Category Archives: ethics

Hypocrisy of Progressive-Democrats

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Recall the bodice-ripping and the hysterical threats to counter-gerrymander engaged in by Progressive-Democrat politicians and governors, particularly the governors of California and Illinois, because Texas gerrymandered. Here is a table showing the extent of Progressive-Democrat gerrymandering, done explicitly to limit, even to completely shut out, the Republican Party from their States’ Congressional delegations (California and Illinois highlighted).

MA: 36% Republican, 0 seats
CT: 42% Republican, 0 seats
ME: 46% Republican, 0 seats
NM: 46% Republican, 0 seats
NH: 48% Republican, 0 seats
RI: 42% Republican, 0 seats
VT: 32% Republican, 0 seats
HI: 38% Republican, 0 seats
DE: 42% Republican, 0 seats

CA: 38% Republican, only 9 of 52 seats (20.9%)
IL: 44% Republican, only 3 of 17 seats (17.6%)
NY: 43% Republican, only 7 of 26 seats (26.9%)
MD: 34% Republican, only 1 of 8 seats (12.5%)
NJ: 46% Republican, only 3 of 12 seats (25%)
OR: 41% Republican, only 1 of 6 seats (16.7%)

This is their dishonesty, too, since hypocrisy is a subset of that.

H/t Frank Tuslow and ralflongwalker.

Not Really

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President Donald Trump (R) wants the Senate to get rid of its Blue Slip Rule, which a couple of New Jersey Progressive-Democrats used to block attorney Alina Habba’s Senate confirmation as US Attorney for New Jersey even from getting out of committee. The Wall Street Journal‘s editors claim that threatens the Senate’s role in the checks and balance structure of our Federal government. Never mind the editors’ obfuscatory natterings about the machinations Trump has been going through to get her in that position as Acting US Attorney; the alleged threat to checks and balances is the thrust of their editorial.

The editors finished with this in their penultimate paragraph:

Yet that’s [getting rid of the Blue Slip process] up to the Senate, and the Founders gave the chamber its advise-and-consent power for a reason.

The role of the Senate under our Constitution, in the present context, is precisely to provide advice and where warranted consent to a President’s nominations. That’s the whole Senate, though, not one or two self-important or virtue-signaling (or both) Senators. Even the erstwhile filibuster of judicial nominations required a significant collection of Senators—more than 40 of them—to enact a block.

The time of Blue Slips never was, legitimately, and it’s time for the blockage to be cleared away.

Add some Teeth to It

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Congressman Andy Biggs (R, AZ) is proposing legislation that would modify the DC Home Rule Act. The piece of interest to me is his Make DC Safe Again Act. Biggs’ proposal would lengthen from 30 days to 180 days the emergency period in which the president can take control of DC police.

I’d like some teeth added to that. Specifically, require DC to pay the costs of the Feds assuming control of the local police unless the DC governing body requests Federal intervention. I’d also like to see legislation that would apply that principle nationwide. Portland of 2020 (especially, but also extending into today) and Los Angeles of the current summer stand as firm examples of that necessity.

Vast Rightwing Conspiracy?

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Nah. Just a vast force out there. That’s the view of some venture capitalists who are launching PACs to support political candidates who favor as little AI regulation as possible and to oppose candidates who want strong regulation of AI and of AI development regimes. Josh Vlasto and Zac Moffatt, for instance:

There is a vast force out there that’s looking to slow down AI deployment, prevent the American worker from benefiting from the US leading in global innovation and job creation and erect a patchwork of regulation[.]

The polemics from the other side are just as extreme: AI will be the death of society, even the death of us all.

It’s certainly true that AI—like all sharply new technologies—carries risks for the current order of things in our economy, as well as benefits for us all on the other side of the disruption, but the extremes from either side and both sides’ ignoring those benefits do none of us any good.

There does need to be serious discussion and debate regarding the appropriate level of regulation of AI and of AI development, and serious discussion and debate regarding how that regulatory setup should itself evolve as AI and AI development evolve.

Notice that word “serious,” though. That takes the discussion and debate, or should, out of the realm of politics and into the realm of tech experts and, critically, us citizens who must live with the outcomes of regulatory decisions. Especially, us citizens must have the final decision regarding these (and all other, come to that) regulations.

A Justice…Misunderstands

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Justice Ketanji Br own Jackson dissented strenuously with a Supreme Court ruling that, in part, upheld the Trump Administration’s request for an emergency stay of a lower court’s blocking of NIH from canceling $783 million worth of grants.

The money part of the woman’s (dare I use that term on a person who doesn’t know what a woman is?) dissent:

the high court’s way of preserving the “mirage of judicial review while eliminating its purpose: to remedy harms.”

No. Not at all. The purpose of judicial review is critically—and solely—to ensure that the action before it, along with the statute(s) involved, follow the text of our Constitution and the text of those statutes. Nothing more and nothing less.

But the woman wasn’t done with shredding (to use the in-vogue term) “judicial review” [emphasis added]:

It would have been much simpler for the Court to just announce that, regardless of the plain text of the APA or what Congress intended to authorize, we no longer accept that the Government’s grant-termination decisions are subject to arbitrary-and-capricious review or that vacatur of an arbitrary grant-termination decision is an available remedy.

The greatest harm that is in play here is ruling on the basis of a particular judge’s or Justice’s personal definition of “harm.” Yet, this is exactly what Jackson presumes to attempt with her setting aside the petty text of a statute from which her august self demurs.

The Supreme Court’s ruling, including Jackson’s dissent can be read here.