Jts5665

Weird items sometimes show up in my inbox, and this clip from Nikole Hannah-Jones (creator of the academically shoddy 1619 Project) definitely qualifies.

She actually cites the economic wasteland of Cuba as a role model for equality.

Ms. Hannah-Jones said that Cuba’s results are because of socialism.

On that point, I’ll agree, though I think it shows why that collectivist ideology is so destructive.

Let’s look at some comparisons based on the Maddison data. This first chart shows how Cuba has fallen far behind Panama and the Dominican Republic, two other multi-racial nations in the region.

The key thing to realize is that Cuba was equal to (or richer than) those countries when the communists took power in Cuba.

But socialist policies have caused Cuba’s economy to stagnate and now Panama is almost three times richer and the Dominican Republic is nearly two times richer (and you can click here is you also want to see comparisons with Chile and Costa Rica).

In other words, Cuba is a role model, but not for anything positive.

Let’s drive that point home with another chart comparing three nations – Cuba, Singapore, and Taiwan – that were roughly equal back in 1959.

What makes this comparison especially instructive is that Cuba went for socialism and Singapore and Taiwan became pro-market reformers. So it should be no surprise that the latter two have far surpassed Cuba.

The same thing is true, by the way, if you compare Hong Kong and Cuba.

Let’s conclude by addressing one final point.

Ms. Hannah-Jones asserted that Cuba deserves praise for having equality.

I doubt that’s true since left-wing dictators usually steal lots of money while ordinary people suffer.

But even if she’s right and Cuba genuinely has equality, it’s only because socialism has impoverished everyone, including the ruling class.

Our friends on the left apparently think that’s something to applaud, as Margaret Thatcher observed, but I’d rather be part of a society characterized by an “unequal sharing of the blessings.”

P.S. Ms. Hannah-Jones may be even more wrong about Cuba than Bernie Sanders, Jeffrey Sachs, or Nicholas Kristof.

AN ARMY OF DAVIDS: The Undergrad Who Found China’s Nuclear Arsenal: What a Hobby.

A couple of weeks ago, word arrived that 120 new missile silos had been discovered in the desert of Northern China. While the press made much of this evidence that China is busy expanding its nuclear weapons program, they did not look at who found the silos and how he did it.

As it happens, the silos were spotted by Decker Eveleth, an undergrad at Reed College. He spent weeks poking around on satellite imagery until he happened upon the silos’ distinctive inflatable dome coverings. (Which, in turn, has led some people to describe them as “bouncy houses of death.”)

In what I believe is his only interview about the incident, Eveleth told me about his process, and we covered it here in a larger story about all the goings on in the private space industry and what is now possible in Low Earth Orbit.

Expanding capabilities.

FASTER, PLEASE: New research finds common denominator linking all cancers.

“If you want to see the most equal multi-racial democ… — it’s not a democracy — the most equal multi-racial country in our hemisphere, it would be Cuba,”

WE HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE. ALSO, WE’LL SUE YOU IF YOU TRY TO FIND OUT WHAT WE’RE DOING. Mom Says School Board Threatened to Sue Her for Seeking Public Information on Critical Race Theory in Curriculum.

KEEP THAT BACKLASH COMING: California drops new ‘social justice’ math curriculum after critics say it would ‘de-mathematize math.’

The post Psaki Doubles Down on Defense of Big Tech Censorship appeared first on The Bongino Report.

UM: NHTSA Cautions Against Leaving Chevrolet Bolt EVs Indoors. “The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued an alert pertaining to Chevrolet Bolt owners, as the vehicles’ LG Chem battery packs could have a propensity to catch fire. On Wednesday, the safety organization recommended that the cars be left outdoors (ideally a healthy distance from anything flammable) and never left unattended while charging.”

Plus: “While EV fires haven’t been the norm, they’re happening at a pace that’s definitely undermining public trust. This is especially bad considering large swaths of the industry and most governments are hellbent on transitioning entirely over to alternative energy vehicles in the coming decade. Automakers and suppliers clearly need to do better because purchasing modern EVs still requires trading off some of the conveniences of internal combustion vehicles to get the benefits of at-home charging and quiet operation. Under normal circumstances, deciding between them involves some contemplation on what your driving needs actually entail. But owning a car that won’t catch fire is a prerequisite for most consumers and unlikely to be something they’ll be willing to compromise on.”

Other satellite images also show China has deployed military planes to South China Sea.

BUT OF COURSE:

So long as “shark advocates” call it an “interaction” when I kill and eat sharks, I’m okay with that. So far I’ve eaten more sharks than will ever eat me. Apex predator, baby.

Related: Loving Monsters.

We have previously discussed the continued failing of the public schools in preparing African American students for college or the workforce. I have specifically discussed the horrific figures coming out of Baltimore despite being one of the top districts in terms of per capita spending. Recent data now offers another chilling statistic: 41 percent of students in the Baltimore system have a 1.0 (D) GPA or less.

Project Baltimore obtained a chart assembled by Baltimore City Schools. Keep in mind that this is almost half of the 20,500 public high school students in Baltimore.

What astonishes me is the lack of criticism of the school and political leadership of these major cities who have failed the African American community for decades. It is hard to imagine how the school system could possibly do worse while receiving some of the highest levels of federal and state expenditures per student.

This is not due to a lack of funding or support. It is a catastrophic failure that is not being addressed in the media despite occurring annually in cities like New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and other media hubs.

WHY PEOPLE DON’T TRUST “PUBLIC HEALTH” EXPERTS:

DOG BITES MAN (AND THEN DEMANDS A TREAT): Democrats look to keep Coloradans’ tax refunds.

On opening weekend of the BIG3 basketball season—this is Ice Cube's 3-on-3 basketball league, which runs for ten weeks over the summer and is broadcast on CBS—former Iowa State standout Royce White decided to take advantage of his airtime on CBS during a post-game interview and show off his beautiful "Free the Uyghurs" t-shirt.

On Tuesday, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) scrutinized Catherine Lhamon, a former assistant secretary in the Obama-era Department of Education whom President Biden tapped to return to her previous job.

Lhamon was a key enforcer of the Obama administration's ruinous guidance relating to Title IX, the federal statute that prohibits sex and gender-based discrimination in public education. Lhamon actively participated in the federal government's vast expansion of Title IX to include due-process-free investigations and tribunals for students and professors accused of sexual misconduct. President Obama's Education Department urged colleges and universities to deny cross-examination during Title IX hearings, and move to a single-investigator model that involved a sole official—often a hostile one—dictating the terms of the entire procedure.

These unfair proceedings were reformed during the Trump years: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos restored several due process protections to the Title IX process, effectively ensuring that the accused would be more likely to enjoy the presumption of innocence to which they are entitled under liberal norms of criminal justice.

That's why it was so troubling on Tuesday when Lhamon all but assured that the innocent-until-proven-guilty standard would again be jeopardized if the Senate gives her back her old position. Consider this exchange between Lhamon and Sen. Richard Burr (R–N.C.):

Burr: "Would you support keeping a presumption of innocence requirement in the current Title IX rule, if the Title IX rule is changed?"

Lhamon: "I'm trying to not to over-lawyer. But there isn't a presumption of innocence in the existing Title IX regulation. In fact, the Title IX regulation that the Trump administration took pains to note that criminal procedure does not apply in schools.

Burr: "But my question was, would you support keeping a presumption of innocence?"

Lhamon: "Yes, I understood that. But I couldn't keep something that is not there. It is not there now."

Lhamon is engaging in semantics. While the new Title IX rules—which went through the formal administrative rule-making process, including legal review and public notice and comment periods—might not literally use those words, their entire purpose was to re-enshrine the idea that accused students and professors should not be presumed guilty from the outset of a complaint. That's the point of requiring cross-examination, granting access to attorneys, and mandating an actual hearing rather than a report by a single investigator. Lhamon's opinion that colleges and universities are under no obligation to assume that people accused of sexual misconduct are innocent until proven guilty is thus a startling admission.

This was not the only low moment of her hearing. She later clarified that Title IX adjudicators should merely be "open to the possibility" that an accused person is innocent. She also declined to walk back her previous comment that the DeVos rules make it "permissible to rape and sexually harass students with impunity."

It's worth remembering that even the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a progressive feminist icon, criticized Obama-era Title IX guidance "for not giving the accused person a fair opportunity to be heard." Lhamon has a long history of working tirelessly to undermine basic fairness, and her testimony before the Senate earlier this week gave no indication that she's had a change of heart. Her begrudging contention that she would enforce the existing guidance, even if she does not agree with it, was unpersuasive.

The civil liberties of students and professors will be gravely imperiled by her confirmation as assistant secretary in the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights.

Maine became the fourth state in the nation to abolish civil asset forfeiture, a practice where law enforcement can seize property if they suspect it is connected to criminal activity, even if the owner is not convicted of a crime.

After a bill passed by the state legislature, LD 1521, took effect without the governor's signature yesterday, Maine officially repealed its civil forfeiture laws, joining Nebraska, New Mexico, and North Carolina.

Law enforcement groups say civil asset forfeiture is a crucial tool to disrupt drug trafficking and organized crime by targeting their ill-gotten proceeds. However, groups like the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm, say civil forfeiture provides too few due process protections for property owners, who often bear the burden of proving their innocence, and creates too many perverse profit incentives for police.

"Civil forfeiture is one of the most serious assaults on due process and private property rights in America today," Institute for Justice Senior Legislative Counsel Lee McGrath said in a press release. McGrath says Maine's new law "ends an immense injustice and will ensure that only convicted criminals—and not innocent Mainers—lose their property to forfeiture."

The new law will allow property forfeiture without a criminal conviction in only a few narrow circumstances, such as when it is abandoned or the owner dies. The law also creates a right to a prompt post-seizure hearing for owners and requires the Maine Department of Public Safety to post forfeiture reports on its website.

(In 2018, the Maine Beacon reported that, despite a law requiring the Department of Public Safety to create quarterly reports of seized property, it had never done so.)

More significantly, Maine's new law ends the so-called "equitable sharing loophole," which allows state and local police to partner with federal law enforcement and move forfeiture cases to federal court. In doing so, local law enforcement can evade stricter state laws and keep up to 80 percent of the forfeiture proceeds. The other 20 percent goes into a Justice Department fund that distributes revenues to participating law enforcement agencies across the country.

The Institute for Justice reported that Maine law enforcement collected more than $14 million through equitable sharing over the past two decades. In contrast, just over $3 million was forfeited under state law between 2009 and 2019.

Over the past decade, more than half of all U.S. states have passed some form of asset forfeiture reform in response to media investigations and reports by civil liberties groups that found the practice frequently ensnared innocent owners. Reason has reported extensively on civil liberties abuses involving civil asset forfeiture: petty seizures, shakedowns, and kicking people out of their houses for minor drug crimes.

In April, Arizona became the 16th state to require a criminal conviction before police can proceed to forfeit property under its civil asset forfeiture laws. (Unlike the states that have completely abolished civil forfeiture, these states still allow property to be forfeited in civil court once a criminal conviction has been obtained.)

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Evidence Shows Georgia Hand Recount Was ‘Riddled With Massive Errors and Provable Fraud,’ Claims Lawsuit.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

More here: ‘Outrageous:’ Mayorkas Blasted for Vowing to Reject Asylum-seeking Haitians, Cubans.

Exit quote: “I guess this is because Cubans aren’t being persecuted by climate change, only by communists.”

Related:

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record puts it: ‘You Just Don’t Understand Socialism Like I Do,’ Says College Freshman To Man Who Escaped Socialism On A Raft.

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE, THE PENTAGON OR YOUR OWN LYIN’ EYES? Pentagon insists race theory isn’t taught, Air Force Academy instructor brags it is.

The post Cuba Using Chinese Tech to Block Internet Access During Protests appeared first on The Bongino Report.

MICROBIOME NEWS: People given ‘friendly’ bacteria in nose drops protected against meningitis.

You might want to dig through your old stuff because there might be hundreds of thousands of dollars of worth in there.

One of the strangest things about the last few months on planet Earth has been the relentless drive to vaccinate everyone, regardless of what their individual risk from the virus is, and whether or not they’ve already had the disease. It was well known long before covid came along that people who have had an infection are usually at least as well protected as those … Read more

The post Does it make sense to vaccinate those who have had covid? appeared first on Sebastian Rushworth M.D..

DON’T BE EVIL: How Google Translate deceives you. “Now, I don’t know if Google Translate omitted that damning reference because it obviously provokes the question I raised — why are oppressed Palestinians inspired by the land-grabbing oppressors of history? — before or after I cast the spotlight on it in my article.”

SALENA ZITO: Seeing America from the Ground.

A couple of weeks ago, a native Long Islander who has called New York City his home for half a dozen years took his first trip to the Midwest for a news assignment to discuss what he found different about the way of life out here.

He flew to both Chicago and Detroit to learn about this foreign land.

The social media criticism of the resulting story was swift and brutal. The piece wasn’t any worse than the typical story flyover country folk read about themselves. But the oddest thing was that he tried to find the “Midwest” solely in the big cities of Chicago and Detroit. The true measure of the Midwest begins somewhere near the Pennsylvania state line.

Had he driven the 21 hours and 18 minutes it would take on the back roads between New York City and Chicago, he would have had one heck of a story to write about the country and the Midwest.

A mere one hundred miles from his front door, he would have found himself culturally beginning to understand what lies ahead.

Too much work, unless you’re a real reporter like Salena Zito. Who at one point was accused of making up quotes (she didn’t, she had recordings) on the ridiculous basis that flyover people couldn’t possibly speak that articulately.