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Ruth King

EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘Equity’ Rears Its Ugly Head in Academic Publishing George Leef

By on December 17th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/equity-rears-its-ugly-head-in-academic-publishing/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

The leftist obsession with “equity” is showing up all over. Some people insist on ending blind auditions for orchestral openings on the grounds that it’s more important to get a “better” racial mix of musicians than to identify the best ones. And this same mindset is now showing up in the world of academic publishing. It has always been the case that submissions were evaluated “blind” — that is, without the reader knowing anything about the writer.

Now there’s pressure to change that. Daniel Buck writes about this disturbing (but hardly surprising) development in today’s Martin Center article.

In an article for Inside Higher Ed, one academic argues for open reviews. This author, Kim Manturuk, had brought together a conference to discuss instructional practices best suited to the pandemic era. To her shock and horror, a few papers authored by Christians made it through the double-blind review process. Whereas the ancient Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides recommended we “hear the truth, whoever speaks it,” Manturuk, a modern-day Pharisee, suggests we hear the truth only when it is spoken by the ideologically pure.

So, just as with student admissions, merit is no longer the key to success. Papers are to be evaluated based on the characteristics of the writers and tossed aside if those characteristics somehow indicate that the paper isn’t aligned with “proper values.”

Buck argues that this development takes our universities back to the days of the Inquisition.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Last-Minute Fixes Won’t Save Medicare Sally Pipes

By on December 17th, 2022

https://www.newsmax.com/sallypipes/seniors-solvent-taxpayer/2022/12/15/id/1100643/

Doctors around the country are pleading for Congress to scrap a slew of Medicare payment cuts set to take effect next year. If lawmakers don’t act, healthcare providers could be looking at an 8.47% reduction in pay.

Such a pay cut could have significant implications for seniors.

Medicare has paid doctors and hospitals much less than private insurance for years.

Cutting reimbursements further could cause providers to reduce the number of Medicare beneficiaries they’ll see — and thereby jeopardize their ability to access care.

At the same time, Medicare’s finances are a mess.

The program’s Part A hospital insurance trust fund is set to run out of money in 2028. Congress needs to make structural reforms to Medicare to make sure that it’s there for those who truly need it over the long term.

The current turmoil is a function of several mandated changes to how Medicare reimburses providers. First, there is the 4.5% cut in the Physician Fee Schedule that goes into effect next year.

On top of that, Medicare is required to implement an across-the-board 4% cut under the so-called “PAYGO sequester” rule.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Affirmative Distraction Racial preferences won’t solve racial inequality. Glenn C. Loury

By on December 17th, 2022

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.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

‘Inconvenient Anti-Semites’ in New York’s War on Hate Three blind spots render incoherent the promises of liberal politicians to protect Jews from attack. By Elliot Kaufman

By on December 17th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inconvenient-anti-semites-new-york-hate-crime-kanye-jewish-black-hasidic-brooklyn-11671200214?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

After a long month of attacks on Jews in New York City, the big guns held a symposium at a Manhattan synagogue Monday. One by one, Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pledged to fight anti-Semitism. After blaming Donald Trump, Ms. Hochul announced a new hate-prevention initiative and vowed, “When you attack one of us, anyone, that is picking a fight with 20 million other New Yorkers, starting with your governor.”

Liberals love to fight hate, but I’d rather they punish crime. Americans Against Antisemitism has studied 194 anti-Jewish assaults and 135 property incidents in New York City since 2018 but can identify only two offenders who have been sentenced to prison. Others receive probation or counseling or their charges aren’t followed up. “There are practically no serious consequences to be had,” the group concludes in a July report.

Examples abound: In May 2021, a Brooklyn man with an attempted-murder charge pending yelled “F—ing Jews! I’m going to f— you up” and punched a 67-year-old man in the head. He was arrested but hate-crime charges were dropped and he pleaded down to a misdemeanor.

The New York Police Department reported 45 hate crimes against Jews in November, more than double the monthly figure from a year ago. It records 278 such crimes this year, up 53%, and 100 arrests, up 61%. Why don’t prosecutions and prison sentences follow? “I’ve asked the question for years with the DAs of the world, with legislators,” Rabbi David Niederman, a top Satmar Hasidic leader in Brooklyn, says in an interview. He gets no answer.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

What the ‘Twitter Files’ say about the future of journalism By Sarah Westwood

By on December 17th, 2022

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/what-twitter-files-say-future-journalism

Twitter owner Elon Musk’s decision to share internal records with a trio of independent journalists spawned stories about how Twitter executives worked to invent justifications for content decisions they’d already made on ideological grounds.

But it also feeds into a story about how Twitter itself, and other platforms, like the subscription service Substack, have decentralized the media so effectively that individual voices can drive the news in ways once reserved for legacy outlets .

Journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger each combed through reams of Twitter emails, message chains from the workplace communication tool Slack, and screenshots to publish five sets of analyses on Twitter. Their final products took the form of lengthy Twitter threads about how Twitter suppressed stories on Hunter Biden’s business dealings during the 2020 election and how the company ultimately decided to ban former President Donald Trump permanently.

The journalists all had several things in common: They all run popular Substack pages, they have all written pieces in the past for legacy media outlets like the New York Times, and they all have large Twitter followings.

The least-followed of the three, Shellenberger, still had more than 357,000 Twitter followers before he posted his batch of the so-called Twitter Files. He now has more than 480,000. Taibbi started December with less than 750,000 Twitter followers and now boasts more than 1.5 million.

And perhaps most importantly, all three have been outspoken about what they see as the excesses of the Left on cultural issues such as speech and corporate influence.

“To me, the media’s response to the Twitter Files is itself a scandal,” Charles Lipson, political science professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, told the Washington Examiner.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Why Don should make way for Ron The GOP can still make 2024 their year Ayaan Hirsi Ali

By on December 17th, 2022

https://thespectator.com/topic/why-don-should-make-way-for-ron-desantis/?utm_source=Morning+Shot&utm_campaign=

When I arrived in Washington, DC in 2006 to learn about US politics, someone told me that in America, there are two main parties: the party of power and the party of stupid. The latter denoted, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Republican Party. And so it continues to prove. The failure of the much-hyped red wave to materialize in the 2022 midterms shows that the GOP has not lost its knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Consider: a day before the election, Biden’s approval rating was 39 percent. This was a reflection of his poor performance (inflation, gas prices and immigration are just a few of the issues on which his administration has shown stunning incompetence). Concerned that the electorate was comparing the moment to the period of prosperity under Donald Trump, Democrats were fearful of what Election Day would bring, while Republicans must have felt giddy in anticipation, like children on Christmas Eve.

Now, the roles are reversed. The Democrats have held the Senate and, while they’ve lost the House, Republican control is by a far narrower margin than they had anticipated. Biden is gloating, and Republicans are in shock.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

Chanukah Guide for the Perplexed 2022 Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on December 17th, 2022

https://bit.ly/3huvOyQ 

1. NBC news, December 13, 2022: “An ancient treasure trove of silver coins dating back 2,200 years, found in a desert cave in Israel, could add crucial new evidence to support a story of Jewish rebellion…. The 15 silver coins were hidden [during] the Maccabean revolt from 167-160 B.C., when Jewish warriors rebelled against the Seleucid [Syrian] Empire….” 

2. The US relevance. In 1777, Chanukah was celebrated during the most critical battle at Valley Forge, which solidified the victory of George Washington’s Continental Army over the British monarchy.

Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a player in the ratification of the US Constitution, paved the road to the Boston Tea Party, 1773: “What shining examples of patriotism do we behold in Joshua, Samuel, the Maccabees and the illustrious princes and prophets among the Jews…” 

Chanukah according to US Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, December 1915: “Chanukah, the Feast of the Maccabees…celebrates a victory of the spirit over things material… a victory also over [external, but also] more dangerous internal enemies, the Sadducees [the upper social and economic echelon]; a victory over the ease-loving, safety-playing, privileged, powerful few, who in their pliancy would have betrayed the best interests of the people; a victory of democracy over aristocracy…. The struggle of the Maccabees is of eternal worldwide interest…. It is a struggle in which all Americans, non-Jews as well as Jews… are vitally affected…”

3. Jewish national liberation holiday.  Chanukah (evening of December 18 – December 26, 2022) is the only Jewish holiday that commemorates an ancient national liberation struggle in the Land of Israel, unlike the national liberation holidays – Passover, Sukkot/Tabernacles, and Shavou’ot/Pentecost – which commemorate the Exodus from slavery in Egypt to liberation in the land of Israel, and unlike Purim, which commemorates liberation from a Persian attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.  

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Waste and Abuse in the Paycheck Protection Program

By on December 17th, 2022

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.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Is the FBI Investigating Israel? Matthew Continetti 

By on December 17th, 2022

https://www.commentary.org/articles/matthew-continetti/fbi-israel-shireen-abu-akleh/\

Last spring, after terrorist attacks killed more than a dozen Israelis, the Israel Defense Forces conducted counterterrorism operations throughout the West Bank. On May 11, during a raid in the city of Jenin, a bullet struck and killed Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh. What happened next is a case study in selective indignation that continues to damage the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Suddenly—and all too predictably—the 51-year-old Akleh, who held U.S. and Palestinian Authority passports and covered the Israeli–Palestinian conflict from her base in Jerusalem, became a martyr for the Palestinian cause and a rallying cry for critics and enemies of Israel. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, 18 years into his four-year term, described Akleh’s death as an “execution” at the hands of the Israeli army. A Hamas spokesman said that Israel had “deliberately assassinated” her. Such language reverberated in the United States, where Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) said that Israel “murdered” Akleh.

The rush to judgment was as dizzying as it was grotesque. The usual suspects charged Israel with murder before either an autopsy or an official inquiry had been performed. And the imputation that the Israeli military had killed Akleh on purpose was simply slanderous. Israel has the freest press in the Middle East, and the Israel Defense Forces operates under strict rules of engagement that are meant to limit civilian casualties. To argue that what happened in Jenin could have been anything more than a terrible accident is to argue in bad faith.

Yet there is plenty of bad faith to go around, so far as Israel is concerned. Not only did the Palestinian Authority refuse to conduct a joint inquiry with Israel into Akleh’s death, it also would not allow the Israelis to examine the bullet that had killed her. Akleh’s funeral erupted in violence when Israeli riot police clashed with a mob that attempted to turn the sacred rite into a nationalist rally by carrying her casket through the streets of Jerusalem. Global media and nongovernmental organizations issued reports feeding the conspiracy theories surrounding Akleh’s death. And U.S. Democrats looking to court pro-Palestinian constituencies insisted that the Biden administration take a hard line against the armed forces of an American ally.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The War for Eight Billion Minds by J.B. Shurk

By on December 16th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19237/eight-billion-minds

This is a new kind of war against civilians for control of their minds.

Governments are relying increasingly on controlling public “narratives” and vilifying dissent.

[F]or all the harms their actions have caused, governments have issued no apologies for enforcing such life-altering policies while silencing critics. It is as if “narrative engineers” have adopted an official position that they are incapable of being wrong.

The more nervous about the future policymakers are, the more committed they seem to enforcing a standard “narrative” they can control.

In an age when information has never been more easily accessible, the world is awash in lies.

A citizen either accepts Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” as “Russian disinformation,” or that person is labeled a “Russian sympathizer.” Daring to say otherwise could get one banned from social media, professionally sanctioned, or even fired from a job. Except none of these established “narratives” has proved true.

In each case, the “narrative” proved to be either misleading propaganda or an outright lie. Yet they were created and sustained by online communication platforms that pushed the lies and excluded the truths.

As global events increasingly threaten Western stability, governments have demonstrated no inclination to entertain a diversity of viewpoints or discussions along the way. Instead, the more serious the issue, the more committed to a single, overarching “narrative” they seem to become.

This war for eight billion minds means that citizens must be more vigilant than ever in processing and evaluating what they see and read. Whether they like it or not, they are under attack at all times from those who seek to manipulate and control them. As in the last century, we are surrounded by totalitarian propaganda routinely disguised as “the truth.”

The heavy perils we face today include centralized governments micromanaging society, the growing prospect of global war, the growing prospect of forced surrender, and the replacement of reasoned debate and free speech with state-sanctioned “narratives” and censorship: totalitarian governance seems not far behind. This is a new kind of war against civilians for control of their minds.

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