Category Archives: culture

More Party Gaslighting

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This time, it’s Progressive-Democratic Party politicians doing the gaslighting.

Progressive-Democrat Congressman Dean Phillips (MN) wants New York’s Progressive-Democrat Governor, Kathy Hochul, to pardon former President Donald Trump (R) “for the good of the country.”

But is this a Ford pardons Nixon for the good of the country pardon request? Ford pardoned Nixon to reduce (it wound up damping down almost completely) the political divisions growing out of Nixon’s misbehaviors.

No, that’s not the sort of pardon request that Phillips is after. Here’s Phillips in his own words:

You think pardoning is stupid?
Making him a martyr over a payment to a porn star is stupid. (Election charges are entirely different.)
It’s energizing his base, generating record sums of campaign cash, and will likely result in an electoral boost.

Phillips isn’t interested in tamping down our nation’s current divisions. He’s interested only in nakedly favoring his Progressive-Democratic Party, and he has no concerns at all for partisan division mitigation. His “for the good of the country” is just so much gaslighting.

Crimes and Stolen Data

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Ira Stoll, of FutureOfCapitalism LLC, pointed out in his 27 May Wall Street Journal op-ed, that he’s a victim of a crime, namely the “leak” of his personal tax data (along with the “leaks” of many thousands of other Americans’ personal tax data) by the IRS to ProPublica, among others.

Stoll proposed a solution to the larger problem, that of government possession of confidential data of any sort:

Much of this could be solved if the government simply collected and stored less confidential data.

He’s absolutely right on that. However, his proposal addresses only the front end of the crime. It’s a take the keys to your car with you as you go about your business, rather than tossing them onto the front seat, kind of solution. It’s necessary, but woefully inadequate, especially since it’s the confidential data storer that’s tossing your keys onto the front seat.

The back end of the crime needs to be worked, also.

In most other areas of US law, receiving stolen property is itself a felony. That should apply to journalism, also.

At the very least, journalists should be required to turn the received stolen goods over to the police or to return them to the source (and, in the case of digital goods, to certify that all electronic copies have been irretrievably deleted and in the case of hard copy documents to certify that no hard or digital copies have been retained), and journalists should be required to identify the source from whom they received the stolen goods. Criminals in the midst of committing their crimes are not sources that should be protectable by journalistic “investigative reporting” imperatives or by any other excuse. Journalism’s “public interest” is not served by being allowed to abet a crime. More importantly, the public’s public interest is actively harmed by allowing journalists to abet a crime.

Either all American citizens are equal under law, or we are not.

The Veterans Administration Fails Again

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A 22-year USAF veteran has nightmares, the attitude, withdrawal as a result of his experiences while deployed to a plethora of foreign locales. [Emphasis added.]

[H]is wife begged him to get help from the local Veterans Affairs medical facility in West Palm Beach, Florida. [The veteran] said he tried, but after many years and multiple VA therapists who could not see him on a regular basis, he decided to pay out-of-pocket for private care. He would like the VA to pay for his therapy through community care—a program designed for eligible veterans to receive care from a community provider when the VA cannot provide the care needed.

Nor is he alone in this strait. It’s getting worse, too. Now,

the West Palm Beach VA Healthcare System is no longer approving their requests for community care, cutting them off from their longtime mental health providers, with potentially devastating results.

And

Congressman Brian Mast (R, FL), a former Army bomb technician who lost both his legs and a finger in Afghanistan, represents the Palm Beach area in Florida’s 21st Congressional District. He said his office has been contacted by over 70 veterans, relatives, and mental health providers who have complained that the VA will no longer refer patients to community care.

OF course, the VA denies that, claiming to have hired many more doctors and expanded facilities. Never mind the facts provided by our veterans in that district, who know empirically otherwise.

The veterans who spoke to Fox News Digital dispute the VA’s view of its quality of care. [The veteran cited at the top of this post] described how his previous attempts to see a VA psychiatrist were “counterproductive” and “ridiculous.” In a “typical interaction,” the VA would tell him, “we’re going to have somebody call you. This is the date and time,” he said. “Nobody calls.”
When he went back to schedule another appointment, the same thing would happen.
“You’re telling me I missed the appointment, I said. But nobody called me. I have no number to call. This was the norm. It was always a lot of deflection to where I just say, this is beyond ridiculous,” he said.

Even Mast has been denied effective care by the VA at least once.

Mast related that he had to see his primary care doctor, a physical therapist, and a lab technician before VA approved him to receive a new cane—with two-week intervals between each appointment.
“That was the bureaucratic process for getting a guy with no legs a cane,” he said.

Just one more reason why

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Is PRC-Level Surveillance Coming to California

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California, whose gas taxes are among the highest in the nation, is on net losing revenue from those taxes as ICE motorists drive less and the number of motorists driving battery cars increases. The Progressive-Democratic Party, which reigns over California, is looking hard at implementing a…solution…straight out of the People’s Republic of China. Party is

piloting the idea of a “road charge,” which would charge drivers based on the number of miles they drive rather than how much gas they purchase.

So far, driver participation is voluntary, but when the pilot program is replaced by a permanent replacement, look for participation to become mandatory. Track the number of miles driven? That’ll be via uplink to the California government odometer readings.

It’s a short step from there to uplink all the places the motorists’ cars stop, and the routes the car took to get there.

At least nanny states can claim to be looking out for the welfare of their citizens. This is Party looking out for its own welfare by snooping increasingly into citizens’ lives.

Rights

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The ongoing dispute between the actress Scarlett Johansson on the one hand and OpenAI and its MFWIC Sam Altman on the other highlights a broader problem concerning rights, property, and rights in property.

The dispute itself concerns Altman’s attempt to get Johansson to participate in and lend her voice to OpenAI’s development of a talking assistant, ultimately named Sky. Johansson declined to participate, Sky was developed and offered to the public—and Sky sounds remarkably like Johansson.

[Johansson’s agent and of Artists Agency co-chairman Bryan] Lourd and the actress spent the morning fielding calls and emails from friends and associates, some of whom worried that OpenAI had simply appropriated Johansson’s voice without permission.

And

Emails to the actress from friends and associates streamed in asking if she’d participated in the OpenAI project.

The question extends far beyond this glorified NIL dispute, though.

Altman says that

Artists should also be able to opt out of allowing AI systems to mimic their work….

And in Tennessee,

Governor Bill Lee (R) signed into law the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Securities (ELVIS) Act in March, which makes people’s voices protected personal rights.

No. Altman is dead wrong. Artists—and anyone else—should not have to affirmatively act to opt out of anything. Those who want to use an attribute of someone, their voice, their likeness, their DNA, should have to convince that someone to opt in.

The Tennessee law is on the right track, but it stops woefully short. People’s voices, or any other of their attributes, are not personal rights to be protected, or not, by the vagaries of government.

These attributes are not merely a facet of a person’s civilly-granted property. People’s attributes are their personal property, imbued in them by their Creator, an aspect of their unalienable Right to their pursuit of Happiness. Here’s John Adams:

All men are born free and independent, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

A person’s personal attributes are inextricably intertwined with—unalienable from—those certain rights that are essential to our lives and our liberties. Technological advances have no impact on that beyond enhancing that person’s own Happiness.

That understanding badly wants renewal today.