The Republicans haven’t even taken over the House of Representatives yet, and they are already emulating Islamic extremists—and I’m not exaggerating. Continue reading
Leadership
The Democrats, Earmarks, and the Transparency Dodge
The arguments for continuing the irresponsible and frequently corrupt earmark process are misguided at best, and dishonest at worst. Mostly they are dishonest, Senators and House members graft appropriations in the millions for local projects that are never weighed, prioritized or evaluated in the voting process, killing budget restraint by a thousand cuts. They are also used as legislative currency, as two elected officials trade one irresponsible expenditure for a dubious state project for another.
Earmarks are an invitation to corruption, as they often are the result of thinly veiled quid pro quo arrangements. The device makes the American taxpayer the underwriter of expenditures that often have no greater purpose than to grease the skid for re-election for one more fiscally irresponsible politician. For decades, U.S. Presidents have complained about them; most since Ronald Reagan argued for the Constitutionally problematic line-item veto to combat them. Now, spurred by the recent voter revolt over out-of-control spending, the Republican Caucus in the Senate has voted to ban earmarks. The full Senate, however, with eight Republicans joining with the earmark-happy Democrats, voted down a proposed moratorium. Continue reading
Extending Job Benefits: Irresponsible, Unfair and Unethical
Last week, Republicans blocked yet another extension of unemployment benefits, and we can only hope they have the integrity and courage to do it again, in the face of predictable cries that they are cruel and heartless. The correct term is “fair and responsible.”
Well over a decade ago, President Clinton and a Republican Congress instituted welfare reform over similar accusations that it would spark tragedy and starvation. What it did was help end cycles of poverty and dependency. Hardly anyone except die-hard socialists argues that limiting welfare was a mistake today.
The serial extensions of unemployment benefits we have seen for two years, however, have become indistinguishable from welfare, and are now blatant political pandering to a large unemployed voter bloc in distress. The government is broke and in debt, and in no position to add an open-ended entitlement that pays Americans not to get jobs. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Asra Nomani
Asra Q. Nomani is a Muslim. She is also is an American, an author, a women’s rights activist, and co-director of the Pearl Project. Today, in a column for the Daily Beast, she broke ranks with her religion and the absolutist foes of profiling as an anti-terrorist tool with a profoundly ethical act: she argued for new policies that may be against her own interests, but also may be in the best interest of her country and the public— because she believes it is the right thing to do.
The title of her essay: “Let’s Profile Muslims.”
Some excerpts… Continue reading
When The Occupation Of A Criminal Makes The Offense Worse
In Texas, a Roman Catholic priest named John Fala has been arrested on charges that he solicited a hit man to kill a teenager who had accused him of sexual abuse. He had negotiated a price of $5000 for the murder before he was arrested.
Who do we trust, America? Who can we trust?
Self-Restraint in Congress: Great Idea, Little Hope
Is Congress capable of exercising discipline and self-restraint? It will have to, in everything from avoiding partisan bickering and pay-back to cutting dispensable programs with loud constituencies, if the government is to have any chance of reducing the deficit and putting the nation back on the road to fiscal responsibility. We can hope, but the signs are not encouraging.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the incoming G.O.P majority is going to try to take the symbolic step of banning honorific proclamations, on the theory that Congress passing hundreds of bills each session saluting the American pickle industry, noting the retirement of Georgia Tech’s rugby coach, or lauding the memory of actress Delores Del Rio wastes time that needs to be spent doing the real work of governing. Continue reading
Sarah Palin Blows the Whistle On A Classic Media Bias Trick
After Sarah Palin, during a televised interview, said North Korea when she meant South Korea (me, I always mix up North and South Carolina)—an obvious slip of the tongue, since she had correctly identified our ally among the Koreas previously in the same interview, multiple media reports decided the gaffe was newsworthy, or at least another opportunity to show the American public that the former Alaska governor is, as they believe, an idiot. Palin, who is nothing if not feisty, took to the New Media with a Facebook post pointing out that equally egregious flubs out of the mouth of President Obama had been ignored, and listed some of them, including the time Obama raised the number of states to 57, momentarily confusing them with ketchup. Continue reading
Be Thankful Tom DeLay Is Going To Jail
“As for DeLay, his time will probably come. He has ethical blind spots galore, and is only getting bolder with time. The more the Republicans move to protect “The Hammer,” the more damaging DeLay’s inevitable fall will be to the party. As the old newspaper columnists used to say, “You read it here first!”
I posted that almost exactly six years ago. In the years I have been doing ethics commentary, no figure inspired (or perhaps depressed) me more than Tom DeLay when he was G.O.P. Majority leader in the House. Now he has finally been convicted of the legal violations that his contempt for ethics virtually guaranteed. From “Too Dumb to be Ethics Dunces,” posted in 2005: Continue reading
Ten Ethics Questions for the Pat-Down Defenders
I, like you, have been reading and listening to my various “My Obama, may he always be right, but my Obama, right or wrong” friends try to argue that having TSA agents sexually assault non-consenting adults is a perfectly reasonable and benign exercise of government power. I, like you, am tired of the posturing and excuse making. Their arguments, in essence, all boil down to: a) they have no choice b) they have our best interests at heart c) it’s no big deal, and 4) trust them, they know what they are doing.
I suggest that you, as I will, pose the following questions to your trusting friends, perhaps beginning with a preliminary query regarding whether they themselves have undergone the humiliating and invasive pat-down procedure that they so willingly approve of for others.
Then ask them these: Continue reading
CREW Gets Hoisted: For Ethics Watchdogs, Integrity’s a Bitch
CREW—Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington—is one of the most active and fairest of political watchdog groups. It has a definite liberal bias, for approximately twice as many Republicans as Democrats manage to attract CREW critiques, but that’s all right: plenty of elected officials from both parties have had their shady dealings exposed by the group, which is notable for its lack of sympathy for Washington’s traditional myths and excuses to allow guilt-free corruption.
An ethics watchdog, however, can never engage in the same conduct it criticizes in others. The reason for this is as much practical as ethical. A group that made a strong case that certain behavior shouldn’t be tolerated by the public in its elected champions doesn’t diminish the validity of its arguments by violating its own principles, but it does symbolically consent to accepting the same standard of review for its own actions that it demanded for its targets. This is what Will Shakespeare called being hoisted by your own petard—blowing yourself up with a bomb of your own construction.
As Shakespeare also noted, the previous quarry of the one who is thus hoisted just love to see this happen. It doesn’t really make what they did any less wrong or the ethics watchdog any less right to have condemned it, but when the critic gets caught doing something similar, it can make the conduct seem less wrong. This also will often guarantee that future criticism by the watchdog will be greeted with more suspicion than respect.
Salon has a posted a well-researched account of how CREW hoisted itself recently, and the prospects for the organization maintaining its previous level of respect and credibility are not good. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 