Category Archives: ethics

I’d Go One Step Further

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In a Friday letter to the WSJ‘s Letters section, Samuel Estreicher and Rudra Reddy, of the New York University School of Law, reminded us of a suggestion for curbing Federal district judge arrogance in issuing nationwide—universal—injunctions:

Aside from raising the legal standard for issuing such injunctions, the Supreme Court should also consider procedural steps that could be taken to challenge a nationwide injunction once issued, such as an expedited appeal to the regional circuit or to the high court itself.

My one further step is this: automatically stay each universal injunction until its final review by the relevant appellate court and Supreme Court, or by the Supreme Court directly. In conjunction with this, require the appellate court or Supreme Court to take up the case within an explicitly defined number of days (not many) of the injunction having been issued, with that takeup done either by appeal or by the appellate court on its own initiative, whichever is necessary to meet the deadline. Apply the same time-constraint to the Supreme Court in the event of a direct appeal.

I’d give serious consideration, given the serious nature and wide scope of a universal injunction issued at the district level, to having the injunction’s appeal go directly to the Supreme Court. That Court is, after all, the only one with universal jurisdiction, and it’s the only Constitutionally mandated Court in the US.

And an incentive step: in the event the universal injunction is struck down, even if it’s allowed to stand as it applies solely to the litigants, the appellate/Supreme Court should overtly chastise the issuing district court judge for his overreach.

It’s Not Only That

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A letter writer in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wrote, regarding who or what is responsible for safeguarding our rights and liberties,

the security of our rights depends on ourselves. When one considers what we hold self-evident—that government doesn’t possess the power to grant or deny our inherent and unalienable natural rights—we find that all we got from Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues was a federal government that has rarely upheld the terms of our social contract and poses the greatest threat to our freedom and prosperity.

That’s not all we got from Franklin, though. The letter writer missed Franklin’s critical criterion, included in his 17 April 1787 letter to the Abbes Chalut and Arnaud, that defines “ourselves:”

Let me add, that only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.

Our pursuit of being virtuous, though—especially today—requires a complete revamp of our education system to emphasize performance, merit, Western Civilization values and history, along with STEM, all of that being done from pre-K through whatever degree level a student might pursue. And an elimination of professoriate opinion in the teaching of facts along with a strong demand for free and open debate on the meaning of those facts, a debate informed solely by logic and additional facts.

And at least as critically, the active participation of parents in the raising of our children and in their education. Schools cannot, profitably for the weal of our nation, be treated as babysitters, child care centers, or even ex loco parentis facilities.

Progressive-Democratic Party Self-Importance

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In a Just the News article centered on Kamala Harris’ decision to absent herself the California State Progressive-Democratic Party convention to nominate Party candidates for Governor, Stephen Cloobeck, a candidate and convention attendee, said this—and he was serious:

If she decides to get in this race, shame on her for not showing up for the most important people in the party, which is the people who are here today[.]

I always thought that the most important people in a democracy—whether popular, republican, representative—were the people themselves, the citizens of the polity at hand. Here, that would be the good citizens of the United States who also are citizens of California and who self-identify as Party members.

Oh, wait—here’s the State Party rule on who’s eligible to attend and have a say in candidate selection:

3. Delegates to the Convention shall be the members of the Democratic State Central Committee, or their qualified proxies as specified in the Bylaws, whose appointment/election has been transmitted to the State Party no later than Tuesday, March 18, 2025, 60 days prior to the biennial state convention in May 30 – June 1, 2025.

The people, the citizens of California, Party members not exalted enough to be in the Central Committee, have no say in candidate selection(s); these unwashed are not important. It really is the convention delegates who are the most important people in the party.

Silly me.

Or, more likely, this is Party’s utter contempt for average Americans made explicit, with Party Important Ones applying it to average Californians.

I Can’t Think of a Reason

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Mark Zuckerberg wants to automate ad-creation in his Meta.

That’s not all he wants to do, though. Zuckerberg said this at his recent shareholder meeting (keep in mind that the these meetings generally are Zuckerberg talking to himself since he owns the controlling number of voting shares) [emphasis added].

In the not-too-distant future, we want to get to a world where any business will be able to just tell us what objective they’re trying to achieve, like selling something or getting a new customer, how much they’re willing to pay for each result, and connect their bank account and then we just do the rest for them[.]

Which of those processes—customer convenience or Meta convenience—is the one intended to be jumped on with both feet, and which is the one intended to be slipped past us?

I, for one, have no reason at all to let anyone other than myself or my wife have whenever-they-feel-like-it access to my financials.

Government Funding of Speech

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PBS has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the latter’s moves to defund the service.

The system is centering its beef on two things: free speech and the potential to upend public television.

Last thing first. The risk of upending public television is wholly irrelevant. What’s relevant here is what our Constitution and the statutes cited in their suit say. What our Constitution says about PBS‘ business model or about any public business model is…nothing. There is no Constitutional right to a particular business model, and disruptions to models occur all the time, ranging from competitors to changing consumers to governments’ decisions to donate money or not.

PBS‘ crying about its business model is just cynical fear mongering.

PBS‘ free speech argument might have some force, but that one is centered on President Donald Trump’s (R) commentary regarding how little he likes PBS‘ own commentary and editorial decisions. However, Trump’s comments are irrelevant, also; what is relevant here, too, is what our Constitution and the cited statutes and Trump’s defunding EO say.

What our Constitution says about funding PBS is…nothing. There is no Constitutional obligation for our government to donate any money to it or to any public enterprise. The cited statutes create no such obligation. What Trump’s Executive Order says is this:

Government funding of news media in this environment [today’s, vs mid-last century when Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created] is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.
…
No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize.  The CPB’s governing statute reflects principles of impartiality:  the CPB may not “contribute to or otherwise support any political party.”

And this [emphasis added]:

The CPB fails to abide by these principles to the extent it subsidizes NPR and PBS.  Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter.  What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.

In the end, whatever Government, or Trump, say about others’ speech, neither Government in general, nor the Trump administration in particular, are obligated to fund it; the only obligation is to not block it except under a few tightly circumscribed situations: lying under oath, false advertising, making threats or otherwise inciting violence, and the like. This is supported by PBS‘ own words:

After careful deliberation, PBS reached the conclusion that it was necessary to take legal action to safeguard public television’s editorial independence, and to protect the autonomy of PBS member stations[.]

What better way to safeguard public television’s independence and protect the autonomy of PBS member stations than to stop receiving corrosive government money, a point Trump made in the opening of his EO?