Townhall Review | Commentaries

In a rare and startling bit of good news from California, the LA Superior Court struck down as unconstitutional the state’s new corporate diversity law. It had mandated that corporations diversify their boards with people from certain racial, ethnic, or LGBT groups.

Sensible boards understand that having members with a variety of perspectives strengthens decision making and produces better outcomes. But it’s the quintessence of bigotry to assume that someone’s viewpoint is determined by race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

The California law reinforced the bigoted premise that people’s immutable characteristics were what mattered most about them. This pernicious assumption undercuts the whole idea of merit –that people deserve positions based on their individual contributions.

Ironically, these sorts of laws hurt high achieving members of so-called “underrepresented communities” by raising unfair doubts about whether they’ve been selected for their abilities or because they check a box.

Every American deserves better.  Good riddance to California’s flawed law.

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The Fed recently raised interest rates and is signaling that more hikes are on the horizon. Some people, fearing recession, suggest the Fed is going to have to cut rates to avoid a downturn. 

So, should our central bank raise rates or cut them? The answer is: neither! The question assumes that the Fed should be setting rates at all. But it shouldn't. Interest rates should be set by us, by the people. Savers and borrowers, usually with banks as the matchmakers, set the rates every time we make a decision whether to buy something now or defer gratification into the future. 
 
The way to get lower rates under a free system is to become a more thrifty people with a higher savings rate, and that abundant capital will drive down rates. When the Fed overrides our decisions, it creates terrible distortions—asset bubbles, which then inevitably must pop. Leave rate-setting to people with skin in the game—the savers and borrowers. 

The Fed should step back and stay out of it.

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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will almost certainly be confirmed to the Supreme Court. So it was disturbing to read that she holds “no position” on whether individuals have natural rights.

It’s a no-brainer … at least it should be.

Every living man and woman—regardless of race, gender, religion, social status, whatever—has always had natural rights. Each of us is born with a free mind and soul, and natural rights to life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness. That’s what the Declaration of Independence means when it reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

As the first female African American Supreme Court nominee, Judge Jackson surely realizes a deep belief in natural rights is what convicted many abolitionists of slavery’s evils.

Of course, if we have rights by nature, then government’s only legitimate purpose is to protect these rights – not grant them. We can only hope caution, not disagreement, accounts for Judge Jackson’s shunning of natural rights.

 

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At the start of his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia only wanted to liberate Ukrainians from a clique of alleged Nazis. Now a new declaration in state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti has made clear that Putin seeks to erase Ukraine and the ethnic Ukrainian identity. 

First, all forms of national defense “should be destroyed,” including Ukraine’s standing army and its home guard valiantly defending Ukrainian sovereignty. Russia would demand a complete purification of all such elements as a basic conclusion to hostilities. 

Even more chillingly, the plan calls for Russia to treat “a significant part of the masses” as “accomplices of Nazism” and legitimate targets of war. “De-Nazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization”—the declaration says—that eliminates any national or ethnic identity except Russian in “Little Russia.” And that process will take no less than one generation, according to Putin’s outlet.

This is nothing less than the obliteration of a proud people—and a defense of the horrid war crimes already coming to light. The world must take notice and deliver harsh consequences for Putin’s revanchist fascism. 

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The latest data about migration just came out from the Census Bureau and the biggest losers are the New York and San Francisco metro areas. Big winners include Dallas, Houston and Austin. Looking at the big picture: the West and the Northeast were the big losers and the South and the Midwest were the big winners. Eventually, people vote with their feet—and they’re moving from expensive to inexpensive; from high tax to low tax; and from lockdown to freedom. 
 
The response to the Covid pandemic has freed people up. Workers learned that they can work from anywhere—and they’re moving, finding affordable places to live which aren’t in the midst of self-inflicted vagrancy or crime crises and abusive levels of taxation. 

This will change not just the lives of the migrants and the metros left behind with a declining tax base straining to keep up with high debt levels.

Notably: It is also a migration of congressional seats—from blue to red. 

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Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek is under fire for not taking a public stand against the parents’ rights bill in Florida, which would shield K-3rd grade students from gender ideology imposed by teachers. 

Chapek has, not surprisingly, caved to pressure from a small but hyper-organized faction of the company’s workforce. Employees who are not on board wrote their own letter, anonymously, of course, for fear of their jobs. 

Journalist Megan Basham from the Daily Wire had an off-the-record conversation with a senior Disney executive who is resistant to the company’s ideological turn. What would make a difference, he said, would be a “shareholder uprising.” 

He's right. 

I attended the Disney annual meeting and all of the pressure came from one side. Conservatives, centrists and old school liberals have been utterly MIA from the boardroom discussions. 

We own the stocks, but we don’t vote our stocks, or use our voices. 

How bad does it need to get before we use our authority as owners to impose a little adult supervision on America's corporations?

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed into law the “Parental Rights in Education” bill. It has been controversially and wrongly labeled the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its opponents. 

But what the law puts into place is not controversial for parents. It prevents official instruction in gender and sexuality including references to transgenderism and gender identity for students in grades K through 3. Furthermore, it bans inappropriate instruction on these topics for students in older grades as well.

As you can imagine, the cultural mavens are not happy with this.

The bill will be challenged in court and Governor DeSantis knows it. It’s a no-lose situation for him. If the law stands, his signature is on it. If it is successfully challenged, he did what he could to defend the rights of parents. And we need look no further than Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, to figure out if defending the right of parents is a successful campaign strategy. It is and it ought to be.

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I attended Disney’s most recent annual shareholder meeting and listened intently when activists confronted CEO Bob Chapek about what they saw as the company’s insufficient panic about Florida’s egregiously mislabeled “Don't Say Gay” bill.

Chapek reported that he had already been discussing the bill with Governor DeSantis to help ensure that it would not be “weaponized” against gay and trans youth, but of course that wasn't enough. 

Then he said Disney planned to meet with DeSantis again, but of course that wasn’t enough. Then he offered to give shareholders’ money to Human Rights Campaign and other activists groups, but that wasn't enough and HRC threw the money back in Disney’s face. 

Disney pointed out that they have endorsed the various proposals which HRC has demanded over the years, but that wasn't enough. 
 

It's time for Disney and the rest of corporate America to wake up and realize that IT WILL NEVER EVER BE ENOUGH! These groups are unappeasable, so it's time to stop trying to appease them.

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We ought to expect a more sincere apology from Will Smith and Chris Rock—one that has both men admit the enormous mistakes they made at the Oscars Sunday night. 

First, jokes about physical appearance are rarely funny—usually only made when made by the targets themselves. To try for a laugh at Jada Pinkett’s hairstyle in light of her medical condition—or any time—is low for a comedian. Even if Rock didn’t know. Comedians have concluded long ago there is no floor. They are wrong. Rock was wrong. 

Will Smith could be forgiven anger—even a confrontation, but striking Rock, that was very and very publicly wrong—like almost every bar fight in every bar we have ever heard of or seen. 

Shame on both men. An apology tour from both of them would be welcomed. 

Rock and Will Smith have demonstrated yet again, public figures are unworthy of the admiration we often give them.

Think twice before you invest more in a public figure than you ought to.

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On November 12, 1940 Winston Churchill gave a eulogy for his predecessor—Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. 

“It fell to Neville Chamberlain,” Churchill said, “in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man.”

The lesson from the 1930s—relevant for us today—are that it’s impossible to rely on the word of tyrants. Hitler was a tyrant. Stalin was a tyrant. President Xi Jinping of China is a tyrant. Vladimir Putin is an evil tyrant. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, another evil tyrant, who’s acquired a record of mayhem and hatred — just another tyrant.

But President Biden won’t let the facts about Xi, Putin and Khamenei stand in the way of a new “deal” with Iran. This looming nuclear “deal” with Iran is “mind-boggling,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell, on my show.

Indeed: Xi, Putin and Khamenei are wicked men. 

We should not allow ourselves to be deceived by them today.

Appeasement did not work for Chamberlain. It will not work for Biden.

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