≡ Menu

Some Links

As reported by Wall Street Journal columnist James Freeman, Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner – and my former Mercatus Center colleague – Hester Peirce is wisely resisting that agency’s attempt to impose on every publicly traded company an environmental agenda. A slice:

Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Peirce is sounding the alarm on the destructive climate proposal that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is still trying to jam through on a partisan vote.

This week Commissioner Peirce explained that beyond requiring public companies to demand data on climate risks from even small businesses and farmers in their supply chains, the rule could also force changes in how companies operate and even who runs them. In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute Ms. Peirce noted;

… the climate proposal mandates disclosure about board oversight of climate-related risks, including identifying board members or board committees responsible for overseeing climate-related risks; detailing board member climate expertise; describing the processes and frequency of discussions about climate-related risks; explaining how the board is informed about, and how often it thinks about, climate-related risks and whether it considers climate-related risks as part of its business strategy, risk management, and financial oversight; and describing whether and how the board sets climate-related targets or goals and how it oversees progress in achieving them.The proposal also includes a corresponding set of disclosures related to management: who is responsible for managing climate-related risks, what their climate expertise is, how they get informed about those risks, and how often the managers responsible for climate-related risks report to the board…

One comment letter objected that the “disclosures usurp the decision-making authority of corporate boards and executive management, authority specifically granted to them by state corporate law.”

Washington would essentially be forcing every public company, regardless of industry, to focus on climate, while also pressuring them to hire leaders who share this obsession. But even the most climate-obsessed ought to recognize that such change requires a new law, not unelected financial regulators suddenly deciding to appoint themselves ministers of global warming.

George Leef explains yet another sad consequence of the wokes’ nasty racism: that “If you dispute the work of a black radical, you will face an angry mob calling for your head.”

GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino writes wisely about the abuse, as well as about thelegitimate use, in America of appeals to freedom.

Also from Dominic Pino is this worthy call for prison reform in America. A slice:

Nathan Deal, governor of Georgia from 2011 to 2019, gave conservatives a good model to work from. Throughout his eight years in office, he oversaw a reduction in the state’s prison population that coincided with a reduction in crime and a fast-growing overall population. Better prison administration and more effective rehabilitation programs saved taxpayer money while delivering better results.

Deal expanded the number of “accountability courts” that allow nonviolent offenders to avoid prison time by proving to the court that they are turning their lives around.

Steven Greenhut warns Republicans of Trump’s megalomaniacal threat to anyone and all that he perceives as obstructing his personal desires. A slice:

Trump has yet to denounce Fuentes’ views just as he couldn’t quite issue an unequivocal rebuke after Charlottesville. I believe it’s the result of Trump’s narcissism. As the center of the universe, he praises or condemns others based on their fealty to him. It wasn’t hard for him to give an unequivocal condemnation of Islamic terrorism because there aren’t many jihadists who adore him. The same can’t be said for the far right.

Phil Magness and David Waugh report on the confirmation by the Twitter files that pre-Musk Twitter suppressed information on covid that contradicted the hysterical mainstream narrative. Three slices:

Yesterday (Dec 8 2022), using the information provided by Twitter under direction from new Chief Executive Elon Musk, journalist Bari Weiss, released a Twitter thread confirming these suspicions. Twitter secretly suppressed accounts, operated a “search blacklist,” and blocked certain content from trending, Weiss’ thread confirms. In response, Musk tweeted that Twitter plans to release software that will provide users with more clarity regarding shadowbanning.

Victims of Twitter’s practices include Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford professor of medicine and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD). Weiss’s thread and The Twitter Files confirm what we’ve long suspected. Seeking to prop up Anthony Fauci and the lockdown policies he promoted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Twitter (and other Big Tech companies) intentionally blacklisted, censored, suppressed, and targeted the GBD and its signers.

…..

Still unfolding in this investigation is the role of government officials in pressuring Twitter to engage in censorship over the COVID-19 pandemic. As revealed by a lawsuit earlier this year, internal company Slack messages show that Andy Slavitt, a former official on Joe Biden’s pandemic task force, met with Twitter officials and pressured them to restrict the account of COVID gadfly Alex Berenson. Slavitt also , delivered an ominous warning to executives at Facebook that the company would find itself in the White House’s crosshairs if it did not step up its efforts to restrict what the task force deemed to be “COVID misinformation.”

We now have conclusive evidence that public officials pressure private companies to do the dirty work of censorship. We have yet to discover, and may never know, how far the political involvement in social media censorship went, and which officials were given the power to silence. An ongoing lawsuit by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana is currently seeking to get to the bottom of those questions. Just two weeks ago, they obtained a court-ordered deposition from Anthony Fauci, in which they grilled him over similar suppressive tactics. Fauci proved evasive, invoking the “I don’t recall” line 174 times, but was caught in a lie about his direct personal involvement in the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) efforts to smear and discredit the GBD’s authors as “fringe epidemiologists.”

GBD co-author Jay Bhattacharya was slapped with a secret “Trends Blacklist” tag by Twitter executives at some point after his account was created in September 2021, Weiss’s thread confirms. The blacklist tag effectively suppressed Bhattacharya’s tweets by preventing them from going viral or being picked up by Twitter’s trends algorithm. By all appearances, one or more persons on the company’s SIP-PES team made the decision to suppress scientifically grounded dissent against lockdowns.

…..

Last week, Anthony Fauci denied any involvement in coordinating attacks on the GBD under deposition by the Missouri Attorney General. He claims that he was too busy to do so. His emails reveal a different story, though. Fauci expressed his agreement with Collins’ directive, and colluded with Deborah Birx to preempt discussion of the GBD at a White House COVID task force meeting. At some point, Fauci even directed his Chief of Staff Greg Folkers to assemble a list of anti-GBD political editorials, evidently to be parrotted back to the news media during interviews about the GBD. We still don’t know the full extent of Fauci’s efforts, because the NIH heavily redacted several pages of the requested records. But his involvement in the “take down” is undeniable.

Given the nature of Fauci’s smears, lies, and demeanor towards those who question his policy prescriptions, it is time to fully open up the public record at the NIH. It is time to scrutinize the decisions they made during COVID-19, including decisions to politicize science and suppress dissenting viewpoints.

Jay Bhattacharya reacts to the revelations of the Twitter files.

“What Is CISA and Why Does It Matter?”

Anthony LaMesa tweets about the rise in Denmark of common sense and the decline there in covid hysteria: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)

Denmark: “In a statement, the [Danish] Health Authority said on Thursday that Covid-19 is no longer considered to have any special status compared to other illnesses, and that isolation is therefore no longer required following a positive test.”