RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=8cab9ac5f9

For years, conservatives have complained of apparent censorship of their voices on the principal social media platforms, like Facebook, Google and Twitter. Posts or tweets get taken down, or de-boosted, or de-monetized, or degraded in search results, or “shadow-banned,” or slapped with content warnings, or otherwise suppressed. But the response from Big Tech has always been, hey, we’re private companies, and we’re not subject to the First Amendment. We can do as we please.

Then Elon Musk took over Twitter, and followed by giving several journalists access to Twitter’s electronic archives to investigate any untoward government manipulation. The result has been the Twitter Files, an ongoing series of Twitter threads laying bare the coordination between pre-Musk Twitter and dozens of government actors to suppress disfavored speech. The most recent nineteenth segment of the Twitter Files series was published on March 20 by Matt Taibbi.

Now that it is clear that the systematic censorship of conservative voices is very real and has been largely directed and coordinated by the government itself behind the scenes, is there anything that can be done about that through litigation? There actually are some significant efforts under way in that regard. Probably the most important is the case titled Missouri v. Biden, pending in the Western District of Louisiana. The case seeks declaratory and injunctive relief against the government under the First Amendment to stop it from continuing to pressure social media platforms to suppress speech that the current government does not like. On March 20, the court issued a major opinion denying the government’s motion to dismiss. That opinion is available here. With the motion to dismiss denied, the case will proceed through full discovery and, presumably, trial.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

The Left has the annoying habit of blaming the right for transgressions of which they are guilty, from weaponizing government to tabling stories that put them in a bad light, like Hunter Biden’s laptop. Cloaked in bogus virtue, with mainstream media in their corner, they leave no doubt as to the righteousness of their positions. They profess concern for the aged yet are unwilling to address the impending financial collapse of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – virtually a certainty in the next ten to fifteen years, unless action is taken. They claim to represent the poor yet propose and implement inflationary policies whose victims are the lowest income families.

The Left complains about censorship from the right, while they intimidate conservative college speakers, like commentator Charlie Kirk at the University of California Davis, Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford Law School and causing Mary Eberstadt, author of Primal Screams, to cancel this week’s talk at Furman University. In 2016, public figures as diverse as Barack Obama, Clarence Thomas, and Michael Bloomberg warned about political correctness gone awry. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) agreed: “One worrisome trend undermining open discourse in the academy is the increased push by some students and faculty to ‘disinvite’ speakers with whom they disagree from campus appearances.” Seven years later, the situation has worsened. People have the right to protest, but school and college administrators should promote diversity in speakers and in books, not cling to a partisan political ideology.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-hoax-century-thirteen-ways-looking-disinformation

PROLOGUE: THE INFORMATION WAR

In 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed that he had proof of a communist spy ring operating inside the government. Overnight, the explosive accusations blew up in the national press, but the details kept changing. Initially, McCarthy said he had a list with the names of 205 communists in the State Department; the next day he revised it to 57. Since he kept the list a secret, the inconsistencies were beside the point. The point was the power of the accusation, which made McCarthy’s name synonymous with the politics of the era.

For more than half a century, McCarthyism stood as a defining chapter in the worldview of American liberals: a warning about the dangerous allure of blacklists, witch hunts, and demagogues.

Until 2017, that is, when another list of alleged Russian agents roiled the American press and political class. A new outfit called Hamilton 68 claimed to have discovered hundreds of Russian-affiliated accounts that had infiltrated Twitter to sow chaos and help Donald Trump win the election. Russia stood accused of hacking social media platforms, the new centers of power, and using them to covertly direct events inside the United States.

None of it was true. After reviewing Hamilton 68’s secret list, Twitter’s safety officer, Yoel Roth, privately admitted that his company was allowing “real people” to be “unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.”

The Hamilton 68 episode played out as a nearly shot-for-shot remake of the McCarthy affair, with one important difference: McCarthy faced some resistance from leading journalists as well as from the U.S. intelligence agencies and his fellow members of Congress. In our time, those same groups lined up to support the new secret lists and attack anyone who questioned them.

When proof emerged earlier this year that Hamilton 68 was a high-level hoax perpetrated against the American people, it was met with a great wall of silence in the national press. The disinterest was so profound, it suggested a matter of principle rather than convenience for the standard-bearers of American liberalism who had lost faith in the promise of freedom and embraced a new ideal.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/28/time-to-end-the-veil-of-secrecy-inside-d-c-kangaroo-court/

Judge Beryl Howell did not get the gushing send off from her colleagues she undoubtedly expected.

Howell, appointed to the D.C. District Court by Barack Obama in 2010 and elevated to the court’s highest post in 2016—just in time to oversee numerous criminal investigations into Donald Trump—finished up her seven-year stint as chief judge earlier this month. Colleagues and staff assembled in her courtroom as the proverbial torch was passed to Judge James Boasberg, another Obama appointee.

But according to Politico, the retirement celebration turned into a “roast” of sorts as one judge after another chided Howell for her closed-doors dealings. 

“Howell seemed to freeze in her seat as the most senior jurist on the court, Judge Paul Friedman, publicly described her still-secret rulings in grand jury-related matters,” reporters Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney wrote on March 17. “[Her] fellow judges made clear they were as tantalized as the rest of the political world by Howell’s secret work presiding over grand juries that could lead to charges against former President Donald Trump.”

Howell sat “stone-faced” when Friedman teased how, “we’d all love to read her opinions, but we can’t.” Friedman also noted that Howell issued “100 secret grand jury opinions” as chief judge.

Tanya Chutkan, another Obama appointee, also chimed in. “There’s so much work Chief Judge Howell has done that we may never know about,” she joked.

Although she will remain on the bench as an associate judge, her farewell as chief ended on a sour note. Nevertheless, Howell got the last laugh, once again, at Trump’s expense.

In yet another sealed ruling, Howell rejected claims of privilege and ordered Evan Corcoran, one of Trump’s attorneys, to testify before a grand jury in the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into Team Trump’s handling of alleged classified documents. 

Howell’s penchant for secrecy, of course, doesn’t extend to the news media; details related to the sealed order were leaked a few days later. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/tiktok-ceo-testimony-falls-totally-flat/

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew ran into a bipartisan buzzsaw during his grueling five hours of testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 23rd. The main take-away is that Tik Tok’s clock is winding down in the United States so long as it remains tied to its Chinese owner, ByteDance, which in turn is under the direct influence of the Chinese Communist regime.

Mr. Chew described TikTok’s efforts to create a more secure video sharing app platform intended to satisfy U.S. officials’ concerns about the Chinese regime’s access to American users’ personal information for surveillance purposes. He also claimed that TikTok is taking seriously and addressing the harmful content posted on the video sharing app that endangers children’s lives and mental health. But Mr. Chew failed miserably, dodging question after question posed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Mr. Chew also raised eyebrows when he claimed that “ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government. It is a private company.” Before the congressional hearing had even begun, the Chinese regime put the lie to Chew’s assertion. China’s commerce ministry ruled out a sale of TikTok’s so-called “private” U.S. business to an American company.

Chew would not even admit that TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, is a “Chinese company.” ByteDance, while incorporated in the Cayman Islands, is indeed a Chinese company headquartered in Beijing and fully subject to all of China’s laws.

“TikTok has repeatedly chosen the path for more control, more surveillance and more manipulation. Your platform should be banned,” said Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee’s chair who set the bipartisan confrontational tone of the hearing.

Frank Pallone, the committee’s ranking Democrat from New Jersey, was equally critical of TikTok. “The combination of TikTok’s Beijing communist-based China ownership and its popularity exacerbates its danger to our country and to our privacy,” he said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-woke-tyranny/

A minor culture-war squall recently happened over the definition of “woke.” Activists have taken to responding to conservatives who use the term by asking them to define it. The various definitions are usually decried as incorrect, then followed up with QED. certainty that conservatives have no clue what it means, and use the term merely as a question-begging epithet and a political smear.

The word is indeed a political weapon, one adaptable to various political ideologies.  But that doesn’t mean the question of meaning is idle. There are various dimensions of the idea of “woke” that originated over a century ago and continue to shape our culture for the worse. A closer examination of “wokeness” reveals that at its heart lie some of the most destructive ideas of modernity that have been spuriously repackaged as cutting-edge novelties.

Like most definitions, a recent one in Atlantic by Thomas Chatterton Williams captures some of the components of the concept, though the author begs the question by writing that conservatives “end up using this word as an epithet to refer—vaguely—to seemingly anything changing in the culture that they don’t like.” That’s not a fact, but an unsubstantiated assertion of “woke” received wisdom.

The author’s own definition begs even more questions: “The constellation of social-justice concerns and discursive lenses that have powerfully influenced institutional decision making does [sic] work to sort individuals into abstract identity groups arranged on spectrums of privilege and marginalization.”

But what specifically and empirically comprises concepts like “social justice,” “privilege,” and “marginalization”? Lurking behind these cant-terms are questionable assumptions about the role of socio-economic status in personal success, and the contested, often subjective metrics used to define “privilege” and the “marginalization” the follows from its lack.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/03/28/even-democrats-are-rejecting-biden-nominees-n1682125

Democrats have a 51-seat majority in the Senate, but that doesn’t mean that Joe Biden’s nominees for federal office and the federal bench are getting an automatic stamp of approval. In fact, there have been several recent high-profile embarrassing withdrawals by nominees for a variety of reasons.

Some have been too radical — even for Democrats. Some have been woefully unqualified. But the curious thing about these withdrawals is that Senate Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer and the White House are blaming Republicans for the nomination’s failures.

Most recently, the nominee to fill the vacant FAA administrator position, Phil Washington, was forced to withdraw after some Democrats pointed out that Washington, a former military officer and CEO of the Denver International Airport, needed a waiver from the Defense Department to serve as FAA administrator. Washington claimed he didn’t despite what the law clearly says.

In addition to the waiver problem, Washington — embarrassingly — had no aviation experience. Sen. Krysten Sinema (I-Ariz.) alluded to this deficit in Washington’s resume in a statement, saying that “the administration should quickly nominate a permanent FAA administrator with the necessary, substantial aviation safety experience and expertise.”

The Commerce Committee has been a particular sore spot for Biden.

Politico:

The Commerce Committee in particular has given Biden’s nominees a rough ride. FCC nominee Gigi Sohn withdrew earlier this month after being twice nominated by Biden for a position on the commission. That’s on top of several other tough confirmation fights consuming the early days of this Congress.

Julie Su’s nomination to head the Labor Department is expected to draw most of the GOP’s attention in the coming weeks; she had no Republican support in the vote to confirm her as deputy Labor Secretary in 2021, and moderate Democrats will face pressure to oppose her even though she won Democratic support back then.

Before barely being confirmed as undersecretary of labor, Julie Su had served as California’s labor secretary during the time that more than $32 billion in COVID-19 unemployment fraud occurred. This may prove to be a bridge too far for many Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, who only said, “I’m looking forward to the hearing and looking forward to her confirmation.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/03/29/has-trump-won-the-debate-over-free-trade-in-the-u-s-ii-tipp-poll/

Trump’s ideas resonate even among Democrats

In recent decades, Americans have shown strong support for the idea of free trade, based on the belief that they would benefit as much as or more than our trading partners did. But in recent years, as trade and geopolitical conflict with China grew and economic growth slowed, Americans’ support for free trade has waned, as the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Given recent public debates over trade, the online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,358 adults, taken from March 1-3, asked Americans three questions about current trade policy proposals. All come from recent proposals made by former President Donald Trump, as he presumably moves to run again for the presidency in 2024.

The results clearly showed a strong shift toward greater trade protection for domestic markets and workers, and a shift away from free trade.

The three questions all began identically, as follows: “Thinking about America’s trade and tax policy, please indicate the extent to which you support or oppose the following ideas:”

Respondents were then given three policy proposals to react to, including: 1) “Placing new tariffs on foreign goods;” 2) “Imposing strict controls on trade and investment with China;” and 3) “Cutting taxes for American workers and companies.”

The available answers included “Support strongly,” “Support somewhat,” “Oppose strongly,” “Oppose somewhat,” and “Not sure.”

Surprisingly, the answers showed a strong turn in favor of more protectionist measures for trade.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-reserve-michael-barr-senate-testimony-martin-gruenberg-silicon-valley-bank-failure-f16d23d8?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

One certainty in politics is that the Federal Reserve will never accept responsibility for any financial problem. Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr played that self-exoneration game on Tuesday before the Senate as he blamed bankers and Congress for Silicon Valley Bank’s failure. This act is simply unbelievable.

No one disputes that bankers failed to hedge the risk posed by rising interest rates to asset prices and deposits. What Mr. Barr didn’t say is that the Fed’s historic monetary mistake created the incentives for the bank blunders. The Fed fueled the fantastic deposit growth at SVB and other banks with its prolonged quantitative easing and zero interest-rate policy that caused banks to pile into longer-term, higher-yielding assets.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg noted in his testimony Tuesday that SVB’s balance sheet more than tripled in size between the end of 2019 and 2022, “coinciding with rapid growth in the innovation economy and a significant increase in the valuation placed on public and private companies.” That’s a cagey way of saying the Fed inflated tech valuations.

Silicon Valley investors cashed out shares at elevated prices and poured their windfall into startups with SVB accounts. SVB had more deposits than it could safely lend, so it loaded up on long-dated Treasurys and Fannie Mae securities that offered relatively high yields and were deemed low or no risk by regulators. What could go wrong?

When near-zero interest rates persist for nearly 13 years with hardly a blip upward, some bankers will bet this will last forever as they hunt for yield. The Fed had also assured the world until very late in 2021 that it had no plans to change its policies because inflation was transitory.