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David Knowles reports at Bloomberg that former Hewlett-Packard CEO and potential 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina called out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite for criticizing Indiana and Arkansas over their Religious Freedom Restoration Acts while at the same time doing business in countries where gay rights are non-existent. “When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he’s in, including China and Saudi Arabia,” Fiorina said. “But I don’t hear him being upset about that.”
In similar criticism of Hillary Clinton on the Fox News program Hannity, Fiorina argued that Clinton's advocacy on behalf of women was tarnished by donations made to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments where women's rights are not on par with those in America. ""I must say as a woman, I find it offensive that Hillary Clinton travels the Silicon Valley, a place where I worked for a long time, and lectures Silicon Valley companies on women's rights in technology, and yet sees nothing wrong with taking money from the Algerian government, which really denies women the most basic human rights. This is called, Sean, hypocrisy." While Hillary Clinton hasn't directly addressed Fiorina's criticisms, her husband has. “You’ve got to decide, when you do this work, whether it will do more good than harm if someone helps you from another country,” former president Bill Clinton said in March. “And I believe we have done a lot more good than harm. And I believe this is a good thing.”
(Score: 1) by Rickter on Monday April 06 2015, @06:01PM
The taxes/infrastructure argument is ridiculous. If the business pays it's taxes, it has earned the right to use those resources even though they didn't pay for the entirety of them, and it shouldn't be taken away because they choose to make a decision with values you don't agree with. After all, most businesses, especially small local ones like the ones being discussed here pay a disproportionate amount of taxes to support local roads and other services. That should earn them immunity from having their use of those resources questioned because other people disagree with what they do.
I replied [soylentnews.org] to another post (an hour and a half before yours) with a bit mentioning electricians. I'd be more interested in hearing what you thought of the scenario I posted in that post, and reposted here:
Would you rather that we require scientists or programmers, to take money and work from people that they disagree with? If I am a climate change denier, should I be able to hire and compel, without being discriminated against, a scientist who agrees with the climate change science, and compel him, under the terms of hire, to participate in a charade where he will claim to no longer agree with the science as currently understood? Under the normal standards of how he normally works, he's hired to do science and present that to the public, which makes him a provider of service just the same as these business individuals. In this case, all we are doing, economically, is participating in a transaction where I will hire him to work for me the way he works for anybody else? Should he be compelled to to participate? You may think, "But you are forcing him to participate in deceit," and you would be right. But for these business people, they believe they are being forced to participate in a deceit, one that has been deliberately planned (in their understanding). If somebody else can be found to do the work, you should not force these individuals to participate in something they consider to be lying. Shouldn't we expect that of all citizens? That they assess the character of those they associate, or the actions and agreements they are asked to partake in, and chose not to participate in those they find offensive. By your very desire to strip them of their ability to use the roads because they don't agree with you, you indicate that you think this should be a standard they should live up to. But then when they do it in disagreement with your values, you want to strip them of their rights.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday April 06 2015, @07:11PM
Only if it pays ALL the taxes.
I own a business in WA state. We have no income tax but we do have a sales tax, property tax -- and a B&O tax which only affects business owners. Although I may pay more tax than the average person in WA by virtue of owning a business, I still don't pay _all_ the taxes, and other people kick in too. Many things I don't support get the benefit of my tax dollars -- churches for example. FN1.
The fact is, a business is not exactly a private space like a home, because it invites the public to use its services. It is thus perfectly reasonable that if the public at large provides an infrastructure on which to build that business, the public at large is right to expect that it will be served as a whole, otherwise, that business is just a freeloader sucking at the public teat.
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FN1: Can you think of a bigger waste of money, intellect, time, and effort than churches? It's pretty hard -- video games, heroin, fishing -- these come to mind but each of them actually has some utility (flight simulators for video games, pain treatment for heroin, food from fishing). I can't play games anymore because of my wrists, never tried heroin, but I have spent thousands of dollars and countless hours fishing. I still pay taxes that in part, make it possible for people to go to church, for churches to not get broken into and sacked, and for those utilities they use despite having a strong moral objection to churches (imagine the awesome place the world would be if all that time and money spent on fantasy went to science or art). But I also pay taxes that go to building boat launches, seeding oysters, monitoring the populations of various sea creatures, and the like. Anyway, you have to take the good with the bad, and for a business open to the public, that means serving people you don't like because that person contributed to the infrastructure your business needs. Just like when paying taxes, you buy some crap you totally don't want, and some stuff you really like.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 07 2015, @03:06AM
Only if it pays ALL the taxes.
So if someone else pays just a little bit of tax, then that dirties the pool?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 07 2015, @07:54AM
Only if it pays ALL the taxes.
So if someone else pays just a little bit of tax, then that dirties the pool?
Shut up, Donnie, you're out of your league. (Big Lebowski, Bowling Alley Scene)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 07 2015, @11:59AM