Category Archives: ethics

A Clear Choice

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The recently passed OBBBA has Federal funding for private school tuition in the form of tax credits—private schools being, primarily, charter and voucher schools. States must opt into the program, though; the tax credits won’t be available automatically.

As The Wall Street Journal headline put it, Blue States Face Big Decision. And then,

Now comes a protracted debate at the state level. Progressives and public-school groups object to funding private schools and say the new program will hurt public education. Supporters say the money will give families options outside of their neighborhood school.

The thing is, though, public schools are already beyond increases in hurting, especially in blue States—pupil test scores are bad and falling (rising recently only against the prior Wuhan Virus Situation school lockout steep drop), and public school’s pupil test scores especially lag those private schools’ student outcomes, as well as the test scores of homeschooled students.

A clear choice, indeed, and over the coming months we’ll see very clearly just how opposed to school choice and children’s education are Progressive-Democrat politician-run States and municipalities, and just how far in thrall are those politicians to teachers unions.

Fault and Blame

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This example is all too typical. An elderly couple was scammed out of their life savings–$5 million—by a “pig butcherer” who conned the husband into wiring the couple’s savings, in a number of tranches, to the scammer under the guise, among others, of investing the money in a sure-fire investment.

What happened:

A year or so earlier, Craig had responded to an online ad about investments and later received a text message from someone calling themself Tiffany, according to his hazy account. The person struck up a flirtatious exchange and was soon telling him about a lucrative opportunity. All he needed to do was wire money from his bank account.

And

The adviser [at an earlier bank where the husband had begun his “investing” with Tiffany] had repeatedly tried to convince Craig that “Tiffany” was scamming him, to no avail.

The husband after that had pulled his—their—money from that bank and placed it with another bank, from which the husband continued “investing” with Tiffany.

And

Shortly after discovering the scam, Anamarie learned something else about Craig that helped explain what had happened. His doctor told her that Craig had vascular dementia, likely due to a brain injury from a fall he took in 2015 while walking his brother-in-law’s dog.

The first the wife knew anything was amiss was when her credit cards were declined at a Walmart.

In the end, the couple is blaming bank for their having been scammed, claiming that the bank hadn’t acted nanny-ish enough [my term] to protect the couple from themselves.

I have questions, and I’m not entirely sympathetic with the couple or with their blame-shifting.

Why didn’t the wife know more about the couple’s financial situation? True enough, they’re of an age where money matters usually was the husband’s job, but that doesn’t excuse her ignorance; it only illustrates how widespread such ignorance is.

What was the husband doing getting flirty with an online person about whom he knew nothing about, including whether the person even was female? See below for this before readers get up in morality arms.

Why didn’t the wife know anything about her husband’s medical condition? Certainly, this is related to a couple’s internal dynamics, but there’s little reason for one member of the couple to be so ignorant of the other member’s medical state. This is another aspect of couples of an age, but again, this doesn’t excuse the ignorance; it only illustrates the widespread nature of it.

Credulous Editors

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are in a tizzy over the Senate Judiciary Committee having voted out to the Senate floor the nomination of Emil Bove to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, having done so after the Progressive-Democratic Party’s committee members staged another of their toddler temper tantrums and stormed out of the committee meeting because they couldn’t get their way. Especially, though. the editors are upset because the Republican majority on the committee chose to ignore a so-called whistleblower’s beef about Bove.

At a March 14 meeting, discussing the possibility that a judge could block those removals [illegal alien deportations], “Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘f— you’ and ignore any such court order.” That’s according to a “whistleblower” letter by a former government lawyer.

And

The Judiciary Committee’s GOP majority dismissed this evidence as “completely devoid of context.” That sounds like an argument by plausible deniability. The whistleblower made specific claims, and isn’t his account context?

That also sounds like an argument for facts and specifics rather than anonymous claims. It’s telling that the editors chose one interpretation while completely ignoring another, much less identifying that other and explaining their logic in choosing the one interpretation over the other. And, no, the person’s account isn’t context; it is itself shorn of context: for instance, to whom was his letter written, what are the relationships between the letter writer and the letter’s recipient with Bove?

And this: the editors never even identify the whistleblower, whose name as the protected person that all whistleblowers are, should be a matter of public record. There’s also a reason that the editors put their characterization of whistleblower inside those euphemism quotes. Maybe that’s because the person isn’t actually a whistleblower, but a leaker with an axe to grind. What proof—what evidence, even—do the editors have that the person exhausted all of his whistleblower avenues before he chose to leak? Too, if the whistleblower isn’t actually one, but a leaker, why do the editors not worry about that leak context?

Jurisdiction

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A commenter on an earlier post suggested I define “jurisdiction.” Herewith.

Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution define and create our social compact as a nation whose people are sovereign and whose government men and women work for us by our consent (in government’s existence) and by election (of those men and women actually serving*).

Johnson’s Dictionary, 4th ed, contemporaneous with the writing and ratification of our Constitution:

JURISDICTION.
1. Legal authority; extent of power.
2. District to which any authority extends.

Modern American dictionaries, viz., Merriam-Webster Online, define jurisdiction:

Jurisdiction
1: the power, right, or authority to interpret and apply the law a matter that falls within the court’s jurisdiction
2a: the authority of a sovereign power to govern or legislate
b: the power or right to exercise authority: control
3: the limits or territory within which authority may be exercised

The definition of jurisdiction as our Founders understood it remains the same as it is understood today. (Aside: that only keeps things convenient. Were the definition materially changed today, our Constitution still would have to be understood and applied in those original terms; an Amendment would be needed, not judicial decree, to bring that definition forward to today.)

Our government’s jurisdiction, thus, does not extend beyond the limits of our nation’s social compact.

Our social compact (any social compact) isn’t only geographically defined, however. It’s also, and primarily, a two-way commitment, a mutual agreement to protect the compact’s members and the members’ agreement to submit to and obey the rules associated with that agreement.

Hence, my claim in that earlier post: illegal aliens, by entering our nation illegally and remaining illegally present, are holding themselves outside the tenets of our social compact. By holding themselves outside our social compact, they are holding themselves beyond the reach of our government’s jurisdiction. Their presence within the territorial limits of our nation only cedes control via raw power to our government.

*Unelected bureaucrats in government, from Congressional and Executive Branch staffers through the men and women in civil service are selected and hired—at bottom—by those elected representatives.