Tag Archives: morality

The Morality of the Left

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In response to the IRS’ appalling targeting of administration-disfavored groups applying for tax-exempt status, President Barack Obama’s senior advisor David Plouffe tweeted

David Plouffe ‏@davidplouffe 12 May

What IRS did dumb and wrong. Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $.

As The Wall Street Journal notes, all that matters in Plouffe’s moral world is

partisan advantage rather than…apolitical tax enforcement….

It’s clear to me from all of the scandals exploding in DC that this view of “morality” is typical of the Progressives and is not at all unique to Plouffe.

The rightness or wrongness of a thing is wholly unimportant.  What matters is whether any profit can be made from it, and what’s wrong about it is the other side collecting the profit.  So they say.

Just a Bunch of Low-Rent Chicago Hoods

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Here’s a short list:

  • Fast and Furious and Attorney General Eric Holder’s steadfast refusal to cooperate with Congress’ investigation of this crime
  • Department of Energy’s use of taxpayer money to loan millions to cronies at Solyndra, Fisk, A123, et al
  • President Barack Obama’s initial attempts to downplay the IRS’ politically targeting government-disfavored groups and men by holding up their tax-exempt applications and/or singling them out for “investigation:” “If the reported actions are true,” he said on the heels of the IRS admitting it had done these things and issued their faux apology
  • Obama’s “firing” of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller by allowing him to resign: Miller was resigning anyway in a couple of weeks, and he’s being allowed to stay on for a couple of weeks
  • For all that, IRS continues to collect tax data by trolling taxpayers’ digital activities, scraping eBay auctions, Facebook posts, and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records.
  • Obama’s dissembling about events surrounding Benghazi and the terrorist murders of our Ambassador and three others, including lies to the press, through Carney’s mouth, about “a single” talking point edit
    • the “penultimate point” from original talking points:
      • The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qaeda in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out that individuals had previously surveilled the US facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks
    • State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland’s concern:
      • …the penultimate point could be abused by Members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings so why do we want to feed that either?
    • White House’s David Adams’ concurrence with Nuland:
      • I’m with Toria [Victoria]. The last bullet especially will read to members like we had been repeatedly warned
  • Obama’s politicizing the outcomes of the Benghazi and IRS failures, then claiming that it was the Republicans who were politicizing them by seeking the facts of these matters
  • DoJ’s secret seizure of AP phone records, which included those for phone lines in the House of Representatives press gallery—which means phone records of Congressmen talking with the press via telephone were included: DoJ was collecting communications records on Congressmen, too
  • HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pushing, among other organizations, insurance companies (which she regulates) to contribute private monies to help make up the shortfall in government funding of the government’s insurance exchanges
  • Obama, et al., claiming that Republican budget cuts caused the Benghazi security failures, even though Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb testified under oath before Congress that budgetary considerations were not a factor in her decision not to beef up Benghazi security
  • More than 2,200 illegal immigrants, over 600 of which had criminal records,  released earlier this year by DHS’ ICE, using the sequester as the excuse, and the release kept hidden from Congress for months until threat of subpoena

And Obama is the leader.

Punishment and Rehabilitation

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Joseph Muto was an employee working on a Fox News opinion program when he was caught stealing material from the show and using it for personal gain.  What he and his lawyer said about the matter is instructive.

Muto:

I wouldn’t have done it had I known I’d end up in this courtroom.  To answer your question of “was it worth it?” I wouldn’t have done it.

Notice that: there was no recognition, finally, that what he’d done was wrong; there was only regret that he’d gotten caught.  Still it does indicate the deterrence potential of punishment: a criminal wannabe who actually thinks through his crime before he does it has a chance of being persuaded not to.  Perhaps unfortunately, it also illustrates the uselessness of attempting rehab in our criminal system.  There has to be a recognition of wrong-doing before rehab from that can occur.

Florian Miedel, Muto’s lawyer, was quoted as saying that Muto should not have been treated like a criminal, despite admitting he’d stolen material from his employer.  This, of course, is cynical nonsense.  Why shouldn’t he have been treated like a criminal?  He was a criminal: he admitted to “attempted unlawful duplication of computer related material and attempted criminal possession of computer-related material.”

Miedel’s own words:

Making him accept a criminal conviction is unfortunate for conduct that is fairly commonplace in the industry.

Nonsense.  Miedel just acknowledged that theft is commonplace.  His logic plainly is that since crime is “fairly commonplace,” it should be excused.  This is morally bankrupt.

Time to Fire a Judge?

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Last month US Federal Judge Edward Korman ruled that the Food and Drug Administration must permit the morning after pill—the so-called Plan B pill—to be sold over the counter, to be stocked on store shelves rather than held behind the pharmacist’s counter, and to be saleable to “women” of all ages—i.e., including to children.  And saleable to these children without any parental involvement, which is the outcome of eliminating the FDA’s by-prescription and age-limited sales.  That’s bad enough.

Now, though, in response to the government’s decision to appeal this ruling and to ask that Korman stay his order pending that appeal, Korman is cynically decrying as politics the government’s objection to his interference in family matters—while demonstrating the involvement of his own politics in this matter.

Korman told an assistant US attorney that the FDA ruling [partially implementing Korman’s ruling] was a cynical attempt to “sugarcoat this appeal of yours.”

I don’t often agree with this administration, but on this matter, I do.  Korman went on, accusing Justice’s lawyer of “intellectual dishonesty” and calling further delays “a charade.”  Because the lawyer disagreed with Korman’s ruling and its efficacy.

He wasn’t finished.

When the government lawyer argued that delaying Korman’s order while it was on appeal was in the public interest, the judge responded, “Is there a public interest in unwanted pregnancies…that can often result in abortions?”

And

The judge…expressed outrage at another provision under the new FDA rules that would require government-issued photo identification to get the pills, placing an “impossible burden” on disadvantaged people without IDs.

And

“The poor, the young and African-Americans are going to be put in the position of not having access to this drug,” [Korman] said.

Minors are, by definition, incapable of making their own decisions without adult guidance.  Thus, I have some questions for Korman:

  • is there a public interest in allowing minors to act on so serious a matter solely on their own recognizance?
  • is there a public interest in cutting parents out of the decision-making of their minor children, leaving children with no adult guidance?

Korman’s objection concerning access plainly is not true.  Parental involvement gives them the access those parents—not a remote, disinterested judge—deem appropriate.  The prescription gives them access through the guidance of another adult—generally with the parents involved here, also.

And so a final question:

  • is there a public interest in leaving the many unaided by adult guidance by barring an imperfect system which, if implemented, would leave a few without that guidance?

Korman’s arrogance in decrying the government’s representatives and the government for their daring question his ruling with its pseudo-logic, frankly, is worse than his ruling with its pseudo-logic.  Judges aren’t kings whose decisions are above the questioning of the judges’ inferiors.  Korman needs to be reminded of that.  Forcefully.

In the end, Korman officially refused to stay his order pending appeal.  In his ruling, he opined, in part,

that if the status of these drugs is changed and later reversed, it can lead to situations in which women mistakenly believe that they can obtain the drug without a prescription or at certain locations where it used to be available, but is no longer.

This argument assumes that defendants have a likelihood of success on the merits and is largely an insult to the intelligence of women.

Because the children newly granted access behind their parents’ backs are women.  And because Korman has never dealt with a government rule from the outside, being himself inside government.

On the question of identification, Korman does have a valid point:

He also questioned why the government takes an opposite position in voting-rights cases, where the US has argued that identification requirements discourage some people from voting.

But this isn’t enough to validate his overall ruling or his refusal to stay it pending appeal.  He still needs to be reminded, decisively, of his place in our employment as a member of our government.