Category Archives: ethics

The US Flag Is Litter?

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An Alabama home owners association thinks so.  This is an image of the letter sent to residents of a condo unit (the unit is owned by one of the resident’s parents).

In case it’s hard to read in this post, the typed part of the letter reads

Resident,
It has come to our attention that you have items in plain sight that are not to be visible from the parking lot by rules and guidelines stated in the home owners association bylaws.  Please remove the following listed item(s) as soon as possible to keep the community as tidy as possible.

The hand written part reads

Your flag attached to the stairs has to be removed ASAP!

When the recipients of this clean-up letter posted it on a number of veteran advocacy Facebook pages, the resulting uproar included a flood of communications to the home owners association president and condo property manager, Carol Coffey, objecting vociferously to the demand and to the implication that the American flag is just litter to be swept away.

In fact, such association bylaws that ban the US flag from public display on (condo owners’, for instance) private property are a violation of Federal law [emphasis in the original; a copy of the law can be seen here or here]:

A condominium association, cooperative association, or residential real estate management association may not adopt or enforce any policy, or enter into any agreement, that would restrict or prevent a member of the association from displaying the flag of the United States on residential property within the association with respect to which such member has a separate ownership interest or a right to exclusive possession or use.

Coffey had this to say to justify her clean-up letter:

I served in Afghanistan, I served in Iraq, and I served in Kuwait.  I am not anti-veteran, and I am not a communist[.]

And

In order to maintain the integrity of that asset [the condominium complex], we have certain rules because people could put anything out here if we let them.

Because, she says, the association bylaws are in place to maintain property value, and naturally, the American flag is just any old thing, and it depresses property values.  Coffey also claimed that she realizes there are laws that protect the right to fly the American flag, but said those are for private property and this condo was not private property, because the condos are owned by a community of people—then she said that the “community of people” who own this particular condo consists of the parents of one of the residents, as noted above.

Coffey had this whine, also:

I think they are persecuting us without knowing all the facts.  And here’s one thing that really bothers me…this person got the letter from our management team and instead of coming to the board and expressing his concern, he went and posted something on two or three veteran’s sites without all the information and without us knowing anything about it, and now we’re being threatened—that’s not right.

That’s valid as far as it goes; she shouldn’t be getting threatened.  But.  In most (all?) other legal matters, a fundamental doctrine is that ignorance of the law is no excuse.  And she’s already said she knew the law; it wasn’t a matter of her not “knowing anything about it.”  She sent her clean-up letter anyway.

Since she already knew her letter was…invalid…it’s also hard to see what good spending time protesting to her about her letter would have done, especially since that time would have violated her ASAP demand.

The right answer is to stop “considering” waivers, but to correct her homeowners association bylaws so as both to not conflict with Federal law and separately to recognize that our flag, in its own right, is a proper item to display.

A Foreign Tax on American Investors in America

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The European Commission earlier this month proposed a new financial-transaction tax for 11 participating states, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Slovenia, Portugal, Greece, Slovakia, and Estonia.  These produce roughly two-thirds of the EU’s economy.

It’s an enormous tax, too, in a market where spreads are on the order of pennies, even fractions of pennies: 0.1% for trades in bonds and shares, and 0.01% for derivatives transactions, and it would apply to both buyers and sellers

as long as either of them is based in one of the participating states, or if the financial instrument being traded was issued in any of these countries.

As damaging as this tax is, they’re not done.  The tax is intended to suppress trading:

[The European Commission’s] own impact assessment estimates that the number and volume of trades in shares and bonds could drop by around 15%, while derivatives transactions may drop by as much as 75%.

Never mind that this activity—especially its volume—contributes to the liquidity of the instruments and so contributes to holding down their price to buyers.  Which facilitates more general investing in companies—their source of funds for R&D, plant expansion, even hiring.

But wait, there’s more: they’re claiming the right to tax folks outside their jurisdiction—we Americans, investing here in the US, for example, as a result of those domiciliary and passing-through aspects.

This tax will hurt us: Paul Jiganti, Managing Director of Market Structure and Routing Strategy at TD Ameritrade Holding Corp, estimates that

a typical [American] customer who pays $9.99 to buy 1,000 shares priced around $35 apiece could see that charge rise sevenfold, to around $70 on the trade.

Which will have the EU’s desired outcome.  Jiganti was caught by surprise by all of this:

To be honest, I thought that cooler heads would prevail.  I thought the US government would take care of it before it really became an issue.

For all of Treasury’s sharp words about the tax, though, don’t expect any real action.  President Barack Obama, Treasury’s boss, has never met a tax he didn’t like.  He’s not going to oppose this one in any meaningful way.

What’s Being Kept Hidden?—Update

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In response to Senate Republicans holding up his SecDEf nominee’s confirmation yesterday, Obama released (at least part of) his answer.

Obama didn’t make any phone calls the night of the Sept 11 attacks on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House said in a letter to Congress released Thursday.

“During the entire attack, the president of the United States never picked up the phone to put the weight of his office in the mix,” said Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC).

He didn’t talk to anyone in Libya, he didn’t talk to his own Secretary of State, he talked to no one in his own defense establishment—not his Secretary, not any of his generals.

Ann Althouse speculates on why he’s tried to keep all of this hidden.

I think he is ashamed. Here’s what I’ve been assuming happened: It looked like our people were overwhelmed and doomed, so there was shock, sadness, and acceptance.  But then the fight went on for 7 or 8 hours.  The White House folk decided there was nothing to do but accept the inevitable, and then they witnessed a valiant fight which they had done nothing to support.  It was always too late to help.  It was too late after one hour, then too late after 2 hours, then too late after 3 hours….  When were these people going to die already? After that was all over, how do you explain what you did?

It’s not only shameful for the man, this timidity, this defeatist attitude, if accurate, is shameful for our country.  And it’s a reason our enemies—Iran, northern Korea, the People’s Republic of China, Russia—so plainly don’t take anything our government says seriously.

What’s Being Kept Hidden?

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Former Senator and Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel’s confirmation is hanging in the balance.  Senate Republicans are holding up a floor vote on his confirmation until President Barack Obama is more forthcoming about his involvement—or lack—in the Benghazi debacle in which an American ambassador was murdered by terrorists.

Naturally, the Democrats are unhappy.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) said

Chuck Hagel had nothing to do with the attack on Benghazi.  There are serious consequences to this delay.

Yet, with those consequences, Obama continues to delay and to stonewall.  All he’s allowed to be released so far is a letter from his counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, to three Republican senators averring that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf on his behalf the night of the attack.  ABC News had this portion of Ruemmler’s letter:

This intensive response, which was directed by the President, included 13 meetings of interagency Principals and Deputies within a week of the attack and involved continuous outreach by senior administration officials to the Government of Libya, including by the President and members of his Cabinet.  As to the specific question in your February 12 letter, Secretary Clinton called Libyan President Magariaf on behalf of the President on the evening of the September 11, 2012 to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya and access to the Libyan territory.  At that time, President Magariaf expressed his condemnation and condolences and pledged his government’s full cooperation.  The President spoke to President Magariaf on the evening of September 12th.

What did Obama do in this “outreach?”  What did he instruct Clinton to say to Magariaf on his behalf?  Why didn’t he make the call himself?  What did he say on the 12th?  Did he do anything else?

I have to ask: what is there in Obama’s behavior the day of the attack and that night—other than his decision to absent himself from the White House in favor of a campaign fundraising trip to Las Vegas, I mean—of which he’s so ashamed that he’s willing to blow up the confirmation of his own nominee in favor of keeping it hidden?

Update: Sorry–this should have been published over two hours ago; a software glitch prevented that.

Ethics and the Left

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Let’s talk about this in the context of Presidential elections and the Electoral College.

Two states, Nebraska and Maine, award Electoral College votes on the basis of which candidate won the state’s Congressional districts in the popular vote.  The winner of a district gets one Electoral vote, and (in general) the winner of the state’s overall popular vote gets two Electoral College votes.  Four other states, Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, are actively moving in that direction, with a number of other states in the talking stage.  Virginia is the farthest along, having passed out of committee a by-district proposal in the state Senate (awarding the two votes to the candidate winning the most districts rather than the overall popular vote) and sent it to the full Senate.

What’s interesting here is not so much the rationale for making the move, but the arguments against and who is making those arguments.

Virginia State Senator Donald McEachin (D) calls the bill a “sore-loser bill” and added

The bill is absolutely a partisan bill aimed at defying the will of the voters, giving Republican presidential candidates most of Virginia’s electoral votes, regardless of who carries the state[.]

Virginia State Delegate Vivian Watts (D) sponsored or co-sponsored several bills over the years that would have apportioned Virginia’s electoral votes by Congressional district; she had this to say about that:

I’m age 72 so I spent a lot of years in the wilderness and the last time the state had gone Democratic [before 2008] was following the assassination of John F Kennedy.  I thought back in those days about how we were just totally ignored.

But she opposes the present bill coming before the House of Delegates.  The argument that Democrats weren’t getting their voices heard yesterday is valid, but the argument that Republicans aren’t getting their voices heard today is invalid.  Hmm….

Nationally, Democrats also oppose today what they wanted yesterday.  Mike Tate, Democratic Party Chairman, had this to say:

They can’t appeal to a majority of voters, whether it’s here in Wisconsin or Michigan or in the rest of the Midwest, so they are undermining a majority of voters.  The Republicans realize that where they are today, they can’t win a presidential election. It’s an audacious attempt to rig the system.

And, as The Washington Post summarizes,

Democrats nationwide attacked the proposed plans, which could tip the balance away from population-heavy urban centers to more rural districts that tend to favor Republicans.

Because bitter, gun-clinging, bible-toting rural Americans aren’t as important as more progressive, citified Americans.

Democratic political analyst Larry Sabato had this to say:

[I]t is a corrupt and cynical maneuver to frustrate popular will and put a heavy thumb—the whole hand, in fact—on the scale for future Republican candidates.  We do not play presidential politics with a golf handicap awarded to the weaker side.

Republicans face a choice that can best be characterized by personalizing it.  A healthy, optimistic party is Reaganesque, convinced that it can win the future by embracing it, and by making a positive case for its philosophy and candidates to all Americans.  A party in decline is Nixonian and fears the future; it sees enemies everywhere, feels overwhelmed by electoral trends, and thinks it can win only by cheating, by subverting the system and stacking the deck in its favor.

No, we insist the handicap favor the Democrats.  We insist that Democratic Chicago alone carry Illinois in its entirety, against the will of the rest of the state.  We don’t accept that letting the grass roots—individual Americans themselves—determine the apportioning of Electoral College votes is in any way democratic.

It is the Democrats themselves, presently in the ascendant, who fear the future and want to seal their superiority by blocking—today—a more democratic apportionment.

Thus, as the Post points out at the end of the article at the first link above, this isn’t the first move (in Virginia, to take that state as our example):

[S]everal [Electoral College apportionment bills] have been introduced over the past decade, all with the same rationale of giving more say to voters on the losing side.  The only difference is that those bills were submitted by Democrats, back when they weren’t having as much luck in the state in presidential elections.

And Democrats nationally were in favor of changing the Electoral College system to better favor them in the aftermath of their narrow losses in 2000 and 2004.  And before that in response to the Nixon victories in the 1970s.

Ethics are what we say they are, say Democrats, when we need them to say that.