Thoughts From Today’s News

I find myself getting more and more jaded about what goes on in our society. So I felt the need to share my feelings about recent goings on.

Juan Williams was fired from NPR for a bigoted remark about Muslims he made on the O’Reilly Factor. And, in the society we live in, we have people writing in to NPR – not just Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, but actual listeners – to voice their displeasure at his firing.

If the remark had been made about African Americans instead of Muslims, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. All but the fringe would just say, “Yeah, OK, of course that makes sense. Dude’s gotta be fired. Why are we even talking about this?”

Usually I don’t like NPR; their reporting is often called “liberal” but unfortunately that is far from the truth. They parrot all of the establishment assumptions about things like the moral integrity of our political elites. But at least in this case they’ve done well.

Elsewhere…

I am really glad to see Meg Whitman down 8 points in the polls, according to KPFA morning news. It really gives a little bit of hope for our society. She has spent $141 million of her own money on this governor’s race, and it’s not going to buy her the election. Jerry Brown, by contrast, has spent about a tenth of that and is winning. Sure, he’s not perfect – he is likely far from it – but he is also far from being as bad as Meg Whitman.

Also, I heard today that there is a Tea Party movement in Europe. God help us…

And, I watched a few news reports about the French protests. I personally think the protests are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Interestingly enough, the things that I have heard about the protests have included people saying “Of course, everyone knows that the pension age must be raised. However, the unions have to save face.”

Really? They _must_ be raised? There is no other possible place in the budget that can be cut, or taxes can’t be raised?

This reminds me of what is going on right now in San Francisco. The MUNI workers (bus drivers, etc) are being scapegoated by local politicians for MUNI’s woes, saying that their salaries should be lowered and benefits cut. I’m not the biggest fan of MUNI workers, but we’re looking in the wrong place for the source of the problem. Almost no one is bringing up the possibility of greatly cutting the salaries of managers and politicians. For instance, MUNI head Nat Ford makes over $300,000/year. How is this not a problem?

That is all.