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What is one to think when professed high standards are allowed to be corrupted by dishonest judgement?
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Pulitzer Prize Board Defending Its Awards to Dishonest Reporters
The very first Pulitzer Prize was awarded in 1917.
Since then, the Pulitzer Prize established a reputation for going to writers and other creators of the arts who meet top-level criteria. These criteria include exemplary public service, top-notch journalism, and other industry-based accomplishments.
However, the Pulitzer Prize is losing the reputation it’s maintained for decades on end. In real-time, the Pulitzer Prize Board is under fire for granting an award to journalists with the New York Times back in 2018.
As it turns out, these journalists were proven guilty of spreading outright lies about former President Trump, along with peddling the debunked narrative of Russian collusion during the 2016 election.
Yet, in spite of this, the Pulitzer Prize Board is defending its decision, rather than walking it back.
Not a Good Look
The Times journalists who were awarded the Pulitzer Prize four years ago peddled information that the Justice Department and various investigations proved as demonstrably false.
Naturally, this led to scrutiny regarding the Pulitzer Prize Board’s decision to commend these reporters. Over the weekend, the group was clear that it has no intention of revoking the awards or even apologizing for issuing them in the first place.
Instead, the Pulitzer Prize Board put out a statement, expressing that formal complaints regarding its awards go through a certain internal process. At the same time, the group also informed that nothing written by these journalists was proven to be incorrect, following their being granted the Pulitzer Prize.
This is the conclusion the board reached after reviewing various complaints submitted by former President Trump concerning these awards.
Significant Public Backlash
With the Pulitzer Prize Board doubling down on its 2018 decision, the public hasn’t hesitated to weigh in with their thoughts.
Many social media users suggested the board’s response ultimately weakens the value and esteem once associated with the Pulitzer Prize. Others suggested that the board should have nonfiction vs. fiction categories when awarding those in journalism.
Even the statement from the Pulitzer Prize Board was widely slammed as dishonest. The investigation by then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller alone proved that what the New York Times journalists wrote just wasn’t accurate.
All things considered, the Pulitzer Prize Board can expect Americans to remember this next time it chooses to hand out awards.
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Kim reminds everyone what we know but forget. Republicans also are political prostitutes because they also love spending your money:
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The GOP’s Self-Defeating Spending Habit
The party can’t run credibly against profligate Democrats if it is complicit.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
What do you get when you cross a Republican with a tech lobbyist? A bipartisan boondoggle. The question is how long the GOP can get away with its posturing on fiscal restraint.
The Senate voted 64-34 to proceed on a semiconductor welfare bill sporting a fictitious $76 billion price tag. Before the vote, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer broadcast his intention to lard it up with billions more in government spending if he crossed the 60-vote filibuster mark. Sixteen Republican senators signed up.
It’s possible the bill could hit $250 billion, all vaguely aimed at promoting U.S. “innovation.” The legislation directs government agencies to assist in the “development” of tech sectors, meaning bureaucrats will funnel the dollars to private companies—chip makers, telcos, cybersecurity outfits, artificial-intelligence shops. Why bother raising capital privately when you have the American taxpayer? Or rather future taxpayers, since the bill’s supporters aren’t even pretending they intend to cover the cost. We’ll borrow from the nation’s toddlers to cut checks to Intel.
This is Republican business as usual. The GOP that is assisting in this quarter-trillion-dollar spendathon is the same GOP that last year provided the votes for a $1 trillion infrastructure boondoggle. The same GOP that in 2020 signed on to not one, not two, three or four, but five Covid “relief” bills, to the tune of some $3.5 trillion. The same GOP that smartly cut taxes in 2017, but pretended it didn’t and blew through discretionary spending caps. The same GOP that has unofficially re-embraced earmarks. The party occasionally takes a breather—say to gripe about the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion Covid bill in 2021—but then it’s right back to the spending grindstone.
When was the last time anyone heard a Republican talk about the need to reform Social Security or Medicare? That disappeared with the election of Donald Trump (opposed to both) and the retirement of Speaker Paul Ryan and never reappeared. Instead, a growing faction of the party sees a future in buying the votes of working- and middle-class voters with costly new entitlement proposals of their own, such as expanded child tax credits. Who wants to dwell on painful budget or welfare reform when Republicans can promote their values by doling out federal cash?
Some will note that “only” 16 Senate Republicans voted to advance the new “innovation” blowout—that the significant majority of the 50-strong GOP caucus remains opposed. But 16 is still a lot. Especially for a party that claims a core belief in “limited government.” The number is a function of a party leadership that is no longer making a top priority of fiscal restraint, giving license to its spenders. That, and outside conservative groups that are increasingly focusing on the culture wars rather than the threat of big government.
Yet the political risks of this GOP spending habit are huge, both in the short and the long run. Republicans correctly blame the Democrats’ 2021 spending for today’s inflation, and public fury over high prices makes for their best shot at retaking the House and Senate this fall. But the potency of the inflation argument will dissipate if the GOP joins yet another spending frenzy. The next time a Republican runs an ad hammering a Democrat for inflation, the target will simply remind voters that it was a bipartisan effort that produced the vast majority of Covid-and-beyond spending.
Some Republicans will argue that Americans—even conservative voters—are less worried about federal spending or the deficit than they were a decade ago. But Gallup reported in March that 75% of Americans still worry about those issues “a great deal” or “a fair amount.” An Ipsos poll from last year similarly found 75% of Americans are worried about the national debt and its effect on the economy.
It played in GOP primaries—where voters are sending a message. The media put down Illinois Rep. Mary Miller’s victory in June over fellow incumbent Rep. Rodney Davis entirely to Mr. Trump’s support of her. Less noticed was the contrast on spending. Mr. Davis signed up for millions of dollars worth of earmarks; Ms. Miller none. A similar dynamic played out in a West Virginia primary between two incumbents. Rep. Alexander Mooney (who supported no earmarks and voted against the infrastructure measure) beat Rep. David B. McKinley (who supported both).
The Biden inflation is educating new generations about the real-world costs of loose government money. In the next presidential election and beyond, those voters will look for an alternative to the progressive left that dominates the Democratic Party and wants to double the size of government. A complicit Republican Party isn’t credible in its claims of fiscal discipline, or any sort of an alternative. It’ll be Democrat Lite.
The GOP still has the ability to restore its reputation on spending, but it needed to start yesterday. A good first step would be saying no to any form of Mr. Schumer’s corporate-welfare blowout.
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Joseph Epstein concludes Trump was the wrong man at perhaps the right time and Biden is the wrong man at any time:
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Biden and Trump Are Both Bums
May the Jan. 6 committee hearings ensure there’s no 2020 rematch in the 2024 presidential election.
By Joseph Epstein
I have watched more than 16 hours of the Jan. 6 committee hearings and plan to watch the rest. I have learned some things, though not many. And I grant that the hearings might have been more effective if some aggressive Republicans—one imagines Rep. Jim Jordan scowling in his shirt sleeves—were present to cross-examine the witnesses. But then I have my own motive for watching. I hope they will sweep Donald Trump out of public life and return American politics to their old, calm, yes even dull days.
The hearings have revealed that Mr. Trump clearly enjoyed the violence visited on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—and that he inspired it. He has yet to renounce that violence or denounce the groups that participated in it. A bully, a narcissist and a sociopath, Mr. Trump has been called many names, but he is above all shameless, which isn’t the first quality one looks for in a president.
Granted, he stabilized the economy, slashed regulations, and stimulated employment among blacks and Hispanics. He forced various North Atlantic Treaty Organization members to pull their weight, got us out of the misbegotten treaty with Iran, and moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. One could even argue that Vladimir Putin might not have gone into Ukraine had Mr. Trump still been president.
But, discredit where discredit is due, Mr. Trump is also responsible for Joe Biden, who may go down as among the most ineffective presidents in American history. Mr. Biden won 81 million votes in 2020. Yet who can doubt that roughly 50 million were votes less for him than against Mr. Trump, whose relentlessly rebarbative style pushed his accomplishments into the shadows? Mr. Biden meanwhile went back on his promise to unite the country and instead led a progressive program of big spending that, along with inducing inflation, further divided the country.
The Jan. 6 committee investigation may end in a call for a criminal indictment of Mr. Trump. My hope is that at a minimum it will quash in the former president’s mind the idea of running again in 2024. The prospect of a second Trump-Biden election invokes a staggering sadness for the fate of our country. How did America come to such an unhappy choice, which it may face again in 2024?
My sense is that, just as Mr. Trump gave us Joe Biden, liberal culture earlier gave us Mr. Trump. It’s easy to imagine all those Americans, struggling to make a living, worrying about the fate of their families amid rising crime and plummeting educational standards, tuning their TV sets in 2014 and 2015 to the antipolice riots in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. Changing the channel, they heard college students say that disagreement made them feel unsafe. On another channel they were told that failing to celebrate transgenderism made them bigots. Bring on the Donald!
Various polls show that as many as 85% of Americans feel the country is heading in the wrong direction. Surely one of the chief reasons is that for six years it has been led by men of dubious character. I haven’t voted in the past two presidential elections—on both occasions being unable to discern the lesser-evil candidate—but I can think of several current-day politicians I would be able to vote for in 2024, among them Sens. Tim Scott, Joe Manchin and Chris Coons, Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Gov. Nikki Haley and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. None are corrupt; none, unlike Messrs. Trump and Biden, off-the-wall nutty.
All of which is why I wish the Jan. 6 committee well in disqualifying Mr. Trump from high office. In doing so, it would also likely eliminate the candidacy of Mr. Biden, for it has been said, with some persuasiveness, that the only hope he has to win re-election is to be opposed by Mr. Trump.
In Chicago, where all politicians are thought guilty until proven innocent, and where that presumption is usually right, we cry, “Throw the bums out!” In their different ways, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have proven themselves bums of the first order. The sooner both are out, the better for the country.
Mr. Epstein is author, most recently, of “Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits.”
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How the Climate Elite Spread Misery
Most people are more worried about high gas and food prices, which green policies make worse.
By Bjorn Lomborg
The chattering classes who jet to conferences at Davos or Aspen have for years been telling the rest of us that our biggest immediate threats are climate change, environmental disasters and biodiversity loss. They point to the current heat waves killing thousands across Europe as the latest reason to change our societies and economies radically by switching to renewables.
Such arguments are misleading. It’s true that as temperatures rise the world will experience more heat waves, but humans also adapt to such things. In Spain, for example, rising temperatures have actually led to fewer heat deaths, because people have adapted faster than temperatures have gone up. It simply took air conditioning, public cooling centers and better treatment of maladies that are caused or aggravated by heat, such as heatstroke and heart disease.
The exclusive focus on heat deaths is also misleading. Across the world, low temperatures are much more dangerous than high ones: Half a million people die each year from heat, but more than 4.5 million die from cold. While rising temperatures will increase heat deaths, they will also decrease cold deaths. A recent Lancet study found that rising temperatures since 2000 have on net reduced the number of temperature-related deaths. Researchers concluded that by the end of the 2010s, rising temperatures globally were causing 116,000 more heat deaths annually, but also leading to 283,000 fewer cold deaths a year.
Moreover, politicians’ singular focus on climate change ignores that people are much more worried about rampant inflation, especially rising food and energy prices. And climate policies are making those problems worse.
Much of the extreme energy-price increase that normal people are dealing with is caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine. But things wouldn’t be nearly as bad if the West hadn’t thrown up green roadblocks to its own energy security, such as President Biden’s moratorium on gas leases or Europe’s refusal to dig into its substantial shale gas reserves. Climate policies also increase energy prices by subsidizing renewables like solar and wind. That makes it even harder to adapt to the extreme temperatures climate activists bemoan. You need cheap and reliable energy to afford air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter.
Rising fuel prices are also making food more expensive. Low-cost synthetic fertilizer is one of the greatest technologies humanity has invented for feeding the world, but it’s mostly made with natural gas. Even with almost a billion people at risk of starvation, climate-obsessed bureaucrats still object to producing more fertilizer because of the fossil fuels required.
The cost of green policies will become even harder to bear if politicians make good on their promises to hit net-zero emissions. Achieving this globally by 2050 would cost more than $5 trillion a year for the next three decades, according to McKinsey. That would be one-third of total global tax revenue. If every American were to shell out more than $5,000 a year, it would only get the U.S. 80% of the way there by midcentury. Hitting 100% would likely cost more than twice that. The European Union already pays €69 billion a year in subsidies to support its renewables. But if the EU persists with its even stauncher promises of net-zero, that annual climate policy cost is likely to exceed $1 trillion.
No wonder there’s political pushback to environmental grandstanding. The Netherlands has been roiled by protests since the government mandated in June that nitrogen-oxide and ammonia emissions, which are produced by livestock, must be slashed by 70% to 80% in some parts of the country. As many as 40,000 farmers demonstrated against the measure last month. Holland is among the world’s 10 largest food exporters, and these policies would decimate the country’s agriculture industry while global hunger is rising.
Sri Lanka is the epitome of elite environmentalism gone wrong. Pushed to go organic by activists and the World Economic Forum, the government banned synthetic fertilizers in April 2021. Food production collapsed and the currency defaulted. Hungry and outraged citizens launched protests, overran the presidential palace, and forced the government to resign en masse and the president to flee the country.
It’s entirely possible to help the climate and working families at the same time. The policies to do so are innovation-focused. Policy makers need to recognize that they simply can’t eliminate fossil fuels with current technologies. The world gets almost 80% of its energy from fossil fuels, and even if all current climate policies were fully implemented, by midcentury fossil fuels would still provide more than half of all energy used world-wide, according to the International Energy Agency. Instead of sending energy prices sky-high by trying to force a transition to renewables prematurely, policy makers should focus on funding research to develop clean energy sources that are actually affordable and reliable. And instead of badgering farmers to go organic, governments should invest in research to develop varieties of crops and agricultural practices that deliver higher yields with a smaller environmental footprint.
Some of these technologies are already in development. Greater funding could bring them to fruition more quickly and do a lot more to help limit emissions than the policies activists now hawk. These sorts of sensible measures would cost much less than policies like net-zero, leaving more money to meet the world’s many other challenges.
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