Politics – Dean Cook

Let’s Create Better Suburban Representation On The DART Board

Getting on the buses and trains for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system is always an ordeal. There is always that sense of dread as to what sort of crazy person you’re going to run into today. Will there be a bum sleeping off his latest heroin/fentanyl fix lying at your feet? (True story.) Going to get threatened by the local “diversity”? (Also true story.) What if there was a better way?

The City of Plano and several other suburban cities around Dallas are currently negotiating changes to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system with the DART board. DART was created in 1983, and replaced the Dallas Transit System. DART includes within its service area more than just the City of Dallas. Several suburban cities are covered under DART service, and, as part of this coverage, sales taxes are imposed on the sale of goods and services to cover the costs of DART. (Fees are charged to riders, but the sales taxes provide the bulk of the money for DART.)

I wanted to write a little on this topic because I think it is assumed that anyone in favor of capitalism must be against the use of buses and trains in cities. I think it is a mistake to assume this. In an ideal world, I would very much prefer to use buses and trains. I would generally prefer to live in a place where I did not need to own a car to get around. (I don’t want to get into all the reasons I don’t think this is an ideal world right now, as it would be a distraction concerning my overall point. Let’s just say it relates to the people who tend to be on the buses and trains, and their behavior. It’s also the fact that our cities, especially Dallas, are set up in such a manner that being carless is not a good option.)

In a better culture, with better laws, that was closer to pure capitalism, cities would be private entities. Services like roads for cars, sidewalks for pedestrians and bikers, and trains and buses would all be owned by a private corporation. This corporation would replace all functions of city government, other than the police and perhaps municipal courts. It’s also possible that some services currently provided by a single city government would be provided by multiple corporations. But, I suspect it would make the most economic sense to put most of those services into one entity that provides a complete “package” of services in the area.

People would then “vote with their feet”, on where to live. They’d choose cities with the bundle of services and infrastructure that best served their needs and lifestyles. People who preferred more car-centric cities could live in those cities. People who prefer to use buses, trains, bikes, and walking, could live in those cities. Cities would also set the terms of who could live there, and under what conditions. It would probably become common to require criminal background checks to ensure safety in a city. People with criminal records would be barred from living in certain areas, or even from living in the city at all. Cities would set the terms on which roads, sidewalks, and other city assets could be used on a wide variety of topics. For instance, fully privatized cities could set the terms on whether and how firearms could be carried on private roads, private parks, and private sidewalks. Cities would set the terms on what sorts of gatherings and speech could be engaged in, as it is all private property. People who prefer cities that allow them to carry firearms or to engage in more or less speech on sidewalks and roads could move to the cities that offer more or less of that. The terms of use for things like roads, sidewalks, busses, and trains could also contain a requirement that individuals are subject to “stop and frisk” and other crime control measures, thereby reducing criminality. (People who do not like it are free to move to other cities that don’t have such requirements. No one is forced to pay for cities they don’t like.)

The private city would charge fees for its services. For instance, given advances in technology, city roads would likely be electronically tolled now, with drivers being charged some fee for every mile driven on those roads. (In the past, before electronic toll tags became so easy to implement, this might have been some other system, such as receiving a sticker or plate to put on your car that shows you paid the monthly user fee, and then private security or cops would stop and evict/fine anyone driving on the road without the proper sticker/plate.) Bicycle lanes and even pedestrian pathways might be tolled, or portions of them tolled, too. For instance, a particularly scenic walkway might be tolled with an entry fee, and bicycle paths might be patrolled by security/cops, who require you to have a displayed sticker or small plate, or a QR code, on your bike. (Those who don’t are evicted as trespassers, and/or fined for trespassing.) Rules regarding the use of bike paths, roads, and pedestrian walkways would all be set by the property owner(s). No longer would homeless people and mentally ill people be able to just camp out on sidewalks or roadsides, as this would be trespassing. Likely some portion of the roads, sidewalks, and bike paths would also be paid by local businesses. For instance, the entity that owns a road or sidewalk might charge a business a fee to get access to the road or sidewalk in front of it. Without paying the fee, the entity might block off the road or sidewalk such that access to the business is impossible. (They could erect a large wall, or some other such thing preventing cars and pedestrians from going from the road to the business or vice-versa.) Other methods/business models are possible when it comes to funding. (For instance, advertising billboards might be used on some roads by the owner of the road to defer costs.)

How do we get from where we are today, with city governments delivering services like roads, to a completely privatized city, where the only thing city government manages are the police and local courts? Such a privatization could take different forms. I think it would require some sort of transfer of the ownership of things like roads, sidewalks, bike lanes, and other city land/property to a corporation. Shares in the corporation would then be distributed to the local property owners and taxpayers. Perhaps everyone owning property in the area gets a number of shares in the corporation proportional to the amount of property they own in the city limits. I believe cities are currently funded mostly through sales taxes and property taxes, so these taxpayers should get shares in the corporation, but the exact details of the privatization can be worked out at some future point when our society is actually ready to do so. The principle of the privatization, and who should own city infrastructure, would be based on the idea that the current taxpayers are the true owners of city property. These taxpayers should receive ownership interests in the city in proportion to the amount of taxes they pay.

Until city infrastructure is truly privatized, we should seek to mirror the private, free market model by giving a greater say to those who are actually paying the money to support the system. In the case of DART, that means giving the people who pay the sales taxes a say in how DART is run. People who pay more sales taxes should have a greater say when it comes to DART.

The City of Dallas contributed about half the sales taxes for DART. Up until recently, it had more than 50% of the board members for the entity that controls DART. This was clearly unfair, but apparently Dallas has agreed to give up more seats to other cities to keep them from withdrawing from DART. This is fairer, and closer to a private system where ownership is tied to capital contribution.

I would propose that this be taken a step further. The State Legislature should pass a law that creates a new “charter” or “constitution” for DART that directly ties membership on the entity that controls DART to how much sales tax revenue the city contributes. It should probably be something along the lines of: each city within the DART service area gets one member on the DART Board. A city then gets additional members on the DART Board based on their relative contribution to funding DART through sales taxes. For instance, Dallas contributes roughly half, so it gets enough additional members to give it roughly 50% of the Board members. Every other city gets additional members on the Board to reflect their relative contributions. If a City’s contribution to DART changes over a period of time, then it gets fewer or more Board members. This can all be enforced in court, so a city can ensure it is receiving its fair share of Board members.

Some cursory research indicates that DART’s enabling legislation is found at Chapter 452 of the Texas Transportation Code, so this should be modified to put this into effect. The current DART Board only has 15 members. The Board would probably need to be expanded to ensure each city in DART gets at least one member, and to ensure proper proportional representation based on amount of sales tax contributed. I also believe that members to the DART Board are currently appointed by each city’s council. Another possible reform to consider would be to make the DART Board members elective at the city level, so that members of the public choose their DART Board representatives. There might be downsides to making the positions elective, however. Local elections usually draw very few voters, so it is easy for local interest groups to round up a number of voters, take them to the polls, and influence the outcome of the election. It might be better to leave the system as an appointed system, with DART Board members chosen by the local city council, which has the knowledge and resources to pick good Board members. Alternatively, perhaps one of a city’s DART Board members is elected, and the rest are appointed by the city’s council. This gives some direct representation by the city’s voters. So, for instance, if the City of Dallas had ten members on the DART Board, one of those is elected by the voters, and the other nine are appointed by the Dallas City Council.

Unfortunately, a completely privatized City of Dallas and local suburbs is not possible under the current system of governmental interference in the free market. Until pure capitalism is established, the State Legislature should do its best to ensure that local taxpayers who pay for DART are in control of the Board, and are able to control the system’s future growth and progress.

End Affirmative Action and DEI In Employment

In 1963, President John Kennedy made a televised appearance and urged legislation similar to what would become the Civil Rights Act. After Kennedy was assassinated, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act)

The act was the most sweeping legislation on this topic since Reconstruction. It covered many areas, and is broken down into eleven titles. For instance, Title I has to do with voter rights, Title VI concerns federal funding, and Title VII concerns employment. A major intent of the act was to end Southern legal policies concerning public accommodations, voting, and businesses. However, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 went far beyond this, as it did not just abolish certain state laws in the South, but also regulated private action by private businesses and individuals. (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act)

Opponents of the Civil Rights Act said it would, amongst other things, lead to a system of racial quotas in hiring. They said businesses would have to hire a certain percentage of each race, regardless of the merit or ability of those persons to do the best job. Proponents of the bill that would become the Civil Rights Act assured the nation it would not institute racial quotas for the hiring of employees. (https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-rights/archive/1964-civil-rights-act-then-now/) However, subsequent Supreme Court decisions said that “voluntary affirmative action”, that is open discrimination against whites in hiring, was just fine.

Currently, the courts say any private employer is free to implement voluntary affirmative action programs that are claimed to assist blacks and other minorities. This has been the law of the land since 1979, when the US Supreme Court decided United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193 (1979).

United Steelworkers concerned a collective bargaining agreement between a union and an employer, which said that 50% of employees in a training program would be black “…until the percentage of black craft workers in the plant is commensurate with the percentage of blacks in the local labor force.” (Id.) Weber, a white employee, sued, pointing out that the policy violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The plan, instituted by the labor union and the employer, was considered by the court to be voluntary, and not one that was required by government. The Supreme Court held that since it was voluntary, and was aimed at helping blacks, it did not violate Title VII.

The Court pointed to the Legislative History of the Civil Rights Act, which indicated it was aimed at helping black people:

“Congress’ primary concern in enacting the prohibition against racial discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was with ‘the plight of the Negro in our economy.’ 110 Cong.Rec. 6548 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Humphrey).” (Id.)

In other words, the Supreme Court in United Steelworkers said the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was there to help black people, not to create a “colorblind” society, or to create “racial equality in the workplace”.

The Court in United Steelworkers also dismissed a provision in the Civil Rights Act that seemingly prohibited racial quotas, in an act of what I’d call “linguistic jujitsu”:

“Nothing contained in this subchapter shall be interpreted to require any employer, employment agency, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee subject to this subchapter to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of such individual or group on account of an imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race, color, religion, sex, or national origin employed by any employer, referred or classified for employment by any employment agency or labor organization, admitted to membership or classified by any labor organization, or admitted to, or employed in, any apprenticeship or other training program, in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons of such race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in any community, State, section, or other area, or in the available work force in any community, State, section, or other area.”(42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(j))

The court basically focused on the language: “…to require any employer…to grant preferential treatment…on account of any imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race….in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons of such race…in any community, State, section, or other area, or in the available work force in any community, State, section, or other area.”

The Court said no one was “requiring” the employer in United Steelworkers to grant preferential treatment to blacks, who were underrepresented in the workforce, in comparison to the number of people living in that area. In this case, the business in question was located in Gramercy, Louisiana, whose local workforce was 39% black. Prior to the implementation of this program, the workers in the business in question, involved in that particular type of work, was only about 1.83% black. (Id. at 198)

It’s doubtful that any court, anywhere, ever, would allow an “affirmative action” program to stand, if the situation were reversed. That is, imagine if the population of a city were 39% white, but only 1.83% of a company’s workforce were white, and the company instituted a program to increase white hiring. (I’m not sure if this would ever really happen, but perhaps if some basketball team decided to have a special program to increase white basketball players?) Not only would such a policy be struck down by the courts, the business would likely be burned to the ground by an angry mob of protestors, but I digress.

Probably the above scenario I present, of a black imbalance of workers over whites, also could never occur because the Court in United Steelworkers went on to say that there were limits on when a voluntary affirmative action plan like that one would be upheld. The Court said the plan in that case was designed to “...to break down old patterns of racial segregation and hierarchy…” (Id. at 208), it did “…not unnecessarily trammel the interests of the white employees…” (Id at 208), and the plan was a temporary measure, and would only continue until black employees as a percentage of workers, were the same as the percentage of blacks in the local population.(Id. At 208).

Like it or not, since 1979, employers have been free to “voluntarily” discriminate against whites, in favor of blacks, as long as they could show it had to do with breaking down “old patterns of racial segregation”, did not “unnecessarily trammel the interests of whites”, and so long as the measure was “temporary”. This is what many companies have done, too. For instance, Larry Fink of Blackrock said that he was instituting an aggressive “diversity program” in order to get rid of “…a bunch of white men…”. (https://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/blackrocks-larry-fink-rattles-employees-amid-political-posturing) (Fink and his defenders would, of course, say that I’m mischaracterizing what he said, but he was aiming to reduce the number of white workers by replacing them with less qualified minority workers, since a profit-oriented business would naturally hire the most qualified, regardless of race, in order to maximize shareholder value and profits.)

There are indications in the legal system, and in the culture, that preferential treatment for black employees in hiring could be coming to an end, however. This has already occurred, “de jure” if not “de facto”, when it comes to affirmative action programs in college admissions.

In the Summer of 2023, the US Supreme Court issued its opinion in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. This opinion declared illegal any sort of racial preference system for any entity receiving federal financial assistance. Most universities and colleges today receive such financial assistance through student aid programs like Pell Grants or Federal student loans, as well as through research grants and other tax breaks:

“The clearest example of Title VI-covered federal financial assistance is money provided through federal grants, cooperative agreements, and loans. An entity may receive grant money directly from an agency or indirectly through another entity. In either case, the direct recipient as well as the secondary or subrecipient are considered to have received federal funds. In other instances, the funding may be directed to the funding beneficiaries but another entity ultimately receives the funding. For example, a college or university receives federal financial assistance indirectly where it enrolls United States military veterans for whom the federal government provides tuition payments.” (https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/T6manual5)

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 says no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oasam/regulatory/statutes/title-vi-civil-rights-act-of-1964)

Additionally, even without the existence of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, a state government cannot prefer one race over another without likely running afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. The majority opinion of Justice Roberts spent a lot of time analyzing the actions of Harvard and UNC based on the equal protection clause of the 14th, but, as far as I can tell, it was simply assumed that Harvard was a state actor. At footnote 2 to the majority opinion, Justice Roberts says:

“Title VI provides that ‘[n]o person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.’ 42 U. S. C. §2000d. ‘We have explained that discrimination that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment committed by an institution that accepts federal funds also constitutes a violation of Title VI.’ Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244, 276, n. 23 (2003). Although JUSTICE GORSUCH questions that proposition, no party asks us to reconsider it. We accordingly evaluate Harvard’s admissions program under the standards of the Equal Protection Clause itself.”(SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023, footnote 2, Roberts opinion, emphasis.)

The opinion’s equal protection clause analysis makes more sense with respect to the University of North Carolina, which is clearly a state actor. It would seem to me that Harvard’s program was struck down more because of Title VI, not the equal protection clause, but the Robert’s footnote 2 makes it clear this is based on past precedent, which no one asked the Court to reexamine in that case. (Whether this makes any difference in future analysis of affirmative action programs at private versus state public universities, time will tell.)

The relevant facts in SFFA v. Harvard concerned the admissions processes at Harvard and University of North Carolina, which ensured that race was a major determinant in whether a significant percentage of black and hispanic students were admitted to these universities. Since there is only a certain number of students admitted every year, if black and hispanic students are being admitted because of their race, and not their qualifications, it meant there were other non-black, non-hispanic students not being admitted, who otherwise would have been admitted, based on academic qualifications alone. (In other words, this was a “zero-sum” situation. The only way for one student to “win”, and be admitted, was for another student to “loose” and not be admitted.)

In a six to three decision, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs were found to be illegal by the Supreme Court. As noted, much of Justice Robert’s majority opinion centered around an equal protection analysis under the 14th Amendment, which more clearly applied to UNC. His opinion noted that any exception to the equal protection clause must survive what is called “strict scrutiny”. Under this two-step test, the racial classification must be used to “further a compelling governmental interest”, and second, must be “narrowly tailored” to achieve that interest. In practice, almost nothing will survive strict scrutiny analysis by a court, meaning almost all governmental distinctions based on race are illegal:

“Outside the circumstances of these cases, our precedents have identified only two compelling interests that permit resort to race-based government action. One is remediating specific, identified instances of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute. See, e.g., Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U. S. 701, 720 (2007); Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U. S. 899, 909–910 (1996); post, at 19–20, 30–31 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). The second is avoiding imminent and serious risks to human safety in prisons, such as a race riot. See Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 512–513 (2005).3) (SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023.)

In a 1978 case, Regents of University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court had said that promoting a racially diverse student body could be a “compelling governmental interest”, such that certain affirmative action programs could survive strict scrutiny. As the majority in SFFA v. Harvard noted, this was the opinion of Justice Powell, while the rest of the majority wrote their own opinions about why the program in Bakke was legal:

“In a deeply splintered decision that produced six different opinions—none of which commanded a majority of the Court—we ultimately ruled in part in favor of the school and in part in favor of Bakke. Justice Powell announced the Court’s judgment, and his opinion—though written for himself alone—would eventually come to “serv[e] as the touchstone for constitutional analysis of race-conscious admissions policies.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 323….No other Member of the Court joined Justice Powell’s opinion. Four Justices instead would have held that the government may use race for the purpose of ‘remedying the effects of past societal discrimination.’ Id., at 362 (joint opinion of Brennan, White, Marshall, and Blackmun, JJ., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). Four other Justices, meanwhile, would have struck down the Davis program as violative of Title VI.” (Id., emphasis added)

In essence, Bakke was a tie, with one judge, Powell, breaking it in favor of the affirmative action side, but for a reason other than “remedying the effects of past societal discrimination”.

The majority opinion in SFFA v. Harvard also discussed another case, Grutter v. Bollinger, from 2003, in which the affirmative action program of the University of Michigan law school was upheld. In that case, the court endorsed Justice Powell’s position from Bakke, that racial diversity was a compelling governmental interest. Interestingly, the court in Grutter, as part of Justice O’Connor’s majority decision said:

“We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” (Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 343 (2003).)

So, the Grutter court punted on the issue, and said they’d uphold such programs for now, but not at some point in the future.

The majority opinion written by Justice Roberts in SFFA v. Harvard used strict scrutiny analysis to find that affirmative action programs for state universities like the one at UNC were illegal:

“For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”(SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023.)

The majority opinion did allow for one caveat. It said that:

“...nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” (Id.)

This is why I said that affirmative action was made illegal “de jure” if not “de facto”. Every university, including Harvard and UNC, will now increase black and hispanic enrollment through the use of essays, where the applicant makes a note of the fact that they are black or hispanic, and ties it in to some way they once were allegedly discriminated against and overcame it. (This will probably generate a whole cottage industry of essay-writers and “editors” that will assist black and hispanic students with this task, or they’ll just use Chat GPT to make something up.) The Court did note that this was not a license for backdoor race discrimination:

“…universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”(Id.)

But, showing that universities are doing this will become very fact-specific in litigation, and will be difficult and expensive to show, unless a “smoking gun” can be found, like whistleblowers coming forward stating that they were instructed to admit black students based on their essays.

Solely based on its facts, SFFA v. Harvard has nothing to do with employment law or employers engaging in “voluntary affirmative action”. But, the Gorsuch/Thomas concurrence suggests that there might be future movement by the Supreme Court towards overruling United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, and a finding that employer “voluntary affirmative action” is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Unlike the Roberts majority opinion, the Gorsuch concurrence, joined by Thomas, focuses on an analysis of the legality of the UNC and Harvard affirmative action programs from the perspective of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

“Today, the Court holds that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not tolerate this practice. I write to emphasize that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not either.” (SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023, Gorsuch concurrence.)

What is important about the Gorsuch concurrence from the standpoint of employment law is that Gorsuch believes that Title VII, the law on employment discrimination, should be read the same as Title VI, the law on federal funding to universities and other institutions:

“If this exposition of Title VI sounds familiar, it should. Just next door, in Title VII, Congress made it “unlawful . . . for an employer . . . to discriminate against any individual . . . because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” §2000e–2(a)(1). Appreciating the breadth of this provision, just three years ago this Court read its essentially identical terms the same way. See Bostock, 590 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 4–9). This Court has long recognized, too, that when Congress uses the same terms in the same statute, we should presume they “have the same meaning.” IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U. S. 21, 34 (2005). And that presumption surely makes sense here, for as Justice Stevens recognized years ago, “[b]oth Title VI and Title VII” codify a categorical rule of “individual equality, without regard to race.” Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 416, n. 19 (1978) (opinion concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis deleted).”(SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023, Gorsuch concurrence, emphasis added.)

After indicating that Title VI and Title VII have similar terms, and should be presumed to have the same meaning. Gorsuch then went on in his concurrence to find that affirmative action programs in education, where the educator receives federal funding, are illegal. In fact, he stated that they are even more illegal under Title VI than they would be under just the equal protection clause, because the strict scrutiny standard might allow for some limited exceptions, while Title VI does not:

“In other respects, however, the relative scope of the two provisions is inverted. The Equal Protection Clause addresses all manner of distinctions between persons and this Court has held that it implies different degrees of judicial scrutiny for different kinds of classifications. So, for example, courts apply strict scrutiny for classifications based on race, color, and national origin; intermediate scrutiny for classifications based on sex; and rational-basis review for classifications based on more prosaic grounds. … By contrast, Title VI targets only certain classifications—those based on race, color, or national origin. And that law does not direct courts to subject these classifications to one degree of scrutiny or another. Instead, as we have seen, its rule is as uncomplicated as it is momentous. Under Title VI, it is always unlawful to discriminate among persons even in part because of race, color, or national origin.”(SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023, Gorsuch concurrence, emphasis added.)

The Gorsuch concurrence in SFFA v. Harvard invites other lawsuits under Title VII against employers that use “voluntary affirmative action” or other “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” policies to discriminate against whites or males. In fact, I think the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, could rule, long before the US Supreme Court ever does, that Title VII should be read the same as Title VI under SFFA v. Harvard, and declare many affirmative action and DEI programs illegal.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is considered one of the more “conservative” in the nation, which means there is already an ideological bent in that court that would disfavor affirmative action and DEI programs. Ironically, in United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, the 5th Circuit found in favor of the white Plaintiffs. (“A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, holding that all employment preferences based upon race, including those preferences incidental to bona fide affirmative action plans, violated Title VII’s prohibition against racial discrimination in employment.”, United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193, 200 (1979).) This indicates that the 5th Circuit would probably prefer to see United Steelworkers of America overruled, and could use the Gorsuch and Thomas concurrence from SFFA v. Harvard to take up the issue. Even though the 5th Circuit cannot directly subvert the United Steelworkers decision themselves, they could use the reasoning in SFFA v. Harvard to perhaps limit United Steelworkers in some meaningful way.

The desire amongst some Circuit Judges on the 5th Circuit to use Title VII to outlaw affirmative action programs by employers is already there. For instance, in Hamilton v. Dallas County, as part of his concurrence to an en banc decision, one Judge said:

“Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect every American against every form of prohibited discrimination—not just certain favored classes against certain disfavored forms of discrimination. For decades, however, the judiciary has distorted the Act in various ways to protect some Americans, while excluding others.” (Hamilton v. Dallas County, No. 21-10133, August 18, 2023, James C. Ho, Circuit Judge, concurring, emphasis added.)

Hamilton v. Dallas County involved an allegation of sex discrimination under Title VII. The Dallas County Sheriff’s Department had instituted a sex-based policy to determine when employees who monitor prisoners in jail would get their two days off per week. Men could select full weekends off, that is both Saturday and Sunday. Female deputies could pick either two weekdays off or one weekend day plus one weekday. (For instance, a woman could pick Friday and Saturday, or Sunday and Monday, but a woman could not pick Saturday and Sunday off.) The reason for this was it was believed that it would be unsafe for all the men to be off during the week and that it was safer for the men to be off on the weekends. (Hamilton v. Dallas County, No. 21-10133, August 18, 2023, footnote 2.) (The exact reason the County of Dallas believed this, I don’t know, and I don’t know how meritorious this argument was.)

The district court granted Dallas County’s motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), meaning the case was dismissed quite early, soon after the lawsuit was filed. Based just on the pleadings of the Plaintiffs, the trial court found that there was insufficient factual basis in the Plaintiff’s pleadings to support a plausible claim for relief, and dismissed their case. (Basically, even if what the Plaintiffs said in their pleadings was completely true, they would still lose.) The Plaintiffs then appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The reason for the early dismissal turned on a policy in the Fifth Circuit called the “ultimate employment decisions” requirement. Basically, this said that an adverse employment decision action for Title VII employment discrimination claims turned on whether the discrimination involved an “ultimate decision”, such as hiring, granting leave, discharging, promoting, and compensating an employee. An employer was not going to be found liable in the Fifth Circuit merely for taking a discriminatory action that didn’t affect one of these “ultimate decisions”. So, mere changes to employee work schedules, for instance, would not be an “ultimate decision” and therefore could not form the basis of a Title VII claim in the Fifth Circuit. In essence, it limited the scope of Title VII in employment discrimination. In an en banc decision, the Fifth Circuit overruled itself and discarded the ultimate decision rule as having no basis in the text of the Civil Rights Act:

“Nowhere does Title VII say, explicitly or implicitly, that employment discrimination is lawful if limited to non-ultimate employment decisions. To be sure, the statute prohibits discrimination in ultimate employment decisions—’hir[ing],’ ‘refus[ing] to hire,’ ‘discharg[ing],’ and ‘compensation’—but it also makes it unlawful for an employer ‘otherwise to discriminate against’ an employee ‘with respect to [her] terms, conditions, or privileges of employment….Restricting liability under the statute to ‘’ultimate employment decisions such as hiring, granting leave, discharging, promoting, or compensating’’34 renders the statute’s catchall provision all but superfluous. This we cannot do.’”(Hamilton v. Dallas County, No. 21-10133, August 18, 2023, emphasis added.)

In his concurrence Circuit Judge James C. Ho went on to say that not only was Title VII not limited to “ultimate decisions”, but the plain textual reading of the statute also meant that its protection was not limited to any particular racial group or groups. He cited, with favor, Justice Department positions that various DEI and affirmative action policies would also violate Title VII:

“As the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department noted during en banc oral argument in this case, if “a law firm is having a lunch to do CLEs and you have a policy that says we’re only going to invite women but not men to this CLE lunch, that’s of course actionable, and that’s of course a term, condition, or privilege of employment” under Title VII. Audio of Oral Arg. 23:00–23:29. The Justice Department agreed that “a lot of law firms do that.” Id. at 25:35. It also noted that “work assignments . . . happening on the basis of race” are likewise actionable under Title VII. Id. at 27:12–20.”(Hamilton v. Dallas County, No. 21-10133, August 18, 2023, James C. Ho concurrence.)

Note that Circuit Judge Ho said that a law firm continuing legal education program for only women would violate Title VII in the Fifth Circuit because it is a “..term, condition, or privilege of employment…”, and he also, implicitly, says it still violates Title VII, even though it is aimed at men. Presumably, a meeting of black associates or partners at a law firm that was limited to only black associates and partners would also violate Title VII in Judge Ho’s, and the current Justice Department’s, opinion. He also noted that work assignments are happening on the basis of race, and should be considered illegal under Title VII. For instance, I could see a company sending a black sales representative to meet with a black buyer, which would be a violation if this viewpoint prevailed. Or, in the entertainment industry, perhaps, a producer is assigned to television shows with black audiences or black record artists solely because the producer is also black. All of this would (and should) be made illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Circuit Judge Ho invited future litigation against corporate DEI and affirmative action programs by also saying:

“The Justice Department is not alone in expressing these concerns. See, e.g., Andrea R. Lucas, With Supreme Court affirmative action ruling, it’s time for companies to take a hard look at their corporate diversity programs, Reuters, June 29, 2023 (“Title VII bars . . . a host of increasingly popular race-conscious corporate initiatives: from providing race-restricted access to mentoring, sponsorship, or training programs; to selecting interviewees partially due to diverse candidate slate policies; to tying executive or employee compensation to the company achieving certain demographic targets; to offering race-restricted diversity internship programs or accelerated interview processes, sometimes paired with euphemistic diversity ‘scholarships’ that effectively provide more compensation for ‘diverse’ summer interns.”); U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, Cotton Warns Top Law Firms About Race-Based Hiring Practices, July 17, 2023.” (Hamilton v. Dallas County, No. 21-10133, August 18, 2023, James C. Ho concurrence.)

There is a rich (dare I say, “diverse”) number of potential corporate and business targets out there for a Plaintiff’s attorney to choose from. Imagine all the DEI programs major corporations have implemented over the past fifteen to twenty years. There is also a lot of evidence out there, since many of these corporations have not even tried to hide what it was they were doing. They openly discriminated against whites and males as a badge of honor. “The Lost Generation” by Jacob Savage, published in Compact magazine on December 15, 2025, discusses blatant discrimination against white males in favor of women and minority candidates in media, journalism, TV and film, and academia. All of these companies should be sued.

The courts, and the Fifth Circuit in particular, are ready to start taking claims of employment discrimination against white males seriously. I personally believe that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and all subsequent acts, should be repealed. This is because I believe in freedom of association and freedom of contract. I believe I have an inalienable right to associate with anyone, or to not associate with them. I believe others have the same right. I don’t believe I owe any minority, or group of minorities, anything. Certainly not my time or association. The only thing I owe to people of other races is the same thing I owe anyone: to respect their rights to life, liberty, and property. In a truly free market, with actual capitalism that respected rights to property, freedom of contract, and association, the owner of a business would be free to racially discriminate or not, as they choose. (I think that those businesses that did racially discriminate for irrational reasons would lose profits as a result, but that is their decision to make.)

The reality is that if capitalism, freedom of contract, and freedom of association were legally instituted tomorrow, there would likely be plenty of affirmative action for minorities by companies that would choose to engage in such discrimination against whites. Does anyone really doubt that these leftist businessmen with white guilt, like Mark Zuckerberg or Sergi Brin, wouldn’t? I think affirmative action is unjust and bad for everyone, including black people, but you certainly should be free to discriminate against whoever you want, if it’s your property and your business.

But, in the meantime, while these laws still exist, I fully support the extension of the principles in SFFA v. Harvard to Title VII employment discrimination matters. We should end all affirmative action and DEI programs in all companies by force of law, as long as the law exists. Until the Civil Rights Act is repealed, everyone, both black and white, should feel the pain equally.

W. Dean Cook

Spanish Blackout April 28, 2025 – I Was There

I happened to be in Spain when the blackout occurred. I did a video about it: https://youtu.be/hN80pO84_Jw?si=-P2_UFE6bAr5aYpt

Privatize Public Property To Help Stop Fires in Los Angeles

The fires of January 2025 in Los Angeles have been historic. The scope of destruction is like nothing I have ever seen from fire in my lifetime. Eighty to one hundred mile per hour winds turned the area into something that looked like an apocalyptic hellscape. A combination of man-made and natural phenomena were the cause of the fires.

A recent Wall Street Journal article identifies one factor that made the fires worse than they otherwise would have been. State and Federal land near people’s houses often remained unmanaged and uncleared of brush and other vegetation that created more fuel for the massive fires:

“Barry Josephson enjoyed a peaceful life in his hilltop home in the Pacific Palisades, save for one constant worry: the highly flammable brush that clogged the surrounding government-owned land.” (“How L.A. Bureaucracy Made It Harder to Clear Flammable Brush: A mishmash of government agencies failed to keep public lands safe from deadly wildfires, residents say”, The Wall Street Journal, by Jim Carlton, Mark Maremont and Dan Frosch Jan. 18, 2025 5:30 am ET; https://www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/how-l-a-bureaucracy-made-it-harder-to-clear-flammable-brush-683f953e?st=MGTcv2&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink)

Much of the native vegetation in Southern California is prone to fire because it has evolved to use fire as a means of reproducing itself. The build-up of such vegetation is therefore a build-up of fuel for fire. The more there is of it, the worse the resulting fire. A landowner who did not clear his property of vegetation would be no different than a landowner who stored up kerosene or some other flammable substance on his property over time.

The Wall Street Journal documents how the lack of private property rights exacerbated the fires in Los Angeles, which probably led to the unnecessary loss of life and property.

Why did State and Federal land managers fail to clear out the excess vegetation on public land? In essence, the Wall Street Journal article says that different bureaucracies all had input into how public land was managed:

“In the Palisades, the city and county of Los Angeles, the state parks department, the California Coastal Commission, and the National Park Service all have a say in what happens on land surrounding residential areas.” (Id.)

The result was that basic responsibilities of landownership were often not taken because everyone, and no one, owned the public land:

“The delays were caused by a slow-moving tangle of government agencies that own or regulate Los Angeles’s undeveloped land and are tasked with mitigating wildfire risks, according to a review of public records and interviews by The Wall Street Journal.” (Id.)

Nearby private landowners often had to beg government agencies to do something about the excessive growth of public land. When nothing was done, private landowners would sometimes undertake to clear public land, despite the risk of being fined or arrested for doing so:

“Impatient with government bureaucracy, including a $150 fee for permission to remove brush from state parkland, some of Josephson’s neighbors cleared it on their own.” (Id.)

In other words, not only was the government failing to clear public lands of fuel for wildfires, but it often prohibited neighboring private landowners from doing so. (Such is the insanity of “Progressive”, Democratic California government.)

By breaking the law, and clearing out this land of excess vegetation, they may have saved portions of Pacific Palisades in the process:

“They might have saved some of their homes. Of 81 houses in the vicinity, Josephson said 54 are still standing amid the wreckage of this month’s Palisades fire, including his. It is particularly remarkable because investigators believe the blaze could have started a few hundred feet away, around a popular hiking destination known as Skull Rock.” (Id.)

The argument is often made that government is needed to solve “negative externalities” like air or water pollution. But, this demonstrates that the only entity creating “negative externalities” in Pacific Palisades was the State of California and the Federal Government. Their failure to engage in basic vegetation management exacerbated this natural disaster.

But why would government managers of public lands fail to manage public property like this? The answer lies in the nature of property rights.

In her 1965 article, “The Cashing In: The Student ‘Rebellion’”, originally found in “The Objectivist Newsletter”, Ayn Rand spoke about the use of public university buildings and facilities by “student rebels” to undercut freedom of speech. Students at Berkley in the 1960’s began shouting obscenities indoors, and “occupying” university buildings, claiming that they had the right to “freedom of movement” and “freedom of speech” on the University.

Ayn Rand noted that the waters were muddied by the fact that the universities were taxpayer-funded. In a sense, everyone, and no one, owns the public universities. Therefore, there are conflicting claims between those who want to learn in their classrooms, and those who claim the right to, for instance, obstruct the entrance to the classroom with their bodies as part of a protest. When there is a taxpayer-funded “public space”, such as a university, road, or sidewalk, such clashes and conflicting claims will be inevitable. It is only on the basis of private property rights that human beings can live together without such conflict:

“It is only on the basis of property rights that the sphere and application of individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. Without property rights, there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing views, interests, demands, desires, and whims.” (“The Cashing-In: The Student ‘Rebellion,’”; Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand, Kindle Edition, Pg. 293 of 366; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/property_rights.html )

This conflict on public university campuses exists to this very day. In the Spring of 2024, we saw supporters of terrorists in the Middle East “occupy” campuses at universities such as UCLA, and begin to ethnically cleanse the campus of “Zionists”, i.e., Jewish students:

“…protesters created a ‘Jew Exclusion Zone’ where in order to pass ‘a person had to make a statement pledging their allegiance to the activists’ view.’ Those who complied with the protesters’ view were issued wristbands to allow them to pass through, the complaint says, which effectively barred Jewish students who supported Israel and denied them access to the heart of campus.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-rules-jewish-students-says-ucla-cant-allow-barred-accessing-camp-rcna166529)

Regardless of what one thinks of the goals, motives, and desires of the “pro-Palestine protestors” on the UCLA campus in 2024, a satisfactory resolution of the issue was impossible due to the nature of so-called “public property”. Everyone is forced to pay for UCLA through their taxes, including the Jewish students and the pro-Palestine students. UCLA will either have to curtail the freedom of the pro-Palestine protestors to associate with who they want, or it will have to curtail the freedom of Jewish students to move about the campus freely without making “loyalty oaths” to Hamas. (My support of people’s freedom to verbally voice support for Hamas and dissociate from Jewish people should not be construed as my agreement with that viewpoint. I only support their right to freedom of association.)

As Ayn Rand noted in 1965, it is only on the basis of property rights that individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. The elimination of property rights eliminates the ability of people to take the actions necessary to maintain their lives. Just as the creation of a “public university” that is “public property” creates intractable social conflicts between students with differing religious and cultural viewpoints, so too does the creation of “public parks” and “public land” create incurable conflicts.

State and Federal parkland near homes and buildings was often not cleared because everyone, and no one, owned that property. Homeowners were often not permitted to clear brush, and no one at the governmental entities controlling these parks had any incentive or authority to do so.

If this parkland had been owned by private individuals, then they would have cleared the brush themselves. The owner would not want his own land to burn, and even if he didn’t care, he would have to fear lawsuits from those with adjoining land that could be damaged by keeping his property in a dangerous condition. Even if the adjoining landowner had abandoned the property, nearby homeowners could have obtained injunctive relief to abate the fire nuisance, or just done it themselves. (Since they would not be damaging the property, they would not have to fear a damages award in trespass, and if the property is abandoned by its owner, then it is subject to adverse possession law in which the neighboring landowner acquires ownership by improving it.)

Moving forward, what should be part of the solution to the problem of improperly managed public lands in California? They should be sold to the highest bidder, with the new owner(s) having full rights of ownership over the property. The new landowners would have the right to develop or do with the land as they will, only subject to the same general laws as other landowners, such as the law of nuisance.

Private owners of this formerly public land would have the right to develop it, or maintain it as parkland. They would also have the correspondent obligations to maintain it in a manner that does not facilitate wildfires. If a fire starts on this land as a result of the negligent failure to manage vegetation, then the owners would be liable in a lawsuit. (Preemptively, the owners of the nearby structures could seek injunctive relief against landowners who create hazardous fire conditions on their land through the common law of nuisance.)

There are other political and cultural problems that California would have to address to mitigate or reduce such fires in the future. This is just one piece of the puzzle. Privatization of land would at least eliminate the lack of accountability that comes from “public property”.

I Voted For Donald Trump In 2024

I saw my two choices for the Presidential election as voting for Trump, or not voting. Up until last week, I was still going back and forth between these two choices. Last Thursday, I finally made my decision.

My “gut reaction” was always to prefer Trump (or really any Republican) to Harris. I suspect that there is a large segment of the Democratic Party that hates white, male, heterosexuals. I suspect that this segment of the Democratic Party wants to see white people, or really any civilized people, dead. They support groups like Hamas in their efforts to remove Israelis “from the river to the sea”, which sounds like a call for ethnic cleansing and genocide. They support “Black Lives Matters” efforts to “defund the police”, so that innocent, civilized people can be murdered at will by criminals here in the US. They also support legal concepts that would excuse or justify the murder of white people by black people, such as the concept of “black rage“. There is also a good-sized segment of the Democratic Party that wants to see men impoverished (see feminism), and they want to make heterosexual people suffer. (See gender transitions for children, men in women’s sports, and women forced to change and use the bathroom with men who still have intact male genitalia.) I also don’t enjoy the verbal bullying that I see going on by Democrats. The attempt to ostracize or denigrate people who vote for Trump by Democrats just motivates me to vote for Trump. I don’t like boorish people who use argument from intimidation debate tactics, which is common amongst Democrats.

I think that the left is what I’d call “neo-Marxist”. Marxism views everything through the lens of class warfare, and violent revolution to depose the bourgeoisie. Neo-Marxism substitutes race, gender, or sexual orientation for class, and views whites (or men, or straight people) as the new bourgeoisie that needs to be killed off. This neo-Marxism often takes the form of Democrats calling Trump “fascist”. This is straight out of the Antifa playbook, where, if you aren’t a violent neo-Marxist, then you’re a Fascist. I’m tired of hearing the words “fascist” or “racist” in American political discourse. Kamila Harris’ adaptation of Antifa-language just made me want to vote for Trump.

I also think Kamala Harris is incompetent. She has never earned anything in her life. She failed the bar exam the first time. She slept with Willie Brown to get into politics. She became Vice President because Biden said he was going to pick a black woman. She didn’t win the Democratic Party primary, and was simply “installed” after Biden’s mental incompetence became apparent.

The only thing I really like about Trump is his call for replacing the Income Tax with tariffs. I don’t like this for trade protectionist reasons, but because it is a tax on consumption rather than on production. The people who pay a tariff would be people living in the US. When a government imposes a tariff on an imported good, the importer just raises the price of the good, and passes that on to domestic consumers. An income tax, on the other hand, is a tax you pay for your work -that is for producing goods and services. Taxes on production like the income tax discourage production. If you can earn $10 for the work that you do, but the government taxes you $5 for that work, then you only earn $5. At that level, you might find that the disutility of working is greater than any utility you gain from anther $5, so you may just choose not to work. If the government taxes you $5 on a $10 good you purchase, you might decide that you don’t really need it, but you’ve still got $10 in your pocket that you can spend on other goods or services, or invest in a business, or whatever. You haven’t been discouraged from producing goods and services. Ethically, I think taxing consumption is less bad than taxing production, because you aren’t being penalized for being productive when a consumption tax is imposed. With a tariff to fund government, American consumers can choose how much tax they pay by controlling their consumption. Basic imported foods and imported medical supplies could be exempted, and any shortfall on government funding could be covered by a national sales tax, especially on luxury goods. Even if we ultimately cannot do this because there would be insufficient revenue for government, Trump could appoint a commission to look into it, and at least start a national conversation about the merits of an alternative system of taxation.

What finalized my decision to vote for Trump was Leonard Peikoff’s video in support of him. I was still going back and forth in my mind about what to do. This tipped me in favor of a vote for Trump, which I did the morning after seeing the video on YouTube, through early voting in Texas. I respect Peikoff’s opinion enough to consider it. His essay on the issue also made some good points I had never been able to articulate myself. Peikoff notes in the essay that Trump can be emotionalist and make bad statements when he gets like that. These outbursts by Trump are usually in the face of what he perceives as an injustice. But, he does not advocate things that would systematically undermine our Constitutional Republic and its institutions, which Harris and the Democrats do. For instance, Harris calls for “packing” the Supreme Court with additional justices. She has also advocated ending the filibuster in the Senate. Admittedly, neither of these things are specifically in the Constitution, but they have become such ingrained traditions, that doing away with them just to achieve short-term policy goals would be a shock to the system, and would have potentially dangerous side-effects.

Does this mean I think Trump is great? No, just significantly better than Harris. My biggest misgiving about voting for Trump is abortion rights. I consider this to be an important issue. Trump has promised to veto legislation that would impose a national abortion ban. I could see his promise having some “weasel language”. Maybe a Republican Congress would put legislation on his desk that was “merely” a 15-month ban, and Trump will then sign it, claiming he is not breaking his promise? I don’t see the Republicans controlling enough of the Senate to get past a Democratic filibuster before the next midterms, so I’m not sure how likely this scenario is. I will certainly kick myself for trusting Trump if that happens, but I have weighed the risks of that versus the risks of a Harris presidency, and decided Harris is a greater threat.

The 2024 Cuban Blackouts

On November 15, 1973, Fidel Castro made a speech to the Cuban Worker’s Congress. Reading over the transcript is very revealing of the fundamental philosophy and motivations of his regime in Cuba, which still exists to this day.

In the speech, he said that Cuba was not yet ready for the “communist principle” as Karl Marx had defined it. What did Castro mean by this phrase?

“This is an essential matter in the construction of socialism and our revolutionary and socialist workers understood that. In discussing that principle we have been discussing an essential and key principle of revolutionary ideology. That every one contribute according to his ability, that each one receive according to his work is a principle, an inexorable law in the construction of socialism. When we learn to understand this principle thoroughly we are penetrating the depths of political thought, we are penetrating the depths of revolutionary thought and we learn to distinguished it from another principle of the communist society established by Karl Marx: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” (Speech by Fidel Castro, at the closing ceremony of the 13th Congress of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers on 15 November, 1973 (“Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech”), emphasis added, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1973/19731116.html)

In essence, Castro distinguished “socialism” from “communism” by distinguishing it from Karl Marx’s statement that communism means: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”:

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm)

Castro said that the “principle of socialism”, as contrasted from this “principle of communism” is that “…every one contribute according to his ability, that each one receive according to his work…”(“Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech”), emphasis added.)

Why did Castro believe they couldn’t operate under the “principle of communism” in 1973 Cuba? Because the Cuban people were not “ready” for communism:

“Many events demonstrate to us that we are not yet prepared to live in communism. Aside from the fact that in order to live in communism it is not only necessary to have a communist consciousness but to have abundant wealth spring from man’s work…” (Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech)

Castro says that the people are “ready” to live under “communism” in some areas, such as, supposedly, education and health care. But in other areas, they are not “ready”. An example of an area where the Cuban people were supposedly not “ready” was electrical production:

“We can continue and ask how much fuel are we wasting? How much in the way of raw materials are we wasting? How much electricity are we excessively consuming? It is clear that with (?light patrols) and simple appeals to people’s consciences, we are not going to save on electricity. I raise this issue because the electricity problem is an unpleasant one which we will have to face. It is an unpopular problem, but we have to face it. [applause] We substantially reduced the rate of an electric company–I do not exactly recall which. The electrical octopus was using a rate which encouraged the use of electricity. The rate on the first kilowatts was higher and it dropped as you used more.

With our revolutionary inexperience we were improvident. We reduced the company’s rates by half and we were left with the same condition which encouraged more consumption. I say we were improvident because we should have thought of the day when the electric system would not be the property of an electrical octopus but the property of the people. Now the electrical octupus belongs to the people and the people have to pay for the consequences of any electrical waste.” (Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech)

In essence Castro said here that Cuba is consuming more electrical power than is produced because the rates charged to people are very low, or even zero. Basic economics teaches that when a price ceiling is set on a good or service, there will be shortages because demand outruns supply. (https://fee.org/resources/price-controls-and-shortages/) This is why you would see breadlines in the old Soviet Union, and grocery stores with empty shelves. The profit motive to produce more is eliminated, and no one is incentivized to produce more. In the case of electrical production, the result of charging insufficient rates for electricity, or giving it away for free, is that people will not economize, and there is no incentive to produce more, so there will be constant blackouts in the power grid.

Castro blamed the Cuban people for not being “ready” for communism:

“…a study of an endless number of facts clearly demonstrates that our society, our people do not have the culture necessary for communist life–aside from the fact that an economy sufficiently developed for communist life is lacking.” (Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech, emphasis added.)

In other words, communism, and the goals of communism are noble, but the Cuban people are just not quite “good enough” for it. Someday, the people of Cuba would be “ready” for Communism, so operating under the “socialist principle” was just going to be temporary:

“It is a matter of making rectifications because we are socialists [applause] and because we want to be communists [applause–crowd chants Fidel, Fidel and rhythmically applauds for 30 seconds] and because we will never renounce the communist objective or our revolution and the development of our revolutionary consciousness…”(Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech, emphasis added.)

What is the “communist objective” it is, as Marx said: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme”)

Why, according to Castro, is the “communist objective” desirable? Because Castro and his minions “…will continue, above all, to uphold altruism, selflessness and man’s solidary spirit.” (Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech, emphasis added.)

Castro went on in his 1973 speech to say, almost paraphrasing Geroge Orwell, that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” at least while it’s necessary to operate under the “socialist phase”, where everyone is not equal, rather than the “communist phase”, in some future paradise, when everyone will be equal. In particular, Castro said it would be necessary for certain “administrators” to receive more for their, supposedly, “important work” than others:

“This is another example of why we should develop a savings policy in all aspects, and especially with regard to fuel. It is here that the workers movement can give us extraordinary help. Wherever fuel is being wasted be it a farm, or a factory, or any place these are realities which our workers have to face. But a study of an endless number of facts clearly demonstrates that our society, our people do not have the culture necessary for communist life–aside from the fact that an economy sufficiently developed for communist life is lacking. Realistically, very realistically, we must implement the formulas which apply to this phase of our revolution, and implement in every aspect–not only in distribution, not only in wages, but also in administration— all the formulas which are applicable to the socialist phase of the revolution. [applause]” (Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech, emphasis added.)

In other words, the people involved in “administration”, that is Castro, and his gang of communist thugs in Cuba, would need to receive more money, bigger houses, nicer cars, and more political power, because what is more important than bringing about eventual communism? If everyone must “…contribute according to his ability…” and everyone must temporarily “…receive according to his work…”, who, according to Castro and his cronies, was doing more valuable work than them? Aren’t they the ones (supposedly) trying to bring about eventual communism, which is everyone’s goal?

Castro’s 1973 speech is more than 50 years old. Surely progress has been made in moving the country towards “true” communism, hasn’t it? Has Cuba come closer to being “ready” to operate under the “communist principle” of from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs?

In October of 2024, Cuba experienced a days-long blackout throughout the country. I became aware of this by watching YouTubers in Cuba who were documenting their experiences during the blackout. (This seems to be not without risk. I assume these amateur videographers could be arrested and jailed for bringing the regime there into disrepute. I consider these YouTubers to be quite courageous.) What the blackout shows is that the Cuban people, in general, have probably gotten poorer, not wealthier. The recent Cuban energy crisis suggests the answer to whether Cuba is more “ready” for communism than it was in 1973 is: No.

Of course, the Cuban regime, and its left-wing apologists have a retort to why Cuba is suffering from blackouts. They’ve had the same scapegoat for the past 50+ years: The United States and its supposed “blockade” on Cuba.

First of all, it’s not a “blockade”. The United States has imposed an embargo on Cuba. A “blockade” is when a country uses its navy to prevent entry or exit from a country, thereby preventing trade and the movement of people by military force. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blockade) An “embargo” is where a country simply prohibits its citizens from trading with a particular country. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/embargo) It does not use military force to prevent other countries from trading with the embargoed country.

The “US is imposing a blockade on Cuba” myth is so prevalent on social media that it was fact checked by a left-leaning organization, and found not to be true:

“Cuba can trade with other countries of its choosing — if those countries are willing as well. Some of Cuba’s trading partners include China, Spain, the Netherlands, Canada, Mexico and Brazil, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Venezuela was one of Cuba’s key trade partners until its ability diminished amid its own economic turmoil. Cuba’s main exports include rolled tobacco, raw sugar, nickel, liquor and zinc. Top imports include poultry meat, wheat, soybean meal, corn and concentrated milk.” (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/19/facebook-posts/cuba-can-trade-other-countries-heres-some-context/)

The United States has simply chosen not to trade with Cuba. (Whether the United States, from the perspective of its own national interest, should impose embargoes is a debate for another time.) An important question to ask these leftist apologists for Cuba is: Why is Cuba’s survival so dependent on trading with the arch-Capitalist enemy, the United States? Shouldn’t socialism make it economically much stronger than the US? Cuba can trade with much of Europe, Latin America, Canada, and China. Can’t it get whatever it needs in trade from China, Iran, and Russia? If not, why not? What is it about these countries that makes them less productive than the United States?

But, the most important question of all is this: If Cuba can have the material prosperity the United States enjoys, and end the embargo, just by adapting capitalism, why not just do that? Why’d they make the people of Cuba suffer under shortages and blackouts for the past 50+ years?

The regime in Cuba must believe either, or both, of these two things:

(1) Cuba will eventually have even more prosperity in the future by not giving in and adopting some sort of semi-free-market economy here and now, and/or;

(2) Adapting more free markets and individual freedom runs so contrary to their worldview, philosophy, and morality that it is simply unthinkable, even if it means many must suffer and die. In other words, the Cuban regime believes that the only proper system is “…from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs…”, and they will kill every last person in Cuba to achieve it.

The first explanation for why Cuba does not adopt free markets and a free society has pretty much been shown to be false with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviets waited 75 years, suffered terrible hardship, human rights abuses, and deaths, but the prosperity promised by Karl Marx never came. People living under communist regimes could wait 200 years, and prosperity would never arrive because it is a system that is contrary to human nature. It is contrary to what the individual needs to survive and function. Since ‘society’ is nothing but a number of individual human beings, any system that crushes the individual, ultimately disintegrates when it runs out of productive victims.

But, prosperity is not what really matters to the Communist. What matters is that everyone receive equal results for unequal effort. The second motive of the Cuban dictators, “…from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs…”, doesn’t require prosperity. It only requires forced redistribution of the production by the able to the unable. At the end of the day, Cuba is poor not because of any (imaginary) “blockade” or embargo, but because they follow a morality that destroys productiveness. At root, the Cuban regime is committed to a morality that crushes the individual spirit, and prohibits people from furthering their own lives and pursuing personal happiness.

The leadership of the Cuban regime are not looking for prosperity for the people of Cuba. They are only looking to achieve “pure communism”, a system that destroys the individual in favor of “selflessness”, and that will someday, somehow, “work”. Since socialism and communism will never “work”, in practice, it means the leadership of the Cuban regime will continue to cling to power -and use whatever repression of the people is necessary to maintain that power, forever. (Unless the Cuban people someday decide they have had enough, and put an end to it.)

How can Cuba achieve prosperity? Only by rejecting the idea of “…from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs…” In turn, this requires them to reject altruism, that is, they must reject the sacrifice of the individual’s life for some ‘greater good.’ They must recognize that ‘society’ is nothing but a number of individuals, and that each person has an inalienable right to pursue his own happiness. I’m not even saying they have to institute pure capitalism as described by Ayn Rand. (Not even the United States is that good, yet.) It just means they need to depose the current leaders of the Cuban regime, probably by force, and institute a freer government. A government that recognizes basic individual rights, with free and fair elections, rule of law, and, in economics, a generally free market, like the United States.

Only then will Cuba’s periodic blackouts end.

Altruism In Action: The Felon Heart Transplant Recipient

Anthony Stokes was a black juvenile delinquent who needed a heart transplant in 2013. Initially the hospital refused to provide him with a transplant because he had a history of committing crimes, and had a “history of non-compliance” with the directives of his doctors regarding his health. This meant he was not a good candidate for a heart transplant over others who would actually take the gift of a heart transplant seriously.

Of course, once the leftist media got a hold of this story, the hospital was criticized for being “mean” and “racist”. The hospital caved to pressure, and reversed its decision, giving Stokes a heart. Since there are only a limited number of human organs available for transplant, this meant that someone else had to wait, and possibly die, because they gave a heart to the less-deserving Stokes. (The fact that we have limited organs for transplants, which could be solved with a free-market in organs, where people would be paid, while alive, to contractually sell their organs when they unexpectedly die in the future, is a separate issue. We can argue about that at another time. Right now, the system is what it is.)

What did Anthony Stokes do with his new lease on life? Go out and commit more crimes, of course. About two years after he got his heart transplant, he committed an armed robbery of an 81 year old woman in her house, shot at her, and then ran from the police in a high speed chase. During the course of the chase, he crashed into a pole, and died. (Presumably, he decided he was going to get his “reparations” through armed robberies.)

Our society is a society dying of altruism. What is altruism? It’s not just “helping others”. Its fundamentally about sacrificing those who are good to those who are evil:

“The injunction ‘don’t judge’ is the ultimate climax of the altruist morality which, today, can be seen in its naked essence. When men plead for forgiveness, for the nameless, cosmic forgiveness of an unconfessed evil, when they react with instantaneous compassion to any guilt, to the perpetrators of any atrocity, while turning away indifferently from the bleeding bodies of the victims and the innocent—one may see the actual purpose, motive and psychological appeal of the altruist code. When these same compassionate men turn with snarling hatred upon anyone who pronounces moral judgments, when they scream that the only evil is the determination to fight against evil—one may see the kind of moral blank check that the altruist morality hands out.” (“For the New Intellectual“, Ayn Rand; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html )

There is more I could say about this story. I could talk about how we coddle black criminals, because it is considered “racist” to hold them accountable for their actions, and thereby infantilize and endanger other blacks as well as whites. It’s also a story about how “black culture“, by which I mean the culture of a significant segment of black society, needs to be changed, both for the sake of black people and our own. It’s also a story about how many, many, many needlessly guilty white people, especially the “liberals” and “progressives”, are unwilling to judge and hold black people accountable for their actions. But, I think, at root, it is a story about altruism run amok, and not just with respect to race relations. Until more people explicitly recognize the value of their own lives, and chose a set of reality-oriented principles for living their lives, and for living in a rational society, which includes the willingness to judge and recognize a criminal when you see one, it’ll only get worse.

Conservatives On The Secular Basis of Sexual Propriety -A Trojan Horse For Dogmatism

I occasionally watch bits of a podcast called “whatever” on YouTube. It reminds me of “The Phil Donahue Show” from when I was a kid, although it’s more focused on sex and relationships. The host will have a panel of women on. Some of them will be involved in the pornography industry or doing sex work, sometimes including women that do legal sex-for-money work, such as in a brothel in Nevada. There will also be a person on the panel who represents the “conservative/religious viewpoint” on sex and romance.

Additionally, there will be some women on the panel who have more “average” lives, and are not sex workers and also are not conservative ideologues. The point of the podcast, from a “getting viewership” standpoint, is obviously to get the two “sides” into debates about what is and isn’t appropriate or acceptable when it comes to sex, romance, dating, and marriage. Often the debates will center around questions like: “How promiscuous is too promiscuous?” “Is sex before marriage okay or desirable?” “Is viewing or producing pornography okay?”

In the most recent episode I partially watched, there were two women who do or have done legal sex work at brothels in the state of Nevada, as well as a couple of women who do Only Fans pornography in varying degrees of undress.

The conservative/religious viewpoint was represented by Candace Owens, who is a conservative, Catholic podcaster. During the course of the podcast, she made arguments for why monogamy is preferable to promiscuity, and why things like paying money for sex, and polyamorous relationships are not desirable for the people engaged in such activities.

I saw Candace Owens making, basically, two types of arguments in the podcast, although she did not explicitly acknowledge the difference between these two categories of argument. They are the same two arguments that most religionists make about marriage, sex and romantic relationships:

(1) Non-monogamous relationships and sexual promiscuity are contrary to biology and fundamental aspects of human psychology. An example of this type of argument is the following, although I don’t know that it is explicitly made on the podcast: Too many sex partners before marriage make pair-bonding more difficult, and watching pornography will affect pair-bonding later. There is supposedly some scientific evidence for this, although that is disputed. (https://healthland.time.com/2011/02/09/do-men-really-bond-with-porn-spoiling-them-for-real-life-sex/)

(2) Non-monogamous relationships/sexual promiscuity are contrary to the Bible/Christian doctrine, at least as they interpret it.

The conservative/religious ideologues I see online make the first, secular, argument when they say things like: Women who are promiscuous when young will find it difficult to be in a committed relationship later. That may or may not be true -I don’t know. But, when pressed, the conservatives like Ms. Owens fall back on: Promiscuity is contrary to the Bible. In other words, argument number two. At the end of the day, conservatives believe such behavior is undesirable because it is contrary to their interpretation of the Bible. That is what really matters to the conservatives/religionists, not any sort of scientific or psychological argument.

There may or may not be evidence to prove the first argument, regarding biology/human nature. Even as an atheist, I still regard monogamy as ideal, and I try to avoid being too promiscuous. But, I am open to the possibility that I hold this attitude because of the somewhat Christian culture I grew up in, which might still be buried in my subconscious. For that reason, I tend not to pass judgment on people who choose unconventional sexual lifestyles, such as promiscuity, polyamory, or to be sex workers. (I think it’s easier to justify certain types of nude photos, sexual dancing, or erotic art as consistent with a healthy psychology, but again, I’m not 100% certain.) All I am willing to say is that open relationships would not work for me. (I would get too jealous to share a wife or girlfriend.)

I would like to see someone pose the following question to conservative/religious pundits making these two types of arguments regarding sex work and promiscuity: “If the scientific evidence will later show that promiscuous behavior before marriage does not affect pair-bonding, and it is possible to be in a long-term polyamorous relationship, or to be a sex worker without psychological damage, will you then change your opinion on this topic? Do you actually follow the science, or is this really about what you think the Bible says, evidence and logic be damned?”

This method of argument used by conservative/religious people extends beyond the realm of sexual propriety. For instance, they will use the same sorts of arguments when it comes to abortion. They will present psychological or medical arguments, which they allege are science-based, for why women who get abortions will be medically harmed by abortion, or that it will affect their psychology adversely. The science here may or may not be true, but, at the end of the day, they are really opposed to abortion because they believe it is contrary to their interpretation of the Bible. Even if there were scientific evidence that abortion causes no harm to a woman, or less harm than an unwanted pregnancy, the religionists aren’t going to suddenly change their mind. That’s because science has nothing to do with their viewpoint. It’s about religion, which is based in their faith.

Do the Conservatives/Religionists really believe that love and romance are important when they promote things like sex only after marriage? Religious institutions instruct their followers not to marry atheists because they would be “unequally yoked”, and they regard sex as a sin for purposes other than reproduction. So really, their desire for pair-bonding isn’t about love or romance, but about making yourself what they believe is a better servant of god.

More generally, conservatives will wrap up their religious arguments with secular-sounding justifications in other areas too. They will say things like: “We need religion to keep people moral.” But, why do we need morality at all? When asked this, they are probably going to say something like: “Morality is needed to keep people from committing murder and stealing.” If that is their reason for why they think morality is necessary, and if I can present a secular moral code and a secular basis for the criminal law, will they abandon religion? Of course not, because these arguments are just rationalizations. They want to advance their religion, and are pragmatic enough to use a secularist argument as a fig-leaf, if it suits their agenda.

Truly religious institutions recognize this, too. They will say things like: “Works do not get you into heaven.” In other words, not stealing and committing murder is not what they believe gets you into heaven, so they don’t really care if people are moral or not. The truly consistent ones realize that logic, reason, and science are irrelevant. Even “conventional morality”, such as “stealing is wrong” and “murder is bad”, is irrelevant to them. Many of these western religious institutions might not commit murder for god (yet), but they are certainly committing manslaughter.

Am I being hyperbolic? The Catholic Church forbids the use of contraception, even in the context of marriage. There is good evidence that the lack of contraception world-wide leads to unnecessary deaths for women. (https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2012/ahmed-contraception) The Catholic Church even opposes the use of contraception by married women with certain medical conditions that would make pregnancy unusually dangerous. They are expected to either abstain from sex or risk death if they become pregnant. I submit that this is advocacy of manslaughter by the Catholic Church. They are promoting the use of force by government to prevent women from using a device that will save their lives.

The Catholic Church will tell those women not to have sex. But, without sex, how do they maintain a romantic relationship with their husbands? The Catholic Church will respond that sex is an unnecessary aspect of marriage. I do not believe that assertion is at all reality oriented. More fundamentally, it also shows what the Catholic Church thinks of love. It is a belief in platonic love as an ideal. Sex is dirty and base for the Catholic Church. They view it as a necessary evil for reproduction, and nothing more.

Tying this back in to the ‘whatever’ podcast with Candace Owens, at points the sex workers claimed that sex and love are not connected. They said sex has nothing to do with love, so loveless sex without psychological consequence is possible. Interestingly, the Catholic Church also believes in love separated from sex. ‘True love’ between a man and woman is platonic, with sex as a necessary evil, for purposes of reproduction. This is what the truly dedicated religionists actually believe.

I don’t know if non-monogamous and polyamorous people can find lasting happiness with that sort of lifestyle. (I’m very skeptical.) All I can say for sure is it doesn’t work for me. But, swingers and sex workers are not the people who need to fear the declarations of religious institutions like the Catholic Church about how people should govern their sex lives. The people who need to be wary are the monogamous couples who want to sleep with their husband or wife without the psychological consequences of perpetual guilt and shame.

“The Thin Blue Line” on Netflix

“The Thin Blue Line” on Netflix is an old documentary about an even older murder case in Dallas County, Texas. In the late 1970’s Randall Dale Adams was convicted of murdering Dallas police officer Robert Wood. It was asserted by the prosecution that Adams had shot Officer Wood after being pulled over by the later.

In reality, there was compelling evidence that another person, David Ray Harris had shot Officer Wood. This included the fact that Harris had been bragging to other people that he had shot Officer Wood. Harris later claimed at trial that he hadn’t shot Officer Wood, and had only been bragging to his friends to seem like a bigshot cop-killer. Additionally, although the state does not have to show motive for murder, Harris had the only logical motive to kill Officer Wood. Harris was driving in a stolen car when it was pulled over by Officer Wood. Randal Dale Adams would have had no reason to kill the police officer, and likely wouldn’t have even known that the car was stolen. Randal Dale Adams claimed that he was not even in the car at the time of the shooting, because he had been dropped off by David Ray Harris earlier that night.

So why was the State so intent on prosecuting Randal Dale Adams, rather than the more obvious suspect, David Ray Harris? Randal Dale Adams was in his mid-twenties at the time of the murder, while David Ray Harris was only 16, and not eligible for the death penalty. It’s likely that the Dallas Police Department, the Dallas County District Attorney, and the State of Texas wanted to put someone to death for the murder of a cop, even if it was the wrong person.

Randal Dale Adams was convicted and sentenced to death. His appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was unsuccessful in overturning his conviction or getting him a new trial. His execution was scheduled for May 8, 1979. Three days before that, the US Supreme Court reversed the conviction on a procedural matter unrelated to the factual finding of guilt. This would require a new trial on guilt/innocence before Mr. Adams could be executed. In order to avoid a new trial, which would likely have brought to light new evidence of innocence, the Dallas County District Attorney was able to secure the commutation of his death sentence to life in prison. This obviated the need for a new trial on the procedural irregularity, since the US Supreme Court opinion only applied to death penalty cases. As a result, Randal Dale Adams then spent more than a decade in prison until “The Thin Blue Line” came out.

While conducting interviews of David Ray Harris, who was on death row himself at that point, for the murder of another person, the producers of the documentary recorded David Ray Harris giving what almost amounted to a confession, stating that Randal Dale Adams did not kill Officer Wood.

Additionally, the producers of the documentary conducted interviews of the witnesses who had claimed to see Randal Dale Adams behind the wheel of the car before Officer Wood was shot. They had been driving by on the road when Officer Wood had first pulled over the car the night of the murder. It turned out that the witnesses were not very credible, had reasons to lie, or just flat-out stated to the documentary producers they didn’t actually see Randal Dale Adams. One female witness, Emily Miller, seemed like total scum. She was either lying because she wanted to collect reward money, or she simply convinced herself that Adams was the man she had seen, even though she had not been able to pick him out of a lineup earlier. (I would think this would have been brought up by the Defendant’s attorney on cross examination?) It also turned out that Emily Miller had her own legal problems. Her daughter was being investigated for a robbery, so she might have been trying to curry favor with the DA and Police for the sake of her daughter. (She had also recently been fired from her job for stealing from the cash register.) Additionally, on a motion for a new trial, after the first trial, the Dallas County District Attorney engaged in prosecutorial misconduct and withheld evidence that could have exonerated Randal Dale Adams, ensuring that he went to death row.

As a result of the newly unearthed evidence and the negative publicity on the DA and Dallas Police, Randal Dale Adams got a new trial in 1989. The Dallas County DA then dismissed the case, and Mr. Adams was a free man after 12 years of incarceration and nearly being executed by the State of Texas. Try to imagine what it would be like to be an innocent person, convicted of a crime you didn’t commit, waiting on death row to be killed by the State. The police didn’t believe you, the DA didn’t believe, you, the judge didn’t believe you, and the jury didn’t believe you. For all intents and purposes, the human race is against you, and wants to see you dead. In reality, you didn’t do anything to deserve any of it, and you will die soon. The situation is too horrible to contemplate.

All around, it was a total miscarriage of justice. Why would the Dallas County District Attorney and the Dallas Police Department want to convict the wrong man? Most likely because they couldn’t give David Ray Harris the death penalty because he was only 16. (Although I wondered if someone in a position of power was protecting him for some reason?) In their minds, the public needed to see someone being executed for the murder of a police officer, either because it would satisfy the public’s sense of justice, or because it would deter others from shooting a cop. Whether the Defendant actually did it was a secondary consideration for them. As a result, Randal Dale Adams was three days from his death sentence being carried out, and only avoided that because of a procedural irregularity the US Supreme Court found.

The Police, the jury, the DA, the judge, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the public all seemed to be okay with executing Randal Dale Adams, who, in my mind was likely innocent. Unlike 99% of all other exonerations I’ve read about, I think Randal Dale Adams probably didn’t do it. Usually, I think when people who spent time in prison are let go because of newly discovered evidence, it’s not because they’re actually innocent. It’s simply a case of new evidence coming to light that creates some reasonable doubt as to their guilt, and it’s better to let them go than take a chance keeping them in prison for a crime they possibly did not commit. I agree that it is better to let probably guilty, but possibly innocent, people go since I don’t want to see innocent people in jail or executed. Guilt always needs to be beyond a reasonable doubt, and if anything creates reasonable doubt, you’ve got to let them go.

But, the fact that everyone failed, or willfully chose to hide the truth, in the case of Randal Dale Adams has been the last straw for me. If there were a hell, the prosecutor in his case belongs there. I’ve changed my mind about the death penalty. When I was younger, I was willing to take a chance with the possibility of executing an innocent person. Life has taught me that about 50% of the police, judges, and prosecutors are either incompetent or maliciously negligent in their duties. Additionally, juries in many counties in Texas have the attitude of: “Don’t bother with presenting the evidence, just tell me where to write ‘guilty’ on the jury charge.” As an advocate of capitalism and the free market, I recognize that government is highly inefficient and often corrupt. I think death can be a just punishment, as it stops criminals from committing more crimes permanently, but many government officials are not sufficiently competent or virtuous to ensure that the innocent are not executed. There are people who definitely deserve death, but not at the cost of innocent lives.

The Biden Administration’s “Friendly Censorship”

Murthy v. Missouri is a case that was recently argued before the United States Supreme Court. It involves the allegation that the Biden administration in 2021 coerced social media companies such as Facebook into removing content that concerned COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccine, election integrity, and other matters considered important to the Biden Administration.

The factual findings of the trial court in the case are disturbing, if true:

“For the last few years—at least since the 2020 presidential transition—a group of federal officials has been in regular contact with nearly every major American social-media company about the spread of “misinformation” on their platforms. In their concern, those officials—hailing from the White House, the CDC, the FBI, and a few other agencies—urged the platforms to remove disfavored content and accounts from their sites. And, the platforms seemingly complied. They gave the officials access to an expedited reporting system, downgraded or removed flagged posts, and deplatformed users. The platforms also changed their internal policies to capture more flagged content and sent steady reports on their moderation activities to the officials. That went on through the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 congressional election, and continues to this day. “ (5^th Circuit Opinion, Case: 23-30445, Document: 00516889176 , Date Filed: 09/08/2023, Pg. 2) (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca5/23-30445/23-30445-2023-09-08.html)

The Biden Administration and its defenders seem to have responded to these allegations by saying that the factual findings of the trial court are simply mistaken. They claim that the trial court took things out of context, or just outright misrepresented facts:

“While the legal questions presented are legitimate, a substantial amount of the underlying evidence now before the Court in this case is problematic or factually incorrect. Snippets of various communications between the government, social media executives, and other parties appear to be stitched together – nay, manufactured – more to support a culture war conspiracy theory than to create a credible factual record” (https://www.justsecurity.org/93487/a-conspiracy-theory-goes-to-the-supreme-court-how-did-murthy-v-missouri-get-this-far/)

The government says it was merely engaging in its own speech to combat what it viewed as “bad speech”, and that it did not coerce social media companies into taking down social media posts it disagreed with:

“Brian Fletcher, the principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, argued that the government was legally using its bully pulpit to protect the American public.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/18/supreme-court-social-media-biden-missouri/)

Whether the Biden administration was merely engaged in its own speech or whether it intentionally used the threat of force to coerce social media companies into censoring the posts of their users will be determined through the court process.

Even if the government was simply using its own speech to counter what it viewed as “bad speech”, without any intentional threat of coercion, given the reach of government when it comes to regulating the economy, I think companies and businessmen must, of necessity, take into account what a President and his administration say.

In 1962, Ayn Rand wrote an article titled “Have Gun, Will Nudge” in which she discussed the efforts of then head of the FCC, Newton N. Minow, to “encourage” broadcasters to air certain types of “educational programs”. She noted that the arbitrary power held by the FCC in the form of its licensing of broadcasters meant that it didn’t have to engage in explicit censorship. Broadcasters would attempt to discern through their contacts and back-channels with Washington what the FCC officials would like to see on the airwaves, and then provide it:

“No, a federal commissioner may never utter a single word for or against any program. But what do you suppose will happen if and when, with or without his knowledge, a third-assistant or a second cousin or just a nameless friend from Washington whispers to a television executive that the commissioner does not like producer X or does not approve of writer Y or takes a great interest in the career of starlet Z or is anxious to advance the cause of the United Nations?” (Ayn Rand, “Have Gun, Will Nudge” https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/regulations/pov-have-gun-will-nudge/ )

For the people running a television station, or, today, a social media company, not listening to what the President wants them to post or not post would be almost suicidal. The President has enormous power to bring any company to its knees through executive orders and arbitrary regulations. It doesn’t even matter if the President and his administration intends to engage in censorship. The massive and arbitrary power that the President, and the government in general, holds over any company through economic regulation means any broadcaster or social media company has to take into account what the government wants, just as a matter of self-preservation. If Facebook or Google believes that keeping up certain social media posts might have even a one percent chance of getting them slapped with an antitrust suit, the cost of keeping up the post just isn’t worth the benefits. That’s why true freedom of speech likely isn’t even possible today. As Ayn Rand noted:

“The right to life is the source of all rights — and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”(“Man’s Rights”, Ayn Rand https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/individual-rights/ )