The Front Page Cover
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Google Censorship: Competition Beats Regulation
by Arnold Ahlert
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A Labor Day Look at Labor
by Political Editors: Labor Day is upon us, a day set aside to celebrate the American worker. In this vein, here’s a quick look at several labor-related topics.
One: Over the years, labor unions have become increasingly politically partisan, essentially morphing into PACs for Democrats. Unions’ original cause of representing worker rights and interests has become one of propping up union bosses. With union memberships steadily dwindling to only 11% of the U.S. workforce and only 6% of current union members having ever voted for unionization, it’s time for reform. Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN) has introduced the Employee Rights Act, which would protect secret balloting, prevent members dues from being spent on anything except for collective-bargaining without a vote and provide for periodic recertification of union elections so that every employee has an opportunity to vote on whether they wish to be represented by a union.
Two: As the economy steadily picks up steam, a problem has begun to emerge across the country: More and more employers are having difficulty finding workers. There are several factors that have contributed to this problem, including a lack of skilled workers, coupled with an unemployment rate siting at 4.4% — very close to “full” employment. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) recently introduced a bill that would help alleviate this problem by increasing the number of visas for foreign guest workers. The State-Sponsored Visa Pilot Act would allow for up to 500,000 visas to be divvied up across all 50 states. Keeping jobs and job growth in the U.S. verses companies shipping jobs overseas will benefit the economy and American workers. The issue also pits two big Democrat constituencies against each other — Big Labor and immigrants.
Three: Unfortunately, when a tragedy happens there are those who, rather than working to help those in need, look to take advantage of the crisis. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Big Labor decided to exploit the disaster by conducting a fundraiser with the aim of supporting … unionization efforts. Texas Organizing Project Education Fund, a pro-labor union group, launched the Hurricane Harvey Community Relief Fund, stating, “Your donation is vital to ensuring that we have the resources we need to organize and fight for Texans devastated by Hurricane Harvey.”
Finally: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been a staunch advocate for school choice, something the Left and teachers unions hate. DeVos has a long history of working for school choice via a voucher system in her home state of Michigan. Her early efforts there failed, but support for school choice has grown, specifically among the poor. DeVos said, “Times have continued to change and move more in favor of giving parents and students more choices, because we’ve seen consistently that too many kids are not being served in the schools to which they’ve been assigned.” And what has been the biggest obstacle to school choice? Teachers unions. Thankfully, DeVos is committed to advocating for greater freedom for students and parents.
In any case, a happy Labor Day to those Americans taking a break from laboring today! ~The Patriot Post
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Ex-Israeli intelligence chief:
Trump should attack North Korea if he can
Amos Yadlin
{timesofisrael.com} ~ The former head of Israel’s Military Intelligence said Sunday that the US should launch a preemptive strike against North Korea if it has the capability to do so in the wake of an apparent hydrogen bomb test by Pyongyang... However, he said he was not sure, and didn’t know if Washington was sure, whether it had the ability to do so. Maj. Gen. (res) Amos Yadlin, who also served as IDF attaché to Washington and who is currently the director of the Institute for National Security Studies, told 103FM Radio said the military option against North Korea was very complicated and risky. While he recommended that US President Donald Trump “make a preemptive strike” to prevent North Korea from continuing to develop its nuclear weapons capability, he said such a strike would require “excellent intelligence.”... https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-israeli-intelligence-chief-trump-should-attack-north-korea-if-he-can/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=4bcf95db06-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-4bcf95db06-54638825.
True: California City Will Pay
Gang Members to Remain Peaceful
by Jon Rappoport
{activistpost.com} ~ This isn’t a satire on ultra-liberal California. FOX News 40 reports: “After a violent weekend of suspected gang-related shootings, Tuesday the Sacramento City Council took action to reduce the bloodshed.”... “It approved a controversial program called Advance Peace, which offers cash stipends to gang members who remain peaceful.” “The program targets key gang agitators, offering them cash stipends to graduate from school and remain peaceful…But the city would still have to pay half the cost of the program, $1.5 million out of the city’s general fund.” In other words, Sacramento, the capital city of the state of California, has surrendered...Is this where your tax dollars are going. http://www.activistpost.com/2017/09/true-california-city-will-pay-ang-members-to-remain-peaceful.html?utm_source=Activist+Post+Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=a1ebe54ce0-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_b0c7fb76bd-a1ebe54ce0-387888649.
{conservativezone.com} ~ President Donald J. Trump thumbs his nose at all things liberal, and his recent moves have leftists once again losing their minds... In his latest one-eighty on liar-nObama-era policies, Trump struck down the previous administration’s ban on police departments purchasing military surplus. While conservatives widely agree these are smart efforts to support law and order, the left at least pretends to be outraged. Most importantly, police across the country can be better prepared to defend against terror attacks, hostage situations and mass shootings... http://www.conservativezone.com/articles/trump-is-arming-police-again-and-the-left-hates-it/
Trump is Arming Police Again, and the Left Hates It
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Trump Out-Smarted Ryan and Pandering
RINOs – DACA’s Yours Now, You Fix It
by rickwells.us
{rickwells.us} ~ Paul Ryan should have been more careful about what he pandered for. Now it appears he’s going to get his wish on DACA... that President Trump is going to give the dysfunctional gathering of DC streetwalkers in Congress six months to put our money where their mouths are. RINO Ryan made his ill-advised statement last week on a Janesville, WI, radio station, saying in response to a question as to whether or not Trump should end the illegal DACA program, “I don’t think he should do that.” Ryan added, “These are kids who know no other country, who were brought here by their parents and don’t know another home.” He called for a “legislative solution.” They’re not kids, by and large, any longer... http://rickwells.us/trump-smarted-ryan-pandering-rinos-dacas-now-fix/.
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Google Censorship: Competition Beats Regulation
by Arnold Ahlert: Despite its self-congratulatory assertions of tolerance and diversity, Google is a fraud. Moreover, many of its progressive supporters are hypocrites.
“Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that the left was cheering Google for firing an employee who dared to question the company’s liberal orthodoxy?” asks Investor’s Business Daily. “Now the company is getting battered by the same crowd for allegedly causing a critic to be fired from a think tank.”
The fired employee was engineer James Damore, whose two-pronged dissent was more than the politically correct crowd could endure. In a 10-page memo entitled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” he first asserted that Google’s culture was one “which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause.” Then he committed the ultimate “sin,” suggesting it’s possible the gender gap in certain workplace positions may have to do with the difference between men and women themselves, rather than some sort of implicit bias.
That was a bridge too far. “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK,” explained Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a staff memo, even as an updated memo stated “that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves” — unless they “cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”
Progressive reaction? “Even if it creates an anti-PC martyr, firing an employee who was comfortable airing his harmful bigotry is a laudable stand,” asserted Slate columnist April Glaser. “It should have been a no-brainer.”
It was also a no-brainer to assert Damore was a “messenger for an older set of beliefs animating right-wing extremists,” as Quartz columnist Michael J. Coren insisted, or “a hero on the right-wing Internet,” as The Washington Post’s Abby Ohlheiser stated.
In other words, anyone who violates progressive dogma is a right-wing extremist whose firing was wholly justified.
Unfortunately for the self-righteous social justice set, Google’s disdain for dissent snared one of its own. Shortly after Washington think tank New America Foundation posted a piece on its website praising the $2.7 billion fine levied by European antitrust regulators against Google, company chairman Eric Schmidt made his displeasure known to New America president Anne-Marie Slaughter.
Barry Lynn, director of New America’s Open Markets program, wrote the “offensive” post, asserting the EU “is protecting the free flow of information and commerce upon which all democracies depend.” He also urged “US enforcers” to “build upon this important precedent, both in respect to Google and to other dominant platform monopolists including Amazon,” explaining the “traditional American approach to network monopoly … is to cleanly separate ownership of the network from ownership of the products and services sold on that network.”
Lynn’s post was taken down and then reposted hours later. But as The New York Times reported, “word of Mr. Schmidt’s displeasure rippled through New America,” leaving some people “concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors.”
They were right to worry. Last Wednesday, Slaughter informed Lynn “the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways,” according to an email that simultaneously asserted the firing was “in no way based on the content of your work,” while accusing Lynn of “imperiling the institution as a whole.”
Lynn’s 10-member team initially stuck around trying to negotiate with Slaughter, but eventually got the axe as well. In a public statement disputing the Times’ story, Slaughter insisted Google did not lobby New America to expel Open Markets. Instead, she asserted, Lynn “repeatedly refused to adhere to New America’s standards of openness and institutional collegiality,” while offering no explanation for his team’s firing.
One might be forgiven for wondering if Slaughter was influenced by the $21 million Google has bestowed on the think tank since 1999, or the fact that New America’s main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab.”
Regardless, leftists were suddenly aghast that some of their fellow travelers could be treated like Damore and that Google’s “monopoly” should be broken up. Ultra-leftist Zephyr Teachout, who is chairing Open Markets reincarnation as an independent entity, believes Google “has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power,” reaching a “dangerous point … where it no longer wants to allow dissent.” The New York Times followed up its original story with one entitled “Google’s Disturbing Influence Over Think Tanks,” and the Huffington Post huffed that “Google Just Proved That Monopolies Imperil Democracy, Not Just The Economy.”
The tech giant was hardly chastened. Last Tuesday it issued an ultimatum to The Liberty Conservative (TLC), demanding that the right-leaning website either remove an article Google found offensive, or lose the ability to generate ad revenue from its site.
The email was sent by AdSense, which acts as Google’s ad placement service, and its take on “free” speech is typically leftist: Anything deemed as “hate speech” justifies censorship. Even worse, AdSense stated the particular story was “just an example” of that violation and that “the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites that you own.”
On the TLC website Shane Trejo, media relations director of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Michigan, disputed the assertion, insisting the real reason for the warning was that the piece’s author, James Allsup, attended Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right” rally. “Although the article itself contained no offensive content,” Trejo stated, “just the fact that it was authored by a man deemed to be an ‘unperson’ by the corporate elite was enough for Google to target it for censorship.”
Allsup is a dodgy individual. But if Trejo is correct and Google is censoring people, how long will it be before Google expands its “enemies list” of those forbidden to publish at all, irrespective of what they write?
Should Google be subjected to antitrust statutes? The company controls 80% of the online search market and 54% of the U.S. browser market. Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon are similar behemoths, and all have made efforts to control and influence the flow of information, tilting overwhelmingly left in that regard.
But does that make any of them monopolies? Teachout insists Google “is forming into a government of itself,” while admitting it couldn’t succeed in “entirely” silencing New Markets. The New York Post refers to “monopolists who dominate the internet” and The Week’s Ryan Cooper refers to both Google and Facebook as “platform monopolists.”
Perhaps. Or perhaps they provide goods and services millions of people want. And for those that don’t, perhaps there’s a gargantuan opportunity for non-progressive entrepreneurs to set up alternative platforms. Better that than giving government another opportunity to put its regulatory thumb on the scale.
Are the aforementioned corporations run by largely obnoxious, self-aggrandizing leftists? You betcha. But a free society is about competition, not censorship. Leftists would prefer the latter, now that the Wrath of Google has touched one of theirs.
Conservatives? Censorship is easy. Free-market principles are hard. ~The Patriot Post
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