Thursday, 24 September 2015

In Passing

Organizational capture at Wesleyan

SJWs Always Lie  Dept

Daily Pundit:
That train is never late….

There’s a kerfuffle going on at Wesleyan University over an op-ed piece the student newspaper, The Argus, published recently...

The response — a petition signed by roughly 150 students and faculty — is predictably rich in the variety and inanity of its demands, yet as fascinating as these details are, there is a leitmotif that runs through the outrage — one as familiar to us as the sound of coins clinking in a pocket.

It appears that, in the eyes of the petitioners, the Argus is insufficiently diverse, in part because it offers no ‘‘paid’’ positions on its staff.  This purely volunteer workplace, therefore, is discouraging to students — chiefly minority students — who need compensation for their efforts, owing to their oppressed economic status.

Among the demands of the petition, therefore, is that the newspaper establish a number of staff positions with sufficient hard cash emolument to enable suitable candidates to add their voices to the general chorus, no longer obstructed by the grinding poverty that hitherto has impeded their progress at a $60,000+/year college...
To which Bill Quick offered:
They could add ten paid positions and then, to reflect the racial makeup of the Wesleyan student body, they could give one of those positions to a black kid...

That should make them happy...
Which misunderstands what is really going on:  It’s not about one position that might go to some protected class member, its about the other nine positions which will be filled with noisy Social Justice Warrior types.

Possibly making SJWs the majority of the paper’s staff; certainly putting the paid SJWs at an advantage vis-a-vis the unpaid volunteers.  Expect organizational capture within a year or so.

Remember:  It’s never about the issue; it’s always about the power.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 18:34:08 GMT | Comments (62) | Add Comment
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Friday, 18 September 2015

In Passing

Stock up on coal?

Your Government Inaction  Dept

Trains:
BNSF Railway’s chief executive, Carl Ice, said September 9 that BNSF would in effect shut down most of its network rather than violate a federal law mandating that positive train control be operational by December 31.  CSX Transportation has said it, too, questions whether it should violate federal laws, and other Class I carriers are likely to follow suit.  This set up the real possibility of a national transportation crisis at the beginning of 2016...
...
BNSF reads the law as saying no train can legally operate on a PTC-mandated line if PTC is not in service by December 31...  Ice adds that were his railroad to operate over lines where PTC is not in place and an accident occur[], the exposure to legal claims and punitive damages would be significant.
...
Six years ago Congress thought it was giving railroads enough time to do this...  But implementation has been a disaster.  The technology being put in place is largely new.  [The] FRA was slow to issue necessary rules.  Signal engineers able to put all the pieces together have been in short supply.  And then for more than a year everything ground to a halt because the Federal Communications Commission would not issue permits for construction of radio towers and antennae.
...
...Railroads have sought is an extension of the deadline, something that Congress has thus far refused to act upon... 

Appears we might get a chance to try out the President’s new no-coal energy rules a bit sooner than planned.

Sleep warm!


More:
(Thanks to J.E.D.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 22:37:02 GMT | Comments (67) | Add Comment
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Wednesday, 16 September 2015

The Press

How they lie


Passive voice, missing details, spontaneous happenings:

HEAD: Jewish Man Dies as Rocks Pelt His Car in East Jerusalem
[ED: ‘‘As rocks pelt his car’’?  How exactly did the rocks go about doing this... get up off the ground and hurl themselves..?]
...
COPY:  A Jewish man died [ED: ‘‘was killed.’’] early Monday morning after attackers pelted the road [ED: ‘‘pelted the road’’?  They were aiming at the pavement?  Please clarify.] he was driving on with rocks as he was returning home from a dinner celebrating Rosh Hashana...
Etc., etc.

Oh, it’s the New York Times. ‘‘Unexpectedly.’’


Elsewhere:
Instapundit: Politics and The English Language
from Skeptical Thinker’s comment:
In the left-wing Hebrew press, the distinction in even greater than in English, because ‘‘progressive’’ writers don’t even use the passive voice, which at least implies somebody threw the rocks or fired the shots.  Whenever possible, they use the ‘‘middle’’ voice (as in Greek), which implies no such actor.  For example, they prefer avanim hit’offefu (literally, ‘‘rocks flung themselves in the air’’) to avanim niz’reku (‘‘rocks were thrown’’).

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 21:34:40 GMT | Comments (99) | Add Comment
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Tuesday, 15 September 2015

In Passing

Crony Capitalists ‘‘Endorse’’ Trump?


Indirectly...

...A key group of business leaders is pretty clear about who they think will come out on top, according to the latest CNBC Global CFO Council survey.

The CFO Council represents some of the largest public and private companies in the world and collectively manages more than $2 trillion in market capitalization across a wide variety of sectors.  Of the 34 council members, 19 (or 56 percent) of the council responded to this quarter’s survey.

More than 72 percent of members of the council surveyed earlier this month say Jeb Bush will in fact win the Republican nomination.
That was June.  Now, three months later, there’s this:
Wall Street is growing increasingly terrified that Donald Trump — once viewed as an amusing summertime distraction — could actually win the Republican nomination for president.
...
The industry began this election cycle confident that a GOP candidate like Bush would win, and offer some reprieve from populist anger.
Bush?  Reduce ‘‘populist anger?’’  Really?

Trump:  Making all the right people nervous, one at a time...


Elsewhere:
Daily Pundit:  Nobody I Know Voted For….Trump?
Ace of Spades HQ:  Wall Streeters Beginning to Panic...
I hope they are panicking.  They are liberal Democrats, and aggressive ones, who despise conservatives, but rely on conservatives to protect them from liberal Democrat tax policies, which for some reason, we do.
Ed Driscoll:  President Goldman Sachs Hardest Hit

HT:  CNBC via Ace’s sidebar

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 21:07:32 GMT | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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