‘All value is socially constructed’. Really!

This statement is pure ideology and demagoguery! Real values are created by individuals!

These demagogues are calling for a Big Government program to forcefully correct manufactured injustices by inappropriate or even unconstitutional means!

Better ways are to create more free market opportunities for home ownership. E.g. less regulation and lowering the costs of home building etc.

How far apart are home appraisals really when you compare white, Asian, Hispanic home appraisals of homes in similar neighborhoods and homeowner with similar socioeconomic status? I bet not very far!

"... Research has shown that, for decades, homes in predominantly Black neighborhoods have been appraised at lower values than those in majority-white neighborhoods, even when comparing similar houses in neighborhoods with similar socioeconomic status. ...
The Biden administration created an interagency task force last year to evaluate the cause and consequences of this appraisal bias, measure the extent of the issue and propose steps to address it. ..
But the reality is that no true, fair housing market exists. How we value homes and neighborhoods is entirely subjective, dependent on biases embedded in society and in the housing systems we’ve built. ...
If we start with the assumption that a fair housing market exists and the problem is that some people can’t access it ...
The action plan called for diversifying the appraisal industry ...
“We have to deal with the fact that we’ve allowed certain communities to accumulate more wealth than others ..."

Home appraisals: ‘All value is socially constructed’ – Center for Public Integrity The federal government has taken a first step in addressing inequalities in home values, but there’s still a lot to be done.

JAMA editor to depart following podcast that questioned racism in medicine

There is nothing to celebrate here! This is medieval inquisition all over again in the 21st century! Indoctrination and orthodoxy reign! Awful!

JAMA editor to depart following podcast that questioned racism in medicine Following a huge backlash that flared after the Journal of the American Medical Association aired a podcast and posted a tweet questioning whether structural racism exists in medicine, the American Medical Association announced Tuesday that the journal’s editor-in-chief, Howard Bauchner, will be stepping down at the end of June.

Millions Died Thanks to the Mother of Environmentalism Rachel Carson

Recommendable! This important story about environmentalism gone mad cannot be told often enough! To ban DDT without an effective substitute was reckless, but the victims of malaria were mostly located in poor countries (still true today)! Who cares!

"... Unfortunately, the PBS documentary neglected to mention that in her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, Carson had made one critical mistake – and it cost millions of people their lives. ... On Sept. 27, 1962, Rachel Carson changed her tone. Her next book, Silent Spring, which she called her “poison book,” was an angry, no-holds-barred polemic against pesticides: especially DDT. The first chapter of Silent Spring, titled “A Fable for Tomorrow,” was almost biblical, appealing to our sense that we had sinned against our Creator. ...
In May 1963, Rachel Carson appeared before the Department of Commerce and asked for a “Pesticide Commission” to regulate the untethered use of DDT. Ten years later, Carson’s “Pesticide Commission” became the Environmental Protection Agency, which immediately banned DDT. ...

Although DDT soon became synonymous with poison, the pesticide was an effective weapon in the fight against an infection that has killed – and continues to kill – more people than any other: malaria. By 1960, due largely to DDT, malaria had been eliminated from 11 countries, including the United States. As malaria rates went down, life expectancies went up; as did crop production, land values, and relative wealth. ... Since the mid-1970s, when DDT was eliminated from global eradication efforts, tens of millions of people have died from malaria unnecessarily: most have been children less than five years old. ...
DDT was arguably one of the safer insect repellents ever invented – far safer than many of the pesticides that have taken its place. ...
In 2006, the World Health Organization reinstated DDT as part of its effort to eradicate malaria. ..."

Millions Died Thanks to the Mother of Environmentalism - Foundation for Economic Education

PBS glorifies a career criminal and drug addict who physically resisted police arrest

Paid for by American taxpayers! Horrible propaganda and demagoguery! Look how PBS makes this former criminal look like a saint or even Jesus!

Utopia: Ein Projekt ohne Erfolgsaussicht

Empfehlenswert! Zu green reset, Energiewende usw.

Joe Biden issues executive order cracking down on 'financial risks' of climate change

The cognitively impaired 46th President is doing willfully something almost every day to further ruin the U.S. economy! His economic illiteracy is unhinged! What a waste of taxpayers' money!

"President Biden issued a major executive order on Thursday requiring federal agencies to analyze and mitigate the financial risks of climate change.

“Our modern financial system was built on the assumption that the climate was stable,” said Brian Deese [what a clown, served already as economic advisor to President Obama], the chairman of the National Economic Council. “And today it’s clear that we no longer live in such a world.” 
The executive order requires senior-level climate and treasury officials to undertake a “comprehensive government-wide” review of administration programs that contribute to climate change. Its goal is to remove the federal government from financing projects with taxpayer dollars that produce greenhouse gas emissions. ..."

Joe Biden issues executive order cracking down on 'financial risks' of climate change - Washington Times

Black Supremacy: Craft an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Why this special treatment for this group and not for others? Why this obsession with skin color? Similar things happened to other people as well!

They want Native Americans and black Americans be treated equally?

"... We propose in addition the creation of an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (AAGPRA), modelled on existing federal legislation for Native American remains and cultural items. ...
There are still no federal protections specifically for historic Black cemeteries. ...
Pause the unethical study and use of Black remains in collections. ... Efforts should first exhaust all non-invasive methods to find known descendants or representative descendant groups, so that they can be consulted closely on giving consent for inventories or repatriation. ..."

Craft an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Universities and museums must catalogue the remains of Black Americans in their collections, and pause research pending consultation with descendant communities.

University of California Panel explores ways Asian Americans can break through ‘bamboo ceiling’

University of California LA chooses poor metaphors based on phony ideologies! The so called "glass ceiling" for women was already ridiculous!

The term "bamboo ceiling" connotes serious stereotyping about Asian people!

I suppose, India is not an Asian country? E.g. are the current CEOs of Alphabet Google and Microsoft not of Indian background?

Jensen Huang is the CEO of Nvidia. He has a Taiwanese background!

"... In fact, the poverty rate among Asian Americans is 12.5%, and income levels vary significantly. Additionally, although Asian Americans represent 12% of America’s professional workforce, less than 1% of S&P 500 CEOs are of East Asian descent. ..."

Panel explores ways Asian Americans can break through ‘bamboo ceiling’ | UCLA Discussion among UCLA faculty, leadership and alumni emphasized education, advocacy, allyship

Coming to America: Africans, Caribbeans Flock to 'Systemically Racist' US

Recommendable! Welcome to AmeriKKKa! (Caution: irony)

"... According to the most recent Department of Homeland Security data, 548,891 African immigrants became permanent U.S. residents between 2015 and 2019. ...
Between 2015 and 2019, Caribbean green card awardees totaled 816,522. They, too, swapped black-ruled islands for this allegedly racist superpower. ..."

Coming to America: Africans, Caribbeans Flock to 'Systemically Racist' US

Harvard University pseudoscience: How unjust police killings damage the mental health of Black Americans

Harvard University is purveyor of phony ideologies and pseudoscience! The elite university is race baiting and promoting skin color based victimhood! Appalling!

This is so absurd! So the many black on black killings and maimings in which also numerous children die from e.g. drive by shootings etc. is not causing damage to the mental health of Black Americans?

What kind of a nutty professor or quack is this Harvard professor David R. Williams? A "professor of African and African American Studies and Sociology at Harvard University" When you look at his Google Scholar profile (over 99,000 lifetime citations and about 571 papers, but he has apparently not published anything since 2018), you will discover that this professor is race obsessed based on his most cited articles.

How unjust police killings damage the mental health of Black Americans – Harvard Gazette Harvard Chan’s David R. Williams, whose research looks at how discrimination affects Black people’s health, appeared on “60 Minutes” in April. Research tracks the ways racial discrimination wreaks a physical, psychological toll

Here is the link of one of the studies this nutty professor worked on:

Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-based, quasi-experimental study (2018, The Lancet; funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and National Institutes of Health)

'I'm sick of being used by Democrats': Black Republican woman scores historic win in VA

Recommendable! Winsome Sears: This is what systemic racism in America looks like! (Caution: Irony) She is an immigrant from Jamaica, grew up in the Bronx of NYC, became a U.S. Marine ...

Microsoft: Race and Technology: A Research Lecture Series

Microsoft is also a purveyor of phony ideologies! Appalling! What a perversion!

Joseph Goebbels is smiling in his grave!

"Race and technology are closely intertwined, continuously influencing and reshaping one another. While algorithmic bias has received increased attention in recent years, that is only one of the many ways that technology and race intersect in computer science, public health, digital media, gaming, surveillance, and other domains. To build inclusive technologies that empower us all, we must understand how technologies and race construct one another and with what consequences. ..."

Race and Technology: A Research Lecture Series

Pseudoscience: Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19 rivals that of 1918 Spanish Flu

This appears to be at the moment the most celebrated Covid-19 study of all! As if the death count of Covid-19 is not already highly inflated (I blogged e.g. here, here about it), this so called Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (affiliated with University of Washington, Seattle, WA) claims a significant undercount! Preposterous!

That same so called Institute also claims that "Racism is a public health issue Fighting health inequity means fighting against racism. Black lives matter.".

Don't these ideologues love the universal lockdowns? The longer, the better! Any wild story is just good enough!

This so called Institute is trying very hard to make us believe that Covid-19 is like the 1918 Spanish flu: "“…Covid is going to rival Spanish flu at the global level in terms of the count, likely, before we see the end of this epidemic,” IHME director Christopher Murray told STAT reporter Helen Branswell and others. 675,000 Americans were believed to have died in the 1918 pandemic."

Apparently, IHME selected these two countries to make their point:

"... IHME estimates Russia had more than 593,000 deaths as of May 3, while only 109,334 had been officially reported.

Likewise, deaths in Mexico were calculated to be nearly 494,000 and not 174,000. ..."

Lots of nebulous/elastic and vage metrics and wishful thinking:

"... There are several reasons that have led us to adopt this new approach. These reasons include the fact that testing capacity varies markedly across countries and within countries over time, which means that the reported COVID-19 deaths as a proportion of all deaths due to COVID-19 also vary markedly across countries and within countries over time. ...
In other countries, such as Ecuador, Peru, and the Russian Federation, the discrepancy between reported deaths and analyses of death rates compared to expected death rates, sometimes referred to as “excess mortality,” ... Our approach to estimating the total COVID-19 death rate is based on measurement of the excess death rate during the pandemic week by week compared to what would have been expected based on past trends and seasonality."

Here is what the CDC has to say about the Spanish Flue of 1918:

"... The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin ... It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide ... Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic. ..."

Wold population around 1920 was only about 1.9 billion compared to roughly 8 billion today!

Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19 | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

Credits:

Global Health News 5/9/2021

Pseudoscience: The gender pay gap is not going away

The Royal Society of Chemistry is a purveyor of phony ideologies and phony data reporting! The Royal Society compares apples with with eggs! Men and women do not work in exactly the same jobs and exactly the same employers etc.

Yes, phony ideologies are not going away! Repeat them again and again!

"... For most of November and December the average woman in the UK effectively works for free. That is if you compare her annual salary to that of her male colleagues. ..."

The gender pay gap is not going away | Careers | Chemistry World Despite a variety of activities in industry and academia, women in chemistry continue to earn less than men

MIT: In Compton Lecture, Kwame Anthony Appiah analyzes foundations of racism

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology from the president President L. Rafael Reif down, who provided introductory remarks and then moderated the questions and answers session, is a purveyor of phony ideologies! The MIT President apparently made no effort to challenge the phony ideologies of the lecturer!

Lecturer mentions the controversial socialist W.E.B. Du Bois, but not e.g. the much more effective Booker T. Washington!

"... anti-Black racism, for instance, only fully emerged in connection with the development of the modern Atlantic slave trade. [Was there never any racism among the indigenous people of Africa? Anti-Black racism predates the Atlantic Save trade]... Regarding the full-blown creation of anti-Black prejudice that arose to justify the Atlantic slave trade, Appiah noted, “Its effect was to rationalize the appalling treatment of Black people that the trade and practice of enslavement involved, as well as to defend, a little bit later, colonial empires.” [What about African empires on the African continent? Did they never colonize other people and land?] He added: “We are still living with legacies of that white supremacy.” ...
“Racial solidarity among African Americans, given the history of white supremacy, is not a kind of racist ideology [except for black supremacy], and the attitudes it produces are not racist,” ..."

In Compton Lecture, Kwame Anthony Appiah analyzes foundations of racism | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Victor Davis Hanson: The New Antiracism Is the Old Racism

Recommendable! About "Antiracist Racism"

The New Antiracism Is the Old Racism › American Greatness The benchmarks of the Black Lives Matter and affiliated woke movements are overt racism, systemic untruth, and the hypocritical privilege of their elite architects.  

David Horowitz on Black Supremacy

Very recommendable! Long article, lot's of details! I blogged here about this phony ideology!

I am afraid he is only describing the tip of an iceberg and it is narrowly focused on the Nation of Islam (Louis Farrakhan), BLM and its fellow travelers.

"... The Nation of Islam [founded in 1930] is a racist religion, headed by America’s most virulent, anti-Semitic, anti-white, anti-gay bigot, who is also black: Louis Farrakhan. According to Wikipedia, the Nation of Islam has an estimated 50,000 members ... 
From January 2009 through December 2014, ["civil rights activist" and Reverend Al] Sharpton visited the Obama White House on 72 separate occasions, including five one-on-one meetings with the president and 20 meetings with staff members or senior advisers. ..."

Black Supremacy | Frontpagemag

Harvard University: The fight for environmental justice and racial justice

One of the elite universities of the United States in a crusade based on phony ideologies! You can't make this up! What a hodgepodge of subjects are mixed together here!

Who hires graduates from this university? Who attends this university voluntarily?

"“Unequal” is a multipart series highlighting the work of Harvard faculty, staff, students, alumni, and researchers on issues of race and inequality across the U.S. ...
The coexistence of air pollutants and communities of color isn’t an anomaly, says Hannah Perls, J.D. ’20, but is representative of the environmental injustices that many communities of color across America live with. .."

Harvard affiliates working to right the wrongs of discriminatory policy – Harvard Gazette Harvard affiliates at the Law School and School of Public Health are working to right the wrongs of decades of discriminatory policy

This is what systemic racism in America looks like

Is this just a black man acting white like Uncle Tom? Maybe it is just a white actor with black shoe polish on his face a.k.a. as blackface like they used to do it in the film industry several decades ago? (Caution: irony)

Perhaps, the cognitively impaired 46th President from Scranton, Pennsylvania should have a meeting or phone call with this attorney general from Kentucky! 😄

Kentucky AG: Republicans need to show strong alternative for how the US can look

Pseudoscience: Sex differences in Covid-19 mortality vary across racial groups

The prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology is also a purveyor of junk science and phony ideologies! That the Journal of General Internal Medicine accepted this paper is puzzling at best! When the obsession with phony ideologies intrude on science!

Would it not be more likely or reasonable that e.g. the prevalence of obesity is the explaining factor than race?

"... One of the study’s findings is that Black women are up to four times more likely to die of Covid-19 than white men are. Additionally, Black men have the highest Covid-19 mortality rates of any group defined by both race and sex — up to six times higher than the rates among white men. These findings strongly suggest structural inequities in society ...
Marion Boulicault, a graduate student in the MIT Department of Lingustics and Philosophy, and [2nd] co-author of the study."

"Inequities in COVID-19 outcomes in the USA have been clearly documented for sex and race ... Unexplored, however, is how sex and race interact in COVID-19 outcomes. ..."

Study: Sex differences in Covid-19 mortality vary across racial groups | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Black women are more vulnerable than white men, illustrating how race and gender intersect to shape health outcomes.

Here is the link to the underlying research article:

Sex Disparities in COVID-19 Mortality Vary Across US Racial Groups (open access)