Tag Archives: ethics

An Attack on Workers’ Rights

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Hypocritically, it’s by the Progressive-Democratic Party, which runs Michigan’s government. That’s the party that claims to champion the rights of America’s workers.

[State] Senate Democrats voted along party lines in support of repealing the decade-old “right-to-work” law in a state long considered a pillar of organized labor.

The State’s House already had passed a substantially similar bill, now the two go to conference to reconcile the differences, then the result will be voted up in both houses and sent to Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) to be signed into law.

Michigan’s workers, for the last decade, had been able to speak for themselves, to join or not join unions, to not pay dues to unions to which they didn’t belong.

The Michigan government is telling those workers they have no voice, and their wishes have no importance. Oh, and pay up, suckers.

So much for workers’ rights when Progressive-Democrats reign in Michigan.

What Are They Teaching?

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Matthew Wielicki, University of Alabama Assistant Professor of Geological Science, is on the right track, but he’s in a vanishing minority.

We’re literally moving away from the foundations of academia. If professors have any hesitancy in their speech, if students are hesitant to ask questions, if there is a decrease in dialogue because of a fear of retribution—that’s the fundamental principles that universities were founded on.

Unfortunately, he says, professors have precisely that hesitancy to speak freely. And this regarding a December 2022 poll by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression that found that

[m]ore than half of the nearly 1,500 college faculty members…were afraid of losing their jobs or reputations because of their words being used against them, even if unfairly. About a third said they don’t feel they can freely express their opinions.
“I definitely experienced that,” Wielicki said.

Even more unfortunately, destructively to our nation’s ability to grow following generations of inquisitive children and adults, these self-censoring “professors,” instead of teaching their subject matter, are teaching two critical and pernicious things. They’re teaching, by example—modeling, in the precious lexicon—cowardice. And they’re teaching that morals don’t matter; it’s better to put career, to put personal gain, ahead of morality.

“Banking System is Safe”

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That’s what President Joe Biden (D) claims after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.

Americans can rest assured that our banking system is safe. Your deposits are safe. Let me also assure you that we will not stop at this. We will do whatever is needed.

But that’s true only if regulators do their job and enforce the rules in place—as they chose not to do in the runup to SVB’s failure—and if risks are well-known and left to the responsibility of the risk-takers in a free market rather than laid off to us taxpayers to make those taking the risks whole.

That last just transfers the risks to us and leaves the risk-takers entirely free of risk. That last, also, is what concerns Senator Tim Scott (R, SC), even though Biden claims that taxpayers won’t cover the losses. Yes, we will. SVB doesn’t have enough book value, even were its liquidation not done at fire sale prices, to cover the billions of investor—venture capitalists, startups, bond holdings, and on and on—losses that will occur. Scott’s concerns:

We just heard recently that they’re going to really have the greatest form of corporate cronyism that we’ve seen in a very long time. They’re going to insure all the deposits, even the ones over the $250,000 limit, which means that the most sophisticated investors are now going to have the insulation of the federal government. That is problematic. It sends a very negative statement to the marketplace….

Scott’s concerns are well-founded. Here’s what Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, and FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said in their Sunday joint statement

Today we are taking decisive actions to protect the US economy…providing access to credit to households and businesses in a manner that promotes strong and sustainable economic growth.

That bailout is destructive of our banking system and of our economy at large.

I’ll have more on that last tomorrow.

Forfeiture

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Robert Frommer had a Wall Street Journal article centered on a case in which the FBI confiscated the life savings of his client as they raided a bank’s safe deposit box vault and snatched up the contents of deposit boxes rented by hundreds of customers, including his client’s. The FBI never charged his client with any wrong-doing, and in denying her request to get her stuff back, the FBI simply said “No,” with no explanation.

What drew my attention even more strongly, though, was Frommer’s penultimate sentence:

Courts must demand justice by preventing agencies from forfeiting property without informing owners of what they did wrong.

That’s not enough. Seizing and forfeiting are two different things. If existing statutes don’t permit courts to bar forfeiture altogether prior to actual conviction, than Congress must correct the statutes’ shortfall.

Further, rather than seizing property prior to conviction—the FBI and too many local police departments repeatedly show how difficult it is even to get back seized property—law enforcement agencies should be limited to getting courts to freeze property pending conviction, leaving the frozen property at least nominally, and formally, in the possession of the owner.

At Least There’s One

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One man in DC understands the situation. Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee has this radical idea on getting violent crime, at least, back under control:

What we got to do, if we really want to see homicides go down, is keep bad guys with guns in jail. Because when they’re in jail, they can’t be in communities shooting people.

Sadly, that’s a concept that’s too complex for the wonders of the DC City Council, who passed—and overrode the Mayor’s veto to do so—an ordinance that

reduce[s] maximum penalties for violent crimes such as burglaries, robberies, and carjackings, along with abolishing minimum sentences for most crimes.

Contee illustrated the depth of the problem:

Right now, the average homicide suspect has been arrested eleven times prior to them committing a homicide[.]

Sadly, he’s only one in DC governance, though, for whom the simple solution isn’t too complex to understand.