SHAPES OF THINGS (16)

SHAPES OF THINGS (16)

John Tierney takes up the subject of the current campaign to suppress speech in his City Journal essay “The new censors.” Here is an excerpt:

It wasn’t enough to ban Donald Trump from Facebook and Twitter if he and his followers could move to Parler—so Parler had to be shut down, too. Big Tech obliged, succumbing to pressure from the media and their Democratic allies in Congress. (Google and Apple removed Parler from their app stores, and Amazon forced Parler offline by booting it off its web servers.) This unprecedented suppression was denounced by conservative and libertarian publications like the Wall Street Journal and Reason, and by a few independent journalists like Glenn Greenwald, but the usual solidarity among the press against censorship was missing.

The Washington Post headlined an editorial, “Parler deserved to be taken down.” The Guardian called for still-harsher censorship through federal regulation that would restrict “online harms” and promote “social values such as truth telling.” At MSNBC and CNN, commentators longed for more government action—a new equivalent of the 9/11 Commission to investigate the Capitol riot—and further corporate censorship.

CNN’s senior media reporter, Oliver Darcy, called for telecom companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast to stop providing platforms for the distribution of “lies” and “conspiracy theories” by conservative channels like Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network. On his CNN show Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter discussed further steps to “curb” the “information crisis,” and he offered no objection to the solution offered by a former Facebook executive: “We have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences.”

A few mainstream journalists expressed mild reservations about the Parler shutdown—the Los Angeles Times called it “troubling” though also “understandable”—but most didn’t even bother taking a position. Their attitude was nicely captured by the fictional Titania McGrath, the satirically woke character on Twitter created by British comic Andrew Doyle. “If you don’t like our rules, just build your own platform,” she tweeted. “Then when we delete that, just build another one. Then when we delete that, just build your own corporate oligopoly. I really can’t see the issue.”

Tierney separates these two sentences by a paragraph break: “Politicians are always eager for more power. But why would any sensible journalist go along with them?” In his Tablet essay “Journalists mobilize against free speech,” Armin Rosen compiles a dishonor roll of journalists “going along.”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/01/shapes-of-things-16.php

Schumer Urges Biden to Declare a 'Climate Emergency'

Schumer Urges Biden to Declare a 'Climate Emergency'

BY RICK MORAN 

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show that President Joe Biden should declare a “climate emergency” the same way Trump declared a national emergency to build the border wall.

Trump built the wall in response to a massive influx of refugees and illegal aliens at America’s southern border. But what “emergency” is present because of climate change?

This is exactly what Republicans feared. The presidency has enormous power and the chief executive doesn’t always need Congress to make trouble.

The Hill:

“He can do many, many things under the emergency powers … that he could do without legislation,” Schumer added about what authority Biden would have if he used his emergency powers.

“Trump used this emergency for a stupid wall, which wasn’t an emergency. But if there ever was an emergency, climate is one,” Schumer added. …

“If today, the national emergency is border security … tomorrow the national emergency might be climate change,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told CNBC in 2019.

In truth, it didn’t take much prescience to know that what was good enough for a Republican president would be good enough for a Democratic one. Democrats would be smart to remember that rule as Biden seeks to run roughshod over Congress on several issues.

The Hill:

Schumer’s push comes as the president has already issued climate-related executive orders including rejoining the Paris climate agreement. The Washington Post reported on Monday night that he’ll also impose a moratorium this week on new federal oil and gas leases.

But Democrats have pledged to make climate change a top priority as they have control of both chambers in Congress and the White House for the first time in roughly a decade.

Democrats will seek to use Senate rules to bypass the filibuster and try to pass some of their radical agenda. They have already indicated that they will use the reconciliation process to pass Biden’s pandemic relief bill. Using it to pass climate bills may prove to be more difficult.

Only some spending bills are exempt from the filibuster. If the bill is declared “extraneous,” it is not eligible to be passed under the reconciliation process.

The “Byrd Rule,” named after Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, sets out 6 cases where a bill would be considered “extraneous”:

1. If it does not produce a change in outlays or revenues;
2. If it produces an outlay increase or revenue decrease when the instructed committee is not in compliance with its instructions;
3. If it is outside the jurisdiction of the committee that submitted the title or provision for inclusion in the reconciliation measure;
4. If it produces a change in outlays or revenues which is merely incidental to the non-budgetary components of the provision;
5. If it would increase the deficit for a fiscal year beyond those covered by the reconciliation measure (usually a period of ten years); or
6. If it recommends changes in Social Security.

That’s why any radical changes offered by the Democrats will probably not be eligible for reconciliation. There are strict budget constraints — especially in a climate bill — that Democrats will have trouble meeting.

Biden’s “climate emergency” won’t mean much in the real world. But in the fantasy world of global warming hysterics, it will be cheered.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/01/26/schumer-urges-biden-to-declare-a-climate-emergency-n1411449?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=333548a2571394d78f5984884e55069e&recip=28668535

American Exceptionalism Is Our Birthright. We’re Keeping It.

American Exceptionalism Is Our Birthright. We’re Keeping It.

by Toni Williams in politics 5 Comments

Writing in the Globalist, author Brian K. Muzas posits that American Exceptionalism is dead and was never really a thing in the first place. As a red-blooded American girl, I am sick to death of these nattering nabobs of negativism (Thank you, William Safire) and their willful misunderstanding of the American Experiment. Muzas argues that America in unique in her optimism, individualism and work ethic, but not exceptional.

I had to read the description of “the Globalist” because I had never heard of it. According to the Globalist “About” tab: “Anyone with a curiosity to learn about the world around himself or herself is a globalist.” Well Hale, we are all globalists according to that description. A quick glance at the articles listed shows these people are purveyors of gloom and doom. It is depressing reading the titles.

Brian K. Muzas is an ordained Catholic priest and Assistant Professor at Seton Hall University. He also has a serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). After writing that America was unique in her optimism, individualism and work ethic, Muzas says that Donald Trump has ruined that:

The outgoing U.S. President, rhetoric notwithstanding, has done much to pollute this core, even constitutive, national belief.

Muzas offers as proof, the Capitol breach on January 6:

Most Americans, however, would have envisioned such a staggering act as happening overseas in an unindustrialized, undemocratic backwater or similar setting — definitely not in the citadel of U.S. democracy — the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

After all, the United States, as the leader of the free world, is supposed to be somehow different, exceptional — hence the term, “American exceptionalism.”

First of all, the U.S. Capitol is not the citadel of democracy. It is the citadel of hypocrisy. Second, that Capitol breach was a small intersectionality of Qanon, BLM and antifa supporters, not an insurrection. It was not a new Pearl Harbor or September 11, 2001. And, will we ever find out who shot Ashli Babbitt?

We don’t have a citadel of democracy. The Citadel of Our Republic is the Constitution of the United States of America.

More from Mr. Muzas’s article:

If we are honest with ourselves, the idea of American exceptionalism was overblown and ham-fisted ever since it was first articulated.

Now we see plainly that the concept ultimately can become self-destructive — rendering a nation tone-deaf, and a populace unable to comprehend the difference between “listening” and “waiting to speak.”

In the worst case, people turn brutish and speech turns violent.

If Mr. Muzas was honest with himself, he would admit that he doesn’t understand American exceptionalism. He claims it is ham-fisted, but offers no examples. Does he not know that we have been “listening” and “waiting to speak” and now we are done with waiting? The people who have been brutish are the people who have spent the last five months burning our cities.

What is American exceptionalism? The late Justice Antonin Scalia describes it:

Golly, we miss Antonin Scalia. He explains the genius of the Founding Fathers with the bicameral government, separately elected executive and the independent judiciary so beautifully. Senator Mike Lee and Justices Breyer and Scalia vollying will increase your IQ points. The Bill of Rights is a parchment guarantee without The Constitution. Surely, Father Muzas has traveled the world enough to know that religious freedom is tenuous and, often, non-existent.

But, it’s so much more than The Constitution and The Bill of Rights. In most places in the world today, where and how you were born is who you are. Here in the United States, you can become whoever you want to be. If your parents were low born, illiterates, that does not mean that you have be poor and illiterate. Read a brief biography of Dr. Ben Carson. Think about Barbadian singer Rihanna. Writer J.D. Vance rose above his roots to write Hillbilly Elegy.

These stories of successful lives are the rule here in the United States of America, not the exception. Our Constitution, our open society and our optimistic people guarantee that American exceptionalism will not die. We dare to dream and we make our dreams come true. American exceptionalism is our birthright and we are keeping it. You can mock us, you can denigrate us, you can threaten to reprogram us. As long as one of us still believes in the promise of America, the dream won’t die.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/american-exceptionalism-is-our-birthright-were-keeping-it/

Rural America, Prepare for Biden's Newly-Proposed Tax

 Rural America, Prepare for Biden's Newly-Proposed Tax

Beth Baumann

When President Joe Biden announced former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg as his pick for Transportation Secretary, many scratched their heads. Why would he tap someone who oversaw a small budget, in a small town, in the midwest for such a role? That puzzle is finally coming together.

It turns out that Biden favors Buttigieg's transportation views, specifically the idea that America should move away from the gas tax and instead opt into a tax based on the number of miles a person travels. It would be a new way to provide cash for the Highway Trust Fund, which currently funding from the federal gas tax. As it currently stands, the federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel.

Liberal states, like California, Oregon, Washington State, and Colorado are already contemplating this so-called "alternative." 

Biden's administration would have to figure out how to pay for his $1 trillion infrastructure plan, which includes $160 billion for the transportation department. 

During his confirmation hearing with the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on Thursday, Buttigieg explained his take on the gas tax.

"I think all options need to be on the table. As you know, the gas tax has not been increased since 1993, and it has never been pegged to inflation, and it's one of the reasons why the current state of Highway Trust Fund is that there's more going out than coming in," Buttigieg said about a potential tax increase. "In the long term, we need to bear in mind also that as vehicles become more efficient and as we pursue electrification, sooner or later, there will be questions about whether the gas tax can be effective at all."

Instead, the transportation nominee wants to consider taxing Americans on the number of miles they drive.

"A lot has been suggested recently about the idea of vehicle-miles-traveled-based, so if we're committed to the idea of user-pays, then part of how you might do that would be based on vehicle miles traveled," he said. "But that raises, of course, concerns about privacy and there remains some technological questions too. These are examples of some of the things that could be part of the solution, but I know that's going to have to be a conversation, not only in the administration, but with Congress too."

Should the Biden administration move forward with taxing Americans based on the number of miles they drive on any given day, rural America would be the ones disproportionately impacted. They live further outside of metro areas. Many travel 20 to 30 miles one way to work or to do any kind of major grocery shopping. Farmers, especially those who live even further out – a few hours from a metropolitan area – would be punished because they don't live in the inner cities.

This is a prime example of why rural folks feel forgotten about. It's always about what's best for those who live in the cities, not about those who grow and transport your food, or do the dirty work no one else is willing to do. It's about those who work in fancy offices in New York City, not the loggers and miners who work in dangerous conditions to provide heating options for the very people who despise them.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2021/01/23/biden-administration-is-contemplating-a-new-tax-that-would-disproportionately-impact-rural-americans-n2583595

Sen. Hawley: It’s time to stand up against the muzzling of America

Sen. Hawley: It’s time to stand up against the muzzling of America

By Josh Hawley

THE COVER THE "NEW YORK POST"

0:09

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3:21

 

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Have you checked your social credit score lately? You might want to. Mine seems to have taken a nosedive this month. You might want to see how yours is doing.

Everyone knows what a credit score is. But social credit scores are new. They’re the latest corporate import from Communist China, where government and big business monitor every citizen’s social views and statements.

And they’re the latest form of cancel culture in this country, as corporate monopolies and the left team up to shut down speech they don’t like and force their political agenda on America. For those who still believe in free speech and the First Amendment, this is the time to take a stand.

SEE ALSO

Senate GOP must act now to stop tomorrow’s Big Tech abuses

Like the old-fashioned kind of credit score, your social credit requires a lot of maintenance. You’ll need to get good grades in school and stay out of trouble with the law. But that’s just the start — you have to earn your right to live in polite society these days. So if you want to get a good job, stay at hotels and be served at restaurants, you will need to do a few other things. You will need to voice the right opinions. You will need to endorse the right ideas. You will need to conform. That’s what the corporate chieftains tell us, anyway.

They tried to reprimand me this month because I didn’t. On behalf of the voters of my state, I raised a challenge to the presidential electors from Pennsylvania after that state conducted the election in violation of the state constitution. Maybe you agree with me. Maybe you don’t. But whatever your view, corporate America’s rush to cancel those it dislikes should trouble you.

In my case, it started with leftist politicians demanding I resign from office for representing the views of my constituents and leading a democratic debate on the floor of the Senate.

Taking that cue, a corporate publishing house then canceled a book it had asked me to write. Ironically enough, the book is about political censorship by the most powerful corporations in America. (And will be published by an independent publishing house.) Now corporate America is canceling my political events, because two parties are apparently one too many for their taste.

It will get worse. The tech titans have already booted dozens of conservatives off social media, and if they have their way, half the House Republican conference will be expelled from Congress. The corporate titans seem to believe that the only way to get a democracy to their liking is to eliminate all threats to the Democratic Party’s unified control of government.

The alliance of leftists and woke capitalists hopes to regulate the innermost thoughts of every American, from school age to retirement. And they’ve trained enforcers of the woke orthodoxy to monitor dissent or misbehavior. A “Karen” who cuts the wrong person off in traffic gets followed home on a livestream and shamed into crying for mercy as her license plate is broadcast to an online horde eager to hound her out of a job.

Everyone knows it can happen to them, so everyone shuts down. The circle of trust narrows. Conversations — too easily recorded — shift to encrypted messaging apps. For now. Until those get banned too for interfering in efficient social credit markets.

For some time, conservatives, recognizing that we’re now the counterculture, indulged in the delusion that we could opt out of all this. We’d send our kids to schools that don’t teach all the woke stuff. We’d make our friends at church, not at work, and take comfort that trust and openness were still possible in communities of shared purpose. We’d vote our conscience, because the ballot box was something no election could take from us.

And if ever our political organizing were impeded by censorship — say, by the big tech giants — we could build our own platforms.

But the left and the corporations are challenging all of this now. Your “conservative” social platform isn’t worth much when Amazon can shut it down. Your vote may still be yours, but if your party is denied the means to effectively organize by corporate monopolies, it’s not going to win. Your church, well, you can still attend for now, but go to the wrong church and you may not have a job in a few years.

Here’s the good news. The cancel culture agenda will only succeed if we let it. We need live in fear only if we choose to say nothing. In this time of testing, conservatives must not shrink back. We need to stand up for the right of every American to be heard.

We need to stand up for the basic principles that join all Americans together — the right to speak freely, to debate openly, and to address our differences graciously without fear of being silenced or punished for dissenting views.

I for one am not going to back down. My book will be published, and I will continue to represent the people of my state without fear or favor, whatever the left or the corporations say.

The powerful see in the present moment an opportunity to consolidate their control over society and to squelch dissent. That means those who believe in the First Amendment and the fundamental principles of American liberty must now take a stand, while we still can.

Sen. Josh Hawley is a Republican representing Missouri.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/24/its-time-to-stand-up-against-the-muzzling-of-america/

COMING UP, FOUR YEARS OF SLUMBER

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN MEDIA BIAS

Glenn Kessler is the “fact checker” at the Washington Post. That means that for the last four years, whenever President Trump said something, Kessler would parrot the Democratic Party line in opposition to it, and allege that Trump was “lying.” That practice will cease, of course, now that we have a Democratic president:

Back on January 16, Kessler explained in a CNN appearance why he won’t keep a list of alleged lies from Biden. “I assume the Biden presidency will be a lot like the Obama presidency, and that they will be responsive, and will be able to quickly back up what they’re saying,” he told host Victor Blackwell.

So, like pretty much all other political journalists, Kessler will be able to take a four-year vacation, basically just checking in now and then to applaud the Biden/Harris administration. Although, to be fair, he may have to spend some time “fact checking” Mitch McConnell and other D.C. Republicans.

Here is what I find funny in all of this: for the last four years, the Post, under Kessler’s direction, has maintained a database of alleged “false and misleading statements” by President Trump. The count? 30,573.

Ponder that for a moment. Trump was president for four years, or 1,461 days. That means that the Post identified an average of 21 “false and misleading statements” for every day Trump was president. Although, to be fair, they probably started “fact checking” Trump during the primary season, so maybe it was only 19 statements per day over that longer time.

But still: the obsessiveness of the Post’s effort is remarkable. How many full-time employees pored over every word Trump spoke or wrote, looking for statements they could disagree with? I eventually abandoned the effort as a sisyphean task, but for a while I followed “fact checkers” like Kessler and formed my own judgment about who was right. My conclusion was that when “fact checkers” disagreed with Trump, Trump was right most of the time, and when he was wrong, the point was generally trivial.

I don’t have to worry about doing anything similar for the next few years. Rip Van Kessler and his fellow “fact checkers” are about to take a long, long vacation.

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/01/coming-up-four-years-of-slumber.php

Liberal authoritarians like John Brennan are real threat to democracy

Liberal authoritarians like John Brennan are real threat to democracy

By David Harsanyi

Enlarge Image

Former CIA Director John Brennan testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, before the House Intelligence Committee Russia Investigation Task Force in May 2017.AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

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Every time former CIA Director John Brennan appears on cable news to warn about some new “insidious threat to democracy,” I am reminded again that he deserves to be in federal prison. 

In this corrupt media environment, however, the official who oversaw an illegal domestic-spying operation on the legislative branch of the US government, who tried to cover it up and blame innocent Senate staffers when discovered and who then brazenly lied about it to legislators and the American people — this man is held up as a paragon of civic virtue.

We still don’t even know what role Brennan played in spying on his political opponents during the 2016 campaign. We do know he went on TV for years after, alleging to have insider knowledge of an unprecedented seditious criminal conspiracy against the United States. Never once was he challenged by his hosts. And when an independent multimillion-dollar investigation couldn’t pull together a single indictment related to those claims, Brennan shrugged it off by saying that he may have “received bad information.”

Brennan was back on MSNBC last week, contending American intel agencies “are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about” the pro-Trump “insurgency” that harbors “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”

Even a former Communist such as Brennan surely understands there is nothing prohibiting Americans from being religious extremists, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists or even libertarians. It’s definitely none of his business, or that of intelligence agencies, to define what those terms mean. (And the idea that libertarians, who can’t get a minyan to agree on anything libertarian, are marshaling forces for a national insurgency is nonsensical.)

As Brennan is a congenital liar, this may well be another one of his convenient fictions. Yet, considering his history of abusing power we shouldn’t entirely dismiss the idea that his allies are ferreting out thought crimes.

Finding those who illegally threaten others with violence is well within the bailiwick of the government. But the Capitol riot has given authoritarians such as Brennan the pretext to advocate the chilling of speech. 

It has become normalized, even celebrated. Networks such as CNN employ full-time anti-speech advocates who pump out cynical content meant to shame tech carriers into taking their competition off the air.

“Extremists exploit a loophole in social moderation: Podcasts on Apple, Google,” reports Tali Arbel for The Associated Press. Are Americans who express their political views on the Internet really abusing a “loophole,” or are Big Tech companies who censor them at the behest of the powerful abusing a “loophole” in the First Amendment? 

Only in the kicker does Arbel quote Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who warns that the tide of censorship “is against the speech of right-wing extremists . . . but tomorrow the tide might be against opposition activists.” The problem is that censors never believe they’ll lose power, and maybe this time they’re right.

SEE ALSO

Why media love Brennan’s lies and other commentary

Those who rationalize state censorship almost always expand their definition of “extremist” to include their opponents. The Washington Post’s columnist Max Boot welcomed regime change by imploring the Biden administration to regulate those who supposedly incite radicalism, including Fox News.

Nicolle Wallace, Brennan’s MSNBC colleague, called for forcing Republicans to offer “the truth” before they’re “allowed” to say anything else. As we protect people from “counterfeit bills,” we can protect them against “fake news.” 

What made Wallace’s comment especially surreal was that her guest was Ben Rhodes, the former Obama administration official who once bragged that he’d duped a bunch of dimwitted reporters into becoming his disinformation operation. Now Rhodes, too, seems interested in importing Iranian-style censorship with a “firm and brutal” “detox” of bad ideas, achieved through the “national security” officials.

I’m old-fashioned. I’d rather have a bunch of nuts ranting on podcasts all day than one John Brennan deciding what we can say. To my ears, Rhodes, Brennan, Wallace and Boot are the ones who sound like a threat to “democracy.”

https://nypost.com/2021/01/24/liberal-authoritarians-are-the-real-threat-to-our-democracy/