Real headline, folks: The Votes of Black Americans Should Count Twice

Black votes in this country are worth less than white votes. Joe Biden won the Electoral College because Black voters in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia turned out in significant numbers. But even with overwhelming Black support—94 percent of Detroit voted for Biden!—the outcomes in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were worryingly close.

The Argument is a column where writers and thinkers propose a provocative idea that may not be politically realizable in the short term but that pushes one to think broader about a pressing issue of public importance.

One core problem is the Electoral College. Wyoming, which has just 580,000 residents and is 93 percent white, gets three electors because of its two senators and one representative in the House. By comparison, Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District—which includes Atlanta, has 710,000 residents, and is 58 percent Black—has no dedicated electors or senators and can only occasionally overcome the mostly white and conservative votes from elsewhere in the state. This devaluation of Black votes allows our political system to ignore Black lives, and the consequences are devastating. Unequal representation has led to unequal health care outcomes, which the Covid-19 pandemic has only worsened. Without sufficient voting power, Black communities receive substandard education, and politicians are free to appoint judges who sanction mass incarceration, abusive policing, and electoral disenfranchisement.

This is all by design. The Constitution’s framers set up the Electoral College to protect the interests of slave states. Along with the Senate, the Electoral College was critical in the endurance of slavery and its continuation by other means. Abolishing this system would mean that ballots cast by Black voters—or any voters, for that matter—would count the same.

But there’s another way to undo the damage of the Electoral College and other structurally racist political institutions: We can implement vote reparations by double-counting ballots cast by all Black residents. The poisonous legacy of slavery applies to Black people regardless of when we or our ancestors arrived in this country. Vote reparations should also extend to Native Americans. Slavery is rightly called America’s original sin, but so too was the United States’ genocidal seizure of land from its original inhabitants. Various legal forms of disenfranchisement have applied to them. It wasn’t until 1962 that all Native Americans were allowed to vote, and even then they faced—and still face—electoral obstacles. These are not the only examples of American oppression; we should include in vote reparations others who have suffered similar disenfranchisement.

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“Cancel Culture” Decimating Free Speech At World’s Leading Universities

A study by leading education focused think tank Civitas has found that free speech at the world’s leading universities is being eroded at an alarming rate owing to the rise of “cancel culture”.

The study found that within the past three years, more than 68 per cent of universities in the UK have seen free speech severely restricted, with academics unable to meaningfully discuss the nuances of issues such as race and gender.

The report notes that universities including Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews, three of the world’s premiere institutions are among those that have fallen into a “red” category for free speech following instances of “no platforming” of scheduled speakers.

The study warns that the situation has gotten so severe that it requires government legislation to stop campus censorship at 48 universities, the equivalent of at least 35 per cent of institutions.

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Lockdowns Do Not Control the Coronavirus: The Evidence

The use of universal lockdowns in the event of the appearance of a new pathogen has no precedent. It has been a science experiment in real time, with most of the human population used as lab rats. The costs are legion. 

The question is whether lockdowns worked to control the virus in a way that is scientifically verifiable. Based on the following studies, the answer is no and for a variety of reasons: bad data, no correlations, no causal demonstration, anomalous exceptions, and so on. There is no relationship between lockdowns (or whatever else people want to call them to mask their true nature) and virus control. 

Perhaps this is a shocking revelation, given that universal social and economic controls are becoming the new orthodoxy. In a saner world, the burden of proof really should belong to the lockdowners, since it is they who overthrew 100 years of public-health wisdom and replaced it with an untested, top-down imposition on freedom and human rights. They never accepted that burden. They took it as axiomatic that a virus could be intimidated and frightened by credentials, edicts, speeches, and masked gendarmes. 

The pro-lockdown evidence is shockingly thin, and based largely on comparing real-world outcomes against dire computer-generated forecasts derived from empirically untested models, and then merely positing that stringencies and “nonpharmaceutical interventions” account for the difference between the fictionalized vs. the real outcome. The anti-lockdown studies, on the other hand, are evidence-based, robust, and thorough, grappling with the data we have (with all its flaws) and looking at the results in light of controls on the population. 

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Your Credit Score Should Be Based on Your Web History, IMF Says

With more services than ever collecting your data, it’s easy to start asking why anyone should care about most of it. This is why. Because people start having ideas like this.

In a new blog post for the International Monetary Fund, four researchers presented their findings from a working paper that examines the current relationship between finance and tech as well as its potential future. Gazing into their crystal ball, the researchers see the possibility of using the data from your browsing, search, and purchase history to create a more accurate mechanism for determining the credit rating of an individual or business. They believe that this approach could result in greater lending to borrowers who would potentially be denied by traditional financial institutions.

At its heart, the paper is trying to wrestle with the dawning notion that the institutional banking system is facing a serious threat from tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. The researchers identify two key areas in which this is true: Tech companies have greater access to soft-information, and messaging platforms can take the place of the physical locations that banks rely on for meeting with customers.

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Biden Names As “Climate Czar” Former EPA Chief Blamed For Flint Water Crisis

At the time of the Flint water crisis, where lead from aging pipes leached into the city’s water system after it changed its water source, Chaffetz was the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which held hearings on the issue.

Chaffetz wasn’t the only one to object. “The people of Michigan won’t soon forget Gina McCarthy’s mishandling of and failure to adequately respond to the Flint water crisis as EPA administrator,” U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, a Tipton Republican and a former member of the committee who took part in the Flint hearings,  told the Free Press Wednesday morning. “That ineptness alone is reason enough to disqualify her from a senior role, but her push for higher energy taxes and heavy-handed government regulations is also concerning for consumers.”

Democrats also chimed in: Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Flint Township who is a supporter of Biden’s, issued a statement Wednesday afternoon, noting deep doubts about the choice. While thanking Biden for taking climate change so seriously, Kildee – who was a sharp critic of both the state’s and federal government’s roles in causing the Flint water crisis –  said he’d heard from several Flint residents who “expressed their concerns to me about this appointment and I have relayed their concerns to (Biden’s transition team).”

“While the position of White House climate coordinator does not require confirmation by Congress, we must never forget the failures of the Flint water crisis,” said Kildee, who led efforts to require faster public notifications of high levels of lead in water systems and to approve funding to replace lead water pipes in the wake of the crisis. “All levels of government, including the state of Michigan and the Environmental Protection Agency, failed Flint families.”

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Dr. Paul Thomas Targeted By Medical Board & Media After Landmark Vaccine Study

Recently, a landmark study was conducted by Dr. James Lyons-Weiler and Dr. Paul Thomas. The study compared vaccinated children and unvaccinated children and was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on November 22, 2020 after being peer reviewed.

Dr. Weiler, a research scientist and co-author of the study, was recently interviewed by Activist Post Contributor Spiro Skouras. In the interview, Weiler breaks down the data from the study which indicates children who were vaccinated showed a higher rate of medical office visits and experienced an elevated rate of medical symptoms ranging from Asthma and behavioral issues, to ADHD and Anemia.

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New York Times Normalizes Racist Eugenics Supported by Woke Doctors

When it comes to deciding who will receive the coronavirus vaccine, the far-left New York Times is normalizing the idea that skin color is more important than need, risk, and vulnerability.

Yep, the Times is perfectly comfortable arguing that it is okay to sacrifice your grandparents on the altar of social justice.

Feel free to accuse me of hyperbole, but the truth is the truth, and the truth is that not since Nazi Germany have we seen something like what the New York Times is guilty of, which is an establishment news organization openly normalizing the idea of choosing who lives and who dies, not on need, but on race and skin color.

Wither the Hippocratic Oath.

An article published by the Times this month examined the dilemma of the Trump vaccine. “The Elderly vs. Essential Workers: Who Should Get the Coronavirus Vaccine First?” the headline read, which is a perfectly legitimate moral dilemma for a newspaper to look into. We can’t vaccinate everyone at once, so who goes first and why?

So dummy me, because I sometimes forget how far gone the media are, how morally illiterate the children who run organizations such as the Times are, I’m expecting a thoughtful debate over who is more at risk and how tough decisions sometimes have to be made. I’m even willing to accept a look at something like, “Well, if we vaccinate grandma and not Dr. Happy and Dr. Happy dies or gets sick, more people might die with Dr. Happy out of action.”

Hey, I’m an adult. I get nuance and thinking out loud. I can handle that.

I’ll tell you what I didn’t expect…

I did not expect the New York Times to normalize the openly racist practice of eugenics. I’m going to quote fully below what the New York Times published as an acceptable line of thought, and since you may not believe me, you can look for yourself right here.

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