What the Progressive-Democratic Party now Stands For

With Party’s nomination of three Democratic Socialists of America for our nation’s House of Representatives, its election of DSA member Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor, its all but election of a DSA supporter as mayor of DC, and its nomination DSA acolytes for positions up and down the ballot across America, the Progressive-Democratic Party has made plain what it has chosen to stand for.

  • open support for Palestinians and Hamas
  • end to support for Israel, which is genocidal and apartheid
  • defunding our police departments, elimination of the police function altogether(!)
  • end to jail/prison for convicted felons
  • open national borders
    • abolish ICE
    • end deportations
  • seizure of the means of production
    • seize apartments, other rentals from existing landlords
  • Medicare for all—provision of a national, government produced, health system
  • push for all union employment, elimination of right to work provisions
  • packing Supreme Court
  • ever higher income taxes and wealth taxes

None of these is good for our nation. Any combination of them will be disastrous.

Confidential

A fifteen-year-old boy who sued YouTube, Alphabet‘s Google-owned company over YouTube‘s alleged causing [of] mental health harms to children via its also alleged by-design addictive nature, has settled his lawsuit rather than insisting on going to trial. The terms of the settlement are…confidential.

Of course, the boy’s lawyers are taking a victory lap.

YouTube‘s decision to resolve this case before having to face a jury speaks for itself.

On the other hand, José Castañeda, a Policy Communications Manager (III) at Google, speaking on behalf of YouTube and the settlement

said in a statement to FOX Business that the lawsuit had been amicably resolved.

Naturally, the lawyers for both sides would paint the outcome as favorable for their own client. The losers in such an outcome, though, are the public, other children in the boy’s claimed strait, and the boy himself.

By concealing the outcome, it’s impossible for the public—those other children, especially—to know whether YouTube is being suitably punished or the boy’s beef is bogus. That’s all carefully hidden. The concealment reduces a suit and the associated publicity to nothing more than virtue-signaling.

I’m spring-loaded against keeping settlements of civil lawsuits, which themselves are public affairs, hidden away from the public. If the plaintiff(s) aren’t confident of the legitimacy of their plaint, they ought not bring the case in the first place. If they are confident, they should push the pace and go to trial.