Tag Archives: ethics

Removing the DA from the Case

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That’s what a Georgia State appellate court has done with Fani Willis. She’s off the case she had brought against former President and present President-elect Donald Trump (R) over his alleged interference with the results of the 2020 Presidential election. (She’s appealing the matter to the State Supreme Court.)

The court ruled, in part, that she needed to be removed because the

remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring.

The appellate court also did not toss the case itself. Inconvenient as this will be for Trump, it actually has the potential to work strongly for his benefit. It’ll be better for the case to be tossed on its (lack of) merits than on the technicality of tossing it as punishment of the prosecutors. The latter outcome would leave the question of Trump’s alleged interference hanging. Winning the case outright, or getting it tossed because no other Georgia prosecutor wants to touch it, would put the question to rest in all of our minds save those of pressmen and Never-Trump hysterics.

Legalized Extortion

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Elon Musk says he’s been ordered/threatened/whathaveyou to “settle” an SEC beef, or else. The SEC’s capo, Gary Gensler, has told Musk he must agree within 48 hours to either accept a monetary payment or face charges on numerous counts.

This is the Federal government, which has no authority to do so, requiring a settlement be agreed. This is more than just an effort to stampede a defendant so an arm of government can avoid the embarrassment of taking a weak case to court and getting a public failure and a potful of opprobrium when it loses.

This is that arm of government demanding the defendant pay the vig or suffer damage to, if not destruction of, his business. Crime syndicate capi do that. It’s behavior that doesn’t belong in the government of a free people.

Gensler should face far sterner sanction than just loss of his job.

It Takes This Long?

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Our Federal government is just now (as I write on Sunday) starting to thinking about deploying a high-tech drone detection system to New York State.

…federal officials are finally preparing to deploy a high-tech drone detection system to New York State.
The drones that comprise the detection system will ostensibly help both state and local law enforcement figure out what has been going on over the past month or so….

Preparing to deploy. This, after weeks of National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby and Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh insulting our intelligence by feeding us utter BS about nothing to be seen here, we don’t know what these things are (maybe commercial aircraft!), but they’re not dangerous.

Sadly, dangerously, this long delay in getting around to deploying even the beginnings of a response isn’t only due to the incompetence of the Biden administration. It’s also from the shameful timidity of the Biden administration in its desperation to avoid even the appearance of offending one or another of our enemies, even before we know who the perpetrator is.

But—and this is the dangerous part—more than either of the above, this delay is from the glacially slow decision-making capability of the Pentagon bureaucracy that has supplanted the decision-making of serious, operational senior officers who are practiced in deciding and acting in fluid environments.

That last, far more important than any wasteful spending cuts (important as those are in their own right) must be the first and primary target of any reform moves, whether from DOGE or from in-government reformers. That bureaucracy, no matter how well intended, must be ripped out root and branch and surrounding dirt, and wholly replaced by those operational officers, men and women who’ve grown up in the combat and combat support branches.

How Can He Trust Them?

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Former President and current President-elect Donald Trump (R) is being inundated with visits from CEOs who in the past have castigated him, his policies, his character, his integrity, even censoring him outrageously (excuse the redundancy). Some are even throwing millions of dollars at him his inaugural fund.

Titans of the business world are rushing to make inroads with the president-elect, gambling that personal relationships with the next occupant of the Oval Office will help their bottom lines and spare them from Trump’s wrath.
In the weeks since the election, Trump and his advisers have been flooded with calls from C-suite executives who are eager to get face time with the President-elect and his team at Mar-a-Lago, the private Florida club where the transition team conducts much of its planning for the second term.

Even as they smile in his face, though, they’ve already shown their true colors with their prior attacks. They’re only mouthing words of approbation today in hopes of avoiding the consequences of their disingenuosity.

How can Trump trust them? He can’t. He can use them, but he should keep in mind an old maxim: keep his friends close and his enemies closer.

At bottom,

Il capo d’azienda e mobile, qual piuma al vento
In pianto o in riso è mensognero

Cancel the Contract

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And award it to another manufacturer. Former President and current President-elect Donald Trump (R) has long wanted a better aircraft for Air Force One, correctly identifying the current iteration as woefully limited in capability and badly obsolescent. Boeing has long had the contract for Air Force Ones, and they have the current contract to build a new, fully capable model.

Boeing is badly failing at this, too, even as it continues to fail at producing commercial aircraft, it fails at producing vehicles that can reach the ISS and return safely, its moon rocket is over budget and behind schedule, and on and on.

The long-delayed [Air Force One replacement] project has fallen so far behind schedule that Boeing has told the Air Force that it expects to deliver the new jets after Trump leaves the White House, according to people familiar with the matter. That means the airplanes wouldn’t be ready until 2029 or later.

And:

Boeing has booked more than $2 billion of charges tied to the fixed-price contract, which has gone over budget and been troubled by production glitches and management issues.
…
The delay is startling given that Boeing isn’t building the planes from scratch. During Trump’s first term, Boeing started to overhaul two 747s that were built for a Russian airline that never took the jets.

Such sloth is wholly unacceptable. It’s time to cancel the Boeing contract altogether and award it to a reputable company that will take seriously the task of building and outfitting a modern, fully capable Air Force One aircraft. The delay associated with the changeover, even if it involves building a new airplane from scratch, won’t be materially different from the delay Boeing presently is inflicting. Does anyone really have any confidence that Boeing would deliver soon after 2029?