11/25/2008

Another reason why political donations shouldn't be listed publicly

Andrew Breitbart explains what is happening to those who donated to Proposition 8 in California here.

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posted by John Lott at 2:05 AM

4 Comments:

Blogger juandos said...

Wow! This is a toughie...

I for one am for public airing of who gave what to which candidate in principle and for the most part in practice...

The fact that hooliganism is resulting from the airing of these lists I think is more of an indictment of the people involved than of the public listings itself...

Where is law enforcement when these hooligans step over the line and physically attack people?

Why they are being politically correct by letting the whining losers throw temper tantrums...

11/25/2008 7:00 AM  
Blogger Martin G. Schalz said...

Thank you, Dr. Lott. At first I was disgusted by those who would trample free speech, and 'blacklist' not only people, but businesses who have, or had should I say, employees who donated money to oppose prop 8.

Joe McCarthy and his communist witch hunt came to mind here.

Then came the reality check of just who is being 'attacked', and who or what is not.

Mr. Breitbart did a wonderfull job of pointing out the hyprocrisy of the Far Left folks who are behind this mess.

Let's see if I understand this correctly. It is okay to protest at a Mormon Church, but they refuse to go down to a local Mosque to protest against the Islamic position on Gay Marriage?

That put a smile on my face. I would suggest that they protest at the nearest 'biker bar'. Maybe at a Rodeo perhaps. How about a Nascar Race? That would give them some prime time coverage!

Now that I have taken care of my 'Funny Bone', I decided to go to the Big Three Network sites ABC, NBC, and CBS, to see what I could find for 'prop 8 protesters' by using each sites search feature.

ABC has a nice piece about how the California Fair Political Practices Commission is going to investigate the Mormon Church. Gee, how nice of them.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=6326677

CBS had 4 stories, and NBC had none.

I truly wish I had the time to investigate and quantify the data, but I do not. I did notice one story at CBS that detailed a Gay group that went to Salt Lake City to protest. To say that the story was slanted towards the protestors, would be a very mild statement indeed...

11/25/2008 9:50 AM  
Blogger ICONIC FREEDOM said...

This is a hard pill to swallow, I know, but it’s more reason why government should be out of the business of moralizing behavior through mob mentality voting and subsidizing ANYTHING that doesn’t represent the pluralistic nation we live in; if all people, regardless of status, cannot partake then it doesn’t belong in government.


If you’re going to uphold freedom and choice, it has to be freedom and choice EVEN for those things which you dislike or have distaste, lest you create a target for your own back for when others seek your behavior or choices as unacceptable or disagreeable. You’ll want others to support you and say, “who cares, let them be for they are not infringing on my civil liberties to live my life, earn a living and do as I wish in this nation”.

NO citizen has a RIGHT to not be offended or boycotted.


GOVERNMENT blacklists people from working.

Citizens create boycotts.

There's nothing wrong with individuals exercising their free speech rights through free markets to make their voices heard through their dollars spent or withheld.

If you are not able to accept ownership of your choices in this life and be response-able to them and the possible outcomes, I suggest you don’t make those choices.

If that choice leads to a boycott of your business, so be it. YOU MADE A CHOICE TO TAKE A STAND.

If someone were purchasing your goods BECAUSE you made the choice in the affirmative, no one would have a problem with that, now would they?

Again, I would uphold a church deciding to fire a woman who had an abortion if that is their policy and does not uphold their values as a private business.

There’s a difference between being government funded and being a private business.

When private businesses get involved, the same freedom we want the market to have in order to function properly, must also be upheld so that the owners have the free right to hire and fire based on their values and job requirements.

If the owner hired someone who was previously a pedophile you’d want that owner to have the right to take a stand and fire that person because that employee didn’t uphold the company values of “whatever” his religion might be or the owner considered him a threat. What do you think churches do with some of their priests who have behaved as such?

If you're going to moralize others' behavior, be prepared to have them do the same to you.

11/25/2008 8:54 PM  
Blogger Antonio A. Prado said...

It appears that some supporters of Prop 8 are giving the initiative's backers a dose of the same thing that Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination in commerce has done to them.

Oddly enough, it is the free market at work and some folks are crying fowl. As unattractive as it seems to some people, no business should be forced to do business with someone it doesn't want to conduct trade with.

Consequently, if people do not want to trade with a certain business, they shouldn't have to. And anyone is within his rights to say that others shouldn't do business with that merchant either.

The problem that is arising here is that people complain when it's the "wrong side" doing the boycotting.

This is the problem in general with blanket actions such as protests and boycotts that paint a broad brush or the sweeping actions of government, and why they should be limited - the former my moral sanction and manners and the latter by constitutional limitations.

I recall that when the wise commentator Ken Grubbs was my deskmate at Investor's Business Daily he commented one day about whatever action of government we were talking about that day (I forgot what it was exactly) shouldn't be OK only "when the good guys are in charge," because someday they won't be.

The problem here is not the existence of the information, but how it is used. What we're seeing is what someone here described as "hooliganism," and what I wrote in a comment on another post as part of a decline in the civility of the lowest common denominator of the citizen political participant.

On the other hand, the public can benefit if information such as this is analyzed to look at trends and study what macro forces are using money to move government (in other words, who is going to raise your taxes or limit your property rights). There is great value in knowing what movements or organizations support a candidate or organization because it can help voters figure out who the unknown name in their ballot is allied with, and whether or not they should vote for them.

But this not that, for sure.

I'm fairly certain that this will pass and fade away, particularly if these miscreants stop getting so much attention.

I suspect correspondent inference theory is at work here. We might be inferring that these people are trying to hurt Business A or Business B or make this church or that group look bad and lose money or support.

But these are moves for attention that work much in the same way that terrorism is intended to spread fear and alter public behavior, not necessarily kill millions of people as some believe.

Stop giving these miscreants attention and they'll have to find a better, hopefully more civilized way to get attention.

Though I must give credit that a boycott is far more civilized and rational than the acts of violence and property damage that were perpetrated in the days after the election.

11/30/2008 10:15 PM  

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