Links - 22nd July 2024 (1 - Diversity [including Plagiarism])

Thread by @realchrisrufo on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "EXCLUSIVE: @LukeRosiak and I have discovered that the DEI director of UCLA Medical School, Natalie J. Perry, plagiarized multiple long passages in her PhD dissertation, which is her only published academic work.  The plagiarism here is shocking. 🧵
UCLA Med School has been in the news recently for promoting ideology about "Indigenous womxn," "two-spirits," and "structural racism." A guest speaker praised and two residents championed "revolutionary suicide."  The DEI director, who advances "anti-racism," is Natalie Perry. But according to our exclusive analysis, Perry's career is predicated on academic fraud. Her PhD dissertation plagiarized material from ten other papers, which she did not attribute or put in quotations. The examples are brazen: Throughout the paper, Perry copies and pastes large sections of text from other authors. When she has to rely on original work, she often lapses into serious errors and basic grammatical problems. The paper—of course—was about DEI at universities."
DEI Meets Plagiarism at UCLA - "Recent headlines about UCLA School of Medicine suggest that the institution has lost its focus. Instead of brushing up on organic chemistry, its students were subjected to lessons on “Indigenous womxn” and “two-spirits.” Future doctors had to take a class on “structural racism” and were led in a “Free Palestine” chant by a Hamas-praising guest speaker. The school made plans to segregate students by race for courses on left-wing ideology, and two of its psychiatry residents championed “revolutionary suicide.”   Why has the school charted this course? One reason is its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology. UCLA has a DEI program called “Cultural North Star,” and at the medical school, it is led by Natalie J. Perry, whose official title is Cultural North Star Lead... The scale of the plagiarism suggests that Perry lacks both ethics and competence and raises questions about academic programs that push DEI... Entrepreneur Mark Cuban recently argued that DEI policies don’t necessarily lower an organization’s expectations. But for Harvard, UVA, and UCLA Medical School—where Perry earned her master’s, Ph.D., and DEI position, respectively—this is evidently not the case. These institutions have dramatically lowered expectations for favored groups and pushed a cohort of “scholars” through the system without enforcing basic standards of academic integrity.  Ultimately, Natalie Perry is to blame for her misconduct. But these institutions of higher learning share some fault for permitting such shoddiness to stand unchallenged"

Thread by @aaronsibarium on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "NEW: In 2021, MIT hired six high-level DEI officials. Two of them now appear to be serial plagiarists.  One official, Tracie Jones-Barrett, copied an entire section on "ethical considerations" from a classmate in her Ph.D program.  Her dissertation's title? "Cite A Sista."🧵 In 2021, MIT welcomed six new deans of DEI, one for each of the institute's main schools, as part of a "DEI Strategic Action Plan" launched the previous year. The plan pledged to "make equity central" to the university "while ensuring the highest standards of excellence." But according to a 71-page complaint filed with the university on Saturday, at least two of the six DEI officials may not be living up to those standards: In their doctoral dissertations, Tracie Jones-Barrett and Alana Anderson copied pages of material from other scholars. In her 2023 dissertation titled "Cite a Sista," Jones-Barrett, MIT’s deputy "equity officer," lifts a whole section on "ethical considerations" from Emmitt Wyche III, her classmate in Northeastern University's Graduate School of Education, without any sort of citation. The section is one of several long passages taken from Wyche's 2020 thesis, "Boyz in the Hoods: (Re) Defining the Narratives of Black Male Doctoral Degree Completers," which does not appear in Jones-Barrett's bibliography. Anderson, who served as the diversity czar for MIT's computer science college until last year, when she left to become Boston Beer Company's inclusion and belonging program manager, likewise copied copious material from other scholars. Her 2017 dissertation, "#BLACKONCAMPUS: A Critical Examination of Racial and Gender Performances of Black College Women on Social Media," lifts over a page of material from Mark Chae, a professor of counseling at Pillar College, who is not cited anywhere in her dissertation. "It would have been nice to at least get a citation!" Chae told the Washington Free Beacon in an email. "Anderson seems quite comfortable in taking credit for large portions of another writer's scholarly work." Anderson, who held DEI posts at Boston University and Babson College before coming to MIT, lifts another long passage from Jarvis Givens, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, without an in-text citation. The omissions appear to violate MIT's plagiarism policy, which states that scholars must cite their sources any time they "use the words, ideas, or phrasing of another person." In total, the two diversity deans lifted about 10 full pages of material without attribution, according to the complaint, as well as dozens of shorter passages sprinkled throughout their theses. Like former Harvard president Claudine Gay, Anderson even stole language from another scholar's acknowledgments, copying phrases and sentences used by Khalilah Shabazz, now a DEI official at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, to thank her dissertation advisers. The lift was executed clumsily: Anderson's acknowledgments contain several typos not seen in Shabbaz's, including missing words and commas and a lack of subject-verb agreement. Saturday's complaint is the latest in a string of plagiarism allegations against campus diversity officials. Since Gay's resignations, DEI officers at Harvard, Columbia, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the UCLA have been accused of research misconduct. The accused administrators have not been publicly sanctioned by their universities, which have either declined to comment on the allegations or issued statements in support of the officials. The complaint against Anderson and Jones-Barrett may be harder for MIT to brush aside, however, given its high-profile efforts to distance itself from DEI in the post-October 7 era. MIT said this month that it would no longer require DEI statements from candidates applying to faculty positions, making it the first elite school to axe the practice. It also led the way in restoring the SAT requirements axed by many colleges in an effort to boost diversity. The pushback has come largely from MIT faculty and been driven, in part, by a sense that DEI programs excuse and even encourage anti-Semitism. An April article in MIT's faculty newsletter noted that an event on "Jewish inclusion" had whitewashed the rhetoric of the school's pro-Palestinian protesters, who have occupied campus buildings, called for "Intifada revolution," and allegedly chanted "death to Zionists." "Jewish students," a blurb for the DEI event read, "are encountering much of the same discomfort that other minorities face on campus and in the world, in that they don't feel heard or acknowledged." The two dissertations at issue are strikingly derivative, cobbled together from classmates, online sources, and even a book's dust jacket, and at times read like replicas of their unattributed source material. Jones-Barrett's summary of her dissertation, for example, is nearly identical to the summary Wyche provides of his own. Both papers use "semi-structured interviews" to "gather insights" from black graduates of Ph.D. programs about their "subjective experiences" of "meaning-making," or, as Wyche misspells it, "mean-making." The primary difference is that Wyche's study deals with black men, while Jones-Barrett's deals with black women. "This study, the first of its kind[,] uses Black Feminist Thought as a framework to explore and investigate how Black women at Ivy League graduate schools of education make meaning of thriving," reads the first sentence of Jones-Barrett's dissertation, which is missing a comma. "There are limited studies that center the voices of Black women at Ivy League graduate schools and there are no studies that look specifically at Ivy League graduate schools of education." Jones-Barrett, who has taught courses at Harvard Extension School and was initially hired as the DEI czar for MIT's humanities programs, also poached a passage on "potential research bias" from Wyche—now a DEI consultant who on LinkedIn calls himself as a "status quo disrupter." He's not the only classmate she plagiarized: On p.1 of her dissertation, she lifts an entire paragraph from Scott Fitzsimmons, who earned his PhD in education from Northeastern, without attribution, swapping out "rural EMS leaders" for "Black women in graduate programs." Anderson, meanwhile, lifts several paragraphs from a 2016 ThinkProgress article about her alma mater, Boston College, from which some of her study's interview subjects were drawn. That plagiarism undercuts her effort to prevent the school, to which she refers with a pseudonym, from being identified—a possible violation of the study's consent form, which promised participants that no "identifying information" would be disclosed. Anderson—who runs her own consultancy that offers "scientifically-based" DEI programming—also borrows three sentences from the dust jacket of Ebony and Ivy, a 2013 book by MIT historian Craig Wilder, who is only cited in one of the sentences (without quotation marks). Like many of the authors plagiarized by Gay, Wilder defended Anderson's decision to copy his work, writing in an email that he didn't think a citation was necessary. "I cannot imagine why anyone would cite a dust jacket, nor do I see the urgency of criminalizing the failure to do so," Wilder told the Free Beacon. "I'm honored," he added, when other scholars "find inspiration from my publications.""

Fourth Black Female Harvard Scholar Accused of Plagiarism Amid Assault on DEI Initiatives - "Harvard Sociology assistant professor Christina J. Cross was accused of plagiarism in an anonymous complaint to Harvard’s Office of Research Integrity, conservative activist Christopher F. Rufo reported in the City Journal — the fourth Black woman at Harvard who studies race or social justice to be accused of plagiarism.  The allegations against Cross mark the fourth in a rapid series of anonymous plagiarism complaints of varying severity lodged against Black women at Harvard amid a growing right-wing attack against diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education. Cross follows former Harvard president Claudine Gay; Sherri A. Charleston, Harvard’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer; and Shirley R. Greene, a Title IX coordinator at the Harvard Extension School, who have all faced plagiarism allegations since December."
Clearly, this just shows how much racism and sexism there is against black women when white men are as bad or worse, and even though the left wingers have been openly proclaiming that they'll try to weaponise plagiarism accusations too and the only attempt they've made is Bill Ackman's wife, and that's a bad attempt too, they're tons of examples out there

gail shulman on X - "Let's not ignore your racist, sexist mission to discredit as many Black women as you can. You could choose to investigate white male professors for plagiarism (and I assure you there are plenty of them) but you focus on Black women. I can't wait till someone investigates you."
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ on X - "Newsflash: One of my sources investigated white social-justice scholars at Harvard, but did not find plagiarism in their work. This is not dispositive, nor a large-scale survey, but the initial result suggests the strong possibility of a disparity in behavior, i.e., copy-pasting."
Moderately Deplorable Diva on X - "You can assure us there are many white, male plagiarizers? So why aren’t you exposing them?"
gail shulman on X - "I'm too busy smashing the patriarchy."
Moderately Deplorable Diva on X - "Well, exposing white male frauds should right in with your project then."
When did universities' zero tolerance for plagiarism become zero tolerance only for plagiarism by white straight cis men?

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ on X - "One of the ironies to this accusation is that I have explicitly asked my sources to review the work of white and Asian scholars and, thus far, the verified plagiarism cases have been predominantly from black women. This is not dispositive, nor is it a systematic study, but it is not implausible that CRT/DEI fields would have higher rates of plagiarism, particularly in specified demographics, given that these fields are heavily populated by affirmative action policies and have lower scholarly standards that more rigorous disciplines."
AmishDude on X - "There’s another factor. The people that you’ve focused on have administrative positions. Those in the DEI/CRT fields tend to be attracted to admin. Typically admin isn’t filled with the best scholars but social climbers."
guwinster on X - "Those in DEI fields are also less likely to believe in academic merit or that successful people (particularly white people) succeed academically because of merit. Because they don't believe in academic merit, it should be no surprised they have low academic integrity."

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ on X - "Let's not ignore the pattern: This is the fourth black female CRT/DEI scholar to be accused of plagiarism at Harvard. We need further research, including a control group of more rigorous fields, but initial reports suggest that the grievance disciplines are rife with fraud."
Roger Kimball on X - ""Grievance Disciplines," indeed. Many of these people major, if but covertly, in grievance studies. It fuels their narcissism as well as their anger."

Michael Nayna on X - "People aren't going to like this but it's an obvious pattern. It boils down to the more (intersectional) oppression categories one's identity has the less scrutiny applied to thier work. A result of DEI culture. Poke around the work of Indigenous scholars, it gets wild..." *crazy video of woke socialist drivel and demanding to be paid to grievance monger*

Yale Tells Hopeful Scientists: You Must Commit to DEI - "Want to be a molecular biologist at Yale? Well, make sure you have a ten-step plan for dismantling systemic racism. When making hires at Yale’s department of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, faculty are told to place “DEI at the center of every decision”... every job advertised on the site links to a DEI “rubric” that tests candidates’ “knowledge of DEI and commitment to promoting DEI,” their “past DEI experiences and activities,” and their “future DEI goals and plans.” The questions are designed to find out how they would infuse diversity, equity, and inclusion—a focus on race, gender, sexual orientation, and other categories of “marginalization”—into their work... The assessment puts the thumb on the scale for those with progressive sensibilities. Scientists earn a high score in the category of “DEI knowledge” by showing they understand the “specific challenges faced by underrepresented minorities”—a criterion likely to favor those with a strong faith in the concepts of microaggressions, implicit bias, and systemic racism.  Diversity statements raise serious issues about free expression, and they also signal an ill-advised shift in priority—away from disciplinary excellence and toward social activism."

Want to Get Hired by Columbia? Put DEI Before Teaching. - "Columbia is using an “evaluation tool”—strikingly similar to the Yale rubric—that mandates hiring committees assign more weight to DEI than teaching, and to give DEI equal weight to research.   The tool, designed by the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, tells faculty to give each candidate up to 50 points, with DEI comprising 15 of those points—the same amount as their research. An additional ten points each are awarded in the areas of teaching and service... if Columbia search committees follow the advice of their administrators, they would rank an average researcher with strong DEI credentials more highly than an outstanding researcher who expresses skepticism about, say, segregated graduations. (Meanwhile, the worst thing any scholar or scientist could do for their job prospects is to focus on diversity of thought in their mandatory DEI statement. Don’t even think about using the word color-blind. If that describes your approach to diversity—as it does for Columbia graduate and Free Press contributor Coleman Hughes, for example—keep it to yourself.)  If the “tentifada” protesters who took over Columbia weren’t enough to put prospective students off the Ivy League college, sliding academic standards might just be. Perhaps one day Columbia will again be a serious institution"

The DEI Eradication Must Extend to K-12 Schools - "“DEI must DIE.” Elon Musk posted this simple message on X, formerly known as Twitter, for the world to see on December 15. Thankfully, it seems much of the world is agreeing with him... these are excellent developments. But real victory will not be achieved until reforms reach K-12 schools, where DEI policies have fundamentally transformed them from centers of learning and discovery into apparatuses of retribution, resentment, and shame... Presented as the optimal way to close achievement gaps and improve the overall school environment, DEI instead conditions administrators, board members, teachers, and staff to openly embrace prejudice... In Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky, the bias is noticeably clear in how it defines “diverse.” According to its racial equity policy, diverse is “pertaining to any and all cultures that are NOT heterosexual, male-centered, white, Western and/or Christian.” When the district runs programming for diverse students, or prioritizes hiring diverse staff, it is easy to picture who does not qualify. “How to be Anti-Racist" author Ibram X Kendi illustrated this mindset when he wrote, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”   Nothing should be seen as more sinister in a K-12 school context than the enthusiastic implementation of discrimination based on revenge. Yet, many districts have written equity policies that permit and encourage this vile practice.  In Virginia, Falls Church City Public Schools’ Equity Vision Statement declares that it is “Persistently, unapologetically, and consistently providing more time, attention, support, effort, resources, advocacy, and energy to those groups who have historically received less.” The district desires to undo historical discrimination by redistributing educational resources based on skin color, as well as the past treatment of groups. In Vermont, Essex Westford School Districts’ equity policy states that it works “to recognize and undo the harm of centuries of systemic inequalities and oppression” and distribute “resources, power and decision making to marginalized groups or individuals in order to redress marginalization.” Defining privileged groups as predominantly white and male, the district has enshrined shame and retaliation in its official policy.  Experts in gaslighting, many K-12 schools have been tragically successful in convincing the public that inclusion is exclusion. Resurrecting evils reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, districts promote the long-discredited – and illegal – practice of segregation through race or ideologically based affinity groups. Hamilton County Schools in Tennessee contracted with a consultant for $50,000 to facilitate an “educators of color” teacher affinity group. California’s Piedmont Unified School District has a program geared toward training kids to proselytize the “inclusive” practice of affinity groups and the celebration of collective identities, adding, “When we don’t acknowledge differences, we are centering whiteness.”  In New York, Rochester City Public Schools openly discriminate against Enlightenment values. It states in its Racial Equity Action Plan that the district will “work toward ensuring that all [district] educators will demonstrate fundamental understanding and commitment to valuing the importance of race and class consciousness.” The district includes these “fundamental understandings” in its hiring process as well. In Rochester, being inclusive means discriminating in favor of neo-Marxist thought."

Opinion | For the sake of academic freedom, universities should rethink their use of diversity statements - The Washington Post - "One 2021 study found that about one-third of job postings at elite universities required them. Now, however, some in academia are starting to express second thoughts about this practice. In April, Harvard Law School professor Randall L. Kennedy urged abolition of DEI statements, arguing that they amount to “compulsion” and “ideological litmus tests.” Not long after Mr. Kennedy’s article appeared, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first top university to voluntarily end their use. The decision came after extensive consultations among all six of the school’s academic deans. MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, explained: “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”... they stoke what Mr. Kennedy, a self-described “scholar on the left,” who formerly served as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, called “intense and growing resentment” among academics. Not surprisingly, 90 percent of self-described conservative faculty view the statements as political litmus tests, but so do more than 50 percent of moderates and even one-quarter of liberals... Because the criteria for acceptable DEI statements are often vague, jobseekers must do the work of anticipating the ideological and political preferences of university administrators and faculty, who are disproportionately left-leaning... Harvard University’s Bok Center for Teaching and Learning included a list of guiding questions including, “Do you seek to identify and mitigate how inequitable and colonial social systems are reinforced in the academy by attending to and adjusting the power dynamics in your courses?”... In one faculty search at University of California at Berkeley, around 75 percent of applicants were screened out of consideration — irrespective of criteria such as teaching ability and research skills... The last thing academia — or the country — needs is another incentive for people to be insincere or dishonest. The very purpose of the university is to encourage a free exchange of ideas, seek the truth wherever it may lead, and to elevate intellectual curiosity and openness among both faculty and students. Whatever their original intent, the use of DEI statements has too often resulted in self-censorship and ideological policing. Fundamentally reconsidering them could actually strengthen DEI, by placing it on a more sustainable basis — intellectually and politically"

Meme - "Modern half a billion dollar movie productions are made super carefully in order to please this specific person *fat woman with multi-coloured hair, big ugly glasses, a black upper lip and ugly top*"

Zᴇᴚo on X - ""your game is not inclusive enough!!"
Us: "haha look, I'm a monkey""
Pirat_Nation 🔴 on X - "They want gay monkeys, idk 🤣"
bingbongbingy on X - "Probably change the monkey to a strong black female because monkeys are offensive to black peoples"

Candace Owens Trends For Hours After Dems Demand ‘Black Woman’ For Supreme Court - "The BLEXIT founder was recently mocked on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” in a racially-charged sketch, essentially for being black and having views SNL apparently believes are unacceptable for a black person"
From 2022

Our conversations are losing individuality, linguists say - "Conversation and speech patterns are increasingly lacking individuality, as people grow more likely to echo bromides and jargon made fashionable by business, academia and activism, according to linguists at Lancaster University and the University of Liverpool. People are "increasingly adopting each other’s speech patterns to be more socially inclusive," the team found, suggesting that the "dramatic change" could be due in part to an "institutional turn towards corporate social responsibility (CSR), and ideologies such as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion," also known as DEI. The mockingbird-esque tendency was more noticeable among those with higher levels of formal education and among people who do not do manual labour, according to the researchers, whose findings were published in the journal Applied Linguistics. "This increase is not found in workplaces where these ideologies are not institutionalized and routinely encouraged," said Vittorio Tantucci, senior linguistics lecturer at Lancaster University. The researchers studied over 1,600 British conversations over a 20-year-period, while controlling for creativity, age, class, gender, context, dialect, and intra-generational speech. "Over time, this form of engagement, known as resonance, has increased mostly among people in higher social grades, including people in leading managerial positions in the corporate world, doctors, university lecturers and politicians""
"Diversity" leads to less diversity

Universities' crazy, stupid love … for diversity - "Perhaps the dumbest article to recently appear in the formerly distinguished U.S. journal Science was a June 27 piece entitled “Radical women-only hiring policy improves diversity at Dutch university.” That is saying something, since under the guidance of its editor-in-chief for the past five years, Holden Thorp, the journal has veered away from strict and critical science reporting toward the promotion of political ideology, producing a lot of drivel in the process. Thorp was perhaps chastened by his brief, scandal-plagued career as chancellor of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, which may have led him to believe that faculty, and sometimes students, were not to be trusted. (While he was UNC chancellor, he had university administrators sent around to check on classroom teaching, for example.) As a result, the recent approach at Science has been that higher education is inherently suspect, and needs to be reined in. Specifically, Science began endorsing and promoting critical social justice dogma, arguing that systemic sexism and racism — including the notion of white supremacy — were endemic in the sciences and somehow intrinsic to such things as teaching and research in physics, and supporting wherever possible politically motivated impositions (now often discredited) of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” on free speech, hiring and promotion in academic scientific disciplines. Legalized academic gender-based discrimination is not new. Universities in Canada now advertise positions open only to candidates who identify as women or non-binary. But the current Science report describes how the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), which specializes in engineering science, announced in 2019 a more comprehensive and more radical policy. For the first six months of recruitment for permanent academic jobs, only female applicants would be considered. The legality of the program was questioned by the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, which complained about the method, but not the goal. The university amended its draconian measure in 2021 to apply to only departments where less than 30 per cent of the faculty were women, and reduced the number of women-only endowed positions. Guess what? After five years under the new policy of recruiting mostly women, the number of female faculty at TU/e increased (although, as it turns out, only moderately, from 22 per cent to 29 per cent). Shocking! If they had limited applications to only people under five-foot-five, one might have similarly expected that overall the faculty would get shorter. Nevertheless, Science deemed this result sufficiently newsworthy to publish an uncritical, and laudatory, report about it. The article stressed that TU/e had had the smallest ratio of female professors to male professors in the Netherlands. The implication was that this reflected some underlying inequity that needed to be fixed. However, TU/e is an engineering university, not a liberal arts college, and engineering is a field that traditionally has attracted few women. For some reason, in fields like engineering, as opposed to, say, teaching, or health care, social justice advocates feel a compelling need to ensure that academic departments match the background demographics of the population. Could it be that women simply prefer other fields, as numerous critics have suggested? We won’t know, because new policies are designed to enforce numerical equity independent of the pool of applicants, gender preferences, or the qualifications of those applicants. Indeed, nowhere in the reporting of this bit of non-news were the issues of quality, merit or qualifications seriously analyzed. Tellingly, the only place where the issue of qualifications arose was in a comment from the university president, who said many women were surprised to be headhunted. He argued that this suggested they would not have considered themselves qualified and would not have applied on their own. He went on to support the idea that such self-assessments by women are unreliable, so discounting these (along with the possibility that they might not meet all of the job criteria) would not compromise quality. (Nothing was said of men who may also be too timid to apply because of a lack of self-confidence. Indeed, to suggest that this is uniquely gender-related is an unfair stereotype.) This patronizing attitude is not good for women, or for universities. It suggests that women cannot compete on an open playing field in STEM studies and need special assistance. That may be true, but no evidence is provided that gives empirical support for draconian policies like this. And of course, such policies unfairly penalize male candidates. As if to add insult to injury, all new female recruits at TU/e receive grants of €100,000 ($147,000) to support their research, as well as additional mentorship to help them build their careers. Any males who actually get hired must surely feel like the second-class citizens that they are. That this is lost on academics and administrators at places like TU/e, who have been so barraged by the notion that demographic equity is essential, was made clear by a distinguished scientist in the U.S. who reported to me about a lengthy conversation she had with a colleague from the Netherlands. Her colleague kept repeating the mantra: “but it is not discriminatory against men — because we did not take positions from men, we just created new positions, which are designed for women.”"
We're still told that diversity is about giving everyone an equal chance and removing barriers
So much for Europeans not being woke
Clearly Lawrence M. Krauss knows nothing about science

Links - 21st July 2024 (2 - Left Wing Economics)

GUNTER: No surprise Edmonton has soured on Sohi, council - "Leger found that of the 15 issues most important to Edmonton voters, bike lanes, transit and battling climate change were at the bottom of the list, ahead of only “other.” Yet those are three of council’s biggest obsessions. Housing affordability is Edmontonians top concern. Council and the mayor pay a lot of attention to that, too. But when regular voters say “housing affordability,” they mean their own ability to afford housing. When council and the bureaucrats use the same term, they almost always seem to mean “social housing” – affordable homes from the homeless and poor. Edmontonians’ second greatest concern is property taxes, which doesn’t concern a single member of the current council at all. All 13 members, Mayor Sohi and the 12 councillors, voted unanimously to raise property taxes this year by 8.9 per cent. And that’s the rise only if the value of your home rose by the average amount in the city. Our home’s value happened to rise by about five per cent above average, so our property taxes are going up 14 per cent – in one year!... Homelessness is the No. 3 concern of voters. Yet, frankly, if the majority on council had their lefty wish, I would bet homelessness would be declared a human right and encampments would never be dismantled."

The Atlantic on X - "If gentrification has a sound, it’s silence. Xochitl Gonzalez on why the rich love quiet so much, and what it means for everyone else:"
pagliacci the hated 🌝 on X - "you can always tell who was actually poor and who's just an Ivy League shitlib LARPing because the latter romanticizes aspects of poverty that real poor people desperately want to escape.  when they think "noisy neighborhood," their mind conjures up some abuela playing tropipop out her breezy open window while she makes empanadas as a table of Chinese men laugh and play Mahjong on the street -- literal Hollywood movie shit.  in reality, the noise of poverty is the woman next door screaming while she's getting beaten up by her drunk boyfriend, a schizo man shouting obscenities outside of your apartment window, and the blaring siren of ambulances coming to collect yet another overdose."
Erich Hartmann on X - "Excessive /unavoidable noise causes major problems: increased stress, sleep issues, reduced quality of life, decreased performance, and longer term cognitive impairment, mental health issues and perpetuates negative social behavior. Why should "poor" people have to suffer this?"
Eric S. Raymond on X - "I think this article is best understood as an attempt to invent a novel category of grievance for the author to feel victimized about, so he can first feel virtuous and then crybully others."
David Santa Carla 🦇 on X - "Rich people don’t yell at the movie screens. 🍿"
Steve Sailer on X - "Because rich people tend to have longer, more complicated trains of thought (which is one of the reasons they are richer) that are more easily interrupted by random noise blaring? For example, why did Proust work in a cork-lined room?"
Clay on X - "Everybody loves quiet, especially once you get out of your early 20s. Rich people are the only ones able to pay to get away from it. Perhaps working class people deserve peacefulness too."
samizdata on X - "Enforcing laws instead of coddling criminals might help."
ライオン Lion on X - "Why are poor people so noisy? Why is a quiet neighborhood a privilege that only the rich can afford?"
Zarathustra on X - "Schopenhauer “On Noise” is required reading 1/2"
Clifton Duncan on X - "Until you've lived in a neighborhood where residents blast reggaeton from their hatchback at 2am on a weekday don't lecture me about wanting peace and quiet"
Addendum: On the article "Why Do Rich People Love Quiet?"

Why Financial Confessionals Go Viral - The Atlantic (aka $350,000 a Year, and Just Getting By) - "The hypothetical couple were making $350,000 a year and just getting by, their income “barely” qualifying them as middle-class. Their budget, posted in September, showed how they “survived” in a city like San Francisco, spending more than $50,000 a year on child care and preschool, nearly $50,000 a year on their mortgage, and hefty amounts on vacations, entertainment, and a weekly date night—even as they saved for retirement and college in tax-advantaged accounts... Perhaps you recall the law professor making $250,000 a year who accused Barack Obama of squeezing him dry back in 2010. Or the marketing intern making it in New York on $25 an hour with hefty subsidies from her parents and grandparents (she was, as she put it, #blessed). Or the two lawyers earning $500,000 a year and “scraping by,” unable to save...  people’s perceptions of what it means to be “rich” have stratified. In surveys, individuals making less than $25,000 say that making $293,000 a year makes you rich. People with incomes over $120,000 say something more like half a million dollars... Dogen, for his part, believes that saving needs to hurt to work. “Anybody who has gotten braces or who has lifted weights understands this concept,” he says. “If the amount of money you’re saving each month doesn’t hurt a little, you’re not saving enough.”"
Capitalism has failed. People just don't make enough money

Woman left with $150 every fortnight despite having household income of $180,000 - "A TikToker has left people divided after saying she can't afford 'self-care', despite having a combined household income of $180,000... The mom questioned how people are still able to get their 'nails, hair, lashes [and] brows done all the time' noting she and her partner have 'a bigger income' but have a 'strict budget' so they can 'save for a house' by July 2025.  "In order to do that, I only have $150 spending money per fortnight," she continued.  However, the TikToker said nails cost about '$100 every four weeks' and her hair costs her '$200 every eight weeks'. Her lash lift tint, brow lamination, sculpt and dye 'all at once' works out at '$170 a fortnight'. In total, the cost of the 'self care' for a month comes to a whopping $370."
"Even if young people actually *could* get on the housing ladder by foregoing coffee, holidays, netflix, brunches, books... why should we have to? why should we have to forego the lovely small things that make life bearable just to feel like we have somewhere stable to live?"

We are being far too soft on incompetent teachers – and the militant unions that indulge them - "I don’t know what’s more demoralising. The evidence that primary schools still haven’t returned to pre-Covid standards across reading, writing and maths, or the response to these figures from teaching unions and our newly installed education minister.  Most people would consider it imperative that schools bring attainment in these three core disciplines back to 2019 levels. Not so the headteachers’ union NAHT, whose general secretary weaponised this news to push for the “purpose of statutory assessments” to be “reconsidered”.  Meanwhile, Labour’s schools minister Catherine McKinnell lamented that “despite the brilliance of our teachers ... too many pupils ... are not meeting the expected standard”. But surely this “brilliance” ought to be called into question. In what other scenario would we dissociate the quality of the service from the experience of the customer?  For years, education was the positive story the Tories could tell. Britain was rising up the Pisa rankings. Free schools, under Michael Gove’s supervision, were flourishing. Former schools minister Nick Gibb’s phonics revolution was paying stellar dividends.  Almost none of this was achieved with the help and support of our benighted “educators”. Teaching unions vociferously opposed Gove’s reforms. At every level of education, from nursery to postgrad, they have argued against assessment and accountability, with the stock response that they damage “mental health”. They would prefer there was no monitoring at all, with children denied the benefits – the structure, motivation and reward – of exams.   Many of the problems with our education system, from staffing shortages to pupil attainment, stem from decisions pushed with maniacal fervour by union chiefs. They expect all teachers must have completed a PGCE, even though mature entrants may have relevant skills, then complain of shortages. They were among the main stumbling blocks to reopening schools in the summer of 2020, the effects of which are clearly being felt today.   Yet our collective sympathy for teachers is near-boundless. We are constantly told of excessive workloads, burnout, poor pay, long hours, bad management, disruptive pupils and aggressive parents. The most dedicated, patient and passionate of our teachers may have some legitimate grievances. But the education narrative is strikingly one-sided.  Few criticise the unions, even though the largest among them is now run by a hard-Left former activist who once proclaimed that strikes were about “taking back control from a brutally racist state”. Teacher pensions – where employer contributions are roughly three times the average in the private sector – are seldom mentioned.   Too many educators subscribe to the “something for nothing” culture which now underpins much of Britain’s public sector. When walkouts were staged months after normal schooling resumed post-pandemic, and teachers were offered £1,000 and a 4.3 per cent pay rise, there was no quo for the taxpayer’s quid. There was no promise of better results.  And herein lies the most depressing aspect of our attitude towards education – worse even than the dearth of choice for parents and the militant unions. It’s that, for all the evidence of the damage wrought by lockdown on children, their needs are still deprioritised. The Tories put teachers before pupils during Covid. Under Labour, the danger is that the sector will be run solely for the producers at the expense of the consumer."

YOU SAID IT: Never been about the kids - "When 51 per cent of our education budget is being spent on teachers’ salaries, you know something is wrong. It would be one thing if our kids were coming out of school educated and exceeding provincial standards, but they’re not, so we as taxpayers aren’t getting our money’s worth. Every time they threaten to go on strike, the unions spout the same mantra: “It’s for our kids.” Seems they have been taking lessons from the Liberals: if you say something loud enough and long enough and make that your talking point, we will believe you. It’s never been about the kids. It’s about teachers’ salaries, their overly generous pensions and their several weeks of holidays. Looking at the average salaries they’re making, it’s not like they’re hard done by. If any cuts are to be made, may I suggest they start there? If they truly care, then they wouldn’t have a problem with a pay cut or a freeze. After all, it’s about the children, isn’t it? There are good teachers out there, but at this point I’d say their unions are the problem. They have become very political and very radical. It’s time for a change."

Meme - "Anarchists when the one optometrist in their village won't trade them a pair of glasses in exchange for poetry about being gay"

Ginny Roth: Housing is going through a supply-side revolution. Can we do the same for childcare? - "Governments—often local—pile on regulations and restrictions. They say these restrictions will protect society and initially, they don’t seem to do much harm. At the same time, some people (often wealthy) realize these restrictions can help them because maybe they have a vested interest the restrictions protect. But still, as a result, people don’t have the thing that they need, especially low-income people, so governments feel the need to respond. They can’t remove the restrictions—they’re protecting society after all! Also, the beneficiaries of the protections wouldn’t like it. And anyway, it would be hard. Meanwhile, borrowing is cheap. Like, really cheap. So, governments decide to throw some cash at the problem. At first, people get excited. Maybe one of these new programs means they’ll finally be able to get that thing they can’t get. In fact, as the money pours out, more people realize they want the thing and might be able to reach it with the cash boost. The problem is, that thing they want? There isn’t more of it available. Even if it’s paid for, it just doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, governments keep adding new regulations and restrictions. Demand goes up. Supply goes down.  But it doesn’t stop there. People whose job it is to find business opportunities spot one. After all, where there’s high demand and low supply, there’s value. So private equity swoops in. They also use cheap debt to buy up what little is left of that thing people want so much of since they know they can ask a lot for it and won’t face competitive pressure to charge less. And who can blame them? It’s their job.   Meanwhile, other governments try to benefit politically from appearing to solve the problem, so they throw in more cash too. Joint announcements ensue, only to be followed weeks later by news stories pointing out that there still isn’t enough of the thing people want, and that every day, more people want it.  Finally, in the midst of all of this, as cash drives up demand, and regulation drives down supply, and you think things can’t possibly be made worse, every month, more and more people come to Canada. And what do those people want? In fact, what do they need? That’s right, the very same thing everyone else wants, and of which there is not enough. And now, relatively speaking, even less... The carbon tax and other input costs that make food more expensive, development charges, municipal zoning requirements, and provincial licensing red tape all stand in the way of entrepreneurs trying to build and grow childcare centres, and labour regulations and credentialization make it impossible to find enough staff.   It was bad enough before the Trudeau Liberals launched their ten-dollar-a-day childcare program, otherwise known as Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care. Then it got worse. CWELCC manages to both increase demand and supress supply by redistributing the money Canadians pay in taxes (including low-income people) to subsidize the cost of childcare spots down to ten dollars a day, not just for low-income people, but for everyone, even the wealthiest Canadians.   The regressive, demand-jacking economic program would be bad enough on its own. But on top of that, the program design (different depending on how negotiations went with each province), worsens the disincentive for small businesspeople to create centres and add more spaces. Childcare entrepreneurs, most of them women, report being berated by municipal civil servants for their profit-seeking motives and business choices, many of them forced to turn away countless families who will never make it off the endless waitlists, some of them opting out of the program altogether.  Some provinces and municipalities have been better than others. Alberta, for instance, has more choice and flexibility in its model, presumably influenced by the success of its education system which allows market forces to match supply with demand. Regardless, the principles of the federal program mean shortages persist across the country. And the non-profit sector hasn’t helped, too often dogmatic about service delivery, insisting that non-profit centres are inherently better than for-profit businesses and advocating to bake that preference into program design, inevitably suppressing supply and exacerbating access issues which, ironically, hurt the low-income people who can’t afford alternatives the most... perhaps the lowest hanging fruit, governments could look at the credentialization of childcare labour—labour shortages being the biggest driver of supply shortages—and ask themselves why Early Childhood Educator, a designation that didn’t even exist in Ontario until 2007, is the pinnacle of quality care. No parent I know is an ECE, no grandparent, no loving neighbour, not even my own children’s caregiver (Marry Poppins in the flesh)."
Left wingers don't like good outcomes - they hate profit and are unable to imagine that a non-profit outcome could be worse, because they have zero sum thinking: someone profiting means someone must be being exploited

Meme - Hot Takes Nobody Asked For: "hot take: you shouldn't ask for a ten percent raise unless you're upgrading yourself, doing ten percent more work and creating ten percent more profits for the company. /j that applies to some of us but it doesn't often apply to these folks."
Andrew Hilary @AndrewHilaryUS: "Hot Take: Landlords should not be able to increase rent unless they are upgrading the apartment."
Left wingers think all inflation is "greed" after all
No surprise there's a Palestinian flag. Left wing beliefs usually come in a package

wanye on X - "I have spent the last few weekends preparing an apt for rent. The “landlords don’t do anything” discourse is another manifestation of the particularly modern delusion that stuff just happens, that apartments are just magically there to be consumed. People are so disconnected from physical reality that they’ve actually forgotten how it works.
“Everybody is conservative about what they know best” is partly explained by the fact that once you’ve actually done something it pierces the illusion that that thing just happens all by itself. Suddenly you see clearly that that thing requires dramatic intervention on the part of real, breathing beings. It’s a kind of Gell-Mann amnesia that people can realize this in one domain and continue believing that it’s not the case in all the others."

Woman homeless as tenants refuse to leave her new house - "After a sudden layoff forced her to sell her Mississauga home last December, Ayesha Asghar scrambled what little savings and severance she had left to buy a modest two-storey townhome in east Hamilton.  “I wanted to rebuild my life,” said the 36-year-old, a casualty of last year’s sweeping tech sector layoffs. “I couldn’t afford mortgage payments after losing my job and Hamilton was an opportunity to downsize, regroup myself and focus on rebuilding my life and career.”  The move-in date was June 6.  Asghar is now living out of her car. Her home is occupied by a handful of tenants she says have refused to leave her Ellis Avenue townhome, despite being issued N12 eviction notices more than 80 days before she took ownership of the property.  The dispute — part of a broader provincewide trend in recent years — has seen Asghar go from young homeowner to homeless landlord virtually overnight, with no recourse but to wait for a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) on Aug. 27. Beyond refusing to leave, Asghar claims the tenants have yet to pay rent or utility bills, and caused significant damage to the property, including leaving “piles and piles” of garbage in its front yard. Meanwhile, she’s still obligated to make mortgage payments. “It’s dehumanizing,” said the still-jobless Asghar, her voice breaking. “I can’t tell you how many panic attacks I’ve had recently.”  At the townhome early Thursday afternoon — where music could be heard from around the corner and piles of belongings, from bikes and an office chair to bed frames and a loveseat, could be seen on its narrow front yard — tenant Kimberly Sheffield said it’s within her rights as a tenant to remain there. Sheffield said she was never served with an N12 eviction notice and said she has paid her rent up to April 1. She alleged Asghar wants to renovate the property to bring in new tenants and jack up rent.   “I’m not going to leave just because she bought a house,” she said. “I know my rights as a tenant. I don’t think somebody who buys a house can just kick people out onto the street.” Asked if she was aware the person who bought the home is now homeless and living out of her car, Sheffield said: “No, she’s not. And if she is, well, hey, at least she’s in a better situation than me and can afford a car.”... A recent inspection of the townhome — conducted by a property management company Asghar “had to hire just to deal with the tenants because they became so difficult and unreasonable” — found interior damages exceeding $17,000, with photos showing graffiti scribbled on most of its walls, window screens missing, clutter and debris throughout, and soiled floors and stairs. Hamilton’s fire department, also in attendance at the June 12 inspection, ordered Asghar to install new smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors after they had been removed...  As part of the sale agreement, the previous owner agreed to issue the tenants eviction notices March 12 because a buyer intended to move in, according to Asghar, who has kept copious records documenting all of the efforts she’s made to prepare for her case.   Asghar said she was informed by the seller’s realtor the tenants had agreed to vacate the property by May 31.  That never happened... “I know how difficult it is to find a home,” she said. “It would be one thing if these tenants told me on the closing date that, ‘We know you’re supposed to move in, but can we have another month to find a place?’ I get that. But these people are refusing to leave period.”  Kayla Andrade, president of Ontario Landlords Watch, said the checks and balances in place at the LTB become an issue when tenants — the people who those laws are meant to protect — begin abusing the system. “Even though (Asghar) has a hearing coming up, the tenants have many loopholes where they can stretch this process out as long as they want,” said Andrade, who has supported disputing landlords and tenants for more than a decade.  Indeed, it can take months after an eviction notice is issued just to get a hearing — and longer if that hearing is delayed or the tenant files more appeals.  It’s an ordeal Andrade said has forced many Ontario landlords, who can be stuck for months with non-paying tenants and a mortgage as the LTB struggles to manage a backlog of applications, to leave local real estate altogether. “You look at the cost of housing as one thing and the interest rates as another, but they’re getting out because of the lack of protection for them at the Landlord and Tenant Board,” Andrade said, adding disputes like Asghar’s are becoming increasingly common. She pointed to a case last year of a Hamilton couple who bought a home and, after its tenants refused to leave, parked their RV in the driveway as a sign of protest.  “Why are we holding the (LTB) down with applications that don’t need to be heard by an adjudicator? We have a lot more important factors that need to be dealt with by the (LTB).”"
All landlords are bastards. She deserves to go bankrupt!

Homeowner gets hearing expedited as tenants refuse to leave - "Ayesha Asghar has finally caught a break.  After a Spectator story June 25 profiled her overnight transition from young homeowner to homeless landlord, the 36-year-old says she’s now been granted an expedited eviction hearing from the Landlord and Tenant board that will sooner determine the fate of tenants who refuse to leave her recently bought east Hamilton townhome.  “Instead of waiting two months, it’s now down to a month, so that’s definitely a little better,” Asghar said of the eviction hearing, which has been moved from Aug. 27 to July 29.  “But it all depends on how the hearing goes. If I get the decision right away, then I still have to wait 30 to 60 days for the board to issue an order and then for the sheriff to enforce that order.”... A tenant doesn’t “have to” leave a home that’s under new ownership, noted paralegal Andrew Choubeta, who specializes in landlord-tenant issues.  While Ontario law permits landlords to evict a tenant on behalf of a buyer insofar as the latter or one of their family members intends to occupy the home, Choubeta said “the tenant can push the matter to a tribunal hearing and essentially challenge the purchaser’s ability to move into that unit.”"

@DRJessieNYC 🇵🇸 on X - "We really have to ackownledge that “not enough time to read” is part of the THEFT built into capitalism."
Swann Marcus on X - "People will watch 7 hours of Netflix a day and spend the rest of their free time on twitter and then claim they didn't read War and Peace because of capitalist exploitation"
Brianna Wu on X - "Post something that mildly annoys you below, and I will find a way to blame it on capitalism."

Meme - Alexander @datepsych: "In addition to lower SES individuals having more leisure time, they also spend their leisure time in different ways.  For example, despite it being free and health-promoting (and thus being a good financial decision in multiple ways), poorer individuals don’t go running much. In fact they do most sport or exercise activity less.   They do however spend more time watching TV, relaxing, socializing with friends, gambling, playing games, and using recreational drugs."
"Income distributions in Americans' pastimes"
"You might expect poorer people to do cheap, healthy hobbies that don't incur additional financial costs if we all made good and reasonable decisions. Instead, poverty is associated with expensive vices."
We're going to be told about the cognitive load of poverty, even though that does not replicate

Meme - Chris Freiman @cafreiman: "Capitalism has provided us with plenty of time to read"
"Estimated Trend in the Lifetime Distribution of Discretionary Time, 1880-2040
Activity 1880 1995
Lifetime Discretionary Hours 225,900 298,500
Lifetime Work Hours 182,100 122,400
Lifetime Leisure Hours 43,800 176,100
Source: Fogel (2000)
Notes: Discretionary hours exclude hours used for sleep, meals and hygiene. Work hours include paid work, travel to and from work, and household chores."

Meme - "New Study Reveals That People Who Make Good Decisions Have an Unfair Advantage"

Book Excerpt: How Mike Harris got Ontarians off welfare and back to work - "Enriched benefits, rising costs amid a deep recession and more than 1.3-million Ontarians on welfare. Those were the realities for the Progressive Conservatives when they were elected in 1995... In his manifesto, the “Common Sense Revolution,” Mike Harris promised to cut benefits, which were high relative to other Canadian provinces, to bring in work or work-training requirements for welfare recipients and to enhance welfare verification. In 1997, the government launched a transformation, creating new programs to help people get back to work. These restored the principle of social assistance as a temporary stopgap rather than a long-term income substitution. This structure is still mostly in place nearly 25 years later, including benefit levels that have not shifted materially since. At the time, much of the attention was paid to the budgetary impetus. Ontario was running large deficits, and social assistance spending represented more than 10 per cent of total expenditures. Yet the Progressive Conservatives were not merely motivated by fiscal considerations. They saw a connection between work and dignity."
No wonder left wingers hate him so much

Will Canada's biggest city legislate a maximum temperature in apartments? - "Selvasegar is part of a coalition of tenant and environmental advocacy organizations, backed by seniors' and disability rights groups, who are demanding Toronto bring in a maximum temperature bylaw. Similar to the way landlords must keep units heated when it's cold, the coalition wants the city to legislate protections to keep residences no warmer than 26 degrees when outdoor temperatures increase."
When rents rise, it will be the fault of greedy landlords and proof that capitalism has failed

Meme - Mike @mikeinspace: "Anyone who says, "but they have insurance" has obviously...
- never dealt with an insurance company before;
- has no idea how deductibles work;
- don't understand the opportunity cost of lost time;
Have no concern for others' trauma."
Not to mention, left wingers don't understand that premiums must rise to cover payouts

The billionaire takeover of civil society

Big money and market concentration are only problems when they hurts the left wing agenda. And the people who keep demanding churches be taxed because they have a lot of money support rich NGOs manipulating politics:

 

The billionaire takeover of civil society

As the founder and operator of a pro-democracy civil-society organisation, I’ve often been astounded at calls to give NGOs a greater say in rule-making, more visibility during negotiations and privileged access to decision-makers. Because I know what few people do – that small, member-driven, self-funded NGOs are relatively rare.

Instead, the kind of organisation that tends to drive the political agenda is generally billionaire (or at least multimillionaire) funded. The most well-known examples here are groups funded by conservatives like the Koch brothers and large companies like ExxonMobil. I had naively assumed that others criticised these organisations for the same reasons I did – because their actions undermined the principle of democratic equality by giving the impression that their ideas enjoyed far more backing than they did.

However, I stand corrected.

A few months ago, I suffered a rare relapse into naivety and decided that it was about time I got on to the NGO ‘funding’ gravy train. Apparently, floods of money were out there waiting for me in the democracy world. Meanwhile, for incomprehensible reasons, I was stubbornly insisting on behaving like some old-fashioned grandmother, cackling things like, ‘In my day, we used to go around with a tin can collecting for Amnesty International at Christmas! We met in the basement of a pub and everyone paid for their own beer!’

People were so baffled at this attitude that I began to doubt myself and look into how to get funding for projects in the democracy space. And because I thought it would be a good idea to be organised about it, I made a database.

That turned out to be a good idea, because it revealed the influence exerted by a wealthy few over civil society. To illustrate this, I am going to show how just a tiny fraction of a small slice of one funding network starts, but definitely does not end, with eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar.

I should stress that I have no particular axe to grind against Omidyar, who has supported things I whole-heartedly approve of, like the Intercept under Glenn Greenwald. I also don’t believe that Omidyar is the source of any kind of unique evil or that he is up to anything other wealthy people aren’t. I merely picked him as my starting point to illustrate the generalities of the modern NGO-industrial complex, which includes an end-to-end web of political financing, of which Omidyar is merely a part.

Omidyar provides funding for, among many other things, the American Economic Liberties Project. AELP views itself as a check on the influence of big business on politics. According to its website: ‘All across society, monopolistic corporations govern much of our economic lives and exert extraordinary influence over our democracy.’

According to a typically fawning article about the AELP, during one meeting:

‘the conversation turned to a report the group was producing: a series of graphics showing that different brands of a certain product – or coffee – were, in fact, owned by a small number of conglomerates. The graphics represented the group’s hope that people will understand how concentration affects their lives – and be moved to do something about it. [To which AELP’s executive director Sarah Miller said:] “Let’s just wonder at it for a minute.”’

And that is exactly what we’re going to do here: just wonder at the concentration of power behind a bazillion different brand names and hope people understand how it affects their lives. 

 

Omidyar, whose Omidyar Network funds AELP, also funds the Democracy Fund which is now part of Omidyar Group (1). The Democracy Fund, in turn, together with the Knight Foundation, Quadrivium, the McArthur Foundation and Luminate (also funded by Omidyar) fund Democracy Works (2). Omidyar also funds Democracy Fund Voice, which in turn contributes to Defending Democracy Together (3). Then there is Healthy Democracy which is funded by the Democracy Fund, Silicon Valley Community Foundation (which also receives money from Democracy Fund) (4) and the Ford Family Foundation. The Omidyar Network also co-funds New Public by Civic Signals, along with the Knight Foundation, One Project, the National Conference on Citizenship and the University of Texas at Austin, Centre for Media Engagement. Of course, the University of Texas at Austin, Centre for Media Engagement is also funded by the Omidyar Network, the Democracy Fund (funded by Omidyar), the Knight Foundation, Robert McCormick Foundation, and Google. To name just a few others, the Ada Lovelace Institute also receives funding from Luminate, the Wellcome Trust and Nuffield Foundation, while TicTec, a MySociety event about ‘civic tech’, is funded by Facebook, Luminate and Google, among others.

 

Now that may boggle your mind a bit. Indeed, feel free to draw yourself a diagram. You may need it, because this is just the beginning. Many of these funds fund other funds. That fund other funds. That fund other funds.

And then – and this is the really interesting part – a lot of these funds fund some very interesting organisations indeed.

For example, Luminate, which is part of the Omidyar Group and chaired by Pierre Omidyar, funds:

• ‘grassroots’ and ‘outreach’ groups like: Campaign Bootcamp, Do Something (to the tune of $8million), Civic Hall, and MySociety;
• as well as a slew of ‘research and information centres’ such as the Data and Society Research Institute (received $4.5million in 2018); More in Common; the Centre on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law; Full Fact (now a Facebook partner, also supported by Flax, Bytemark and Google’s Digital News Initiative); and the Centre for Public Integrity.

Together with over 250 ‘angel investors’, Luminate also funds the New Media Ventures Innovation Fund (NMV). While NMV also covers information services (the Daily Kos forms part of its portfolio), it focuses much of its effort on:

• Grassroots groups, such as: PeoplesHub; LuzCollective; Momentum; Project Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations; Climate Cabinet Action Fund; Sunrise Movement; Mobilise America; Stay Woke;
• party-political campaigns and vote turn-out optimisation, such as: Vote.org; SwingLeft; Contest Every Race; Flippable; SisterDistrict; ActBlue Civics; Three Point Strategies; BallotReady; Resistance Labs; Run for Something; Pantsuit Nation; Voter Circle;
• and advanced market-research organisations like: Avalanche Insights; Swayable; and Open Field.

Meanwhile, the American Economic Liberties Project, funded by the Omidyar Network (which also funds Luminate, which together with other ‘Angel Investors’ funds all of this) is contemplating soulfully how the concentrated might of the coffee industry hides behind a series of flimsy brand names.

The irony of that is just sublime.

One could write not just a book, but an entire encyclopaedia on this topic. However, for the sake of brevity, let’s focus on a few of the groups that receive funding in this convoluted manner, because as we shall see they form something like a political conveyor belt, covering all aspects of the political process.

Exhibit A: Sunrise Movement

The first piece of this funding machine is the grassroots groups. Take the environmentalist Sunrise Movement. You may remember it as the group of youth activists who staged a sit-in at House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, which was joined by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a high-profile media event that resulted (according to the Sunrise Movement) in 4,000 articles being published about it within 48 hours.

The Sunrise Movement was founded in 2017 and its goal, among other climate-related issues, is to push the Green New Deal through the US legislature. Now I personally rather like the Green New Deal, although I am sometimes concerned that a publicly funded green-energy transition could become a cash cow for large companies seeking to update their infrastructure on the taxpayer’s dime. After all, that kind of profiteering happens all the time. And I have become significantly more worried about that possibility since I came across the Sunrise Movement’s logo under the ‘investment portfolio’ of New Media Ventures Innovation Fund. What, after all, is an investment group doing with a ‘grassroots’ organisation of environmentally concerned teenagers on its hands?

According to Luminate, ‘New Media Ventures is a seed fund and national network of angel investors supporting media and tech startups that disrupt politics and catalyse progressive change’. According to NMV’s website, the fund ‘invest[s] in progressive start-ups’ to ‘spark civic engagement’, ‘change culture’ and ‘build movements’. This ‘applies leverage at three critical points, creating momentum’ in order to ‘shift power’, ‘driving long-term political impact’. In order to facilitate this process they have ‘designed a fund structure that allows us to invest flexibly across startups – for profit and nonprofit, mission-driven and political – for the greatest impact’.

Finally, Omidyar Network CEO Mike Kubzansky stated in an interview: ‘Philanthropic money is the most risk-tolerant capital out there, whether it’s deployed for-profit or not-for-profit or on advocacy. And we view part of our role, in terms of social impact, as being risk capital for very difficult issues that society needs to take on…’

If one accepts what ‘givers’, like Omidyar et al, say, it becomes apparent that rather than participating in traditional acts of charity, like founding a hospital for the needy, they are attempting to engage in ‘social engineering’ – that is, using their resources to artificially change the structure of society to what they think it should be. If successful, this would amount to an extreme circumvention of democracy, utilising money not just to win elections, but to substitute paid or subsidised content for actual support, and thereby flip an entire political culture on to a different track by amplifying some voices and drowning out others. Moreover, just to keep things interesting, this is viewed in quite explicit investment terms – and investors tend to expect a return on their investment.

If one accepts this model or ‘theory of change’, as they frequently call it, then ‘investing in’ the Sunrise Movement – a group of teenage and twentysomething activists who complain that ‘fossil-fuel billionaires’ (but not, apparently other billionaires) have influenced government policy and who campaign for ‘investment in technology that would reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere…’ – makes sense.

The ‘engineered’ aspect of many of these social-change organisations comes through in myriad ways. For example, members frequently refer to ‘how-to’ manuals and books for creating social change (of any kind) according to a fairly technical blueprint. In addition, some organisations are supported by other organisations with the same funders. For example, Sunrise members specifically credit Momentum (which is also part of the NMV investment portfolio) with training them.

In an hour-long webinar posted on Momentum’s webpage, Sunrise members Sara Blazevic and Will Lawrence, together with Momentum members Cicia Lee and Lissy Romanov, explain the ins and outs of this training. The talk included references to the need (also frequently referenced by Extinction Rebellion) to activate 3.5 per cent of the population for environmental change, and featured such statements as ‘Momentum taught us that movements don’t happen by accident’, and that they needed to ‘prepare in advance a movement to go viral’. Speakers stressed the need to become ‘the dominant political alignment’ which ‘defines the common sense of society’ and ‘directs social and economic policy’. Having realised that this would require ‘tak[ing] over the entire United States and all the institutions in it’, they began ‘finding and developing our first leaders’. This involved moving activists into ‘dorm-style Sunrise Movement Houses for three to six months’ in order to create leaders who had a deep level of commitment ‘for everything that would come afterwards’.

A reporter attending a ‘bootcamp’ describes members being encouraged to ‘tell their personal stories as acts of “public narrative”’ and being taught to ‘refer to the fossil-fuel industry as fossil-fuel “elites”, so as not to alienate the industry’s workers’ as well as ‘how to stand during a protest for maximum visual impact’.

It is not bad advice, but the entire impression is of a very steered, technocratic process that attempts to achieve theoretical concepts (‘3.5 per cent mobilisation’, ‘dominant political alignment’) through a kind of brute-force factory production. It is an impression that is heightened when you realise that Sunrise isn’t just powered by a spontaneous coming together of the minds, but gets its core funding and support from ‘angel investors’. In the video, Will Lawrence explained that in addition to small individual donors ‘we also have some support from some philanthropic institutions, foundations’, and that ‘this year our support will probably be like 50-50 between individuals and larger institutions’ (according to another article, ‘Sunrise’s operating budget was $850,000’ in 2018, and $4.5million in 2020 with ‘a 60-40 split between grants and individual donations’).

On one level, it is great that young people are taking part in politics. But on another level it is incredibly fake. The youthful participants aren’t so much being empowered as instrumentalised. After all, they are part of the portfolio of an investment fund that is using them to ‘shift power’, with part of the strategy being to shame politicians for not being nice enough to hysterical children.

So, is power being shifted?

The Sunrise Movement credits itself with pressuring representatives into agreeing to a Select Committee on the Green New Deal, as well as contributing to getting a Green New Deal passed for the state of Maine. Its website also claims that the group contacted ‘over 6.5million voters in the primaries and Presidential Election’, which helped to elect Joe Biden.

While the results are certainly mixed, I think it is fair to say that Republican efforts to eliminate limits on political spending may have backfired and that ‘progressives’ may have overtaken them in the ‘tactical funding’ department.

However, funding ‘grassroots’ groups is only one aspect of the new ‘progressive’ NGO-Industrial complex. Progressives now tend to pride themselves on ‘facts’, ‘science’ and ‘evidence-based decision-making’, so obviously they are in need of some services to provide them with the facts and evidence in question. Which brings us to the Data and Society Research Institute, and More in Common (both funded by Luminate).

Exhibit B: the Data and Society Research Institute, and More in Common

It is worth noting that the Data and Society Research Institute and More in Common (both funded by Luminate) are only two organisations in the extensive network of wealth-funded ‘research’ institutes.

The Data and Society Research Institute describes itself as ‘an independent nonprofit research organisation’ which believes ‘that empirical evidence should directly inform the development and governance of new technology’. They produce ‘original research to ground informed, evidence-based public debate about emerging technology’, work with ‘academic rigour’ and ‘are committed to ensuring… that our research is made free and available to the public’.

Data and Society’s purpose then is not just to find things out. It is also to ground ‘public debate’, which is why it is imperative for its research to be freely available.

Data and Society also receives money from Microsoft and Arabella Advisors, an alleged component of the ‘dark money’ nexus of the left (said to work with various networks, including the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which in turn worked with Demand Justice, ‘the courts-focused group helmed by former Hillary Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon’, that spearheaded efforts against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh).

I counted 46 people on Data and Society’s ‘about’ page: 22 in ‘research’, 13 in operations (eg, accounting, HR, etc) and 11 in events (PR, etc). Job titles include: ‘director of creative strategy’, ‘network engagement manager’, and ‘newsroom outreach lead’ – not necessarily the kind of jobs one tends to associate with ‘original research’, ‘academic rigour’ and people who are nobly struggling to fulfil their commitment to make their research free and available to the public.

The age profile of Data and Society isn’t quite as young as that of the Sunrise Movement, but it isn’t far off. This is something that struck me again and again while looking through these organisations – the youth and inexperience of almost everyone involved despite the fact that the jobs are well-paid. One fellowship, which seems to consist of little more than ‘curating’ other people’s work, comes with a salary of $80,000-100,000 attached.

The inexperience of staff is reflected in the quality of the work, which often consists of little more than coming up with solutions to problems they themselves invented. For example, ‘10 tips for reporting on disinformation’ by one ‘senior research analyst’, offers pearls of wisdom such as: people who put out outrageous information are often looking for attention (no!). And it asks journalists ‘to weigh the costs and benefits of amplifying a particular voice, perspective, or incident against the broader public good’. By reporting on misinformation one can ‘risk mainstreaming dangerous, misleading ideas, while also driving curious readers to search for and, ultimately, stumble upon problematic content’. Lastly, it’s a good idea to make sure that any debunking includes ‘metadata and other SEO signals that will ensure search engines surface your content over the content of manipulators’. I think we can all agree there is absolutely nothing manipulative about making sure that your content shows above someone else’s in a search result.

But this is exactly the kind of double-standard these organisations work so hard to establish. Their information is the correct information – the article cited above, for example, simply asserts that the 2016 US Presidential election was ‘a carefully laid plot to deceive huge swaths of the population and undermine our democracy’. It is other information that must be tightly patrolled. It’s not too dissimilar to the approach taken by drug-dealers. You can do as much hallucinating as you like, just be sure to get your stuff from them.

And they work with other organisations that just so happen to have the same funders to achieve this control. The article cited above specifically advises journalists to use the procedures outlined by First Draft News to verify information. First Draft News’ US director just so happens to be Claire Wardle, an advisory board member of the Omidyar-funded Civic Signals project, information that is not included in the ‘10 tips…’ article. The impression created by the article is that First Draft News just happens to be the recommended verification organisation of Data and Society. Only thanks to the fact that some weirdo sitting in Ireland (me) decided to analyse the industry before becoming part of it (FYI: mission aborted), do we know that they are more related than one might think.

First Draft News may not receive funding from ‘governments and political parties’ as it proudly states on its website, but it does get funding from (among many others): Democracy Fund (funded by Omidyar who also funds Luminate which funds Data and Society); Google News Initiative; Open Society Foundations; and Facebook Journalism Project – all organisations funded by people who themselves often fund partisan political causes.

It was interesting to read that during the last Irish General Election, First Draft News was nice enough to take the time to send a ‘Daily monitoring briefing email [to] journalists covering the election’. In other words, rather than let journalists make up their own minds on how to cover stories – because, hey, it’s a free country – First Draft News decided to be on top of them. Every. Single. Day.

Meanwhile, Data and Society is berating people to use First Draft News (funded by some of the same ‘ultimate’ funders as Data and Society), while simultaneously warning people to be wary of manipulators.

Machiavelli would beg to be taught by these people.

OK, you might be thinking, that is pretty bad and weirdly controlling. Can it get worse? So glad you asked! Let us look at More in Common, also funded by Luminate.

More in Common is active in the UK, France, Germany and the US, and while the organisation doesn’t do a whole lot, it gets an enormous amount of coverage for what it does do, which is to promote the idea that we all have ‘more in common’. Just like Data and Society hypes the idea of ‘dangerous information’, the solution to which is First Draft News and the continuous monitoring of journalists, More in Common claims: ‘Societies are fracturing as the forces of division grow stronger, driving people apart. We are losing trust in each other and in the future.’ Fortunately, they have ‘ground-breaking research’ that helps to solve that problem.

In reality – a dimension these people rarely seem to inhabit – the idea that voters actually do have quite a lot in common is an entirely mainstream political analysis that one can buy entirely mainstream academic books about. However, that kind of ‘traditional scholarship’ does these organisations no good, because they need the problem to be there to justify the need for their own solutions.

The highlight of More in Common for me was its highly polished website Democracy for President. Its content mainly revolves around the American 2020 presidential election, which at the time the website was created was still a future event. It features such topics as ‘Is Mail-in Voting Secure?’ and ‘What Motivates Americans to Vote?’.

I was curious, so I downloaded their package under ‘Will the [American Presidential] Election Be Fair and Accurate?’. And here I have to say More in Common exceeded my expectations, because what I ended up with was a block of ‘sample op-eds’, a bunch of infographics already formatted for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and some ‘discussion guides’ for talking to people who disagree with you (a common hallmark of several organisations).

The first sample op-ed was entitled ‘It’s our duty to talk to people we disagree with’. Now, I personally would be prepared to release any busybody out there from that self-inflicted duty and encourage them to take a day off from talking to people they already know disagree with them. But let’s face it, social change doesn’t happen unless you have your army of foot-soldiers continuously out there on patrol. Their arguments may rarely actually convince other people, but it does tend to intimidate them into silence.

And those foot-soldiers need instructions. Very precise instructions as it turns out. According to the packet:

‘Many audiences can be reached through op-eds – local and national decision-makers most importantly. Use this template to write a sample op-ed on the urgent need to communicate across political differences, with tips on how to have difficult discussions as we head into the most important election of our lifetime.’

According to the ‘Tips for writing a great op-ed’ you need ‘a hook’, for example, ‘a personal anecdote’; a point; a call to action and evidence, which More in Common helpfully provides for you, along with the actual text of the op-ed:

‘No matter who wins the election, we should come together as a country. In fact, most Americans would prefer to: 68 per cent are exhausted by the division in our country, and six out of 10 believe pitting Americans against each other is a threat to democracy.’

Another sample op-ed entitled ‘This election can’t be rigged or stolen’ offers the text:

‘There are many legitimate concerns about potential threats to the election, from foreign interference to misinformation about how to vote, but this election cannot be rigged or stolen so long as we stay engaged with the process.’

This is followed by ‘key points to include’ – for example ‘81 per cent of Americans feel a sense of pride in being American when they vote’ – and an exhortation to the ‘writer’ to: ‘Share your own personal voting experience. Did you vote by mail for the first time? What were the poll workers like? How is/was voting this year the same or different from other years?’

Now, an op-ed is supposed to be an opinion that the author (often an expert in the area concerned) has genuinely thought about and is prepared to stand behind, although, unfortunately, the practice of writing one first and then finding someone willing to put their name on it is not unknown in political circles. Still, the factory-level production exhibited by More in Common takes things to a whole new level.

Its goal is to propagate a kind of intellectual dishonesty aimed at making it appear that one centralised opinion is coming from many different sources who are, in this scenario, little more than the sock-puppets these very organisations complain about so much. This highly manipulative behaviour is, however, in their minds, justified by the exaggerated dangers they have identified in a vicious cycle of escalating political interference.

While the aforementioned tactics attempt to influence public opinion with their ‘groundbreaking’ research that just so happens to be part of an entire web of wealth-funded pop-up organisations, there is, in fairness, a lot of what one could call actual research going on in a separate set of institutions. These organisations, like Cambridge Analytica before them, really try to get inside your head, so that they can persuade you of what they ‘know’ is right. There are several of these, such as Swayable (‘predicting how content changes people’s minds’). But personally, I would bet on Avalanche Insights if I were going to invest in one of them, which let me remind you, 256 investors who also invest in a range of grassroots movements and campaign incubators already have.

Exhibit C: Avalanche Insights

Avalanche Insights is in the NMV portfolio and has also received an undisclosed amount of money from Luminate. Avalanche Insights works kind of like a psychiatrist. It aims to get people to talk, because, ‘language reveals values, emotions, and motivators’. Its ‘proprietary, natural language processing system’ then ‘analyses thousands of lines of text, revealing how people’s values, emotions, and priorities map to an issue’.

The end goal is to ‘help you craft messages that will resonate deeply with your target audience, persuade and mobilise them towards action, meet your strategic objectives, and win’, as well as to ‘shift perceptions’ and ‘change the conversation’.

Of course, political organisations have long used focus groups and gurus to craft emotionally resonant messages. One of the most famous, and effective, examples is Republican consultant Frank Luntz’s coinage of the term ‘death tax’ to replace ‘estate tax’. However, it is quite amazing that Avalanche Insights is funded by some of the same umbrella organisations that also fund organisations like Data and Society, with its concern about ‘manipulation’, and the American Economic Liberties Project, which is concerned about monopolies hiding behind other organisations.

Avalanche Insights is not just a company on the market for hire by anyone. It doesn’t have to be indiscriminate with its clients because it gets funding from Luminate et al. Thus, it can limit itself to working with ‘some of the biggest players in progressive politics as well as values-aligned companies and causes’. As such, it fulfils an important niche in the NGO eco-system, coming up with the core plan on how to ‘shift perceptions’ and ‘change the conversation’ that can then be utilised in other funded organisations. Such as Run for Something.

Exhibit D: Run for Something

As the final piece in the puzzle, which has so far covered ‘grassroots groups’, ‘research and think tanks’ and ‘privately-run but NGO-subsidised focus groups’, the final act is, of course, the actual running of campaigns and turning out the vote.

Even this one small slice of the NGO complex includes tonnes of tools like TurboVote and BallotReady that are intended to help get out the vote, as well as organisations dedicated to getting Democrats elected, such as Flippable and SisterDistrict. These all help to move targets (voters) through the political action funnel, sometimes exhorting a level of ‘engagement’ with the prospective voter which would in other countries border on harassment.

But there are also organisations – again for some reason listed as investments – that complete the political-involvement cycle by recruiting candidates and helping them win election. One of these organisations is Run for Something, which according to the Avalanche Insights webpage also works with it. Run for Something also partners with Flippable, Indivisible, PantSuitNation, Sister District and Swing Left (all also in the NMV stable).

Under ‘What kind of candidate are we looking for?’, Run for Something states that it ‘works exclusively with progressive Millennials and Gen-Zers running for local office for the first or second time’. In order to become a Run for Something candidate, one must be ‘pro-choice, pro-universal healthcare, pro-LGBTQ equality, pro-criminal justice reform, pro-working families and organised labour, pro-voting rights, pro-campaign finance reform’, and ‘focus on inequality, raising incomes, and creating jobs… acknowledge that climate change is real, man-made, and our responsibility to fight; and… fight to reduce gun violence in their community.’

As one can see, it is a pretty tight operation – they are not just helping young people in general run for office or even allowing any cherry-picking on the policy.

The site continues: ‘How well they communicate online and in person, how comfortable they are in their skin, and how “authentic” they can be are all important factors. We’re willing to invest in good talent wherever it is.’

I’m not sure what is weirder here – the fact that it is still ‘investing’, this time literally in candidates, or that ‘authentic’ is in quotation marks.

Run for Something claims to have ‘helped elect 309 people’ who will be ‘the present and future leaders of the Democratic Party’.

Some of the services Run for Something provides include: advising candidates on campaign management; helping with fundraising; creating ‘a really beautifully produced, powerful campaign video’; writing speeches, procuring media attention and putting candidates in touch ‘with vendors and really talented campaign staff, an exceptional graphic and web-design team and… mentors and confidantes to be sounding boards and bounce ideas off of’.

I had occasionally wondered how so many young candidates had managed to knock 40- and 50-year-olds out of the way in the political arena. Run for Something goes a long way to explaining that phenomenon.

I do feel for the plight of the young – after all, I am a very short 40-year-old who is still routinely listening to all of the things people think I look too young to do. Getting to live this reverse ageism on a regular basis has probably made me more empathetic than most.

But my brain hasn’t stopped aging and it has noticed how easy young people are to manipulate, simply because they haven’t had the dubious privilege of seeing it all before. Politics, like all the worst fashion, comes around in a slightly different form again and again. Neon colours, for example, are only exciting the first time around. And so are potential apocalypses (climate change in its more hysterical aspects, Y2K, nuclear holocaust, Communism, etc) and threats to human decency (for example, ‘white supremacy’, which seems to involve rather fewer skinheads with steel-toed boots than it did in the 1990s).

Empowering younger people would involve just letting them do their own thing without trying to shut them down. When you make them sign up to your programme to get help, you’re – once again – instrumentalising them, having enticed them in with the services the cash donations provide.

So to sum up: We have a conveyor belt of political organisations that includes activist groups like Sunrise, research operations like Data and Society and More in Common, focus-group operators like Avalanche Insights, and vote turn-out and candidate-support services like Run for Something, all operating under a dense web of funding, partnering and referrals. It truly is its own end-to-end ecosystem.

These organisations constantly cite each other’s work, recycle the same personnel and fund, ‘support’ and ‘partner with’ each other’s projects on multiple different levels. Moreover, perhaps the most startling thing for me in conducting this impromptu investigation was how many people I knew who were on the boards, steering committees or staff of these organisations. And I don’t mean know of. I mean, personally, know. Because that’s how far-reaching and yet incestuous this sector is. It’s virtually impossible to be politically active without running into them, yet they stick together like a highly-funded clan.

The example of Quadrivium perhaps best illustrates this. Together with Democracy Fund (sponsored by Omidyar), Quadrivium funds Democracy Works and pursues much the same type of goal, for example, achieving 80 per cent voter turnout (via Democracy Works), and ‘developing the pipeline of leaders’, including recruiting, training and apparently helping them legislate (via the Millennial Action Project).

Quadrivium was founded in 2014 by James and Kathryn Murdoch. Yes, those Murdochs. James is Rupert’s son and worked for NewsCorp for 17 years. His wife, Kathryn, used to work for the Clinton Climate Initiative.

Quadrivium funds: a voter registration tool; an organisation that helps politicians legislate; Unite America; Voting Rights Lab; Protect Democracy; Brennan Centre; Republicans for the Rule of Law; New Politics; Represent Us; Centre for a New American Security; ADL; Code.org; Upstream; ADL/Moonshot CVE; Audacious Fast Grants; Climate Central; AAAS/SciLine; The 19th: PEN America; Election SOS; Environmental Defense Fund; Climate Leadership Council; National Academy of Sciences; Niskanen; Potential Energy; and NRDC Rewrite the Future.

And in addition to that, reports CNBC, Murdochs 2.0 also donate to political candidates and political action committees. By September 2020 they had contributed $12million dollars to the 2020 election cycle.

We’ve been over all that kind of thing, though. As I said in the beginning, Omidyar is hardly one of a kind. However, Quadrivium illustrates another turn of the screw. For in that CNBC article above about the Murdochs’ spending, it gives as its source the Center for Responsive Politics. Guess who funds the Center for Responsive Politics? Among others, the Democracy Fund and Quadrivium.

So – in a development that is just indescribably poetic – the source the article cites about Quadrivium’s political funding is funded by… Quadrivium.

You couldn’t make this up.

Let us, like the American Economic Liberties Project – funded by Omidyar, which funds Democracy Works, which funds TurboVote together with Quadrivium and Democracy Fund, and with whom Quadrivium funds the Center for Responsive Politics which keeps track of the political spending of Quadrivium and Omidyar – just contemplate how concentrated wealth can hide its power behind a series of pop-up brand names, shall we?

And, while we’re at it, let’s abandon the pretence that these funders are keen on deconstructing their own power. No, they have created an end-to-end web of political institutions, and a dependent hand-out culture, where nothing happens without money and a tsunami of gushing praise for those brave enough to ‘speak truth’ to the power that pays their salary… and continues to do so. 

After all the screaming about the Koch brothers’ insidious influence on politics, it turns out that, for some, the near naked exercise of oligarchic power wasn’t the issue at all. It was that the wrong people were doing it. As much as they shouted about a commitment to democracy, they were only really ever committed to getting their own way. And they have – proudly – out-oligarched their enemies.

With a twist.

The old villains, like the Kochs and Murdoch, First of His Name, were seemingly concerned with self-enrichment. Essentially self-absorbed, they pursued politics to get what they wanted (more money), hurting other people in the process. By contrast, ‘philanthropists’ like Omidyar and Murdoch II are set on changing your life for ‘the greater good’. They have convinced themselves that, since they are on a holy mission, everything they do and all the money they expend in pursuit of those goals is somehow justified. The ruthless businessmen of yesteryear are being replaced by priests of higher morals who just happen to be phenomenally rich. The oldies pursued their interests selfishly – the newbies are convinced that their interests are your interests. And they are spending a great deal of money trying to convince the rest of the world of that, too.

Links - 21st July 2024 (1 - Black-on-Asian Violence)

Seasonal Clickfarm Worker on X - "“Stop Asian Hate” was preposterous. Has there ever been so blatant an attempt to meme nonexistent bigotry into existence in order to shore up a fracturing political coalition"
Seasonal Clickfarm Worker on X - "This post has been mostly well received but what the negative responses show is that under conditions of ethnonarcissism people CRAVE the feeling being hated; when you tell people "meh, Americans generally like asians" they feel something is being TAKEN AWAY"
Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "Stop Asian Hate died overnight because people started asking “Wait who’s attacking Asians?” and they didn’t like having to answer that
I remember they tried "white supremacy is making blacks attack Asians" but somehow that didn't gain traction.  Curious"
RGS on X - "I also remember when Asians won the affirmative Action scotus case and they tried the "Asians just opened the door for more white supremacy and this decision will only benefit white women.""
Wait... what🤦 : r/facepalm - "Yes, I’m not even fully Asian but I’ve encountered sufficient hostility from certain communities that it was one of several reasons I moved to the UK.  Black British people and East Asian British people seem to get along just fine. I have spent time in several African neighbourhoods in London and experienced NO hostility. I wouldn’t risk that in America, sadly.  I’ve found there to be a lot of similarities in terms of work ethic between African and Asian immigrants, for better or for worse. In the sense of making their kids work REALLY HARD IN SCHOOL to the point where their social lives can be neglected. Or saying “you have to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer.”"

Meme - "LA riots epitomizes the problem. Blacks pillaged the Asian town, then LA's police cordoned off both the Asian and black districts to burn. Then the white media and police had the audacity to victim shame the Asians. It took decades for a lot of Asian stores to recover from billions in damages, their wonderful neighbors."
"That was some crazy shit"
"Isn't that where the roof Koreans with guns started?"
Meme - "Yep. Cue the oppression Olympics. The arguments would follow this exact formula:
between Blacks and Asians, Asians are more privileged
it is impossible to be racist towards someone more privileged
Black-on-Asian hate/violence is therefore not racist and therefore cannot be mentioned in the same sentence as "racism"
Cue the language policing: the perceived mislabeling of it as a racism issue is itself considered anti-Black racism, so the conversation must be redirected to that, as if it's a bigger problem than the original complaint of Black-on-Asian hate/violence"
"Had a friendship fall apart because they thought exactly like this, and treated people who disagreed like total bastards. It's a shame, really."
"Every time I hear the argument that you can't be racist against a more privileged race, eyes roll back so hard I can see my brain dying."

Meme - "As an Asian living in Bay Area and have my whole life. It's mostly black people who fucks with us. I'm not saying white, Latinos or even other Asian don't mess with us, they do too."
"Yeah I'm black and the casual Asian racism my family throws around is insane. Grew up being told not to date Asians because of their food and some other stuff. Food just stood out to me because my family also loves Asian food??? Like what???"
"Nah for real I absolutely love my dad but I have to call him out sometimes. He LOVES Asian historical dramas tho and Jackie Chan, we grew up watching Jackie but he does NOT like Asian people and I'm just disappointed. And my mom mimics a stereotypical Asian accent and I just call her out and leave the room, I understand different generations but like fuck."

Garry Tan on X - "Oakland had 30 brutal attacks & robberies at Westlake Christian Terrace Senior Living in a week 85 year old Asian grandmas getting beaten/robbed so bad they're sent to the ER every few hours. And yet it is still not being investigated as a hate crime"
Wilfred Reilly on X - "The reality of inner-city, and mostly (from the ID'd suspects) Black crime is insane. 31 grand-parents were attacked in 7-8 days. Any sane society would track down and arrest - if not hang or crucify - the perps during prime time. Our current claim is that "systemic racism" or some similar boogey-man caused this. That's a level of bullshit that's just not sustainable."
Damn anti-blackness!

Meme - "Black on Asian crime in NYC is so normal that people just assume that's what happened when it's on the news. Took the Q from Flatbush through Chinatown into midtown for work for years and I'll tell you I've seen it in person on the train and platforms"
"I was staying in NYC for a school rotation in January 2020 right before the COVID lockdowns happened and it was starting to ramp up back then because of the virus' association with China, lots of homeless panhandling and a few of them would jump to slurs if I refused."
"Yea honestly same I've been taking the Q from sheepshead ever since I was born and I can confirm ts"

Wait... what🤦 : r/facepalm - "Back in 2019 right before covid. My family's restaurant was robbed at gunpoint. The group of guys broke in from the back and held me at gun point as I gave them money and listening to them for 15min about how he was going to kill me and my family if I don't give him more money.  Turns out we were number 7 out of 13 asian restaurants (in total) that got robbed by this group. The fbi even got involved and eventually all 3 got caught and all 3 are in jail now. Had to testify twice.  All 3 of them were black and I still remember before the trial talking with the prosecutor and while I truly believe he is a good person and wanted justice for all of us. When he sat me down and the first thing he said to me was "I want you to know first this isn't big enough to be on the news nor is it considered a hate crime because they didn't state anything about being hateful towards asians".  In my mind I was so angry because I was thinking. 13 asian families were robbed, one old asian woman was pistol whipped so hard she got brain damage, and you're telling me this wasn't a hate crime just cuz they didn't say it was?"  And it wasnt "important" enough to be on the news or anything. If the local news or authorities wouldve said something after the 3rd asian restaurant robbery, we mightve been more prepared but no, we weren't that important enough and even though they only targeted asian restaurants. It's not a hate crime....got it 👍"

Meme - :) @999kassh: "why are you only holding black people accountable when someone debunked ur whole take w statistics ?????"
Kangmin Lee @kangminjlee: "Ok show me videos or cases of white people ganging up on Asian women and punching Asian grandmas in the regular and I'll be happy to denounce it"
:) @999kassh: "like ur going off of REDDIT COMMENTS. u cant be serious"
Kangmin Lee @kangminjlee: "Still waiting."
:) @999kassh: "wait all day"
Kangmin Lee @kangminjlee: "You have proven my point. Have a great day!" Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "30 targeted black on Asian violent attacks in 7 days. Oakland police captain says the attacks on Asian elderly are not hate crimes because there is "no evidence to suggest it was race based." Every single one of the 30 victims was Asian. Yeah, ok." Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "Black on Asian violence, esp against the elderly, has exploded in cities like Oakland, but Asians aren’t allowed to complain about it because then we’re RAYCIST or “complicit in yt supremacy”  If black people denounce the violence, they’re shunned by their own community as “coons” or bludgeoned over the head by liberals for “upholding harmful stereotypes”  What a great culture lmao"
rekhan on X - "Black people have more immunity than the president" Wait... what🤦 : r/facepalm - "I'm Chinese and I went to predominantly black/Hispanic middle and high schools (through magnet programs) in those years, and the only overt racism I really ever experienced came from black students--mostly slurs in middle school to mostly targeted property theft in high school. Thankfully, it was pretty mild in the grand scheme of things, clearly perpetrated a few shitty kids, and we also had incredible black teachers who taught us how to be kind (and not racist) through example.  Honestly the worst lasting impact was that it made my parents more racist, which I had to actively work to fix. But I can totally see how COVID could make this kind of resentment worse on both sides." Wait... what🤦 : r/ facepalm - "I taught high school in NYC between 2000-2007. One of my Chinese students came to me asking for help because a group of African Americans students roamed the cafeteria mugging Asian students. They had talked to the administration and as usual, nothing was done, except having the Asian students read a story from James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. They asked me to open my classroom to them for lunch. I did, but also talked to the principal. He admitted that he couldn't do anything because African American parents were going to get really angry. I'm Hispanic and became really close to my Asian students. In April an Asian student got his iPod stolen and was punched by a student in our school. I broke the rules, woke to the police station in our building, and reported the crime. The iPod was found and returned, the victim was given a safety transfer and was removed from school. I went to teach the next year to a school in Brooklyn that was another hellhole, with Yemeni students forming a moral police and harassing and assaulting students for eating during Ramadan or girls for not wearing hijabs.  TL;DR: Don't become a teacher...
 A bunch of boys harassing other Muslim kids for eating lunch during Ramadan. They were supposed to go to a classroom so they didn't have to be around other people during lunchtime, but when they realized some Muslim kids were eating they went down to the cafeteria to take their food and throw in the trash, most kids couldn't afford to buy more food or had only one lunch ticket for their free meal. They hit girls for not wearing hijabs. I heard that a girl was threaten with sexual violence. We had a young Pakistani girl who didn't wear a hijab and after some kid slapped her in the face her father came to complain.  Not related to the moral police, but we had another Muslim boy who was dating a Mexican girl, some Pakistani boys assaulted him and told his father. They boy was removed from the house and sent to foster care because the father threaten to kill him because he was engaged to marry a girl in Pakistan and his relation with a Mexican girl was a dishonor to the family." Wait... what🤦 : r/facepalm - "I recall an interview on NPR I heard a couple of years ago. The interviewee, some activist on anti-Asian violence said explicitly that the reason she does not focus on black on Asian violence is because she does not want to damage black-Asian relations.   My jaw hit the floor at her honesty."
"And it’s still very sugarcoated lol.  A real honest answer would be “the PR gymnastics I would need to do on these eggshells to address this topic, is not at all worth just how easily someone can accuse me of racism and turn public opinion against me for saying any single negative thing about the black population.”"
"I remember an NPR interview during the antisemitic attacks in New York a few years back where the guest was talking about the Black Hebrew Israelites and other know antisemitic groups carrying out the attacks and how we needed to find ways to combat the hate. The NPR reporter interviewing her grilled her on this and all but flat out called her a bigot asking why she was focusing on this small problem when Trump exists and why she wasn't going after white supremacists (she was as well) instead of focusing on this. Basically any amount of attention was too much attention on this particular issue for some reason. You're only allowed to call out white racism (maybe Jews are up for grabs now too?) any other group and you're a bigot for focusing on a non-issue." Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "A common complaint I get is: "But Asians are racist against black people!" Man, you’re right. It really breaks my heart when Chinese men pulverize black grandmas and gangs of Korean men stomp on black women’s heads against concrete regularly. Oh wait. That doesn’t happen.
But we know what does happen. We know who’s committing violence against vulnerable Asians in cities regularly.  Race hustling liberals and low-IQ nuts who don’t understand per capita squeal about the "anti-blackness" in the Asian community, and it’ll just be a microaggression, calling the cops, or AT WORST refusing business. Yet they’ll act like it’s the end of the world and are allowed to throw a tantrum. Meanwhile black people brutalize and terrorize Asians weekly and we have to shut up about it or else we’re smeared as "anti-black" and "racist". Why are we not allowed to talk about the anti-Asianness in the black community? There really is no comparison.  Every time we try raise awareness or call for measures of safety for vulnerable Asians it’s always either "but Asians are mean too!" or "what about white people?" Are you allergic to accountability like toddlers? Is it really that hard to denounce when blacks violently hurt and kill Asians and not want violence against innocents? You lot will bend over backwards to deflect the blame on something meaningless like white supremacy or anti-blackness among Asians to justify & ignore blacks violently murdering Asians.  If you’re tired of the stereotyping, clean up your act and stop giving people a reason to stereotype."