Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
November 2, 2011
The conservative media and some Republican politicians are accusing the mainstream (translation: liberal and biased) media of smearing Herman Cain by publishing, then blabbering continuously about, allegations of sexual harassment of subordinate employees when Cain headed the National Restaurant Association back in the 1990s.
Cain’s campaign early today called it an “appalling smear” by “inside-the-beltway media.” Later today the Cain campaign accused the Rick Perry campaign of tipping the story when Cain chief of staff Mark Block told Fox, “Rick Perry needs to apologize to Herman Cain and, quite frankly, to America.”
Cain has only himself to blame for the vultures circling overhead. His story has changed—materially—every day, and more than once most days. First he denied ever being accused of sexual harassment. Then he acknowledged that there had been a complaint but he turned it over to the association that he headed and he didn’t think anything had come of it. Then he said there had been no settlement paid to his accuser(s). Then he said, wait a minute I thought there had been an agreement, not a settlement.
It’s hard to keep up with the story, but a few facts are beyond dispute:
- Two complaints of sexual harassment were filed against Cain.
- The National Restaurant Association paid off the accusers in exchange for their silence.
- Cain first denied any such complaints had ever been made.
- Cain’s story has changed daily.
The original story in Politico would have been a one-day item. Cain’s serial lying has turned it into a media circus that may well destroy his campaign, and deservedly so.
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Tags:conservative media, ethics, Herman Cain, inside-the-beltway media, mainstream media, Mark Block, National Restaurant Association, Politico, Rick Perry, serial lying, sexual harassment, smears
Posted in Ethics-general, Media, Politics | 5 Comments »
October 25, 2011
Reasons to vote against Mitt Romney: He’s a liberal trying to look like a conservative. He has no convictions other than a determination to appear what’s necessary to get elected. He’s willing to employ illegal immigrants as long as no one knows about it. He put his pet dog in a cage on the roof of his car and drove 500 miles.
But some people have another reason: He’s a Mormon! And Mormons aren’t Christians. Not really. Mormonism is a cult!
So said Robert Jeffress, a senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, explaining why Christians should prefer his candidate, Rick Perry, who he introduced at the Values Voter Summit two weeks ago in Washington.
Jeffress and the people who agree with him are repudiating the Constitution of the United States, which says in Article VI, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
Pretty strong statement, using ‘no,’ ‘ever,’ and ‘any’ in one clause. But Jeffress believes that Christians must prefer a Christian to Romney. That’s a religious test. It’s wrong when practiced by Evangelicals opposing Romney for the Republican nomination, and it’ll be just as wrong when liberals use it if and when Romney gets the nomination.
The theological argument over Mormonism as Christianity (more…)
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Tags:Article VI, Ask Mormon Girl, Constitution, cult, dog on the car roof, ethics, First Baptist Church, illegal immigrants, Mormonism, On Being with Krista Tippett. Joanna Brooks, religious bigotry, religious Test, Rick Perry, Robert Jeffress, Romney, San Diego State, Values Voter Summit
Posted in Ethics-general, Politics, Retail, Tolerance | 2 Comments »
October 17, 2011
Herman Cain has a plan for America’s tax system: junk the federal income tax and payroll tax, and substitute his 999 system, in which everybody pays 9% federal income tax and 9% federal sales tax, and corporations pay a 9% income tax.
Elegant in its simplicity. But a crusher for the working poor, who now pay 8% in payroll (Social Security and Medicare) taxes, but get a substantial credit via the earned income tax credit, or EITC.
Here’s how a single mother of two earning the California minimum wage of $8 an hour would fare under the 2011 tax structure and under Cain’s 999 plan.
2011 actual Cain 999
Earned income $16,000 $16,000
Less taxes:
Federal payroll tax 900 -0-
Federal income tax -0- 1,440
Federal sales tax -0- 1,440
State/local taxes 1,600 1,600
Subtotal taxes paid 2,520 4,480
Net income before EITC* $13,480 $11,520
EITC 4,800 -0-
Net income 18,280 11,520
So under Cain’s plan her actual taxes paid increase by 77% ($2520 to $4,480), and she loses the EITC of $4,800. Her net income is slashed by 37% ($18,280 to $11,520).
What does it say about the media and about Cain’s competitors for the Republican nomination that they let this barbarism go unremarked?
_______________
*Earned Income Tax Credit. Cain’s plan abolishes (“simplifies”) it.
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Tags:999, earned income tax credit, EITC, ethics, federal income tax, federal sales tax, Herman Cain, media, minimum wage, payroll tax, Social Security and Medicare tax, tax plan, working poor
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, hypocrisy, Media, Politics | 3 Comments »
October 14, 2011
New York has averted a potentially explosive confrontation with the Occupy Wall Street protestors. From FovNews.com a few minutes ago:
“The deputy mayor of New York City says a planned cleaning of the Occupy Wall Street protest encampment in lower Manhattan has been postponed.
“Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park – Brookfield Properties – that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation. Our position has been consistent throughout: the City’s role is to protect public health and safety, to enforce the law, and guarantee the rights of all New Yorkers. Brookfield believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown, and we will continue to monitor the situation,” Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said in a statement.”
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Tags:Brookfield Properties, Cas Holloway, ethics, FovNews.com, New York, Occupy Wall Street, park cleaning, Zuccotti Park
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Politics | Leave a Comment »
October 13, 2011
Americans pay attention when a lot of people turn out. And so there’s lots of attention for “Occupy Wall Street,” or OWS for short. Thousands of people, mostly of the Millennial generation (born since 1982) are camping out in Zuccotti Park, just two blocks from Wall Street’s New York Stock Exchange.
The Right doesn’t like OWS: “I think it’s dangerous, this class warfare,” Mitt Romney opines. “Growing mobs,” snarls Eric Cantor. “Anti-American,” Larry Kudlow charges. “The beginning of totalitarianism,” warns Ann Coulter.
OWS comprises lots of people, diverse in temperament, opinion, and goals, but they are engaging in old-fashioned American protest, this one against corporate greed, social inequality, and joblessness.
Some dismiss them as incoherent, but that’s a mistake. They’re angry about the way our society has moved away from the American dream and toward greater and greater inequality. Like them or not, OWS is a growing force. Our country needs to take their complaint seriously. They may be as consequential as Tahrir Square. Or more. Or maybe not.
Of course there’s always a danger when a mass of people congregate. Large numbers of peaceful people can give cover to wrongdoers bent on looting or mayhem, as in the recent London riots, or in the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992, which started as a peaceful protest but left 53 dead (more…)
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Tags:American dream, Ann Coulter, bonus marchers, corporate greed, Eric Cantor, ethics, Herbert Hoover, joblessness, Larry Kudlow, London riots, looting, Millennial generation, Mitt Romney, mobs, New York, New York Stock Exchange, Occupy Wall Street, protest, Ray Kelly, Rodney King riots, social inequality, Tahrir Square, totalitarianism, U.S. Cavalry, Zuccotti Park
Posted in Ethics-general, Politics | 8 Comments »
September 23, 2011
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, told a cheering UN General Assembly today, “I do not believe that anyone with a shred of conscience can reject our application for full admission to the United Nations.”
Who can disagree? The government of Israel, for one. And if the GOI objects, the American right will come right along. And so, sadly, will President Obama. Conscience takes a back seat when votes are about to be counted.
Obama’s speech to the UN was a craven surrender to the Israeli government’s demand that we oppose the Palestinian request. This is an ethical disaster, as well as a realpolitik one. It will wipe out the good will Obama earned with his earlier calls for honorable treatment of the Palestinians and his once-brave insistence on a halt to Israeli expansion into the West Bank. Forgotten, too, will be his siding with the Arab Spring, outweighed as it is among most Muslims and young people everywhere (including in Israel) by his opposition to Palestinian rights.
Obama did have support for his position. To Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama’s speech was a “badge of honor.” This is the same Netanyahu that President Clinton blamed, as recently as yesterday, for preventing a peace deal.
Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman liked the speech even more, telling a news conference, “I congratulate President Obama, and I am ready to sign on this speech with both hands.” Lieberman is widely despised in Israel as a racist for his proposal to rid Israel of its Arab citizens by “redrawing its map to ‘exchange’ part of the Arab population and create a more ‘homogenous Jewish state,’ as a solution to Israel’s Arab minority ‘problem.’ ”
Having sabotaged Israel’s own relations with Turkey over Israeli refusal to apologize for killing nine Turkish activists running the Gaza blockade, Israel is now sabotaging American relations with the entire Muslim world, which will have a hard time accepting that America preaches freedom for all, but not for occupied Palestine.
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Tags:Arab Spring, Avigdor Lieberman, badge of honor, Binyamin Netanyahu, ethics, Gaza blockade, Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, Muslims, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, President Clinton, realpolitik, Turkey, UN General Assembly, West Bank
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, International, Politics | 4 Comments »
September 19, 2011
It’s looking iffy whether the Republicans can prevent President Obama’s reelection with a Tea Party-approved candidate. So let’s change the rules.
First, change the way electoral votes are tallied. Nebraska and Pennsylvania are headed this way. In Nebraska electoral votes are awarded congressional district-by-district. Obama carried Omaha in 2008, so earned one of Nebraska’s five votes. Nebraska appears headed for a winner-take-all system that would deny Obama that one vote.
Pennsylvania is a bigger deal. Obama carried the state in 2008, and its 21 electoral votes under winner-take-all rules. It is headed for a district-by district award—yes, the system Nebraska is abandoning—under which Obama would have only gotten 11 of Pennsylvania’s 21 votes in 2008.
So we could see a Republican gain of 10 votes in Pennsylvania and one in Nebraska—enough to swing a close election. But Republicans can improve the odds a lot more by making it harder for students, minorities, and low income people to vote at all.
To this end Republican-controlled state legislatures in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin are moving to trim early voting days. Early voters are disproportionally Democrat.
If that’s still not enough to insure a Republican victory, legislators in 20 states are considering tighter ID requirements, including requiring a government-issued photo ID. Guess who don’t have photo IDs: lots of students, minorities, (more…)
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Tags:congressional districts, early voting, election rules, electoral votes, ethics, Florida, League of Women Voters, minorities, Nebraska, Obama’s reelection, Ohio, Pennsylvania, photo ID, poor people, registering new voters, Republican-controlled state legislatures, students, Tea Party, voter fraud, voter ID requirements, winner-take-all, Wisconsin
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Politics | 3 Comments »
September 13, 2011
Jack Marshall raises an interesting ethics issue here, as he does so often in his Ethics Alarms. This time it’s the conflict between empathy and justice. He explains how the Golden Rule can get us into some uncomfortable ethical conflicts. He writes,
‘Empathy is considered an ethical virtue for good reason: it is at the core of the Golden Rule. A person without empathy is less likely to put himself or herself in the other person’s place. The criminal justice process, however, is not a good fit for the Golden Rule. In the place of a guilty criminal, I would still probably want to be pardoned, set free, and given a second—or third, or fourth—chance to be law-abiding.”
Marshall defends Gov. Rick Perry’s answer at last Wednesday’s Republican debate to moderator Brian Williams’s question whether Perry was troubled by the idea that there might have been some innocents among the 234 people executed while Perry was Governor. After the audience cheered the grisly tally, Perry answered:
“No, sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which — when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, (more…)
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Tags:Brian Williams, death penalty, empathy, ethical conflicts, ethics, Ethics Alarms, executions, Golden Rule, humanity, Jack Marshall, justice, leadership, Republican debate, Rick Perry, Supreme Court, Texas
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Politics | Leave a Comment »
September 1, 2011
You’ve no doubt heard that half of federal tax filers pay no income tax. That’s part of the argument that we shouldn’t raise taxes on the rich. It’s also part of a despise-the-poor argument, like the one made by Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing.”
It’s true that the poor pay no federal income tax. But it’s also a lie—a big one.
The truth is the poor pay taxes at a rate nearly that of the rich—the reverse of the way we usually think of our tax system as “progressive.” They don’t pay federal income tax, it’s true. But they pay state and local taxes at a higher rate than the rich. (more…)
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Tags:Curtis Dubay, ethics, federal income tax, free ride, Heritage Foundation, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Social Security and Medicare taxes, something for nothing, state and local taxes, taxes on the poor, very rich, working poor
Posted in Ethics-general, Finance, Government, hypocrisy, Politics | 2 Comments »
August 29, 2011
Americans believe in fair play. That’s why we’re outraged when a ballplayer cheats. Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa went from American heroes to pariahs overnight when we discovered that they were juicing. That may be why voters switched from Kerry to Bush when we learned that The New York Times had used a forged document on the eve of the 2004 election to “prove” that President Bush had pulled family stings to escape being drafted for Vietnam.
Unfair play may account for some of Sarah Palin’s popularity, as we see her being treated shabbily by the media. And now the media seem set on building up sympathy for Michele Bachmann by distortions of her words.
Ironically, the disdain many rightfully feel toward Bachmann leads them to heap undeserved scorn on her, on top of the scorn her candidacy deserves. And this is helping her, not only with her right-wing base but also with moderate people who believe she’s being treated unfairly.
So some of the media are reporting that Bachmann blamed hurricane Irene on the big-government Democrats in—ugh—WASHINGTON, D.C. Here’s how it went at a widely covered campaign stop in Florida. (more…)
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Tags:2004 election, ABC, big government, CBS, CNN, D.C., ethics, fair play, forgery, hurricane Irene, Mark McGuire, Martin Bashir, media, Michele Bachmann, MSNBC, NBC-TV 4, President Bush, Sammy Sosa, Sarah Palin, St. Petersburg Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Nation, The New York Times., Time, Vietnam draft, Washington
Posted in Ethics-general, Media, Politics, Religion | 2 Comments »
The conservative media and some Republican politicians are accusing the mainstream (translation: liberal and biased) media of smearing Herman Cain by publishing, then blabbering continuously about, allegations of sexual harassment of subordinate employees when Cain headed the National Restaurant Association back in the 1990s.
