Tag Archives: politics

A Government “Medical Camp”

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Via Dr David Samadi, a bill proposed in all seriousness in the New York Assembly. It authorizes the Governor, on his declaration of a health emergency, to “remove” and/or “detain” anyone or any group he decides is a threat to the public’s health. The money paragraph comes early on:

UPON DETERMINING BY CLEAR AND CONVINCING EVIDENCE THAT THE HEALTH OF OTHERS IS OR MAY BE ENDANGERED BY A CASE, CONTACT OR CARRIER, OR SUSPECTED CASE, CONTACT OR CARRIER OF A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE THAT, IN THE OPINION OF THE GOVERNOR, AFTER CONSULTATION WITH THE COMMISSIONER, MAY POSE AN IMMINENT AND SIGNIFICANT THREAT TO THE PUBLIC HEALTH RESULTING IN SEVERE MORBIDITY OR HIGH MORTALITY, THE GOVERNOR OR HIS OR HER DELEGEE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE COMMISSIONER OR THE HEADS OF LOCAL HEALTH DEPARTMENTS, MAY ORDER THE REMOVAL AND/OR DETENTION OF SUCH A PERSON OR OF A GROUP OF SUCH PERSONS BY ISSUING A SINGLE ORDER, IDENTIFYING SUCH PERSONS EITHER BY NAME OR BY A REASONABLY SPECIFIC DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIVIDUALS OR GROUP BEING DETAINED. SUCH PERSON OR GROUP OF PERSONS SHALL BE DETAINED IN A MEDICAL FACILITY OR OTHER APPROPRIATE FACILITY OR PREMISES DESIGNATED BY THE GOVERNOR OR HIS OR HER DELEGEE AND COMPLYING WITH SUBDIVISION FIVE OF THIS SECTION.

Notice that. Folks of whom the Governor—or his delegees—disapproves can be rounded up and locked away. The present governor has already attacked many of the Jewish communities in his State for their insistence on acting within their religious requirements—which conflict with the Governor’s personal views.

Notice, too, that once the Governor has declared a health emergency pursuant to a particular disease that’s epidemic, he gets to lock up anyone or any group who have any “communicable” disease, not just the one driving the alleged emergency.

But wait—there’s more.

There’s not a syllable of measures to be taken to protect the new inmates’ medical privacy. Nor can there be: these unfortunates are to be seized, unavoidably publicly, pursuant to a publicly declared “health emergency.”

The newly detained will be “permitted” to identify those friends and family the new inmate wants to be notified of the fact of his seizure. Of course. That way, those friends and family can be more easily rounded up and locked away, too.

The accumulated timing of all the delays to notifications, responses to requests for release from gaol, actual release (if any) lines up well with CDC’s view of the duration of contagiousness. And the Governor gets the first three days of lock-up free: he doesn’t have to do anything in that initial interval. Nor does the clock count weekends and holidays: if the seizure is done on a Friday morning of a three-day weekend, the Governor gets six days.

RTWT—it’s short, and the link is just below.

This is what happens with Progressive-Democrats have both houses of a legislature and the executive’s office. Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) has stolen a march on Governor Gavin Newsom (D).

The proposed bill can be read here.

Diversity

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A brief thought. Joseph Epstein wrote about true diversity, as opposed to the Left’s and their Progressive-Democratic Party’s ideology of race, sex, et al., diversity before merit in his Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

In the main, he’s right. I want to add a little, though, to his concluding sentence.

The best way to celebrate diversity, perhaps, is to begin by celebrating diversity of thought.

Number one.

Number two is overtly recognizing the inequality of individual talent, interest, work ethic, plain luck, and a host of other inequalities intrinsic in every man that culminate in unequal outcomes flowing from the utterly necessary equality of opportunity.

That equality of opportunity is at the center of individual liberty, which includes the freedom to speak diversely—out loud and publicly—from that diversity of thought.

That ability to speak freely is a critical part of every man’s right to show the best that there is in him, a right that is truncated by demanding equality of position or of outcome.

Additionally, that demand for equality of position or of outcome insults every one of us by insisting that our best isn’t worthy of consideration or that we cannot achieve that best without Know Betters in government doing for us.

Surveillance State

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And it’s not the People’s Republic of China this time. It’s a European ally.

Spain is planning to keep a record of individuals who refuse to receive the coronavirus vaccine, said the country’s minister of health on Monday.

Worse, Salvador Illa, Spain’s Minister of Health says,

The log of people who refuse vaccination will be shared with the country’s “European partners,” but will not be shared with employers or otherwise made public….

Not even simple, ordinary doctor-patient confidentiality matters here. This medical information will be shared around so all of Europe’s governments can participate in a pan-European surveillance state, even though the putative purpose of such surveillance—so that local employers, et al., can take “appropriate” measures—will be blocked.

The contradiction is so obvious it can only be taken as a distraction from the move’s true purpose: to take an initial step in tracking the details of the daily lives of citizens.

This is the Europe Joe Biden and his ilk want us to emulate. Of course, that dovetails nicely with the administrative state he and his want to expand in our nation.

Investing in the PRC

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For good or ill, the People’s Republic of China has decided change the regulatory rules regarding Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s banking activities. The company has lost

almost all its stock-market gains this year, just days after [PRC] regulators signaled a major change in their posture toward the e-commerce behemoth and its finance affiliate, Ant Group Co.

Notice that: the regulatory change does not cover the PRC’s banking or finance industries—it’s explicitly targeted at Alibaba’s subordinate, Ant. The PRC’s

central bank released a harshly worded statement Sunday criticizing Ant’s business practices and instructing the financial-technology giant to shift its focus back to its mainstay—and less lucrative—digital-payments business.

Notice that, too: the ruling is not the outcome of any sort of investigation, followed by trial in court to assess whether anything wrong actually was being done, followed by a court ruling based on the presented evidence. No, the order is government diktat.

Investors, unwarned by the existence of an investigation or subsequent existence of a court trial, have lost heavily. The only warning investors had was a Christmas Eve announcement of an investigation—and then came the diktat.

Alibaba’s swift comedown has led investors to reassess the regulatory risks faced by [PRC] internet companies…
The hard part is figuring out “how much of the recent regulatory moves against Ant and Alibaba is politically based, how far it will go, and when it will be over,” said Alex Au, managing director at Alphalex Capital Management, a Hong Kong-based hedge fund.

Yewbetcha.

This is what rule by law does, as compared to rule of law. This is why it’s foolish, potentially to the point of violating fiduciary responsibility, to invest in PRC businesses.

Remember this for the coming year.

In Which the Supreme Court Gets One Right, Sort Of

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The Supreme Court has ruled, for now, that the Trump administration’s policy of not allowing census-counted illegal aliens to be included in States’ post-census Federal Congressional reapportionment decisions can stand.

Following its ruling earlier this month that allowed the Trump administration to remove illegal aliens from the 2020 Census count, the Supreme Court on December 28 threw out two lower court decisions that went the other way, that barred the government from eliminating that population from the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes that officially determine the presidency.

The two tossed cases were Trump v Useche and Trump v City of San Jose. Notice that these address two separate, albeit related, matters. One is counting illegal aliens during the census itself; the other is whether State populations of illegal aliens can be used in setting the seats each State is allocated in the Federal House of Representatives and from that each State’s Electoral College representation.

California Attorney General and Joe Biden’s wish for HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra (D) insists,

[a] complete, accurate census is about ensuring all our voices are heard and that our states get their share of resources to protect the health and well-being of all of our communities. We remain committed to the core principle that everyone counts.

This, too, addresses two separate matters. Becerra is right, of course, about one of those matters, just not in the way he thinks. All of our voices—the voices of all of us who are citizens of the United States and of the particular State in which we reside—should be heard. Our voices should not be drowned out, or even diluted, by the voices of illegal aliens. Illegal aliens are not citizens; they’re not entitled to Federal government representation, and they shouldn’t be allowed to water down the representation of us citizens.

The other matter is this. Illegal aliens not being excludable from the census itself has perhaps legitimate implications for Federal transfers to the States for Medicare and other welfare fundings. It may be that taxpayers shouldn’t be held liable for the upkeep of those who announce from the jump their disrespect for our laws by breaking into our nation. On the other hand, we have our Judeo-Christian obligation to help those less well off—including those illegal aliens who have come from far direr straits: the difference between stealing a loaf of bread because the thief can, and stealing the loaf to feed his family.

Of course, the liberal, Living Constitution Says What We Say It Says wing dissented. Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent in Useche, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, and carried forward into this dismissal centered here:

The plain meaning of the governing statutes, decades of historical practice, and uniform interpretations from all three branches of Government demonstrate that aliens without lawful status cannot be excluded from the decennial census solely on account of that status.

That dissent does not address the use of populations of illegal aliens in apportioning State representation, only whether the illegal aliens can be counted in the first place. The dissenters will get their chance to argue again, though: the Supremes rejected the lower courts’ rulings on technical grounds, not on the merits of the issue.

Be heads up.

The Supremes’ order can be read here.