Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2408
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
No More Free Golf
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 2005 Aug 18
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112433000832316307,00.html
Notes:
Ralph Faggotter’s Comments: Even the Wall Street Journal thinks it should be a felony for politicians to receive free golf games from corporations- so why shouldn’t this logic apply to doctors receiving free golf games etc from pharmaceutical companies?
Full text:
On the pressing matter of crime and the game of golf, we tend to think of moving one’s ball to a better lie in the rough, failing to take a penalty stroke for going out-of-bounds, or taking a mulligan on the putting surface. If these aren’t felonies, they ought to be.
Meanwhile, back in the game of politics, Ohio’s Republican Governor Bob Taft has been charged with four criminal misdemeanors for, among other gifts, failing to report golf outings that he didn’t pay for. Prosecutor Ron O’Brien sent a chill wind through political fairways everywhere yesterday by citing Mr. Taft on four counts that each carry a potential fine of $1,000 and six months in jail.
Ohio law requires officeholders to report all gifts of more than $75, and Mr. Taft first announced the omissions himself in June. Earlier this month he released records showing he’d accepted invitations for 21 golf rounds since 1999. The Governor has said previously that his failure to disclose the rounds was inadvertent, and he is expected to respond publicly to the misdemeanor ethics charges today.
Yes, the law is the law, and the golf probe is part of a larger investigation into political corruption in Ohio. The prosecutor said the total value of the gifts Mr. Taft didn’t report was $5,800 over four years. On the other hand, if this is the worst that prosecutors have been able to come up with, then modern politics must be cleaner than we thought. We’ve been raised never to trust a politician, but we also don’t recall meeting any who can be purchased by 18 holes.
The no-free-golf rule strikes us as the triumph of a certain kind of modern ethicist who thinks even the small favors of everyday life such as a free lunch are corrupting. Ohio’s real political crime is an economy listing under the burden of runaway spending and high taxes, but at least its citizens can now be sure that the state’s politicians aren’t getting a free ride around sand traps.
