Category Archives: ethics

‘Unacceptable incompetence’

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That’s the description of CDC performance under the then and continuing management of Rochelle Walensky, the Sobbing Doomsayer.

The CDC found itself hoist with its own petard by making 25 basic statistical and numerical errors related to COVID-19, particularly with regard to children, while purporting to expose COVID vaccine misinformation, according to an analysis led by University of California San Francisco epidemiologists.

And they’re still at it.

…nearly as many [errors] were made in the first two months of 2023 as in all of 2021….

The JtN article went on at considerable length concerning the vast numbers of errors—often dangerous errors, especially for our children—the experts of the CDC committed.

TL;DR summary: the CDC is nothing but a bunch of government bureaucrats who happen to have medical degrees or this or that science degree. Nothing in the CDC, and no words from CDC bureaucrats, can be taken seriously as long as Walensky and her coterie remain in place.

Idiotic

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Some otherwise reputable folks want a six-month moratorium on the continued development and improvement of artificial intelligence software.

Several tech executives and top artificial-intelligence researchers, including Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, are calling for a pause in the breakneck development of powerful new AI tools.
A moratorium of six months or more would give the industry time to set safety standards for AI design and head off potential harms of the riskiest AI technologies, the proponents of a pause said.

Cynically, the six months would give the Biden administration, with its empirical preference for DEI over actual defense capability, time to manufacture a permanent “moratorium.”

Aside from that, though, our nation is in a break-neck race for supremacy—even parity—in artificial intelligence and its ability to generate ever improving software, especially in weapons and counterweapons, ever improving production capabilities, and on and on. Even a six-month delay could put us fatally behind in what is, at bottom, an exponential growth curve.

At the very least, we need to continue our own development apace, if only because our enemies are developing AI capabilities as fast as they can, and we need to understand AI capabilities in general and our enemies’ AI capabilities in particular, and we need to know what we need to defend against our enemies’ use of AI against us and to develop those tools.

Because Shut Up

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The Progressive-Democratic Party majority in the Colorado House of Representatives is tired of hearing from recalcitrant Republicans demurring from having our 2nd Amendment rights curtailed.

Democrats in the Colorado House of Representatives invoked a rule to limit debate on gun control legislation over the weekend and passed three bills on the matter.
The Democratic-controlled chamber invoked Rule 14 to limit debate on Saturday. The rule allows for debate to be stopped an hour after a motion to end debate is made and after an affirmative vote of a majority of members.

A whole hour.

When we want your opinion, we’ll give it to you. This is the tyranny of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

FISA Revamp

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Congress may be moving to revamp the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which among other things, creates a secret Federal court that empirically allows the Federal government to spy on American citizens in the United States—one of whom was a representative of citizens of Illinois whom they had elected to Congress—without a warrant.

[Congressman Austin, R-GA] Scott said lawmakers on the committee want to address who in government can query the database, who can be targeted and who must sign off on such warrantless surveillance. He also suggested there is some support for adding lawyers to the secretive process to help defend the rights of Americans who are being surveilled without their knowledge.

The problem with those first three…suggestions…is that there already are limits on who can query, who can be targeted, and who must sign off, and each of those limits have been routinely violated by FBI and intelligence personnel. There’s no reason to believe that new limits won’t similarly be blithely ignored.

The problem with that last is even larger: the secret process still would be secret, the lawyers supposedly defending the targeted Americans’ rights would be secret, they would be appointed by the same government that has been abusing FISA surveillance powers right along, and there would be no way for us American citizens to assess the skill with which those “defense” lawyers defend, or even their level of zeal.

It’s promising that there is finally a recognition that the FISA process is flawed in some way.

However, what’s truly required is to abolish altogether the Star Chamber that is the secret FISA Court. Scott made the case for abolishment—although he didn’t intend that—when he told JtN that there was clear evidence that the law’s past safeguards have been breached by the FBI and intel agencies. Given that, there’s no reason to believe those FBI and intel agency personnel won’t “breach” any new safeguards, also.

The Purpose of Medicaid

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State Medicaid programs were created for the explicit purpose of providing health insurance coverage for State citizens on the lower rungs of that State’s economic ladder. The Federal government transfers Federal funds—the tax remittances of all of us citizens regardless of the State of which we might also be citizens—to support those Medicaid programs.

In California’s case, Federal transfers in support of Medi-Cal, that State’s Medicaid program, comprise more than 69% of the program. That amounts to 71.4 billion of our tax dollars.

Now the Progressive-Democrat governor of California, Gavin Newsom, wants Medi-Cal to pay the rent for the State’s homeless.

Newsom has proposed using federal healthcare funds to cover at least six months of rent for homeless California residents and those close to losing their homes.

The foolishness is spreading; California is not the only State pulling this stunt.

California is modeling the program off of similar programs in Oregon and Arizona that have been previously approved by the federal government.

Oregon gets 76%—$8.5 billion—of its Medicaid program covered by the Feds, and Arizona gets more than 80%—$14.3 billion—of its Medicaid funding from the Feds.

Newsom argues—and he’s actually serious—that this will save money in the long run because the State (as JtN cited him)

will not have to pay as much for these people’s expenses in hospitals, nursing homes and prisons.

This is a cynical non sequitur. Nursing homes and prisons aren’t centered on medical care, for all that medical care is a small part of those…services. Those services’ costs also are already factored into their budgets. Too, hospitals aren’t residences—and their medical service costs also are already factored into their budgets, including in part from California’s existing Medi-Cal.

Maybe it’s time to stop sending the Medicaid-related tax remittances of citizens of other States to these States.