Tag Archives: ethics

Time to Go

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Here’s yet another Federal agency that needs to be eliminated, its budget returned to the Treasury, and its personnel—all of them—returned to the private sector rather than reallocated within the Federal Leviathan.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency [emphasis added]:

  • its role in organizing the Election Integrity Partnership—the private group that worked with social media companies to censor content during the 2020 election
  • did not implement effective controls for the selected High Value Asset (HVA) system per Federal and departmental requirements
    • DHS OIG found inactive user accounts were not consistently disabled or removed, according to established rules—40% of nearly 2,800 “users”
    • 15% of sampled users missed initial or annual cybersecurity training
  • did not follow its own recommendations when conducting its own review of the system, failing to detect the access control deficiencies identified by the watchdog

When the agency personnel aren’t being overtly corrupt, they’re being patently incompetent. The organization is far beyond redeemability, and it’s new enough (created out of whole cloth in 2018) that there are much fewer entrenched interests in preserving its corruption or its incompetence.

A Foolish Question

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors note that California’s Progressive-Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has waived some permitting requirements for some folks to facilitate their rebuilding efforts in the wake of the fires burning to ashes some suburbs of Los Angeles. Then they ask

Why not ease regulations for all projects if the rules are such a barrier to development?

It’s clear enough why not. Newsom hasn’t had the epiphany the editors’ headline at the link claims; he’s pandering to the uber-rich and to the upper middle class folks in what is really a narrow slice of the whole of California. Those rich who’ve lost their homes to the fires are major donors to him and to Party. The waiver is limited to these panderees because throughout that whole of the rest of California, Green groups and unions operate, and they’re major donors, also, to Newsom and to Party.

Cynical Failure

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Say they really believe their climate-cause claims.

The theory is that climate change caused two especially wet winters in California in 2023 and 2024.

And

[C]limate change explains wet and dry seasons, which follows the progressive line that climate change is responsible for every natural disaster….

It doesn’t matter if they actually believe that. If the California Progressive-Democratic Party politicians and the climatistas really believed that climate was at the root of the wildfires that have beset the State over the last couple of years, the one collective would have taken proactive steps, and the other collective would have supported those proactive steps, to protect the State’s citizens and their property from the ravages of those wildfires—the alleged outcome of “climate.”

They—both collectives—consciously, with forethought, chose not to take those steps. The question is why. One motive is increased power for the political collective through ranting about climate and how they’re the only ones able to deal with it and more “climate”-combating funding for the climatista collective who insist they are the only ones qualified to devise the ways with which to deal with it—and people and property be damned.

There is a Parallel

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Virginia Republican legislators are looking at updating and tightening Virginia law regarding fentanyl deaths.

Under current case law, it is difficult to charge a drug dealer with the murder of a user who died from fentanyl they had purchased unless they are in the proximity of that dealer, according to GOP legislators.

Thus:

State Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-New Kent, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that Virginia hopes to address that legislative insufficiency.
“This [new] [law] would say if you sell the drugs, it doesn’t matter if you’re in physical proximity,” he said.

When a person is killed in the course of a crime of which he’s a victim or bystander, all of the participants in that crime are as guilty of murder as is the one who did the actual killing. This is well established case law.

It’s eminently sensible that participants in a drug activity (and not just involving fentanyl) during the course of which or as a result of which a person is killed by the drug should all be guilty of the murder as is the individual who was proximately involved in that killing. Bullets and knives have, in the main, pretty prompt effects from having been delivered in the moment. Drugs, though, have prompt effects when taken, the taking often is delayed. Hence the need to expand that proximity to the dealer bit. The drugs the dealer delivered might well have their prompt effect later, when the addict takes the metaphorical bullet/knife stab.

Unfortunately, though, this law has little chance of passage in the current Virginia legislative session: the Progressive-Democratic Party will hold a one-seat majority after a pair of special elections are completed. Party has shown over the last four years that it has no stomach for punishing criminals, lacking even the stomach to hold them in jail pending trial, or even to bring them to trial at all.

Are They or Aren’t They?

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The McDonald’s burger chain now is claiming to be doing away with its DEI foolishness in its corporate hierarchy.

The company said it would phase out some diversity commitments among suppliers and said its diversity team would now be called the Global Inclusion Team. The name change, it said, was “more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work.”

Then the company said it would instead

focus on “continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations.”

The name change and backhanded admission that it would continue doing precisely what it intimated it would stop doing insult the intelligence of us average Americans.

This sort of weasel wording is why we cannot trust business managers who claim to be doing away with the intrinsically racist and sexist DEI…foolishness. They aren’t. They’re just hiding it in their back rooms.