Tag Archives: ethics

Don’t Waste Any More Time

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The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability asked for Hunter Biden’s bank and communications records. Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said “No” with the rationalization that the Oversight Committee’s request lacked oversight basis. This excuse is so risible as to be contemptible.

Enough.

Stop wasting time handling these persons with kid gloves. Subpoena the documents, and then go get them under threat of arrest—and actual arrest and lockup—using the Senate’s Jurney v MacCracken precedent. Find Hunter Biden in contempt, have the House Sergeant at Arms arrest him and bring him before the House, there to try him on the contempt charge, and if convicted jail him until he clears the contempt failure by producing the untampered with (vis., unredacted) documents for the Committee’s satisfaction.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on MacCracken, which makes clear that this power extends to each house of Congress and is not limited to the Senate, can be read here.

Not Too Circular….

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During last Wednesday’s House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing regarding the Federal government’s collusion with social media, social media powdered wigs were asked whether they had used disappearing message apps to talk with government officials.

Twitter’s ex-Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gaddee’s response:

Not to the best of my records.

Which, of course, her records would not indicate, her messages with government officials (like another “witness” in front of the committee, then-FBI General Counsel James Baker) having disappeared via those apps.

Incidentally, Baker, in front of the Committee in his role as ex-Twitter Deputy General Counsel, claimed I don’t recall whether he had used disappearing message apps.

Go figure.

Lies of a Progressive-Democrat President

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President Joe Biden (D) has long claimed that his tax-raising plan and his IRS would not target anyone making less than $400,000 per year. He repeated that claim in his State of the Union speech last Tuesday.

Under my plan, nobody earning less than $400,000 a year will pay an additional penny in taxes.

Never mind. His IRS’ latest proposed rule:

The proposed SITCA [Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement] program is designed to take advantage of advancements in point-of-sale, time and attendance systems, and electronic payment settlement methods to improve tip reporting compliance.

Not even that vaunted and highly successful barkeep, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pulled down 400 stacks in a year when she was working saloons in New York City.

The IRS claims the program is “voluntary,” but watch what happens to the hapless waitress or waiter, or any other low-wage person for whom tips are a significant fraction of his income, who doesn’t report his tips in a manner that suits the revenooers.

Biden has lied again.

Separately, I’ll no longer include my tip on the charge card receipt that’s increasingly often offered to patrons as a “convenient” way to tip wait staff on their presentment of my bill. Instead, I’ll return to an earlier practice of leaving my tip on the table as cash. The busboy is more trustworthy than this President and his IRS. That’s an appallingly low bar for the busboy, but I do not mean the comparison as faint praise for him. Far from it. I may go a step farther, and pay the whole bill with cash.

Aiding an Enemy Nation

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In the present case, it’s technically legal, but it’s strictly wrong.

The People’s Republic of China is a global leader in the development of artificial intelligence, and it’s on the way to becoming the global leader. AI has a number of uses of which the PRC is taking advantage, including surveillance of citizens and fighting battles and entire wars.

Despite this threat to our nation’s security, American businesses and investors have comprised more than 40% of the 400 international investments in PRC AI, and those 400 investments were 17% of total international investment in PRC AI.

Here, per the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University, are the top 10 American investors in PRC AI—companies that put their lucre acquisition ahead of our nation’s security:

The CSET has reported further that

Collectively, observed transactions involving US investors totaled $40.2 billion invested into 251 Chinese AI companies, which accounts for 37 percent of the $110 billion raised by all Chinese AI companies.

And [emphasis added]

such financial activity, commercial linkages, and the tacit expertise that transfers from US-based funders to target companies in China’s booming AI ecosystem carry implications that extend beyond the business sector. Earlier stage VC investments in particular can provide intangible benefits beyond capital, including mentorship and coaching, name recognition, and networking opportunities. As such, US outbound investment in Chinese technology, and particularly AI, merits additional attention and tracking.

This comes after Google, for instance, infamously refused to continue a contract with the US’ Department of Defense to develop battlefield-capable artificial intelligence packages while continuing actively to support the PRC’s citizen-surveillance and military AI development. Alphabet’s subsequent words and actions concerning its now wholly owned subsidiary now being willing to work with DoD do nothing to mitigate, much less correct, that infamy.

Objectivity

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Leonard Downie, late of The Washington Post, and writing in WaPo last Monday, decried the objective use of objectivity in today’s journalism while occupying quite a number of column inches offering “objective” techniques for maintaining credibility in the preferred lack of objectivity. The core of his objection is this:

They [reporters, editors, and media critics] believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change, and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences, and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.

This, though, is just one more way in which these wonders, abetted by folks like Downie, seek to control what us average Americans know about the world around us: they deliberately, consciously, and mendaciously conflate opinion writing with fact and event reporting.

Those concerns—race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change, etc—all are valid subjects about which to write, but they belong on the opinion pages instead of being dishonestly masqueraded as facts. If these…persons…maintained that separation, they truly would be pursuing truth.

Objectivity, after all, really is expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice—everywhere, that is, except in the Left’s Newspeak Dictionary.