#InsideTheMopac media will go in the tank for the #TPP

For the unfamiliar, or those missing my post of earlier this morning, the Inside the Mopac media is the Texas state-level version of the Inside the Beltway media. I'll be blogging about it more and more in the future, Peter Principle and all.

In fact, in Dallas, the Snooze is already doing it, writing a puff piece about how much ranchers will like the Trans Pacific Partnership. The piece mentions none of the potential problems for the TPP, whose full text is here.

Among things the Snooze doesn't mention is that Japan is still reserving agricultural "safeguards." We've seen how restrictive Japan has been on exports in the past. If this opens the door to other countries doing the same, then it's not much advancement. And, per that link, Japan at least isn't cracking its doors open a lot.

And, the intellectual property rules could allow genetic research on livestock improvement to become more bottled up and pricey than now.

Saying no to the #InsideTheMopac media

Fellow Texans of a political bent, especially fellow bloggers, will, I hope, get the meaning of the hashtag.

Texas has its state-level version of "inside the Beltway" media. The Mopac freeway doesn't run all the way around Austin, but, as the original bypass, it's a handy symbol for calling out the Austin bureaus and the state-level political analysts at Texas' main seven-day daily newspapers for their suckupitis to Austin's ruling class.

I am including the Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the Houston Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News and the Austin American Statesman. I'm not as familiar with the El Paso Times, but since it was bought by Gannett earlier this year, which since then bought Corpus Christi and other Journal Sentinel papers, I'll mark it down as an expected suck-up for the future. Anything smaller than these falls under the state-level version of regional papers (Corpus, Laredo, the lower Valley, Lubbock, Odessa, Midland, Beaumont, Amarillo, Waco, Wichita Falls and even smaller.)

On constitutional amendments? I suspect the Lege could put forth a bill to constitutionally enshrine goat-fucking and the inside the Mopac media would all solemnly sign off on it, and offer reasons to support it.

I know this well with the Snooze; having lived in metro Dallas most of the previous decade, there's not an establishmentarian ass that paper won't kiss. I am 119 percent sure that, within the city of Dallas, if the Dallas Citizens Council said, "We support goat-fucking," the Snooze would do the same, on a dime. The Startlegram, I have enough familiarity with it from my time in the Metroplex to say that it's only better by the soft bigotry of low comparisons.

The Chron? I know less about it, but not nothing. It seems to me to tank pretty well itself. The Express-News, especially with bureau consolidation, just follows its lead.

The Stateless? The paper's not as liberal as traditional Austin, and tilts left-neolib to some degree in deference to "new Austin." Plus, in print, it's barely a seven-day daily newspaper anymore, and if Cox can't sell ads into it on Mondays, why keep pretending?

The EP Times? Already checked that box; it's a Gannett paper.

And, per this follow-up post, expect to see more and more "tanking" on the Trans-Pacific Partnership by the Inside the Mopac media.

The Edge, "great thinkers" and Peter Principle

Online magazine The Edge has, for several years, had an annual "big question." This year, that question is: "What should we be worried about?"

The answer, I think is a high-level and simple one that encompasses a multitude of lower issues.

"We should be worried about the hubris of our species."

Among the list of responses, it instead seems the inanity of our species is a worry to several of the respondents.

A number of people talk about things like "internet drivel," "online fascism," and more, all focused on how today's "always on" world increases this inanity factor.

Nicholas Carr and Evgeny Morozov, as I expected, have some very good Internet-related insights, not necessarily limited to inanity.

And, as a few respondents note, increases opportunities for the Peter Principle to take effect.

That said, the Peter Principle also sometimes pops up among Edge question respondents.

The first, Geoffery Miller, fears Chinese eugenics. Sounds like an overblown worry to me, though the idea of such eugenics does underscore my fear of human hubris.

Dan Sperber says "misplaced worries." Sounds like a trivial answer.

NYT's Linda Greenhouse shows herself a travesty

Another refutation of the "liberal" NYT myth here.

But, an informal proof of how much the Peter Principle works at major news organizations.

In a special set of mini-columns on the 10th anniversary of Bush v. Gore, columnist and former SCOTUS reporter Linda Greenhouse says this of Bush v. Gore:

I’m often asked for my thoughts on Bush v. Gore, and liberal audiences are often disappointed when I describe the decision not as a travesty or tragedy, but as a bad hair day. By this, I mean that it was just something that happened, a weird gust of wind that blew through the court

Bush v. Gore was "just something that happened"? The "Brooks Brothers mob"? The armada of lawyers, led by James Baker? That all was "just something that happened"?

Of course, earlier on in her comments, Greenhouse shows how idiotic she was back then:

I assured my editors that the court’s conservative majority believed too deeply in federalism ever to entertain a challenge to how Florida was counting the votes.

Right. Sure. The court wasn't quite as activist then as now, because it wasn't as far right. But, Nino Scalia, above all, already showed plenty of activism more than a decade ago.

Here's more the truth, from Larry Tribe:

I was then stunned when questions from the bench to my co-counsel David Boies, who argued the second and ultimate case, hinted that the court might make permanent its earlier decision to stop the recount temporarily.

But not even those hints prepared me for the 5-4 late-night decision in which the court announced that equal protection demanded a more uniform approach to counting the ballots — only to add that, having itself run out the clock, it sadly had no choice but to end all the counting that very night (Catch-22!).

But, nooooo .... this all was "just something that happened." At least the NYT op-ed page, overall, isn't quite as bad as the WaPost. Certainly not on house editorials.