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In the past, The New York Times may have been an actual newspaper. But those days are long gone, perhaps even fading from living memory. Today, the Times is the chief ideological enforcer of America’s globalist class. The “Grey Lady” is dedicated to squashing any institution that steps out of line. And right now, the Times’s target is Silicon Valley cryptocurrency upstart Coinbase.
Coinbase is the single biggest U.S. trading platform for Bitcoin. The company recently filed for an IPO which could value it at nearly $30 billion. For the past six months, the Times has been positively obsessed with destroying Coinbase. The NYT’s latest assault came on Dec. 29: “Cryptocurrency Start-Up Underpaid Women and Black Employees, Data Shows,” the paper’s headline shrieked:
The fast-growing cryptocurrency start-up Coinbase has been rattled in recent months by tensions between executives and employees who said they were being treated unfairly because of their race or gender.
While management at the company has argued that the complaints were limited to a handful of employees, Coinbase’s own compensation data suggests that inequitable treatment of women and Black workers went far beyond a few disgruntled workers.
The data, recently obtained by The New York Times, indicated that women at Coinbase were paid an average of $13,000, or 8 percent, less than men at comparable jobs and ranks within the company, according to an analysis of the figures, which included pay details for most of Coinbase’s roughly 830 employees at the end of 2018.
The picture was also unequal for the 16 salaried Black employees in the data. They were paid $11,500, or 7 percent, less than all other employees in similar jobs. [New York Times]
The New York Times completely fails to make the case that Coinbase “underpays” due to sexism or racism. If fact, the Times actively distorted the numbers by failing to control for experience and education. Of course, they buried this lede towards the end of the piece, where very few headline-consuming Times readers dare to venture.
The numbers in the Google and Oracle cases controlled for factors, such as experience and education, that were not possible in the Coinbase statistics because of the limits of the data shared with The Times.
The Coinbase figures arrived at by Ms. Marr took account of the job level of all employees, as well as their status as an engineer and manager. It is possible that if the analysis took account of more factors, the pay disparity would shrink. [New York Times]
NYT says women and blacks are paid less at Coinbase. Buried deep in the article: no control for experience and education, as they do for others, much less other factors.
Includes menacing quotes from lawyers.
This is not news, it's stamping out dissent. https://t.co/PkMcN2kdUA pic.twitter.com/CYWZ2L5fL1
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) December 30, 2020
Comparing the salary levels of different employees with wildly different levels of education and experience cannot even be characterized as an apples to oranges comparison. The Times might as well be comparing apples and elephants.
This attack piece masquerading as “journalism” is not in the public interest. It’s not intended to inform the reader. Rather, it’s malicious propaganda carefully engineered to destroy Coinbase. The article drives home that point with a threatening quote from a lawyer meant to encourage aggrieved ex-employees to sue the company.
“If I was running a company and I knew that my numbers looked worse than people being sued, that would worry me,” said Janice Madden, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who did the analysis in the Oracle case. [New York Times]
So, why does the Times wish so much ill on a lone mid-sized tech company? It’s quite simple. Coinbase’s great crime is that it has not prostrated itself before the globalist Altar of Wokeness.
In late September, CEO Brian Armstrong announced that Coinbase would not be joining the ranks of American companies bowing down to the baying mob of bloodthirsty woke white and mocha HR-lady agitators roaming the halls of corporate America and screeching on Twitter. Instead, it would be a “mission focused company” going forward.
“We don’t engage here when issues are unrelated to our core mission, because we believe impact only comes with focus,” Armstrong wrote. “We don’t advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction from our mission.”
To show that he really meant it, Armstrong offered lucrative buyouts to any employees who weren’t on board with his decision.
In another era, Armstrong’s announcement would be so obvious it would never require a statement at all. Revolver said so at the time:
[Armstrong] didn’t pledge support for Donald Trump. He didn’t rename his company Coinbased. He merely said his company would abstain from politics, both publicly and in the workplace. But in 2020, even this is a revolutionary act, and Armstrong knows it. On Wednesday, he sent a follow-up letter to employees announcing that if any weren’t up for keeping politics and work separate, he’d pay them to go away. Six months of severance pay, it turns out, is a small price to pay to purge far-left extremists from one’s company.
It is no wonder then that Armstrong’s defiant stand has the press and woke capital in a panic. It’s obvious that the vast majority of people, and in particular the vast majority of productive workers, prefer Armstrong’s corporate vision. They want to work at a business, not a gulag. If Armstrong can thrive while vocally rejecting the left’s political demands, then other corporate leaders will be emboldened to do the same. [Revolver]
Now, just as Revolver anticipated, the campaign to destroy Coinbase pour encourager les autres is underway, with the Times at the head of the pack.
In late November, the paper published a ridiculous story about black employees claiming they were “tokenized” at Coinbase. The piece simply repeated the grievances of four employees, all of whom had left the company at least a year before. Just like this week’s piece, the agenda was obvious: Rip down a company for openly defying the diversity cartel.
Before the November hitpiece came out, Coinbase preempted the attack by publishing a blog post of its own on the company website. In response, Times reporter Mike Isaac seethed with outrage. By refusing to haplessly sit back as the New York Times viciously attacked, Coinbase “torched any semblence of trust” it had with the paper:
I have nothing to do with this story and didn’t know we were even doing one
that said, this attempt at a front-run is mindblowing.
theyve guaranteed readership for the coming story AND torched any semblance of trust or relationship they had media https://t.co/qwzrpoCymF
— rat king (@MikeIsaac) November 26, 2020
In a just society, Isaac’s tweet would be read back to him at a criminal trial about the press’s war on the American people. But life is not always fair, so we must instead content ourselves with the knowledge that, so far, Coinbase is far more successful than the failing New York Times.
Even in its coverage of Coinbase’s regular business activities, the Times has made it clear the corporation is an enemy. In a short December article on Coinbase filing for an IPO, the Times still took the time to tar the company with flimsy and irrelevant claims of racism:
On Wednesday, the price of a Bitcoin rose above $20,000 for the first time. On Thursday, it rocketed above $23,000.
But Coinbase has also been hit by questions in recent months over its management practices and its treatment of minority employees. In late 2018 and early 2019, the company experienced a mass departure of 15 Black employees; at least 11 of them had informed the human resources department or their managers about what they said was racist or discriminatory treatment at the start-up. [New York Times]
Despite the endless hatred heaped on it by the Times and despite its own public statements, Coinbase still isn’t a conservative or patriotic company in any way. The vast majority of Coinbase employees almost certainly did not vote for Donald Trump. The company issued an obligatory statement after the death of George Floyd. Brian Armstrong himself has tweeted favorably about Black Lives Matter. The company has even banned some figures on the right, like Gab founder Andrew Torba. The New York Times simply wants to send a message that they are in charge and the rest of us must bow down in obeisance to their diktats. This is the disgusting attitude of an increasingly growing number of smug journalistic wannabe commissars.
Coinbase may be an imperfect champion, but patriots still ought to support it against this tyrannical offensive. CEO Brian Armstrong is far gutsier than countless other managers and leaders in Silicon Valley who know that woke politics are nonsense, but refuse to do anything about it. If Coinbase is able to thrive despite refusing to submit to the left’s control, then other companies may be emboldened to do the same. Only then might America’s incompetent, corrupt, and fake ruling come crashing down, so that a real elite of actual talent can rise to take its place.
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