Those Stubborn Facts: Innovation Machine?

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Bell Labs, IBM, innovation, National Affairs, Oren Cass, Silicon Valley, tech, Those Stubborn Facts

Number of Nobel prizes won by researchers at Bell Labs: 8

Number of Nobel prizes won by researchers at IBM: 5

Number of Nobel prizes won by researchers funded by a Silicon          Valley firm: 0

 

(Source: “Putting Dynamism in Its Place,” by Oren Cass, National Affairs, No. 39, Spring, 2019, https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/putting-dynamism-in-its-place)

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Evidence of the Crucial U.S. Role in China’s Tech Rise

Tags

Broadcom, China, Daniel Strumpf, Huawei, Intel, Qualcomm, Silicon Valley, tech, tech transfer, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If you need any further evidence that American technology firms have played vital roles in China’s transformation into a major technology power capable of threatening U.S. national security as well as economic interests, check out Dan Strumpf’s article in The Wall Street Journal today. In the process, he inevitably exposes gaping holes in President Trump’s China strategy that need to be closed up pronto if the President is serious about checking China’s dangerous rise.

Here are just some of the highlights of Strumpf’s piece – which is limited to U.S. tech firms’ contributions to the emergence of Huawei, whose CFO (and founder’s daughter) was arrested in Canada a week ago on charges of helping the entity use fraud to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. (As always, I refuse to use words like “company” or “business” in describing Chinese economic actors, since they have nothing in common with corporate organizations in free market economies.)

>”Silicon Valley giants from Intel Corp. to Broadcom Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. are top suppliers of Huawei, which buys their components to make equipment such as base stations and routers and Huawei mobile phones.”

>”Qualcomm and Intel are also working with Huawei on its development of next-generation 5G technologies, a field in which the Chinese company’s aim to be a global leader has alarmed some in Washington.”

>”Huawei still relies on imports from U.S. chip companies such as Broadcom, Xilinx Inc. and Analog Devices Inc. for components used in its telecom equipment…Huawei buys equipment from data-storage equipment maker Seagate Technology PLC for use in its enterprise business, and uses memory chips made by Micron Technology Inc. in its smartphones….”

>”Intel and Qualcomm, which draw huge revenue from China, are seen by Huawei as more than suppliers. In Huawei’s annual report, Intel is described as a ‘strategic partner,’ and the companies work together in a range of areas, including next-generation 5G technology.”

>”In 2015, Qualcomm, Huawei and China’s largest chip maker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., launched a joint venture in Shanghai to work on next-generation chip technology.”

And lest you think it’s just Huawei, click here and here for numerous examples of similar assistance rendered by such American corporations to other Chinese entities and industries.

Strumpf’s article also makes clear the flip side of these American companies’ operations: Chinese entities like Huawei have become major customers and sources of revenue for the U.S. tech sector.

Nonetheless, it’s inconceivable that any Trump administration policy to address the China tech threat can succeed if these sales and partnerships are allowed to continue. Silicon Valley will of course cite these earnings in its inevitable campaign to any attempted curbs on its China activities (while simultaneously urging Washington to “do something” about the Chinese intellectual property theft- and extortion-fueled tech ambitions that has these companies scared silly for their own selfish reasons). And that’s why the President urgently needs to get on TV from the Oval Office, explain comprehensively how the tech firms’ massive giveaway of critical knowhow has undermined their country’s future, how his globalist predecessors’ indulgence has enabled this risky business, why the course change he’s engineering in China policy is so essential, and what his end-game is.

Trade wars may not be easy to win, contrary to the President’s recent boast. But can anyone reasonably doubt that this message will be easy to sell?

Im-Politic: Why Washington’s Latest Think Tank Scandal Should Matter – but May Not

Tags

corporations, corruption, democracy, Google, idea laundering, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, New America Foundation, Silicon Valley, special interests, think tanks

Slowly, and not so surely, the American media is waking up to the pervasiveness of corporate corruption of the nation’s think tank complex. I say “slowly” because revelations of the way these special interests – which include foreign governments – have used these supposedly quasi-academic institutions to promote and defend their own selfish agendas has tended to drip out in individual exposes usually separated by years (literally). And I say “not so surely” because these reports rarely connect any of the important dots. Worse, it’s ever clearer that the Mainstream Media itself is a big part of the problem.

The latest example: the uproar set off by revelations that the New America Foundation (NAF) recently fired a team of analysts because it started goring the ox of one of the organization’s main funders, Google.

It’s been gratifying to see that nearly everyone who has commented on this incident considers NAF and Google to be in the wrong, and no one whose work I’ve seen has given the slightest credence to the organization’s insistence that the team was canned because he wasn’t sufficiently collegial in his work habits.

Much less gratifying has been the almost equally widespread tendency to interpret the incident as a sign that Google itself has become way too powerful on America’s policy and intellectual scenes, and in underhanded ways. Or that Silicon Valley itself is now exerting way too much of this power just as sneakily, and without adequate checks.

That’s all true, and important. What’s been almost completely missed, however, is that Google’s muscle-flexing is anything but limited to Google or to the tech sector or to the New America Foundation. It is now Standard Operating Procedure in the think tank world, which has become what I’ve called an idea-laundering racket. That is, donors use the tanks they support to dress up various self-serving ideas in respectable-looking scholarly raiment that can be sold to policy-makers as the products of disinterested truth-seeking.

Not that special interests lack the right to bring their concerns to official-dom. But they should be correspondingly obligated to display some transparency – and where they’re determined to be secretive, or to capitalize on the general public’s understandable unwillingness to investigate the information they do need to disclose, the press needs to step in. Sadly, it’s almost unheard of for journalists to link think tank staff quoted in news articles as scholarly experts to the donors that pay them and the agendas they’re pushing.

Indeed, as I’ve documented, there’s a strong tendency on the part even of news organizations that have reported on think tanks’ corporate and other special interest connections to ignore their own findings and permit idea laundering as usual.

One big reason that’s become clearer to me than ever as I’ve been looking into the NAF scandal is the remarkable extent that journalists have formally been part of its operations and structure. The informal connections between journalists and think tankers have always been important, however neglected. Think tank staff and establishment journalists tend to come from the same kinds of fairly affluent backgrounds, have attended the same kinds of schools, graduate with the same kinds of ideas, and – since so many are clustered in Washington, D.C. – live in the same kinds of neighborhoods, send their kids to the same schools, and generally move in the same social circles.

Moreover, it’s been routine for media figures to take sabbaticals at think tanks to write books or just get some relief from the day-to-day grind and study subjects in depth. How realistic is it to expect any of them to turn around and then bite the hand that literally fed them?

The inevitable result is downright scary if you believe (as you should) that a robustly functioning democracy depends in large measure on individuals and institutions playing distinct roles that enable them to function as balancers and watchdogs or simply reinforcers of needed degrees of political and social pluralism. When they interact too closely and especially too systematically, temptations to scratch each other’s backs inevitably mushroom.

But perhaps more subtly, and therefore more importantly, these actors (especially the individuals) just as inevitably begin to know and understand each other too well, to like and admire each other too much, to recognize each other’s wants and needs too willingly, to agree with their legitimacy too thoroughly, to avoid any potential awkwardness or unpleasantness, and to cut them considerable slack when any kinds of trouble arise. And as these patterns emerge and consolidate, the lines separating these actors blur, their independent outlooks start dissolving, and they begin to merge into a genuine establishment (or “swamp,” if you will) with a common mindset, a consequent tendency toward group-think, and an increasing dedication to promoting and protecting its position – which tends to be pretty privileged.

In this vein, NAF’s journalistic connections are truly eye-opening. Its first board chairman was The Atlantic‘s James Fallows. An early president was Steve Coll, formerly with the Washington Post and The New Yorker. One of its board chairs today is National Review Executive Editor Reihan Salam, and he’s joined on this body by Fallows (still with The Atlantic), Steven Rattner (a New York Times columnist and financier), David Brooks (another New York Times columnist), and Washington Post columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria.

NAF also has developed a network of “media partners” that regularly publish its material via syndication deals. These news organizations include The Atlantic, Quartz.com (which is owned by The Atlantic‘s parent company), Slate, National Review (Salam’s publication), and TIME.  

The organization’s governmental connections are extensive as well. Like more and more think tanks, NAF also gets funding from the U.S. and foreign governments and international organizations. These official donors include the U.S. State Department and Agency for International Development, the U.S. government-funded U.S. Institute of Peace, the European Union, the European Commission, Norway’s foreign ministry, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Germany’s Embassy to the United States. (See NAF’s latest Annual Report for documentation of current Board members and donors.)

Again, it’s been encouraging to see NAF take its lumps. But real progress toward breaking up the Washington swamp won’t be made until journalists and policymakers start treating the think tanks with the skepticism they deserve, and if not ignoring the information they generate, at least considering the source much more exactingly before internalizing and further propagating it.

And all RealityChek readers will easily be able to tell whether the NAF scandal brings genuine change. Check your favorite news sources to see whether NAF staff keep appearing as founts of scholarly wisdom – and when they are used, if the reporters or anchors in question tell you whose signing their paychecks, and what stakes these donors have in the issue in question. And look for the same treatment for all the other major think tanks. Even better? Start giving them heck in their comment sections and on social media when they don’t.

Following Up: Mercury News Treats H1B Debate as Non-News

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Following Up, H1B, immigrants, Immigration, journalism, Mercury News, Neil Chase, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, tech, tech workers, workers

The story of the video of a major debate on U.S. immigrant tech worker policies that earlier this week looked like it was being kept under wraps now looks like the story of a video that never was – due to some astonishingly unenterprising journalism from the Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s main newspaper and therefore a leading source of information on the technology industry.

As RealityChek regulars know, the story began with a June 1 debate in Silicon Valley centering on the controversial H1B immigrant visas. Squaring off were the Valley’s new Democratic Member of Congress, Ro Khanna and Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis. (A tech entrepreneur took part in the event, too, but in a minor way.)

Technology companies claim that the H1B and similar programs are crucial to accessing the world’s best talent. Critics charge that they’ve overwhelmingly been used to cut their costs by replacing native-born U.S. workers with much cheaper foreign counterparts. Khanna favors relatively modest changes to H1B policies; Matloff believes major surgery is needed.

Matloff, who’s become a valued friend of mine, has written that the event marked  the first time a debate has been held between an elected official and a researcher on the topic, a major event in that sense. (Khanna has not disagreed.) Matloff also noted that a videographer from the Mercury News was present and apparently recording the proceedings.

Yet the Mercury News failed to cover the debate and never posted a recording on its website. Matloff asked a reporter on the paper to find out why, and was told that a recording existed, but that “it was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna. Not sure the reason(s) for this…” Matloff then speculated that the paper failed to make the video public because Khanna performed poorly – leading the Mercury News, which editorially has sided with the tech industry on H1B and related issues, to consign it to non-event status.

I emphatically agreed that the video’s import deserved to see the light of day, and last Sunday urged the Mercury News to post it both to perform a public service on a major technology policy area and to affirm its journalistic chops. Gratifyingly, the post and follow-up tweets prompted Khanna readily to agree, and to call openly for the video’s posting. (For the record, he contends that it was Matloff who was highly ineffective.)

Two days later, Matloff and I got answers from Mercury News editor Neil Chase. In the version he sent Matloff, he wrote, “We had a photographer there who captured some still photos and some video for use with a future story, but we didn’t attend with the intention of taping the full debate and did not.”

Based on information Matloff had shared with me and my own journalistic experience, yesterday, I sent Chase the following email. I had hoped to get a response from him in time to prepare this post, but no such luck yet:

Dear Neil,

Many thanks for your comment to my blog and my apologies for the short delay in responding.  

I must confess, though, that the response leaves me somewhat mystified on two counts.

First, the statement that the Mercury News videographer did not “record the whole event” doesn’t track with an email from one of your reporters, Ethan Baron, to Matloff.  Baron said, in response to the latter’s query re the video’s availability, “it looks like the video was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna.”  Granted he’s conveying some uncertainty here. But Matloff also has written in his blog that “the videographer seemed to be taping continuously.”  In addition, Matloff noted that “the video cam [was] on a high tripod, seemingly much for an occasional clip.”

Similarly, it sounds odd, as your email indicates, to give the videographer the responsibility for choosing the portions of the debate to be shot.  Was this the case?  If so, what were the criteria used to determine what was captured?  Or were they simply taken to get a bit of file footage of each participant, irrespective of what they were saying at the time?  

Second, I certainly don’t mean to tell you how to do your job.  But as someone with a journalistic background, I’m hard pressed to understand the paper’s seemingly offhand attitude toward this event.  After all, the H1B issue has been described as crucial by the dominant industry in the region served by the Mercury News, and it’s surely of comparable importance to all your tech worker subscribers.  The new Congressman from your area, Rep. Khanna, has been touted by several national publications as a rising star in the Democratic party, and possibly all of national politics.  To his credit, he was willing to appear in public with an outspoken, prominent critic of the H1B and related programs – a rare event at the very least, according to Matloff.  And of course, H1B and other immigration issues have become even greater controversies nationwide since the last presidential campaign heated up.  So from all appearances, the leading paper of Silicon Valley would be expected to view the debate was highly newsworthy from the get-go.  And yet it seems from your email that no coverage was ever planned.  

Now it’s clear that some fur was flying at the event, and that Rep. Khanna and Matloff are begun feuding in public over what was said and over their qualifications to claim expert status on the issue.  I.e., because of this aftermath, their debate has become by any reasonable definition even more newsworthy.     

So I respectfully make the two following requests:

1. Would you check whatever video archive you have – including whatever the videographer might possess – to determine conclusively whether a full recording of the debate is indeed available?  (If not, I would hope to find out how it was disposed of, and why.)

2. Would you assign a reporter to cover this emerging Khanna-Matloff dispute — in which a local Congressman who’s increasingly prominent nationally has publicly gone after a critic on an issue that’s one of his top legislative priorities, and a major national concern?  The Mercury News would get an excellent scoop, and perform a valuable public service at the same time.  

Thanks for your consideration, and I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Alan

As per the email, I’m still hoping that the Mercury News finds a recording and shares it, and that it reports on the differences between Khanna and Matloff, which cut to the heart of the debate on H1B and broader questions and arguments concerning the future of the domestic workforce in an age of rapid innovation. At a time when Fake News abounds, it would amount for welcome coverage of some real news.

Following Up: Progress in Freeing the Mercury News H1B Debate Video

Tags

Following Up, H1B, Immigration, Mercury News, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, social media, tech workers, Twitter

What a day it’s been for RealityChek on Twitter today! Yesterday, I posted on the peculiar failure of the Mercury News, the top newspaper in technology industry center Silicon Valley, to post a video it made of a landmark and apparently heated recent debate on the H1B visa program. Under this controversial feature of U.S. immigration policy, American employers can secure foreign workers they can demonstrate are needed because they boast special talents that generally can’t be found in the U.S. workforce.  

Thanks to this item, and to some tweets today, I seem to have persuaded the most prominent participant, Rep. Ro Khanna (D.-Cal.) to ask the paper to release the full version.

Another participant in the event, University of California, Davis computer science professor Norman Matloff, had already made such a request, but got a “Thanks, but no thanks”-type answer.

So this morning, I decided, via Twitter, to ask Khanna to join the campaign. It was great to see him respond, and after a few tweets back and forth, at about 1:45 PM EST, he declared, “I have told them [the Mercury News] I would welcome the release of the tape if they have one. I would love for this to be public. I’m all for transparency.” So let’s hope that a request from a Member of Congress will do the trick. And let’s also hope that the paper still has the video!

I’ve asked Khanna to let me know the Mercury News‘ answer as soon as he can, and of course, I’ll pass the word on to you – ideally with a link – right away. And FYI, you can get in on this kind of action first-hand yourself by following me at @AlanTonelson. As with RealityChek, feedback is always welcome, and that includes heavy doses of snark!

P.S. Just for a bit of context, a major point of contention between Khanna and Matloff is a bill sponsored by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa that attempts to address H1B-related problems.  Khanna is another sponsor of the legislation; Matloff considers its remedies inadequate.

Im-Politic: Free the Mercury News H1B Debate Video!

Tags

H1B, H1B visas, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, media bias, Mercury News, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, technology companies, technology workers, Voice of America, wages

There’s been no shortage of controversy stirred up by the H1B visa program that brings immigrants to the United States to take jobs allegedly requiring special talents – mostly in technology companies. So when what could well have been the first public debate ever that centers on this subject is held that included a researcher on the visas (who has charged that they overwhelmingly go to foreign workers who simply lower wages for companies who want to replace more expensive Americans) and a politician who’s been strongly in favor, you’d think a major newspaper would find that pretty newsworthy.

In the case of the Mercury News, however, you’d be wrong. And much worse, it looks like the San Francisco Bay area daily is keeping a video of the event under wraps because it makes the politician – whose views closely mirror the paper’s pro-H1B editorial stance – look absolutely terrible.

Here’s the skinny on the event. Precisely because there’s no recording available, I’m relying on this account from participant Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California, Davis, a leading national authority on immigration issues and the H1B program in particular, and a strong critic of the latter. Joining Matloff on a panel convened at the newly opened offices of the Voice of America’s Silicon Valley bureau were freshman Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna and Kamran Elahian, who Matloff describes as “an immigrant tech entrepreneur.”

According to Matloff, most of the H1B exchanges took place between him and Khanna, who has been characterized in the press as “the favorite of the tech industry since he tried to first overtake incumbent Mike Honda in the 2014 election” in large part because of his defense of the domestic tech industry’s H1B practices.

As Matloff describes it, Khanna – who has also been described in the national media as a rising Democratic party star and champion of pragmatic fixes for economically besieged middle class Americans – was stunningly ignorant about recent H1B-related news developments. More troubling: Khanna sunk to thinly disguised personal (and completely unjustified) attacks on Matloff and several times seem to have flown off the handle when presented with evidence that clashed with his preconceived ideas.

I’d say “Don’t take my (or Matloff’s) word for it; see for yourself” – but I can’t. The debate was filmed by the Mercury News, but in response to a query from Matloff about whether the video would be posted, a reporter he knew at the paper told him that

“it looks like the video was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna. Not sure the reason(s) for this, but I know videos of such events are often just used in bits and pieces…”

As Matloff noted in an email to me, “Certainly it would have cost the Merc nothing to put the video on the Web, quite easily and simply.” And it’s hard to disagree with his judgment that the paper “would be performing a major public service by placing the video online (in full, of course).”

So it’s necessary to take seriously Matloff when he speculated, in that same email to me: “I can certainly see the Merc wanting to protect Rep. Khanna. They had endorsed Khanna, and generally feel their loyalty is to the tech industry. Their coverage of H-1B has been fair, but their editorial position has always been pro-H-1B.”

Matloff’s views are hardly dispositive – though I have always found him to be scrupulously honest. What could not be clearer, however, is that the Mercury News could reenforce its claims to objectivity by posting the video. With every passing day that it fails, the case for questioning its motives can only grow.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: So You Think You Know Manufacturing’s Productivity Leaders?

Tags

labor productivity, manufacturing, multi-factor productivity, offshoring, productivity, Silicon Valley, technology, trade policy, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Washington has just released detailed new manufacturing labor productivity data, and as with the 2014 numbers (which have been revised), these new 2015 figures show a head-scratching list of out-performers, mediocrities, and laggards. Specifically, the champs include lots of sectors that few would consider “high tech” or “industries of the future” or “knowledge-intensive,” and the mediocrities include many that would be lumped into those glitzy categories.

A reminder – the labor productivity performance measured here is the narrower of the two efficiency gauges tracked by the U.S. Labor Department. It shows the amount of goods and services produced for each hour on the jobs by an American workers. The other measure – multi-factor productivity – as the name implies, measures how much output is created by a group of inputs taken together. The inputs include not only labor but capital, energy, materials, and others.

Earlier this year, Labor reported that labor productivity for the entire manufacturing sector increased by 1.39 percent in 2015. That’s OK by recent standards, but recent standards as poor by historical standards. Here’s a list of the ten sectors that beat this average by the greatest margin:

agricultural chemicals: +11.6 percent

tobacco products: +11.3 percent

industrial machinery: +8.0 percent

miscellaneous furniture-related products: +7.6 percent

paints, coatings, and adhesives: +7.6 percent

miscellaneous non-metallic mineral products: +7.6 percent

sawmill and preserved wood products: +7.4 percent

coating, engraving, and heat-treating materials: +7.4 percent

petroleum and coal products: +7.0 percent

lime and gypsum products: +6.0 percent

I don’t see anything screaming “Silicon Valley” here, do you?

Here’s a list of the ten sectors with the worst productivity growth last year:

household appliances: -10.9 percent

medical equipment and supplies: -6.9 percent

leather and allied products: -8.9 percent

bakeries and tortilla products: -7.3 percent

electrical equipment: -5.9 percent

fabric mill products: -4.6 percent

miscellaneous textile mill products: -4.4 percent

beverages: -4.2 percent

ships and boat-building: -4.1 percent

alumina and aluminum: -3.8 percent

architectural and structural metals: -3.8 percent

Nothing real high tech here, either. But most of the real surprises come from industries practically synonymous with innovation. Many experienced 2015s that were ho hum at best. In particular:

pharmaceuticals and medicines: +3.9 percent

semiconductors and electronic components: +3.4 percent

aerospace products and parts: +1.0 percent

Moreover, their 2015 numbers were worse than their (revised) 2014 performance. Which were as follows:

pharmaceuticals and medicines: +5.7 percent

semiconductors and electronic components: +3.5 percent

aerospace products and parts: +6.6 percent

Lastly, what about that torrid American automotive sector? It hasn’t been remotely torrid in terms of labor productivity growth. In 2014, labor productivity actually sank by 2.2 percent for vehicles but rose by 3.8 percent for parts. The 2015 numbers: a 0.5 percent decrease for vehicles, and a 1.7 percent gain for parts.

As I’ve often reminded, great uncertainty still surrounds the concept of productivity (either version). Here’s what seems a lot more certain. If America’s leaders were the slightest bit familiar with these detailed manufacturing productivity figures, and if they valued the sectors that really generate the greatest productivity growth and all of its unquestioned benefits (like sustainably rising living standards), the nation’s offshoring-happy trade policies of recent decades would look a lot different.

Im-Politic: Rating the Journalists at the Front-runners’ Republican Debate

Tags

bankruptcy, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Chris Wallace, debate, Donald Trump, Fox News, Im-Politic, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, journalism, Marco Rubio, Megyn Kelly, Mike Huckabee, religion, Republicans, Scott Walker, Silicon Valley

Since Donald Trump still almost certainly won’t be the Republicans’ presidential nominee this year, my reactions to the first GOP presidential debates need to deal with the 16 other candidates, too. But since Trump is still The Story of Campaign 2016 so far, I need to start off by correcting a mistake in yesterday’s post on his performance. I was slightly inaccurate in my description of his response in the front-runners’ debate to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly’s charge that he’s often insulted women.

Then I’ll segue into an examination of how well or poorly she and her colleagues organized and conducted the session – because the press’ performance clearly will have powerful effects on the presidential race itself.

I wrote yesterday that, rather than trashing Kelly personally, Trump should have focused on framing her question as typifying the superficial “gotcha” mentality that’s dominated mainstream journalism for so long and thus helped degrade American politics. (And of course, Trump should have made this observation “in sorrow, not in anger.”)

But Trump actually did try to Go Serious. As the transcript shows, after his Rosie O’Donnell crack, he insisted that “I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either. This country is in big trouble. We don’t win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody.” The trouble is, immediately afterwards, and especially the following day, he was back in Tabloid Land.

Nonetheless, overall, Kelly and her Fox colleagues did a pretty good – and “fair and balanced” – job at the front-runners event. The initial questions for all the candidates zeroed in on conspicuous weak spots in their records – from neurosurgeon Ben Carson’s unfamiliarity with foreign policy, to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s dynasty and “W” problems, to New Jersey’s economic woes under Governor Chris Christie, to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s extreme pro-life abortion stance, to former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s challenge in broadening his appeal beyond Christian conservative ranks.

My main criticism on this score is that the subjects of these questions were somewhat too conspicuous. That is, each candidate had obviously heard all of them before, and had had plenty of time to rehearse answers. Moreover, some really obvious follow-ups were neglected throughout the debate. For example, why didn’t any of the panelists point out to Bush that the impressive numbers racked up by his state’s economy during his tenure stemmed largely from a housing bubble that burst disastrously just as he was leaving office?

In addition, Fox’s Chris Wallace once again demonstrated how pitifully little political reporters know about business and finance. As Wallace saw it, a handful of bankruptcies declared by Trump’s businesses over the last 25 years cast doubt on the candidate’s qualifications “to run the nation’s business.” Wallace obviously doesn’t know that failure is such a common aspect of doing business that, as one analyst has noted (and in connection with this Wallace question) it’s “a background term to every contract.  It’s an embedded option.  Lenders price for it.”

Perhaps more important, Wallace is obviously clueless about the essential role bankruptcy plays in producing success. A good businessman or woman uses it the way any intelligent person uses the mistakes that all of us make – as a learning opportunity. Indeed, the most celebrated part of U.S. economy (rightly or wrongly), Silicon Valley, has begun to celebrate failure as an essential ingredient of eventual success.

Finally, I was troubled by the Fox journalists’ decision to pose this viewer question: “I want to know if any of them have received a word from God on what they should do and take care of first.”

I know that subjects like this are of intense interest to many Republican voters in particulara. But you don’t have to oppose injecting religion into political and public policy matters to recognize that this query was bound to unleash a torrent of the most vapid homilies imaginable, notably Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s declaration that “I believe God has blessed our country. This country has been extraordinarily blessed. And we have honored that blessing. And that’s why God has continued to bless us” and Ohio Governor John Kasich’s “I do believe in miracles.”

The only saving grace (no pun intended!) in this segment of the debate was Walker’s statement that “I know that God doesn’t call me to do a specific thing, God hasn’t given me a list, a Ten Commandments, if you will, of things to act on the first day. What God calls us to do is follow his will.”

Here’s hoping that the rest of the 2016 field shows similar restraint in declaring themselves or their agenda or their party to be the Almighty’s anointed messengers – with all the ugly insinuations about their opponents that logically follow, whether they’re intended or not.

Next on RealityChek: a discussion of those Republican candidates not named Donald Trump, including the participants in the undercard.