The Oily Robert Reich

 

I like this one because the text and image is on the same tweet.

Robert Reich was a policy advisor and Secretary of the Department of Labor in the first term of the Clinton Administration.

After he left, he wrote a book "Locked in the Cabinet".  I read excerpts of this book (second image) and, from what I read the whole book was "Things would have been great if everybody had listed to me".

Since he left government he has had a number of professorships, been a commentator on TV, chair of various non governmental organizations, won all kinds of awards. Notwithstanding that, I've never heard any thing from him that wasn't just a more lugubrious version of a piece of conventional wisdom or a hack political response to something. 

In the twinned tweets, one could call it hypocrisy. However, what keeps me from this is that Reich probably doesn't even believe what he is saying in the second tweet.  Oil companies do not have US based 'excess capacity' that is turned down or up *the Saudi do have this). Wells are drilled and produce as much as the owners can get out of them for as long as they can (this is because of the high capital investment which needs to be recovered). At the margin, a well may produce for a few weeks more less depending on the price that day.  Also wells are taken off line because of hurricanes sometimes (e.g. Hurricane Ida in late August and September 2021 took a lot of capacity out for several weeks).

Of course it is possible that Reich is ignorant enough to believe this.  Back in 2017 he wrote for Newsweek hypothesizing that Antifa protests were organized by Trump or Breitbart.

Congressman touts benefit of law he voted against

 

U.S. Representative Gary Palmer (first image), who represents Northern Alabama, took credit for an  $350M highway earmark in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, a.k.a., BIF).

He voted against the bill.

This may be obnoxious but not hypocritical.

The BIF is one of those aggregate bills with thousands of earmarks (the bill language contains over 1400 earmarks in 1700 pages) and covering many different types of infrastructure including highways, transit, ports, broadband, electrical transmission and more.

Unfortunately, I have personal experience with administering portions of previous aggregate bills, which if they cover most of the government are called Omnibus Bills or if they only cover a portion, miniBus Bills. These typically have worthwhile projects and wasteful projects and sometime the project is so poorly defined it takes considerable time to figure out what it was supposed to be.  

 

My own Representative has lauded several earmarks he got into the bill for replacing diesel buses with electric buses on the premise that this will relieve traffic congestion. Although obviously a false claim (it might even make traffic congestion worse as the current generation of electric buses brake down more often than the current generation of diesel buses but it might save money if the information in the chart is correct, it is from a 2016 study by a graduate student) that is not hypocritical either.

An article on a fire involving an electric bus is here

Yahoo article with image is here

 Earmark summary is here.

Hyprocrisy Airlines

This is another in the 'fighting climate change by emitting more carbon' stories.  I've done this before but because the Daily Mail used 'hypocrite' in a cute headline and because they had excellent photography, I decided to do yet another post on it (although I ended up using BBC photos because of a formatting issue - the first image is of a 787 from Bangladesh, the second an Airbus A 319 from Cyprus)

I'll give the Daily News and BBC thoroughness credit for covering the various pieces of aircraft and the motorcades (the US had I think the largest motorcade and largest delegation). 

The Daily News also did various calculations, e.g., the private jets alone put some 13,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (I have no way of checking these figures) and the US delegation put some 2.2 million pounds of carbon in the atmosphere counting planes, helicopters and motorcade (I don't know why they used different metrics).

I wonder at thought process of the world leaders involved. Did President Biden say, "I want to make sure we send more people than any other country, that will show leadership".  This seems pretty stupid but I've heard important people say similar things when I worked for the government. Did Jeff Bezos say, "Well it will be a good chance to meet people and make contacts to expand Amazon." Did the leaders of Cyprus and Bangladesh say, "This will be a good way to get money from rich countries."

It seems to me that President Biden could defend the large delegation saying that 'we need to improve staff knowledge so we can develop better legislation" or something like that.  Of course, this seems so silly as to be laughable (you could read and call people on the phone or have zoom meetings to get knowledge after all) but perhaps Biden thinks like that. Thus, I will not declare it hypocrisy on his part.

The Daily Mail article is here.

An article a bit less critical of the political leaders from the BBC is here.

Another Face Mask Hypocrisy Situation

 

Back in 2020 Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey signed a face mask executive order.  It required 

"...individuals to wear face coverings in outdoor public spaces when it is not practicable to socially distance and keep a six-foot distance from others, excluding immediate family members, caretakers, household members, or romantic partners, except where doing so would inhibit that individual’s health, where the individual is under two years of age, or in situations where individuals cannot feasibly wear a face covering, such as when eating or drinking at outdoor dining areas."

 

The rules for indoor public spaces were even more strict.

The image shows Murphy addressing an event which was hosted by a teacher's association (Essex County Education Association). Other images from that event show people taking group pictures and almost nobody wearing a face mask.

I'm not sure if this event is considered indoors or outdoors or if the people sitting at tables had completed eating and drinking but soon after these images appeared at the teacher's union tweeter feed, they were deleted (not soon enough because the images were grabbed). 

The fact that the images were deleted seems to me to indicate that the Association boss(es) realize that this is hypocrisy.

Office of the NJ Governor's executive order is here.

Article in ShoreNewsNetwork about the event (including the images) is here.

 

Mayor London Breed's Maskless Dancing

San Francisco has, what I understand to be, one of the most strict covid masking rules in the USA.

Per the news articles, it requires masks indoors, vaccinated or not, unless the person is actively eating or drinking.

I infer there is not an exception for dancing, singing or having pictures taken with friends (the mayor is second to left in, the first image and in the middle in the second image - both images from the SF Chronicle story).

Both the Fox News report and the SF Chronicle report give a video clip of the mayor singing and dancing without a mask  (the reporter taking the pictures also seemed to not have a mask)..

 

Apparently, the Mayor's defense of her action is,

"While I'm eating and drinking I'm going to keep my mask off," Breed, a Democrat, told reporters while calling the story a "distraction," according to FOX 2 of the Bay Area. "And yes, in the time while we're drinking like everyone else there, we were all having a good time and again all vaccinated."

The mayor insisted the focus of media attention should be on live music returning to San Francisco and said that putting a mask on in between eating and drinking isn’t "realistic." 

This seems to be an admission that she knew what the rules were (in fact she was responsible for the rules) and broke them knowingly.  

That's hypocrisy.

Fox News report here.

SF Chronicle report here.

AOC's "Tax the Rich" Dress

 

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, went to a NY Metropolitan Opera charity event with a nice dress. However the dress had large letters on it, saying "Tax the Rich". AOC had a matching handbag as seen in the second image where she is accompanied by, what seems to be her date, maybe her boyfriend.

The event cost regular donors $30,000 to attend but AOC probably got in for free. AOC says that it is because, “NYC elected officials are regularly invited to and attend the Met due to our responsibilities in overseeing our city’s cultural institutions that serve the public.”  

I suspect AOC was given a ticket by a supporter or by the event organization, for profit, Conde-Nast, not the Met. This may result in an ethics investigation and may have interesting consequences tax wise, but that is not my focus.

Personally I don't think a US Representative has any municipal responsibilities, that is, AOC is incorrect about this, but that isn't germane to the issue of hypocrisy.

People have pointed out that this event is for rich people. These people take the $30k, or a large portion of it, as a charitable deduction thus reducing their tax liability.

Is this hypocrisy? 

I would say "No" because AOC never said, "People should not go to elite charitable events" at least as far as I know.

It has also been pointed out that at the event, AOC and the elite did not wear masks but the staff, serving drinks and hors d'oeuvres and taking pictures, wore masks (see 3rd image) but that is another matter and AOC is not responsible for covid related masking rules.

 

Also, the dress designer, Aurora James is, per one report, rich, owes taxes to both the US and the State of NY and has accepted public covid impact subsidy.

 

Finally and ironically, people have pointed out that AOC's dress looks like the "Chick-Fil-A" logo if you put it on its side and make it cursive.

From an article in the NY Post 

about Aurora James here

tweet showing large masked staff getting AOC ready for party is here 

 

 

Representative Cori Bush on security and policing

 U.S. Representative Cori Bush  (D-MO) spends a great deal on personal security. I'm not sure how much her office spends as opposed to the general taxpayer but it is in the tens of thousands. Bush is also in favor of defunding the police. 

In fact, in this video, she takes the interesting position that she needs the personal security to fight for defunding the police. 

I don't follow the logic here and since I can't follow the logic I'm not able to determine the hypocrisy.

Bush also states that she receives death threats but there is evidence that, at least some of the hate mail she has received was uploaded from from her own office.

The image of Bush was taken from this second link.

Mayor Muriel Bowser a 'Mask for Covid' Hypocrite

Muriel  Bowser (she is at top right in the image) is Mayor of Washington D.C.  I met her at an event once when I was the on duty mashgiach. This was long before the pandemic.

On 29 July, Mayor Bower announced that masks would be required at indoor events beginning at 5am on 31 July 2021.  

 

Between the announcement and the deadline, Bowser had a birthday party unmasked (she is 2nd from right in the second image, Dave Chappelle is in the middle) and then officiated at a wedding unmasked. 

 

There was a reception the next morning, which was 31 July. The event was related to the wedding  and began after the 5am deadline for masks. Bower was unmasked. She has received a fair amount of criticism for this.

She could have apologized and said, "I got confused between 5am and 5pm) or some other excuse but as near as I can tell she has not. The Mayor is pretty popular and perhaps doesn't really care about this kind of criticism.

Anyway, assuming that she knew what she was doing, I will call it hypocrisy.

Article on this (in British Paper) is here.

Gwen Berry and the flag

 A few days ago, Gwen Berry qualified to represent the US in the Summer Olympics.  

She refused to stand at attention for the national anthem. 

Back in 2015, after winning a hammer throwing event, Berry celebrated with the US flag.

Not hypocrisy.  Just changing her opinion.

Interestingly, her current opinion is that the 3rd stanza of the anthem, which is almost never sung, insults black American slaves (she says this is obvious). There has been debate about this for years but no substantial percentage of opinion maintains that it refers to American slaves, in fact this contention seems to me to be illogical. The two predominate opinions are that it refers to British indentured sailors as slaves or that it refers to a small contingent of British soldiers comprised of freed slaves. Berry also contends that the anthem was 'sprung on her by surprise' which is a comment on her honesty as she has been competing in sports events for many years and should know the protocol by now. A few years before the 2015 picture was taken Berry made a number of racist tweets. This, while obnoxious is also not connected with hypocrisy.

 

Image 1 comes from an article from the AP carried by MSN. Image 2 is from the Daily Mail (a UK media company).

Two Updates on Gretchen Whitmer

 

Update 1. Continuing to make Covid rule violation news is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. 

In this case the rule was not to dine with more than 6 people without doing distancing.

Whitmer apologized saying that initially there were only 4 but then more and more people showed up (somewhat believable as the image shows that tables have been moved together - faces of elected and appointed officials have been blurred out).

 Article regarding the restaurant issue in Detroit news is here.

Update 2. The private plane Whitmer used to charter a trip to Florida was not approved for charter service.  This is not a direct hypocrisy issue but affects the reliability of statements made by Whitmer.

Detroit news report on the charter plane issue is here.

 

 

Sponsor of Sex Traffic Legislation Arrested Under His Own Bill

 

Dave Hunt (in first image) was, a few years ago, the speaker of the Oregon State Legislature.  He currently is on the board of a Community College (second image shows their basketball team recently) and is also CEO of a public corporation (which I think does lobbying for the College). About 10 years ago, he sponsored legislation that made sex solicitation for commerce a crime. The legislation passed. Earlier this year he was arrested and charged under statutes established by the legislation he sponsored. His identity as one of 8 people arrested was revealed earlier this month.

 Hunt denies the charges.

This may be disgusting but I'm not calling it hypocrisy.

1. The arrests were the culmination of a sting operation involving, among other things, putting ads on human trafficking websites, so he may claim entrapment.

2. He may be innocent.

3. Even if he is guilty, he is not reported as saying 'no one should solicit'.  In fact, his sponsorship of the legislation may be because he realized some people, such as himself, need more disincentives to be able to avoid this. 

It is tragic and, to many people incomprehensible, why people would engage in this.  It is also frightening that someone who looks so normal and has held responsible positions would do this. However, I have some sympathy for people whose inner demons dominate them.

Local media coverage is here.

Update on the Grechen Whitmar Story

 

 The State of Michigan released more information yesterday about the Michigan to Florida roundtrips (yes plural) that the Governor had taken.

They said there were at least 3 trips. Whitmar used a Gulfstream G -280 to take them. She got the G-280 as a 'loan' from billionaire (or near billionaire) friends. There is no information yet on whether these friends have business before the State of Michigan.

Whitmar says she didn't want to use a scheduled flight because she faces death threats (although she was the recipient of a recent 'Kennedy Courage Award').  She also didn't want to use a private charter because of the cost ($40k by one estimate).

Also interestingly, the Gulfstream G-280 is made under contract to Gulfstream by Israel Aerospace Industries.

 

Reporting on this is here.

Governor Gretchen Wittmer and the Trip to Florida

Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer has asked the residents of her state to avoid travel.  She also specifically blamed 'snowbird', i.e., Michigan residents winter vacationing in Florida or elsewhere in the south, for the recent increase in Covid infections in Michigan.

Her office recently confirmed that she had traveled outside the state several times in the past few months and that one trip was to Florida.  That office stated that the purpose of the Florida trip was for Whitmer to visit her grandfather who has a chronic condition that was life threatening.  

Assuming that the 'visit with her grandfather' story is true and there was no 'have a beer on the beach' part to the trip, I think Whitmer gets a pass on this.  However, her 'avoid travel' comments to the Michigan residents should have included caveats with respect to trips such as 'family emergencies' or something of that kind.

This is really not an important 'hypocrisy' event (probably not even an incident of hypocrisy). However I posted partly to show, what I think is the resemblance of Whitmer to  the evil nurse Ratched who was played by Louise Fletcher  in the  1975 movie "One Flew... House". This character is consistently named as one of the best 'evil women' in movies. The movie itself is frequently credited with the de institutionalization of mentally ill people in the US. This, in turn, is sometimes blamed for the scale of the homeless situation in the US as well as the incidence of mass shootings.  I take no position on de institutionalization or its impact, not having time to research it.

 Post on Governor Witmer's Florida Trip is here.

The Wall St Journal had an opinion on their 4/21/2021 "Best of the Web" site,

 David Eggert reports for the Associated Press on the plucky Michigander who was not about to let misguided state policy deny her a chance to visit a cherished family member. Gretchen Whitmer, a resident of Lansing, appears to have hit her personal lockdown limit sometime within the last several months. And haven’t we all? But what’s especially encouraging about her rejection of Michigan Covid policy is that she is its principal author. 

Anti Drunk Driving Activist Arrested for DUI

Sharon Har is an elected representative in the Hawaii Legislature.

She has supported increased enforcement to deal with drunk driving.

She was recently arrested and charged with DUI (image is her mugshot at arrest). 

Does this make her a hypocrite?

No.

She didn't say, "I will never DUI" or "no one should DUI".

On the other hand she may be a bad person as subsequent to the arrest she claimed she was taking prescription cough medicine and mistakenly had a beer with it.  This seems suspicious and the police have said that she didn't mention the cough syrup at the arrest but that they could smell alcohol from 3 feet away.

 

Articles on this are here, here, and here.

 

David French and the Syria Bombing

 

David French (image from article about him on wikipedia) is a political commentator. He writes for National Review among other outlets. He is a lawyer by training and served on active duty in Iraq during Desert Storm as a Judge Advocate.

He is noted for being an anti Trump Conservative.

 

Back on April 12, 2018, he warned that bombing Syria without Congressional Authorization would be imprudent and unconstitutional.  Then President Trump ordered bombing of Syria the next day and the bombing was

carried out on April 14, 2018. This was after a Syrian chemical bomb attack on civilians.

In 2021, he praised President Biden for bombing Syria despite their being no Congressional Authorization. 

 

Personally, I think there is a good case to be made that the 2018 bombing was unconstitutional but similar actions have been carried out by a number of Presidents over the past 50 years, so even if unconstitutional, it is more or less SOP.  

More to the point, is French being hypocritical?  French's only defense here is that he is OK with unconstitutional bombing as long as it is 'prudent' and in that case it deserves 'praise'.  That defense is so implausible that I discount it and judge him a hypocrite.  

Similar 'Trump bombing was wrong but Biden's is fine' has been made by other people. My favorite of this genre was by Amy Siskind (a former Wall Street finance type, now a leftist writer) who said that since Biden didn't issue a mean tweet to go with the bombing, it was OK (I can't link to it since she removed the tweet after it was ridiculed - image is from a screen shot by, SirajAHashm, a critic of Siskind).

 

 French's 2018 tweet is here.

French's 2021 tweet is here.

Hashm's tweet with Siskind's tweet captured is here.

Jamie Raskin 2017 opponent of Congressional Election confirmation is now impeachment manager

 

Jamie Raskin is a US Representative for Maryland's 8th Congressional District. It is one of the most obviously politically drawn, a.k.a., Gerrymandered, districts. I live in MD's 6th Congressional District, just outside the 8th which is also Gerrymandered but less so and new district lines are to be drawn in 2021 so I might be in a new district next year.

Back in 2017, Raskin sought to challenge the Electoral College Vote and the Congressional confirmation of that vote.

Now in 2021, Raskin is one of the managers of the impeachment of former President Trump because, among other things, Trump sought to challenge the Electoral College Vote and the Congressional confirmation of that vote.

Is this hypocrisy?

The difference between the two cases is not qualitative and if that were the only criterion, Raskin would be hypocritical. However the difference between the two cases is massive in a quantitative sense. Raskin's anti Electoral College activity was limited to a few days, lower keyed than Trump's comments and not tweeted to millions of his followers over a period of several weeks.  

So I'll say Raskin is a hypocrite but minimally so.

 

Regarding this issue, information on Raskin in 2017 is here and here.

Pirate Hypocrisy

   

Jamie Goodall is an historian. She authored an op ed in the Washington Post. It was published the Friday before the Superbowl. 

The op ed contains her opinion that that calling the Tampa NFL team the Buccaneers (their logo is the first image) is
bad because,

 "...it takes these murderous thieves who did terrible things — like locking women and children in a burning church — and makes them a symbol of freedom and adventure, erasing their wicked deeds from historical memory. These were men (and women) who willingly participated in murder, torture and the brutal enslavement of Africans and Indigenous peoples...."

The second image is this same Jamie Goodall with a tatoo of a sexy female pirate.  Her pirate is quite friendly compared with the team's logo.

Perhaps she got the tatoo and then changed her mind but didn't get the tatoo removed because it costs a lot and is painful.  Other than that this seems hypocritical to me, although it also seems more idiotic than hypocritical.

 

Op ed in the Washington Post is here.

Article on the subject is here.

Snow Travel Hypocrisy

 I don't get too many hypocrisy related weather posts.

New York City has a major snowstorm going on today (up to 2 feet).

Governor Andrew Cuomo went on TV, radio, etc. and told everybody to stay off the road.

Then he got in his car and drove to New York City.

This would be plain hypocrisy except for, first, the presumption that Cuomo's instructions do not apply to emergencies and second that his presence in New York City constitutes an emergency.  I'm OK on the first point. On the second point, it seems to me a truly ridiculous premise.

However, it is possible Cuomo is so detached from reality that he believes this.

Thus I'll call it probable hypocrisy.

 

Story is here.

Biden and Executive Orders

 

Appearing on NBC in October 2020, then former VP Joe Biden said, "You can't Legislate through Executive Orders, this is not a dictatorship..."

In the first few days of his administration, now POTUS Joe Biden issued 30 Executive Orders, more than any President had ever done in their first week.

Is this hypocrisy?

My answer is 'No' or at least 'not yet' because we don't know how many total executive orders Biden will issue or how extensive they will be.

The comment about executive orders appears at the end of this video.

Comparing Biden and others on Executive Orders in first week from this website:

• President Joe Biden: 22 executive orders in first week
• President Donald Trump: 4 executive orders in first week
• President Barack Obama: 5 executive orders in first week
• President George W. Bush: 0 executive orders in first week
• President Bill Clinton: 2 executive orders in first week
• President George Bush Sr: 1 executive order in first week
• President Ronald Reagan: 0 executive orders in first week

 

As of recent calculation, the leaders in total executive orders are-

FDR: 3721

Wilson: 1803

among recent Presidents-

GW Bush: 291

Obama: 276

Trump: 220

 

These numbers come from here. 

2020 Global Warming Policy Forum Award for Climate Hypocrisy goes to President Xi Jinping

 

These are not my awards. I had nothing to do with it.

However, it is interesting that an NGO is devoting space to this issue.

The winner for 2020 was President Xi Jinping of the PR of China.  From 2000 to 2018, the PRC roughly tripled its carbon footprint while producing five and ten and twenty and 40 year carbon reduction plans.

The "Emmas" are named for the 2019 winner, actress Emma Thompson (born in 1959, she portrayed Professor Sybill Trelawney in three Harry Potter movies) who took first class jet round trip to attend a global warming related event and after some back and forth actually admitted it was somewhat hypocritical. 

 

I am not going to evaluate either award as I don't really know the criteria used by the Global Warming Policy Forum (GPWF).

 

 

 

GWPF announcement of its 2019 award winner.

GWPF announcement of its 2020 award winner.