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NOVEMBER 30,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

MADNESS – FROM FOX:   The superintendent of Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) said earlier this month that schools in his district are "deeply using critical race theory," claiming students must learn about historical injustice in the United States "to better understand who they are."  Superintendent Nikolai Vitti made the remarks during a Nov. 9 school board meeting, footage of which went viral Tuesday after being disseminated on Twitter by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo.  "Our curriculum is deeply using critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you’ll find it in English, language arts, and the other disciplines," Vitti said. "We’re very intentional about creating a curriculum, infusing materials and embedding critical race theory within our curriculum."   Detroit, a predominantly black city, has been making progress in recent years, trying to recover from decades of neglect, corruption and racial politics.  This will simply set it back again, setting race against race, and denying to the black child a true education that could advance that child in the modern world. 

November 30,  2021     Permalink

WHO IS IN CONTROL? – OVERNIGHT:  There is a chill coming from China, the chill of censorship and artistic control.  Is anyone resisting?  From Hollywood Reporter:

Disney+ users in Hong Kong have noticed an episode of The Simpsons is conspicuously missing.

The 16th season of the iconic Fox animated show jumps from episode 11 to 13 when viewers in the city browse the flagship Disney streaming service. The missing episode 12, first broadcast in 2005, happens to be the one where Homer takes his family to China, where they visit Tiananmen Square and come across a placard that reads: “On this site, in 1989, nothing happened.”

It appears the episode has suffered precisely the kind of the censorship it was written to ridicule.
The censorship of such content would come as no surprise in Mainland China, where any mention of the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy student protestors has been scrubbed clean of public discourse for decades. But the apparent voluntary removal of the episode in Hong Kong — especially when done by a major U.S. media company — is a relatively new feature of civic life there.

The episode also follows the Simpson family as they visit the mummified remains of ex-leader Mao Zedong and come across a row of tanks in Beijing, referencing the iconic “tank man” photo taken during the 1989 student uprising.

Under Beijing’s encroaching influence, Hong Kong’s legislature has passed a series of bills undermining the city’s former free speech laws. Last month, the legislature put in place a new law banning films deemed contrary to China’s national security interests — an intentionally vague designation — from being screened or distributed in the city. Any person who exhibits an unauthorized film could face up to three years in jail and a $130,000 fine.

The content rules governing streaming services in Hong Kong remain somewhat unclear, although analysts believe it’s only a matter of time before they are hit with the same restrictions that are undercutting the city’s once vibrant film sector and international journalist community. When asked in August whether the new film law would apply to online platforms, a spokesperson for the city’s Commerce and Economic Development Bureau told the Hong Kong Free Press that “other” laws apply to the internet: “[TV] broadcast and the Internet are subject to other applicable law and regulations. Whether an act constitutes a crime or otherwise would depend on its specific circumstances and evidence, and cannot be taken in isolation or generalized,” they spokesperson said.

COMMENT:  Coming soon to a city near you.  President Biden just appointed, as an FCC commissioner, someone who believes in censorship.  And Twitter's new CEO is a left-wing zealot who has no great regard for free speech.

We will not have a Constitution until the American people defend it.  The behavior of some American corporations does not inspire us.

November 30,  2021     Permalink

NOVEMBER 29,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

COULD BE CRITICAL, BUT READ WITH CAUTION – FROM FOX:    Authorities in New York's Long Island are investigating a blast that left a crater and was felt miles away Sunday. Police are working with the FBI on the probe, to determine whether it could have been a prelude to something bigger.  The Suffolk County Police Department said the explosion occurred on Fox Island, off the coast of West Babylon, around 11:40 a.m. when a device was detonated. Authorities received nearly three dozen 911 calls, the department told Fox News.  No injuries were reported. Fox News has reached out to the FBI. Investigators are not ruling out the idea that the incident may have been a test run for something bigger, such as a possible terrorist attack.  "Terrorism is always a concern because people do test devices before using them," a police spokeswoman told Fox News. "The SCPD is investigating with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force on this investigation."  The blast left a crater on the north side of the island that measured 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep. Authorities are seeking a boat seeing leaving from the area at the time.  I would take this very seriously.  If this were some group trying just to get rid of an explosive, they wouldn't set it off, they'd dump it in the ocean.  The fact that the device was set off gives the episode the flavor of a test.  Eternal vigilance required.

November 29, 2021       Permalink

SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES – OVERNIGHT.  If the reporting is accurate, this is a scandal of mammoth proportions.  But who will have the guts to investigate?  From the Washington Times: 

As the coronavirus pandemic raged, Uncle Sam was doing more than putting money in unemployed Americans’ pockets — the federal government was also shipping tens of billions of dollars overseas to fraudsters working with the country’s most prominent adversaries, such as China and Russia.

Haywood Talcove, CEO for LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ government division, says 40% of the more than $700 billion spent on unemployment went to fraudsters. 

Most of that ill-gotten money — $175 billion of it — went to overseas actors. And most of that, perhaps $140 billion, went to organizations that are state-sponsored.

“It makes me mad that there hasn’t been enough oversight, that the tools that are needed when you’re distributing this type of money aren’t in place,” Mr. Talcove told The Washington Times. “It allows our adversaries, the Russians, the Chinese, the Nigerians, the Romanians, to use that money to hurt our country.”

He said the money lost to fraud could have provided $160,000 to each individual in the country below the poverty line. Or it could have paid a Harvard University-level tuition for four years for every 18-year-old in the country.

Instead, it ended up in the hands of criminals, from low-level grifters to sophisticated government-backed syndicates.

Nearly two years after the pandemic first broke out in China, and 20 months after Congress passed its first major coronavirus bailout bill, the U.S. is still reeling. 

Virus variants are still breaking out, and the economy is facing a chaotic jobs market and soaring inflation.

Government assistance has begun to ratchet down, but there’s not yet been a full accounting of the $6 trillion or so Congress allocated, including the $717 billion the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculates went to pandemic unemployment assistance.

Congress initially offered a $600-a-week boost on top of what states were already paying, and granted new eligibility to people who’d exhausted their benefits. The program was later extended, though at $300 a week.

The problem, Mr. Talcove said, is that the states just weren’t ready for that kind of money to flow through their unemployment systems. But fraud rings were.

For years, they’d been using the same playbook, combining names and pilfered personal identifying information to scam companies and government agencies like disaster relief or the IRS.

They’d not targeted unemployment because the money had been pretty small potatoes. But a $600-a-week federal payout on top of states’ payouts suddenly made it worthwhile. 

The average pandemic unemployment payout totaled $26,000, or more than the average tax-refund fraud, Mr. Talcove said.

California, which received more than $130 billion of the unemployment money, likely saw tens of billions of dollars in bogus payments made. Even a jurisdiction like the District of Columbia, with about $2 billion in federal assistance, lost about $800 million in bad disbursements, Mr. Talcove estimates.

In Michigan, an auditor’s report earlier this month found the state didn’t require individuals to self-certify the reason they were out of work. That meant people who didn’t deserve the money under the federal rules were nonetheless allowed to get checks in Michigan.

Even after being warned by the feds, Michigan took months to change its system, allowing people to continue to be paid benefits they shouldn’t have gotten. 

The auditor said at least 300,000 bogus claims were paid because of the bungle, and the money won’t be recovered because applicants didn’t actually scam the system.

Mr. Talcove said private companies could never withstand those kinds of losses. “With government, they just get to print more money,” he said.

COMMENT:  This demands a full Congressional investigation.  But will we get it?  I doubt it.  There are, allegedly, too many hands in the cash bucket, too many public figures.  There are reputations to maintain, future presidential candidates to protect. 

The story is just getting reported.  I cannot verify every line of it, but the sourcing appears to be sound, and the detail is compelling.  We were robbed.  Big time.  But who will care?

November 29, 2021       Permalink