Tag Archives: ethics

Illegal Aliens and CDLs

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The Federal government is finally cracking down on illegal aliens with commercial driver licenses and the schools that “train” them. The latter cavalierly ignore the grave danger to life and property—to say nothing of the businesses’ cargo that those illegal aliens are hauling around.

It’s good that the Federal government is finally moving seriously to reduce the number of illegal alien CDL holders and the risks to us Americans and our businesses that those illegals represent.

It’s not enough, though. Government isn’t the only player here, nor should it be the primary. Businesses that engage shipping companies to move their goods from port, factory, farm, retailer to stores, factories, assemblers, and end users have their own part to play in this. They should require those shipping companies, as a condition of doing business with them, to certify that they have no illegal alien CDLs on their payroll.

The Left and many of their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians like to talk about noblesse oblige in the context of rationalizing their drumbeat of imposing punishing taxes on the Evil Rich. A broader and far more legitimate onus is characterized by patriotisme oblige. It’s time for businessmen who are Americans to act like it, and to act on it.

Progressive-Democrats as Taxmen

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There is a way for the Evil Rich to provide for their heirs in a remarkably tax favored, if not tax-free, way—private-placement life insurance, a customizable insurance contract that allows unlimited investments to grow tax-free. The contents would go to the beneficiary(s) on the account creator’s death as a death benefit, and so be free of income taxes at that point, also. These accounts were designed that way explicitly to encourage folks to provide for their dependents. The tradeoff is that the account must be under the control of an independent account trustee of some sort; the account creator cannot have even influence over how his money is invested within that contract. The mechanics of how this works isn’t relevant to this post. The outcome, though, is.

In one relatively extreme case, one Rich Person’s account, set up in this way,

could [could, mind you; the account’s manager may make bad or unlucky investment decisions] one day be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he won’t have paid a dime in ordinary-income or capital-gains taxes on their growth. He can take withdrawals or loans against the policy’s cash value but generally doesn’t expect to tap the proceeds. When he dies those will go to beneficiaries income-tax-free in the form of a death benefit.

Enter Progressive-Democrats with their hatred of the wealthy and their jealousy of the wealthy’s success and their demand to confiscate other people’s money, especially that of the so hated rich.

Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR) has introduced legislation that would separate these insurance policies from traditional life insurance, making those earnings and losses taxable to the policyholder as they are earned each year.
“We cannot have a bunch of ultrarich tax dodgers abusing its special tax treatment to set up tax-free hedge funds and shelter mountains of cash[.]”

It’s abuse to follow tax law? And: why can’t we have successful people take advantage of the government’s tax law to take care of their families? Never mind that. The Evil Rich Man cannot be allowed to pass his good luck on to his dependents. He owes Government and must pay the Progressive-Democrat government’s vig.

Pick One

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In an article regarding Europe’s censors’ efforts to govern and limit American speech, Nathan Harden, RealClearEducation Editor, warned about AI packages embedding invisible and supposedly unremovable watermarks in writing (and eventually in imagery and recordings of speech, also) so that those censors can identify and block speech of which they personally disapprove. In the course of that, the author wrote this about Anthropic AI-generated watermarks in particular.

The marking technology subtly biases words the model picks, in a pattern Anthropic controls via a secret key. The watermark survives ordinary copy and paste, and there is no way to opt out. Anthropic says the mark carries no information that could identify a user and won’t affect the overall meaning of the text.

It isn’t possible to subtly bias words in a text without the overall meaning of that text being so influenced. Surely Anthropic’s managers understand this.

Harden then asked the critical question:

Americans should be asking a more fundamental question: Why is European law dictating how an American company produces words for Americans?

The answer is because [Anthropic’s] managers are all too willing to surrender to Europe’s censors in order preserve their precious presence there and not willing enough, if at all, to spend that energy preserving the freedoms of the nation that nurtured them and provided them the environment in which they grew and now prosper.

How, then, can [Anthropic] or its products be trusted in America or anywhere else?

The Cat’s Out of the Bag

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One of President Donald Trump’s (R) advisors, Jared Kushner, met with Progressive-Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY), ostensibly to seek out areas of “common ground” in advance of Jeffries’ ascension to House Speaker in January.

The Left has been ripping at its collective bodice ever since news of the meeting broke. I also disagree with the usefulness of the meeting, but for different reasons. The first is that Jeffries cannot be trusted to keep any agreement, formal or tacit, out loud or unspoken, with a President or a Party whose members he’s spent his time in the House smearing as unpatriotic threats to democracy and/or personally dishonest.

This corroborates my position:

Jeffries said the only way the Democrats and the Trump administration would come to agreements on issues would be if Republicans were willing to give ground to Democrats on cost-of-living issues, which is the Republican’s top priority.

Nothing about his party giving ground to Republicans on any question. Nothing about compromise at all. This is Jeffries’ statement that he will lead Party to pass legislation without Republican input that isn’t Republican surrender. This is Jeffries’ statement that he and Party will simply dictate legislation and non-Party Representatives can go hang.

This is corroborated by Party’s commitment to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate as soon as they get a majority there, enabling Party to impose its will on us Americans wholly independently of any other party input and utterly without compromise.

That arrogance makes Jeffries and Party entirely untrustworthy.

Speculation and So What

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The Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger that California’s Progressive-Democrat AG Rob Bonta, along with some dozen of other Progressive-Democrat-led States and a union, have gone into court to block may be entering “settlement” talks. The situation as it stands, from Paramount:

Paramount has warned it is prepared to move the company out of California if it can’t reach a deal with the states, with a potential move starting as soon as October 1. Tennessee is seen as a likely potential landing spot for Paramount.

October because that’s when Paramount starts owing fees to Warner Bros. Discovery related to delayed signing of the deal. Tennessee is the most likely gaining State, although there are a number of States with much more congenial business environments than those Progressive-Democrat-run States.

From Bonta:

As it stands today, the proposed Warner Bros./Paramount merger will mean higher costs, less competition, lower wages, job cuts, and fewer movies and TV shows[.]

That’s pure speculation based on nothing other than ephemeral economic studies that try to predict the future, here in an environment very much changed from the environment in which those studies were conducted. Speculation should form no basis, even in the Ninth Circuit’s region (the first stop for the inevitable appeals), for blocking a business deal.

From the union:

The Writers Guild of America also sued over the merger, saying that the deal would eliminate jobs and career opportunities for Hollywood screenwriters.

That may or may not be true, and it’ll be influenced largely by the willingness of those Hollywood screenwriters to relocate and become Tennessee screenwriters. At bottom, though, while any job loss would be too bad for those terminated, the WGA‘s plaint is a big so what. Nobody, not even Hollywood screenwriters, have an intrinsic right to any job, not even screenwriting.

Paramount, in the absence of a deal with the States that’s entirely satisfactory to Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery by COB 30 September, should make its move out of California on 1 October and conclude the merger. There’s no need for Paramount or Warner Bros. Discovery to delay past that date.

The Tennessees of our nation will greatly benefit from the revenue gains that making movies, ancillary businesses associated with movie-making, businesses supporting ancillary businesses, and further business rippling will bring to the gaining State (and in the case of Tennessee, the rippling will flow into Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South and North Carolina). Los Angeles and California can take up that loss of revenue with Bonta, et al.