Racial disparities alleged in aerospace hiring

All anecdote, no data, pure hype. Another Sharpton shakedown. If the corporations buckle under to these sorts of theatrics, they deserve the unending hassles they'll get.
— March 7, 2018 8:56 p.m.

Border Angels takes water out to Jacumba area for migrants

Let's see now. Trump tells wannabe illegal aliens not to come, that he's increasing border protections, that he's stepping up enforcement and not just for violent criminals, and that more illegals are going to be charged and punished and not just given Kool-Aid and sent back across the border. Arrellano, Morones, the Border Angels and all their open border allies say the reverse. Come, violate US law, we'll provide water, we'll provide free legal advice, we'll show you how to get government benefits, we'll help you evade law enforcement, and maybe, eventually, we'll get you amnesty. This message penetrates all of Mexico. So on whose hands is the blood of those lured to their death in the deserts and mountains? Who is increasing the lawlessness on the border and in the interior of the US? As famed UCSB biologist Garrett Hardin once said, "There is nothing more dangerous than a shallow-thinking compassionate person." Always good to have another bona fide good example at hand.
— August 16, 2017 10:38 p.m.

Union-Tribune lays off journalists

Don, a few rejoinders: Wouldn't have to restrict pages to locals, tho they could be given preference. Certainly don't want to encourage academics who don't know how to write for a general audience -- or to accept pieces that require heavy editing. That said, even locally there are probably two orders of magnitude more academics who are good general writers than there are good professional journalists. But as an academic, I'd strongly argue against letting academics dominate. Maybe it's a bit precieux to continue pretending opinion is restricted to the Opinion pages. For most papers there is so much de facto editorializing and bias throughout the paper, accomplished by selection of topic/stories to cover and the non-subtle spinning of those they do cover, that the way to go is just to have a tiny symbol at the end of each title that identifies it as primarilly opinion or primarily news. A little "O" or little "N".
— February 17, 2017 2:39 p.m.

The state of the U-T and Tribune Publishing

As someone who has dunned the San Diego Union-Tribune leadership for decades for its suppression of hard data and objective analysis of population-environment connections, I find this advertisement courageous and greatly refreshing. If they get the right person, the UT could become a national leader in expanding understanding of the the environmental degradation that will result from continued US population growth: << The corporation’s website features a help-wanted advertisement for a new U-T senior “environment” reporter. “Do you take on explanatory reporting and watchdog assignments with equal gusto?” the notice asks. “Are you someone who aggressively pursues enterprise stories with a national or even international imprint? Does your definition of environment reporting cover everything from California’s drought and land-use controversies to population control and marine science?”>> Surely the UT leadership is aware that in even using the phrase “population control” they are likely to be attacked by right wing whackos as “commies” and by left wing whackos as “racists.” Kudos to the newly enlarged UT cojones! As journalism prof Michael Maher pointed out in his 1997 article, “How and why journalists avoid the population environment connection” (see http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF022085… OR http://dieoff.org/page118.htm), a great defect of environmental journalism in the US (and most other western nations) is that news stories about environmental problems due in large measure to population growth almost NEVER mention the connection to population growth, let alone the fact that population growth is driven primarily by high immigration rates. Most media outlets deliberately act to keep the electorate minimally informed on such issues. This is because most of them are lap dogs to the powerful but delusional neoliberal cornucopian economists who dominate the leadership of both the Democratic and Republican parties and whose religion is Growth Forever, both economic and populational, the environment be damned.
— August 26, 2015 6:50 p.m.

Without Papa Doug, need Peters fear GOP?

Hmmmm… Doesn't Jeb Bush also have the Chamber of Commerce, not to mention all the mainline media, locked up? No worries then!
— August 19, 2015 7:05 p.m.