The New York Times started the New Year with a column by one of its more recently-hired progressive-biased columnist. His name is Carlos Lozada: the Times’s DEI office finally noticed in 2022 that it didn’t have a Hispanic pundit, I guess—and his self-written description is hilarious when compared to his column kicking off 2026. “I strive for fairness, honesty and depth,” he writes. “I believe that there is something called truth, and I do my best to approximate it. My overriding value is skepticism. Along with all Times journalists, I am committed to upholding the standards of integrity outlined in our Ethical Journalism Handbook.”
Right. None of the journalists at the Times strive to uphold the standards of integrity outlined in the Ethical Journalism Handbook, and Lozada proves that he’s no different from the rest of the Times pundit stable. He begins with a deliberately disingenuous premise in today’s effort titled “How Did We Get to Such a Bad Question?” (Gift link). The “bad question” is “How did we get here?” which, of course, is exactly what Lozada’s column is about. How clever. This is like the guy who says, “I’m the last person to to say X” and then says it. At this paragraph, I stopped reading:
How did we get to the so-called Trump era, for example? If your answer is about economic inequality and the forgotten man, then maybe start with the World Trade Organization or NAFTA or the decline of organized labor. If your answer is about race, then point to the backlash against the Obama presidency or against identity politics or the civil rights movement or maybe even against Reconstruction. If your answer is about our deteriorating political discourse, then call out Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh; if it’s about the nativist takeover of the Republican Party, then quote at length from Patrick Buchanan’s speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention. And so on, ad infinitum.
Yeah, I’m pretty used to that brand of bias by now. The amazing thing is that the Times is so accustomed to it as the norm that no editor saw how disqualifying Lozada’s rhetoric is. One of the major reasons for Trump’s rise was that Obama made the discriminatory philosophy behind affirmative action central to his approach to his Presidency, increasing racial division and making “Racist!” the fall-back response of the media and Democrats to any criticism of his leadership. Lozada follows suit by framing the reasonable response to Obama’s destructive eight years as…racism. “[B]acklash against the Obama presidency or against identity politics or the civil rights movement or maybe even against Reconstruction”…yeah, Carlos, white Americans who didn’t appreciate living in a culture where they were constantly vilified were expressing their hostility to the civil rights movement.
Then: “If your answer is about our deteriorating political discourse, then call out Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.” Funny, this truth-seeker immediately fingers two conservatives who correctly called out the one-way partisan bias in the mainstream media, not the complete partisan takeovers of CNN, NPR PBS and the network news. Not Obama’s arrogant “they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” comment, not Hillary’s “deplorables” speech, or…
But the final smoking gun in the column is Lozada’s “if it’s about the nativist takeover of the Republican Party…” Dingdingdingdingding! The Republicans rejecting the Obama-Biden-Democrat embrace of open borders and “the good illegal immigrants” are nativists….you know, bigots. Like Bill the Butcher in “The Gangs of New York.” That assessment is Lozada’s idea of “fairness, honesty and depth.”
Well, bye, asshole. Now we know what your agenda is.
But I digress! You write about whatever ethics issues interest you as the new year dawns…
…
Ethics Alarms 
Proposal: Abolish (if feasible) OR revise POTUS pardon authority to prevent the sorts of abuses seen since the Clinton administration (and probably before, I’ll lean on the other scholars of history here to fill in on earlier abuses).
For example:
Crimes in which POTUS might plausibly be implicated or that benefited POTUS or his family not eligible.
POTUS personally and extended family of POTUS not eligible.
Members of POTUS campaign staff, cabinet, other positions in the government where POTUS has the power to appoint not eligible.
Counterpoint: The Innocence Project
I thought pardons were for people who were guilty? Is there no path in the legal system to void convictions when they are later shown to be false?
The pardon is that process.
Ah okay, thanks. So keep the power in place, but put restrictions on it? What do you think of the restrictions that I proposed?
Or maybe require some kind of vetting (such as the Innocence Project) for some kinds of crimes (or ripe for corruption targets such as family of POTUS) to be eligible for a POTUS pardon?
No restrictions
Executive pardons and commutations are by definition supposed to be based on discretion, gray areas, special circumstances, and judgment. Mercy and kindness. It’s a unique power and it exists to Be outside the system. Pardons are by nature controversial. One person’s outrage is another’s just application. The system needs the safety valve, but to impose restrictions on it would also harm its main purpose. I don’t think the Vietnam draft-dodgers who fled to Canada should have been pardoned while so many other young men who followed the law were killed and maimed. Should the Confederate leaders have been pardoned? How about Nathan Leopold, the “thrill killer?” (He submitted to medical experiments that saved lives)If governments are going to use lawfare to stay in power, they also need pardons to fix what the other side did when it was in power. Like all powers, the pardon powers are also political capitol and tools of governance, and can be misused like other tools. John McCain screwed over his own party and the country by not voting against Obamacare just to spite Donald Trump. You can’t legislate away motives and human nature. The PP is low hanging fruit, using it is going to be controversial, and not using it is controversial.
“shown to be false”
By whom, how, and how long? What expense? By what measure? A system has to have some finality. Human beings run it, and it’s fallible.
Defense of an illegitimate charge can bankrupt a family. Ask some of the J6ers who were caught up in the moment, walked through open doors, and didn’t harm or damage anything. They were simply enthusiastic and curious, and paid a very heavy price.
Though there has been some abuse of pardon power, maybe we just leave it alone. Bigger fish to fry.
Thank you all for your responses! I am convinced by your input that although prone to abuses (as is pretty much any kind of power!), the pardon power should stand without restrictions. Proposal herewith withdraw in response to your collective wisdom!
If that’s not an EA first, it’s one of the few. Brava. Very impressive.
The Washington state attorney general released a statement on X Tuesday evening warning independent journalists to stop investigating fraudulent Somali daycare centers or they could be charged with a hate crime.
“My office has received outreach from members of the Somali community after reports of home-based daycare providers being harassed and accused of fraud with little to no fact-checking,” State AG Nick Brown stated. “We are in touch with the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families regarding the claims being pushed online and the harassment reported by daycare providers. Showing up on someone’s porch, threatening, or harassing them isn’t an investigation. Neither is filming minors who may be in the home. This is unsafe and potentially dangerous behavior.”
Hmm, well some of these actions do seem problematic. Surely there are ways to investigate without these actions? (If indeed things like this are happening?)
I just saw a post on InstaGram about a couple who had twenty years of life savings gone because the wife has cancer, and then saying the U.S. has the worst health care system in the world.
I guess this means the Affordable Care Act failed.
Strangely enough, almost none of the commenters pointed this out.
It may not be the worst health care system in the world, but it may well be the only one in the developed world that regularly drives people into penury / bankruptcy / both when they get sick.
How do you think this should be fixed? The GOP “concepts of a plan” don’t seem to be coming along very quickly…
Relatedly the current system is sufficiently lucrative for the for entities that form the infrastructure of the industry that there are powerful barriers to true change.
You will not fix the health care system from the demand side of the equation. To reduce costs at the individual level you must find ways to recouple the patient with the cost as well as provide greater competition and transparency in pricing. Insurers pay what they deem are reasonable and customary. But that does not take into account quality of service. There have been some initial steps in Medicare to promote quality over quantity but unfortunately, in my opinion, it seems like those on Medicare use doctors visits to provide a social outlet for an otherwise lonely existence. Not all, but based on an evaluation of the number of daily visits to our medical center, a significant number of patients are regular visitors to a variety of outpatient offices in just one of the multiple facilities operated by Meritus Health. Numerous other private outpatient facilities exist as well and are routinely booked for weeks in advance.
Given the amount of subsidies the Federal government provides to mitigate the rising insurance costs those funds could just as easily be redirected to outfitting health clinics thus reducing capital costs for doctors. Doing this in concert with changing physician development practices to allow the final few years of training in a non-hospital environment would help temper price push pressures on insurers and the insured. Currently, we have a limited supply of available residency slots which limits the number of developing new physicians. Get the AMA out of the way for physician and specialist development. They operate the industry like a closed shop to maintain high wages for medical professionals. Those wages will remain higher than average because health care is both price and income inelastic. We could also subsidize training costs for qualified students who wish to become doctors.
The claim that Republicans don’t have a plan is not accurate because the opposition only focuses on the R’s unwillingness to keep propping up the health industry using insurance subsidies that only seem to benefit insurers and those running health care operations. The ideas above have been identified as options for a long term fix but people only focus on what they are getting now.
We need proce controls on health care.
I wonder why more states do not do this.
Price controls have rarely worked, and then only in war time. They almost always result in shortages, and black markets arise to fill the void.
Price control doctors? Who will spend eight or more years in university at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars only to be told that bureaucrats are going to decide how much to earn in a year? There are already de facto price controls with insurance and government reimbursement schedules. My nephew the surgeon observes that some reimbursements barely cover costs.
Economists and accountants knew that Obamacare was not affordable at inception, and the problems would grow over time. Subsidies will not cure the ills. The Universal Health Care solution is great if you can wait months for appointments and services. The much lauded Canadian system provides good care if you can hang in there ….. and if you have the means you are paying the high taxes and buying supplemental insurance so you can ‘skip the line.’
There are no quick or easy answers, but it is time to listen to different proposals.
Health care is worth what people will manage to pay. But, I would argue people in general are more fearful of upsetting their status quo. A tasty bite of carbohydrate is a hard thing to let go of. I am on the fence which is harder to give up alcohol or carbs.
Reframe the U.S. system as a personal responsibility system and it is evident that people are unwilling to change, especially when it comes to carbohydrates. If people were to switch to a near zero carbohydrate diet – replaced by high far and animal protien, high blood pressure, diabetes and cvd would largely disappear relative current spending. And, what remains could effectively be paid for by the government.
Crowing about excess expense fails to make a distinction between the unlucky like my neighbor who spontaneously developed type 1 diabetes at 17 years old and the person who eats themselves into a diabetic hole in the ground.
Price controls on health care only go to subsidize deleterious eating habits of the majority.
What are my expectations? To have treatment available for me for every conceivable malady? For every conceivable malady for everyone? This seems unreasonable. We don’t have a cultural ethos of unavailability but the opposite from which so much has been delivered so cheaply tha the we have conditioned ourselves into expecting someone to rescue us from a medical condition as cheaply.
We fail to sufficiently grasp that we added decades to life expectancy an quality simply by delivering clean water and antibiotics and simple fortified nutrition, and all of this at a relatively low cost. If medical care for an individual were as simple as delivering clean water then it should be expected to be cheap – like say insulin, I can’t think of any reason for insulin to be more expensive than $150/mo for a standard American diet which could be reduced 50% on strict keto.
good lord. The guy suggests he is not biased and then gives a multiple choice of biased views to explain how we got here.
here is my single unbiased opinion:
Trump prevailed because he was not a politician.
in 2016, Trump bulldozed the Republican field because he was not afraid not to kiss ass. The politicians, like Jeb Bush, can’t help but try to parrot what they think the party line is.
in comparison, Trump was the wretched stench that felt like a breath of fresh air because you would never get it from a politician.
he had the populist appeal that had been waiting in the wings since Perot. Perot, however, was a weenie. When it seemed he might win, he backed out. I recall predicting at the time that Perot would come back in (like Rocky), which he did (after tanking his chances of winning).
Trump was too dumb to pull a Perot. If winning is everything, he could not voluntarily lose.
then, the Dems installed their candidate (you can’t ignore that the Republicans got a candidate they did not want, while the Democrats put in a candidate ordained by the party (Hilary got the nomination because Obama pulled a “Trump” in 2008 by getting the nomination that the Democrats did not want; 2008 was the last year the Democrats did not control the process)).
Trump was not and is not a politician. That is what allowed him to blow away his Republican competitors. And it allowed him to pull a Grover Cleveland. And it will likely make him one of the most effective lame-duck presidents in recent memory (because he does not care about politics).
or, maybe the Republicans have a problem with their post-Civil War plans for Reconstruction.
“Whatevs” as the kids say these days.
-Jut
Provided not caring about politics doesn’t lose the House, which will be a disaster.
there is always that risk.
and I do not put it past Trump to consider it an honor to be a thrice impeached President.
but, regardless of the midterms , he may still show that the border can be closed and illegal aliens can be deported.
-Jut
Will the Dems becone obsessed with impeaching Trump?
Does a bear..well, you know the rest.