Can you imagine the outrage in the media if an oil company got a climate researcher fired for criticizing the actions of oil companies? We’d never, ever, ever hear the end of it. The hysterical shrieking would be over the top. Well, look what happened here.

In this June 8, 2017 photo, oil derricks are busy pumping as the moon rises near the La Paloma Generating Station in McKittrick, Calif. California’s vast San Joaquin Valley, the country’s most productive farming region, is engulfed by some of the nation’s dirtiest skies, forcing the state’s largest air district to spend more than $40 billion in the past quarter-century to enforce hundreds of stringent pollution rules. Its bad air is the byproduct of booming farms, oil production, two major highways, a web of rail lines – and the valley’s bowl-shaped geography. (AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian)

Well, it’s been said before, but it’s worth repeating: that’s basically what happened at New America when they fired an entire department of people because its CEO, Anne-Marie Slaughter, believed the organization would lose funding from Google if she did not do it.

The foundation’s Open Markets initiative employed ten people. But they had to be crushed under Google’s heel, and says the New York Times, the order came from the very top:

Google officials — including its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt — had complained about Open Markets multiple times. Their grievances could not be easily ignored. The company, Mr. Schmidt and his family’s foundation had donated more than $21 million to New America since the think tank’s founding in 1999, according to voluntary disclosures and tax filings.

Why did the Open Markets Ten have to be fired? They, as left-wing researchers, took a standard left-wing position that strong government regulation should be applied to powerful corporations, and so they praised the European Union’s fining of Google. That was the last straw.

Being out of power, this is precisely the kind of thing that could send the hard left into a hysterical frenzy, unless you know, the sites would criticize Google are also getting Google funding.