Tag Archives: ethics

Once Again

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And still: the Veterans Administration is not up to the task.

Hundreds of thousands of veterans face yearslong delays in their appeals of disability rulings because of a backlog of cases choking the Department of Veterans Affairs….

This backlog causes a number of problems…. Rushed rulings on initial claims can be riddled with errors. Veterans who appeal their cases typically wait between three and seven years for resolutions to their appeals, according to the Government Accountability Office. An inspector general report also found that one in 14 veterans dies while awaiting a decision on their disability claim appeal.

Against this backdrop, “VA officials say they have worked hard to process disability claims—and appeals to those claims—faster.”  Stipulate that.  The VA still is failing, no matter the amount of hard work.

The VA must be disbanded and its once and future budgets converted to vouchers for our veterans so they can get the care they need from the doctors they choose at the facilities they choose.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

A Question of Credibility

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Google is being sued for invasion of privacy and for what approximates false advertising.

“Google expressly represented to users of its operating system and apps that the activation of certain settings will prevent the tracking of users’ geolocations,” says Patacsil’s suit, which was filed Friday in California federal court. “This representation was false.”
“Despite users’ attempts to protect their location privacy, Google collects and stores users’ location data, thereby invading users’ reasonable expectations of privacy, counter to Google’s own representations about how users can configure Google’s products to prevent such egregious privacy violations,” the complaint says.

The plaintiffs want Google to cease and desist and to destroy all data obtained “from unlawful recording and use of the location information.”

Let’s say Google is guilty as charged, and the court orders it to “cease and desist and to destroy all data obtained ‘from unlawful recording and use of the location information.'”  The trial hasn’t begun, yet, much less reached a verdict, so Google isn’t actually guilty of anything yet.

On the premise of guilt, though, my questions are these: on what basis would we believe that Google will have stopped collecting the data, and on what basis would we believe that the heretofore collected data have been destroyed?

What mechanism would exist to confirm any of that?  What independent body—capable of the forensic analysis required, since Google has claimed it doesn’t collect the data without prior permission and so unauthorized data don’t exist in Google’s systems—would do the verification, and how deeply and broadly would it be allowed to penetrate Google’s software and hardware systems in order to carry out any verification inspection(s)?

How often would that body—or those bodies, since multiple sets of eyes are better than a single one—be allowed to conduct those inspections and with how much notice (no notice at all would be optimal)?

Editorial Decisions

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Gerald Seib made one typical of the NLMSM in his Monday op-ed.  He opened his piece with this, and he went on from there.

Let’s imagine for a moment a parallel universe in which President Trump last week didn’t call a onetime top female aide a “dog….”

…

In that parallel universe, which of these other stories might have gotten more attention?

  • A Commerce Department report on booming sales in grocery stores, restaurants and department stores
  • The largest one-day rise in the stock market in four months
  • The approval by Mr Trump’s own Food and Drug Administration of a lifesaving generic version of the EpiPen injector device for allergic reactions
  • The resumption of trade talks with Chinese officials who increasingly appear shaken by the Trump administration’s tough actions.

Probably, all of them would have gotten more attention.

Let’s understand one thing very clearly. It’s entirely Seib’s editorial choice and that of his fellow journalists to talk about side issues instead of serious ones, matters like those in his list above that he’s confessed to freely ignoring in favor of tabloid claptrap. Blaming these editorial decisions on the man the NLMSM is so anxious to disparage is an illustration of the general dishonesty of the NLMSM.

Criticize or praise his policies to a journalist’s heart’s content—and there’s much to critique from both sides of his policies—that’s an op-ed journalist’s job.  Deciding to ignore those policies is not.

Oh, and one more thing.  For good or ill, Trump calls everyone “dog.” Seib and his fellow journalists are the only ones making a big deal about a particular person’s gender. His and their rank sexism stinks.

Drinking Coolaid

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The NLMSM has done it.  In deep drafts.  And, no, I’m not writing about the recent collusion among NLMSM outlets one Sunday to write coordinated “opinion” anti-Trump pieces.

No, it’s even more blatant than that.  Here is an example of how deeply the NLMSM has drunk of ex-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s (D) coolaid that half of Americans are irredeemably deplorable racist, misogynistic, homophobes and ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) coolaid that we’re all just a bunch of bitter Bible-clinging gun-toters in flyover country.

MSNBC political analyst John Heilemann had this to say about those not on the Left and so too ignorant to agree with him:

I would like a pollster to test this question: how many people in the Republican Party think that it would be OK for Donald Trump to dissolve their own grandparents?

I’m virtually certain that if it was a Donald Trump–related question, you’ll get like 10% that would be like “Donald Trump has the power to do whatever he wants, including kill my parents.”

Heilemann claimed he was being hyperbolic to make a point about Trump loyalists, but you get the idea.

Distractions

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Mark Warner (D, VA), Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has objected to President Donald Trump’s revoking ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance.

This might be a convenient way to distract attention, say from a damaging news story or two. But politicizing the way we guard our nation’s secrets just to punish the President’s critics is a dangerous precedent.

This is neither politicization nor punishment, but a safeguard of our nation’s secrets.  No one, regardless of rank, once they leave government service should have a security clearance.  They neither have a need to know nor a need for access, the two Critical Items—both of which must be present, not just one of them—for granting clearances.  Trump’s only error here is in not ordering the revocation for all persons who have left government service.

No, what’s happening is that Progressive-Democrats like Warner are using this manufactured kerfuffle over Brennan’s security clearance revocation to distract from the fact that their Party has no message whatsoever other than that America is not, and never has, been great and never will be until there’s free stuff for everyone, paid for by taxing the rich, taxing the energy engine of our economy, cutting back our ability to defend ourselves, and on and on.