Giving Google Credit, But Not a Pass

LTP News Sharing:

Elected leaders come and go, but bureaucracy sticks around forever. Therein lies the inherent problem with government.

While the Trump Administration is doing its best to bring about commonsense regulatory and legal reforms, a lot of what are known as “deep state” shenanigans are often overlooked.

So it heartens us to be able to praise the likes of Google and other companies that have stood up and fought back. In a CNSNews.com commentary, I write that we admire these companies for their “efforts to drain the D.C. swamp.”

Despite many of these same companies being among those who have rightfully earned the criticism of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) in the past – and who will most likely earn it again in the future – we are happy to give them credit in this case for doing something right.

In this case, it’s Google, Oracle and others who are standing up to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and its “practice of filing race and gender discrimination lawsuits” against them and other high tech corporations:

The National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP), the nation’s leading activism arm for conservative shareholders, regularly takes Google and its parent company, Alphabet, to task for trampling intellectual property rights, promoting liberal groupthink in Silicon Valley and even fighting our efforts to protect conservative employees from retribution related to their political beliefs.

Yet Google and other companies have our support in one area, as they fight lawsuits brought against them by an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor that is suing companies over discrimination claims that are rooted solely in statistical bean-counting.

Overall, we feel Google would best serve its investors, customers and employees by being politically neutral and focusing on quality products and services instead of public policy. Likewise, we believe the federal government best helps the marketplace and taxpayers when the bureaucracy isn’t abusing its powers to pursue a woke agenda.

The federal lawsuits against these companies started in the final days of the Obama Administration, but they have festered during the Trump presidency. Challenging the OFCCP’s allegations is brave because this agency has the power to blackball companies from being able to maintain and bid for new federal contracts.

“While some challenged companies have thrown in the towel,” I point out, “Oracle and Google are fighting back. Good for them, and for that they deserve our support.”

I add:

Not only is this all an injustice, but it’s a waste of taxpayer money. The federal government’s witch hunt is compelling these businesses to spend millions of dollars to defend themselves against what appear to be flimsy charges against them.

This is why it’s important for the people in charge of the Labor Department, most notably Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia, to step in and rein in the OFCCP’s radical crusade.

But our support is earned. We will still be seeing Google and other companies who do not properly respect the free-market fundamentals that have helped make them great as this year’s shareholder season ramps up:

Kudos to companies like Google for fighting back against the OFCCP. We will still criticize Google when it fails to protect ideological diversity in its workplaces, but taking this stand against D.C.’s swamp creatures is admirable.

To read all of this commentary – “Google Finally Does Something Right” – at the website of CNSNews.com, click here. CNSNews.com describes itself as “a news source for individuals, news organizations and broadcasters who put a higher premium on balance than spin and seek news that’s ignored or under-reported as a result of media bias by omission.”