GOV/MIL Leftists Call For New "Secret Police" Force To Spy On Trump Supporters (AN ABSOLUTELY MUST-READ THREAD)
- Thread starter marsh
- Start date
-
- Tags
- gestapo secret police
marsh
On TB every waking moment
GRASSROOTS VICTORY: Critical Race Theory and 1619 Project Banned On the Spot In Cherokee Co. Georgia | The Gateway Pundit | by Kari Donovan
In Cherokee County, GA, recently there was a grassroots victory at the school board level as concerned citizens convinced their elected school board members, on the spot, to prohibit the implementation of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the 1619 Project based on their concerns.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
GRASSROOTS VICTORY: Critical Race Theory and 1619 Project Banned On the Spot In Cherokee Co. Georgia
By Kari Donovan
Published May 24, 2021 at 7:45am
In Cherokee County, GA, recently there was a grassroots victory at the school board level as concerned citizens convinced their elected school board members, on the spot, to prohibit the implementation of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the 1619 Project based on their concerns.
“Please let people know about this so they will go to school board meetings in their communities to stop CRT, ” a participant in the activism on that day, and a frequent reader of The Gateway Pundit, reported to us.
According to our reader, interest in the topic of CRT and the 1619 project was intense and concerned citizens overfilled the building where the school board meeting was held and many had to be out in the parking lot
The following is our GWP reader’s first-hand account of the event.
Ty Tagami for the Atlantic Journal-Constitution wrote in “Opposition to critical race theory intensifies in Georgia” about the same meeting:
In a meeting that drew hundreds, with hundreds left outside after the school board meeting room reached capacity, Superintendent Brian Hightower addressed a local debate of an issue that has flared up across the country. The school board voted 4-1, with two abstentions, to approve a resolution to prohibit implementation of critical race theory and the 1619 Project, a New York Times project that put slavery and Black contributions to democracy at the center of American history, from being taught in Cherokee schools.
Groups of concerned parents, teachers, students, and other concerned citizens around the country are organizing similar resistance to the Marxist teaching style and learning aids called CRT, with lobbying efforts at their school board and local government levels, seeking similar resolutions to have it banned from public schools.
“The school board voted 4-1, with two abstentions, to approve a resolution to prohibit implementation of critical race theory” was announced by a School board member, and that was the sound of victory to the concerned people of Cherokee Co. Georgia last week.
In the video below Hightower spoke to the crowd, saying there was never any intent to use the academic theory in classrooms. He added that the district would not be implementing a “diversity, equity and inclusion” program as planned.
One man in the crowd yelled, “liar”.
Watch:
1:21:46 min
Similar resolutions have been passed in four states on CRT and 1619 Project — Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee— restricting how race and racism are taught in schools. Lawmakers in several other states are attempting to the same, including North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Utah, and others.
Activist movements of students, teachers, parents, and other concerned citizens are forming and learning the process of how to lobby for the legislative changes they want to see. Seeing other people’s victories on these local school boards will have a critical impact on all government, even up to the US House and Senate races in the 2022 election cycle. With so many more people engaged in the civic process than in the past, the country is beginning to pull itself out of the shock over the 2020 Presidential election with action.
Citizens who had remained on the sidelines for most of their lives are learning how to engage in legislative action on many topics. Seeing a groundswell of like-minded support staying vigilant in the Populist “MAGA” movement is life-giving to others. Conservative-Populist activists are achieving great successes where they apply themselves.
The old saying that “all politics is local” is coming back into fashion. Thanks for the report, GWP reader!
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Vernon Jones Denounces Critical Race Theory -- 'It's Racism,' 'Should Not Be Taught'
Republican Georgia gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones on Monday argued against the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. | Clips
www.breitbart.com
Vernon Jones Denounces Critical Race Theory — ‘It’s Racism,’ ‘Should Not Be Taught’
TRENT BAKER24 May 202143
Republican Georgia gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones on Monday argued against the teaching of critical race theory in public schools.
Jones, who is challenging Gov. Brian Kemp (R), called the method of teaching “racism” that should not be taught in schools because it is “being abused.
“I’m against it,” Jones told Fox Business Network “Mornings with Maria.” “You know, Maria, if you asked 10 different people what is critical race theory, you get 10 different answers. So, we do know one thing that everybody knows is race-based. And if you teach it in school, it’s racism.”
“You ask 10 different people, you get 10 different definitions,” the former Georgia state lawmaker added. “It’s been taught different ways in different schools, and it’s being abused.
And the problem is you are taking young people … next to another young person and pitting one against the other, and you say to even white children, ‘Look, you’re responsible for what happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago,’ and they don’t have a clue. So, it being race-based, and you are teaching in a way that you’re teaching racism. It does not make any sense.
I’m totally against it. Georgia shouldn’t have it. I call on our governor to stop it. I was with the local school board just recently the other night. I had my representative there saying, ‘Look, ban it in those local schools.’ There is no place for critical race theory. We can’t talk about history. We can’t … teach about things we don’t know about, where it’s becoming abusive. And it’s … race-based. What else can you say? It just should not be taught.”
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Jim Inhofe: Troops Should Be Encouraged to Speak Out Against Marxism
Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a statement over the weekend in support of Lohmeier.
www.breitbart.com
Top Senate Armed Services GOP Jim Inhofe: Troops Should Be Encouraged to Speak Out Against Marxism
KRISTINA WONG24 May 2021147
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the committee that oversees the United States military, issued a statement over the weekend in support of Air Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, who was relieved of his command at Space Force after warning about Marxism spreading in the military.
“Based on the information the committee has received so far and what’s been reported in the press, I am concerned. Members of our military should not only be able to speak out against Marxism, but they should be encouraged to do so — as long as they follow the rules and laws already in place,” Inhofe said in a statement.
“Marxism is an ideology that goes against everything this country stands for, and it belongs, as Ronald Reagan said famously, ‘on the ash-heap of history,'” he said.
Inhofe joins a growing chorus of Republicans expressing concern over Lohmeier’s firing, after he appeared on several podcasts to discuss his new book warning of Marxism spreading in the military. A Space Force spokesperson told Military.com, which first reported Whiting’s decision to fire Lohmeier, the decision “was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast.”
“Lt. Gen. Whiting has initiated a Command Directed Investigation on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity,” the spokesperson said.
After a number of Republican members in the House and Senate called for Lohmeier to be reinstated, the service suspended its investigation into Lohmeier and is allowing the Air Force inspector general to look into the entirety of Lohmeier’s case and dismissal.
“I have many questions about how the Department has handled the case of Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, and I am glad the Air Force Inspector General is looking into this situation,” Inhofe said in his statement.
Inhofe also said he would continue looking into ways to protect service members “of all ideologies,” amidst allegations of bias against conservatives in the military. He said he would look into using the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — the annual bill that authorizes the Pentagon’s budget and activities, to do so.
“As we await the results of the Inspector General investigation, I will continue looking into ways we can protect service members of all ideologies to ensure they have the freedom of speech and thought they are afforded as citizens of this country, including through the NDAA,” he said.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, also recently expressed concern about bias against conservatives in the U.S. military.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
DeSantis Signs Law Equipping Floridians to Fight Big Tech Censorship
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed SB 7072, a law he claims will equip Floridians to fight back against Big Tech censorship on Monday.
www.breitbart.com
Gov. Ron DeSantis Signs Law Equipping Floridians to Fight Big Tech Censorship
HANNAH BLEAU24 May 202182
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed SB 7072, a law he claims will equip Floridians to fight back against Big Tech censorship on Monday.
Speaking at Florida International University in Miami on Monday, DeSantis detailed action Florida is taking to fight against Big Tech via SB 7072.
“Really Florida is a trailblazer, yet again, on another issue that’s really important to not just millions of Floridians but really tens of millions of Americans,” DeSantis said Monday.
“When the Founding Fathers established our country and crafted the Constitution, they were very concerned with threats to liberty,” he continued, highlighting their concerns over government power and concentrations of power, which would “lead to people’s liberties being curtailed.”
“We are now though in a situation where we have things that, I think, were probably unforeseen by the Founding Fathers,” the governor continued. While the founders established the First Amendment as a shield against government overreach, “we now have a situation in which some of these massive, massive companies in Silicon Valley are exerting a power over our population that really has no precedent in American history,” he explained.
“I would suggest the monopolies today, these Big Tech monopolies, are exerting way more influence over our society than the monopolies than the earliest 20th century, which led to anti-trust and a lot of trust-busting,” DeSantis said.
Platforms, he continued, have become a “public square” but now act as “enforcers of orthodoxy,” suppressing ideas “that are either inconvenient to the narrative” or ideas they “personally disagree with.”
According to a summary provided by his office, all Floridians “treated unfairly” by Big Tech platforms “will have the right to sue companies that violate this law — and win monetary damages.”
This, his office claimed, will prevent “Big Tech bureaucrats from ‘moving the goalposts’ to silence viewpoints they don’t like.” They also say the bill allows the Florida attorney general to bring action against technology companies that violate the law “under Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.”
“If social media platforms are found to have violated antitrust law, they will be restricted from contracting with any public entity. That ‘antitrust violator’ blacklist imposes real consequences for Big Tech oligopolies’ bottom line,” his office said.
His administration also claims the law will prohibit Big Tech from deplatforming political candidates in Florida. There will be real, monetary consequences for those who move to deplatform Florida candidates, they say, including a $250,000 per day fine for platforms shutting down statewide candidates and $25,000 per day fines for non-statewide candidates, which the Florida Election Commission (FEC) will impose.
“Any Floridian can block any candidate they don’t want to hear from, and that is a right that belongs to each citizen — it’s not for Big Tech companies to decide,” his office said:
When people look back on this period of history, DeSantis said, two issues will be at the forefront: The efficacy of coronavirus lockdowns and the origin of the virus, using those as examples of Big Tech’s influence and impact.
“Now we have information that this very well may have emanated from the Wuhan lab, that it was a leak from the lab. But you remember when people last year were raising that as something that needed to be investigated, they were deplatformed for talking about the lab leak,” DeSantis said.
“They were censored for having said that. And now, even Fauci admits that this may be something that very well is the case. Are they now going to censor Fauci and pull him down off social media?” he asked.
Because corporate media said it was a conspiracy theory, DeSantis continued, Big tech oligarchs “responded” and targeted the opposition, behaving similarly last year against those who criticized lockdowns.
Silicon Valley, the Republican governor added, is routinely canceling and shadowbanning people which “creates partisan echo chambers.”
“And honestly, they are some of the major reasons why this country is divided for doing what they’re doing,” he added. “And the worst part about this: Silicon Valley thinks they know better than you.”
Breitbart News has reported extensively on Florida’s Big Tech battle and the aggressive measures being taken, but as Breitbart News’s senior tech reporter Allum Bokhari noted last month, concerns remain prevalent, particularly around enforceability:
“All of these are great ideas,” he reported. “But without common carriage or public accommodation measures, it is highly doubtful that they’ll survive legal challenge.”
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Preference Or Prejudice? Federal Court Finds Biden Administration Is Engaged In Racial and Gender Discrimination
MONDAY, MAY 24, 2021 - 04:30 PM
Authored by Jonathan Turley,
Below is my column in The Hill on the recent decision of a federal judge that the Biden Administration was engaged in racial and gender discrimination in the administration of the pandemic relief under the American Rescue Plan Act. It is a question that is now being raised in a variety of federal programs under the Biden Administration.
President Biden has spoken out often, eloquently and passionately against the “ugly poison” of discrimination and racism in our government. So a ruling by a federal district court in Texas this week was particularly jarring: Judge Reed O’Connor found that the Biden administration engaged in systemic gender and race discrimination to implement COVID-19 relief for American restaurants. Café owner Philip Greer had claimed in a lawsuit against the Small Business Administration (SBA) that, while white, he needs the same rescue as minority restaurateurs under the newly enacted American Rescue Plan Act.
Greer’s Ranch Café reportedly lost over $100,000 during the pandemic. Like many restaurateurs, Greer was delighted to hear about the Restaurant Restoration Fund approved by Congress.
However, he soon learned that, due to his race, he could not be considered until other applicants were allowed to seek funds. The White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress insisted that various groups should be first in line, including women, minorities and “socially and economically disadvantaged” people.
The government confirmed that $2.7 billion already has been distributed through the fund and that there are almost 150,000 pending applications from owners with preferential treatment. As a result, owners like Greer fear not just delayed payments but the exhaustion of the $28.6 billion allocated under the program. The SBA confirms it already has requests for $65 billion in payments under the fund.
The Biden administration agreed that such classifications, particularly based on race, must satisfy the highest constitutional burden of “strict scrutiny.” That means such classifications are unconstitutional unless they are “narrowly tailored” to serve a “compelling governmental interest.” However, the Justice Department cited studies that women and minorities historically have fewer lender resources and, before the pandemic, often were less likely to receive credit. There is ample support for that claim. The legal question is whether historical disparities are enough to justify a system of race and gender preferences when all restaurants were impacted by the pandemic.
In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that a minority set-aside program in Virginia was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause. The government cited historical barriers for minority enterprises, but the court balked. It noted that “identified discrimination” in the past “would give … government license to create a patchwork of racial preferences based on statistical generalizations about any field of endeavor.” When using racial classifications, the divided court stressed that “simply legislative assurances of good intention cannot suffice.”
Judge O’Connor relied on such precedent to declare the enforcement of the criteria for COVID-19 relief to be raw racial and gender discrimination. His ruling can be appealed, but it highlights a concern over a variety of state and federal COVID-19 programs enforcing racial and gender criteria. In Oregon, a state COVID-19 program for black businesses, called the Oregon Cares Fund, was challenged by a Mexican-American café owner and others under the Equal Protection Clause. While legislative counsel and some legal experts raised concerns over the constitutionality of the law, a trial court rejected the challenge. Other such cases are continuing.
Courts have allowed minority set-asides to remedy past inequities. Such programs often are created solely for that purpose and, thus, are treated as a remedial benefit for a targeted group, as opposed to an exclusionary denial for other groups. These cases can present difficult questions of what is needed to enforce a racially discriminatory policy and when a legislative remedial measure becomes either a form of reparation or discrimination.
The question is, when should preference be given over a common resource desperately needed by everyone? For example, the Biden administration and many states gave preferential treatment to minority communities in the allocation of early vaccines; states like Montana and Vermont gave people of color priority in receiving shots. That meant many other citizens had to wait, due to their race, for a vaccine in the middle of a lethal pandemic. Yet, advocates cited greater vaccine “hesitancy” in minority areas and other historic barriers to medicine as justification.
The court’s concern in the Greer case is that the Biden administration’s rationale would allow the use of racially discriminatory policies throughout the government. This is a far more nuanced constitutional issue than past challenges. Rather than impose a quota system or a direct exclusionary policy, Greer and others complain that the government can achieve the same result by prioritizing certain groups in the receipt of benefits.
The alternative is to maintain a bright line against the use of racial criteria in government programs. In a 2007 case, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that position most succinctly by declaring that the “way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Even if such categories pass constitutional muster, there is the question of selecting groups for favored treatment. In the case of Oregon’s fund, Latino owners were excluded. Under the American Rescue Plan, anyone can qualify for preferential treatment if they claim to be part of a group that has “been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American society.” It is the legislative version of the special graduation held at the University of Portland for “QTBIPOC (LGBTQIA and/or BIPOC).” Once the inclusions were defined, the only major exclusion was straight white males.
The question is whether an American Rescue Plan can tell white owners to wait for a rescue that might not come. Of course, as with vaccine priority programs, the preference given minorities was designed to be short-lived and, as a result, difficult to challenge. However, the underlying issue likely will remain as the Biden administration uses racial and gender criteria in a variety of government programs and resources. Indeed, the same logic was used in other programs like the special COVID-19 relief funds for black farmers.
The courts must resolve where to draw this line when limited funds can result in the reduction or denial of government aid based solely on skin color or gender. That fear of a zero-sum game for public aid will deepen our divisions and undermine the worthy unifying theme struck by President Biden in his campaign. Racial discrimination is indeed a “poison” in our body politic even when done for the best of motivations. The question is, how much can the body politic tolerate?
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Exactly How Corporate Media Launders Opinion To Attack Inconvenient People And Facts - The Federalist
It's called 'the news,' and here's how it worked for Arkansas' Sen. Tom Cotton's completely plausible theory that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab.
thefederalist.com
Exactly How Corporate Media Launders Opinion To Attack Inconvenient People And Facts
By Christopher Bedford
MAY 24, 2021
A New York Times business correspondent in Hong Kong, a weekend editor at The Guardian who lives in New York, a British Business Insider reporter with a focus on the Saudis, and the executive editor of The Daily Beast.
A 48-year-old blogger who works for Rachel Maddow, a union activist who covers “extremism, far-right politics and media disinformation” for The Huffington Post, and the 29-year editor of the Arkansas Times.
A breaking news reporter at The Washington Post who wrapped up her most recent internship in May 2016, a 2016 University of Pennsylvania graduate who covers “young people doing big things” for Forbes, a 45-year-old former George Will intern who writes for CNN, and David Frum.
What do these people have in common, aside from their political ideology? Every one of them is a part of a machine that launders smears and opinions through newspapers, magazines, and television channels, presents the cleaned-up product as unimpeachable truth to the public, and then uses the fresh-minted facts to protect friends and hurt enemies. It’s called “the news,” and here’s how it worked for Arkansas’ Sen. Tom Cotton’s completely plausible theory that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab.
That Hong Kong business correspondent? She wrote this headline for the Times in February 2020: “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins.”
“Scientists,” the slug reads, “have dismissed suggestions that the Chinese government was behind the outbreak, but it’s the kind of tale that gains traction among those who see China as a threat.”
“Republican who floated virus conspiracy says ‘common sense has been my guide,'” the weekend editor at The Guardian dismissively explained.
“A GOP senator,” our award-winning Saudi investigator declared, “keeps pushing a thoroughly debunked theory that the Wuhan coronavirus is a leaked Chinese biological weapon gone wrong.”
“Sen. Tom Cotton Flogs Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Dismissed by Actual Scientists,” the editor of The Daily Beast howled.
“Tom Cotton’s veiled threats really aren’t helping,” Maddow’s blogger chimed in.
“Don’t Listen To Sen. Tom Cotton About Coronavirus,” our “media disinformation” boy piped up.
“Tom Cotton and the virus conspiracy theory,” the three-decades’ veteran of an Arkansas weekly blogged, citing a Vanity Fair write-up that maintained far more nuance than the grizzled writer.
“Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) repeated a fringe theory,” the young Post staffer confidently led, “suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.” That “theory,” her headline definitively states, “was already debunked.”
“Senator Tom Cotton Ramps Up Anti-China Rhetoric,” Forbes’ “Under 30 community lead” righteously wrote.
“Tom Cotton,” CNN’s Chris Cillizza authoritatively declared, “is playing a dangerous game with his coronavirus speculation.”
Get all that? We’ve now heard from everyone from Rachel Maddow’s blogger to The New York Times, and from a 200-year old English newspaper to Cotton’s local editor that the senator is a racist, fear-mongering conspiracy theorist who imperils us all. But was a lick of it true?
It was hard to say at the time because the vast majority of the country didn’t know much about the virus at all — although that didn’t hold any of those above back in spouting their opinions and shutting down Cotton’s.
Now that it’s largely accepted that the disease escaped a Chinese laboratory, have any of those above issued a correction or so much as an update? Of course not. So far, the only thing like that was issued by PolitiFact for an article “fact-checking” a guest on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” who repeated the lab-leak theory.
That poor, ignominious “fact-check” was written by Daniel Funke in September 2020. Although Funke doesn’t stand out above any of the mediocrities above, he ties a bow on media manipulation nicely.
Young Funke graduated from the University of Georgia in 2017, receiving a News Lab fellowship from Google. Google, in their wisdom, placed their young student at the Poynter Institute in Florida, which bills itself as an academic authority on media critiques and fact-checks. Funke must have impressed that summer, as he was rewarded with a job at Poynter’s pet project, PolitiFact, which boasts it is the “home of the Truth-O-Meter and independent fact-checking.”
In his new job, Funke fact-checked a number of COVID claims, smacking down the now largely acceptable lab-origin one more than once and making himself quite an authority on the facts.
But lest anyone think he’s being picked up unfairly, don’t fret. His now-retracted “fact-check” on an unknowable thing (from a time that was obvious) won’t slow him down: Today, he proudly covers misinformation for USA Today. No one in this machine is ever held accountable.
It’s rare to catch the media machine so red-handed, but don’t worry about them, either — they’re already rewriting the history.
Enter: Frum, an angry and somehow unembarrassed architect of the Iraq War who is now a senior editor at The Atlantic, the once-venerable magazine with its own fact-checking problems.
“Some,” he declared this week, “are trying to turn the lab-leak theory into a potent political weapon.”
By “some,” he meant conservatives. Rinse, lather, repeat.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Shade Lewis at his cattle farm in La Grange, Mo., on Friday. Mr. Lewis has spent the past decade scratching out a living as the only Black farmer in his corner of northeastern Missouri.Credit...Neeta Satam for The New York Times
‘You Can Feel the Tension’: A Windfall for Minority Farmers Divides Rural America
A $4 billion federal fund meant to confront how racial injustice has shaped American farming has angered white farmers who say they are being unfairly excluded.
Shade Lewis at his cattle farm in La Grange, Mo., on Friday. Mr. Lewis has spent the past decade scratching out a living as the only Black farmer in his corner of northeastern Missouri.Credit...Neeta Satam for The New York Times
By Jack Healy
May 22, 2021
LaGRANGE, Mo. — Shade Lewis had just come in from feeding his cows one sunny spring afternoon when he opened a letter that could change his life: The government was offering to pay off his $200,000 farm loan, part of a new debt relief program created by Democrats to help farmers who have endured generations of racial discrimination.
It was a windfall for a 29-year-old who has spent the past decade scratching out a living as the only Black farmer in his corner of northeastern Missouri, where signposts quoting Genesis line the soybean fields and traffic signals warn drivers to go slow because it is planting season.
But the $4 billion fund has angered conservative white farmers who say they are being unfairly excluded because of their race. And it has plunged Mr. Lewis and other farmers of color into a new culture war over race, money and power in American farming.
“You can feel the tension,” Mr. Lewis said. “We’ve caught a lot of heat from the conservative Caucasian farmers.”
The debt relief is redress set aside for what the government calls “socially disadvantaged farmers” — Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and other nonwhite workers who have endured a long history of discrimination, from violence and land theft in the Jim Crow South to banks and federal farm offices that refused them loans or government benefits that went to white farmers.
The program is part of a broader effort by the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress to confront how racial injustice has shaped American farming, which is overwhelmingly white. Black farm advocacy groups say that nearly all the land, profit and subsidies go to the biggest, most powerful farm operations, leaving Black farmers with little. But in large portions of rural America, the payments threaten to further anger white conservative farmers.
The plans have drawn thousands of enraged comments on farm forums and are being fought by banks worried about losing interest income. And some rural residents have rallied around a new slogan, cribbed from the conservative response to the Black Lives Matter movement: All Farmers Matter.
Mr. Lewis is part of a new generation of Black farmers venturing back into urban plots and small rural farms, driven by a desire to nourish their communities with healthy food and create wealth rooted in the land.
Growing up in LaGrange, a city of 950 along the Mississippi River, Mr. Lewis would scoot a toy John Deere tractor through his mother’s apartment and pretend he was farming the carpet. He joined 4-H, farming and business groups in high school. He started farming at 19, with a few cows and dreams of ending the day with his own dirt on the soles of his boots.
“I worried about him,” said his father, Kevin Lewis. “I watch him and shake my head and say, Is it worth it?”
It can be a tough, lonely life. In 1920, African-Americans owned some 14 percent of the farms in the United States. But after a century of racial violence, foreclosures, migration into cities and farm consolidation, there are just under 49,000 left, representing 1.4 percent of American farmers. Most are concentrated in the Southeast and Texas.
These days, Black farmers have forged online networks that function as their own digital homemade farm bureaus. They celebrate first turnip harvests, ask whether fertilizer made from fish can revive wilting plants and commiserate about navigating government programs and the isolation of being the only Black farmers in their counties.
Image
The program is part of a broader effort by the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress to confront how racial injustice has shaped American farming, which is overwhelmingly white.Credit...Neeta Satam for The New York Times
“You don’t have a network. You don’t have an infrastructure. There’s nothing,” said Sandy Thompson, who started an online directory of Black farmers in 2019 after abandoning a three-year quest to convert a five-acre plot outside San Antonio into a vegetable farm.
Ms. Thompson spent $20,000 on equipment only to have her mower get stuck in the sandy soil. She called university extension offices, a vital source of guidance for farmers, but said she never got any help.
“We are not competitive with white farmers,” she said. “We need any help we can get.”
Nonwhite farmers, who make up about 5 percent of farmers, say they struggle disproportionately to get loans and government grants. They received less than 1 percent of the billions of dollars in subsidies that flowed into farm country last year under former President Donald J. Trump to compensate farmers hurt by the coronavirus pandemic and the trade war with China.
Mr. Lewis said he spent years struggling financially and searching for credit as he built his cattle herd from a few cows on rented ground to about 200 cows and calves on more than 100 acres of his own land. At first, he said, farm agents did not return his calls. Banks scoffed at his plans.
Some days, he could not afford to gas up the red pickup truck that would stall out as he went to fix fences and spread manure in his alfalfa fields. Like many farmers, he works a second job, on power transmission lines.
Getting his government loan paid off now could change everything: He said he could pay down other loans on his livestock. Expand the patchwork of fields he owns to compete against established farmers. Get financing to build a home so he and his wife can escape their one-bedroom apartment.
“It’ll open up a whole lot of doors,” he said. “Maybe these local banks that didn’t have time for minorities will open up to us.”
Is this helpful?
But several of his white neighbors in Lewis County, where 77 percent of voters supported Mr. Trump in November, see it differently.
Now, raw conversations about discrimination in farming are unfolding at farmers’ markets and on rural social media channels where race is often an uncomfortable subject.
“It’s a bunch of crap,” said Jeffrey Lay, who grows corn and soybeans on 2,000 acres and is president of the county farm bureau. “They talk about they want to get rid of discrimination. But they’re not even thinking about the fact that they’re discriminating against us.”
Even in a county that is 94 percent white, Mr. Lay said the federal government’s renewed focus on helping farmers of color made him feel like he was losing ground, a sign to him of the country’s demographic shifts.
“I can’t afford to go buy that 5,000-acre piece of ground,” he said. “Shade Lewis, he’d qualify to get it. And that’s fine. That doesn’t bother me. But I can’t.”
Image
Jeffery Slay, President of Lewis County Farm Bureau, at his farm in La Bella, Mo., on Thursday.Credit...Neeta Satam for The New York Times
Mr. Lewis senses the tensions when he swings into the gas station to get a Mountain Dew before feeding his cows in the morning and when he scans comments on Facebook or the news on RFD-TV, a kind of CNN for rural America. Conversations with white farmers around LaGrange become strained when they veer from corn prices to the challenges of being a Black farmer in a white industry.
“You can sit here and talk about race and things you’ve been through,” Mr. Lewis said. “They don’t understand. They’ll never understand.”
Many farmers of color have welcomed the debt relief, which was tucked into the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief act, as well as even more ambitious measures proposed by Democrats to grant plots of up to 160 acres to Black farmers.
The Agriculture Department has a longstanding series of programs to serve socially disadvantaged farmers, and estimates that nearly 16,000 will have loans paid off that were made or backed by the government. The agency has sent thousands of letters to eligible farmers, and expects that money could start flowing by early June.
But rural residents upset with the repayments call them reverse racism.
White conservative farmers and ranchers from Florida, Texas and the Midwest quickly sued to block the program, arguing that the promised money amounts to illegal discrimination. America First Legal, a group run by the former Trump aide Stephen Miller, is backing the Texas lawsuit, whose plaintiff is the state’s agriculture commissioner.
Image
Shade Lewis with his wife Taylor Lewis and dogs at the Lewis Farm in LaGrange, Mo.Credit...Neeta Satam for The New York Times
Image
Nonwhite farmers, who make up about 5 percent of farmers, say they struggle disproportionately to get loans and government grants.Credit...Neeta Satam for The New York Times
“It’s anti-white,” said Jon Stevens, one of five Midwestern farmers who filed a lawsuit through the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative legal group. “Since when does Agriculture get into this kind of race politics?”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack defended the debt-repayment program at a White House briefing this month, saying that earlier coronavirus relief had gone disproportionately to white farmers. He also said the government had never addressed the cumulative effects of years of racial discrimination against farmers.
“We know for a fact that socially disadvantaged producers were discriminated against by the United States Department of Agriculture,” he said. “There is a very legitimate reason for doing what we’re doing.”
The use of race in federal programs has been a subject of litigation for decades, with a narrow majority of the Supreme Court deciding in 1995 that it is permissible only if the programs are “narrowly tailored” to accomplish a “compelling governmental interest.” The courts have generally held that institutions have a compelling interest in remedying their own past discrimination.
Still, the lawsuits have sowed concern and anger through networks of Black farmers. Some have spent decades fighting unsuccessfully to get their share of legal settlements over past discrimination by the Agriculture Department. Now, they are worried that the money set aside for debt repayment could get delayed for years in legal challenges.
“We’re getting the short end,” said John Wesley Boyd Jr., a Virginia bean and grain farmer who is also founder of the National Black Farmers Association. “Anytime in the United States, if there’s money for Blacks, those groups speak up and say how unfair it is. But it’s not unfair when they’re spitting on you, when they’re calling you racial epithets, when they’re tearing up your application.”
Image
Mr. Lewis surveys his cattle at his farm earlier this week.Credit...Neeta Satam for The New York Times
Mr. Lewis says he tries to look beyond issues of race and has a white wife, white in-laws and white family on his mother’s side. But ignoring race can be impossible in a small town like LaGrange, he said. He hunts, fishes and holds conservative views, and curses by saying “son of a buck.” He has voted Republican in past elections, but unlike most of his neighbors, he voted for President Biden.
One recent afternoon, a friend, Brad Klauser, who runs his family’s large cattle and grain farm, swung by Mr. Lewis’s barn to catch up. As they talked bills, rising fuel costs and sky-high land prices, the conversation turned to the debt relief that only one of them was eligible to receive.
“Everybody should have the same option,” said Mr. Klauser, who is white, leaning on the flatbed of Mr. Lewis’s pickup. “Do you think you’re disadvantaged?”
“There’s definitely disadvantages,” Mr. Lewis replied, saying that officials scoffed when he first tried to get a federal farm loan. “They didn’t take me serious.”
After Mr. Klauser headed home, Mr. Lewis thought about how the two friends were both trying to reap a profit from the land. “Everyone should have a chance at farming,” he said.
Last edited:
marsh
On TB every waking moment
marsh
On TB every waking moment
‘Our constitution should be burned’: What critical race theorists really think of America
“…our constitution should be burned, because our constitution in and of itself is only written for who owned land? Men at the time, it’s still written accordingly. Who was owned? Black folks.”
thepostmillennial.com
NEWS ANALYSIS May 22, 2021 12:52 PM EST
'Our constitution should be burned': What critical race theorists really think of America
"...our constitution should be burned, because our constitution in and of itself is only written for who owned land? Men at the time, it's still written accordingly. Who was owned? Black folks."
Libby EmmonsBrooklyn, NY
May 22, 2021 12:52 PM5 Mins Reading
Will Reusch, a high school teacher in LA who also worked with the Heterodox Academy, asked to have a conversation with advocates for CRT in schools. That conversation revealed that CRT advocates do not believe in America's founding documents, instead saying that "the constitution should be burned."
Reusch spoke to Alfred "shivy" Brooks who is running for Atlanta City Council, Dr. Kate Slater who has worked in teacher recruitment for a top prep school, and Louiza "Weeze" Doran who were proponents of critical race theory. While undoubtedly these folks would define it differently, critical race theory is the practice of looking at all events both current and historical through the lens of race and racism.
"Our constitution should be burned"
The conversation turned to the principles of Enlightenment as the foursome tried to find common ground. Reusch asked if they could all agree that those principles represented the way forward. They could not.
"I just want to jump in and bring it back to the point," Doran said, turning to her computer to read off a definition of "Enlightenment principles."
Doran read that these principles were centered around the idea "that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy and advocated such ideals as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separations of church and state." But she's not into those things.
"Inherently, the problem with that, is that when our constitution was built, our constitution was built on those founding principles, but was not built on those founding principles including the humanization of marginalized folks.
"So you cannot cite our constitution, our constitution should be burned, because our constitution in and of itself is only written for who owned land? Men at the time, it's still written accordingly. Who was owned? Black folks. Those amendments have not been ratified. You should read your constitution."
Doran said the constitution as it stands now is full of "oppressive amendments and languaging."
"The constitution itself is only rooted in Enlightenment for white people, just like this country," said the educator.
Whiteness "is a stand-in for white supremacy"
Slater answered Brooks' question "How do you define whiteness?"
"So yeah," Slater began. "So whiteness I think that it—first of all, we know race is a construct—but whiteness was created to represent when you talk about whiteness as property, whiteness was created as a category to delineate people that could own property. People as property, that could enslave, that could oppress, that could use the weapons of settler colonialism, and they were allowed to be in that position because of a construct that was created about them."
"So by virtue of that, by virtue of that historical grounding… whiteness represents white guilt, white fragility, white supremacy, white violence. All of these things are now synonymous with whiteness, which I see as a stand-in for white supremacy," Slater continues.
"And by that, I simply mean: The ways in which this country preserves whiteness, as the default, and the norm, the ideal, in all of its spaces and all of its systems."
Brooks then asks Reusch, after Slater's explanation, "Do you view whiteness as property?"
"I'm still just really confused by whiteness," Reusch says.
Slater tries to help him understand by explaining that "In this country whiteness has currency, right? Whiteness has always had currency. Whiteness has always had value. Monetarily, power, systematic, value, sewn up in us being white people. There is power in inherent with that, just like there is experiences of disadvantages and oppression that are sewn up in the experiences of people of color in this country because of whiteness. These two things are in opposition to each other, right?"
"White people" v. "people who happen to be white"
"Whiteness is not phenotypic whiteness," Doran tells a visibly confused Reusch. "There's white people and there's people who happen to be white, for sure, right? Whiteness is a… set of ideologies, ideas, institutions, and policies that have been explicitly set up, rooted, and born in white supremacy, predicated on the binary of white and black, good and bad, and all of the tropes that come with it in order to maintain oppression."
Doran continues, "The reason I say white folks and people who happen to be white is because anyone that is born in the world, because whiteness is global, can absolutely abide by tenets of whiteness. This is why we have Candace Owens," Doran says, listing off other black people she disagrees with.
"This is why we have black folks who will say critical race theory is trash, because there is trauma rooted in that for marginalized folks, that means they try to increase their proximity to those ideals and those policies and those institutions for safeness.
"But at the end of the day, people who are phenotypically white have a choice. They can—because we're all indoctrinated into whitenesS—they can choose to uphold the system that was built for and by them on our backs, those are white people.
"Then there's people who happen to be white," she says, identifying these as people who are "committed to dismantling that same system, using her identity privilege. Does that full breakdown make it a little bit clearer?"
"Yes, it does," Reusch concedes. "Yes, it's a theory. Okay. Yes."
Brooks laughs, and Reusch's concession is not enough for Doran, who replies "It's not a theory.
Like a theory means we can sit here and—like critical race theory for example that's a theory.
Because there are tons of ways to go at dismantling systems of oppression." Doran says that she doesn't even agree with all the tenets of CRT.
"But, there are certain facts in our social fabric," Doran says, listing off some of these "facts."
"Whiteness is a construct that was 1000 percent created under Prince Philip's guidance at the birth of the enslavement of black Africans and the human trafficking of black Africans for the purpose of increasing wealth for Portugal, because they could no longer tax their people. That was very intentionally fabricated, through pseudoscience, through religious—religion, and through history, right?
"So we cannot say it's a theory when we have so much empirical and historical evidence to tell us that these things are in fact real and true," Doran said.
If critical race theorists are unwilling to use the constitutional foundations of American democracy as a starting point for any change or adjustment that they feel needs be made, then it is hard to believe that anything that have to say about how progress should be made can be even remotely valid.
Those who want to burn the nation to the ground and rebuild something as-yet unimagined from our country's ashes do not have the good of the nation or her people at heart.
Reusch commented on the shared, two hour long conversation when he posted it.
He wrote that: "While one could say that very little was accomplished, or that this wasn't productive, this is a rare and very clear example of what CRT looks like in practice- conversation, the classroom, etc.
"K-12 needs to be a place where curiosity is encouraged & supported and that includes issues over clarity of language, specific complexities & nuance, personal experiences, etc."
Critical race theory has come under fire by parents and educators who actively believe in equality, justice, due process, opposing racism, and the constitution.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Washington Reality Versus American Reality
MONDAY, MAY 24, 2021 - 07:50 PM
Authored by Newt Gingrich, op-ed via The Epoch Times,
Washington reality reflects the fevered conversation over lunch, cocktails, and dinner between the Washington press corps, lobbyists, and government officials.
Washington reality reflects the narcissistic self-absorption of the Imperial Capital.
Rep. Liz Cheney’s fate consumes days and days of gossip and speculation. Is her dismissal as House Republican Conference Chair a sign of House Republican unity or an alienating event that will weaken the GOP?
House dictator Nancy Pelosi’s fight over wearing masks with pro-freedom Republicans is a major chapter in the evolution of Washington.
Washington says when 35 House Republicans bolt to vote with Democrats for the Pelosi Commission to investigate Jan. 6, it brings into question Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s control of the House GOP. Of course, when McCarthy gets Senate Republicans to agree to block the investigation, it highlights Speaker Pelosi’s partisanship and failure. Which narrative is more important?
All these Washington-centered conversations are like a mild spring rain behind which a mammoth hurricane is building.
That hurricane is the concerns and attitudes of the American people over what’s happening in the American reality.
The fiercest band of the hurricane is the looming acceleration of inflation. One report compared the average price of various commodities in May 2020 under President Donald Trump to those in May 2021 under President Joe Biden. Here are some staggering numbers:
- Gasoline: $1.77 under Trump vs. $3 under Biden.
- Lumber: $332 per 1,000 board feet under Trump vs. $1,570 per 1,000 board feet under Biden.
- Home sales: $283,500 under Trump vs. $329,100 under Biden.
- Coffee: $0.96 a pound under Trump vs. $1.50 a pound under Biden.
- Wheat: $5 a bushel under Trump vs. $7.42 under Biden.
- Corn: $3.19 a bushel under Trump vs. $7.22 a bushel under Biden.
- Copper: $2.33 a pound under Trump vs. $4.76 a pound under Biden.
The gas lines triggered by the hacking of the Colonial Pipeline (probably by a Russian-based group) led millions of Americans to flashback to the President Jimmy Carter years. One woman said to me, “I remember sitting in line with my parents as they hoped to get gasoline before the station ran out.”
Inflation is real in people’s lives. The Cheney gossip, the Pelosi Commission, and the squabble over masks on the House floor simply do not matter. Washington trivia is in the Washington reality—not in American reality.
The behavior of the schools, however, is part of the American reality, because it affects people and their children.
- First, the culture of work in America is built around the assumption that schools would be available to watch children. When this breaks down, American lives are reshaped in a way which particularly impacts women, who are the most likely to stay home with children. (This is not a statement of misogyny or any sort of “ism,” it is a statement of American reality.)
- Second, the quality of education will affect children for their entire lives. The decay of the big city schools has been devastating for poor children. The current pattern of trying to eliminate magnet schools so no one will feel bad because all will be equally mediocre is a mortal threat to the economic future of American children.
- Third, the new cycle of radical indoctrination of left-wing values about race, American history, sexual issues, and “wokeism” directly threatens parents, who find their own personal beliefs being ridiculed and attacked by teachers who are authority figures in the classroom.
It is this gap between the triviality, pettiness, and partisanship of the Washington reality and the personal impact of American reality which explains why—despite everything the media has done to prop up Biden and the Democrats—two polls in the last week (one Democrat and one Republican) have shown the generic vote for the House tied.
Larry Sabato now has 19 incumbent Democrats in toss-up races and only two Republicans.
If inflation, education, and other real-world issues continue going badly for the Democrats, the Washington reality will be drowned by the American reality. In that world, McCarthy will be Speaker of the House and Sen. Mitch McConnell will once again be Majority Leader.
The challenge for Republicans is to ignore the Washington gossip and focus on the potentially giant hurricane of anti-leftwing repudiation looming on the horizon. American reality must drown the Washington reality.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
1776 Commission urges states: Oppose Biden funding for 'teaching of racial discrimination' in K-12
Disbanded Trump administration group says federal government trying to circumvent Constitution's reservation of power over education to states and localities.
justthenews.com
1776 Commission urges states: Oppose Biden funding for 'teaching of racial discrimination' in K-12
Disbanded Trump administration group says federal government trying to circumvent Constitution's reservation of power over education to states and localities
By Greg Piper
Updated: May 24, 2021 - 11:12pm
A Trump administration commission tasked with promoting "patriotic education" is calling on the Biden administration to withdraw a proposal to fund history and civics programs informed by critical race theory (CRT).
The 1776 Commission met in D.C. Monday despite being disbanded by President Biden on his first day in office. It published its final report just two days before the presidential transfer of power.
The proposed federal rule would prioritize funding for history and civics curricula that consider "systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history" and incorporate "racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives." It favorably cites Boston University professor Ibram Kendi, the foremost popularizer of "anti-racism," and the New York Times' 1619 Project.
The commission is concerned the proposal, whose public comment period closed on Wednesday, "actually encourages and seeks to direct federal funds to the teaching of racial discrimination in America's elementary and secondary school systems," according to a statement it released Monday afternoon.
States should also oppose "race-based pedagogy," especially if the curricula is "imposed by the federal government," the statement reads. The commission encourages states, counties and localities to set up their own 1776 commissions to prepare for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.
The statement praises federalism and the primary role of parents in protecting their children from being "taught false narratives or fed hateful lies about our country." Like-minded people should run for school boards, and states and localities should reform their curricula to "teach our true history."
The federal government is seeking to circumvent the Constitution's reservation to the states of unenumerated federal powers (like a power to nationalize educational standards) by incentivizing school districts to adopt its "one-size-fits-all" proposal, which like the Common Core standards is a "blueprint for trivializing and mechanizing learning," the commission said.
The panel submitted a shorter version of its statement for the federal rulemaking, which drew nearly 24,000 comments.
The commission is led by Larry Arnn, president of non-taxpayer-funded Hillsdale College, and Carol Swain, a retired law professor at Vanderbilt University. It also includes Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights member Peter Kirsanow, historian Victor Davis Hanson and former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
CCP Sellout Posts Public Struggle Session Online: Actor John Cena Apologizes on Social Media in Chinese for Calling Taiwan a Country in Interview | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft
Hollywood Actor Posts Public Struggle Session Actor John Cena went on social media this week to apologize profusely for calling the country of Taiwan a country.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
CCP Sellout Posts Public Struggle Session Online: Actor John Cena Apologizes on Social Media in Chinese for Calling Taiwan a Country in Interview
By Jim Hoft
Published May 25, 2021 at 9:45am
Hollywood Actor Posts Public Struggle Session
Actor John Cena went on social media this week to apologize profusely for calling the country of Taiwan a country.
Cena and Hollywood continue to bow to their new overlords.
This is so shameful. And here we thought he was a Hollywood tough guy?
He made the apology in Chinese!
1:08 min
marsh
On TB every waking moment
SCHOOL PARENTS HOLD MASS RALLY in Scottsdale, Arizona - Announce Coalition to Recruit, Train and Mobilize Parent Activists - While School Board Hides (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Jordan Conradson
On Monday, the Scottsdale Unified School District’s cowardly school board members held a virtual meeting so that they would not have to answer to their constituents.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
SCHOOL PARENTS HOLD MASS RALLY in Scottsdale, Arizona – Announce Coalition to Recruit, Train and Mobilize Parent Activists – While School Board Hides (VIDEO)
By Jordan Conradson
Published May 25, 2021 at 9:08am
On Monday, the Scottsdale Unified School District’s cowardly school board members held a virtual meeting so that they would not have to answer to their constituents.
This comes after their last meeting on May 18, where they walked out on the parents before the meeting got underway.
Concerned parents in Scottsdale decided to hold their own meeting and press briefing outside of Coronado High School, where the in-person meeting would have taken place.
Amy Carney led the charge and spoke on behalf of Scottsdale’s parents.
Amy Carney then took questions from the press after comments from a few more parents.
Arizona Republic: There is a push in some school districts to recall some board members. Is that something that you’re thinking of doing?
Carney: No. We discussed it but that’s not where we’re going to put our energy. Our energy is going into like I said before, finding parents and helping develop them into strong candidates for 2022
Arizona Republic: You also said you started organizing at each other’s homes. How was that process of organizing? How did that happen? How did you join forces with one another?
Carney: Well it’s pretty easy. There’s a lot of parents and groups we’re already starting during Covid. I started AZ Parents Rights and Education, it’s a national group. There are several right now so we’re trying to come together because we all want the same things. It’s amazing… and you know that parents are busy. We don’t have time for this type of thing but we know we have to make the time we are making the time and we’re ready to put in the effort to make change.
Arizona Republic: How do you get funding?
Carney: We’re grassroots.
Fox 10: So it was the Scottsdale Police Department who said it was outside groups that were organizing and I believe you directed a lot of the criticism towards the board, but again it was the chief of police who said it so do you think the police are making that up?
Advertisement - story continues below
Carney: No I don’t believe that but I can only speak for us the parents… We can’t stop tax-paying citizens from coming to our meetings. We just want to do this today to let you know that is not who we are. We are not some mob, we are parents.
Fox 10: well fair enough at least one of you claim to be that… but I guess that leads me to my next question. You are well aware that these groups are saying “we need strength in numbers here at this district” but if you’re a parent in that district and you know what’s best for your kids, why does somebody else from another district know what’s best for your kids if they don’t have any in that district.
*Crowd Erupts*
Guy: Here’s a better question, why are there people on the school board who don’t have kids?
TGP’s Jordan Conradson: Do you think the school board members are doing the job that the taxpayers of Arizona pay them to do?
Everyone: NO!
Issues such as critical race theory and medical freedom are at the top of these parents’ concerns. Parents want their kids to learn subjects like math, English, history, science, etc. Not learning that they’re racist solely because they’re white or that students of color are destined to fail.
Parents also do not understand why masks must be worn in the classroom, even though Gov. Ducey lifted the school mask mandate over a month ago.
Last Thursday, Carney started Arizona’s BEST Coalition to recruit, train, and mobilize parent activists to run for school board in Arizona. Amy told Conradson that “it’s for the kids to stand up for the kids” and it’s about building a grassroots support system to fix our education.
For more about Arizona’s BEST, visit the link below!
Best. – Building Education for Students Together (parentsknowbest.com)
Rumble video on website 8:30 min
marsh
On TB every waking moment
"Bias Form" Encourages School Kids to Report on Each Other for Opposing Marxism. - The National Pulse+
Loudoun County in Virginia is sparking controversy by encouraging parents and students to report on other students’ “biases” through an anonymous form. Loudoun parents who recently formed themselves into a political action committee named “Fight for Schools” called the new, anonymous “Bias...
thenationalpulse.com
“Bias Form” Encourages School Kids To Report On Each Other For Opposing Marxism.
Loudoun County in Virginia is sparking controversy by encouraging parents and students to report on other students’ “biases” through an anonymous form.
Loudoun parents who recently formed themselves into a political action committee named “Fight for Schools” called the new, anonymous “Bias Reporting” form an “Orwellian move from Loudoun County Public Schools.” The committee of parents see the form as a symptom of cancel culture, saying it “asks students to anonymously cancel each other.”
The form allows students to “denote if they wish to have the incident followed up at their respective school.”
“The specific reason behind this action step is to utilize it as a means to amplify and elevate student voice,” claimed a Loudoun spokesperson via email, adding that a 2019 “Systemic Equity Assessment” had “revealed some students who felt marginalized or had experienced bias.” According to the Washington Times:
The group began a petition campaign earlier this month in order to remove six out of nine Loudoun county school board members who the PAC says are pushing critical race theory in schools. Interim Superintendent Scott Ziegler denied that critical race theory is being used as a “framework for staff to adhere to” in the county. Critical race theory is a Marxist-influenced way of viewing American history mostly through the lens of race.
The National Pulse previously reported on the targeting of parents who opposed critical race theory in schools by a group that included six members of Loudoun’s school board. The latter group, led by school board member Beth Barts, was sharing the personal information of anti-critical race theory parents in the district.
Critical race theory (CRT) is sparking outrage across the country while schools continue to push the CRT agenda. Last week, a group calling themselves “Parents Against Critical Theory” hosted a “Save Our Schools” rally at a local middle school in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Maryland’s largest school system, Montgomery County Public Schools, is currently working on an “Anti-Racist System Audit” which is costing them over $454,000. The audit, begun in November, is being conducted by the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, which declares itself dedicated to “increasing access to a high quality education for culturally, linguistically and economically diverse learners.”
A spokesperson for the Montgomery County Public Schools told the Washington Times that the audit is meant “to examine systems, practices, and policies in school culture that create barriers to equitable outcomes for students, staff, and families.” Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, however, uncovered evidence from the audit that a recent curriculum for at least one school in the district, Thomas Pyle Middle School, focused heavily on what were termed white supremacy and “White privilege,” the latter being partly defined as having a good relationship with police.
Meanwhile, President Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” was listed as “covert White supremacy,” just below actions and words such as “lynching” and “the N-word” during a lesson for the middle school. A school district spokesperson denied knowing about the middle school’s social justice course and refused to comment.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Hollywood Panic: 'F9' Star John Cena Could Have Cost NBCUniversal, WWE Billions Without Apology to China
Hollywood star and WWE champion John Cena has apologized to China for correctly calling Taiwan a "country" during the recent press tour for the movie Fast & Furious 9. His groveling mea culpa highlights the degree to which Cena's career has become intertwined with Communist China -- and how his...
www.breitbart.com
Hollywood Panic: ‘F9’ Star John Cena Could Have Cost NBCUniversal, WWE Billions Without Apology to China
DAVID NG25 May 2021491
Hollywood star and WWE champion John Cena has apologized to China for correctly calling Taiwan a “country” during the recent press tour for the movie Fast & Furious 9. His groveling mea culpa highlights the degree to which Cena’s career has become intertwined with Communist China — and how his employers at NBCUniversal and the WWE could have lost billions of dollars if they angered Beijing.
In a video posted to China’s Weibo, John Cena acknowledged that he recently made a “mistake.” Though he didn’t elaborate, Cena appeared to be referring to a recent interview with a Taiwanese TV network during which he reportedly said Taiwan is “the first country to watch the movie.”
His remark set off a wave of social media criticism in China, with some fans demanding the actor acknowledge that Taiwan belongs to China.
Cena delivered his apology in Mandarin, which he has learned as part of the WWE’s efforts to expand into China.
“I made one mistake. I have to say something very, very, very important now,” Cena said in the Weibo video, “I love and respect China and Chinese people. I’m very, very sorry about my mistake. I apologize, I apologize, I’m very sorry. You must understand that I really love, really respect China and the Chinese people. My apologies.”
Watch below:
Universal had a vested interest in Cena’s apology. His act of contrition appears like a necessary PR move to protect one of the studio’s most valuable movie franchises. Fast & Furious movies have consistently grossed more money in China than any other country, including the U.S.
Watch below:
The last F&F movie — Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, released in 2019 — derived more than 26 percent of its worldwide box office gross from China, compared to 22 percent from the U.S. The Fate of the Furious (2017) garnered 32 percent of its worldwide gross of more than $1 billion from China, versus just 18 percent from the U.S.
China recently surpassed the U.S. to become the largest movie market in the world — an accomplishment made possible in part by the coronavirus pandemic, which forced the closure of U.S. cinemas for several months.
Since China limits the number of foreign movies that play domestically, Hollywood studios have gone to great lengths to stay in Beijing’s good graces. Paramount removed a reference to Taiwan in its upcoming Top Gun sequel, while Disney changed a Tibetan character to a white woman in Doctor Strange.
Disney has also refused to comment on China’s human rights violations in the western province of Xinjiang, where the studio partnered with local authorities to shoot parts of its live-action Mulan.
FILE -In a Sunday, April 7, 2013 file photo, wrestler John Cena, top, chokes Dwayne Douglas Johnson, known as The Rock as they wrestle during Wrestlemania, in East Rutherford, N.J. WWE bills WrestleMania as its Super Bowl, and is headed to a stadium worthy of a Super Bowl on Sunday, April 3, 2016. The WWE has lofty expectations of stuffing 100,000 fans inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)
F9 is Cena’s first Fast & Furious movie, and in many ways, he has come to embody the corporate synergy between NBCUniversal and the WWE. NBC’s Peacock is the exclusive streaming home of the WWE Network in the U.S., offering new and archived content as well as pay-per-view matches.
And like Universal, the WWE is betting big on China, where Cena is better known for his wrestling career than acting. In 2017, the WWE launched the WWE Network in China in partnership with the PPTV streaming service. The service showcases WWE’s major live events, original series, and classic matches. The company has also partnered with Chinese broadcaster PP Sports.
Last year, the WWE expanded its footprint in China by teaming up with iQIYI Sports to air the WWE’s RAW and SmackDown events each week. In addition to live broadcasts, the deal includes a video on-demand service featuring monthly WWE pay-per-view events.
The WWE has only to look to the NBA to recognize the fickle nature of doing business in China. The NBA reportedly lost eleven of its local partners in 2019 after Houston Rockets general manger Daryl Morey expressed support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver stated at the time that the NBA could lose up to $400 million as a result of the controversy.
The WWE has experience standing up to autocratic countries.
In 2018, some of the WWE’s biggest names were quick to register their disapproval to Saudi Arabia following the death of Jamal Khashoggi. Wrestlers who were set to appear in the WWE Crown Jewel in Riyadh that year withdrew from the event as media pressure built to punish the kingdom over Khashoggi’s death.
One of the wrestlers who quit the show was John Cena.
Universal and the WWE didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Breitbart News. John Cena couldn’t be reached for comment.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Alex Marlow: Cancel the New York Times’ ‘1619 Project’ for Disinformation
In our current “cancel culture” moment, the New York Times' “1619 Project” easily meets the definition of “fake news” and fits the textbook definition of disinformation.
www.breitbart.com
Alex Marlow: Cancel the New York Times’ ‘1619 Project’ for Disinformation
6,033
ALEXANDER MARLOW24 May 20212,267
In my new book, Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption, I explain in detail that the New York Times’ “1619 Project” was never an accurate historical account, but in fact it was a part of a concerted effort by the Times to pivot the newsroom’s focus from the Trump/Russia collusion hoax to race hysteria.
I also argue that in our current “cancel culture” moment, the “1619 Project” easily meets the definition of “fake news” and fits the textbook definition of disinformation.
A brief summary:
After the Mueller Report, the New York Times was in trouble. The paper of record needed a replacement for RussiaGate, into which the Times had (profitably) poured millions of dollars.
The Times rode the Trump wave to record highs, reporting $24 million in profit in 2018. But when the Russia narrative finally flamed out, the newsroom was without a clear direction.
At an internal town hall meeting in 2019, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet told the newsroom that, going forward, their primary focus would be on “what it means to be an American in 2019,” which “requires imaginative use of all our muscles to write about race and class in a deeper way than we have in years.” Race would be the new issue to enrapture the Times’ core audience of card-carrying members of the anti-Trump “Resistance.”
The pivot has literally been measurable. According to Tablet Magazine, the Times’ use of the terms “racist,” “racists,” and “racism” increased 700 percent between 2011 to 2019. Use of “whiteness” increased approximately 500 to 700 percent since 2015, while instances of “white privilege” and “racial privilege” leapt about 1,200 percent between 2013 and 2019.
That August, the New York Times Magazine unveiled the “1619 Project,” an ambitious series attempting to “reframe” American history with slavery as the foundation upon which our nation was based. According to the “Project,” 1619, the date when the first ship carrying African slaves arrived in the Virginia colony, was America’s true founding and its defining moment.
Radical as it may seem, “1619” wasn’t simply a vanity project for the Times. The Pulitzer Center quickly unveiled school curriculum based on the “Project,” which won a Pulitzer Prize and was named a “Top Work of Journalism of the Decade” by New York University’s journalism school.
The “1619” vision of America is diametrically opposed to Americans’ most fundamental collective beliefs about our origin and purpose. “In God We Trust,” E Pluribus Unum, and Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness had all been overemphasized by educators over the last hundreds of years, and slavery had been underestimated, or so the Times would have you believe.
But historians, and even one of “1619’s” own fact-checkers, quickly challenged key portions of the “Project.” Shortly after it was published, a group of distinguished historians wrote a letter to the Times critiquing “1619” and accusing the Times of having an “opaque” fact-checking process for the “Project’s” many historical claims. Their main objection was that the “Project” contained “factual errors” which they argued went beyond mere “framing” or “interpretation” and were “matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism.” The historians also argued that these errors “suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology” and that “[d]ismissal of objections on racial grounds — that they are the objections of only ‘white historians’ — has affirmed that displacement.”
That last criticism was aimed directly at the creator of the “1619 Project,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, who had previously dismissed her detractors as “old, white male historians.”
Like much of “1619,” Hannah-Jones’ attack on her critics was bogus. For example, one such critic was Leslie M. Harris, a professor of history and African American studies at Northwestern University who helped fact-check “1619.” She is neither old nor white nor male, and yet she claimed that her objections went unheard at the Times.
The Times itself, which has relentlessly stood by “1619,” made changes to key sections of the essay.
The original text of the “1619 Project” contained the following passage: “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”
Since publication, the words “some of” were added before the words “the colonists.” The Times noted the update with an “Editor’s Note” insisting that this massively significant correction was not in fact a “correction.”
When historians requested corrections, New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein rejected them.
Alarmingly, the original essay also contains the line “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” If Nikole Hannah-Jones truly believes this is true of America, then is it really a surprise that she would be willing to stretch and strain the truth to try to discredit the notion that we were founded in glory?
Hannah-Jones was hardly secretive about her agenda. In July 2020, she tweeted, “I’ve always said that the 1619 Project is not a history. It is a work of journalism that explicitly seeks to challenge the national narrative and, therefore, the national memory. The project has always been as much about the present as it is the past.”
Brazen, radical, and instantly beloved by the establishment.
Baquet continued to laud the “1619 Project” a year later, stating, “1619 is one of the most important pieces of journalism The Times has produced under my tenure as executive editor. It changed the way the country talked about race and our history.”
This is the Times’ business model. Objectivity is not their objective. They want to “teach our readers to think” more like the Times on race. Dean Baquet said as much himself: “I mean, one reason we all signed off on the ‘1619 Project’ and made it so ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think a little bit more like that.”
This focus on race, and shaping readers’ views around it, has altered the Times’ basic standards. In 2020, the New York Times triumphantly announced it would start capitalizing the “B” in “black.” “It seems like such a minor change, black versus Black,” the Times’ national editor, Marc Lacey, explained “But for many people the capitalization of that one letter is the difference between a color and a culture.”
The Times has chosen, as of yet, not to capitalize the word “White.” (I’m capitalizing it here just this once.) Their explanation? “White doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups.”
This should be news to readers of “1619 Project,” who have been learning that our nation is rooted in white supremacy. It appears as though the New York Times only regards whiteness as a “shared culture and history” when they wish to attack white people as a group without getting blowback. Recall that criticism of the “1619 Project” by white historians was rejected specifically because of the critics’ race.
The Times, of course, has published other fake news, and they know it. But when the fake news doesn’t neatly fit the woke narrative, they seem to handle it quite a bit differently. For example, last year, the Times began reviewing Caliphate, a hit Times podcast, after Canadian authorities accused one of its central figures of lying about his involvement with ISIS. The credible challenge to one of Caliphate’s key stories was enough for the Times to trigger an internal review of the podcast, leading to a public and embarrassing retraction of one of its core claims.
There was a public reckoning.
Meanwhile, “1619,” subject to criticism no less damning, has been staunchly defended by the New York Times’ leadership and the media establishment in general.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Bring on the 'Asperger's Republicans'
Some liberal goof asserted that Ron DeSantis resided somewhere on the Aspergers Spectrum in a recent tweet that I can't dig up with just a cursory search, but said pinko tweeted that like it was a bad thing.
townhall.com
Bring on the 'Asperger's Republicans'
Kurt Schlichter
|Posted: May 24, 2021 12:01 AM
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Source: AP Photo/Phil Sears, File
Some liberal goof asserted that Ron DeSantis resided somewhere on the Asperger’s Spectrum in a recent tweet that I can’t dig up with just a cursory search, but said pinko tweeted that like it was a bad thing. It’s not. It’s a great thing, and we need more GOP pols with that condition’s political manifestation. People with Asperger’s tend to miss social cues and fail to respond as society expects, but many are also focused, driven, and generally amazing in their areas of interest. When you put those qualities together in a right-wing officeholder, that means you have a Conservative Terminator. Conservativing is what he does; it’s all he does.
So, bring on the Asperger’s Republicans.
Far too many Republicans, for far too long, have found themselves distracted and/or enslaved by the elite consensus, restrained by norms and conventions that the liberal elite demands we observe, but that it itself flaunts when those rules limit its options. These Fredocons care what people who care nothing about them think, and they find themselves responding to the outside stimuli of the garbage mainstream media instead of focusing intently on conservative change while disregarding the slings and arrows of the haters. When it comes to fighting the establishment, political Asperger’s is indicative of awesomeness.
And our next generation of Republicans needs to embrace their place on the Spectrum – the more inappropriate the liberal elite finds their reactions to its cues and signals, the better. No more tame, pliable sissies like Mitt (R-ish – Miracle Whip). No more of Nikki! Haley’s sucking up to the establishment while trying to grift the base by leveraging hack conserva-cliché’s from 2005 to present to us as hardcore instead of Jeb! in a dress. No more Kristi!s and Asa!s fronting as all tuff about men pretending to be girls to win races then folding the second the establishment disapproves. Instead, we need GOP politicians who are utterly immune to the siren song of a media and an establishment that seek to draw them in and crash them upon the rocks. Our pols need to ignore MSNBCNN and its hysterical horsehockey. They need to stop reading the NYT and WaPo and being scared that a bad write-up will get them uninvited to all the cool parties. They need to lock onto their target and take it out like an Israeli missile flattens a Hamas/AP frat house.
Look at Ron DeSantis – he just doesn't care what the bad guys say. Not at all. They scream that he won’t enforce face-diapering, that he’s too hard on election fraud, that’s he’s declared open season on those Antifa/BLM nimrods who trap normal citizens in their cars on public roads, and then DeSantis just goes ahead and does what he wants anyway. And it works – he’s super popular.
This was not Donald Trump’s style – Trump would engage the haters, if only to sock them in the gut, often with his apocryphal mean tweets. But not Ron the Conqueror. No, DeSantis’s accomplishments are his mean tweets.
See, the liberal elite always misunderstood the nature of Donald Trump, and the elite failed to appreciate the popularity of his ideas. In dealing the pain, Trump was the right man at the right time – we needed his punch-back then to show the simps we could counter-attack. But that strategy had a cost. The elite gleefully exploited Trump’s colorful antics, and it leveraged his feistiness into a weapon to energize the pinkos while alienating the softcons from fully supporting the most conservative president since Reagan. They focused on attacking Trump in terms of social class and style instead of in terms of substance. They couldn’t, and it’s only now that many people are noticing just how amazing Trump’s accomplishments were in contrast to President *’s unending series of failures.
The elite finds itself at a grave disadvantage when it comes up against a pol it can’t provoke into fighting on the elite’s preferred ground, the favorable terrain of social class and style within a culture the elite controls. An Asperger’s Republican has a relentless focus on conservative achievement, of doing what he/she wants done, and he/she is not distracted by the disapproval of the media or even his/her peers. An Asperger’s Republican simply does conservative things, heedless of liberal howling and calumny, and then the liberals are stuck having to battle on the hostile terrain of actual achievements. What is someone going to say to DeSantis as Florida leads the recovery out of the pandemic paranoia? “Sure, there was no tsunami of death when you took the lead in eschewing flu hajibs, but you still should have made people wrap a hanky around their mugs forever because of reasons?”
There’s a lesson there for Republican pols – and all of us.
Stop giving a damn what people who hate you think and say, and just do what you promised to do. Don’t ask permission – and don’t ask forgiveness either. Get it done.
This is where I must join the Spectrum Caucus because there are going to be some folks who pretend to be highly offended, outraged, and literally shaking over my analogy to Asperger’s and “The Spectrum.” To them, I say this: I don’t care if you’re offended. I am going to do and say whatever I want, all the time, in whatever manner I feel like doing and saying it, and you are going to sit there and cry. Buzz off.
We need more people saying things like that, especially among our politicians.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Biden's plan to force people into labor organizations, and pay billions in dues
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which President Joe Biden has endorsed, would mainstream labor unions’ illegal dues collection practices, according to worker and business groups.
www.wnd.com
Biden's plan to force people into labor organizations, and pay billions in dues
'What this bill is about is giving union officials dramatic new powers'
Published May 25, 2021 at 11:26am
By Thomas Catenacci
Daily Caller News Foundation
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which President Joe Biden has endorsed, would mainstream labor unions’ illegal dues collection practices, according to worker and business groups.
The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would enable labor unions to grow in size and, therefore, collect more dues, the groups said. The legislation’s provisions legalize dues collection practices, which are currently illegal nationwide.
“What this bill is about is giving union officials dramatic new powers over employees. There’s nothing in this bill that deals with individual employee rights. Nothing,” National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW) President Mark Mix told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It’s all about union officials getting more power to corral more workers into unions.”
Unions have rallied in favor of the PRO Act because of their rapidly declining membership, Mix added. Just 11% of U.S. workers were members of a labor union as of January compared to 20% about 40 years ago, according to Department of Labor data.
Labor unions would receive about $20 billion per year in union dues, $9 billion more than they receive now, if the PRO Act is signed into law, according to a recent Institute for the American Worker report. The Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employee, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and many other major unions have endorsed the bill.
“The [PRO Act] aims to boost the number of dues paying union members, padding the coffers of union bosses at the expense of workers, small and local businesses, entrepreneurs and Main Street consumers,” Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) Chair Kristen Swearingen said in a statement to the DCNF.
“American workers and small business owners would be forced to hand over their hard-earned paychecks to labor bosses or lose their jobs, despite the rampant corruption tied to unions,” she said.
The House passed the PRO Act mainly along party lines in March, but the bill faces a tough roadblock in the Senate where it needs 60 votes to pass because of the filibuster. Biden said he would sign the bill and urged lawmakers to quickly send it to his desk.
Unions slammed the filibuster and demanded that the Senate changes its procedural rules to pass the legislation. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, a federation of more than 55 unions representing 12.5 million workers, denounced the filibuster after the House passed the PRO Act, saying the “very survival of our democratic republic” was at stake.
Ending the filibuster to pass the PRO Act is “vital,” International Union of Painters and Allied Trades organizer Ryan Kekeris told the Intelligencer.
“It’s time for Senators to stop hiding behind outdated rules and procedures like the filibuster and to pass the PRO Act,” Communications Workers of America President Chris Shelton said in a March statement.
What’s in the PRO Act?
The PRO Act would repeal the so-called right-to-work laws that exist in 27 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The laws allow private sector workers to choose whether they’d like to join a union even if a unionization election succeeds at a workplace.
Advertisement - story continues below
If the PRO Act is enshrined into U.S. law, millions of workers across the country would automatically start paying dues, even if they don’t want to, Mix said.
“[The PRO Act] would dramatically increase unions’ dues harvest by orders of magnitude by simply repealing Right to Work laws,” Mix said. “Unions don’t have to do anything else.”
In states without right-to-work laws, workers who voted against unionization must join a union and pay dues if the majority of their fellow workers voted in favor.
The PRO Act would also introduce card check elections, or the process of unionizing a workforce without a formal secret ballot election, according to the Chamber of Commerce. Instead, union organizers would simply need to convince 50% of workers at any given workplace to sign cards, which are often labeled like an election request card.
Advertisement - story continues below
The legislation includes a variety of provisions that pose serious privacy concerns, which may lead to worker intimidation, according to Mix. For example, workers’ private information will be more easily accessible for organizers attempting to unionize a business.
“I think it’s perfectly safe to say that there’s privacy issues involved,” he told the DCNF. “And that’s a very serious matter.”
NRTW has filed complaints against union organizers who have showed up to a worker’s home late at night and who obtained the private information of a potential union member’s mother, Mix said.
In addition, the PRO Act allows “secondary boycotts,” or the union practice of protesting an employer that does business with a company resisting unionization. It also opens up the possibility of the government forcibly establishing a contract between a union and business if the two parties cannot come to an agreement within a set amount of time, according to the House Education and Labor Committee.
Altogether, the legislation’s changes to labor law would lead to more union members, Americans for Fair Treatment researcher Suzanne Bates told the DCNF in an interview. The relationship between unions and Democratic politicians who mostly support the PRO Act has left many workers behind, she said.
“We like to think of them as membership organizations, but their ties to the political left have become so extreme that their mission seems to have shifted from doing what’s best for their members to doing what’s best for their friends – politicians,” Bates said.
“Then the politicians turn around and make it easier for the unions to bargain and organize,” she said.
A series of ongoing litigation, which firms like NRTW have brought before the National Labor Relations Board, has shown that unions actively try to increase dues-paying members using many means.
For example, the NRTW are currently representing bus drivers in Virginia attempting to decertify a union, a United Airlines employee that doesn’t want his dues money used for his union’s “political and ideological activities,” a Delaware farmer who alleges he was intimidated by the union he is attempting to decertify and Michigan construction workers denied the ability to resign from the union under the state’s right-to-work law.
“Unions are failing workers,” Bates told the DCNF. “They’re failing workers in the public sector, they’re failing workers in the private sector. So they’re looking for a political solution to stay alive.”
marsh
On TB every waking moment
How to Apply Non-Discrimination to Digital Platforms via Common Carriage
Digital platforms that hold themselves out to the public now resemble other traditional common carriers, such as telephone and cable companies.
www.newsweek.com
How to Apply Non-Discrimination to Digital Platforms via Common Carriage | Opinion
ADAM CANDEUB AND CLARE MORELL
ON 5/25/21 AT 6:30 AM EDT
Social media platforms' power to control national political discussions and create personalized political echo chambers is unparalleled in our history. From deplatforming President Trump to stifling the New York Post's laptop exposé about Hunter Biden before the 2020 election, the content moderation decisions of the dominant Big Tech conglomerates appear to many reasonable observers to be censorship of conservative speech.
To remedy this problem, many have recently been looking to the common law doctrine of common carriage—particularly since Justice Clarence Thomas's recent concurring opinion that highlighted this possible approach.
But what exactly is common carriage law?
Common carriage refers to an ancient, diffuse set of legal rules that for centuries has ensured that basic economic, transportation and communication channels are open and accessible to all members of society. It reflects a practical approach to the issue of market dominance in industries that provide public goods. Under common carriage, the government gives dominant firms certain privileges, such as immunity from antitrust laws or tort liability and, in exchange, these firms have an obligation to provide their goods and serve all comers in a non-discriminatory way. In this way, common carrier regulation operates as a classic carrots-and-sticks "regulatory bargain."
Digital platforms that hold themselves out to the public now resemble other traditional common carriers, such as telephone and cable companies. Today, social media companies like Twitter and Facebook provide universal communications platforms, providing individuals and the government the ability to communicate with everyone else. Their dominant market positions now necessitate imposing common carrier obligations on them. And, in fact, these platforms already receive the first half of the common carriage regulatory bargain: Section 230 immunity protections from certain suits related to third-party content and content moderation decisions. Congress gave this carrot in an effort to aid the nascent internet industry back in the 1990s.
But, with the emergence of dominant social media platforms, the absence of a stick to ensure the free and democratic provision of this public good has become increasingly apparent.
Section 230 gives Facebook and Twitter the legal immunity that telephones and telegraphs enjoy—but without the corresponding duty to serve all customers in a non-discriminatory manner.
Imposing non-discrimination requirements on Big Tech companies would correct this imbalance and ensure that all Americans enjoy the ability to communicate with each other on equal footing. This could be achieved using the same, straightforward legal language that prohibits discrimination by telephone companies and other common carriers.
Given the complexity of telecommunications law, a common carriage-type solution could be imposed using one of several different legal and regulatory pathways.
Option 1: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could regulate social media platforms directly under Title II common carriage requirements. A Democratic-majority FCC is likely to impose Title II non-discrimination network neutrality on broadband access service providers—for example, AT&T and Comcast—but is not likely to impose the same non-discrimination requirements on social media firms and may even preempt states from doing so themselves (see Option 4 below). For conservatives, regulating the internet under Title II would be the wrong approach.
Big Tech company logos on tablet deviceDENIS CHARLET/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Option 2: Congress could regulate social media platforms by drafting a law such as the 21st Century FREE Speech Act recently introduced by Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) or Senator Josh Hawley's (R-MO) Section 230 bill from last Congress that would require content moderation decisions to be politically unbiased. Hagerty's legislation posits treating interactive computer service platforms with more than 100 million active monthly users worldwide as common carriers that must provide reasonable, non-discriminatory access to all consumers. Politically, though, a law from Congress that would directly impose common carriage-type anti-discrimination requirements on Big Tech companies is unlikely to pass in the foreseeable future.
Option 3: The FCC could promulgate interpretive rules on Section 230 to regulate social media liability. These rules would provide a much-needed return to the original intent of Section 230, which courts have ignored by greatly expanding the provision's protection. This approach would be narrowly constrained to clarifying what Section 230 immunity is not—where courts have incorrectly expanded it—and therefore would be unlikely to provide broader, affirmative non-discrimination requirements.
Option 4: States could regulate platforms under their own common carrier authority, as Texas is apparently ready to do. States' current ability to regulate interstate internet offerings stems from the FCC's 2018 order to regulate the internet under Title I, not Title II. Courts determined, in upholding Vermont and California's recent internet non-discrimination laws, that states may regulate the internet in this manner as long as the FCC continues to classify the internet under Title I. The courts reasoned that the FCC Title I classification reflected a retreat from regulation, permitting states a role rather than preempting them. Of course, this option would end if and when the FCC decides to regulate network neutrality under Title II instead.
With any of these four options, regulating via common carriage presents an interesting question for conservatives. Specifically, this approach at least seems on the surface to contradict their long-standing opposition to network neutrality. Many of their objections though, rest on faulty or specious assumptions.
First, some argue that one cannot consistently oppose network neutrality and still seek to impose non-discrimination requirements on social media. However, network neutrality advocates sought to subject broadband service providers to Title II and its public utility model, a burdensome regulatory framework. In contrast, proposals like Hagerty's apply only one common carriage principle—non-discrimination. This requirement reflects a modest regulatory burden, if one at all. It would simply require platforms to offer a service, which costs next to nothing to provide to the incremental user, to everyone.
Second (and crucially), despite the decades-long network neutrality policy dispute, there have been no examples of widespread discrimination by the nations' leading broadband providers.
On the other hand, few can ignore the clear bias and discrimination on the part of the major Big Tech platforms. And the relevant legal language could be drafted to explicitly not apply the new obligations to broadband internet access service.
Certain businesses—from ferries and telegrams in the 19th century to email and social media in the 21st century—play a central role for meaningful participation in society. As has been done for centuries, our laws must ensure these businesses treat everyone fairly.
Adam Candeub is professor of law at Michigan State University and senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America. He was previously acting assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information.
Clare Morell is a policy analyst at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she works on the EPPC's Big Tech Project. Prior to joining EPPC, she worked in both the White House Counsel's Office and the Department of Justice, as well as in the private and nonprofit sectors.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Wokeness at Fed's regional banks puts central bank independence at risk
Regional Federal Reserve Banks are taking an increasingly “alarming” stance on politically charged issues like racial justice, according to Sen. Pat Toomey.
www.foxbusiness.com
Wokeness at Fed's regional banks puts central bank independence at risk
Fed is supposed to operate free from political influence
By Jonathan Garber FOXBusiness
Regional Federal Reserve Banks are taking an increasingly "alarming" stance on politically charged issues like racial justice, according to Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania who is the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.
Federal Reserve banks in Atlanta, Boston and Minneapolis recently dedicated resources to social policy, reflecting the political leaning of officials who are neither elected nor confirmed by the Senate.
The Federal Reserve’s mission statement mandates the central bank to achieve maximum employment and stable prices while being free from political influence. Experience has shown that countries with independent central banks achieve better outcomes for their citizens.
Pursuing a highly politicized social agenda unrelated to monetary policy is inflicting "reputational damage" on the Minneapolis, Atlanta and Boston Fed banks and the Federal Reserve as a whole, Toomey said.
The three banks recently spearheaded a series that was participated in by all 12 regional banks, which centered on the belief that "racism forms the foundation of inequality in our society."
The "Racism and Economy" series highlighted a number of topics, including structural racism in housing, education and labor markets.
Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, who is the first Black Fed president, on Monday told Axios that should he become Fed chairman, he would steer the central bank toward economic inclusivity and equity.
Earlier this year he said there are "definitely merits" to reparations and called the changes to Georgia voting laws "troubling." That came after last year he published a letter titled "A Moral and Economic Imperative to End Racism."
The Minneapolis Fed, meanwhile, in its 2020 Annual Report renewed its commitment to dismantling systemic racism. Additionally, a report published by the Boston Fed in December 2020 said the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others were the result of the "racist roots of this country."
Toomey has asked all three regional Fed banks to provide documents on their recent "racial justice" activism, an issue that falls outside their scope, no later than June 7. He requested briefings from them no later than the week of June 7.
"We have received the inquiry from Sen. Toomey’s office, and we look forward to discussing with him how better understanding racial inequality helps the Federal Reserve reach its mandate of maximum employment and ensure economic gains are widely experienced across the population, regardless of race," a spokesperson for the Atlanta Fed told FOX Business.
Spokespersons for both the Federal Reserve Board and the Minneapolis Fed declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Boston Fed did not respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.
The politicization of the Fed’s regional banks comes as so-called "wokeism" has been seeping into governmental departments, corporate boardrooms and universities across America as the Biden administration pushes the narrative that the United States has a long history of systemic racism.
"Systemic racism is a stain on our nation’s soul," President Biden said last month following the murder conviction of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. Chauvin earlier this month asked for a new trial, citing misconduct and errors of law, among other things.
Biden later said he doesn’t think "American people are racist."
The Biden administration in February threw its support behind forming a commission to study the history of slavery in the U.S. and government policies that may have impacted former slaves and their dependents. The commission would recommend potential financial payments and other remedies to compensate descendants of slaves for years of unpaid labor.
The White House has not said if Biden would sign a reparations bill should one pass through Congress.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Exactly How Corporate Media Launders Opinion To Attack Inconvenient People And Facts - The Federalist
It's called 'the news,' and here's how it worked for Arkansas' Sen. Tom Cotton's completely plausible theory that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab.
thefederalist.com
Exactly How Corporate Media Launders Opinion To Attack Inconvenient People And Facts
By Christopher Bedford
MAY 24, 2021
A New York Times business correspondent in Hong Kong, a weekend editor at The Guardian who lives in New York, a British Business Insider reporter with a focus on the Saudis, and the executive editor of The Daily Beast.
A 48-year-old blogger who works for Rachel Maddow, a union activist who covers “extremism, far-right politics and media disinformation” for The Huffington Post, and the 29-year editor of the Arkansas Times.
A breaking news reporter at The Washington Post who wrapped up her most recent internship in May 2016, a 2016 University of Pennsylvania graduate who covers “young people doing big things” for Forbes, a 45-year-old former George Will intern who writes for CNN, and David Frum.
What do these people have in common, aside from their political ideology? Every one of them is a part of a machine that launders smears and opinions through newspapers, magazines, and television channels, presents the cleaned-up product as unimpeachable truth to the public, and then uses the fresh-minted facts to protect friends and hurt enemies. It’s called “the news,” and here’s how it worked for Arkansas’ Sen. Tom Cotton’s completely plausible theory that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab.
That Hong Kong business correspondent? She wrote this headline for the Times in February 2020: “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins.”
“Scientists,” the slug reads, “have dismissed suggestions that the Chinese government was behind the outbreak, but it’s the kind of tale that gains traction among those who see China as a threat.”
“Republican who floated virus conspiracy says ‘common sense has been my guide,'” the weekend editor at The Guardian dismissively explained.
“A GOP senator,” our award-winning Saudi investigator declared, “keeps pushing a thoroughly debunked theory that the Wuhan coronavirus is a leaked Chinese biological weapon gone wrong.”
“Sen. Tom Cotton Flogs Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Dismissed by Actual Scientists,” the editor of The Daily Beast howled.
“Tom Cotton’s veiled threats really aren’t helping,” Maddow’s blogger chimed in.
“Don’t Listen To Sen. Tom Cotton About Coronavirus,” our “media disinformation” boy piped up.
“Tom Cotton and the virus conspiracy theory,” the three-decades’ veteran of an Arkansas weekly blogged, citing a Vanity Fair write-up that maintained far more nuance than the grizzled writer.
“Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) repeated a fringe theory,” the young Post staffer confidently led, “suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.” That “theory,” her headline definitively states, “was already debunked.”
“Senator Tom Cotton Ramps Up Anti-China Rhetoric,” Forbes’ “Under 30 community lead” righteously wrote.
“Tom Cotton,” CNN’s Chris Cillizza authoritatively declared, “is playing a dangerous game with his coronavirus speculation.”
Get all that? We’ve now heard from everyone from Rachel Maddow’s blogger to The New York Times, and from a 200-year old English newspaper to Cotton’s local editor that the senator is a racist, fear-mongering conspiracy theorist who imperils us all. But was a lick of it true?
It was hard to say at the time because the vast majority of the country didn’t know much about the virus at all — although that didn’t hold any of those above back in spouting their opinions and shutting down Cotton’s.
Now that it’s largely accepted that the disease escaped a Chinese laboratory, have any of those above issued a correction or so much as an update? Of course not. So far, the only thing like that was issued by PolitiFact for an article “fact-checking” a guest on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” who repeated the lab-leak theory.
That poor, ignominious “fact-check” was written by Daniel Funke in September 2020. Although Funke doesn’t stand out above any of the mediocrities above, he ties a bow on media manipulation nicely.
Young Funke graduated from the University of Georgia in 2017, receiving a News Lab fellowship from Google. Google, in their wisdom, placed their young student at the Poynter Institute in Florida, which bills itself as an academic authority on media critiques and fact-checks. Funke must have impressed that summer, as he was rewarded with a job at Poynter’s pet project, PolitiFact, which boasts it is the “home of the Truth-O-Meter and independent fact-checking.”
In his new job, Funke fact-checked a number of COVID claims, smacking down the now largely acceptable lab-origin one more than once and making himself quite an authority on the facts.
But lest anyone think he’s being picked on unfairly, don’t fret. His now-retracted “fact-check” on an unknowable thing (from a time that was obvious) won’t slow him down: Today, he proudly covers misinformation for USA Today. No one in this machine is ever held accountable.
It’s rare to catch the media machine so red-handed, but don’t worry about them, either — they’re already rewriting the history.
Enter: Frum, an angry and somehow unembarrassed architect of the Iraq War who is now a senior editor at The Atlantic, the once-venerable magazine with its own fact-checking problems.
“Some,” he declared this week, “are trying to turn the lab-leak theory into a potent political weapon.”
By “some,” he meant conservatives. Rinse, lather, repeat.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Fed's Lael Brainard pushes digital dollar as central bank currency race heats up
Fed Governor Lael Brainard pressed the case for a digital dollar, saying a cryptocurrency backed by the central bank could provide a variety of benefits.
www.cnbc.com
FEDERAL RESERVE
Fed’s Lael Brainard pushes digital dollar as central bank currency race heats up
PUBLISHED MON, MAY 24 20219:41 AM EDTUPDATED MON, MAY 24 20218:24 PM EDT
Jeff Cox@JEFF.COX.7528@JEFFCOXCNBCCOM
KEY POINTS
- Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard said a cryptocurrency backed by the central bank could provide a variety of benefits.
- Getting payments to people during the early days of the Covid pandemic was one example. She also cited cross-border transactions and protection against fraud.
US Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard attends a “Fed Listens” event at the Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, DC, on October 4, 2019. Eric Baradat | AFP | Getty Images
Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard pressed the case for a digital dollar, saying Monday that a cryptocurrency backed by the central bank could provide a variety of benefits.
Providing financial services to the nearly 1 in 5 Americans considered “underbanked” is one of the advantages Brainard cited in a speech to a conference presented by Coindesk.
She also cited the safety of a Fed-backed system, as well as improvements in efficiency and cross-border payments, or transactions between people in different countries.
While stressing the importance of moving forward carefully, Brainard said the Covid-19 pandemic strengthened the need for a system in which a broad swath of the public has access to well-regulated digital money.
Podcast;
Digital currencies from central banks could change money as you know it 31:41 min
“The Federal Reserve remains committed to ensuring that the public has access to safe, reliable, and secure means of payment, including cash,” she said. “As part of this commitment, we must explore — and try to anticipate — the extent to which households’ and businesses’ needs and preferences may migrate further to digital payments over time.”
Those comments come days after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell announced that the central bank this summer would be releasing a working paper that addresses multiple issues involving Central Bank Digital Currencies.
The Boston Fed and MIT have launched a joint project in which they will set up a hypothetical model, and several other Fed districts also are involved with research of their own.
WATCH NOW
VIDEO on website 09:59 min
Why central banks around the world want to get into digital currencies
Essentially, the development of the CBDC would give consumers broader access to electronic currency, the likes of which have been popularized with the use of bitcoin and its myriad peers.
China’s central bank has been moving forward with its own project as have various others around the world.
Brainard said the pandemic presented an example of how important developing a Fed-backed currency could be.
When Congress began sending relief payments at the outset, some individuals didn’t get theirs for weeks because they either did not have accounts or their information was not updated with the IRS. A CBDC would help get money more quickly to those people, she said.
“In the United States, the pandemic led to an acceleration of the migration to digital payments as well as increased demand for cash,” Brainard said in prepared remarks. “While the use of cash spiked at certain times, there was a pronounced shift by consumers and businesses to contactless transactions facilitated by electronic payments.”
Brainard noted, without naming specific cryptocurrencies, that alternate payment systems present multiple problems, including potential fraud.
“In contrast, a digital dollar would be a new type of central bank money issued in digital form for use by the general public,” she said. “By introducing safe central bank money that is accessible to households and businesses in digital payments systems, a CBDC would reduce counterparty risk and the associated consumer protection and financial stability risks.”
The Fed has not set a timetable for its currency. The FedNow Service, which would be a payments system that in some ways would resemble a digital dollar, is expected to come on line in two years.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Exclusive: JSOC Personnel Encouraged to Attend Diversity Conference
Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) personnel are being encouraged to attend a conference on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
www.breitbart.com
Exclusive: Joint Special Operations Command Personnel Encouraged to Attend Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Conference
KRISTINA WONG25 May 20211,026
Personnel for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a secretive component of the United States military’s Special Operations Command, are being encouraged to attend virtual conferences on diversity, equity, and inclusion, among other topics considered beneficial for their “professional development,” according to two sources.
Emails obtained by Breitbart News and sent out from JSOC’s Civilian Training Office to JSOC personnel — both civilian and military — in April and May encouraged them to attend the virtual conferences, which would also be broadcast at their compound at Fort Bragg.
One email sent on May 20, 2021, reminded JSOC personnel that they had access to the conferences “at no cost (normally $500 a session per person).”
The email highlighted the three next upcoming conferences, which would be broadcast in a classroom for JSOC personnel — one on “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”; another on “Change & Transformation”; and another on “Emotional Well-Being.”
The conference on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which started on Monday, included panels on:
The conference on Emotional Well-Being includes an event titled: “Black Emotional Lives Matter: Embedding Diversity and Inclusion in Your Approach to Employee Well-Being.” The description said, “You will hear about issues such as”:
An earlier email sent April 13, 2021, by JSOC’s Civilian Training Office said:
It added: “Add these opportunities to your [Individual Development Plan] and invest time in yourself. These opportunities will help you grow professionally over time and do count towards your continuous learning credit hours.”
The email included another forwarded email from the Pentagon’s Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service (DCPAS) that said, “DOD employees are being afforded an opportunity to attend an array of FREE virtual conferences sponsored by The Conference Board.”
The Conference Board is a global non-profit “business membership and research group organization” described as “a think tank that delivers trusted insights dealing with subjects impacting business and society.” “These insights,” the email said, “are for all grade levels and ranks.”
The DCPAS email added: “We encourage your participation in the attached virtual conferences.”
One source familiar with the emails told Breitbart News that special operations forces are “disappointed that this Marxist crap is impacting the command.”
“[It] has zero impact on winning wars or hiring the best,” the source added.
Kenneth McGraw, spokesman for SOCOM, responded to a query by Breitbart News about the training in a statement:
It is not the first time the Pentagon has included special operations forces in its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
SOCOM announced in March it had hired its first diversity chief, only to suspend him weeks later for partisan social media posts, including one comparing former President Donald Trump to a doctored photo of Adolf Hitler.
The diversity training is happening amid a major push by the Biden Pentagon to further diversify the military and “root-out” extremists, despite not having a definition of “extremism” or data on how many extremists are serving in the military.
One of the first actions President Joe Biden took in office was to reverse restrictions on transgender persons serving in the military.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also hired the department’s first senior adviser on diversity and inclusion, Bishop Garrison, and ordered a 60-day period where commanders were to spend a day addressing “extremism” with troops, and stood up a Counter Extremism Working Group to define what “extremism” is and make countering it a permanent and continuous effort.
Some troops have expressed concerns that the push against extremists in the military is really a push to silence conservatives.
“What you see happening in the U.S. military at the moment is that if you’re a conservative, then you’re lumped into a group of people who are labeled extremists if you voice your views,” Air Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier said in a May 7 on the podcast Information Operations.
Lohmeier was recently fired from his command at Space Force after the interview, in which he warned about Marxism spreading in the military.
Lohmeier, an Air Force Academy graduate, also said diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings in the military are pushing critical race theory that is rooted in Marxism. He went on to say:
He said Air Force materials given to commanders to conduct the stand-down on extremism with began with a vignette about the January 6 Capitol breach. “That context painted the entire discussion and all the talking points,” he said. He also said all the examples of extremism did not mention riots during summer 2020 but only had to do with:
To date, only one active duty service member has been charged in relation to the Capitol breach.
Since Lohmeier’s remarks, dozens of Republicans in the House and Senate have issued statements of support for him and against the spread of Marxism in the military. They are also vowing to examine political bias against conservatives in the military.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
One father’s stand against critical race theory: We’re indoctrinating our children
Democracy fundamentally cannot work properly if we cannot openly have discussions and debates on the difficult issues facing our country.
thehill.com
One father's stand against critical race theory: We're indoctrinating our children
BY ANDREW GUTMANN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 05/25/21 11:00 AM EDT 903
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
© istock
A month ago, I mailed a letter to all the parents of my daughter’s New York City private school, Brearley, asking them to speak up against the school administration’s illiberal and indoctrinating antiracism initiatives and divisive obsession with race. That letter went viral and has helped bring about much needed attention to the explosive adoption of critical race theory throughout our country. Having been unexpectedly thrust into the media spotlight, I feel an obligation to dispel several common misconceptions pertaining to this movement.
There appears to be widespread belief that opposition to critical race theory is a view held solely by the political right. This perception is wrong. It is certainly true that the conservative media has almost exclusively embraced viewpoints unfavorable to critical race theory while the liberal-oriented media has been overwhelmingly approving. But our polarized media does not seem to accurately reflect the view of most Americans.
Since my letter became public, I have received several thousand supportive emails and messages from people across this country, including many from self-described Democrats and liberals. The tone of most of the messages sent to me is not at all political in nature; instead, the tenor is one of desperation and powerlessness.
I have received emails from parents expressing devastation that their kids, as young as five years old, are coming home from school after being taught to feel guilty solely because of the color of their skin. I have received messages from grandparents feeling hopeless that their grandchildren are being brainwashed and turned against their own families. And I have received notes from teachers brought to tears because they are being required, day after day, to teach fundamentally divisive, racist doctrines and being forced to demonize their own students.
Perhaps the most powerful – and most frightening – of the notes I have received are the several dozen from those who identify themselves as having immigrated to America from the former Soviet Union or from countries in formerly communist Eastern Europe. These emails are never political in nature and are nearly identical in message: These first-generation Americans all write that they have “seen this movie before.” They are familiar with the propaganda, the tactics of indoctrination and the pervasive fear of speaking up that plague today’s United States. Simply put, they cannot believe this is happening here.
A second common misconception about critical race theory is that it is confined to educational institutions. This, too, is false. Over the past year, the tenets of critical race theory have become pervasive throughout society, in our corporations, in our scientific and medical community, and in our military. Coca-Cola’s diversity training materials have encouraged employees to “try to be less white.” United Airlines has announced a plan for half of its new pilots to be women or people of color. The Walt Disney Company has reportedly asked employees to complete a “white privilege checklist.” The American Medical Association released a three-year roadmap that rejects equality and meritocracy and espouses “racial justice.” The Department of Defense has recommended many steps to its diversity and inclusion initiatives, including examining changes to recruitment policies, aptitude tests and senior leadership promotion criteria.
Many who read my original letter to Brearley parents incorrectly concluded that its main theme was race. It was not. What I wrote was, first and foremost, about the school’s unwillingness to have discussions about race and debate about the school’s antiracism initiatives. The moral of this misconception, however, goes far beyond a single letter. It touches the heart of democracy itself.
Democracy fundamentally cannot work properly if we cannot openly have discussions and debates on the difficult issues facing our country. We have allowed a small but very vocal minority, amplified by the power of social media, to shut down nearly all debate on the topic of race and critical race theory. The simple cry of “racist” or the threat of that cry will nearly always do so. This cannot be allowed to continue. Regardless of one’s own beliefs on the roots of racial disparities, on the existence of systemic racism or on the merits of critical race theory, we must together agree that we can no longer allow a small group of Americans to bully the rest of us into silence.
We are just a few election cycles from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, yet we find the country embattled over the date of its true founding — 1619, as critical race theory espouses, or 1776? This fight is also a misconception. As every good history teacher knows, history is not a set of dates but a continuous story. We must begin to have a national conversation about the story we went to tell our children and about the future we want for our country.
Do we really want to extinguish our founding principles, or do we want to reaffirm them and work harder to make sure they apply to all Americans? Do we really want to abandon the precepts of free speech – if not by statute, then by fear – or do we want to foster diversity of thought in our schools, workplaces and communities? Do we really want to adopt the thoroughly Marxist concept of equality of outcome, or do we want to strive for equality of opportunity for all those who seek it with talent and effort? Do we really want to encourage divisiveness and wallow in victimhood, positions that will weaken us and almost certainly lead to ethnic strife, or do we want to use our diversity as a strength to help face the many global challenges ahead?
Lastly, do we really want to make skin color the defining feature of America, or do we want to return to the colorblind dreams of our storied civil rights leaders, and to the true inclusiveness for which they preached?
I know where I stand on these questions. But what say you, America?
Andrew Gutmann is a father of one and a former investment banker turned software developer and entrepreneur who now works with his family’s chemical business. He can be reached at his website, speakupforeducation.org.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Chinese Propaganda Outlet Paid Millions to American Newspapers and Magazines, Records Show
A news agency controlled by the Chinese Communist Party paid millions of dollars to American newspapers and magazines over the past six months, even as U.S. officials have sounded the alarm on Beijing's propaganda activities.
freebeacon.com
Chinese Propaganda Outlet Paid Millions to American Newspapers and Magazines, Records Show
China Daily pays to place interviews with pro-China Quincy Institute scholar
https://twitter.com/share?url=https...erican+Newspapers+and+Magazines,+Records+Show
A news agency controlled by the Chinese Communist Party paid millions of dollars to American newspapers and magazines over the past six months, even as U.S. officials have sounded the alarm on Beijing's propaganda activities.
China Daily paid more than $1.6 million for advertising campaigns in Time magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, and Foreign Policy magazine, according to disclosures filed with the Justice Department. The Beijing-controlled news agency paid another $1 million to American newspapers, including the L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, and Houston Chronicle, to print copies of its own publications.
U.S. officials have increasingly drawn attention to CCP propaganda campaigns in the West. The Justice Department requires several Chinese news companies, including China Daily, to disclose their activities under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Officials have also warned that CCP-affiliated groups have hosted events with American think tanks and educational institutions in an attempt to boost their influence in the West.
Several American newspapers have come under fire for publishing China Daily inserts entitled "China Watch." Though designed to look like normal newspaper stories, the inserts contain articles that portray the Chinese government and life in China in a positive light.
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post have all severed ties in recent years with China Daily amid complaints that they were publishing CCP propaganda. The Times purged hundreds of China Daily advertorials from its website last year because of concerns about working with state-run media.
China Daily increased its advertising spending by more than 36 percent over the past six months, from nearly $3.3 million to more than $4.5 million, according to its latest foreign agent disclosure.
Time magazine took in $700,000 for advertising, while the Los Angeles Times received $272,000. Foreign Policy and Financial Times received $291,000 and $371,577, respectively. The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, raked in $329,898 for advertising.
Time appears to be a new China Daily client. The magazine's website features articles from China Daily with the disclosure "paid partner content," though without any mention of its affiliation with the Chinese government.
Its most recent partner content is an interview with Charles Freeman, a U.S. diplomat affiliated with the isolationist Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a controversial foreign policy think tank supported by billionaires Charles Koch and George Soros. Freeman has blamed the so-called Israel lobby for blocking his appointment to lead the National Intelligence Council during the Obama administration.
In the China Daily article, Freeman discusses his work as chief interpreter for President Richard Nixon during his first visit to China in 1972. Freeman praises what he says is China's rapid modernization since the Nixon visit, saying, "I knew China would change, but I never imagined how much and how fast it has changed."
Quincy Institute scholars have defended the Chinese government against allegations that it has committed genocide against Muslim minority groups in Western China.
Many of the newspapers working with China Daily face severe financial problems. The Los Angeles Times furloughed workers last year as advertising revenue cratered during the coronavirus pandemic. Papers like the Chicago Tribune and Boston Globe have failed to turn a profit for years.
China Daily paid $89,700 to the Los Angeles Times for printing services and $164,000 in all to the Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, and Boston Globe.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Exclusive: Republican Lawmakers Demand Immediate Action From Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin After Bombshell Bishop Garrison Report - Revolver News
Thirty Republican Congressmen are demanding action after Revolver exposed the Biden administration's liberal military purge and takeover.
www.revolver.news
Exclusive: Republican Lawmakers Demand Immediate Action From Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin After Bombshell Bishop Garrison Report
May 25, 2021 (4h ago)
A group of thirty Republican Congressmen led by Matt Rosendale of Montana are demanding action from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin after Revolver’s recent reporting exposed the disturbing depths of woke ideology taking control of the highest echelons of the American military.
“The sole purpose of the United States Military is to protect American citizens, defend American national security interests, and to fight and win wars when necessary,” the Congressmen say in a letter exclusively provided to Revolver News. “We urge you to use your authority to take action to fight back against the creeping left-wing extremism in the U.S. military.”
The letter specifically cites Revolver‘s recent exclusive exposing Bishop Garrison, the newly-appointed Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Diversity and Inclusion. As Revolver first reported three weeks ago, Garrison runs a toxic, dangerous grift that claims “White Supremacy is a national security threat,” and that patriotic Americans must be purged from the military to combat this fake danger. The Congressional letter states:
The letter also highlights the case of Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, the Space Force commander recently interviewed by Revolver who was relieved of command for his book warning about the infiltration of Marxist ideology into the armed forces. Along with Lohmeier, it also mentions the botched elevation of Richard Torres-Estrada, who was slated to serve as Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer until patriots unearthed his social media posts comparing President Trump to Adolf Hitler.
Rep. Rosendale praised Revolver News for exposing Bishop Garrison to the nation, and offered Revolver a statement clarifying his intentions behind this important letter:
Besides Rosendale, other prominent signatories of the letter’s include Paul Gosar of Arizona and Matt Gaetz of Florida.
“Left-wing extremism and anti-white racism have percolated from universities and schools, to government agencies, and now the military,” Rep. Gosar told Revolver in a statement. “People who love their country are being purged from government and our armed forces. Biden and Bishop Garrison are prioritizing bigotry and anti-white hatred over national security. It’s unacceptable and my constituents demand answers and accountability” said Rep. Gosar, who also recently introduced a bill to ban affirmative action in the military (along with the rest of the federal government).
Congressman Gaetz, meanwhile, warned that the toxins filling the military are merely the prelude to something worse.
“Americans must think about this wokeification of our military not as an end unto itself, but rather as a means to a more sinister end,” Rep. Gaetz told Revolver. “The Left wants to take control of the full national security apparatus and turn it against our people. This should alarm us all.”
Besides Rosendale, Gaetz, and Gosar, the full list of signatories includes Reps. Andy Biggs, Ronny Jackson, Bob Good, Diana Harshbarger, Ted Budd, Jeff Duncan, Jody Hice, Lauren Boebert, Brian Mast, Dan Bishop, Randy Weber, Alex Mooney, Ralph Norman, Brian Babin, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andy Harris, Andrew Clyde, Russ Fulcher, Warren Davidson, Mary Miller, Ken Buck, Greg Steube, Chip Roy, Barry Moore, Louie Gohmert, Barry Loudermilk and Clay Higgins.
But every Republican in Congress ought to be on the letter. If the Republican Party has any reason to exist at all, it’s to insist that Marxism, anti-white racism, and other radical race ideologies be entirely eradicated from the senior levels of the U.S.
government. Revolver encourages readers to find out if their lawmaker has signed the letter. If they did, contact their office with praise. If not, call to ask why they haven’t.
It is virtually certain that Secretary Austin will attempt ignore this letter. His video address to the military during its February stand-down makes it clear he is fully on-board with the political purge of the armed forces currently underway. We cannot allow him to get away with this. The correct posture toward the political weaponization of our armed forces must be one of Maximum Pressure. Without maximum, unrelenting pressure from patriots, from media, and from congress, the military will accelerate its purge of pro-American patriots. It will escalate the fomentation of hatred of white people and division and hostility view among the citizens of this very country. And most dangerous of all, the military will be further hollowed out until all that is left is a husk waiting to be crushed in the next serious war.
Getting Republicans in Congress to speak up against what is happening is a victory. But it doesn’t win the war. And American patriots must continue to demand answers, demand accountability, and demand change until they once again have a military and a government worthy of this great country.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Shock Doctrine Comes Home
Whether on the streets or on social media, no one can miss the fried mental status of Americans. Some of us have carried on with normal lives during covid lockdowns or the scare, but we see million…
theamericansun.com
Shock Doctrine Comes Home
Posted by HENRY DELACROIX on MAY 25, 2021
Whether on the streets or on social media, no one can miss the fried mental status of Americans. Some of us have carried on with normal lives during covid lockdowns or the scare, but we see millions living lives of fear and hysteria. It does seem overblown. Using a framework from a pre-financial crisis pop economic book, it is easy to see America is going through an oligarchical imposed episode of shock doctrine. A tool used so effectively in the empire has now been turned inward.
Shock Doctrine is a great title to label the multiple instances where the machinery of big business, the US foreign policy apparatus, and academia could install economic policies known as the Washington Consensus. In short, create a crisis, install a new government, while everyone is reeling this team installs the new economic policies and if there is failure and chaos, keep instituting more and more free trade, free floating prices and wages, and austerity. It is a banker’s delight. Capital can move freely and speculate for quick gains while the masses get burned by the economic shock.
It is not economic shock though, not on its own. Shocks are usually political but can be disaster or war related. Everyone is confused. As the economic changes create chaos, people clamor for the new regime to do anything to ease the pain. Klein uses very clear examples of political disruption (Chile, Poland, Russia, etc) creating an opening for the neoliberal economic agenda and wholesale pillaging of national assets. Post-Asian Flu economic reforms were forced on nations and transformed the entire region. It was always for the same suite of policies: the Washington Consensus. At the end, there is always this stance of changes being set in stone because the IMF & World Bank are there to enforce the rules. No reforms, no loans. No loans if you go back on your reforms. Klein is a standard issue Canadian liberal, but the subject matter and narrative read much clearer today. It was alien and foreign then.
Shock Doctrine was published in 2007, and the 2008 global financial crisis and consequences look straight out of shock doctrine’s neoliberal playbook. Municipal assets have been auctioned off to crony insiders to pay bankers whole. Bailouts made hedge funds and Wall Street bondholders whole while impoverishing Greeks, Italians, etc. The West even saw an austerity wave in the EU to settle the ship after trillions in bailouts and liquidity injections to keep banking institutions alive. We bound our nations to keep a specific piece of the system whole rather than the reverse.
Looking at this book in 2020, you see it all around you. Covid hit. Major state governments took the most aggressive lockdown stance across the US. The political class stabbed its citizenry and then the aid it provided was a one time check and some unemployment bonus. Evictions were paused. Student debt payments were paused under certain conditions. The major winners in the CARES Act were big business interests. The 2021 Democrat covid bill used family checks as a shield for public relations to bail out blue states horrible finances and pension problems.
How many people cared? This is why the shocks have been steady and the hysteria has been so long going despite the truth that 99.9% of people under 65 survive covid. All those states could have taken a different approach. Big business sectors like travel might have suffered or might have had an all Millenial and Zoomer clientele. The lockdowns were the shock to justify aid. The never ending hysteria drove people to want some help due to the deadly virus, forgetting it was their governments that choose the lockdown forever path.
Never let a crisis go to waste. Fits here. The year long hysteria is creating shell shocked people who won’t bother to object to the silly hold up of relief checks because the rest of the bill needs to be hammered out. Too large a mass of people are in a daze or has had their brains fried by the hysteria to not demand a one page up and down vote for cash. They can’t even protest that ridiculous hold up of $1400 checks for all Americans, but first we need to send a trillion to states and businesses. Protesting would be bad in this deadly plague.
Klein documented how the success in getting Chile and Argentina emboldened the neoliberal academics to repeat the process at every opportunity, even helping make opportunities. The dark but probable prediction for America is that shock doctrine has come home to stay. They don’t need to bring the banking system to a near fail anymore. They don’t even need a real plague. They just need to create a climate of fear on a steady enough basis for just enough of the population to wither in until legislation is signed.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Exclusive: Tomorrow Paul Gosar Will Deliver Body Blow to Liberal/Globalist Ruling Class When He Introduces the "MERIT Act" - Revolver News
Revolver Exclusive: Conservative stalwart Paul Gosar takes aim at the globalist ruling class and their liberal ideology with the MERIT Act.
www.revolver.news
Exclusive: Tomorrow Paul Gosar Will Deliver Body Blow to Liberal/Globalist Ruling Class When He Introduces the “MERIT Act”
May 24, 2021 (1d ago)
Nearly two and a half centuries ago, the United States Declaration of Independence bolding asserted that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with the same inalienable rights. For centuries, America strove to make the Declaration a reality. But now, radical leftist ideologues want both the Declaration and the Constitution it inspired to be trashed, and replaced with a new ideology of permanent racial and gender antagonism.
At this very moment, U.S. government policy actively encourages employers across the country to engage in overt race and sex discrimination in a fight to achieve “equality.” The Biden administration is forgiving massive loans based only on skin color, and has decided that white male business owners don’t deserve any relief from the catastrophic harm of coronavirus lockdowns. America is rapidly becoming a county of first and second-class citizens.
But Revolver can now exclusively report Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona is introducing a bill that would bring all this to a halt, immediately. The Making Excellence Replace Identity Traits (MERIT) Act would force a permanent end to this hateful situation. Most of the laws bringing down America are hundreds or thousands of pages long, so it’s fitting that the MERIT Act is so brief it can be quoted in full here:
In less than one hundred words, the bill would eliminate countless cancers that are slowly killing the American republic. It would enshrine actual merit as the only valid grounds for rising high in the American government and in American life.
Of course, with Democrats controlling Congress and the White House, this bill isn’t likely to pass. But what it should become is a litmus test for the Republican Party going forward. The Democratic Party has embraced slicing Americans up into dozens of different groups and pitting them against each other. Whether a person deserves prosperity or poverty, and whether they are good or evil, is determined through a straightforward calculation of their membership in certain nonwhite or nonmale groups. If you are a transwoman of color, you are a holy saint of the Democratic Party. If you are a straight white male, then you are irredeemable. Ideologically bankrupt Republicans think that embracing this thinking is the way to win in 2022 and beyond.
They are wrong. Affirmative action and identity politics are the path of national suicide. Republicans in Congress, and candidates who see to join them, should rally in support of Gosar’s bill. Conservatives everywhere will be watching for those who do.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
9:00 min
It may not matter if Democrats lose Congress. They’re forming an ‘ADMINISTRATIVE STATE’ [The FED]
•May 25, 2021
Glenn Beck
Glenn details how the far left are using their current political power to create an ‘administrative state,’ otherwise known as FASCISM. It’s exactly what progressives in the early 20th century — like Woodrow Wilson — dreamed of doing themselves. So, will it even matter if Democrats lose Congress in 2022?
marsh
On TB every waking moment
1:03:45 min
America, Can We Talk? 5/25/21- Biden Marxist Agenda; Rep. Yvette Herrell; Obsession with Race
•Streamed live 4 hours ago
Right Side Broadcasting Network
Tuesday, May 25, 2021: Join us live for the first "America, Can We Talk?" episode on RSBN, hosted Debbie Georgatos. America Can We Talk is a show with a mission — to speak up for the extraordinary and unique greatness of America. Debbie talks about the top issues of the day facing America, often with insightful guests, always from the perspective of furthering that mission, and with the goal to inspire listeners to celebrate and embrace the liberty on which America was founded. Tonight's episode: Biden Marxist Agenda; Rep. Yvette Herrell; Obsession with Race 5.25.21 Biden Team Admits Marxist Agenda
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Backgrounder
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74_BnXZs9-o
28:36 min (Annoying music until 1:28 min)
The Architects Of Decline [The Frankfurt School - Critical Theory]
•May 7, 2020
ahsido1
The rise of Cultural Marxism: A critical study of cultural Marxism and the Frankfuirt school. From VertigoPolitix.
28:36 min (Annoying music until 1:28 min)
The Architects Of Decline [The Frankfurt School - Critical Theory]
•May 7, 2020
ahsido1
The rise of Cultural Marxism: A critical study of cultural Marxism and the Frankfuirt school. From VertigoPolitix.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Maine School Board Bars Anti-CRT Parent From Attending Daughter’s Graduation
By Chrissy Clark
May 25, 2021 DailyWire.com
A father from an affluent town in Maine is barred from attending his daughter’s graduation ceremony after publicly criticizing the local school board.
n May 15, police handed father Shawn McBreairty a “prohibitive conduct warning” informing him that he is no longer allowed on local school district property. McBreairty needs clearance from the district’s superintendent to attend on-campus events. Violation of this order could result in arrest.
McBreairty told The Daily Wire that the conduct warning was served because of his ongoing fight with Cumberland’s Maine School Administrative District 51 (MSAD51) school board, which began in June 2020.
Following the death of George Floyd, MSAD 51’s Superintendent Jeff Porter and the district’s “Equity Leadership Committee” emailed out an equity statement. McBreairty — who described himself as publicly apolitical prior to his school board fight — said that he found the email incredibly divisive and partisan.
“In a culture that continually reinforces white supremacy, justice can only be achieved when we confront and repair the anti-Blackness woven through every aspect of society — in our homes, schools, workplaces, communities, places of worship, and government,” the email reads.
The email received backlash from community members, including McBreairty, who found the terminology used to be offensive and partisan. Following complaints, the superintendent emailed parents encouraging them to stay open-minded to the partisan teaching.
“The committee’s statement earlier this week reflects its mission to educate all stakeholders that ‘equity is a dynamic system that addresses past and present inequalities and constantly evaluates conditions to ensure that all people have unhindered access to the resources and opportunities that enable them to thrive,’” Porter said. “This being said, I realize not everyone is going to receive the message in the way it was intended. I also recognize that some of the terminology may have felt confrontational, such as ‘white majority’ and ‘white supremacy.’”
In the same email, Porter announced that the school district had hired Boston-based Community Change Inc., a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm. The firm holds far-left views and advocates for the destruction of capitalism. In a June newsletter, the firm said, “If we say we are committed to ending white supremacy, then we must also end capitalism.”
McBreairty told The Daily Wire that by September he had become an active parent at school board meetings and was advocating for increased transparency in the curriculum. The father of two said that he knew what critical race theory was and became fearful that Community Change Inc. would promote the divisive theory in the classroom.
McBreairty claims that the school board’s equity lead, Ann Maksymowicz, tried to silence him and others for opposing critical race theory. At one meeting, a community member used a three-minute comment period to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Maksymowicz refused to stand for the Pledge and McBreairty snapped a picture.
The father posted the picture on Facebook and Twitter. On October 19, McBreairty printed the picture onto a small canvas and placed it on his lawn with a floodlight. McBreairty said that he knew Maksymowicz would drive past his house and see the picture on her way home.
Maksymowicz claimed that the picture was no longer a form of free speech, but a form of harassment. The school board member came up to McBreairty’s door and asked his wife to remove the sign. Instead, he opted to get an even bigger sign.
via Shawn McBreairty
In a GoFundMe to “counter harassment” of school board members, Maksymowicz said that the Cumberland Police Department (CPD) served her with a “criminal trespass warning” for being on the McBrearity’s property.
“Being a responsible adult I left a note asking for the sign to be taken down and informing them that it was harassing to me,” Maksymowicz said. “I returned the following day and spoke with the wife of the sign’s owner. By that afternoon CPD had served me with a Criminal Trespass Warning.”
The fighting continued between the school board and McBreairty for months. By January 2021, McBreairty removed the sign of Maksymowicz and focused his efforts on filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to reveal the scope of critical race theory in MSAD51 schools.
In early May, local activists placed a bed sheet on the fence at the middle school across the street from McBreairty’s house. “Honk if you support the school board,” the sign read. McBreairty told The Daily Wire that people were showing up at 2:30 a.m. to blare their horns in support of the school board. The sign remained for about one week.
In response, McBreairty put the poster of Maksymowicz on the same fence. Within an hour the police had responded and a maintenance man from the school district removed and withheld the sign. McBreairty was served with a “prohibitive conduct warning” shortly after.
McBreaitry said that despite threats of being arrested, he fully intends on attending his daughter’s graduation on June 6. He has sent several emails to the district’s superintendent requesting that he be allowed to attend.
Porter told The Daily Wire that reporting on McBreaitry’s fight with the school board is “reckless” because he deems the father “someone who is unstable.” Porter claims that McBreairty can attend graduation “pending his conduct.”
“I did respond to Mr. McBreairty that his request to attend graduation was pending his conduct between now and graduation,” Porter said.
Ann Maksymowicz did not respond to request for comment.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
This article has been updated to include comment from Superintendent Jeff Porter.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
New PAC Aims To Fight Back Against Critical Race Theory, 1619 Project By Targeting Local School Board Elections
"Now it's time to fight back."
By Jon Brown
•May 25, 2021 DailyWire.com•
A new political action committee (PAC) launched Monday that is dedicated to eradicating critical race theory and the 1619 Project from U.S. schools by targeting local school board elections.
The 1776 Project PAC, which was started by political consultant Ryan Girdusky, is the “first national political action committee to target local, historically nonpartisan school boards,” according to Axios.
The PAC intends to “abolish” the anti-American curricula from U.S. classrooms with the hope of “[reforming] our public education system by promoting patriotism and pride in American history,” according to the PAC’s website.
“A new and troubling trend has emerged in our nation’s public school system,” the website further explains. “School districts in all 50 states have adopted critical race theory and parts of ‘The 1619 Project’ as part of their curriculum.”
“Critical race theory is a radical belief that pushes the idea that America is an inherently racist country and white Americans are stained with the original sin of racism for which they can never be cleansed. Their solution is to remake the U.S., abandoning our founding documents and the capitalist system.”
“The 1776 Project PAC is pushing back against this growing crisis in our public education system by campaigning on behalf of school board candidates that vow to overturn any teaching of the 1619 Project or critical race theory in their school districts. We will also support any type of education reform that promotes a patriotic vision of America and its history,” the PAC added.
“Critical race theory and the 1619 Project have made their way through our public education system and now it’s time to fight back,” Girdusky tweeted.
“Conservatives need to approach public school curriculum with the seriousness they’ve approached school choice,” Girdusky told The Daily Wire. “A majority of American children will be taught in public schools for the forseeable future and we cannot lose those children to critical race theory.”
“Progressives are telling our children that their country is systemically racist,” Girdusky continued. “They’re told that Western civilization and capitalism are working against people of color. It’s a lie and we need to push back against it. The 1776 Project PAC will work to elect school board members across the country who want to incorporate patriotism in our public education.”
Several states have recently adopted measures banning public school administrators from mandating instruction in critical race theory. The Texas Legislature is the latest to move forward with such legislation. As The Daily Wire reported:
marsh
On TB every waking moment
EPIC: Marine Veteran Takes Stand Against Newsom with '1776 Forever Free' - Is Immediately Targeted by Deep State but He Wont Go Down Without a Fight | The Gateway Pundit | by Jordan Conradson
On Saturday, at the ‘Revival Revolution Faith, Freedom and the Fight’ rally in Arizona, TGP’s Jordan Conradson sat down with Cordie “The Megaphone Marine” Williams.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
EPIC: Marine Veteran Takes Stand Against Newsom with ‘1776 Forever Free’ – Is Immediately Targeted by Deep State but He Wont Go Down Without a Fight
By Jordan Conradson
Published May 26, 2021 at 7:15am
On Saturday, at the ‘Revival Revolution Faith, Freedom and the Fight’ rally in Arizona, TGP’s Jordan Conradson sat down with Cordie “The Megaphone Marine” Williams.
They talked about Cordie’s “1776 Forever Free” organization, his motives, and future plans.
Cordie now has a target on his back and he is being bombarded with lawsuits and malpractice claims after helping lead the fight to recall Gavin Newsom.
Williams is also working to provide constitutional classes and a campaign toolkit so that patriots can fill these vacant seats that Soros-funded Marxists are walking into.
He was once a Marine but he has plans to serve his country again and run for U.S. Senate one day.
Learn more about Cordie Williams and his movement at the link below!
Dr. Cordie Williams – The Megaphone Marine (drcordiewilliams.com)
Rumble video on website 6:25 min
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Cotton on John Cena China Apology: 'Hollywood Is Deep in China's Pocket' -- 'Very Disappointing'
During a Wednesday appearance on Fox News Channel's "America's Newsroom," Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) weighed in on actor and WWE superstar John Cena apologizing in Mandarin for calling Taiwan a country while promoting his upcoming film "F9." | Clips
www.breitbart.com
Cotton on John Cena China Apology: ‘Hollywood Is Deep in China’s Pocket’ — ‘Very Disappointing’
TRENT BAKER26 May 2021153
During a Wednesday appearance on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) weighed in on actor and WWE superstar John Cena apologizing in Mandarin for calling Taiwan a country while promoting his upcoming film “F9.”
Cotton said Cena’s apology goes to show that “Hollywood is deep in China’s pocket.” He added China’s influence is “almost everywhere in society.”
“It’s very disappointing,” Cotton lamented. “It’s just one more example of how the China lobby in American society continues to try to lobby for China’s interests against America’s interests.
You know, Hollywood is deep in China’s pocket. When was the last time you saw a Chinese bad guy in a movie, unlike, say, the Soviets? That’s because Hollywood wants access to the Chinese market and to Chinese money.”
He continued, “But it’s almost everywhere in society … university presidents come and lobby us all the time because they want more full-freight tuition paying Chinese nationals to come to their country. So many companies like hotel companies or airline companies refuse to list Taiwan in their dropdown menu because of Chinese pressure. Just one more disappointing example of how the China lobby bends American policy in China’s favor.”
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Kristi Noem Praises Alex Marlow’s Bombshell Exposing NYT's 1619 Project
Gov. Kristi Noem (R) praised Breitbart News Editor in Chief Alex Marlow for exposing the New York Times’ agenda behind the 1619 Project.
www.breitbart.com
Gov. Kristi Noem Praises Alex Marlow’s Bombshell Exposing NYT’s 1619 Project
HANNAH BLEAU26 May 202115
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) praised Breitbart News Editor in Chief Alex Marlow, author of Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption, for exposing the New York Times’ agenda behind the 1619 Project, with Marlow ultimately calling for the Project’s cancellation for peddling disinformation.
“Great piece here from @AlexMarlow,” the Republican governor said. “This is precisely why I was the first national candidate to sign the 1776 Pledge by @1776ActionOrg which calls for a stop to anti American indoctrination like the ‘1619 Project’ in our nation’s schools”:
Noem’s tweet linked to Marlow’s article on Breitbart News detailing his coverage of the 1619 Project in his investigative blockbuster Breaking the News. As Marlow noted, the Times’ 1619 Project was “never an accurate historical account, but in fact it was a part of a concerted effort by the Times to pivot the newsroom’s focus from the Trump/Russia collusion hoax to race hysteria.”
He wrote in part:
As a result, the Times effectively created “racial panic and hysteria,” Marlow said, going into further detail during a live stream on Facebook and Instagram this week.
“After the Mueller report came out, they were big trouble, and they had structured their entire newsroom around this hoax that Trump had colluded with Russia to rig an election, and when their beloved hero Saint Robert Mueller let them down by reporting the truth, they were left pretty much rudderless,” Marlow explained.
As a result, the Times scrambled and decided to make “racial reckoning the centerpiece of their newsroom,” Marlow said.
“In 2019, Dean Baquet, who is the editor of the Times, he said that the focal point of the newsroom is going to be ‘what it means to be an American in 2019,’ and that means it ‘requires imaginative use of all our muscles to write about race and class in a deeper way than we have in years.’ Do you need muscles to write about race and class?” Marlow asked. “These guys are so pompous.”
Marlow’s article noted that the 1619 Project has been criticized by historians for having “factual errors” and an “opaque” fact-checking process. Marlow concluded that “in our current ‘cancel culture’ moment, the ‘1619 Project’ easily meets the definition of ‘fake news’ and fits the textbook definition of disinformation.”
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Altering Our Language to Control Minds: Big Brother's Way ⋆ Politicrossing
The Left seeks to enforce an extreme edict of ‘political correctness’ so that everybody thinks like they do
politicrossing.com
Altering Our Language to Control Minds: Big Brother’s Way
The Left seeks to enforce an extreme edict of ‘political correctness’ so that everybody thinks like they do
May 26, 2021
By Jeff Davidson
Since the fraudulent 2020 election, and in particular since January 6, 2021, the Left has more blatantly dominated public discourse and is now enforcing an extreme edict of ‘political correctness.’
To have voted for Donald Trump is now considered a grievous sin, as is being a Republican. To oppose Israel’s right to defend itself in the face of thousands of Hamas rockets is considered de rigueur on the Left.
To take issue with the activities of BLM or Antifa is to risk being socially ostracized, ruining your career, maybe getting beaten, and possibly being murdered.
A Cultural Billy Club
Political ‘correctness’ is a cultural billy club employed by people who seek to:
1. Silence and intimidate others
2. Viciously label those who don’t agree with their viewpoint
3. Belittle them for the language used, even if such language is not offensive
4. Obliterate their careers, if not imperil their safety
5. Diminish any activity, whatsoever, that doesn’t conform to such verbal fascism
Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security in 2009, chose to not employ the term “terrorism,” even following despicable acts of terrorism on U.S. soil. After her initial testimony before Congress, she explained to a reporter that while she is aware of terrorism threats, she prefers to call them “man-caused” disasters (!) Let that sink in…
Political ‘correctness’ (PC) advocates demand that everybody think like they do, and march on command as they direct. PC immobilizes others, such as otherwise well-intentioned government officials, from doing their jobs, protecting U.S. citizenry, and upholding the U.S. Constitution. Consider ’sanctuary cities’ and the city officials within them – they are at odds with the Constitution which affords protection to U.S. citizens.
Straight Out of 1984
PC is thought-control, pure and simple, straight out of 1984. It often impedes appropriate investigation into the nefarious activities of certain individuals. As such, and as we’ve witnessed repeatedly, PC can be deadly.
In 2015, many individuals questioned the behavior and activities of the San Bernardino, CA Islamic husband and wife who became mass murderers. The observers consciously avoided reporting them, however, due to the couple’s minority status.
In April 2016, the Department of Justice, under Obama, coined new terminology for convicted criminals: They now were to be cited as ‘justice-involved individuals.’ Youthful offenders were to be deemed ‘justice-involved youth.’ Such language restriction and contortion borders on lunacy. Big Brother would approve.
In Orlando, FL in June 2016, the same phenomenon occurred as in San Bernardino: An Islamic mass murderer was known in advance by many others to be potentially violent and unhinged.
Whoops!: 49 people died, many others were gravely injured, and the town, the state, and the nation was in shock. If the shooter employed a bomb instead of a gun, he could have murdered nearly 350 people, not “merely” 49.
Linguistic Fascism
Following the Orlando massacre, the Obama Administration mandated that the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies be barred from using the words “jihad” and “Sharia.”
Today, a single word in a single tweet that is disapproved by the ‘woke’ crowd might end one’s career; likewise, a comment that one uttered 30 or 40 years ago. PC is the ‘Big Brother’ type curse of our times and, clearly, the go-to tool of domination.
PC has its own vocabulary, such as “white privilege,” “micro-aggression” and “mansplain.” PC contends that Caucasians, (read: western males) are the embodiment of oppression and that their views, behaviors, and actions are inherently wrong because they are white, western males.
Such terms are designed to squelch the observations, experiences, rationale, and worthiness of the presumably non-conforming opposition.
The Protected Class
In PC culture, minorities can do little wrong, because, well… they are minorities, so the consequences of their behavior are excusable. Consider Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri. At age 18, he had a sealed juvenile rap sheet. It has been proven that Brown did not put his hands up and did not say, “Don’t shoot,” prior to his demise.
Such individuals are regarded as the “continuing victims” of the Caucasian western male-dominated society. Thus, PC advocates bestow upon minorities a de facto life-time pass for any socially destructive behavior that they exhibit, even murder, arson, and rioting. What a world…
May your children and grandchildren one day live in an era when political ‘correctness’ has been totally and irrevocably swept out of our society.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
‘Dangerous’ New Wave of Censorship Culminating in the US: Dershowitz
www.theepochtimes.com
Attorney Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Donald Trump's legal team, speaks to the press in the Senate Reception Room during the Senate impeachment trial at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 29, 2020. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
CENSORSHIP & SOCIALISM
‘Dangerous’ New Wave of Censorship Culminating in the US: Dershowitz
BY ISABEL VAN BRUGEN AND JOSHUA PHILIPP
May 26, 2021 Updated: May 26, 2021
The removal of Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier from the U.S. Space Force this month after he publicly stated his opposition to Marxism and critical race theory is part of a broader, more dangerous new wave of censorship that is culminating in the United States, says constitutional expert Alan Dershowitz.
In an interview with Epoch TV’s “Crossroads,” Dershowitz, a former Harvard Law School professor, expressed concern over Lohmeier’s dismissal, as well as other incidents such as the removal of former President Donald Trump from Twitter, Facebook, and other Big Tech platforms in January following the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
The Space Force on May 19 relieved Lohmeier from the 11th Space Warning Squadron over allegations that he was “politically partisan” when he denounced the spread of Marxism in the military during an interview.
In explaining his dismissal, the department said Lohmeier made “public comments” deemed to be “partisan political activity.” Lohmeier in a podcast warned about the spread of Marxist ideology within the military and the detrimental consequences of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s agenda to push critical race theory.
Critical race theory, which is rooted in Marxism, has been heavily promulgated throughout academia, entertainment, government, schools, and the workplace in recent years, coming to new prominence following the rise of far-left groups such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
Some employers have included concepts from the doctrine—which some claim teaches that the United States is a fundamentally racist country and that one race is inherently superior to another—in their “racial and cultural sensitivity” training.
Like Marxism, it advocates for the destruction of institutions, such as the Western justice system, free-market economy, and orthodox religions, while demanding that they be replaced with institutions compliant with the theory’s ideology.
The legal scholar and author of the new book, “The Case Against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech From Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities,” accused Democrats and Big Tech companies of engaging in censorship.
“We’re in a very, very dangerous situation now where the left, which has enormous influence on American universities, has enormous influence on social media, has enormous influence on certain kinds of politics in the media, are trying to suppress free speech, and they’re succeeding, and we have to fight back,” Dershowitz said.
Big Tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google are today engaging in “massive censorship” that endangers the freedom of speech itself, Dershowitz said.
“That’s not good for the country, it’s not good for the Constitution, it’s not good for freedom of speech. It’s not good by any standards, and it has to stop. And we the consumers have to demand that Facebook and YouTube and Twitter stop this censorship,” he continued.
Twitter executives have indicated that Trump—who had about 90 million followers on the platform—will remain suspended indefinitely, while Facebook’s “Oversight Board” ruled earlier this month to uphold his ban but set a time limit on it.
The companies have also drawn intense scrutiny for perceived political bias and alleged unbalanced moderation of users’ content. Critics say much of the companies’ moderation in the past year has unfairly targeted conservative speech and speech from individuals deemed to be supporters of Trump.
Meanwhile, groups on the other side of the aisle have been taking issue with how social media companies are operating, claiming that the Silicon Valley companies have failed to adequately address misinformation that is being proliferated online.
“What Donald Trump tweets—I may disagree with every single word he says—but he has the right to say it. And more importantly, people forget the First Amendment has two aspects, one, the right of the speaker—Donald Trump to speak—that’s one part of it,” Dershowitz said.
“But the second part, which is largely ignored, is the right of you and me the public to hear and read and see what he has to say to accept it or reject it in the marketplace of ideas,” he added. “When you ban a speaker, you also ban his viewers and listeners from having access to that speech, and that’s an equally dangerous aspect of violating free speech rights.”