is the sickness benefit program.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary. is attempting to combine dozens of different out-of-work benefits into a single payment with the aim of ensuring an individual is always better off working than collecting benefits. As part of that process, there is an assessment of the people on the sickness benefit program to determine whether or not they are fit to work. Some 878,300 people on that program decided to come off the program rather than submit to the assessment. We need to learn from this experience.

The article at Real Clear Politics looks at disability payments in America:

In 1960, when vastly more Americans were involved in physical labor of some kind, 0.65% of workforce participants between the ages of 18 and 64 were receiving Social Security disability insurance payments. Fifty years later, in a much healthier America that number has grown to 5.6%.

In 1960, 134 Americans were working for every officially recognized disabled worker. Five decades later that ratio fell to roughly 16 to 1.

I am sure that in most cases disability payments are warranted. In fact, I am sure that everyone who is disabled does not necessarily look disabled. I can think of one example in particular where a person received severe neck damage in a work-related car accident and on some days appears to be perfectly normal. On other days, that person can barely move. Unfortunately, there is no way of predicting which days are which. However, I do think there are people among us who would rather ride in the wagon than help pull it. The problem is that at this point we have too few people pulling the wagon and too many people sitting in the wagon.

Government workers have no incentive to cut disability payments–their jobs depend on administering these programs–if you cut the programs, you might have to cut the number of administrators. Government spending has become like the hamster on the exercise wheel–it keeps moving (and growing) but nothing is actually being accomplished.

If we are serious about ever balancing the federal (and states) budget, we need to take a serious look at who is receiving payments from that government and what the basis for those payments is. Until we are willing to help people enter the workforce instead of helping them enter generations of dependency on government, we will not solve our financial problems.

Click And Clack Are Retiring

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Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Magliozzi Brothers, Tom and Ray, of the NPR Radio Show “Car Talk” (where they are known as the Tappet Brothers) are retiring. They will stop recording new shows in October. “Car Talk” began taping 35 years ago at Boston’s MBUR radio station. I have no idea how good their advice was, but they were extremely entertaining. I also enjoyed the ‘puzzler’ that they would inject into the show. I am sorry to see them go.

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