Transportation Hypocrisy or incoherence

A letter to the Montgomery County Gazette accuses elected officials of hypocrisy regarding transportation.

First, the letter writer notes that he likes light rail more than bus rapid transit. He then says that Montgomery county is proceeding toward a rapid bus transit decision as opposed to light rail. He then notes that Baltimore has a light rail line (all these statements are presumed to be true). Then he makes the accusation:

"Why should Montgomery County be handed only the choice of a dedicated bus line when the politicians from Baltimore, sitting in the positions of authority at the State House in Annapolis, commit hypocrisy given the light rail in their area? What hypocrisy.

So per the letter writer, because there is light rail in Baltimore, then Montgomery County must have light rail also.  This would be hypocrisy only if light rail and bus rapid transit were identical in their cost, impact, service characteristics, etc. but they are not. Think of the argument this way, if handicapped people get handicapped parking, why shouldn't non handicapped people get handicapped parking?

I think the argument is incompetent. No hypocrisy.

Letter in full available here.

Tim Noah's Definition of Hypocrisy

Tim Noah is a senior editor at The New Republic.

In an opinion piece for that publication he writes about Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard U. who is running for Senate in Massachusetts.

Warren claimed American Indian ancestry on her professor ID at Harvard (and earlier did so at another University). She denied remembering that she had made this claim but later admitted it. It also turns out that nobody has been able to identify any American Indian ancestry for Warren.

Noah, who perhaps for ideological reasons, seems to like Warren comes up with several points defending her. The one that interested me is this,

"...Warren may have used her Native American ancestry to get ahead in the cutthroat world of legal academia. We don’t know that she did, and she says she didn’t. But let’s assume she’s lying and that she did make an effort to inform potential employers that she was part Native American. That would be hypocritical if Warren were known to oppose affirmative action. But Warren, a liberal Democrat, almost certainly supports affirmative action.."

Apparently, in Noah's definition, if you support affirmative action, it is NOT hypocritical to lie about your ancestry it but if you oppose affirmative action, it would be hypocritical to lie your ancestry..

I can't follow the logic there. Lying about ancestry to achieve an appointment as a professor is a distinct action that would seem to undermine the whole point of affirmative action as well as being inherently immoral and.or unethical. But maybe Noah doesn't see it that way. .


Noah's opinion piece is here.

National Security Hypocrisy

The NY Times essentially states that the President of the US is a hypocrite in a long deeply sourced article. Here are some excerpts from the article (the image is from the article and shows President Obama with two advisers):

"...Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war...Nothing else in Mr. Obama’s first term has baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike as his aggressive counterterrorism record. His actions have often remained inscrutable, obscured by awkward secrecy rules, polarized political commentary and the president’s own deep reserve.. . a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.... the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers....A phalanx of retired generals and admirals stood behind Mr. Obama on the second day of his presidency, providing martial cover as he signed several executive orders to make good on campaign pledges. Brutal interrogation techniques were banned, he declared. And the prison at Guantánamo Bay would be closed. What the new president did not say was that the orders contained a few subtle loopholes. They reflected a still unfamiliar Barack Obama, a realist who, unlike some of his fervent supporters, was never carried away by his own rhetoric. Instead, he was already putting his lawyerly mind to carving out the maximum amount of maneuvering room to fight terrorism as he saw fit...a new definition of “detention facility” was inserted, excluding places used to hold people “on a short-term, transitory basis.” Problem solved — and no messy public explanation damped Mr. Obama’s celebration. Without showing his hand, Mr. Obama had preserved three major policies — rendition, military commissions and indefinite detention — that have been targets of human rights groups since the 2001 terrorist attacks...Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent....In the wake of Mr. Awlaki’s death, some administration officials, including the attorney general, argued that the Justice Department’s legal memo should be made public. In 2009, after all, Mr. Obama had released Bush administration legal opinions on interrogation over the vociferous objections of six former C.I.A. directors. This time, contemplating his own secrets, he chose to keep the Awlaki opinion secret.." 

At least a few conservatives have essentially said "Hooray for Hypocrisy". Rich Lowry, of the National Review, essentially says that the Bush doctrine of counter terrorism was correct and now that Obama is doing it, the left agrees in that the left hasn't been critical of Obama. Mr. Lowry's view is capsulized in this quote, 

"..For most of the left, the highest principle of just-war theory is licet si Obama id faciat (it’s okay if Obama does it). This is how Gitmo, formerly a standing repudiation of all that we hold dear as a nation, becomes an afterthought when it is owned and operated by one Barack H. Obama...".

I like the support of hypocrisy. However, neither the NY Times nor Lowry actually gives a quote by candidate Obama that matches an action by President Obama. Without quotes it is just a plausible accusation rather than an example and it is also plausible that the candidate Obama used nuances in his, for example, seemingly anti Drone strike.

A similar 'I like the hypocrisy' opinion piece is in the Washington Post on-line. It is written by a Mark Thiessen. This one also does not provide any 'Obama is a hypocrite' documentation or citations but does provide a citation that Amnesty International called for arrest of George Bush. Thiessen implies that Amnesty International has not issued a peep of protest about Obama's actions (however, I don't see a good way to provide documentation of a none event other than get Amnesty International to make an actual statement saying they think Obama isn't doing anything wrong - and I'm pretty sure Amnesty Intl doesn't do stuff  like that).

NY Times article is here.
Lowry's opinion piece is here.
Thiessen opinion piece is here.