Tag Archives: ethics

Veteran’s Day

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I first posted this in 2011.  It bears repeating today.

Thank you for all who have, and are, serving.  And because I couldn’t have said it better, I’ll let Mike Royko, late of the Chicago Tribune, via BlackFive, say it from his 1993 column.

I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday.

They all said the same thing: working.

Me, too.

There is something else we share. We are all military veterans.

And there is a third thing we have in common. We are not employees of the federal government, state government, county government, municipal government, the Postal Service, the courts, banks, or S & Ls, and we don’t teach school.

If we did, we would be among the many millions of people who will spend Monday goofing off.

Which is why it is about time Congress revised the ridiculous terms of Veterans Day as a national holiday.

The purpose of Veterans Day is to honor all veterans.

So how does this country honor them?…

…By letting the veterans, the majority of whom work in the private sector, spend the day at their jobs so they can pay taxes that permit millions of non-veterans to get paid for doing nothing.

As my friend Harry put it:

“First I went through basic training. Then infantry school. Then I got on a crowded, stinking troop ship that took 23 days to get from San Francisco to Japan. We went through a storm that had 90 percent of the guys on the ship throwing up for a week.

“Then I rode a beat-up transport plane from Japan to Korea, and it almost went down in the drink. I think the pilot was drunk.

“When I got to Korea, I was lucky. The war ended seven months after I got there, and I didn’t kill anybody and nobody killed me.

“But it was still a miserable experience. Then when my tour was over, I got on another troop ship and it took 21 stinking days to cross the Pacific.

“When I got home on leave, one of the older guys at the neighborhood bar — he was a World War II vet — told me I was a —-head because we didn’t win, we only got a tie.

“So now on Veterans Day I get up in the morning and go down to the office and work.

“You know what my nephew does? He sleeps in. That’s because he works for the state.

“And do you know what he did during the Vietnam War? He ducked the draft by getting a job teaching at an inner-city school.

“Now, is that a raw deal or what?”

Of course that’s a raw deal. So I propose that the members of Congress revise Veterans Day to provide the following:

– All veterans — and only veterans — should have the day off from work. It doesn’t matter if they were combat heroes or stateside clerk-typists.

Anybody who went through basic training and was awakened before dawn by a red-neck drill sergeant who bellowed: “Drop your whatsis and grab your socks and fall out on the road,” is entitled.

– Those veterans who wish to march in parades, make speeches or listen to speeches can do so. But for those who don’t, all local gambling laws should be suspended for the day to permit vets to gather in taverns, pull a couple of tables together and spend the day playing poker, blackjack, craps, drinking and telling lewd lies about lewd experiences with lewd women. All bar prices should be rolled back to enlisted men’s club prices, Officers can pay the going rate, the stiffs.

– All anti-smoking laws will be suspended for Veterans Day. The same hold for all misdemeanor laws pertaining to disorderly conduct, non-felonious brawling, leering, gawking and any other gross and disgusting public behavior that does not harm another individual.

– It will be a treasonable offense for any spouse or live-in girlfriend (or boyfriend, if it applies) to utter the dreaded words: “What time will you be home tonight?”

– Anyone caught posing as a veteran will be required to eat a triple portion of chipped beef on toast, with Spam on the side, and spend the day watching a chaplain present a color-slide presentation on the horrors of VD.

– Regardless of how high his office, no politician who had the opportunity to serve in the military, but didn’t, will be allowed to make a patriotic speech, appear on TV, or poke his nose out of his office for the entire day.

Any politician who defies this ban will be required to spend 12 hours wearing headphones and listening to tapes of President Clinton explaining his deferments.

Now, deal the cards and pass the tequila.

– Mike Royko

Conflict of Interest

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…or just rank cynicism by a Progressive Know Better government?

President Obama on Wednesday defended his signature health care law in a speech from Boston, saying that people who are losing their insurance plans because of the law should start shopping around for better coverage.

Never mind that these people already had good enough coverage, by definition: it’s the coverage these folks had bought voluntarily.  But President Barack Obama has a solution for all those folks being dumped, willy-nilly, into the market for insurance: shop in his newly opened ObamaMart store.

And

The cancellation notices apply to people whose plans changed after the law was implemented or don’t meet new coverage requirements.  The president said those changes ensure that all Americans are able to get quality coverage.

Never mind that those changes to perfectly fine policies were required in order to meet Obamacare-mandated standards.  Or that those compliance-required changes violated the Obamacare terms for grandfathering so the original policies couldn’t be grandfathered.  But it’s OK; folks who lost their policies can go shop in that newly opened—only by happenstance opened just now, mind you—new store: Obama’s ObamaMart.

And the explicit pitch:

So if you’re getting one of these letters, just shop around in the new marketplace.  That’s what it’s for.

The new marketplace: ObamaMart.

And this: “Only 5% of Americans are in the private insurance market, are getting cancellation notices.”  Only 14 million Americans.  Those 5% are only a small amount of people, according to Juan Williams on last Wednesday’s Special Report with Bret Baier.  But, hey, they can shop around again, so they don’t matter in the larger picture proffered by a Progressive Know Better Government.  They’re unfortunate, but unavoidable, collateral damage in getting the government’s store up and running.  For the greater good.

And for the good of ObamaMart.

A Thought on a Judicial Shutdown

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Somewhat moot, with a bill to reopen the government having been passed and signed into law Wednesday night, but the subject is useful in its own right.  During the shutdown, the courts were at a real risk of running out of funds and having to shut down.

Fed up with the shutdown and sequester budget cuts, judges are mounting a “work-in.”

More than two dozen federal courts have avoided furloughs by designating all of their staff essential….

Those two dozen include the Appellate Court of the 2nd Circuit.

As the WSJ‘s Law Blog asks, what are the ethics of this?  Legally, a judge who participates in this decision or its development must recuse himself from related cases—for instance, should a recalled furloughee, or a declared essential staff member, object and sue.

But what if all the Federal courts designated their entire staffs essential?  After all, the work of the courts must go on, and they’re at minimum staffing in the best of times.  To whom could that “work-in” staffer appeal for redress, should he feel the need for redress?

Even more important, it seems to me, though, are the ethics of allowing the courts to be shut down against the backdrop of the other two branches of the Federal government—of which the Judicial Branch is most definitely the equal—remaining fully open for business, if on slightly reduced staffing.

Moreover, if the Executive Branch is going to continue one of its central duties—enforcing the law—a fully functioning judiciary is an absolute necessity to adjudicate those enforcement actions.  The obligation to enforce and the enforcee’s right to a speedy trial are not subject to shutdown.

Another Reason to Shoot Down Drones

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Deer Trail, CO, is looking at passing an ordinance allowing its residents to shoot down drones.  It seems those good folks have a proper disdain for government fishing expeditions masquerading as “surveillance.”

But it’s not just the government that’s intruding objectionably.

When Tina Turner got married at her estate in Switzerland over the weekend, she wanted to keep paparazzi away.  But photographers used drones and other aircraft to get the exclusives they [wanted].

And [emphasis added]

Drones are gradually becoming established in Germany as a tool of photographers and television crews….  Drones are cheaper and quieter than helicopters and can be navigated unnoticed over gardens or in front of windows.

And

“They can be very helpful—it works well in the US,” says Heiko Schoenborn of the photo agency WENN.

Maybe Deer Trail should expand its target list.

Some Thoughts on Citizenship

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…by Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a recent speech at the Chautauqua Institute [emphasis mine; deeper indents are Cohen quoting Kennedy].

[T]he Justice asked his audience to pretend first that “you are a government official, bound by the Constitution…. You’ll be a judge, a federal judge.”  Next, he told the audience, “assume this…you may not like it…but assume that you as a personal matter strongly reject:

the idea of ethical relativism, moral relativism.  That’s the philosophical school which says (and here the Justice’s voice elevated a few octaves and turned sing-song-y, as though he were trying to mimic a new-age guru) that all ideas are of equal value, you have a right to think what you want, all books are the same, all music is the same…the philosophy that one person cannot insist on the correctness of his or her views; the philosophy that there are no absolutes in art, architecture, literature, aesthetics, beauty, religion, the fact that you can and must tell your kids what’s a good book and not a bad book.

“Now how can you be a judge and enforce the first amendment,” Justice Kennedy asked, “If this is your personal philosophy?”  He then said:

The first amendment says all rights are protected.  All movies are protected.  All music is protected.  Aren’t you a hypocrite?  And if as a judge you are enforcing some mandate that is contrary to your conscience and your ethics maybe you should resign.  How can you do this?  There’s an answer.  The Constitution controls only the government.  The first amendment says it’s not for the government to say that this book is good and this book is bad, it’s not for the government to say that this movie is good and this movie is bad.  It’s doesn’t follow that the public cannot say so….

And here the hypothetical seemed to end.  And here Justice Kennedy seemed to be making his own point: “A nation that’s in the grips of moral relativism, as a private philosophic matter, cannot protect basic values,” he said, before offering an example about a group of students he met last summer who later went to Europe and then returned to “give little reports on what they had done.”  As the justice recounted, a young woman said to him:  “‘And I elected to go to Auschwitz and it was very important.’

“‘Why was it important?’ Justice Kennedy said he asked the student.  And she said: “That’s where Schindler’s List was filmed.’: Justice Kennedy then said:

Well, I had this sinking feeling that even with the crime of the enormity of the Holocaust, or of the Stalin massacres, that we are reluctant to condemn….  A strong society, a happy society, a society with a civic consensus, must make judgments on what’s good, bad, beautiful, ugly, right, wrong. That’s not just your right as a citizen.  In my submission it’s your responsibility.

There’s lots more in Cohen’s article, but this is enough for here.

 

h/t Andrew Cohen, writing in The Atlantic.