Double Standards Wrecking America

Once again, Democrats have done what they used to hyperventilate about Republicans potentially doing.

Yesterday, the NY Post published the accusation (from a whistleblower) that Governor Cuomo and his team hid data for political purposes. Ask yourself, how serious is this. 

Now compare this to the announcement over the summer that the HHS would take over data reporting from the CDC. If you don't remember, there was a ten-alarm outrage fire from the media about politicizing data collection and hiding data. All of which was worried speculation based on the belief that Trump is the most evil and cynical human being that has ever lived.

Anyone who was outraged by the possibility that Trump would hide data should be even more outraged by Cuomo actually doing it! But they're not. Are there calls from Democrats or the media for an investigation or just Republicans? Do you know any Democrats? Is their reaction proportional to the events?

Also, consider the reaction to and follow-up investigations of Chris Christie when someone on his staff closed a bridge.

This is just a single example from the past fortnight. Over and over again, we were warned that Trump doesn't believe experts and puts politics ahead of science. Yet, Biden does the exact same thing, dismisses the well-documented position of the director of the CDC as just a personal opinion and minimizing it because he didn't want to run afoul of the teachers' unions. That is absolutely his right, but the media should call him out on it. It should apply at least 50% of the scrutiny it applied to Trump.

Gina Carano was fired because "her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable." This was the post she shared:

“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views”

Do you think this statement is "abhorrent" or that it denigrates anyone, let alone denigrates them based on their cultural and religious identities? Some make the argument that any comparison of today to what happened to the Jews is itself abhorrent. Firstly, to be totally clear, this post does not say that what is happening today is the same as the violence against the Jews, the concentration camps, or the genocide itself. Read literally, it is comparing only the existence of neighbor on neighbor hate. But secondly, if any comparison is off-limits, then Pedro Pascal should also be fired.

There is a great chasm in the reactions from the media and left-leaning people. They may agree with everything in this post, but because of their political affiliations, their level of outrage is highly correlated with not the events themselves but the affiliations of the people involved. Their blood boils when it's the other side and when it's on their side, they nod and move on.

This leads to a huge disparity in consequences. Republicans get fired and ridiculed, and oftentimes Democrats skate on without punishment. For this country to continue to work, the consequences have to depend on the offense and not the offender. There cannot be different punishments depending on the political affiliation of the criminal. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is rampant, both in the media and in the public, and the only step towards solving it I can imagine is to continue to push people to look at themselves, consider whether they are part of this problem, and try to overcome it.

Update:

Yet another example: White House Press Secretary TJ Ducklo threatened a reporter writing a story about him. His threats included "I will destroy you" and that he would "ruin her reputation." Pre-Biden, any threats made by a White House official against a reporter would have been met with a day of stories and opinions about the end of democracy. In this case, there's no coverage on the main page of Google News; I had to search for Psaki to find the details. This gap in the level of caring by Democrats and the media will lead to disaster in the long-run.

How the Left Wins - Marjorie Taylor Greene Edition

The Marjorie Taylor Greene situation perfectly exemplifies how Democrats (and the media) do business to break all the rules and not look back.

For those who don't know, Marjorie Taylor Greene (or MGT for the twitterati) is a US Congresswoman from Georgia who has said some pretty outrageous things. I will not defend her sanity, her qualifications, her suitability for Congress, or her suitability to serve on committees other than to say that typically the media serially exaggerate, so she's probably not as crazy as they are projecting.

What I wish to debate is the narrower issue of whether or not the Democrats should strip her of her committee assignments. Every elected Congressperson is assigned committees to serve on in their respective legislative body by their party. The committee seats are allocated depending on the overall breakdown of the parties within their house. For example, if there were 50% Republicans and 50% Democrats, then the committees would each be 50/50, too. 

The Democrats, though, want to remove Congresswoman Greene from her assignments. This is unprecedented, and Republicans argue that the Republicans should be the ones making this decision, not the Democrats. More broadly, considering the larger implications, should the Democrats do this, they are breaking a precedent and setting a new one, one in which the majority party can decide who serves on committees for the minority party. This is the argument. Looking forward, it's very likely that even if Democrats have a good argument that Ms. Greene shouldn't be on committees, what's to prevent that standard to erode over time?

This is exactly why Republicans have lost and will always lose. They are much less willing to break precedents and erode these standards. In addition to that, the media are much less protective of standards and precedents when Democrats are breaking them. A legitimate and informative media would have focused on the bigger picture arguments instead of hyping up all of Ms. Greene's statements. But this way, what does the American public think about the situation - only that Ms. Greene has said some crazy things and should probably be punished somehow. Since the only punishment being floated is removal from committees, they assume that's the proper punishment and agree it's reasonable. 

In a nutshell, this is how Democrats and the media ceaselessly and successfully push the culture in their direction. First, they misinform the public by telling them one side of the story, the easy side, the provocative side. Not only that, but they build up the argument against by pointing to the most extreme elements that support their side. They completely ignore the legitimate arguments on the other side, and they break precedent. Finally, years from now, one of two things happens: 1) They do it all over again and move the ball farther forward towards their own goal or 2) When Republicans try it, they use all their tactics against the Republicans, and if Republicans say, 'yeah, but you didn't say anything before' then they dismiss that as 'whataboutism'.

The Media Then and Now

Several stories from President Biden's first two days in office really illustrate how differently the media treat President Biden from President Trump.

Pete Buttigieg's nomination to be Secretary of Transportation (compare to Trump's nominations) - 

The nomination and Senate hearings of Pete Buttigieg
National Guard Kicked out of Capital
Biden's 100 million vaccine goal
Biden violating his own mask mandate

Try to imagine if any of these stories occurred during Trump's presidency and how the media would have covered them. Compare to how they're being covered now. Thinking about that, it's clear that the media's approach to the Trump years consisted of the following:

1. Ignore all context. Remember the spate of "racist" Cabinet nominees? The formula was simple, find one action they committed throughout their life, that could be interpreted as racist and then call them racist full stop. Ignore everything else about their life. If someone called them a racist in their past, then they are a racist full stop. Do not under any circumstances write a full story about the sum total of their life and the counter-examples. The press repeatedly ignored context in stories about Trump to paint everything as egregious. When he moved the embassy in Israel, there was scant mention that every president had promised to do so. 

2. Interpret the story in the most negative way. For Cabinet nominees, if they only have private sector experience, lambast them for not having government experience. If they have government experience, criticize them for getting questions wrong. Ignore all the positive aspects. If one answer is wrong, then they are unqualified. The embassy story is another good example; how many people decried the move and said it meant the end of peace and imminent war? How many outlets pushed back?

3. Assume the most evil motivation. The press commonly attributed Trump's actions to evil intentions. They laid the groundwork for this by constantly claiming he was a racist and an authoritarian. Then when he would do something they didn't like or they misinterpreted, they would explain it by his being one or the other.

4. Assume that President Trump was responsible for anything bad that happened. This would apply to the story about the National Guard. There would be many stories about how awful this action was, and the assumption that Trump was directly responsible. Then they would talk about how he hates his base and he treats them like garbage. 

How many on the left blame Trump for the Covid economy? Was Trump responsible for Covid? How does he compare to European leaders? Are other European leaders blamed for their Covid economy? There's no question that Trump could have handled Covid better, but the fact that several European countries did just as bad demonstrates that Trump wasn't uniquely bad. How often do you see comparisons of US to countries that are worse? A responsible media would show how US performance compares to countries better AND worse. Not just the countries that are better. The vaccination story is similar. The US is a top-5 vaccinating country, both in absolute terms and daily. Therefore, the media don't report on that, or if they do, they compare us to Israel, which is the best.

5. Repeat the same stories that the other outlets are reporting. This will serve to amplify the story. Notice how negative stories about Biden, where they exist, are extremely isolated.

6. Point out, amplify, and ridicule every hypocrisy and mistake. Imagine if Trump had issued an order that masks be worn on federal property and then was on federal property with a group of people unmasked. How many stories would be written about that? What would be the tone?

There's no question that the corporate media treat Biden differently than Trump. Since I can't fix it, and I doubt anyone can, it's vital that we illustrate this to as many people as possible so that they're aware of how they're being manipulated.

The Resumption of the Unskeptical Press

President Biden has made it a goal of his to vaccinate 100 million people in the first 100 days of his first term. This, obviously, would require an average of 1 million people per day. Given the number of vaccinations that are occurring daily, however, this goal doesn't seem especially ambitious.

In the past week, the average daily doses were 939,973. In fact, more than 1 million doses have been administered five times already. The average so far for this business week (Monday was a national holiday) is 1.3 million.

In light of this, it doesn't seem like it would take much effort to achieve Biden's goal. This can never be proven, but I would bet it would be achieved simply by making no changes to the current personnel or plan, but that won't be done.

This all seems pretty straightforward. Perhaps the above analysis has a tinge of bias to it, but even many on the left wonder how ambitious this goal is, and any responsible journalist would surely point out that Trump left a system that was producing nearly 1 million per day, correct?

Doing a google search on "100 million vaccines" produced the following (in order)

"Biden Inherits a Vaccine Supply Unlikely to Grow Before April" (NY Times)
"Biden vows to move 'heaven and earth to get 100 million vaccinated" (The Independent)
"Biden administration plans for Covid vaccines and pandemic response" (NBC News)
"Amazon is offering to help Biden get 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations to Americans in 100 days "(KTLA)
"For Biden, 100 Million Vaccinations in 100 Days Not Easy" (WebMD)
"Distribute 100 Million Covid-19 Vaccines in 100 Days" (NY Times Opinion)
"Is Biden's bold promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans in 100 days possible?" (The Hill)

All of these headlines at least imply that this is very ambitious. The first article though, to its credit, does explicitly say this isn't very ambitious, and goes even further to say, that that goal would itself waste tens of millions of vaccines. The Independent article makes no mention of the current state of vaccinations. NBC News explicitly calls it ambitious, then doesn't provide the current state of vaccinations, but does talk about the daily and total deaths so far. The KTLA story also mentions daily and total deaths but not vaccinations. 

The WebMD story calls it "attainable" yet "extremely challenging." It calls a 1 million/day pace "somewhat of an increase over what we're already doing." Then does mention the total number of shots given and shipped since December 14th, which wouldn't provide the context of how difficult it would be for Biden's administration to build on where we are now.

The NYTimes Opinion piece goes an extra step, and provides the average number of vaccinations per day since mid-December--447,000. This is quite a misleading statement. Of course vaccinations were slower in the beginning days. Omitting the current pace of vaccinations should earn this opinion piece a "Misleading" label from the fact checkers.

Like several of the others, The Hill article includes the total number of Americans who have died, and the total number of doses distributed. It also quotes CNN claiming "Biden is 'inheriting a nonexistent vaccine plan' from the Trump administration." It's a good thing The Hill's readers aren't told that Trump's non-existent plan is producing the same number of vaccinations as Biden's "bold" goal.

The other indirect source of the poor reporting might be Google's search itself. Of the top ten stories returned, only one of them actually provided the context of the current daily vaccination rate, and no link to the information itself. These figures are not hard to find. Simply searching "vaccination progress" produces them. The only explanation for not including them is egregiously bad reporting or the lack of interest in actually informing the public for fear of making Biden look worse than Trump.

Again, kudos to the NY Times first article. They get today's good journalism award: Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weiland. Joseph Guzman wins the award for bad journalism. Thomas J. Kollyky, Jennifer B. Nuzzo and Prasith Baccam win the "Too Biased to be Informative Opinion" Award

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.