Category Archives: morality

The Penn State Fiasco

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I had some words about this earlier.  Now the sports authorities have weighed in.

The NCAA has penalized Penn State with the following primary sanctions:

  • fined Penn State $60 million
  • erased all of Head Coach Joe Paterno’s wins from 1998-2011
  • banned Penn State from the postseason for four years
  • permitted current and incoming football players to transfer to and immediately compete at another school (this permission runs for the entire college careers of current players.  Normally, players can transfer at any time, but they must sit out a year at their new school, with that year counting toward their 4-year eligibility)
  • capped football scholarships at 20 below the normal limit for four years (this is a roughly 25% reduction in scholarships)
  • placed the Penn State football program on probation for five years

The Big 10 has added (while reserving the possibility of adding further penalties) a ban on sharing in post season (bowl) revenues for four years, with an expected cost to Penn State of $13 billion.

On the whole, I agree with these.  A ban on football altogether for a year—the so-called death penalty—would have punished the player-students, who had nothing to do with their coaches’, Athletic Department, or University leadership failures.

However, I would have preferred additional sanctions: 100% termination of the remaining football coaching staff who were on the payroll last November; 100% termination of all Athletic Director staff associated in any way with the Penn State football function (including athletics, financial support functions, player recruitment (beyond the football coaching staff’s involvement), alumni relations as these apply to Penn State football, and so on); and termination of the Penn State University President, Vice President, and Chief of Operations, and their operational (as opposed to administrative) staffs—just clean house altogether.

Whether or not these people had anything directly to do with Sandusky’s behavior, their oversight was wholly inadequate: Sandusky could not have gone on as long as he did, nor could the cover-up of Sandusky’s behavior have gone on as long as it did, without a significant fraction of these staffs functionally condoning the behavior and cover-up through their own inaction.  Just generally require a wholesale house-cleaning.

Another Take on Free Speech

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Comes this from Fox News.

The mayor of Boston is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in the city after the company’s president spoke out publicly against gay marriage.

Mayor Thomas Menino told the Boston Herald on Thursday that he doesn’t want a business in the city “that discriminates against a population.”

Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy told the Baptist Press this week that his privately owned company is “guilty as charged” in support of what he called the biblical definition of the family.

So, if a government disapproves of a political remark, it’s allowed to drive the speaker from the arena.  Free speeches?  We ain’t got no free speeches in Boston.  We don’t need no free speeches.  I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ free speeches.

The Progressive View of Free Speech

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We ought to be allowed to set limits.  The government should tell you what your limits are.  No less a light than Senator Charles Schumer (D, NY) says so.  Fox News reports that in an effort to pass the Disclose Act, which would have stripped political speakers of their anonymity and exposed them to union intimidation and to Democratic ad hominem attacks (can you say “Koch brothers?”) with a view toward further intimidation,

New York Sen. Charles Schumer claimed Monday that “there ought to be limits” on First Amendment rights, while arguing in favor of Democrat-backed legislation that would require full disclosure of big-money donors behind election campaign advertising.

After all, he says,

You can’t scream “fire” falsely in a crowded theater.  We have libel laws.  We have anti-pornography laws.  All of those are limits on the First Amendment.  Well, what could be more important than the wellspring of our democracy?  And certain limits on First Amendment rights that if left unfettered, destroy the equality—any semblance of equality in our democracy—of course would be allowed by the Constitution.

There’s a pattern here.  The examples he cites are plain acts of dishonesty.  So what else is dishonest in this Progressive’s eyes?  Why, political speech of which he disapproves.  So this must be limited, too.

But, indeed, “what could be more important than the wellspring of our democracy,” the freedom of political speech?

This Plant is your Plant, This Plant is my Plant

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With apologies to Woody Guthrie….

Here is Folksinger Obama with his latest…hit:

This plant is your plant, this plant is my plant
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This plant was made for you by me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This road was made for you by me

I’ve roamed and rambled and I’ve followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me my voice was sounding
This firm was made for you by me

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This farm was made for you by me

As I was walkin’—I saw a sign there
And that sign said—no tresspassin’
But on the other side…it didn’t say nothin!
Now that side was made for me by me!

In the squares of the city—in the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office—I see my people
And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
Why this land’s made for you by me.

Be Too Bad if Something Was to Happen to It

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So, pay the vig.  That’s the extortion Senator Patty Murray (D, WA) is threatening us with.  Roll over, and give us our tax increase on those we don’t like, or we’ll raise taxes on everyone.

[If] we can’t get a good deal, a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share, then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013…. We will have a new fiscal and political reality….

Of course, she continues to insist that “fair” is whatever the Progressives say it is, at any moment.  She, like her fellows, have continuously refused to say what amount constitutes a “fair share,” for her hated rich or for her sainted poor.

Here’s her naked extortion threat:

If middle-class families start seeing more money coming out of their paychecks next year—are Republicans really going to stand up and fight for new tax cuts for the rich? Are they going to continue opposing the Democrats’ middle-class tax cut once the slate has been wiped clean?

She’s also taking our national defense hostage and demanding that it be ransomed with more taxes.  The article at the link cites her as adding

[If] Republicans don’t negotiate to her party’s liking on the automatic spending cuts—known in Washington as the “sequestration”—set to take effect at the start of next year, her party would let those cuts happen, too.

Can we afford four more years of this assault on our freedoms?  Can we afford four more years of bipartisanship meaning “do it the Progressive way, or else?”

As to the taxes themselves, to which Senator Murray and her fellows are so tightly bound, Murray and her fellows, as with so much of the legislation they’ve rammed through, are running against the wishes of Americans.   The latest McClatchy-Marist poll has found the following:

  • Registered voters want all of the tax cuts extended, including for those with incomes above $250,000, by 52% to 43% wanting the cuts reserved for those making $250,000 or less
  • Those making less than $50,000 per year supported tax cuts for all incomes by 53% to 41%
  • Voters in the age band 18-29 favor tax cuts for everyone by 69% to 29%