Category Archives: ethics

Progressive-Democratic Party Version of Free Speech

Posted on by
Reply

A Conservative legislator in Maine spoke against boys competing in girls’ sports, and she posted the image of the State’s Class B girls high school pole vault champion—a boy competing against girls and who as a boy competing against boys the prior year who could do no better than fifth.

Maine’s Progressive-Democratic Party legislators promptly voted 75-70 to censure the Conservative, Congresswoman Laurel Libby (R, 90th District). Nor does Maine do an ordinary censure: under the Maine constitution, by censuring Libby, they have denied her any right to speak on the Maine House of Representatives floor, or even to vote on any legislation before the Maine House. As the WSJ editors noted, that also denies her constituents any representation, disenfranchising them.

Of course, Party knows that, too. Party politicians claim that speaking and voting would be restored to Libby were she to apologize. But for what would she apologize? Having done nothing wrong, apologizing would both be dishonest intrinsically, and it would be cowardly appeasement.

Libby is made of sterner stuff, and she has said she will not apologize.

Those WSJ editors also posited a warning:

Democrats should be considering whether they really want to go down the road of regulating posts on social media.

But that’s what the Progressive-Democrats have been doing for some years already—see Twitter and Facebook during the first Trump administration and throughout the Biden administration.

This is the censorship which we can expect to be inflicted nation-wide if Party ever regains control over our nation. Speech is free when Party permits it.

Yapping vs Action

Posted on by
Reply

Republican Congressmen are starting to push back, ever so gently, against President Donald Trump’s (R) DOGE initiative and agency. They want more control, for themselves and for the several Department and Agency heads, over spending and Federal job cuts.

The calls come as some GOP lawmakers have pushed back against job cuts and characterized moves as haphazard, even as they largely agree with the broader goal of reducing government costs and inefficiencies.

That’s the difference between yapping and action. It’s necessary to be specific, to name programs and to name names, if actual action—cuts—are to be made. Republicans are exposing themselves now.

The House, with its alleged Republican majority, has passed its budget outline proposal, and already it does not include an aggregated ceiling for spending cuts that’s high enough to have room for all of the ones the DOGE effort is suggesting.

Certainly, it’s useful to not make cuts as sweeping as those on offer from DOGE and from Trump all at once; business and especially State budgets need time to adjust to the sharply reduced inflow of Federal dollars and outflow of ex-Federal employees, but that’s easily enough accommodated over a period of two years, so all the cuts proposed could be accomplished within a single Congressional session.

Just as certainly, the several constituencies of the several Republican Representatives have differing imperatives and needs—Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis’ (R, NY) constituents have different views of appropriate levels of cuts and where to make them than do Congressman Thomas Massie’s (R, KY), but in the Federal Congress, these Congressmen have national level constituents in addition to their local ones.

But, as ralflongwalker passed along to me:

You want to gore my ox? Oh, no!

Pick one, guys. Either you’re for spending cuts and reductions in the bloated Federal bureaucracy labor force, or you’re like a bunch of spendthrift Progressive-Democrats, just yapping differently.

University Funding and University Overhead

Posted on by
Reply

Maya Sen, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, thinks the Trump administration’s insistence on a cap of 15% for “indirect costs” as part of all Federal research grants to colleges/universities is too low for too many such institutions; such caps should continue to be negotiated school by school. She insists, for instance, that Harvard needs its 69% cut of research grants for its indirect cost.

An across-the-board 15% cap, she insists, ignores any individualized considerations, leaving schools with higher costs in the lurch. And, she claims,

University research depends on federal money—11% of Harvard’s operating revenue comes from such grants.

Her alternative:

There’s a better solution than a blanket cap. Universities could instead commit to addressing administrative bloat and shoring up research integrity—both reasonable points that academics themselves have flagged.

Couple things about that. One is Harvard’s $53.2 billion endowment with its 2024 return on investment of 9.6%—a fairly typical ROI for Harvard; even if its yearly ROI varies quite a bit around that figure. That’s a lot of money carefully not being used for the school’s operating revenue, or its grant “indirect costs.”

The other is that proposed Universities could instead commit to addressing administrative bloat and shoring up research integrity. We’ve seen already the value of those commitments—empty virtue-signaling words in far too many cases. See for instance, Sen’s own Harvard and its refusal to enforce its commitment to protect Jewish students from Harvard’s population of pro-terrorist “students.”

Bonus thing regarding those schools with higher costs about which Sen worries being left in the lurch: any lurch is solely the product of those “higher cost” schools. They can straightforwardly cull their administrative bloat and adjust their spending allocations to deal with remaining costs. All that would take is a modicum of courage, with backbone injected via reduced revenues caused by reduced Federal froo-froo included in any research grants.

No. The administration’s across-the-board 15% cap needs to be implemented.

Speculative Lawsuits

Posted on by
Reply

A collection of Leftist State Attorneys General led by New York’s Letitia James has filed an amicus brief in an existing suit against the Federal government over President Donald Trump’s (R) move to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That might leave American banks without a government watchdog, they claim in their brief.

Furthermore, [t]he AGs didn’t accuse any banks of wrongdoing. These AGs further claim

The absence of a functioning CFPB…creates a regulatory vacuum even greater than what existed before the Great Recession. The very large financial institutions that compete with state-chartered banks will have carte blanche to loosen their regulatory compliance and profit accordingly.

Further, as cited by The Wall Street Journal,

The AGs argued that the administration is creating a regulatory gap that will encourage the largest banks to game the system by taking a more lax approach, while smaller state-chartered banks will still be subject to state supervision.

Might. Will have. And those two possibles in the latter: “will encourage” and “will still be.” These are purely speculative, with no harm being alleged. No actual wrong doing, in so many words, is being alleged. Basing a law suit, or even an amicus, on speculation about an unknown future—however likely plaintiffs might claim that future to be—is anathema in the American legal system. The requirement to allege—credibly—actual harm already done prevents a potful of frivolous, of politically motivated, of purely fee-seeking lawsuits where no harm exists, even where no harm is likely to exist in some nebulous future.

The Leftist AGs’ move is typical of the Left’s and their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians’ lawfare business.

This is yet another reason why it’s so difficult for us average Americans to have nice things in our nation. It’s time to start requiring plaintiffs to pay the defendants for the costs of lawsuits which plaintiffs bring and lose, and to require those providing amicus briefs on the side of plaintiffs to share in paying those costs.

Presidential Authority

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump (R) is moving to reassert a President’s authority over the Executive Branch of our Federal government, lately signing an Executive Order that imposes new White House supervision over so-called independent agencies.

The editors of the WSJ center their support for this on

Article II’s command that the President “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” If Congress has charged such agencies with enforcing laws, then the President should be able to supervise how they do their job.

They’re right as far as they go, but the matter is far more basic than that. The first sentence of Section 1 of our Constitution’s Article II lays out the foundational nature of an American Presidency:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

Our Executive Branch is run by a single executive officer, not by a committee of board members, especially not by an executive and a number of other executives operating independently of him and of each other.

This is the unitary executive, as some legal scholars term it. It’s long past time it got restored. Trump is entirely correct in this matter.