RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2022/12/16/the-latest-edition-of-the-twitter-files-reveals-the-cozy-relationship-between-twitter-and-the-fbi-n1654314

Over the past couple of weeks, Elon Musk has treated us to a regular exposé of what went on behind the scenes at Twitter before he took it over. Musk has relied on independent journalists tweeting the information in threads to get it out to the public.

Part six of the Twitter Files dropped on Friday afternoon, and, in this installment, Matt Taibbi revealed how closely the Twitter folks worked with the FBI and other agencies to silence “election misinformation.”

Taibbi reported that the relationship between the FBI and Twitter was cozy, even chummy. In fact, Taibbi suggested that the social media giant operated as if it were a “subsidiary” of the FBI.

“Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” Taibbi tweeted. “Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.”

Taibbi noted that, while some of the emails were anodyne and humdrum, most of them consisted of requests for Twitter to review and take action on information relating to what the FBI deemed “misinformation” relating to elections. And the FBI’s involvement in rooting out “misinformation” led to bureaucracy on a massive scale.

https://www.city-journal.org/affirmative-distraction

The United States has a problem with persisting racial inequality. It is, in part, a legacy of our ignoble past: the institution of chattel slavery and a century of unfreedom and unequal citizenship for African-Americans after emancipation. Americans have a moral imperative to redress the consequences of that past. But affirmative action isn’t the remedy for this problem. It’s a distraction.

That doesn’t mean that affirmative action should never be practiced, that it’s morally wrong, or that it can never be a suitable policy. Those are separate questions. Racial inequality is deep and abiding, showing no sign of going away, and we are a lesser nation for it. Yet while affirmative action helps to obtain an adequate representation of diverse ethnic groups at elite institutions of higher education, it imposes serious costs.

Institutionalizing the practice of preferential affirmative action when assessing African-Americans for selection into highly competitive arenas—in other words, using different standards when judging the fitness of blacks competing with others for access to certain venues—is inconsistent with the goal of racial equality. It invites us to become liars—to pretend that false things are true. It invites us to look the other way. It’s not equality; it’s the opposite of equality. Knowing that I’m being judged by standards that are different and less rigorous by virtue of the fact that my ancestors suffered some indignity is itself undignified.

Racial preferences persist because they represent the path of least resistance. If an administrator of a selective institution saw that blacks were a minuscule percent of his student body, he would want to change that. If he found that admitting African-American students at a lower percentile of performance would ease his public-relations problem, then he would do it. But when thousands of people in that same situation make the same decision and place it beyond criticism, the goal of equality suffers. Failing to address ourselves to the developmental disparities manifest in test scores, as well as failing to change the dynamics of human development at the root of black underrepresentation in elite and selective venues, means failing to solve the inequality problem.

Head counts are no substitute for performance, and everyone knows it. No policy can paper over the racial dimension of academic disparities. True equality would seek to remedy the foundational circumstances reflected in the underrepresentation of African-Americans at the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Tech, Holy Cross, or Harvard. I’m for racial equality, not patronization. Don’t patronize my people, inflict on us the consequences of a soft bigotry of low expectations, or presume that we’re not capable of manifesting excellence in the same way as any other people. Don’t judge blacks by a different standard.

https://www.newsweek.com/waste-abuse-paycheck-protection-program-opinion-1766582

JAMES PIERESON AND ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI

When COVID-19 began to infect Americans in early 2020, Congress appropriated $787 billion under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to allow businesses and nonprofits to pay employees when they were forced to close. These payments were made in the form of low-interest loans that would be forgiven if the funds were spent on salaries, wages, and related expenses. PPP’s purpose was to maintain payrolls and incomes while the country fought through the early months of the virus.

A recent study from OpenTheBooks, an organization devoted to transparency in government spending, reports that more than 95% of these loans were forgiven, and many were sent out to wealthy organizations, including top law and accounting firms, country clubs, and even family offices that were facing little financial concern.

OpenTheBooks reports that $1.4 billion in forgiven PPP loans went to some of the largest law and accounting firms in the country. Nearly half of the largest 300 law firms in the United States took payments from the program, as did three-quarters of the largest accounting firms. Overall, some 25,000 law and accounting firms received $13 billion in PPP loans. While those firms may have qualified for the payments, it is questionable whether they really needed them.

Among law firms, Boies Schiller Flexner, led by long-time Democratic Party counselor David Boies, received the maximum of $10 million in forgiven PPP loans, even as the firm billed clients for $480 million during 2020 and 2021 and equity partners in the firm received $4.5 million each in average profits. Meanwhile, partners and employees in the firm donated $1 million to candidates during the 2020 and 2022 campaign cycles, almost all of it to Democrats.