From Sarah Hoyt, at Instapundit, "PLEASE REMEMBER YOU’RE AMERICAN. IT’S IMPORTANT."
Friday, December 25, 2020
Human Remains Found at Site of Nashville 'RV' Bombing: Sources
The remains were possibly too shredded to ultimately identify the body.
At ABC News, "Human remains found at site of 'intentional' Nashville RV explosion: Sources."
PREVIOUSLY: "Nashville Christmas Bombing 'RV' Photo."
Dissident Women's Studies Ph.D. Speaks
It's Samantha Jones (not her real name, to protect against leftist death threats, apparently), at New Discourses, "A Dissident Women's Studies Ph.D. Speaks Out."
It's the second half of her piece that's most interesting, for example:One of the most urgent needs is the development of a grassroots movement for intellectual diversity on campus, spearheaded by students, alumni, parents, and concerned citizens. I hope that existing conservative, centrist, or libertarian organizations can help to facilitate this movement by providing organizational and logistical support at campuses throughout the country. Everyone should take a close look at their state’s public universities’ Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiatives to see if intellectual diversity is included. If it is not, then the obvious first step is to advocate for the inclusion of intellectual diversity. Concerned taxpayers, students, parents, and alumni, working with the elected officials in those university districts, if necessary, need to ensure that universities have intellectual diversity in humanities and social sciences course offerings. If intellectual diversity is included in the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiative (in my experience, most of these initiatives include at least a brief reference to intellectual diversity), then work can be done to survey students to see if they feel that intellectual diversity is represented, particularly in their humanities and social sciences courses. Heterodox Academy has published relevant survey data on the dearth of intellectual diversity in these fields. If America has any chance of continuing the classical liberal values upon which it was founded, then students who have a commitment to these values have to enter the teaching profession—as doctoral students in education, as administrators, and as public school teachers. Critical pedagogy, and more specifically critical race theory, are the dominant discourses controlling all levels in American schools of education, so students need to tread lightly and assent, at least outwardly, to Critical Social Justice ideology. Once in the classroom, however, teachers should reject all pressures to teach Critical Social Justice, and especially critical race theory, because it is an inherently racist ideology and because it instantiates the problem—racism—that it purports to solve. Critical race theory also needs to be resisted because it, as its own proponents assert, “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” (Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction). Teachers should take a stand for fighting racism within liberalism, not by adopting critical race theory. If there is not already a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting non-woke students to enter the teaching profession—again, at all levels, as professors of education, as administrators, and as public school teachers—then one should be organized immediately. This could also be a special project for existing right- or libertarian-leaning organizations. Another important project should be the revival of Western civilization and Great Books courses, at all levels of education, but most critically in the universities. In 1964, 15 of the 50 premier universities in America required students to take a survey of Western civilization. All 50 offered the course, and nearly all of them (41) offered it as a way to satisfy some requirement. (Source: New York Post, by Ashley Thorne “The drive to put Western civ back in the college curriculum,” March 29, 2016). But since 1987, when Jesse Jackson led 500 students around Stanford University protesting the requirement that undergraduates take a course in Western Civilization, which they denounced as Eurocentric, white-male indoctrination, most colleges have eliminated Western civ courses for diversity or multiethnic course requirements. An excellent example of a Western civ curriculum can be found in the James Madison program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, which is dedicated to “exploring enduring questions of American constitutional law and Western political thought.” Another avenue is to look into funding institutes for education in Western civilization as a new department at extant colleges and universities. I would love to see crowd-sourced funds used to construct a beautiful classical building adjacent to one of the ugliest college campuses in the country, preferably one composed entirely of postwar Brutalist buildings. I imagine that students whose spirits are continually depressed by attending classes in the midst of such hideous architecture would feel intrigued to enter such a beautiful building. Once inside, they might learn that there is, in fact, such a thing as beauty; that it matters, and that Critical Social Justice ideology can never build anything beautiful; it can never, in fact, build anything at all—it can only destroy. Once inside that building, students might become interested in registering for a course on Western civilization, a course in which all thought is permitted, in which no one is threatened with cancellation: a microcosm of what a university environment used to be. In this way, we might plant and nurture the seed of resistance to the increasing totalitarianism of Critical Social Justice. In the long term, it is going to be necessary to create more universities devoted to classical education, not indoctrination into Critical Social Justice ideology, as well as more K-12 private and charter schools in the classical tradition because university schools of education have been training “social justice” educators for decades now, so Critical Social Justice ideology is now in the K-12 public schools. At a policy level on this problem, we need avenues for teacher certification outside of the existing teacher colleges, which are wholly committed to critical pedagogy and other failed approaches. Forcing every licensed teacher (usually for state jobs) to undergo ideological training to gain licensure is not only a problem but should be illegal. At the personal level, my advice to everyone with kids who can afford to do so is to pull your kids out of the public schools immediately and enroll them in private schools, or home school. Although home schooling has already begun to come under attack, it is still a viable option—at least for now. In the future, homeschooling will come under increased scrutiny and I believe there will be attempts to render it illegal. I realize that not everyone can afford to home school or send their kids to private schools (many of which are not safe from Critical Social Justice, either). I strongly recommend that all parents emphasize the value of vocational training programs for their children as avenues to career paths that pay well and offer a great deal of autonomy. My hope is that new immigrants to America will increasingly speak out against Critical Social Justice ideology as an American instantiation of what is called, in other contexts, tribalism—a form of corruption that has damaged many countries. Far from being a bastion of white supremacy, America’s liberal values are what have attracted people from all countries to undergo great hardship to come here, precisely because this is one of the few places in which ordinary people can exercise their talents to achieve a standard of living that is impossible in most of the world. It is my fervent hope that more American college students—especially the “woke” who rail against their own country as evil—would be required to spend a semester abroad in a developing country in order to gain some much-needed perspective on the struggles people face who were not fortunate enough to be born into such an “oppressive” place as America. Lastly, I have focused mostly on academia and education because this is the sector I know best, but I strongly urge everyone, from all walks of life, to embrace your sense of humor (a quality that is conspicuously absent in woke culture). Wokeness should continue to relentlessly mocked and parodied through meme culture (Andrew Doyle’s Titania McGrath is a great example). Just as important: Be courageous. Stand up for the beliefs that have made America a great country. If you hear people treating others as members of groups, articulate the importance of treating people as individuals. As Jordan Peterson put it, “The smallest minority is the individual.” If you encounter people treating others badly because of their gender or skin color, say that this behavior is morally wrong. If you see people attempting to “cancel” others, articulate why this is a terrible way to treat others. If you witness attacks on freedom of speech and advocacy of censorship, or if you meet people who are in favor of “hate speech” laws, or laws to combat “misinformation” (a code word for non-leftist ideas), articulate why freedom of speech is an absolutely essential and non-negotiable value. If you hear people discussing why they think socialism is great, take a stand for free markets and the prosperity they have produced. If you hear people calling for retributive justice and political violence, push against it and discuss why violence is never acceptable. If you encounter attacks on meritocracy, make a case for why merit is essential to the advancement of individuals and societies. I think a lot of liberals, like me, generally, if not naively, assumed that the liberal values underpinning America would simply continue throughout our lives, but these values are under attack and they need to be vigorously and unapologetically defended. Our civilization is at stake and the hour is late.
RTWT.
Christmas Women
At Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."
Also, at the Other McCain, "Super Hot: Christmas Naked Rule 5!"
'Die Hard' is Definitely a Christmas Movie
At the Other McCain, where the inimitable Robert Stacy McCain regales us with Merry Christmas Eve movie-aficionado insights.
See, "‘Happy Trails, Hans’: What Is Everybody’s Favorite Christmas Movie Really About?"
Jennifer Delacruz's Christmas Forecast
Well, I doubt Ms. Jennifer will be under your tree, but have a Merry Christmas in any case!
At ABC News 10 San Diego:
Claire Lehmann, et al., eds., Panics and Persecutions
At Amazon, Claire Lehmann et al., eds., Panics and Persecutions: 20 Quillette Tales of Excommunication in the Digital Age.
Thursday, December 24, 2020
Screw COVID Tyranny: Families Defy 'Dire Public Health Warnings' to Travel Home for the Holidays
And California's the new New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S.
This could actually just be massive Democrat Party hypocrisy, since this state's almost all Democrats anyways, and thus the majority of travelers are likely to be progressives who voted for the elected officials who are literally destroying the country.
At LAT, "Dire COVID warnings go unheeded as many insist on Christmas traditions; officials fear new surge":
Airports are seeing steady increases in travelers determined to spend Christmas with family and friends. Coronavirus testing centers are seeing brisk business, including from some people who want to know whether they have the virus before attending holiday events. And last-minute shoppers are still out looking for that perfect gift. To the alarm of California health officials, Christmas is looking an awful lot like Thanksgiving, when social gatherings put an already unprecedented surge of the coronavirus into overdrive. The Thanksgiving “super-spreader” events helped fill hospitals with COVID-19 patients, forcing more restrictions on businesses and pushing the healthcare network to the brink. But even the most dire public health warnings seemed to have failed to sink in. And in some cases, they are no match for the basic human need to spend time with loved ones, maintain family traditions and turn to others for support during challenging times. Officials have already said that hospitals will likely have to make difficult decisions in the coming weeks about which patients will get the critical care that could mean the difference between life and death. The further spread of COVID-19 during Christmas gatherings would only prolong the crisis, officials said. “We really can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of Thanksgiving. ... Another spike in cases from the winter holidays will be disastrous for our hospital system, and ultimately will mean many more people simply won’t be with us in 2021,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Monday. “Our hospitals are already over capacity, and the high quality medical care we’re accustomed to in L.A. County is beginning to be compromised as our frontline healthcare workers are beyond stretched to the limit.” “Almost no one has caught COVID on a plane,” said Andrew Connors, who stood in a security line at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday morning with his daughter, Meikah. All around them, the terminal buzzed as masked passengers queued up for security pat-downs, airport employees wiped surfaces with fervor and roller bags rumbled across the floor. Connors said Meikah, 11, was preparing to travel alone to Marysville, Ohio, to spend Christmas with her mother. Although he was initially reluctant to put his daughter on a plane, he said he felt reassured after reading up on safety protocols and air-filtration methods onboard. “We’re probably going to make a snowman when I get there,” she said. She joins more than 3 million passengers who have passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints in the last three days, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration...
More.
Families on the Economic Brink as Congress' Christmas Relief Bill Crashes
It's bad.
Millions of Americans who are hours away from losing unemployment aid or the small business they have spent years building have a simple plea to President Trump and Congress: Please help us. The Washington Post has been inundated with messages and phone calls from people on the verge of losing their homes and cars and going hungry this holiday who are stunned that President Trump and Congress cannot agree on another emergency aid package. Several broke down crying in phone interviews. Some blamed Trump for torpedoing a $900 billion relief package at the last minute. Others agreed with Trump that the proposed $600 checks for over 150 million American households was too little, too late and should be raised to at least $2,000. Others blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for not taking a deal in August. But most told The Post they are “not political people” and are struggling to understand why Congress and the president would be able to celebrate Christmas when 14 million Americans are slated to lose unemployment aid on Saturday, the government is set to shut down on Tuesday, and an eviction moratorium that has prevented millions from losing their homes during a pandemic ends on New Year’s Eve. Waitress Robyn Saban summed up the sentiment of many: “I’ve worked for 18 years at a diner under very hard conditions. I never called in sick except when my husband died. And now Congress is just leaving town. It makes me furious because they are leaving people hanging.” Saban, 57, has been out of a job for nearly 10 months. The diner where she worked is up for sale. Below are 10 voices that represent a cross-section of ages, races, political views and professions of the millions of people who are caught in the crosshairs of the stalled fight in Washington, D.C. over more aid...
Keep reading.
The Chinese Communist Party Fail
Following-up from previously, "How the U.S. Misread Xi Jinping."
See Cai Xia, at Foreign Affairs, "The Party That Failed: An Insider Breaks With Beijing":
When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, I was full of hope for China. As a professor at the prestigious school that educates top leaders in the Chinese Communist Party, I knew enough about history to conclude that it was past time for China to open up its political system. After a decade of stagnation, the CCP needed reform more than ever, and Xi, who had hinted at his proclivity for change, seemed like the man to lead it. By then, I was midway through a decades-long process of grappling with China’s official ideology, even as I was responsible for indoctrinating officials in it. Once a fervent Marxist, I had parted ways with Marxism and increasingly looked to Western thought for answers to China’s problems. Once a proud defender of official policy, I had begun to make the case for liberalization. Once a loyal member of the CCP, I was secretly harboring doubts about the sincerity of its beliefs and its concern for the Chinese people. So I should not have been surprised when it turned out that Xi was no reformer. Over the course of his tenure, the regime has degenerated further into a political oligarchy bent on holding on to power through brutality and ruthlessness. It has grown even more repressive and dictatorial. A personality cult now surrounds Xi, who has tightened the party’s grip on ideology and eliminated what little space there was for political speech and civil society. People who haven’t lived in mainland China for the past eight years can hardly understand how brutal the regime has become, how many quiet tragedies it has authored. After speaking out against the system, I learned it was no longer safe for me to live in China. THE EDUCATION OF A COMMUNIST I was born into a Communist military family. In 1928, at the beginning of the Chinese Civil War, my maternal grandfather joined a peasant uprising led by Mao Zedong. When the Communists and the Nationalists put hostilities on hold during World War II, my parents and much of my mother’s family fought against the Japanese invaders in armies led by the CCP. After the Communists’ victory, in 1949, life was good for a revolutionary family such as ours. My father commanded a People’s Liberation Army unit near Nanjing, and my mother ran an office in that city’s government. My parents forbade my two sisters and me from taking advantage of the privileges of their offices, lest we become “spoiled bourgeois ladies.” We could not ride in our father’s official car, and his security guards never ran family errands. Still, I benefited from my parents’ status and never suffered the privations that so many Chinese did in the Mao years. I knew nothing of the tens of millions of people who starved to death during the Great Leap Forward. All I could see was socialism’s bright future. My family’s bookshelves were stocked with Marxist titles such as The Selected Works of Stalin and Required Reading for Cadres. As a teenager, I turned to these books for extracurricular reading. Whenever I opened them, I was filled with reverence. Even though I could not grasp the complexity of their arguments, my mission was clear: I must love the motherland, inherit my parents’ revolutionary legacy, and build a communist society free of exploitation. I was a true believer. I gained a more sophisticated understanding of communist thought after joining the People’s Liberation Army in 1969, at age 17. With the Cultural Revolution in full swing, Mao required everyone to read six works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, including The Communist Manifesto. One utopian passage from that book left a lasting impression on me: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Although I didn’t really understand the concept of freedom at that point, those words stuck in my head. The People’s Liberation Army assigned me to a military medical school. My job was to manage its library, which happened to carry Chinese translations of “reactionary” works, mostly Western literature and political philosophy. Distinguished by their gray covers, these books were restricted to regime insiders for the purpose of familiarizing themselves with China’s ideological opponents, but in secret, I read them, too. I was most impressed by The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by the American journalist William Shirer, and a collection of Soviet fiction. There was a world of ideas outside of the Marxist classics, I realized. But I still believed that Marxism was the only truth. I left the military in 1978 and got a job in the party-run trade union of a state-owned fertilizer factory on the outskirts of the city of Suzhou. By then, Mao was dead and the Cultural Revolution was over. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, was ushering in a period of reform and opening, and as part of this effort, he was recruiting a new generation of reform-minded cadres who could run the party in the future. Each local party organization had to choose a few members to serve in this group, and the Suzhou party organization picked me. I was sent to a two-year program at the Suzhou Municipal Party School, where my fellow students and I studied Marxist theory and the history of the CCP. We also received some training in the Chinese classics, a subject we had missed on account of the disruption of education during the Cultural Revolution. I plowed through Das Kapital twice and learned the ins and outs of Marxist theory. What appealed to me most were Marx’s ideas about labor and value—namely, that capitalists accrue wealth by taking advantage of workers. I was also impressed by Marx’s philosophical approach, dialectical materialism, which allowed him to see capitalism’s political, legal, cultural, and moral systems as built on a foundation of economic exploitation...
Still more at that top link.
How the U.S. Misread Xi Jinping
More blockbuster reporting from the Wall Street Journal, "How the U.S. Misread China’s Xi: Hoping for a Globalist, It Got an Autocrat":
BEIJING—In the two years before Xi Jinping became China’s leader in 2012, U.S. officials tried to size him up through a series of face-to-face meetings. During talks in China in 2011, Mr. Xi, then vice president, asked about civilian control of the U.S. military, shared his thoughts on uprisings in the Middle East and spoke, unprompted, about his father, a renowned revolutionary. When he visited the U.S. in 2012, he was relaxed and affable, chatting with students and posing for pictures with Magic Johnson at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game. The U.S. officials’ conclusion: Although Mr. Xi was far more confident and forthright than Hu Jintao, the stiff and scripted leader he would succeed, he likely shared his commitment to stable ties with Washington and closer integration with the U.S.-led global order. Some even hoped Mr. Xi would kick-start stalled economic reforms. It was one of the biggest strategic miscalculations of the post-Cold War era. In the eight subsequent years, Mr. Xi has pursued an expansive, hypernationalistic vision of China’s future, displaying a desire for control and a talent for political maneuvering. Drawing comparisons to Mao Zedong, he has crushed critics and potential rivals, revitalized the Communist Party and even scrapped presidential term limits so he can, if he chooses, rule for life. Promising a “China Dream” of national renewal, he has mobilized China’s military to enforce territorial claims, forced up to a million Chinese Muslims into internment camps and curbed political freedoms in Hong Kong. Now, with Covid-19 under control in China but still widespread across the U.S., he is promoting his self-styled, tech-enhanced update of Marxism as a superior alternative to free-market democracy—a “China solution” to global problems. “It was clear he was not going to be a second Hu Jintao,” said Danny Russel, who as a senior Obama administration official attended several meetings with Mr. Xi, including in 2011 and 2012. “What I underestimated about Xi Jinping was his tolerance for risk.” Mr. Xi’s swift reversal of more than three decades of apparent movement toward collective leadership and a less intrusive party has surprised both U.S. officials and much of the Chinese elite. In hindsight, though, the roots of his approach are visible in key episodes of his life. They include his father’s purge from the top party leadership, his teenage years in a Chinese village, his induction into the military and his exposure to nationalist and “new left” undercurrents in the party elite. Mr. Xi’s autocratic turn also was catalyzed by a 2012 political scandal that upset the balance of power among the party elite and emboldened advocates of stronger, centralized leadership. It gave Mr. Xi the justification he needed to sideline rivals, rebuild the party and revamp its ideology. Today China follows a new political doctrine known as “Xi Jinping Thought,” which combines many attributes of different 20th-century authoritarians. It reasserts the party’s Leninist role as the dominant force in all areas, including private business. It revives Maoist methods of mass mobilization, uses digital surveillance to replicate Stalin’s totalitarian social controls and embraces a more muscular nationalism based on ethnicity that makes fewer allowances for minorities or residents of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Above all, Xi Jinping Thought aims to grant Mr. Xi the legitimacy to remain in power and continue his quest to make China a rich, truly global power by 2049, the centenary of Mao’s victory. Mr. Xi has been a popular leader, bolstered in part by positive coverage in state media. Under his leadership, China has posted robust economic growth and eradicated extreme poverty, as well as curbing Covid-19 within its borders. The nation’s growing international stature also has become a source of national pride. “His goal is to make the whole world see China as a great power, and him as a key figure in making it great,” said Xiao Gongqin, a leading figure among scholars who advocate so-called enlightened autocracy in China. “At heart, he’s a nationalist.” Mr. Xiao, based in Shanghai, counts himself a supporter. But like many in China’s elite, he said he worries Mr. Xi “lacks a spirit of compromise. That’s his shortcoming….And there is no mechanism to correct him.” China’s government press office declined to comment, but arranged interviews with two professors at the Central Party School, the party’s top think tank and training academy. Both said Mr. Xi hadn’t abandoned collective leadership, but declined to predict whether he would retire in 2022, when his current term is scheduled to end. They described Xi Jinping Thought as “21st-Century Marxism,” saying his political thinking was shaped, in part, by his experiences in his youth. “When he was young, his life was a little tortuous, but these twists and turns made comrade Xi Jinping what he is today,” said Han Qingxiang, one of the professors, who has conducted a study session on Marxism for top leaders...RTWT.
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Mary Katharine Ham's 'Op-Sec' Christmas Gifting Experiences
A great thread, via Instapundit (click through), "A DELIGHTFUL THREAD FROM MARY KATHARINE HAM: Christmas surprises and OpSec failures."
Hunter Biden’s Family Name Aided Deals With Foreign Tycoons
Hunter Biden ramped up business activities with European and Chinese tycoons as his father exited the vice presidency four years ago. For him it was a potential path to income; for the tycoons, the Biden family name promised to burnish their reputations. The dealings got the younger Mr. Biden a discounted stake in a private-equity firm in China and consulting arrangements with a Romanian property magnate and overall allowed him to maintain a globe-trotting lifestyle, according to interviews, documents and communications reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A Chinese energy tycoon gave Mr. Biden a 2.8-carat diamond, and entities linked to him wired nearly $5 million to Mr. Biden’s law firm, according to an investigation by Senate Republicans. These arrangements now loom over President-elect Joe Biden. A federal criminal tax investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings is under way, with findings potentially trickling out in coming months. His business ties to well-connected people in China and other places could add to scrutiny of foreign-policy decisions taken by the Biden administration over possible conflicts of interest. All are likely to provide ammunition to Republicans. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who has led the Senate Finance Committee whose Republican staff helped investigate Hunter Biden, has said he would continue to look into what he says are possible counterintelligence and criminal concerns related to Mr. Biden’s business dealings. “Based on all the facts known to date, Joe Biden has a lot of explaining to do,” Mr. Grassley said recently. Hunter Biden has said he takes the tax investigation “very seriously” and is “confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.” He declined to comment for this article and his lawyer, George Mesires, didn’t respond to questions. In 2019, Mr. Biden said he wouldn’t work with any foreign companies if his father were elected U.S. president. None of the Journal’s reporting found that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business activities. The tax investigation doesn’t implicate the president-elect, according to people familiar with the matter. In a statement this month about the investigation, the president-elect said he is “deeply proud of his son.” He told reporters Tuesday he had not and would not discuss the federal tax investigation with prospective attorney general candidates. “The attorney general of the United States of America is not the president’s lawyer,” the president-elect said. “I will appoint someone who I expect to enforce the law as the law is written, not guided by me.” Joe Biden also has previously said his family members won’t be involved in businesses that appear to create a conflict of interest and won’t have “a business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country.” Some of Hunter Biden’s business deals appeared to go nowhere. Sometimes his contribution mainly consisted of making introductions to important people in business and government, according to people involved and documents. Still, legal and consulting services he provided offered a way to generate income; the Senate Republicans’ report says the millions of dollars in wire transfers from entities linked to Shanghai energy entrepreneur Ye Jianming were described as payment for such services. The tycoons who sought out Mr. Biden as a business partner were looking to build ties to the Washington establishment that Joe Biden inhabited for decades, and by doing so, smooth the way for major deals or ward off legal troubles, according to interviews, documents and communications. For businessmen in some countries, paying for introductions and getting close to people in power or their relatives is a normal part of doing business, and the son of a veteran American politician offered a potential trove of connections. Mr. Ye “would say if you find a strong partner, then opportunities can flow just from this relationship,” said a former subordinate. Mr. Biden, in an exchange about putting together a venture with Mr. Ye, pointed to the value of his family name: “Just happens that in this instance only one player holds the trump card and that’s me. May not be fair but it’s the reality because I’m the only one putting an entire family legacy on the line,” he wrote in a 2017 text message to an associate in the venture and viewed by the Journal. A graduate of Yale Law School, Hunter Biden was for a period a registered lobbyist in Washington. He also worked in boutique investment and property development firms along with American partners who sometimes tried to raise capital among the newly well-heeled in the former Soviet Union and China. Mykola Zlochevsky was looking to raise the standing of Ukraine’s Burisma Holdings in Washington when Hunter Biden joined its board in 2014. President Trump and some Republican allies have tried over the past two years to draw attention to Hunter Biden’s business activities—an effort that took off as Joe Biden emerged as a likely presidential challenger. A particular focus was Hunter Biden’s board seat with Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings. When he joined the board in 2014, Burisma’s founder Mykola Zlochevsky was looking to raise the company’s standing in Washington, as he parried legal inquiries abroad and at home where the government was vowing to clean up corruption. Mr. Biden was paid roughly $50,000 a month from 2014 to 2019. For the first three years, then-Vice President Joe Biden served as the Obama administration’s point man for international anticorruption efforts in Ukraine. Mr. Trump and his allies have alleged corruption by the Bidens. Mr. Trump’s request to Ukraine’s president in 2019 to announce an investigation into the Bidens figured into Mr. Trump’s impeachment; the GOP-controlled Senate ultimately acquitted him. Joe and Hunter Biden denied any wrongdoing...
Still more.
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
America the Sick
I disagree with this guy's take, or mostly, his ideological stance and one-sided blame on Trump, blah, blah...
But he makes a good point here, at Der Spiegel, "A Land in Decay: Where Did America Go Wrong?":
America knows it is sick. It is showing all the symptoms. There are doubts about the legitimacy of elections, and confidence in political institutions has crumbled. The media have abandoned or lost their role as impartial observers. The country's predominantly white police force continues to deploy misguided violence against a disillusioned and outraged Black population. There are armed militias on the streets and it's become almost impossible to voice an opinion without getting overwhelmed by hateful comments on social media. To top it all off is a president who refuses to concede defeat, a society that has been battered by a pandemic that can only be contained by way of solidarity...
There's still more at that top link, FWIW.
Death and Denial in California's Central Valley
This is an interesting piece, sympathetic to both sides, although definitely a leftist New Yorker take.
The San Joaquin Valley is an emerald gash shaped like a fist in the middle of the state. It abuts the Sierra Nevada mountains and drinks in the rivers that zag from the foothills. Looked upon from an airplane cabin window at thirty thousand feet, the valley appears as a medley of pixels in every shade of green; irrigated fields collide at improbable angles. On the ground, viewed from a speeding car on Highway 99, it’s a blur of corduroy—rows of garlic, tomatoes, and fruit trees sprouting from the rich, dark loam. The San Joaquin Valley is California’s bread basket, the source of the state’s bounty, the source of much of the country’s bounty. Even the names of towns that dot this verdant blanket sound fecund: Chowchilla, Planada, Ripon. These townships orbit midsize cities with populations exceeding three hundred thousand—Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton—but the region is mostly rural and agricultural. Its demographics reflect that. Of the more than four million people in the valley, many are migrant workers. A hundred and twelve thousand are believed to be undocumented. At the same time, the region skews further right politically than most of California. In the 2020 Presidential election, half of the valley’s eight counties voted for Donald Trump; in the four counties that went for Joe Biden, the Democrat won by margins far narrower than that by which he won the state as a whole. The coronavirus exacerbates the valley’s long existing divisions and pain points, says Nancy Burke, a public-health professor at the University of California, Merced. “The health indicators rival the poorest parts of Appalachia,” she told me. The counties in San Joaquin Valley “rank among the lowest in California in terms of health outcomes, as well as determinants of health, [such as] social and economic factors.” Forty-one per cent of rural residents in the region are covered by Medi-Cal, the state health insurance that is available to Californians living below the federal poverty line. So, although the region produces much of the nation’s food supply, Burke explained, the people here suffer some of the highest rates of food insecurity in the state...
More.
Baldwin Hills' Crenshaw Mall is Busted
It's a "black" mall, I guess. Nice part of town too.
Who knows? It's probably just the bad economy and consumer trends away from brick-and-mortar. But someone, somewhere, will make this about racism, amirite?
At LAT, "‘This mall has been devastated.’ A lean Christmas, empty stores and an unsettling future":
The food court is mostly shuttered. The Museum of African American Art, located improbably inside a Macy’s, is closed for now. And Black Santa is not coming to town. The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza may be open, but it doesn’t much feel that way. Gone is the classic mall background noise — Top 40 music drowned out by people talking, walking, rustling shopping bags. Gone are the free weekly workouts and the book readings. The stores have signs in the windows noting that they are open with limited capacity, but more often than not there’s only a lone shopkeeper inside. A few determined shoppers remain. “I could have gone to Fox Hills mall but I said I’m coming here to Crenshaw, and I want to patronize it because it is struggling to come back,” said Yvette Archie, a 60-year-old veterinarian who visited the mall recently to do some Christmas shopping. “I’m hoping that we can keep it in our community and for our community.” For decades, the Crenshaw mall has been a gathering place for Black Los Angeles and a prime venue for small businesses. Even during the pandemic, the mall has continued to serve the community with food drives and a coronavirus testing site. The mall also holds a weekly farmers market and Melanin Market LA, a showcase for small Black-owned businesses, in its parking lot. But like its counterparts across the country, the mall has been pushed to the brink by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the holiday shopping season — when big and small businesses alike depend on a boost in sales to help pad margins in the new year — has coincided with the worst surge in COVID-19 cases of the pandemic. Health and government officials have urged people to stay at home but stopped short of closing malls as they had done earlier in the pandemic. Recent orders from the Los Angeles County health department limited indoor mall capacity to 20% and prohibited dining on site...
More.
Monday, December 21, 2020
China Rations Electricity for Millions
Wow!
And just think, Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to turn California into China!
At NYT, "‘The Whole City Was Dark’: China Rations Electricity for Millions":
Warning of coal shortages, officials are trying to curb energy usage by telling residents not to use electric stoves and extinguishing lights on building facades and billboards. In the city of Yiwu in eastern China, the authorities turned off streetlights for several days and ordered factories to open only part-time. In coastal Wenzhou, the government ordered some companies not to heat their offices unless temperatures are close to freezing. In southern Hunan Province, workers have reported climbing dozens of flights of stairs after elevators were shut down. Large swaths of China are scrambling to restrict electricity use this winter, as the country’s rapid economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and unexpectedly frigid temperatures have sent demand for power surging. Officials in at least three provinces — where a total of more than 150 million people live — have issued orders limiting energy use, warning of potential coal shortages. Demand for coal is so high in the mining hub of Henan Province that buyers have been lining up in trucks at the gates of coal mines, jostling for access, according to a recent report in the state-run news media. Many residents have responded to the restrictions with anxiety and confusion, worrying about being left in the cold or suffering hits to their businesses Chinese officials have sought to remind citizens of the country’s ambitious environmental goals while reassuring them that there is plenty of energy to keep people warm and the economy humming. “In general, please believe that our ability to ensure stable energy supply is not a problem,” Zhao Chenxin, secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission, which steers energy policy, said on Monday. But the drastic measures point to potential longer-term problems in China’s energy universe, as leaders juggle competing priorities. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has vowed to make China a climate leader and to make the country carbon-neutral by 2060. But the country still draws nearly 70 percent of its power from fossil fuels, predominantly coal, and those energy sources have helped propel China’s impressive recovery from the pandemic. By May of this year, China’s carbon dioxide emissions from energy production, cement making and other industrial uses were 4 percent higher than the year before. “He’s got to wrestle with economic growth, economic structures, employment and the environment,” Philip Andrews-Speed, senior principal fellow at the Energy Studies Institute at the National University of Singapore, said of Mr. Xi. Some of the present difficulties may also be self-inflicted. Coastal areas of China depend on imported coal, including from Australia. But relations between the two countries have gone into free-fall this year, as Australia has, among other things, demanded an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, which first emerged in China. China in turn has banned imports of Australian coal — leaving huge ships stranded at sea. Chinese officials have denied that the ban on Australian coal is responsible for the current squeeze on energy, noting that in 2018 less than 8 percent of China’s coal consumption involved imported coal; much of Australia’s coal is also used for steel and other metals, not power. But the government has also acknowledged, with rare bluntness, the scale of the problem...
How China Censored Everything
It's real.
At NYT, "No ‘Negative’ News: How China Censored the Coronavirus":
In the early hours of Feb. 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control. The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had died of Covid-19. Grief and fury coursed through social media. To people at home and abroad, Dr. Li’s death showed the terrible cost of the Chinese government’s instinct to suppress inconvenient information. Yet China’s censors decided to double down. Warning of the “unprecedented challenge” Dr. Li’s passing had posed and the “butterfly effect” it may have set off, officials got to work suppressing the inconvenient news and reclaiming the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets. They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages. And they activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion: “As commenters fight to guide public opinion, they must conceal their identity, avoid crude patriotism and sarcastic praise, and be sleek and silent in achieving results.” The orders were among thousands of secret government directives and other documents that were reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic. At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies, China is manipulating online discourse to enforce the Communist Party’s consensus. To stage-manage what appeared on the Chinese internet early this year, the authorities issued strict commands on the content and tone of news coverage, directed paid trolls to inundate social media with party-line blather and deployed security forces to muzzle unsanctioned voices. Though China makes no secret of its belief in rigid internet controls, the documents convey just how much behind-the-scenes effort is involved in maintaining a tight grip. It takes an enormous bureaucracy, armies of people, specialized technology made by private contractors, the constant monitoring of digital news outlets and social media platforms — and, presumably, lots of money. It is much more than simply flipping a switch to block certain unwelcome ideas, images or pieces of news. China’s curbs on information about the outbreak started in early January, before the novel coronavirus had even been identified definitively, the documents show. When infections started spreading rapidly a few weeks later, the authorities clamped down on anything that cast China’s response in too “negative” a light. The United States and other countries have for months accused China of trying to hide the extent of the outbreak in its early stages. It may never be clear whether a freer flow of information from China would have prevented the outbreak from morphing into a raging global health calamity. But the documents indicate that Chinese officials tried to steer the narrative not only to prevent panic and debunk damaging falsehoods domestically. They also wanted to make the virus look less severe — and the authorities more capable — as the rest of the world was watching. The documents include more than 3,200 directives and 1,800 memos and other files from the offices of the country’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, in the eastern city of Hangzhou. They also include internal files and computer code from a Chinese company, Urun Big Data Services, that makes software used by local governments to monitor internet discussion and manage armies of online commenters. The documents were shared with The Times and ProPublica by a hacker group that calls itself C.C.P. Unmasked, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. The Times and ProPublica independently verified the authenticity of many of the documents, some of which had been obtained separately by China Digital Times, a website that tracks Chinese internet controls. The C.A.C. and Urun did not respond to requests for comment. “China has a politically weaponized system of censorship; it is refined, organized, coordinated and supported by the state’s resources,” said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder of China Digital Times. “It’s not just for deleting something. They also have a powerful apparatus to construct a narrative and aim it at any target with huge scale.” “This is a huge thing,” he added. “No other country has that.”
Still more.
Public Schools Are Losing Their Captive Audience of Children
At Reason.
But see this, from L.A.T, a couple of weeks ago, "L.A. Unified will not give Fs this semester and instead give students a second chance to pass."
And this passage especially is killing me, about the push-back against the "no fail" policy:
In April, L.A. Unified prohibited failing grades for the spring semester and also determined that no student’s grade would be lower than it was on March 13, the final day of on-campus instruction. At the time, many teachers and some principals complained that the policy undermined student motivation and some reported a subsequent drop-off in student effort. Stocks surge. Retail rises. Unemployment continues to decline. Post-election markets set record highs while online shopping contributed to recovery. How did this month fare overall? Such concerns resurfaced Monday during a faculty meeting at a high school in the San Fernando Valley, according to an English teacher who did not wish to be identified because she was not authorized to speak. “Yes, it’s COVID time,” the teacher said. “But this soft bigotry of low expectations — including us being banned from demanding students ever comment with their voices or actually show themselves on camera during Zoom — will indeed help our low-income students stay on the bottom of the pile of learning.” A high school principal from a different campus was more supportive. Given the unprecedented crisis, the principal said, students who earn A’s and B’s should get to keep them but that the only other grade handed out should be a pass. This principal — who also was not authorized to comment — requested anonymity...
Astonishing, really.
Notice how everybody speaks off the record, obviously so they won't face the guillotine.
Saturday, December 19, 2020
Friday, December 18, 2020
The Buck Stops With Barr
A great piece, from Kim Strassel, at WSJ, via Memeorandum, "The Weekend Interview: William Barr: ‘One Standard of Justice’":
The U.S. attorney general is meditating on one of his frustrations with the modern Justice Department: The outside world keeps moving faster; the wheels of justice ever more slowly. “Nobody wants to take responsibility anymore,” William Barr says with a hint of incredulity. “They wring their hands and push issues around the bureaucracy and trade memos for months.” His response: “Bring it to me! I’ll make the decision. That’s what I’m here for!” If Mr. Barr, 70, dominated headlines over the past two years, it’s because he made a lot of tough calls. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s constitutionally dubious claims that President Trump committed obstruction of justice? No. An investigation of the 2016 Russia-collusion probe and the dismissal of charges against Mike Flynn ? Yes. New oversight of sensitive political investigations and surveillance of U.S. citizens? Yes. A criminal referral about Mr. Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president? No. Repeated demands—from the left and the right—for his department to engage in politics? No, no, no. Consequential decisions have a way of annoying people—Democrats, Republicans, the staff, one’s boss—but Mr. Barr, who’d been attorney general before, from 1991-93, knew that going in. “I’m in a position in life where I can do the right thing and not really care about the consequences,” he told senators during his January 2019 confirmation hearing. In a 90-minute phone interview Tuesday—less than 24 hours after the announcement of his resignation, effective Dec. 23—he sounded his usual spirited self. He reminds me why he took the job in the first place: “The Department of Justice was being used as a political weapon” by a “willful if small group of people,” who used the claim of collusion with Russia in an attempt to “topple an administration,” he says. “Someone had to make sure that the power of the department stopped being abused and that there was accountability for what had happened.” Mr. Barr largely succeeded, in the process filling a vacuum of political oversight, reimposing norms, and resisting partisan critics on both sides. Mr. Barr describes an overarching objective of ensuring that there is “one standard of justice.” That, he says, is why he appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the FBI’s 2016 Crossfire Hurricane probe. “Of course the Russians did bad things in the election,” he says. “But the idea that this was done with the collusion of the Trump campaign—there was never any evidence. It was entirely made up.” The country deserved to know how the world’s premier law-enforcement agency came to target and spy on a presidential campaign. Mr. Barr says Mr. Durham’s appointment should not have been necessary. Mr. Mueller’s investigation should have exposed FBI malfeasance. Instead, “the Mueller team seems to have been ready to blindly accept anything fed to it by the system,” Mr. Barr says, adding that this “is exactly what DOJ should not be.” Mr. Durham hasn’t finished his work, to the disappointment of many Republicans, including the president, who were hoping for a resolution—perhaps including indictments—before the election. Mr. Barr notes that Mr. Durham had to wait until the end of 2019 for Inspector General Michael Horowitz to complete his own investigation into the FBI’s surveillance. Then came the Covid lockdowns, which suspended federal grand juries for six months. Mr. Durham could no longer threaten to subpoena uncooperative witnesses. “I understand people’s frustration over the timing, and there are prosecutors who break more china, so to speak,” Mr. Barr says. “But they don’t necessarily get the results.” Mr. Durham will, and is making “significant progress,” says Mr. Barr, who disclosed this month that he had prior to the election designated Mr. Durham a special counsel, to provide assurance that his team would be able to finish its work. The new designation also assures that Mr. Durham will produce a report to the attorney general. Mr. Barr believes “the force of circumstances will ensure it goes public” even under the new administration. The biggest news from Mr. Durham’s probe is what he has ruled out. Mr. Barr was initially suspicious that agents had been spying on the Trump campaign before the official July 2016 start date of Crossfire Hurricane, and that the Central Intelligence Agency or foreign intelligence had played a role. But even prior to naming Mr. Durham special counsel, Mr. Barr had come to the conclusion that he didn’t “see any sign of improper CIA activity” or “foreign government activity before July 2016,” he says. “The CIA stayed in its lane.” Mr. Barr says Mr. Durham’s probe is now tightly focused on “the conduct of Crossfire Hurricane, the small group at the FBI that was most involved in that,” as well as “the activities of certain private actors.” (Mr. Barr doesn’t elaborate.) Mr. Durham has publicly stated he’s not convinced the FBI team had an adequate “predicate” to launch an investigation. In September, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified a document showing that the FBI was warned in 2016 that the Hillary Clinton campaign might be behind the “collusion” claims. Mr. Barr says Mr. Durham is also looking at the January 2017 intelligence-community “assessment” that claimed Russia had “developed a clear preference” for Mr. Trump in the 2016 election. He confirms that most of the substantive documents related to the FBI’s investigation have now been made public. The attorney general also hopes people remember that orange jumpsuits aren’t the only measure of misconduct. It frustrates him that the political class these days frequently plays “the criminal card,” obsessively focused on “who is going to jail, who is getting indicted.” The American system is “designed to find people innocent,” Mr. Barr notes. “It has a high bar.” One danger of the focus on criminal charges is that it ends up excusing a vast range of contemptible or abusive behavior that doesn’t reach the bar. The FBI’s use “of confidential human sources and wiretapping to investigate people connected to a campaign was outrageous,” Mr. Barr says—whether or not it leads to criminal charges. Also outrageous, in Mr. Barr’s view, was the abuse of power by both the FBI and the Mueller team toward Mr. Trump’s associates, especially Mr. Flynn...Keep reading.
How Critical Race Training Is Harming Higher Education
I attended this event. Really great stuff and crucial work they're doing.
At Legal Insurrection, "VIDEO: Critical Race Training is “a series of dated ideas that basic analysis often debunks”."
Thursday, December 17, 2020
Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State
At Amazon, Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State.
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Belle Delphine Holiday Teaser
At Celeb Jihad, "Belle Delphine Holiday Teaser."
Plus, at Know Your Meme, "Belle Delphine's Christmas Day Video."
PREVIOUSLY: "More Belle."
Joe Biden's Unsolvable Identity Politics Problem
Great piece from Michael Barone, at the Washington Examiner, "Biden: Identity politics and no apologies":
Even as the Supreme Court rejected the last pro-Trump lawsuit and the Electoral College confirmed his 306-232 majority, Biden seemed to be playing identity politics with his major appointments. “Identity-based groups,” the New York Times is reporting, “continue to lobby Mr. Biden to ensure racial and gender diversity at all levels in his administration.” He’s facing demands for two cabinet posts for Hispanic women, for a black attorney general, and for a Native American interior secretary. He’s facing criticism for placing “people of color” in posts for which they have no apparent expertise — Xavier Becerra at Health and Human Services, for example, and Susan Rice at the Domestic Policy Council [and she's a fucking foreign policy "expert"!]. Every incoming president faces vexing choices and scornful criticism, but it’s an especially vexing problem for Democrats. Their party, since its creation in 1832, has been an often unwieldy coalition of out-groups with grievances and self-appointed advocates. Their urban political bosses developed the art of balancing party tickets (with Southern Democrats, decades and decades ago). The plaints and pleas of identity group advocates can sometimes seem disconnected from reality. How many Hispanic-surnamed women out there are determined to renounce the Democratic party unless Biden appoints to his cabinet not just one but two Latinas? (At least the Times isn’t using the university-spawned and unpronounceable adjective "Latinx.") Will black voters really feel betrayed if this Democratic president doesn’t appoint a black attorney general as the last Democratic president did? At this point in our history, it seems apparent that the public will not only accept but approve of appointees of any ethnic or racial description, depending on their performance and policies. And one suspects that among the public, if not in the press, most people care more about policy than ethnicity, more about competence than ticket-balancing...RTWT.
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
Today's Shopping
At Amazon, Shop Deals.
See, KIND Breakfast Bars, Peanut Butter, Gluten Free, 1.8 Ounce, 32 Count.
And, CLIF BAR - Energy Bar - Crunchy Peanut Butter - (2.4 Ounce Protein Bar, 12 Count).
Still more, AmazonBasics AA Performance Alkaline Batteries (48 Count) - Packaging May Vary.
Here, Tactical Sabre 2.0 Waterproof Jacket, Polyester Bonded Softshell, Detachable Hood, Style 48112.
BONUS: Philip Roth, The Human Stain (American Trilogy).
See, KIND Breakfast Bars, Peanut Butter, Gluten Free, 1.8 Ounce, 32 Count.
And, CLIF BAR - Energy Bar - Crunchy Peanut Butter - (2.4 Ounce Protein Bar, 12 Count).
Still more, AmazonBasics AA Performance Alkaline Batteries (48 Count) - Packaging May Vary.
Here, Tactical Sabre 2.0 Waterproof Jacket, Polyester Bonded Softshell, Detachable Hood, Style 48112.
BONUS: Philip Roth, The Human Stain (American Trilogy).
Monday, December 14, 2020
Beth Harmon 'Venus' Scene in 'The Queen's Gambit' (VIDEO)
This show is riveting, to say the least. Anya Taylor-Joy plays "Beth Harmon." She's spectacular. I mean just wow! There's all kinds of accolades, at Entertainment Weekly, for example, "The Queen's Gambit plays familiar moves with style and star power: Review."
Also at the Cut, "The Sexiest Show on Television Is About … Chess?"; and at Vogue, "The Story Behind Beth Harmon’s Red Hair in The Queen’s Gambit, According to the Show’s Hair and Makeup Artist"; one more, at the Detroit Free Press, "A leadership lesson from 'The Queen’s Gambit'."
Watch the "'Venus' (Shocking Blue song)" scene, and you'll know what I mean.
Also, the original video segment of Shocking Blue playing their 1969 hit, "Venus."
China 'Floods' U.S. With Spies
From Gordon Chang, at Gatestone, "Espionage Emergency: China 'Floods' America with Spies."
Sky News Australia had the bombshell breaking news the other day, "Leak reveals Chinese Communist Party members working in Aust, UK and US consulates."
And from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "REPORT: Chinese Communists Have Infiltrated Top Companies, Governments In US, UK, Australia."
FLASHBACK: From 2017, "Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations."
PREVIOUSLY: "Chinese Communist Party Pushing Narrative of the Superiority of its Authoritarian Political Model."
Unthinkable? As Pandemic Rages, Colleges Cut Tenure
At Tax Prof, "WSJ: Hit By Covid-19, Colleges Do The Unthinkable and Cut Tenure":
When Kenneth Macur became president at Medaille College in 2015, the small, private school in Buffalo, N.Y., was “surviving paycheck to paycheck,” he said. Enrollment was declining and the small endowment was flat. Then came the coronavirus pandemic. The campus shut down and revenue plummeted 15%. Dr. Macur saw what he considered an opportunity: With the approval of the board of trustees, he suspended the faculty handbook by invoking an “act of God” clause embedded in it. He laid off several professors, cut the homeland security and health information management programs, rescinded the lifelong job security of tenure and rewrote the faculty handbook, rules that had governed the school for decades. “I believe that this is an opportunity to do more than just tinker around the edges. We need to be bold and decisive,” he wrote in a letter to faculty on April 15. “A new model is the future of higher education.” Dr. Macur and presidents of struggling colleges around the country are reacting to the pandemic by unilaterally cutting programs, firing professors and gutting tenure, all once-unthinkable changes. Schools employed about 150,000 fewer workers in September than they did a year earlier, before the pandemic, according to the Labor Department. That is a decline of nearly 10%. Along the way, they are changing the centuries-old higher education power structure. The changes upset the “shared governance” model for running universities that has roots in Medieval Europe. It holds that a board of trustees has final say on how a school is run but largely delegates academic issues to administrators and faculty who share power. This setup, and the job protection of tenure, promote a need for consensus and deliberation that is one reason why universities often endure for centuries. But this power structure can also hamper an institution’s ability to make tough personnel decisions or react quickly to changes in the labor market or economy. In recent months, the American Association of University Professors, which advocates for faculty and helped establish the modern concept of tenure in 1940, has received about 100 complaints from professors around the country alleging power grabs by college presidents. The organization has labeled the changes at colleges a “national crisis.”
Hat Tip: Instapundit.
California Central Valley: Desperation and Defiance Amid Lockdown
At LAT, "‘I’ve seen people die.’ COVID-19 slams Central Valley hospitals, as many resist lockdowns":
FRESNO — The last time Dr. Eyad Almasri had a day off was in November, when he was infected with the novel coronavirus. His symptoms were not life-threatening, but it crushed him, he said, that he couldn’t be with his patients for 10 days. A pulmonologist with the Fresno campus of UC San Francisco, Almasri works in the intensive care unit at Community Regional Medical Center in downtown Fresno — so packed with COVID-19 patients that the hospital has had to create makeshift isolation wards, including one in a hallway. Exhausted staff, working long hours seven days a week, rarely take off their protective gear because the entire area is the “dirty zone” — a phrase Almasri detests. With so many patients, there is no time for breaks anyway. The story was similar this week in much of the San Joaquin Valley, where hospitals were crowded with COVID-19 patients. As of noon Saturday, availability of ICU beds in the region was zero. Fresno, a metro area with more than 1 million people, hit that dubious marker two days earlier. “There is no help on the way,” Almasri said Thursday. “I can’t tell you how scared people are, and I can’t even sit there and hold their hands. There are so many others waiting.” Across California, medical professionals such as Almasri live a world apart from average citizens, who have no clear window into the conditions of hospital wards. But the San Joaquin Valley is different. Nowhere else in California do intensive care doctors and nurses work in such a fragile system. It’s an agricultural valley with high rates of poverty and a staggering shortage of doctors. Yet during the pandemic, many local leaders have been openly defiant of public health directives. The Fresno City Council on Thursday approved an order intended to clamp down on backyard parties, for what it was worth. But the city police chief quickly issued a statement saying his officers would not enforce it. Meanwhile, coronavirus cases continue to soar in the county, in part because of outbreaks at a Foster Farms poultry plant and a state prison. In Stockton, in the northern part of the San Joaquin Valley, some small-business owners are demanding a reprieve from closures, arguing that this third round is arbitrary and unfair. They say there is little sense in having large chains such as Target and Walmart, where workers come into contact with hundreds of customers a day, remain open while shutting down outdoor dining for neighborhood eateries and services such as salons. Closing again, they contend, may mean that they go under permanently — a financial catastrophe for them and their employees. “The hospitals are not overflowing because of restaurants,” said Johnny Hernandez, co-owner of the Black Rabbit gastropub in Stockton, who joined a protest with other small-business owners Thursday on the steps of Stockton City Hall. Hernandez said he has let go seven of his 10 employees and doesn’t have the funds to make it past this month. For him, the threat of financial ruin is more real than the specter of illness. “I don’t see Republican; I don’t see Democrat,” said the former union organizer. “I see people hurting.” The valley is a diverse place, with complex opinions on the pandemic. Farmworkers and other essential Latino workers have been hit hard and are scared that the coming months will be even tougher. But with many lacking legal immigration status and unable to receive state aid, they must work to put food on the table. Many business owners also recognize the seriousness of the pandemic and are taking precautions to protect themselves, their families and employees...
Still more.
Chinese Communist Party Pushing Narrative of the Superiority of its Authoritarian Political Model
I hear Buddy Holly singing up there near the Pearly Gates, "That'll Be the Day..."
At NYT, "China’s Combative Nationalists See a World Turning Their Way":
In one Beijing artist’s recent depiction of the world in 2098, China is a high-tech superpower and the United States is humbled. Americans have embraced communism and Manhattan, draped with the hammer-and-sickle flags of the “People’s Union of America,” has become a quaint tourist precinct. This triumphant vision has resonated among Chinese. The sci-fi digital illustrations by the artist, Fan Wennan, caught fire on Chinese social media in recent months, reflecting a resurgent nationalism. China’s authoritarian system, proponents say, is not just different from the West’s democracies, it is also proving itself superior. It is a long-running theme, but China’s success against the pandemic has given it a sharp boost. “America isn’t that heavenly kingdom depicted since decades ago,” said Mr. Fan, who is in his early twenties. “There’s nothing special about it. If you have to say there’s anything special about it now, it’s how messed up it can be at times.” China’s Communist Party, under its leader, Xi Jinping, has promoted the idea that the country is on a trajectory to power past Western rivals. China stamped out the coronavirus, the messaging goes, with a resolve beyond the reach of flailing Western democracies. Beijing has rolled out homegrown vaccines to more than a million people, despite the safety concerns of scientists. China’s economy has revived, defying fears of a deep slump from the pandemic. “In this fight against the pandemic, there will be victorious powers and defeated ones,” Wang Xiangsui, a retired Chinese senior colonel who teaches at a university in Beijing, averred this month. “We’re a victor power, while the United States is still mired and, I think, may well become a defeated power.” The firm leadership of Mr. Xi and the party has earned China its recent success, say newspapers, television programs and social media...
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