Tag Archives: morality

Still Holding Hostages

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I wrote about this a bit ago.  Unfortunately, the Democrats in Congress still are at it.  The Senate once again failed to pass a bill funding a response to the Zika virus in Florida and elsewhere in the US, because Senate Democrats blocked it—the bill blocks funding for Planned Parenthood.

Yup.

Shamefully, Senate Democrats still are holding the lives of Americans hostage against their getting their way on an entirely separate issue.

Congress should stick the currently proposed Zika funding into the upcoming budget bill, and then pass that budget through reconciliation.  Force President Barack Obama (D) to sign it or to veto Zika treatment funding—and to veto funding the Federal government.

Some Lives Are More Equal Than Others

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Cornell University is looking for a Dean of Diversity.  OK, they’re looking for a Dean of Students, but an important part of his DOC is his ability to promote diversity.  But the new Dean mustn’t promote diverse diversity, only the diversity of school-favored groups of students.

…one top candidate, Vijay Pendakur…held a “diversity townhall” with students to persuade them to support his candidacy.

Then he let the cat out of the bag.

If I say, “The dean’s area of focus is diversity and inclusion,” the unspoken thought in response often is, “Oh, so he’s here for only the marginalized students.”  So we need to undo that, because that is a deeply problematic framework.  If we’re going to make progress, it needs to be everyone’s conversation.

Cornell’s Vice President for Diversity of Inclusion, Julia Montejo, chose to be offended by this truth.

I’d like to hear more on how that kind of approach and philosophy still puts the concerns of minority students, students of color, underrepresented students, LGBTQ-identifying students and students with disabilities at the forefront….

Because.

Cornell favors some diversity, but not complete diversity.  Some groups of students should just proceed to the back of the Cornell bus.

Climate and Race

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From a piece quoted by What’s Up With That:

Police arrest seven of nine people chained to tripod on runway in protest against impact of air pollution on black people.

Flights have been cancelled at London’s City airport after nine protesters from Black Lives Matter UK got on to the runway and chained themselves together.

And [emphasis in the original]

The group issued a video that said the reason for the protest was that the climate crisis was a “racist crisis”.

The Black Lives Matter movement will manufacture a racism beef out of anything.  They’re projecting, again.

Our Dishonest Department of Justice

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The Obama Department of Justice has been caught again.  This time, it advised the Supreme Court—13 years after the DoJ’s misbehavior—that it had lied made “several significant errors” in the 2003 case Demore v Kim, a case concerning excessive detention times for aliens with criminal records who were being held without bail.  DoJ had “mistakenly” argued at the time—and convinced the Supremes with the argument—that the detention periods involved were four months or less and so not excessive.  From this, the Supremes upheld a blanket policy of bail denial to immigrants jailed while appealing deportation orders.

DoJ’s lately confession admits that the detention periods actually were longer than 12 months.

And this incident:

In 2012, the Justice Department told the court that it had inaccurately asserted in a 2009 case, Nken v Holder, that officials routinely “facilitate” the return to the US of deported aliens who later win their immigration appeals.

It turns out that DoJ hardly lifts a finger to speed such returns.

Unfortunately,

In both instances, more accurate information emerged through Freedom of Information Act requests filed by immigrant advocates who were skeptical of the government’s claims.

Clearly, DoJ knew these things and have been trying to hide the fact of their “mistakes.”  They knew they were lying “providing inaccurate information” at the time; they deliberately withheld accurate information from the Supreme Court.  That’s why it took FOIA requests to expose these facts.

Recall, too, the DoJ having been caught out overtly and deliberately lying in another immigration case in 2015, and that judge ordered DoJ’s lawyers to undergo ethics training.  President Barack Obama’s (D) Attorney General Loretta Lynch has refused to have her lawyers undergo that training.

Of course she has.  Lying is too deeply embedded in the culture of the DoJ.

This is a mess, spanning administrations, and it can be cleaned up only with a wholesale removal of DoJ leadership down to middle management and the discharge of the lawyers ordered to undergo ethics training and who have not yet done so.  But that won’t happen in a potential Clinton administration led by a candidate who has promised to continue and extend Obama’s policies.

The EU and Tax Invasion

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Notice that: invasion.

EU antitrust regulators ordered Apple on Tuesday to pay up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in taxes plus interest to the Irish government after ruling that a special scheme to route profits through Ireland was illegal state aid.

The problem, in the EU’s eyes, is that Apple headquartered its European operations in Ireland, which has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the EU (and which EU Know Betters keep hammering on the Irish to “correct” because its tax rates are, somehow, unfairly low), and then Apple funneled most of its European revenue through that Irish branch so as to pay—legally in their and Irish eyes—low taxes.

“Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years,” said Competition Commission Margrethe Vestager….

Ireland agrees with Apple and will appeal the EU’s demand.  As Finance Minister Michael Noonan said,

This is necessary to defend the integrity of our tax system; to provide tax certainty to business; and to challenge the encroachment of EU state aid rules into the sovereign member state competence of taxation.

Ireland is quite clear on the invasion matter.

The EU may well be on the right side of its law, but it’s on the wrong side of morality and the wrong side of economic principle.  It’s not the EU’s money.  It’s not even Ireland’s government’s money.  It’s Apple’s money, and it’s the money of the 6,000, or so, Apple employees in Ireland, which they allocate to the Irish government (not the EU governance) as taxes.  If Ireland is charging Apple a lower tax rate than continental members of the EU, the latter should compete, not run from competition by presuming to dictate to a fellow member what that member must do.

It’s also the case that the lower tax rate leaves more money in the hands of those who earned it—those Irish employees and the Apple corporation—which means those employees have more money with which to take care of their families and to spend generally and Apple has more money with which to hire employees and to engage in product development—all of which are good for the Irish economy.

How Ireland takes care of its domestic economy is of no legitimate concern to the rest of the EU, and that Apple paid all the taxes required by Ireland is just a bit of too bad for the EU Know Betters.