We previously discussed the racist comments of Clippers owner Donald Sterling. We discussed the possible sanctions under the NBA rules, which are confidential. This afternoon NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced that Clippers owner Donald Sterling will be suspended for life and fined $2.5 million. That blows away any prior sanction of the NBA.
Silver announced “I am banning Mr. Sterling for life from any association with the Clippers association or the NBA. Mr. Sterling may not attend any NBA games or practices, he may not be present at any Clippers facility, and he may not participate in any business or decisions involving the team.” That is pretty much a demand that he sell the team though he could use his general manager for some of those functions.
The $2.5 million fine will be donated to anti-discrimination organizations, which is a particularly nice touch.
I have little sympathy for Sterling and found his comments deeply disturbing and unsettling. However, it will be interesting to see if Sterling, who is a lawyer, will fight the fine. He is being banned and fine for private comments that he did not intend to be released publicly. While this is not the government (raising first amendment issues), it is a free speech questions. We have been discussing how government employees like teachers and police officers have been punished for statements and activities in their private lives. I have opposed that trend. In this case, Sterling did not even intend for this comments to go to anyone other than his girlfriend.
The question is where the line is drawn on private comments. No one would suggest sanctions Larry Johnson for (after the Sterling comments) reportedly called for all-black teams and league or his prior comments calling players “rebellious slaves.” He was clearly upset with the news and venting on social media. I understand that. Indeed, his call for some black owners of NBA team is understandable given this controversy and reflects a long-standing objection to the paucity of black owners in the NBA. Yet, those were intended to be public comments and might be viewed as offensive by white players or owners or fans. If the NBA rules extend to private communications, I am curious as to how it distinguishes between comments both public and private. When it comes to free speech, we tend to favor bright line rules but this is a rule that is neither published nor clear. Sterling may be the easy case due to the vile nature of these comments but Silver does not address the standard that has been and will be applied to owners and players.
The counter to this argument is that, as a NBA owner, Sterling agreed to comply with the rules, including the undisclosed rules of conduct. His comments clearly created an embarrassment for the NBA and other teams. Yet, my guess is that these rules are vaguely worded and this sanction is far beyond prior punishments. He probably could challenge it under contractual and even anti-trust theories.
In the end, he is being banned for being a racist (which he vehemently denies). However, if he did not act in a racist manner to the team or fans, should his private views be the basis for a ban. What is owners are anti-gay or anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim in private? Can they all be banned if a third party reveals their views or a private conversation surfaces?
What do you think?
Ode to Sterling’s girlfriends:
Karen S
I was thinking of what I guess is the other Death Panel. It was the one that would pay a physician for discussing “End of Life” issues. It caused a furor. Too bad. Patients and doctors need to discuss them.
I know only a bit about the board to which you refer. I think it is advisory only. I’ll read your link.
“There is money and votes to be made on throwing around “millions of racists.”
Yes. And….
There is money and votes to be made on throwing around ‘Obama is going to take your guns’.
Silver is a Plutocrat.
Dear Ayn Rand,
“1. The Minimum Wage Doesn’t Kill Jobs.
The Republican story on the minimum wage takes the inordinately complex interactions of the market and makes them absurdly simple [reductio ad absurdum]. Raise the price of labor through a minimum wage, they claim, and employers will hire fewer workers. But that’s not how it works. In the early Nineties, David Card and Alan Krueger found “no evidence that the rise in New Jersey’s minimum wage reduced employment at fast-food restaurants in the state.” Since then, international, national and state-level studies have replicated these findings – most recently in a study by three Berkeley economists. Catherine Ruetschlin, a policy analyst at Demos, has argued that a higher minimum wage would actually “boost the national economy” by giving workers more money to spend on goods and services. The most comprehensive meta-study of the minimum wage examined 64 studies and found “little or no evidence” that a higher minimum wage reduces employment. There is however, evidence that a higher minimum wage lifts people out of poverty. Raise away!” (Six Studies That Show Everything Republicans Believe is Wrong, link in my previous comment).
(Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy)
Feynman:
The “death panels” referred to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which the AMA opposes:
https://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/advocacy/topics/independent-payment-advisory-board.page
“Death Panel” is a catchy phrase, and inflammatory, but there are legitimate concerns with a board that decides what care it will pay for. It’s been argued that they don’t actually euthanatize a patient, but if chemotherapy is denied to a healthy, fit 70 year old marathon runner, he’ll die unless he’s rich enough to afford it on his own.
You have to wade through the hyperbole on both sides. I agree with the American Medical Association on this one, that IPAB has too much power and is too arbitrary as written. Similar issues in Great Britain.
Again, Obamacare seems to be using the hated HMO paradigm as its health care model. Most Americans do not like HMOs, and yet Obamacare has many similarities, and it’s been argued will become more so as single payor.
Just because something is called a “study” does not mean that it is a qualified, elegantly constructed design.
I could conduct a study linking murder with eating bread. (My statistics professor showed us how to design any study to get the conclusion you want. It shouldn’t pass a peer review, but you could get the conclusion you desired.)
Dredd:
“The minimum wage doesn’t kill jobs.”
OK. You have the budget for 2 employees, one makes $10/hour and one is minimum wage, at $7.25 and hour. It has been proposed to boost all minimum wage to $10/hour, at a cost of $5,720/year/minimum wage employee.
Your budget is the same.
Do you:
A) Take a pay cut yourself, as an owner, of $5,720/employee?
B) How do you explain to your more experienced employee that he now makes minimum wage, despite his higher skills and experience, and how that is fair that they make the same now?
C) Do you fire the minimum wage employee and ask the remaining guy to cover his work?
D) Do you increase the cost of goods and services and pass that on to you customers?
E) Do you decrease the hours of the minimum wage employee, expect him to do more work in that time, so that your budge is net neutral?
My husband and I own a small business, and as far as I am aware, there are no options F-Z. Sometimes I wonder if Berkley researches ever set foot off campus.
Some companies have a high enough profit margin to absorb increased costs, or they just pass it on to the consumer and hope they will still be competitive. But many small businesses do not have that luxury.
Dredd, seriously, which option do you think small business owners should choose? If an owner makes $60,000 of his own income, but he has 4 minimum wage employees, his income just dropped to $37,120. How is that possibly fair, when it’s the owner who puts his livelihood, and the roof over his head, on the line to start a business?
The minimum wage debate is a math word problem. I agree that minimum wage should be tied to inflation, but think it should be the boss who decides when an employee should get a raise.
Karen S
How are we to handle something like “death panels”. I didn’t hear one Republican Leader try to shoot that one down. And IIRC, John McCain was the only one who stood fast in a townhall and tell a constituent that Obama was not a Muslim.
Fox is a powerful broadcaster. The works to the Republicans advantage. But one consequence is that what is said on Fox has to be owned by the Republican party. Thus falling victim to -all Republicans say this, this is a lie, therefore Republicans are liars.
“Cackling is not laughter.” – Duh Bears
Bigfatmike:
Thanks, I needed the laugh!
I swear, if I could, I WOULD vote 52 thousand times, literally (as Joe Biden would say). I think I’ll remember that next time I pay my bill on my ACA compliant policy! 🙂
Feynman:
No worries. I’m not so easy to rile, I swear. I don’t know why but I just got hot with the repeated line about conservatives being horrible people, as if thinking the government taxes too much and wastes the money is morally wrong. I got my cool back. It wasn’t even personally directed at me, deliberately. I just had to take the bit for a moment.
Feynman:
Anachronism is applying today’s standards to times gone by. Such as when you read a novel supposedly set in the 1400s where everyone calls each other by their first names as soon as they’ve met.
There are many valuable aspects of the past that still apply today. However, when we say we admire Greco-Roman democracies, we would not want Emperor Nero to rule today and ravish the wives of the Senate at dinner. We basically take what we like and disregard what we don’t as having been normal for the past.
Take Thomas Jefferson, a prolific writer, able politician, avant guard farmer (he introduced peanuts as human food instead of fit only for swine), but he also was a slave owner who fathered children with his slaves. There are many things I admire about him, but I do not judge his behavior by today’s standards. Indentured servants labored for 7 years to pay for passage, only to get a pair of new boots and an ax with which to survive, and good luck to him. We can’t say all descendants of those who used indentured servants owes restitution, because that was the norm of the day.
bigfatmike
I DO love it when somebody makes me laugh around here!
Paul,
No, I do not expect HHS to admit what a failure they are.
Now, do you expect LI to declare the ACA a winner? Or Michelle Malkin? Or Mark Levin? Or Sarah Palin? or Ted Cruz? Do you expect the NRA to say guns are fatal? children are often fatally injured by guns? (does anyone count the kids who are just chewed up by guns?)
Point is, nobody advertises their failures or the other team’s win. That works both ways. Right and Left.
Karen S
I’d support banning “mentally challenged” when used as an epithet. But I fear you will meet with much resistance if you try to do more.
Prof Turley is making it clear that personal attacks are uncivil. This should help you feel better.
Sorry we are such a rambunctious group.
Annie
Hear hear Randyjet.
Dredd, one of the reasons why the indoctrination of children is so important to these sick cultures. To keep as many of them within the cycle, if too many break free and break the cycle, the sick society collapses, IMO. It takes individuals to be exposed to outside influences to see just how sick the environment they were brought up in really was. I can relate my own experience growing up in a fundamentalist religion, luckily I had a rebellious nature.
======================
There are some studies out, and I expect more.
Six Studies That Show Everything Republicans Believe is Wrong
It’s time for the right wing to stop lying about the minimum wage, taxes, global warming and more
As we can see, they do not care whether they are wrong or not, thus, the wrong-wing nuts.
Their conscience has been seared by their culture and themselves.
Dredd – the whole idea of the Common Core is for the left (using your federal funds) will indoctrinate the children of America with the ideas that are viewed by the left as best for them. The implementation of the Common Core is causing even some liberal teachers to run from it.
Annie – because you are following the MSM which is controlled by liberal Democrats, the only information you getting on racism is when it is from the Republicans. When it occurs with Democrats, the only place it appears is places you won’t touch, like Fox News or Breitbart.
How often have we heard about “all Dems” “all liberals”, “all Chicago cops”, etc.?
At least there is not a one note band playing 🙂
Karen S
Weighted down with anachronistic standards of the past? Scalia does it all the time. And doesn’t the Tea Party advocate the anachronistic past?
Have I misunderstood your meaning?