Tag Archives: ethics

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.

Security Clearances for Retired Officials

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The Hatch Act is a Federal law that bars active Federal employees from acting in politically partisan fashion from the pulpit of their official positions. President Joe Biden’s (D) Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is frequently cited for violating it.

Stewart Baker, very late of the National Security Agency’s General Counsel, and Michael Ellis, ex-National Security Council Senior Director for Intelligence Programs, want to extend the Hatch Act (presumably with sterner consequences for violation) to retired Federal intelligence community employees.

As part of an effort to depoliticize the intelligence community, lawmakers should extend the Hatch Act’s restrictions to senior intelligence officials who continue to hold security clearances after they’ve left government.

Such an extension of the Hatch Act would be a good step, but it falls far short.

All persons—not just from intel—who leave government employ, or the employment of government suppliers of any sort, whether they leave through retirement or in order to “seek other opportunities,” no longer have the Need to Know that is a Critical Criterion for having a clearance. These folks should have their clearances revoked as of COB of their last day on the job.

[W]hen senior officials enter the private sector, they routinely retain security clearances as a perk….

It’s especially the case that matters pertaining to national security—security clearances, for instance—are far too important to be considered mere perks.

Free Speech Progressive-Democrat Style

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Progressive-Democratic Party members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its subcommittees—Congressmen Frank Pallone (D, NJ), Jan Schakowsky (D, IL), Doris Matsui (D, CA), and Kathy Castor (D, FL)—are unhappy with the new free speech position of Sundar Pichai’s Google-owned YouTube. They categorically reject YouTube‘s statement that

open debate on political ideas, “even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society—especially in the midst of election season.”

They’re perfectly fine, though, with Pichai’s YouTube censoring the speech of President Joe Biden’s (D) presidential primary campaign opponent, Robert F Kennedy, Jr, and leaving Biden an unanswered and unanswerable field for his own speech.

The Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, it seems, want to be the sole arbiters of what speech is legitimate, and what speech must be banned. These Leftist politicians think we ordinary Americans are just too grindingly stupid to understand what we hear and how to evaluate it, and so we must not be allowed the choice. We must be led by these Leftist politicians.

This is the naked censorship toward which we can look if the Progressive-Democratic Party wins in 2024.

It’s What You Ask

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Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton ran last Tuesday’s mid-day-ish presser, and she was asked about polling indicating that President Joe Biden (D) routinely gets low approval ratings regarding his handling of our economy and how a then-upcoming speech would impact those ratings. Dalton replied with this:

Well, what I would say is that the president’s economic policies are incredibly popular. When you ask people what they think about investing in our roads, bridges, and airports, what you—when you ask people what they think about educating and empowering workers, when you ask people about how they feel about reshoring, manufacturing jobs, and investing in America, those things are incredibly popular.

Well, of course they are. What American isn’t enthusiastically in favor of motherhood and apple pie? What us Americans aren’t happy about is Biden’s actual performance in doing anything toward achieving those starry-eyed goals. The President’s men carefully do not ask about Biden’s execution; they ask only about those popular intentions, and then they claim that because everyone loves their mother, everything is hunky dory.

This is the cynicism of the Biden White House.