TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 987.
Archive for 2016
January 21, 2016
CONVENTION OF THE STATES: Texas Has A Plan.
WHY ARE LEFTIST INDUSTRIES AND INSTITUTIONS SUCH HOTBEDS OF RACIAL PRIVILEGE? How White Is Hollywood?
While Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the Academy president, earlier this week expressed her commitment to bringing “much-needed diversity” to the organization, the numbers draw a daunting picture of the task ahead:
· 6.7 percent of Oscar nominations since the creation of the awards in 1929 have gone to non-white actors; in the past 25 years, 12.5 percent of nominees were non-white, according to AMPAS, the Academy Awards Database.
· The Academy’s members were 94 percent white and 77 percent male, according to a 2012 study by the Los Angeles Times.
· 94 percent of film studio heads are white and 100 percent are male, according to the 2015 Hollywood Diversity Report by the University of California, Los Angeles.
· 16.7 percent of the lead roles were given to minorities in the 174 films examined for 2013, up from 15.1 percent in 2012, according to the Hollywood Diversity Report. (Minorities represented 37.4 percent of the US population in 2013.)
· Also according to the diversity report, women and minorities are significantly underrepresented in film and TV, even though Hispanics and African-Americans reportedly go to the cinema more frequently than whites.
Reform isn’t enough. I won’t rest until this modern-day KKK of an industry is shut down. Repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts! Why subsidize racism?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Think Flint’s Water Is Bad? Your Tap Could Be Poisoned Next.
But don’t worry — “EPA Chief: We ‘did our job’ in the Flint water disaster” — and they can do their job in your town as well!
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ED MORRISSEY: Trump vs. Sanders? Get Ready for a Populist Disaster.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT RUN-INDUSTRIES SUCH HOTBEDS OF RELIGIOUS CONFORMITY? “Forget the nonsense about the Jews owning Hollywood. If that was true, the Jews wouldn’t be screwed in the Academy Awards.” Which is why, “Yid With Lid” Jeff Dunetz writes, “This year for the first time in my life, I will be boycotting the Academy Awards on February 28, 2016.”
Me? I’m old school — I’ve pretty much boycotted them since Bob Hope and Johnny Carson stopped hosting.
#NEWYORKVALUES: “Public urination … would no longer be a misdemeanor in the city under the proposed legislation.”
Keep building that bridge to the Travis Bickle era, Mayor de Blasio.
(Though to be fair, since buying a 32-oz Big Gulp practically warrants the death penalty in “Fun” City, how bad can things get…)
THAT’S NICE, BUT I’LL STILL WANT TO SEE SOME ACTION HERE: Marco Rubio now says he will stop assault on college due process rights. Not just a news release on his campaign website. As Ashe Schow writes: “I want to see Rubio’s plan to stop OCR’s overreach. Until then, I’m still skeptical.”
IT’S NOT LIKE SHE TOOK AN OATH TO UPHOLD IT OR ANYTHING: Dem Senator Says She Wants To Avoid ‘Constitutional Arguments’ During Hearing On Obama’s Executive Gun Action.
ANN ALTHOUSE ON GLENN LOURY ON The coming cascade of smart, educated people embracing Trump. “It troubles me that there can’t be a serious discussion about immigration issues because people are afraid of being called racist. People are afraid of being called a bigot. And I think one of the things that people like about Donald Trump — those who like him — is that he’s going ahead and saying it, and it’s creating a kind of inoculation against something people have feared so much, which is being called a bigot. It’s just too effective to call people bigots, and a lot of people are very intimidated and silenced and don’t even want to talk about certain issues because they don’t want to be called that. So I think part of his popularity is: He goes there, he says it, he takes the hit, and it still works for him. So that’s a kind of a liberating change in the discourse.”
Plus, a preference cascade on immigration? I was talking with Mickey Kaus about just that yesterday.
WE’VE GOT IT WRONG: ISIS IS NOT THE MAIN PROBLEM IN THE MIDDLE EAST. “ISIS is not a unique organization; rather, it exists at one of the most extreme points along a continuum of movements committed to Sunni political Islam.”
Read the whole thing.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: What You Need To Know About The Supreme Court’s New Immigration Case.
WHY IS OBAMA’S AMERICA so deadly to White Southern Women?
WOW, WHY DOES THE LEFT HATE MORGAN FREEMAN SO? Twitter is furious at Stacey Dash for saying the same thing about ‘Black History Month’ as Morgan Freeman.
CALIFORNIA UNION SUBMITTED 600,000 SIGNATURES TUESDAY IN AN EFFORT TO GET ITS $15 MINIMUM WAGE BILL ON THE NOVEMBER BALLOT.
We’re they signed via auto-pen? Because that would be appropriate; California is already learning the hard way that the true minimum wage is always zero.
(Via Newsalert.)
POLITICO EUROPE: Cologne puts Germany’s ‘lying press’ on defensive: Media’s timidity on refugees prompts charges of bias.
For the broadcasters’ detractors, Cologne represents the latest example of months of tendentious coverage. One common complaint is news reports on the refugees often picture families and women, even though single young men make up the vast majority of those arriving.
Another is that the broadcasters downplay or conceal events that might rouse the public’s emotions. The alleged gang rape of two teenage girls in southwest Germany on New Year’s Eve by four Syrian refugees was not reported by any of the main news programs, for example, despite the parallels to the attacks in Cologne and other cities.
SWR, the regional public channel, reported on the rapes but was quick to add: “The nationality of the suspects played an ‘insignificant role’ in the crime, investigators and prosecutors said.”
Such reporting has fueled criticism that the broadcasters soft pedal any hint of criminal behavior among refugees. It also earned them a new moniker: “Willkommens Broadcaster” — a play on the so-called “Willkommenskultur,” or culture of welcome that swept Germany in the early days of the refugee crisis.
The quips are only partly in jest. Opponents of Angela Merkel’s refugee policies say the public media demonize anyone who dares speak out against them.
Good thing we never see anything like that from our own press.
SOME GOOD NEWS THAT I DIDN’T PAY ENOUGH ATTENTION TO OVER THE HOLIDAYS: Sen. Lamar Alexander and thinking – and accomplishing – the educationally unthinkable in Washington. “The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) largely replaces No Child Left Behind, passed during administration of President George W. Bush. Through ESSA, approved overwhelmingly in Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama, Washington has released a great deal of its clammy grip on American education, and Alexander was the driver of this bi-partisan bus for schools.”
Now if Lamar would do the same thing for what the Education Department has done to Title IX.
MEDIA OUTRAGED BY PRESS REGISTRY LAWS — BUT ONLY WHEN REPUBLICANS PROPOSE THEM: “If the media get this animated about an unserious press registry law proposed by an obscure Republican state legislator, shouldn’t they be really worked up that Democratic senators and presidential candidates want broad government limits on the media’s First Amendment rights — and they’re dead serious about it?”
As Glenn like to say, just think of the MSM as Democratic operatives with bylines, and you’ll rarely go wrong.
WELL, THIS IS COMFORTING: “Biological weapons are now within the reach of many rogue nations and possibly some terrorist groups.”