Democrats move to eviscerate the First Amendment

 Jonathan Turley sounds the alarm.

The Democrats are now on record for systematically trying to destroy the First Amendment. Moreover, they are doing so to gain power, which for all practical purposes is tantamount to attempting to overthrow the government by force. That is treason.

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Below is my column in USA Today on how the Musk purchase of Twitter has forced politicians and pundits to move from corporate censorship to calls for good old-fashioned state censorship. Indeed, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has declared Musk’s pledge to restore free speech values on social media as threatening Democracy itself. She has promised that “there are going to be rules” to block such changes. She is not alone. Former President Obama has declared “regulation has to be part of the answer” to disinformation. For her part, Hillary Clinton is looking to Europe to fill the vacuum and called upon her European counterparts to pass a massive censorship law to “bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”

Here is the column:

“A brave new nightmare.” Those words from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich described the threat created by Elon Musk’s bid to restore free speech values by buying Twitter.

Yet, despite warnings that censorship is necessary “for democracy to survive,” neither the Tesla CEO and billionaire nor ordinary citizens appear to be sufficiently terrified of free speech. Twitter confirmed Monday that Musk will acquire the company in a deal worth $44 billion. Once the deal is complete, Twitter will become a privately held company.

Progressives, in the meantime, have adopted a dangerous shift in their strategy of calling for corporations to censor speech.

Last week, former President Barack Obama made this shift clear in his much covered speech at Stanford University. Just days after Musk re-enforced his bid for Twitter with the support of many in the free speech community, Obama warned that social media was “tilting us in the wrong direction.” He called for more censorship of disinformation while calling himself “pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist.”

Obama has never been viewed as an ally on free speech by those of us who have been attacked for our “absolutist” views. Moreover, calling for censorship as a free speech absolutist is like claiming to be a vegetarian while calling for mandatory meat consumption.

Obama favors free speech only if it does not include disinformation, including what he considers to be “lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, racist tracts and misogynist screeds.”

However, it was notable that Obama called himself “pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist,” not a free speech absolutist. The point became clear later in the speech when Obama noted that the First Amendment does not restrict private businesses from censoring speech. The First Amendment is not the full measure or definition of free speech, which many consider a human right.

For years, the First Amendment distinction has been the focus of liberals who discovered a way to circumvent constitutional bans on censorship by using companies like Twitter and Facebook. Now, that successful strategy could be curtailed as shareholders join figures like Musk in objecting to corporations and media acting like a surrogate state media.

Faced with that prospect, Democrats are falling back to their final line of defense – and finally being honest about their past use of corporate surrogates. They are now calling for outright state censorship. Obama declared: “This is an opportunity, it’s a chance that we should welcome for governments to take on a big important problem and prove that democracy and innovation can coexist.”

He is talking about imposing “standards” on companies to force them to censor “lies” and “disinformation.”

As is often the case, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stripped away any niceties or nuance. Clinton called for the European Union to pass the Digital Services Act (DSA), a measure widely denounced by free speech advocates as a massive censorship measure. Clinton warned that governments need to act now because “for too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability. The EU is poised to do something about it.”

Clinton’s call for censoring disinformation was breathtakingly hypocritical. President Obama was briefed by his CIA Director John Brennan on “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” The intelligence suggested it was “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”

Moreover, her call for censorship came just weeks after special counsel John Durham offered more details about the accusation that her campaign manufactured a false Russian collusion theory. One of Clinton’s former lawyers is under indictment for the effort. Clinton personally tweeted out the disinformation that is the subject of the federal prosecution. And the Federal Election Commission recently fined her campaign for hiding the funding of the Steele dossier.

Given that history, it would be easy to dismiss Clinton’s calls as almost comically self-serving. However, the 27-nation EU just did what she demanded. It gave preliminary approval to the act, which would subject companies to censorship standards at the risk of punitive financial or even criminal measures.

If implemented, it might not matter if Musk seeks to restore free speech values at Twitter. Figures like Clinton are now going to the EU to effectively force companies to continue to censor users.

Faced with liability across Europe, the companies could be forced to base their policies on the lowest common denominator for free speech.

Countries like Germany and France have spent decades criminalizing speech and imposing speech controls on their populations. That is why the premise of the DSA is so menacing.

European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager was ecstatic in declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”

Sound familiar? Freedom is tyranny, and democracy demands speech controls.

Under the DSA, “users will be empowered to report illegal content online and online platforms will have to act quickly.” This includes speech that is not only viewed as “disinformation” but also “incitement.”

Academics have increasingly echoed the call for such censorship. Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods have called for Chinese-style censorship of the internet, stating in The Atlantic that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.”

A glimpse of that future was made clear by Twitter last week, when the company declared that it would ban any ads disagreeing with its view of climate change. Previously, Democratic senators demanded that Twitter expand censorship to include blocking disinformation on climate change as well as an array of other areas.

The push to pass the DSA brings many U.S. politicians full circle but also exposes the true motivation of what is euphemistically called “content moderation.” Democrats turned to corporate allies to impose censorship programs that they could not impose directly under the First Amendment.

Now that Musk’s potential purchase of Twitter could blow apart that unified corporate alliance, they are seeking to use the EU to reimpose censorship obligations. Again, such restrictions would not trigger the First Amendment because they are being imposed by foreign governments.

The result would be a delicious victory for the anti-free speech movement. Musk may buy Twitter only to find himself forced to curtail free speech against the wishes of his customers and his new company.

The Sweet Sound of Censorship: The Biden Administration Seeks the Perfect Pitch for Disinformation Governance

 Jonathan Turley gets it right again on his blog.

The progressive push toward tyranny continues.

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Many politicians and pundits are in full panic over Elon Musk’s threat to restore free speech values to Twitter. While Hillary Clinton has called upon Europeans to step in to maintain such censorship and Barack Obama has called for U.S. regulations, the Biden Administration has created a new Disinformation Governance Board in the Department of Homeland Security. It appointed an executive director, Nina Jankowicz, who is literally pitch perfect as an advocate for both corporate and state censorship.

It would have been hard to come up with a more Orwellian name short of the Ministry of Truth. However, the DGB needed a true believer to carry out the monitoring of political speech in the United States. It found that person in Jankowicz, who has long been an outspoken anti-free speech advocate.

Indeed, Jankowicz put her extreme views to music and posted it on TikTok in a rendition of Mary Poppins’ “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

What is clear is that Jankowicz has a far better hold on the musical scale than constitutional values. With what is a remarkably impressive singing voice, Jankowicz croons that “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation.”

It was a poignant and prophetic line.

Jankowicz was selected by the Biden Administration after years of pushing disinformation on the left while calling for censorship of the right.

Jankowicz previously argued that Congress should create new laws to block mockery of women online by reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and including “provisions against online gender-based harassment.”

Jankowicz testified before British House of Parliament last year about “gender misinformation” being a “national security concern” and a threat to democracy requiring government censorship.

She has demanded that both tech companies and government should work together using “creativity and technological prowess to make a pariah of online misogyny.”

On the Hunter Biden laptop, Jankowicz pushed the false narrative that it was a false story and that “we should view it as a Trump campaign product.” She continued to spread that disinformation, including tweeting a link to a news article that she said cast “yet more doubt on the provenance of the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story.” In another tweet, she added “not to mention that the emails don’t need to be altered to be part of an influence campaign. Voters deserve that context, not a [fairy] tale about a laptop repair shop.”

She even cites the author of the Steele Dossier as a guide for how to deal with disinformation. In August 2020, Jankowicz tweeted “Listened to this last night – Chris Steele (yes THAT Chris Steele) provides some great historical context about the evolution of disinfo. Worth a listen.”

She also joined the panic over the Musk threat to reintroduce free speech values to Twitter. In an interview on NPR, she stated “I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities.”

Pitch perfect. Indeed, in seeing how we all “measure up,” Nina Jankowicz “is practically perfect in every way.”

Harvard vs. Roland Fryer

 Rob Montz's documentary can be seen here.

Worth watching.

Inflation and the end of illusions

 Here is John Cochrane at Project Syndicate.

As usual, JC is on target.

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Inflation’s return marks a tipping point. Demand has hit the brick wall of supply. Our economies are now producing all that they can. Moreover, this inflation is clearly rooted in excessively expansive fiscal policies. While supply shocks can raise the price of one thing relative to others, they do not raise all prices and wages together.

A lot of wishful thinking will have to be abandoned, starting with the idea that governments can borrow or print as much money as they need to spray at every problem. Government spending must now come from current tax revenues or from credible future tax revenues, to support non-inflationary borrowing.

Stimulus spending for its own sake is over. Governments must start spending wisely. Spending to “create jobs” is nonsense when there is a widespread labor shortage.

Unfortunately, many governments are responding to inflation by borrowing or printing even more money to subsidize energy, housing, childcare, and other costs, or to hand out more money to cushion the blow from inflation – for example, by forgiving student loans. These policies will lead to even more inflation.

Expanded social programs and transfers must be funded from stable long-run tax revenues, from taxes that do not impose undue costs on the economy. These facts will make it much more difficult for policymakers to continue ignoring budgets and the disincentives that are embedded in many social programs.

The bailout bandwagon will end. The 2008 financial crisis was met with a torrent of borrowed and printed money to stimulate the economy and bail out banks and their creditors. The COVID-19 recession was met with a tidal wave. Once again, government money went to bail out creditors, prop up asset prices, and provide more stimulus.

Given these precedents, our financial system now firmly trusts that the government will borrow or print money in the event of any future crisis. But once fiscal space has run out and given way to inflation, the government’s ability to stop the next crisis may evaporate. When people no longer have confidence that the borrowed money will be repaid, or that the printed money will be soaked up again, they will not lend more. Today’s small (so far) inflation is a taste of this fundamental change.

The “secular stagnation” debate is settled. Since 2000, long-term growth has fallen by half, representing one of the great unsung economic tragedies of the twenty-first century. After rising by an average of 3.6% per year between 1947 and 2000, US real (inflation-adjusted) GDP growth has since averaged just 1.8% per year.

Was this sclerosis a case of demand-side “secular stagnation” that, given persistently low interest rates, had to be addressed with oodles of “fiscal stimulus?” Or did it follow from a reduction in supply owing to the corrosive effects of protected and over-regulated industries, or to deeper problems such as the erosion of educational performance or a lack of innovation?

We now know that it was supply, and that more stimulus will bring only more inflation. If we want growth – to reduce poverty; to pay for health, environmental protections, and transfers; or for its own sake – it will have to come from unleashing supply. Tariffs, industrial protections, labor-market distortions, restrictions on skilled immigration, and other supply-constraining policies have direct costs that cannot be offset by printing more money.

The return of inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine signal the end of stupendously counterproductive energy and climate policies. Our governments have been pursuing a dangerously myopic strategy of shutting down US and European fossil-fuel development before alternatives are available at scale, strangling nuclear energy, and subsidizing grossly inefficient (and often carbon-intensive) projects such as California’s high-speed train to nowhere.

The folly of this approach is now plain to see. After blocking the Keystone XL Pipeline and limiting oil and gas exploration, US President Joe Biden’s administration has now gone begging to Venezuela and Iran to make up for a shortfall in energy supply. Similarly, although cracks have appeared, the Germans still can’t bring themselves to allow nuclear power or fracking for natural gas. Efforts to strangle domestic fossil-fuel companies via financial regulation continue unabated. For example, on March 21, just as Russia’s attack on Ukraine was driving gas prices sharply higher, the US Securities and Exchange Commission decided to announce expansive new climate-related disclosure rules designed to discourage fossil-fuel investment.

For years, climate regulators have repeated the mantra that fossil-fuel companies would soon be bankrupt – stuck holding “stranded assets” – because of such regulation, and that this justified measures to force banks to stop lending to them. But reality must now remind everyone of a lesson from Economics 101: when supply is restricted, price (and profits) go up, not down. Those who have been insisting that climate change is the greatest risk to civilization, or to financial markets, surely must now acknowledge that there are other more likely near-term threats, such as pestilence, military aggression, and now possibly even nuclear war.

Yet the spin continues. One still hears that inflation comes from vulnerable supply chains, nefarious price gouging, profiteering, monopoly, and greed. The Biden administration’s latest effort to brand inflation “Putin’s Price Hike” is both comically inept and patently false. Inflation is widespread and has been surging for a year, while Russian President Vladimir Putin wants nothing more than to sell us lots of oil to finance his military. Such spin trivializes a war that is a fight for the soul of Europe and for the security of the world; it is not about Americans’ inconvenience at the gas pump.

The era of wishful thinking is over. Those who come to grips with that fact now will look a lot less foolish in the future.

The Elite confuse tyranny with freedom – wait – I take that back – they want you to

 Jonathan Turley gets it right yet again.

The really scary part is that a large segment of an entire generation of children has been indoctrinated by teachers at all levels into non-think behavior that is destroying our freedom - and their freedom. And the indoctrination has been so thorough that they are now incapable of thinking - so they don't see it.

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Robert Reich Goes Full Orwellian: More Freedom is Tyranny

We recently discussed the gathering of Democratic politicians and media figures at the University of Chicago to discuss how to better shape news, combat “disinformation,” and reeducate those with conservative views. The political and media elite shared ideas on how to expand censorship and control what people read or viewed in the news. The same figures are now alarmed that Elon Musk could gain greater influence over Twitter and, perish the thought, restore free speech protections to the site. The latest is former labor secretary under President Clinton, Robert Reich, who wrote a perfectly Orwellian column in the Guardian titled “Elon Musk’s vision for the internet is dangerous nonsense.” However, the column offers an insight into the anti-free speech mentality that has taken hold of the Democratic party and the mainstream media.

Musk is an advocate for free speech on the Internet. Like some of us, he is an Internet originalist. That makes him an existential threat for those who have long used “disinformation” as an excuse to silence dissenting views in the media and on social media.

Twitter has gone from denial of seeking to shape speech on the Internet to embracing that function. After the old Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was criticized for his massive censorship efforts, Twitter replaced him with CEO Parag Agrawal who has expressed chilling anti-free speech sentiments. In an interview with Technology Review editor-in-chief Gideon Lichfield, he was asked how Twitter would balance its efforts to combat misinformation with wanting to “protect free speech as a core value” and to respect the First Amendment. Agrawal responded;

“Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation. The kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.

One of the changes today that we see is speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard. The scarce commodity today is attention. There’s a lot of content out there. A lot of tweets out there, not all of it gets attention, some subset of it gets attention.”

He added that Twitter would be “moving towards how we recommend content and … how we direct people’s attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.”

Reich lays that agenda bare in his column while condemning free speech advocates as petty tyrants oppressing people through freedom.

Reich explains that it is not about freedom but tyranny. More free speech means less freedom. It is the type of argument commonly used in China and other authoritarian nations–and an increasing number of American academics and writers. Indeed, his column is reminiscent of the professors who have called for the adoption of the Chinese model for censoring views on the Internet.

In an article published in The Atlantic by Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods called for Chinese-style censorship of the internet, stating that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.”

Reich tells people not to be lured by freedom of speech: “Musk says he wants to ‘free’ the internet. But what he really aims to do is make it even less accountable than it is now.” What Reich refers to as “accountability” is being accountable to those like himself who can filter out views and writings that are deemed harmful for readers.

Reich then goes full Orwellian:

“Musk advocates free speech but in reality it’s just about power. Power compelled Musk to buy $2.64bn of Twitter stock, making him the largest individual shareholder.”

Reich insists that censorship of views like former President Donald Trump are “necessary to protect American democracy.” Get it? Less freedom is more freedom.

The column gets increasingly bizarre as Reich cites the fact that Musk has continued to express banned thoughts as proof that he is a menace:

“Billionaires like Musk have shown time and again they consider themselves above the law. And to a large extent, they are. Musk has enough wealth that legal penalties are no more than slaps on his wrist, and enough power to control one of the most important ways the public now receives news. Think about it: after years of posting tweets that skirt the law, Musk was given a seat on Twitter’s board (and is probably now negotiating for even more clout).”

Reich then delivers his terrifying warning:

“That’s Musk’s dream. And Trump’s. And Putin’s. And the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth. For the rest of us, it would be a brave new nightmare.”

That nightmare, of course, is free speech. It is a nightmare that people like Reich and those at the “Disinformation conference” will lose control over media and social media.

Imagine a site where people are largely free to express themselves without supervision or approval. What a nightmare.

More Woke idiocy in academia

 Jonathan Turley discusses another example of Woke idiocy in academia.

And these people are "teaching" our children.

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We previously discussed the view of University of Rhode Island and Director of Graduate Studies of History Erik Loomis that “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist.” Others have agreed with that view, including denouncing math as racist or a “tool of whiteness.” Now, as part of its “decolonization” efforts, Durham University is calling on professors in the math department to ask themselves if they’re citing work from “mostly white or male” mathematicians.

According to the Telegraph and The College Fix a guide instructs faculty that “decolonising the mathematical curriculum means considering the cultural origins of the mathematical concepts, focusses, and notation we most commonly use.” It adds:

“[T]he question of whether we have allowed Western mathematicians to dominate in our discipline is no less relevant than whether we have allowed western authors to dominate the field of literature. It may even be more important, if only because mathematics is rather more central to the advancement of science than is literature.”

Some professors have objected to being asked to consider the race or gender of mathematicians rather than their underlying theories or formulas.

In the Telegraph article, Exeter University Social Science Professor Doug Stokes is quoted as saying that “[t]he idea behind decolonising maths is that because everyone should be regarded as equal, the status of their beliefs must also be equal.” He denounces that view as “judgmental relativism is an inversion of science that is based on what is real rather than making everybody feel included.”

But all ideas are not equal, particularly math. Some literally do not add up. Math is inherently objective and based on provable tenets or theories. As I discussed earlier, it is a shame to see math treated as a field of privilege when many of us view it as a field of pure intellectual pursuit and bias neutrality. Either the math is there or it is not. The race of the mathematician will not change the outcome.

The Durham University guide insists that academics need to not only consider what theories to apply but the race of the theoreticians to “decolonize” math. It does not state how a failure to do so will impact on a professor’s retention or advancement at the university.

Jonathan Turley on the disinformation at the “disinformation conference”

 Jonathan Turley gets it right again.

Journalism is largely dead.

Election fraud committed by the media does exist.

A lack of appreciation of FREEDOM continues to be widespread among the elites.

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The Reeducation of America: Obama Calls on Our “Better Angels” to Change Voter Viewpoints

Below is my column in The Hill on the recent “disinformation conference” held by leading democrats and media figures. It was a confab of the liberal politicians and journalists over how to deal with problems like Republicans, Fox News, roughly half of the voters and most television viewers. The solution for some seemed to be reeducation led by the media through even greater advocacy journalism and censorship.

This weekend MSNBC analyst John Heilemann and Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa) added their own suggestion for such reeducation. Dean agreed with Heilemann that Democrats “have to scare the crap out of [the Democratic base] and get them to come out. They can’t motivate them on the basis of hope or their pocketbooks or any of these accomplishments. They have to scare the crap out of them.”

Here is the column:

Tennessee Williams once lamented, “If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.” That fear came to mind this week when former President Barack Obama called upon “our better angels” at the ironically named “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference at the University of Chicago.

The conference was a confab of media and political elite, gathered to discuss how to defeat their common demons: Republicans, Fox News, and apparently half of the electorate and most television viewers. In fact, the conference offered a chilling display of not just disinformation but delusion in dealing with current controversies.

It proved fascinating as the media and political elite openly worked through intractable problems like the backlash over burying the Hunter Biden scandal before the election. For that reason, it was particularly ironic that the conference was sponsored by The Atlantic magazine, which has been a source of some of the most criticized coverage.

One of the figures in special counsel John Durham’s ongoing investigation is Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer, who has been identified as “Reporter-2″ in Durham’s investigation of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. Foer allegedly sent an early draft of the article for review by operatives working with the Clinton campaign, according to Durham, and the campaign later used the article to spread a false story involving Russia’s Alfa Bank and the Trump campaign.

Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, declared this week that “only one party in the American system has currently given itself over so comprehensively to fantasists.” He further denounced “social media-Big Data” for not censoring such views. Apparently, the extensive censorship of conservatives by Big Tech is not sufficient because any access to such forums “makes it easier and easier to inject falsehoods into political discourse.”

The Chicago conference resembled a mainstream-media version of a car show, featuring new political-narrative models for eager buyers. One came from Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum, who joined CNN figures in denouncing conservative media. That’s when University of Chicago student Daniel Schmidt delivered a haymaker question:

“A poll, later after that, found that if voters knew about the content of the [Hunter Biden] laptop, 16 percent of Joe Biden voters would have acted differently. Do you think the media acted inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation, and what can we learn from that in ensuring that what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation, and not reality?”

Applebaum responded by saying that she really did not care if the laptop was legitimate because she did not find it “interesting”: “My problem with Hunter Biden’s laptop is I think it’s totally irrelevant. I mean, it’s not whether it’s disinformation … I didn’t think Hunter Biden’s business relationships have anything to do with who should be president of the United States.”

It appears that laptop is no longer Russian disinformation. It is now just uninteresting or irrelevant, even though the president’s son may soon be indicted on this evidence.

Applebaum was one of those pushing the Russian disinformation claims in calling for censorship by Big Tech of conservatives. Back then, the Hunter Biden scandal was “relevant” as Russian disinformation. For example, in a column titled “The Science of Making Americans Hurt Their Own Country,” Applebaum praised the killing of the Hunter Biden “saga” and encouraged even greater efforts to control information for voters. She criticized those who “argue … that these 2020 efforts don’t need to be taken so seriously, because they failed.”

CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter also was confronted by a student, Christopher Phillips, who listed false stories run by CNN, from the Russia collusion stories to the Jesse Smollett case. Phillips then asked: “All the mistakes of the mainstream media and CNN, in particular, seem to magically all go in one direction. Are we expected to believe that this is all just some sort of random coincidence, or is there something else behind it?” Stelter responded dismissively that it was all just “a popular right-wing narrative” before returning to the narrative of the true demons on the right. Stelter has previously embraced censorship as part of a “harm reduction model” for media.

The conference was more about the demons than the angels of the mainstream media. The sense of frustration was palpable.

While pushing for greater private censorship, the conference adopted an almost clinical tenor of conservatives and Fox News-watchers being brainwashed or cognitively challenged. Yet, despite years of such attacks, Fox remains the most popular cable news network; it not only often doubles the viewership of its rivals, but more Democrats watch Fox than CNN. (For the record, I work as a Fox legal analyst. I previously worked for NBC, CBS and the BBC.)

Obama denounced “anger-based journalism” while promoting an advocacy-journalism model in which the media shape the news for citizens who supposedly need help to properly frame ideas. He and many other speakers highlighted a much-touted study by political scientists David Broockman and Joshua Kalla. The study has been featured by the Washington Post and many of these same outlets for its conclusion that Fox News viewers change their views when exposed to “good” news sources like CNN.

Obama declared the study as hopeful since it showed “how easy it is to shift people’s views on issues by changing their media diet.”

But the study itself is a study in bias. The researchers at Berkeley and Yale only subjected Fox viewers to this type of re-educational viewing; they paid Fox viewers to watch CNN but did not do the opposite to see how CNN viewers changed their views after being exposed to Fox. Moreover, the study assumed as fact what would be viewed as a contested viewpoint. For example, they assert that “Fox News largely did not inform viewers of Trump’s failure to protect the U.S. from the COVID-19 outbreak, whereas CNN extensively did so. This is concerning for democratic accountability.”

In the end, the study found the change was often slight, with less than 10 percent shifts on most questions and short-lived results, as viewers returned to their original viewing preferences.

The “hopeful” message — that we just have to change what people watch in order to save democracy — is hardly a new idea. Just last year, some Democratic members of Congress sought to pressure cable companies to take Fox off the air.

There is another possibility: As Obama summons the “better angels” of the left, they might consider promoting free speech. After all, we once believed good ideas can prevail over bad ones in an open marketplace of ideas. Instead, this crusade to rid liberals of their demons would kill the most angelic part of who we are as a people.

Perspective on COVID-19 strategies – tradeoffs matter

 Here is a Wall Street Journal editorial that provides useful perspective. It shows that tradeoffs matter.

Here's the point. A goal concerning COVID-19 of minimizing deaths from COVID-19 is a terrible idea.

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More than two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s time to draw some conclusions about government policy and results. The most comprehensive comparative study we’ve seen to date was published last week as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and it deserves wide attention.

The authors are University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan and Stephen Moore and Phil Kerpen of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. They compare Covid outcomes in the 50 states and District of Columbia based on three variables: the economy, education and mortality. It’s a revealing study that belies much of the conventional medical and media wisdom during the pandemic, especially in its first year when severe lockdowns were described as the best, and the only moral, policy.

The nearby table shows the state ranking based on a combined score of the three variables. Utah ranks first by a considerable margin over Nebraska and Vermont. The Beehive State scored well across all three categories: fourth on the economy, fifth in education (as measured by lost days in school), and eighth in Covid mortality adjusted for a state population’s age and the prevalence of obesity and diabetes (leading co-morbidities for Covid deaths). The authors used a regression analysis for the economy that adjusted for state industry composition.

The top 10 in the rankings are smaller states with the notable exception of Florida, which ranks sixth. Recall how the Sunshine State’s decision to open itself relatively soon after the first lockdowns was derided as cruel and destructive. Gov. Ron DeSantis was called “Governor DeathSentence.”

The study ranks Florida 28th in mortality, in the middle off the pack and about the same as California, which ranks 27th despite its far more stringent lockdowns and school closures. But Florida ranks third for the least education loss and 13th in economic performance. California ranks 47th overall because its shutdowns crushed the economy (40th) and in-person school (50th).

In other words, Florida did about average on mortality as other states, but it did far better in protecting its citizens from severe economic harm and its children from lost schooling. “The correlation between health and economy scores is essentially zero,” say the authors, “which suggests that states that withdrew the most from economic activity did not significantly improve health by doing so.”

The NBER working paper presents the data straight without policy conclusions, but here’s one of ours: The severe lockdown states suffered much more on overall social well-being in return for relatively little comparative benefit on health.

The most extreme example of this tradeoff is Hawaii, an isolated island state with an economy heavily dependent on tourism. The state came closest of any to imposing a version of China’s zero-Covid policy as it shut down travel to the islands. The result was a stellar performance on mortality—first by a big margin. But it finished last in economic performance and 46th in education.

The bottom 10 are dominated by states and D.C. that had the most stringent lockdowns and were among the last to reopen schools. Their economies are for the most part still behind most others in recovering from the pandemic.

New York, whose former Governor Andrew Cuomo was celebrated as a Covid hero, ranks 49th. Albany’s severe and overlong economic shutdown (48th) had no payoff in mortality (47th). New Jersey ranks last with a miserable performance across the board. Gov. Phil Murphy didn’t save lives, but he did savage the economy and punish students as he followed the teachers union demands on school closures to rank 41st on education.

Another lesson we’d draw that the authors don’t in their paper: Thank the U.S. Constitution for our federalist system of government. States were largely able to implement their own policies. The outcomes would have been much worse had Washington imposed a single national policy as dictated by the federal bureaucracy.

Let’s hope we absorb the lessons of these state outcomes for how to respond to the next pandemic—and there will be a next one.

A Pulitzer Prize winner’s lack of professionalism and abundance of dishonesty

 Johnathan Turley gets it right about this example of "journalism". Unfortunately, it's only one of many.

Whether or not there was "voter" fraud in the 2020 election - there was "journalism" fraud. What is the probability that the election outcome would have been different without the latter?

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It appears that some media have a new narrative after admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop is legitimate after all. According to Atlantic Magazine writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum, the story never did matter because it was just not interesting and “totally irrelevant” to her. Strangely, however, it once did. Applebaum pushed the false narrative as she was slamming others for publishing “Russian disinformation” and using the Hunter Biden story as an example. It only became uninteresting when it turned out to be true. The one convincing assertion, however, is that it was simply not viewed as “relevant.” What was clearly relevant for Twitter and most media outlets was the election of Joe Biden. Otherwise, as captured by Gaston de La Touche, it is a matter of sheer boredom.

Applebaum was at my alma mater, The University of Chicago, for the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference on Wednesday. The conference appeared largely an echo-chamber, a disappointing lineup for UChicago which is known to value a diversity of opinion. Applebaum slammed Fox and its viewers: “Those who live outside the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need to learn any of this stuff.” (For the record, I work as a legal analyst at Fox).

That is when University of Chicago Student Daniel Schmidt delivered a haymaker after citing her dig:

“A poll, later after that, found that if voters knew about the content of the laptop, 16% of Joe Biden voters would have acted differently. ‘Do you think the media acted inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation, and what can we learn from that in ensuring that what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation, and not reality?”

Applebaum responded by saying that she really did not care if the laptop was legitimate because she did not find it interesting.

“My problem with Hunter Biden’s laptop is I think it’s totally irrelevant,” she said. “I mean, it’s not whether it’s disinformation… I didn’t think Hunter Biden’s business relationships have anything to do with who should be President of the United States.”

So, if the Biden family was engaged in selling access to foreign interests, it really has nothing to do with the President of the United States. It is not interesting that there are references to Joe Biden’s knowledge or involvement and possible benefitting from the millions passing through his son. It does not matter that Hunter is shown telling his daughter Naomi: “I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.”

It is all just so uninteresting.

Nevertheless, Applebaum did find it interesting that others are pushing “disinformation.” Russian disinformation has been a focus of her work and she has called for Facebook to stop those who “spread lies” and work to “undo the terrible damage done by Facebook and other forms of social media” by allowing people to speak freely on their sites. Applebaum repeatedly objected to how “extreme-right television channels, then repeated and amplified in cyberspace, creating an alternative reality.” However, when the left killed a legitimate story before an election, that alternative reality is just not interesting.

It turns out, however, that there was relevance to the Hunter Biden scandal when the media was dismissing it as Russian disinformation. For example, in a column titled “The Science of Making Americans Hurt Their Own Country,” Applebaum was fixated on how everyone had to work to kill such stories like the Hunter Biden “saga.” Indeed, Applebaum chastised Americans for not being interested enough:

“Russian disinformation works because Americans allow it to work-and because those same Americans don’t care anymore about the harm they do to their country.

You can argue, of course, that these 2020 efforts don’t need to be taken so seriously, because they failed. Biden won. At least half the population did not believe the false accusations, or weren’t swayed by them. The Hunter Biden saga faded. But that misses the more insidious, longer-term effect of these kinds of games-or rather, the insidious, long-term effect of the behavior of the Americans who play them.”

Applebaum now insists that she never really “cared” about the story or whether a true story was suppressed by the media before the election. It seems that that is not disinformation. It is just uninteresting information.

I previously wrote a column on the one year anniversary of the Hunter Biden laptop story that marveled at the success of the Biden family in making the scandal vanish before that 2020 election. It was analogized to Houdini making his 10,000-pound elephant Jennie disappear in his act. The Biden trick, however, occurred live before an audience of millions.

The elephant was not hard to see. The trick worked because he knew people did not want to see it.

The key to the trick was involving the media in the original act so that reporters became invested in the illusion. It is like calling audience members to the stage to assist in the performance. Reporters have to insist that there was nothing to see or they have to admit to being part of the original deception. Indeed, previously writers like Applebaum accused those who saw an elephant of being dupes and liars.

Well now the elephant is back, Applebaum wants everyone to know that she was never really interested in elephants in the first place.

MIT reinstates the SAT

 Jason Riley at the Wall Street Journal discusses MIT's reinstatement of the SAT as an admissions requirement.

This is good news. Meritocracy will lead to a better world than Woke and Cancel Culture "Equity".

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During oral arguments in a 2003 Supreme Court case about affirmative action at the University of Michigan law school, Justice Antonin Scalia told lawyers who were defending the school’s racially discriminatory admissions policies that they couldn’t have their cake and eat it too.

“I find it hard to take seriously the state of Michigan’s contention that racial diversity is a compelling state interest—compelling enough to warrant ignoring the Constitution’s prohibition of distribution on the basis of race,” Scalia began. “The problem is a problem of Michigan’s own creation. That is to say, it has decided to create an elite law school . . . [and] it’s done this by taking only the best students with the best grades and the best SATs or LSATs, knowing that the result of this will be to exclude to a large degree minorities.”

Scalia said that if Michigan wants to be an elite law school, that’s fine. But there are trade-offs involved if the school also wants to prioritize enrolling some predetermined percentage of underrepresented minorities for aesthetic reasons. “If [racial diversity] is indeed a significant compelling state interest, why don’t you lower your standards?” he asked. “You don’t have to be the great college you are. You can be a lesser college if that value is important enough to you.”

Last week, the highly selective Massachusetts Institute of Technology, faced with a similar dilemma, apparently chose to maintain its high standards. It became the first prominent school to reinstate the requirement that applicants submit SAT or ACT scores, a practice that MIT and many other colleges had abandoned during the pandemic.

MIT explained the reversal in a blog post. “Our research shows standardized tests help us better assess the academic preparedness of all applicants, and also help us identify socioeconomically disadvantaged students who lack access to advanced coursework or other enrichment opportunities that would otherwise demonstrate their readiness for MIT,” wrote Stu Schmill, the dean of admissions. “Our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT⁠is significantly improved by considering standardized testing—especially in mathematics,” he added. Thus, “not having SATs/ACT scores to consider tends to raise socioeconomic barriers to demonstrating readiness for our education.”

None of this is unique to MIT. Mr. Schmill cited a major study released in 2020 by a University of California task force that highlighted the SAT’s ability to assess accurately high-school students for college readiness. Opponents of standardized testing claim the SAT is biased toward more-affluent whites. According to race scholar Ibram Kendi, “The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever designed to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies.”

If that’s true, how is it that a racial minority—Asian students—tend to score highest on the SAT? And how is that even low-income Asians outperform middle-class students from other racial and ethnic groups? Moreover, social science has long demonstrated that the SAT is a better predictor of college performance than high-school grades are for black students, while the reverse is true for white and Asian students.

Thus, black students have the most to lose as schools move away from objective test scores and toward more-subjective holistic assessments of applicants. The University of California system simply ignored the social science and ditched its SAT requirement. MIT should be applauded for putting the interests of students ahead of racial balancing.

Racial differences in test scores are less a reflection of innate intelligence and more a reflection of a young person’s developed academic capabilities. Given that millions of blacks are relegated to some of the worst-performing K-12 schools in the country, why would anyone be surprised by racial gaps in SAT scores? In large cities such as New York and Chicago, most black students cannot read or do math at grade level. Standardized tests aren’t causing these disparities, just revealing them. And the responsible way to address the problem is not by scrapping the test but through more school choice and better test preparation.

Of course, to Justice Scalia’s point, MIT also realizes that double standards for admissions will eventually lead to double standards for grades and degrees. The school must keep its eye on such competitors as the California Institute of Technology, which has a race-blind admissions process. “I have a hunch that MIT’s decision was driven by competitive pressure,” wrote Steven Hayward, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, since “its arch-rival for science supremacy in academia—Caltech—might start to leave MIT conspicuously behind if MIT continued down the road to politically correct admissions practices.”

No doubt. But the broader concern is that other nations—China, Japan, South Korea—will gain a competitive edge on the U.S. as our elites wage war on meritocracy in the name of equity.

Oberlin College: Where not to send your kids - an example of Woke and Cancel at work

 Here is Jonathan Turley's blog entry.

JT is on target.

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Starting in 2017, I have written half a dozen columns on the lawsuit against Oberlin College over its participation in a campaign against a small family-owned business accused of racism. In this case, the college not only joined the mob but helped lead the mob against Gibson’s Bakery. Even after a massive award by the jury, Oberlin President Carmen Twillie Ambar continued to refuse to apologize for the shameful and costly conduct of his administration. Now, an appellate court has upheld a $25 million judgment against the small college and Oberlin earned every penny of that penalty. Ambar still remains the president of the college.

This controversy began with a shoplifting case. In 2016, an African American student named Jonathan Aladin was caught trying to steal a bottle of wine from Gibson’s Bakery, which was established in 1885 and has been closely tied to the college for over a century. When the grandson of the owner tried to stop Aladin, a fight ensued and police were called. Aladin and two other students, Cecilia Whettstone and Endia Lawrence, were arrested. Students, professors, and administrators held protests, charging that the bakery was racist and profiled the three students.

Oberlin maintained in court filings that the son and grandson of the owners of Gibson’s Bakery “violently and unreasonably attacked” an unarmed student, but that is not how the police viewed it. Aladin was charged with robbery, which is a second degree felony, and Whettstone and Lawrence were charged with first degree misdemeanor assault. Police rejected claims of a racial motive and noted that, over a period of five years, 40 adults were arrested for shoplifting at Gibson’s Bakery, but only six were African American. It also is not how the court viewed it. When prosecutors cut a plea deal to reduce the charge to attempted theft, a local judge refused. He said the plea deal appeared to be the result of a permanent “economic sanction”by the college in which the victim had little choice but to relent. Ultimately, all three students pleaded guilty.

The merits of the case did not seem to bother Oberlin officials or student protesters. Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo reportedly joined the massive protests and even handed out a flier denouncing the bakery as a racist business. When some people contacted Oberlin to object that the students admitted guilt, special assistant to the president for community and government relations Tita Reed wrote that it did not change a “damn thing” for her. Reed also reportedly participated in the campus protests.

Other faculty members encouraged students who denounced the bakery. The chairman of Africana studies posted, “Very proud of our students!” Oberlin barred purchases from the bakery, pending its investigation into whether this was “a pattern and not an isolated incident.” Raimondo also pressured Bon Appetit, a major contractor with the college, to cease business with the bakery. Reed even suggested that “once charges are dropped, orders will resume” and added that she was “baffled by their combined audacity and arrogance to assume the position of victim.”

The jury in June 2019 awarded the Gibsons $44 million in compensatory and punitive damages. A judge later reduced the award to $25 million. That was just upheld and the appellate court also upheld an award of $6.2 million payment in attorney fees. That comes to $31.2 million not including millions spent by the college to fight this case. If you add the same fees for the college, it comes to $37.4 million in fighting this case by Oberlin.

What is most striking about this case is the utter lack of accountability or remorse on the part of Oberlin. Notably, even after record judgments against the college, officials like Raimondo remained at the college and faced no apparent sanctions for their conduct. (Raimondo recently left the college).

President Ambar would not even apologize to this family. The two patriarchs of the family died during the course of this litigation.

Yet, the college itself is also a victim. The tens of millions of dollars lost by Oberlin could have given hundreds of students free tuition at the school. It could have sustained major research grants and programs. Instead, college officials burned through the money rather than stand up to a mob.

Here is the opinion: Gibson Bros. v. Oberlin

Vote fraud in the 2020 US presidential election

 John Lott's analysis of vote fraud. Here is the link.

Here is the abstract.

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This study reports three tests measuring vote fraud in the 2020 US presidential election, although they provide inconsistent evidence. To isolate the impact of a county’s vote-counting process and potential fraud on candidates’ vote margins, I first compare voting precincts in a county with alleged fraud to adjacent precincts in neighboring counties with no allegations of fraud. I compute the differences in President Trump’s vote shares on absentee ballots in those adjacent precincts, controlling for the differences in his vote shares on ballots cast in person. I also control for registered voters’ demographics and compare data for the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. When I examine Georgia and Pennsylvania separately, weak evidence of vote fraud on absentee ballots is found. However, combining the samples produces significant results and implies at least 10,000 additional votes for Biden in Pennsylvania’s Alleghany and Georgia’s Fulton counties. I then apply the same method to provisional ballots in Alleghany County, where, contrary to state law, voters were allowed to correct alleged defects in absentee ballots by submitting provisional ballots on Election Day. My analysis finds that such permission contributed to a statistically significant additional 6,700 votes for Biden. Finally, vote fraud can show up as artificially larger voter turnouts. Fraud can take many forms: higher rates of filling out absentee ballots for people who hadn’t voted, dead people voting, ineligible people voting, or even payments to legally registered people for their votes. The estimates for Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin combined indicate an average of 255,000 excess votes for Biden.