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Make a Wish

Posted by on 28 January 2012, 8:21 am

Cystic fibrosis is a terrible disease, one which compromises lung function and leads to systemic organ degradation, slowed growth and physical weakness. Once nearly always fatal in early childhood, the condition can be managed via modern medicine, but the sufferer will always be in a disease management regimen.

For someone with cystic fibrosis, what we would consider a “normal life” is just not a reality. Alyssa Braden, 13, of Garland, Texas, suffers from cystic fibrosis, and wanted nothing more than to be a soldier in the United States Army. For three days, the Make A Wish Foundation, and the 193rd Infantry Brigade at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, made her wish come true.


Private wish: Teen fulfills dream of being a Soldier


By Cursha Pierce-Lunderman, Fort Jackson Leader

FORT JACKSON, Sc.c. — Alyssa Braden could have had any wish in the world fulfilled. But — in lieu of meeting a celebrity or visiting a theme park — the diminutive teen chose to get down and dirty.

Her wish? To join the Army.

The 13-year-old from Texas has spent the past week training with battalions in Fort Jackson’s 193rd Infantry Brigade through coordination with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Alyssa participated in morning physical training sessions, rappelled down Victory Tower, conducted convoy training missions, qualified on an M16, and saw the life that she would live as a Soldier in training.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation allows children to dream big by granting a “wish” to those suffering from a life-threatening medical condition. Alyssa said she chose joining the Army as her wish because her cystic fibrosis makes it impossible for her to enlist in the future due to Department of Defense medical restrictions.

“My uncle was in the Army and he’s my favorite uncle,” Alyssa said. “When I saw him, I just always thought of him as a hero and I wanted to be like him.”

During recent family discussions, Alyssa and her family realized that she would have some trouble joining the Army.

“We have been talking to recruiters with her older sister,” said Alyssa’s mother, Maggie Braden. “When Alyssa found out about asthma issues in the Army, she was devastated because she knows what she has is much worse than that.”

According to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, cystic fibrosis is a chronic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system characterized by the body’s production of unusually thick, sticky mucus that often clogs the lungs, leading to life-threatening lung infections. Those who suffer from the disease often deal with wheezing and shortness of breath, frequent lung infections and persistent coughing.

Now, more than 13 months ago after being referred to the Make-A-Wish, she was able to see her wish fulfilled. She said her time with the Soldiers and drill sergeants at Fort Jackson has lived up to her dreams.

More at the link.
_________________________
Cross posted on Truth Before Dishonor

Filed under Personal Responsibility, United States Army. Tagged , ,
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The economy grew 2.8% for the 4th quarter, 1.7% overall in 2011

Posted by on 27 January 2012, 8:38 pm

From


U.S. Economy Picks Up Steam


Fourth-Quarter Growth Rate of 2.8% is Fastest in 18 Months, but Doesn’t Appear Sustainable
By JOSH MITCHELL And BEN CASSELMAN

The U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in 18 months in the fourth quarter as companies restocked their shelves, but underlying weak demand pointed to slower growth in coming months.

U.S. gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services and a barometer of the nation’s economic health, grew at an annual rate of 2.8% in the October-to-December period, the Commerce Department said Friday.

That was the first time that growth exceeded 2% all year and the fastest pace since the second quarter of 2010.

But even with the acceleration, growth remained stubbornly below the 3% pace that many economists say is needed to quickly bring down the unemployment rate. The report also showed that most of the growth was thanks to a surge in inventory replenishing by businesses—a trend not likely to last. Final sales—a measure of products sold to end users, rather than to wholesalers or suppliers—advanced only slightly.

Much more at the link; for all of 2011, the economy grew 1.7%, down from the 3% growth rate in 2010. The figures are preliminary; the Department of Commerce will release final figures later.

The report was actually downbeat, based on the projections of various economists, rather than positive based on the 4th quarter growth, and stocks declined based on the report. However, it should be remembered that economists’ predictions have been wrong before.

Filed under Economics.
2 Comments

Moody’s Investors Services downgrades Illinois’ credit rating

Posted by on 27 January 2012, 9:19 am

Many of our friends on the left have been wedded to the outmoded notions of Keynesian economic thought, telling us that the key to economic recovery is for more government spending, financed by increased taxes on the higher producers, and more borrowing if necessary. Well, at least one state has followed their ideas. From


The Greece Next Door


Illinois gets a credit downgrade, in contrast to Wisconsin.

Run up spending and debt, raise taxes in the naming of balancing the budget, but then watch as deficits rise and your credit-rating falls anyway. That’s been the sad pattern in Europe, and now it’s hitting that mecca of tax-and-spend government known as Illinois.

Though too few noticed, this month Moody’s downgraded Illinois state debt to A2 from A1, the lowest among the 50 states. That’s worse even than California. The state’s cost of borrowing for $800 million of new 10-year general obligation bonds rose to 3.1%—which is 110 basis points higher than the 2% on top-rated 10-year bonds of more financially secure states.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Only a year ago, Governor Pat Quinn and his fellow Democrats raised individual income taxes by 67% and the corporate tax rate by 46%. They did it to raise $7 billion in revenue, as the Governor put it, to “get Illinois back on fiscal sound footing” and improve the state’s credit rating.

So much for that. In its downgrade statement, Moody’s panned Illinois lawmakers for “a legislative session in which the state took no steps to implement lasting solutions to its severe pension underfunding or to its chronic bill payment delays.” An analysis by Bloomberg finds that the assets in the pension fund will only cover “45% of projected liabilities, the least of any state.” And—no surprise—in part because the tax increases have caused companies to leave Illinois, the state budget office confesses that as of this month the state still has $6.8 billion in unpaid bills and unaddressed obligations.

Much more at the link.

The article continues to note that neighboring Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) and the Republican-controlled legislature imposed some rather unpopular economic measures, including stripping public-employee unions of bargaining power on some issues, and requiring public employees to pay a larger share of their health care and pension costs. The results? Well, six Republican legislators faced recall elections (and two of them lost their seats), and now Governor Walker is facing a recall election. But, even though many of the cheeseheads on the left don’t like the Republicans, the Governor and the state legislature balanced the budget without raising taxes, and rose to 17th, from 41st, in Chief Executive Magazine’s ranking of the states’ business climates, while the Democrats running the Land of Lincoln helped push Illinois from 45th to 48th.

This being a democratic representative republic, the voters will have their way, and it may be that the Democrats and their union allies will force Governor Walker from office. But the Governor and the state legislature put Wisconsin on the right budget path, as reflected by the state’s stronger economic showing, especially when compared to their neighbor to the south.

I wrote about this last August, and John Hitchcock addressed the issue last January and March. The Wall Street Journal noted Governor Pat Quinn’s (D-IL) remarks upon the tax increase vote:

The state was careening toward bankruptcy, fiscal insolvency. We’re in a period now of reform and recovery.

For some apparently unknown reason, Governor Quinn’s remarks do not seem to have been matched by reality. Your editor wonders why that is.

Filed under Debt and deficit spending, Democratic Party, Economics, I told you so, State & Local Gov't Spending, State and Local Government, Taxation. Tagged , , , ,
7 Comments

Another Obama Administration “green” investment goes bankrupt.

Posted by on 26 January 2012, 9:48 pm

From Ed Morrissey:

Another green-tech stimulus recipient files for bankruptcy

posted at 3:40 pm on January 26, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

In last year’s State of the Union speech, Barack Obama hailed the great investment he made with taxpayer dollars in the manufacturer of advanced solar panels, only to have Solyndra go down the tubes — taking more than a half-billion dollars in taxpayer money with it.  In this year’s SOTU speech, Obama bragged about having sunk money into “partnership” with the private sector to become a world leader in car-battery sector.  Right on time, that “partner” filed for bankruptcy, too:

An Indiana-based energy storage company that received a $118.5 million stimulus-law grant from the Energy Department filed for bankruptcy Thursday.

Ener1 is asking a federal bankruptcy court in New York to approve a plan to restructure the company’s debt and infuse $81 million in equity funding. …

The Energy Department, in 2009, approved a $118.5 million stimulus-law grant for EnerDel, a subsidiary of the company that develops lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles. The grant was part of a broader program aimed at promoting the development of electric-vehicle battery technology.

President Obama touted the program in his State of the Union address this year.

“In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries,” he said.

We saw this coming last October, when CBS first reported on Ener1′s shaky financial position.  At that time, the company had spent $53 million of the grant and had pledged to create 1700 jobs from it in total.  When the story got reported, Ener1 traded at 11 cents a share, down from its December 2008 peak of $9.40 and the $3 per share price when the Department of Energy decided to invest in a company that had lost two-thirds of its value.  The share price was five cents by the beginning of this month, and is now at two cents a share.

Don’t forget, too, that the $53 million spent by October created jobs … 33 of them.

Perhaps green-tech stimulus recipients should call on Obama to refrain from giving them SOTU shout-outs.

And what does the Obama Administration say? Jen Stutsman, spokesman for the Energy Department, said:

The Department of Energy’s grant to EnerDel is supporting a cutting-edge battery manufacturing plant that is producing batteries in America that are being sold across the country and around the world. This grant is part of the department’s efforts to commercialize promising vehicle technologies that will help America to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and ensure U.S. companies can compete in the global auto industry. While it’s unfortunate that Ener1, the parent company, has entered a restructuring process, the new infusion of $80 million in private capital demonstrates that the technology has merit. As the company has said, the restructuring is not expected to impact EnerDel’s operations and they do not expect to reduce employment at the site.

NASDAQ delisted Ener1′s stock (HEVV) last October:

Earlier this week, Ener1 was notified by the NASDAQ Stock Market LLC that it has not complied with the exchange’s filing requirement for continued inclusion in Listing Rules 5250(c)(1). The rule requires the timely filing of period financial reports with the SEC. The company failed to file its form 10-Q for the three-month period ended June 30, 2011, on a timely basis, violating the rules set by NASDAQ.

And there’s even more:

According to the SEC filing, Ener1 failed to meet an Oct. 17 deadline to file a quarterly report for the period ended June 30. In addition, the company said NASDAQ determined that Ener1 violated shareholder approval requirements in amending a line of credit.

Ener1 already was in danger of losing its NASDAQ listing because its stock price has not met the $1-per-share minimum price requirement to trade on the exchange since July. NASDAQ warned the company in September that it was not meeting listing requirements.

Ener1’s shares tumbled from more than $4 a share in January, when Vice President Joe Biden visited EnerDel’s Greenfield battery plant, to less than a dollar in a matter of months. Shares traded at 20 cents each Wednesday morning, down 6 cents since Tuesday’s close.

The company has experienced a series of setbacks this year. Most recently, several lawsuits have been filed, claiming the company misled investors about its financial condition.

Investors began filing the suits in August, days after Ener1 said it would restate earnings for 2010 and for the first quarter of this year. Ener1’s 2010 financial loss of $69 million eventually was restated to a loss of $165 million.

And, to top it all off, the company has even applied for $290 million in federal loan guarantees.

So, what do we have? A company that the Obama Administration thought should get a grant, because they were in an approved kind of business, that failed to make legally required filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and which allegedly misled its shareholders about its financial condition. How is it that the regulation-and-oversight-happy Obama Administration could give Ener1 a $118.5 million grant yet somehow fail to monitor what was going on with the company?1

EnerDel develops lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles, something the Obama Administration really, really likes. But, as THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL has reported previously, General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt has not been selling very well, and in the United Kingdom there are actually more public electric car charging stations than there are electric cars on the road. The Obama Administration, for political reasons, invested over a hundred million in taxpayer dollars in a company which couldn’t pay its bills, wouldn’t meet its legal requirements, and possibly misled investors, because it was in the business of developing batteries for cars that nobody wants to buy.

This is the kind of thing that happens when the government gets involved in picking winners and losers, based on what kind of business proposals the companies can make: some are going to turn out OK, and others are going to turn out bad. And that’s why the government shouldn’t be involved in this kind of thing at all: if Ener1 had been a good business investment, it shouldn’t have needed the $118.5 million grant, but would have attracted that kind of investment from the private sector.

________________________________

Filed under Economics, Energy, Solutions from the left. Tagged , , ,
7 Comments

Internet Identity Theft, GoDaddy, Terms Of Service Violations

Posted by on 26 January 2012, 6:49 am

I just got done sending a take-down notice to GoDaddy. I am not a lawyer and I obviously did not employ a lawyer to write my message, but I sent it to GoDaddy, the service I allege one of the two Iowa Liberal administrators used to create the counterfeit Truth Before Dishonor site.

My notice to GoDaddy:

You sold the domain name “truthbeforedishonor.com” to someone who intentionally counterfeited my site. He created his blogsite, Truth Before Dishonor, and his name “John Hitchcock”, later changed to “J. Hitchcock”, as a deliberate attack against my site and me. His whole intention was to steal my internet identity (in blog name and in author name, both) in order to defame me and cause harm to me. As his domain name and his author name are both intentional violations of your terms of services, I am requesting you immediately close his domain.

I am keeping a copy of this correspondence for future reference.

–John Hitchcock

http://truthbeforedishonor.wordpress.com

And the pertinent part of GoDaddy’s TOS agreement:

ii You will not impersonate another User or any other person or entity, or submit content on behalf of another User or any other person or entity, without their express prior written consent.

iv You will not use this Site or the Services found at this Site in a manner (as determined by Go Daddy in its sole and absolute discretion) that:
…
Promotes, encourages or engages in defamatory, harassing, abusive or otherwise objectionable behavior

As the radical Leftist internet Identity Thief, counterfeiter, and defamer agreed when buying his counterfeit TBD domain, he would not do exactly what he intentionally did in buying the name and in using my name in his publishings. The low-life Leftist who did this did so in direct violation of GoDaddy’s Terms of Service Agreement, which is standard-issue boilerplate legal terms that can be found practically everywhere.

As DNW noted over on The First Street Journal, I am in fact holding two comments from the ID thief in moderation, in case I need to use them for any particular legal purposes. It is my intent to close down the fraudulent and counterfeit site that was created for defamatory purposes and in an attempt to reduce my internet footprint through use of internet identity theft.
____________
Cross-Posted

Filed under Blogging Matters, Crime and Punishment, Culture and Society, Dirty Tricks, Liberal. Tagged , , ,
2 Comments

The President and his props

Posted by on 25 January 2012, 9:14 pm

President Obama, in his zeal to get some form of the idiotic “Buffett rule” passed, had Warren Buffett’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, at the State of the Union address yesterday. The esteemed Mr Buffett had said that he pays a lower efective tax rate than his secretary, because his income in the form of capital gains and dividends, is taxed at a lower rate.

Well, when you become a Presidential prop, people start looking into you. Forbes magazine did some calculations, and concluded that Mrs Bosanek must be paid in the $200,000 to $500,000 per year range.

The Forbes article relies on some assumptions, which are given in the article. But the Smoking Gun had some more solid facts:


Despite Unfair Tax Burden, Warren Buffett’s Secretary Was Just Able To Buy A Second Home

Despite a heavy tax burden, Warren Buffett’s secretary last year was able to purchase a second home in Arizona, a residence complete with a swimming pool and a “professional PGA putting green,” according to real estate records.

Debra Bosanek, 55, and her husband Gerald bought the 2100-square-foot home in Surprise, a city outside Phoenix. The Bosaneks paid $144,000 for the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath property (the purchase was financed, in part, by a $115,200 mortgage).

The principal Bosanek residence is in Bellevue, Nebraska, several miles from Buffett’s corporate headquarters in Omaha. The couple’s 2568-square-foot home, built in 2000, also has four bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths. But the modest property, which Sarpy County assessors last year valued at $217,716, offers no outdoor amenities for swimmers or golfers.

Bosanek, who last night attended the State of the Union speech, has become the face of President Barack Obama’s so-called Buffett Rule, which contends that the secretary of a wealthy individual should not pay a higher tax rate than their boss.

Normally, we think of secretaries as not paid all that well, though one would have assumed that the secretary for Warren Buffett would be near the top end of that scale. But when you agree to be a political prop for the President of the United States, you can count on losing your privacy.

As it happens, Representative John Boehner (R-OH), the Speaker of the House, decided to have his own political prop guests:

Speaker John Boehner will host some elected officials and business executives who had a stake in the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which Mr. Obama recently delayed. Republicans have criticized Mr. Obama’s decision. In a press release Tuesday, Mr. Boehner’s office refers to the four guests as “leaders and job creators hurt by the president’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline extension.”

Now, no one assumes that the Speaker’s guests are somehow playing the economically-downtrodden card, but their presence sure points out one thing: while President Obama wants to increase taxes on the top producers, Speaker Boehner and the Republicans are concentrating on the jobs this President has cost the nation with his decisions. As far as I am concerned, the creation of jobs for working people is far more important than trying to get higher taxes for a relatively small number of people. The Republicans are concentrating on the right things, and the President — as usual — on the wrong issues.

Filed under Barack Obama, Economics, Energy, Taxation.
77 Comments

“It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bail outs, no hand outs and no cop outs, an America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.” — President Barack Hussein Obama

Posted by on 25 January 2012, 5:43 pm

That was the applause line from his State of the Union address, a line with which I can agree completely.  But, given that line, what did the President actually propose?

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL listed some of President Obama’s proposed initiatives from last nights State of the Union speech:

Initiatives Outlined in the State of the Union Address:

The President Plans to Ask Congress to:

  • Create a “Buffett rule,” that would require households who earn more than $1 million per year to pay a minimum 30% federal income tax and limit deductions.
  • Require U.S. companies with foreign operations to pay a minimum tax on overseas profits.
  • Bar companies from deducting as a business expense costs associated with shutting U.S. operations to move them abroad.
  • Create a new tax credit to cover moving expenses for companies that close production overseas and bring jobs back to the U.S.
  • Reduce tax rates for manufacturers, with extra breaks for high-tech manufacturing.
  • Pay for proposed $200 billion spending on roads and bridges with some of the savings from the wind-down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • Reduce federal aid to colleges that raise tuition too high.
  • Provide funding to help people who have kept up their mortgage payments current to refinance at lower interest rates.
  • Double the number of work-study jobs for college students.
  • Ban farm subsidies for millionaires.
  • Ban insider trading by members of Congress.
  • Prohibit lobbyists from bundling campaign donations, and bundlers from lobbying.
  • Require the Senate to give certain presidential nominees an up-or-down vote within 90 days.

..And Do Himself

  • Create a new trade unit to investigate unfair practices in countries including China.
  • Set aside more federal land for natural gas extraction and require companies to disclose the chemicals they use in fracking, a method used to extract the gas.
  • Encourage new partnerships between businesses and community colleges to train workers for needed jobs.
  • Establish a financial crimes unit at the Justice Department to go after large-scale financial fraud.

Now, your editor doesn’t have problems with all of these proposals, but I certainly have problems with some of them. Ban farm subsidies for millionaires? If President Obama’s statement that we need to “apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts and no copouts,” then we shouldn’t have farm subsidies for anyone. The same rules would mean treating millionaires and the not so wealthy the same; President Obama, after his statement, proposed treating them differently, and giving a hand out to some people.

Require the Senate to give certain presidential nominees an up-or-down vote within 90 days? It seems to me that President Obama is asking for a different rule than Senator Obama wanted, given that he voted against cloture several times for some of President Bush’s nominees. However, I do support this idea.

Ban insider trading by members of Congress? Insider trading is already against the law.

Reduce tax rates for manufacturers, with extra breaks for high-tech manufacturing? I certainly support reducing tax rates for businesses, but that means all businesses. It should not mean separate rates for manufacturers, and it should not include “extra breaks for high-tech manufacturing.” That would be a special subsidy, for a favored group of businesses. Whatever happened to “no hand outs?”

Bar companies from deducting as a business expense costs associated with shutting U.S. operations to move them abroad, and create a new tax credit to cover moving expenses for companies that close production overseas and bring jobs back to the U.S.? There he goes again, saying that “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom,” and then proposing different rules.

Create a “Buffett rule,” that would require households who earn more than $1 million per year to pay a minimum 30% federal income tax and limit deductions? Once again, he is proposing different rules for different people.

Provide funding to help people who have kept up their mortgage payments current to refinance at lower interest rates? It would certainly be wise of people with good credit to refinance at lower interest rates, but why should the government be involved and subsidizing such? After all, people who have kept their mortgage payments current are precisely those people who have been able to do so without government help, and are, by definition, better off than those who were unable to do so. Why should the government tax other people, people who have had problems with their mortgages, and people who rent, to provide welfare for people who have been able to keep their mortgages current without government help?1 Somehow, that doesn’t seem to your editor the “apply(ing of) the same rules from top to bottom.”

I really do love the words of the President’s applause line, and support them completely: apply the same rules from top to bottom, and give no bail outs, no hand outs, with no cop outs, to anyone. The President doesn’t like lobbyists “bundling” campaign funds? Great! If the federal government actually treated everybody the same, from top to bottom, if the government stopped trying to “adjust” the economy or the business environment or favoring companies like Solyndra, which can make a splendid presentation but not perform to make a profit, the lobbyist population would drop precipitously; if the rules were always the same, for everybody, companies would have virtually no use for lobbyists.

So, the President had a great applause line, but, as far as I can see, he didn’t mean it, didn’t mean it in the slightest.

______________________________________

  1. Your editor would qualify for such; my mortgage is current, and always on time, because it is set up to come out of my checking account automatically on the 10th of the month. Why, if I can pay my mortgage as it is, should I be eligible for special help from the government? ↩
Filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Solutions from the left. Tagged ,
6 Comments

Sen. Casey (PA – Do What Sen. Reid Says Party) Ask Me to Comment on Adding 10 Months to the Tax Cut Bill from Last Year.

Posted by on 24 January 2012, 6:56 pm

Sen. Casey sent me an email to comment on the full year 2% tax cut that the Senate changed from 12 months to 2 months. Here’s my response:

This seemed too complicated for the Senate to figure out last December. The House sent you a Bill with the whole year of the tax cut. You and your cohorts passed a bill with 2 months and ran home. You had your chance and BLEW IT. I hope the House tells you to take a hike.
———————————————————————————————
Casey Insincere email:
Dear Friends,

Today, I will take part in the Payroll Tax Cut Conference Committee’s first meeting, as we begin our work to reach agreement on an employee payroll tax cut for all of 2012.

Just before the holidays, the payroll tax cut, which had been set to expire at the end of December, was extended for two months through February. This extension prevented a tax increase on 6.7 million workers in Pennsylvania and provided some good news for families going into Christmas.

The payroll tax cut reduces employees’ share of the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent of earnings. For the average Pennsylvania worker, this tax cut will boost take-home pay by nearly $1,000 in 2012.

The additional money in workers’ wallets and pocketbooks will help families buy gas, make car payments, pay for housing and put food on the table. The increased consumer spending will help sustain the economic recovery.

According to an independent analysis, there would be 19,700 fewer jobs in Pennsylvania in 2012 without the payroll tax cut. With almost half a million Pennsylvanians out of work, we cannot afford this hit to our economy.

The Conference Committee is comprised of 20 members of Congress – 4 Senate Democrats, 3 Senate Republicans, 5 House Democrats and 8 House Republicans. As the Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee and author of the Middle Class Tax Cut Act, I was appointed to be a Senate conferee.

The task before us is to reach an agreement before the end of February to make certain that this money stays in the pockets of middle class Americans.

I initially proposed that these cuts be paid for by a modest surtax on annual income exceeding a million dollars because I believe that is a fair and reasonable way to make sure we extend these middle class cuts without adding to our debt. I believe it also makes great economic sense. However, I am open to other ideas. The key is that we get this done.

The Conference Committee will also take up the issue of how to continue unemployment insurance for those workers who have been out of work for more than six months.

Some say that Washington only focuses when it’s up against a deadline. Well, we have until the end of February to figure this out. I’m confident we will.

Sincerely,

Filed under Democratic Party, Dems Bolt Talks, Dems Insincere, Dirty Tricks, Humor - maybe, Hypocrisy, Karmic Justice, Politics of Our Destruction, Solutions from the left, Utter stupidity.
4 Comments

The decisions not taken

Posted by on 22 January 2012, 2:30 pm

Joe Paterno, the long-time head football coach at Pennsylvanian State University, died this morning; he was 85.

Coach Paterno’s legacy should be one of greatness: he won more games in Division I College Football than anyone in history. He coached at Penn State for 62 years, the lass 44 as head coach. This article is not a eulogy for a great coach; I leave that to Jack McCallum, whose article you can read here.

Coach Paterno went out on a sour note, because of a decision he didn’t take: when told of a locker room incident involving a former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, and a boy the witness, assistant coach Michael McQueary, described as looking around ten years of age, an incident Mr McQueary said he told Coach Paterno was a rape, and which Mr Paterno says he heard as inappropriate touching — and only they know what was really said — JoePa didn’t go to the police, but to his supervisor.

What Coach Paterno did was consistent with the law in Pennsylvania, but it wasn’t consistent with the law of public opinion, and the Penn State Board of Trustees fired him. Joe Paterno’s legacy will always be tarnished by a decision which didn’t involve football at all. If someone had asked Coach Paterno, before he had ever heard the first thing about his close friend’s alleged sexual perversion, whether he would report anybody he caught raping a child to the police, he would have said, “Of course, I would!”

And if someone had asked Francesco Schettino, captain of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, whether he would flee his ship and passengers and crew in a time of danger, he would have said, “Of course not!” In fact, he did say just that, in an interview with a Czech ­travel writer with the wonderful name of Dana Emingerova, in ­December 2010. From the Mirror:

Francesco Schettino, Captain of the Costa Concordia, with Czech ­travel writer Dana Emingerova, December, 2010


Costa Concordia captain: I wouldn’t have wanted to be in charge of the Titanic

Francesco Schettino, 52, ­nicknamed “Captain Coward” for abandoning his passengers, also hinted at a selfish side as he laid bare the philosophy he lives by.

“I like to make people happy,” he said. “But at the same time I realise that every person lives in this world by himself alone and dies by himself. That’s why ­everyone goes his own way.

“I wouldn’t like to have been in the position of the captain of the Titanic, who navigated the ship through a sea full of icebergs.

“Nowadays the important ­decisions are made by more ­people to help the captain, so he doesn’t carry all of the decisions. But the ­final word is always given by the captain.” . . .

In the interview he said he felt immune from tragedy at sea. “With good preparation you can deal with every situation and avoid possible problems,” he said.

“The safety of our passengers is our highest goal. I have never been in a dangerous situation I haven’t managed. It is essential to be prepared for everything.”

But he said he would enjoy the challenge of a potential disaster.

“I like moments when something unpredictable happens, something that kicks you off the standard procedure. It is a challenge which ­entertains me,” he explained.

In words that may come back to haunt him, he told writer Dana: “Today ­everything is safer than it was in the past and we are ­better ­prepared… the navigation is more simple, we have perfect ­technical equipment. When a failure or defect ­happens, it isn’t as fatal as it used to be.”

Boasting of running his ship like a sergeant-major, he went on: “Because of safety on board it is run with almost a military ­discipline. The demands on the people on board are high.

“I get up each day at 5 or 6am. When the weather is bad I don’t sleep because as the captain I have to be on the captain’s bridge.

“When a situation more serious occurs, the captain has to have everything under his control.”

Would it ever have entered his mind that, faced with a real crisis, he would abandon his ship and crew and passengers to their fates? Probably not. But the captain who didn’t go down with his ship, being excoriated across the world as a coward, the man who gave the wholly lame, and universally unbelieved excuse that he tripped into a lifeboat, never really knew, never faced that decision before; when he was, suddenly his life and his safety became more important than his duty.

The vast majority of us have all taken decisions, in advance, the consequences of which we never had to face. Bernard Cardinal Law took decisions he probably never expected he would, protecting a sexually abusive priest rather than reporting him to the law, not because he didn’t care for the victims, but because, when the situation arose, he found protecting his friends and the Church more important. Coach Paterno probably never anticipated that, if he had ever been asked if he would report such a rape to the authorities, that the rapist involved would be his close friend. How many of us have said, to ourselves and our friends, “I’d rather be dead than a paraplegic,” or something along those lines? That is an easy thing to say, when the consequence of such a statement is not a decision to commit suicide; among people who really are significantly handicapped, the suicide rate is higher than the general population, but the vast majority of paraplegics do not kill themselves. Faced with the type of decision that so many of us talk about, the decisions taken by the handicapped are very different from what people think they would, or should, be.

How would I react if I were a soldier, and found myself in combat? I can say now, unhesitatingly, that I would do my duty with courage. But I have never been a soldier, never been in combat, and once the bullets started flying, once having to be brave in combat actually faced me, it’s possible that I would cower under cover, or flee. If someone asked me if I would turn in a man I discovered to be sexually abusing a child or had robbed a bank or had sold drugs, my answer would be an unquestioned, “Of course, I would.” But if I discovered that my best friend had been sexually abusing a child, or that my daughter has robbed a bank, or than my sister had been selling drugs, such a decision would send my best friend or my daughter or my sister to prison. Could I do it then, would I do it then?

If I decided, heck, I can’t send my best friend to jail as a pedophile; I’ll talk to him, and try to get him some help, so he doesn’t do this again, I would be responsible for that decision. And so the late Coach Paterno was responsible, even though he did act precisely in compliance with the law. Such decisions have consequences, and even though Mr Paterno’s decision was completely legal, it wasn’t one which could stand public scrutiny, and he paid for it with being fired from the position he loved, from the school he loved. We all bear the responsibility for our own decisions. Perhaps we can understand why some people wind up taking decisions we see as baffling, due to their circumstances, but the responsibility for those decisions remains.

Filed under Crime and Punishment, Culture and Society, Personal Responsibility. Tagged 
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