Senator Obama on Vouchers

Back in February 2008, there was some possibility that Senator Obama would be pro-school voucher. After all, his kids are in private school and part of his wife's compensation package is tuition support for dependents.

Since then, he has, apparently reversed his position.

Does the fact that he essentially receives a voucher for private school for his kids constitute hypocrisy given that he is against extending this priviledge to everyone.

Not the way I look at it.

Similarly, I don't think taking advantage of a tax management device that you believe is unwarrented, makes you a hypocrite. Nor is watching public television even though you believe govt shouldn't subsidize it.

Furthermore, on the subject of taking public funds for campaigning for President, Senator Obama once pledged to do this and now says he won't do so.

This is simply a matter of changing his mind - change you can believe in I guess.

However, it is not hypocrisy.

Gore Mansion Again



Back in February 2007, there were a number of reports that the family mansion belonging to former VP Al Gore in Nashville, TN used many times the amount of electricity and natural gas that similarly sized mansions did elsewhere in Nashville (and of course many, many times the amount used by an average house). I commented on these at the time.

Subsequent to these February 2007 reports, spokespersons for Mr. Gore stated that energy saving measures and alternate energy generating devices were being installed and subsequently work was done.

A new report indicates that the electricity consumption of the mansion has increased, rather than decreased since then. This new report does not contain information on natural gas consumption. A Gore spokesperson notes that the energy saving products were not completely installed until Nov 2007 and requests more time before a before/after comparison is made.

As noted back in 2007, although this looks bad for Mr. Gore, he may sincerely believe that the carbon offsets he purchases and the 'clean energy program' he participates in with the local electricity provider make him innocent of carbon-hogging. In addition, as noted before, there may be offices in the mansion and if, say, there are more people working in the mansion this year than in a previous year, it might account for some of the discrepancy.

Where to Drill for Oil; Where Not to Drill

President Bush has urged Congress to rescind statutory restrictions on oil exploration in various off shore areas but has not rescinded an Executive Order (dating back to 1990) that also restricts oil exploration. According to an Associated Press report, he considered doing this latter step but determined to delay doing so.

Is this hypocrisy (George thought it might be)?

Unfortunately, I don't really have the information to determine this. There are times that Congress passes a law that has some loose ends and the President issues an executive order that, ostensibly, allows the executive branch to tell the rest of the executive branch how to deal with the loose ends without making administrative blunders. I'm not sure if this is such a case.

UPDATE: On July 16, President Bush issued a new executive order allowing drilling.

Saletan is pro-hypocrisy on Hymenoplasty

(but with a caveat).

On the left is a doctor who, per his own testimony, performs 100 to 200 hymenoplasties a year. The patient is 23 years old.

This operation, is a type of plastic surgery which creates an artificial skin cover over the female sex organ. The skin cover is called the hymen. It is, from the point of view of the physical health of the patient, medically unnecessary. In ancient cultures having a hymen was a sign of virginity, although in many cases the hymen is torn off by action other than sexual intercourse.

Will Saletan, of Slate (a webzine owned by the Washington Post) dislikes the cultures (mostly Moslem but some others also) that gives women an incentive (and sometimes violently coerces them) to have this operation. However he acknowledges the existence of the culture and does not want to eliminate the choice of having this operation.

Saletan's article contains this core argument:

"...The virginity fetishism these women endure is sexist, hypocritical, and totally unrealistic. The pressure applied by families and communities to enforce it is obscene. One woman interviewed by the Times says her fiance's family is insisting that she go to Morocco so a doctor of their choosing can inspect her for proof of virginity. Don't even get me started on the mental sickness of insisting that your wife bleed on your wedding night. And to top it off, the procedure is a sham. Restoring your hymen doesn't make you a virgin.
You and I can sit here all day rehearsing these complaints. And some day, God willing, the twisted culture of virginity hypocrisy will wither away. But until it does, hypocrisy is its own best remedy. Help these women deceive their husbands and parents. If they want artificial hymen restoration, let them have it."

and here is a second hypocrisy noted in Saletan's piece:

"...The Journal [I'm unable to determine which Journal he is referring to] reports that Dr. Bernard Paniel, a Paris gynecologist, has modified the original Tunisian procedure to reduce invasiveness and coital pain and bleeding. In fact, the blood reduction is so effective that it threatens to expose the fraud. That's why he "provides his patients with vials of blood that can be spilled on wedding-night bed sheets."
Let's hear it for Dr. Paniel and his fellow fraud artists. Two wrongs don't make a right, but sometimes, they're better than one."

I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to the ideas noted in Saletan's argument. One problem I see is the cost. If the cost of these procedures is borne by society at large (via the French national health plan for example), the people who pay for these procedures are also victims of the culture that requires virgin brides. Another problem is that by using the procedure we may be perpetuating the culture.

I would consider this hypocrisy to be a fairly significant one, 4 on a 1-5 level (with 5 being very bad and 1 being harmless).

Another Blogger on Jet Setting Enviros

At a comment space on Amazon.com, a post entitled, Double Standards, Hypocrisy, and Hey! A Trip to Bonn notes,

"...is there anything quite like having 2,400 delegates from 162 Nations all jetting in to Bonn, Germany for a summit on--you guessed it--Climate Change?..."

I personally wonder if the author of this post did an analysis. If each of the people attending took public transportation for each of their trip and shut off all the electricity, etc. at their home during this conference, it might have made a slight decrease in total carbon emissions. Of course these assumptions are unlikely, however, what is likely is that each of the attendees considers their personal presence vital to this conference (on the other hand, this is, undoubtly, in many cases due to ego or bureaucratic game playing). The thing is that how many people are being hypocrites here is completely unknown.