Ginning up climate alarmism is all about tyranny; now they're coming after what's on your dinner plate

 The United Nations is utterly worthless when it comes to calming actual global hot spots, such as Ukraine or Israel. However, it does seem to have the resources for this:

The world’s most-developed nations will be told to curb their excessive appetite for meat as part of the first comprehensive plan to bring the global agrifood industry into line with the Paris climate agreement.

The global food systems’ road map to 1.5C is expected to be published by the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization during the COP28 summit next month. Nations that over-consume meat will be advised to limit their intake, while developing countries — where under-consumption of meat adds to a prevalent nutrition challenge — will need to improve their livestock farming, according to the FAO.

From farm to fork, food systems account for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions and much of that footprint is linked to livestock farming — a major source of methane, deforestation and biodiversity loss. Although non-binding, the FAO’s plan is expected to inform policy and investment decisions and give a push to the food industry’s climate transition which has lagged other sectors in commitments.

The guidance on meat is intended to send a clear message to governments. But politicians in richer nations typically shy away from policies aimed at influencing consumer behavior, especially where it involves cutting consumption of everyday items.

“Livestock is politically sensitive, but we need to deal with sensitive issues to solve the problem,” said Dhanush Dinesh, the founder of Clim-Eat, which works to accelerate climate action in food systems. “If we don’t tackle the livestock problem, we are not going to solve climate change. The key problem is overconsumption.”

Who's this "we" that has to "tackle the livestock problem"? Is I just the pointy-heads at your agency? Are you sure the world's cattle ranchers and pork producers are going to get on board? What's your plan for making this more effective than the feeble attempt to get China to stop building coal-fired power plants?

Here's a term to make one's hair stand on end: "road map [for a] shared direction of travel":

The plan will be rolled out in three parts over the next few years to eventually include country-specific recommendations.

The road map has the potential to offer a “shared direction of travel” for livestock companies and their investors, mirroring the role of the International Energy Agency’s net zero document for the energy sector, according to FAIRR Initiative, an investor network focused on intensive animal production.

“This road map is needed to bring clarity to both companies and investors so that they can plan for the transition,” said Sofía Condés, head of investor outreach at FAIRR. “The longer companies wait to act, the more drastic and potentially disruptive the transition.”

The FAO’s work is one of several food-focused announcements and pledges that are expected to come out of the COP28 summit in Dubai. While climate summits have tended to steer away from agrifood issues largely due to sensitivities over food security, this year’s organizers are trying to push through a number of initiatives outside the formal talks, said Clim-Eat’s Dinesh.

Anybody who has read LITD for any length of time knows I am most definitely not a MAGA type. That movement has employed the term "globalism" in a manipulative way to justify protectionist economic policy. But there is, on the other hand, a cadre of administrative dweebs who clearly hold the free market in disdain and are constantly devising ways to intrude into the personal lives and decision-making of people who live far from their ivory-tower offices and conference rooms. James Burnham first brought this to our attention in 1941 in The Managerial Revolution. 

My message to them is that when they start eyeing my grill, oven and dinner plate, it's getting real personal. 

This citizen of a sovereign nation - not of some kind of "global community" - says, resoundingly, "Like hell you will."

 

Two divergent - but both intelligently arrived at - views of populism

 Consider this a preliminary working-out of a notion I want to explore in an essay for a new publication to which I've been invited to contribute.

Populism is obviously a force to be contended with, but its contours are not distinct beyond a basic juxtaposition against an elite.

I think Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center does a commendable job framing it as a reaction to the limited choices posed to the Western public, much as social democracy was a century ago:

By 1929, labor-backed parties were powerful everywhere they existed. Five Western nations had labor-led governments by then, and many more would join them by 1940. The nineteenth-century debates between liberals seeking constitutional democracies and conservatives resisting their rise had been utterly transformed into the battle between capital and labor that typified twentieth-century politics.

It’s easy in hindsight to see why this happened. Industrialization upset centuries of tradition as millions of people left farms and towns to work in city-based factories. These people came to see themselves as united by class interest, one that sought to limit the private power held by factory owners and traditional moral authorities such as priests and aristocrats. Armed with the vote, they forced their views to the political forefront and set the terms of debate.

Their rise was fueled by the failure of their foes. Non-socialist parties promised peace and prosperity. Instead, the world experienced war and woe. After the World Wars and the Great Depression, voters everywhere wanted calm. They largely granted social democrats the policies that had driven their ancestors to mad opposition in exchange for continued liberal political freedoms and some semblance of private property and markets. The post-1945 social democratic victory was so thorough that even leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan could only claw back some of the ground their ancestors had conceded.

He says something similar seems to be presently afoot:

Populist ideas and themes have also infiltrated major parties in the United States, Great Britain and Canada. Donald Trump is a populist par excellence with his overt nationalism and call to smash elites. Britain’s Tories won their 2019 majority under the leadership of the brash Boris Johnson, who promised to deliver the Brexit voters had opted for three years earlier, as well as significant government spending to “level up” left-behind parts of the country. Canada’s new Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, also opts for “us versus them” themes and targets working-class voters with his policies and rhetoric.

This dramatic surge has already left its mark just as the early twentieth-century social democratic jump did. Back then, existing parties began to create rudimentary welfare states in the hope they would prevent “socialism.” Today, existing leaders rush to limit immigration and subsidize domestic manufacturing, two main demands of the populist right. Fiscal consolidation or austerity seems off the table as traditional center-left and center-right parties compete for the support of economically struggling voters and parties who otherwise might back populists.

This alone would mark populism as an important phenomenon. Social democracy’s prior rise from nonentity to dominant force, however, suggests a more fundamental shift is underway. Populists have already imitated their predecessors’ early achievements. Can they go further and become the paradigmatic twenty-first century political force?

He's candid about how populism is being demographically fueled:

Populist parties tend to draw from less educated, poorer men. These are not society’s dregs: they work rather than draw benefits. But the same trend persists regardless of nation. Populist support drops as income and education rise, and it is almost always higher among men than among women. Populism also tends to draw support from those who identify as Christians but do not regularly attend services. This tendency is less often measured, in part because many western nations are so thoroughly secular that pollsters tend not to ask about religious belief and observance. A statistical study I commissioned, however, found that 2017 support for Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland rose in Bavaria in direct relationship to Catholic church membership, even after controlling for other factors. This would explain why many populist parties and leaders extol Christian values even as they do not pursue explicitly theological policies.

The demographic solidarity among populists means they have a shared identity that fuels their political activity. They are not, as elites have commonly assumed, motivated solely by transitory anger focused on discrete — hence ameliorable — concerns. They have a worldview based on their experience and framework that encompasses the whole of society. This means they can weather the periodic storms that always beset politics and remain firmly on course.

It's a worldview markedly at odds with what Olsen (and a great many other analysts) call the "elite":

. . . populists want a very different type of society than do the educated, affluent elites whom they battle. Elites benefit from the individualistic society they have created, both economically and socially. Globalization and mass immigration mean they can contract with cheaper foreigners for labor at home and abroad, dramatically increasing their purchasing power. Their education also has trained them to value the novel experience over the traditional one, whether it is searching for exciting new foods or engaging with different cultures. The fact that the rapid adoption of these views has unsettled and disadvantaged large numbers of their fellow citizens does not bother them, so sure are they of their merit and virtue.

Where I think Olsen steps onto shaky ground is when he concludes that populism is so inexorably on the rise that elites had better reconsider their presumptions lest they get run over. Let us remember that the "elites" have the technology and the thrall of upcoming generations to their "novel" ideas. Shiny objects and human nature are a volatile mix.

Olsen's view, in more concentrated form, is what motivated a formerly actual conservative, well-respected for his erudition and measured takes, such as Victor Davis Hanson to burn bridges and go all-in for the Very Stable Genius, arguing in a book called The Case for Trump that a hollowed-out national core was fed up with not being listened to, and that a period of upheaval was just the ticket for serving notice to the muckety-mucks.

Daren Jonescu is having none of it. He sees a different kind of dichotomy, and illustrates it using the issue of Ukraine:

The American government’s old guard establishment in both parties wants Ukraine to lose the war, but slowly. The establishment’s upstart wing, comprised mainly of populists of the right, including the farcically-named House Freedom Caucus, wants Russia to win, and quickly. Neither side is quite willing to state its genuine position directly, at least so far, although the loonier puppets of the populist faction, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, are almost there. But the two groups’ respective positions become increasingly obvious and inescapable over time, being the only reasonable explanations for their respective actions and rhetoric. 

Let it be noted, however, that for all the apparent conflict between them on the subject of the war, in the final analysis they are aiming at the same thing, namely the appeasement of Vladimir Putin and the maintenance of the pre-war status quo, with thousands of dead or enslaved victims of tyranny “over there” being regarded by both sides as an insignificant price to pay for the restoration of “stability.” That is, for all the noisy vitriol between the two factions, they are, in the final analysis, basically arguing about optics, not outcomes — such internal conflict over mere methods and rhetoric being a defining mark of establishmentarianism. The “two party system” operating as always, and, as always, dragging a hundred and fifty million lost souls through the crucible of its ignoble lie, the never-ending “binary choice” election cycle.

The same dynamic, with regional variations, may easily be observed in Western Europe, as the traditional democratic allies maintain, at the leadership level, the same ambiguous voice of “supporting Ukraine, but not too much,” while an undercurrent made up of undersecretaries and rival parties speaks more openly of Putin having been “unjustly provoked” by NATO, and of Ukraine having to accept the sacrifice of its territorial sovereignty in the name of peace. 

Is it any wonder the former free world is so unfree today, and so rapidly accelerating into the gutter of self-annihilation? Its establishments are rotting corpses, decaying in the muck of lustful indulgence and hubristic illogic, and increasingly infested with Marxist flies and populist worms, all seeking, in their superficially alternative ways, to cast off all the institutions, principles, and apolitical wonders that were once the wellsprings of civilization and the guardrails of rational coexistence, in the name of their own avarice, perpetual power, and sense of entitlement.

Allow me to here let the cat out of the bag and say that I find Jonescu's assessment more resonant. He takes the longer view, speaking of "wellsprings of civilization and the guardrails of rational coexistence."

That is what gets short shrift in most of these exchanges. What I'm after is a worldview impervious to compartmentalization. 

Olsen says populists claim a Christian foundation but are not inclined to attend church. That indicates to me that they're also not inclined to do a deep dive into the very kind of thing we all need to dive into. 

I know that the notion of immutable verities shows up in a lot of the bullet-point-ish summarizations of what conservatism (remember that concept?), but we're always tempted to settle for an uneasy peace at which competing social movements or economic paradigms arrive. 

The real quest human beings are on is that for a slop-proof universal ought. 

And I don't think we can embark on a sound analysis on any level short of acknowledging a transcendent order. Anything less ends in a relativity that ultimately resolves nothing.

 

 

 

With the "equity" push, the overlords may have found their most effective means yet of imposing tyranny on us

 A while back, at my Substack, Precipice, I wrote a piece titled "The Sliver of Terrain I Inhabit Grows Narrower Still." It further developed a them I've visited there occasionally - namely, the struggle to adhere to a truly conservative vision in an age in which Trumpism has assumed the role of progressivism's chief combatant. As I've exhaustively explained, at Precipice, here at LITD and elsewhere, Trumpism and actual conservatism are markedly different critters, and the peril in the conflation of the two weakens the case against the progressive agenda.

In the latest essay on the subject, I make note of a further complication: that of the non-Trumpist conservative who minimizes, or at least cares not to discuss more than glancingly, the machinations of the Left:

There are two types of people who frustrate me to no end with their perpetuation of the message that concern about this is overblown. For shorthand, I’ll use individuals who embody the two types of argument for saying so.

It gives me no pleasure to call either of them out. I greatly admire both of them, and feel the work they do generally speaking is invaluable.

Let me start with Heath Mayo, the founder of Principles First. It was supremely important that that movement appeared when it did, and its importance continues to this day. But Mayo, whose presence on Twitter is considerable, is so focused on the ill-advised nature of the Florida legislature’s tactics that he risks coming across as oblivious to the very real damage late-stage progressivism is doing to Western civilization’s spiritual health. He’s a solid conservative. I know that. But there is more to conservatism than the limited-government pillar.

Then there’s David French. I hesitate to take issue with him, given the risk thereby incurred that one gets associated with Sohrab Amari-ism. Let me state with no ambiguity that I am not in Amari’s camp.

In fact, my frustration with French is rooted in his main virtue. He is first and foremost a Christian, a real, deep and sincere one. He has the heart of one who is constantly looking to see if he has a plank in his own eye, as we all should. But it leads him to say some things that, frankly, I don’t think serve the moment well, such as that “how you love your friends might be more important to our nation than what you think of CRT.” 

Mr. French, with all due respect, the racialization of everything, along with the sexualization of everything, is a real and urgent problem.

Furthermore, the way he frames such things leaves him open to mocking from some truly scurrilous figures who, despite their vileness, have followings and influence. Since we’re naming names, I’ll say that Kurt Schlichter comes to mind in this regard.

I start this post the way I do because the Left's intention to bring every last individual in our society to heel grows more menacing by the day. 

If one loves freedom, particularly freedom to come to one's own conclusions about human interaction, one cannot fail to see the darkness our federal government wishes to subject us to:

Under the Biden administration, more than 90 federal agencies have pledged their commitment to equity by adopting action plans that put gender, race and other such factors at the center of their governmental missions.

The Equity Action Plans, which have received little notice since they were posted online last month following a document request from RealClearInvestigations, represent a “whole of government” fight against “entrenched disparities” and the “unbearable human costs of systemic racism.”

The equity blueprints show that:

• The U.S. State Department is keen on exporting American-style gender and race consciousness into foreign diplomacy and across the globe. Citing “identity” and “intersections of marginalization” as focal points, State Department officials acknowledge that promoting these Western concepts in foreign lands may clash with “societal norms” and elicit an “unwillingness to cede power by dominant groups.”
• The Environmental Protection Agency plans to tap into “community science” from tribal nations and other interest groups, in addition to relying on academic peer-reviewed research. As the agency shifts its enforcement focus from responding to complaints to proactively initiating its own investigations, the EPA plans to fund “community scientists” to supply evidence of what it calls environmental racism and other corporate practices to be targeted for federal investigation.
• The Smithsonian Institution is embedding diversity and equity in “everything we do” across the labs and collections that make up the world’s largest museum complex. The Smithsonian has, like other agencies, enthroned a Head Diversity Officer position to coordinate these efforts, and will refocus its energies to explore “how race has informed all our lives” and affirm “the centrality of race in America.”

The Equity Action Plans are a response to an executive order President Biden signed on his first day of office in January 2021, committing his administration to pursuing “a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”

And these Equity Plans are not an end but a means:

The Equity Action Plans are only the first step in what the Biden administration calls a “generational commitment” to redressing historical disparities between political identity groups. But the full implications of the Biden strategy are obscured by the fact that the documents are short on specifics and larded with standard governmentese and boilerplate language about promoting best practices, collecting data, reducing barriers to government procurement, and contracting with disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.

In a typical bureaucratic passage, the Justice Department's plan includes a commitment to “ask each of its major procuring bureaus to identify at least two contracting opportunities for HUBZone small businesses each fiscal year for 4 years, or until the statutory goal of 3% is met, and to compete those contracts exclusively among HUBZone firms.”

But the documents are also open-ended and can serve as a platform for significant change. In a sweeping, general statement, the Department of Agriculture vows to “continue to integrate civil rights and equity in the design of its policies and programs that span the entirety of its mandate, including areas such as food security, nutrition, natural resources and conservation, rural development, and more.”

Representatives of several groups that filed public comments described the comments as generic but promising an important first step toward empowering historically marginalized communities.

“For the most part they say the right things,” said James Goodwin, senior policy analyst with the Center for Progressive Reform, one of the nearly 500 groups that filed public comments to guide the creation of the Equity Action Plans.

“But you know words on paper are very different from action. What’s most important is that an agency’s culture changes to incorporate a lot of these things,” Goodwin said. “A lot of these things can be relegated to a check-the-box exercise which doesn’t make a major impact in the day-to-day actions of an agency, or it can be fully integrated into an agency’s DNA.”

As I noted in a piece here at LITD a while back, this is also happening the local level:

The codification of DEI into an imposition of rules and even laws is not confined to coastal areas or the federal level of government. 

There is a city, with a manufacturing-based economy (that is, it's not some insular bubble of egghead-ism), in the heart of an ostensibly rock-ribbed red state in which local government, the local community college, the local K-12 school district, hospital, newspaper, major employers and religious coalition have banded together to coordinate efforts to impose DEI on all aspects of daily life. 

The message is clear: You will be made to put your fellow human being's demographic classification front and center in your dealings with him or her. 

And the emergence of this term "equity" merits some discussion. Until recently, I'd never heard it used in any context other than as the portion of a piece of property one is buying on loan that one has already paid for. Why has it supplanted the term "equality"? 

“Equity” is the relative newcomer to the [DEI] trinity. It is a substitute for “equality,” because equality before the law, equality of opportunity, and moral equality fail to deliver the wished-for result, which is redistribution of all social goods in strict proportion to the relative size of a minority group to the general population. Equity is a wish-fulfillment word masquerading as a justice claim.

 There is only one way this upending of what we've always been about as a nation is going to have any kind of chance at being rolled back: unflinching courage on the part of everybody who can see what's happening.

 

 

 

 

The obscene preening over the Georgia election law

 Lots of people and organizations are grandstanding and demagoguing about a piece of legislation in Georgia that is well within the midrange of voting laws to be found around the country, and merely specifies provisions that were considered quite normal less than a decade ago. Their displays of self-congratulation are based on lies and they know it. 

Let's start with President Joe Biden, whose "Jim Crow on steroids" remark and lies about the law's voting-hours provisions garnered four Pinocchios from the Washington Post's fact-checker Glenn Kessler:

First he quotes Biden:

“What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It’s sick. It’s sick … deciding that you’re going to end voting at 5 o’clock when working people are just getting off work.” (March 25)

“Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.” (March 26)

“You are going to close a polling place at 5 o’clock when working people just get off. This is all about keeping working folks and ordinary folks that I grew up with from being able to vote.”

Then Kessler responds to the president’s claims:

In reality, Election Day hours were not changed and the opportunities to cast a ballot in early voting were expanded. The law made a modest change, replacing a vague phrase “normal business hours” — presumed to be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. — to a more specific 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. time period. (Some rural county election offices worked only part time during the week, not a full eight-hour day, so the shift to more specific times makes it clear they must be open every weekday for at least eight hours.) But that’s the minimum.

Under the new law, counties have the option to extend the voting hours so voters can start casting ballots as early as 7 a.m. and as late as 7 p.m. — the same as Election Day in Georgia. Moreover, an additional mandatory day of early voting on Saturday was added and two days of early voting on Sunday were codified as an option for counties.

The White House did not provide an explanation for Biden’s erroneous statement, which has turned up in a news conference, an official statement and an interview. Astonishingly, at an April 1 news briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the president’s comment, incorrectly arguing “it standardizes the ending of voting every day at 5, right?”

The truth is that the Georgia bill codifies drop boxes for ballots as a permanent feature of the state’s voting system (prior to 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic they had never been used there before), expands early voting, and institutes a voter ID requirement that is broadly supported by Americans of all races. Jim Crow it is not, much less a performance-enhancing drugged-up version of it.

Then there's his disgusting distortion of what the handing-out-food-and-water provision says:

Here’s what Biden had to say:

It’s an atrocity. The idea, you want any indication, it has nothing to do with fairness, nothing to do with decency. They pass a law saying you can’t provide water for people standing in line, while they’re waiting to vote.  You don’t need anything else to know that this is nothing but punitive, designed to keep people from voting. You can’t provide water for people about to vote? Give me a break.

Let’s take a look at what S.B. 202 actually says:

No person shall solicit votes [or] distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to [a voter] … This Code section shall not be construed to prohibit a poll officer…from making available self-service water from an unattended receptacle to [a voter] waiting in line to vote.

The parts in bold are what S.B. 202 added to the statute. The prohibition applies inside polling places, within 150 feet of a polling place, or “within 25 feet of any voter standing in line to vote at any polling place.”

Now, first of all, notice what is not prohibited here. Voters can still bring bottled water or other food or beverages with them to stand on line to vote, as people often do when waiting at Disney World or to buy concert tickets or in other public places where people stand on long lines. Voters can still also, if they like, order food; the bill doesn’t stop the Domino’s Pizza man or the local hot dog cart or taco truck from doing business. And if you feel impelled to donate food and drink to voters, you can still do that, too; you just have to give it to the poll workers so they can put it out for general use. The president’s claim that “You can’t provide water for people about to vote” is just false. What you cannot do under the new Georgia law is deploy people in National Rifle Association t-shirts and MAGA hats to hand out free Koch-brothers-financed, Federalist Society–branded pizza to voters. 

  

If you read the full Major League Baseball statement, written my commissioner Rob Manfred, also found in the above-linked piece, you'll see he doesn't actually specify any details of the law that the organization finds objectionable. Just a lot of dog waste about Hank Aaron and "fair access to voting."

Delta Airlines peddles falsehoods with a race-card angle in its chime-in on the matter:

Delta’s CEO, Ed Bastian, issued a foolish statement denouncing Georgia’s election reform legislation. Bastien’s statement parroted false left-wing narratives:

Last week, the Georgia legislature passed a sweeping voting reform act that could make it harder for many Georgians, particularly those in our Black and Brown communities, to exercise their right to vote.

This is false. What the law does is make it harder for non-existent people, people who are not qualified voters, and people who have already cast ballots to vote.

I need to make it crystal clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values.

The right to vote is sacred. It is fundamental to our democracy and those rights not only need to be protected, but easily facilitated in a safe and secure manner.

After having time to now fully understand all that is in the bill, coupled with discussions with leaders and employees in the Black community, it’s evident that the bill includes provisions that will make it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right to elect their representatives. That is wrong.

Again, this is sheer fabrication, and racist fabrication at that. The idea that “Black voters” are somehow unable to participate in an elementary process like voting is insulting to them.

You may remember Gabriel Sterling, the Georgia election official who gave the thunderous speech last December holding Donald Trump responsible for creating a climate in which threats and calls for violence could proliferate, and for costing the GOP the Senate;

My boss, Secretary Raffensperger, his address is out there. They have people doing caravans in front of their house. They’ve had people come on to their property. Tricia, his wife of 40 years, is getting sexualized threats through her cell phone. It has to stop. This is elections. This is the backbone of democracy. And all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit in this. It’s too much. Yes. Fight for every legal vote. Go through your due process. We encourage you. Use your first amendment. That’s fine. Death threats, physical threats, intimidation, it’s too much. It’s not right. They’ve lost the moral high ground to claim that it is.

I don’t have all the best words to do this because I’m angry. The straw that broke the camel’s back today is again, this 20 year old contractor for a voting system company, just trying to do his job. Just there. In fact, I talked to Dominion today and I said, “He’s one of the better ones they got.” His family is getting harassed now. There’s a noose out there with his name on it. That’s not right. I’ve got police protection outside my house. Fine. I took a higher profile job. I get it. Secretary ran for office. His wife knew that too. This kid took a job. He just took a job. And it’s just wrong. I can’t begin to explain the level of anger I have right now over this. And every American, every Georgian, Republican and Democrat alike should have that same level of anger.

Mr. President, it looks like you likely lost the state of Georgia. We’re investigating. There’s always a possibility. I get it, and you have the rights to go through the courts. What you don’t have the ability to do, and you need to step up and say this, is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed. And it’s not right. It’s not right. And y’all, I don’t have anything scripted. Like I said, I’m going to do my best to keep it together. All of this is wrong.

So he's clearly no fan of the Very Stable Genius. But he also sees that Biden's remarks are every bit as toxic:

Sterling wasn’t pleased. “I think it’s morally reprehensible and disgusting that he’s perpetuating economic blackmail over a lie,” he told The Dispatch. “It’s a lie. This is no different than the lie of Trump saying there was voter fraud in this state. And the people who are going to be most hurt by [a boycott] are the workers in all of these places that are going to be impacted.”

Georgia was by no means purple, even though it wound up sending two Democrats to the Senate in the January runoff.  That was largely due to the boneheaded GOP candidates' behavior and the VSG's antics such as the "find 11,000 votes" call to Brad Raffensperger. My powers of prognostication are decidedly those of an amateur, but I think we can expect 2022 midterm results that show strong backlash to this disgusting bit of strutting by the leftists who have designs on making America unrecognizable. 

UPDATE: A white-hot Governor Brian Kemp lets loose on the MBA and big Georgia-based corporations. 

UPDATE:  Donald Trump needs to shut his stinking rotten mouth and stay the hell out of this situation.

 

 

 

  

 

The Business Roundtable has served up its testicles to Elizabeth Warren on a silver platter

Did those CEOs that deigned to expand the array of stakeholders to which a corporation is responsible beyond those who actually own it not see that the insatiable Left would demand an immediate translation of their declaration into action - action that must meet the Left's standards?

The Business Roundtable in August issued a statement that basically announced that the folks who had scrimped and saved and invested in American corporations for their retirement were just not that important anymore. I noted then:

“Business Roundtable Redefines the Purpose of a Corporation to Promote ‘An Economy That Serves All Americans,’” according to a press release from the organization. It adds: “Updated Statement Moves Away from Shareholder Primacy, Includes Commitment to All Stakeholders.”

Moving away from shareholder primacy? What about your retirement, right?

Other “stakeholders” were more important in the redefined corporation, however.

The Wall Street Journal presciently noted a “whiff of pre-emption” in the statement:

They see socialism on the rise, with Senator Elizabeth Warren proposing to redefine corporate governance in law with explicit direction to serve “stakeholders.” Her goal is to redirect corporate capital to serve political goals favored by unions, environmentalists and trial lawyers. The CEOs no doubt want to get out in front of this by showing what splendid corporate citizens they are.

Yet these CEOs are fooling themselves if they think this new rhetoric will buy off Ms. Warren and the socialist left. It may even embolden them by implying that corporate rules that require a focus on achieving value for shareholders are somehow morally insufficient. The Roundtable CEOs may be selling Ms. Warren the political rope to hang them.

The editors were right: rather than being mollified, Senator Warren was emboldened.

Warren is now demanding that the Roundtable CEOs prove that they are willing to redefine corporations, as an editorial in this morning’s Wall Street Journal observes:

“I write for information about the tangible actions you intend to take to implement the principles” in the Roundtable’s Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, Sen. Warren wrote to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and other CEOs late last week.

Her letter then denounces corporate profits, stock buybacks and dividends that she says leave workers behind. “I am pleased that the Business Roundtable has acknowledged the harm that this trend inflicts on the economy and that you, on behalf of JP Morgan Chase, have pledged to take steps to reverse it,” the letter adds.

“If you, and the other 181 corporate executives who signed the BRT’s new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, plan to live up to the promises you made, I expect that you will endorse and wholeheartedly support the reforms laid out in the Accountable Capitalism Act to meet the principles you endorse. I have attached a copy of the bill.”

You have to love that “I expect” line. She’s not President yet, but she’s already giving orders to CEOs about how to behave if they know what’s good for them. Very Trumpian. And entirely predictable.

If you are retired or nearing retirement age, this has to be especially frightening.

The editors go on to explain how Senator Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act would “end capitalism as we know it.”

Companies with a billion or more in revenue would have to obtain a federal charter (they now have state charters). And they would go down the road the Roundtable redefiners started on—but much farther:

Instead of serving the interests of the shareholders who own the company, CEOs and directors would have to serve some combination of “the workforce,” “customers,” “the local and global environment” and “community and societal factors.” Forty percent of directors would also have to be employees, which would usually mean union representatives.

So pre-emptive concessions to appease the left might not be the best policy:

CEOs can’t buy off Mrs. Warren and the left with this or that rhetorical or policy concession. Her intention is to co-opt and redirect the capital that business and individuals now control. The only way to defeat this threat is to defend the morality of free markets and the moral and fiduciary duty of corporations to their shareholder owners.

 The really sad part is that there will be some Rountable signatories who will puke all over themselves to accommodate Warran's rapacious designs, who will see her agenda as "just" and "visionary" or some such dog vomit.

A New York Times editorial board member tries to deem Ted Cruz unqualified to utter Frederick Douglass's name

Seriously. Just take a moment to let in the smugness, the supreme arrogance, of this.

The story begins with race hustler Colin Kaepernick's cherry-picking of a Frederick Douglass quote to make it seem like Douglass had a 2019 leftist view of America:

Kaepernick initiated his descent by tweeting a quote from Douglass: “‘What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.’ – Frederick Douglass.”

Cruz then launched his fusillade:

You quote a mighty and historic speech by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, but, without context, many modern readers will misunderstand. Two critical points: This speech was given in 1852, before the Civil War, when the abomination of slavery still existed. Thanks to Douglass and so many other heroes, we ended that grotesque evil and have made enormous strides to protecting the civil rights of everybody.

Douglass was not anti-American; he was, rightly and passionately, anti-slavery. Indeed, he concluded the speech as follows: “Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from ‘the Declaration of Independence,’ the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.”

Cruz concluded, “Let me encourage everyone, READ THE ENTIRE SPEECH; it is powerful, inspirational, and historically important in bending the arc of history towards justice.”

And then the NYT editorial board member chimed in:

Mara Gay‏Verified account @MaraGay

Mara Gay Retweeted Ted Cruz

Frederick Douglass is an American hero, and his name has no business in your mouth.

Will she get in trouble? After all, she's pretty clearly in violation of her paper's policy:

The New York Times announced on Friday an updated and expanded set of guidelines for our journalists’ use of social media.

The new guidelines underscore our newsroom’s appreciation for the important role social media now plays in our journalism, but also call for our journalists to take extra care to avoid expressing partisan opinions or editorializing on issues that The Times is covering.

In the interest of transparency, we’ve included the complete guidelines below, along with an introductory memo sent to the newsroom by Dean Baquet, our executive editor.

We’re always interested in hearing from our readers. Do the new guidelines raise any questions for you? If so, please share your thoughts in the comments section.

To the newsroom:

The New York Times has been a dominant force on social media for years. Our newsroom accounts have tens of millions of followers. Many of our journalists are influential voices on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. The voices of our readers, listeners and viewers inform and improve our reporting. 

We believe that to remain the world’s best news organization, we have to maintain a vibrant presence on social media. 

But we also need to make sure that we are engaging responsibly on social media, in line with the values of our newsroom.

That’s why we’re issuing updated and expanded social media guidelines.

The guidelines were developed in a collaborative way by Cliff Levy, Phil Corbett and Cynthia Collins, and are rooted in the very experiences of our journalists. 

Please read them closely, and take them to heart.

— Dean Baquet, Executive Editor

I'm not holding my breath, though.

 

Gender obliteration winds up reinforcing gender-difference realities more forcefully than ever

Two pieces I've run across this afternoon have a point of confluence that ought to launch an important  discussion.

Susan Wright at The Resurgent quite appropriately laments the Boy Scouts of America officially changing its name - and membership policy - to Scouts BSA. (And what a lame way to try to nod to heritage. If the B doesn't stand for anything, what the hell is it doing there?) Specifically, she brings up the inevitable scenario that's going to arise:

As the group now begins adding girls to that group, ages 11 to 17, at the very time when puberty is setting in and that self-conscious sense of being sized up by the opposite sex seems to encompass every waking moment, we can only wonder how soon before some young woman fires the first shot at the organization.

In this too “woke” society, just a passing glance can be used as a punishable offense.

Put pre-pubescent and hormone-driven youth together, and at some point, something will go wrong.

Unfortunately, our current state of reality prevents us from pointing out that males and females are different, for a reason.

Then there's Christine Rosen's article about the Davos confab at Commentary, and the back and forth over - of course, they had to discuss this; it's such a weighty subject, so say the pointy-heads who assume the role of deciding what's weighty - toxic masculinity. It seems like the preponderant view was that caution about putting professionals of opposite genders - are we even allowed to couch it that way at this late date? - in such realms as the corporate world or government or NGOs is an obstacle to progress. Rosen substantively refutes this:

At this year’s recent gathering of the global business elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, during panels exploring subjects such as the Future of Masculinity, business executives used all the right buzzwords to signal their support of women in a post-#MeToo world. As Marc Pritchard of Procter & Gamble told the New York Times, “It’s not enough to stand by when toxic masculinity is on display . . . It’s not enough to stand by and say ‘that’s not me.’ You need to be a role model for the next generation.”

Behind the scenes, however, others expressed concern about some of the unintended consequences of #MeToo. Many admitted they were now uncomfortable mentoring female colleagues for fear that their behavior would be misconstrued as sexual harassment. As the Times noted, male leaders said “they were avoiding one-on-one time with junior female colleagues because, as one man put it, the issue is ‘just too sensitive.’”

It’s a surprisingly honest admission from business leaders, who are not usually so straightforward about their feelings. (By contrast, as some business leaders confessed to a reporter, despite the many earnest public expressions of concern about the future of work, most Davos attendees are secretly super excited about robots replacing humans.)

The story drew a predictably scornful response from many in the media, however, including from people who complained that the Davos men were using claims of hypersensitivity as justification for longstanding sexist attitudes.

One GQ writer scoffed at the idea that business leaders felt confused about the new rules for office behavior and suggested that male executives “just . . . not sexually harass anyone,” arguing, “It begs the question what kind of mentoring these executives were providing that it could be so easily confused with sexual harassment.” Others were blunter. As a digital media strategist quoted in the GQ story tweeted: “It’s important to understand that a lot of rich, prominent men rarely or never interact [with] women they’re not in financial control of: Wives, or employees, or mistresses. They literally have no frame of reference for a professional woman with independent ambitions.”

By refusing to take men’s concerns seriously, however, these critics do men and women a disservice. The concerns of men about the optics of spending one-on-one time with their female colleagues might be cover for sexism for a few, but for most in the post-#MeToo business world, hypersensitivity about the appearance of misconduct has become de facto business practice for good reason.

At a time when an uncorroborated allegation of harassment (amplified by social media) can potentially derail a career (or, say, a Supreme Court nomination), it would be foolish for men not to think twice before spending time alone with a woman in their office.

It’s disingenuous for feminist-minded critics to demand that men embrace the new post-#MeToo regime of awareness and sensitivity to women’s concerns and then turn around and attack them when they try to do just that. Remember the reaction to the so-called “Pence Rule?” After it emerged during an interview that the vice president made it a practice not to dine out alone with any woman but his wife, critics acted as if he had just announced he had joined the Taliban.

We certainly see this when the envelope is pushed yet further. Trans "girls" routinely win athletic contests. They also take intents beyond relieving themselves into restrooms.

The question is how much damage is going to be done to actual human beings before there is a collective reassessment of the wisdom of going down this path.

We do not invent ourselves. There is an architecture to the universe that we inhabit that was instituted on the eternal plane, and we try to buck it at our peril.