Tag Archives: ethics

Rule By Law

Posted on by
Reply

…and not rule of law, which our Constitution so strongly pushes. That’s what SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has decided to do.

The SEC announced this month that it will suspend enforcement of new rules issued under former Chairman Jay Clayton that subjected proxy advisory firms to the same anti-fraud rules as public companies and required them to disclose their business conflicts.

Just pick and choose the rules the Biden appointee deigns enforce. Don’t move first to change the rule, while enforcing it while it’s in force. Gensler Knows Better which rules are fit, and disdains the need for someone so awesome to submit his wishes to lesser masses who might impudently comment contrariwise to any change he deems necessary during such a rule change’s comment period.

Oh, wait:

Mr Gensler has directed SEC staff to consider revising the rules.

Give him a rule that better suits him. But he’ll still ignore the existing rule as beneath his dignity.

This is rule by law—which is another way of saying rule by men with the raw power to reign.

More Big Tech Censorship

Posted on by
Reply

This time, perpetrated by Sundar Pichai and his YouTube—which Pichai controls through his control of Alphabet and Google (the latter which is wholly owned by Alphabet) and through his Google’s ownership of YouTube.

Real America’s Voice has been suspended from YouTube for a week for posting an exclusive interview with former President Donald Trump in which he discusses the disputed 2020 presidential election.

This is an image of the YouTube notice RAV received and subsequently showed to Just the News:

The notice image is hard to read (try the right-click|open in new tab trick), YouTube claimed to RAV that the video included prohibited content that “advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election.”

Except that the video—the interview with former President Donald Trump (R)—did no such thing. It merely contained Trump’s claim of a fraudulent outcome of the 2020 election. There’s not a minim of fraud, errors, or glitches, widespread or not, in the fact of his claim. Some might—and many do—dispute Trump’s claim, but there’s nothing in the censored video that is false regarding the fact of Trump’s statements about the election or in RAV‘s recording and reporting of Trump’s statements.

Of course, Pichai knows this full well; he’s that bent on censoring speech of which he personally disapproves and over which he has the nakedly raw power to commit his censorship.

Big Tech, Big Brother

Posted on by
Reply

This time, it’s Tim Cook’s Apple.

In a report released [last] Wednesday, the company argues that allowing users to download apps directly onto their iPhones without having to use Apple’s App Store would harm customers by threatening privacy protections, complicating parental controls and potentially exposing users’ data to ransomware attacks.

Say that’s true. It remains the user’s personal choice to run that risk. It remains the user’s personal responsibility to deal with that risk.

Is Cook denying the personal agency average Americans have in their decisions and in their property?

Or is Cook denying the cell phone user’s own property in the cell phone he bought—often for a thousand dollars—and uses? Is Cook claiming Apple retains primary ownership in that cell phone he “sold” to the user?

In any event, I decline to acknowledge Apple, Inc, or any of its managers as Big Brother.

Bipartisan Negotiations Progressive-Democratic Party Style

Posted on by
Reply

There is a bipartisan group of Senators who are close to agreement on a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill. Set aside, for the moment, whether the bill is good or bad. Consider, first, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) and his Socialist colleague Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) position and planned move regarding that bill.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders have started the process of adding elements of Biden’s agenda to a large-scale budget reconciliation bill, regardless of the outcome of ongoing bipartisan negotiations on infrastructure.
Schumer has said the reconciliation bill will include the parts of Biden’s $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan that are not included in a potential bipartisan agreement on infrastructure spending.

The bipartisan negotiation is a sham, a decoy, an attempt at a shiny object. The Progressive-Democrats in that group are fully aware of this, and they’re enthusiastic participants in the distraction.

This is what Republicans and Conservatives have to deal with.

The Manchin Alternative

Posted on by
Reply

Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) claims he never liked HR1, even though he voted for cloture on the Senate Progressive-Democrats’ effort bring that Federal election deform law to the Senate floor for party-line passage.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors rightly called out his sham of a compromise, to be substituted for that HR1…nonsense.

I’ve picked out just a couple of the items in Manchin’s offering to illustrate the sham. The first is a repeat example of Manchin’s personal fundamental dishonesty.

The [compromise’s] preamble insists that any voting bill “must be the result of both Democrats and Republicans coming together.”

We’ve already seen how worthless Manchin’s word is. On that “coming together” bit, in particular, Manchin late last fall piously intoned, often, that he would support no bill that didn’t have input from “his friends across the aisle.” Then he voted, twice, for a unilaterally done reconciliation bill that spent nearly $2 trillion of our taxpayer money.

“ban partisan gerrymandering and use computer models.”

Here is an example of Party’s intrinsic dishonesty, and that of the DC politicians in general, for generations and across parties.

The only legitimate way to get rid of gerrymandering, and computers would be helpful here, but they’re far from critical, is to subdivide each State into rectangular districts of substantially equal numbers of citizens, and with no regard to geography other than State borders.

After all, in the eyes of our Constitution, there are no black voters or brown voters or Asian voters or white voters. There are no male voters or female voters. There are only American voters.