Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

ROGER KIMBALL: The Biden administration’s race-based tax plan is disgusting: It is a malevolent effort to destroy middle-class prosperity by brandishing race.

Do you like scary stories? How about this recent report from the United States Treasury, “Advancing Equity through Tax Reform: Effects of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 Revenue Proposals on Racial Wealth Inequality.”

That sleep-inducing mouthful of grade-A bureaucratese may seem anodyne, the sort of thing that requires a surgeon general’s warning. But even a cursory trip through this twelve pages of reader-proof gobbledegook will be enough to give any sentient being nightmares. For what this malodorous blueprint aims at is nothing less than the confiscation of your wealth and property.

Beginning with its title, this report bristles with loaded buzzwords —“equity,” “racial wealth inequality.” Behind those abstractions, however, is a malevolent plan to destroy middle-class prosperity by brandishing the chief shibboleth of the age: race.

Race! Ergo, we are going to demonize whites.

Race! Ergo, we are going to punish success.

Race! Ergo, we are going to fiddle with the tax code in order to figure out ways of penalizing those with wealth, most of whom turn out to be whites and Asians.

The first sentence gives the show away. “For generations, entrenched disparities in our society and economy, at times facilitated by the federal government, have made it harder for Americans of color to have access to opportunity.”

“Americans of color,” forsooth. I am an American of color — a pleasing pink, if you must know — and so, even if you are an albino, are you. To distinguish among citizens on the basis of skin color — preferring some hues to others — is not only invidious, it is un-American. It should also be illegal.

But here we have the Department of the Treasury telling us about how the Biden administration has plans to tax Americans differently depending on their race. It is disgusting.

Related: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.

BRADLEY THOMPSON: The Yudelman Affair, and Why It Matters.

On May 5, Jonathan Yudelman was confronted on a Phoenix street corner during a pro-Israel rally by a baying mob of masked, pro-Hamas counter-demonstrators. The hate-filled mob screamed in Mr. Yudelman’s face that the mass murder of over 1,100 Israelis on Oct. 7, did not occur, that the Israel Defense Force was responsible for raping children, and that Mr. Yudelman himself was a “butcher.”

Mr. Yudelman was justly outraged, particularly given that Jewish students at ASU have been repeatedly terrorized for months by pro-Hamas students. Moments later, when he encountered another group of protestors confronting a second Jewish man with the same hate-filled lies, he regrettably lost his temper. In the ensuing 25 seconds caught on video and posted online, Mr. Yudelman got in the face of one of the pro-Hamas demonstrators with his arms held wide and called her a “bitch.” He never touched her or said a word about her religion or national origin. He committed no crime. He walked away.

The ”Yudelman Affair” is a classic example of the important legal maxim, “De minimis non curat lex” [The law is not concerned with trifles]. This is a trifle. There is no crime, and the alleged “victim” has apparently disappeared.

Yes, Mr. Yudelman’s words and deeds were imprudent and indecorous. He forgot a simple rule adhered to by campus administrators around the country: pro-Hamas demonstrators are permitted to spew vile antisemitic hatred and sometimes commit acts of violence, while Jews are expected to engage politely with those who wish them dead.

Mr. Yudelman’s life has been subsequently turned upside down. Following Saul Alinsky’s thirteenth rule for radicals, the Intifada Left has picked its target, frozen it, personalized it, and polarized it.

Since the altercation, Mr. Yudelman has been the object of a high-tech lynch mob. . . . It gets worse.

The day immediately after the incident, ASU put Mr. Yudelman on paid administrative leave for allegedly having engaged in discriminatory harassment. But the university’s discriminatory harassment policy does not apply to the facts of this case. . . . To make matters worse, ASU refuses to tell Mr. Yudelman who his accusers are other than to tell his counsel that the university has received “thousands of complaints,” which suggests a coordinated effort. Nor has the university identified the specific policies under which they are investigating Mr. Yudelman other than to say the allegation concerns protected-group harassment!

Time to sue. And to pointedly, and publicly, ask ASU administrators why they are siding with anti-semitic lynch mobs.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Appeals Court overturns UNC gun possession conviction. “The State failed to demonstrate that regulating Defendant’s possession of firearms, which were kept within a vehicle that was parked in the university hospital parking lot where Defendant was seeking emergency medical care, is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

ELECTED HATE: “Over a dozen Democratic elected officials criticized a parent group that asked for a review of rules that let students play on sports teams that align with their gender identity.” “In a letter made public on Monday, a coalition of 18 Democratic elected officials from New York called the proposal “hateful, discriminatory and actively harmful” to the city’s children…. The officials argued that while some parents say they were ‘simply asking for a conversation,’ the resolution ‘was based in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.'”

WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE IDIOTS: The Elite Are Discrediting Themselves.

Last week, the Secretary-General of NATO felt the need to tweet about transphobia. Millions of people in NATO countries find no use for that sort of thing. These people are winning elections and wondering if NATO is relevant anymore. The Secretary-General helped them answer the question negatively. . . .

The Senate Chaplain yesterday prayer for the people of Iran as they grieve the loss of their president, which they are not doing. The State Department issued a statement of condolence on the death of the butcher of Tehran. The BBC noted the monster’s complicated legacy.

The government covered up COVID data that did not conform to guidance, refused to change guidance as data changed, and collaborated with businesses to fire people who refused the COVID-19 vaccine, which did not stop people from getting COVID-19.

Now, the post office is so busy making sure Amazon packages get delivered on time that it refuses to perform its basic constitutional duty to deliver mail on time.

Nobody wants to do their actual job.

MATT TAIBBI:

Sources tell me at least two different active groups are working on political content moderation programs for the November election that tactically would go a step or two beyond what we observed with groups like Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, proposing not just deamplification or removals, but fakery, use of bots, and other “offensive” forms of manipulation.

If the recent rush of news stories about the horror of foreign-inspired AI deepfakes (“No one can stop them,” gasps the Washington Post) creating intolerable risk to the coming “AI election” sounds a bit off to you, you’re not alone. This is one of many potential threats pro-censorship groups are playing up in hopes of deploying more aggressive “counter-messaging” tools. Some early proposals along those lines are in the unpublished Twitter Files documents we’ve been working on. Again, more on this topic soon.

Also: beginning around the time we published the “Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex,” Racket in partnership with UndeadFOIA began issuing Freedom of Information requests in bulk. The goal was to identify inexcusably secret contractors of content-policing agencies like the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. The FOIA system is designed to exhaust citizens, but our idea was to match the irritating resolve of FOIA officers by pre-committing resources for inevitable court disputes, fights over production costs, etc. Thanks to UndeadFOIA’s great work, we now have a sizable library of documents about publicly-funded censorship programs (and a few private ones scooped up in official correspondence).

We’ll be releasing those, too, focusing on a few emails per batch, and publishing the rest in bulk. There’s so much material that a quick global summary here would be difficult, but suffice to say that the anti-disinformation/content control world is much bigger than I thought, enjoying cancer-like growth on campuses in particular, in the same way military research became primary sources of grants and took over universities in the fifties and sixties. Some of these FOIA documents are damning, some entertaining, some just interesting, but all of them belong to the public. We’re going to start the process of turning them over, hopefully today.

Turn on the lights and watch the roaches scatter. And stomp on any that don’t.