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Quickly Noted: Untangling the Media Myths of COVID-19

This article from the WSJ is a must-read reflecting how the media reported on the pandemic:

“Has there been in recent history a more tendentious, hysterical, data-denying and frankly disreputable exercise in misdirection than the way in which much of America’s media has covered the Covid-19 epidemic?

Perhaps we can forgive them the endless repetition of pandemic porn; the selectively culled stories of tragedy about otherwise completely healthy young people succumbing to the virus. While we know that the chances of someone under 30 being killed by Covid are very slim, we know too that news judgments have always favored the exceptional and horrific over the routine and unremarkable.

Perhaps we can even forgive them the rapidly shifting headlines—each one shouting with absolute certitude—about the basic facts of the virus and its context: its lethality and transmissibility, the merits of mask-wearing, or the effectiveness of this or that therapy. The science is evolving, and so too is the reporting.

But there are larger representations of this massive and complex story that we should mark as simply unforgivable.

First, the notion, implicit or at times explicit, in so much of the reporting, that the U.S. handling of the pandemic has been a globally unique failure. This is quickly ascribed to the ignorance and malevolence of the Clorox-injecting, quack-cure-peddling bozo in the White House.”

And this:

Even less forgivable is the naked, politically motivated selective use and manipulation of data to damage Republicans and favor Democrats. Typical of this is the steady stream of stories telling us what a great job New York and other (Democrat-controlled) Northeastern states have been doing in managing the spread of the virus, in contrast with the performance of other (Republican-led) states.”

And this:

“There are many reasons for differing rates of infection, death and economic performance, and it would be unwise at this stage to say anything about outcomes with absolute certainty.

But that is perhaps the greatest dishonesty of all: the media’s self-serving insistence that their narrow, partisan narrative of this complex and evolving phenomenon is the revealed and unchallengeable truth.”

The article is worth it to read in its entirety.

“Notes on the News” Ineptitude

The Wall Street Journal has a feature called “Notes on the News” which is supposed to “walk you through the biggest news stories of the week.”  Unfortunately, their writer, Tyler Blint-Welsh is so inept and full of bias that he misses key points in his summaries to the detriment of WSJ readers. 

For instance, on July 26, while writing about federal agents being sent to US cities, he describes how federal officers have been patrolling Portland, Oregon since July 2, but utterly leaves out the fact that violence in Portland has been going on for much longer; many people and property have been injured, yet he ignores that fact in order to focus on the presence of federal authorities. He further mishandles the scenario by describing the use of force on protesters as “apparently without provocation.” However, anyone watching the videos of the circumstances can’t possibly make the assumption of apparent provocation; doing so is utterly inappropriate and dishonest. The protesters were trying to set the courthouse on fire with people in it, but he completely omits that from his analysis. He also chooses not to include the fact that the federal agents were there to protect the federal buildings that the mayor refused to protect but managed to mention that the mayor was tear-gassed by federal agents. The lopsided point-of-view is ridiculous.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Blint-Welsh also analyzes the situation with unemployment benefits which face an expiration at the end of the month, saying “that lack of progress could jeopardize the $600 weekly unemployment supplement that millions of Americans have been relying on since the pandemic triggered record numbers of jobless claims.” He further describes how the Democrats want to extend the $600 until January 2021 while noting that the Republicans want to reduce the benefit amount. However, he conveniently leaves out the fact that the reason the Republicans want to cut back payments is because a large number of recipients are paying more to stay home than if they went to work — which is hampering economic recovery. Forget about the fact that it shouldn’t be so readily available to collect because jobs are available. The extension that the Democrats want is unconscionable but he’s making it seem like the Democrat position is reasonable and that the Republicans are selfish and cold-hearted.

It’s hard to imagine that Blint-Welsh is so uninformed as to not know what’s actually going on, so the only conclusion is that he is intentionally distorting these situations. That is egregious for both the integrity of the Wall Street Journal and those who have to read his diatribes.

A Better Way

It gets really annoying when commentators blather on about Obamacare and the  Republican’s plan to repeal and replace; they get called hypocrites and the commentators keep suggesting that there is no plan to replace Obamacare, because they are terrified that it actually might happen, striking at the heart of the pinnacle of liberal policies.

But it’s not true and we all know it. It’s like the same lie we keep here over and over from the Democrats that the Republicans are being obstructionist and have nothing to contribute. “Being obstructionist” for the left means that the Republicans aren’t interested in sacrificing core principles for some ridiculous leftist policy. Likewise, saying the Republicans have “nothing to contribute” simply means that the Republicans have nothing to contribute that would appeal to the leftists.

The lie gets repeated because the press is either too lazy or too in the bed with certain camps to actually report on facts.  Paul Ryan and Congress have come up their “A Better Way” proposal and its like it doesn’t even exist among mainstream media, because it goes against the narrative that “Republican are bad” and “Democrats are good.” Unfortunately, that narrative got deflated on Election Day.

Until now, no one has bothered to vote on the “A Better Way’ plan, because everyone who pays attention knew that Obama would automatically veto it. Now that Obama will be gone, now is the time to do it. The question is, will the commentators finally admit that such a roadmap to recovery exists?

How The Media Was Complicit in the VA Scandal

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We now know that the state of affairs within the VA system was abhorrent for years — and that Obama, like his predecessor, knew there were problems. And yet, several well known left-leaning columnists spoke highly about the VA health system anyway, especially ramping up the rhetoric right at the time Obamacare began to take shape in Congress in 2009.

Obama’s objectives regarding the VA were laid out in the Obama Transition Plan for when he took office. Obama had been warned about the problems in 2008, so he stated that he wanted to “make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible”.

Therefore, shortly after his inauguration, Obama spoke to Congress in February 2009 to discuss healthcare reform, and the process toward the Affordable Care Act (ACA) began.

At the same time in 2009, both Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman of the NY Times and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post heaped praised the VA system. They must have read Obama’s VA talking points:.

Kristof: It is fully government run, much more “socialized medicine” than is Canadian health care with its private doctors and hospitals. And the system for veterans is by all accounts one of the best-performing and most cost-effective elements in the American medical establishment.

Paul Krugman: Let’s talk about health care around the advanced world…. By the way, our own Veterans Health Administration, which is run somewhat like the British health service, also manages to combine quality care with low costs.”

Klein: The “VA is actually socialized medicine, where the government owns the hospitals and employs the doctors. If you ordered America’s different health systems worst-functioning to best, it would look like this: individual insurance market, employer-based insurance market, Medicare, Veterans Health Administration”.

It is clear that these writers never had any information, nor had they done any research on the VA, the quality of its services, or its financial and operational efficiency. They write what they wish to be as if it were fact, hoping that their readers won’t find them out. You are certainly free to wonder about the credibility and integrity of their other writings.

The ACA began to be debated seriously during the fall of 2009 and it passed on March 25, 2010. It was during this same time that the secret waiting lists were developed at many VA centers. In the midwest alone, ten facilities have been found with the secret waitings lists, along with the most widely known problem in Arizona. These were clearly not “rogue” employees but signal part of a wider, concerted effort to keep issues quiet.

How did this happen? At least one attempt to fix the problem never got off the ground after nearly a decade of trying.

Apparently a medical scheduling project for the VA was begun in 2000 and was discontinued in 2009, 9 years after it the project began — and it remained utterly unfinished. Nothing seems to have been done for another 3 years until 2012, when the Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs launched a contest to create an app for scheduling — a contest which didn’t close until the summer of 2013.

According to a press release in 2013 announcing the winners in the “scheduling app” contest, it was noted that the “VA started to develop a Medical Scheduling Package replacement in 2000. This effort was not successful. When VA ended the project in 2009, none of the planned capabilities were delivered. It had cost more than $127 million”.

And was used at the VA between the end of the Medical Scheduling Package project in 2009 and the Medical Scheduling App Contest of 2012/2013?

We now know there were secret waiting lists as some of the facilities. It also appears the the Obama Administration knew about the “secret waiting lists” as early as 2010. The Daily Caller reports that there was an internal VA investigation in 2010 regarding “paper” waiting lists:

“We conducted this review to determine the validity of an allegation that senior officials in Veterans Integrated Service Network 20 (VISN) instructed employees at the Portland VA Medical Center to use unauthorized wait lists to hide access and scheduling problems,” according to an August 17, 2010 VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report entitled “Review of Alleged Use of Unauthorized Wait Lists at the Portland VA Medical Center”

So, while the merits of the ACA was being debated, the VA’s scheduling system was scrapped, wasting $127 million. $127 million is a lot of taxpayer monies that could have been used on veterans’ treatments over the years.

But who was talking about it? No one. Certainly not the most widely read papers in this country.

Instead, we got reassurances from the press to a nervous public about the government’s ability to overesee healthcare, especially after the ACA passed in a controversial way. What’s more, the VA continued to be offered as a model even when the backlash to the law began.

In 2011, Paul Krugman of the NYT happily explained how successful the VA system: “The V.H.A. is a huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform. Many people still have an image of veterans’ health care based on the terrible state of the system two decades ago.”

Now we find out that it was clearly not working.

Underfunding the Department of Veterans Affairs is not the problem. From 2007 to 2012, enrollment in VA services has increased by 13% from 2007 to 2012. At the same time, the VA budget went from $82 million to $125 million — a 53% increase, and the biggest jump in the VA’s budget history since records go back to 1940. Yet the VA could not deliver quality services to our Veterans.

Government should not be handling our health systems. The fact that secret waiting lists existed shows just how far the government went to hide its incompetence in running a health system at the very time that Obamacare was being debated both in Congress and then in the public square. And the media supported the narrative that government delivered quality and efficient health care to our Veterans without checking to see if it was actually true.

If Congress and Americans knew the truth of the condition of the VA health system, it is quite possible that Obamacare would never have been allowed to become law.

Tea Party Challenges

At a recent dinner, I asked a friend of mine if he would join me as a supporter of the Tea Party but he balked at the idea. This intrigued me; I know that he champions smaller government and fiscal responsibility – policies the Tea Party stands for as well. When I pressed him, he admitted that there’s a feeling about the Tea Party that makes him uncomfortable.

This got me thinking. My experience with the Tea Party movement, at least in New York, has been nothing less than superb. I’ve met a true cross-section of people – entrepreneurs, office workers, doctors, retirees, young people. They are intelligent, decently educated, passionate individuals. It astounds me that there is a great disconnect between what the Tea Party stands for and what the public perspective is. People need to understand that the Tea Party is not what the press portrays it to be – it is not out-of-touch, crazy, or reactionary. The Tea Party is about smaller government, lower taxes, the Constitution, and individual liberty. That’s it.

I am sure that there are Tea Party followers who have off-the-mainstream and even strange opinions, as do followers of any group. For instances, some Tea Partiers may be pro-immigration, while others may not be. It doesn’t matter; that is, there is no right or reason for any Tea Partier to be saying anything about immigration reform in the context of the Tea Party. Such opinions are not relevant to their Tea Party association. And though these ancillary opinions would be disregarded in other organizations, they become front and center – for liberals and the press – who want to diminish the Tea Party or try to sow discord.

The Tea Party is a movement of ordinary American people who share an excellent philosophy. The fact that they continue to be targeted, tarred, and trashed by the left-wing media should be an outrage to all Americans.

The Tea Party will be successful by continuing to impress upon Americans – person by person – the need for restraint in government, in taxes, and in spending.