The Patriot Post® · Last Snowfall of the Season Miscellaneous
Last Tuesday, The New York Times featured a photo from the White House Easter Egg Roll. It showed two adorable little girls on the White House lawn, decked out in brightly colored skirts and jackets, both with pink bows in their hair. One of the girls is using her spoon to roll an egg; the other is standing next to her, crying her eyes out. With apologies to Humphrey Bogart for stealing his “Casablanca” line, of all the gin joints; of all the millions of possible photos…
I realize that Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well in the mainstream media, but really?
CNN’s ratings are tanking, and there was an article the other day citing CNN executives as contemplating a change in their strategy. It’s no secret that the mainstream media has it in for Trump, with something like 90% of the coverage negative. In the cable world, MSNBC and CNN have been slugging it out for the gold medal in Trump bashing. But according to recent ratings, MSNBC (while still trailing Fox News) is pulling away.
There is a subtle difference in their approaches. While they both criticize everything Trump, MSNBC generally provides a liberal alternative, but CNN is simply vitriolically negative and its audience is tuning out. Maybe just being anti-Trump is losing its cache among the Democrat faithful. And since Democrats have little else, that might bode well for the GOP in November.
The reverse needs to be true, however, for the GOP in the midterms. There seems to be a trend toward running on Trump’s accomplishments — tax cuts, national security gains, regulatory reform, judges, etc. And while that is certainly positive, it is not going to be enough. Midterm voters tend to be more emotional, unlike in the presidential years where more is at stake and substance plays a bigger role. The Democrat base is motivated. Unfortunately, emotion often translates into negative advertising.
I would prefer that the GOP win on substance. But to prevent a possible blue wave, it will need to go on the attack as well. Losing the House will result in a full stop in everything but impeachment, attempts to shred the Second Amendment, and the rolling back of tax cuts and regulatory reforms, among others. GOP voters need to be frequently reminded of the good but also about the downside of a Democrat-controlled House.
Back in the good old days, when we did multibillion-dollar hostile acquisitions over a weekend, Big Bank mergers were a staple of the merger and acquisition business. The expense budget for these deals always included a line termed “miscellaneous legal expense.” In fact, this characterization was really code for “extortion payment.”
The way it worked was that the deal would be announced, requiring regulatory approval. Within days, an “activist” would appear (the most likely suspect was Jesse Jackson), conduct interviews with all major media outlets, and threaten to sue to block the deal unless certain patterns of activity by the offending banks were corrected. The typical grievance of choice was racial discrimination in things like mortgage applications, a practice known as “redlining.”
There would be the perfunctory denials by the banks, and visible meetings would be arranged with Jackson et al. at which possible “reforms” were discussed. As the deal got closer to closing date, those discussions evolved into a “settlement.” The banks would not admit any wrongdoing but would agree never to do it again and install new guidelines for lending throughout their systems.
Since no legal violations were proven, there were no victims to compensate. But to better inform the minority communities of their rights and the new efforts being made to increase their chances of getting mortgages, funding was provided for “reach out” programs to get the message into minority communities.
Unsurprisingly, the organizers of those efforts and recipients of the funding were groups affiliated with the aforementioned Jackson. The deals were often so big that the amounts paid were rounding errors. And while the odds of Jackson actually being able to block the deal were infinitesimal, the payments were worth the cost in distraction and unfavorable PR. What a country.
With Jackson having completed his farewell tour, one might think that the days of racially based extortion were behind us. To refute that assumption, I give you the Target Corporation.
Target recently “settled” an NAACP Legal Fund lawsuit that had claimed racial discrimination in Target’s employment application process because it had the temerity to ask applicants if they had a criminal record — apparently because, according to the NAACPLF, we live in an inherently racist country where minorities are convicted of crimes and incarcerated at rates disproportionate to the general population, therefore any inclusion of criminal records in job applications by definition discriminates.
The lawsuit goes on to say that while some review of criminal backgrounds might be acceptable, it should be tempered by the severity of the crime, how long ago it happened, and (ready for this?) whether the crime was “relevant” to the job function of the position. I guess if you were applying for sales clerk, the fact that you were a drug dealer might be a résumé enhancer.
Target settled, denied any wrongdoing, and agreed to modify its process by deferring asking about criminal records until the final stages and not use it as a screening criterion early on. On what planet is the fact that you have a criminal record not relevant to a hiring decision? An employer might decide to overlook it if other factors compensate, but preventing it from asking is just plain nonsensical.
As compensation for anyone denied a job inappropriately, Target established a $3.75 million fund. But if folks who incurred damages can’t be found, then the money goes to — drum roll — the NAACPLF. I guess times are tough if it would go through all that effort for such a small result. At least Jackson aimed a tad higher and his settlements generally had another zero in them. Sadly, victimhood remains alive and well.
Have you noticed the differences in the way the media has covered the Florida school and California YouTube shootings? Granted, in Florida, 17 people were murdered, while in California three people were injured and only the shooter died by committing suicide. But the general implications of both shootings were very disturbing and might deserve similar media treatment.
The focus of the Florida aftermath has been on the weapon used and how more gun control is the answer. We have heard precious little about the shooter and his motives and even less about the failures of government at every level to protect the kids, particularly to acknowledge that the shooter was a bad actor with multiple reports of violent and mentally unstable/potentially criminal behavior, and nothing was done.
In California, the focus has been on the shooter and her motives. The fact that she passed a background check, waited the required period, and used a common semiautomatic handgun is buried in paragraph 37 because it doesn’t fit the gun control narrative. She didn’t use an “assault weapon,” and there was no remedy short of banning guns that would have prevented her from getting access to the weapon.
Since that is not where the gun control folks want to go, the media coverage of California was instead about the shooter (female, vegan, animal rights activist, immigrant from Iran, member of the B'aaith religion, and very active YouTube contributor).
In fact, we are told that YouTube was her way to make a living, and the platform had recently changed its compensation policies that made it progressively more difficult for her to make a living. It comes close to the media looking to provide a sympathetic rationale for her actions, but in any event, it keeps scrutiny away from the weapon and the method of obtaining it since nothing about that serves the gun control agenda. It helps that social media is in the crosshairs these days for things like privacy violations.
Speaking of social media, how about Facebook? I find the hurricane surrounding the company, including the mea culpa pilgrimage by Mark Zuckerberg to DC this week, the height of irony. The idea that Facebook users and the pols that want to take advantage of them are somehow shocked that Facebook is letting advertisers see their private data is absurd. That has been the Facebook business model and bargain with its users from day one — you get to use the platform for free and use it to voluntarily send your private data to everybody, and Facebook supports it by selling ad space that is optimized by using that data.
The irony is that no one would care about what is now being cited as an inexcusable “breech” of data usage if a whistleblower at Cambridge Analytics had not implied that the company used the data inappropriately to help the Trump campaign. It was the latest attempt to excuse Hillary Clinton’s loss on stolen data, and the Left is so Trump-deranged that it was willing to throw its liberal poster child Zuckerberg under the bus if there was a whiff of a chance that they could nail Trump.
Now that Cambridge Analytics has admitted using the data in fraudulent ways — either with Facebook’s knowledge or naiveté (as thousands of other APP developers do) — but denied using it to help Trump, the Left is caught. The rationale for blasting Facebook was privacy violations, not Trump, because that might sell better. But with Trump off the table, leftists still have to follow through with their privacy investigations.
The real gripes with Facebook are not from folks who think their privacy has been compromised; compromising privacy on Facebook is the whole point of its existence, and everybody knows it, whether you read the privacy statements or not. They are from the developers who are being squeezed on revenue shares and restricted from posting ads. It’s a profit allocation dispute, not a holier-than-thou privacy issue.
The fact is that with the opportunity to delegitimize Trump out of the equation, no one in DC really wants to bash Facebook and Zuckerberg, and Zuckerberg certainly doesn’t want DC regulators involved in his money machine. Watch for the falling on the sword from Zuckerberg this week and grandstanding from the pols trying to posture themselves as guardians of the folks. It will all fall short of anything meaningful being done. Facebook will agree to try harder and do better, and the pols will pat themselves on the back for making the powerful social media platform grovel. We will be back to slightly modified versions of business as usual by next month.
The real issue is the allocation of revenue. In a big-picture sense, the product is advertising. Companies will pay something for data to better promote their stuff on Facebook. Facebook provides the platform where folks generate information relevant to advertisers and auctions off its space using that data. In that sense, Facebook is simply a different form of media outlet, like TV, radio and newspapers.
Users pay nothing but have no real idea what their data is worth. If you really wanted to level the playing field, you would allow the users to own their data, not Facebook, and each individual user could auction that off to advertisers directly. Obviously, if that revenue went around Facebook, it could no longer afford to provide the platform for free and would wind up charging users to be on it. The arbitrage of the advertiser dollars would then find their equilibrium with the cost of supporting the platform.
This would be Facebook’s worst nightmare, so Zuckerberg will do everything he can to avoid it while keeping the regulators at bay. The practice runs with his lawyers and PR army would be worth the price of admission to watch.
Individual ownership of data on Facebook would probably be the fairest business model, but we will need for blockchain to take over the world for that to be realistic. In the meantime, enjoy the show this week while Zuckerberg and the pols play their roles and preserve most of the status quo for Facebook’s bottom line and the campaign donations it supports.