Wednesday Morning Briefing
Welcome to tariff "liberation day"!
• I might feel some sympathy for federal employees being summarily fired from the Centers for Disease Control if the CDC hadn’t flagrantly lied to us about COVID; hadn’t abused its power to declare a moratorium on evictions from rental properties; hadn’t declared in 2020 that racism was a “public health emergency;” hadn’t previously declared gun ownership to be a public health malady, etc, etc. The CDC no doubt does some important and useful work over the year, but given how badly the CDC surrendered to woke leftist, they are lucky RFK Jr. didn’t fire everyone and raze the place to the ground.
• Me, today, on “Trade Protection and Tariffs from Reagan to Trump,” over at Civitas. Relevant perhaps:
At one point in 1985, the Senate voted 92 - 0 and the House 394 - 19 for resolutions calling for retaliation against Japan unless it reduced its trade imbalance with the U.S. In 1985, 300 protectionist bills were introduced in Congress. . . In 1986, Reagan threatened to impose a 200 percent tariff on Spain for its restrictions on U.S. grain imports.
• Canada’s Carney-barker? Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, seems to have sprung full blown from the loins of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. When you look up “Generic Davos Man” at any reputable source, you get a photo of Mark Carney, who has never held elective office, but has been a central banker for more than one nation. (Did I mention he is the perfect embodiment of the Dovoisie?)
Guess what? Turns out he is a classic plagiarist. From the National Post:
The National Post obtained a copy of Carney’s 1995 thesis for his doctorate in economics from Oxford University titled “The Dynamic Advantage of Competition.” It shows 10 instances of apparent plagiarism, according to the judgment of three university academics who reviewed the material.
In several sections of his thesis, Carney used full quotes, paraphrases, or slightly modified quotes from four previous works without proper acknowledgement or attribution.
“He’s just directly repeating without quotations. That’s what we call plagiarism,” said Geoffrey Sigalet, an assistant professor and member of UBC Okanagan president’s advisory committee on student discipline, which handles plagiarism cases for the university.
Carney’s camp disputes the claim. But why do so many leftists turn out to be plagiarists? Maybe they are not, strictly speaking. As I have argued previously, it is almost impossible to prove plagiarism against an establishment leftist because they all think the same thing, in the same words. That’s what makes being a leftist so easy.
• A few days back I noted an especially absurd example of “gender studies,” and commenters wondered, “Just what do you do with a gender studies degree?” UC Santa Cruz is quite candid that a degree in gender studies qualifies you to join the DEI Stasi:
Specialists in feminist studies are being hired as consultants in industry, higher education, insurance companies, and human resource firms. State and federal government agencies require people with special training in understanding gender relations. Finally, educational institutions need specialists to develop and administer feminist studies programs, women's centers, and other institutional structures designed specifically to study and address women's rights and gender issues.
Translation: You won’t get a real job with a degree in feminist studies, but you can perpetuate the racket!
• RFK Jr. is getting results already: safe cookie dough!
• Wait—I thought the Senate filibuster was a relic of slavery and white supremacy that we need to abolish?
• France, this week:
• And finally, today’s meme truth bomb:
In Carney's defense plagiarism took a lot more effort back then, you had to go to Kinko's.
"but given how badly the CDC surrendered to woke leftist"
That was for profit, not a surrender. Each of them did it for a cut of the profits, status, and peer recognition. This was agency capture through bribery.