Tag Archives: government

Public Records

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The Seattle Times has the shameful story.

…a brazen attempt by [Washington State] lawmakers to exempt themselves from the state’s Public Records Act. These elected officials are evading the ruling of a judge and contradicting Attorney General Bob Ferguson, both of whom said legislators are subject to the law.

And

[SB 6617] tries to permanently ban access to lawmakers’ past emails, text messages and calendars, as well as past disciplinary proceedings and complaints about lawmakers’ conduct.

What are these guys trying to cover up?

With dizzying speed and no public debate, state lawmakers passed the bill sealing off thousands of records that could inform voters how well their elected leaders are representing them. The entire process took about 48 hours….

It must be something, or a lot of somethings.

The Times editors called on the State’s Progressive-Democrat Governor to veto the bill.  It’s not often I agree with these editors, but on this score, they’re absolutely right.  Jay Inslee agreed: he vetoed the bill Thursday.

Hmm….

Constitutions

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The Communist Party of China has before it a Constitutional amendment that would abolish term limits for the Presidency of the People’s Republic of China.  The CPC is expected to ratify the amendment, along with a number of others that also will enhance the power and apparent prestige of the incumbent, Xi Jingping.

The CPC is expected to ratify….

It’s interesting that the Chinese people aren’t allowed a voice in the document the CPC uses to subjugate them. This is the contempt for ordinary citizens that the men of the government of the People’s Republic of China will inflict on all the nations over which the PRC gains control.

A Justice Misunderstands

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The Supreme Court heard arguments the other day on an Ohio voter registration law.  That law removes voters from the roll if they haven’t voted over a two-year period and don’t respond to a follow-up notice from Ohio’s Secretary of State.

It’s a partisan case from the Left’s perspective: those opposing the law argue, with some justification, that those who live in urban regions (and who happen to vote Democratic) relocate more frequently than do those who live in the ‘burbs and out in the country (and who happen to vote Republican).  This would seem to put Democrats at a disadvantage in elections since they’re more likely to have not voted over a two-year period and not responded to the follow-up notice.

Justice Sonya Sotomayor put the thing nakedly: Ohio’s law

results in disenfranchising disproportionately certain cities where large groups of minorities live, where large groups of homeless people live

and, as the WSJ added,

including people who can’t make it to the polls because of the long hours they work.

The one is at best a misunderstanding, albeit entirely consistent with the Left’s view that responsibility lies with Government and not with the individual.  The other is just nonsense.

Urbanites may well have a higher turnover rate than suburbanites and [farmers], but nothing stops those who leave from registering to vote in their new jurisdiction, and nothing stops those arriving as “replacements” for the departed from registering in the current jurisdiction.  Turnover has nothing to do with it, skin color (I won’t address ethnicity; we’re all Americans in the voting booth) has nothing to do with it, homelessness has nothing to do with it (although this group has a beef in terms of demonstrating their residency so they can register).

The other is wholly irrelevant: Ohio has an extensive early voting time frame; there are lots of opportunities for those with long hours to go vote.

Privacy Innovation

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The FBI’s management says it supports strong encryption, but out of the other side of their mouth they claim that the FBI’s

inability to access data [is] “an urgent public safety issue” that requires “significant innovation.”

Here we go again.  Heads up for FBI Director making plain what he’s now only hinting at: he wants a backdoor into our encryption so Government can enter whenever it takes a notion to.

FBI Director Chris Wray is seeking to reboot the privacy-versus-security debate surrounding law enforcement’s inability to access data on electronic devices protected by powerful encryption.

Over the past year, the FBI failed to access data from nearly 7,800 devices, Wray said Tuesday at the International Conference on Cyber Security in New York City, adding that the number continues to grow[.]

This is disingenuous.  The FBI, in the San Bernardino terrorist shooting, pretended it was unable to open decrypt the cell phone of one of the terrorists because they couldn’t hack the password.  They also pretended difficulty decrypting the contents when they did get the phone opened.  In both cases, when a private enterprise was allowed into the problem, that private company cracked both problems lickety-split.

But we can trust Government.  Nobody in Government would abuse that backdoor.

Here’s an innovation: do your own work at keeping up in the encryption/decryption arms race; don’t demand private enterprise hand you the keys to our kingdom.

Here’s another innovation: get a warrant.

Whose Information Is It?

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Information belongs to the government of the People’s Republic of China, apparently.  Especially when it’s investment information, information that might facilitate the prosperity of individual citizens and their businesses, information that might lessen their dependence on and control by, that government.

A Chinese quasi-regulator told the country’s top raters of investment funds to stop publicizing the sizes of money-market mutual funds, in what is being seen as another attempt by Beijing to slow the industry’s rapid pace of asset accumulation.

Because an informed investor can make his own decisions instead of the decisions Government wants him to make.

A copy of an internal directive reviewed by The Wall Street Journal told firms that rate and rank investment funds to avoid publishing the asset sizes for money-market funds, which could have the effect of drawing more investors to the largest funds.

Which would (in a free market) have the knock-on effect of competition raising rates paid investors in those not-largest funds, which would benefit the investors.  And the further knock-on effects of drawing yet more money into the funds and of adding liquidity to these short-term instruments which would facilitate the short-term borrowing (useful for inventory control, meeting payroll, etc) of businesses.  Which would have the further knock-on effect of spurring the private economy and not the Communist Party of China’s controlled economy.

Gotta keep the peasants down on the farm.  The cities are collecting too many of them, anyway.

Unless it’s proprietary or a matter of national secrets, information isn’t controlled by Government beyond a couple of laws protecting intellectual property and those secrets.  In free nations, anyway.