Cowboy Confessional

It never troubles me to call out a liar. When they work in the media it is a downright pleasure.

This tiny tale relates the troubled souls of the Oakland Tribune, two of their writers and its Gollum editor Martin Reynolds. Martin’s misdeeds are a case study in why old media in general and newspapers in particular are a dying breed.

In May the Trib ran an article penned in tag team by two of their journalist. I misuse the term journalist herein because what they wrote in no way resembles reporting. The topic of their corrupt correspondence was gun control, and the piece was proffered in advance of a mayoral campaign by a well known advocate of gun control. I will not accuse these literary desperadoes of prostituting themselves for a politician, especially one known as the “Bay Area Bagman” and under investigation by the FBI. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if these hacks turned a trick, bending over for an elected thief.

Their reporting was contemptible correspondence. This peculiar piece did not meet minimal journalistic standards and was beyond slanted. Any reporter with integrity would have sought balanced sources, multiple perspectives and dug under the issue’s skin. These folks didn’t bother to look beneath their own distorted and seemingly psychotic version of reality. They spoke only to representatives of the gun control industry, misstated facts, cited unreliable sources and quoted discredited researchers.

They may well have smoked their breakfast. After all, they work in Oaksterdam.

I popped off a tirade to the Trib, demanding they print a retraction. I knew exactly what I was asking and did not take my demand lightly. A retraction is an admission of guilt by a newspaper for printing something they shouldn’t have. In the case of this pile of journalistic dung, a retraction was in order. A retraction, an apology, several thousand Hail Marys and possibly even a human sacrifice — the Trib had two reporters who were worthy candidates for the latter.

Martin Reynolds, the editor of the Oakland Tribune, emailed me shortly thereafter, saying in part:

However, the points you have made from what I can tell don’t come close to constituting the need for a retraction. You may not agree with the tenor of the story, or agree with the way it was sourced and what information was not reported, but writing a story in this manner does not warrant a retraction. Not even close.

Martin conveniently missed the point. I never complained about the “tenor” of the piece. I complained that their reporters abdicated their responsibilities as journalist. Anyone even faintly acquainted the political football of gun control would agree that the Oakland Tribune’s reporting lay somewhere between negligent and fraudulent. Martin might not appreciate blunt assessments of his staff’s shortcomings as journalists and human beings, but he misrepresented the nature of the problem and complaint as slickly as his two reporters misrepresented everything.

He also did not bother to question his questioner. Had he performed two seconds of investigative journalism himself, he would have ascertained my position as one of the Bay Area’s top gun control policy experts (I even used my GunFacts.info email address, which should have been his first lead) and one who had published op/eds in his paper previously. This miscue became comically evident when he finished his email with:

And I don’t think you read the story very closely if you think the reporter equated guns shows (sic) with guns on the streets.

Silly me for not closely reading the article before demanding a retraction, and in the process detailing why the article was beneath the lowest of journalistic bars as well as contempt.

I fired off a reply to Martin offering that he or his minions contradict my observation. I suggested the Oakland Tribune serialize the article, having the original reporters interview criminologists with opposing views on the sources for crime guns, or at very least explain why they were excluded in the original story. I strongly suggested that his reporters at very least ask gun-owners rights groups for data that might counterpoint the sound bites they had blindly parroted for the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center and the Joyce Foundation-funded university medical researcher they quoted.

Martin was unimpressed with my suggestion that his reporters commit work or journalism. He did take up my gauntlet, and replied:

As editor of this newspaper I endeavor to give voice to as many perspectives as possible. May I also suggest you write a letter to the editor, or a short 500 word opinion piece we call a “My Word” stating your views and concerns with the story. I would be happy to make sure it gets on our opinion page.

I emphasize the last sentence as prelude and the cornerstone of evidence that Martin Reynolds has no respect for his own integrity or that of his profession.

Most people would be intimidated by his offer. Being a writer, a gun policy expert and more than ready to lead public opinion back from the intellectual wastelands into which the Oakland Tribune led them, I sent off a piece within a couple of days. I did not attack the Trib, its writers or even Martin. I simply positioned the facts behind Oakland’s crime wave and how gun control was not the answer. As always, I tailed the submission with a small stack of citations from quality research and government sources. I sent the piece in reply email to Martin, copying his promise to publish. Then I waited.

And waited, and waited, and …

I gave Martin nearly a month to reply and/or publish, pinging him upon occasion, checking the Tribune web site and even resubmitting the op/ed through their online interface. Nada. I searched the Oakland Trib web site daily using both my name and various keywords to find my response to their journalistic lapse.

I finally gave up, rewrote the piece, submitted it to the San Francisco Chronicle. They printed it shortly thereafter.

Allow a tally:

• The Oakland Tribune published a piece of journalistic effluvium
• An expert on the topic complained
• The editor of the Trib promised to publish an opposing perspective
• The editor reneged on his promise

The price one places on their self-respect varies from person to person. The average man won’t sell his at any price. A politician or an Oakland Tribune reporter sells theirs at a discount. A street walker sells hers for spare change. But the editor of the Oakland Tribune gains not a penny for his - he cannot sell what he does not posses.

If you feel compelled to remind Marin that journalistic integrity is essential, feel free to pop him a note at mreynolds@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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George Bush the 1^st learned that mucking in markets is madness.

Bush the Elder imposed a 10% luxury tax during his only term as President. This tax on consumption by well-heeled folk had the peculiar effect of eliminating most of the Florida yacht building industry. Wealthy people (Republican-defined wealthy, not Democrat-defined) ran the numbers, determined they could buy yachts in neighboring countries for less and take a nice little vacation to pick up their boat with the spare change. And they did.

Fiberglass layers, engine mechanics, and sail makers … you know, the blue collar vote … all lost their jobs while Sunshine State yacht building companies tanked.

If anyone is wondering why gasoline prices are so high these days, a good first place to look is government and how they have mucked in the markets.

China admitted as much today as they raised gasoline prices by 18%, which is not a price hike at all.

China and India both are in hyper growth modes. Since most of their population is poor, and since continued industrialization requires energy and transportation, these countries subsidize gasoline prices. So does Iran, Venezuela, and other nations run by advanced-stage syphilis patients.

Gasoline in those countries is less expensive than the market would otherwise demand, and as a result, gas and oil consumption is higher than it would otherwise be. This artificially high demand creates artificial shortages, which causes prices to artificially rise.

Oil has risen, climbing 100% in the last year alone.

An unintended consequence of market meddling is that the difference in the artificially low price of gasoline and the artificially high price of oil is paid for by these insane regimes. This is the real reason why China is reducing subsidies in order to raise prices: they can’t afford to keep paying the ransom they created.

Monkey with any self-balancing system (like an open market economy) and the system falls out of balance. Typically it falls on the people who tossed the monkey wrench into the machinery.

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Q: What do Cassandra and Al Gore have in common?

A: Nothing.

That poor tart of antiquity (Cassandra, not Al, though he may well be old enough to qualify) knew with certainty what the future held, and nobody believed her. Gore on the other hand has prophesied on his and excited a throbbing mixed mass of the guilt-ridden yuppies, aging hippies, and anyone easily frightened by news anchors with serious facial expressions.

Brian Williams’ scowl has been known to scare small children into wetting themselves. Some adults too.

The cycle has become more predictable than any of the prophesies from the alarmist industry. We can go back to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring where she predicted mass species annihilation due to some pesticides, and as an indirect effect condemned millions of children to die from malaria that could have effectively been controlled with judicial use of the pesticides she caused to be banned. Rachel could be rightly accused of inciting an anti-intellectual riot resulting in manslaughter.

Her process — one of taking some small scientific theory or reality and extrapolating worst-case scenarios — has oft been repeated. A mere six years later Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb claimed that in the 1970s “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Yet the only wide-spread starvation that occurred where caused by governments creating artificial food shortages as weapons … or in Hollywood where actresses upchucked their excesses.

This parade of false prophets has continued unabated. Some predicted the end of natural resources in the 1970’s and even the end of the human species by the year 2000. Oddly, the only thing that died at the millennial turn were a small piece of my liver, that collided with a dose of Jack Daniels … all night long.

One would think … well maybe not. Perhaps one should think about these serial sages and their apocalyptic predictions, and then think about Al Gore.

Try not to think of him too much as the side effects are unpleasant.

Gore is the modern Malthus, taking premature trends and projecting pandemics and pestilence. Al’s predictions are about as accurate. Often echoing other eco-prophets, Al’s earlier Earth in the Balance book and various speeches claimed we would have no arable soil, no forests, oceans devoid of fish, and no oil.

Funny. I had fish for dinner last night, with a nice salad (grown in soil I assume), and went for a walk afterwards in a redwood grove before filling my tank of my pickup.

I won’t pick on Al anymore (today). But the history of doomsayers is long, going back to ancient Greece and perhaps further. Of their dire predictions, very few have come true. Take what political apocalyptics say with two grains of salt.

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Be wary of stupid people in large groups. They tend to be dangerous.

Just watch any session of Congress.

Today’s lunacy lesson revolves around a tiny film called Fitna. The video involves the Quran (or Koran for American journalists) and was produced by a non-Muslim. That combination alone is enough to ignite lethal agitation among zealots sans intelligence (if I may be redundant).

In this presentation, producer Geert Wilders simply shows verses from the Quran, then plays video of Islamists who obviously wound their turbans too tightly. For each of these select passages Wilders shows the verses being used as justification for abusing women, slavery and homicide. Wilders’ point appears to be that like many religions before, some people are using Islam to justify theological fascism.

You know, like the Roman church did by posting a copy of Deuteronomy in every inquisition waiting room.

Granted, Wilders put a prickly point on his presentation, using some of the more graphic (though edited) videos produced by Islamist for Fascism, Inc. (if you don’t like seeing a masked jihadist holding aloft a freshly severed caucasian head, then don’t watch Finta). Wilders’ selected footage is the best of their worst, or as I like to say “the cream of the crap.”

But at no place in the video does Wilders call Islam a bad name, defame Mohamed, or call for reverse jihad. He simply exposes people misusing religion as a means for their maniacal mission.

Tell that to the Islamist. Well try to tell them if you can get them to quit scream and burning effigies long enough to engage in thoughtful discussion (yes, I know — I’m pissin’ into the wind with that notion).

All too predictably, after the film hit the Internet violence erupted among Islamic hot heads (how can your head not be hot when you live in the desert and is wrap your head in turban — maybe they have simply baked their brains to the point of imbecility). “They call this freedom of expression, but it’s freedom of aggression,” said one over agitated ass. Failing to have watched the film or to dispassionately consider Wilders’ core message, he continued with the obligatory “God is great.”

Well, at least he got something right. I hope he joins one group that marched in protest of the film. They were wearing headbands that read “We are ready to sacrifice our lives for the sanctity of the prophet”.

That can be arranged.

What would be amusing were it not for the sadness of stupidity is that Radical Islamist have detached themselves from reality. Sane people who watch Wilders’ film will not think less of Islam. They would instead see an analysis of how dimwits with dictatorial dementia abuse the Prophet’s words to justify their temporal tantrums. Loons — like the leadership of Jamate-e-Islami — are Wilders target.

Likewise with my literary cross-hairs and Leupold scope.

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Liberalism has been called the politics of wishful thinking.

In actuality it is the politics of hope above reality, which gives and entirely new dimension the Obama brand.

A tragic case in point is the latest squandering of scratch this side of Congressional salaries. In my silly city of San Francisco, the government has sought to house the homeless. A noble ideal and one grounded in the same ruthless, rational logic of any Monty Python skit.

The Mayor — a locally grown Bill Clinton, replete with his own trouser problems — last year predicted his pet project and election gimmick would provide “healthy, affordable housing for 106 formerly homeless individuals.”

Affordable it is given that the bill is footed by people with homes, jobs, incomes, kids to raise, and a larger than ever tax bill. “Healthy” it might be if it weren’t for secondhand crack cocaine smoke in the hallways. In San Francisco’s Plaza Apartments, you don’t even need a “contact high” — respiration is sufficient.

As with Federal public housing projects before, The Mayor was oblivious to the mechanics of crime and poverty. Ignoring decades of research into why people become homeless, Frisco conceptualized a simple (and thus simplistic) solution of giving homes to the homeless. This assumed that homelessness was the cause, and not merely a symptom of another and larger problem.

A government flunky, in a rare moment of lucidity, noted “80 to 90 percent of the people we have are struggling with drug use. We know when we bring those people indoors those issues do not go away.”

He later said the sky was blue, bunnies are cute, and that Gavin Newsom in no way deserved the salary he receives.

Various surveys of homeless hominids claim that between 68% to 90% have become full time sidewalk campers due to drug and alcohol abuse. Interviewing these folks shows that they were born with better options. None started life with a crack pipe in the infant lips and begging for spare change from other babies. They descended the societal ladder one drink or rock at a time.

Much like Paris Hilton’s panties.

This is the norm of criminality as well as self destruction. Crime does not cause criminal behaviour. The poor tend to be victims of criminals because a life of crime leads to poverty and thugs descend into poor neighborhoods. You don’t have to take my word on this. Throughout the rural South are good, decent, hard-working people still farming the forty acres their ancestors were awarded. These people are about as poor as you could fear becoming, and yet are not innately prone to committing crimes. Nor are they routinely victimized since criminals tend to light in cities where their targets are more numerous and thus their trade is more profitable.

Then they run for office.

This why public housing projects are deadly districts of maddening malfeasance. Once the poor were warehoused into centralized locations, criminals drifted into the projects, bringing their life-long habits with them. When the government made single motherhood possible, if not profitable, gang games became even more lucrative. Mobile sperm donors, unshackled from the bonds of marriage and raising their offspring, could continue their felonious existence. Crime became a lifestyle.
The same systematics apply to San Francisco’s Homeless Hilton. Take a population of people — 70% or more of whom cannot keep bottles from their lips and needles out of their veins — and stack them like corpulent cordwood into a central facility. One must expect the root cause of their low lifestyle to follow. Thinking that providing a roof and a stipend would change decade long addictions requires the special insanity reserved for politicians.

“[P]ermanent supportive housing solves homelessness,” is what Mayor Newsom said when the program received federal funding.

Nothing in the known universe (i.e., reality) can make a boozer sober except the discipline to say “no”. The same applies to junkies and loco politicians with taxing authority.

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