BIG TECH: Amazon stole $62 million from its drivers—but media outlets refuse to say so.
February 4, 2021
CURTAILING INSTITUTIONAL RACISM: Tulane gave ‘priority’ to ‘Black’ and ‘People of Color’ job applicants. It doesn’t anymore.
A recent listing for a teaching-assistant position at Tulane University appeared to prioritize certain applicants explicitly on the basis of their race or ethnicity.
The job description for “Teaching Assistant for ‘The Arts and Social Impact’” originally stated that “priority will be given to BIPOC applicants.” The acronym “BIPOC” refers to “Black, Indigenous, (and) People of Color.”
When contacted by Campus Reform, Tulane University backtracked and removed the language stating that priority for the position “will be given to BIPOC applicants.”
The Executive Director of Public Relations for Tulane University, Michael Strecker, told Campus Reform, “We have removed the phrase from the advertisement for the teaching assistant position you referenced below.”
“As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Tulane University does not discriminate on the basis of protected classifications (such as race, color, or any other classification protected by applicable law) in its programs, activities, or employment.”
The description states that the job is intended for “somebody who has interest in arts practices, community organizing/engagement, education, policy, and activism.”
Next question: Why does this position exist at all?
NOTHING SAYS FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY LIKE A MINISTRY OF TRUTH HEADED BY A “REALITY CZAR.” Liberalism’s Ministry of Truth: Academics and the progressive press mull state media controls.
The academic establishment and progressive press want you to know two things: First, conservative claims of social-media bias are bogus. As Silicon Valley firms police content, their decisions are, miraculously, wholly uninfluenced by ideological preference.
Second, there is an urgent need for a much wider crackdown on political speech, perhaps led by the Biden Administration and requiring the creation of new government agencies. In other words, all that conservative suppression that’s, er, not happening? We need more of it.
New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights released a brief this week that is being amplified in the press entitled, “False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives.” It argues that “some conservatives believe their content is suppressed on partisan grounds when, in fact, it’s being singled out because it violates neutral platform rules.”
That is sometimes true, but the report doesn’t remotely prove that it always is. What about when Twitter and Facebook tried to suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden before the 2020 election? Even the report concedes that “the question of whether social media companies harbor an anti-conservative bias can’t be answered conclusively.”
That doesn’t stop the authors from unabashedly asserting that “the claim of anti-conservative animus is itself a form of disinformation.” It is perpetuated partly because “it appeals to the same conspiratorial mindset that has fostered the QAnon movement.”
Got it? Anyone who argues social-media moderation has a progressive slant is spreading disinformation, and possibly drawn to a bizarre cult. And remember that disinformation is against the rules—which, once again, are neutral.
Among the solutions to the non-problem of progressive bias is, naturally, government control. The NYU report recommends that “the federal government . . . press Facebook, Google, and Twitter to improve content policies” and “cooperate with these companies” on enforcement. This political suppression—er, neutral government-backed content policy—“could be enforced by a new Digital Regulatory Agency.”
Since we’re devising new entities for speech control, the New York Times offers another idea. Experts recommend “that the Biden administration put together a cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a ‘reality czar,’” the beacon of progressive tolerance avers.
1984 wasn’t supposed to be an instruction manual, you know.
SINCE WE’RE BARELY ALLOWED TO GO OUT TO DRINK, THIS SEEMS LIKE A SAFE BET: Uber is betting $1.1 billion on alcohol deliveries.
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KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Can Ron DeSantis Teach Media Relations to Weak Republicans? “That’s precisely what the Republican party needs — leaders who don’t fall for the false promise of respect from the mainstream media. It was bad enough before Trump won in 2016. The MSM hacks would dangle carrots for witless Republicans. If the Republicans in question did what they were told — like back stab other Republicans — they’d be treated slightly less awfully in the press. As soon as their service was no longer required, it was back to crap treatment as usual.”
ALEXANDRA OCASIO SMOLLETT: AOC faces backlash as critics point out she wasn’t in Capitol building during riot.
CIRCLING BACK TO NEVER: Reporter to Psaki: When will Biden make an effort to reach out to pro-life Americans?
GOOD NEWS, IF TRUE: Biden’s team faces the ugly facts on China.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent rebukes of China give hope that the Biden administration recognizes the truth about this vicious regime.
On NBC’s “Today,” Blinken called Beijing’s coronavirus coverup a “profound problem” that continues “even today,” accusing the Communist country of failing to live up to international obligations since the first cases popped up in 2019.
Before that, he said during confirmation hearings that China’s mass detention of Uighur Muslims qualifies as “genocide.” He even admitted that Team Trump was right to take a tougher stance against China.
Beijing is already whining that these words amount to “interfering in its domestic affairs and undermining its interests.”
The good news is that the Bidenites have also offered more than words, by rushing a US Navy group to support Taiwan during the mainland’s latest effort to intimidate the free, democratic island nation.
Let’s hope this attitude continues.
HMM: Josh Hawley proposes “preemptive” ban on Big Tech mergers. “Hawley’s idea mirrors a recommendation made last fall by Democrats on the House antitrust subcommittee, suggesting there could be bipartisan support.”
THERE ARE SOME PARTS OF AMERICA I WOULD NOT ADVISE YOU TO OPPRESS: Biden readies showdown on guns.
Former CIA Director John O. Brennan is an angry man, and his anger mismanagement issues emerge not in the preface to his memoir but in its title, which reads Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad. The CIA is an executive branch organization focused on foreign intelligence, intentionally headquartered across the Potomac in McLean, Virginia, separated from the White House, State Department, Congress, and all the other policy and partisan bodies. So, who are a CIA director’s domestic enemies—terrorist sleeper cells? Russian illegals? Shady companies aiding Iran’s nuclear procurement efforts? These would be valid targets for joint FBI-CIA attention, and probably anger too.
Four hundred pages later, the reader finds that Brennan’s list contains none of these but it is long, and he exhausts his thesaurus of abusive language against them: Arlen Specter, Richard Grenell, Devin Nunes, Lindsey Graham, Donald Rumsfeld, Michael Pompeo, Trey Gowdy, Michael Scheuer, and Gina Haspel (on and off; she didn’t invite him to CIA holiday parties), and the CIA’s Directorate of Operations generally. Pride of place goes, of course, to Donald Trump. Before Brennan has even met the newly elected Trump, but is en route to brief him in early January 2017, he records that the “mere thought” of the meeting “jarred my very soul.” Brennan’s meetings with, say, Yasser Arafat evince no such dread, and in fact are recounted pretty jauntily.
Brennan’s outbursts are a consistent theme in this memoir. They are often blamed on his “Irish temper,” as if his rage is something external, like an unruly Irish setter that jumps on strangers. Trump is “evil despicable, and vile,” with bad qualities—“incompetence, dishonesty, and cravenness,” especially when Andrew McCabe was fired from the FBI, on St. Patrick’s Day no less, when “my Irish dander was more easily ruffled.”
They often come at a cost: In late 2006, a hot-tempered draft op-ed piece attacking President Bush, while never published, found its way to the White House and would cost Brennan the job of deputy DNI a year later. His famous anti-Trump meltdown when McCabe was fired cost him a gig at Booz Allen Hamilton, and his implausible threat of a lawsuit when his clearances were pulled cost him a consultancy contract with Kissinger Associates.
Sod off, Swamp Thing.
WHY IS THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SO FULL OF HATE? Biden Press Sec Used Insult Condemned by Dem Officials as ‘Homophobic.’
THE EXPERTS’ TRACK RECORD WAS BETTER A HALF-CENTURY AGO, BUT STILL A LOT WORSE THAN THEY PRETENDED: “Of the countless lies the American people are meant to believe, perhaps the greatest is the myth of expertise.”
Related: The Suicide of Expertise.
SQUAD GOALS: ‘Squad’ member Cori Bush defended Antifa during summer riots.
Flashback: Bush tweeted in December that her goal was to “defund the police:”

But not all police: When asked by MSNBC’s Joy Reid after the Capitol Hill riot if the Capitol Police made her feel safe, “I did until today.”
HERE COMES $2 TRILLION WORTH OF PAIN: Hans Bader at Liberty Unyielding explains why the national response to the vastly more lethal Spanish Flu of 1918 was superior to the current lockdowns and multi-Trillion-dollar relief packages.
Or, to put it another way, when government says the solution to a problem is A, you know it’s almost invariably actually the precise opposite of A.
BACK TO THE FUTURE: Daimler to spin off trucks, change name to Mercedes-Benz.
From Mercedes-Benz to DaimlerChrysler to Daimler to Mercedes-Benz.
SO MUCH FOR BIDEN’S ERA OF NORMALCY: Nation buys guns at blistering pace.
SALENA ZITO: Billy Carter may have been ‘small beer’ in comparison with Frank Biden.
The same can be said of Biden himself: Our Biggest Liar? Joe Biden.