Monthly Archives: August 2019

Value

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Wretchard (@wretchardthecat) asked an interesting question on Twitter Wednesday, and the implications from the question are being carefully ignored by the Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates who want to forgive all—or most—student debt.

Forgiving student debt sends the signal that educational investment is worthless because it cannot return the rate of the money borrowed to finance it. That may actually be true but then what is the value of the credential?

Read the whole thread, it’s pithy and concise, as are the comments ensuing.

A related question has implications that Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates who want to make college/university education “free:” if nothing is paid for the education—if it has no cost (to the user)—what is the value of that education or of the credential that proclaims it? Value not in the eye of the holder, but in the eye of any employer?

Democracy is Terrorism

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That’s the openly stated position of the People’s Republic of China.  PRC President Xi Jinping now has said, through his government’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs of the State Council spokeswoman Xu Luying, that he

condemned what [the State Council] described as “terrorist-like” attacks on its citizens by pro-democracy protesters.
“We express the strongest condemnation of these terrorist-like actions[.]”

Because pro-democracy demonstrators—who are the citizens of Hong Kong—in objecting to Xi’s weeks-long attempt to take complete control of the erstwhile semi-autonomous city, are terrorists.

And this from Xu:

Hong Kong’s radical violent elements have completely broken through the bottom line of the law, the bottom line of morality, and the bottom line of human nature.

Never mind that the Hong Kong police have done precisely that: using strong-arm tactics—truncheons and beatings, on top of tear gas—to quell nearly universally peaceful protests.

Never mind Xi’s attempts to intimidate the people of Hong Kong by massing PLA units just outside the city and threatening to inflict a Tiananmen Square assault on the city.

Here, too, is the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, with her crocodile tears:

Take a minute to think, look at our city, our home; do you all really want to see it pushed into an abyss?

No, they don’t. That’s why they’re in the streets, trying to protect Hong Kong from the power grab and threatened occupation of Lam’s bosses in Beijing.

On the other hand, the thought of democracy does truly terrify Xi.

In Which the 9th Gets One Right

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Facebook’s use of the output of its facial recognition software—imagery of individuals’ faces—without those individuals’ prior permission can be contested in court, according to the Ninth Circuit.  Facebook had demurred when the case was brought.

On Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected Facebook’s efforts to dismiss the ongoing class-action lawsuit, which could potentially require the company to pay billions in compensation.
The lawsuit dates back to 2015 when three Facebook users living in the state [Illinois] claimed the tech giant had violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires companies to obtain consent when collecting their biometric information.

Judge Sandra Ikuta, writing for the court, wrote:

We conclude that the development of a face template using facial-recognition technology without consent (as alleged here) invades an individual’s private affairs and concrete interests.

Yewbetcha.  However, the courts, ultimately, the Supreme Court, need, in the end, to rule decisively that no company gets to steal a man’s personally identifying information—which his face assuredly is in this day of highly accurate facial recognition software—and theft is what it is when the data are taken without permission.

It’s even worse when these data, these facial recognition image outputs, are monetized for the benefit of the company in question with that done behind the individuals’ backs, too.

Threats

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Progressive-Democrats are nakedly trying to intimidate the Supreme Court to get their own way—and they’ve made their threat overt, in an Amici Curiae brief filed with the Supreme Court concerning New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc v City of New York, which is a case involving New York City’s ban on transporting “licensed, locked and unloaded handgun[s] to a home or shooting range outside city limits.”

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI), Richard Blumenthal (D, CT), Mazie Hirono (D, HI), Richard Durbin (D, IL), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) made their threat thusly:

The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be “restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.” Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal.

The threat to the Court’s safety, its independence, couldn’t be more clear.  Never mind that the influence of politics is made manifest by this threat.

We can’t afford this in our government. At any level.

The despicable brief can be read here.

They Do

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Hong Kong closed its airport for several hours Monday because protesters were thronging the terminals in protest of the People’s Republic of China’s Hong Kong—Carrie Lam—government’s attack on the “semi-autonomy” of the city, and of the police’s growing violence against what have been fundamentally peaceful protests over the last several weeks.  The movement into the airport is a recent development of these peaceful protests.

Then Lam’s Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung said this regarding the protests at the airport:

[P]eople should cherish the future of Hong Kong, which is the collective hard work of everyone over many years.

That’s exactly right, although not in the way Cheung meant.  The Hong Kong people do cherish the future of their city and environs. That’s why they’re in the streets, and now the airport, protesting an overweening government that’s so plainly in the hands of the PRC’s autocrat President Xi Jinping.

Their city most assuredly is the outcome of the result of the work of all those people, effort expended over so very many years.

Their city most assuredly is very much at risk at the hands of that misbehaving government.