Category Archives: ethics

A Cynical Offer

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Colony Ridge is a residential development just north of Houston which a number of reports claim

is a “colonia,” an “illegal alien settlement,” a haven for drug cartels and crime, among other accusations.

Most of those reports are from news outlets, so there’s that. Members of the Republican Party also are the source of some of those reports, so….

Nevertheless, what drew my eye was this offer by Colony Ridge CEO John Harris, which he made, made for today, in a letter to Texas’ State Congress politicians:

In order to refute these false accusations, we are inviting all legislators to tour and visit our community on October 5 at 11 AM. We will provide you a tour of the community, an overview of our operation and allow you to interact with our employees and customers[.]

And this: Legislators are required to RSVP.

Sure. Come at the carefully specified time, and only those vetted Congressmen will be “allowed in.” Nothing screams of careful sanitization and coverup more loudly than naming a permissible timeframe, by which the development will be carefully sanitized. Just like a visit to El Paso by Progressive-Democrat Joe Biden.

No.

Texas’ Congressmen and Senators should call Harris’ hand and visit and walk through Colony Ridge on their own, individually or groups of their choosing, and they should do it at their own time and with no notice. And not all at once.

The Question Proceeds from a False Premise

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The subheadline exposes itself:

GOP rebels, fueled by social media and online fundraising, feel empowered to block their leaders from cutting deals with Democrats

Leave aside the question of whether it’s ever a good idea to try to cut deals with a Party that’s bent on destroying our nation. The lede paragraph repeats the false premise:

The small group of House Republicans bucking their party leaders and pushing the government toward a shutdown would have carried a dismissive label in past years. They would be called gadflies—annoying to colleagues, and easily swatted away.

Perhaps. However, rigid party discipline is a Parliamentary process fit for Great Britain, and it’s a Party process abused by the Progressive-Democratic Party. But American political parties are not elected monolithically. Every party member is elected by his own constituents, and every Representative and Senator is duty-bound to reflect the wishes and requirements of his constituents, not those of the party leadership. Each Congressman and Senator isn’t even obligated to go along with a majority of their House GOP colleagues, as Zitner and Wise put it in their article at the first link.

These politicians’ duty is to their constituents, and to no one else. That they carry out their duty well or poorly—poorly in the present case—is a separate matter from “empowerment to block party leaders.”

Selling His Testimony?

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Scott Hall, one of former President Donald Trump’s (R) co-defendants in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ shotgun case against Trump, has agreed to a plea deal in that case. The terms of his deal

require[] Hall to testify against the other defendants, demand[] Hall pay a $5,000 fine, and receive five years of probation.

Willis’ charges against each of the 18 (now 17) co-defendants center on allegations under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. To be clear: Hall was one of those charged under RICO.

A RICO beef is a very serious one, a beef that on conviction involves prison terms of up to 20 years per racketeering count and/or fines up to $25,000.

Hall’s deal is a sweetheart deal second, these days, only to Hunter Biden’s erstwhile plea deal with then-ordinary prosecutor David Weiss. I have a question and a comment.

My question is a repeat of the headline of my article: did Hall sell his testimony in return for such a soft sanction for such a serious charge?

My comment is this: anyone who agrees to a plea deal is, in my opinion, an entirely untrustworthy witness. He either sold his testimony in return for a soft penalty, or he was brow-beaten into his testimony under threat of a much harsher penalty. The latter seems unlikely in Hall’s case, but under either of those alternatives, it seems to me that the witness won’t be speaking his own words on the witness stand but instead it would be the prosecutor speaking from the witness stand using the pled-out witness’ voice.

Another Nation-State Kidnaps

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The lede says it.

A senior executive at US risk advisory firm Kroll has been barred from leaving mainland China for the past two months, heightening concerns about the risks foreign companies face when doing business in the country.

Then this:

Michael Chan, a Hong Kong-based managing director at the company who specializes in corporate restructuring, traveled to the mainland in July and subsequently informed his employer that he cannot leave….

However, this:

Neither Chan nor Kroll is the target of the investigation….

They’re not targets, but Chan can’t leave, anyway. That’s kidnapping. That he’s free to move about the cabin country in no way means he’s not a prisoner. He’s just locked up in a gilded cage. And like most cages, his contact with the outside world is a tenuous, sometime thing, given the PRC’s communications fire wall.

In the end, the optimal way to mitigate these kidnappings by the PRC is for American businesses to stop doing business inside the PRC, especially given the Biden administration’s reserve price for getting our citizens back. It’s come to this, quite aside from the national security question of our businesses being economically and resource dependent on an enemy nation.

Internet Censorship

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The Supreme Court has granted certiori to a suit involving Texas and Florida statutes barring social media from committing censorship.

The Texas law prohibited social-media platforms with at least 50 million monthly active users to censor users based on their viewpoints, thus applying to the most popular sites including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, as well as X. The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals, in New Orleans, upheld the measure.
Similar Florida legislation…was largely found unlawful by the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit.

Thus, a circuit split, which virtually guaranteed a Supreme Court case. Plaintiffs argue for allowing these media to commit censorship as they see fit. Chris Marchese, NetChoice‘s Litigation Center Director:

Online services have a well-established First Amendment right to host, curate and share content as they see fit.

In most cases, that’s true. However, online services that have enthusiastically presented themselves as public squares (vis. Twitter/X) or that have become de facto public squares (vis. Facebook), must act like the public squares that they are, and cannot censor speech made there.

Marchese, though, contradicts his own claim:

The internet is a vital platform for free expression, and it must remain free from government censorship.

You bet. The public squares on the Internet also must remain free from censorship. (State) governments barring these entities from censoring are not themselves engaged in censorship.