Wil Wade case: Is the NCAA Hypocritical

The day before the LSU-Maryland NCAA tournament game, there was an article in the Washington Post. The article was, in essence, a long 'perspective' (which is basically an opinion piece) by a writer, Barry Svrluga, who has been with the newspaper since 2003. 

The title of his perspective was,

"Enjoy Maryland vs. LSU for the basketball. But don’t forget the NCAA’s hypocrisy."

 

I am unable to say for certain what the writer thinks is the hypocrisy . 

However, I think it is because the LSU coach (up until a few days ago), Will Wade aggressively recruited a player and the NCAA ordered him suspended. This while the NCAA has a multiyear contract with with CBS and Turner to broadcast the men’s basketball tournament through 2032. The total tab, over 22 years: $19.8 billion.

In any event, LSU won the game by two points on a shot that a lot of people think was traveling should have been called.

 
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The Washington Post article is here.

AOC Hamburgers and Campaign Finance

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez produces about 10 tweets a day and lots of other output. She has over 2 million twitter followers, more than any other member of Congress.

One of her most famous pronouncements was that people should give up meat (this was part of the Green New Deal, which I sometimes call the Green Leap Forward - second image is AOC announcing this, Representative Markey of Massachusetts is next to her)

The first image is of AOC and her chief of staff. Her CoS is eating a hamburger. The CoS in that image is Saikat Chakrabarti. I'm not calling this hypocrisy because I have no evidence that Chakrabarti opposes eating meat (AOC's response to the charge of hypocrisy was to denounce the picture taker as 'creepy')

However, Chakrabarti is involved in another AOC issue. This one involves campaign finance.  During her campaign, AOC was very much in favor of transparency in campaign finance. However, it seems there were some PACs (controlled by Chakrabarti) buying 'services' from LLCs where the PACs and LLCs had board members in common and other suspicious linkages.  It is all very complicated and without having all the information on the finance and knowing campaign finance law, it is impossible to know if there was any wrong doing. However, I think the case of hypocrisy is pretty solid.  The AOC defense that 'this is all legal and there may some bookkeeping errors' is a decent indicator that she realizes she hasn't been transparent, but does not want to admit it.






Image of AOC and hamburger eating by Caleb Hull at this tweet.
Article on the campaign finance issue (sent me by Irwin) is here.

The College Bribery Case

A number of people have called out 'Hypocrisy' in regards to the news of a college entrance bribery and manipulation scandal.

One such report was at 
 foxbusiness which headlined the article,

College admissions scandal exposes Hollywood hypocrisy

The interesting thing to me is who has become the face of the 'hypocrisy'.  The news consistently pictures two actresses, Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. Perhaps this is because these people are known from their roles on Desperate Housewives and Full House respectively.  Or perhaps because they are photogenic. However neither of them are, near as I can tell, specifically advocates of college admission fairness and thus I can't really call them hypocrites.

A closer-to-hypocrisy case could be made for two other individuals involved in the case. These are Bill McGlashan and Manual Henriquez who are prominent bosses of financial organizations. McGlashan is known for advocating 'ethical' investing. Henriquez is known for advocating 'socially responsible' investing. However neither, as far as I can tell, ever really addressed the issue of college admission. Thus I can't give them hypocrisy credit either.

Of course, I consider their actions to be disgusting and certainly they deserve reprimands and possible criminal prosecution.

 

 

All four paid to get their kids admitted to various prestigious universities. 

Images: Bill McGlashan CEO of  the Rise Fund (without glasses), Manuel Henriquez CEO of Hercules Capital (with glasses), Felicity Huffman (of Desperate Housewives who has 3 gold necklaces in the image) and Lori Loughlin (of Full House). Pictures of the CEOs from a different article in foxbusiness

New Green Hypocrisy

 A twitter exchange occurred involving US Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) and Dr. Patrick Moore. Moore was one of the founders of Greenpeace but, as I understand it, left the organization when it began opposing chlorinating water and made other decisions of that type.
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AOC famously is an advocate of the Green New Deal and an audit of her campaign expenses showed she used automobiles far more than the subway, planes more than trains and so forth. AOC tweeted that 'she has to live in the world as it is'.

Moore said that the world as it is has subways and trains and doesn't require air conditioning and that AOC is a hypocrite.

Actually, I don't think AOC stated her case well. She should have said that since there were time constraints on her she had to take the fastest mode of transportation at the time but would be transitioning to a less energy intensive life style. Of course she would then have to carry out that transition and if she didn't, would then be an obvious hypocrite.


The AOC tweet is here.
Moore's tweet is here.