Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
Heritage Pressure Leads to Amazon’s Reversing Censorship Decision <[link removed]> – This episode is a reminder that while sometimes Big Tech can be pressured to respond in certain cases of wrongdoing, there are so many more instances where those without the resources or large-enough public profile simply have to live with the arbitrary decisions made by these
companies. The fact that this was the result of human error further demonstrates the need for Big Tech companies to establish clear, sensible, and consistent rules and policies, and then implement those rules and policies fairly across the board. They also must be willing to publicly admit mistakes when they do occur, whether intentional or not. Big Tech’s influence over everyday American life continues to grow. It’s vital that we establish clear standards for how these companies behave, and mechanisms to hold them accountable when they don’t.
**Original Story**
Heritage Responds to Amazon Censoring Expert's Book on Black Lives Matter <[link removed]> – I wrote this book because most of the press refused to cover the important questions about the people and
organizations behind Black Lives Matter. Now Amazon is trying to limit how many Americans read this book. The American people deserve answers to those questions, especially after the 630 or more riots that left our cities burning, businesses destroyed and billions in damage, and Americans dead. I have to wonder if Nikole Hannah-Jones’ and Ibram X. Kendi’s books—which also sell in the ‘Black and African American History’ category, where my book often outranked them in the past week—face similar constraints. Herbert Marcuse, the critical theorist who authored the essay ‘Repressive Tolerance,’ would be proud of Amazon. Heritage experts: Mike Gonzalez <[link removed]> and Kara Frederick <[link removed]>
Even Some Democrats Sound Alarm on Radical 10,000-Page, $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill <[link removed]> – House committees have only had a few weeks to compose and deliberate on their sections of the bill. At a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee, Murphy raised concerns that the Congressional Budget Office hasn’t had time to estimate the cost of its provisions. Technically, members of Congress have no idea how much all this legislation will really cost. How is that being responsible? So far, requests to prevent deficit increases and avoid rushing to meet arbitrary deadlines have gone nowhere. That’s because Pelosi is more concerned with appeasing far-left activists who aren’t satisfied with $3.5 trillion for their causes. As a result, the House is on pace to finish drafting the pieces of the package by the end of this week, and a floor vote is expected by the end of the month. It remains
to be seen whether moderate Democrats in the House and Senate will stick to their guns and oppose the spending package if it violates their commonsense requests. One thing that’s clear already: The bill is bad news. It’s bad for the economy, bad for education, and bad for the rule of law. Fortunately, there’s still time for Congress to back away and avoid the catastrophic consequences. Heritage expert: David Ditch <[link removed]>
Gerrymandering is inevitable in a
democracy <[link removed]> – You can’t take politics out of redistricting, but you can implement common-sense rules that prevent misshapen districts that you need a
GPS to navigate. Those rules should require that districts be as compact and contiguous as possible. They should follow the lines of natural boundaries like rivers and mountains and political boundaries like city and county lines. That will also lead to representatives who have an interest in representing all of the diverse people of a city, for example, rather than just those who are concentrated in one part of that city. For more than 200 years, Americans have complained about partisan gerrymandering. But that is how our system works, and despite all of the complaints, we have something many other people around the world envy: a remarkably stable system of governance in which our democracy has never been compromised. Heritage expert: Hans von Spakovsky <[link removed]>
Growth of Virginia universities' diversity-industrial complex <[link removed]> – After reviewing a number of student satisfaction surveys, we found that in general, universities with larger DEI staffs did not report better campus climates than at universities with smaller DEI staffs. If anything, the institutions with large DEI staff had worse climates. None of this should be surprising when we remember that hiring staff is just the way many universities mollify angry constituents. It doesn’t mean the bureaucracies they create are efficiently designed to actually solve problems. State legislators, boards of trustees, tuition-paying parents, and other stakeholders should demand accountability for these symbolic hiring sprees. They should insist that universities produce evidence of the effectiveness of maintaining an army of DEI staff or cut those headcounts to lower university costs. We suspect that lower tuition would do far more to promote diversity and inclusion on campus than massive DEI staffs with important-sounding titles. Heritage expert: Jay Greene <[link removed]>
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