Tag Archives: responsibilities

Protection

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Facebook’s MFWIC Mark Zuckerberg wants the Federal government to regulate the industry in which Facebook plays such a significant role. As cited by The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg claims that

such intervention is vital to protect both the welfare of users and the fundamental values of an open internet.

He closed his op-ed, originally published in WaPo and the Irish news outlet Independent with this gem:

People shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies addressing these issues by themselves….

People shouldn’t have to rely on Government to dictate to private enterprise, and those enterprises’ leaders and managers need not be told what to do by the men of Government.  It’s entirely appropriate for people to expect “individual companies” to behave honestly and honorably—to address these issues to customers’ satisfaction without Government involvement.  After all, the managers of those companies are grown, adult human beings who clearly understand the difference between right and wrong.  And we customers clearly can withhold our custom from misbehaving businesses; we need no Government instruction for that, or Government protection from those misbehaviors.

Zuckerberg knows full well what regulations are necessary for the purpose.  Which means he knows full well the internal controls he needs to implement—wholly voluntarily and without Government intervention, or even prodding—to achieve those regulatory goals.

Instructively, Zuckerberg is not alone.  Apple’s Tim Cook and Alphabet’s Google honcho Sundar Pichai agree with him: they also want Government to impose “stricter privacy rules.”

In the end, though Zuckerberg, Cook, and Pichai aren’t interested in protecting consumers, much less their own—as Zuckerberg and Pichai have demonstrated repeatedly with Facebook’s and Google’s cavalier attitude toward customer’s privacy and control over personal data, and Cook’s willingness to work with the People’s Republic of China’s government to invade that nation’s citizen privacy in the name of government censorship.

No, all Zuckerberg (along with his fellow protectee wannbes) want is protection of their companies from competitors—even though their very size and market share afford all of that that they need.

Delusions of Average

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Some folks think an annual income of a half million dollars leaves them…average…and strapped. The tweeted image of an example of this delusion is below.  CNBC represents this as a real couple.

You can read the CNBC article linked to in the tweet here, but the image and many of the comments in the tweet’s thread are instructive by themselves.

Morgan Housel offered a couple:

@morganhousel
So $36K in 401k contributions should be added to “what’s left over,” along with $18K in charity contributions (not an expense either).

@morganhousel
If you fix that then the headline becomes “This couple that makes $500K and spends too much money still saves more than 20% of their after-tax salary, which is what happens when you make a lot of money.”

Here’s ODS:

‏@brendan_schleen
Average people don’t have the ability to contribute 18k a year to charity either

KP:

@lightsoutonight
Their house is $1.5 million, with $20,000 property tax payment.  So average.

m night…:

‏@HezbollottaLove
Personally I love to be so goddamn deluded that I can save $36k a year for retirement, have a $200/month per person clothing budget, and spend $2000/month on food, and STILL have $7300 leftover as Do Whatever money, and think that’s “average”

And Thomas:

‏@MintyMultimedia
3 6k vacations a year, 12k a year for “lessons” even though the kids are young enough to need 42k a year in childcare.
The dude who deluded himself into thinking this was “average” was high off his own farts.

 

In the end, though, go ahead and read the linked-to article.  Its author, Kathleen Elkins, shows herself to be delusional with remarks like these:

As the example of one New York City couple shows, you and your partner could be making $500,000 a year and still end up with very little besides 401(k) money.

And

…there’s only $7,300 left each year to go towards other savings goals, investment accounts, or retirement funds.

Very little.  Those 401(k)s getting 36 stacks per year aren’t actually retirement funds, apparently.  And the $7,300 that’s left over is just dog food.  Never mind that lots of actually average income households would love to have that much at the end of the year to go towards other savings goals, investment accounts….

 

h/t to ralf.

An Arrogant Pope

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Recall that French (should be ex-)Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was convicted of covering up the child sexual abuses inflicted by his priests.  Pursuant to that conviction, Barbarin tendered his resignation as Cardinal to Pope Francis.

Amazingly, the Pope refused the resignation.

“Monday morning, I handed over my mission to the Holy Father. He spoke of the presumption of innocence and did not accept this resignation,” Barbarin said in a statement.

Being convicted of a crime in a petty secular court apparently doesn’t satisfy the Pope’s definition of guilt.

Of course, the Pope also could have been operating off the French court’s sentence for Barbarin’s barbarity.  The court sentenced Barbarin to all of six months in jail. And then suspended even that. If the French don’t care about Barbarin’s terrible actions, there wouldn’t seem much reason for the Pope to, either.  Maybe not so arrogant.

Work…Works

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Sam Adolphsen, Foundation for Government Accountability’s Vice President of Executive Affairs, writing for Fox Business, commented on that in a piece about Medicaid’s work requirement in Arkansas—about which Progressive-Democrats in Congress are in an uproar.

Those Progressive-Democrats have complained that work requirements

“threaten[]” Americans…work [is] a “restrictive condition.”

These politicians of the Left ignore two things. One is the trivial one: no one is forcing anyone to work; the only “restriction” is that, in order to get any of Arkansas’ OPM, recipients must go to work in Arkansas or make a good faith effort to do so.

The other thing is the critical item in the affair.

Since the requirement was implemented, thousands of adults have left the welfare program.
…
…when people go back to work after work requirements are implemented, their incomes double or triple in just a year or two.

And this fallout from that second thing:

Getting these able-bodied adults back to work also frees up resources for the truly needy—the very people that the Medicaid program was designed to help.

It also increases Arkansas’ tax collections that go to the State’s Medicaid program.

Here’s where Adolphsen missed the mark, though.  He wrote

Why are Democrats so against work?
…
It’s an indication of how out of touch these progressive leaders are with everyday Americans.

No, Progressive-Democrats are the smartest kids on the block—just ask them.  They know what they’re doing with their objections to imposing a measure of personal responsibility on welfare recipients, personal responsibility that brings with it personal prosperity.

Those folks getting work and raising their standard of living aren’t actual human beings; they’re just votes spilling out of the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare box.

Forgive, Certainly

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“We Gave Him a Chance”: Mercy for Abusive Priests Divides Church reads the headline of an article in a recent Wall Street Journal.  And the division exists; although IMNSHO, it need not; it stems from a misunderstanding of a basic concept.

Recall last fall’s American Bishop conclave in which the group’s decision was to hold all abusers—priests, bishops, cardinals—absolutely accountable with all of them defrocked for a single occurrence—a zero-tolerance position.  Also common, though, is an opposing position, exemplified by a Polish priest:

You have to exonerate the human being[.]

This after his congregation had rallied behind a colleague convicted of distributing child pornography.

The American bishops come closer to the mark, but they miss, too. Forgive, of course—but that, in no way, requires, or even suggests, forgetting the sin or the sinner, nor does it even hint at leaving the man in the same place or function within which he committed such grievous sins.

Forgetting, or taking no sanction—which not removing the abuser would be, no matter the pretty words of scold that might be uttered—cannot be.

Full stop.