The mainstream media loves to hate payday lenders.  That’s because it’s easy to paint them as villains without ever explaining the whole story behind the product.  So they publish article upon article attacking payday lenders without ever acknowledging that millions of consumers use it every year, with only an infinitesimal number of complaints.   The free market and repeated studies have determined that customers like the service, understand its costs and risks, and are left worse off when the option is forcibly removed.

But that’s not enough for the so-called reporters. They also must bow at the altar of any alternative to payday loans, disregarding the disadvantages of those products, and not acknowledging that they are just payday loans by another name.  Nor do they compare those alternatives on an apples-to-apples basis to payday loans.  To do so would not permit journalists to present “heroes” alongside the short-term credit villain of payday lenders.

That’s not to say these other products aren’t great alternatives — which, in fact, they are.  I champion the introduction of an innovative product into the credit market, particularly at a time when credit is so restricted.  Case in point:  a nifty new service called Billfloat.  Billfloat will pay various types of bills (utility, phone, etc) on your behalf, up to $225.  They’ll float you this loan and allow you to repay it in monthly installments.  The fees are competitive to those charged by payday loans.

However, while Billfloat doesn’t call itself a payday lender, the company is lending against the most likely source for repayment: a customer’s paycheck.  That’s a payday loan.

Unless you’re a journalist! (more…)

Junk science has exploded thanks to the Internet.  It’s easier than ever to strike fear in the hearts of consumers by using words like “toxic” or worse, “cancer” in association with a given product.  Some of you may remember the Alar hoax. Nowadays, junk science finds willing advocates in form of uninformed celebrities who endorse their misguided causes. The latest example of embracing myth and fear over truth and reason is Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Dr. Oz has cynically leveraged his celebrity status into becoming an irresponsible spokesman against products Americans use daily, whose safety is beyond question.  He’s disgraced his status as physician by becoming an agent of fear, rather than an agent of healing.

Even worse, the mainstream media perpetuates junk science without vetting anything Dr. Oz says.  They report his nonsense, but never the criticism of it.  Nor does the MSM bother to investigate the anti-capitalist group supporting him.

Dr. Oz has irresponsibly generated public fear about dozens of safe products…and by “safe”, I mean scientific studies with rigorous protocols that have determined they are exactly that:

Apple Juice

What the … ? Is he serious?  I’m afraid so.  He recently made the outrageous assertion that apple juice is unsafe because of the amount of total arsenic found in it.  The EPA, he says, permits 10 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic in water, but has no standards for apple juice., so he uses the same 10ppb as the toxicity level for apple juice.

Water is not apple juice.

Not only does the FDA permits 23ppb of total arsenic in apple juice, but virtually every step along the supply chain tests for arsenic levels.  Even in China, farmers are trained on how to properly cultivate apples and arsenic levels in soil are measured.  When the apple concentrate arrives in the U.S., the FDA conducts random checks.  Manufacturers then rehydrate the concentrate into juice, and test every lot.  If total arsenic exceeds 23ppb, they toss it.

Oz’s report was so misleading report that the FDA took the unprecedented step of debunking the claim publicly.  The FDA also reminds us that only inorganic arsenic, as opposed to organic arsenic, is toxic, and that dearest Dr. Oz tested for total arsenic. In addition, the FDA did the same testing on one brand’s apple juice that Dr. Oz did, and came up with results that showed ninety percent less total arsenic.  As the FDA responded to Oz, “The analysis of foods can pose a challenge to analytical laboratories and seemingly minor variations in sample treatment and analysis can have a significant effect on results.”

No kidding.

As Rick Cristol, President of the Juice Products Association told me, “The Juice Products Association, its member companies and even the FDA provided Dr. Oz Show producers with substantial information to develop a factually accurate program.  Yet, Dr. Oz chose instead to frighten the public with misleading and inaccurate information, that the former Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control, and now a broadcast reporter, described as yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

Yet the mainstream media pays no attention to any of this.  They just perpetuate the fear by reporting on what Dr. Oz had to say — not his critics.

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As a communications professional, my assessment of the Obama Administration’s communications strategy is that it may be the most inept performance I have ever seen of any political regime.

Crisis communications is not a silver bullet.  Some thing simply cannot be repaired.  The whole point of communications in general, however, is that the job should never be challenging if the entity the communicator works for doesn’t provide fodder for the opposition.

The Obama Administration has repeatedly handed its opposition ammunition — not 9mm bullets, but everything from Stinger missiles to bunker-busters.  The result is the appearance, to this citizen, of a White House on the verge of panic.  I’m not the only one.  When legendary far-left blabbermouth James Carville tells the White House it’s time to panic, it’s time to panic (That’s no diss on Mr. Carville.  I love watching him.).

Almost none of this has to do with the truth or facts of any given situation.  It has to do with how it all appears.  Generally, it makes Mr. Obama appear like an amateur politician.

It Started Out So Well!

The Obama campaign had it made in 2008.  The GOP had put up the Grumpy Old Troll against a PR juggernaut — the first viable Black presidential candidate.  Young and slick vs. old and creaky.  The backlash against the Bush presidency had peaked — people were tired of the war in Iraq, gasoline had hit $4, and the mainstream media so controlled the political narrative that it would’ve taken a literal disaster to push the Obama campaign off-message.  Not only did the GOP face an uphill battle anyway, but now they were facing a wave of messaging that was hard to ignore: hope and change.  So powerful was this message that, despite it and the candidate it spoke for being utterly lacking in substance, it swayed enough of the electorate to create an historic moment for America.  The country had elected a God.  I don’t need to tell you how this photo comes off:

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Citizen journalism is working far better than perhaps anyone expected.  While traditional media has abandoned its responsibility and ethics to report unbiased news, citizen journalists have taken over the blogosphere and taken their cameras to the streets to find truth.

The former technique is one reason traditional newspapers are on their last legs. The latter technique is capturing truth so well that those being filmed resort to violence and intimidation in order to prevent it.

Why?

The answer goes back to a key phrase from an American cultural icon: Allen Funt.

Yes, I said, “Allen Funt.”

“Candid Camera” was not only a groundbreaking television show, it was a groundbreaking exercise in behavioral psychology.  Mr. Funt told audiences that they were enjoying, “people getting caught in the act of being themselves.” In that case, it was innocuous entertainment.

In the case of citizen journalists filming left-wing protests, it’s akin to war zone photography. The numerous incidences of protestors intimidating or assaulting citizen journalists have been posted here on the BIG websites all too often.

Why such hostility?

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I love it when Atheists proclaim to know more about people of faith than those people know about themselves.

The March 3 hatchet job on Christians perpetrated by the Secular Progressive Atheist Clown Phil Zuckerman is another case in point.  Now, Christians don’t need me to defend them.  They are the MSM’s favorite religious target.  The sad thing about Zuckerman is that it isn’t enough for him to just espouse his own lack of faith.  He has to attack other people’s faith.  I guess that’s part of the “new tone.”

Never mind that Zuckerman’s way into the article is to make a completely false statement derived from a Pew Poll.   Never mind that demonizing Christians for their support of the death penalty is done without mentioning that even left-leaning Californians support the death penalty.  Never mind that Zuckerman could have presented an intriguing non-partisan sociological study of religious and political beliefs among Evangelicals (he is a “Professor of Sociology” after all).

No, Zuckerman’s huge revelation — his entire reason for writing the article — is that Evangelical Christians are hypocrites when it comes to reconciling their religious and political beliefs.

Hypocrites.  Imagine that.  People…actual human beings….are flawed.  They say one thing yet do another! (more…)

Meet Sarah Seltzer.

She’s one of the great untold stories of the internet — that invention that allows everyone to have a voice whether they make good use of it or not.  And, regrettably, she does not.

To wit, her essay on Alternet.org (“16 of the Dumbest Things Americans Believe – And the Right-Wing Lies Behind Them”) where she writes:

“Americans are often misinformed, occasionally downright dumb, and easily misled by juicy-sounding rumors.”  Of course, it is only the “right wing…that takes full advantage of this reality.”

Setting aside that Ms. Seltzer is just your garden variety rude, insulting self-perceived elitist (Americans are neither dumb nor easily misled), the evidence she provides readers to support her case would not pass muster in a 7th grade debate class.

“Polling data during and after last week’s midterm elections suggested that many Americans genuinely believe President Obama has raised their taxes — even though the reality is that our president actually lowered them for most of us.”

Here are the facts.

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The City of Los Angeles is so deep in red ink, they are flagrantly violating state law in an effort to generate revenue, and have been for 12 years.

As I reported in an earlier column, officers from the Parking Violations Bureau (PVB) are still videotaping cars parked in 15-minute or loading zones around elementary schools.  This videotaping occurs during school drop-off and pick-up hours, as kids start their days to learn, or leave to be reunited with their parents – parents who will receive tickets by mail in a few days.

This is an illegal method under California law by which parking tickets may be delivered.   The 2010 California Vehicle Code, Division 17, Article 3.5, Sec. 40202(a,b,d) explicitly states that the ticket must be placed on the vehicle, and may only be delivered through the mail if the car is driven away while it is being ticketed.

The MSM is nowhere to be found regarding this issue.  Instead, citizens must rely on the superior consumer protection reporting of local news stations to fuel their outrage.  These stations, along with the LA Weekly, have taken on the City of Los Angeles where the MSM has abandoned its responsibility.

So has BigJournalism.com, and your intrepid reporter. (more…)

Some issues are so simple to understand that, when the mainstream media distorts the truth in service of a hidden agenda, you almost have to laugh as it drives the clown car over the Cliffs of Bias.

When the issue is enormously complex, and the folly of determining the truth by even our greatest minds humbles us all, you almost want to cheer at the media’s contortionistic talents — so grotesquely fascinating to observe as they are.

That is, you would if the purpose behind it all wasn’t so appalling.

The enormously complex issue is the food vs fuel debate — the diversion of crops from food production to biofuel (ethanol) production.  The MSM has an unsurprisingly hypocritical history of reportage on this story.

During the Clinton presidency, the Energy Policy Act and its subsequent amendments offered incentives for biofuel production.  This was allegedly aimed at promoting clean energy and reducing dependence on foreign oil.  The subtext, however, was for the environmental movement to deliver a blow to the big, bad oil companies.  Take away oil’s market share by promoting an alternative, and stack the deck by providing government subsidies.   The MSM ate it up, and spit it back out with glee. (more…)

When it comes to the alleged toxicity of perfumes and fragrances, there’s nothing worse than non-scientists eschewing readily-available scientific research in favor of village idiocy found on the internet, publishing their “findings” in a book, and metastasizing their contaminated thinking across millions of viewers via a network morning show.

I refer to the book No More Dirty Looks: The Truth About Your Beauty Products and the Ultimate Guide to Safe and Clean Cosmetics, and Robin Sindler, a producer at NBC’s Today Show.  Together, they deliver an intellectual bubonic plague — the authors acting as virus, the producer who apparently refuses to provide balance as rat flea.

The result is yet more scare science — that blend of fantasy, confusion, cancerphobia, and intellectual laziness my high school math teacher referred to as “stupidity.”

The International Fragrance Association (IFRA) Code of Practice is a comprehensive self-regulating protocol, augmented by independent third-party compliance testing.

Before any fragrance reaches market, it is created from a selection of 3,000 ingredients — natural and synthetic — all published earlier this year to demonstrate the industry’s transparency. The materials are reviewed by the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM).  RIFM prepares a comprehensive report on the materials from existing safety data, requires missing data to be provided, and issues recommendations for the materials’ safe usage.  This includes analysis of the concentration and volume of each ingredient, even for those in which no data exists. (more…)

When the employees of the Los Angeles Times go home at night, I wonder if they ever think about the travesty that they are contributing to on a daily basis.  After all, when writers like David Lazarus and Michael Hiltzik first joined the paper, did they consider themselves real journalists?  Did they feel that they were reporters in the truest sense of the word?

Because there’s no way they are now, and I have trouble finding other employees of the Times that I would call true journalists.

These days, real journalism is happening at the LA Weekly.  This free, alternative newspaper has out-reported the propaganda machine at the LA Times over and over again.  Reporters at the Weekly have repeatedly, and properly, hammered Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for gross incompetence.  The most recent example was the Weekly’s outstanding exposé on the Mayor’s failure to report over $100,000 in free tickets to various sporting and entertainment events.  As the intrepid reporters at the Weekly have shown, there is simply no excuse for what the Mayor has done to Los Angeles.   This came on top of the paper’s report that the Mayor spends only 11% of his time actually handling the business of Los Angeles.  The Weekly also remains one of the last bastions of true film criticism left in the country, this despite the departure of true film critic extraordinaire Manhola Dargis.

In contrast, we have the “reporters” at the Los Angeles Times.

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No, Gary Rivlin, the Payday Lenders and Other Fringe Lenders Are Not To Blame

I’m puzzled by Gary Rivlin.  Here’s a guy who spent two years profiling the subprime consumer loan industry for a forthcoming book and who, unlike most critics of the industry, actually has journalistic credentials.  Yet in a puzzling article in the Huffington Post, he inexplicably blames this industry for causing the country’s economic crisis.

Let’s remind everyone that the reasons for this crisis come from the following cause-and-effects:  cheap debt made it easy for borrowers to get money to purchase houses they had no business buying.  Banks and mortgage providers lent money to these people out of greed.  The toxic loans were bundled into packages and sold by Goldman Sachs and other entities.  The buyers of these packages failed to do their due diligence (out of greed).  Derivatives called collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps were set in place to “insure” against defaults.   When the housing market collapsed, anyone holding these mortgages got wiped out.

Do you see anything about payday lenders, pawnbrokers, auto title lenders, or check cashers in there?  Of course not.  Yet Mr. Rivlin proposes a bizarre piece of logic as to why these alternative financiers should be regulated by the forthcoming CFPA: “If you’re not directly to blame for the current crisis, then you get a free pass until you cause a national recession of your own?” (more…)

Doofus Major Richard Eskow proved himself to be the simple child again today, in yet another bumbling screed over at the Huffington Post.  Readers of this column know that his previous essay was filled with illogical pronouncements and an interpretation of philosophical and Scriptural texts worthy of an 8th-grader.

Did Mr. Eskow address the rebuttals that tore apart his arguments?  Of course not.  So like the 8th grader who’s had his fanny smacked for bad behavior, he waves his hands and says, “No no no!  Let me try this!” Not surprisingly, Mr. Eskow again demonstrates he has no journalistic credentials.  He cherry-picks data to support his case and quotes an organization that is a well-known PR front for an entity that created the exotic mortgages that cratered this economy.

Then again, Mr. Eskow doesn’t even qualify as a citizen-journalist.  He’s a Senior Fellow at a far-left wing think tank, and a “policy writer.” Apparently, he is also a musician.  What he apparently lacks, however, is the ability to use the internet to find some very simple facts.  Yes, facts.  Or maybe he just doesn’t want to discuss facts because he’s an ideologue, and facts are contrary to his perspective.

However, it is a Godly endeavor to educate the Fool, so I shall attempt to do so further with Mr. Eskow.

He states in yesterday’s column: (more…)

There’s nothing I love more than a sanctimonious fool and non-believer who preaches the literal Gospel not only to other non-believers, but also to those who follow Jesus Christ.   It is especially enjoyable when this same Prophet-Jester also fumbles Aristotle in his desperate attempt to elevate his own ego.  This is exactly the kind of dunderhead that make reading the Huffington Post so occasionally enjoyable.  It really is journalism at its best.

Doofus Major du Jour, Richard “RJ” Eskow babbles on about usury and the taking of interest, going so far as to call payday lenders “evil.”  Yes, he actually has placed them in the category of Satan’s minions, without ever realizing that ignorance itself is, alas, a sin.  So I must do what we Jews at Passover call “educating the simple child.”

Mr. Eskow loves throwing around the word “usury,” yet I doubt he would have much of a rebuttal when actually confronted with both the secular and spiritual definitions of the word. Therefore, having debunked his invocation of Ezekiel, I also suspect that Mr. Eskow shall make a stone of his heart and refuse to actually consider that he might be wrong.  So we’ll add “arrogance” to the list of sins he’ll owe penance on (for those keeping track). (more…)

Who exactly is Rachel Maddow anyway? How did she get a show on MSNBC?   A quick glance at her bio shows, let’s see, no journalistic credentials whatsoever.  This comes as no surprise.  And yet, considering that she has a Stanford degree in public policy, a Doctorate in Philosophy from Oxford, and (holy cats!) was a Rhodes Scholar, you’d think she might demonstrate those smarts by not making herself look like a total moron.

I’m talking about her screed against payday lenders.  Never mind the usual blather about being “legal loan sharks”.  Obviously, had the esteemed Dr. Maddow taken an elective class in economics, she’d realize that payday lenders fill a vital role in providing short-term credit to those in need, and what would happen if they didn’t exist.  However, the fact that she failed to point these facts out reveal her weak journalistic skills.  Oh, but I forgot, she isn’t a journalist.  She’s another academic who should know better.

The sanctimonious conclusion to her hit piece, however, is particularly revelatory.  She calls payday loan business model, “usury,” and demonstrates her spelling acumen by putting the correct five letters in the correct order, telling us that “it’s in the dictionary, and actually, also in the Bible.”

Alas, Dr. Maddow manages to demonstrate exactly why she isn’t a journalist.  If she were, she’d be able to actually look up the real definition of “usury” in the dictionary while properly interpreting the Biblical passages that refer to it.  Then she’d find they have no application to the issue and work an actual balanced story around it.

Here’s the definition of usury from a random Google search: (more…)

Duff Wilson of the New York Times should be ashamed of himself.  His March 30 article, “Risks Seen in Cholesterol Drug Use in Healthy People,” is a shameless piece of hysteria masquerading as journalism.  It’s yet another case of an experienced reporter either being too lazy to do his job, or spewing his or the Times’ bias against pharmaceutical companies.

I say it’s the latter.  Mr. Wilson is an investigative reporter.  Guys like him don’t get lazy.

Worse, his irresponsible bias may scare away people who will benefit from this drug. (more…)

It’s a sad state of affairs when a “non-profit” activist group can get a grant from the federal government to launch a campaign to put commercial fisherman – who actually do hard work for a living – on the unemployment line.

It’s an even sadder state of affairs when the media assists in this effort.

So goes the latest round of attacks on the commercial fishing industry.  Here’s the story for all of you folks out there who love your Omega-3 (Hint: go ahead and take it.  There’s nothing to worry about).

There’s a wee little fishy in the Chesapeake Bay called the menhaden.  Humans don’t eat them, but they are harvested because they are a great source of omega-3.  The menhaden also eat a lot of phytoplankton and zooplankton, which makes them a good source of food for other predators.  The activists would have you believe that commercial fisherman are running amok, gobbling up all the poor little menhaden and soon, there will be none left!  With them gone, predators who live on menhaden will vanish, and the entire Chesapeake environment will be destroyed! (more…)

We already know true journalism is dead, with but a few courageous reporters carrying the last beacons of light in the apocalyptic landscape of the Fourth Estate.   In recent years, however, newspaper editorial boards have vastly overstepped their boundaries in commentary on issues of which they know nothing.  We really should change the name of the Opinion Editorial to Informed Opinion Editorial.  After all, do we really want the Village Idiot telling us what he thinks?

Specifically, I refer to an irresponsible screed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in which they call on the FDA to ban bisphenol-A (BPA), a common building block of in plastics found in great abundance in our everyday products.

It’s bad enough that any outside entity should try to exert influence over the FDA’s decision-making process.  Thankfully, the FDA ignored the Journal Sentinel, and just announced that it considers BPA to be safe, while reasonably calling for continued studies.

This doesn’t change the importance of rags like the Journal Sentinel from meddling in something they know nothing about, and hoping to influence an independent body. The ramifications of the Journal Sentinel’s behavior go deeper than the message it’s sending.  By attempting to pressure a body charged with protecting the public, it sets a dangerous precedent that affects each and every one of us. (more…)