Accusing them of being pornographic when they are not.
Addiction is a huge factor in homelessness
A lot of articles on homelessness focus on factors such as unaffordable housing, and zoning laws that make it hard to build in certain cities. Weather’s certainly important, too, as well as permissive laws that make living in tent encampments on the streets non-actionable.
But an enormous factor in homelessness is addition to drugs such as fentanyl:
Homelessness is an addiction crisis disguised as a housing crisis. In Seattle, prosecutors and law enforcement recently estimated that the majority of the region’s homeless population is hooked on opioids, including heroin and fentanyl…For the unsheltered population inhabiting tents, cars, and RVs, the opioid-addiction percentages are even higher—the City of Seattle’s homeless-outreach team estimates that 80 percent of the unsheltered population has a substance-abuse disorder.
The obvious question is how do all these addicted homeless people find the money to support their habits? The obvious answer:
…[T]he average heavy-opioid user consumes $1,834 in drugs per month…West Coast cities are seeing a crime spike associated with homeless opioid addicts.
The article goes on to point out that if a city would deal with its growing homeless population it needs to stop denying the enormity and centrality of the drug problems of the homeless. But many West Coast cities are engaged in such minimizing.
But even if those in charge of these cities were to freely acknowledge the scope of the problem, it’s not as though we know how to treat drug addiction with enormous success, particularly in this population, which also has high degrees of mental illness, and alcoholism as well.
I have to say it’s a tremendously depressing situation. I ordinarily go to the West Coast at least once a year, and it’s disturbing and painful to see what’s happened there, and extraordinarily difficult to even think of a solution that might actually work. But it seems to me that the first step is not closing our eyes to the reality, and yet that’s what appears to be happening to a great extent.
Here’s a brave person
As part of the series of #WalkAway videos on YouTube, here is a trans woman who discovered a lot about the left when she decided to voice the idea that maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump wasn’t the devil incarnate. She ended up Walking Away, and here is part of her story (I’ve cued it up for what I consider to be the most interesting section, which is just a couple of minutes long):
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is leaving
Too bad, although understandable. Talk about stressful jobs! I thought she was one of the better press secretaries.
Sanders held the job of press secretary under Trump for nearly two years. That’s a long time in this day and age, when under constant harassment from the Trump-haters.
“Remember: for the left, all politics is personal,” Higgins responded, adding that there was an effort to “delegitimize” Sanders’ voice as well as other female figures who support or work for Trump.
“It basically tells you that it’s OK to treat people who disagree with you with disdain and contempt and sort of write them out of the picture,” she said. “And that’s all driven by a very different worldview of who we are as people and what to expect.”
By the way, today is Trump’s birthday. He turns 73. By the standards of today’s politics—what a young’un!
And by the way, when I Googled “Trump birthday” just now to get a link, I had to scroll down quite a bit to find one that wasn’t mocking him or berating him.
The latest media hysteria about Trump
You can read about it here as well as here and here.
From the latter:
As Trump told Stephanopoulos, there is nothing wrong with listening to information that anyone, foreign or domestic, might have that is relevant to a presidential candidate. But what is blindingly obvious, yet absent from every Democratic Party news account feigning horror at the ABC interview, is that the Hillary Clinton campaign didn’t just receive “foreign dirt” on the Trump campaign. It paid for foreign sources to fabricate lies about Trump, which it then disseminated to the press. Listen to “foreign dirt”? The Clinton campaign paid for it!
This is just one more example of why no sensible person takes “news” sources like the Washington Post seriously.
Ah, but many people must not be sensible then, and I seem to know an awful lot of them.
I sometimes feel I ought to write something about every single brouhaha that takes center stage for a day and then fades away. And sometimes I do add my 2 cents into the mix. But sometimes I just shrug and think that, unless I have something at least somewhat clever or insightful to contribute, why bother? Because the repetitiveness and the trivia of it all wearies me.
And yet these things do matter. I don’t dismiss them, because the media still affects and influences a great many people. Most people are not new junkies. Most people just read headlines or the first paragraph of a story, or listen to it for a moment or two with half an ear while double-tasking. The MSM knows that, and they know that they can influence people by the steady drumbeat of negative news and analysis. And they do.
Oberlin will fight the Gibson verdict
[NOTE: I just learned that Professor Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, who’s been following this story in-depth from the start, will be on Tucker Carlson’s show tonight at 8 PM ET to discuss the Oberlin judgment.]
Oberlin says the Gibson award isn’t the end, and it’s not even the beginning of the end, it’s just the end of the beginning (apologies to Churchill):
The President of Oberlin College, Carmen Twillie Ambar, just sent this blast email:
Dear Members of the Oberlin Community,
By now many of you will have heard about the latest development in the Gibson’s Bakery lawsuit, a jury’s declaration of punitive damages against Oberlin. Let me be absolutely clear: This is not the final outcome. This is, in fact, just one step along the way of what may turn out to be a lengthy and complex legal process. I want to assure you that none of this will sway us from our core values. It will not distract, deter, or materially harm our educational mission, for today’s students or for generations to come…
We are disappointed in the jury’s decisions and the fragmentary and sometimes distorted public discussion of this case. But we respect the integrity of the jury, and we value our relationship with the town and region that are our home. We will learn from this lawsuit as we build a stronger relationship with our neighbors.
I doubt it.
I also was struck by this phrase: “It will not distract, deter, or materially harm our educational mission, for today’s students or for generations to come.” The “educational mission” of Oberlin and many many other colleges today, in fact the majority of them, has become the indoctrination of America into leftism.
Oh, they have other missions, to be sure. To raise money. To give a lot of administrators and professors a livelihood among simpatico others in an atmosphere of culture. And yes, to impart some information to its students about things such as literature, science, and history, along with the leftist ideological slant that pervades everything.
The email burns with its own outraged self-righteousness and a bit of fake humility at the end. Oberlin, like many colleges set in towns that are not entirely of the same mind or demographics as the denizens of the school, has a town/gown problem that has seemingly escalated, and administrators have become aware of the fact that there might be negative consequences to the college itself when townies [* see NOTE below] are harmed by something the college has done. It behooves Oberlin the school to make nice to Oberlin the town to avoid future incidents spilling over in a way that can negatively impact their bottom line.
Do I sound cynical about this? If so, that’s because I am.
I also think that Oberlin will be successful on appeal in getting the award reduced, and that it will end up being just a little bump in the road for the college. The award itself won’t hurt enough. What will hurt more—if it occurs—is a big drop in enrollment in the future.
[* NOTE: Re “townies”—that was the word typically used when I was of college age, long long ago. I haven’t checked with the PC police to see if that’s still an okay word to use; is it?]
The Russiagate news du jour
On certain days (today is one of them) I’m happy to rely on other people to present the Russiagate news du jour. So here are some links from Ace:
On getting dirt from the Russians.
And this one isn’t from Ace; it’s Andrew C. McCarthy on the lessons of the Mueller probe.
This next tweet doesn’t really have much if anything to do with the above, but I found it at Ace’s and it made me chuckle:
Trump trolls the press while trying to pick a reporter to call on: “Let’s see, who do I like? …. Nobody.” (He picked someone) pic.twitter.com/t2OKp2HsRZ
— Marcus Gilmer (@marcusgilmer) June 12, 2019
Oberlin loses, big time
Wow.
The jury really really really didn’t buy Oberlin’s “poor little me” argument:
Daniel McGraw, our reporter in the courtroom, reports that in addition to the $11.2 million compensatory damages awarded last Friday, the jury awarded a total of $33 million in punitive damages, which will probably be reduced by the court to $22 million because of the state law cap at twice compensatory (it’s not an absolute cap, but probably will apply here). That brings the total damages to $33 million. We will have the breakdown soon. The jury also awarded attorney’s fees, to be determined by the judge.
In closing argument, Gibson’s lawyer Lee Plakas argued:
“Why is the country watching you. Because the country agrees that what happened to the Gibsons should not happen to anyone, but could happen to everyone.”
”Colleges are watching us and you. Because they all know the way colleges are run will be affected, and by your decisions, they will be.”
Just to clarify, the award wasn’t about student demonstrations against Gibson’s Bakery. It was about Oberlin’s participation in the persecution and defamation of Gibson’s as a supposedly racist business.
In the punitive damages section of the trial, one of Oberlin’s main defenses was that their bottom line would suffer from a large award and that it would ultimately be the poorer students who would wind up paying. As Defense attorney Rachelle Kuznicki argued, “less [sic; it should be “fewer”] students who are not able to afford a college education will be able to do so.”
I think Oberlin might not understand the nature of the term “punitive damages.” The award for punitive damages is meant to hurt the person or group or institution ordered to pay it. Oberlin is that group. Will a large award mean that fewer students will be able to afford a college education? Only if Oberlin decides to cut back on that element of its spending rather than other areas.
Such an award means makes it more likely that fewer students not able to afford a college education will not be going to Oberlin. That hurts Oberlin. There are plenty of other institutions from which to choose, and Oberlin serves a rather small number anyway, enrolling around 800 students a year. Oberlin used to be a great school, but that was a long time ago. In recent years at Oberlin, “serves” has tended more and more to mean “indoctrinates in leftist thought and leftist activism.”
Britain: and in no surprise…
…Boris Johnson leads the race to head the Conservative Party and become Prime Minister.
This is just the first round, and it involves a secret ballot by the 313 Conservative MPs. The next step in the process is for further elimination rounds that involve the party lawmakers, winnowing the candidates down to two. Then the final decision will be decided by a vote of the 160,000 Conservative Party members.
It seems to be a bit of a hybrid between something resembling our old “smoke-filled room” party system and the more recent primary system. I believe that Johnson is virtually certain to win. There won’t be an opponent from another party, because this isn’t a general election. It’s a one-sided contest to replace Conservative Party leader May, who is leaving.
Human nature and political left vs. right
Commenter “Snow on Pine” makes the following excellent observation about the differences between left and right:
The fork in the road occurs at the crossroad named Human Nature.
Believe that humans are innately good and that it is just their circumstances that make them misbehave—do bad things, and you travel down one of the two forks—everything thereafter—your view of the world, your value system, your view of the purpose and role of government, and the solutions to those “circumstances” you propose—are all based on that fundamental assumption about human nature.
That road terminates at Socialism and dictatorship, in less and less Freedom—as you try (or claim to try)—in vain—to arrange “circumstances” to create a perfected man.
Believe that human beings are fallible, and tend to get into trouble if left to their own devices—are what they are and are not “perfectible”—and you travel down the other fork—and everything thereafter—your view of the world, your value system, your view of the purpose and role of government, and the solutions to that “misbehavior” you propose—are all based on that fundamental understanding of human nature, how to take it into account, and to plan government and public policy around it.
That road leads to more Freedom and, among other destinations, to Capitalism.
Starting at that fundamental divide, each road diverges more and more from the other, getting further and further apart, until the people traveling each road can no longer even see or easily communicate with each other.
I agree wholeheartedly with that last paragraph of Snow’s. And I believe that Snow’s general analysis has some basic truth, particularly regarding the more idealistic sort of leftist (and they absolutely do exist) and the smaller-federal-government type of conservative. But there’s also a way in which the situation sometimes gets flipped/reversed/twisted.
I’ve known leftists who don’t seem to believe in the basic goodness of humankind. They just happen to believe that they themselves know best and therefore should have power and control over flawed humanity, that they themselves can put the correct restrictions on other people so that they themselves can get the results they deem “good.” If people are innately selfish, for example, they must be forced to share. If they are innately racist, they must be forced to check their privilege. Don’t let re-education camps fool you; the instruction is not necessarily meant to gently persuade. Sometimes the goal is to tell the attendees what is the expected behavior for them, and what is the penalty for non-compliance.
On the other side, there are some people on the right (not very many, but some) who seem to be quite sanguine about human nature, or at least about the larger social systems in which humans are involved. They veer towards thinking that total laissez-faire capitalism would work just fine, for example. Likewise, they believe that by lowering taxes very dramatically and eliminating entitlements, people would give so much to charity that social ills would be adequately addressed.
I also think that the divergent roads along which people disposed to be on the left and those disposed to be on the right travel are not entirely ideological roads (although there’s certainly that). They are also informational roads and group-identity roads. I believe this tends to be more true for left than right, but that it can be true for either.
For example, people on the left don’t tend to expose themselves to any media outlets on the right, whereas people on the right are exposed (voluntarily or not) to the left far more often. That’s the informational road I’m talking about, and the left travel one that’s more homogeneous. For me, one of the main drivers of my political change was being exposed to new sources of information available over the internet in the early years of the 21st Century—and I’m not talking about fringe sites on the right, I’m talking about hoary periodicals such as Commentary or National Review which I’d vaguely heard of before but never actually seen until I started getting most of my news via internet around 2000. The internet made it easy, and I was far more simpatico with what the right was saying than I had previously thought I would be before I had that exposure.
But the group identity road is an important one, too. A lot of people grow up as members of groups (for example: religious, racial, urban-vs.-rural) in which they rarely meet someone who thinks differently, or if they do they’re not aware of it. If a person grows up with that sort of political identity forged by group identity—what Zell Miller called the “birthmark”—it is particularly difficult for that person to change a political affiliation and outlook. It’s felt as a very jarring experience. You can hear a lot of these stories on the WalkAway videos at YouTube, and it’s clear that many of these people have gone through a lot of emotional anguish as they sort it out.
The social fallout of political disagreements—umpteenth version
As you might expect, when I saw the headline “Don’t get divorced because of Trump. The tough work of settling America’s political differences,” I immediately clicked on it, because it sounded as though it would deal with one of my major interests.
That’s not because I’m trying not to get divorced; I’m already long-divorced. And I didn’t get divorced because my husband (now my ex-husband) and I disagree on politics or ever disagreed on politics; strangely enough, we’ve been on the same page pretty much right along. But I know that political differences can be a big problem in marriages, and I’ve certainly experienced the problem in other relationships with friends and family.
But the article doesn’t deal with marriages at all. And it deals with the general topic in a rather surface way, and seems to be trying to balance things out with a “both sides are qually hateful and angry” point of view interspersed with a subtle skew towards blaming Trump.
In my experience—and I have a lot of experience—there is indeed hatred on both sides, but the hatred is far more virulent and widespread left to right. And although it has exacerbated during Trump’s presidency—and although Trump himself is anything but a conciliatory figure—I most definitely do not see this phenomenon as his fault. I see the press as having had an enormous role to play in the escalating hatred, as well as social media—predominantly Twitter, which the nearly-worthless article doesn’t mention at all.
I say “nearly worthless” because the article does have one potentially helpful part in which the author mentions groups such as Better Angels and the Listen First Project, which try to promote more meaningful and less abusive discourse between the two sides. I’m not all that sure how much such movements actually help, however, because they appeal mostly to people who are interested in such civil discourse in the first place, as the article states. My guess is that most of the people doing all the flaming of others don’t really want to give up the excitement and the venting of bile.
At the moment I’m not very hopeful about all of this. As the 2020 election approaches, I see the prospects getting worse. And I don’t see the problem as a mere lack of civility, although there certainly is a dearth of civility. I see it as a huge divide involving very basic political assumptions that are quite fundamental, and I see the lack of civility as a byproduct of that, exacerbated by the hypocritical bias of the press, the general coarsening of our culture, and the amplification caused by social media,
Bruce Ohr’s role in Russiagate
Russiagate has so many elements and such complexity that it’s easy to lose track of the details. One detail I haven’t covered all that much is the role of Bruce Ohr, who was an Associate Deputy Attorney General during the Obama administration.
Eric Felton certainly has, however. Please read the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:
Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr was perfectly positioned to advance the Russia collusion narrative. He had a rare set of relationships — ties to opposition researchers and the FBI — and would use his links to both in 2016 to connect federal law enforcement to those advancing Trump-Russia conspiracy theories.
A mystery remains: To some in his narrow circle, Ohr was upfront about the compromising nature of his connections, yet he hid that fact from officials charged with overseeing ethics at the Justice Department. Why, then, did Bruce Ohr admit to the FBI that his wife worked for opposition researchers Fusion GPS while failing to disclose it to the DoJ? The answer speaks volumes not just about how the Trump-Russia affair gained traction but about the way Washington works…
Fusion GPS didn’t just get Bruce Ohr’s valuable attention, the firm used it to make an ask. Nellie Ohr acknowledged in her own congressional interview what Fusion GPS had in mind when Steele invited her and her husband to breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel on July 30, 2016. “Chris Steele was hoping that Bruce would put in a word with the FBI to follow up on the information in some way.” He did just that.
As I said, please read the whole thing.