Category: Government, Policy, & Politics

How Conservatives Awoke to the Dangers of Sean Hannity – The Atlantic

The Fox News host is under attack as never before because many Americans are now forced to take what he says seriously for the first time.

At the unlikely climax of his career, Hannity’s job is under attack because the most powerful man in the world trusts his words in a way no similarly powerful man ever has––and with that great responsibility, with that opportunity to inform the president about any matter in the world, Hannity indulges in half-baked conspiracies.

Source: How Conservatives Awoke to the Dangers of Sean Hannity – The Atlantic, by Conor Friedersdorf

 

It’s a dramatic and lurid misdirection, one that even the writers of House of Cards would find far-fetched, and it has the benefit of tricking gullible Trump supporters into further mistrusting the media. … Every time Hannity and his allies hyped this story, they disrespected their conservative audience, they hurt a grieving family, and they violated their own professional obligations to carefully check facts rather than engage in wild speculation.

Source: The Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory Is Shameful Nonsense | National Review, by David French

 

The network I once respected as a necessary antidote to liberal media now peddles craven lies and Russian disinformation.

Fox was supposed to provide some ideological balance within the larger media universe. That was a laudable ambition, but what Fox has become is far from laudable. Not only is it a toxic workplace where the harassment of women is rampant; it is also a no-fact zone. The Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact found that nearly 60 percent of the statements it checked on Fox News were either mostly or entirely false. Another 19 percent were only half true. … FNC might as well stand for Fake News Channel, and its myths have had a pernicious, indeed debilitating, effect on U.S. politics.

Source: The Seth Rich ‘Scandal’ Shows That Fox News Is Morally Bankrupt | Foreign Policy, by Max Boot

What Progressives Miss About Arms Sales – The Atlantic

Source: What Progressives Miss About Arms Sales – The Atlantic

Celebrating their success in retaining blue-collar jobs is one way Republicans are winning the votes of working-class Americans.

While the president was in Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration announced $110 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia—with an additional $240 billion committed over a 10-year period.

Selling U.S. arms to the Gulf states further ties them to U.S. interests by deepening cooperation and interoperability between the U.S. military and its Gulf partners. … Arms sales also drive down the cost of our own weapons and thus the amount of money U.S. tax-payers have to spend on defense instead of other priorities

while progressives might have moral qualms about companies that sell weapons, the roughly 1.2 million American voters who work in the aerospace and defense sector—together with the roughly 3.2 million Americans who support the sector indirectly—see little wrong with the sales that help ensure their livelihoods and provide a future for their children.

This might be another area in which progressive elites are out of touch with the voters they need to win back control of the Congress.

Section 8 Vouchers Help The Poor — But Only If Housing Is Available : NPR

RE:

In Dallas and other tight rental markets, Section 8 voucher holders can’t find the homes they need, while developers face resistance from wealthier neighborhoods when trying to build new housing.

Source: Section 8 Vouchers Help The Poor — But Only If Housing Is Available : NPR

 

Question paraphrased from comments:

What would be the libertarian answer to people in neighborhoods that actively attempt to block development of lower cost housing within their neighborhoods? When resident groups and local officials actively participate in efforts to keep low income housing out, and when developers are uninterested in building low-profit units (as is frequent in other cases), how should markets address the issue of affordable housing? How does the free market get past these barriers, given the barriers are not just economic, but sociological as well?

Continue reading Section 8 Vouchers Help The Poor — But Only If Housing Is Available : NPR

Steve Ballmer Serves Up a Fascinating Data Trove – The New York Times

A stealthy pet project by the former Microsoft chief lets you search and learn about how the government spends tax dollars.

Using his website, USAFacts.org, a person could look up just about anything

Mr. Ballmer calls it “the equivalent of a 10-K for government,” referring to the kind of annual filing that companies make.

“You know, when I really wanted to understand in depth what a company was doing, Amazon or Apple, I’d get their 10-K and read it,” he told me in a recent interview in New York. “It’s wonky, it’s this, it’s that, but it’s the greatest depth you’re going to get, and it’s accurate.”

“I would like citizens to be able to use this to form intelligent opinions,” Mr. Ballmer said. “People can disagree about what to do — I’m not going to tell people what to do.” But, he said, people ought to base their opinions “on common data sets that are believable.”

Source: Steve Ballmer Serves Up a Fascinating Data Trove – The New York Times

 

Learn more about our story, principles, sources, and methodology.

Source: USAFacts.org