Tag Archives: rights

Congressman Colin Allred (D, TX) Makes the Case

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The good Congressman tried to make the case for HR1 in his Letter to the Thursday Wall Street Journal

What HR1 does is simple: it sets national standards for access to vote by mail, early voting, and voter registration so that our democracy isn’t radically different from state to state.

HR1 also nationalizes a number of other aspects of voting currently set by the individual States (as well as giving the Federal government veto authority over any moves a State might make in contradiction, but that’s an extra little fillip).

Unwittingly, though, the Progressive-Democratic Party Representative from Texas has made a critical aspect of the case against HR1.

Our 50 States do not exist merely as counties to the central government, existing solely for the convenience of enforcing laws handed down from the center. They are, instead, 50 different, enthusiastic, ongoing experiments in democracy. The good citizens of Maine have different imperatives than those of Illinois or Texas, and those citizens have different imperatives than those of California or Oregon.

And that’s a core strength of our nation.

Disingenuosity in Wisconsin’s Legislature

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A bill that would prevent election workers from correcting mistakes a voter makes on his absentee ballot is making its way through the State’s legislature. The bill would

would clarify that only voters or their witnesses can correct a mistake on an absentee ballot.

After all, as Congresswoman Donna Rozar (R-Marshfield) put it:

Because [absentee voting] is a privilege, there’s got to be some responsibility that the voter has to exercise that privilege. And I think that responsibility is to do it right and legally.

The disingenuosity is illustrated by Congresswoman Lisa Subek (D-Madison):

I don’t care if absentee voting is a privilege. That doesn’t mean you should have to pass a test, or make sure that you dot every I and cross every T. If someone makes an innocent, honest mistake, it is appalling that we’re not going to then let their ballot count.

Subek cynically exaggerates what the bill does. There’s no test (other than the implied one of being able to read well enough to read the ballot—but witnesses and others approved by the voter can help with that—and every uncrossed i or undotted t do not disqualify the ballot.

The biggest bit of dishonesty (here, not mere disingenuousness) is her claim of not letting the ballot count. The bill explicitly allows the voter in question, or his witness, to correct the error, thereby making the ballot count.

It’s only invalid ballots that wouldn’t count, especially were the bill to pass.

College Entrance Discrimination

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A letter writer in Monday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wants the Supreme Court to rule in favor of racial discrimination, at least as practiced by Harvard, in the Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard case.

If the plaintiffs…win, you can bet that elite college- and graduate-admissions offices around the country will establish workarounds to assure that opportunities remain for admittance of significant numbers of underrepresented minorities.

Therefore, he asserts,

The justices would be wise to take a pass on the Harvard case, or to affirm the lower courts’ decisions.

Which decisions upheld Harvard’s practice of racial discrimination for admission to its ivy-coated halls.

Harvard, to the letter writer’s first plaint, already uses “workarounds”—opaque and obscure criteria for assessing admissions “essays” and “descriptions of what this means to me” for starters—in selecting entrants on the basis of race while nonselecting other entrants on the basis of race.

Were the letter writer serious, he’d stop demanding free passes for the “underrepresented minorities” solely on the basis of their under-representation; that’s just racism under another guise. They’re underrepresented because they’re not qualified.

The solution is not free passes at the late date of college admissions applications, it’s getting these high school “graduates” actually educated and qualified.

More importantly, the solution is working to correct the K-12 systems and broken families that are the cause of unqualified-ness. But that takes actual work, and it’ll be a generational struggle to correct the ills so deeply embedded in what we’re pleased to call our education system. That solution is not the feel-good quick fix of which the Left is so enamored.

Another letter writer, however, takes a markedly differ view of the matter.

It [The Supreme Court] ought to take this case and apply strict scrutiny to the rationales advanced to justify treating some students more favorably than others merely on account of their ancestry.

But that doesn’t go far enough. As Chief Justice John Roberts already has said, [t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. On this, he’s right.

There is no justification for discriminating on “account of ancestry.” No more strict scrutiny; end the use of race as a discriminant, no matter how far down the list of selection criteria. Any—any—use of race as a selection criterion is rank racism.

Full stop.

Wuhan Virus Vaccines and Intellectual Property

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President Joe Biden (D) is looking at “waiving” the patents held by American pharmaceutical companies—Pfizer and Moderna—that  developed the vaccines that have been so effective against the Peoples Republic of China-released Wuhan Virus.

Leave aside the uselessness of waiving these patent rights because the vaccines require to much, too varied, too complex equipment to be manufacturable just on the basis of the vaccines’ technologies being made freeware in the public arena.

Leave aside, too, that these companies—and others beyond American jurisdiction that have developed other Wuhan Virus vaccines—already are delivering doses virtually at cost to the poorer nations.

Biden’s proposal [is] to temporarily waive their patents, but that’s completely disingenuous. An intellectual property once lost is lost forever—there is nothing temporary about such a waiver except in the narrowest, most legalist, sense.

The larger problem is the: with that government-mandated loss will go any incentive a company might have to spend the billions of dollars it takes to develop future such things, especially vaccines, since a company can have no confidence Government might decide it “needs” to give the new patents away also.

There will be very little vaccine development in the United States after Biden goes through with this.

This will not be over quickly. We will not enjoy this.

Patient Privacy

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The Wall Street Journal article headline says it all.

Google Strikes Deal With Hospital Chain to Develop Healthcare Algorithms

Alphabet, through its Google subsidiary, is going to be given access to patient records—patient identification, medical history, drug prescription and use, Internet-connected medical device use and medical device-originated reporting—by a major healthcare provision chain, HCA Healthcare Inc.

Dr Jonathan Perlin, President of HCA’s Clinical Services Group and Chief Medical Officer assures us:

Data are spun off of every patient in real time[.]

In real time. As the patient is hooked into the Internet via an ostensibly privacy-protecting connection.

The claimed goal of this…partnership…is to

develop algorithms to help improve operating efficiency, monitor patients and guide doctors’ decisions, according to the companies.

However,

Google will access data when needed with consent from HCA….

But not necessarily with the consent of the patient, it seems.

Perlin does promise that patient-identifying data will be stripped before HCA passes patient data to Alphabet.

Of course.

Never mind that patient monitoring is tough to do without those data. Never mind that developing algorithms for monitoring patients is tough to do without those data in the mix for, you know, testing.

Alphabet’s penchant for taking user personal data for its own purposes, including monetizing those data for the company’s benefit, is long-standing and well-known. Now the company, with the active collusion of a major hospital chain, is expanding that reach into patient medical data—Alphabet user or not.

Patient privacy be damned. It’s a brave new world.