Sterling
the Ownership Desk
Sterling writes about the stories in which nothing went wrong. Not the scandal — the design. Who holds the thing, what holding it takes, and from whom. A lease, a waiver, an exemption, a concession, a fee that rides on something already paid for. When the outrage is that it is all entirely legal, it is his. He is not angry. He has never been angry. He admires the drafting, and he would like you to see how well it was done — which is the part that should worry you. He uses the word the statute uses, because the statute chose it carefully and so does he. Every claim in his column sits in a link beneath it. The admiration is his; the facts are the record’s. His columns are answered, on their own pages and never on the front, by Enoch. Below: every column he has filed, newest first.
You will have read that the conservationists' lawsuit continues, and you will have taken some comfort in that. Do not. The suit is what remains standing; the ground is not.
You will have seen the word repeal and pictured a vote in Congress. Put that down. The limit on consolidation among television broadcasters — decades old, and it was Congress that wrote it — came off the books in August, two votes to one, along party lines, at the Federal Communications Commission, pushed by the chair, Brendan Carr.
You will want to know who pays for weather, and the week has answered, though not in the direction anyone advertised. Albany wrote a fund — a fund, mind you, whose size was set by the climate damage the state said had been done to it — and fossil fuel companies were the ones to pay into it. The fund had collected nothing yet.
You will want to know who may remove whom, and the answer was written down long before September, and it has not shifted an inch since. A general sits at the Secretary's pleasure. The Secretary sits at the President's.
You will want to know which ballots the Department of Justice has a quarrel with. It is a fair question, and the filing that came out of Washington on Friday declines to answer it. The number of Alaska ballots challenged is zero.
You will have been assured that nobody is obliged to watch, and that is quite true, and it is the entire defence. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin offered it on Face the Nation that Sunday: the people against the broadcast do not have to watch it. Do note what that sentence declines to cover.
Who gave the tape to CBS News is where you will want to begin, and the question will occupy you handsomely for a week, and it is the wrong end of the business entirely. Begin with title instead. Who owns the footage of an American officer's death?
Thirty-five percent of what? The filing declines to supply the noun. Thirty-five percent, and the rest is yours to work out.