Category Archives: morality

A Journalistic View of the Importance of Truth

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This is what too many journalists are saying about NBC’s Brian Williams’ lie about being on a helicopter in Iraq that was forced to land after being hit by an RPG. They’re making these statements, too, while eliding Williams’ subsequently discovered lies concerning his…reporting…in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and in Israel, before that, during Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah. First up is Howard Kurtz, author of the piece from which the rest of the quotes below are taken:

What’s been striking to me is how many people are willing to end what has been a pretty solid career because of this one admittedly horrible mistake.

That’s because the career should end. The man has destroyed his credibility with his lie—a deliberate act, not a “mistake.”

Alan Colmes, as cited by Kurtz:

[I]t was “sad” to see this mistake “destroy a man and destroy his career.

No. Whether all of this destroys Brian Williams is up to Williams alone, what he chooses to learn from this, what he chooses to do about it. Whether it destroys Williams’ journalist career, it certainly should. He lied. At least three times.

Dan Abrams:

I am troubled by the fervor, occasional glee, and potentially disproportionate fury…. This alliance of certain capital-J journalists, conservative bloggers, and some who simply despise any rich and famous journalist are a formidable force.

No journalistic distortion there. Nope.

Joe Scarborough:

…the decision is made to judge what Brian Williams’ future should be, that that decision will be based on the entirety of his career and not on one or two or three mistakes.

Mistakes. I’m detecting a theme here. When a journalist lies, that’s just a mistake. No big deal. Nothing to see here.

Scarborough again:

If he exaggerated, if he puffed his chest out a little bit—news people do that.

Lies are just puffery. And since all news people do it, it’s OK. That Left morality, again: an act’s legitimacy comes from whether or not somebody else did it, or does it, too. Morality is not at all inherent in the act.

How can anyone ever believe what a liar says? Kurtz and his fellows apparently have chosen not to answer that one.

News Media

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First, there was Dan Rather and his nakedly falsified National Guard document, which he used on his 60 Minutes show to attempt to smear President George Bush the Younger.

Then there’s the constant smear campaign against folks like Governor Sarah Palin and the Tea Party as racists.

There’s the blatantly biased coverage of the Ferguson shooting.

Now there’s Brian Williams.

Brian Williams, the nation’s top-rated news anchor, has admitted fabricating a tale of being forced down by enemy fire in a helicopter over Iraq a dozen years ago.

Williams apologized on the air Wednesday evening, saying: “I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago.”

A lie is just a mistake, is it? Well, yeah, if…recognition…of it by the perp comes 2 years after the lie, it’s of personal interest to the liar to play down the lie, and it’s a journalist doing the down-play. He did, finally, tell the Stars and Stripes straight up that

I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area—and the fog of memory over 12 years—made me conflate the two, and I apologize.

He only made the statement, though, after he’d been caught out by the helicopter crewman who were there—the ones who actually had been shot down by Iraqi ground fire.

He also said:

I would not have chosen to make this mistake. I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.

Except he did choose exactly that. Besides, how does one “conflate” the helicopter one’s in with another helicopter an hour and some miles away?

Is there anyone on the Left News Media who’s an honest journalist?

Oh, yeah: there’s also the woman who used to sit in the Secretary of State’s chair, Hillary Clinton, who lied about taking sniper fire in Bosnia.

And President Barack Obama’s repeated lies about Obamacare (and nearly everything else about his administration’s policies).

Is there anyone on the Left who’s honest?

In a Just World

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The Jordanian pilot, the one whom ISIS was wanting to trade for a terrorist in a Jordanian prison has been burned alive. Our President, Barack Obama had this to say:

Should in fact this video be authentic, it’s just one more indication of the viciousness and barbarity of this organization. This organization appears only interested in death and destruction.

Notice that: “this organization.” Obama still can’t find the…something…to recognize these as Islamic terrorists.

More importantly, this should now be a no-quarter war. These terrorists, and the nations who continue to support them, have forfeited their right to exist.

But our President has no clue of justice.

Here Comes the Extortion

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Nice business you got there. Be too bad if it got shut down for some reason.

The United Steelworkers union told its workers at nine US refineries and chemical plants to strike early Sunday morning….

And they’ve gone ahead and walked out, trying to shut down nine refineries from Houston to LA. For demurring on paying the union vig. USW’s threat to the viability of these refineries ultimately could affect

30,000 workers at 230 refineries, oil terminals, pipelines, and petrochemical plants[.]

USW threatening the viability of a company for not paying up is an overstatement, you think? These refineries still have to make payroll—even of those union workers who no longer are working and earning their paychecks—they still have supplier bills to pay, they still have maintenance bills to pay, they still need to run their R&D programs, they still…. They can’t, though, if they can’t refine petroleum and have a product to sell to earn the revenue needed to pay those bills.

The USW knows that. It’s why they’ve chosen to strike—to attack the viability of their target companies and so to force their surrender.

In the final days of negotiations, the union rejected multiple offers from Shell, which led negotiations on behalf of US refinery operators.

Notwithstanding that, USW International President Leo Gerard claimed in wide-eyed innocence,

Shell refused to provide us with a counteroffer and left the bargaining table. We had no choice but to give notice of a work stoppage.

It’s time unions lost their exemption under the Clayton Antitrust Act, the successor law to the Sherman Antitrust Act which bars companies—and the USW is a company—from abusing their monopoly power. A monopoly power the USW clearly has with its near total control over the labor force of these refineries, and a monopoly power the USW clearly is abusing with its naked threat to the viability of those companies through its refusal to work—its refusal to let those companies earn the revenue they need to pay their bills.

Death Taxes

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Or, as President Barack Obama likes to call them, “trust fund taxes.” Either way, it’s another Progressive attempt to steal the gains of one family—now with its parent safely dead—to transfer them to another group of “families” of whom Obama approves.

As the graph below demonstrates, this latest wealth “redistribution” grab by Obama would represent, if it’s passed, a 36% increase to a world-beating 68% of a family’s hard-earned accumulated prosperity.InternationalDeathTaxRates

Not even the famously social-tax heaven of the UK confiscates that much of a family’s wealth on the death, nor do the social democracy nations of France, Belgium, Spain, Finland, Norway, etc. Russia and the People’s Republic of China have no death taxes at all.

Here’s the deal:

Under current law, when a parent or grandparent dies, the increase in the valuation of his or her asset from when it was originally purchased is not taxed.

This is to offset the effects of the estate tax.

But

Obama’s plan would tax estates and impose the regular capital gains tax on inherited assets—a business, property, or stocks.

That business, far from being a Buffet’s holdings in Berkshire Hathaway, or a Gate’s holdings in Microsoft, is typically the family’s only asset: a mom and pop business that mom and/or pop have spent a lifetime building, with little to no outside cash available with which to pay the Obama vig. They’d have to sell the business; they’d have to sell their children’s future to pay up. That property usually is the family home, which the family finally was able to afford in the late afternoon of the deceased parent’s life. Those stocks…. No trust funds here.

But, no worries. Obama and his Democrat Party Know Better. Their money, temporarily reposing in our hands for a few years, will be well used. Obama says so.