Tag Archives: politics

Mobile Encryption is a Huge Problem

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That’s the position of FBI Director Christopher Wray.

To put it mildly, this [mobile device encryption] is a huge, huge problem.  It impacts investigations across the board.

Certainly, consumer-done encryption of our communications devices can temporarily hinder investigations of the criminals who also use this encryption.  But as the FBI demonstrated regarding an encrypted cell phone involved in the San Bernardino terrorist attack, its initial claims notwithstanding, the encryption can be broken without the cooperation of the device’s owner.

Every tool can be misused.  The problem is not the misuse of the tool but government efforts to apply one-size-fits-all solutions to the misuse that end up harming all the rest of us more than the bad guys.

The FBI’s continued demand for a “government-mandated backdoor” that the government’s agents can use whenever they take a notion puts a premium on the encryption side of the question.  Think Government wouldn’t misbehave?  Ask anyone on the right about the behavior of the Obama administration.  Ask anyone on the left about the behavior of the Trump administration.

It’s always going to be an arms race between the good guys and the bad guys.  It’s a critical arms race, though, when it’s our own government that wants to pry into all of our private communications because a few of us are bad guys.

Federal Deductibility of State Taxes

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The current Republican Federal tax reform plan on offer, at least as described by the NLMSM, includes elimination of the deductibility of State taxes on our Federal tax returns.  Naturally, Progressive-Democrats object.  Here’s New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D), as a canonical example:

This is probably one of the most destructive policies to the state of New York I’ve heard proposed in 30 years[.]

What Cuomo and his ilk carefully ignore is that with significantly lower tax rates and a doubling of the standard deduction the value of a state tax deduction—even for high-tax States—is markedly lowered.  What they also carefully ignore is that it’s primarily their hated rich who use the deduction at all—most of the rest of us don’t incur enough expenses to be able to itemize our deductions, even (especially) medical expenses, which must exceed 10% of our AGI, anyway (and which threshold those same Progressive-Democrats want to preserve).

That doesn’t seem very destructive.

Guys like Congressman Peter King (R, NY), on the other hand, simply misunderstand the situation.  King insists, for example,

The deduction is essential for these people to get by.

His beef and that of his fellows in high-tax States, though, is with those State governments, not with the tax reform plan.  What’s essential is that those States’ usurious tax rates be lowered, so “these people” can get by with more of their own money left in their own pockets.  King and his fellows should be working to lower their States’ taxes, not preserve them.

Free Speech at the Universities

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Kent Fuchs, University of Florida President, and Glenn Altschuler, Cornell Professor of American Studies, have some…interesting…thoughts on this in their recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Public universities that choose to grant access to speakers who are not invited or affiliated with the institution are legally obligated to accept all such speakers. As a result, they may become hostage to Nazis or other extremists—forced to stand by as these groups capitalize on their university’s visibility and prestige to amplify their vile messages.

Fuchs and Altschuler wrote that as if it were a bad thing.  I have to ask: why are they so terrified of a contest of ideas in an open, public forum?

And:

[A] partial solution [to handling costs] could entail a new Federal Extremist Speakers Fund to help universities with their exorbitant security costs. That would shift the financial burden of following the First Amendment to the government that requires universities to do so.

Wow.  Apparently, Fuchs and Altschuler slept through their eighth-grade Civics class.  Government isn’t making universities do anything here.  We the People, through our 1st Amendment, are making the government protect free speech in all public forums.

And:

Meanwhile, when openly racist and virulently anti-Semitic speakers show up on campus, we need to deprive them of attention and confrontation, the oxygen on which they thrive, by shunning them.

Certainly.  And that will happen pretty much automatically over the course of the ideas contest of which Fuchs and Altschuler are so terrified.

Steve Bannon and the Progressive-Democratic Party

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Steve Bannon is acting more and more (and more openly) like a stooge of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Is Steve Bannon working for my agenda—or his?

That’s the question Donald Trump might ask himself….

Indeed, since Bannon’s targets are Republicans of whom he disapproves—which is to say nearly all of them—all of us must ask for whose agenda is Bannon working so hard.  Bannon did, though, give his game away:

The only question on Capitol Hill, he warned Mr [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell, is “who’s going to be Brutus to your Julius Caesar[?]”

Indeed.  Who’s going to play the role of assassin/traitor to the Senate?

Bannon intends to subject every Republican Senator who is rude enough to support McConnell to a primary contest with a view to removing that Senator from office and replacing him with a more malleable candidate in the general election.

I’ve written elsewhere of the likely outcome of Bannon’s campaign.  William McGurn, the author of the piece at the first link, has one take on Bannon’s motive for that outcome.  I have another.

If Bannon were truly interested in a Conservative victory in the coming series of elections, he’d be going after the Progressive-Democratic Party candidates instead of targeting Republicans, even those who aren’t conservative enough to suit him.  Instead, he’s carefully ignoring the Democrats.

“Fear of Violent Protests Raises Cost of Free Speech on Campus”

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That’s the title of Douglas Belkin’s piece in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal.  However, it’s inaccurate.  What is feared by college/university management is the thugs who protest free speech with violence and others who protest free speech with noise and interruptions and venue entrance blockings that prevent the speaker from speaking.

Schools have struggled to come up with a consistent answer to requests to speak, pitting their free-speech ideals against security concerns.

Schools are being disingenuous when they pretend to these concerns, and the WSJ is misunderstanding the problem when it characterizes the schools as having free-speech ideals. The existence of the schools’ trading off security for free-speech demonstrates the lack of ideals regarding free-speech.

Were the schools’ managers truly concerned, they would understand the greatest violence is done to liberty when they cravenly trade free-speech for security, when they cravenly force disfavored speech into school-mandated “free speech” zones, when they cravenly allow “protestors” to prevent disfavored speakers from speaking, when they cravenly, despicably, allow “protestors” to dictate to others what speech those others will be allowed to hear.

“We have a non-negotiable commitment to provide safety and security for our guests and the public at large and we have an equally unwavering commitment to free speech,” said Mr [UC Berkeley Assistant Vice Chancellor, Dan] Mogulof. “That puts us between a rock and a hard place; we can’t step back from either one.”

Mogulof is being disingenuous. There’s no need to step back from either—allow the one, and provide the other. Worried about cost? Get serious about dealing with thugs who masquerade as protestors blocking speech of which the thugs disapprove. Get serious about snowflakes who pretend to being “triggered” when they hear speech they claim frightens them.

What’s plainly of distant secondary importance to these managers is actual free speech.  With their timidity, these managers fail to seriously defend the free speech rights of the speaker and, worse, fail to defend the free speech rights of others to make their own choice of what speech they will hear.