Month: June 2020

Linkage

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Paraphrasing Harry Belafonte, “That’s right, the Squirrels is, Smarter.”

This Won’t Hurt a Bit, I’ll Respect You in the Morning, the Check Is in the Mail

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And here is the latest big lie, Indian outsourcing firm Infosys is denying that if favors cheap South Asian labor over workers available in America.

There business model is the abuse of the H1B visa program to provide cheap consultants to their US clients, and they go through contortions NOT to find qualified US workers, because they would have to pay them the prevailing wage:

Infosys has rejected the premise of a lawsuit brought by Davina Linguist, the former head of its diversity program recruiting manager program, who alleges the company prefers to hire South Asians and conducted visa fraud to replace US workers.

Filed in the East Texas District Court last week, case 4:20-CV-465, Divina Linguist vs. Infosys Limited, opens with the accusation that Infosys’ staff is 90 percent Indian as a result of a “pattern and practice of discrimination against individuals who are not Indian in the hiring, promotion, compensation, and termination.”

“Infosys managers have obstructed her efforts to increase the non-South Asian diversity of Infosys’ workforce,” the complaint alleges, adding that “Infosys retaliated against Ms. Linguist, stripping her of her title as the head of diversity recruiting (and replacing her with an individual with no relevant experience) and demoting her, among other improper conduct.”

The filing also alleges that “Infosys has gone to great lengths to obtain its primarily South Asian work force in the United States, including by engaging in visa fraud to bring South Asians (primarily Indians) into this country to replace or supplant non-South Asians and non-Indians.” The filing also mentions “bulk rejection of about 12,000 U.S. applicants for positions in favor of South Asian visa holding applicants”.

Infosys denies the allegations.

Needless to say, Mandy Rice-Davies applies.  (“Well they would say that, wouldn’t they?“)

Nah Gah Nah Happen

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When GM closed down its Lordstown, Ohio plant, it violated the incentive deal that it cut with the state, and so may have to repay $60,000,000.00 to state and local governments.

This won’t happen of course, because holding corporations to the terms of their contracts isn’t “Business Friendly,” so they will let General Motors skate:

The state of Ohio has put General Motors on notice that it may be forced to repay more than $60 million in public subsidies as a result of the automaker closing its massive assembly plant last year in Lordstown.

The state’s collection effort, initially outlined in a letter to GM in March, has not been previously reported, and the automaker itself has not disclosed the potential liability to shareholders in its corporate filings.

State officials say the Lordstown shuttering, which made national headlines and drew the ire of President Donald Trump, violated the terms of two state economic development agreements that GM signed more than a decade ago, according to documents obtained by The Business Journal and ProPublica through public records requests. In return for tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks, the company had pledged to maintain operations at the Lordstown site until at least 2027.

“If the state were to claw back $60 million, that would be one of the biggest clawback events in U.S. history,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a national nonprofit that advocates for accountability in economic development. “This is very significant, very interesting that it would come from a Rust Belt state from a very pro-business administration.”

Ohio is not going to claw back even a fraction of the money, because they want to maintain their reputation as a, “Very pro-business administration,” and in our race to the bottom political system, this will trump every other consideration.

I expect, at most, a couple of job developments centers, and perhaps the donation of some land for a city park.

GM will never be made to pay their debts.

I Am Seasoning My Stew Tonight with Their Tears

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In a 6-3 decision the US Supreme Court has ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights act prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ employees.

The bigots were claiming that this was never the original intend of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which is true, but it is also true that the sections on sex discrimination were inserted by an ardent segregationist, Howard W. Smith, to kill the bill, so the claim of original intent is rather specious.

I’m just enjoying the butt-hurt of the bigots and the haters right now:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination “because of sex.”

Today the Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-3, ruled that even if Congress may not have had discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status in mind when it enacted the landmark law over a half century ago, Title VII’s ban on discrimination protects gay, lesbian and transgender employees. Because fewer than half of the 50 states currently ban employment discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation, today’s decision is a major victory for LGBT employees.

………

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the third lawsuit, involving the rights of transgender employees, in federal district court in Michigan against R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes after the funeral home fired Aimee Stephens, a funeral director and embalmer who announced that she would begin living as a woman. (Stephens died on May 12 from complications from kidney failure, but her wife, Donna, took her place in the lawsuit.) The district court agreed with the funeral home that Title VII does not protect transgender employees from discrimination, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reversed. The justices agreed to hear the cases last spring. Although the two cases involving discrimination based on sexual orientation were argued separately from the case involving discrimination based on gender identity, the court issued one ruling this morning that covered all three cases. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Gorsuch framed the question before the court as a straightforward one: “Today,” he wrote, “we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender.” The answer to that question, he continued, “is clear.” When an employer fires an employee “for being homosexual or transgender,” that employer “fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”

It is particularly delicious that this has been authored that the right’s golden boy Gorsuch.

This Exceeds my Capacity for Mockery

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Movie intercuts are not a part of the newscast

Fox News was reporting on the Seattle Capitol Hill occupation, and unironically reported dialogue taken from Monty Python and the Holy Grail as evidence of growing tension within the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.”

Does the phrase, “We’re an Anarcho-Syndaclyst Commune,” sound familiar?

Seriously?

I am left staring at the screen like a cow that has just stepped on its own udder.

H/t Crooks and Liars.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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Senior executives at eBay, including their former senior director of safety and security, and director of global resiliency, have just been arrested for cyber-stalking a blogger who wrote unfavorably about a legal dispute between the auction site and Amazon.com.

By cyber-stalking, I don’t mean that they were trolling them on Twitter and Facebook. I mean that they were sending them bloody pig masks, cockroaches, funeral wreaths, late night pizza deliveries, and explicitly labeled pr0n.

Not only that, it appears that the (also former) CEO of eBay, while not arrested, may have been fired as a result of these activities.

This is f%$#ed up and sh%$:

Six former eBay employees were “charged with leading a cyberstalking campaign” against a newsletter editor and publisher, which “included sending the couple anonymous, threatening messages, disturbing deliveries—including a box of live cockroaches, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig mask—and conducting covert surveillance of the victims,” the US Department of Justice and US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts announced today.

James Baugh, 45, is eBay’s former senior director of safety and security, and David Harville, 48, is eBay’s former director of global resiliency—both were arrested today and charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. Each charge “carr[ies] a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, a fine of up to $250,000 and restitution,” the DOJ said.

The bloody pig mask was a Halloween mask and shipped via Amazon.com, a court document said. The mask arrived at the victims’ home the same day one of the victims “received an email reporting that a ‘Preserved Fetal Pig’ had been ordered online to be sent to the Victims’ house,” the document said. A few days later, the victims “received a box of cockroaches” that was purchased from a roach breeder and seller.

The alleged targets were a couple in Natick, Massachusetts, who publish an online newsletter that covers e-commerce companies and which “eBay executives viewed as critical of the company,” the DOJ said. One alleged victim is a reporter and editor for the newsletter, while her husband is the publisher. The alleged victims’ names and the news website they operate are not identified in the charging documents filed in US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

………

SAC Joe Bonavolonta, MA USA Andy Lelling & Natick Police Chief Jim Hicks announce charges against six @eBay employees for an aggressive cyberstalking campaign targeting the editor & publisher of an online newsletter. They’re also charged with obstructing our investigation. pic.twitter.com/yBRWL7SvaO

— FBI Boston (@FBIBoston) June 15, 2020


The alleged crimes took place in August and September 2019. Four other former eBay employees weren’t arrested today but face the same charges. They are Stephanie Popp, 32, eBay’s former senior manager of global intelligence; Stephanie Stockwell, 26, former manager of eBay’s Global Intelligence Center (GIC); Veronica Zea, 26, a former eBay contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst in the GIC; and Brian Gilbert, 51, a former senior manager of special operations for eBay’s Global Security Team. Harville is from New York City while the other five defendants are from California.

………

Thirdly, the defendants allegedly conducted surveillance of the editor/publisher couple. After registering for a software-development conference as a pretext to go to Boston, “Baugh, Harville, and Zea (and later Popp) allegedly drove to the victims’ home in Natick several times, with Harville and Baugh intending at one point to break into the victims’ garage and install a GPS tracking device on their car,” the DOJ said. “As protection in the event they were stopped by local police, Baugh and Harville allegedly carried false documents purporting to show that they were investigating the victims as ‘Persons of Interest’ who had threatened eBay executives. The victims spotted the surveillance, however, and notified the Natick police, who began to investigate. The police learned that Zea had rented one of the cars used by the defendants and reached out to eBay for assistance.”

………

eBay issued a statement today saying that it “immediately launched a comprehensive investigation” upon being notified by law enforcement. “As a result of the investigation, eBay terminated all involved employees, including the company’s former Chief Communications Officer, in September 2019,” eBay said.

eBay further said that it “does not tolerate this kind of behavior” and “apologizes to the affected individuals and is sorry that they were subjected to this.”

Devin Wenig was the CEO of eBay at the time of the incidents and left the company in September 2019. eBay said that its “internal investigation found that, while Mr. Wenig’s communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband. However, as the company previously announced, there were a number of considerations leading to his departure from the company.”

Also, even without the whole fetal pig thing, the fact that eBay has a senior manager of global intelligence, a manager of their Global Intelligence Center (GIC), with intelligence analysts, and a senior manager of special operations for eBay’s Global Security Team is completely and totally whack.

I understand the need for security to prevent things like industrial espionage, but the fact that eBay has a paramilitary wing is an indication of some deeper problems in the organization.

Boeing Cannot Make Aircraft Anymore, Part XXXIV

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The delivery of one of the first two KC-46 tankers has been delayed after debris was found in the fuel tanks.

This is aircraft manufacture 101, and it happened on one of the first air frames that was supposed to been accepted by the Air Force.

Boeing really cannot make airplanes any more:

The delivery of a new KC-46 Pegasus tanker aircraft to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina has been delayed after foreign object debris was found inside the plane by Boeing inspectors.

The delayed aircraft was to have been one of the first two KC-46s delivered to Air Force Reserve Command at Seymour Johnson on June 12. But while the first was successfully delivered, debris was found in the fuel tank of the second during its pre-acceptance inspections.

In a statement provided to Air Force Times and Defense News on Monday, the Air Force said the debris came from “non-standard factory rework,” and not the kind of “production line quality escapes” that caused the Air Force to halt KC-46 deliveries in March 2019.

Those problems with foreign object debris, or FOD, led the Air Force to put a plan in place to correct the problem.

………

Just a month after Boeing began delivering the KC-46 to the Air Force in January 2019, the service found foreign object debris — tools or other materials used to build the aircraft — left behind in multiple KC-46s, creating a potential safety hazard. As a result, the Air Force stopped accepting new tankers over a weeks-long period in March and April 2019 as it investigated the issue.

I’m not sure that Boeing can be fixed without burning the whole rotten edifice down and rebuilding from the ashes.

Linkage

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National Organization for Women Members Say Racism Ran Rampant (Daily Beast) Karens Abide
John Maynard Keynes: “Newton, the Man” (MacTutor History of Mathematics) Isaac Newton was a complete nut case.
Revealing the Divisive History of Minneapolis (CityLab) Explains why the current round of Black Lives Matter protests started in Minneapolis, a city called the, “anti-Semitism capital of the United States” in 1947.
Top 16 Euphemisms US Headline Writers Used for Police Beating the Sh%$ Out of People (FAIR) The View from nowhere is antithetical to good journalism.
Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop (Medium) A former cop says that there are no good cops.
Pennsylvania just became the third state to ban child marriage (CBS) Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?  It’s still legal in 47 states?
Unpacking the Left’s Cultural Baggage (The Bellows) Money quote, “Most people really like the substance of what the Left champions ……… but they really don’t like—and I mean really don’t like—are the many forms of cultural policing rooted in identitarian thinking.” (Is this self sabotage deliberate?)

Ask a Mortician makes Melville’s Moby Dick much more interesting:

Cats are Ingrates

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We just did our semi-regular complete cleaning of the cat room, along with are significantly more frequent changing of the cat litter.

Do you know that the cats did as soon as we were finished?

They crapped in it.

Typical.*

*This is sarcasm. The cats crapping in the cat box is actually a GOOD thing.

Pass the Popcorn

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A federal appeals court ruled Monday that President Donald Trump’s tax returns must be turned over to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who had subpoenaed the documents from Trump’s accounting firm as part of an investigation into the pre-election payoffs to two women who alleged affairs with Trump.

Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow said he would appeal the case to the Supreme Court. Trump had earlier lost the initial case before a federal district court, and it was since fast-tracked.

………

The three-judge panel wrote in their decision that “any presidential immunity from state criminal process does not extend to investigative steps like the grand jury subpoena at issue here,” affirming the lower court’s ruling on that question.

Vance is seeking to obtain eight years of Trump’s tax documents through his account firm, Mazars USA, to evaluate the Trump Organization’s role in the payouts to porn star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as the reimbursements made to Trump’s former longtime attorney Michael Cohen, who is now serving a three-year federal prison sentence for a litany of crimes, including campaign finance violations. Daniels and McDougal claimed to have had affairs with Trump, allegations he has denied.

Because the tax documents were requested under a grand jury subpoena, it’s unlikely they will become public if turned over. Trump is engaged in a series of legal battles across the country to keep his tax returns private.

I don’t think that it’s going to be resolved before the election, but I hope that will be.

Times Endorses Jamaal Bowman

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The New York Times just announced its Congressional endorsements, and they just endorsed Jamaal Bowman over incumbent Eliot Engel:

………

DISTRICT 16 (northern parts of the Bronx and southern half of Westchester County, including Mt. Vernon, Yonkers, New Rochelle and Rye): The current representative — Eliot Engel — has been in Congress since 1989, and his connections to the district seem to have frayed.

He was criticized for not returning home even as the coronavirus raged through communities he represents, particularly New Rochelle. When he did return for this race, he was caught on a hot mic pushing for a chance to speak during a protest rally, saying, “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”

His main challenger is Jamaal Bowman, an educator for more than 20 years and a fierce advocate for public schools. Mr. Bowman helped found a public middle school in the Bronx, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, and promises to work for all of the district, including sections he says have been neglected during Mr. Engel’s time in Congress.

Mr. Bowman says he wants to see the United States adopt a kind of Marshall Plan for climate change, jobs, housing and education. “We need political imagination,” he said. In a district that needs new energy, Mr. Bowman will bring it.

I’m beginning to think that Bowman is less of a long shot than I thought when I wrote about this 11 days ago.

It’s important to remember that primary challenges are important even when they fail, and a relatively low success rate is a given.

Dan Lipinski has already been taken out this election cycle, and if Engel is taken down, it will put fear in the hearts of a lot of Democratic Party incumbents.

Good.

H/T Diane Ravitch.

D’Oh! I Missed This Yesterday

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Not Good

Initial unemployment claims fell to a still horrifying high 1.5 million.

When the number drops below ½ million, we can start to talk about having a meaningful recovery.

As it stands, we still have not seen the full knock-on effects for April and May:

The number of people seeking unemployment benefits continued to fall while those receiving them appeared to plateau, signs the U.S. labor market continues to slowly mend from the coronavirus employment shock.

The ranks of Americans drawing on unemployment benefits declined slightly in the week ended May 30 to 20.9 million, the Labor Department said Thursday. So-called continuing claims remain historically high—the prepandemic record was 6.6 million in 2009—and appear to have stabilized in recent weeks after peaking in early May.

Though states continue to work through a backlog of claims, new applications for unemployment benefits have trended down since the coronavirus pandemic and related lockdowns triggered a surge in claims at the end of March. About 1.5 million applications were filed last week, compared with a peak of nearly 7 million in the week ended March 28.

Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.

Toxic as Hell

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Facebook is starting to lose advertisers because they think that it is a toxic organization:

Nima Gardideh, the co-founder of a digital advertising agency, has encouraged his clients to hold back millions in advertising dollars from Facebook.

………

But there was something else weighing on his mind: Facebook’s hands-off attitude toward President Trump’s aggressive, misleading posts.

“We harshly disagree with how Facebook has approached this,” said Mr. Gardideh, the co-founder of Pearmill, a New York marketing agency with a dozen clients, mostly tech start-ups. “For the past couple of years, this problem has become bigger and bigger. These massive platforms have to care about free speech issues to some extent, but Facebook is on the extreme end of not caring.”

Unlike Twitter and Snap, which have toughened their stances against Mr. Trump’s online statements that contain misinformation or promote violence, Facebook has held firm on its decision to leave his posts alone. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has defended the policy, despite the resignations of some staff members and public criticism from current and former employees.

In recent days, many companies have cautiously returned to advertising, after having pulled back during the height of the pandemic in the United States. But some have decided not to advertise on Facebook, now that it has become clear that Mr. Zuckerberg will give the president a wide berth.

But it ain’t just advertisers. Non-profit organizations are starting to reject funds from Zuckerberg’s Panopticon too, which kind of boggles the mind, since evil captains of industry is a primary source of funding for such groups:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to apply platform policies to moderate rule-breaking posts by President Trump and other political figures has prompted a pair of tech policy groups to stop accepting money from the ad biz.

On Wednesday, Public Knowledge and the Open Technology Institute said they would no longer accept funding from Facebook because it refuses to moderate hate, misinformation, and abuse.

“I believe that different platforms can have different moderation policies,” said Chris Lewis, President and CEO of Public Knowledge, in a statement.

“However, platforms shouldn’t hide behind the First Amendment as an excuse to allow hate, misinformation, and abuse to run rampant on their services, particularly when they hold such a dominant position in the marketplace. Doing so distorts what the First Amendment means, and ignores the influence that moderation has on our civic conversations and system of democracy.”

Facebook’s relentless support of right-wing lies and exhortations are not an accident, nor are they an artifact of deeply held beliefs about free speech by Zuckerberg.

They are an artifact that right-wing mythology and violence get more engagement from the users than does the left wing equivalent, and so generates so generates more money, as both Zuckerberg and the Macedonian teens promulgating conspiracy theories in 2016.

It’s all about the Benjamins.

Support Your Local Police

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In yet another example of how the Boyz in Blue are covering with glory, while protests were raging, a squad of officers, including supervisors, hung out in Representative Bobby Rush’s office drinking his coffee and popping his microwave popcorn.

One took a nap on the office couch.

The others just hung out, instead of  ……… you know ……… Doing Their F%$#ing Jobs.

Then again, considering that their job right now is basically basically brutalizing people for engaging in First Amendment protected behavior.

Still, their asses should be fired:

As protests across Chicago devolved into chaos last week and residents started to loot nearby stores, police officers were making popcorn and drinking coffee while “lounging” inside Congressman Bobby Rush’s office, officials said in a stunning news conference on Thursday.


This is F%$#ed Up & Sh%$

Speaking alongside Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Rush said at least 13 Chicago Police officers were loitering inside his South Side campaign office in the early hours of June 1 and were “relaxing” while nearby stores were being looted and burned, and their fellow officers were clashing with demonstrators.

“They even had the unmitigated gall to make coffee for themselves and to pop popcorn, my popcorn, in my microwave, while looters were tearing apart businesses within their sight and within their reach,” Rush (D-IL) said.

………

The incident, which Rush and Lightfoot said was captured on CCTV, showed the officers—and at least three supervisors—with feet up on desks. One officer “was asleep on my couch” while another “was on his cellphone,” Rush said.

“They were in a mode of relaxation and did not care about what was happening. They did not care. They absolutely did not care,” Rush added.

………

Lightfoot, at times visibly angry and tearful during the Thursday press conference, said the officers “demonstrated a total disregard for their colleagues [and] for the badge” and should be held accountable. She said she and her team were “enraged” when they learned of the incident. None of the 13 officers has been identified, and she urged them to come forward before investigators find them.

They’re not going to come forward, because ……… COPS.

That being said, when they get caught, I think that the statement from the Chicago police union defending them is going to HAVE to be one for the ages.

This is a Sick Burn, If You Know Russian

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Британский парламентарий призывает громить еврейские могилы.
🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ https://t.co/lY5ymjJDGh

— Ruslana Boshirova Альянс пианистов (@ValLisitsa) June 11, 2020

In case you are wondering, “Британский парламентарий призывает громить еврейские могилы,” translates to, “British MP calls for smashing Jewish graves.”

It’s not a statue that he wants destroyed, it’s Karl Marx’s grave stone.

Bummer of a Birthmark, Uber

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The California PUC has just made it official, ruling that the drivers for Uber and Lyft are employees, not independent contractors.

I guess that the “Ride Sharing” companies are going to have to find a new way to f%$# over their drivers to justify the obscene money that they pay their senior executives.

Oh, the humanity.

Think of the venture capitalists!

The California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates private transport companies including Uber and Lyft, has ruled that the two upstarts’ drivers should be recognized as employees instead of contractors.

The issue over the status of drivers for ride-hailing companies has been controversial for a while. Cali Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 5, known as AB5, that classifies gig economy workers, such as Uber and Lyft drivers, as employees in the US state.

The law came into force in January this year, though Uber and Lyft have resisted the change. Both companies were sued by the state’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra last month for failing to recognize its drivers as employees. Now, the California Public Utilities Commission has weighed in.

About f%$#ing time.

D’Oh!!!!!!

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The Republican Party decided that they did not need to update their party platform from what they had in 2016, so it includes a condemnation of the current President.

Old habits die hard, I guess.

Oops:

When Republicans read the platform their party is using for the 2020 campaign, they may be surprised to see that it is full of condemnations of the sitting president.

“The survival of the internet as we know it is at risk,” the platform reads. “Its gravest peril originates in the White House, the current occupant of which has launched a campaign, both at home and internationally, to subjugate it to agents of government.”

The warning about speech online is one of more than three dozen unflattering references to either the “current president,” “current chief executive,” “current administration,” people “currently in control” of policy, or the “current occupant” of the White House that appear in the Republican platform. Adopted at the party’s 2016 convention, it has been carried over through 2024 after the executive committee of the Republican National Committee on Wednesday chose not to adopt a new platform for 2020.

The platform censures the “current” president — who in 2016 was, of course, Barack Obama — and his administration for, among other things, imposing “a social and cultural revolution,” causing a “huge increase in the national debt” and damaging relationships with international partners.