Utopia, you are standing in it!

The insidious nature of prominent media myths is evident in how casually they are invoked, as if their veracity is beyond question.

These blithe, passing references in news articles and commentary seldom are accompanied by much context or explanation. And their appearance signals how deeply embedded some media myths have become.

Two recent cases serve to illustrate this tendency.

Musings in the New York Times

One example appeared last week in an entertaining if overlong New York Timesarticle that mused about the identity of an elusive and anonymous Instagram user whose handle is rg_bunny1. Over the recent months, user rg_bunny1 has unleashed what the Times called “a daily torrent of quirky, particular images that, taken together, speak to an aesthetic that delights, confounds, fixates and infuriates in equal measures.”

What most interests Media Myth Alertwas the article’s passing reference to Carl Bernstein, one of the Washington…

The new Israeli governing coalition had a major stress test in the early morning hours of 6 July. It came through looking really strong! it failed utterly!

On the one hand, the bill in question went down to defeat, 59-59. The bill was to extend and modify an existing law that expires at midnight. So that’s pretty embarrassing, especially when a critical lost vote was a member of the prime minister’s party, Amichai Chikli of Yamina. Chikli had also voted against the government itself in the investiture vote a few weeks ago, when the government was approved, 60-59. In the vote on this bill, instead of one Ra’am MK abstaining, as in the investiture, two did.

Before I go any further, an important disclaimer: I am NOT interested in debate on the substance of the law in question, other than as it pertains to the specific compromises the governing…

Since Winston emerged a few weeks ago giving the government, media and anyone else he could think of a serve for the rapid descent the country is taking into Te Reo and a change of name to Aotearoa I have been considering the likely rise and rise again of Winston and New Zealand First. Then along came the latest Roy Morgan Poll and that served to confirm my thoughts even though the party did not feature in the poll headlines.

The first thing I did was take a look at Curia and KiwiBlog which displays polling averages and these indicate that historically NZFirst has a `core constituency’ of about 3% – possibly more like 2% at present but it fluctuates and Winston would tell anyone who would listen it is as much as 10% on a good day.

What this does tell me is that all NZFirst has to do…

Texans and Californians now have a choice between no power and getting their own diesel generators. Mass blackouts and power rationing are now the norm, thanks to an obsession with chaotically intermittent wind and solar, in both cases.

Back in February, it was a big freeze that froze turbines and plastered solar panels with blankets of snow and ice; some 4 million Texans were left powerless during that debacle.

Now as the weather heats up, it’s a case of déjà vu, all over again.

The California and Texas Greenouts
Wall Street Journal
Editorial
16 June 2021

Electric grid operators in Texas and California are again urging residents to conserve power amid a sweltering heat wave to avoid blackouts. Keeping your thermostat at 78 degrees during the summer may be the green new normal.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) warned this week that a large number of unexpected power…

Last night we were subjected to an extraordinary interview where the Human Rights Commissioner defended his decision to give taxpayer money to the Mongrel Mob in form of a koha, He said it would be ‘churlish’ of him not to do so. Then followed a long dissertation about koha being a form of respect with some obscure Maori academic weighing in that the idea of gift giving between parties shows mana to both parties … ‘if you do not give a gift then you are depleting their mana’.

What tosh. The Mongrel Mob are a criminal gang. They are major players in the manufacture, supply and distribution of illegal drugs along with a range of other criminal activity … just where does the Human Rights Commissioner think all those Harley-Davidsons replete with all the bells and whistles come from.

More evidence that Labour is a prisoner to woke thinking. Soft…

Programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, along with the tax code’s healthcare exclusion, have created a system where consumers directly pay for only about 10 percent of the care they receive.

We think it’s normal and appropriate for either the government or an insurance company to foot the bill.

Yet this system of “third-party payer” explains why the health care system in the United States is inefficient and expensive.

Is it possible, though, to put the toothpaste back in the tube? Can we unwind the bad government policies that have undermined market forces?

There are certainly big-picture reforms that would be helpful. Genuine entitlement reform could address the problems with Medicare and Medicaid, and fundamental tax reform could get rid of the healthcare exclusion.

But progress is possible even without major policy change.

Reason interviewed a doctor, Lee Gross, who decided to set up a…

Since when were French Presidents, or any other leaders, in a position to ‘protect the planet’ or alter the weather? The sooner such obvious nonsense ends, the better.
– – –
Reuters: The French Senate has voted to block a referendum promised by President Emmanuel Macron on whether to enshrine the fight against climate change in the French constitution, it said in a statement on Monday.

Macron had pledged to organise such a vote in response to criticism that he has not done enough to protect the planet.

The Senate, the legislature’s upper house, is dominated by the opposition conservatives.

In May, it watered down draft legislation requiring the constitution to “guarantee” the fight against climate change, preferring less binding wording.

Continued here.

The Public Finance Act requires that every four years The Treasury publishes a “statement on the long-term fiscal position” looking “at least” 40 years ahead. Parliament allowed them to defer the report due last year, but yesterday they published a draft – for consultation – of the report they will formally publish later this year. Quite why they have chosen to go through this additional step, of consulting formally on the draft of a report that is likely to have next to no impact even when finalised, is a little beyond me.

These long-term fiscal reports are fashionable around the world. As I’ve noted previously I was once quite keen on the idea, but have become much more sceptical. They take a lot of work/resource – which should be scarce, and thus comes at a cost of other analysis/advice The Treasury might work on – and really do little more…