Tag Archives: morality

Perjury?

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This is the oath that witnesses before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requires of its witnesses, when those witnesses are sworn (and if one witness is required to be sworn, they all must be) (scroll to Rule 9, para (g)). It’s not the same oath for all committees, but it’s typical.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

I mention this because it turns out

Then-Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller wrote in an email in June 2012, about a month before a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing….

“I am beginning to wonder whether I should do [the hearing] and affirmatively use it to put a stake in politics and c4 [regarding IRS targeting of conservative organizations applying for 501(c)(4) status].”

Miller also was never directly asked about the targeting. That removes the legal aspect of perjury: Miller would seem not to have perjured himself.

But morally? Yew betcha.

Misunderstanding

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…by Howard Kurtz in his recent Fox News piece.

Sony’s unforgivable blunder was in making this misbegotten movie in the first place. I mean, an assassination “comedy” that includes Kim Jong Un’s head being blown up, with an internal debate over how much his hair should be on fire? As Greta Van Susteren tweeted, “Anyone who has been to NK knows how dangerous it is and would not have been so stupid to make that movie.” Sony Pictures and Seth Rogen didn’t even have the wit to make it about a fictional regime with a short leader.

No. Sony and Rogen had plenty of wit—they had the wit to skewer a living, breathing thug who’s starving his own people.

Kurtz misunderstands completely. The quality of the movie, the degree of its comedy, are wholly irrelevant. Folks like Kim “Bébé Doc” Jong-un are exactly the ones who need to be called out, satirized, ridiculed, caviled, and by name.

The point of free speech, the reason it’s at the center of liberty, is to allow men to speak their minds on any subject—especially including calling out, to facilitate their removal, political thugs.

Sony’s unforgivable blunder was not in making a movie but in collapsing into their fetal ball in the face of some threats.

Is Sony Dissembling?

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President Barack Obama said Sony “made a mistake” when they decided not to release their movie in surrender to northern Korea’s hacker threats.

Sony had this in response to Obama’s recognition:

Let us be clear: the only decision that we have made with respect to release of the film was not to release it on Christmas Day in theaters, after the theater owners declined to show it. Without theaters, we could not release it in the theaters on Christmas Day. We had no choice.

Let me be clear: releasing the movie and theaters then showing it (or not) are two different things. Sony “leadership” knows this full well. Sony easily could have released the movie. Some theaters might have shown it, others might not (and several major ones had, in fact, chickened out and said they wouldn’t show it), but absent the release, no theater has the opportunity to show the movie.

Sony had a choice.

Update: Sony has backtracked its backtracking, and it has released its movie this Christmas to some 300 theaters in the US, and it’s streaming the movie online via Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft’s Xbox Video and its own website, http://www.seetheinterview.com.

Sony’s Fold

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Sony made a movie about two journalists scoring an interview with northern Korea’s Bébé Doc, Kim Jong-un, the CIA convincing the journalists to assassinate Kim, and the comedic aspects of such a thing.

This offended Baby Kim and his sycophants, and they threatened mayhem against Sony’s executives and those US movie theaters with the temerity to show the movie.

Rather than letting us Americans make up our own minds about whether to go see the movie, rather than letting movie theater managers determine for themselves whether to show the movie (some had), those threatened Sony executives collapsed like yesterday’s tissue and made the executive decision to not release the movie at all.

This decision can’t even be masqueraded as empathizing with our enemies.

This abject, craven surrender by Sony executives can only encourage terrorists: make threats, get their way. This abject, craven surrender by Sony executives has exposed American companies and American citizens to further terrorist extortion and mayhem.

Way to go, Sony. I’ve lost interest in any more of your movies.

Why Would Anyone Want To Do Business with the Illinois Government?

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A bit less polemic (but only a bit); however, the Illinois government is being openly dishonest in its business dealings.

The Land of Lincoln has accrued a $111 billion unfunded liability for government workers’ pensions—up 75% from five years ago. There is an additional $56 billion of unfunded debt to cover health benefits for the state’s retirees. Illinois today is already spending more of its general fund on pensions than on K-12 education. One in four tax dollars pays for its retired workers’ benefits. Last year the state had to defer paying $7 billion owed to contractors. All this after Democrats in 2011 raised income taxes and corporate taxes by 67% and 30%, respectively.

How can any business expect to get paid by a government so far into debt with so little means of raising the money to pay it? How can the Illinois government incur additional (contractual) obligations with private (or other) businesses, knowing as it must know, that it has no hope of meeting its current obligations under its current tax and spend régime?

The only legitimate way, the only moral way, to unilaterally alter a contract is through bankruptcy. Like Stockton, CA, and Detroit, MI, and others have had the integrity to do. But states can’t do bankruptcy. Illinois (in the present case) can only cut spending (except now, for their debt); counterintuitively (to Democrats, anyway), reduce tax rates; and otherwise get out of the way of Illinois citizens and those citizens’ private sector economy.