base­ball-re­lated in that part of the world —  and se­ries or­ga­niz­ers have used his name, like­ness and jer­sey num­ber to pro­mote them. 

For Or­tega, the one­time San­din­i­sta leader whom the U.S.-backed Con­tra reb­els failed to elim­i­nate in the 1980s, stag­ing the se­ries would be one more po­lit­i­cal coup. He cares noth­ing for Cle­mente, who died on New Year’s Eve 1972 while trans­port­ing hur­ri­cane re­lief aid to Nic­ara­gua, and the Nic­ara­guan team may not have the po­lit­i­cal will to exit the games. 

But the Puerto Ri­can team’s will­ing­ness to go through with the games is puz­zling, not to men­tion shame­ful, and Ma­jor League Base­ball should join the cho­rus of those con­demn­ing it. 

Base­ball shouldn’t be used as balm for po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion, and that’s es­pe­cially true of games as­so­ci­ated with the sport’s best-known, most-be­loved hu­man­i­tar­ian. Bow­ing out of the se­ries would send Or­tega an un­mis­tak­able mes­sage.  But right now, as much as it may re­vere Cle­mente, the Puerto Ri­can team is show­ing that it lacks the char­ac­ter that the Hall of Famer showed on and off the field.

Reve­la­tions that the U.S. bio­tech­nol­ogy com­pany Thermo Fisher was pro­vid­ing the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment with equip­ment to con­duct a DNA col­lec­tion sur­veil­lance op­er­a­tion were shock­ing and en­rag­ing. Un­for­tu­nately, Thermo Fisher may not be the only U.S. com­pany help­ing Chi­nese of­fi­cials op­press their peo­ple.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port by The Inter­cept, Google em­ploy­ees have un­cov­ered ev­i­dence that they be­lieve shows that the tech gi­ant still plans on re­leas­ing a cen­sored search en­gine, known as Proj­ect Drag­on­fly, in

China. Just this past Decem­ber, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told U.S. reg­u­la­tors that Google had “no plans” to re­lease such a search en­gine — “for now.”

But it seems that Google may still be pre­par­ing to launch the proj­ect. In­for­ma­tion leaked by Google em-

ploy­ees to The Inter­cept shows that ap­prox­i­mately 900 al­tera­tions were made to the Drag­on­fly code through Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary, and about 100 em­ploy­ees are still on a bud­get af­fil­i­ated with the proj­ect.

Google has de­nied that the Drag­on­fly proj­ect is still on­go­ing. “This spec­u­la­tion is wholly in­ac­cu­rate. Quite sim­ply: There’s no work hap­pen­ing on Drag­on­fly,” a Google spokes­per­son told the tech web­site The Verge.

At least one Google em­ployee ac­knowl­edged to The Inter­cept that the

al­tera­tions to the proj­ect’s code could have been the re­sult of em­ploy­ees “wrap­ping up” their work on Drag­on­fly.

But there has been a great deal of in­ter­nal frus­tra­tion at Google about the lack of trans­par­ency from the com­pany’s lead­er­ship on cer­tain eth­i­cal is­sues, in­clud­ing cen­sor­ship. At least six staff mem­bers have re­signed over the reve­la­tions re­gard­ing Drag­on­fly.

Colin McMil­len, a soft­ware en­gi­neer who quit Google in early Feb­ru­ary, told The Inter­cept that even if Drag­on­fly is dor­mant for now, he be-

lieves it won’t be for long. “I think they are put­ting it on the back burner and are go­ing to try it again in a year or two with a dif­fer­ent code name or ap­proach,” he said.

Google left China’s search mar­ket in 2010 and seems to have re­gret­ted it ever since. With nearly 1.4

bil­lion peo­ple, China has an enor­mous un­tapped mar­ket share that Google would love to le­ver­age. The com­pany gen­er­ated nearly $137 bil­lion in rev­e­nue last year, but Google ex­ec­u­tives are surely lick­ing their lips at thought of how much more could be made with a foray into China.

Amer­i­can cit­i­zens and, more im­por­tant, law­mak­ers must make it clear to Google that the cre­ation of a search en­gine that witholds in­for­ma­tion is un­ac­cept­able. The profit mo­tive can never jus­tify cen­sor­ship. 

I would pay for all of this by in­sti­tut­ing a “Na­tional Wealth Tax” of 15 per­cent on all in­di­vid­u­als with a net wealth/​net-worth of $10 mil­lion and higher.

I would also pay for all of this by abol­ish­ing all “cor­po­rate wel­fare” and “busi­ness sub­si­dies.”

The Cato Institute, a con­ser­va­tive-lib­er­tar­ian think tank, noted in 2012 that our fed­eral gov­ern­ment spends $100 bil­lion per year on cor­po­rate wel­fare, and it would like to see it elim­i­nated. I rarely agree with Cato, but I do on this par­tic­u­lar is­sue.

Stew­art B. Ep­stein

Roch­es­ter, N.Y.

The writer is a re­tired pro­fes­sor who taught at Slip­pery Rock Univer­sity of Pennsylvania and West Vir­ginia Univer­sity.

One of the best

At least 10 times over the past five years, most re­cently last week, the highly skilled and ded­i­cated doc­tors, nurses and tech­ni­cians at a num­ber of UPMC hos­pi­tals have saved or greatly en­hanced the lives of some of my clos­est friends and rel­a­tives.

Vir­tu­ally ev­ery­one I know can say pretty much the same thing for them­selves, their friends and rel­a­tives.

But first-class, life­sav­ing med­i­cal ser­vices are no lon­ger the ba­sis of dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing UPMC. In­stead, these con­ver­sa­tions now fo­cus on the greed and ar­ro­gance that

ra­di­ate from the top floor of 600 Grant Street, UPMC’s head­quar­ters in what will al­ways be in my mind the U.S. Steel Build­ing.

To those at the top of UPMC, I para­phrase Oliver Crom­well: You have been there too long for any good you may have been do­ing. Go, and let UPMC be again viewed as what it is — one of the best, if not the best, med­i­cal pro­vider in the world.

VAUGHN GILBERT

Eliz­a­beth