This Bill to Reform Section 230 Is Bad News for Big Tech. It’s Even Worse for the Little Guy – Inc.

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For most people, the details of the "26 words that created the internet" are probably a little fuzzy. Known colloquially as "Section 230," the law is a carve-out to the Communications Decency Act that provides internet companies immunity related to the content published by users on their platforms. It also gives those companies protection from being sued over content moderation decisions they make regarding those platforms.

As important as the law is at making the open internet possible, most people had probably never heard of Section 230 until politicians started talking about reforming or repealing it in the last year or so. Ostensibly, that's not a terrible thing on its face--there's room to make an argument that the law couldn't have foreseen every possible scenario of online content and that some amount of change is warranted.

The latest effort comes in a bill from Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.)called the Safe Tech Act.While Warner and his co-sponsors'intentions may be good, the bill is very bad. And, the thing is, it's not just bad for big tech companies like Facebook or Twitter. It's especially bad for the startup economy.

The law would no longer grant protection if "the provider or user has accepted payment to make the speech available or, in whole or in part, created or funded the creation of the speech.'' While the authors say that's primarily targeted at ads, it won't end there.

YouTubers, for example, get paid for posting content on YouTube through ads and through sponsorships. Under the proposed changes, that would mean that YouTube could be liable for the content posted by every content creator, even if a creator isn't paid directly by YouTube. ButYouTube isn't even the biggest problem.

More concerning is that in the event of a lawsuit, the bill would eliminate what is currently an "immunity," and instead provide for an "affirmative defense." That would require a company to prove it shouldn't be held liable.

Currently, if you were to sue Facebook over a review someone left of your business, the social-media company would ask the judge to dismiss it on the grounds that it is protected by Section 230 and that would be the end of it. That would change now in the event there's any money that has exchangedhands for either the platformor the user. In that case, the platform would have to prove that it should be protectedand that your lawsuit doesn't fit one of the carve-outs provided under the new law.

Even for a company like Facebook, which has more than enough resources to hire lawyers and fight lawsuits, it could quickly become untenable. For small companies, however, it would be devastating.

There are hundreds of small web-hosting companies, for example. The changes proposed would makethese companies liable for the content on every website or blog hosted on their platform. There is simply no way to monitor or moderate every website on the internet.

Or, imagine you're a food blogger with a few thousand readers. You allow your readers to pay for a membership, and in return, they get access to a members forum, or to leave comments on theblog. Suppose one of those members posts a negative comment about a meal they had a restaurant in town, and how no one should ever eat there.

The restaurant owner finds out and is angry enough about it that they want you to take the comment down. If you don't, they threaten to sue youand your web host.

In the past, that threat would have been hollow. If the comment isn't otherwise illegal, Section 230 would provide protection from liability for what a member said. Under this proposal, that immunity is gone since money changed hands.

Finally, it's worth talking about intentions. To that end, I'm willing to give the authors the benefit of the doubt that their intentions are good. It would be great for everyone if there was less online harassment or discrimination.

The problem is that making providers liable for all of the content published on their platforms won't result in less harassment or discrimination. It will simply lead many of them to decide it isn't worth the potential risk. There will just be fewer platforms.

When I reached out to the Warner's office, an aide referred me toaFAQ thatsaysthe new law would have no such effect on startups since they are toosmall to sue,which is a sentiment completely divorced from reality. That's part of the problem, really--while the authors seem to have good intentions, it appears they fail to grasp how the internet actually works.

For that matter, the bill fails to grasp how people actually work. Angry people sue all the time. It doesn't matter if the target is small.

Collecting damagesisn't even often the point. The goal is to force you to take down a review, or a comment, or a statement they don't like. Small businesses don't have the resources or the time to fight lawsuits and can end up bankrupt if they have to defend themselves.

People tend to measure the impact of what they do by their own best intentions, and not by the way it will be used by others who may not share those intentions. If your goal is to do something you consider just, it's easy to dismiss concerns that you might cause something terrible.

Yet, unfortunately, that's exactly what this bill will do.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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This Bill to Reform Section 230 Is Bad News for Big Tech. It's Even Worse for the Little Guy - Inc.

In Big Tech world: The Journalist as Censor, Hit Man, and Snitch – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

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At Substack, one of an increasing number of independent news and opinion sites, lawyer and civil rights activist Glenn Greenwald looks at a disturbing trend in journalism today. The rise of the journalist as tattletale and censor, rather than investigative reporter:

A new and rapidly growing journalistic beat has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism.

Whereas an investigative reporter succeeds by getting the story right, tattletales can succeed even if they get the story wrong. Censors can succeed even if their concerns are wholly misdirected quite apart from whether censorship is a valid enterprise anyway.

Greenwald (pictured) cites recent instances:

A star New York Times tech reporter, Taylor Lorenz, falsely accused tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen of having used the slur world retarded in an online discussion of Reddit activities. In fact, a woman in the discussion room had used the wordit is a self-description on the part of some Redditors. Without offering any apology for failure to listen carefully, Lorenz lectured the world about insensitivity, then locked her Twitter account. She likely faces no consequences.

Forty-five-year veteran New York Times science reporter Donald McNeill, on a field trip with high school students in Peru, used the n-word while discussing with a student whether it was fair that one of her classmates was punished for using it in a video. Greenwald: McNeil used it not with malice or as a racist insult but to inquire about the facts of the video so he could answer the students question. New York Times management was inclined to issue only a reprimand but dozens of Times journalists insisted on much more serious punishment, so he was fired.

Greenwald cautions that these widely publicized examples are by no means isolated ones:

These examples of journalism being abused to demand censorship of spaces they cannot control are too numerous to comprehensively chronicle. And they are not confined to those three outlets. That far more robust censorship is urgently needed is now a virtual consensus in mainstream corporate journalism: its an animating cause for them.

Indeed. One might also cite the recent, almost incomprehensibly vicious attack on Jordan Peterson, author the bestseller 12 Rules for Life, by Decca Aitkenhead of the Sunday Times of London. She interviewed Peterson and his daughter Mikhaila, who has seen her father through serious health problems over the past two years (her mother is recovering from a battle with cancer). Under the circumstances, the family would hardly seem appropriate subjects for a full-on assault. But thats what happened.

Mikhaila Peterson released the unedited transcript for the world to see how grievous the misrepresentation has been. But not everyone is so lucky and Aitkenhead likely faces few consequences other than the approval of like-minded colleagues.

Then there was the 2019 misrepresentation by George Eaton at New Statesman of British philosopher and writer Roger Scruton (19442020) as a racist as the result of an interview. The misrepresentation led to his being unceremoniously dumped from a government committee.

Author and commentator Douglas Murray, suspecting that Sir Roger would not really have said those things, began a search and eventually came into possession of the tape and transcript. He notes, What the tape showed beyond doubt is that George Eaton misled his readers to try to destroy the reputation of Britains foremost conservative thinker. Readers and listeners can listen to and read the interview themselves and find their favorite examples of Eatons dishonesty. He offers a few favorites of his own. (National Review, April 29, 2019)

Murray comments, To say that this is the sort of thing that has degraded public discourse is to wildly understate things.

Well, yes, but whats behind it? Greenwald offers, regarding the new breed of journalists,

They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers: the military-industrial complex, the CIA and FBI, the clandestine security state, Wall Street, Silicon Valley monopolies, the corrupted and lying corporate media outlets they serve. So settling on this penny-ante, trivial bullshit tattling, hall monitoring, speech policing: all in the most anti-intellectual, adolescent and primitive ways is all they have. Its all they are. Its why they have fully earned the contempt and distrust in which the public holds them.

How did we get here?

Ive been in the news business fifty years. Heres my view: The single biggest factor in all this is that traditional media are no longer a necessary institution.

In the 1970s, one needed a newspaper to find out the weather, the scores, and who had a bicycle for sale. Hit pieces sometimes appeared, of course. But generally speaking, the investigative journalist was, well, investigating, not plotting to take someone down just for the sake of it. There were plenty of bad landlords, corrupt officeholders, shoddy builders, etc., to focus on. It was difficult and sometimes dangerous work.

But we have specialty web sites and consumer groups for all that today. Its all online.

Today, the newspapers (along with generic TV and radio) are echo chambers for opinion for cultural reasons, that usually means progressive opinion. When an institution is no longer needed, its mission usually changes. The people attracted to it change too.

One suspects that Greenwald is right: The sort of people who would launch baseless attacks and refuse to apologize, destroy colleagues careers over misunderstood conversations, and ridicule or misrepresent old or sick men probably could not do an exhausting eight-month, on-the-ground investigation into corruption at the Municipal Housing Board. So, increasingly, they do what they can: Misrepresentation and speech policing.

One outcome of the increasing prevalence in media of the type of people Greenwald describes is a very great decline in the perceived value of freedom of speech and of the media. Twenty years ago, media people understood freedom of speech to mean, I want the right to report, with evidence, that the mayor fixes drunk driving tickets for upper class twits. Today, many in media understand it to mean I want the right to spout hate against visible and sexual minorities. Because that truly is all they do understand it to be. And they want a crackdown. Until then, they will act as police themselves.

Increasingly, the organizations many new journalists work for are owned by companies eyeing the Chinese market. That entails the need to get along with a totalitarian state. Perhaps it is best for them to get used to the mentality first. It is best for the rest of us to view their output with a skeptical eye and seek out smaller, alternative, independent sources of news.

You may also wish to read: Escaping the news filter bubble: Three simple tips. Spoiler: Reduce the amount of information big providers have about YOU. (Russ White)

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In Big Tech world: The Journalist as Censor, Hit Man, and Snitch - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Big Tech’s road to underperformance and why its dominance is waning – CNBC

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Over the last 10 years, technology stocks have been the undisputed winner.

Whether it's Apple, Amazon, Microsoft or any of the mega-cap tech names, investors likely have a bad case of buyer's remorse holding just about anything else. For context, the tech-heavy Russell 1000 Growth index outperformed the Russell 1000 Value index by about 7% per year on average over the last 10 years. This is a 2-standard deviation spread, last seen during the late 1990's.

But, while higher this week, Big Tech has shown signs of weakness in recent months. In my opinion, tech's reign of relative dominance has come to an end ... at least for now.

Any good thesis for an underperforming asset always starts with it being overvalued.

It's not that FAANG and other large tech companies aren't great businesses.On the contrary, they are fabulous businesses by most measures. In fact, a number of these stocks remain our largest single stock exposures. They just happen to also be our largest underweights relative to the benchmark.

The problem is that current prices necessitate a level of future growth that will be very difficult to realize.At almost 24% of the S&P 500, the concentration of the largest five stocks is now well known and is a significant contributor to the elevated valuation of the broad market.The S&P 500 is generally inflated from a valuation perspective at 22.5 times earnings over the next 12 months the 94th percentile of all observations dating back to 1985.Removing just 7 stocks, FAANG plus Microsoft and Tesla, drops the forward P/E to 20x. Historically expensive, but meaningfully less so, especially considering that the earnings of many of the remaining companies have yet to recover.

Despite the unique advantages created by the pandemic, tech's relative advantage from an earnings growth perspective peaked in 2020 as well failing to exceed the previous high-water mark set in 2010.

Low interest rates have been a key enabler of above-average valuations, but tech is most dependent on rates staying low.Low interest rates increase the value of companies with long-dated future cash flows many tech companies via a simple present value calculation.The technology sector is, therefore, most vulnerable to accelerating economic growth and rising interest rates.

Similarly, a recovery in inflation is another risk to tech's dominance. Although unemployment is still elevated and economic slack remains, fiscal stimulus, both past and future, will quickly close the gap at a time when fundamentals are naturally improving amid the vaccine rollout.This should accelerate a recovery in demand, creating upward pressure on prices.Even during the extreme momentum of the technology bubble, the tech sector could not sustain its relative outperformance amid higher rates and inflation.

Finally, the tech sector appears vulnerable from two policy perspectives: tax increases and regulation.

Taken in combination, the time seems right for tech to relinquish its reign at the top.

Jeffrey D. Mills is the chief investment officer at Bryn Mawr Trust. He has more than 15 years of experience in investment analysis and specializes in providing investment advice to high net-worth individuals as well as institutional clients, including endowments and foundations.

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Big Tech's road to underperformance and why its dominance is waning - CNBC

The regulation of tech monopolies will decide the fate of Western democracies – Business Insider – Business Insider

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When the global financial crisis slowly subsided in the spring of 2010, tech giants Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (GAFA) were collectively valued at just under 450 billion euros by market cap. These companies were drivers of innovation that pointed the way forward, enterprises at the center of a flourishing technological ecosystem with a creative and technology-driven vision.

Over the past decade, the transformation of society's relationship to these companies is unprecedented. We use the products of the GAFA companies to manage almost our entire professional and private lives. And during the coronavirus crisis, the value of the tech giants have increased even more. The GAFA companies, taken together, currently have a market capitalization of 6 trillion euros, which is about five times as much as the entire German DAX index.

The dominance of the GAFA companies has become so great that individual governments have no choice but to submit themselves to them.

Google and Apple dictated the interface for the Corona app, not the other way around. When Australia wanted to introduce a new law on fair remuneration for its publishing houses, Google unashamedly threatened to switch off its search engine in the country.

It seems that many German and European politicians have given in to the superior power of the GAFA companies. Complicated regulatory issues are not very attractive election campaign topics, after all. This powerlessness is also reflected in the practically nonexistent media debate.

It is my steadfast conviction that how we handle the US tech monopolies will dictate Europe's future. Never before in the history of our continent have so few companies possessed so much power never before were they able to exert such a profound influence on our lives.

And even if it seems almost unimaginable the technological revolution is not yet over. Quite the opposite is true. We are still in the early phases. If we want, we can still make the rules that will shape our future. But the room for the maneuvering needed to do this is shrinking, and time is running out. If we want to know what to do next, then it is vital that we gain an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms by which the tech monopolies operate.

In the 20th century, a company's wealth came from its factories, machines, and its qualified employees. In Germany and the EU, our entire education and economic systems are designed based on this formula. The problem is that the digital world functions completely differently.

In the digital world customer behavior is evaluated in real time. This allows digital services to be continuously improved and aligned precisely to customer needs and desires. The more data is collected, the better the algorithms work and the more relevant the offers presented to customers become.

Over the past decade, the GAFA companies have built a huge competitive advantage because they control the operating systems, the search engines, the browsers, and the cloud infrastructure. They also own the shopping marketplaces, the communication platforms, the networked household appliances, and the app stores.

To return to our picture of the 20th century, the tech monopolies not only have factories and machines, they also increasingly own the entire infrastructure of the value-creation chain, including all the businesses and all of the communication channels to the customer. With every new customer, this value-creation chain becomes more efficient and more profitable. Competition in the GAFA infrastructure is only allowed for as long as the competitor compensates the monopolist or helps the monopolist towards even more expansive growth.

The capital that the GAFA companies suck out of the system using this mechanism is fed straight back into undermining the competition or accessing new areas of business. The vendors on Amazon's marketplace are just as dependent on the goodwill of the platform as media companies are on Google or Facebook. This goodwill can only be acquired by consistently providing access to all content and data, thus continuing to feed the monopoly and making it more efficient.

The enormous profitability of these infrastructure services allows the GAFA companies to invest in new fields of business on a very long-term basis. To do this, the monopolists are willing to accept high losses for many years in order to weaken the competition and build up market shares. Due to the enormous market capitalization of the GAFA companies, it is necessary for them to continue to occupy large and lucrative markets to keep the expansive system going and to increase their stock market price.

The favorite argument put forward by the GAFA companies to divert attention away from their position of power is that the products are free for the consumers and that they greatly improve the lives of all of us.

That is a sneaky argument that might seem plausible at first glance. However, it is a deliberate trick. The products sold via the platforms must finance the high profits of the GAFA companies which means that the users are paying indirectly.

What is even worse: they are forced to hand over their personal data. The tech giants have no reservations whatsoever when it comes to analyzing their customers down to the smallest detail. They know that we can no longer live without their products, and that is why antitrust fines or occasional political objections are a small price for them to pay on the way to increasing their market dominance.

Our dependency on the GAFA companies' infrastructure makes things extremely difficult for our government authorities because they want to help the citizens, not cause them problems.

A life without iPhones, Google Maps, WhatsApp, or Amazon is hard to imagine and not exactly something we are striving for. The bundling together of the different services such as the integration of maps into Google's search engine, or the linkup between the app stores and the smartphone operating systems makes it even more difficult to break up the monopolies.

Not that GAFA doesn't deserve our respect for having understood this connection years ago and for placing it at the heart of their strategy to defend what they do and exculpate them from any wrongdoing. None of us can imagine a world without their dominance anymore. And therein lies the problem, as well as the political and regulatory challenge.

The large tech corporations spend billions on image campaigns and employ an army of lobbyists in Berlin, Brussels and Washington, DC. There is hardly a single association, NGO, or start-up hub in the political sphere that they do not support in some way or other. Politicians and entrepreneurs who point out alternatives are with only few exceptions reeled in again by the lobbyists and opinion-makers, attacked in the media or have their businesses damaged.

There are two possible exit scenarios for the end of the tech monopolies. If we continue without strict regulation of GAFA, the polarization within society will grow. The economic opportunities of smaller businesses will shrink more and more because of the growing profits of the monopolies, and the GAFA companies will be able to take over whole new fields of business.

An ever-growing concentration of economic power will lead in the medium term to an erosion of the market economy. This will soon cause social unrest, distribution struggles, and an increasing destabilization of our liberal democracy, which will be unable to gain control of the economic inequality.

There have been clear signs of this development for many years, but our debate so far remains focused on the symptoms instead of asking about the causes. This is regrettable, because the facts are there for anyone to see. You only have to look at where record turnovers are being made in the midst of a great European recession, where profits are increasing permanently, and market shares are being gained.

And in my opinion, this dark scenario can only end in a state run by autocratic populists. We only have to look at protectionist China to see where this might lead. The GAFA companies have nothing to say there anymore, and the Chinese have constructed their own tech ecosystem. The Chinese population pays a very high price for this in the form of an illiberal dictatorship in which politicians decide who is allowed to have economic success.

The second, optimistic exit scenario is a return to European sovereignty and our social market economy. Ludwig Erhard, who as Minister of Economic Affairs led Germany's remarkable post-war economic recovery (the Wirtschaftswunder, or 'economic miracle'), and later became Chancellor, already postulated that a market economy can only work if it works for everyone. What Erhard was referring to here was protection against interference in the state, but also protection against monopolists and cartels.

Ludwig's legacy is being kept alive today by the likes of EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who campaigns like almost no other politician in Europe for regulation of the GAFA companies. However, in contrast to the eagerness for reform in the early years of the Federal Republic, the EU is slower as well as unclear in its vision and in its willingness to shape the future. And that is precisely the weakness that the US corporations have been exploiting for many years.

In my mind, there can be no doubt that splitting up the GAFA companies is unavoidable in the long term if we want the liberal democracies of the Western world to survive. This is not only in the hands of the EU, but is ultimately a decision of the US government. Which is why this topic must be given utmost priority in German and European foreign policy.

The US is rightly demanding that we take our security interests increasingly into our own hands. But the ability to act in a self-determined manner also requires a functioning market economy, which is why we must immediately prompt the US to modernize its antitrust legislation and, after sharp debate in the Senate, to also become active in the campaign to split up the GAFA companies.

In the meantime, Vestager and the EU recently embarked on the pragmatic path towards intelligent regulations by announcing the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA defines what gatekeeper platforms are and submits them to much stricter competitive restraints. For example, giving their own products preferential treatment in the marketplaces, as currently practiced by Amazon and Google, is to be prohibited and carries a heavy fine.

In my eyes, this is still not enough to cope with the problem of GAFA market power. We must define, isolate, and regulate the critical infrastructure of the GAFA companies. This applies, in particular, to the evaluation of personal data, and to the allocation of their enormous profits. Whether Google's search engine, Facebook's WhatsApp, or the Amazon Cloud: data and profits from this critical infrastructure must not be used to expand into other markets.

Just as we would not allow an electricity generation company to make unlimited profits to enter into direct competition with Miele, Siemens, and Bosch, we must subject our digital infrastructure to the same regulatory checks and controls. The data and the algorithms of the monopolists must be available to all of us so that those participating in the market can engage in fair competition on the platforms to the benefit of the customers.

For a long time, I was skeptical about whether Europe can succeed in managing this enormous task. But, in the meantime, I see reason for optimism. When Facebook recently wanted to force WhatsApp users to share all their data so that their advertising could more easily reach users via Facebook and Instagram, the update resulted in a huge surge towards alternative messaging services like Signal and Telegram.

Both of these have been at the top of the app stores for weeks now and differ from WhatsApp in that they request much less data. A turning point has been heralded in, and people are ready for a future that is different from the one imagined by the GAFA companies. The political decision-makers in Brussels and Berlin should follow this lead. The social market economy is one of our greatest achievements and is the foundation of our democracy.

And we should fight for it, especially in the digital age, undaunted by the size and power of its opponents.

This article originally appeared in WELT.

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The regulation of tech monopolies will decide the fate of Western democracies - Business Insider - Business Insider

To Fight COVID-19 Misinformation, WHO Is Partnering With Big Tech : Goats and Soda – NPR

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Open up any social media app on your phone and you'll see it: links to COVID-19 information from trustworthy sources. Here, a Twitter screen reads, "No, 5G isn't causing coronavirus." Michele Abercrombie/NPR hide caption

Open up any social media app on your phone and you'll see it: links to COVID-19 information from trustworthy sources. Here, a Twitter screen reads, "No, 5G isn't causing coronavirus."

Open up any social media app on your phone and you'll likely see links to COVID-19 information from trustworthy sources.

Pinned to the top of Instagram's search function, the handles of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization are prominently featured. Click and you'll find posts and stories how to keep safe during the pandemic.

In the home section of the YouTube app, there's a playlist of videos that promote vaccination and counteract vaccination misinformation from WHO, the Journal of the American Medical Association and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.

And on the Twitter app, you might spot a warning under posts with fake or misleading COVID-19 information. A tweet from a user falsely proclaiming that 5G causes coronavirus, for example, has a big blue exclamation mark with a message from Twitter: "Get the facts about COVID-19." It links to a story debunking the claim from a U.K. media outlet called iNews.

About Goats and Soda

Goats and Soda is NPR's global health and development blog. We tell stories of life in our changing world, focusing on low- and middle-income countries. And we keep in mind that we're all neighbors in this global village. Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Learn more about our team and coverage.

In the noisy news landscape, these are just some of the features launched by the tech industry to bring down COVID-19 misinformation and deliver facts to the public.

This effort didn't happen spontaneously. The World Health Organization sparked the efforts in Feb. 2020 in the early days of the coronavirus crisis. The U.N. agency teamed up with over 40 tech companies to help disseminate facts, minimize the spread of false information and remove misleading posts.

But there's one big question that's tough to answer: Is it working?

Have any of these efforts actually changed people's behavior in the pandemic or encouraged them to turn to more credible sources?

Health messaging experts and misinformation specialists interviewed for this story praise WHO's efforts to reach billions of people through these tech industry partnerships. But they say the actions taken by the companies have not been enough and may even be problematic.

Vish Viswanath, a professor of health communication in the department of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been closely monitoring the global health content spread by the tech industry since the pandemic started.

"The WHO deserves credit for recognizing that the sheer flood of misinformation the infodemic is a problem and for trying to do something about it," he says. "But the tech sector has not been particularly helpful in stemming the tide of misinformation."

Researchers say there are limits to some of the anti-misinformation tactics used by social media companies.

Flagging or pulling down a problematic social media post often comes too late to undo the harm, says Nasir Memon, professor of computer science and engineering at New York University. His research includes cybersecurity and human behavior.

"It only comes after the post has gone viral. A company might do a fact check and put a warning label," he says. "But by then the ones who consumed that information already have been influenced in some way."

For example, in October, President Donald Trump claimed in a Twitter post that he had COVID-19 immunity after he was sick. According to the CDC: "There is no firm evidence that the antibodies that develop in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection are protective." The post was taken off Twitter after being flagged by fact-checkers but not before it had been shared with millions of his followers.

And there are no guarantees that people are going to take the time to click on a link to credible sources to "learn more," as the labels suggest, says Viswanath.

These "learn more" and "for more information" COVID-19 labels can be found on almost every tech platform yes, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, but also Tinder, the dating app (every few swipes there are reminders to wash hands and observe physical distancing, with links to WHO messages) and Uber, the ridesharing app (a section on its website with rider safety information directs people to WHO for pandemic guidance).

"If I'm sitting in some community somewhere, busy with my life, worried about my job, worried about whether the kids are going to school or not, the last thing I want to do is go to a World Health Organization or CDC website," Viswanath adds.

WHO is aware these measures aren't perfect. Melinda Frost, with WHO's risk communication team, concedes that simply removing posts can create new problems. She shares a December study from the disinformation analytics company Graphika. It found that the crackdown on anti-vaccine videos on YouTube has led their proponents to repost the videos on other video-hosting sites like BitChute, favored by the far-right.

YouTube removes videos if they violate its COVID-19 policy. Videos that claim the COVID-19 vaccine kills people or will be used as a means of population reduction, for example, are not allowed. But other platforms may have less stringent policies.

"We may expect a proliferation of alternative platforms as fact checking and content removal measures are strengthened on social media," Frost says.

Researchers say it's hard to know whether any of these efforts have actually changed people's behavior in the pandemic or encouraged them to turn to more credible sources.

Claire Wardle, U.S. director of First Draft, a nonprofit organization that researches misinformation, says "we have almost no empirical evidence about the impact of these interventions on the platforms. We can't just assume that things that seem to make sense [such as taking a post down or directing people to a trustworthy source] would actually have the consequences we would expect."

Andy Pattison, who leads WHO's digital partnerships in Geneva, says the organization is now trying to assess impact.

WHO is working with Google, for example, on a questionnaire for users to see whether the company's efforts have resulted in behavior change and/or increased knowledge regarding COVID-19. Since the early days of the crisis, Google has ensured that users searching for "COVID" or related terms on its search engine see official news outlets and local health agencies in its top results, says Pattison.

In the absence of current data, past research can shed some light on social media misinformation.

For example, an April 2020 study from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering found that warning labels messages such as "multiple fact-checking journalists dispute the credibility of this news" can reduce people's intention to share false information. The likelihood, however, varied depending on the participant's political orientation and gender.

Memon, the lead author of the report, says the findings are relevant to social media policing in the pandemic. "Fact checking [on social media platforms] is going to become an important aspect of what we do as a society to help counter the spread of misinformation," he says.

Both Memon and Viswanath say with tens of millions of posts being shared on social media a day, companies need to scale up efforts to take down false information.

"They have the power. They have the reach. They should be more aggressive and active than they have been," says Viswanath.

Memon suggests that companies could deploy stronger mechanisms to verify users' identities. That could help prevent people from creating troll accounts to anonymously spread falsehoods and rumors, he says. And Viswanath suggests that tech companies hire teams of experts ethicists, researchers, scientists, doctors for advice on how to handle false information.

As for WHO, it's learned a key lesson during the pandemic. "Information alone is not going to shift behavior," says Frost, who has been working on WHO campaigns to debunk unjustified medical claims on social media.

So over the past few months, the organization has been gathering a group of sociologists, behavioral psychologists and neuroscientists to study how information circulates, how it can be managed and how it can change people's minds.

"A lot of what we know about behavior change really requires something closer to the individual making sure the information we have is relevant to individuals and makes sense in their lives," she says.

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To Fight COVID-19 Misinformation, WHO Is Partnering With Big Tech : Goats and Soda - NPR

Breaking the sovereign power of big tech – DiEM25

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In an ironic turn of events, social media companies had to shut the account of Donald Trump an authoritarian president whose rise to power and grotesque attacks on democracythey had themselves enabled. Indeed, despite the lauded actions of social media companies that have blocked Trump after the capital riot, social media has been one of the main motors of the damaging effects of fake news and increased division worldwide. Here is why we should refuse this fatalistic view and break the power of big tech.

In the confusion of early 2021, at a time when the world was still gripped by the worst pandemic in a century and the US Capitol was under the assault of a pro-Trump mob set on overturning the results of the election, big tech corporations made an unprecedented move. Social media companies such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter suspended the social media accounts of a sitting US president.

The existential threat that the Capital riot and its fraudulent accusations of a stolen election presented to the democratic process required exceptional measures. Trumps authoritarian impulses should have been suppressed even long before. We do not dispute that. The question however is whether the power to decide on and execute these exceptional measures lies solely in the hands of the CEOs of several private companies.

The sovereign to borrow the expression coined last century by political scientist Carl Schmitt is the one who decides on the state of exception. Given that the exceptional decision to suspend Trumps Twitter and Facebook account was not taken by the judiciary or legislative power, but by private companies, does that make them de facto sovereign entities?

In another remarkable though less commented decision, only a few days apart from the Capitol assault, Twitter refused to automatically transfer Trumps followers to Biden, as they did four years before when Trump took over Obamas account. Biden was forced to start anew with zero followers, with no explanation from Twitter.

Was this a display of sovereign power? If big tech wields this kind of leverage over both an outgoing and an incoming US president, one can only imagine what they are capable of doing when dealing with less powerful sovereign states around the world. Or with defenseless citizens. For one thing, the events of early 2021 have laid bare these huge power differentials.

Unraveling the unity of sovereign power achieved by modern nation states is sending us back to a modern form of technological feudalism. While all eyes are on the US elections, democracy around the world is under threat because of the exploitative, recklessly profit-driven, and non-transparent functioning of big tech companies.

Over a decade of mass social media usage, powered by algorithms that are exclusively aimed at maximising sales, even if that means manipulating our fears and reinforcing our pre-existing biases, has also incredibly polarised public debate and created fertile ground for the spread of unverified claims and ludicrous conspiracy theories.

Big tech companies have made themselves indispensable in many aspects of life. In many countries, Facebook is equivalent to the internet, as Facebook Zero allows access to Facebook without mobile charges.

It would be unimaginable to run a political campaign, let alone public office, without massive social media use. They are now making themselves equally indispensable in the control of the abuses that derive from it, wielding an unprecedented power of censorship.

There is some irony in big tech having to shut down an authoritarian president whose rise to power and attacks on democracy they had themselves enabled. Socialmedia platforms are trying to portray themselves as the cure for the illness of modern democracy they are largely responsible for, but we should absolutely refuse a narrative that sees the quasi-sovereign power of big tech as unavoidable.

While their actions do make them de facto sovereign entities, it is not the content, but the size of the companies, that is the main problem.

In the end, we the Technological Sovereignty DSC do not believe that a legal solution (either through an intra- or supra-national approaches) is feasible, as a whole new court system would need to be established for the flood of cases, whenever a post is taken down.

A viable alternative thus has to be decentralisation of power, no monopolies or oligopolies of a few very powerful companies, so information and its flow is not controlled by the few.

Various platforms already exist, and are run and used by digital sovereignty conscious people (and not driven by shareholder profits), but the majority of people have yet to question the monopolies of big tech.

DiEM25 made Technological Sovereignty one of its pillars and you can read all about it here.

Additionally, start using alternatives to the options of big tech, some existing alternatives are:

Peertube as an alternative to Youtube

Mastodon as an alternative to Facebook

Matrix as an alternative to WhatsApp

Mattermost as an alternative to Slack

Photo byTracy Le BlancfromPexels.

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Breaking the sovereign power of big tech - DiEM25

To avoid online censorship, government must force Big Tech to be more transparent, expert says – Yahoo News

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Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP (3), Getty Images

Censorship online by Big Tech is a bad idea, in large part because its a distraction from the problem of how social media companies promote, spread and amplify harmful information, according to author Peter Pomerantsev.

Its ridiculous to think that you can regulate the billions of things people say every day, or that we should, or that its even feasible. So I dont think thats the way forward, Pomerantsev said in an interview on The Long Game, a Yahoo News podcast. Therell be a way to get out of the whole tricky thing of taking one comment down or leaving it up.

The way out, he said, is through forcing the tech companies to be transparent about how they are manipulating the spread of information, and holding them accountable to prevent public harms.

Pomerantsev is a Russian-born journalist now based in London whose parents were hounded by the KGB secret police in Soviet Russia. His book This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality argues that phrases like freedom of expression have been hacked by authoritarian leaders and governments like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines.

Authoritarians use freedom of speech as an excuse to spread massive amounts of disinformation at the click of a button, while employing online mobs and troll farms to drown out and intimidate critical voices and obscure truth. This constitutes a sort of censorship through noise, Pomerantsev and two others wrote in a recent article for the London School of Economics Institute of Global Affairs, where he is a visiting senior fellow.

But countering autocrats doesnt have to mean removing the posts of ordinary people or taking them off their preferred social media platforms, he said, which has become a growing concern among many Republicans.

We thought that for a long time, the federal government is infuriating, Tucker Carlson said on Fox News Wednesday. The bigger threat to your family turned out to be huge publicly held corporations, particularly the tech monopolies.

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In fact, focus on censorship and cancel culture actually distracts from solving the problem of disinformation and all the chaos and confusion and real-world harm it brings with it in a way that preserves free speech, Pomerantsev said.

A lot of the virality is amplified artificially. Thats kind of how a lot of these platforms were designed, he said. That kind of artificial amplification I think really has to end.

Fake amplification everything from gaming algorithms and search engine optimization through to amplification through coordinated inauthentic activity I think that probably has to end if the internet is going to be a just reflection of society and not this kind of weird funhouse mirror that distorts everything, Pomerantsev said.

One of the first steps toward reducing disinformation is algorithm transparency: revealing how the social media and Big Tech companies engineer which information rises to the top and is seen by large numbers of people. Google, Facebook and TikTok have all taken some recent steps in this direction, Axios reported this week, but it was voluntary and most experts think this issue needs to be overseen by government regulators.

When Trumps people would say, Google pushes conservative views right down, liberal news up, we dont know because Google has not shown anyone its formulas that shape search results, Pomerantsev said. Thats ridiculous.

Carlson addressed the same root cause on his show. Twitter refuses to release data on who it bans, he said.

Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., sent letters to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in late January urging the companies to address the fundamental design features of their social networks that facilitate the spread of extreme, radicalizing content to their users. The letters were co-signed by 38 other House Democrats.

The lawmakers drew a straight line between the focus of social media companies on maximizing user engagement and the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by Trump supporters who believed the former presidents lies about the 2020 election.

The rioters who attacked the Capitol earlier this month were radicalized in part in digital echo chambers that these platforms designed, built, and maintained, and that the platforms are partially responsible for undermining our shared sense of objective reality, for intensifying fringe political beliefs, for facilitating connections between extremists, leading some of them to commit real-world, physical violence, Malinowski and Eshoo wrote.

The lawmakers cited a Wall Street Journal investigation from last May that revealed Facebook knew in 2018 that its algorithms sometimes radicalized its users, but did not take action to reduce this because it would reduce profits. Our algorithms exploit the human brains attraction to divisiveness, a presentation created internally said, noting that the company was serving more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.

Malinowski and Eshoo have proposed a change to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act a law targeted for reform by conservatives as well that would hold tech companies accountable for content they proactively promote for business reasons, if doing so leads to specific offline harms.

Malinowski said in a hearing this week that this is a solution that Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree on. We can believe that the biggest problem is on the right, on the far right or on the far left it doesnt matter. We can debate that. Whichever of those things you believe you should be for this, because the mechanism works the same way. It pushes people on the left further left. It pushes people on the right further right, until they reach an extreme.

Pomerantsev pointed to the United Kingdoms approach, which says in his words that companies have to think about the harms they cause, and those harms could be around public health or some forms of personal abuse.

And the question is what are the companies doing almost like in a health and safety kind of regime to mitigate that? So are their algorithms making it too easy for people to bully others or to harass them? Pomerantsev said. Are the way their systems are designed making it too easy to spread this information thats dangerous to peoples health?

The British have said there needs to be a regulator thats making a judgment about whether theyre doing enough around those issues, and are working to set up a system in which Ofcom, its communications regulator, could issue fines if the companies are found at fault.

The tech companies have lobbied the British government against giving Ofcom punitive regulatory powers.

But as Pomerantsev wrote in his book and expounded on in his interview with Yahoo News, the Big Tech companies have acquired so much information about their users which is most people that there is a real question about whether they are infringing upon freedom of thought.

To some degree our private thoughts, creative impulses, and senses of self are shaped by information forces greater than ourselves, he wrote in This Is Not Propaganda.

Are they actually invading your freedom of thought? Are they actually crossing the line of you, and then using it against you? he said. What is that line of our unconscious that deserves to be protected?

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To avoid online censorship, government must force Big Tech to be more transparent, expert says - Yahoo News

Three ways investors can play Big Tech on the back of earnings – CNBC

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Big Tech stocks are bouncing back.

The Invesco QQQ Trust has climbed over 4% this week, led by shares of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet and Microsoft.

After roughly six months of sideways trading, this is likely the start of a broader push higher for the group, two market analysts told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Tuesday.

"In 2020, obviously so many of the sectors just got pummeled, and particularly industrials and consumer discretionary. But communications actually didn't fall by as much ... and [information technology] actually expanded their earnings-per-share growth last year," said Gina Sanchez, founder and CEO of Chantico Global.

Though all six are broadly considered tech stocks, only Apple and Microsoft are in the S&P 500's technology sector. Alphabet, Facebook and Netflix are in its communication services sector, while Amazon is in the consumer discretionary sector.

"Investors are looking for value and there are not a lot of places where you didn't get a lot of excessive [price-to-earnings] expansion with the exception of consumer discretionary, but also, interestingly, communications and technology," said Sanchez, also chief market strategist at Lido Advisors.

She noted that 2021 earnings expectations for the communication and tech sectors were 24% and 28%, respectively.

"We think that, in fact, they represent an interesting opportunity going forward with their earnings potential," Sanchez said.

All six names appear to have more runway, particularly given the strength of the current earnings season, said Mark Tepper, president and CEO of Strategic Wealth Partners.

Alphabet and Amazon shares jumped in after-hours trading on Tuesday following the companies' fourth-quarter earnings reports. In Wednesday's premarket, Alphabet was up 7% but Amazon was only slightly higher as investors mulled Jeff Bezos' announcement that he plans to step down as CEO.

"When you look at every single one of these companies, all of these companies were strong before Covid, they all got stronger during Covid and they're going to be strong long after we stop talking about Covid," Tepper told CNBC. "The runway wasn't short, it's long. I do believe there's more gains to come."

While his firm owns all six Big Tech names, Tepper said its positions in them are weighted less than the benchmark, the Russell 3000.

"We are finding more value down the cap spectrum a little bit. That's where we're putting new money to work, and one of the names we're talking about is Apple," he said. "The great way to potentially play that is to look at one of their suppliers, which is Knowles."

A roughly $1.85 billion electronics manufacturer, Knowles makes acoustic equipment for consumer devices such as Apple's AirPods, and its stock could soon play catch-up, Tepper said.

"Look at the performance between Knowles and Apple. Knowles has underperformed Apple by 75% over the last year," he said. "I think you can get some catch-up in a company like that."

Disclosure: Tepper and Strategic Wealth Partners own shares of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet and Microsoft.

Disclaimer

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Three ways investors can play Big Tech on the back of earnings - CNBC

Dont stop at big tech we need to bust big agriculture, too – Wisconsin State Farmer

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Rob Larew and Diana Moss Published 11:45 a.m. CT Feb. 5, 2021

Consolidation has given a few large companies control of proprietary, multi-level systems of traits, seeds, agrochemicals and digital technology.(Photo: Jessica Reilly, AP)

Amid Congressional investigation and federal, state and privateantitrust cases, all eyes are on Big Tech. The step up in antitrust enforcement against the digital technology behemoths and their alleged abuses of market power is, by all accounts, good news. Successful cases could restore competition, which would benefit smaller businesses and American consumers alike. And after decades ofunder-enforcement of the antitrust lawsin the United States, these cases could deliver some base hitsand even home runsfor a critical area of law enforcement.

But the outsized media, political and social attention paid to the tech industry has diverted focus from other important sectors. There are monopolies and domestic cartels elsewherein healthcare,pharmaceuticals, media and communications, as well as food and agriculture. These industries produce goods and services that are essential to the health, safety and well-being of consumers, and even to our national security, which is why antitrust laws must be enforced against violations in these sectors, too.

The food system has been particularly fertile ground for rising concentration, the emergence of dominant firms and formation of domestic cartels. Some of the largest players have been allowed to engage in anticompetitive mergers and practices that are as serious, if not more so, than those of which Big Tech stands accused.

Rob Larew(Photo: NFU)

Much like their counterparts in the tech sector, many of the largest food and agriculture corporations haveacquired their way to dominanceby gobbling up rival businesses. This has occurred across the food system, including digital farming startups, biotechnology firms, food manufacturers,flour millers, farm machinery manufacturers and grocery store chains. But nowhere has it been more pronounced than agricultural inputs.

In acquiring competitors both small and large, the six biggest agricultural biotechnology firms collapsed rapidly into the Big ThreeBayer, DuPont and ChemChina. This wave of consolidation, which was met withlittle resistancefrom antitrust authorities, gave these corporations control of proprietary,multi-level systemsof traits, seeds, agrochemicals and digital technology that limit farmers choices and lock them into limited cropping systems.

But some parts of the agricultural sector are rife with other damaging antitrust violations that we havent seen in Big Tech. This includes alleged conspiracies to fix prices and allocate marketspractices that are made possible by high levels of consolidation and concentration.

One of the most notable examples of this is in beef packing, where thetop four firms now control about 85 percent of the national market. Given the market power that the packers possess, it comes as no surprise that they have allegedly abused it:On multiple occasions, these packers have been accused of colludingto pay ranchers less for cattle and charge consumers more for beef.

Diana Moss(Photo: American Antitrust Institute)

However, this behavior isnt unique to the beef-packing sector. Similar allegations of price fixing have been leveled against tuna, chicken, turkey, egg, pork and peanut producers, among others. These cartels are especially egregious because processors allegedly collude on both the sell and buy sides, hurting both farmers and consumersincluding independent restaurants and grocery stores.

Beyond anticompetitive practices, rising concentration has implications for our national food security. Concentration-driven bottlenecks along the supply chain make the entire food system vulnerable to disruption, a fact that has become painfully obvious during the pandemic. Following a rash of COVID-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants, national meat processing capacity declined bynearly half, resulting insupply chain breakdowns and price gouging that affected millions of Americansmany of whom were already experiencing food insecurity.

If disruption in the food supply system werent enough, the communities that support our food system are also at risk.Foreign companies now owna non-trivial portion of the United States farmland and food system. These entities not only resist food labeling and regulations that protect and inform consumers, they also take jobs and resources out of rural communities, accelerating social and economic decline and suppressing the growth of independent businesses that would contribute to revitalization.

Kudos to antitrust enforcers for finally taking aim at Big Tech. Monopolization casesif they produce meaningful resultswill improve the welfare of hundreds of millions of people that engage in online search, social networking and shopping. But we should not stop there. Americans depend on a safe, functional and resilient food system at least as much as they depend on their social medianetworks or ability to search the internet. Antitrust enforcers must turn their attention there next.

Rob Larew is president of National Farmers Union, which represents 200,000 family farmers and ranchers across the country.

Dr. Diana Moss is the president of the American Antitrust Institute, which is devoted to promoting competition that protects consumers, businesses and society.

Read or Share this story: https://www.wisfarmer.com/story/opinion/2021/02/05/dont-stop-big-tech-we-need-bust-big-agriculture-too/4395476001/

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Dont stop at big tech we need to bust big agriculture, too - Wisconsin State Farmer

35 of Ayn Rand’s Most Insightful Quotes on Rights, Individualism, and Government | Gary M. Galles – Foundation for Economic Education

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Alisa Rosenbaum was one of the most controversial writers in Americas history. Why, then, have few people heard of her? Because both peoples plaudits and their intemperate attacks have been aimed at the new name she adopted after leaving Russia for AmericaAyn Rand.

Her influence is beyond question. She sold more than 30 million books, and decades after her 1982 death, hundreds of thousands more sell each year. Atlas Shrugged has been ranked behind only the Bible as a book that influenced readers lives.

Some are devoted enough that Randian has become a descriptive term. Others use her name only to disparage opponents. Still others disagree with some of her ideas (e.g., while Rand was an often-strident atheist, capitalism is clearly defensible on Christian principles, and most historical defenses of liberty employed Christian rationales which conflict with Rands reasoning), yet find a great deal of insight in her analysis of liberty, rights and government.

As we mark the anniversary of Rands February 2 birth, consider some of her most insightful words:

However much some adore Ayn Rand and others despise her, those who seek wisdom wherever it can be found will find serious food for thought in her words on liberty, rights and government.

When so many promote the cognitive dissonance of pursuing supposed collective or social justice by the unjust expedient of violating the rights of individuals who make up society, she can stimulate our thought about foundational questions. And that is crucial, because, as George Mason said, No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

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35 of Ayn Rand's Most Insightful Quotes on Rights, Individualism, and Government | Gary M. Galles - Foundation for Economic Education

If Senators Wont Kill the Filibuster, They Should at Least Sweat for It – The Nation

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Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell speaks during a news conference. (Tom Brenner / Pool via AP)

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The US Senate was a mistake. Its a fundamentally antidemocratic institution that gives political power to land instead of people, and it was structured that way at the request of slavers who worried about losing their right to hold people in bondage. Abolishing it should have been part of the conditions of surrender at Appomattox.1

As it is, nothing can be done to change the Senates antidemocratic structure. (Article V of the Constitution literally mandates that equal representation of the states must be preserved in the chamber.) But something can be done about the Senates anti-majoritarian nature. Ending the filibuster is one way to make the Senate less beholden to a ruthless minority and more responsive to the majority of its members. Its also the only practical way for Democrats to move their agenda through Congress, because many Republicans just proved theyd rather overthrow the government than work with the Biden administration.2

Unfortunately, senators generally like the filibuster.It gives each and every one of them the power to grind democratic self-government to a halt.That was made evident at the start of the new Senate term, when minority leader Mitch McConnell staged a week of parliamentary temper tantrums to try to force the Democrats to promise they wouldnt end the filibuster. He finally relented when Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema reiterated their long-standing commitment to keeping it intact.3

But what does that promise really mean?4

The filibuster refers generally to the ability of any senator to delay or block a vote on a bill. But when people talk about ending the filibuster, what they really mean is reforming the rules of cloture. Cloture is the procedure that ends Senate debate and allows the body to vote on legislation and move forward with the peoples business. Its this process that needs to be changed.5

The cloture rules have been rewritten multiple times over the course of US history. The current rules have been in place only since 1975. Thats when thenSenate majority leader Mike Mansfield, a Montana Democrat, pushed a change to Rule 22one that allowed the Senate to achieve cloture with a three-fifths majority (60 votes) as opposed to two-thirds (67 votes), which had been the rule since the Wilson administration. That would have been fine, but Mansfields new three-fifths majority applied to the total number of senators (all 100) instead of those who were actually in the building at the time a vote was taken. That massively changed how the filibuster could be deployed. Instead of minority senators having to be physically present for the entire filibuster, only a single one needs to be there. In addition, since 1970, Mansfield had allowed the Senates work to proceed on two tracks, meaning members could continue to debate and vote on other bills while one was held up by a filibuster, awaiting cloture. The age of the talking filibusterthink Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washingtonwas over.6

One can see why all this sounded very progressive in 1975. On paper, the change made for less gridlock. In practice, it has been a disaster. The use of the filibuster has skyrocketed, largely because it costs the members of the minority nothing. They dont have to talk; they dont even have to be present. And they dont have to explain to the American people why C-Span is showing Ted Cruz reading Atlas Shrugged for eight hours a day while Americans suffer and die.7Current Issue

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Fixing this doesnt require centrist Democrats to abandon the filibusters anti-majoritarian principles in favor of aggressive progressive policies; it simply requires them to go back and fix one of their own mistakes. Letsto borrow a phrasemake the filibuster great again. Lets require the minority to do something to exercise it. The people who are against cloture should have to be in the chamber, all day and all night, to vote against it. The Senate should have to stop all other business until one side or the other relents.8

Im confident Democrats would win these battles, if only they would fight them. I can imagine an army of volunteers providing food, water, and moral support to Democrats as they battle to the last to preserve the Affordable Care Act. I can imagine Republicans looking like fools as they filibuster Covid-19 relief. And I can imagine both parties using the filibuster only as a last-ditch effort to protect some cherished belief, not as a de facto requirement that nearly all bills must get 60 votes to pass.9

Are Manchin and Sinema against that? Do they have a principled reason to support the cowards filibuster?10

We dont have to nuke the filibuster (though many of us would still like to). We just have to make senators show up to work and account for their actions. Thats not too much to ask. And if it is, well, thats just another reason we should abolish the whole chamber and start over.11

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If Senators Wont Kill the Filibuster, They Should at Least Sweat for It - The Nation

The Chronicles of Covid, or why we must kill the Great Reset Witch – The Conservative Woman

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A snowy scene, Narnia

We must go as quietly as we can, said Mr Tumnus. The whole wood is full ofherspies. Even some of the trees are on her side.

Another snowy scene, a popular hillside in Somerset, January 2021

Its a Sunday and families living under lockdown are having fun near a remote car park, parents building snowmen with their children. Then a police car arrives and parks for a while. Similar scenes happen elsewhere in Britain. Why?

Since the end of the first lockdown in March 2020, this Somerset hillside has never been busier. It has become the go-to place to find some sort of normality.

The local hunt, for example, held a memorial gathering in one of the hills car parks before Christmas for a young lad killed in a car accident. They knew that such a gathering would not be allowed elsewhere.

Why are we all being forced to live like this? Why is the constabulary now becoming such a powerful presence throughout the land? (We couldnt summon any police when we needed them to stop an illegal rave on the same hillside years ago.)

Is it because there is a realisation that the public is losing respect for authority and more coercion will be needed to implement the global Build Back Better agenda?

Maybe the penny has begun to drop that there is insufficient support for fascism, even if it is re-labelled stakeholder capitalism?

Certainly in continental Europe there is growing resistance to Planet Lockdown, often of a violent nature. In Europe they have a better understanding of the nature of fascism, unlike in Britain where we lack historical experience of mass arrests, deportations and arbitrary shootings.

The parallels with the 1930s are, however, becoming obvious to the extent that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, used his contribution to the World Economic Forums annual Davos meeting last month to warn the world. In his view, the situation could develop in an unpredictable and uncontrolled manner and risks a fight of all against all.

Meanwhile, the WEF is trying to distance itself from any accusations that its Great Reset is a conspiracy that is masking some nefarious plan for world domination (?!)

But then its plans are hardly nefarious, given that the WEF is so blatant about its role in bringing together global leaders and mega-corporations to rebuild the world along sustainable lines.

Sadly for the WEF, its own benign belief in its motives is not shared universally. Of the 200,000-plus views of its latest YouTube video, it could muster only 1,500 likes compared with 19,000 dislikes and openly hostile messages in the comments below. Not exactly a good indicator of widespread support. The UK government would do well to take note.

While there might not be agreement about return to pre-Covid ways of living were it possible or whether change is necessary, neither is there any consensus on what form that change should take.

In particular, there is increasing cynicism about an elite group of globalists lecturing us on how to collectively improve life on the planet without destroying it. It does not sit well with the public that the same billionaires who form the WEF are those who have profiteered from their misery during the pandemic.

Mega-corporations and their supporters politicians, financiers, non-governmental organisations, etc also have zero credibility as eco-warriors.

They are more closely associated in the public mind with creating problems rather than solving them. Pollution and destructive business as usual have continued unabated under a cover story of environmentalism.

The examples of cobalt and lithium alone reveal the empty virtue-signalling in the pious rush for the windmills and solar panels that are the basis for the WEFs Build Back Better campaign.

Cobalt and lithium are widely used in electronics for energy storage, whether a solar panel or a mobile phone. Yet the way cobalt is mined (using child labour) is never discussed, nor is the damage to Chiles Atacama desert, where lithium extraction displaces the flamingos. The billionaires have failed so far to provide viable alternatives.

There is also nothing remotely sustainable about increasing our reliance on electricity. It would take only a coronal mass ejection a gigantic release of plasma and magnetic field from the sun to wipe out the National Grid, as Sir Oliver Letwin so eloquently pointed out in his March 2020 bookApocalypse How?It makes no sense that a British government continues to take us on the doomed path that WEF promotes.

History will not judge kindly a government that abandons its people in favour of the diktats of a foreign entity. Our government needs to learn the lesson of Brexit. The British people want their independence. It is the reason we as a nation have been willing to fight wars.

Now is the time for the Government to abandon Build Back Better, and focus instead on building back without the WEFs fake sustainability and its Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is synonymous only with yet more unemployment and misery.

A useful first step would be for the Government to restore hope, at the very least, to the lost generation. The traumatising of the young, and their consequent despair, is one of the most distressing aspects of the mishandling of the pandemic.

The lack of support for the most disadvantaged white working-class boys is nothing short of a scandal. The Government is sending a clear message that these children have no future in the technocratic world.

This attitude toward the disadvantaged speaks to C S Lewiss grim prophecies of the 1940s. In his novelThat Hideous Strength,he blames advances in technology for the reductions in industrial and agricultural workforces, with no mention of retraining.

Instead, a large, unintelligent population is now a deadweight. In his view the masses are therefore to disappear the human race is to become all technology.

In 1945, George Orwell wrote a review in theManchester Guardianof Lewiss novel. The title of the review was The Scientists Take Over.

He believed that Lewiss dystopian vision was realisable and that there could be a time when the common people are to be used as slaves and vivisection subjects by the ruling caste of scientists Man, in short, is to storm the heavens and overthrow the gods, or even become a god himself.In effect, he was predicting transhumanism, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.

At some point it will become obvious in the UK if the oppression we currently face is about keeping us safe from a virus, or about preparing us for life under the WEF reset.

The pandemic itself is likely to fade. Covid has now replaced seasonal flu in the official statistics, thus suggesting that it is no more deadly than a flu. Cases are on the decline. With Covid gone, what will be the excuse to bully us?

The narrative has already begun to change in the US. No sooner was it clear that Donald Trump would leave the White House, than theNew York Timesran an article suggesting that coronavirus will come to resemble the common cold and be no more than a minor annoyance,and the most draconian governors in California, New York and elsewhere began to lift restrictions.

It would seem that the pandemic had done its job: it left Trumps economy in ruins, and provided the perfect pretext for mail-in ballots and for keeping poll watchers at bay during the election count.

So, when can we expect a similar shift in the UK? Liberation cannot come quickly enough. We are fast turning into a nation of zombies. Nothing is working properly. People cant think straight. They demand vaccines in the hope of a return to normality, but fail to hear the Government telling them that nothing will change. The sunny uplands continue to recede.

We are now facing an unholy mess with a shrunken economy, no shiny new Fourth Industrial Revolution to fill the gap, and the potential for hordes of disaffected and disturbed masses to threaten us all.

Is this what is anticipated for us? We can only hope that there is no significance in the evidence coming from one part of Somerset, where an abandoned quarry is used for training police marksmen.

Locals tell me that the police have recently increased their use of the quarry and the barrage of shots can be heard more frequently over a wide distance. What hope is there?

Maybe, once it has sorted itself out, the US will once again help rescue us from fascism, as it did in the 1940s. My great-grandfather certainly believed in June 1940 that the US would rise to the occasion when he wrote to my grandmother from his hotel in Liverpool before setting sail for the States.

We were pleased to see the Americans when they did finally arrive. But more than 80 years later, perhaps such thoughts of rescue are more fiction than fact. Like Mr Tumnus, we may have to wait instead for The Last Battle for freedom to return, and who knows when that will be?

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The Chronicles of Covid, or why we must kill the Great Reset Witch - The Conservative Woman

Tokyo medical school won’t pay staff over virus leave caused by ‘inappropriate behavior’ – The Mainichi – The Mainichi

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A written notice that Tokyo Women's Medical University distributed to employees is seen in this Feb. 8, 2021 photo. The notice states that workers "will not be paid for taking leave if they are recognized to have engaged in obviously inappropriate behavior." (Mainichi/Nobuyuki Shimada) Tokyo Women's Medical University is seen in this June 2002 photo. (Mainichi)

TOKYO -- Tokyo Women's Medical University has notified its employees that they will not get paid for taking leave due to coronavirus infections if it was caused by "inappropriate behavior" among other reasons, sources close to the school have revealed to the Mainichi Shimbun.

Employees at the university, based in the capital's Shinjuku Ward, have raised voices of concern, saying the in-house rule could be "applied arbitrarily" as it does not specify what exactly constitutes "inappropriate behavior."

According to individuals connected to the university, the notice was issued by the personnel affairs division of the school's management control department on Jan. 29, under the title: "Regarding treatment when taking leave due to infections with the novel coronavirus and other reasons." The notice was addressed to employees of the university, as well as doctors, nurses and other workers at three affiliated hospitals that are accepting coronavirus patients.

The document states that staff will not get paid during leave if they were recognized to have contracted the virus either through "conduct that runs counter to the university's request for self-restraint" or "obviously inappropriate conduct."

If staff are recognized to have come into close contact with coronavirus carriers or ordered to stay at home due to a fever or other COVID-19 symptoms, the no-pay rule also applies for their leave or quarantine at home if they are recognized to have caught the virus through either one of the aforementioned reasons.

The university requires employees to wear masks and goggles on campus, refrain from nonessential and nonurgent meetings or attending gatherings for meals, and bans the use of facilities including karaoke bars and gyms. It is assumed that violations of these rules would constitute "conduct against requests for refraining from activities." However, the document does not specify what exactly is "obviously inappropriate behavior."

The notice points out that "workers at the medical university essentially need to provide labor in a healthy state." It also emphasizes that taking time off from work after getting the coronavirus due to failure to take countermeasures "constitutes default under the Civil Code," saying it is based on a view obtained from a consulting lawyer.

"I felt as if I were being threatened as the notice went out of its way to bring up a viewpoint offered by a lawyer," fumed an employee working at an affiliated hospital. "The document doesn't even explain what would happen if someone was infected with the coronavirus without their awareness."

A public relations office at the university told the Mainichi Shimbun, "We announced a policy not to pay salaries to employees who raised the risk of spreading infections on campus as a result of clearly violating our request for self-restraint. The policy is not aimed at withholding payment from all staff members who contract the virus."

A worker interviewed by the Mainichi Shimbun expressed concern that many staff would leave their jobs in response to the notice. "All the more because the coronavirus crisis is dragging on, the employer is essentially required to lay out a policy that can maintain motivation among health care workers. All that the university has done so far runs contrary to this. Many of my colleagues are dumbfounded," the employee said.

(Japanese original by Nobuyuki Shimada, City News Department)

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Tokyo medical school won't pay staff over virus leave caused by 'inappropriate behavior' - The Mainichi - The Mainichi

ASU ranks 6th in research among US universities without a medical school – The State Press

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Photo by Mitchell Atencio | The State Press

"University officials credit the success to their transdisciplinary approach to major problems, claiming a different path of solutions than traditional research." Illustration published on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021.

ASU has ranked 6th in the nation for research expenditures among universities without a medical school in the 2019 fiscal year.

The National Science Foundation recently released its annual Higher Education Research and Development rankings for research expenditures among universities nationwide.

In the 2019 fiscal year, ASU's expenditures totaled $639.6 million, almost $22 million more than the previous year.

A University press release said much of the funding has come from investments by federal agencies including NASA and the NSF as well as local grants and philanthropic contributions among others.

ASUs Knowledge Enterprise Executive Vice President Sally Morton said in the press release that ASU researchers are capable of solving major problems through their transdisciplinary approach. Morton began her new role Feb. 1 and is one of the successors of former lead Sethuraman Panchanathan, who is now the director of the NSF.

"I am confident we have the capabilities to discover impactful solutions to pandemics, climate change, cybersecurity and emerging health issues all of which will challenge humankind well into the future," Morton said in the release.

ASU's Biodesign Institute has also been at the forefront of COVID-19 research and testing in Arizona. The University has established over 100 testing sites across the state and developed a saliva-based test for faster results and more efficient testing.

COVID-19 research at the institute is led by Biodesign Director Joshua LaBaer. LaBaer said in the release that fast and easy testing is crucial for returning to in-person activities.

As we return to the workplace, schools and other daily activities, testing early and often is going to be the best way to help us prevent the spread of COVID-19, LaBaer said in the press release.

Another of the University's recent focal points is the Mastcam-Z. The camera system will provide visuals for Perseverance, the newest Mars rover, upon its landing this month.

The development of Mastcam-Z was led by researchers of the School of Earth and Space Exploration. The rover launched in July 2020 and will touch down on Mars later this month with Mastcam-Z at its head.

READ MORE: Mars 2020 Perseverance rover launches equipped with ASU-developed camera

The HERD rankings account for where and how much funding is spent at each university. In these rankings, ASU kept its No. 1 spot in expenditures for anthropology and rose to No. 1 in the fields of geographic and earth sciences as well as transdisciplinary sciences.

ASU also ranked fourth in social sciences and business management, 11th in psychology, 12th in electrical, electronic and communications engineering, and 14th in civil engineering.

The University also placed third among universities with NASA funding, 10th in health and human services funding, and 23rd for NSF funding.

Reach the reporter at gmlieber@asu.edu and follow @G_Mira_ on Twitter.

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Continue supporting student journalism and donate to The State Press today.

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ASU ranks 6th in research among US universities without a medical school - The State Press

U Of M Medical School Sees Increase In Student Applications – FOX 21 Online

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This year there were nearly 3,500 applicants wanting to attend the school.

DULUTH, Minn. More people are filling out applications to attend the University of Minnesota Medical School campuses including in Duluth.

There are many factors that may play into the increase of applicants, but U of M Medical School officials say it is impressive knowing so many people are willing to dedicate to a career in healthcare.

In a typical year, the University of Minnesota Medical School Duluth Campus receives about 2000 applications.

This year there were nearly 3,500 applicants wanting to attend the school.

This is approximately an increase of more than 75% for the Duluth campus, which houses about 300 medical students.

Admission officials believe the pandemic is highlighting the value of healthcare for these applicants.

Theyre seeing the pandemic really impacting their lives, their families, their friends, and their communities. Its driving them to pursue a career in medicine that they may have been on the track for, but are really passionate about now because now is the time, said Dr. Kendra Nordgren, the assistant dean of admission at the U of M Medical School Duluth Campus.

In recent years, there has been a strong need for family physicians in rural and under-represented populations like the native community.

Leadership says the medical school has been on a mission to fill the gap for the last 50 years.

Now more than ever its so important that we see this uptick because it shows us that there are candidates out there and there are people that want to serve these communities, said Nordgren.

In 2019, the U of M Medical School Duluth Campus welcomed a record number of incoming Native American students on track to becoming physicians.

The Twin Cities campus has also seen about a 45% jump in the number of applications to the medical school.

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U Of M Medical School Sees Increase In Student Applications - FOX 21 Online

Accreditation process of medical school in Tyler moves forward; first class likely set for 2023 – Tyler Morning Telegraph

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The process of a medical school coming to East Texas is moving forward as the UT Health Science Center at Tyler has reached its first milestone in the accreditation proceedings.

UT Health Science Center at Tyler, an instructional site of UT Tyler, announced Friday that the Liaison Committee on Medical Education classified UTHSCT as an applicant school for LCME accreditation. This committee is the accrediting body recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for medical education programs that led to Doctor of Medicine degrees in the United States and Canada.

Through LCME accreditation, institutions become eligible for federal grants and programs. Most state boards of licensure require U.S. medical schools awarding an MD degree be accredited by LCME.

Those who graduate from a LCME-accredited school are eligible for residency programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, according to UT Health Science Center.

The accreditation determines if a medical education program meets established standards and fosters institutional and program improvement.

This marks a great milestone that the medical school has completed the first step toward LCME full accreditation, said UT Tyler President Kirk A. Calhoun, MD, FACP. Applicant status is followed by candidate status, preliminary accreditation, provisional accreditation, then full accreditation. The awarding of accreditation status and the timing of those awards are entirely at the discretion of the LCME.

UTHSCT will have to submit more documents to LCME in April to be reviewed and presented to the LCME board in June. After this, the medical school in Tyler could be deemed a candidate school. LCME leadership will conduct site visits sometime in the fall.

Preliminary accreditation could be granted as early as February 2022. The university cannot interview or advertise for students until preliminary accreditation is achieved. The recruitment could likely begin as soon as May next year.

By February 2023, the medical school should have a good idea of its first class of students, with plans to start that first class in summer 2023, if all goes well, Calhoun said.

LCME will conduct another visit sometime in 2024 to interview students and review the school for an application with the LCME board to change the status to provisional. Three years after that, before students graduate, the LCME will determine if the university should receive full accreditation.

UTHSCT Executive Vice President for Health Affairs Dr. Julie V. Philley said shes glad to help the medical school grow, including the addition of four positions for the school.

We are pleased to announce that Planning Dean Dr. Sue Cox, a nationally recognized leader in medical education, has been shepherding the accreditation process since last spring, Philley said. She was the lead designer of curriculum at The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School and has worked to get the initial application submitted with hopes to have full accreditation by the time the first medical school class graduates in the spring of 2027.

Philley has been involved in medical education for 30 years and served as executive vice dean of academics and chair of the Department of Medical Education at Dell Medical School. She was the senior associate dean at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas.

Dr. Emmanuel Elueze has been named associate dean for graduate medical education and professional development at the medical school. Elueze previously served as vice president for medical education and professional development, providing oversight of graduate medical education, undergraduate medical education and continuing medical education. He came to UTHSCT in 2011 as the founding program director of the internal medicine residency program in Longview.

Torry A. Tucker will be the associate dean for research of the new medical school. Tucker came to UTHSCT as a postdoctoral fellow in 2007 and joined the faculty in 2009.

Kent L. Willis was named associate dean for student affairs of the new medical school. He previously served as the UTHSCT associate provost and assistant professor of occupational and environmental health since 2016.

Dr. Elueze, Dr. Tucker and Dr. Willis will provide valuable leadership as the new medical school progresses, Philley said.

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Accreditation process of medical school in Tyler moves forward; first class likely set for 2023 - Tyler Morning Telegraph

Women now outnumber men in med school. And studies show thats good for patients. – Houston Chronicle

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When Dr. Angela Nunnery started her career, she was the only African-American woman physician on staff at Kingwood Medical Center, now known as HCA Houston Healthcare Kingwood.

She was also the only African-American woman practicing medicine in Kingwood. But that was 30 years ago, and the present and future for women physicians in the U.S. is bright, Nunnery said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Women are almost twice as likely to develop brain aneurysms than men. Doctors don't know why.

When you look at my medical school graduating class picture in 1985 and then what it looks like now its amazing, outstanding, diverse, said Nunnery, a primary care physician for Baylor St. Lukes Medical Group in Kingwood. Every year, theres an increase in the number of female physicians. The future for female docs is outstanding.

This Wednesday, Feb. 3 is the fourth annual National Women Physicians Day, an event celebrating the first woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S. in 1849: Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.

More women are becoming physicians as many U.S. doctors are nearing retirement age, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

In 2007, 28 percent of U.S. doctors were women. Last year, more than 36 percent of the countrys physician workforce was made up of women, thanks to an increase in the number of women being accepted to medical schools, the AAMC reported.

In 2019, the majority of U.S. medical students were women (50.5 percent) for the first time, according to the organization. Once graduated and finished with their residency placement, women doctors are most concentrated in pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, child and adolescent psychiatry and neonatal-perinatal medicine.

Women remain the minority in many specialties, but Nunnery believes its only a matter of time before that changes, too. Her daughter is a sophomore at Howard University majoring in sports medicine, the fastest growing specialty in the country, according to AAMC.

Once you choose to be a physician, your life is truly an oyster. You really can pick whatever you want to do, and I didnt know that then, Nunnery said. I just knew my great-grandmother was a nurse midwife, and I knew I wanted do be like her.

Traditionally, women are seen as the leaders of the household and those skills translate easily to the medical world, said Dr. Amelia Averyt, associate medical director for family practice at Legacy Community Health. Studies show female health care providers improve patient morbidity and mortality outcomes.

A bilingual doctor who is two years into her career, Averyt said she feels lucky to have had many women physicians as role models during medical school and her residency. Legacy has several women in leadership roles from the CEO to the chief medical officer, Averyt said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: UTMB receives 3-year grant to research breast milk's COVID-19 antibodies

Work-life balance has changed for women physicians, as well. Whereas Nunnery felt pressure to do it all to have it all as a wife, mother and doctor, Averyt said expectations are changing for young women in medicine.

Newer generations of physicians are adapting practices to work works for them as humans. Were recognizing the importance of family, Averyt said. Before, we never would have thought women could get pregnant during their residency, but its happening more frequently. People are able to grow families and lives outside of the practice.

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Women now outnumber men in med school. And studies show thats good for patients. - Houston Chronicle

Medical school suspends study that would have tortured transgender people for science – LGBTQ Nation

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A controversial study on transgender peoples neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has been suspended due to ethical concerns that the participants could face harm from the study itself.

Dr. Jamie Feusner, the principal investigator in the study, has paused the National Institute of Health-backed study to get more input from transgender people and understand their concerns more deeply and have a dialogue about the studys objectives.

Related: Political debates over LGBTQ rights dramatically increase bullying rates in local schools

The study, according to reports of people who participated in focus groups to help researchers construct it, was supposed to be about the effects of gender dysphoria on a persons brain.

Gender dysphoria is the medical term for the distress a person feels because their gender identity doesnt align with their sex assigned at birth. The experience is psychologically painful and associated with depression, anxiety, social isolation, and an increased risk of suicide attempts.

The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior study was going to trigger gender dysphoria in participants and then use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan their brains to better understand the condition.

This studys stated purpose is to trigger gender dysphoria by taking photographs of participants bodies in tight clothing (unitards), and specifically people who have not had access to affirming medical transition, said Gender Justice LA Executive Director Ezak Perez in a statement. This research design unapologetically aims to cause mental health distress to trigger dysphoria to an already marginalized and vulnerable community.

The group also said that the research could be used to push conversion therapy on transgender people.

The researchers claim that their study can help TGI people, but their own research materials and publications suggested that they are developing tools that may curtail access to gender-affirming treatment, the statement says, adding that the study could be used for the creation of therapeutics to treat gender dysphoria as one would treat anorexia and that it opens the door for advancing the highly disregarded and dangerous practice of conversion therapy.

In a letter dated January 27, 2021, the California LGBTQ Health and Human Services Network urged transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex people to stay away from the study, calling it harmful.

We object to the view that transgender people have an aberrant body image condition or that brain imaging of traumatic response could ultimately help trans people, the group said in the letter. It is suggestive of a search for medical cure, which can open the door for more gatekeeping and restrictive policies and practices in relation to access to gender-affirming care. At a time in which trans lives are under attack, we find this kind of research to be misguided and dangerous.

The institute said that Dr. Feusner is voluntarily suspending the study for the moment to get more input on it.

The ultimate hope of this study is that it will lead to improved quality of life for those who identify as transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming and a better understanding of the effects of hormones on the brain, a spokesperson for UCLA Health told Radiology Business. UCLA believes partnership with our diverse communities is essential to performing research that is culturally aware, socially responsible, improves quality of life, and advances our public service mission.

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Medical school suspends study that would have tortured transgender people for science - LGBTQ Nation

Surge in African American medical school applicants drive to action by Covid – Yahoo News

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The Week

Former President Donald Trump was, by all accounts, furious at his impeachment trial defense team, especially lead lawyer Bruce Castor, panned across the board for his odd, rambling opening statement. "Cocooned at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump watched as his defense attorneys responded to an emotional presentation by House impeachment managers with a series of dry, technical, and at times meandering arguments about due process and the constitutionality of the proceedings," Politico reports. "As they droned on, he grew increasingly frustrated with the sharp contrast between their muted response and the prosecution's opening salvo." But Trump, watching the trial on Newsmax, wasn't just dismayed at Castor's low-energy performance and the bad reviews from allies and senator-jurors, Politico reports. Castor declined to use "graphics or a video tools his TV-obsessed client had hoped to deploy." And the former president was upset Castor "wore an ill-fitting suit and at one point praised the case presented by the Democratic House impeachment managers," The Washington Post adds, even though Trump himself was reportedly also impressed with the impeachment managers and their video presentation. And Castor notably "did what Trump himself has not: conceded Joe Biden won the presidential election," The Associated Press notes. He called Trump a "former president," said he "was removed by the voters," and argued that Americans are "smart enough to pick a new administration if they don't like the old one, and they just did." Trump continues to insist falsely that he actually won the election, and this "big lie" that the election was "stolen" from him undergirds his entire impeachment trial. Castor was using Trump's status as former president to make his case, rejected by the Senate, that it's unconstitutional to try a president after he leaves office. In fact, "Trump initially pushed his impeachment lawyers to make the baseless case that the election was stolen," the Post reports, "an approach they ultimately rejected while still arguing that the First Amendment protects their client's right to share misinformation and false claims." More stories from theweek.comDominion says it had to hire detectives to track down Sidney Powell to serve her with its $1.3 billion lawsuitSen. Coons: Trump's impeachment defense is 'the Four Seasons Landscaping of the legal profession'Biden almost certainly has full access to Trump's secretive calls with Putin, other world leaders

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Surge in African American medical school applicants drive to action by Covid - Yahoo News

Black doctors in white coats on a mission to cure racism and discrimination in the workplace – WCNC.com

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Its heartbreaking because we recognize Black patients tend to do better when treated by someone who looks like them."

CHARLOTTE, N.C. Racism and discrimination are nasty diseases that even Black doctors in white coats cant cure.

There have been instances when Ive gone into a patients room only to be asked wheres the real doctor, Dr. Rob Robinson said.

Robinson owns a house call physician service with his wife Dr. Karla Robinson.

Ive experienced that many times, Karla Robinson said. Wheres the real doctor. Ive even had someone to refuse my care, you know like uh uh, I rather not. That actually happened when we moved to the South.

Dr. Karla and Rob Robinson, both inner-city Chicagoans turned Charlotteans, have more than 15 years of medical experience, contributing to the small group of Black practicing physicians in the country. According to data from the Association of Medical Colleges, Black doctors make up less than 6% of practicing doctors in America. White doctors make up 56%.

Its heartbreaking because we recognize Black patients tend to do better when treated by someone who looks like them, Rob Robinson said.

Karla Robinson even reflected on a time she was discriminated against as a patient when she was pregnant.

I had a minor complication and had to go into the hospital and it was immediate suspected that I was a drug seeker, Karla Robinson said.

What made it even more hurtful for the Robinsons is this happened at the hospital Karla Robinson was training at to become a doctor.

Racism truly transcends all socioeconomics standards. What you see coming through the door is the color of our skin, not our bank accounts not our degrees, Karla Robinson said.

A study by Stanford University found Black doctors who treated Black patients were more inclined to write detailed notes, provide clear understandings of diagnoses and find holistic approaches to curing illnesses.

If a Black patient comes in with high blood pressure then it may not be lets throw medication at you," Karla Robinson said. Lets talk about some of the stressors as we live in this highly racially charged society.

Last summer, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, introduced The Expanding Medical Education Act, with the goal of narrowing the racial gap in healthcare by recruiting, enrolling and retaining Black students in medical school and providing funding to medical programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

There arent enough of us on faculty and staff to really advocate for the monitory student, Rob Robinson said. We really need to have a position at the table to be in these discussions regarding who gets admitted to medical school and about who gets admitted to medical school and really leveling the playing field so this disparity doesnt continue.

The Robinsons not only talk the talk, but they also walk the walk. The couple owns Urban House Call, a house call physician service in Charlotte. While working at local hospitals, the two hosted a radio show called Urban House Call where they would educate listeners on preventative health services and keep them in the know about health-related topics. Listeners encouraged them to open a real house call practice and they did.

Weve been doing that in a small practice since 2012 and that has also morphed into opportunities like this where we speak to the community, the media, opportunities where we are really able to get the message of health and wellness out on a much broader scale, said Dr. Karla.

Karla Robinson added, We want young people to know hey if they can be doctors I can do it too. If they can make it out of inner-city Chicago we can do it too.

Rob Robinson smiled at his wife in agreeance.

The Robinsons, a power couple with a powerful message, contributing to Black history.

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Black doctors in white coats on a mission to cure racism and discrimination in the workplace - WCNC.com