Category Archives: ethics

So Long, and No Thanks for the Memories

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Law school students and new recruits think they should run the major—or even minor—law firms at which they sought work.

In the days since Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps and other elite firms cut deals with the president to fend off punitive orders, their actions have set off protests and recruiting boycotts among the next wave of top young legal talent. Georgetown Law students canceled a recruiting event this week with Skadden Arps. A group of students and lawyers is circulating a missive on social media and over email, urging students at top schools to refrain from applying to the firms.
Several Columbia law students who signed on to start at the firms this summer are asking whether they can pull out of those commitments, one recruiter said. Junior lawyers at some firms, meanwhile, are rejecting their bosses’ requests to interview summer associates.

I wouldn’t call these Precious Ones “top young legal talent.” They’re too self-absorbed, too ate up with their own importance. The law firms are better off without these folks on their payroll.

So: bye, bye. Good luck to you in your sole proprietor law firms, and in your new small partnerships.

Say they Did

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James Freeman, who does the Best of the Web column for The Wall Street Journal, has waxed optimistic about the Progressive-Democratic Party’s future, given a New York Times editorial he ran across over the past weekend.

It was a most pleasant surprise to see a weekend editorial in the New York Times of all places suggesting a step back from the progressive ledge. The Times is now urging Democrats to reconsider a number of the destructive ideas that party leaders embraced after reading about them in the New York Times. Let’s be optimistic and call this a great start if the newspaper wants to embark on an era of reform.

Per the Times, as Freeman quoted it:

First, they should admit that their party mishandled Mr Biden’s age. Leading Democrats insisted that he had mental acuity for a second term when most Americans believed otherwise. Party leaders even attempted to shout down anybody who raised concerns, before reversing course and pushing Mr Biden out of the race. …
Second, Democrats should recognize that the party moved too far left on social issues after Barack Obama left office in 2017. The old video clips of Ms Harris that the Trump campaign gleefully replayed last year—on decriminalizing the border and government-funded gender-transition surgery for prisoners—highlighted the problem…. [Elision in the original]
Even today, the party remains too focused on personal identity and on Americans’ differences—by race, gender, sexuality and religion—rather than our shared values.

Say Progressive-Democratic Party leadership and members do change how they talk about the issues us average Americans care about—which would include, for starters, actually talking about those issues. On what basis would we believe those persons have changed what they’d do were they restored to political power? The same persons who Freeman thinks should admit that their party mishandled Mr Biden’s age, and who he thinks should recognize that the party moved too far left, and who he says remain[] too focused on personal identity and on Americans’ differences would still be in place.

Why would any rational American believe these Wonders have suddenly shorn themselves of their most tenaciously held ideology?

Alternatively, consider these persons actually changing their core ideology. If they toss so readily and quickly that long-held central tenet in favor of a new central tenet, how could any rational American trust them not to toss equally readily and quickly their new central tenet in favor of yet another central tenet—or revert to that original, wholly divisive and otherwise dishonest centrality?

What’s really needed to restore us to a viable two-party political system is a wholly new and separate political party created out of whole cloth, difficult as that is to achieve—the last successful effort being the Republican Party in 1854. The Progressive-Democratic Party incumbents already have amply demonstrated their lack of trustworthiness.

Whose Property Is It?

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“Wall Street” is all in a tizzy over an entirely private deal made by the owner of all two of companies involved in the deal [emphasis added].

The valuation was surprising and so was how the companies got there. Only one set of advisers worked for both sides, when a deal of this size would normally take armies. In short, the unusual process resulted in a megadeal few public companies could get away with.

The news writers willy-nilly assume that all deals must have “armies” of advisers, just because. Why would an owner of two private enterprises need more than his own teams—or himself—to assess whether or how to merge his privately owned companies? Other than spreading fees out among a plethora of Wall Street investment advisor firms, I mean.

The news writers spent a whole section of their piece on the matter of The advisers worked both sides.

This proceeds, cynically, I claim, from a false premise: both private companies are/were owned by the same man. What “both sides?” There was only the single owner’s side.

And whence the question, in the first place? These are private enterprises, beholden to no one in the public sphere, especially the denizens of The Street. Even were the two private enterprises owned by two separate private individuals, no one on The Street has anything legitimate to say about the matter. Maybe this sort of interference-wannabe is part of the motivation for not going public and for taking public companies private.

No, the question implied, but never asked out loud, by these Wall Street Wonders is who owns the two companies—Elon Musk or “Wall Street?” The two news writers address this for themselves, but never put it to the wonders they claim to cite.

Reviewing Harvard’s Federal Funding

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The Trump administration has begun reviewing Harvard University’s $9 billion in Federal funding. The question I have is how badly does Harvard need any Federal funding?

Harvard’s endowment is some $53.2 billion as of last year, and the school got a 9.6% return on its endowment’s investments last year. That allowed its endowment to grow by nearly 5% year-on-year despite disbursements from the endowment.

Harvard claims $6.4 million in annual operating expenses as of last year, and it spent $749 million in scholarships and its own grants for its students.

With all of that, I ask again, how badly does Harvard need Federal funding? The school’s endowment doesn’t seem to be doing much more than collecting dust, investment returns, and net growth, while the school collects billions of average citizens’ tax money for its programs. Given that, why should citizens of Iowa, or Montana, or Utah—or New York, or Illinois, or California—pay for Massachusetts-domiciled Harvard’s spending decisions?

My answer: Harvard has little to no need for taxpayer monies.

That Includes You, Mr Newsom

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California’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom claims to be worried that Party is too judgmental and toxic and that We talk down to people. We talk past people.

Then he said this:

I mean, this idea that we can’t even have a conversation with the other side…or the notion we just have to continue to talk to ourselves or win the same damn echo chamber, these guys are crushing us[.]

These guys are crushing us. Not, “We need to converse/debate/argue/talk with folks about ideas that we think help all Americans.” It’s “We need to do better at beating the other side so we can win.”

Party will remain toxic to the American idea as long as its goal is wholly independent of working toward the national weal and wholly focused instead on doing down the other side.