Category Archives: ethics

Another Reason…

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…to disband altogether the Securities and Exchange Commission and build a new exchange watchdog from the ground up. Now it wants a database of all investor personal information whenever those investors make a move in our stock market.

The Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) database was originally proposed by the SEC in 2010 to help regulators track order and trading activity throughout US markets for listed equities and options. According to the ASA, the database will list all the financial holdings and personal information of investors, including their name, phone, address, brokerage accounts, birthdate, and Social Security numbers.

Then, a year ago,

the SEC released an order that granted temporary relief from certain requirements of the CAT, delaying its full implementation until 2024. In the interim, the SEC is requesting the information be given voluntarily, with expected forced implementation by next year’s deadline, according to the ASA [American Securities Association].

This is just weasel-working around the SEC’s demand to have all personal information, even though it has no need for those data.

This SEC has shown, once again, that as an institution it cannot be trusted with American investor data.

Activist Judges

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There are three of them on the 4th Circuit, those who unanimously ruled that construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline must stop pending those judges’ personal review of the Interior Department’s record of decision for permitting pipeline construction in the national forest.

These judges don’t care that the 4th Circuit has no jurisdiction over the pipeline or cases related to it. The recently concluded debt ceiling law explicitly stripped the 4th Circuit of jurisdiction, limited questions about the pipeline to constitutional questions, and placed those questions solely within the jurisdiction of the DC Circuit.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors concluded their editorial with this:

Three willful judges have improperly usurped the power of Congress and the executive branch. Judges who refuse to honor proper orders from the political branches are begging to have the political branches ignore their rulings.

These three judges also have violated their oaths of office and have thereby rendered themselves vulnerable to impeachment and removal from the bench.

“No Undue Influence”

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An audit of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, done internally by AIIB audit personnel, found no evidence of undue influence from the Communist Party of China arm of Peoples Republic of China government.

The AIIB is not just PRC-backed, though, it’s PRC-led. That means that we can take the audit—which lasted all of 10 days—seriously and at face value.

The PRC audited itself, and over nearly a week-and-a-half period, but the outcome is completely believable.

Don’t look behind the curtain to see that the PRC holds 26.6% of AIIB’s shares, giving it an effective veto over major decisions, since AIIB’s major decisions require a 75% supermajority.

Misguided

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A Federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction (meaning the matter must still go through the courts before anything becomes final) barring the Federal government from communicating with social-media companies with a view to influencing what those companies post or allow to be posted on their sites.

Some on the Left are objecting.

Some legal scholars have been skeptical that…courts could intervene without chilling legitimate government speech about controversial matters of public interest.

“Some legal scholars” are cynically distorting the situation. There is nothing in the judge’s ruling that bars government speech about controversial matters of public interest. The “government”—i.e., the men and women in government—remains entirely free to speak on any matters it wishes, and in any venue it wishes. The “government,” however, may not seek to tell—or even to try to influence—private enterprises what they might post or not post, or allow or not allow to be posted, on their sites.

The government has a plethora of outlets of its own: the White House, for instance, the Senate, and the House all have their own Web sites, as do each of the several Federal Departments and agencies, and every Congressman in the Congress. And many of those Congressmen hold aperiodic town halls to talk directly with their constituents—all of them should, and those meetings should occur more frequently—but that’s the Congressmen’s choice. Nothing bars any Congressman from doing any of those direct-to-constituents conversations as often as a Congressman might wish.

Furthermore, the judge noted in his injunction that

The Court finds…that a preliminary injunction here would not prohibit government speech.

And

A government entity has the right to speak for itself and is entitled to say what it wishes and express the views it wishes to express. The Free Speech Clause restricts government regulation of private speech; it does not regulate government speech.

At bottom, and especially in light of that last—and the plethora of legitimate government outlets for its own speech—the answer to speech with which government disagrees is not to bar the speech (outside of deliberate and overt incitement to riot), but to answer it with their own speech.

The judge’s preliminary injunction ruling can be read here.

Reparations—Punishing the Children and their Mothers

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The California Reparations Task Force has hit a new low with its reparations…foolishness.

The California Reparations Task Force is asking the Democrat-controlled state legislature to eliminate interest on past-due child support, as well as any back child support debt for Black residents of the state.

And this:

[T]he group claimed “discriminatory” laws “have torn African American families apart,” and that one effect of that is the “harms” caused by “the disproportionate amount of African Americans who are burdened with child support debt.”

This is just wholly irrational. Discriminatory laws have not torn any families apart, African American or otherwise. Divorce tore the families apart—whether because of misbehaving husbands or wives or simply because of their incompatibility. Aside from that, when the mother gets custody, child support gets paid by the husband because the husband is—was—most often the major or sole source of the family’s income.

In addition to that, the burden from child support debt is due to that debt, and the burden of its not being paid is borne by the child(ren) and the single mother.

And this bit of foolishness so blatant that it has to be dishonesty:

[T]he 10% interest the state charges on back child support “hinders” their ability to finance further education, attend job training, find employment, and maintain housing because of the legal consequences of not paying such debt.

This gives no consideration whatsoever—deliberately so, apparently—to the barriers (not mere hindrance) not paying such debt inflicts on the child(ren)’s and single parent’s ability to finance any education, attend any job training or internship or apprenticeship, find any employment—summer or part-time for the child(ren) who’s old enough, or any level of employment including full-time for the single parent—or maintain, or even get, housing.

And this:

[T]hose who owed child support had lower incomes than “the typical California worker” and that such interest required a larger portion of their income to actually pay the debt.

What a tear-jerker. Never mind that the single mother who’s owed the child support has even lower income than the deadbeat dad who owes it.

This nonsense hurts black children and their single mothers far more than it helps black deadbeat dads. Never mind asking why the CRTF wants to help deadbeat dads in the first place. The CRTF doesn’t care: it’s all about reparations for the sake of reparations. And the money.

This is one way to monetize the bigotry.