The New York Times – When The Abuser Goes To Work…

U.S. Bureau of Prisons Jumps The Gun On Sending Males Who ‘Identify’ as Women To Women’s Prisons

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) seems to have jumped the gun on an anticipated executive order by Pres. Joe Biden when it instituted a major change in U.S. prison policy.

The BOP, a division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice, issued a notice on Jan. 13 stating it will henceforth assign “transgender or intersex” inmates to women’s prisons to “ensure the inmate’s health and safety.”

That very provision was included in a draft of an executive order on police reform crafted for Pres. Joe Biden that has not yet been signed because, according to the New York Times, it has precipitated a “near breakdown” between the White House and law enforcement authorities.

The NYT reported Thursday that a copy of the proposed order was obtained on Jan. 5 by a conservative web site, The Federalist.

The NYT fails to even mention that The Federalist article decried a provision in the draft order enabling the BOP to assign male prisoners who self-identify as women to facilities in accordance with their gender identity.

Instead, the Times focuses on a provision of the draft order that allows police to use deadly force only “as a last resort when there is no reasonable alternative, in other words only when necessary to prevent imminent and serious bodily injury or death.”

Designate

The draft order, dated December 2021, requires “the U.S. attorney general to ‘within 30 days of the date of this order, begin the process of identifying any necessary changes to the [Bureau of Prisons] Transgender Offender Manual … to enable BOP to designate individuals to facilities in accordance with their gender identity.’

The BOP didn’t wait for Biden to sign the executive order and on Jan. 13 issued a revised Transgender Offender Manual.

Outrage About China’s Treatment of Peng Shuai

There is more than a little bit of hypocrisy with respect to the outrage in the U.S. about China’s treatment of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai’s following her sexual assault complaint against Chinese ex premier Zhang Gaoli.

Things are not going so great in the United States for victims of sexual assault.

MONEY AND JUSTICE

I had to twice check the date on a story published this week by The New York Times because it seemed like a relic from the 1970s.

Christopher Belter, then 16 and a student at an elite private boys school, pleaded guilty to the sexually attacking four teens (including the rape of at least one victim). He faced up to eight years in prison but instead was sentenced to probation.

County Court Judge Matthew J. Murphy III of Niagara, N.Y., claims he “prayed over” the appropriate sentence in the case and concluded that “incarceration or partial incarceration isn’t appropriate” for Belter.

The Buffalo News reported that Peter M. Wydysh, an assistant district attorney, did not make a sentencing recommendation to the court. This is unusual, especially since Belter pled guilty to four counts of sexual attacks on teenage girls.

Is it purely coincidental that Belter comes from an extremely wealthy family?

Factual Reckoning: Nikole Hannah-Jones

Contrary to New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, the controversy surrounding her quest for tenure at the University of North Carolina (UNC) has nothing whatsoever to do with gender or race discrimination.

Hannah-Jones went on national television Tuesday to decline UNC’s begrudging offer of tenure, and to announce she has accepted another tenure offer, at the historically black institution, Howard University.

She said she couldn’t work at UNC because the trustees subjected her to gender and race discrimination by demonstrating reluctance to grant her tenure.

But that’s not what this is really about.

Accuracy?

Hannah-Jones was the editor of the 1619 Project, which claimed to “reframe” America’s history to define the nation’s “true founding” as one rooted in slavery rather than liberty.

Hannah-Jones, and the NYT refuse to acknowledge that the central premise of the 2019 project in Hannah- Jones lead essay is indisputably wrong. She wrote:

“One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies, which had produced tremendous wealth.”

This is false.

Big Tech Tests Gullibility of U.S. Voters

So, it seems that Big Tech will continue to kick former GOP President Donald J. Trump off the major communications platforms in America.

And Americans are being asked to believe this is because he poses a continuing threat to Democracy.

How gullible do you have to be to buy that explanation?

This week, a Facebook appointed advisory group and YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, ratified the continued suspension of Trump from their platforms. Twitter has permanently banned Trump.

Trump is the pivotal figure in the Republican Party because 75 million Americans voted for him in 2020. Trump is not only being silenced but he is stymied with respect to fundraising.

Trump’s ban from the modern-day public square could have serious consequences for the GOP in the next election, which will decide control of the Congress.

Two Party System?

The United States has a two-party political system but one party, the GOP, has had one hand tied behind its back by three left-leaning billionaires from Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, and Jack Dorsey of Twitter.

Why America’s Free Press Is Circling The Drain

After 45 years in the news business, Marty Baron had no answers for how to address the flailing state of the U.S. media.

Baron, who retired as executive editor of The Washington Post (WP) on Feb. 28, was interviewed Sunday by CBS correspondent Leslie Stahl.

He criticized former GOP President Donald J. Trump for declaring that papers like the WP report “fake news” and for calling reporters the “enemy of the people.” Baron declared that democracy will not die in darkness because of the WP.

Of course, Baron knows that Trump is not the real problem with the media today.

The real problem is that Congress has allowed six corporations to control about 90% of media outlets in United States, and most owners are multi-national corporations that have little or no commitment to the First Amendment or the traditional values of America’s free press.

Baron’s assessment is emblematic of the shocking and extreme dearth of intellectual scholarship about the current and future state of the media. Instead, news anchors and journalism professors are teaching students to capitulate to corporate ownership by losing any semblance of objectivity.

Baron had nothing but praise for Jeff Bezos, the owner of the WP and the owner of Amazon, which many consider to be a monopoly in flagrant violation of U.S. anti-trust laws. Baron said Bezos came to the Post in 2013 with a visionary plan to expand its coverage from a regional newspaper to a national digital publication. (Of course, The New York Times had already launched a digital platform in 1996 and a subscription-based internet paper in 2011.)