Censorship for Thee but not for Me

These are the opinions of the left, as I've surmised them. Not all of the left believes all of them, but I have heard or deduced each of these arguments from them.

1. The social media moderators try to reduce racist, hateful, and misinformation on their platforms.
2. The social media moderators, while mostly left-leaning, apply their standards blindly and without regard to politics.
3a. The right is more likely to generate content that fits into #1, and so gets suppressed more.
3b. There is no disparity between moderation of the left and right.
4. There is no moderation of the right. (Because right-leaning users have high engagement)
5. The word "suppress" is too polemical.

#3 is split into two, because both can't be true, but I've heard both arguments. #4 is a remarkably terrible argument. There are many reasons why the right can have high engagement despite an effort to reduce it. Making this argument is like saying masks have no effect on Covid spread because countries with mask mandates are seeing Covid spread. There is no way to infer the effect of a deterrent by observing the final amount of anactivity. The only thing that high engagement tells you is that any moderation isn't 100%, which no one is arguing.

This is what the right believes, as I understand it:

1. The social media moderators try to suppress racist, hateful, and misinformation, and that's ok.
2. The social media moderators, mostly left-leaning, apply their standards inconsistently and overzealously because of their own views.

Recent events are substantial evidence that #2 is true. 

The NY Post story. First, Twitter banned the links altogether because the story was based on hacked e-mails or it contained private information, so they said. First, there was no evidence that the e-mails were hacked. Recovered under dubious circumstances, to be sure, but no indication they were obtained illegally. On the other hand, the NYTimes story about Trump's taxes was very likely based on tax returns obtained illegally. There's clearly a double-standard. Twitter has also never acted to suppress a political story that contained private information. Again the NYT story about Trump's taxes would seem to fit into this definition. 

On the overzealous application of their "standards," the recent post from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan is illustrative. Twitter suspended him for a post about the border wall. The text of the post: "[Customs Border Protection and US Army Corp of Engineers Headquarters] continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It's a fact, walls work."

The explanation from Twitter: "You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease."

If we first remove everything that Twitter can't possibly be referring to: "You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin....". Since there's no threat here, there's no promotion of violence, so it must be that Twitter believes this harasses other people. But still this doesn't seem to relate in anyway to the offending post.

In truth, Twitter blocked this because a moderator, representative of the left, inferred that Morgan is saying 100% of the people (who are overwhelmingly Latino) are "gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drug [transporters]." Firstly, this is not what Morgan said, this is what Twitter inferred. Second, even if he had said exactly this, it still wouldn't fit the reason they cited, since it's not harassment. It would be an extremely egregious and racist form of stereotyping, but Twitter should have a policy for that explicitly.

The problem for the right with this episode, is Twitter is acting, call it suppressing or moderating or censoring, based on how they are interpreting a statement, not based on the literal words being used and that there's no clear policy. Taken as it is, I don't think it's disputable that there are some gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs that cross the border, and if a wall is effective it'll stop them.

The left has a real problem separating text as written from their own inferences. Because their inferences are highly correlated with their political biases, it leads them to over-moderate the right. Morgan should not have been suspended for making a factual statement that didn't obviously violate Twitter's policy. Instead, Twitter should have, at most, slapped on a "Potentially racist implication" tag, and allowed Morgan to modify his language if he wanted it removed.

The Definitive Case for the Filibuster

Democrats are salivating. At the moment, Democrats are set to win the presidency, a Senate majority, and retain a majority of the House. For the first time since 2010 they’ll have full control of the two branches of government needed to pass their agenda. Knowing, however, that their agenda is too left-leaning to garner 60 votes in the Senate, it’s of course time to change the rules so they can pass as much as they want with a simple majority.

The Democrats’ designated ideological pinch-hitter, Ezra Klein, right on cue, has assembled the “definitive case for ending the filibuster.” Mr. Klein is a master of weaving together de-contextualized talking points magnified through a partisan lens into a grand, indisputable argument. Take, for example his argument that Donald Trump definitely colluded with Russia or that Republicans govern poorly because they hate government. In both cases, Mr. Klein took isolated examples that supported his argument while ignoring all counter-evidence to reach the inexorable truth, that just happens to always fit within Democratic politics.

The United States, Mr. Klein argues, cannot get anything done, and it’s the fault of the filibuster, despite the filibuster being technically possible since 1806. United States Congresses have in fact passed several laws in the years between 1806 and 2020. The filibuster has expanded in use rapidly in the past 30 years. Democrats weaponized filibusters to stop Republican Supreme Court nominees—William Rehnquist twice and Samuel Alito. They also relied on the filibuster to prevent Miguel Estrada’s elevation to the DC Court of Appeals in 2003 as well as many other Bush nominees. Senate Republicans followed suit with Obama’s nominees, and then the Democrats went nuclear and forbade filibusters on lower court nominees. (Republicans have never attempted a filibuster of a Democrat’s Supreme Court nominee, it should be noted).

Democrats have already weakened the filibuster twice, in its history, when it suited them. Now that it can’t possibly get any weaker, and the Democrats have their eye on control of the Executive and Legislative branches, it’s time to eliminate it altogether.

Klein begins his case by pointing out that the US system of governance has four veto-points, more than any other western democracy. By veto-points, he means that for legislation to pass, it must pass the House, the Senate, the President, and also the states. Since no one’s really talking about amending the Constitution, the states are not a veto point for every day legislation, which seems to be the primary concern. Other countries, he claims typically have two, maybe three.

Perhaps this analysis is correct, at least on the number of veto points. But bear in mind, his treatment of the United States’ system isn’t even accurate. In general, legislative systems are more complex than Civics 101 suggests. Beyond curiously counting the states as a veto point, consider that he has ignored Congressional committees. Shouldn’t that count as a veto point? Is Klein in favor of eliminating this veto point as well? Do other countries have similar institutions? I believe that most agree that the Committee system is beneficial. It cleans up legislation and filters out bad legislation as well.

The answer to how many veto points are appropriate, for one, depends on the country but also on balancing doing too much with too little. Democrats, like Mr. Klein, are extremely activist, wanting to pass multitudinous laws and regulations. They default to the position of “There’s something wrong; we need more laws.” In reality, though, the market fixes many of the perceived problems. Many other “problems” they see aren’t problems at all. Sometimes it is better to see how thing evolve before legislation because legislation exacerbates the problem. For example, increasing cost of housing is largely caused by over-active Democrats restricting the usage of land for high density housing, mandating larger and larger apartments, and regulating construction practices. All of which decrease supply and increase rents. These also lead developers to prioritize luxury apartments. Then, they enact more regulations—rent controls—lowering the quality of what housing remains. Is it not odd that no matter how much legislation we have, how many regulations on the books, they claim we still have the same problems and need more regulations?

In addition to slowing bad legislation down, veto points have another advantage, unique to the U.S. system. In his podcast, Klein decries the nationalized media as a reason things have broken, but yet he wants to make it easier to pass legislation at the national level. He doesn’t recognize that these two are related. Preventing legislation at the national level compels states to solve problems on their own. Beyond the “laboratories of Democracy” benefit, this also means that problems that California perceives but Ohio disagrees with leads to solutions that don’t hurt Ohioans. If California wants to legalize marijuana, provide universal healthcare coverage, and micromanage the water pressure of your showerhead they should do so. Why is it necessary that they bring Ohio, kicking and screaming along with them? If California makes that work and starts attracting Ohioans to California because of their great healthcare at affordable prices, I’m 100% certain that Ohio will adopt it as well.

The other big argument that Klein makes is that the filibuster is anti-democratic because it prevents a simple majority from enacting its policies. In particular, it’s being used to stop voting rights expansions, the admission of Puerto Rico as a state, and giving DC representation in Congress.

The suggestion that Klein and the Democrats are really concerned about democracy is laughable. Over and over, the Democrats pass legislation that cannot garner 50% public approval. Notably, the ACA, despite years of Democrats saying the healthcare system was broken, and that the uninsured needed to be insured, and then two years of Democrat-wrangling legislation to do so, that they had difficulty convincing even Democrats to go along with, then a year of media cheerleading for how amazing the bill was, still, its popularity bounced between favorable and unfavorable. Its unpopularity caused Democrats to lose the supermajority in the Senate, and then the Senate itself. Is that what Klein means by the U.S. needing more democracy? 

Giving DC Congressional voting rights would require a Constitutional amendment, which already exceeds the filibuster minimum. On Puerto Rico, state entry should surely not be subject to political calculations and excluding this use of a filibuster should be considered.

The reason things have broken down is not the filibuster. It is the diminishment of politicians and the media. Politicians on both sides have abandoned seeking compromise in favor of signaling ideological purity. The media have abetted this evolution, including Mr. Klein. Perhaps polarization has reached a point where the filibuster does make legislating untenable. That is a debate worth having, but that’s not Klein’s argument. Since the left never bemoans Democrats’ use of the filibuster by, for example, preventing a Republican majority from passing a Covid relief bill for political reasons, we are left to assume that their current stance is not for the good of the country, but for the good of their cause.

Audit of FISA Applications Provide More Evidence of Political Motivation for Carter Page Warrants

In the aftermath of the DOJ's Inspector General finding material finding "apparent errors or inadequately supported facts" in the DOJ's FISA applications to surveil Carter Page, the DOJ undertook a comprehensive review of practices to determine whether those errors were common or uncommon.

The answer to that question would help determine whether the Carter Page warrants were politically motivated or not. If those errors are common, for example, then the FBI is systematically riding roughshod over Americans' rights so that they can get secret warrants issued and surveil anyone and everyone they possibly can.

If, on the other hand, those errors were unique to Carter Page, then the FBI is generally by the book, but for some reason, in this case, they broke the rules so that they could procure a warrant. Conservatives will argue that the reason was politically motivated.

Benjamin Wittes from the Lawfare Blog put it well: "If the FBI botched its applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Mr. Page because of political bias, after all, problems of the sort Mr. Horowitz identified are most likely unique to this case."

In the first phase of the review, the Horowitz audited 29 FBI applications to the FISA court and found "widespread problems" including deficient documentation in 4 of the 29 and "apparent errors or inadequately supported facts" in the remaining 25. The discovery that every one of the reviewed applications had problems (an average of 20 issues/application) supports the position that the FBI's application process is awful and the Carter Page warrants were not politically biased but just business as usual.

The next phase of the investigation would look more closely at the errors and determine if they were material or not--if they resulted in warrants that should not have been granted. They determined that "nearly all of the inaccuracies" were minor. 

This supports the argument that the FISA warrants against Page and the errors committed to guarantee them were politically motivated.

Furthermore, it is worthwhile to compare the errors found in the comprehensive audit to those in the Carter Page warrants. 

From the audit:

"The FBI stressed in its new filing that many of the apparent mistakes it identified were minor, involving typographical errors, agents using the wrong dates for underlying documents or misidentifying underlying documents."

From the original review of the Carter Page warrants:

"The errors in the FISA applications on Carter Page were significant and serious. They were not, in my experience, the kind of errors you would expect to find in every case. ... It’s not acceptable to rely on a Confidential Human Source and then not check with his FBI handler in describing his bona fides to the FISA Court. It’s not acceptable to omit some potentially exculpatory recorded statements made by the FISA target to a source. It’s not acceptable to leave unresolved credibility and perhaps factual disputes between a key source and his primary subsource. It’s not acceptable, after closing the key source, to continue to get information from him through an Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) staffer, thereby effectively treating him as a subsource of the ODAG staffer. And it’s certainly not acceptable for an FBI attorney to alter an email from another intelligence community agency as to whether the other agency had contact with the FISA target or treated him as a source. (Internal citations omitted.)"

I will leave it to the reader to decide for themselves if the errors in the Carter Page applications were similar to those found in the subsequent audit, and if not, what was the driving force that led to the errors in the former.

Nike is Becoming a Corporate Karen

Without an accompanying announcement, on the evening of July 2^nd, Nike has memory-holed Washington Redskins merchandise. The instigating factor seems to be that “87 investment firms sent” a letter to Nike (and three other corporate sponsors). But the woke activists have been clamoring for this change for a decade, and they finally have a triggering an event to make the final push.

There’s no question that the term “redskins” is a racial slur and is unacceptable to use in any context other than the football team, but what has changed in the past week that makes the term more offensive or the situation worse than it was a month ago? The murder of George Floyd has nothing to do with the name of an NFL team in Washington. There is no connection to police brutality; George Floyd was not a Native American; his murderer has no relationship to the football team. Changing the name of a football team will not improve a single black life.

Nike has become especially activist in the past few years, most notably cancelling a shoe that celebrated Betsy Ross and the American flag because a handful of white supremacists used it as their symbol. (There is no evidence that this was a popular or common symbol among these people.) Now, it seems, they are taking it upon themselves to “fix” the Redskins offensiveness.

Recently, the term Karen has been growing in usage, and it refers to a person who thinks they’re being considerate but are “demanding [their] own way at the expense of others.” This is exactly what Nike is doing.

The only people who can legitimately be offended by the Redskins’ name are Native Americans. If they demand to retire the team name, then the NFL should take those demands seriously. Even Nike could take them seriously, but hiding merchandise and refusing to sell it for a single team in order to exact capitulation is not the right approach. Nike is hurting itself and the fans and the team, all in an effort to demonstrate their cultural awareness and that they believe the Redskins name is offensive to others (who heretofore have not been the prominent actors in this situation).

If Nike actually cared about the effects on Native Americans, they should first provide evidence that this matters, in a significant way, to Native Americans, and isn’t just a cause celebre for its white activists. Secondly, if Nike felt really strongly, they could discontinue all business with the NFL, but that would be a big loss, bigger than they’re willing to lose for this cause. More reasonably, Nike should commit to donating all profits from Redskin merchandise to Native American groups or hire more Native Americans. These actions would represent a win-win for all involved and avoid the brinksmanship culture that the warriors on both sides seem to want.

If Nike insists on an arms race, the NFL, though, should respond in kind. This is the NFL’s decision, not Nike’s. The NFL should not give in to pressure from Nike as they do not represent the potential victims. Corporations and states are both expanding the business of boycotting against entities they disagree with. Both corporations and state governments have stopped doing business with states that pass laws that they disagree with even though a majority of the people in those states are in agreement with the laws. Letting these companies and states bully everyone else around is anti-democratic.

The NFL should raise the stakes by telling Nike that if they don’t sell apparel for one team, they can’t sell it for any other team. They should, in private, suggest Nike take the more constructive actions listed above. If Nike insists, then the NFL should exclude Nike from consideration of being a partner in the future.

NFL fans should also step into the fray by boycotting Nike. If Nike wants to show how much it cares about this issue by foregoing some profits, then NFL fans should oblige them. For twenty years, activists have been making demands and bullying society to get their own way. Even though these activists make up a tiny slice of the population, they claim they speak for an oppressed majority, and the actual majority are sympathetic and don’t want to offend anyone, so they relent. But the activists are never satiated, they just move on to the next cause and claim new victims and decry anyone who disagrees.

It is time for the sensible majority to stop standing astride and muttering, “OK, you feel more strongly than I do.” And instead stand between them and their objective and yell “Stop! We will no longer listen to culture warriors claiming to represent actual victims.” The activist bullying process has repeated itself enough times to understand that it will only end when they have remade society to fit their naïve notion of perfect harmony where no one offends anyone else because the only way that society exists is with Big Brother monitoring every action we take.

Google's Glaring Hypocrisy on Section 230

A debate has been active in Washington for months over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996. In essence, Section 230 protects internet companies who host comments or any user-created content from being held liable for what the users post. In the past six months, some Republicans, annoyed with the perceived political bias from media companies such as Twitter and Google, most notably, have been threatening to rescind that immunity claiming that the companies treating conservatives differently makes them ineligible for the protection.

While there is evidence that the media companies are biased against conservatives (considering the proportion of conservative content that is removed), arguing that their 230 protections should be removed is a stretch.

While Google argues that they should be protected from private lawsuits based on comments, however, it seems they believe that de-platforming other sites for user-generated comments is right and proper.

NBC News reported The Federalist to Google (side note: several stories and tweets (1, 2, 3) provide the quote "Google blocked The Federalist from its advertising platform after the NBC News Verification Unit brought the project to its attention" but that does not appear in the story...anymore.) based on some media "watchdog" group, and then reported that Google was demonetizing The Federalist. Google then clarified that it was just warning The Federalist about some comments (that have not been listed) and it had three days until "a ban goes into effect."

So, in a nutshell, Google is threatening to punish The Federalist for comments left on one of its stories, at the same time it is telling the government that it shouldn't be held responsible for comments left on their many sites.

Many tech journalists are arguing that it's not inconsistent at all, that Google is not the government and Google has a right to do this. This is missing the point of the inconsistency. Of course Google is not the government, and Google has this right. The point is that Google wants a power (punishing other companies for comments on their site) that they don't want used against them. Other claims are that Google wants protection from the government, not private parties. Private parties are free to do as they choose. But that's not correct either. Section 230 also protects Google from lawsuits from other private parties based on the comments.

Granted, they're not the exact same situations. No one is claiming that they are. If you look at the specifics and details then you can argue that these aren't the same situation. However, if you look more broadly at the underlying action "punishing other platforms for comments", then there is definitely an inconsistency. Everyone should acknowledge that there is some inconsistency here, even if there are countervailing details that reconcile them.

Doom and Gloom Media Wrong Again

When the April jobs report came out, most of the media were talking about however bad it was, the reality was even worse.

LA Times - May 8 "The Unemployment rate may be even worse than it looks"
Associated Press, May 8 - "[The Jobs Report is] Even Worse than it looks. Really."
Vox.com, May 8 - "20.5 million job losses recorded - and the real situation is even worse"
Politico.com, May 11 - "The jobs situation is worse than it looks"
Bloomberg Opinion, May 8 - "This Ugly Jobs Report is Just the Beginning"

CNBC - May 21 "May Unemployment looks worse than expected"

The print media were more balanced, but the internet and televised media all took the glass-half-empty view. Because 18.1 million people, 78%, expected their layoffs would be temporary, there was the possibility of better results in May, if things began to re-open. All of these media outlets, however, chose to expect worse.

What interests me most in this episode, is that again the media were all taking an unprecedented situation and were unable to envision what would eventually transpire. How is it that the media predictions can all be so certain of events that never come to be?

Arguing with Strawmen; Avoiding the Issues

On the evening of May 27th and the following morning, TheHill.com featured prominently, this opinion piece by Marik Von Rennenkampff. While you disclaim that his views do not represent your own, by publishing it and featuring it you are promulgating an opinion untethered to good journalism or productive opinions. Mr. Von Rennenkampff’s piece is a one-sided, distorted interpretation of the facts of the Flynn case that is more propaganda than informed opinion and is more suited for a website like Slate.com than what I would expect from The Hill.

While I tend to lean more on the side of those who believe that the FBI and the highest levels of government over-stepped the boundaries of civil justice, I also recognize that this story is extremely complicated and nuanced, and I don’t begrudge those who believe the opposite. In many circumstances, the facts can be read in different ways and both sides have good arguments.

Mr. Von Rennenkampff’s arguments, however, ignore all of that. He takes the strongest arguments from the prosecution’s side puts them up against the weakest (and even non-existent) arguments from defense’s side all while twisting and pulling the facts of the case to suit his opinion.

For example, he twice points to the DOJ’s finding no evidence of political bias after an “exhaustive review.” By saying it was the DOJ finding no evidence and not mentioning it was a review by an independent watchdog within the DOJ he falsely gives the impression that even a politically-motivated organization found no evidence of bias. Additionally, he omits the fact that the DOJ explicitly did not try to determine whether there was political motivation. Their conclusion was basically that “the reasons given to us, pass a minimum threshold to support their decision to investigate.” This is similar to believing that even though a robber broke into your house and stole your jewelry, he said he was actually just looking for flour to make cookies.

If this was the only example of this abandonment of objectivity and sticking close to the facts instead of straying deep into partisan interpretation, it wouldn’t be worth discussing. He claims the Trump-Russia investigation was not based on “bogus information”, omitting any mention of the Steele Dossier and how the actual basis of the investigation – Papadapoulos’s claim to the Australian was fed to him from an untrackable source and the content of the discussion was not true.

He claims that Obama/FBI did not spy on Trump even though the FBI clearly listened in to Flynn’s phone calls, illegally surveilled Carter Page in an effort to investigate Russian collusion even if Carter Page wasn’t an official part of the campaign and completely omits the existence of the confidential informants. Given the facts, a normal person, not trying to spin the facts to suit his biases would not completely dismiss the allegation of spying.

He also tries to knock down a straw man that the FBI Investigation into Flynn was bogus. Only the most extreme are claiming that the investigation was totally bogus. The claims in support of Flynn are that the investigation was properly predicated but politically motivated (jury’s still out), that the FBI had investigated and found nothing for months and then pushed him in a corner where he lied and threw the book at him, and that the FBI bended or broke its own rules to prosecute him. The latter three charges are harder to tackle so Mr. Von Rennenkampff ignores them. He also assigns nefarious motives to an incoming administration official working in an official capacity (albeit before he officially should) to prevent the outgoing administration from blowing up an international relationship.

It is not my intent to condemn opinions that I disagree with, but only to point out unrestrained opinions that do more to activate their own side than to inform. Opinions such as these do nothing to persuade the other side but only strengthen the resolve of the most partisan. The Hill should be more deliberate in choosing what it publishes to inform and challenge instead of instigate.