Category Archives: culture

Cowardice

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This time, by Intel’s Chairman Omar Ishrak and CEO Pat Gelsinger. This management team, a short time ago, sent out a letter to Intel suppliers asking them to avoid sourcing from the [People’s Republic of China’s] region of Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has conducted a campaign of forcible assimilation against religious minorities.

Intel called on its business partners to steer clear of the remote northwestern region of China, noting that “multiple governments have imposed restrictions on products sourced from the Xinjiang region. Therefore, Intel is required to ensure our supply chain does not use any labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region.”

After a hue and cry on PRC social media, though, Ishrak and Gelsinger cringed and ducked under their separate desks, and had the company issue a carefully unsigned corporate statement expressing “Intel’s” regret over having offended the PRC.

…its letter was written only to comply with US law and didn’t represent Intel’s stance on Xinjiang.

Please don’t hurt us, please. We didn’t mean it. And this plea:

We deeply apologize for the confusion caused to our respected Chinese customers, partners, and the public[.]

There’s this, too, illustrating the artificial nature of the conundrum:

Multinational companies have been caught in the middle as Western governments have pressured companies to disentangle their supply chains from Xinjiang.

No, they’re not caught in any middle. They just need to find the moral courage to shift their supply sources and their markets out of the PRC. They have the economic wherewithal, even if the transition processes will be near-term expensive. An earlier First Lady identified the position to take: “Just say no.” Even that infamous shoe-maker, Nike, has the right words, if not the integrity to honor them: “Just do it.”

Never mind that it’s PRC President Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party cronies who should be apologizing for their ongoing atrocities against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

This is disgusting cowardice, and it should be unacceptable for American company managers to put lucre from the PRC above morality.

Assess or Not?

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Jason Riley had some thoughts in his Wall Street Journal op-ed concerning Harvard’s decision to not bother with any serious assessment of prospective students before choosing which to admit and which to…not. The subheadline on his piece summed up his column:

How do you help young people move forward without honestly assessing where they stand?

I had some thoughts in answer of that question, too, and they’re rather more pithy than Riley’s.

“You” don’t, but that’s not the point of the Left’s identity politics, most explicitly seen in academia. This is just the utter contempt Leftist identity politics purveyors have for blacks and Hispanics, considering them intrinsically inferior and so, paraphrasing Woodrow Wilson’s infamous words, they should be grateful for the protections of no assessments. It’s also the raw jealousy the Leftist identity politics purveyors have for Americans with Asian heritage, viewing them as intrinsically superior to the rest of us.

It’s a completely disgusting and dishonest display, and in a moral world, it would get institutions that employed such as these cut off from Federal and State funding, and alums with any sense of propriety and self respect would stop donating to them.

Taxes and “Give Backs”

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There is a surprisingly broad misunderstanding regarding taxes and to whom those taxed funds belong, even among those who should know better. One example is The Wall Street Journal editors’ mischaracterization of Arkansas’ tax reductions in an editorial, which they subheadlined

Little Rock returns some of its booming revenue to taxpayers.

The “return of revenue” was this:

Governor Asa Hutchinson recently signed legislation that reduces the top state income-tax rate to 5.5% from 5.9%, effective New Year’s Day. The rate will continue to drop in stages to 4.9% by 2025.

Along with this:

The state Department of Finance and Administration anticipates that some 105,000 residents will soon pay no income tax as a result.

And this “sweetener:”

The legislation includes the sweetener of a $60 tax credit for some 535,000 Arkansans who make less than $23,600.

None of this is giving money back to Arkansan citizens; all of it is letting them keep more of their money in the first place.

Even the tax credit is less a giveback than it is a let ’em keep it, albeit after the friction of a tax man middleman has taken its toll.

Insisting on your Rights is Uncooperative

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That’s the view of one lawyer.

It seems that the actor Alec Baldwin wanted a search warrant before he would turn over his cell phone to the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department. Supposedly, Baldwin asked for one even before the sheriff asked for his cell in the apparent expectation that the sheriff would be asking.

Lawyer Christopher Melcher says that’s being uncooperative.

It is spin by Alec’s lawyer to say that he suggested the warrant. He refused to provide his phone without a warrant. That is not cooperation or a proactive suggestion.

What we think of Baldwin doesn’t matter. Nor does it matter whether he asked for the search warrant before or after the sheriff asked for his cell phone. Not only his right to have a search warrant implied by our Constitution. The government’s requirement to get one before any search is written in black letters in our Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

What would be uncooperative would be the sheriff demanding Baldwin give up his cell phone without that warrant (which is different from the sheriff asking for it before getting the warrant in order to save some administrative hassle).

It’s attitudes like Melcher’s that give law enforcement and prosecutorial proceedings a bad name, whether or not Melcher is associated with either.

Laws and Rules

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The Progressive-Democrats are unhappy that they haven’t had their way with our government, and so they insist on changing the rules so they can get their way forever after. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) took note of this from the Senate floor last Thursday.

In the span of a few hours, one Senate Democrat had renewed calls to nuke the Senate and break the rules, and another published a national op-ed arguing that Democrats should attack the rule of law and pack the Supreme Court.
Two frontal assaults on two branches of government, proposed in the space of about two hours. Entire generations of statesmen would have seen either one of those unhinged proposals as Armageddon for our institutions.

But this is the Progressive-Democratic Party. If they can’t have their way within the law, within the rules, they’ll change the law, change the rules. If they can’t change the law or the rules, they’ll simply ignore them.

The government of the People’s Republic of China, and of the predecessor nation on the mainland, operates and operated the same way. If the men of those governments don’t—didn’t then—like the outcomes of specific laws, or if the people become too unruly (in those government men’s eyes) under existing law, they alter the law to suit those men.

This is not to say the Progressive-Democratic Party is the same as the Communist Party of China. The attitudes and techniques of the two, though, are quite similar, and they produce the same outcome: a nation whose citizens are ruled by government men rather than a nation under law where all citizens are equal, including those government men, and government is subordinate to the citizens.