Paul Chesser

Democratic Candidates Seek to Weaponize SEC Over Climate Change

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Elizabeth Warren/PHOTO: Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons

The 2020 presidential primary campaign has most of the Democrat candidates competing for who can impose the most requirements upon corporations to disclose the threats their assets, operations and profits face from climate change (formerly known as “global warming”).

Except the risks – at least with specificity – aren’t defined.

What is a “threat” from climate change? An extensive list of societal ills have been blamed on global warming, so many that it can be argued that everythingbad is caused by it. Of course, that’s the brilliant intention of the alarmists – create an all-encompassing source of destruction that cannot be averted without their prescriptions for massive government intervention, wealth redistribution, and the affliction of anyone who is comfortable.

While all corporations are in the environmental left’s crosshairs, the major targets are the fossil fuel companies. If they can get CEOs … Read More ➡

Moralizing CEOs Exert Pressure Over Guns and Abortion Laws

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Marc Benioff

The trend for corporations to use their leverage to exert influence on divisive public policies escalated last week, with the potential of driving off a significant segment of their customer and investor base, in the name of self-styled “corporate social responsibility.”

In the higher-profile examples, tech-entertainment studios Disney, Netflix, WarnerMedia and a few others threatened to remove productions from the state of Georgia, because of a recently-passed pro-life law that prevents the abortion of any unborn child in which a heartbeat has been detected.

In another example, business software giant Salesforce announced it would not allow businesses that use its product to sell certain types of guns.

So now corporate social responsibility has come down decisively in favor of the view that a beating heart is not evidence of the presence of life, that would be worthy of preservation. And it also means that the ability for mature, … Read More ➡

Corporate America Gets Behind Deceptively Named ‘Equality Act’

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Rep. Vicki Hartzler

Much of corporate America is once again banding together to attack the social construct of the nation and many of its liberties, all in the name of conferring special rights and privileges upon individuals who don’t accept or acknowledge the gender they were born with.

The occasion this time was to get behind the “Equality Act,” which the Democrat-controlled U.S. House recently passed. The misnamed legislation purports to enact law that prohibits “anti-Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer (LGBTQ) discrimination,” but in practice would put the kibosh on almost all other rights and freedoms Americans possess –including speech, association, privacy, and property rights. Most of what the law would do is bastardize the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” discrimination protections.

The “Equality Act” would produce draconian outcomes, including (list compiled by staff of Rep. Vicki … Read More ➡

Yet Another Study Reveals Bias in Google’s News Search

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Google CEO Sundar Pichai

The evidence that verifies allegations of Google’s search bias against conservative resources continues to accumulate.

Two researchers, Daniel Trielli and Nicholas Diakopoulos at the Computational Journalism Lab at Northwestern University, examined results from a large sample size they extracted from Google News in November 2017. They searched on 200 current news terms of the time (such as “Colin Kaepernick” and “tax reform”) and accumulated 6,302 links to articles shown in the search engine’s “Top Stories” box – the most desirable outcome for Web publishers, to gain traffic from curious readers.

The results: Only 20 news organizations’ sites were represented in more than half of “Top Stories,” according to Diakopoulos’s explanation in the Columbia Journalism Review, and 86 percent of article impressions in those results came from just the top 20 percent of sources.

According to the study’s findings, CNN received nearly 11 percent of … Read More ➡

Mueller Report: Trump Believed Special Counsel Had Conflicts of Interest

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Special Counsel Robert Mueller

The legacy media (of course) has focused on all the evidence Robert Mueller considered in his report about whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice during the Russian (non)collusion investigation, questioning whether the special counsel made the right decision not to prosecute the Commander-in-Chief.

Perhaps most significant among that evidence is the claim that Trump wanted former White House counsel Don McGahn to have Mueller removed as special counsel, because of conflicts of interest, then asked McGahn to deny to the media that the president asked him to fire Mueller.

There are disputes in the testimony between witnesses, which is why Mueller didn’t move forward with a “prosecutorial decision” on that point (or on any other). But setting aside the analysis about what happened, and interpreting it under the law, there is one question that is not being addressed:

What about Mueller’s conflict(s) of interest?

There was… Read More ➡

More Evidence That Google CEO Pichai May Have Lied to Congress

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Google CEO Sundar Pichai

If it wasn’t already obvious that Google CEO Sundar Pichai lied to Congress in December about its censorship practices, more leaked information from inside the company should make it clear now.

Documents given to The Daily Caller show the Internet gatekeeper maintains a manually controlled blacklist against conservative websites that determines how and where their content appears in search results. The censorship is intended to filter out of top results content that runs afoul of Google’s “good neighbor” and “misrepresentation” policies.

“The deceptive_news domain blacklist is going to be used by many search features to filter problematic sites that violate the good neighbor and misrepresentation policies,” the leaked document says, later adding:

“The beginning of the workflow starts when a website is placed on a watchlist which is used for monitoring of sites to determine if they violate the Good Neighbor Policy. This watchlist is … Read More ➡

Senator Crapo Hits Big Banks for Playing Politics

Posted on by Paul Chesser

The Left has tried to sway businesses’ behavior to comply with their public policy goals through shareholder activism, and used the cudgel of law enforcement and regulation to choke off funding for businesses it disfavors, but now signs are showing from elected conservatives that they’ve had enough.

Much in the way organized progressives have attacked Fox News’ advertisers to deter them from supporting programs they disagree with politically, so also have they pressured banks and other financial institutions to persuade them to stop lending money, or providing everyday money management services, to legal businesses they oppose – think gun dealers, payday lenders, and precious metals merchants.

At the end of March, Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho – who chairs the Senate Banking Committee – notified eight major banks that he expected them to not succumb to the demands of political agitators.

“Banks serve customers who are geographically and … Read More ➡

Tim Cook Intensifies Apple Censorship Through App Store

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Apple CEO Tim Cook

Most of the time when conservatives and libertarians think of censorship by the large technology companies, the image that comes to mind is some leftwing millennial in a Silicon Valley cubicle who is blocking their article post from others’ view.

They are often told they have “violated (company’s) terms of use” or something similarly mysterious, then are left to stew without any explanation from an actual human being.

But the extermination of conservative thought from accessing the Internet is becoming more comprehensive.

The effort by the Left and the platforms they control (think Google and Apple, as well as Facebook and Twitter) has escalated from muting these voices, to cutting off their oxygen.

For a while conservatives could count on at least having equal access to Big Tech’s platforms, whether they were search engines; phone, tablet and computer operating system applications (or “apps”); or social media.… Read More ➡

Win or Lose, Nunes’s Lawsuit Could Still Be Effective Against Twitter’s Bias

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Devin Nunes/PHOTO: Gage Skidmore (Creative Commons)

The $250-million lawsuit filed in Virginia by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) – against Twitter, a handful of fake accounts on the social media platform, and a libertarian political consultant – may not succeed in court, but it may not have to.

It may be just enough to (further) expose the company’s hypocrisy and bias in the ongoing battle against censorship of conservatives by the big tech companies, which also include Facebook, Google and Apple. And it may lead to other productive actions, legal or otherwise.

Nunes, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee the last four years, was subjected to a relentless smear campaign during the 2018 election cycle – much of it in the form of tweets. Political communications strategist Liz Mair is the named consultant in his complaint, as are accounts controlled by unknown individuals that go by the Twitter handles … Read More ➡

Google Must Embrace Sexual Harassment Shareholder Proposal in Wake of Cover-Up Allegations

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Schmidt and Rubin

The revelation this week that Google made mega-payouts to two former executives accused of sexual harassment highlights the need for the adoption of a resolution by the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), which is a shareholder in parent company Alphabet Inc.

According to NLPC Chairman Peter Flaherty, “Alphabet’s management must end the stonewall. A necessary first step is to embrace our shareholder proposal on sexual harassment.”

According to disclosures related to a civil shareholder lawsuit that alleges Google consistently hid sexual harassment and discrimination claims by employees, former Android software creator Andy Rubin was paid $90 million upon his departure, and head of search Amit Singhal was offered $45 million when he left, although the amount was reduced to $15 million because he was hired by a competitor.

Information from the lawsuit says a former employee under Rubin claimed that he pressured her into oral sex, … Read More ➡