Pun Salad

Every institution in the United States and in Canada has endorsed diversity as a fundamental value and goal, and has formally committed to sex, race, sexuality, and ethnic diversity in its personnel. This is seen at every level, from national governments to universities to primary schools, from international corporations to the media to street corner stores, and from the military to political rioters. Diversity is alleged to be valuable in and of itself, a broadening and enriching of knowledge and experience.

While sex, race, sexuality, and ethnic diversity are the objects of the highest approbation, any consideration of differences between sexes, races, sexualities, and ethnic groups is condemned and strictly forbidden. Any statement indicating differences is assumed to be invidious, praising one and demeaning the other. Even where differences do imply value judgements, such as in academic performance or crime rates, it is now forbidden to mention them. In other words, we love diversity, but hate differences.

About that “dark money” — it’s a reality. But in political parlance, translated by a compliant media, it has always been understood to mean undue influence of high-dollar conservative donors. Which may be why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the principal co-sponsor of H.R. 1, while Majority Leader Chuck Schumer grandstands likewise on behalf of the Senate sibling, lending it prestige. Or, it may not: Both Democratic leaders are champions of raising, directing, orchestrating, associating with, relying on, and spending dark money. Per the Washington Free Beacon, the duo quarterbacked the funneling of millions in dark cash into the 2020 congressional elections. In fact, the amount that a Schumer-related group pulled in and spent in 2020 was a massive increase over the 2016 and 2018 election cycles:

Majority Forward, a nonprofit with ties to Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC, pushed $57.4 million into super PACs that helped Democrats regain the majority in Congress’s upper chamber. The vast sum far eclipses the $6.2 million it funneled into election activity in the 2016 and 2018 cycles combined. The nonprofit does not disclose its donors, making it difficult to identify who provided the funding to back Schumer’s efforts.

Majority Forward’s election cash spike was made possible by a record-breaking fundraising haul from mid-2018 to mid-2019, when the group received $76 million in anonymous donations. That same year, it passed tens of millions to other left-wing nonprofits for its primary purpose of bankrolling voter engagement. Its largest donation was $14.8 million to America Votes, which later found itself under investigation in Georgia for allegedly sending ballot applications to non-residents.

And they say the right-wing conspiracy is vast!

By the end of last year, there were few better symbols of bad-faith politics than Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that gives online platforms legal immunity for user-generated content. After a fairly sleepy existence since its passage in 1996, Section 230 turned into an unlikely rallying cry for a subset of Republican politicians who disingenuously blamed it for letting social media platforms discriminate against conservatives. (In fact, the law has nothing to do with partisan balance, and if anything allows platforms to keep more right-wing content up than they otherwise would.) Down the home stretch of his reelection campaign, Donald Trump began dropping Section 230 references into his stump speeches. The whole thing culminated with a pair of depressing Senate hearings that, while nominally about Section 230, were little more than PR stunts designed for Ted Cruz to get clips of himself berating Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Senate Democrats didn’t quite cover themselves in glory either.

So it’s a bit of a surprise to see a legislative proposal on Section 230 that thoughtfully, if imperfectly, addresses some of the most glaring problems with the law. The SAFE TECH Act, a bill announced on Friday morning by Democratic senators Mark Warner, Mazie Hirono, and Amy Klobuchar, is an encouraging sign that members of Congress are paying attention to the smartest critiques of Section 230 and trying to craft appropriate solutions.

Just because Senators Warner, Hirono, and Klobuchar are apparently oblivious to how their SAFE TECH bill would destroy the Internet doesn't mean everyone else should ignore how it does. These are Senators drafting legislation, and they should understand the effect the words they employ will have.

Mike [Masnick, Techdirt editor] has already summarized much of the awfulness they propose, and why it is so awful, but it's worth taking a closer look at some of the individually odious provisions. This post focuses in particular on how their bill obliterates the entire Internet economy.

However, it is critical that such fees be dedicated to highways, roads, and streets, and not diverted to build obsolete light‐rail lines or subsidize other archaic infrastructure. Currently, about 20 percent of federal and state gas taxes are diverted to transit and other non‐​highway programs and the result is an incredible amount of waste and inequity.

Calculations based on 2019 Department of Transportation data show that it cost five times as much to move someone a passenger mile by public transit as by the average automobile. An Oregon transit agency is currently spending $108 a rider subsidizing one rail transit line.

This is particularly inequitable because transit commuters have the highest median incomes of any commuters in the country. Just 5 percent of people who earn less than $25,000 a year took transit to work in 2019 while nearly 7 percent of people who earn more than $75,000 a year commuted by transit. This means that 95 percent of low‐​income workers disproportionately pay through gasoline and other taxes for transit rides taken by high‐​income workers.