Tag Archives: ethics

Whose Choice Is It?

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And whose property is it?

A new law being seriously considered by lawmakers in New York City could strip landlords of the ability to perform criminal background checks on prospective tenants.

Because landlords shouldn’t be able to control who rents their property, shouldn’t be able to protect the interests of their existing tenants—who have, by dint of their rent agreements, have some property of their own in the landlord’s buildings.

This law means it’s city government property; landlords possess the buildings only in fee from the city lords.

Republican Councilwoman Inna Vernikov has the right of it:

A bill which would prohibit landlords from conducting criminal background checks of potential tenants. Murdered someone? Beat up your girlfriend? Robbed? Stabbed your neighbor? No problem. Come live among us!

Certainly felons, even violent felons, shouldn’t be blanketly denied a second chance, shouldn’t be blanketly denied an opportunity to demonstrate that they’ve rehabilitated themselves, shouldn’t be blanketly denied an opportunity at redemption.

But that should be the choice of the property owner, the landlord; it cannot be, legitimately, a choice forced upon the property owner, in a one-size-fits-all diktat by the Lords of the city.

Maybe It’s Time

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The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported to Congress at the end of October that

for the first time in its history [SIGAR was] unable this quarter to provide Congress and the American people with a full accounting of this US government spending [in Afghanistan] due to the noncooperation of several US government agencies.
The United States Agency for International Development, which administers the majority of US government spending for Afghanistan, and the Treasury Department refused to cooperate with SIGAR in any capacity while the State Department was selective in the information it provided pursuant to SIGAR’s audit and quarterly data requests.

These refusals directly violate current law regarding fund expenditure reporting requirements and are yet further examples of the disdain for inconvenient law held by members and supporters of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Maybe it’s time to defund entirely the USAID and to drastically reduce funding for Treasury and State. That would significantly reduce the amount of government spending that would go unreported.

It’ll be difficult and noisy to do, though, since the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians controlling the Senate and White House agree that this badly needed information should be covered up.

A Deliberate Move by the Progressive-Democratic Party

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…against American citizenship and American citizens.

The Progressive-Democratic Party-backed Washington, DC, city council voted 12-1 (!) to allow anyone resident in the city for at least 30 days to vote in city elections. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) didn’t have the courage to take an open position, one way or the other, on the bill; she allowed it to become the law of the city by simply not signing it. The new city law is so broadly written that illegal aliens and foreign college students would be able to vote, and

There’s nothing in this measure to prevent employees at embassies of governments that are openly hostile to the United States from casting ballots.

Now, courtesy of Bowser and her city council, anyone in the Russian, or the PRC, or the Venezuelan, or the… embassies can vote to choose the city’s elected officials up to and including the Mayor. To hell with what American citizen voters resident in the city want or vote for (or against).

Now the matter goes to Congress—the city being a Federal enclave—and those worthies have 30 days to vote it down. It’ll be instructive to see whether there are enough Party politicians in each house of Congress with enough understanding of the meaning of patriotism, and especially of the meaning of “American citizen,” to strike down this bill. As The Wall Street Journal editors put it, Let’s see the roll call.

How to Save Twitter and Democracy

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Mark Weinstein, founder of Twitter-competitor MeWe, wrote a Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed on this subject; he suggested a number of “fixes” that Twitter owner Elon Musk should implement to save Twitter—and Weinstein’s conception of “democracy.” These are:

…immediately create an advertiser content-preference system. Allow advertisers to select the tenor and topical content that their ads are associated with….

Only if Twitter users can have access to the system and to which advertisers sign up for which censorship. That way, we can block the ads from Woke or otherwise too thin-skinned advertisers. They will have demonstrated that their products are too fragile for actual usefulness.

…[act to block] a rash of verified accounts impersonating public figures, companies, and organizations….

How does Weinstein propose that legitimate satire and ridicule be discriminated from the fraud about which he claims to worry?

…sites that allow absolute free speech are overrun with hateful posts, spam, pornography, bullying, doxing, and incitement of violence.

Yeah, and? Whose definition of any of this is to be applied? We’ve already seen how the Woke and the thin-skinned Left already cry loudly over petty hurt feelings. Weinstein is just proposing more of that. The concept of free speech is centered on being able spout the ugliest spew, with answering speech being the remedy, not naked censorship.

…oversee a Twitter with little propaganda. Marketers, politicians and governments use Twitter to target unsuspecting users and manipulate their emotions, opinions, purchasing decisions…. …the way to solve this is to stop letting users pay to boost and amplify content.

Weinstein can’t have it both ways. Either Twitter allows advertising—propaganda—and allows advertisers to use their propaganda/advertising to target unsuspecting users and manipulate their emotions, opinions, purchasing decisions and to boost their advertisements (see that content-preference bit above), or it does not.

Twitter must go an extra step: no algorithms manipulating user newsfeeds or boosting unwanted content, period.

Again, Weinstein must pick one of these. Either he allows some—e.g., his precious advertisers—to manipulate newsfeeds and boost content, or he does not.

Twitter and its leadership must remain politically neutral.

I look forward with great anticipation to Weinstein telling other communications entities—The Washington Post or The New York Times, for instance, that they must remain politically neutral.

It’s not surprising that Weinstein proposes his competition attempt such internally contradictory moves.

Merrick Garland’s Special Prosecutor, in His Own Words

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Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as Special Prosecutor of former President Donald Trump (R). Leave aside the fact that while Smith was a lawyer in the Department of Justice a dozen years ago, he worked closely with the IRS’ then-Director Exempt Organizations, Lois Lerner, to target Conservative organizations applying for tax exempt status for slow-walking their applications or outright denial.  Never mind, either, that Smith brought a number of charges against a sitting Republican Governor and obtained convictions, thereby destroying his political career. Or that these convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court over Smith’s naked distortion, to the point of blatant unconstitutionality, of the laws under which Smith achieved his destruction.

Here is Special Counsel Jack Smith in his own words:

I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice[.]

Smith will both investigate and then prosecute. He can’t possibly—and this highly talented lawyer knows full well he can’t possibly—conduct his investigation and his prosecutions independently of each other. Sadly, though, he’s right that this is in the finest tradition of the politicized Eric Holder-, Loretta Lynch-, and Merrick Garland-run Department of Justice.

This is one more illustration of the naked political assault by President Joe Biden (D) and his Attorney General on a 2024 Presidential campaign competitor from a competing political party.