Jan
12
2024

Check Their Privilege

I found this Thomas Sowell quote to be especially relevant to current events…

Specifically, this current event: San Francisco Board of Supervisors passes resolution calling for Gaza cease-fire.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed a resolution calling for a sustained cease-fire in Gaza after a heated period of public comment.

The resolution passed as amended with an 8-3 vote. In addition to calling for a cease-fire, the resolution also condemns anti-Semitic, anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic rhetoric and attacks, as well as calls for humanitarian aid in the region and the release of hostages.

I would not have been surprised if they had also called for an end to weed apartheid. But maybe next week.

But seriously: is there anything more irritating than a bunch of politicians insulated at a safe distance of 7,425 miles telling Israelis how to run their war?

Also of note:

  • Not learning from past mistakes. That would be the senior senator from the Bay State, as described by Eric Boehm: Elizabeth Warren's Terrible Model for Tech Regulation.

    The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which existed for about a century before being mercifully put out to pasture in 1995, is one of the best historical examples of how governmental attempts at regulating the economy can backfire.

    Created with the stated goal of protecting consumers from the competitive interests of Gilded Age railroad barons, the ICC was quickly captured by the very special interests it sought to control, then helped entrench a railroad cartel. At the height of its powers, the ICC tried to limit the use of trucks for hauling freight (an effort that thankfully failed) and used its influence to have a critic of the railroad monopoly committed to an asylum.

    Naturally, some senators see the ICC as the ideal model for a new agency aimed at regulating Big Tech. Bad ideas never seem to truly die in Washington.

    While promoting their bipartisan bill to ramp up federal regulation of successful tech companies in The New York Times, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) pointed to the ICC as one model for what they aim to do. "It's time to rein in Big Tech," they argued, "and we can't do it with a law that only nibbles around the edges of the problem." Warren has also invoked the ICC in posts on X (formerly known as Twitter) and in public comments calling for tighter federal control over companies like Amazon and Facebook.

    If you look at that NYT Warren/Graham op-ed, they also cite the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a great example. Which is why we have so many new clean, safe, zero-carbon nuclear reactors these days.

    This isn't new news. The S.2597, the "Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act of 2023" was introduced back in July, there's no action reported since, and there are no co-sponsors other than Lindsay Graham.

    So… perhaps good news?

  • Also beware the Jabberwock. Jeff Jacoby advises: Beware any candidate who values loyalty above all else.

    AT A campaign rally last month in Ankeny, Iowa, former president Donald Trump reached for one of the worst insults in his lexicon to disparage the state's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, for having endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the 2024 presidential race.

    He accused her of disloyalty. "I mean, that was her choice to do this. But I believe in loyalty," he said.

    At another rally a few days later, Trump again condemned Reynolds for not showing him more loyalty. "We love loyalty in life," he said. "Don't you think? Loyalty?"

    Trump has long had an obsession with loyalty. He demands that supplicants and subordinates profess their loyalty to him. He opened his first Cabinet meeting as president by having each official at the table loyally sing his praises. When he met then-FBI director James Comey in January 2017, Trump made clear what he wanted in exchange for letting him keep the job. As Comey later testified before Congress, Trump said: "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty." A key Trump aide during his presidential term was John McEntee, whose mission as director of the Presidential Personnel Office was to purge insufficiently loyal officials from federal agencies and subject job applicants to a litmus test of loyalty to Trump.

    On a somewhat related note, Granite Grok poster Ed Mosca claims There Is No Practical Difference Between Haley And Biden.

    Really?

    Haley's heresy, according to Ed:

    Obviously, she's insufficiently Trump-loyal! And that's the only thing that matters to Ed.

  • That's cold, man. Jeff Maurer hosts a screed from another Biden Administration member who's gone AWOL, who's pretty pissed about the lack of publicity: Everyone's Mad at Lloyd Austin But I Died Three Weeks Ago and No One Cares.

    All of Washington is furious at Lloyd Austin. And they should be: The Secretary of Defense left White House officials and Congress in the dark for days as he was hospitalized after complications from surgery. It was inexcusable; people need to know when government officials are incapacitated. Though — at the risk of making this all about me — my nose is just slightly out of joint over the Lloyd Austin uproar, because I passed away in December and there hasn’t been a peep from anyone about it.

    I was the Vice President, after all. That’s supposed to be important! And, sure, I’ve spent my time in office alienating people through my poor organizational skills and lack of policy mastery, but…come on! Vice President! Second in charge! To a guy who’s 81! You’d think that my passing would have at least made the crawl on CNN, or that the White House would have sent a “remembering those we lost recently” tweet with pictures of me and Franz Beckenbauer. But no: When I google “Kamala Harris death”, the first result is still the obituary for some schoolteacher from Ontario who died in 2002.

    The circumstances were tragic and amusing.