Sedona mountain scene taken by friend and
fellow memo reader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
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Iran acknowledges it is working with Soros. Wherever vermin grows you will find Soros.(See 1 below.)
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Mauldin on China. Can it pull it off? (See 2 below.)
And:
5 Reasons Why The Chinese Military Is WEAKER Than You Think
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Will Ocasio knock out the Democrat Party or will Socialism knockout Ocasio.? Stay tuned. (See 3 below.)
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When Cory Booker runs for president will he be wearing NIKE shoes? (See 4 below.)
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I did not say it would happen but I did bring it to your attention. (See 5 below.)
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Will Kavanaugh return SCOTUS to its rightful role? (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Iran Admits: Regime 'Worked Closely' With Soros
By AAN Staff
)A new report from Israel National News alleges Iran's authoritarian regime has a powerful, secret ally – George Soros and his network of Open Society Foundations. (Israel National News)
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif said Sunday that the Iranian government has worked closely with billionaire George Soros' Open Society Foundations (OSF) organization.
Zarif made the remarks in response to questions raised in the Iranian parliament. According to Zarif, the activity began before he entered his current position, and he boasted that he had succeeded in "keeping the activity organized."
OSF has funded a number of far-left organizations in Israel which seek to change the policy of Israel's government.
According to NGO Monitor, among the top beneficiaries of OSF funding is Human Rights Watch, which has been criticized for targeting, and falsely libeling, the state of Israel. Another is J Street, which describes itself as “pro-Israel” but has been termed anti-Israel by others for, among other things, welcoming proponents of a boycott on Israel at its national conference and honoring IDF soldiers who refused orders.
Other prominent anti-Israeli organizations, like B'Tselem, receive OSF funds. B'Tselem is known for exaggerating Arab civilian casualty figures.
A leaked document reveals one of OSF's goals is to end the so-called Israeli occupation.
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2)
China’s Command Innovation
By John Mauldin
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Photo: Getty ImagesTo that end, the government is pouring infrastructure investment into the region, including a 22-mile bridge connecting Hong Kong and Macau (not cheap!) with the mainland and a new $11 billion rail link for Hong Kong. It also plans to eliminate some of the bureaucratic barriers that presently slow down commerce.“The GBA is home to a high concentration of dynamic private businesses, such as Tencent, Midea, and Huawei. It is also China’s most innovative urban cluster, generating more than 50% of the country’s international patent applications. And, according to HSBC, the GBA is the least burdened by inefficient state-owned enterprises and excess capacity.“The reason is simple: The GBA is far more market-oriented than its counterparts, with Hong Kong and Macau much more open to the outside world than any other Chinese cities. Both cities not only permit the freer flow of goods, services, capital, technology, talent, and resources, but also meet global standards in terms of regulations, business practices, soft infrastructure, and even lifestyles.”(Source: Andrew Sheng and Xiao Geng, Project Syndicate)Part of this area is Shenzen, just north of Hong Kong.
Image: Google MapsIn 1980, Shenzhen was a fishing village of 30,000 people. Today, it produces 90% of the world’s electronics and is home to over 12.5 million people. It has 3 million registered businesses. It is compounding its growth at over 12% a year, doubling in the last six years.The size of this region is hard to comprehend. With nearly 70 million people and $1.5 trillion GDP, it is economically bigger than Australia or Mexico. Guangdong (the mainland China part) alone exported $670 billion in goods last year. Three of the world’s ten busiest container ports are in the region. It will be Silicon Valley on steroids.For that matter, it could be the US on steroids, at least geographically. From Hong Kong you can fly to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Manila, Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo as fast as I can get from Dallas to San Francisco. This Greater Bay Area will be the center of the world’s fastest-growing region, with billions of smart business people, scientists, and consumers.According to Wealth-X, Hong Kong just overtook New York as the world’s largest concentration of ultra-wealthy people (net worth of $30 million or more). Their study specifically attributes it to enhanced links with mainland China. Look for this to continue.Research Capital
When Americans import Chinese goods, we get stuff we want and China gets our US dollars to spend. Ditto for China’s other customers. They receive goods, China receives cash. On this end, much of what we purchase ends up in landfills, or like our iPhones, being replaced every few years. Not so over there. They often spend our cash more wisely than we use their doodads. (Infrastructure is a good example. Many Chinese highways, railroads, and airports are far superior to ours.)This is a great chart on the world’s top exporters in 2017. While you can easily see that China out-exports the US, I find it interesting that Germany is almost the size of the US, and that the Netherlands, with only 17 million people (barely 5% of the US population), exports $652 billion. On an export dollar per population, why isn’t the US worried about the Netherlands?Beijing sees this same data and realizes its leadership is not guaranteed. China needs to develop its own technology, and doing so requires research, and research requires capital. So, through a combination of government edicts and profit-seeking, it is right now in a major effort to build its own innovation economy.The plan isn’t complicated. To summarize, “Throw money at it.” Beijing is forcing money into venture capital at an astonishing pace. My friend Peter Diamandis toted up the numbers last month.By end of 2017, 3,418 Chinese VC funds were launched within the year, raising a combined $243 billion USD or 1.61 trillion RMB.Of the $154 billion worth of VC invested in 2017, 40 percent came from Asian (primarily Chinese) VCs. America’s share? Only 4 percentage points higher at 44 percent.In the first three quarters of 2017, 493 state-backed funds were founded with a capital size of 114 billion USD (756.8 billion RMB).And as of two years earlier, Chinese VC coffers had surpassed a remarkable $336.4 billion USD.In a great push to scoop up intellectual property and drive growth in key tech sectors, China’s VC scene is booming.As of 2016—before the numbers Peter lists there—China VC investment had roughly caught up to US level. Now it is probably ahead.Of course, merely spending money isn’t the same as spending it wisely, nor does it mean the resulting products will succeed. But the research is the first step, without which little is likely to happen. AI doesn’t invent itself (yet).Peter Diamandis says Chinese VC firms are targeting three segments: robotics, driverless vehicles, and biotechnology. I can see why, too: demographic necessity. It’s odd to imagine labor shortages in such a huge country, but that is a growing problem for China. Decades of the one-child policy produced a severe age imbalance. Robotics and driverless vehicles will address that problem, while biotechnology may help China avoid the healthcare spending that weighs down the US economy.Yet this is good news for the whole world. Chinese innovation in these segments won’t stay in China. They will export it and, if it’s better than what others produce, the market will let everyone benefit. So, I hope they go full speed ahead. May the better tech win. (Of course, I will still root for the home team!)Paper Wars
It is common knowledge that China has produced more scientists and engineers for decades than the West has combined. Many of us had suspicions about the qualities of the universities and their degrees. They couldn’t be as good as ours, could they? Well, we’re beginning to see the answer to that, and it turns out they were comparable and possibly even better in some areas.As a graphic indication, here’s the countries with the most STEM graduates:We know China’s contribution to scientific knowledge has grown, but how much so is less clear. Exactly what counts as “Chinese” research? You have Chinese people working both within China and in other countries, including at many top US and European universities. How do we categorize their contributions? It’s hard to assess.A recent study gives us new data. Last month, Quartz cited a study by Qingnan Xie of Nanjing University and Richard Freeman of the National Bureau of Economic Research, which looked at the number of scientific papers with Chinese authors. Unlike other such studies, they included not just authors in China, but those with Chinese names but located elsewhere.That’s an imperfect standard, of course. You can have a Chinese name and live in Singapore. Many US citizens have Chinese surnames, and the Chinese diaspora is well known. Likewise, not all research by ethnically Chinese researchers will find its way back to Chinese businesses or government agencies, nor is every paper an equally valuable contribution to the world’s knowledge base. But the study seems as rigorous as possible, so I think the general findings are probably right, at least in their direction.Xie and Freeman found that in 2016, roughly 24% of scientific papers had an author with a Chinese name or address. If you include Chinese-language papers, it jumps to 37%.Looking at it another way, China has 15% of global GDP but produces more than a third of the scientific papers. It seems those university degrees are beginning to pay off in actual research.Again, we’re not considering the value of those papers. Some may be worthless. But just in terms of output volume, China is producing far more research than its share of the world economy and population says it should. As the chart shows, this figure has been trending steadily higher, too.Now, recognize how breakthroughs happen. They are often a consequence of large numbers. The more smart people you have trying to solve a problem, the more likely one of them is to solve it. Most will fail and that’s ok. All you need is one success.If China has more scientists working on more problems than anyone else—and it does—then we can expect China to find more solutions, other things being equal.As I said, this is okay from a global perspective because we will all get the benefit of those breakthroughs. But we won’t get it free, and the price will be higher for us in the US if we have to import it from China.So, this is not a race the US or Europe or the West or anyone should concede, but weare conceding it in some ways. For instance, when we admit Chinese students to study at our top universities then don’t let them stay here to build their careers. We educate them and send them back. It makes no sense. We should give them a green card and an open door. You think they are taking jobs? No, they are creating jobs in China when they could be creating jobs here. Just saying…A Place to Innovate
Matt Ridley says human progress and prosperity make the greatest leaps when “ideas have sex with each other.” They produce offspring, in other words. This creative process happens faster and more easily when the idea-holders share proximity. Many inventions come from large cities not because city folk are any smarter, but because the necessary mix of ideas was in the same place, at the same time. In the US, Silicon Valley often serves this purpose. Along with Austin, Dallas, Boston, New York, and others.China has abundant venture capital to fund research and large numbers of researchers cranking out ideas. It needs a central place for those ideas to have frequent sex with each other. The government is aware of this and, in true command-economy style, has decreed it will happen in the Greater Bay Area I mentioned above.Economic growth is largely a numbers game: workers times productivity. China already has both ingredients and is working assiduously to enhance them further. For now, the US is still ahead, but we shouldn’t be complacent. Nothing requires the global economy to keep us in the lead, and we are not doing what we should to keep it.There are literally books written on this. Everywhere you turn is an amazing story. Many readers are going, “Okay, China has a lot of large cities and fast trains. So what?” Serious research shows that creativity goes up the larger the city gets, measured in either new businesses or GDP or patents. Putting humans together has been a spark for new ideas since man first began to organize cities 10,000 years ago.But large cities are not the real story. China is shifting from an export-driven to a consumer-driven economy. That will be a rough transition in itself, but the government is leaving little to chance. Here in the US, we’re skeptical of central planning. I certainly am. But I have to admit, if it’s possible for a centrally planned economy to achieve sustainable long-term growth, China will be the one to do it.And again, there is decades old accepted economic research to demonstrate that a centrally planned economy has some advantages in the early stages of development. The transition to a consumer-oriented society is the most difficult for a top down, centrally planned economy to manage. So far, China seems to be letting entrepreneurs put capital to work without having to tell them how to do it. They just give them the tools and, sometimes, the money as well.Next week, we will look at some even more astounding data, then later go on to what could cause China to stumble. Remember those 1980s predictions Japan would own the world? It turns out you can only do so much on credit. Stay tuned...
3) Ocasio Gets Knocked Out
In June 2018, young 28-year-old "Socialist Democrat" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated 10-term Democrat Joe Crowley in what was considered a major upset. Crowley – a tried-and-true Democratic congressman with 20 years of loyal party service, proved no match for Ocasio-Cortez and her embodiment of the new brand of über-liberal progressivism. In the new paradigm of Democratic Party politics, there is no such thing as social policies that are too liberal, no education, healthcare, or assistance initiatives that are too generous with government-funded payouts, no position on illegal immigration or gender identity that is too lenient or accommodating.
Now in Massachusetts, it has happened again. Ayanna Pressley, a Democratic African-American woman, decisively defeated 10-term Congressman Mike Capuano 59-41% in a primary contest on September 4. Since there is no Republican candidate in the MA 7th Congressional District, this was the de facto election for that seat and Pressley – who holds views essentially identical to Ocasio-Cortez – will be the officeholder come January 2019. Like Joe Crowley, Mike Capuano was a 50-something white male. "Old white guys" – with the somewhat ironic, humorous exception of Bernie Sanders – seem to be falling out of favor in the Democratic Party these days. Pressley's acceptance speech was characterized by such lines as "We ran a campaign for those who were told their priorities can wait," and "These times demand more from our leaders… change can't wait." This, of course, is merely liberal code-speak for the promise that new government giveaway programs to her constituency are on the way, financed by new taxes on the "rich." Like Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley is seen as a Democratic rising star – female, non-Caucasian, solidly in the "Big Government Solves All Problems" camp.
It's all in keeping with the idea of Democratic Socialism, in whose curious reality the playing field is leveled, differences in incomes are eliminated (or at least minimized) and wealth is redistributed to the deserving. The "deserving" according to the arbitrary whims of these new Democratic Socialists, where the ordinary rules of a market economy can be ignored as needed and Government funding is not generated by modest income taxes on a continually-expanding economic base, but instead by targeted, ever-increasing punitive taxation on a restricted, over-regulated economic base.
The "Ocasio" name has some interesting connotations. Boxing aficionados will undoubtedly remember Osvaldo "Ossie" Ocasio, a Puerto Rican-born heavyweight boxer who was active in the 1970s. He scored two big wins over highly-regarded contender Jimmy Young (who had given Muhammad Ali a very hard time in 1976 and then upset George Foreman in 1977), which catapulted Ocasio into the upper echelon of heavyweight contenders. On the strength of these wins, Ocasio was awarded a title fight against champion Larry Holmes in 1979.
Alas, Ocasio's time in the limelight was short-lived and his lasting importance in heavyweight boxing ultimately proved to be both illusory and fleeting. Holmes dominated Ocasio for six rounds before dropping him four times in the 7th, en route to a devastating knockout victory. Ocasio was never heard from again.
The Ocasio-Cortez/Pressley contingent of the new Democratic Socialist movement may well score some impressive wins in the near term, upsetting a lot of long-standing Democratic incumbents and perhaps wresting a significant degree of national power as well. However, if they achieve a dominant position nationally and begin to implement their socialist agenda, they will be unpleasantly surprised and eventually suffer major disappointments.
This country is based on a market economy. It is capitalistic, driven by the profit motive. Virtually all economic activity in the private sector – whether it's retail or pharmaceutical/healthcare or energy or manufacturing or entertainment or communications/information services and devices or transportation or real estate/construction or law – is predicated on generating a profit. Government policies that discourage profit-oriented activity – indeed, punish it – will serve only to slow the growth of the national economic pie – the very pie that Democratic Socialists intend on cutting into slices and giving away to those they've deemed "deserving" or "underserved" or "disadvantaged."
Diminishing private sector profits will result in a continually-contracting downward spiral, in which economic activity is restricted, companies shrink, hiring decreases, and the general standard of living – across all demographic sectors, including the "deserving" – is reduced.
Democratic Socialism – a fraudulent idea based on fraudulent assumptions, foisted either by callous hypocrites like Sanders and Warren (who already have "theirs" and therefore can easily weather any economic downturn) or stunningly ignorant neophytes like Ocasio-Cortez (who simply don't know any better) – will collapse from the illegitimacy of its own weight, as did Ossie Ocasio from the unapologetic power of champion Holmes' inescapably real punches.
The country will suffer in the short run for having fallen prey to the false seduction of the promises of a Socialist free lunch. Perhaps we will be better off in the long run if we learn our lessons the hard way – with the Ocasio-Cortez/Pressley faction actually in office and making policy – and then we surgically remove the fantasy of government-supported Nirvana-for-all from our national consciousness once and for all.
Ultimately, if Ossie Ocasio had never been given the chance to climb into the ring in the first place, Holmes couldn't have knocked him out and sent him into oblivion forever
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4) Cory Booker Is Sharpton, Not Spartacus
What is the difference between Cory Booker and Emily Litella, the late Gilda Radner's classic "Saturday Night Live" character who would go off on epic rants only to say, when told her premise was incorrect, "Never mind"? Cory Booker will not say, "Never mind."
Booker, the new poster child for demagoguery, called it his Spartacus moment, pretending to risk his political career by releasing, in violation of Senate rules, an email by Judge Brett Kavanaugh on racial profiling that had already been cleared for release, a post 9/11 email that expressed the hope that a race-neutral set of rules for vetting terrorists could be found. Racist it was not, except in the mind of Booker, who was less like Spartacus and more like that little Martian in the movie Space Jam ready to fall on his rubber sword.
As Fox news contributor and Democratic pollster Doug Schoen opines about Booker's latest tirade:
The senator was not elected to pretend to engage in civil disobedience that really isn't civil disobedience – in an effort to appeal to the Democrats' growing progressive wing – without taking any real risks at all.
And Booker was not elected to play the role of one of the many protesters who, during Kavanaugh's hearing and previously, have taken well-publicized protest actions to "resist" the Trump administration in every way possible, including violating the law….
Even though the rule-breaking by Booker turned out not to be rule-breaking in the end, it set a bad precedent. Senators need to follow the rules of the chamber. That's because in order for the Senate to operate smoothly in service of the American people it has to operate by rules – and members have to be able to trust each other to abide by those rules.
When senators feel they can ignore rules whenever they wish and fight their opponents with any means necessary the Senate can descend into chaos and paralysis, making it unable to function as what it used to be called – "the world's greatest deliberative body."
This is not Mr. Smith goes to Washington. This is Saul Alinsky runs for president.
Somewhere Saul Alinsky, author of the progressive guidebook, Rules for Radicals, is smiling. His goal was to destroy America's institutions through demonization of their occupants and the corruption of their functions. If Donald Trump's election has done anything, it has exposed the depth and stench of the swamp; pulled back the curtain and forced us to pay attention to the anarchists who were running the show behind.
Cory Booker intends to ride the race card all the way to the White House and if good men like Judge Kavanaugh are to be sacrificed well, hey, break the eggs and make your omelet. His demonization of Kavanaugh as a racist is akin to his slanderous assault on then attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions who, whatever his other faults, is not a racist.
Cory Booker willingly stepped to the plate as the designated character assassin of fellow Sen. Jeff Sessions. It was a forum of great attention that perhaps Booker thought might launch a 2020 presidential run like another freshman Senator, Barack Obama, whose 2004 Democratic Convention speech launched his presidential campaign. As Sen. Tom Cotton noted on Facebook:
I'm very disappointed that Senator Booker has chosen to start his 2020 presidential campaign by testifying against Senator Sessions. This disgraceful breach of custom is especially surprising since Senator Booker just last year said he was "honored to have partnered with Senator Sessions" on a resolution honoring civil-rights marchers. Senator Booker says he feels compelled to speak out because Senator Session wants to keep criminals behind bars, drugs off our streets, and amnesty from becoming law. He's welcome to oppose these common-sense policies and vote against Senator Sessions' nomination, but what is so unique about those views to require his extraordinary testimony? Nothing. This hearing simply offers a platform for his presidential aspirations.
So too does the hearing on Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation as a Supreme Court justice. Racism is the last refuge of political scoundrels like Cory Booker, something which requires an historical amnesia of historical and, yes, hysterical proportions.
Booker's historical amnesia omits the fact that it was Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and former "Grand Kleagle" with the Ku Klux Klan, who holds the distinction of being the only Senator to have opposed the only two black nominees to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, and led a 52-day filibuster against this legislation.
Sen. Al Gore, father of the former vice president, voted against the act, as did Sen. J. William Fulbright, to whom Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial, current senior senator from South Carolina Ernest Hollings, Sen. Richard Russell and, of course, Sen. Strom Thurmond, who was a Democrat at that time.
Booker forgets that it was Democrats who unleashed the dogs and turned on the fire hoses on civil rights marchers. It was Democrats who stood in the schoolhouse door and are still standing there by opposing school choice and trapping minority children in failing schools. It was Democrats who blocked the bridge in Selma.
Booker's amnesia omits the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would never have been possible without Republican leadership. Not only was that legislation a personal victory for Illinois Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen, then Senate Minority leader; Republicans in both the House and Senate supported the measure in far greater percentages than Democrats. Only six GOP senators voted against the act, compared with 21 Democrats. The party of Abraham Lincoln and Jeff Sessions beat back the fire hoses and dogs of the party of Robert Byrd and Cory Booker.
As one pundit put it, the Democrats should know a lot about Jim Crow laws, since they are the ones who wrote them. Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush's national security advisor, and who introduced Kavanaugh at his hearing, explained at the 2000 GOP national convention why a black college professor would be a Republican:
The first Republican I knew was my father John Rice. And he is still the Republican I admire the most. My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. I want you to know that my father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.
And neither should we. Booker is not Spartacus, fighting for the freedom of slaves and the proposition that all are created equal. He is Al Sharpton, a race-baiting demagogue lusting after the power of government, ready to rewrite history and demonize anyone blocking his progressive path as a racist.
Go ahead, Cory, play the race card. We'll play our Trump card.
Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
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5)
We all know you can “like” or “share” something on Facebook, but it turns out more and more people are instead hitting the “delete” button and taking down their accounts altogether.
5)
The glory days may be dead and gone for social media giants
BY LIZ PEEK, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
We all know you can “like” or “share” something on Facebook, but it turns out more and more people are instead hitting the “delete” button and taking down their accounts altogether.
According to a new survey from Pew Research, some 26 percent of Americans have wiped their phones clean of the social media platform over the past year; another 54 percent have adjusted their privacy settings, and 42 percent claim to have taken a break from the site for several weeks or more.
These actions came on the heels of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and suggest that Facebook’s careless and dishonest handling of user information came back to bite them.
It’s only one of many issues raising red flags for Facebook investors and also those who own Twitter and Alphabet shares. The social media giants are fending off charges of political bias against conservatives as well as accusations that they continue to allow foreign actors to promote destabilizing propaganda on their platforms.
They have other problems, too. Studies showing that social media use can be addictive and unhealthy, especially for young people, led the French government to outlaw the use of smart devices in primary and secondary schools in July. Some local authorities in Germany and England have taken similar steps.
What could it all mean for these tech behemoths that have led our stock market and been the envy of entrepreneurs around the world? It could mean more oversight, more regulations and more confrontations with Congress such as took place this week.
It could mean the glory days of social media will give way to creeping regulation and increasing wariness of organizations that have become central to our lives; possibly, many think, too central.
The rattling of confidence in these extraordinary American companies has led to a recent sell-off in shares. Tech stocks overall are up 16 percent this year, leading the markets.
But over the past five days, Alphabet, the parent of Google, along with Facebook and Twitter have seen their share prices decline. Both Facebook and Alphabet tumbled 7 percent, while Twitter took a 12-percent hit.
Those declines came on the heels of yet another mea culpa before Congress. In a now-familiar routine, Twitter and Facebook admitted mistakes to skeptical legislators and again vowed to do better.
The firms were also charged, in different hearings, with trying to muffle conservative voices. Google was the standout participant in both sets of interviews; they simply didn’t show, which is not how to win friends and influence legislators in Congress.
While such encounters mostly convince us that Congress doesn’t have a prayer of rigorously overseeing the social media behemoths (mainly because they do not understand how they work and cannot pretend otherwise), these ever-more-frequent hearings should not be dismissed.
In Europe, after all, complaints of privacy violations resulted in new regulations earlier this year, and EU officials are threatening more oversight unless the firms do a better job of squashing fake news.
Facebook, attempting to mollify critics, has pledged to hire thousands of workers to ferret out bad actors trying to corrupt our elections. That will be expensive but probably not as expensive as waking up to find they have become a utility.
For that is the ultimate threat. Just as politicians railed that banks became simply too big to govern, some are beginning to think that the social media giants, too, are just too large and too powerful.
Democrats have scoffed at charges that Facebook and Twitter suppress conservative voices, but a Pew Research study found that 85 percent of Republicans think otherwise. There have been numerous reports of right-leaning people being “shadow-banned” or even bounced from Twitter and of right-wing stories being muted on Facebook.
In 2016, an ex-employee of Facebook told tech news site Gizmodo the he was part of a team that routinely kept conservative news items from “trending." The same group also injected more politically palatable stories into the influential “trending” column, even if they didn’t gain the required audience.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress this past week that his firm does not intentionally silence voices and argues that the censorship of his website is managed through complex (and impartial) algorithms. That is an unsatisfactory answer, since those algorithms are written by people who can certainly create preferred outcomes.
In an interview with CNN in August, Dorsey admitted, “We need to constantly show that we are not adding our own bias, which I fully admit is [...] is more left-leaning.”
The fact is that all these companies are “left-leaning.” A report showing that Alphabet employees gave 90 percent of their political contributions to Democrats over the past 14 years bolsters that claim. Facebook and Twitter, too, give more in political donations to Democrats than Republicans.
No one can anticipate how these various issues will be resolved. What is certain is that the social media companies have become so huge and so influential that they will attract increasing oversight, and, eventually, increasing regulation.
Congress and customers can no longer assume that competition and the kind of disruption we associate with new technologies will keep them honest. Victims of their success, they’ve become way too big to be governed by the marketplace.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. For 15 years, she has been a columnist for The Fiscal Times, Fox News, the New York Sun and numerous other organizations.
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6) The Supreme Court's days as a super-legislature are over, and Democrats aren't happy about it
On Day Two of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, a number of Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee appeared to be sizing themselves up for black judicial robes.
If they weren’t doing that, they were lamenting the fact that someone of their own great wisdom couldn’t sit on the Supreme Court — the highest legislature in the land, they seem to think — and rule the country from their lifetime position.
Democrats placed themselves one after another into Kavanaugh’s seat on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals to second-guess rulings, which is only natural for those who think the courts are there to make policy decisions. Ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., complained that Kavanaugh had, in an opinion on D.C. gun control laws, deemed that semi-automatic rifles are in “common use” and thus not, under Supreme Court definition, something the D.C. government could ban. Feinstein was weirdly outraged about this characterization, given that private citizens in the U.S. own something on the order of 50 or 60 million such rifles, and possibly more.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., complained that Kavanaugh had dissented from an emergency ruling that ended up rushing a minor migrant girl in the care of the U.S. government off to get an abortion without parental consent. Durbin also complained about Kavanaugh’s interpretation of a complicated Supreme Court case that had deemed illegal immigrant workers unable to vote in workplace unionization elections.
For Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the problem was that Kavanaugh had written an opinion favoring two mergers in the grocery and health insurance industries.
All these opinions about Kavanaugh’s rulings have one thing in common: They come from politicians who seem to think judging is a lot like what they do for a living. But judges don’t make policy, and the Supreme Court is not a super-legislature. That’s why a good judge who decides cases based on law and precedent will not like all the outcomes of the cases he hears
Federal judges don’t run for their seats or make promises on how they will vote. And they are not supposed to make rulings that set the policies that affect millions of Americans. Policy is supposed to be a function of the democratic process, not something created by a lifetime-appointed nine-person oligarchy.
Democrats are upset about where the Supreme Court has been heading not because it isn’t doing its job, and not because it is overly partisan, but because they don’t like the fact that cases going there are increasingly being decided based on the Constitution and the law and not on motivated reasoning in search of liberals’ pet causes.
Democrats look back wistfully to the era before 2006, when they could at least often count on the courts to stymie conservative reform using such motivated reasoning. That hasn’t been the case as often lately, and they’re not happy.
They can’t just come out and say that after years of treating Supreme Court rulings as a form of Holy Writ — and also with two-thirds of Americans approving of the Supreme Court as an institution. So they mislead people. For example, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said in Wednesday's hearing that the problem with the Supreme Court is that it has taken a hash, partisan turn under Chief Justice John Roberts and now consists of one narrow 5-4 decision after another. But this is fake news. In Roberts' 13 years, the court has produced 172 5-4 or 4-4 decisions, according to the Supreme Court database. In the 13-year period between 1970 and 1982, there were more than 330 such narrow split decisions. And the results are similar for any 13-year period between 1970 and 1990. You'll get similar results. Are we in an especially partisan era on the court? Not at all.
The good news is that the Supreme Court has been and likely will continue moving back in the direction of providing predictable, law-based and Constitution-based rulings, rather than moving forward the Left's agenda. That's why the Democrats are fuming.
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