Category Archives: rights

Do Black Lives Matter?

Posted on by
Reply

Or are companies just virtue-signaling?

These companies openly allied themselves with the Black Lives Matter organization (which should not be confused with the more honest black lives matter (lower case) movement):

Nike, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Ben & Jerry’s, Nordstrom, Target, and Ulta Beauty

Now, with crime against black Americans spiking—including homicides, and those including killings of children—as BLM and its anti-cop cronies push for, and succeed in getting, police departments defunded, reduced in funding, and police personnel reductions, those companies refuse to discuss their alignment, whether to defend and explain it or to acknowledge their error and correct their alignment. Or even to discuss the matter at all.

Of course, that’s consistent with many of these companies’—Nike, Apple—enthusiastic business dealings with and inside nations like the People’s Republic of China which is committing genocide against its Uighur population, and other of these companies—Ben & Jerry’s—openly siding with Middle East terrorists and reducing or boycotting altogether Israel, and of others—Facebook—just generally favoring censoring political speech.

Criminal behavior is of no interest to these companies—criminals’ dollars matter, too.

Discrimination

Posted on by
Reply

Recall the California law that requires (required) the boards of directors of California-headquartered public companies to have at least one member of an “underrepresented” race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, and two to three for larger boards. Recall further that California Superior Court Judge

Terry Green judge struck the law for violating California’s constitution.

Now The Wall Street Journal includes a bit of the judge’s reasoning from his opinion.

the judge says no one “appears to have made any effort to identify, define, or survey the qualified talent pool for director positions.”

Oops.

In an associated footnote, the judge went on, with clarity that even a California Progressive-Democrat should be able to discern.

Some of the experts have identified common feeder positions (such as “C-Suite” executive roles) and academic qualifications (such as an MBA), but there appears to be no one single” gatekeeping “qualification that could be used to define the pool in the way that a license might for lawyers and medical professionals, or a credential might for teachers.

Then he drove the point home in his conclusion.

Corporations Code § 301.4 [the board of directors membership law] violates the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution on its face. The statute treats similarly situated individuals—qualified potential corporate board members—differently based on their membership (or lack thereof) in certain listed racial, sexual orientation, and gender identity groups. It requires that a certain specific number of board seats be reserved for members of the groups on the list—and necessarily excludes members of other groups from those seats.

It’s hard to get any clearer than that, but if the California Progressive-Democratic Party legislators are true to their history, they’ll work hard to find a way to be confused.

Some Progress

Posted on by
Reply

The Alabama House of Representatives, on the last day of this year’s legislative session, passed—66-28—a bill that makes felonies out of performing certain essentially irreversible transgender procedures on children. The State’s Senate had passed the bill earlier, so now it goes to Governor Kay Ivey (R) for signature and passage into law.

Among the procedures proscribed by the bill are hormone treatment, puberty blockers, and gender-reassignment surgery.

It’s one thing if adults want to undergo transgender procedures, but it’s quite another for children. Not only are children—from an intellectual and emotional maturation standpoint as well as legally—incapable of making such decisions, they’re incapable of deciding for themselves their underlying desired gender recognition status. That status is determined solely by a child’s parents, and so are the decisions to act on their determination.

Such procedures are irreversible, and neither the parent nor the child can undo them later if either should wish to change his mind or recognize a mistake and wish to correct it. A parent imposing such a decision on the child is as guilty of child abuse as they would be of beatings or genital mutilation.

Ivey has not said whether she would sign the bill, and her office did not respond to a request by the wire service for comment.

It’s unclear why Ivey is hesitating. Protecting children from abuse should be a goal of everyone, including politicians.

Threats

Posted on by
Reply

Russian President Vladimir Putin is broadening his threat against non-Russian nations in furtherance of his goal of expanding Russian control in Europe.

Finland, on observing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and seeing the butchery Putin’s military is inflicting as a matter of state policy on Ukrainian cities, women, children, is looking hard at applying to join NATO.

Russian lawmaker Vladimir Dzhabarov stated that joining the alliance would be a “strategic mistake” for Finland, adding that the country would “become a target.”
“I think it [would be] a terrible tragedy for the entire Finnish people,” Dzhabarov said, adding that with such an action, “the Finns themselves will sign a card for the destruction of their country.”

The threats don’t get any clearer. With Finland having inflicted the heavy losses they did when the Russian-led Soviet Union invaded the last time, in 1939, there’s also a strong measure of vengeance in these threats Putin is making, here with Dzhabarov’s voice.

Canceling Charter Schools

Posted on by
1

The Biden-Harris administration is trying to. His Department of Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, is proposing a cancelation rule, cynically called, in part, Expanding Opportunity Through Quality Charter Schools Program. The rule provides, among other things:

prov[e] there’s a demand for a new school—e.g., evidence satisfactory to Miguel Cardona that there is “over-enrollment” in existing public schools

Prove to the government’s satisfaction, that is. A government that the teachers unions, recall, heavily influence—lately regarding Wuhan Virus requirements for opening and operating in existing public schools.

show[] how they would ensure diversity

Not how they would ensure a quality education. That’s no longer a factor under this administration or the teachers unions.

limit the degree of control over their own schools that would be allowed outside for-profit companies

Because Big Government Knows Better than actual businessmen and educators how to run a school.

[A]n applicant [for Federal startup seed money] must propose to collaborate with at least one traditional public school or traditional school district

And

In its application, an applicant must provide a letter from each partnering traditional public school or school district demonstrating a commitment to participate in the proposed charter-traditional collaboration.

Under these two requirements, a new charter school functionally must get permission from its competitors—those public schools—even to operate. That permission is granted in part, or withheld entirely, by whether an existing partner school will agree, or not, to “partner” with the supplicant applicant.

The proposed rule goes on like that for over a dozen Federal Register pages, every single one of which is unnecessary, since this…rule…is less than unnecessary, it’s Government overreach.

It’s long past time to put these people out of office.