Category Archives: ethics

Permissions of the PRC

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Tom Shorrock, who touts himself as having been raised in Japan and South Korea during the Cold War, has an interesting, if incoherent, piece in his Wednesday TomDispatch article.  He opened with a repeat of President-Elect Donald Trump’s tweet in response to the faux outrage of the NLMSM and the People’s Republic of China over his brief telecon with Republic of China President Tsai Ing-wen, a tweet that was concerned with whether the PRC had asked permission before building “a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea.”

Shorrock then supplied a series of potential PRC President Xi Jinping tweets.

“Did America ask us if it was OK to…maintain a massive military complex of more than 100 bases in nearby Japan? I don’t think so!”

“Did America ask us if it was OK to…rent space at the massive U-Tapao military complex in nearby Thailand? I don’t think so!”

“Did America ask us if it was OK to…use portions of the military complexes at Antonio Bautista Air Base, Basa Air Base, Fort Magsaysay, Lumbia Air Base, and Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base in the nearby Philippines? I don’t think so!”

And on and on, ad ridiculum; you get the idea.

What’s missed here, or ignored, you pick ’em, is that the PRC seized and occupied islands that are either sovereign territory of other nations rimming the South China Sea or are well within those nations’ Exclusive Economic Zone, and so the PRC is present—vandalizing those islands with its construction—wholly illegally.  On the other hand, the US did, indeed, ask permission and conclude formal, freely negotiated treaties with the owning nations to allow our presence in the named locales.

The comparisons are so inapt as to be risible.  Which may well be why Xi didn’t make those tweets.  Or make those responses in any milieu.

Defuse This

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Residents of the town of Totolapan in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, have taken a situation into their own hands: in response to a drug cartel’s kidnapping of family members of some of those residents, the residents have kidnapped the mother of the cartel’s leader.  They’re willing to work a trade.

On the other hand,

The government of…Guerrero said Tuesday it dispatched 220 soldiers and police in hopes of defusing the situation….

A better move, one that would more permanently defuse the situation, would be to send those soldiers into the area to eliminate the cartels that infest the town and others like it.

Of Course It Is

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Now that the Obama administration’s end is near, and a new guy is being put forward to run Obama’s EPA, that agency is changing its mind about the impact of fracking.

Fracking can affect drinking water supplies in certain circumstances….

The report, written by Environmental Protection Agency scientists, includes findings that are more open-ended than those in a draft version last year, when the agency said fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, isn’t having “widespread, systematic impacts on drinking water.”

When pressed on the “updated” report, which contradicts that earlier draft, EPA Deputy Assistant Administrator Thomas Burke conceded the draft’s prior conclusion that only a small number of cases of contamination had been found—even though that was left out of this later iteration of the report.

While the number of identified cases of drinking water contamination is small, the scientific evidence is insufficient to support estimates of the frequency of contamination[.]

Even the identified instances of contamination—surface spills of fracking fluids or poorly done cement casing of a wells—have little to do with fracking, but are failures to execute.

Of course this drives the conclusion that when you can’t find the needle in the haystack, you don’t have enough evidence to say that there aren’t many needles in the haystack.  That’s some science the EPA has there.

Keep in mind, too, that this is same agency whose pseudo-science concluded that plant food—atmospheric CO2—is a pollutant.

Apparently rigorous thinking was outside of these guys’ school safe spaces.

A State Court and the Citizens of the State

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In last month’s elections, one of the ballot items was a South Dakota measure (apologies: the Argus Leader has a really intrusive set of popup ads) to limit

how much PACs, political parties, and individuals can give to candidates.

The measure passed by a slim 51%-49% margin, but nevertheless, the passage is by the voice of the citizens of that State.  The article at the link gives a summary of those limits.

Now a South Dakota judge has issued an injunction against implementing or enforcing that law.  Circuit Judge Mark Barnett, in issuing the injunction, acknowledged that the matter likely will end up before the South Dakota Supreme Court, and he said

This is just a stop on the bus route.  This is going to a much higher power and a much higher pay grade than me.

Never mind that it’s already been to the much higher pay grade—the good citizens of the State of South Dakota, whose employee the State’s government, including the court system, is.

Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard and his Chief of Staff, Tony Venhuizen, have the beginnings of a hazy understanding of the larger issue at hand.  Daugaard said that he’d

support rolling back the measure if it isn’t struck down in court[]

and Venhuizen said that

[t]he governor views the order as a good step that will give the courts and the Legislature time to sort out the “mess [in the current campaign funding system.]”

But only the beginnings of a hazy understanding.  Whether the law passed by the citizens is a good idea or not is a legitimately debatable question.  However, the matter is a political question and only a political question.  The courts have no role to play whatsoever in this or any political discussion.

Here is a case where a court has said the people have no voice; the court speaks in their stead.