Liberty Archives - Page 14 of 120

Another Dumbass White Guy

December 18, 2023/in Education, Featured, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Craig J. Cantoni

Why do White people keep falling for tropes and fallacies about diversity, equity, and inclusion?

In a recent essay in City Journal about the brouhaha over the congressional testimony of Ivy League presidents, Heather Mac Donald wrote the following about Bill Ackman, a donor to Harvard and a billionaire investor:

“Ackman, who has taken the lead in the campaign against Harvard, had been going through a very public education about the diversity, equity, and inclusion complex. On November 6, he admitted on CNBC that until recently he had never read Harvard’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement. When he did, he was surprised to learn that the school’s DEI mandate did not cover “all marginalized groups,” as he put it, such as Asians and Jews. The solution, in Ackman’s view, was to expand the diversity bureaucracy’s client base to include the full panoply of students and faculty who were “at risk of being taken advantage of, of being harmed, of being emotionally harmed,” in his words, by the “majority.”

Source: https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-academy-at-the-crossroads)

Ackman’s thinking is astonishing in three ways.

First, although Ackman is a Harvard benefactor, and although DEI is one of the most controversial issues in academia and society today, he had never read the university’s DEI statement.

By contrast, I didn’t graduate from the Ivy League, am not a billionaire, and am average in IQ. But I’ve read scores of DEI pronouncements from universities, corporations, government, and nonprofits. Not only that but in 1990, while I was still active in advancing equal rights and equal opportunity in business, I read the Harvard Business Review article that came out that year and started the diversity movement: “From Affirmative Action to Affirming Diversity,” by R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr.

Since then, diversity has degenerated from Mr. Thomas’s reasoned argument into divisive tropes and fallacies that have no place in institutes of higher learning or in society at large.

Second, it’s ludicrous for Ackman to claim that Asians are a marginalized group in need of DEI. Which of the many nationalities, races, and ethnic groups force-fitted into the Asian category is he referring to? Is he referring to the Han Chinese who hold most of the power in China? The Koreans who hate the Japanese? The Mongols who conquered and colonized scores of other peoples?

My extended family includes so-called Asians, but they refer to themselves by their ancestral nationality and ethnicity, not by the label “Asian.” They are smart, industrious, successful, and just as family-oriented, if not more so, than Americans of Italian or Jewish ancestry. They don’t need Ackman’s pandering, condescension, and virtue signaling. Nor do Americans of East Indian ancestry need help from Ackman, especially given that they rank at the top in income.

Third, there is no doubt that when Ackman refers to disadvantaged groups being harmed by the majority, he is equating Whites to the majority. This is a particular pernicious nostrum.

So-called Whites are only in the majority because of the specious and arbitrary way in which “races” are classified and counted in America for purposes of DEI. A hundred or so unique ethnocultural groups are lumped together and labeled as White, even though many of them have little in common and many are dirt-poor and far from being privileged.

The underlying fallacious assumption is that everyone labeled as White is homogeneous and monolithic in skin shade, DNA, socioeconomic status, outlook, values, beliefs, experiences, and ethnicity.

Even more ridiculous is the belief that everyone labeled as White cannot be a member of a minority group is an automatic member of the majority, has never been on the receiving end of injustice, and, by virtue of birth, has political power, privilege, and other unfair advantages.

It’s particularly troubling that college presidents and their large bureaus of diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators hold this belief. They do so despite professors of anthropology, sociology, ethnography, genetics, and history knowing that it’s ridiculous.

At the same time, colleges encourage students to use their preferred pronouns. Yet they would look askance at me for refusing to use the adjective “White” to describe myself, preferring instead to use “Italian.” I do that to make the point that Italians, including my forebears, were not seen as White and were treated accordingly by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment for much of the twentieth century. The same for many other ethnocultural groups that were not seen as White back then but are seen as White today

Ackman doesn’t seem to understand the ethnocultural and economic diversity of people classified as White. Maybe he only hangs around with people who are as uninformed and guilt-ridden as himself.

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NEW POLL: 1 in 5 Mail-In Voters Admit to Committing at Least One Kind of Voter Fraud During 2020 Election

December 17, 2023/in Featured, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Justin Haskins, Christopher Talgo, Donald Kendal, Jack McPherrin, James Taylor, Jim Lakely

17% of mail-in voters admit that in 2020 they voted in a state where they are “no longer a permanent resident”

21% of mail-in voters admitted that they filled out a ballot for a friend or family member

17% of mail-in voters said they signed a ballot for a friend or family member “with or without his or her permission”

8% of likely voters say they were offered “pay” or a “reward” for voting in 2020

Taken together, the results of these survey questions appear to show that voter fraud was widespread in the 2020 election, especially among those who cast mail-in ballots.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (December 12, 2023) – A new poll by The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports found one-in-five voters who cast mail-in ballots during the 2020 presidential election admit to participating in at least one kind of voter fraud.

When asked, “During the 2020 election, did you fill out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child?”, 21% of respondents who said they voted by mail answered “yes.” (Filling out a ballot for someone else is illegal in all states, although many states allow people to assist others with voting.)

Additionally, 17% of mail-in voters said they voted “in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident.” Seventeen percent of mail-in voters also admitted to signing a “ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member.” (Both voting in a state where you are no longer a permanent resident and forging a signature on a ballot or ballot envelope are fraudulent activities that invalidate votes when caught by election officials.)

According to election data, more than 43 percent of 2020 voters cast ballots by mail, the highest percentage in U.S. history.

Further, 10% of all respondents — not just those who said they voted by mail — claimed that they know “a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who has admitted … that he or she cast a mail-in ballot in 2020 in a state other than his or her state of permanent residence.”

Eight percent of all respondents said “a friend, family member, or organization, such as a political party” offered them “pay” or a “reward” for agreeing to vote in the 2020 election.

Taken together, the results of these survey questions appear to show that voter fraud was widespread in the 2020 election, especially among those who cast mail-in ballots.

The poll of 1,085 likely voters was conducted from November 30 to December 6, 2023. Among those surveyed in the poll, 33% were Republicans, 36% were Democrats, and 31% were “other”; 32% were 18-39 years old, 46% were 40-64 years old, and 22% were 65 or older.

The following statements from policy experts at The Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution. If you’d like to interview a Heartland Institute expert on this topic or other topics, please contact Justin Haskins, the director of Heartland’s Socialism Research Center and primary author of the Heartland/Rasmussen survey, at jhaskins@heartland.org, or contact Vice President and Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org. You can also call/text Jim at 312-731-9364.

“The results of this survey are nothing short of stunning. For the past three years, Americans have repeatedly been told that the 2020 election was the most secure in history. But if this poll’s findings are reflective of reality. This conclusion isn’t based on conspiracy theories or suspect evidence, but rather from the responses made directly by the voters themselves.

“A democratic republic cannot survive if election laws allow voters to commit fraud easily, and that’s exactly what occurred during the 2020 election. Although some progress has been made in more than a dozen states since the conclusion of the 2020 election, much more work is needed in most regions of the United States. If America’s election laws do not improve soon, voters and politicians will continue to question the truthfulness and fairness of all future elections.”

Justin Haskins
Director, Socialism Research Center
The Heartland Institute
jhaskins@heartland.org

“The 2020 election was unlike any other in history as tens of millions of Americans voted by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, many experts warned that massive mail-in voting could result in widespread voter fraud. Unfortunately, these concerns were prophetic, as the results of this poll clearly show that a large number of voters did indeed fraudulently cast ballots in the 2020 election.

“The past few presidential elections have been razor-thin, and signs point to 2024 being another closely contested election. It is paramount that the American people have the utmost confidence that all elections are free and fair, and bereft of voter fraud as much as possible. Therefore, states should ensure their voter rolls are up-to-date and accurate, encourage in-person voting, and implement commonsense measures to reduce the potential for mail-in voting fraud.”

*****

This article was published by the Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.

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Daily Jihad in France

December 17, 2023/in Featured, Liberty, National Security, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Guy Millière,

From the murder of Sébastien Sellam in 2003 to that of Mireille Knoll in 2018, all murders of Jews in France have been committed by radicalized Muslims.

Shouting “We are coming to kill white people”, they attacked, murdering Thomas Perotto, aged 17, who had his throat slit. Seventeen other people were wounded, some seriously. Criminologist Xavier Raufer asked about the attack, and replied that raids like that take place throughout the country every week.

Although the prosecutor in charge of the case received multiple testimonies that the attackers said they were “coming to kill white people,” authorities maintain that the motive for the attack is “unknown”.

74% of Muslims between the ages of 18 and 25 in France say they place Islamic sharia law above the laws of the French Republic.

Television journalist Christian Malard, who had access to the results of confidential inquiries carried out for the French Ministry of the Interior, said they show that more than half of the imams in France proclaim the superiority of Islam over Western culture and the need to Islamize France, even if that means using force.

The anti-Jewish atrocities by Hamas on October 7 reinforced a distrust of Islam, and for the first time in years, a majority of French people support Israel’s fight in the ongoing war.

An Islamist shouting “Allahu Akbar” on December 2 stabbed a German tourist to death near the Eiffel Tower. The murderer, again shouting, “Allahu Akbar!”, then attacked two more people, seriously wounding them. A government press release quickly mentioned that the killer was a French citizen, born in France, with the exceedingly French first name of Armand.

Then reality struck. Armand was indeed born in France in 1997, but his original first name was Iman (full name: Iman Rajabpour-Miyandoab) — until 2003, when his Iranian parents, who had fled the Islamic Republic, became French citizens and changed his name to Armand. In 2015-2016, he proclaimed his allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) and made contact on social networks with many Islamists who had perpetrated terror attacks in France in that time period, and he planned a terrorist attack in Paris.

Before he could execute his plan, in 2016, he was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. He was released after four years, and placed on the state’s list of particularly dangerous individuals. On the afternoon of December 2, 2023, he filmed a video in which he announced that he wanted to “avenge the Muslims” and kill infidels – exactly what he did a few hours later. Commenting on the attack, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin insisted that the murderer had been under “close monitoring” and “psychiatric treatment” and spoke of a “psychiatric failure”.

The murder was widely reported. Many journalists noted that the murder of a tourist in Paris by an Islamist ex-convict could create panic among foreign visitors, and the fact that an Islamic extremist considered dangerous by the authorities was walking about free could cause even more concern, especially with the mention of “psychiatric treatment”. Similarly, Kobili Traoré, who murdered Sarah Halimi in 2017 and was sent to a mental hospital, was recently declared not responsible for his actions and will soon be free.

What should cause concern in France, however, is the widespread rise in Islamic violence. Official statistics show that every day in France, there are on average 120 knife attacks, many of which result in death.

Although acts filled with Islamic hatred against non-Muslims are becoming more and more numerous, most are passed over in silence. Some, however, are so disgusting that the mainstream media cannot ignore them. The murder in Marseille, for instance, of Laura Paumier and Mauranne Harel, two young students slaughtered and disemboweled with a butcher’s knife by an illegal immigrant, Ahmed Hanachi, in front of a horrified crowd in 2017, delivered a particular shock. Similarly, again in Marseille, Mohamed L., a radicalized drug dealer, in 2022 slit the throat of Alban Gervaise, a military doctor, in front of his two young children while he was picking them up from school. Butchering a father in front of his children seemed particularly shocking and barbaric. On both occasions, the murderers were proudly shouting “Allahu Akbar”.

Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and Jessica Schneider, two police officers, were tortured and slaughtered in front of their young son at their home near Paris in 2016, by Larossi Abballa, an Islamist.

The murder of Fabienne Broly Verhaeghe, a 68-year-old nurse, in Lille on October 18, 2023, also reached a level of savagery difficult to imagine: Mohamed B., a 17-year-old illegal immigrant born in the Ivory Coast, broke into her apartment, then raped, scalped and disemboweled her, and cut off her hands.

On October 16, 2020, the beheading of Samuel Paty near the high school where he was taught, by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee, led President Emmanuel Macron to promise actions that would allow teachers to work in complete safety. Nothing was done. Another teacher, Dominique Bernard, had his throat slit where he taught, in Arras, on October 13, 2023. The murderer, Mohammed Mogouchkov was a 20 years old Ingush refugee subject to an expulsion procedure.

Anti-Semitic attacks in France are also becoming ever more frequent, and have exploded since the atrocious attacks in Israel on October 7 by the terrorist group Hamas. In 2022, there were 436 anti-Semitic acts officially recorded in France. In the few weeks between October 7 and December 1, 2023, there were 1,518 anti-Semitic acts recorded, many of them physical assaults. From examining the police reports, done by the French National Bureau for Vigilance against Anti-Semitism, BNVCA, it is sadly clear that all of them apparently came from Islamic anti-Semites. From the murder of Sébastien Sellam in 2003 to that of Mireille Knoll in 2018, all murders of Jews in France have been committed by radicalized Muslims.

Jews throughout France can no longer wear skullcaps or a Star of David on the street. They remove their names from their mailboxes. “For the first time since 1945,” said French author Elisabeth Badinter, “many French Jews are afraid to the point of hiding.”

Ethnic Muslim gangs raid shopping centers and parties in rural villages. Most of these assaults are also never mentioned in the media. One, however, recently attracted attention: at a party on November 19 in the town hall of Crépol, a village of five hundred people, members of a Muslim gang armed with long butcher knives came from the neighboring town, Romans-sur-Isère. Shouting “We are coming to kill white people”, they attacked, murdering Thomas Perotto, aged 17, who had his throat slit. Seventeen other people were wounded, some seriously. Criminologist Xavier Raufer, asked about the attack, replied that raids like that take place throughout the country every week.

The government concealed the names of the attackers and clearly did everything it could to hide what had happened. A conservative journalist, Damien Rieu, obtained and disclosed them. Although the prosecutor in charge of the case received multiple testimonies that the attackers said they were “coming to kill white people,” authorities maintain that the motive for the attack is “unknown”.

On November 25, a group of young “right-wing” French people who had planned to demonstrate in Romans-sur-Isère were arrested by the police upon their arrival and taken before a judge. He accused them of an “intentional racist attack” and immediately sentenced them to six-to-ten months in prison. They had not attacked anyone. The banner they brought said only: “Justice for Thomas”. The sole victim of violence on that day was one of the French demonstrators who managed to elude the police. He was chased down in the town and later found naked and unconscious, his body lacerated, in the lobby of a building.

On November 29, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne proclaimed that the young people sent to prison deserved it and that they had embodied a “serious threat to democracy” in France: the “ultra-right”. The “ultra-right,” she added, cryptically, was even more dangerous than the “extreme right.” Not a word, however, about Islamic violence.

The French government is aware that Islamic “no-go zones” are growing and that riots can break out at any moment. In June 2023, a police traffic stop gone wrong led to the death of Nahel Merzouk, a 17 year old Muslim criminal, and resulted in three weeks of riots and destruction that spread to many towns. Although French authorities banned pro-Hamas demonstrations planned for October and November, they took place anyway, complete with anti-Jewish and anti-French chants. The police were ordered not to intervene.

The French mainstream media has spoken extensively about the “extreme danger posed by the ultra-right.” Again, not a word about Islamic violence.

Some commentators and political leaders, have spoken out all the same. Columnist Ivan Rioufol wrote:

“The racial outbreak which, in France, accompanied the satanic carnage of Hamas against Israeli civilians, revealed the state of tearing of the nation, close to rupture. Two irreconcilable Frances are already confronting each other in broad daylight: French France and Islamized France.”

Éric Zemmour, president of the Reconquest Party, wrote:

“Two peoples live in France, one of whom must constantly flee the attacks of an increasingly violent faction of the other, not only the attacks perpetrated with shouts of Allah Akbar, but this real daily jihad that the French suffer.”

Marine Le Pen, president of the National Rally, said:

“[M]any French people now feel it: no one is safe anywhere anymore. A new threshold has been crossed. We are witnessing organized attacks emanating from a certain number of criminogenic suburbs in which there are armed ‘militias’ carrying out raids.”

While the influence of fundamentalist Islam is less marked among older Muslims, 74% of Muslims between the ages of 18 and 25 in France say they place Islamic sharia law above the laws of the French Republic.

Television journalist Christian Malard, who had access to the results of confidential inquiries carried out for the French Ministry of the Interior, said they show that more than half of the imams in France proclaim the superiority of Islam over Western culture and the need to Islamize France, even if that means using force. Malard added that the main French Muslim organization, “Muslims of France,” which is the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — a movement banned in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Egypt — has a monopoly on training imams in France and has been infiltrating French universities, sports clubs and political parties.

“Left-wing” politicians and journalists, who try to demonize “far-right” parties by accusing them of anti-Semitism, are having trouble making the label stick. Zemmour is a Jew who strongly supports Israel. Le Pen’s party also supports Israel and denounces anti-Semitism without the slightest ambiguity. Accusing the Reconquest and the National Rally parties of “Islamophobia” no longer has any impact; Islamic violence spreading in France has convinced an increasing number of French people that it is legitimate to be afraid of Islam.

According to recent surveys, 78% of French people think that Islamism constitutes a mortal threat to France. 91% say they are worried or very worried about the sharp rise in violence in the country. The anti-Jewish atrocities by Hamas on October 7 reinforced a distrust of Islam, and for the first time in years, a majority of French people supported Israel’s fight in the ongoing war.

The main anti-Semitic party in France now is a leftist one, Rebellious France. Its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has accused Israel — not Hamas — of genocide, and has claimed that Hamas is a “resistance” movement. He concluded one of his recent meetings with, “Long live Gaza” and “Eternal glory to those who resist”.

If a presidential election were to take place in France today, Zemmour would receive more votes than he did in 2022, and Le Pen would top the first round of voting, receiving between 31% -33% of the votes, far more than in 2022. Whoever her opponent would be in the second round, she would easily win it.

An election victory for Le Pen would confirm that a huge change could still take shape within Europe. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni won the Italian legislative elections on September 25, 2022 by denouncing the Islamization of Europe, and became prime minister. On November 22, in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ party won the most seats in legislative elections.

Security expert Éric Delbecque, whose recent book, Permanent Insecurity , details the growing violence plaguing France, recently stated: “The French seem to understand that their country could die. They are beginning to react.”

Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.

*****

This article was published by the Gatestone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Weekend Read: ESG, DEI, and the Rise of Fake Reporting

December 16, 2023/in Economy, Environment, Featured, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By PAUL FRIJTERS, GIGI FOSTER,MICHAEL BAKER

We know that the modern West has developed a jaw-dropping degree of totalitarianism, wherein the bureaucracies of the state and the corporate sector coordinate together to cripple humans outside their power networks and media channels. But what are the mechanics of this coordination? To understand one of the games they play, consider the rise of measures and standards associated with DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) – both occupants of a highly abstract thought dimension and the latter an especially incomprehensible word salad.

ESG as a phrase was coined in a 2006 United Nations report, gradually gaining adoption by private companies like BlackRock via the production of annual ESG reports. Governments then started supporting these voluntary efforts, and eventually began making them mandatory. Since early 2023, corporations in the EU have been compelled to report on ESG. Many US companies with subsidiaries in the EU must observe both US and European rules, and those in the Asia-Pacific region too are starting to follow the ESG reporting pantomime.

In brief, ESG originated at the level of the international and intellectual stratosphere and then grew, unchecked by tedious real-world constraints like scarcity and tradeoffs, as a kind of malignant joint venture between large government bureaucracies and large corporations.

This JV is a serious industry, offering lucrative money-making opportunities for consulting companies, fund managers, and assorted professionals who ‘help’ companies comply. Bahar Gidwani, co-founder of a company called CSRHub, a compiler and provider of ESG company ratings, estimates that the collection of ESG data alone is already costing companies $20 billion worldwide.

It is an expanding industry too, since the reporting requirements keep increasing: according to recent reports, the head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission estimates that the cost of ESG reporting by the companies it oversees could quadruple to $8.4 billion this year, primarily due to the introduction of more ESG requirements. And that’s just in the US.

Large reporting costs are easier for large companies to bear, which offers a clue to why they’re interested: this sort of burden, particularly when made compulsory by the state, helps them dominate their smaller competitors.

DEI is the younger brother of ESG. At present, DEI reporting is not yet compulsory, but about 16% of the biggest US firms have open DEI reports, and the DEI fad is growing, perhaps eventually to eclipse ESG. Just as with ESG, DEI originates from the grandiose world of fluffy abstractions, big corporations, and governments. Despite efforts to make it appear otherwise, it is not grassroots at all.

The Benign-Sounding Aims of ESG

ESG measures and reports are supposedly about gauging whether the activities of corporations are ‘sustainable,’ and especially whether companies are reducing their carbon footprints. DEI is about whether a company’s employment practices promote gender and race ‘equality,’ provide ‘safe spaces,’ and rely on global supply chains that adhere to ‘fair’ practices. Most reasonable people would agree that many of these stated goals sound worthwhile in principle. What is being advocated sounds caring and does not, on the face of it, appear to be destructive in any way.

Yet, talk is always cheap. How do these pretty ideas get operationalized when they confront the harsh reality of measurement? Let us delve into a leading example from a company report.

Grab Holdings from Singapore

Many Asian companies are ensnared in the ESG compliance system because they are listed on Western financial exchanges. One such company is the Singapore-based ‘superapp’ Grab Holdings, listed on the Nasdaq. Its customers mainly interact with Grab Holdings via a mobile phone app, where they can buy many different services (food delivery, e-commerce, ride-hailing, financial services, etc.), hence the term ‘superapp.’

Grab is unprofitable but very visible. For the first half of 2023, it lost $398 million, on top of the $1.74 billion it lost in 2022. However, it operates in businesses — particularly food delivery and ride-hailing — with serious environmental and human impacts across a vast region encompassing 400 cities and towns in eight Southeast Asian countries. To anyone living where Grab operates, its fast-moving, green-helmeted motorcycle riders are as familiar as yellow taxis are to New Yorkers or red double-decker buses are to Londoners.

Grab’s business model is inherently not great for the safety of its drivers and the public. Grab uses routing and other technology to match riders with deliveries and to minimise both wait time for drivers and delivery times to customers. Scheduling is highly efficient because of the technology, which is to say that drivers are on tight schedules with razor-thin commissions.

To make a buck, the drivers for Grab (and its competitors) have to be brave and aggressive on the road. Some are real daredevils – the Evel Knievels of Southeast Asia – as we have personally witnessed. Not only that, but there is stiff competition in each of the markets in which Grab operates. Grab itself says that 72% of its five million drivers do double duty, performing both food deliveries and ride-hailing services. This makes the company a more efficient service provider across both cut-throat businesses and gives drivers the opportunity to earn more money.

Despite the fact that it doesn’t make a profit — at least not yet — Grab splashed out to produce an ESG report that in its last iteration (2022) was 74 pages long and almost as heroic as its drivers.

The introductory pages are taken up with the usual marketing talk, replete with large photos of company motorbike drivers grinning from ear to ear because, well, they are just so grateful to be part of such a great organization. The uniforms in the photos are smart and clean, in contrast to the reality which is that the drivers’ green uniforms are almost always greasy and grubby and the drivers often look, understandably, stressed and morose.

Deeper into the ESG report, Grab gives us 5 pages on how admirably it is performing regarding road safety, 8 pages on greenhouse gas emissions, 1 on air quality, 4 on food packaging waste and 8 on inclusiveness.

Pantomime One: Road Safety

The part of the report on road safety is of special interest, since Southeast Asia’s roads have a deservedly deadly reputation for motorcyclists, and much of the mayhem is provided by the delivery drivers themselves. For example, one study in Malaysia reported that 70% of food delivery motorcyclists drivers broke traffic rules during delivery, and the kinds of violations covered the waterfront: illegal stopping, running red lights, talking on the phone while riding, riding in the wrong direction, and making illegal U-turns. The statistics on crashes involving these drivers make for grim reading.

Other studies based on rider surveys tell an even grimmer story. A 2021 survey of food delivery drivers in Thailand found that 66% of the more than 1,000 respondents had been in one to four accidents while working, with 28% reporting more than five. This squares with reputation: in countries like Thailand, where enforcement of traffic laws is the exception rather than rule, dangerous driving by two-wheelers is famously awful.

So it is with some surprise that one reads in Grab’s ESG report that there is only just under one accident for every million rides involving a Grab delivery driver. That is an incidence at least one hundred times lower than the incidence implied in self-reports. One may assume that many accidents involving delivery drivers are not reported to the company, particularly those involving no or minor injuries, or where the driver is concerned that he will lose his job.

This latter concern is not trivial, since Grab claims that it has a zero-tolerance policy toward violators of the company’s Code of Conduct, which includes failure to follow road rules. This means the count of accidents per ride is a shaky number at best. The report doesn’t really say where the company gets this number from, so it could well be made up out of thin air, though presumably whoever wrote it down had some rationale in mind. One might imagine something like “Sounds low, and dumb Westerners will believe it.”

Pantomime Two: Grab’s Strategy for Saving the Planet

After dispensing with the road safety issue, Grab’s ESG report moves on to how the company is saving the planet. The company’s greenhouse gas emissions rose during the course of the year because of ‘normalization’ after covid, but the report’s author disingenuously sidesteps the problem by saying that most of the emissions were made from vehicles that were owned by the ‘driver-partners’ rather than the company itself. So, with direct blame for GHG emissions dodged, the company’s priority is stated as to ‘support our driver-partners in transitioning to low emission vehicles and encouraging zero-emission modes of transport.’

It really isn’t clear how that fluffy ‘transition’ might come about, since conventional motorcycles are a cheap and convenient form of transport in Southeast Asia, easily outcompeting other available options for the coal-face work required by Grab’s business model. The report says it will encourage cycling, walking, and EVs. The first two are obviously out of the question in most instances for food delivery, and as for the third, for the overwhelming majority of two-wheeler drivers, upgrading to an EV is a pipe dream (or pipe nightmare, depending on how much they know about EV recharging, weight, and maintenance issues).

One of the beauties of Grab being a platform that connects eateries with drivers without actually operating restaurants itself is that – as with GHG emissions – food packaging waste isn’t really Grab’s direct responsibility. It is the responsibility of the restaurants and food manufacturers, like the owners of the factories that make all those nasty little sachets of ketchup, soy sauce, and other condiments.

Brilliant! With this sleight of hand squarely in frame, this part of the ESG report then writes itself as an exercise in hand-wringing, admitting with furrowed brow that food packaging waste is a serious problem, and stating that the company’s goal is ‘Zero packaging waste in Nature by 2040.’ Exactly what this means and how it is to be accomplished is shrouded in mystery, but to anyone whose beach holidays have ever been marred by the ugly sight of plastic litter on the shoreline, it sounds awfully good.

Pantomime Three: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Most of this section of the report consists of descriptive marketing: saying all the right things and showcasing the occasional shining example, without getting into too much detail. The main statistics given are that 43% of Grab’s employees are women and 34% of those in ‘leadership positions’ are women. Well, maybe that could be true if one counts the few thousand direct employees, including a lot of secretaries, but omits the five million ‘driver-partners’ who are overwhelmingly male. The report also says that female employees earn 98% of what men do, which presumably means that the odd male secretary is treated just as badly as his female colleagues.

This section of the report showcases other inventive labeling. We are told the company has ‘Inclusion Champions,’ collectively a group of employees who ‘contribute to inclusion through crowdsourcing of ideas and on-ground feedback for better inclusion initiatives. They also help to identify and coach fellow Grab employees towards more inclusive behaviour, and will co-drive projects that help drive inclusion.’ Who knows what that really means? One might guess that ‘crowdsourcing ideas’ is the new term for having a suggestion box, and that pretty much every email sent by HR can be contrived to be a form of ‘inclusive’ coaching.

Grab’s report thus seems like it addresses ESG- and DEI-related issues, but no real-world mechanism ties them to actual outcomes, and there is no realistic external verification. Even seemingly simple things, like counting how much fuel a company buys directly for its processes and thereby estimating the size of its ‘carbon footprint,’ are like child’s play to game, as demonstrated by Grab’s masterly reporting: simply forcing workers and subsidiaries to buy their own fuel (compensated via higher wages or other things) will make the footprint of the company itself seem dramatically lower, while requiring nothing substantial to change. It’s all an elaborate show.

Who’s Asking for This Crap?

Though specious, unverifiable, and mostly made up, ESG reporting is a way to formally present a company’s ‘ESG performance.’ This performance can theoretically be ‘scored’ by some third party, and thereby compared with that of other companies. If ESG is valued highly by consumers, then companies that get high scores should attract a disproportionate amount of investment, meaning that their cost of capital will be lower than companies that don’t score so well – the magic through which a bullshit report is turned into a business opportunity.

This also makes delicious fodder for fund managers, who can bundle firms’ stock into ‘ESG funds’ or ‘sustainable funds’ or whatever, and charge investors fat fees for the privilege of investing in them. Fund managers also have another motivation to egg on more ESG reporting: their funds are designed not to green the world or make it a nicer place, but rather to highlight which companies will adapt best and thrive the most in a world where ‘progress’ toward ESG goals (for example, ‘net zero’) is actually being made.

How big is this market? According to Morningstar, by the end of the third quarter of 2023, global ‘sustainable’ funds numbered more than 7,600, of which nearly 75% were in Europe and 10% in the US. These funds had assets of $2.7 trillion. However, global inflows into these funds have been falling sharply since the first quarter of 2022. While they have still been attracting more inflows than non-sustainability funds in Europe, this is not true in the US. Amid waning interest in the US, fewer and fewer new ESG funds are being launched, and in 3Q2023 there were more ESG fund exits than new arrivals.

During the first two years of covid, American ESG stocks outperformed conventional stocks by a wide margin. This is not surprising since technology companies did rather well out of lockdowns, and they also have high ESG scores because of their lower carbon footprints than miscreant ‘old economy’ companies. Still, since the start of 2022, ESG stocks have fallen back and now are only just edging the market. Indicatively, in the seven quarters ending September 30, 2023, the S&P ESG Index was down 7.3%, while the S&P 500 was down 9.4%.

Importantly, many ESG fund investors themselves are government-type entities, like public pension funds, where the distance between investment decision and personal consequence is about as big as it gets. So often the ultimate payers for this circus are the general population whose pensions are, unbeknown to themselves, being used for virtue-signaling by public fund managers.

Who Wins and Who Loses?

Learning how to write up and cheat with these performance reports requires a lot of resources, but once a company antes up, the game becomes easy to play. ESG reporting is just one example of the broader reality that compliance with external bureaucracies requires largely a one-off fixed cost, and in this case the cost is often large enough to bankrupt a small firm. This means that, just as bizarre covid-era rules were a gift of competitive advantage to big companies, ESG and DEI reporting is a mechanism through which big companies can pressurise and even get rid entirely of smaller ones.

This, we think, is the reason why bullshit reporting is not getting pushback from the largest companies that don’t already have natural monopolies: plainly, it suits their purposes. They are big enough to absorb the cost without a major effect on the bottom line, and they are getting in return a stronger position in their markets. They naturally support the big bureaucracies that make these reports compulsory. Big consulting companies, and the aforementioned fund managers, also love the idea of compulsory reporting because it creates business for them.

On this very issue, Michael Shellenberger opined recently on Tucker Carlson’s channel that big traditional energy companies were led by cowards who had been “bullied into submission:” that the ESG movement had “used political activism and the pension funds to put pressure on the oil and gas industries to basically sell out their main product.” He called the ESG movement an “anti-human death cult” and asserted that “it’s finally becoming obvious to people that it’s a scam.”

On the lattermost point, we hope he’s right.

Yet, the scam is still spreading, as there are plenty more unproductive people eager to climb aboard. The push for companies to jump on the ESG reporting bandwagon is not confined to the West. Regulators in Asia are also pushing — harder in some countries, like Singapore, than in others — to make ESG reporting mandatory rather than optional. Sensing a huge opportunity to divert valuable resources their way, a posse of consulting firms are also coming after companies to advise them on how they can bridge the ESG gap with the more advanced West. Companies in Asia are starting to fall in line and dutifully churn out their ESG reports, breathing more life into the scam.

Will This Eventually Crash and Burn?

Hard-nosed managers of big firms understand that bullshit reporting requirements can be a source of competitive advantage, causing financial distress for their smaller competitors. What is in the whole charade for the state bureaucracy and the corporate bureaucracy is that it makes them seem virtuous while creating a huge fog of mystery about what they are actually doing, thereby providing both jobs and cover.

Like the woke movement, ESG and DEI are at heart parasitical developments, originating from a decaying West, championed by the useless and the clueless, and benefiting the shrewd and the corrupt.

Such malignancies weaken our society and should be discarded at the earliest opportunity. Much like Elon Musk showed the door to 80% of Twitter staff with no loss of functionality, and just as we have advocated previously that 80% of employment in ‘health’ professions is useless, so too do we think that firing all professionals whose primary business involves ESG and DEI can be done without any loss of functionality. We don’t think this will happen anytime soon.

If it were to happen, what would one do with all those unproductive workers who have been dining on the ESG/DEI word-salad gravy trains for months or years? Paying them to paint rocks for a while would at least get them out of the way. Better still, taking a cue from what the Ontario College of Psychologists has suggested recently for Jordan Peterson, these people could be taken into the field to help communities struggling with actual problems, involving actual trade-offs, as part of a reeducation and retraining program aimed at making them useful to their societies once again.

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This article was published by the Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

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Higher Education’s “Donor Revolt”: A Conversation with ACTA’s Michael Poliakoff and Emily Koons Jae (Part 1 of 2)

December 16, 2023/in Education, Featured, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Michael E. Hartmann

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s president and vice president talk to Michael E. Hartmann about philanthropic support of higher education and efforts to reform it—before and after October 7.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) was founded in 1995 to bring the voices of alumni and then trustees to the important internal and external discourse about what American higher education should be and how it should be run, including the ways in which it should be funded.

In the wake of the horrific October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, subsequent on-campus activities in defense of or actually outright promoting Hamas, and notably conspicuous silence from higher-ed administrators about the attack and those activities, there has been renewed attention to that funding by donors. This “donor revolt,” as some have aptly described it, has again raised many ACTA-like questions and concerns about such funding. Some high-profile donors have even withdrawn or suspended their support of particular higher-ed institutions.

Michael Poliakoff joined ACTA in 2010 as its vice president of policy and became its president in 2016. He is a former vice president for academic affairs at the University of Colorado and has served in senior positions at the National Endowment for Humanities, the National Council on Teacher Quality, the American Academy for Liberal Education, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education. He teaches at George Mason University and has taught at Georgetown University, George Washington University, Hillsdale College, the University of Illinois–Chicago, and Wellesley College.

Emily Koons Jae is ACTA’s vice president for development and philanthropy. She formerly directed its Fund for Academic Renewal, which offers helpful advice and guidance to existing and would-be higher-ed donors. She has also worked at the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives in Pennsylvania and the Jack Miller Center.

Poliakoff and Jae were kind enough to join me for a conversation late last month. The almost-11-and-a-half-minute video below is the first part of our discussion; the second will [part] is here. In the first part, they talk about ACTA’s mission and history, including the pace of higher-ed reform pre-October 7.

“One of my longtime colleagues says that she’d like to hang a banner outside our window … saying ‘We told you so.’ But our real job now is to fix what is broken,” Poliakoff tells me. “The warning lights have been flashing for a long time. Not everyone was willing to look at those warning lights, but now they have become so bright that they’re much harder to ignore and that can only be a good thing.

“Some good things were happening,” he says—citing adoption of the Kalven Committee report’s principles at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, as well as the work of ACTA’s Campus Freedom Initiative, which “has won something on every campus that we have touched.”

“[T]he challenges to reform are real. They’re formidable,” according to Jae. But

higher education is too important to our society to abandon. … Unlike Vegas, what happens on college campuses doesn’t stay there. This illiberal ideology that we’ve seen take over workplaces, government, you name it—that started on college campuses. So I would encourage donors to not give up on reform efforts, because I think we can’t simply walk away from higher education.

In the conversation’s second part, Poliakoff and Jae talk more about the need for and nature of higher-ed reform in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack and its aftermath—including on-campus pro-Hamas activities, their tolerance if not encouraged by administrators, and the “donor revolt” against all of it.

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This article was published by Capital Research and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Capital Research

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Tax Planning For Freedom: The Arizona School Choice Trust

December 15, 2023/in Education, Featured, Liberty, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Neland Nobel

This is the time of year when investors and individuals are thinking about tax planning. Many will be looking to take portfolio gains or losses to minimize taxation. Others will be looking for charitable deductions to achieve similar ends.

Is there a way to combine personal economic needs, and charitable instincts in a way that enhances freedom?

Yes, there is: contribute to the Arizona School Choice Trust.

ASCT is Arizona’s oldest STO (Scholarship Tuition Organization.) This organization pioneered the idea of school choice in Arizona, which in turn, led the nation in the direction of educational freedom. The vision of Jack and Isabelle McVaugh, coupled with the intellectual firepower of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, forever changed the landscape of education in Arizona and the nation.

The school choice movement is one of the few lasting changes conservatives and libertarians have been able to achieve.

Since the founding of public education, it was generally felt that children should attend a public school based on their geography. This often ignored the needs of the students and made students and parents captive of a monopoly system without the freedom to choose what was felt best for the student and the family.

As years went by, much of the educational system was captured by left-wing and teacher union forces, and now parents have to contend with poor educational outcomes, severe discipline and safety issues, and twisted morality.

At one time, public schools were pretty good in the country. Having attended public schools myself, that can be said as a fact. But those days are now gone and parents need the opportunity of choice. Having the choice is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity.

But not all parents can afford the choice. ASCT still stays with its original mission of giving scholarships to attend school to those of lower income. Hence, the charitable function that was alluded to earlier.

For every dollar you contribute (up to a limit of $2,609 for a married couple filing jointly in 2023), you get a dollar-for-dollar reduction in your Arizona state income tax obligation. For a single taxpayer for 2023, the limit is $1,307.

So, here is the deal: You get to reduce your taxes at the same time you help less fortunate children escape the bad schools they otherwise would be forced to attend. You get a dollar reduction in your tax burden for every dollar you give to a good cause.

You may call ASCT, ask questions, or donate by phone at 623-414-3429.

Or, you can visit their website at ASCT.org.

You may pay with a credit card if you wish.

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Image Credit: ASCT

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Arizona Secretary of State Allows Progressive Groups to Register Voters in Bulk Online, Then Scrubs the Groups’ Names from Its Website

December 15, 2023/in Featured, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Rachel Alexander

Progressive organizations are aggressively registering new voters online using special online access implemented under Democratic election officials. In Arizona, the program was launched during COVID-19 in 2020 and is open to groups that intend to register more than 1,000 voters. There was very little news coverage of the program launch other than a press release, and the names of the progressive organizations are no longer listed on the Arizona Secretary of State’s website.

Last year, the list of the progressive groups granted access under then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs was prominently displayed on the site including Chicanos por La Causa, Mi Familia Vota, Equality Arizona, Inspire 2 Vote, One Arizona, Rock the Vote, and The Civics Center. Additionally, three other organizations that nominally sound nonpartisan but lean to the left were the Arizona Student’s Association, the Phoenix Indian Center, and the Arizona Center for Disability Law.

The Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian parties were listed, but Florence Smith, a precinct committeewoman in Legislative District 8, told Republican Briefs that the Republican Party was unaware of the service. No other right-leaning groups were listed, even though there are several known for registering voters in Arizona, such as Americans for Prosperity and Citizens for Free Enterprise.

The secretary of state’s office defended the lack of participation by conservative organizations by pointing out the sole inclusion of the Republican Party. Since the initial trial rollout of the 2022 program, there are likely many more organizations now approved for 2023.

IRS regulations prohibit targeting the registration of new voters by political party. However, a recent report from Restoration of America found that “nonprofits ran biased registration campaigns using data on where certain demographics live and how they vote.” The report looked at two sister nonprofits founded by a Democratic operative that did this outreach, the Voter Participation Center (VPC) and the Center for Voter Information (CVI). VPC boasted that it was “‘dedicated to increasing the share of unmarried women, people of color, Millennials, Gen Z, and other historically under-represented groups in the electorate’ — which happen to be the Democratic Party’s core constituencies.”…..

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Continue reading this article at The Arizona Sun-Times.

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Were You Surprised?

December 15, 2023/in Featured, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Bruce Bialosky

Because of my background as a weekly journalist, a committed Jew, and a former member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, I have been asked many times recently “Are you surprised by the level of anti-Semitism that occurred after October 7th”? My answer is NO.

My question is why anyone is surprised by the large crowds gathered to support a group (Hamas) that closely resembles the Nazis and proudly revels in the fact they successfully butchered 1,200 Jews in one day in their sneak attack on civilians.

Does anyone really believe most of the people in the rabble know what they are protesting? What the cause is really about? Enough on-site interviews validate their ignorance. It is astonishing that any woman in the United States or Europe is out marching for this cause when they live in societies that have advanced the rights of women to the highest point in history. Odder still are Gays and the related alphabet soup cheering a group that would be happy to bury them alive.

This has been brewing for years. The leaders of this thinking have been working for half a century to overturn the underpinnings of our society. Names like Angela Davis, Herbert Marcuse, Derrick Bell, and Paulo Freire became the intellectual leaders of the movement. Instead of being vilified, they were at first tolerated and then venerated. They were allowed to create disciples that permeated the establishment and created a new system of counterculture that became part of the establishment.

They used Harvard University as the fulcrum but then spread their Marxist thinking throughout the education system. The fascinating part is universities are funded through the largess of capitalists and successful entrepreneurs donating gobs of money. The desire to receive false prestige by seeing their names on buildings masked any understanding they were funding parties interested in destroying the very core of the contributors’ beliefs.

They created an environment in which they lived a cushy lifestyle while duping the average American into funding their excesses. And then they spread their Marxist beliefs like every other group interested in changing the status quo. These individuals and their disciples taught classes six hours a week, then spent the remainder of their time creating documents and doctrines to destroy the very essence of the American dream. They sucked our economy dry of billions through student loans while attending soirees where they denigrated the system that was feeding them and their elevated lifestyle.

Then they created their own vocabulary with terms that made little sense, like “Intersectionality” and “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI),” “Settler Colonialism” and “Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG).” They told people if they did not go along with their perverse thinking, the people were racist. Nothing strikes at the core of a liberal, committed American who follows the rules like being called a “racist.” The liberals bowed to their twisted thinking.

Every university hired teams of DEI officers. Every Fortune 100 company danced to their tune. They disguised their Marxism with race-based terminology. cowered their victims into turning these Marxists into affluent operators of programs training people to hate the essence of their existence. The plotters must have enjoyed a huge laugh as they saw the masses pay to be degraded as they do in the DEI training classes.

We then saw our society’s humiliation during 2020 as destruction ravaged our cities in the name of a man who was nothing more than a common criminal. The Marxists will use any excuse to destroy our society. The populace was hoodwinked into exalting groups like BLM which were self-declared Marxists and anti-Semites. The capitalists poured millions into organizations organized to tear down the essence of capitalism and freedom. Riots were incited with the creation of inflammatory rhetoric. Again, we did nothing to stop them.

They worked the system to have the shamed people put in place laws and people that dismantled our justice system. Liberals willingly changed the law to allow people to steal up to $950 without fear of retribution, then people were horrified when mobs attacked and pillaged their local stores. The criminals had been given license to do such by your average American who the mobs and their leaders consider repulsive.

On October 7th, the crowds of people generated by these Marxists and their milieu once again marched in the street. Is it a surprise? I have asked people for years to name one Leftist/Marxist who is not an anti-Semite. They can never cite one in history. They may call themselves “Socialists” or “Democratic Socialists” or some even call them that soothing term – “Progressive” — but they all hate Jews and especially Israel.

They try to segregate Jews and Zionism, but that is not worthy of discussion. If you are anti-Zionism, you are an anti-Semite. Period.

As usual, Jews are the “canaries in the coal mine.” Many business leaders woke up to the dangers of these people as they marched in support of the modern-day Nazis. They came to realize the operations (charities and universities) they supported bred abhorrent beliefs. So many Jews who thought the haters were their friends woke up to the reality that at best the Jews were tolerated but more likely disdained.

It was not the haters out marching that shocked the people. There is a certain breed of Muslims trained to hate Jews, but not all. That is evidenced by the advances of the Abram Accords. The others who ballooned the crowds were Marxists who were bred by the universities and their evil cohorts.

Why do they hate the Jews? That is an eternal question. They hate the people who provided the concept that people have a free will and that all men and women are created equal. That is too much to bear as these people want to control our lives and tell us what to do and believe.

Hopefully, Americans, and particularly Jewish Americans, have been awoken to the fact the Left in our advanced societies are the ones breeding anti-Semites. They abided by all their new rules yet found out the crowd still shunned them. It is time to defeat them and their ilk and tell them America is the shining city on the hill. We want to maintain the country that has provided the most free and advanced society in history. And we will do what we must to make sure that Israel will be there with America for eternity.

As I have stated again and again, support for Israel is not a Jewish value. It is an American value.

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This article was published in Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

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Are you surprised by the level of anti-Semitism that occurred after October 7th?