Hypocrisy, unfairness…pick your own adjective for Republican and conservative attacks on Sen. John Kerry for saving himself some money by docking his $7 million yacht in Rhode Island, where he could avoid Massachusetts’ s $435,000 one-time tax and an additional $70,000 in excise taxes every year. Incredibly, talk show host Sean Hannity just called Kerry a “tax cheat,” although Kerry is breaking no laws, has no obligation to make sure his home of Massachusetts gets all of his tax money, and is doing what all wealthy Americans—usually championed by Hannity and others as those who create jobs and make the country prosperous—do: using available loopholes, safe harbors and tax minimization methods to hold on to as much money as he can. Continue reading
Sen. John Kerry
Some Ethics Catch-Up Due on Climate Change
It is clear that the Obama Administration, if only to bolster the fading support of its most Left-ward constituency, is going to try a full-court press to get some form of carbon tax or “cap and trade” bill. These were once referred to as “climate change” measures, but since polls are showing that the American public’s belief in Al Gore’s jeremiad is waning fast, now these are “prevent more oil spills like the one going on now” bills. Obama, much to the global warming zealots’ dismay, only snuck in one little “climate” in his Oval Office speech, and that was without “change.”
This is all just politics, but the fact is that the American public has some straight talk coming, and it doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the horizon, or even the Deep Horizon. In the past year, the Climate Change Express has pretty much jumped the rails, with the collapse of international summit; the East Anglia “Climategate” revelations that supposedly objective scientists were blocking dissenting conclusions and hiding inconsistencies, the uncovering of evidence of unprofessional practices at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and some embarrassing pronouncements and predictions that appeared to be off by hundreds of years or so, or wrong entirely.
Despite all this, the U.S. media has been caught in a time warp, with no major news organizations altering their previous official conviction that the fact of catastrophic climate change and the main cause of it–human activity—are “settled science,” even though this is just plain false. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce Deux: Rand Paul Whiffs on Accountability
G.O.P Kentucky Senate nominee Rand Paul has pulled off a record-worthy achievement: he has earned Ethics Dunce status twice in a week’s time, something no one else, even serial Ethics Dunces like Sen. John Kerry and Tom DeLay, were able to do in the nearly seven years the designation has been in existence. He did not earn it the old fashioned way, however, as the old Smith-Barney ads used to say. Most Ethics Dunces do something, but in both cases Paul has proven himself worthy by what he says he believes. This makes him kind of a classic Ethics Dunce. He literally doesn’t understand basic ethical values, or if he does, can’t articulate them. Continue reading
Obama Joins Coakley, Hillary and Kerry in “The Baseball Trap”
A new poll finds the American public’s trust in its government at an all-time low, and as silly as it is, this sort of thing doesn’t help a bit.
President Obama pointedly wore a Chicago White Sox cap when he threw out the first ball at the official Major League baseball season opener in Washington, D.C. rather than the cap of the home team, the Washington Nationals, who need all the fans they can get. Last week he stopped by an actual White Sox game, and visited the broadcast booth, where he chatted with Rob Dibble on the air about his baseball loyalties, and how he was, at heart, a White Sox fan, having lived in the South Side (the North Side is Chicago Cubs territory) during his Chicago days, which extended from 1985 to when he moved into the White House—about 23 years.
Then Dibble asked the President who his favorite White Sox player was “growing up.” It was clear from his answer—stuttering, followed by the explanation that he grew up in Hawaii and thus began life as an Oakland A’s fan—that Obama couldn’t name a single one. Continue reading
More Tebow Ad Ethics: Allred’s Complaint
The much-anticipated Super Bowl ad telling the story of how quarterback Tim Tebow was born because his mother rejected a doctor’s advice to have him aborted for medical reasons is spinning off ethical issues at a dizzying rate.
Some are easily settled, as Ethics Alarms has already noted. There is nothing wrong with a Super Bowl ad raising substantive issues in the middle of beer commercials and tackles, as some have (incredibly) argued. There is nothing unethical about CBS changing its policy regarding issue-oriented commercials. The fact that the network rejected such ads in the past does not make it hypocritical now. CBS, having ended a blanket prohibition, must now be fair and reasonable in deciding which issue ads to accept. Let’s see how it goes before we cry foul.
And there is nothing “anti-choice” about a woman’s story of how she chose not to abort her son, and is glad she did. It is not even an anti-abortion ad, unless the pro-abortion movement literally believes that it is wrong not to have an abortion. She had a choice, and she made it. The message of the ad does encourage thought about the consequences of having the procedure, which is unequivocally good.
Now, however, Hollywood lawyer and woman’s rights advocate Gloria Allred has suggested that Tebow and his mother are spinning a tale that is inspiring, powerful, and full of baloney, and she has sent CBS a letter of protest. Continue reading
Climategate’s Ethics Heroes, Villains and Dunces
The hacked East Anglia University computer files are slowly revealing the ethical values of more than just the scientists. They are also serving as accurate detector of integrity or the lack of it; bias or fairness, honesty, accountability, and courage.
Almost every day, a public statement, op-ed or news item exposes a hero, dunce, or villain or in the climate change debate, like those nifty reagents and black lights they use in the “CSI” TV show and its 37 spin-offs. Here are some who have appeared thus far: Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 