U.S. Sponsors Fan the Olympic Flame
They all shrug and say, “The Games aren’t political.” But they are profitable.
America’s biggest companies may be downplaying their Olympic sponsorships at home, but in Beijing? You can’t walk two feet without a flashy reminder of the U.S.‘s heavy corporate presence. “At the bottom of the slope where snowboarders [compete]… an electronic sign cycles through ads for companies like Samsung and Audi,” the New York Times explains. “Coca-Cola’s cans are adorned with Olympic rings. Procter & Gamble has opened a beauty salon in the Olympic Village. Visa is the event’s official credit card.” Like most of today’s corporate culture, it’s the tale of two continents: demand “justice” at home, enable the violators of it abroad.
For Visa, Airbnb, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and Intel Corporation, those pledges of social responsibility and vows to uphold human rights don’t translate into Chinese. When their spokespeople have been pressed about Uyghur genocide or the regime’s other crimes against humanity, they all shrug and say, “The Games aren’t political.” But they are profitable, and to this handful of money-grubbing CEOs, that’s apparently all that matters. Speaking out would mean jeopardizing their business with 1.4 billion customers — and that’s a risk these brands won’t take.
“Isn’t that disgusting?” Sam Brownback asked. The former Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom has been as revolted as anyone with the duplicity of America’s companies. “They’ll protest all the time [about] things going on in the United States or the West. But if it’s about China,” he fumed on “Washington Watch,” “they’re silent. And a lot of these Western companies are what’s propping up communist China. You pull these western companies out of China and disentangle our two economies, and China is a wreck economically.” At the end of the day, he insists, American businesses are helping to make this “totalitarian communist atheistic regime” possible.
In the Wall Street Journal, one Chinese defector warns that hosting the Olympics actually makes the oppression worse. When Beijing won the 2008 Summer Games, a young Anastasia Lin was horrified to watch the persecution intensify leading up to the Olympics. It was the communist party’s way of “cleaning up” the city, she said. Friends of hers were sent to “re-education camps” then too, where they were “beaten, slapped, force-fed, and only released when [they] were near death.”
“The Communist Party finds these crackdowns necessary because of the influx of foreigners. It doesn’t want them to come into contact with Chinese citizens who question or reject its rule.” COVID, Lin explains, has given them an even better excuse to keep visitors in a bubble. “Holding the Olympics in Beijing doesn’t mean the world accepts China. It means the world accepts the Communist Party, which silences the Chinese people by jailing and torturing those who dare to speak. I didn’t understand that in 2001, but I was a child growing up in a closed society. The West has no excuse now.”
Fortunately, the fury at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), America’s corporate sponsors, and everyone involved in bringing the Games to Beijing is almost universal. Both sides on Capitol Hill have been working furiously to hold the enablers of China responsible. Representatives like Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) and Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) have joined forces to bring anyone helping to excuse the regime’s human rights abuses to justice. “The IOC’s rot runs deep,” the pair insists. “We must take action to put pressure on them from every angle, and that means hitting them where it hurts most — their corporate sponsorships.”
American companies who want to wash their hands of the ugliness happening behind closed doors and barbed wire will have a hard time of it now. And that’s the silver lining of these Games, Brownback says. “You know, one of the things I’ve been very pleased about with these Olympics is [that they] have shined a light on all the abuses and the darkness of the Chinese Communist Party… [People have] seen about the abuse of the Uyghurs and what’s taking place in the country and of the Christians and what’s [happening] to them. [And it’s now] becoming a major political issue in the United States. [Americans want to know] what candidates running for the United States Senate are pro-China or anti-China? … I’m very encouraged about how much the United States public has pushed back against our relationship with communist China.”
And frankly, there’s a lot more we can do. For starters, we can avoid the companies who are doing business with one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. Instead of encouraging their woke corporate agendas, it’s time to walk down the street to a local IGA or a True Value Hardware and do your shopping with small businesses who are more responsive to the community. Americans need to send the message that we won’t tolerate corporations who won’t “meddle” in China but refuse to stop meddling in policy decisions here at home.
As Michael Mazza passionately reminds everyone in NRO, we are the solution. “It is American consumers who have the ability to actually impose costs. But they — we — have not done so… From the halls of power in Washington to the beverage aisles in grocery stores, we have all failed the Uyghurs and other victims of [communist China’s] rights abuses, to some degree. While they suffer at the hands of a genocidal regime, the rest of us blithely gorge on the bread and circuses that the regime serves up. Shame on us all.”
Originally published here.
Waiting on a Price Fighter to Knock out Inflation
The around-the-clock Olympic coverage may be taking some of the heat off the White House, but the relief is only temporary. While Americans are distracted by medal counts, compelling stories, and governments who are worse than ours, the other February news is a rude reminder of how much the Biden administration has set us back. Most people already realize our economy is going downhill faster than the U.S. ski team — what they don’t know, thanks to Joe Biden, is when it will stop.
When inflation topped seven percent for the first time in 40 years, the president tried nonchalance. It’s temporary, Biden said. Now, a handful of months later — and inflation another half-percent higher — NBC’s Lester Holt didn’t pull any punches. “I think a lot of Americans are wondering what your definition of temporary is,” he asked in a sit-down interview with the president. Biden called him a wise guy, but the point had been made. Democrats can’t keep downplaying our problems or their role in creating them.
In some cities, rent is up 30 percent from last year. Prices for used cars have climbed 40 percent, and families are paying almost $900 more for groceries. We’ve printed too much money, spent too much money, and what is the president’s solution? Rinse and repeat. Fortunately, at least one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is capable of looking at the situation sanely and agrees with Republicans that the worst thing we could do is blow through $5 trillion more dollars with Biden’s Build Back Better plan.
“This is not a time to be throwing more fuel on the fire,” Manchin argued. “We have inflation, and we have basically an economy that’s on fire. You don’t throw more fuel on a fire that’s already on fire. So we have to get our house in order.” Of course, that’s not what any Leftist — Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) included — wants to hear. To ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, she balked. “With all the respect in the world to my friend Joe Manchin, it’s not right to say that what we’re doing is contributing to inflation because it is exactly the opposite.”
Good luck persuading the American people of that. Huge majorities think Joe Biden is not only responsible for our economic problems — he’s making them worse. Another six in 10 say there’s “literally nothing Biden has done since taking office that they approve of.” Democrats argue that Build Back Better will somehow put more money in people’s pockets. But most voters aren’t willing to gamble on another bad Biden bet. “It doesn’t matter how good everything else is going,” one Democratic strategist admitted to the Washington Post, “people really do feel inflation. Most people don’t feel nine million jobs created. They feel when it’s $10 more to fill your tank up or bread is up. They feel it even if they’re getting paid more.”
Dr. Dave Brat, dean of Liberty University’s School of Business, has been a student of economics his whole life and agrees that spending more is never the way to dig out of an inflation hole. “The way you fix it is you slam your brake on. You quit printing money. The Fed hasn’t raised rates at all yet, and they’re still doing a little bit of monetary easing. They’re still creating minimal inflation. They’re adding fuel to the fire instead of putting their foot on the brake. Because if you put your foot on the brake, they know they may get a recession.”
No one wants that, he agreed, but if we don’t cure inflation, we’ll be in worse shape in the months to follow. And so will the Democratic Party, strategists warn. They can take their medicine now or schedule their moving vans later. Either way, someone needs to tackle the problem. And if this majority won’t, then it will be up to the voters to put people in power who will.
Originally published here.
Califf Joins Biden’s Who-Not-to-Hire Team
Robert Califf’s nomination as Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) didn’t include the “unknowns” many nominees face. Senators know exactly how he’ll handle the job because he held it once before. Based on his track record, he didn’t deserve another chance. Yet the Senate confirmed him yesterday in a 50-46 vote. Six Republican senators supported Califf’s confirmation, which meant that he was confirmed even though five Democrats voted against him, and one Democrat was unable to vote. If Republicans had been united in opposition, Robert Califf’s confirmation would have failed.
Califf led the FDA during President Obama’s last year in office, during which he championed chemical abortion. At the behest of the abortion industry, Califf dismantled or weakened safety protocols on chemical abortion, helping the abortion industry to perform increasing numbers of abortions by pill. Ever since the FDA approved chemical abortion in 2000 under the pro-abortion Clinton administration, the two drugs involved (mifepristone and misoprostol) were only dispensed under strict protocols protecting the health and safety of the mother. The unborn child, obviously, was not protected by the protocols, because the whole point of these drugs is to poison the baby.
The FDA’s 2016 changes transferred risk and labor inherent in the abortion from the provider to the mother, thus increasing the abortion provider’s profit. The drugs were previously approved until 49 days into pregnancy because later use carried greater risk to the mother; under Califf, the FDA extended this until 70 days into pregnancy. Califf also nixed the requirement for a follow-up office visit, where medical professionals could confirm the mother’s physical condition, and allowed the woman to self-administer the second dose unsupervised. This demonstrates callous disregard for the well-being of the mother, because a chemical abortion inherently contains risks of sepsis (infection), hemorrhage, ectopic pregnancy, and other complications which could become life-threatening if not promptly treated. The FDA also approved an “off-label” regimen not backed by clinical trials, preferred by the likes of Planned Parenthood.
It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that President Biden has nominated an abortion activist to lead the FDA during the COVID pandemic. Biden nominated another abortion activist, Xavier Becerra, as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Like Califf, Becerra also prioritized advancing a Leftist agenda over the well-being of all Americans. His lack of leadership on COVID led The Washington Post to report that “White House officials… have openly mused about who might be better in the job.” That’s what happens when you nominate an unqualified activist to a post that requires common sense and a steady hand. Califf’s track record of promoting the interests of abortion giants over those of women and their unborn babies suggests we can expect from him a performance similar to Becerra. At a time when America needs the FDA to fast-track approvals for COVID therapeutics and vaccines, Califf is the perfect choice — for fast-tracking chemical abortion pills instead.
Over 4,200 adverse events related to chemical abortion were voluntarily reported to the FDA, including 26 deaths. Yet chemical abortion keeps increasing as abortion providers increasingly prefer it. Chemical abortions nearly doubled between 2008 and 2017 to become 39 percent of all abortions in the United States, before the Trump administration tapped the brakes. With Califf sliding behind the wheel, the Biden administration will push the pedal to the metal to accelerate the use of chemical abortion by removing the guardrails. The U.S. government will once again commit a hideous abuse of women’s trust — not to mention the callous attitude that regards a unique human life as something to dispose of with a couple of pills.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
