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Author Topic: flag@whitehouse.gov
BlackBlade
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Orincoro: By "not good" I don't mean it has no meaning or importance. Rather it's one event, so it does not do a good job of shading the entire church as a whole. The church has been involved in many states all considering legislation dealing with SSM. That, to me, is a better indicator of how the church approaches the subject typically.

Personally I feel whoever the church was relying on for political advice failed them quite significantly.

I don't think you are being unfair, from your perspective I can understand your criticisms of the church. The leadership of the church however do not live very wealthy. While the church does bring in alot of money, I'd wager (ironic choice of verb) the majority of the money brought in is used towards charitable causes.

edit: I don't think we are going to see a sustained increase in the church getting involved in political matters and using church funds to do so.

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
While the church does bring in alot of money, I'd wager (ironic choice of verb) the majority of the money brought in is used towards charitable causes.

Is there anyplace you can find out?
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kmbboots
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In an effort to be comradely, BB, I am embarrassed by my church's official policy on ssm as well.
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MattP
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quote:
Is there anyplace you can find out?
The majority of income is used for constructing and maintaining facilities, from what I understand. Chartible causes are next.

[ August 21, 2009, 03:18 PM: Message edited by: MattP ]

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BlackBlade
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
While the church does bring in alot of money, I'd wager (ironic choice of verb) the majority of the money brought in is used towards charitable causes.

Is there anyplace you can find out?
Not currently no. The church employs an independent auditing firm that issues reports in conference, as far as I know that firm does not publish its church related work. If you worked from within the firm or knew a former employee they might be able to illuminate your understanding.

---

kmbboots: United in embarrassment? I suppose baser emotions have brought people together. [Wink]

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Samprimary
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I have people who tell me that they spend over 15 times as much money on building shopping malls as they spend on the poor.

I just want to know more or less what percentage of the money that gets tithed to the LDS gets spent by the church on real estate and other profitable enterprises.

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MattP
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quote:
I have people who tell me that they spend over 15 times as much money on building shopping malls as they spend on the poor.
That may be both true and misleading. The church owns a number of private businesses from which it derives taxable income. Building a shopping mall is very expensive, but the goal is to generate profits which may very well support charitable activities.
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Orincoro
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That's rather coy. If the church is continually plunging cash into profitable business ventures, from which many church members doubtless earn their livings, then the incentive is to take the profits and invest in yet more cash businesses. Perhaps a percentage of the profits is going to charitable causes, however this has not be established. I'm not so credulous of the idea that the church has an endgame goal of funding charities, rather than simply building a business empire, of which charities are a nice public benefit. Bill Gates gives to charity, a *lot* and nobody is under the illusion that Microsoft was set up to help the poor.
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MattP
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quote:
I'm not so credulous of the idea that the church has an endgame goal of funding charities, rather than simply building a business empire, of which charities are a nice public benefit.
I'm no defender of the church. I'm not a member and am frequently irked by their activities, but they do have some substantial humanitarian/charity organizations. I don't know what percentage of the budget they represent but if there's a disaster pretty much anywhere it's all but guaranteed that there are a few cargo planes worth of relief supplies (food, clothing, hygiene kits, etc) on the way on the church's dime. This is on top of a number of ongoing charity/humanitarian programs that the church operates.

I'd love to see more transparancy and have little doubt that full disclosure of the church's financial activities would produce some embarassment, but it's hard to argue that they aren't doing a lot of charitable work, regardless of what portion of the total wealth of the church that it represents.

quote:
nobody is under the illusion that Microsoft was set up to help the poor.
As is the case with the LDS church (and many others). The church's primary goal, which it doesn't attempt to hide, is to become a bigger church. This is the stated goal of many churches, particularly those with active missionary programs. Charity is a secondary activity, which they hope will support the primary one.
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Mucus
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
While the church does bring in alot of money, I'd wager (ironic choice of verb) the majority of the money brought in is used towards charitable causes.

Is there anyplace you can find out?
You can try deciphering their financial statements to the Canadian Revenue Agency.

link

According to their rough breakdown, roughly 50% of time and resources are spent on buildings, 20% on missionary work and evangelism, and 30% on social outreach, religious fellowship, and auxiliary organisations (which would seem to put an upper bound of roughly 30% on what you and I would probably consider charitable causes).

Other interesting bits are that of a total of 185 million in expenditures, roughly 74 million goes toward supplies and assets, 15 million to salary, 3 million for travel (there is no breakdown for what portion of these amounts are considered charitable programs).

Total expenses before "gifts to qualified donees" comprise about 67% of expenditures. Qualified donees can actually be found in a list which seems to include other LDS organizations which makes it difficult to breakdown how those funds are being used in the end.

Doing the math, it seems like compensation is an average of $5000 for part-time/part-year employees. Full-time employees seem to make an average of $70,000 if you take the total salary expenditure, subtract the total for part-time employees, and divide by the number of full-time employees. The top employee makes some unknown value higher than 119k while the next four make between 80k and 119k.

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MattP
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The picture may be somewhat different (or not!) with the US finances - the private businesses are probably mostly held by the US organization and the global humanitarian organizations are headquartered in SLC.
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Mucus
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I don't know.

It seems that the investment income that they are reporting are too high to be accounted for by just the amount of short-term investments that they have, but I can't figure out what else (that is recorded on the statement) they have that might return investment income.

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MattP
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The Canadian disclosure shows $600 million in assets. Estimates of the total church's worth is something like $30 billion, making the Canadian piece relatively small. The percentages may be similar to those for the church over all or they may not be.

In other words, I don't know how informative a financial statement representing 2% of the church's wealth is when trying to determine their overall pattern of spending.

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Farmgirl
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Um... I missed a few days of this thread.. but how did we go from a discussion of the flag mailbox on health care to a general thread of slamming the Republican party/Sarah Palin and then morph into slamming the LDS church and its finances?

I mean, really -- can we get back on topic, please?

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MattP
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Thread drift happens. *shrug* If you've got something "back on topic" to say, then by all means say it.
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Mucus
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Slamming?

I thought at the two of us (MattP and I) were being pretty dispassionate about the whole thing.

MattP: Kinda yes, kinda no.

They're actually "supposed" to be informative, albeit only for Canadians. These pages were launched by the CRA to give Canadian donors an idea as to what they're donating to and avoid donating to charities with too much overhead.

They didn't seem to make it simple for folks to figure out whats on, but that was the idea anyways. Obviously, it won't be nearly as useful as a United States statement, but that doesn't seem to be available for reasons that are beyond me.

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Sterling
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quote:
Speaking on MSNBC, Steele said the town hall meetings across the country are reflecting that debate. However, when asked directly about one of the most controversial statements by some Republicans -- that a House bill would create "death panels" to decide who gets treatment -- Steele refused to acknowledge that such language was misinformation.
(emphasis mine) CNN Link

Congratulations, Mike... You're officially part of the problem.

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MightyCow
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Anyone have an Obama "death (to subersives) panel" show up at your house in the middle of the night yet?

I'm on pins and needles for when the blowback from this heinous abuse of power. This is like warrantless wire tapping, but passive and not an actual abuse of power!

They've had lots of time to collect data on their enemies, someone has to have something to report. Some anti-healthcare advocate got a suspicious parking ticket or a library fine for a book they know they returned on time...

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scholarette
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Well, as an Obama supporter, I did receive my get out jail free card and a little sticker I attach to my license so that when cops pull me over, they know to let me of with a warning. [Smile]
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Alcon
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They haven't started sending out our special "supporter of the socialist regime" tax rebates yet. Can't wait for that one! Still haven't decided what I'm going to spend it on [Smile]

Oh and I hear there are plans in the pipelines for special supporter job reassignment. If you support him, he'll give you any job you want in any company - at a controlled wage of course - even if it requires the company firing a non-supporter! [Razz]

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kmbboots
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I am looking forward to getting my dacha!
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Orincoro
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quote:
Originally posted by MightyCow:

I'm on pins and needles for when the blowback from this heinous abuse of power. This is like warrantless wire tapping, but passive and not an actual abuse of power!

I love that part of it. The best bit is that few of these people complaining about a mailbox were going ape**** over the President ordering wiretaps in express contradiction of our laws.

And it wasn't like the wiretapping thing should have even been a big deal. There was a secret court set up with the purpose of approving virtually anything the administration asked for in terms of wire tapping. It's like the cops saying: "no, no, break into any bank you want, just call first so we know not to come and arrest you," and then you going: "you know what, screw the cops."

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katharina
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I am fascinated about the response concerning this. As if impending danger of jack-booted thugs is the only reason to oppose abuses of power.

And as if abuses are TOTALLY COOL depending on whether or not you like the person doing it.

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scifibum
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quote:
Originally posted by katharina:
I am fascinated about the response concerning this. As if impending danger of jack-booted thugs is the only reason to oppose abuses of power.

And as if abuses are TOTALLY COOL depending on whether or not you like the person doing it.

You're begging the question, of course. It would be fascinating if anyone said that flag@whitehouse.gov was an abuse but they were totally cool with it because they like Obama.
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MightyCow
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quote:
Originally posted by katharina:
And as if abuses are TOTALLY COOL depending on whether or not you like the person doing it.

Actually, I'm just thrilled that the worst "abuse of power" people can come up with is an email address, functionally and legally identical in every way to the existing email addresses people have been using to contact our elected officials for years.

As if "flag@whitehouse.gov" is abusive somehow, while vp@whitehouse.gov is not.

We're not talking secret tribunals here.

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MrSquicky
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quote:
Originally posted by katharina:
I am fascinated about the response concerning this. As if impending danger of jack-booted thugs is the only reason to oppose abuses of power.

And as if abuses are TOTALLY COOL depending on whether or not you like the person doing it.

And, yet again, TIPS.
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Sterling
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Again... spreading mis-information about health care policies is not illegal. No one is even suggesting it be made so. The most obvious reaction within the government to same appears to be some heavy sighs and eye-rolling, and probably a lot of slumped shoulders in offices as people contemplate the accuracy of Barnum's Law.

By way of comparison, not only is terrorism illegal, the Bush administration was doing it's level best to expand the definitions of terrorism to cover, for example, sabatoging lumber-harvesting equipment. And "terrorism" was also the justification used for having the FBI investigate groups like the SOA Watch, a group advocating for closure of the School of the Americas.

If people feel differently about the two, it's probably because they quite reasonably feel that they're entirely different things!

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Orincoro
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quote:
Originally posted by katharina:
I am fascinated about the response concerning this.

No you're not. You're livid. And you just don't get how your hysteria doesn't transfer to others.


Because let's see: on the one hand you have a President who asked for citizens to share information with the white house voluntarily, to help inform the public. And on the other hand you have a President who intentionally broke the law in order to actively spy on citizens and residents of the United States.

Uhhhh. and how we interpret those two actions has everything to do with who we like most? Really?

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Destineer
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quote:
Originally posted by MightyCow:
quote:
Originally posted by katharina:
And as if abuses are TOTALLY COOL depending on whether or not you like the person doing it.

Actually, I'm just thrilled that the worst "abuse of power" people can come up with is an email address, functionally and legally identical in every way to the existing email addresses people have been using to contact our elected officials for years.


Actually, if you read the link Chris Bridges posted a few pages back, you'll find that the worst abuses of power going on now are mostly the same ones that were happening under Bush. [Frown]
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Alcon
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Well, I'm going to take it on faith for now that they're still working on finding and dismantling them.

If they're still taking place in two years I'll started feeling the outrage. In the mean time I'm going to give Obama credit for tackling a whole hell of a lot and if some of the undoing stuff falls by the wayside for now... well alright. I may not agree with his priorities, but at the moment I trust he'll get to them eventually.

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katharina
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No, I'm fascinated. Your logic is too fallacious to take seriously.

If you meant anything, I'd be livid.

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Orincoro
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quote:
Originally posted by katharina:
No, I'm fascinated. Your logic is too fallacious to take seriously.

If you meant anything, I'd be livid.

\\ Do you know what "fallacious" means? Because your argument that people find these two acts to be of different ethical merit because of who they favor politically, rather than which act is in itself seen as less ethical, is a fallacious argument. It's what you call an ignoratio elenchi, or a logical fallacy consisting of a disproof of something that has not been asserted.

Thus, we state that TAPS or warrantless wiretapping was unethical, but Flag is not. Instead of addressing that argument, you state that favoring one President's actions over another for political or personal reasons is invalid. But our personal leanings were not part of the argument put forward about the ethics of one act over another.

As an analogy, let's take a hypothetical case: Joe and Bob are two cops. Joe is my friend, Bob is not. Joe is a clean cop, but Bob is corrupt. I argue that Bob's corrupt activities are unethical, and that he is a bad cop. You counter with this genetic fallacy: I am incapable of assessing these two police officer's actions because Joe is my friend, and Bob is not my friend. That you have established that I have a preference for Joe that is apart from his abilities or ethics does not demonstrate that my argument about their comparative merits is false. You have failed to address the argument about their comparative merits.

Now, your logical fallacy is clearly laid out. Where is mine? Please point it out and I will attempt to correct my mistake, as I expect you will want to correct yours, by addressing the argument at hand, rather than the argument you want to be at hand.

Now, if I have learned anything from experience, you will respond with an ad hominem attack on my character, probably having to do with my arrogance, and possibly belittling my education, or my qualifications as a logician. You have the prerogative there, but you will lose the argument should you choose to go down that path. You may not realize you have lost it, but you will have lost it just the same.

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by katharina:
No, I'm fascinated. Your logic is too fallacious to take seriously.

This comes on the heels of you making a habit of judging via the genetic fallacy, specifically. You did it before as an argument to explain ideological identification within scientific communities, you're doing it again here.

Given that you are representing yourself here as firmly reliant on a fallacious proposition to begin with, you don't put much weight behind your criticism.

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Darth_Mauve
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The newest threat from Universal Health Care.

I switched on AM radio to see what the other side was saying, and I was warned of the biggest danger from Obama Care.

Its not death panels.

Its not a dearth of doctors.

It fits in this thread, since the threat is of a paranoid--misuse of power issue.

ID Cards.

That's right. This monster from the past that has been used to scare the right with biblical 666/revelation leading ID cards will be the result of universal health care.

Why?

Well, if everyone has healthcare then everyone will need an Insurance Card--like we all get now from our various insurance companies.

But the Public Option is guaranteed to lead to only the Public Option being available--so we will all be forced to have Public Option Insurance Cards--or Universal ID Cards.

Even if we don't do Public Option one way they keep talking about streamlining efficiency in health care is to automate records. This means--tracking all the patients. This means Universal ID Cards.

And once the feds have our ID--its all over.

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katharina
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Your essential premise - that reporting on possibly illegal behavior is the same as reporting political free speech - is wrong. Very, very wrong. So wrong, in fact, that I suspect you know it and are just screwing around.
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MrSquicky
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A refresher on what TIPS was:
quote:
Operation TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System) is a new Bush Administration proposal that will be bundled into its volunteer Citizen Corps. The White House has announced plans to begin a pilot project in some cities in August.

Specifically, the initiative will recruit one million volunteers in 10 cities across the country and encourage them to report suspicious activity that might be terrorism-related. According to the White House, it will try to make volunteers of letter carriers, cable tv installers and gas, electric and utility workers who because their work allows them inside people's homes, are well suited to recognize the unusual.


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Orincoro
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quote:
Originally posted by katharina:
Your essential premise - that reporting on possibly illegal behavior is the same as reporting political free speech - is wrong. Very, very wrong. So wrong, in fact, that I suspect you know it and are just screwing around.

Who's premise is that? Mine? I must warn you again, that you are committing another genetic fallacy by arguing against a statement I did not make. I did not say: "reporting possibly illegal behavior is the same as reporting political free speech." My opinion is that Flag is not wrong, and I can also explain my feeling behind that.

First of all, nearly everything said by anyone is free speech. There are noted exceptions, and the simple fact that some speech is political in nature, does not imbue it with an invincible shield against recrimination. Sharing information with the government of one's own free will is also, I remind you, a form of free speech. The government at nearly any time has the practical ability to silence our right to free speech. This is even legal and necessary at times, allowing that due process of law is undertaken. This is how we try to protect our secrets, protect jurors from reprisal, protect defendants against jury tampering, protect public officials and public employees, protect children against indecency and predatory advertising, and protect students from political indoctrination or intimidation by their teachers, and this is part of how we stop public employees from abusing their positions for personal or political reasons. Flag didn't limit free speech at all. Flag refined the process by which information could be shared with the government about items of free speech. And again, private citizens have every right to share this information with the government.

Now, setting up a process whereby citizens are encouraged or given an equally easy solution for reporting suspicious behavior? Even more so, recruiting trusted colleagues and local citizens to spy in people's homes, and become active snitches for the government? First of all, we have systems in place for reporting suspicious behavior, and we have departments of the federal and local governments who collect and act upon such information. I felt, and I do feel now, that the only added benefit to the government of such an additional method would be to encourage and welcome personal denunciations and accusations that would not pass muster with existing law enforcement and national security entities. Also in classic Bush style, it was meant to side-step the government's legal responsibilities for the rights of individuals to privacy. A catch-all mechanism whereby individuals are empowered to air their suspicions with no personal responsibility for their veracity, and to do so in the stead of active criminal investigation undertaken by sworn professionals and public servants, is not a good idea. You will recall that an accused person is entitled under our laws to face his accusers directly. The Bush administration, I think you may again agree, took steps to limit that right in the case of suspected domestic and international terror.

Why are the not the same? Reporting possibly, (or certainly) erroneous free speech to the government is not in itself an accusation of a crime. As you said, the speech is by and large political in nature, and by and large not in any way illegal, unless it is slanderous or libelous. This program was not set up with the stated purpose of reporting libel and slander. It was set up to gather information on free speech. Thus, reporting free speech to the government, for any purpose, does not constitute an accusation. Aside from that TIPS, as squick points out, was intended to actually encourage private citizens to spy on each other in private homes, secretly, as informants for the government. We're talking about two things of vastly different proportions. That is just a small part of why the are different, and that is why I have different opinions of the two very different things.

So, once again, the logical fallacy has been yours. Nowhere did I, though others may have compared them, state that these two systems were the same. Nor, I suspect, did anyone claim they were equivalent. Rather, many pointed out that a complaint against flag would beg the question of one's opinion of wiretapping or Tips. You have steadfastly reserved your opinions on those things, instead choosing to project false arguments onto others. It's disappointing, really.

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Sterling
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Thank you, Orincoro- I hadn't realized quite the depth of misunderstanding here, and you've summed things up rather nicely.
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Orincoro
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Oh well, I suppose my logic was far too fallacious to taken seriously. Cut and run might have been the best strategy.
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SenojRetep
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Just to clarify, Orincoro:

You feel that because under flag@whitehouse.gov a reporting citizen isn't accusing anybody of illegal activity, and because they're not actively stopping anyone's speech (i.e. it's still free) it's ethical for them to voluntarily report the speech to the White House. And because it's ethical for you to voluntarily report it, it is not unethical for the White House to request it.

Whereas under TIPS a reporting citizen is accusing somebody of (potential) illegal activity, which makes both the reporting unethical, since 1) there already exist other mechanisms to report suspicious activity and 2) it increases the likelihood that the individual's civil rights will be violated. And since voluntary reporting of such behavior is unethical, solicited reporting is certainly unethical.

Is that right?
----
Also, crowdsourcing censorship.

<edit>P.S.- Since there's been a lot of angst over the incivility of discussion at Hatrack recently, you might consider choosing not to taunt people. Its easy to let aggressive snideness creep into online dialog, particularly when you feel you've been attacked, but everyone will be better off if you fight the impulse.</edit>

[ August 27, 2009, 11:34 AM: Message edited by: SenojRetep ]

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Teshi
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I think this was handled very badly. I understand why the White House did what it did-- they want to be able to hear all the arguments leveled at them in order to meet them face on. They want arguments, not the names of dissenters.

But someone surely should have realised how this was going to be so easily spun by the opposition. If you're going to do it at all, you need to make the purpose very, very, very clear.

And even then, I wouldn't risk it. I would instead hire an intern to go on the internet and trawl through news and forums like this one, searching for arguments the old fashioned way. It would have been safer.

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Destineer
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quote:
<edit>P.S.- Since there's been a lot of angst over the incivility of discussion at Hatrack recently, you might consider choosing not to taunt people. Its easy to let aggressive snideness creep into online dialog, particularly when you feel you've been attacked, but everyone will be better off if you fight the impulse.</edit>
I second that emotion.
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MrSquicky
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Senoj,
What's your impression of the TIPS program?

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Orincoro
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I feel that it would wrong, as in "the wrong thing to do," for the white house to request such information from individuals. But we must be careful in how we define our terms. Flag is not in itself a request, but a mechanism whereby speech can be reported, for specifically stated purposes. I happen to believe that it was what it was claimed to be, and nothing more. I haven't worked out the ethics of the thing entirely to my own satisfaction, but I am aware of feeling that this act does not threaten me or worry me in any way.

As for TIPS, we're not just talking about reporting. We're talking about the government recruiting specific people, namely government workers who do not work in law enforcement, and private citizens who are also not sworn officers of the courts or federal law enforcement, to investigate and implicate members of their communities for suspicious behavior. It is not unethical, in my mind, to encourage the reporting of suspicious behavior to law enforcement. However, for the government to request that private citizens and public employees, who are not bound by the duties and procedures, as well as the oversight of the courts, to accumulate evidence of suspicious activity in the furtherance of a national campaign against domestic terrorism is not just reporting suspicious activities. In effect, I think the ethical conflict lies in the intent of the request, as I see it, to circumvent the normal and expected privacy of individuals by accumulating non-professional and not officially sanctioned investigations, under the guise of free speech reporting of suspicious activity. The nature of the information could be the same in any case. If a mailman saw wiring devices for a bomb lying around in an open shed, and reported it to law enforcement, there is no ethical violation. If the government requests that the mailman maintain more than his ordinary vigilance, and act decidedly outside his scope of practice as a government worker, but takes no steps to train him or go through the legal process required to make him a representative of law enforcement, that's a problem.

The government uses snitches and informants all the time. But these people are recruited individually, under the supervision of law enforcement officers, to implicate already suspected criminals- the use of informants hopefully does not supplant the presence or actual sworn officers of the law, but rather makes officers of the law responsible for individual informants, and responsible also to the rights of the suspect. The informant is not intended to act on the behalf of law enforcement in investigating crime, but instead to cooperate with the police in their investigations. That informant would be required later to face the person he has helped to implicate, and that informant will be held responsible for the veracity of the information and testimony he gives. It may not always work out that way in practice, I grant you, but that is the intended order of things.

And we're not just talking about government workers. TIPS could apply to anyone. Unlike with flag, TIPS offers a fairly broad range of opportunities for abuse, and little to no insurance against it. It also seems to offer no culpability on the part of the individuals tapped to provide information- they would be treated under such a program the same as private individuals who merely report suspicion, rather than being encouraged to investigate their neighbors.

In short, asking someone to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior fairly negates that person's ability to actually be reasonably conscious of their surroundings, rather than actively suspicious. That is why cops work on investigations and law enforcement around the clock, and not simply while going about their daily lives, only acting should they happen to spot a problem. And that is why cops are bound by stricter codes of conduct than the average person. They are going out and looking for trouble- and they find it more often than the rest of us. If you ask a private citizen or an untrained government worker to go out there and do his part to search out the terrorists, he's going to, and in the process he's going to do damage to your rights, and endanger your personal freedom and privacy.

Part of all that is just practical in my mind. TIPS wouldn't work as stated- it might be *effective* but McCarthy was effective without his reign of terror actually ever doing anything positive, or making anyone much safer. Because he had chosen to persecute people who had specifically enumerated rights to engage in the activities they were accused of, the terror was in itself the only weapon needed, and the only one really intended. Insofar as that's an arm of the government acting in direct contradiction of its stated duties, and deliberately circumventing its own mechanisms for protecting individual rights, I see an ethical problem. The Bush administration notoriously and repeatedly acted in this way, exploiting various legal loop holes and grey areas of the law to accomplish its goals with no responsibility to those laws' intentions, nor to the spirit of our constitution, nor their own oaths of office. That is why Bush, a sworn public servant, flouted the constitution and the Geneva Conventions, by detaining prisoners on foreign soil. Because it was not "illegal," or more appropriately it was an issue that could not fall under the proper jurisdiction of our legal system, it was a clear and willing act of betrayal of the division of powers. Bush's philosophy seemed to be that because the opportunity for exploitation existed, the right and privilege of the executive was to be exploitative. I found that to be horrifying. I hope I always do.

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SenojRetep
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quote:
Originally posted by MrSquicky:
Senoj,
What's your impression of the TIPS program?

I wasn't aware of it until you mentioned it here. I have yet to form a solid opinion of it. On the one hand, it seems like J. Edgar Hoover-style paranoia. On the other, similar programs seem to have demonstrated success at increasing national security without raising the same red flags about federal intrusiveness. In general I think there are probably ways in which public-private information gathering can be implemented with sufficient civil liberty safeguards. Whether TIPS would have done so I can't really say.
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Destineer
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quote:
That is why Bush, a sworn public servant, flouted the constitution and the Geneva Conventions, by detaining prisoners on foreign soil.
Keep in mind though, the Obama administration is also asserting the right to detain "enemy combatants."
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Orincoro
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The name on the door is not going to change my mind about the behavior. If you think that's likely to alter my opinion of the activity, you're wrong. I realize that a presidential administration is wont to hang on with a death grip to anything that was allowed to happen in previous administrations.

That said, Obama inherited that problem, and could not very well simply release the people detained without trying to bring some semblance of legality and order to the process. In a perfect world, actually, I would hope that every single detainee were released immediately and without condition, damn the consequences. Unfortunately, the consequences may be severe, not only politically, but for the individuals who are detained, as they in some cases have no support from any other government, nor any promise of future security outside the United States or Cuba. I say bring them to the States in an orderly manner, and damn well let them go if it is found fitting by due process of law. This idiotic outcry that giving them their rightful access to a court of law will almost surely allow them to go free is just a wallbanger for me. Yes, if the US detained and imprisoned and tortured them illegally, they get to go free. It's called obeying the law, or suffering the rather severe and inconvenient consequences of the law. If we don't have that, we haven't got much.


Obama had very little choice in the matter, and I'm willing to be patient in observing the steps he may take to reverse the damage. It would be a very different story if he continued to use the practice with future "enemy combatants." But as it is, the horse is already *in* the barn so to speak, and Obama is forced by Bush's horrifyingly poor judgment to continue the miscarriage of justice in want of any better solution.

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Sterling
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As far as the Obama administration is concerned, I'm far more unnerved by the change of tune regarding State Secrets.
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Orincoro
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It's an unnerving article. If you go into the case examples that are filtering in, a theme seems to be a continuation of the practice concerning crimes committed under Bush, having mostly to do with counter-terrorism, not surprisingly.

Now, first I'm not an apologist for this behavior, but I try to be as pragmatic as possible in looking at it. The big problem here, both in looking at Bush and in looking at Obama, is that when we're talking about state secrets, the whole point is that they are meant to involve facts with which we are not acquainted. Now, in the specific cases such as that of Binyam Mohamed, in which the White House is trying to block not only a US court, but also a British court from entering into a discovery phase, it is difficult (though not completely impossible) to imagine a legitimately prescient argument for denying his right even to that much of a trial, based on some looming threat to national security.

In my opinion, the pooch got screwed on this issue whenever it was the State Secrets Act was adopted- which I don't know. We absolutely MUST have a check against the Executive's power over information. I will have to watch this item more carefully and see where it goes. I'm not *completely* convinced that the use of the privilege is invalid, just as with Bush I was frustrated at the fact that I would never be sure of whether he was acting in good faith, or not, or was just stupid, or doing the best possible thing he could do, because we would never see the whole picture. We got 8 years to judge Bush on the merits of what he *did* do in public, which if it was any indication of how he handled secretive matters, was not encouraging in the least. Obama has had 9 months, and lest we forget, he has inherited a rather strikingly unique set of challenges. I'm giving it time.

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Destineer
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quote:
The name on the door is not going to change my mind about the behavior.
Nor mine, I think it's wrong too.
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