Vol. 36, No. 17
September 7, 2020
Inside Track
COVID “Hot Spots” Manufactured to Demonize Red States Our mainstream media are being deceptive regarding COVID-19 “hot spots,” and this deception is leading to half-baked policy. As the College Fix
wrote August 14: “Yahoo News\obtained a CDC document [July 29] purporting to show that nine of the top 10 hot spots were in Texas and Florida — states that have been under relentless media assault for imposing less draconian measures than blue states.”
But what Yahoo won’t tell you, Texas Christian University nursing professor Amy Anderson and former White House advisor Doug Badger\wrote in an August 5 essay for the Daily Signal, is that in “this case, the CDC defined a ‘hot spot’ as a county with the most cases per 100,000 population over the most recent two-week period. The metric is prone to designate sparsely populated counties reporting temporary spikes in cases as being hotbeds of coronavirus infection.”
“More importantly,” Anderson and Badger\also tell us, the metric “provides no insight as to the nature of the ‘outbreak’ in those counties.” But the writers do.
Consider America’s hottest hot spot, Columbia County, Florida. “At first glance, there’s nothing especially remarkable about Columbia County’s COVID-19 data. As of Aug. 1, it had\2,562\confirmed cases and just 10 deaths. A closer look shows that the county reported nearly 500 of those cases in a two-day period (July 20-21),” Anderson and Badger relate. Scary, huh?
Well, it “turns out that there was an\outbreak\at the Columbia Correctional Institution, a state facility that can house\1,427\inmates,” they continue. “That outbreak, which involved hundreds of prisoners, accounts for 54% of the county’s COVID-19 cases.”
“A similar pattern prevails in two of the other four Florida ‘hot spots’ identified in the CDC document,” Anderson and Badger also inform.
What follows are some statistics that really matter, but that the mainstream media do their best to hide. As of August 14, per 100,000 population, New York had 169 deaths; Florida had 41; Texas had 34; South Dakota, which never locked down
, had 17. Yale Discriminates Against Asian and White Students An investigation by the U.S. Justice Department has found that Yale University is illegally discriminating against Asian and white students. Prosecutors have found that the Ivy League school is acting in contravention of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program that receives federal funding.
The Department of Justice notified Yale’s attorney Peter Spivack of the violations in a letter dated August 13. The letter states: “Yale grants substantial, and often determinative, preferences based on race to certain racially-favored applicants and relatively and significantly disfavors other applicants because of their race. Yale’s race discrimination imposes undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, including in particular Asian American and White applicants.”
The investigation concluded that Asian and white students have “only one-tenth to one-fourth the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials.”
“There is no such thing as a nice form of race discrimination,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband, the head of the DOJ’s civil rights division, in a statement.
“Unlawfully dividing Americans into racial and ethnic blocs fosters stereotypes, bitterness and division,” Dreiband said. “It is past time for American institutions to recognize that all people should be treated with decency and respect and without unlawful regard to the color of their skin.”
Yale “categorically denies” the allegation. According to Yale, the Justice Department doesn’t have the whole story and cannot offer such an opinion before all the documentation on its admissions practices is thoroughly studied.
Instead of accepting the rebuke and promising to do better, Yale chose to double down on its unfair admissions practices. “We are proud of Yale’s admissions practices, and we will not change them on the basis of such a meritless, hasty accusation,” the statement went on to say.
The Justice Department, however, is demanding that the school change its racially biased admissions practices immediately. Yale has until August 27 to comply voluntarily with the Justice Department’s demands or it will face a lawsuit from the DOJ. Trump Designates Confucius Institutes “Foreign Missions” The U.S. State Department announced August 13 that it has classified the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda fronts known as Confucius Institutes as “foreign missions.”
According to the South China Morning Post
(SCMP), the Trump administration is requiring the institutes, commonly found on college campuses (with equivalent programs for K-12 schools), to register as “foreign missions,” which would subject them to rules similar to those for embassies and consulates.
The State Department took similar action against several Chinese media outlets earlier this year.
As SCMP reports, “The designation would amount to a conclusion that Confucius Institutes are ‘substantially owned or effectively controlled’ by a foreign government.”
“Of some 550 Confucius Institutes around the world, 80 are based at US colleges, including Stanford University and Savannah State University in Georgia, according to the National Association of Scholars, a non-partisan research group that has studied them,” the outlet notes.
China hawks have frequently pointed out that Confucius Institutes, underwritten by China’s government, instill American students with a pro-Chinese political worldview. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has called them “Chinese government-run programs that use the teaching of Chinese language and culture as a tool to expand the political influence” of the government.
According to the Washington Free Beacon’s review of federal records, only 30 percent of colleges that host or have hosted Chinese-financed Confucius Institutes have disclosed their financial ties to Beijing.
After reaching out to all 75 institutions that have not reported the funding to the Department of Education, the Free Beacon received replies from only 22. One of the most prevalent responses was that the universities refrained from disclosing the donations because their annual receipts fell below the $250,000 threshold.
The FBI and Justice Department have stated that Confucius Institutes are replete with Chinese state propaganda, intellectual property theft, “undisclosed ties to Chinese institutions, and conflicted loyalties.”
Thanks to a partnership between Confucius Institutes and the Asia Society, “more than 100 elementary, middle, and high schools located in 27 states and the District of Columbia” have launched “Confucius Classrooms” since 2009. Pro-life Democrats Urge Party Leaders to Soften Abortion Stand A letter from Democrats for Life of America (DFLA) released on August 14 to members of the Democrat Party’s platform committee was clear: Back off on your radical stand on “abortion at any time for any reason right up until the birth of the child” or lose the election in November.
Signed by more than 100 “current and former elected Democrats from many states, representing millions of Americans,” the letter lists three “concerns,” as summarized:
• “Many Democratic leaders support policies on abortion that are radically out of line with public opinion”;
• “Due to this wide disparity, the Democratic Party is alienating voters”; and,
• “An extreme position on abortion rights violates our commitment to inclusivity and diversity.”
The letter quotes the results of a number of polls supporting the point: Abortion at any time, for any reason, is opposed by 79 percent of Americans; taxpayer funding of abortion is opposed by 60 percent of Americans; taxpayer funding of abortion in other countries is opposed by 76 percent of Americans; 30 percent of pro-life voters will only vote for a candidate with their views; and 29 percent of Democrat voters identify themselves as “pro-life.”
Three governors or former governors signed the letter, along with nine members of Congress, 57 state legislators, 30 local Democratic officials, and nine Democratic nominees.
Such a radical position has already cost the Democratic Party dearly, according to DFLA’s Executive Director Kristen Day. Since 2010, Democrats have “lost their political advantages” in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, which have flipped from blue to red. In 2010, Democrats had control of both houses of state legislatures and the governorships of 27 states. “Today,” she said, “that number is 15.”
During that time period, added Day, “the Democratic Party has moved away from ‘safe, legal and rare’,” to supporting “abortion up to nine months for any reason.”
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