On Monday, the Wall Street Journal editorial page took a break from denying climate change to vigorously defend parent company New Corp., which is embroiled in a brutal hacking scandal. Kevin Drum was not impressed.
The editorial board of the Salem Statesmen Journal, one of the most influential newspapers in Oregon, is not messing around.
Their piece on the coming fight over making Oregon a so-called “right to work” state goes right to the point: this law is bad for Oregon, and the only reason we’re talking about it is because of deep-pocket out-of-state special interests.
Don’t know what a “right to work” law is? The editorial kicks it off with a succinct definition:
Under right-to-work laws, employees in unionized workplaces no longer can be required to pay unions for the cost of being represented. That’s the sum and substance of right to work, in one sentence.
These laws, passed in 24 states, have nothing to do with protecting those who have a job from losing it or granting anyone who needs a job the right to find it. Yet the phrase persists, because political factions that back such legislation aren’t courageous or honest enough to call them what they are.
Right-to-work is a misnomer. If proponents were straight with us, they’d call these transparently vindictive efforts a “Right to Weaken Unions Act” or a “Right to Punish Those Who Oppose Us Measure.” The laws drain money from unions under the guise of creating a more business-friendly environment for states.
As we’ve written, the national “right to work” effort sputtered in 2013. In Oregon, Portland attorney Jill Gilbson Odell is sponsoring a “right to work” initiative intended for the 2014 ballot. “There’s national money to be had,” she told the Associated Press, mentioning “large donors” who would back her. But 2013 saw little movement for Odell’s effort, and popular Gov. John Kitzhaber has already stated his opposition.
Yet Oregon remains a top target for national “right to work” backers. “[It’s] as if a big red X has been affixed to a map of our state by outside influences who have decided in secret that we are to be the next target in their misinformation campaign,” the editorial board writes.
Odell’s claims may indeed pan out, and the anti-worker initiative could get the big dollars it needs to get to the ballot. In that case, the Statesmen Journal has a simple suggestion:
The misinformation campaign is coming. Right-to-work proponents are expecting you to roll over and play dumb. We suggest you sit up and become informed.
Here are some real facts to get you started:
Learn more about “right to work” laws at WrongforEveryone.com.
[T]hat narrative of Conservative Victimization… is the true genius of what Fox News has accomplished. Any editorial judgment in news, or schools, or movies, that doesn’t favor the conservative view, is elitism and is evidence of liberal bias. Whereas any editorial judgment that FAVORS the conservative view, is evidence of merely fairness and done to protect them from liberal bias. And, if you criticize Fox for this game, guess what that’s evidence of?
The best chance this year to repeal the irrational ban on openly gay members of the military slipped away Tuesday, thanks to the buildup of acrimony and mistrust in the United States Senate.
Editorial - Military Equality Goes Astray - NYTimes.com
I’m a huge fan of the language used in this editorial. Irrational indeed.
(via mar-see-ah)
Warren Buffett has a message for Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal: Sure, I’ll release my tax returns, if you do too.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial that asked Buffett to disclose his tax returns. The piece, “Mr. Buffett’s Tax Secrets,” took issue with Buffett’s plan to hike taxes on some of the super-rich.
The Journal’s conservative editorial board doesn’t think that’s a great idea, saying that Buffett should instead “educate the public” by letting “everyone else in on his secrets of tax avoidance by releasing his tax returns.”
Asked about the editorial on Tuesday at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, Buffett said he was willing to release his tax returns, on one condition:
“I think it might be a terrific idea if they would just ask their boss, Rupert Murdoch, and he and I will meet at Fortune, and we’ll both give you our tax returns and you can publish them,” Buffett said.
“I’m ready tomorrow morning,” he added.
Representatives from News Corp., the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It would be impossible to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution because there are a number of different reasons for why people end up homeless. But The Times’ editorial board strongly believes that permanent supportive housing is the most productive solution. Beyond a place to sleep, it would give people a brick-and-mortar address so that they may receive Social Security checks. They’d also have resources, including an employment center and mental health counselors, so that they may have the best shot at rehabilitation.
wow, thinking on homelessness in los angeles has really turned a corner. i remember not even 5 years ago, support for permanent supportive housing was seen as a radical liberal approach to homelessness. now, even the relatively conservative LA Times editorial board has embraced it as an official position.
i don’t think the change was motivated by any discussions of rights or the inherent worth and dignity of all people, regardless of homeless status, or by talking about how individuals and families become homeless not because of moral failures but because of financial crises that aren’t cushioned by insurance or by accumulated wealth. (for the record, i think those are all very important reasons to support permanent supportive housing programs, but i don’t think that’s what compelled decisionmakers.)
in my opinion and experience, it’s economic studies like this one the economic roundtable released in 2009 that have really shifted policy on this issue. the study documented the public costs to los angeles county for homeless individuals and families from services such as public health and emergency room costs; probation and jail costs, including health care for people in jail; and emergency shelter costs. the study documented that the typical public cost per homeless person was $2,897 a month - compared to the typical cost for residents in supportive housing of $605 a month.
those numbers are what changed people’s minds. 5 years ago, i would have doubted that the la times would ever say anything positive about creating and subsidizing permanent supportive housing - rather than implying it incentivized homelessness and rewarded drug abusers - much less embrace it as their editorial position.
this is why i think data are important. this is why i think we need social justice folks trained to present information in a way that folks in government, conservative thinkers, can hear and understand it. because at the end of the day, i care way more about the accumulated support for permanent supportive housing than whether it was a rights framework or an economic argument that got people there.
Tony Messenger, the editorial page editor of the St. Louis Dispatch, told CNN’s Brian Stelter why he dropped George Will’s column from his paper after Will’s highly controversial editorial on sexual assault. Messenger said he was sorry that they even published it in the first place and that Will’s words trivialized the sexual assault on women.
MESSENGER: Well, the reaction we had from readers, particularly from women, so many of them were so deeply offended that they could be called — that George Will told them that they were trying to somehow seek a special status, that they were trying to seek some privileged status because of their alleged sexual assault.
It just — we had a lot of readers very angry and very hurt. And it caused us to go back and take a look at it, and it reinforced our previous decision, that he had lost a little bit of speed off his fastball, and it just caused us to make the decision a little bit more quickly than we would have otherwise.
STELTER: You even apologized for running the column in the first place. That must be pretty rare.
When the history of Rupert Murdoch’s ownership of the Wall Street Journal is written, it’s likely that today’s petulant, tin-eared unsigned editorial about the sprawling phone-hacking scandal will be noted as an important low point. Indeed, the wildly misguided and clownish piece, which reads like a furious, indignant Murdoch himself wrote it, might mark a turning point of sorts.
The editorial, which is being eviscerated online, as well it should, represents just one example in recent days of Murdoch’s American properties trying desperately to come to their owner’s aid by offering up the unseemly combination of fabrications and self-pity.
Post-PC world? I think my eyes just rolled out of my head.
This article is pure bullshit. PCs were around before Apple, and they will be around after the iCraze has died down. Saying we live in a post-PC world is like somebody saying in 1993 that AOL has cornered the ISP market forever and ever: “…duh, it’s like synonymous with the internet itself, guys.”
“Macs are glorified fisher-price playcenters for adults”
But what makes today’s Washington Post editorial so remarkable, such a tour de force, is that the editors are literally calling for the criminal prosecution of one of the most important sources in their own newspaper’s history. Having basked in the glory of awards and accolades, and benefited from untold millions of clicks, the editorial page editors of the Post now want to see the source who enabled all of that be put in an American cage and branded a felon. That is warped beyond anything that can be described.
