NowThis News wants everyone to know that school choice is associated with the segregationists of 1950s Virginia. Obviously, if we know this, we’ll oppose school choice because who wants to be a segregationist? “Seeking a way To avoid desegregation these southerners found a loophole through private education. …….Influential conservative and libertarian thinkers supported the white southern cause, seeing voucher programs as an opportunity to advance their broader goal of dismantling public education….” The name of Milton Friedman is mentioned – they even have a little arrow pointing to him in one picture, which isn’t exactly what happened. Friedman supported vouchers; so did…
Author: Tim Worstall
Teen Vogue tells its teenage readers that going back to farming our dyes for clothes is the way to save the planet. This is not just hopelessly wrong. It’s dangerously wrong. Farming produces vastly more emissions and much less land left for wildlife than synthetic dyes. This is all a part of the insistence that doing things the “natural” way is better. But it isn’t – there’s a reason our ancestors changed from natural to artificial, from fields to factories. The complaint is that fashion has emissions – sure, so does being alive. There’s much worrying about polyester and that…
Vice reports in a new piece that Libs of TikTok is to blame for schools receiving bomb threats. Vice has no evidence of this, but the report was published nevertheless. There’s a reason Vice just went bankrupt. But Vice goes ahead and says it anyway: “At least eleven schools or school districts that were targeted by the account “Libs of TikTok” over anti-LGBTQ grooming conspiracies last month received bomb threats just days later.” The implication is obvious enough. If Libs of TikTok having free speech leads to bomb threats, then Libs of TikTok should not have free speech. Or, as we could…
Fast Company reports in a new article that American CEOs are grossly overpaid. The problem is that they’re not – the median CEO pay is $189,520. No, that’s right, there are 199,240 CEOs in the U.S. About 200k CEOs and the median average pay is $200k. Sure, it’s a nice amount to get, but it’s not billionaire riches. But that’s not what we get from Fast Company. Instead: “The question of what fair actually means when it comes to CEO pay is incredibly complicated (this essay can help formulate some answers) and the data pulled together here reflects a single moment in…
In a new piece, GQ tells its readers that misinformation is harmful, especially regarding health matters. The problem is that GQ has swallowed the most awful dose of propaganda. Journalism should be better than this – truth to power, right, not repeating the lies of power? “The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study showing 52 doctors—out of 1 million Americans who hold a medical license—spread COVID-19 misinformation on social media between January 2021 and December 2022. “ Some people may have spread misinformation about covid. Some probably did. Some humans will say anything. But as we’ve been saying for…
Teen Vogue claims that YouTube is right-wing. That’s a significantly dangerous thing to say to the young people this part of the Conde Nast empire is aimed at. Do recall that the self-proclaimed mission of Teen Vogue is “Educating the influencers of tomorrow.” What they’re doing is propagandizing the young. What’s on YouTube is a wide array of thoughts and opinions on everything. Of course, some are more to the right – and more to the left – than the general average opinion. That’s how freedom and liberty work. But then we get this: “I watched things like Gamergate, this…
NowThis News tells us that “Book bans have been a favorite move of the supposedly freedom-loving right for a long time.” This is not true, but maybe that’s just journalism for you. The thing is, NowThis isn’t even producing journalism. It’s producing propaganda disguised as journalism. If some statement has a great big screaming “D” or even “R” on it then we can and do apply the appropriate discount to what is being said. OK, but that’s just politics, and who expects the truth there? But when it’s a supposedly journalistic output – those defenders of the truth and educators of the…
If Florida is so terrible, why are so many people moving there? This is one of those grand questions that must be asked – after all, we keep being told that Governor Ron DeSantis is so far right, anti-trans, just, you know, Republican, that he’s turning the Sunshine State into a hellhole. However, let’s look at what people actually do: they’re moving to Florida. From Census data: “Florida led all states with more than 626K new residents moving in during 2020.” Of course, this really annoys some. Here’s the Lincoln Project (a very D organization): “Miami-Dade county has just recorded its first population drop…
Vice tells us that “experts” and some economists support rent control. However, what is actually happening is that a small minority of economists think that rent control is a good idea. There’s always disagreement in everything. But that’s who Vice chooses to quote: Economists Support Nationwide Rent Control in Letter to Biden Admin “All the empirical literature suggests that the basic economic story does not hold” when it comes to anti-rent control arguments, said one economist. It’s not even a letter to the Biden administration. It’s an entry in a Federal Housing Finance Agency call for comments. That is, it’s a letter…
NowThis News this week brings us the “Drag Environmentalist” Pattie Gonia. Pattie’s slogan is “No Planet, No Pride.” Well, yes, many of us dress up to go outside, but Pattie will have to do some hard thinking here. Suppose we’re all going to stop using fossil fuels. In that case, we’re going to have to stop using propylene glycol (derived from propene, from fracked natural gas usually), mineral oil (from crude oil), petroleum jelly (ditto, crude oil), paraffin wax (yes, you guessed) and that’s just from the ingredients list for mascara. It gets worse, as others include lanolin, a product of sheep ranching – as with meat eating, one of…