It may be a factor in her ability to perform her job – especially if it turns out to have caused her erratic behavior.
So should all elected officials release their complete medical histories, just in case anything in them may be a factor in their ability to perform their jobs? If so, I want to know about the president’s experiences with alcohol abuse (which he has admitted) and drug abuse (which he has not admitted, as far as I know).
But was Carole Migden deceitful in not disclosing the leukemia? And I still am curious how you concluded that her non-disclosure was hypocritical. Care to explain?
You can’t actually ARGUE that my arguments are shit, but now you troll around the board after me to whine? Get a life.
A proud and unrepentant liar, and now a hypocrite too.
Man oh man, you must be getting old and senile. Is your reading comprehension really THAT poor that this is the best you can do to so clumsily mischaracterize me?
Which of course, you yet again do not bother to offer any interesting comments on.
Snore.
Please Liberal, you’re contributing nothing to this thread, and GD is painfully lacking a post from you seeking praise and adulation for your vaunted humility. Or maybe a post about how you’ve like, totally changed now and everything is all different AGAIN! Boy, I can’t wait. The only thing that would make it more perfect is if you and mswas formed an mutual ass-kissing society and threatened not to invite me! Man, I would be so steamed!
Well, I don’t share the opinion that using a cell phone in a car is 100% without benefits. If it was then no one would do it. In fact, some pretty interesting C/B studies have been done showing that the benefits outweigh the costs: you may not agree with the idea behind those sorts of studies, but I don’t think it pays to be glib about the distinction between collective goods vs. selfish individual incentives.
You don’t get my argument at all. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what I think the benefits or costs are of using a cell phone while driving. I’M not the one who supports the law. We are not talking about MY hypocracy. It is hypocritical to want to force individuals to act for the collective good, but refuse to take that action yourself. I’m sure she did find some benefit to using the cell phone in her car…so does everyone else who does it. But if she is truly concerned about the safety of using cell phones in a car, then she shouldn’t do it, regardless of the benefits to her. It is the ultimate in hypocracy for a politician to expect everyone else to work towards the collective benefit, but not expect the same of themselves.
If the law passes, she’ll be subject to the same fines as any other unsafe driver.
Well, no, it isn’t. Granted, this is a fine point which I’m arguing despite over and over making it clear that almost certainly this woman does not fall into it. But it’s worth noting, especially since you are insisting so strongly that it’s impossible.
There is nothing wrong with the idea that one can think something is a good law because it benefits society generally, despite not caring enough about it personally to stop. But if the REST of society isn’t doing it yet, why should I play by different rules? Why forgo a certain benefit to avoid an extremely unlikely cost? The law, in theory, avoids a whole bunch of certain costs, but only in the aggregate.
Why? The law is meant to benefit SOCIETY, and thus me too, but at a particular cost to myself (the cost being that once the law is enacted, I’ll have to follow it as well). Take it another way this time: lets say that I’m just plain selfish: I want less cell phone drivers because it makes ME safer, but I don’t care about the fact that my driving makes everyone else safer. So I pass a law that will make ME safer, with the grudging cost that once its enacted, I’ll have to stop to. In this case, why should I stop before the law is enacted? I have perfectly good reasons to enact the law: I and everyone else will be safer with it, and I want that. But only after its enacted: prior to that, I don’t care enough about the tiny benefit of just me following it. In fact, if I’m a brave enough politician (which, again, this woman probably was not), I could even just say that out loud: “yeah, none of us want to stop doing it, but too many of us don’t want to stop, and if we all are forced to stop, we’ll all be better off.”
Where’s the hypocrisy there, exactly? It’s certainly selfish, but then, it’s no more selfish than probably is what EVERYONE’s calculations are in this situation.
I’m just pointing out that, nah, that’s not necessarily hypocrisy at all. The collective benefit really only comes about once the law is enacted and enforced, in which case then I’ll have to give up something that’s otherwise worthwhile for me to do as a cost of getting everyone else to agree to join me in the same calculation (i.e. we’ll all trade our benefit and enjoyment of talking on the phone for more collective safety, but only if there really IS collective safety: just me doing it by myself isn’t worthwhile enough to make the benefits outweigh the costs).
We disagree on a basic premise, which is what you state here. If someone (especially someone in the position of making laws) believes that a law should exist for the common good, then I believe that ethically speaking they are obligated to act accordingly. I disagree strongly that there is “nothing wrong” with not caring enough about it personally to stop. As far as the cost being “extremely unlikely,” I assume in this case you are referring to a potential accident. I guess it’s not as unlikely as she had hoped and assumed it would be.
But my point is that it’s not just about costs and benefits, it’s about principle. If this person can’t control themselves enough to stop a behavior that she believes to be dangerous, then she really shouldn’t be involved in making laws.
EVERYONE doesn’t support the law, and certainly EVERYONE isn’t in the position to try to get it enacted.
Frankly, I think you have probably put a lot more effort into justifying her behavior than she did. Let’s face it…she wanted to talk on the cell phone, and she caused an accident. She didn’t give a rip about safety, or the collective good or blah blah blah. She sure did see the benefit to herself, and acted accordingly to that. And what is kind of ironic considering your argument, is that she did cause an accident…so I guess in this case, the cost did outweigh the benefit. See how even the actions of one person can make a difference?
I just don’t see how that necessarily follows. Do you think that if someone really wants to play professional baseball, they should do so before anyone else agrees to be on the league/on the team? Do you think that if I’m buying something from you, I should should just give you the money before you are ready to offer what I want in return?
That’s irrelevant: it’s extremely unlikely period. That it happened in this case (and apparently with other circumstances, like reading and/or med problems) doesn’t change that.
My point is that there are many different ways to support something on principle, and not all of them demand unilateral action in the absence of everyone else agreeing to it.
Why? Knowing what’s in the common good an enacting it, and being personally selfish are two different things.
As I said, I very much doubt her behavior can be justified, so this is just an emotionalized red herring.
Ok, but did you understand the argument I made previously wasn’t really about collective good, at bottom? In that example, it is ultimately a selfish impulse to get safer drivers all around you that convinces you that having to give up something you want to do is worth it. There doesn’t have to be any sort of moralized “this is wrong wrong wrong to do” attached in order to think it’s a worthwhile tradeoff as a policy (or as a policymaker).
No, not really, that’s not how cost/benefit calculations work. That’s just focusing on a single case, when C/B weighs things in the aggregate. It’s counting one particular cost while ignoring all the other benefits, and you can’t do that, at least not in the realm of C/B.
[del]SHE HIT A HYBRID!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:[/del]
never mind 
Apos, I am going to let your last post lie…although I completely understand your point, I simply do not find it to be acceptable from an ethical standpoint.
The only thing I can say right now is that if those who advocate for these types of laws use the reasoning that you do, then I am even more against them than I was when this conversation started.
Deceitful, yes. She kept silent about information that might have influenced the voters’ decisions. Hypocritical? According to the strict definition, probably not. I was using the term in the more colloquial sense, to describe someone who purports to be honest and straightforward, and in fact is not. But in the context of this board, I will take back hypocritical.
Sarah, I agree with you in principle. But maybe there was another reason that she has not yet changed her behavior. Maybe she hasn’t had her car fitted with a cell phone speaker that won’t require using her hands to answer. Like everyone else, she has until July.
Nothing excuses arrogant behavior, but the source and the slant of the article lead me to question all of the information provided. Unbiased sources are so much better for dishing the dirt.
And I am oh so aware that Republicans have no monopoly on arrogance.
I hear what you are saying, but IMO there is too much focus in this thread on the letter of the law, and not the spirit of it. Larry Borgia points out that she is subject to fines just like everyone else…but is the point of the law to save lives, or is it to raise money for the state? And now you point out that the law isn’t in effect yet…but again, is the point of the law to save lives? If so, then anyone (and I mean anyone) who believes that driving while talking on a hand-held cell phone is inherently unsafe ought not to do it…whether there is a law or not. And if said person is advocating that no one be allowed to do it, it would be a wise course of action, IMO to set a good example.
I will grant you that.
Honesty, I couldn’t care less what party she is affilated with. I think virtually all politicians lean towards arrogance and hypocrisy.
Do you find it to be unethical when any two or more entities get together to make an agreement for mutual benefit that they wouldn’t make unilaterally?
I think your concept of unethical is sloppily applied, from what I can see of it. There is no way to absolutely reduce chances of harm to all people. Getting in a car and driving substantially raises the risk to other drivers of death and injury: I don’t see you demanding that anyone who admits to that stop driving immediately.
It depends on the nature of the agreement.
No, but I would demand that anyone who believes there shoud be a LAW against driving should stop driving immediately.