Tag: ethics

Categories
insider corruption partisanship

The Precedentedness of It All

Washington, D.C., corruption, politicians, deep state

When Democrats impeached President Donald Trump for pushing Ukrainians to look into Hunter Biden’s Burisma deal, the outcry was Orange Man is prosecuting his political rival! The enormity! The unprecedentedness of it all!

Now, Trump is being prosecuted for mishandling classified documents upon leaving office, and only Republicans cry “prosecution of a political rival!”

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden just received something close to mere admonishment for his not paying taxes on his loot. And no charge for lying on a federal gun application. The Administrative State favors its own.

“The real difficulty, in my view, is trying to figure out how to hold people accountable for their conduct,” said former Special Counsel John Durham in his recent testimony to Congress. “It’s not a simple problem to solve.”

Durham was talkingabout the Russiagate panic that Democrats in government, media, and Congress exhorted for years. “If there was something that was inconsistent with the notion that Trump was involved in a ‘well-coordinated conspiracy’ with the Russians and whatnot, that information was largely discarded or ignored and I think, unfortunately, that’s what the facts bear out.”

Functionaries in the CIA, FBI and Department of Justice “investigated” — but merely to find evidence to bolster a pre-selected story that they could use to oust a president they did not like.

What to do?

Clean house: fire the worst offenders. 

Who can do that?

Any president could hire an Attorney General and directors of the FBI and CIA, each with broom in hand.

And Congress could actually do its job. You know, legislate in the public interest.

But we possess neither, and so we persist in the current stalemate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Trans-philosophical

ethics, post-modernism, age, science, academy, college

Joona Räsänen is a Finn and a “bioethicist” who teaches philosophy at the University of Oslo. But we are not going to talk ontology or mereology or modal logic, here — not intentionally, anyway. The subject is “trans-ageism.”

A hotter topic in philosophy?

Räsänen has had a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, a peer-reviewed academic publication. Entitled “Moral case for legal age change,” it has attracted attention.

To be expected when you write something this absurd: “Should a person who feels his legal age does not correspond with his experienced age be allowed to change his legal age?”

Well, the question answers itself. 

No.

But Räsänen answers yes, “in some cases people should be allowed to change their legal age.” He lists those cases as when

  1. “the person genuinely feels his age differs significantly from his chronological age”
  2. “the person’s biological age is recognised to be significantly different from his chronological age”
  3. “age change would likely prevent, stop or reduce ageism, discrimination due to age, he would otherwise face.”

Witness how far the idiocies of post-structuralist, post-modernist, post-somethingist intersectionalism have brought us: to insisting that the State should adapt to our feelings rather than merely acknowledge simple facts.

Hopefully, the author carefully explains the difference between “legal age” and “chronological age.” That latter sounds like a pleonasm, to me, a redundancy. But then, I haven’t even read Henri Bergson, the philosopher who made hay with “dureé.”

We can only hope Räsänen takes care, here, because we certainly won’t read it, right?

If you think I need to read the whole article to comment on it, hey: I’ve trans-read it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ethics, post-modernism, age, science, academy, college

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folly government transparency ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies

The Problem with Ruth Marcus

Bill Clinton, First Gentleman

Channeling The Sound of Music’s Mother Superior, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus asks, “How do you solve a problem like Bill Clinton?”

Marcus means Bill’s problematic possible return to the White House, the scene of his crimes, as First Dude in a new Clinton Administration — specifically his difficulties with “the twin minefields of sex and money.”

Starting with sex, Marcus argues that, “Trump’s misbehavior with women is a far more important topic than Clinton’s” because “Trump is on the ballot; Bill Clinton is not.”

True, except that Mrs. Clinton has promised to place Mr. Clinton “in charge of revitalizing the economy,” which Mrs. Marcus called “crazy.” Maybe, but it wasn’t Trump’s idea to ballyhoo the old two-for-one Clinton couple “advantage.”

“There is no condoning a record that reflects not just serial adultery, but abuse of power,” writes Marcus. Yet, she does precisely that by adding, “Clinton was a successful president who deserved the two terms for which he was elected, but his misbehavior would disqualify him from a third term even if the Constitution allowed it.”

What?! Quite a convenient drawing of the line, eh?

Of course, the problem isn’t merely Bill, as the columnist admits: “[I]t has become clear that they cannot be trusted to appropriately navigate ethical boundaries between their private interests and public responsibilities.”

Complaining about the “incessant schnorring for private jets, luxury vacation lodging, expensive trifles” by the Clintons, Marcus warns that, “It cannot happen in a new Clinton White House, especially with a Republican Party already drooling over the prospect of congressional investigations.”

But, Ruth, how will electing Hillary Clinton the next president cause Bill & Hill to change their ways?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bill Clinton, First Gentleman

 

Categories
general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility too much government

Undefeated

Missouri Ethics Commission, lobbyist, lobbying, Ron Calzone, Missouri First

It’s over . . . but it’s not.

A conscientious Show-Me state activist has won his case, but . . .

A year ago, the unethical Missouri Ethics Commission fined Ron Calzone $1,000 for not paying a silly $10 fee. To register as a lobbyist. They also ordered him to stop talking to legislators until he complied.

Citizen Calzone didn’t register.

He didn’t pay.

And he didn’t shut up.

On principle.

Instead, he contacted the Freedom Center of Missouri and the Center for Competitive Politics, a national outfit that defends our rights to participate in our supposedly participatory and representative democratic republic.

On Monday, a judge ruled in Ron’s favor, tossing out the “ethics complaint” against him. On a technicality, actually.

Winning is better than losing. But even if someone bothers to try again against Calzone, filing the suit properly*, Calzone would win.

You see, we have rights . . . including the freedom to talk to those pretending to represent us. It is not at all certain that government has any constitutional authority to regulate paid lobbyists.

But Ron is not a paid lobbyist. He volunteers for Missouri First, a citizen group.

So why did the speech police’s long arm reach out to grab him?

He’s effective.

More than a forthright advocate for what he believes, he has proven smart enough to find ways to allow fellow freedom-lovers to weigh in on bills they favor or oppose.

This has endeared him neither to legislators nor the lobbying “community” — professionals paid handsomely to lose to Calzone’s grassroots network. They will strike back. You can count on it.

But as long as there are citizens like him, the people will not be defeated.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The charges weren’t filed by a “natural person,” as the law requires, but by the attorney for the Missouri Society of Governmental Consultants, the state lobbyist guild.

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Missouri Ethics Commission, lobbyist, lobbying, Ron Calzone, Missouri First

 

Categories
Common Sense folly media and media people responsibility

Who Are the Bigots Now?

political, editorial, collage, photomontage, illustration, gender, rape, Rolling Stone, women's studies, campus, violence

“Why did Rolling Stone . . . so massively screw up” in “falsely accusing a University of Virginia frat of gang-raping a freshman girl?” asks Alex Griswold of The Daily Caller. “[I]f you work for liberal magazine The New Republic, the answer is that they were too right-wing.”

Most of my online friends are with Griswold, excoriating and ridiculing TNR’s Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig’s questionable analysis of the piece in question. Before I pile on, let me just say what is right about her analysis in “Rolling Stone’s Rape Article Failed Because It Used Rightwing Tactics to Make a Leftist Point…”

She ably summarizes a world view.

“The left tends to view oppression as something that operates within systems, sometimes in clearly identifiable structural biases” while the “right,” she insists, “tends to understand politics on the individual level,” which she imputes to “a general obsession with the capital-i Individual.”

That, she thinks, is why “the right” pokes at “specific details of high-profile cases like those of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.” If the leftist critique doesn’t apply there, she thinks “rightwingers” hope, they thereby disprove the left’s systemic oppression thesis.

Note how she just assumes the accuracy of the left’s approach; she just ignores how often lefty journalists get actual “big-picture” stats wrong. For example, on the subject of “rape culture,” they routinely suppress discussion of accurate stats on false rape charges by women against men.

Worse yet, she honestly does not see how her “leftwing” media comrades have prejudged coverage of recent race-based and rape-involved cases, doing injustice to individuals.

Is this mere media bias?

No. It’s the very definition of prejudice. It’s bigotry.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Upside Down World View

 

Categories
Accountability Common Sense insider corruption

Above the Law

It’s nice to have friends in high places. Or to sit on high yourself – way up above the law. Or so Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson must think, as he chirps from his high perch.

Last year, State Representative Mike Reynolds detailed publicly that Attorney General Edmondson had violated campaign finance laws. Numerous times.

Some of these Edmondson then sought to rectify, years after the fact. Some not.

But the Attorney General has not been prosecuted. Why, you ask? Well, it’s his job to prosecute such violations, and he has, not too surprisingly, not indicted himself.

Funny though, how Edmondson, a Democrat, has indicted Republicans Brent Rinehardt and Tim Pope for similar alleged violations.

Reynolds has now written to the governor, asking him to appoint an independent counsel. Reynolds argues that the Ethics Commission turns over matters for criminal or civil investigation to Edmondson, who “is hardly in a position to investigate his own campaign committee.”

But Edmondson told a newspaper, “It would be a waste of taxpayer money to pay another attorney to review what the Ethics Commission has already received.”

A spokesman for Governor Brad Henry, also a Democrat, says that the governor will not appoint an independent counsel.

Friends in high places . . . is for the birds.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.