Monday, March 1, 2021

SWAMPER JOE BIDEN'S MINISTER OF PROPAGANDA, NEO-FASCIST MARK ZUCKERBERG GETS HIS ASS KICKED! Judge Approves Facebook’s $650M Settlement over Intrusive Facial Recognition

 While Biden was championing that idea, though, “dark money” groups were mobilizing to see him elected president. As Breitbart News reported in October 2020, a super PAC backed by Silicon Valley donors and boosted by “dark money” spent substantially to run attack ads against Trump in the final weeks of the White House contest.


ustin Danhof: Vote the Corporate Bums Out

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 28: Apple CEO Tim Cook attends Apple TV+'s "The Morning Show" World Premiere at David Geffen Hall on October 28, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images,) SUN VALLEY, ID - JULY 09: Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter and founder and …
Astrid Stawiarz, Scott Olson, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
4:56

After being disappeared, the social media platform Parler found its way back to the Internet two weeks ago. It was an arduous journey that shows how widespread the left’s desire is to cancel conservative organizations, people, speech, and ideas.

In early January, Apple, Google, and Amazon teamed up to kick Parler, a social media company favored by conservatives, off the Internet. There one day and gone the next, Parler was declared unfit by these corporate oligarchs simply because it allowed conservatives to freely communicate. These tech giants disappeared Parler with the stroke of a key. Full stop.

Conservatives are rightly furious at these corporate censors. But I have to ask: What are conservative leaders doing about it?

Conservatives are also justifiably furious at Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter for banning all manner of conservative speech, including deleting former President Trump’s accounts.

But again, what are conservative leaders doing about it?

Some right-wing state leaders are threatening to divest state pension funds from these Orwellian businesses. That’s the last thing they should do.

When big business teams up with the political left and takes actions that are anathema to conservatives, the right-wing reaction is almost always to call for a boycott. But sit back and ask yourself when that has ever worked. Remember when conservatives were going to boycott Nike after it signed cop-hating Colin Kaepernick to a multimillion-dollar endorsement deal? They didn’t. So when Kaepernick demanded that Nike pull a shoe honoring Betsy Ross and the American flag from store shelves, Nike’s management complied. Conservatives once again threatened to boycott. They didn’t. So now Nike knows that these are hollow threats.

I could repeat this example hundreds of times with hundreds of companies.

Remember the conservative boycott of Procter & Gamble over its toxic masculinity and transgender promotion ads? Me neither. Remember the conservative boycotts of Coca-Cola, Disney, and the NFL after they teamed up to cancel Georgia’s religious freedom efforts in 2016? These never materialized.

And now, fueled by Tucker Carlson, conservatives are threatening to boycott Bank of America for handing over to federal authorities vast swaths of private client information of individuals who happened to be near Washington, D.C. around January 6th. But realistically, few will close their accounts.

What conservatives should do instead is engage with corporate leaders who do the bidding of the political left.

Here’s a dirty little secret of the left’s success in getting corporations to carry so much of its water: Leftists don’t boycott either – they engage!

One way conservatives can get involved is to vote the bums out. I am not talking about political leaders; I am talking about Jack Dorsey and the rest of his sycophantic Twitter board members. I am talking about Apple CEO Tim Cook and the rest of that partisan board. I am talking about Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who uses the bank’s finances to fund all sorts of left-wing social justice causes.

Every publicly traded company holds an annual shareholder meeting at which investors have an opportunity to vote for or against board members. But the numbers prove that conservative investors aren’t voting.

For example, at last year’s Apple shareholder meeting, Tim Cook and Al Gore respectively received 98 and 95 percent of the shareholder voting power of the votes that were cast. However, holders of approximately 30 percent of the outstanding shares of Apple stock didn’t bother to vote. So in reality, Al Gore received 67 percent of the vote, with 3 percent against, and holders of 30 percent of Apple stock didn’t cast a ballot. This makes it clear that left-leaning voters, who favor Cook’s and Gore’s use of Apple for social justice and Black Lives Matter causes, are engaging the franchise and voting on lockstep. Conservatives, on the other hand, apparently couldn’t be bothered to vote.

This voting pattern is not unique to Apple – it’s prevalent all throughout corporate America. For example, perhaps no corporate board member has done more to censor conservatives than Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, yet she received 99 percent of the votes at the company’s 2020 annual meeting.

Imagine what would happen if conservative shareholders and red state pension fund managers all started voting against board members of the far-left companies that are corrupting the culture. Perhaps some business leaders would decide it’s no longer worth doing the woke left’s political bidding and focus instead on improving their respective companies. What a novel idea.

Justin Danhof is general counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research and director of the center’s Free Enterprise Project.

Judge Approves Facebook’s $650M Settlement over Intrusive Facial Recognition

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook speaks at Georgetown
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/Getty
2:16

A federal judge has given final approval to a $650 million settlement for a class action lawsuit against Facebook which alleged that the Masters of the Universe stored biometric data in violation of Illinois state law.

The Verge reports that Judge James Donato of the Northern District of California approved a $650 million Facebook class action privacy settlement and ordered the 1.6 million members of the class in Illinois who submitted claims to be paid “as expeditiously as possible.”

Facebook was sued by Chicago attorney Jay Edelson in Cook County Circuit Court in 2015, alleging that Facebook’s use of facial recognition tagging was not allowed under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The lawsuit alleged that Facebook’s Tag Suggestions tool, which scanned faces in users’ photos and offered suggestions to tag Facebook friends, stored biometric data without users’ consent.

Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act allows consumers to sue companies that do not request permission to collect and store their biometric data which includes faces and fingerprints.

In 2018 the case became a class-action lawsuit, one year later in 2019 Facebook altered the facial recognition platform to be opt-in only. The three plaintiffs named in the suit will receive $5,000 each and others in the class-action lawsuit will receive $345 each.

Judge Donato stated that the settlement was a “landmark result” and a “major win for consumers in the hotly contested area of digital privacy.”

In a statement, Facebook said: “We are pleased to have reached a settlement so we can move past this matter, which is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders.”

Attorney Jay Edelson stated “It’s a big deal. It sends a pretty clear message that in Illinois, biometric privacy rights are here to stay.”

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

Valley Insiders Added to Biden Transition Team

 

 

ALLUM BOKHARI

 

After an election year in which the tech giants repeatedly interfered in the election against President Donald Trump, Joe Biden is now rewarding Silicon Valley by appointing insiders to a range of roles in his transition team.

 

Shortly after election night, the Financial Times reported that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is being considered to lead a key tech task force inside the White House.

As Politico recently reported, four more Google and Facebook emp

 TWO FUCKING LAWYERS! JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS. THEY WILL FILL THEIR POCKETS WITH HIGH TECH BRIBES AS THEY STAGE THEMSELVES AS 'POPULIST'. WE NEED TO REMOVE THEM AND PUT THEM IN GITMO.

THE BLOG ADVOCATES THAT NO LAWYER MAY RUN FOR HIGHER OFFICE. THEYRE ALL PARASITIC SOCOPATH LIARS!

Joe Biden Kills Office Protecting Job Rights of U.S. Graduates

Mario Tama/Getty Images

NEIL MUNRO

27 Jan 20211,671

11:01

The Biden administration is eliminating an office that was recently created to protect many millions of American graduates — including Biden’s young voters — from government-fueled corporate discrimination in hiring, pay, and workplace rights.

The worker-rights office was announced January 13 by President Donald Trump’s deputies and canceled January 26 by Biden’s deputies.

The short-lived office was intended to document and expose the corporate discrimination against Americans that is fueled by the huge Occupational Practical Training (OPT) program.

In 2019, the OPT program provided work permits to 400,000 foreign graduates so they can take the jobs and opportunities needed by graduates — including Biden’s voters — under rules that make foreign workers much cheaper to hire and easier to manage than American graduates are. OPT workers are foreign, temporary, contract workers — not immigrants.

The Biden cancellation is bad news for the many college students and graduates who pulled the lever for Biden in November 2020, said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers, which fights the replacement of American graduates. “Biden was selected by the corporatocracy [which sees] no role for American graduates,” he said. American graduates “are not needed” by employers who can import many compliant, cheap, and disposable foreign workers, he said.

Correspondingly, the cancellation was celebrated by the immigration lawyers who help Fortune 500 CEOs import foreigners to take the jobs needed by young Americans, including many debt-burdened black and Latino graduates.

Thx @MDVisas for passing along some good news for F-1 students. Good example of how rolling back obscure Trumpy immigration changes will look. pic.twitter.com/6EHuRoqgGV

— Greg Siskind (@gsiskind) January 26, 2021

On the same day, the administration canceled another graduate protection plan leftover from the Trump administration.

The plan — which was blocked by corporate insiders in Trump’s White House — was to halt the award of work permits to the spouses of the almost one million H-1B foreign contract workers who have jobs in the United States. This H4EAD program was created by President Barack Obama — not by Congress — and it added another 250,000 foreign contract workers who compete for jobs against American graduates.

The cancellation was celebrated by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. He is a Twitter spokesman for the investor-backed American Immigration Council, which is a spinoff of the American Immigration Lawyers Association:

Great news! DHS has formally withdrawn the Trump administration's attempt to strip work authorization from spouses of individuals on H-1B visas, as well as a planned proposed rule on provision waivers of unlawful presence. https://t.co/GztUv3w8Aj

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) January 26, 2021

Biden’s officials have also canceled a recent move by the Department of Labor to limit the outsourcing of U.S. jobs via the huge H-1B program. They are also expected to undermine other Trump regulations that help protect American graduates from the H-1B program.

The administration’s actions match the demands of its corporate donors and cheerleaders, such as the major universities that help deliver the OPT work permit to fee-paying foreign graduates.

Biden’s team is also backed by many corporate employers of OPT and H-1B workers, including Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Apple, Amazon, Deloitte, Microsoft, and their trade groups. For example, Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us advocacy group praised the preservation of the H4EAD program, which has helped keep married H-1B contract workers from leaving the United States:

We commend the Biden-Harris Administration for taking immediate action to turn the page from the Trump-Pence Administration’s disastrous immigration policies, and to do right by more than 100,000 hardworking immigrants who are contributing to the United States every single day in the midst of a deadly pandemic.

The FWD.us group also praised the Biden team for dropping a draft “unlawful presence” rule that would require the foreign student to go home after they get credentials from U.S. colleges. Without the rule, many foreign graduates overstay their visas and work as white-collar illegal aliens in the jobs needed by American graduates.

The Trump administration announced the OPT office on January 13.

The agency “is currently unable to evaluate the impact OPT has had on U.S. workers and foreign students who have obtained work authorization through the programs,” said the January 13 message from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program within the  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

“To remedy this, SEVP is announcing the development of a new unit — the OPT Employment Compliance Unit — that will be dedicated full-time to compliance matters involving wage, hours, and compensation … the first report will be published on ICE.gov by July 31, 2021,” said the statement. It continued:

For example, if the unit were to detect evidence that an employer is using OPT in a discriminatory manner (e.g., as a means to hire only foreign nationals, or only individuals of certain nationalities to the exclusion of others), or in a manner that negatively impacts wages, this unit may notify DOL and the U.S. Department of Justice of such evidence, where HSI is unable to address such matters, so that the evidence can be investigated further.

The loss of employment many U.S. workers have faced since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as employers lay off significant portions of their workforce (while still, in some cases, seeking to hire more foreign workers), makes this work particularly timely.

On January 26, Biden’s deputies announced they would cancel the transparency program:

After conducting an additional review of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s optional practical training (OPT) compliance effort, the program determined that it is already performing much of the work outlined in the Broadcast Message. As such, the creation of the new unit is not necessary at this time.

Before Trump’s arrival, the federal government released minimal information about the huge OPT program. In 2018, Trump’s deputies released some limited information, allowing Breitbart News and the FBI to expose widespread fraud.

But the federal government provides little information about the jobs and wages lost to the OPT program. The federal website provides some basic data about annual numbers, the major OPT employers, that the universities which profit from the OPT program. But the agency provides little data about the operation of the program, the wages paid to OPT, workers, the many small companies that use OPTs to fill Fortune 500 outsourcing contracts, or about reported hiring discrimination against Americans.

However, many foreign and American workers tell Breitbart News that the OPT program — and its sister program, the Curricular Practical Training (CPT) program — provides the workforce for the lowest level of the Fortune 500’s labor pyramid.

The OPT and CPT workers — plus many white-collar illegal aliens and overstays — work long hours at meager pay because they hope to get promoted into full-time jobs and then into the H-1B program. They want to get into the H-1B program because it allows them to eventually get green cards.

The one million-plus foreign workers in this Green Card Workforce displace many American graduates from vital gateway jobs in science, software, accountancy, or health care. The flood of labor in this hidden pyramid also cuts salaries for college graduates — and boosts stock prices for investors and older Americans — including the parents and teachers of the American graduates.

For example, a group of economists estimated in January that Trump’s recent curbs on corporate use of H-1B contract workers nicked the stock market value of Fortune 500 companies “by about 0.45% — representing a total loss of around $100 billion.”

Other evidence suggests that the Fortune 500’s reliance on many foreign contract workers is sidelining qualified Americans, damaging corporate innovation, helping China, and also diverting investment, jobs, and wealth from central states to the coastal states.

But this hidden labor market is rarely covered in corporate media, such a Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, or in the pro-migration New York Times.

However, Lynn and his member of American professionals are trying to raise awareness of how the OPT program pushes young Americans out of good careers.

“The OPT work permit masquerades workers as ‘students,’ so employers are under no obligation to pay them fair market wages,” Lynn noted, adding:

The Biden Administration is under the false delusion that these international students are the best and brightest in the world, so deserve to stay here permanently. Research by the [left-wing] Economic Policy Institute shows that the majority of these students are not the best and brightest, and are entering low-ranked US universities with low entrance requirements [to get work permit]. Universities profit because international students pay full freight tuition, while American students are graduating with immense student loan debt and having to now compete with OPT work-permit holders.

The ICE data shows that the OPT program delivers many foreign workers into Fortune 500 jobs, where managers have a lot of freedom to hire within their own ethnic networks. For example, since 2003, Amazon has hired 12,173 people via the program, while Deloitte has hired 5,799 foreign graduates, and Apple has hired 2,667 people.

For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration — or the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.

The multiracialcross-sexnonracistclass-based, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950’s “Nation of Immigrants” claim.

Migration allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled peopleexploit stoop labor in the fields, shortchange labor in the cities, and impose tight control pay cuts on American professionals.

Migration also helps corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American graduates, undermine Americans’ labor rights, and redirect progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities and claims.

Wall St. & CEOs are waving skewed polls (& checks) to urge politicians to jump back into the amnesty waters.
Polls show (& pols know) that voters strongly prefer economic policies to help blue/white-collar Americans get good jobs
IOW, pocketbook politicshttps://t.co/fMtpvV1GYW

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) January 23, 2021

 

Report: Biden’s Campaign Benefited from Record Amount of ‘Dark Money’

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images, Nick Ares/Flickr

HARIS ALIC

26 Jan 202118

2:52

President Joe Biden’s successful 2020 White House bid benefited from an extensive record-breaking amount of “dark money,” according to a new report.

Bloomberg News noted earlier this week that outside political groups—not officially associated with Biden’s campaign, but working to support his chances at victory—spent and raised more than $145 million from anonymous donors.

“That amount of dark money dwarfs the $28.4 million spent on behalf of his rival, former President Donald Trump,” Bloomberg reported. “And it tops the previous record of $113 million in anonymous donations backing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.”

The money, while significant, was only a fraction of the $1.5 billion spent on Biden’s behalf this last cycle. The president, himself, raised more than $1 billion through his own campaign committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

A further $578 million was raised by Super PACs and other political groups. This figure includes the $145 million in “dark money” that was raised by political non-profits that are not required by law to disclose their donors.

Generally, such non-profits either raise the money and spend it themselves or transfer it to larger Super PACs working on a candidate’s behalf. Although Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with the campaigns of specific candidates, there is no limit to how much they can raise on that candidate’s behalf, provided they disclose every donor. Political non-profits, however, often act as a shield since they too can raise unlimited amounts of money without having to disclose their donors.

During the 2020 election cycle, such practices heavily benefited Democrats. The Center for Responsive Politics notes that more than $326 million in “dark money” was spent to aid Democrats this last cycle. Meanwhile, only $148 million was used to support Republican groups.

Democrats, including Biden, accepted the help from “dark money” groups, even as they argued in favor of tighter regulations on campaign spending. Biden, in particular, unveiled a proposal last year that specifically called for an “end [to] dark money groups.”

While Biden was championing that idea, though, “dark money” groups were mobilizing to see him elected president. As Breitbart News reported in October 2020, a super PAC backed by Silicon Valley donors and boosted by “dark money” spent substantially to run attack ads against Trump in the final weeks of the White House contest.

 

 

 

 

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