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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 6 days

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by Seth Mandel

A hideous article in the Washington Post goes out of its way to flaunt its disregard for journalistic ethics in the service of exacerbating the national anti-Semitism crisis. The piece itself is the reporting equivalent of corking the bat, filling an article with examples that undermine its thesis and hoping nobody looks inside.

The topic of the piece, written by Pranshu Verma, is the assertion that cancel culture is being applied to defenders of Hamas, so now cancel culture is bad. But the most objectionable part of the article is where Verma misrepresents an incident so egregiously that the credibility of the whole piece crumbles to dust.

To be clear, the rest of the article isn’t accurate either. For example, people weren’t being punished for “criticiz[ing] Israel,” as the headline declares, but usually for behavior such as destroying posters or chanting genocidal slogans and the like. Unfortunately, that sort of obfuscation is ubiquitous in media reporting on the aftermath of Hamas’s massacre on Oct. 7. The truly appalling part of the article is in the following excerpt:

Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel responded by attacking Gaza, groups have poured resources into identifying people with opposing political beliefs, sometimes deploying aggressive publicity campaigns that have resulted in profound real-world consequences. Within weeks of Oct. 7, ‘doxing trucks’ prowled the campuses of Harvard, Columbia and Princeton, displaying the names and photos of students and professors who had signed statements declaring solidarity with Palestinians. In January, a Rutgers Law School student sued the university, alleging that he had faced discriminatory disciplinary action after sharing what he deemed ‘pro-Hamas’ messages from his classmates with school administrators.

So here’s how the Washington Post frames the Rutgers situation: Pro-Hamas people are having their lives ruined by Jews who highlight their public comments, and this Rutgers fellow is an example not only of that but of essentially doxxing. (Doxxing means to reveal personal identifying information that is either nonpublic or requires enough effort to find that it is, in a practical sense, nonpublic.)

Here’s what actually happened. Members of the Student Bar Association sent their group chat anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas messages after the Oct. 7 massacre, and an Orthodox Jewish law student in the chat, Yoel Ackerman, responded. He shared the messages with the Rutgers Jewish Law Students Association. For this, the law school opened disciplinary proceedings against Ackerman, with the law school dean telling her colleagues “we have a Jewish law student seeking to take and publish the names of those he deems to be supporting Hamas.” He was then subject to a Sovietesque impeachment hearing from the Student Bar Association. Ackerman, without receiving sufficient explanation, was berated for three hours in what amounted to administrative harassment. In order to dispense of their troublesome Jew, the SBA then moved to suspend its own constitution in order to expel Ackerman.

That’s when Rutgers University stepped in, and briefly suspended the SBA while it could sort out the mess that Hamas propagandists and their enthusiastic supporters among the deans had made of the school. The SBA was soon reinstated.

This, the Washington Post tells us, is an example of a Jew oppressing the poor gentile.

This is not biased reporting. It is Jew-baiting propaganda with a long and very disturbing history. The rest of the article, meanwhile, is biased reporting: Verma simply launders the exterminationist language of domestic extremists into legitimate criticism of a foreign government.

The whole article is science fiction. But the apology the paper owes Ackerman is very real.

#hamas #gaza #washington post #media bias #rutgers university #sba #student bar association #yoel ackerman #pranshu verma

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slasherscream · 1 year

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the crazy ass boys gang or yandere until dawn boys spending the holidays with the reader/reader’s family? 👀

A/N: a little late on this but better now than never! happy holidays my loves (tried to keep the headcanons vague so you could imagine a variety of winter holidays in here, but i'm sorry if it's still christmas centric, honey, that's what i celebrate and so i tend to get carried away with it)

TIP-JAR

crazy ass boys gang + spending the holidays with reader

billy loomis:

It will be a hard sell to get him to enjoy the holidays with you. I won't lie to you. The reason? Besides the fact that he thinks he's too cool for the holidays, they bring up a lot of.... undealt with feelings regarding his own family. You might be tempted to let him grump it out because that will be easier. Resist! He wants you to pull him from his totally-not-seasonal-depression into holiday bliss with you. He just wants you to earn it.

So put on your working boots and get to it. Drag him into tradition, decorate the house, fill it with the smell of well-cooked food. Eventually, the cheer and vigor with which you do everything will get to him. He'll begrudgingly join in and find himself enjoying the holidays for the first time in years.

Pick one battle at a time and leave the roadblock of celebrating with your family for next year's holiday season. Trust me.

josh washington:

Polar opposite of Billy. He loves the holidays. All of the holidays! He's incredibly happy to spend them with you, no matter how many years you've spent them together before. Each year feels special to him, in the corniest way possible.

The biggest problem during the holiday season is deciding who you'll be celebrating with. Are you going to party with mutual friends this year? Go to his family's house or yours? Everyone wants to see you two during the holidays. You're everyone's favorite couple.

You two sometimes stretch yourselves a little thin, practically promising to be in two places at once! While that can add stress to the most magical time of the year, you try and relax and focus on what really matters in your few moments of downtime: each other.

stu macher:

Stu isn't one for traditional holidays at home with the family because that's never how he spent his growing up. The holidays meant trips around the world to far-off places. He doesn't want to give that up now that you're together. In fact, he wants to travel even more, especially if you aren't well-traveled.

The holidays for Stu are synonymous with adventure. If you humor him, he'll make it worth your while and let you pick the location of your trip. The best part is, no matter how expensive the trip gets, he pays for the whole thing.

His family has the money. Why not spend it? Actually, the best part is one of his love languages, as a rich boy, is gift-giving... and he does not consider paying for the holiday vacation his holiday gift to you. You're getting that expensive vacation plus a boatload of gifts under the Christmas tree. He knows how to spoil his partner when he wants to, that's for sure.

jd/jason dean:

Is completely willing to spend the holidays with your family (but I cannot stress this enough); do not take him home to celebrate with your family unless you have a perfect relationship with every single member. He will sense discord in relationships and he will choose to say the tiniest remark perfect for igniting holiday chaos and discontent.

Why? He couldn't tell you why. Maybe chaos is more fun than holiday harmony. When he senses a problem, his instinct is to dig into that problem to find its source. It's an addiction of his.

Other than that, during the holidays, instead of succumbing to melancholy over the past, he strives to make your time together as sweet as possible. He goes along with tradition with minimal cynical commentary and enjoys the happiness the holidays bring you. If you're content, he's content.

kevin khatchadourian:

As disrespectfully as possible, he hates the holidays and hates that you want to celebrate them. Any of them. The more you push, the more irritated he becomes.

Everything about the holidays highlights all the parts of society he finds most unpalatable. The fake cheer people greet each other with. Consumerism. The vigor with which they adore and worship their religious figures. It all makes him sick.

Still... there is a certain glow about you around this time of year. So when you ask him to do things, he goes along with your inane wishes with gritted teeth holding back the venomous words he wants so badly to say (do you have any idea how much he holds back for your sake?) Compliance is truly the best gift you can receive from Kevin any time of year.

nathan prescott:

Before you, he'd spend most of his holidays under the influence of whatever substance he could get his hands on first. He's slowed down on the abuse of most things since being with you. Still, the holidays are no walk in the park for him.

There's no way you'll spend the holidays with his family, even if his father "requested" his presence. He'd break his own leg to keep from having to look his father in the eye.

When you bring up the possibility of spending the holidays with your family, he's a little upset, he wanted to spend the holidays with you. When you clarify that you meant the two of you spending time with your family... well, he had a small panic attack, admittedly.

No matter how much you reassure him that everything will be fine, nothing helps until he actually meets your family and is warmly received. He'll be a little awkward the entire time, but the sheer warmth of love coming from everyone around him is enough to make him cry. Come next year it will be Nathan who suggests spending the holidays with your family again.

sebastian valmont:

To Sebastian, the holidays means receiving a few very expensive (but ultimately quite meaningless) gifts from his father which he reciprocates and then going back to pretending, like neither the holidays nor his father, exist. Cold? Certainly. Sad? Absolutely. But that's how it's always been.

If there was ever a Christmas full of love, it happened before he could remember, so it might as well have never happened at all.

Now you're here and things are different. There's a buzz in the air this time of year. You talk, you dance, you cook, you smile. You do everything together, attached at the hip. You drag him to spend time with your family and even that is tolerable, and Sebastian hates spending time with anyone's family (even yours.)

Being with you has been blissful, even with everything you had to overcome to be happy with one another. How well the holidays went will cement the knowledge in his head that you're what's it for him. You're what he wants, for now and always.

He'll surprise you on New Years Eve with one last tiny present, or that's what he tells you, as he puts you in the car and drives you to an unknown location, blindfolded the whole way there. When you arrive, he'll guide you tenderly up some steps and through a door, and then he'll take off the blindfold. You'll be standing in the most beautiful home you've ever seen. A place plucked directly from your wildest dreams (or all your late night talks with Sebastian).

"Move in with me?" He'd say, somehow smug and earnest at the exact same time.

It's a wonderful way to bring in the New Year.

david mccall:

Will insist on spending time with your family if your relationship with them is good. But if it's bad? Even better, he gets you all to himself.

Goes along with everything you want to do. He's at your beck and call. Whatever you want is yours and nothing you ask is too much. He'll cook with you for hours. He'll clean the house from top to bottom and then smile when you tell him you still have to decorate together. He loves the domesticity of it all.

When you give him his gift he'll be genuinely choked up. You'd already discussed the fact that you were exchanging gifts this year, but it still moves him to receive this physical reminder that you know him, and that you care. Frankly, he hasn't received many gifts in the course of his lifetime. Yours means everything to him.

Even though you both agreed to just one gift each, when you wake up that morning there will be a pile of gifts waiting for you. What can David say? He likes to spoil you.

sparrow!ben hargreeves:

The holidays are the busiest time of year when it comes to preventing crime. People are more desperate around the holidays, more prone to violence than words during the most "magical" time of the year. The holidays have never meant much, just a promise of more crime to fight. Still, this is the worst holiday for him yet.

Stuck in some strange, alternate world his father created, all his Sparrow siblings dead and all the Umbrellas having gone their separate ways? When he's not fighting crime, he's keeping himself wasted. Rebuilding a legacy for himself as a superhero when he did all this groundwork for himself when he was just a kid in the original timeline. It's brutal. It's humiliating.

It's not all bad though... there is, of course, you. The super-powered plus one that the Umbrellas had dragged along through two separate apocalypses until you'd apparently manifested into his reality. When everyone went their separate ways, you'd, for some reason, stuck with Ben.

He tries to pretend, but you both know he's grateful for your company, even though he's an asshole on his best of days.

You're not an Umbrella anymore. And he isn't a Sparrow. Now you're a super-hero duo and it works, somehow. You make a good team.

In a short time, against the odds (the odds being Ben's award-winning personality), you've become friends. Maybe even a weird, two-person family. Except he's pretty sure most families don't have the suffocating amount of sexual tension you do.

You've kissed before. Under the light of a dying universe, when you were pretty sure you were both going to cease to exist. You opened up to each other that night. But then there was the stress of... kinda saving the world? And then you wound up in this new, broken, strange one. You haven't talked about the kiss since.

He feels like he's going crazy.

Especially because you live together. He's not sure why he insisted on moving in together (because he's in love with you? because he's never lived alone before? because he misses his family?) but he did. Now he deals with the consequences every day. He hears you singing in the shower to start your day. He hatefully makes you cups of coffee that he insists are poison for the body (don't bring up the fact that he got blackout last night) when you have a long day ahead of you. He preps you for the interviews you two have started doing together, the whole world entranced by this new super-hero duo that the two of you make. He even holds your hand before your public appearances, because he knows you get stage fright.

There's something deeply wrong with him.

He tries to get you both to focus on crime this year, but you fight him every step of the way. Let's decorate, you chirp! Let's watch holiday movies, you smile. Let's cook our favorite foods together instead of getting them delivered, you beg. It's all maddening!

And now, having made it through all the holidays relatively emotionally distant and unscathed, you have the nerve to be laid up against him, staring up at him with big, drooping eyes waiting for midnight to hit on New Years Eve, and you ask him if he misses his family.

He snaps and finally kisses you, months of wanting and waiting and burning boiling over into this moment.

How could he miss his family when you're sitting right beside him?

#crazy ass boys gang #billy loomis x reader #stu macher x reader #jd x reader #josh washington x reader #nathan prescott x reader #kevin khatchadourian imagine #kevin khatchadourian x reader #david mccall x reader #sebastian valmont x reader #ben hargreeves x reader #sparrow ben #my ben hargreeves bias is showing in this collection i'm sorry guys #he's my MUSE the love of my LIFE #happy holidays!

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eretzyisrael · 4 months

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by Lenny Ben-David

The New York Times (December 21, 2023) claimed Israel’s air force used U.S.-provided 2,000-pound bombs in Gaza, specifically a model that “is one of the most destructive munitions in Western military arsenals.” But the Times based its analysis on the wrong bomb, a Mark-84, which explodes on impact with little penetration properties.

The Washington Post (December 22, 2023), with its satellite and visual analysis, claimed that “the evidence presented by the Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the [Shifa] hospital as a command-and-control center.”

CNN, following the New York Times, claimed that Israel’s 2,000-pound bombs were responsible for the high casualty rate among Gazans. But it appears that CNN was also relying on data from general-use MK-84 bombs and not earth-penetrating bunker busters that explode underground.

What is clear in one CNN map is that the bunker-buster bombs did not damage nearby schools or injure children, but they were deployed to destroy Hamas tunnels, which also explains why the craters were in a linear pattern as if the Israeli pilots were bombing a long stretch of tunnel.

Even suggesting that the IDF sought to harm Gazan school children is a blood libel. But genuinely puzzling is why CNN had a very tiny caption that admits Israel used bunker-busting bombs that avoid explosive damage on the surface.

All Gazan casualty reports emanate from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which has a determined desire and motive to inflate the number of civilian dead, especially women and children. The number of Hamas’ dead combatants is never published.

Hamas’ inflated numbers have become gospel truth, repeated in awe and fury on campuses, television, social media, and in Congress and presidential press conferences. The New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN are co-conspirators in the scam. The consequences of the fraud are Members of Congress calling to cut military aid to Israel, encouraged by Israel detractors.

The New York Times (December 21, 2023) claimed Israel’s air force used U.S.-provided 2,000-pound bombs, specifically a model that “is one of the most destructive munitions in Western military arsenals. When a 2,000-pound bomb detonates,” the Times wrote, it unleashes a blast wave and metal fragments thousands of feet in every direction.” Using “artificial intelligence,” The Times “measured the…craters to find ones that spanned roughly 40 feet across or more, which experts say are typically formed only by 2,000-pound bombs.”1

But, the Times based its analysis on the wrong bomb, a Mark-84, which explodes on impact with little penetration properties. The Times failed to report on a more credible bomb, the BLU-109 “bunker buster bomb,” that penetrates many meters below the surface before it explodes, making it a very effective weapon to destroy deep Hamas tunnels. The craters were the telltale sign of underground voids, such as tunnels, collapsing. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The United States has not previously disclosed the total number of weapons it sent to Israel nor the transfer of 100 BLU-109, 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs.”2

One U.S. intelligence officer (retired) told the author, “The crater in the (Times’) image is ridiculously clean for there to have been a target on top of it. The crater is also symmetrical, which would not be the case if the bomb had glided in.”

If the civilian structures and hospital buildings in Gaza were connected to or located above Hamas tunnels, wouldn’t they be legitimate targets for Israel? Comes the Washington Post (December 22, 2023), with its satellite and visual analysis to show that “the evidence presented by the Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the [Shifa] hospital as a command-and-control center.” Expressly, the Post declared, “The rooms connected to the tunnel network discovered by IDF troops showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas, and there is no evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards.” A video of two hostages dragged into Shifa’s entrance was explained away by the Post as circumstantial evidence – “It was not clear if the hostages were taken to the hospital for medical treatment or other purposes.”3

#media attack #new york times #washington post #cnn #media bias #israel #hamas #gaza #bunker buster bombs #hamas tunnels

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crow-in-springtime · 10 months

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@lee-thebee I couldn’t reblog your post for some reason (I think it’s something on my end dw) but here’s a video of the scene

#don’t worry reynie sticky laughs at your goat joke later in this very episode. like ultimately it doesn’t work but that’s not the point #my son. can’t believe they would ever say he’s not funny. his knock-knock joke game would decimate every stand up comedian ever #<- is that canon? no. do I stand by it? yes #but also personal bias aside what kind of plan was that reynie? 😭#mbs #mysterious benedict society #tmbs #the mysterious benedict society #reynie muldoon #sticky washington #kate wetherall #constance contraire #ky’s gallery

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2bpoliticallycurious · 1 year

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Another good commentary by Jennifer Rubin about how the mainstream media’s fear of being accused of “liberal bias,” overdependence on “historical trends,” the “professional cynicism” of the Beltway press, group think, and confirmation bias have repeatedly led to the MSM underestimating the economic and political performance of the Biden administration. Here are some excerpts:

Many in the mainstream media greeted news on Thursday of robust 2.9 percent economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2022 with surprise — shock even. And on Friday, there was more good economic news: Inflation rates dropped in December compared with November, the sixth straight month of declines.

These numbers were often characterized as defying expectations of a recession or despite economic head winds. The Wall Street Journal proclaimed that even though last quarter’s growth was solid, the U.S. economy “entered this year with less momentum as rising interest rates and still-high inflation weighed on demand.” Almost comically, the Associated Press wanted to know: “How will we know if the US economy is in a recession?”

The better question: When will the mainstream media recognize good economic news for what it is? [...] That is not to say the chance of some type of a recession is zero. Inflation is still high compared with a year ago, so the Federal Reserve will keep raising rates. A downturn is still possible. A potential default prompted by MAGA House brinkmanship could throw the economy out of kilter. But the certainty with which the mainstream media asserted for months that the United States was on the precipice of a recession seems wrong — and oddly familiar.

Akin to the red-wave midterm election that never happened, the media never seems to waiver from its gloomy predictions for the Biden administration. And its widespread refusal to give credit to the Fed and the administration even as good news came in has been notable.

Aside from the media’s predilection to stress negative news (due to the assumption that good news doesn’t attract as many eyeballs), there are several factors that might explain reporters’ willingness to buy into sky-is-falling predictions for Democrats.

First, the media remains deathly afraid of accusations of liberal bias. The constant course correction in the name of illusory “balance” leads to parroting right-wing talking points.

Second, the media is often a prisoner of historic trends. The first midterm always goes to the party out of power; the president’s poor ratings always mean bad news for his party; and a recession always follows a hike in interest rates. The problem is that “always” is rarely — if ever — accurate. (For example, Republicans under George W. Bush performed well in their first midterm elections.)

Moreover, things are different now. The pandemic and resulting recession is unlike any other economic event before it. And the cloud that Donald Trump has hung over his party has had a unique drag on Republicans in three consecutive elections. Sometimes, the past is no guide to the future.

Third, as with its premature obituary for Biden’s first term, the Beltway media covers the midterms and the economy as the permanent opposition to the White House. Certain that they are hearing spin from the White House, media members consistently refuse to give credit to the incumbent president and see themselves as professional cynics. If the White House says it is sunny outside, that must mean it is pouring.

Finally, group think is a perennial problem in the mainstream media. Reporters and editors circulate from one outlet to another; no one wants to be too far out of the consensus; and too many political reporters see everything through the prism of partisan horse-race politics.

All of these factors contribute to confirmation bias. The media starts with an assumption, sifting out contrary data and doubling down on facts that seem “right.”

The solution? More diversity in newsrooms. More expertise in areas other than politics. Less cringing over the threat of attacks from the right and less unstinting negativity. These changes would serve the media and the country well.

[emphasis added]

#mainstream media bias #biden administration #us economy #jennifer rubin #the washington post

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futurebird · 2 years

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Errors and Bias in State-Sponsored Summer Teacher Training

This summer in Florida the governor, Ron DeSantis, enacted the next part in his plan to mutilate the public education system. There were many issues with this teacher training. Notably a focus on "originalism" as the only correct way to read the constitution and a rejection of strict separation of church and state. This framing of history is tailored to support right-wing politics and Christian Nationalism. The presentations included slides for teaching “Qualities of an Upright and Desirable Citizen” and a section titled “Misconception: The Founders desired strict separation of church and state and the Founders only wanted to protect Freedom of worship.” (Focus on "what the founders want" and "what the founders could imagine" is baked in to this framing. Even then this is hardly an area of consensus among historians.) I'd like to focus on how slavery was presented. Very little was said to teachers about slavery at the training. So, what was said is even more important. The little information presented was selective, using intentional errors to push an ideological narrative. Consider this slide from the teacher training Slave owners Washington and Jefferson are selected as the best people from their time to articulate "Opposition to Slavery" (couldn't think think of anyone better to quote on this topic? anyone more relevant? Maybe someone who didn't have a vested interest in slavery?):

The quote attributed to Washington is mangled! Washington never even said this quote as presented. He said something similar, true, but the tone of the real quote is very different.

" ... abolished by law." should be " ... abolished by slow, sure, & imperceptable degrees." (source) This is, presumably, the very best quote they could find from Washington. Another slide on slavery from the teacher training:

No major factual errors in this one, but factual errors aren't the only way to introduce bias. Considering how little was said about slavery what impression would these facts leave? Why is it important to mention that the number of slaves "increased in America through birth?" Is the implication that being born into slavery is a different kind of moral evil than being trafficked directly from Africa? Teachers in FL (and all states) should absolutely teach about these slides. In media literacy context of course! It's possible to push an agenda in many ways. By selecting what to present and what to ignore, through inaccuracies, by framing statistics in a misleading manner and placing facts together to lead the reader to an unspoken conclusion. This is terrifying. It joins the attacks on LGBTQ communities and especially the eliminationist rhetoric and legislation targeting trans people. Florida is going in a very dangerous direction. Ultimately, the plan is to drag the whole country along with them. I firmly believe we can stop this from happening, but I do not think it will be easy. Sources:

New Florida teacher training downplays role of slavery in U.S. history

Florida curriculum trainings show teachers how to make students ‘desirable citizens’

New Florida curriculum training goes from Civil War to Civil Rights, skips over Reconstruction

‘Mind-blowing what they tried to convince us of’: Florida teachers on new, ‘very skewed’ curriculum

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gettothestabbing · 8 months

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The defendants were indicted for their participation in an October 2020 rescue action at the D.C.-based Washington Surgi-Clinic (WSC), the abortion facility run by Cesare Santangelo. Santangelo was featured in Live Action’s InHuman investigation stating that if a child was born alive at his facility during an abortion, “we would not help it.”

Two defendants – Lauren Handy and Herb Geraghty – cited Live Action’s InHuman video as informing their belief that abortion survivors might be being left to die at WSC, which in turn motivated their decision to participate in the rescue action at Santangelo’s facility.

However, calling the video “gossip from propagandists” (despite the fact that the video showed the abortionist in his own words) presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly would not allow the video itself to be admitted into evidence.

youtube

Bias on the part of the prosecution was evidenced by its own word choices. For example, government attorneys referred to a three-day abortion procedure as “care” and as a “treatment” that was “absolutely needed.”

Government attorneys also made sarcastic, condescending remarks to and about the defendants, with one caustically remarking, “That’s convenient,” after a defendant said she could not remember a specific detail.

The judge herself was not above entering into heated exchanges. Sparks flew after defendant Herb Geraghty asserted under cross-examination that federal law prohibits certain types of abortion procedures nationwide:

(Gov. Attorney) Patel: You know that abortions are legal in the District of Columbia? Geraghty: I know that some abortions are, but partial birth abortion and abortion that a fetus survives outside the womb– Patel: Sir– Judge Kollar-Kotelly: Sir, as a practical matter, that’s not correct. There are no statutes in the District of Columbia that say anything about limitations on abortion. Geraghty: There’s federal laws, Your Honor. Judge Kollar-Kotelly: You are going to be the legal expert here? I suggest that you not get into that.

However, partial-birth abortion, or D&X, is indeed outlawed under the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007.

During deliberations on Friday, the jury sent three questions to the judge.

First, they asked: What do “oppression” and “intimidation” mean as defined by law?

Second, pertaining to a particular client of the abortion facility who was on the final day of a three-day abortion procedure and was experiencing labor pains when she arrived at WSC on the day of the rescue: What were the exact medical symptoms of the woman who collapsed in the hallway?

And lastly: What is the nature of ‘treatment’ for each of the different 3 days of ‘procedures’ at the Washington Surgi-Center?

There was a discussion about whether to define “oppression” and “intimidation” narrowly, as in the FACE Act, or more broadly, as it frequently is under conspiracy charges. Ultimately, the judge settled on a broad definition. With regard to the second and third questions, the judge gave the jury no answers; the second on the grounds that private medical conditions are not relevant, and the third on the grounds that there was no evidence given about specific abortion procedures during the trial.

More can be read about the trial at the links below:

Witness testimony in federal trial of pro-life rescuers begins, with court’s bias on display

Prosecution calls more witnesses in day two of pro-life rescuers’ federal trial

Arresting officers take stand at FACE Act trial in DC as judge warns religious pro-lifers on-site

FACE Act trial judge calls video of abortionist that motivated defendants ‘gossip from propagandists’

Defense and prosecution rest in FACE Act trial, as judge appears ignorant of federal abortion law

Defense in FACE Act trial closing arguments: Criteria not met for guilty verdict

#FACE Act #Live Action #activists #pro life #Lauren Handy #Will Goodman #John Hinshaw #Heather Idoni #Herb Geraghty #conspiracy #Bettina di Fiore #Washington D.C.#rescue #Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly #abortion clinics #bias #courts #Youtube

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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The Federal Election Commission has tossed out claims by the Republican National Committee that Google’s spam filters in Gmail are illegally biased against conservatives, according to an agency letter obtained by CNN.

The decision resolves a joint FEC complaint filed last year spearheaded by the RNC that alleged Gmail’s automated filters had sent Republican fundraising emails to spam at a higher rate than for Democratic candidates during the 2020 election cycle. The RNC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FEC decision to dismiss the complaint and close the case is the latest defeat for Republicans who have sought on multiple occasions to bring the agency’s powers to bear against tech platforms over allegations of anti-conservative bias. In 2021, the FEC dismissed a similar RNC claim against Twitter over the company’s decision to temporarily suppress the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop, saying the content moderation decision appeared to have been made “for a valid commercial reason.”

The FEC took the same stance on the Gmail filtering issue in a letter to Google last week, and which the company provided to CNN on Wednesday.

In the Jan. 11 letter, the FEC said its review “found no reason to believe that [Google] made prohibited in-kind corporate contributions” to Democrats in the form of more favorable email filtering treatment.

In order to be considered a violation, the FEC wrote, “a contribution must be made for the purpose of influencing an election for federal office,” adding that Google’s public statements have made clear its spam filtering exists “for commercial, rather than electoral, purposes.”

Even if it were true that Gmail spam filtering happened to favor Democratic campaigns over Republican ones, the FEC wrote — an allegation the commission neither explicitly endorsed nor rejected — that outcome would not necessarily make Gmail’s underlying conduct an illegal campaign contribution.

In its letter, the FEC cited Google’s public statements claiming that its reasons for spam filtering include blocking malware, phishing attacks and scams.

“In sum, Google has credibly supported its claim that its spam filter is in place for commercial reasons and thus did not constitute a contribution within the meaning of the [Federal Election Campaign Act],” it wrote.

Documents related to the case will be made available to the public by Feb. 10, according to the letter.

“The Commission’s bipartisan decision to dismiss this complaint reaffirms that Gmail does not filter emails for political purposes,” said José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson. “We’ll continue to invest in our Gmail industry-leading spam filters because, as the FEC notes, they’re important to protecting people’s inboxes from receiving unwanted, unsolicited, or dangerous messages.”

While the FEC did not weigh in directly on Gmail’s practices, the letter highlighted the limitations and context surrounding a 2022 academic study that the RNC had leaned heavily upon in its initial complaint.

The study by North Carolina State University researchers had involved an experiment testing the spam filters of Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo! Mail. Its findings suggested that of the three email providers, Gmail was the likeliest to mark emails from Republican campaigns as spam.

The RNC had cited the study’s findings as evidence of “illegal, corporate in-kind contributions” to Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden, and called for an FEC investigation.

But the FEC’s letter cited several factors that cast doubt on the RNC’s interpretation of the research, including the study’s own statements of limitations and a Washington Post interview with one of the study’s lead authors, who had said Republicans were “mischaracterizing” the paper.

The study itself acknowledged that it covered a short period of time, and that its findings could have been affected by campaigns’ own tactical decision-making as well as other variables the study did not account for, the FEC wrote, adding that in its response to the RNC allegations Google had said the researchers used a sample of 34 email addresses “when Gmail has 1.5 billion users.”

“Though the NCSU Study appears to demonstrate a disparate impact from Google’s spam filter, it explicitly states that its authors have ‘no reason to believe that there were deliberate attempts from these email services to create these biases to influence the voters,’” the FEC added.

Meanwhile, a separate RNC lawsuit against Google over the same Gmail filtering issue is still ongoing. And Google has continued with an FEC-approved pilot project that allows political campaigns to bypass Gmail’s spam filters. More than 100 political entities are participating in that program, a Google spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday.

#us politics #news #cnn #cnn business #conservatives #republicans #gop #republican national committee #Federal Election Commission #google #spam filter #gmail #campaign emails #Federal Election Campaign Act #José Castañeda #North Carolina State University #the washington post #bias #2023

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mental-mona · 1 year

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I don't necessarily agree with every single point made in this article, but they're all food for thought.

#new york times #washington post #israel #anti israel bias #media bias #antisemitism #media antisemitism #jumblr

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konakoro · 12 days

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Me seeing Washington license plates in Totally Killer

#horror movies #totally killer #it was filmed in vancouver bc which is basically shorthand for washington at this point #funny enough i thought the town looked really pretty before i noticed the license plate #pnw bias pulling through lol

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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 3 months

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by Gilead Ini

January 12 Update:

AP Amends False Claim

After CAMERA informed journalists of the problems detailed here, the Associated Press changed its piece, noting that a study of damage in Gaza counted structures that were "likely either damaged or destroyed" as opposed to "destroyed." The other misrepresentations were not substantively addressed, and no appended correction informs readers of the change. See below for a detailed update.

On Thursday, the Associated Press argued that Israel’s fight against Hamas “now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history.”

Before sunrise the next morning, the language was quietly changed to instead cite wars in “recent” history. But the stealth edit did little to redress the many glaring problems in the piece, the latest in a parade of news stories that invent, distort, or otherwise misuse statistics to unfavorably compare the Gaza war with others across the globe wars.

An image by researchers Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek refers to "likely damaged or destroyed" buildings.

The reason for this assembly line of manipulations, it seems, is precisely to support overblown charges like the one that opens the AP story: Israel’s response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre is the most destructive… the deadliest… the biggest… the worst….

Urban combat is a notoriously destructive endeavor. Add subterranean warfare — the need to deal with the combat tunnels that snake below Gaza’s neighborhoods and serve as a lifeline for Hamas militants and a death trap for Israelis — and there’s no shortage of ruin in Gaza that could be discussed on its own terms.

But apparently that wouldn’t suffice. So cue the embellishments — like the one at the very center of the AP piece:

Israel’s offensive has destroyed over two-thirds of all structures in northern Gaza and a quarter of buildings in the southern area of Khan Younis, according to an analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University, experts in mapping damage during wartime.

Destroyed? The satellite data used by the study’s authors can suggest which buildings have been damaged, but not whether they have been destroyed. When we double-checked with the researchers, Van Den Hoek reiterated that they only count structures as “likely damaged or destroyed” because, he explained, “we don't yet have means of distinguishing categories of damage severity.”

Which means the AP’s claim is egregiously false. And that’s hardly its only manipulation.

The second sentence, meant to support the lead sentence’s claim about the Gaza war being among the “most destructive” wars, reads:

In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II.

The worst… what? By what measure of damage does Gaza surpass these conflicts? The Associated Press doesn’t say.

The most destructive… the deadliest… the biggest… the worst…

The piece later claims that 33 percent of buildings across Gaza and two-thirds in northern Gaza have been “destroyed” (again, a falsehood counting any degree of damage as destruction). But the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which the AP has frequently cited in the past, has assessed that in Mariupol, one of the AP’s points of comparison, “up to 90 per cent of residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed.” The Associated Press itself had reported that Russian munitions left their mark “on nearly every building” in Mariupol.

Is the AP referring to the absolute number of damaged houses rather than the percentage? Maybe. But it would be an odd comparison, since Mariupol is less than half the size of the Gaza Strip. Aleppo, too, is half as big as the Hamas-run territory — and the relevant land area is even smaller, since the rebel militias that came under devastating Syrian and Russian bombardment had only occupied a portion of the city.

So does the claim refer to the density of destruction? If so, then again, it is dubious comparison. The damage in Aleppo was not nearly as densely packed as other in Syrian cities, including Raqqa, Homs, Deir ez Zor, Damascus, and Hama. Why would the AP ignore more extreme examples?

Whatever the reporter means to compare, it’s clear that the piece doesn’t play fair. Consider this passage:

During the 2014-2017 campaign to defeat IS in Iraq, the coalition carried out nearly 15,000 strikes across the country, according to Airwars, a London-based independent group that tracks recent conflicts. By comparison, the Israeli military said last week it has conducted 22,000 strikes in Gaza.

The most…. But not really. The Associated Press cherry-picked this particular Iraq war, but chose to ignore entirely the 2003 Iraq war, in which US-led forces dropped over 29,000 munitions on Iraqi targets in the first 30 days of fighting — double the rate of Israel, which dropped the same estimated number of munitions but in twice the time.

And what does the AP mean when claiming, at the top of the piece, that the Gaza offensive has caused more destruction “proportionally” than the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II?

The author later elaborates:

By some measures, destruction in Gaza has outpaced Allied bombings of Germany during World War II. Between 1942 and 1945, the allies attacked 51 major German cities and towns, destroying about 40-50% of their urban areas, said Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian. Pape said this amounted to 10% of buildings across Germany, compared to over 33% across Gaza, a densely populated territory of just 140 square miles (360 square kilometers).

In other words, the proportion of destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip is greater than in Germany only when comparing the small, densely packed Strip to the entirety of Germany, which in its current borders is nearly 1000 times larger than Hamas’s territory, and which was spaced out to a small fraction of Gaza’s population density. We can consider a closer equivalent within Germany: The city of Hamburg, which is far closer to the size of the Gaza Strip, and where during just eight-days in 1943, four Allied bombing killed around 40,000 people and destroyed over half of the city’s homes.

And if the Associate Press considers Allied bombing during World War II an informative point of comparison, why pick and choose? In just two days of bombing in 1945, the US killed about 100,000 civilians in Tokyo and destroyed 250,000 buildings.

We can forgive the AP for failing to find a perfect analogy. “[N]o military in the world has faced the context Israel faces today,” says John Spencer, a top expert in urban warfare. “No military in the world has fought a war against a military of 30,000 plus fighters (defenders) embedded in underground cities purposely interwoven into the dense civilian population” while dealing with incessant, indiscriminate rocket fire into their own cities. But that doesn’t excuse the AP “hunting for data,” as Spencer termed it, to promote a narrative.

Nor would the “everybody is doing it” excuse suffice — though it is true that plenty of others, including some of the largest and most influential newspapers, are likewise guilty of inventing and manipulating statistics.

A Parade of Distorted Statistics

• Less than a week into the war, the Washington Post reported that Israel had already dropped the same quantity of munitions on Gaza as the US dropped on Afghanistan in its most intense full year of bombing:

"Israel is dropping in less than a week what the U.S. was dropping in Afghanistan in a year, in a much smaller, much more densely populated area, where mistakes are going to be magnified," said Marc Garlasco, a military adviser at the Dutch organization PAX for Peace and a former U.N. war crimes investigator in Libya. He helped plan airstrikes for the Pentagon during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The highest number of bombs and other munitions dropped in one year during the war in Afghanistan was just over 7,423, Garlasco said, citing U.S. military records. During the entire war in Libya, the NATO alliance reported dropping more than 7,600 bombs and missiles from planes, according to a U.N. report.

But this is wildly false. The US had dropped 17,500 munitions on Afghanistan in just 76 days of bombing in 2001. The newspaper eventually corrected after outreach by CAMERA, but not before the fake statistic was echoed by the Los Angeles Times’ managing editor, NBC’s Mehdi Hasan, Al Jazeera, the Guardian, J Street, and members of Congress.

• In a front-page story published on Nov. 26, the New York Times claimed that “Israel has killed more women and children than have been killed in Ukraine.” This is a flagrant misrepresentation, which relied on Ukraine casualty figures that, per the newspaper’s own source, are “considerably” lower than the actual number of civilian deaths. The paper stealthily changed its language online, but it left the error uncorrected in print.

The piece also claimed that “more women and children have been reported killed in Gaza in less than two months than the roughly 7,700 civilians documented as killed by U.S. forces and their international allies in the entire first year of the invasion of Iraq in 2003,” citing estimates from a group called Iraq Body Count. But again, data from the Times own source revealed the newspaper’s egregious dishonesty. The overwhelming majority the Iraq casualties occurred in a just over a month of fighting, after which the regime was overthrown and major combat operations had ended. So contrary to the newspaper’s argument, the rates of claimed civilian casualties in the two conflicts were essentially equal. The newspaper refused to correct.

• Both the Times story cited above and a piece in the Wall Street Journal had misrepresented comments by a senior State Department official about casualties in Gaza. The Times reported, “Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told a House committee this month that American officials thought the civilian casualties were ‘very high, frankly, and it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited.’” Similarly, the Journal claimed that “The U.S. State Department’s highest official for Middle East affairs said that the civilian death toll in Gaza is likely higher than estimates suggest.” The official, though, wasn’t speaking about the civilian death toll, but rather the total number of deaths, Hamas included.

• This week, on Dec. 22, the Washington Post reported that the displacement of two million people in Gaza’s population was “the largest displacement in the region since Israel’s creation in 1948.” On Syria, just on the other side of Israel from Gaza, 12 million people have recently been displaced, according to the United Nations. In Yemen, over four million have been displaced.

The image of a New York Times headline shared on X by Aviva Klompas.

• That same day, the print edition of the New York Times ran a large headline announcing, “Gaza Deaths Surpass Any Arab War Losses in 40 Years,” a reference to the Hamas government’s claim of 20,000 deaths in its fight against Israel. The same New York Times had previously reported on 470,000 deaths counted in Syria’s war; 150,000 deaths counted in Yemen’s war; 150,000 deaths counted in Lebanon’s civil war; 500,000 Iraqi deaths counted from the country’s war with Iran; and 150,000 Iraqi deaths during the gulf war. (The text of the article itself correctly referred to “Arab conflicts with Israel,” though that doesn’t help those who relied on the newspaper’s headline to be accurate.)

The Associated Press piece fits neatly into this parade of flamboyant distortions, and serves as just the latest example of how a zeal to push a narrative of Israeli excesses sends sober journalism slinking ever further into the distance.

Update: Associated Press Corrects

After CAMERA informed AP editors of

the inaccurate claim that an analysis by Scher and Van Den Hoek counted “destroyed” buildings as opposed to damaged ones;

the questionable claim that the Gaza war has wreaked more destruction than Russia’s offensive in Mariupol, despite UN estimates showing more damage in the latter; and

the arbitrary comparison of Israeli airstrikes to those in 2014-2017 Iraq, while inexplicably ignoring the much larger number of airstrikes in 2003 Iraq

the agency redressed the first issue. Where the piece had characterized a study as finding that "Israel’s offensive has destroyed over two-thirds of all structures in northern Gaza," it now correction notes that the study looked at "likely either damaged or destroyed."

A minor modification was made to the language about Mariupol. Rather than account for the UN estimate of destruction there, AP changed the statement of fact that "the offensive has wreaked more destruction than" the razing of Mariupol to instead state that "researchers say the offensive has wreaked more destruction."

The cherry-picked data about Iraq was left unchanged.

While the date at the top of the story was changed from Dec. 22 to Jan. 11, there is no indication that a correction was made to the story, as journalistic norms would call for.

#associated press #washington post #new york times #media bias #statistics #lying with statistics #hamas #gaza #israel

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filosofablogger · 5 months

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Free Press? But Where's The Integrity?

For some time now I have been disappointed and disgusted by the coverage in media outlets I have long placed much faith in, namely The Washington Post and the New York Times, but also Politico, CNN and others. It seems almost as if they think that for every story they print about Donald Trump or other Republicans, they feel the need to seek a false equivalence by running a story about President…

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#democrat vs republican #Donald Trump #false equivalence #journalistic integrity #media bias #New York Times #President Joe Biden #Robert Reich #The Washington Post

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eretzyisrael · 5 months

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by Sean Durns

By the time Tharoor’s dispatch appeared, the IDF had made more than 20,000 phone calls, distributed 1.5 million leaflets, sent more than 4.4. million texts and left more than six million voice messages encouraging Gazans to escape Hamas’s grip. More than 800,000 have done just that. Footage of the IDF helping to evacuate thousands of them was widely available before Tharoor’s article was published.

Hamas wasn’t letting them go willingly, however. On Oct. 13, a spokesman for the terrorist group warned, “We tell the people of northern Gaza and from Gaza City, stay put in your homes and your places.” Hamas set up roadblocks and threatened those seeking to flee. Reports of this behavior, including a detailed analysis by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, were publicly available before Tharoor’s column appeared. Ironically, within 24 hours of the publication of Tharoor’s column, Hamas terrorists were filmed shooting Gazans attempting to flee Al Nasser hospital in Gaza City.

Hamas wants to sacrifice Palestinians in order to harm Israel in the court of public opinion. This is part of a conscious strategy. The terror group has consistently hidden behind its civilian population while plotting and launching attacks. As one 2019 NATO report noted, Hamas’s use of human shields is “common.” Hamas has even used ambulances to transport terrorists. This practice has been caught on film and captured terrorists have confessed to it. As one terrorist said during a filmed interrogation provided by i24 NEWS, Hamas uses ambulances to transport weapons and commanders to “avoid suspicion.” The “Jews,” one noted, “don’t attack ambulances.”

Tharoor omits all these critical facts, choosing instead to depict Israel as wantonly slaughtering civilians. Accusing the Jewish state of genocide—a crime infamously perpetrated against the Jewish people—is a blood libel. It is also a staple of antisemitic propaganda, from white supremacists to the Iranian regime. It appears that The Washington Post can now be added to their ranks.

This libel has been used by Palestinian leaders for decades. Over those decades, the Palestinian population has only grown. As CAMERA noted, in a March 4, 1961 press conference, Amin al-Husseini, the founding father of Palestinian nationalism and a Nazi collaborator, said, “What the Jews have done in Israel” is “similar to what the Nazis did to them in Germany.” By the 1960s, Husseini was mostly irrelevant, but his lies have been mainstreamed by The Washington Post and others.

#washington post #blood libel #media bias

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thelonesgroup · 1 year

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The New Washington State Energy Code

The 2021 Washington State Energy Code (WSEC) is slated to take effect in Washington State on July 1 of this year and everyone in the real estate profession should take note - in Washington State or otherwise!

According to the Columbian, in 2019 Washington State reported that 25% of the state's emissions were from residential, commercial, and industrial buildings - 25.3 million metric tons, also equal to the emissions from 5.4 million gas-powered vehicles. However, the 2021 changes to the energy code are expected to reduce emissions by 12.1 million metric tons over 30 years according to research by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, hired to independently analyze the anticipated results from the code changes. That is equal to the equivalent to what 2.6 million gas vehicles produce in one year.

The updates to the Energy Code are a positive way to combat climate change. The latest updates (2021) to the Washington State Energy Code are expected to result in 18% greater energy savings than the 2018 code according to Madrona Building Performance.

The first energy code was adopted statewide in 1977. In 2012, Washington State set a goal to reduce net annual energy consumption by 70% in new buildings by 2031 as compared with the 2006 standards. The once every three-years updates to the code are a benchmark on the road to achieving those goals (with a goal to reduce energy consumption by 8.75% each reduction period compared to the 2006 code or 14% over the previous code).

How is Energy Code Changing?

The code is being updated for residential, which includes new single-family homes, townhomes, and multi-family buildings that are up to three stories tall. Other regulations apply for commercial buildings. The International Energy Conservation Code standards are the base regulations that the Washington State Energy Code is built on, and Washington has refined the code even further to meet the benchmarks.

There are many aspects of the WSEC that will be impacted. Outlined here are just a few of the more-major changes planned to take effect this July:

Require spaces to be heated with heat pumps (with few exceptions for rural areas with no access to electricity)

Require heat pump water heaters (ditto)

Water heaters and the air handler would both need to be located in conditioned spaces

Reduce the air changes per hour within the home from 5 to 4 (with 3rd party testing required)

More-stringent Energy Star appliance standards

New updates and changes still being worked out, so keep your eyes open for those changes. For a full outline of the changes and expected costs and benefits, this is a good read on the Preliminary Cost Benefit Analysis of the Energy Code produced by the Washington State Building Code Council:

Preliminary Cost Benefit Analysis for the 2021 Washington State Energy Code, Residential Provisions

You might notice that many of the items include an estimated price tag (builder cost) along with an estimated savings amount in terms of energy for the consumer (homeowner savings).

You might be saying to yourself at this point, "Sounds great! We should be moving forward in a positive direction when it comes to saving energy and reducing pollution that causes global warming!"

And I agree with you 100%. However, we have another goal that Washington State is focused on along with most of the country and that is creating more housing inventory. The Washington State Department of Commerce has just released their final housing projections that Washington State will need in the next 20 years in order to put a damper on runaway housing demand and lack of affordability - 1.1 million homes in the next 20 years.

The Final Housing Projections document is a fascinating report that summarizes the type of housing needed by area median income groups by county. For example, King County (which includes both Seattle and Bellevue) needs 336,591 more homes. Snohomish County? 143,182 homes. Have you heard of Wahkiakum County? Me neither, but they still need 334 homes in the next 20 years.

Check your own county here:

Washington State Department of Commerce: Planning for Housing in Washington

To give you a sense of what we would need to achieve that goal, let's take a look at Whatcom County. Up here in the northwest corner of the state and the contiguous United States, we need 34,377 housing units in the next 20 years. That is 1,719 housing units per year. Between 2010-2020, we only built 9,637 housing units according to the Census Bureau - 963.7 per year. Therefore, little old Whatcom County would need to almost double the number of units in order to make that goal for a solid 20 years.

Yikes!

What About New Home Builders?

In order for builders to be interested in building, the risks can't outweigh the reward. New revisions to the energy code every three years is doing that in Washington State. If a builder has a large development that he or she wants to roll out over the course of several years, that is phenomenal for the housing stock. However, it can be a risky business venture when no one is sure how the energy code is going to play out. In fact, even though July is only months away, there are still codes and regulations being discussed and worked out at the state level. All the "what if" questions that builders have brought forth are not yet answered, including - the big one - what is this really going to cost, on average, per housing unit in the real world.

As a developer, I have had to make modifications in my own development to adhere to the previous code change as well as plan for the upcoming code change. In my development, the energy code changes for the 2018 code increased the housing costs between $20,000-$25,000 per home. Although these are costs borne by the buyer in the long run, and are predicted to closely even out over time in terms of energy savings, the bottom line is that these are expenses that will cost everyone in terms of time and money to implement.

The Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) has indicated that it expects these most recent changes to change an average home build costs by $14,850: that is $9,200 for residential energy code updates, plus $650 for EV charging requirements, and another $5,000 for heat pump water and space heating mandates.

For each update, builders and vendors need to relearn the rules, manufacturers need to update their standards, and all of that takes a lot of time and money. Builders are barely able to make forward momentum now let alone make stronger headway to begin to make a dent in the housing numbers.

Furthermore, local planning and building departments are already struggling with staffing and procedural issues. Giving them another roadblock when we should be streamlining is going backwards. According to the Building Industry Association of Washington, "on average, every week of delay adds $1,100 to the cost of a new home." The current proposed changes will undoubtedly cause additional delays and drive-up housing costs even more.

So, why am I writing about issues in the building industry in a news column for real estate agents? Because inventory affects you, it affects your buyers, it affects your sellers, it affects your kids who can't buy a place of their own, it affects our communities and those most vulnerable, it affects companies who can't hire workers because their workers cannot afford to live here!

What Can You Do?

There are two important things you can do right now:

Help give the Washington State building industry more time to implement these changes by signing this petition: Delay the Washington Energy Code to November 1, 2023

Support your local builder industry association and the National Association of Homebuilders! Attend their educational events about the energy code, learn about what they are concerned about, and tell others. Our future inventory relies on us supporting our builders TODAY! Learn more by visiting: Building Industry Association of Washington and reviewing the top priorities of the National Association of Home Builders.

We can balance advocating for the environment and advocating for the housing industry and tomorrow's homeowners when we make our voices heard. Contact your local Builder Association today, learn about their needs, and see what you can do to help.

For further reading, see these additional sources:

BIAW: Labor, Business,a nd Homeowners File lawsuit to Challenge Costly New Codes

BIAW: Building Code Proposals Increase Flexibility and Protect Housing Affordability

The Columbian: Affordable Housing vs. Climate

The Columbian: Washington's Updated Building Codes Seen as a Vital Tool to Fight Climate Change

Washington Building Code Council: Cost Benefit Analysis of the 2021 WSEC Residential Provisions

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By Denise Lones CSP, M.I.R.M., CDEI - The founding partner of The Lones Group, Denise Lones, brings nearly three decades of experience in the real estate industry. With agent/broker coaching, expertise in branding, lead generation, strategic marketing, business analysis, new home project planning, product development, Denise is nationally recognized as the source for all things real estate. With a passion for improvement, Denise has helped thousands of real estate agents, brokers, and managers build their business to unprecedented levels of success, while helping them maintain balance and quality of life.

#biaw #bia #building industry #environment #energy efficiency #energy code #energy efficient homes #housing crisis #legislation #Washington State #WSEC #Washington State Energy Code #New Construction #housing shortage #residential housing #Denise Lones #Zebra Report #The Lones Group

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