A Mistake

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DHS, according to Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, is looking at so-called “ICE tracking apps,” which allow users to share locations of immigration enforcement activity in real time. Of course they should be looking at these.

However.

According to McLaughlin, while such apps might currently be legal, they are “being used by gangs, suspected terrorists, and others to evade law enforcement and even target officers.”
She said the Department of Justice might consider whether the apps and other tracking tools amount to obstruction of justice.

That’s looking at the wrong end of the apps. It’s certainly true that, as McLaughlin also says, there has been a 1,000% increase in assaults against ICE officers.

But the way to deal with that is not to go after the apps as obstructions of justice. The proper way to deal with that is to treat the use of the apps in particular ways as obstructions of justice, backtrack those uses to their users, and then to go after the users who actually obstruct justice or who interfere with law enforcement officers in the course of their actions.

The apps themselves are merely tools. They’re agnostic in themselves; it’s the users who are…not agnostic.

Moreover, targeting the apps over their misuse also would fuel the Left’s war on our 2nd Amendment, making it easier to target our weapons over their misuse.

US Naval Academy Midshipman Honor Concept and Mikie Shirrell

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New Jersey’s Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Governor, it turns out, was barred from walking with her Naval Academy class during its graduation ceremony, although she was allowed to graduate and be commissioned into our Navy. Her explanation for this is this:

I didn’t turn in some of my classmates, so I didn’t walk….

What she didn’t turn some of her classmates in over was a cheating scandal that impacted 130 midshipmen in her class.

And she’s proud of that refusal.

This is the Naval Academy’s Honor Concept [boldface in the original, italic emphasis added]:

Midshipmen are persons of integrity: They stand for that which is right.
They tell the truth and ensure that the truth is known.
They do not lie.

They embrace fairness in all actions. They ensure that work submitted as their own is their own, and that assistance received from any source is authorized and properly documented.
They do not cheat.

They respect the property of others and ensure that others are able to benefit from the use of their own property.
They do not steal.

By refusing to turn in those classmates about whom she knew, by refusing to testify over the course of the cheating investigation, Sherrill openly lied by omission. She further lied by tacitly obstructing that investigation. She affirmatively prevented the truth from being known.

This is the concept of honor and integrity that Mikie Sherrill is putting on offer for the good citizens of New Jersey. It seems a poor fit for any Governor’s office.

Political CYA

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors waxed opinionated on the matter of government efforts at stifling free speech, centering their wax-on piece on Sundar Pichai’s letter (formally written by an Alphabet lawyer) excusing (the editors generously called it a mea not-so-maxima culpa) Alphabet’s Google’s (read: Pichai’s) mistaken role in censoring Conservative podcasts—purging them from YouTube—during the Wuhan Virus (my term; the editors continue to euphemize with “Covid-19”) situation. The editors also nattered on about the hypocrisy of the Left’s getting on the Trump administration over the Kimmel business compared with the Left’s downplaying of the Biden administration’s role in that Alphabet (et al.) censorship.

What interests me about this editorial, though, is this bit from the penultimate paragraph:

Progressives intimidated companies into believing that if they failed to toe the line on certain issues, enforcement could follow.

This is those companies’ managers—including Mark Zuckerberg, of Meta, whom the editors also cited—conscious choice to be “intimidated.” I’ve written elsewhere in this blog about the flaccid-kneed nature of senior managers, at the pinnacle of their professions, who allow themselves to be so easily managed by others. Men and women of good character would have refused to kowtow and challenged in court any enforcement that might have followed, and won easily (if initially expensively, but long-term much more cheaply) on free speech grounds.

And the editors’ close:

Alphabet’s letter to Judiciary is notable for its commitment that the company “has not and will not empower fact checkers to take action on or label content across the Company’s services.” That’s good to hear, but Google would have done better if its accounting had come before the electoral winds shifted. The company’s letter is an admirable statement of principles. Let’s hope it sticks.

This is a sham shift, not at all a statement of principles. This is merely a political CYA claim, done at the convenience of political winds. There’s no reason to believe it will stick. Pichai already has amply demonstrated the strength of his character, and tomorrow may bring an administration of a different feather.

Yes and No

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A letter-writer in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wrote,

As he [Joseph Schumpeter] wrote in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: “Every successful corner may spell monopoly for the moment.” Yet technological change upends whole industries, creating new, previously unimaginable services and “goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization.” Each dislodges the monopoly position of incumbent firms wedded to the old ways of doing things.

Not entirely.

I submit that the real problem, the one of which the above is merely symptomatic, is the fact that the monopoly’s moat is as much a barrier trapping the monopolists inside, limiting their ability to innovate, as it is a barrier keeping competitors in the monopoly’s established, old ways, venue from getting started.

From this, other startups, in closely associated but not the same venues as the monopoly, not being stultified by the safety that moat seems to provide, easily can out innovate and bypass the both the monopoly’s moat and the monopoly.

Wrong Answer

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This time it’s Jason Riley, of The Wall Street Journal, who’s missing the street for the potholes. He wrote in his Tuesday op-ed,

The latest results from the National Assessment of Education Progress were released earlier this month, and they weren’t pretty. High-school seniors recorded the worst reading scores since 1992, and math scores were the lowest since the current test began two decades ago. Elementary-school students have also lost ground. Just 31% of eighth-graders scored at or above the proficient level on the science assessment.

And,

The ramifications extend far beyond our borders. The Program for International Student Assessment exam is a global assessment of 15-year-old pupils. In 2018 only 8% of US test-takers scored in the top tier in mathematics, compared with 15% in Canada, 18% in Japan, and 29% in Hong Kong. Today’s students will populate tomorrow’s labor force, and employers who rely on workers with math, science, and engineering backgrounds have been complaining for decades that too many Americans are uninterested or ill-prepared to fill these jobs.

 

But then he wrote,

Which brings us back to Mr Trump, who wants to make it harder for US companies to hire foreign nationals. On Friday the president announced that he was imposing a new $100,000 fee on applicants for H-1B visas, designated for skilled migrants who disproportionately specialize in science, technology and math occupations.

It’s true enough that we benefit from suitably skilled foreigners who enter our nation legally—those immigrants and Riley’s “migrants.” But the problem, which seems to have blown right by him, even as he wrote it, is identified by those employers…complaining for decades that too many Americans are uninterested or ill-prepared to fill these jobs.

The answer to the problem is not making it easy for qualified immigrants to enter our nation legally, even as that helps at the margins. The answer is to fix our education system. That must begin with eliminating, root and branch, the rent- and fee-seeking teachers unions who collect massive dues and lobby (too successfully) for government money while they work just as assiduously to block local, State, and Federal efforts to improve the public school systems those unions hold in thrall. An early move in this beginning step would be to recognize that teachers and their unions who work for public schools are public servants and public service unions just as are the civil servants and their unions working for any other arm of government, and bar them from striking, just as many civil servant unions are barred.

Our education system would be further improved by getting those unions and their hip-pocket politicians at the various levels of government out of the way of voucher and charter schools and home schooling, accepting that competition works toward product improvement in education as well as it does in industry.

At that point, the cherry on top would be to have local, State, and Federal funding not go directly to the schools, but instead follow the student to the school or home to which he transfers, or with which he stays after having transferred, for use then by the school or parent receiving the student.