Yes, “They” Did

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On this, Karl Rove is broadly wrong.

Our culture is built on the principle that individuals are responsible for what they say and do. People can be influenced by words they hear and groups they’re part of.

So far, so good.

However, there are vulnerable people of all ages who can be, and are, influenced to deadly action. “They” know this full well. “They” are the Left’s and the Left’s politicians’ carefully crafted environment of divisiveness and violent and violence-inspiring anti-Republican, anti-Conservative, anti-right leaning Americans.

  • New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer standing on the Supreme Court building steps threatening by name two Supreme Court Justices, followed shortly by an assassination attempt against one of them
  • Vermont’s Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders likening Conservative Republicans to fascism, followed shortly by a mass murder attempt against a gathering of Republicans at a baseball practice
  • Sanders and them-President Joe Biden likening Republicans and then-Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump to Hitler, followed shortly by two assassination attempts against Trump
  • Jimmy Kimmel nakedly lying about Charlie Kirk in the hours after Kirk’s murder, insisting Kirk was a Jew-hating bigot
  • Other Leftists claiming Kirk’s killer was a Republican
  • The New York Times nakedly smearing Kirk as a Jew-hater and only posting a correction after an enormous outpouring of opprobrium, and then burying its correction instead of giving it the same prominence as its lie
  • The left, relying on their Newspeak Dictionary, distorting MAGA as though it were some right-wing crazies, rather that the hope and dream of every American to Make America Great Again—the American English dictionary definition of the acronym

Just one example of the outcomes of the Left’s and Party’s constructed environment comes from “Bowser,” a protestor supporting the murder of an insurance company executive:

Bowser says[:] “Political violence is how this country was established.”

“They” know full well that the hostile environment they constructed would influence more than one of their minions to violence. That carefully crafted overtly hostile environment most assuredly facilitated—made possible—Kirk’s murder by influencing one vulnerable young man to commit that murder.

Until we broadly recognize that simple environmental fact, and yes, that includes the Karl Roves and the others who insist on downplaying the Left’s artificial political climate, and act on that recognition, that Left and their Party politicians will continue to spout their rhetoric of violence, continue to proselytize their hostility toward those who are not of them, and their atmosphere of hate will continue to cause murders to be committed among the rest of us.

Leaks

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Leading off a Wall Street Journal article alleging Pentagon internal lawyers’ concerns regarding the Trump administration’s targeting of drug boats in international Caribbean Sea waters, there’s this:

Some military lawyers and other Defense Department officials are raising concerns about the legal implications of President Trump’s expanding military campaign against Latin American-based drug cartels, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Leave aside the worries about the legality of destroying boats and the crews on them that are targeting American citizens with those poisons. Of course, there’s nothing illegal about destroying those attacks in progress.

The larger question is this: who are those people with knowledge? They’re speaking without authorization, discussing in public matters of national security, and they’re doing so in direct violation of their terms of employment by the government, and depending on who they are, perhaps in violation of their oaths of office.

Some defense officials and career military lawyers have provided written and verbal legal opinions to decision makers inside the Pentagon, but believe they are being ignored or deliberately sidelined, according to one of the people.

This is pretty dispositive—in the WSJ‘s own words—of these people’s deliberate violation of their employment parameters. And all because these wonders actually think they run the show, and are quite cross that they’re not being heeded on the spot.

These are people—these are leakers—who need to be identified and fired for cause.

A Compromise for the SEC?

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A letter-writer to The Wall Street Journal‘s Wednesday Letters section offered a compromise for the SEC’s proposed change to company reporting from all of them reporting quarterly to all of them reporting semi-annually.

Large companies should continue to report quarterly so that stakeholders have timely signals for pricing and risk management. Micro-caps, by contrast, could move to semiannual reporting without leaving investors in the dark if a few safeguards stay in place. Material developments should still be disclosed promptly between reports; companies should provide a short, standardized mid-period update with such core metrics as sales trend, liquidity and interim financials. Whatever the frequency, they should retain a light auditor review to discourage aggressive accounting.

Aside from ignoring the myriad of companies whose sizes are intermediate between micro-caps and large, most of his suggestions are not materially different from the current quarterly reporting requirements. Quarterly reporting, after all, is quintessentially intermediate to semi-annual periods, and his standardized mid-period updates are those quarterly reports.

The only concrete suggestion, material developments reporting, already is required by law: that’s what Form 8-K is for.

And this from the letter-writer:

This approach targets the real pain point—fixed compliance costs that bite hardest at the smallest issuers….

Moving to semi-annual reporting would be a boon for all companies, large, micro, and intermediate. That large companies “can afford quarterly reporting” while smaller companies cannot is a tired and useless trope used to harry the rich and successful in too many milieus already. The trope doesn’t need to be expanded here.

Is He Worth the Money?

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That’s the question the nattering Left is asking about Elon Musk’s new pay package on offer from Tesla—a package that could aggregate to a trillion dollars over 10 years. Of course, we’d expect such a question from the Left—and from too many Progressive-Democratic Party politicians who disparage free market capitalism.

Of course, in one sense—a sense at the core of free markets—is by definition, Musk is worth the money: all the parties to the package voluntarily and of their own accord agreed to it, each satisfied that they’re better off after agreeing than before.

What the natterers carefully ignore, though, is this:

…the Tesla CEO will get richer only if workers and shareholders do too. Oh, and only if consumers like what Tesla is selling.
Tesla’s board recently proposed a pay package for Mr Musk worth up to $1 trillion over 10 years, contingent on the company achieving ambitious milestones.

Musk has actually to perform in order actually to earn that pay. That’s another aspect at the core of free markets: folks must earn their compensation; they’re not entitled to money just because they think they’re special.

Muddled Editor “Thinking”

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This time, by the August Ones of The Wall Street Journal‘s board of editors. They’re upset because Attorney General Pam Bondi openly decried “hate speech,” and then said that when that speech clearly crosses a line, it becomes criminally actionable. Their lede:

Is a basic understanding of the First Amendment too much to expect from the nation’s Attorney General?

What Bondi said that drew their…attention:

There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place—especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society. We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.

Targeting someone with hate speech isn’t general hate speech; it’s making threats, and it’s incitement to violence, and that is illegal.

Bondi went on the next day, as…paraphrased without context by the editors:

“Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment.” But then she incoherently mixed in everything from “violent rhetoric,” to doxxing, to calling a SWAT team to the home of a Member of Congress.

Those all are forms of threats of violence or of actual violence. The only incoherence is in the imaginations of the editors.

And this from the editors:

The AG also didn’t recant her statement on Monday that the Justice Department might “prosecute” Office Depot or its ex-employee who refused to print a Kirk vigil poster.

Nor is there any reason to. What the editors omitted from this particular excerpt is that DoJ might prosecute on illegal discrimination grounds, not on speech grounds.

Apparently, basic reading/listening comprehension is too much to expect from opinion writers.