Tag Archives: ethics

Blinders

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FBI Director Christopher Wray was wearing them, when he wasn’t overtly insulting the intelligence of committee members, when he testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee last Wednesday. Committee members asked Wray a number of questions that he refused to answer, even as he couched his refusal in a number of rationalizations.

Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R, OH) asked whether the FBI had asked financial institutions for customer transaction records in the DC area for the period surrounding the 6 Jan riots. Wray: I don’t know the answer.

Darrell Issa (R, CA) asked Wray whether FBI agents infiltrated those riots. Wray refused to answer altogether, referring Issa to “existing court filings.”

Matt Gaetz (R, FL) asked Wray how many times the FBI misused FISA authorities to spy on American citizens. Wray refused to say, or even to explain why the illegal searches happened.

Pramila Jayapal (D, WA) asked Wray whether the FBI was purchasing Americans’ personal data from the Internet or social media collectors. Wray refused to “confirm or deny.” When she asked how the FBI used such data, Wray said,

Respectfully, this is a topic that gets very involved to explain, so what I would prefer to do is have our subject matters come back up and brief you[.]

He thereby confirmed that his FBI does obtain such information, whether through buying it, or through other means. And his answer was insulting to the committee members, particularly to Jayapal, implying that the Congressmen were too grindingly stupid to understand the matter or by insulting their intelligence with his claim that he doesn’t understand the matter himself.

And so on through hours of testimonial evasion, pretended ignorance, and insults.

This FBI has long since outlived its usefulness, and it needs to be disbanded.

Another Excuse…

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…for Leftist-dominated governments to grab power. Farmers Insurance, and other insurance companies, are moving to restrict policy sales in California and Florida due to rising payout costs from a recent spate of natural disaster claims. Public Citizen said that such moves are

prime example of the insurance industry’s hypocrisy on climate change.

Progressive-Democratic Party politicians insist that insurance companies aren’t doing enough to combat global warming and want to impose requirements on them to do more. Connecticut’s Leftist politicians are proposing a 5% surcharge on “any premium payments from any fossil fuel company” to any insurer licensed in the state.

Insurers, in a free market economy, are in the business of insuring risk—transferring the risk of a business venture, or ownership of a home, from the venturer/homeowner to the insurer in exchange for a fee based on the risk’s likelihood of occurring and its cost should it occur.

Insurers, in the Progressive-Democrat economy, are tools of the State, usable by the State to achieve the Progressive-Democrats’ personal goals.

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.