Achievement Unlocked: Banned by Mother Jones
Not really sure what I did to reach this achievement, but somehow I got banned in the last 2 days by Mother Jones, and probably by Kevin Drum. My comment history is here, and I am totally perplexed what led to this. My last comment was on a post of Drum's about hospital price competition, where I wrote:
The authors portray this (at least in the quoted material) as an anti-trust issue, but I suspect a bigger problem is the cronyist certificate of need process. In many locations, new hospitals, or hospital expansions (even things as small as buying a new cat scanner) require government permission in the form of a certificate of need. As one may imagine, entrenched incumbents are pretty good at managing this process to make sure they get no new competition. This, by the way, is a product of classic progressive thinking, which in its economic ignorance saw competition as duplicative and wasteful. We are lucky the Supreme Court shot down FDR's NRA or we would have this sort of mess in every industry.
Hard to believe this got me banned, unless Mother Jones has gotten really thin-skinned. The second to last comment I made there was actually in support of Mother Jones, congratulating them on winning a libel suit against them. The most recent one before that was over 2 months ago. This leads me to believe the comment above had to have gotten me banned, but the mind boggles -- did I run into some secret National Industrial Recovery Act fetishist?
Update: Mr. Drum, who I respect while disagreeing with frequently, was nice enough to write me back and said he didn't ban me, it had to come from Mother Jones staff somewhere. Which leaves me even more confused. Not sure why this comment among all the flotsam that washes ashore in the totality of Mother Jones comment sections would earn the ire of some intern.
J_W_W:
Its probably more likely that their scanner bot used to ban wrongthinkers saw NRA in your post and thought that you were talking about the other NRA ;-)
December 17, 2015, 1:07 pmAugust Hurtel:
Thin-skinned is possible. Seems like all the progressives are doubling down on the nonsense that created the new fascist ground swell. You'd think they'd want to listen to us and reform themselves- out of a sense of self-preservation if nothing else.
December 17, 2015, 1:19 pmJim Collins:
Congratulations on a notable achievement.
December 17, 2015, 1:51 pmirandom419:
I thought the lefties always whined about freedom of speech.
December 17, 2015, 2:21 pmSamWah:
Silly Boy! Thin-skinned is most likely, and as old-line leftists, your NRA comment touched their fuse.
December 17, 2015, 2:35 pmSamWah:
They do, they do, but only theirs, not anyone else's.
December 17, 2015, 2:36 pmDon:
Your sin is to have spoken ill of FDR, the patron saint of the modern progressive. You must be a gun toat'n, bible thump'n, inbred tea bagger, therefore unfit for polite and sophisticated company like MJ. :)
December 17, 2015, 3:29 pmTrapper_John:
Silly Coyote, we don't need 23 brands of underarm deodorant or 18 brands of sneakers when Mother Jones's interns are starving.
December 17, 2015, 4:33 pmbigmaq1980:
This is the most likely explanation. They undoubtedly have a hit list of words they scan for and this one was on it.
December 17, 2015, 5:27 pmDavid in Michigan:
Never heard of "Mother Jones". Checked it out via search. Found it. Why did you bother to comment on much less read their articles?
December 17, 2015, 6:07 pmGil G:
Oh boo, Libertarian sites are thin-skinned too.
December 17, 2015, 6:59 pmGil G:
Or as Libertarians sites - they're private sites so they can ban whoever they want.
December 17, 2015, 7:00 pmFreedom:
Interesting. I posted a similar, albeit shorter, comment on the same post and was not banned.
December 17, 2015, 7:04 pmThon Brocket:
Actually, MJ aren't at all ban-happy as a general thing (I know, I've tested them to the limit in the past).
The problem is just a clueless intern. Happened to me a couple of times.
December 17, 2015, 10:05 pmherdgadfly:
Funny things happen sometimes with "runaway" blog post monitoring software. I have been blocked at times by some software or another that Warren installed here at Coyote Blog. Most of us are non-influential in this vast internet, so egos just have to be holstered.
December 17, 2015, 11:07 pmRussell:
The intern explanation makes more sense. You violated someone's safe space. And Drum, while I might disagree with him, is not that far around the bend.
December 17, 2015, 11:34 pmFelineCannonball:
I've seen a few regular commenters of the progressive persuasion banned with no recourse. I don't know if it's robots or a foreign speaking intern. Sign up on disqus again and put a 1 or a 2 after your name. Or if your skin is too thin or it's not worth it to you . . . don't comment there.
December 18, 2015, 12:39 amC:
That post contained 3.73 micro aggressions, clearly over the posted 3.5 limit. If you would have simply removed 2 facts, and just replaced them with a few unsubstantiated opinions, the post would have cleared.
December 18, 2015, 2:12 amCapitalistRoader:
When a lefty's skin gets thin with age he/she moves over to Vox where they don't brook dissent in the form of reader comments. Vanguard of the Proletariat and all that:
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December 18, 2015, 7:40 amMichael Stack:
Your point? I'm sure if a Libertarian blog started banning people for no good reason, he would call them out on it too. He's pretty intellectually consistent.
December 18, 2015, 7:46 amIke Pigott:
So, did they un-ban you?
December 18, 2015, 8:29 amMNHawk:
Take it from someone who knows. You don't have to swear. You don't have to threaten. You don't have to type repetitive posts meant to do nothing but drive people away.
All you have to do is upset the flowers with ideas they can't counter. That's obviously what you did. There is no more cowardly animal on the planet than an American leftist.
December 18, 2015, 9:08 amMNHawk:
That is true. I don't even remember be ever having a comment deleted there, and I too went closer to the edge than at the many places I have been banned.
December 18, 2015, 9:11 amMNHawk:
Yet you're here, commenting. Way not to make a good point.
December 18, 2015, 9:12 amMercury:
More classic "progressive" thinking:
The municipal government of Flint, MI has literally poisoned the city's children with lead after having switching water supplies to save money (just guessing here but probably in a desperate measure to preserve as many municipal jobs as possible in the midst of the city's collapsed economy).
The proposed solution from the new mayor?.....MORE GOVERNMENT!....infrastructure projects, additional social services....a whole generation of cognitively disabled children (a new constituency!) is going to need a lifetime of assistance! The brain damage is irreversible!....it's impossible to quantify how much money will be required but it will be huge the mayor informs us.
Even the NPR reporter conducting the interview is a little flabbergasted. Does the city take any responsibility for what happened? "Can't talk about anything that happened before I got here" says the mayor.
December 18, 2015, 9:37 amThis could be the most unwasted crisis ever!
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=460234581&m=460234582
MJ:
Personally, I think Warren is masochist for posting comments over there. But it's pretty obvious that the problem is with the magazine and its readers, not with him or what he wrote.
December 18, 2015, 10:35 amMJ:
I doubt that it's an intern doing this kind of thing. I can't speak from experience as I don't read their magazine and don't comment there, but the most likely explanation based on my experience with other moderated (sometimes obsessively) sites is that one of their regular townies took umbrage with what you said and reported you to the site's moderators, ostensibly with some BS claim of insult, racism, or fill-in-the-blank offense, and that this might be enough to get your account suspended or perma-banned.
If true, it's a pretty sad commentary on that site's administrative practices.
December 18, 2015, 10:42 amslocum:
It's a little more complicated than that. Flint was in the process of switching away from sourcing its water from Detroit. As you might expect, the Detroit water department has long been badly mismanaged and seriously overcharged its captive suburban/exurban customers (there was an enormous fight between the city and suburbs about the water department during the bankruptcy process). So...Flint's emergency manager (an official appointed by the Republican governor, BTW) decided to switch to a new system taking water from Lake Huron (and I believe that's still the plan). Which was fine. But the new system wasn't ready, so he also decided to switch, temporarily, to an old, mothballed system that pulls from the Flint River, and that's where the trouble started. That decision was made in order to save money (I believe about $12M/yr -- not a trivial amount), not to preserve lots of cushy municipal jobs but because Flint is a disaster and is dead freakin' broke (which is why there was an emergency manager). The treated water from the Flint River itself didn't have lead and would have been safe to drink out of a tap at the treatment plant, but it was more corrosive and leached lead out of old pipes (there are a lot of old buildings with old plumbing in Flint). And yes, now that the newly elected mayor is in charge, she's going to try to leverage the crisis for every last state and/or federal dollar she can (and, really, where the hell else is she going to get more money -- it's sure not coming from Flint taxpayers).
December 18, 2015, 10:44 amdavesmith001:
Meh. I was banned at Econlog for saying Scott Summer should stick to monetary policy.
December 18, 2015, 11:33 amErikTheRed:
South Park wrote a song about it. Want to hear it? Here it goes...
December 18, 2015, 11:51 amhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXQkXXBqj_U
mesaeconoguy:
Regressives do not like to be challenged in their “thinking.”
This includes all of economics, which no regressive understands.
Yes, that is a blanket statement, and also true.
December 19, 2015, 9:56 amNoumenon72:
Check out Kevin Drum instead of the broader site. He's quite reasonable, checks out data, I could go on but probably your reaction will differ based on our different politics.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum
December 19, 2015, 4:00 pmSineWaveII:
Also he used the word "cronyist". That's a big no no.
December 20, 2015, 10:32 amstevewfromford:
New Republic is particularly bad in this respect. If one deviates even mildly from the lefty "consensus" one is disappeared, literarily, at least!
December 25, 2015, 1:33 amGanja River:
I would also like to share my pride in having been banned from Mother Jones. They deleted some my comments, which I found shocking. These were incredibly mild unprovocative statements too.
January 8, 2016, 11:30 amSortingHat:
Have you ever seen how cockroaches scatter when a light is shined on them?
April 4, 2016, 11:37 pmSortingHat:
Of course they can. The left just like the right have the God given right to remain uninformed and be stupid. They are sure exercising that right to the extreme......I mean left.
Most debates are asking the wrong questions which are on purpose to lead to a run around circle that has no end.
April 4, 2016, 11:39 pmMikeBruner:
Same thing just happened to me at MJ. I've never gotten banned anywhere and don't write anything I'd be uncomfortable with being associated with my name. Have no idea what brought that on.
November 18, 2016, 1:05 pmLarry:
I was banned from Mother Jones for posting how happy I was that Trump was elected. They really like their echo chamber. Good thing they are tolerant.
November 22, 2016, 1:56 pmNathan Robinson:
I got banned as well. All you have to do is not agree with them and your out.
January 22, 2017, 6:02 pmNathan Robinson:
Yup, this happened to me as well.
January 22, 2017, 6:02 pmAlvin Monero:
Yep. Merely speaking the TRUTH and defying FakeStreamMedia Propaganda counts as "Hate-Speech" under their view.
June 5, 2017, 1:50 pmI just had one of my accounts banned for daring to question the 'Russia hacking the election narrative'.
Hahahahahaha!!!
Alvin Monero:
Other words they now scan for are; "Cuck, snowflake, sjw"
June 5, 2017, 1:51 pmAlvin Monero:
Unless you were using that term against some people they DON'T like
June 5, 2017, 1:56 pmdj23:
Yep, just happened to me too...some total snowflake leftist "jjazznola" snowflake extrordinaire banned me on his own by flagging me as spam? maybe we should call them spamflakes now. Mother Jones can't take a pro trump user who knows his stuff, yet FoxNews is trolled daily by innane leftists and their drivel.
April 15, 2018, 12:05 pm