Another Out of Control Agency

…that’s overcome with its own self-importance.  I’ve written before about how the Securities and Exchange System abuses its own system of in-house judges for SEC purposes rather than for the public’s interest.

The Federal Trade Commission is another such agency that’s showing it’s outlived its usefulness and for the same reason.  In 2008, LabMD was “found” to have inadvertently exposed a file containing personally identifiable patient information.  I write “found” because the company that “found” the exposure then tried to use their discovery to peddle its data security services to LabMD.  The FTC brought a case against LabMD over the exposure, but last year an FTC in-house judge ruled against the FTC and tossed the case.

That judge, D Michael Chapell, tossed the FTC’s case last year because the commission could not identify any consumers who’d been harmed by LabMD’s allegedly weak security practices. Because no one had been harmed in the seven years since the patient file was exposed, it was unlikely that anyone would be harmed in the future, Judge Chappell concluded.

Wrong answer, Judge.

The FTC, which has the authority to review the rulings issued by its administrative court, said Friday the judge used an incorrect legal standard that was too stringent.

The ruling, being inconvenient to the FTC’s narrative, was rejected out of hand.

Here is the usefulness of an in-house system of judges.

Because We Just Don’t Understand

But our Betters do.  No less a light than House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) says so, so it must be so.

I think that, so many times, white—non-college-educated white males have voted Republican. They voted against their own economic interests because of guns, because of gays, and because of God, the three G’s, God being the woman’s right to choose[.]

Because it’s not in our interest—not in the interest of any American, but hey: this Democrat is playing the race card—to insist on our right to keep and bear even as Democrats confirm the need with their constant attempts to disarm us.

Because it isn’t possible to disagree with gays on marriage while respecting—actively moving to protect—the freedoms of all individual Americans, including whatever group Democrats want to carve out and divide from other Americans with their identity politics.

Because God doesn’t want us to protect babies as well as women, but only those groups of human beings whom Democrats single out as appropriate for God’s protection.

Elections have consequences, and here’s one from the last election in California.

The DNC “Apologizes”

[T]he DNC finally apologized for “inexcusable remarks made over email,” saying it “does not—and will not—tolerate disrespectful language exhibited toward our candidates.”

Sure.  But—carefully—there’s not a syllable of apology for the Party’s actual bias toward a disfavored candidate, nor is there a minim of an apologetic word about the Party’s overt behavior toward a disfavored candidate in acting on that bias.  There’s only this expression of regret for some words.

Is This How Democrats Would Govern if Given the Chance?

Character assassination, lies, and double dealing rather than honest debate about policies and policy execution.  That’s the way this party proceeds.  Below are three Democratic National Committee emails, in a single thread, that illustrate the Democratic Party’s perfidy (heads up: the Subject Lines might not be Safe for Work).  This is how they treat their own.  Imagine how they’ll treat other Americans.

Continue reading →

A Couple of Idle Thoughts

…triggered by a Wall Street Journal article about Michelle Obama’s expected commentary at the Democratic Party Convention.

Democrats have drafted a platform that makes race a key issue, calling for a “societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter” and saying racial income and wealth gaps “are the result of policies that discriminate against people of color.”

But not all lives, as the Black Lives Matter movement has made clear.

Never mind that those discriminatory policies—minimum wage law positions, for instance—target people of color in particular and that they’re universally and long-standing Democrat policies.

Never mind, either, that the welfare cliff that traps people of color, along with all of America’s poor, in poverty and government dependence are the result of long-standing Democrat policies.

Never mind, either, that the Democratic Party still can’t say “blacks” or “black Americans,” much less “Americans who happen to be black or brown;” they continue to hide behind arch euphemisms.

Mrs Obama could also nod to the subject of gender. Mrs Clinton in her 2008 concession speech called capturing the White House the highest “glass ceiling” for women, but she also said that thanks to the number of primary voters who had backed her, the ceiling had “about 18 million cracks in it.”

And, eight years later, Clinton has, not no record, but an active record of failure and deceit.  All she’s got to favorably recommend her is her gender card.