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Moderated Donald Sterling, Owner of the Clippers, is Racist

The thought police now have to track down and make a comprehensive list of anyone and everyone that Sterling has ever paid, then shame them into give all that money back.

I'm sorry, what?

My comment in no way equates to "thought police tracking down past beneficiaries and making them repay". UCLA have decided to try and dodge an ongoing PR nightmare by foregoing $3m (which is probably relatively small potatoes to their budget and fundraising as a whole).
 
Sterling did something even worse;he insulted a core customer base for the NBA.

What is scary is that I am now convinced that some conservatives support racism on the grounds if the Liberals do not like it it must be right.

You were just convinced? Because of this?:rolleyes:
 
I have no idea but I wouldn't be surprised that UCLA would have more experience and a better feel for how their response to this issue would impact their fund raising and I highly doubt they would do anything which would have a long term negative impact. But then again, maybe random Internet posters know better.

So what UCLA did wasn't stupid because surely UCLA would never do anything stupid?

I could be wrong, but I don't think this is some long term calculation to maximize their future donations. But if it is that is sad because it means there really are people who would refuse to donate to them on the basis that a racist person donated to them. I think it's that they care more about PR than kidney research.
 
Any person who gives, makes, issues, authorizes or endorses any statement having, or designed to have, an effect prejudicial or detrimental to the best interests of our Christian customers, clients, or suppliers, or statements that the same may find offensive, shall be terminated without notice.

If you signed that contract, then you are bound by it.

If you found those terms morally questionable, then you shouldn't have signed the contract, and you certainly shouldn't have willfully violated the terms of that contract.

You deserved to get imaginary fired from your imaginary job.

So you have no problem with a private company choosing to terminate someone for expressing support for gay rights in a private conversation, regardless of whether such a specific condition is included in their employment contract or not, right?

Private companies can conduct their internal affairs however they want, so long as it comports with the law. If they want to be religious bigots, they are certainly free to do so within the bounds of the law. I may disagree with their position, but I would certainly never dictate to them how they should be allowed to run their business.

Bottom line, only a moron would agree to contractual terms they were morally or ethically opposed to, and then whine about being disciplined when they willfully violate those terms.
 
Really? Moral outrage about something someone said is more important than finding a cure for kidney disease?

Wouldn't it be more worthwhile to to take the money? Are appearances more important than progress?

No moral outrage here - just a sensible long term business decision. Lose some funding now to be more confident that funding will be available for the long term. The research will be going on for a long time to come and continued progress is much more important than appearances.
 
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So what UCLA did wasn't stupid because surely UCLA would never do anything stupid?

I could be wrong, but I don't think this is some long term calculation to maximize their future donations. But if it is that is sad because it means there really are people who would refuse to donate to them on the basis that a racist person donated to them. I think it's that they care more about PR than kidney research.

You have a different opinion than DavidJames and myself about why UCLA made this decision. You could be right and we could be wrong, but pending more info, which I doubt we will ever see, I will not be changing my opinion.

Re the hilite - people will choose to donate or not based on any number of trivial and even stupid reasons. Any competent fund raising organization will know this and will be able to take steps to maximize continued contributions to their cause. I expect that the fundraisers for UCLA are fairly sophisticated and will have a good idea how to do this.
 
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In what specific way did The Conservative Treehouse convince you they had the right Donald Sterling that you now find lacking?

The same way Mother Jones convinced you.


I strongly doubt that. Mother Jones convinced me by providing reliable evidence that Donald Sterling is registered as a Republican. That can't be how CTH convinced you that Donald Sterling is a Democrat, because they provided no evidence at all of Donald Sterling's party registration.

So you still need to explain how CTH convinced you of a 'fact' which we now know to be false.

I'm happy to run through how CTH convinced me their claims were false and how Mother Jones convinced me their claim was true, so that you can get a better idea of the question you're being asked.

I rejected the claims made by Conservative Treehouse (that Sterling is a Democratic fundraiser, a Democratic donor and a Democratic supporter) because the evidence they cited did not support their claims. I classed as undetermined an additional claim you made (that Sterling is a member of the Democratic Party) because neither you nor Conservative Treehouse offered any evidence to support that claim.

In contrast I accepted the Mother Jones claim (that Donald Sterling is a registered Republican) because they provided solid evidence of this fact which I and others were able to independently look up and verify.

Let's go through the claims one by one.

First, the CTH claims:

1. CTH (and you) claimed that Donald Sterling is a Democratic fundraiser. The cited source, RealGM.com, said no such thing. You, when asked by posters here to provide evidence, refused to do -- saying simply that it had been talked about in the media so people could look it up for themselves.

If Sterling actually had been a Democratic Party fundraiser there should be news stories about fundraising events he'd put together or testimony from people whom he'd solicited for funds. The complete lack of this evidence in the sources cited, the evasive tactics used by folks putting forward the claim when asked to produce evidence, and my own inability to turn up any such evidence was sufficient for me to conclude (correctly) that the claim was false

2.CTH (and you) claimed that Donald Sterling is a Democratic contributor / supporter. The source cited by CTH cited another source which in turn cited OpenSecrets.org.

What OpenSecrets showed is that 2 decades ago Sterling had made donations to Bill Bradley, Patrick Leahy and Gray Davis. Other sources I checked confirmed that Sterling had not made any contributions to Democrats in more than a decade, and had never made any contributions to Democratic Party groups such as the DSCC, DCCC, Democrats.org, ActBlue, etc.

The misrepresentation of the evidence to be found at the cited source, and the confirmation by checking other sources that Sterling had not been a contributor to the Democratic Party in recent years and that there was no evidence Sterling had ever been an outspoken advocate of the Democratic Party, was sufficient for me to conclude (correctly) that the claim was false. (A claim that many years past Sterling had contributed money to several individual Democrats would have been true, but that's not the claim which was being made by CTH or you.)

3. You claimed (but CTH didn't) that Donald Sterling is a member of the Democratic Party.

It's possible you misread CTH's claim that Donald Sterling is "a Democrat Fundraiser and a democrat contributor/donor" as a claim that Donald Sterling is a Democrat. But the word Democrat in that sentence is an adjective, not a noun. (The correct spelling of the adjectival form is Democratic, but many the right prefer to deliberately misspell it. CTH appears to be among them.) As an adjective, the sentence simply says that Sterling raised funds for the Democrats and contributed to the Democrats; it makes no claim about actual party affiliation although it deceptively implies it.

Since CTH didn't make that claim, they provided no evidence to support it. Nor did you, despite repeated requests from other posters to do so (simply saying it had been talked about on the news and folks could look it up themselves). With no evidence to check, I concluded (correctly) that this was undetermined.

Now the Mother Jones claim:

1. Mother Jones claimed that Donald Sterling is registered as a member of the Republican Party. As evidence, they attested to having looked up the information at the LA County Registrar's office.

I was able to locate numerous other sources saying the same thing, several of which offered instructions for how I and others could check with the Registrar's office for ourselves to confirm this information. So far everyone who has checked the LA County Registrar's office -- using the method established by the LA County Registrar's office for checking voter registration information -- has found the Mother Jones information to be correct. No one to date has come up with any contradictory evidence to this claim. I therefore conclude that this claim is true.

I and others here are still waiting for your explanation of how you concluded that Donald Sterling is a Democrat (which you asserted confidently and repeatedly in this thread).

Please: (a) quote the exact part of the CTH article (or the sources they cited) which convinced you that Donald Sterling is a registered Democrat, and (b) explain why you found it persuasive.
 
So what UCLA did wasn't stupid because surely UCLA would never do anything stupid?
I'll just say your opinion, supported by nothing, means nothing. Accusing people you don't know of being selfish, more concerned about PR, then doing their job, sounds more like projection, then reason.
 
Re the hilite - people will choose to donate or not based on any number of trivial and even stupid reasons. Any competent fund raising organization will know this and will be able to take steps to maximize contined contributions to their cause. I expect that the fundraisers for UCLA are fairly sophistacted and will have a godd idea how to do this.
Indeed. It's also common practice in this country to return "tainted" money.
 
We don't know yet cause we ain't seen any paper work... Let's see the card. And be sure we got the right Donald Tokovich Sterling.

It's been provided to you.

Not so. That thing could be anyone named Sterling.


No, it could not.

The unlikelihood that the registration found is some other Sterling born on the exact same day as Donald Sterling and living at the exact same street number has already been well-addressed by other posters. But there's something else which should be emphasized, and I don't know if it's been said clearly yet or not.

The method used by The LA Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, and others to verify Donald Sterling's voter registration isn't some arbitrary process they invented for this story. They went to the LA County Registrar's site and used the process established there for this purpose.

I realize there are people who still refuse to accept Barack Obama's birth certificate as genuine even though the officials in charge of maintaining such records attest that it is. A refusal to accept LA County voter registration information obtained through the established process strikes me as similarly irrational.
 
Why should any so called tainted money be returned?

Sterling did something even worse;he insulted a core customer base for the NBA.
Huh? He said something stupid in a private conversation. He didn't direct insults to the fans. Wait, I forgot that anytime someone says or thinks something that someone else might find "hurtful" or "mean spirited" the thought police need to spring into action.


My comment in no way equates to "thought police tracking down past beneficiaries and making them repay". UCLA have decided to try and dodge an ongoing PR nightmare by foregoing $3m (which is probably relatively small potatoes to their budget and fundraising as a whole).
I never said it did. Just the logical extension of the concept.

You were just convinced? Because of this?:rolleyes:
Of course. Any sort of push back against the thought police and you instantly become their next suspect.

If you signed that contract, then you are bound by it.

If you found those terms morally questionable, then you shouldn't have signed the contract, and you certainly shouldn't have willfully violated the terms of that contract.
The only problem is that the so called "willful violation" was anything but that. It was an illegally publicized private conversation. The thought police are quick to excuse the fact that it was never intended to be publicly disclosed. "All that matters is that we now know what he is thinking..."
 
Why should any so called tainted money be returned?

No. Why should, in your opinion, -

"The thought police now have to track down and make a comprehensive list of anyone and everyone that Sterling has ever paid, then shame them into give all that money back" ?
 
No. Why should, in your opinion, -

"The thought police now have to track down and make a comprehensive list of anyone and everyone that Sterling has ever paid, then shame them into give all that money back" ?
Because that's their job. Expose, ridicule, and ultimately punish people with wrong thoughts and in this case, anyone connected to those people, include people that have received their dirty money.
 
I'll just say your opinion, supported by nothing, means nothing.

And yours does?

My opinion is based on their actions. They gave up $3million for kidney research because the guy giving it to them turned out to be a racist.

-$3million for scientific research
+$3million for a rich racist guy

That is the result of their action. And there's no guarantee he'll donate it to someone else. None of this is in dispute.

Even if their move was merely a calculated effort to somehow secure more donations in the future, it's an ends-justify-the-means gamble. Any donations they lost in the future would probably just go to another university. So yes, I call it a selfish PR move and probably not even an effective one.

Accusing people you don't know of being selfish, more concerned about PR, then doing their job, sounds more like projection, then reason.

So you're suggesting it's really me who's who's selfish and more concerned about PR than doing my job? Good one. :rolleyes:
 
And yours does?

My opinion is based on their actions. They gave up $3million for kidney research because the guy giving it to them turned out to be a racist.

-$3million for scientific research
+$3million for a rich racist guy

That is the result of their action. And there's no guarantee he'll donate it to someone else. None of this is in dispute.

Yes it is. Since rich racist guy already has the $3million, his not giving it to someone is certainly not "+$3million" for him; it's actually a net change of exactly zero. Likewise for the would-be beneficiary; they do not currently have the money, so they would not actually be losing anything at all if they do not accept the donation - it would also be a zero net change. So, portraying Sterling as gaining something and the would-be beneficiary as losing something in this case is incorrect and misleading.
 
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Well this thread went about as I expected. I must say I am shocked - Shocked! - that our resident conservatives seem to be sympathetic to the rich, old, white racist.
 
A depressing number of people on Twitter think what the NBA is doing is a 1st amendment issues, and a subset of those people think that Sterling should sue them on 1st amendment grounds. *sigh*
 
A depressing number of people on Twitter think what the NBA is doing is a 1st amendment issues, and a subset of those people think that Sterling should sue them on 1st amendment grounds. *sigh*

Just quote Inigo Montoya at them. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
 
  1. It is not obvious at all. In fact, while I completely disagree with ABC10 (or were you referring to Neally?) I take his posts as a direct, honest expression of his views.
  2. That's offensive. My mouse lingered over the report button for a long time before moving on.
Thanks Sez. I am posting my own thoughts, views, opinions while sincere and expressing a direct, honest expression of them. :):):) "Difference of opinion" acciording to the great Mark Twain " is why we have horse races".
 
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No moral outrage here - just a sensible long term business decision. Lose some funding now to be more confident that funding will be available for the long term. The research will be going on for a long time to come and continued progress is much more important than appearances.

Business doesn't involve morals. There was no downside here. PC trumped wellness.
 

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