NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Twitter Becomes a Tool of Government Censorship: Vivek Ramaswamy and Jed Rubenfeld

Posted By on August 18th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-becomes-a-tool-of-government-censors-alex-berenson-twitter-facebook-ban-covid-

Alex Berenson was kicked off the site at the White House’s urging. That’s a violation of the First Amendment.

Alex Berenson is back on Twitter after being banned for nearly a year over Covid-19 “misinformation.” Last week the former New York Times reporter settled his lawsuit against the social-media company, which admitted error and restored his account. “The First Amendment does not apply to private companies like Twitter,” Mr. Berenson wrote last week on Substack. But because the Biden administration brought pressure to bear on Twitter, he believes he has a case that his constitutional rights were violated. He’s right.

In January 2021 we argued on these pages that tech companies should be treated as state actors under existing legal doctrines when they censor constitutionally protected speech in response to governmental threats and inducements. The Biden administration appears to have taken our warning calls as a how-to guide for effectuating political censorship through the private sector. And it’s worse than we feared.

Facts that Mr. Berenson unearthed through the discovery process confirm that the administration has been secretly asking social-media companies to shut down the accounts of specific prominent critics of administration policy.

On July 16, 2021, a reporter asked President Biden: “On Covid misinformation, what’s your message to platforms like Facebook.” Mr. Biden replied: “They’re killing people.” (The president later said he meant users were killing people.) Later that day, Twitter locked Mr. Berenson’s account, and on Aug. 28 it banned him permanently.

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It’s The Culture Of The IRS To Target The Most Vulnerable Taxpayers Daniel Savickas

Posted By on August 18th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/18/its-the-culture-of-the-irs-to-target-the-most-vulnerable-taxpayers/

The Senate recently passed the inappropriately named Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 7 (yes, a Sunday). Aside from the fact that even non-partisan analyses show the bill will have a negligible impact on actual inflation, one specific provision is raising red flags. In the plan, the Internal Revenue Service gets a fresh $80 billion in funding, with $45.6 billion of that slated for “enforcement” measures. This will involve the hiring of more than 87,000 new IRS agents. If past is prologue, it’s reasonable to expect this spells bad news for lower income Americans.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates this new investment in the IRS will generate an additional $203.7 billion over the next 10 years. A sum that large certainly casts doubt on the notion that this will only impact the super-wealthy.  It is especially concerning given the agency’s rates of audits across socio-economic classes in recent years.

According to IRS audit data, the most frequently audited county in the United States is Humphreys County, Mississippi. This rural county near the Mississippi Delta is known for catfish farming and has an average income of $18,000 per resident, making it among the poorest in the nation. Yet, Humphreys’ residents get audited far more often than those in cities such as New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Criminal (In)Justice What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most Rafael A. Mangual

Posted By on August 18th, 2022

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mangual-criminal-injustice

In his impassioned-yet-measured first book, Rafael A. Mangual offers an incisive critique of America’s increasingly radical criminal justice reform movement, and makes a convincing case against the pursuit of “justice” through mass-decarceration and depolicing.

After a summer of violent protests in 2020—sparked by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks—a dangerously false narrative gained mainstream acceptance: Criminal justice in the United States is overly punitive and racially oppressive. But, the harshest and loudest condemnations of incarceration, policing, and prosecution are often shallow and at odds with the available data. And the significant harms caused by this false narrative are borne by those who can least afford them: black and brown people who are disproportionally the victims of serious crimes.

In Criminal (In)Justice, Rafael A. Mangual offers a more balanced understanding of American criminal justice, and cautions against discarding traditional crime control measures. A powerful combination of research, data-driven policy journalism, and the author’s lived experiences, this book explains what many reform advocates get wrong, and illustrates how the misguided commitment to leniency places America’s most vulnerable communities at risk.

The stakes of this moment are incredibly high. Ongoing debates over criminal justice reform have the potential to transform our society for a generation—for better or for worse. Grappling with the data—and the sometimes harsh realities they reflect—is the surest way to minimize the all-too-common injustices plaguing neighborhoods that can least afford them.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

How Gender Radicalism Conquered Sacramento Schools: Christopher Rufo

Posted By on August 18th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/how-gender-radicalism-conquered-sacramento-schools

Sacramento City Unified School District instructs teachers to “normalize gender exploration” and promotes such identities as “genderqueer,” “polysexual,” and “two-spirit.”

Sacramento City Unified School District has adopted a queer theory–based pedagogy that encourages teachers to “normalize gender exploration,” confront their “cisgender privilege,” and maintain strict secrecy when facilitating a child’s gender or sexual transition.

I have obtained a collection of publicly accessible documents from Sacramento City Unified that traces the evolution of the district’s sexual politics. The process began a decade ago, when the district invited Elizabeth Meyer, a professor of Women’s, Gender & Queer Studies at California Polytechnic State University, to conduct presentations on how the district could adopt the principles of academic queer theory and translate them into K-12 pedagogy. The “foundational concepts” of this approach, according to Meyer’s presentation, follow the standard left-wing narrative. Western society has created a “Heterosexual Matrix,” composed of “Hegemonic Masculinity,” “Emphasized Femininity,” “Heteronormativity,” and “Heterosexism,” that underpins an oppressive system of “patriarchy,” “homophobia,” and “transphobia.” To liberate schools from this system, administrators and districts must adopt “queer pedagogy” and “anti-oppressive pedagogy,” which will disrupt the “commonsense view of the world” and replace it with queer alternatives, emphasizing “gender non-conformity” and “gender and sexual diversity.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The post-1967 turning point of US-Israel nexus: a new 7-minute video : Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on August 18th, 2022

 https://bit.ly/3Ppug3V

 
*In 1948, Israel was misconstrued by the State Department as a burden upon the US. 
 
*Since 1967, Israel has emerged as a formidable force-multiplier for the US, economically and militarily.
 
*The June 1967 Israeli military victory spared the US an enormous economic and defense setback, denying the USSR a dramatic geo-strategic bonanza.
 
*In 1970, Israel forced a pull-back of the pro-Soviet Syrian invasion of pro-US Jordan, which could have toppled all pro-US Arab regimes.
 
*The 1981 Israeli destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor prevented a potential nuclear confrontation during the 1991 Gulf War.
 
*The 2007 Israeli destruction of the Syria-North Korea nuclear reactor, averted a potentially nuclearized civil war in Syria. 

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive Charles Lipson

Posted By on August 18th, 2022

https://www.newsweek.com/sanctuary-cities-seethe-illegal-immigrants-actually-arrive-opinion-1734120

The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.

It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd’s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.

Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.

These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Is Winning the Economic Race with the US – The Consequences Will Be Profound by Judith Bergman

Posted By on August 17th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18792/china-economic-race

The [Harvard Belfer Center] report, “The Great Economic Rivalry: China Vs. the US,” predicts that at the current rate China will overtake the US economically within a decade.

When it comes to trade, China has now displaced the US. “When this century began, China was knocking on the door of the WTO and the U.S. was the leading trading partner of most major economies. Today, China has overtaken the U.S. to become the largest trading partner for nearly every major nation… by 2018, 130 countries traded more with China than they did with the U.S…..” — The Belfer Report.

China’s trade policies are not a matter of simply creating more wealth for China, but as with most things that China does, a way to increase China’s power and other countries’ dependency on it.

Today, the U.S. is the world’s largest debtor; China is the largest creditor.

When it comes to manufacturing, China already displaced the US a decade ago.

“China is now the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of scores of essential goods, including 90% of refined rare earth minerals, 80% of solar panels, 50% of computers, and 45% of electric vehicles.” — The Belfer Report.

Crucially, China is severely challenging the US when it comes to innovation…. In 2013, the US was the number one top innovating country, according to the Bloomberg Innovation Index, but by 2020, it was not even in the top 10, having fallen to number 11…. China’s laser-like focus on frontier technologies has positioned it to dominate races like 5G and AI in the future.

China is determined to see this development to its goal of becoming the dominant power in the world by 2049.

What this new world economic order means for the future is probably difficult to imagine for the many who have grown up with the US as the leading world power and the accompanying celebrated values of freedom, democracy, and capitalism, taken for granted by so many.

China’s economic rise and the US response — or lack of such — will determine the predominant values of the 21st century — will it be China’s authoritarianism and disregard for freedom, democracy, and human rights or those of the US and the West?

China has closed the gap with the U.S. “in most economic races, even overtaking it in some,” according to a recent report from Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The report, “The Great Economic Rivalry: China Vs. the US,” predicts that at the current rate, China will overtake the US economically within a decade.

Measured by purchasing power parity (PPP) — which compares national economies in terms of how much each nation can buy with its own currency at the prices items sell for in its market — China has already surpassed the US to become the world’s largest economy

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Manhattan D.A.’s Trump-Organization Case Ends with a Whimper By Dan McLaughlin

Posted By on August 17th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-manhattan-d-a-s-trump-organization-case-ends-with-a-whimper/

Allan Weisselberg, the 75-year-old former chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, is pleading guilty to the fairly piddling tax-fraud charges on which he was indicted by the office of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg last July. The case was always obviously not about Weisselberg or the accused crime, but about showing some progress against Donald Trump and either (1) obtaining Weisselberg’s cooperation against Trump or (2) punishing him for not cooperating. Under the plea deal, Weisselberg is likely to spend only a few months in prison, and he will not cooperate.

What does this all mean? For Bragg, it likely means that his office is closing up shop on an overreaching, overzealous, overpriced witch-hunt of an investigation, and putting his resources to some better use. Some diehard enthusiasts of the perennial “walls are closing in on Trump” narrative note that Weisselberg may now be unable to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against testifying, but how far does that get anyone? If Weisselberg were questioned about matters other than the small-beer tax issues he’s pleading to, he could still invoke the privilege unless granted immunity — but then, he could have been given immunity a long time ago if he was seen as an enthusiastic cooperator. The most that is likely to be accomplished would be to compel him to testify in the civil proceeding pursued by the New York attorney general’s office, but the exposure in that case does not present a realistic path to sending Trump to prison or making it impossible for him to run for office again. Anything else is noise; voters already assume that Trump is the kind of guy who cuts every corner on his taxes and in his business accounting that he can get away with. And Weisselberg is highly unlikely to be in position to incriminate Trump on anything bearing on the 2020 election or January 6.

Yet again: Maybe the legal system can finally find a silver bullet against Trump. But it still does not look that likely.

Let’s review why the collapse of the Manhattan D.A.’s case was inevitable. In March, the New York Times published the resignation letter from special assistant D.A. Mark Pomerantz to Bragg arguing for prosecuting Trump. As Charlie Cooke explained at the time, it is shameful in our system of justice to have a prosecutor do this kind of hit-and-run public argument where he accuses someone of a crime without even detailing the charges or walking through the supporting evidence, let alone making his case to a jury of the defendant’s peers. But taking the letter at face value, here is what Pomerantz said:

I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the Penal Law in connection with the preparation and use of his annual Statements of Financial Condition. His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Green Fascists Are Destroying the World The green agenda needs to become the topic of open, honest, balanced, and very public debate. By Edward Ring

Posted By on August 17th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/16/green-fascists-are-destroying-the-world/

Earlier this summer, the CO2 Coalition was banished from LinkedIn. The CO2 Coalition, with only three full-time employees and an annual budget of under $1 million, had committed the unpardonable sin of sharing contrarian perspectives on climate science. Its work, produced by a network of volunteers that includes dozens of distinguished scientists, offers indispensable balance on a topic that requires honest debate now more than ever.

Among the many comments that followed LinkedIn’s decision, the mentality of the climate crisis mob came through loud and clear. If “the science is settled,” then any contrary perspective is dangerous and must be silenced. A typical comment: “Why does LinkedIn allow so much Climate Disinformation to persist throughout its platform?” Brigades of these content wardens continuously log complaints with LinkedIn against climate skeptics. The impeccable work of Bjorn Lomborg is one of their next targets.

This is not the environmentalism of previous generations, and this new zealotry does not negate or diminish the common sense concern for the environment that most reasonable people share. But this new breed of intolerant, fanatical environmentalism, manifested in the movement to avert a “climate crisis,” is perhaps the most virulent and dangerous expression of fascism in America today. If left unchecked, this fascistic climate change movement will destroy freedom and prosperity while it destroys the planet it purportedly wants to save.

Ideological and Economic Fascism Combined

This is not a frivolous accusation because, in this case, the shoe fits. There are two types of fascism. One is based on ideology and manipulates popular emotions, and the other is based on economics and appeals to elitist greed. The climate crisis movement has found a way to combine both.

Ideological fascism requires a tribal, us versus them mentality, and the climate crisis movement provides this. The climate warriors are the good guys, and the “deniers” are dangerous heretics who must be crushed. They portray the “climate emergency” as a crisis of existential dimensions, which must be resolved by any means necessary. 

As with any fascistic movement, green propaganda is hyperbolic, primal, and terrifying: rising seas, flooding, super fires, extreme weather, burning heat—and anyone who says otherwise is the enemy. The time for discussion has passed. And with every big storm or super fire, the potential for more militancy grows.

Economic fascism is variously defined, but the climate movement in the United States fits every credible definition, as it affects big business and big government. Some call it socialism with a capitalist veneer. That would certainly apply, as the industrialized Western nations are suddenly required to atone for causing the climate crisis by transferring wealth to the developing world, and the privileged American middle class must similarly atone by giving up their homes for apartments, their automobiles for buses and trains, their meat for insects, and submit to rationing of energy and water.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The incredible shrinking Merrick Garland By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Posted By on August 17th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/the_incredible_shrinking_merrick_garland.html

Maybe Attorney General Merrick Garland is the modern Inspector Javert, the French policeman who chased poor Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s classic novel, “Les Miserables.”  I don’t know if that’s a fair comparison, but it sure looks to me like AG Garland has become obsessed with former President Trump.  Or maybe the White House told him to get obsessed or else.

Maybe it’s better to go to legal scholar Jonathan Turley for a description of the man.   

This is how Mr. Turley sees it:  
In the cult classic, “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” the character Scott Stuart is caught in a thick fog that causes him to gradually shrink to the point that he lives in a doll house and fights off the house cat. At one point, Stuart delivers a strikingly profound line: “The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet — like the closing of a gigantic circle.”

If one image sums up the incredibly shrinking stature of Attorney General Merrick Garland, it is that line in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago search.
It looks like things have grown more complicated for AG Garland, as Mr. Turley further explains:  
It is not that Merrick Garland is absent but that his presence often seems immaterial.
That’s correct.  He is there, but we can’t see the shrinking man.

Mr. Garland seemed like a good choice with he was nominated for Attorney General.  I mean that he’d be an attorney general who would avoid politics and stick to the job.  Unfortunately, he just can’t control his department’s leftist impulses, from targeting parents at school board meetings to overlooking the Hunter Biden scandal altogether.

And now he authorized, or we understand that he did, sending the FBI to a former president’s home.   

Apparently, no one at DOJ advised him of the blowback from a such a decision.  He seemed totally lost when he read from the TelePrompTer and sort of explained what he did.

Yes, the AG is shrinking faster and faster.