4 ms·

The really telling part to me is that (seemingly) no one from any of the organizations involved (the hospital and the prosecutors office) will come forward and

The really telling part to me is that (seemingly) no one from any of the organizations involved (the hospital and the prosecutors office) will come forward and outright say that what was done was immoral. They are all hiding behind a veneer of "what he did broke the rules and my job is to enforce them", which is about the weakest argument one can make in defense this sort of thing.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
Covering your ass isn’t a weak defense for the underlings. There exists a leader(s) somewhere that made the rules and that can change the rules. They are the only ones responsible, and I don’t see why anyone else should stick their neck out and risk their income for it. It’s actually a strategy for leaders to want the underlings to stick their neck out, so that they can be sacrificed as a scapegoat when convenient. (in these bureaurocratic situations, obviously I’m not talking about a leader asking people to murder others and them not being responsible for that).
- grayhatter 6y ago
  Where does the moral line lie then? what's difference that makes 'just following orders' suddenly not apply? In this specific case; where's the prosecutorial discretion? If it's coming down from on high, why aren't their names in this article?
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    With the prosecutor. In a government, it starts with the politician. I don’t know why the article doesn’t state who is responsible for the rule making, but I’m always an advocate for more transparency. > what's difference that makes 'just following orders' suddenly not apply? I don’t know, but this situation isn’t it in my opinion. It can be fixed with a flick of a pen (or email) by a higher up.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    > Where does the moral line lie then? I don't know that that's a useful question in this context. Bureaucracies function in intensely amoral ways. Even ones with a moral mission. You can embarrass the leadership with moral judgments, and that will steer things for at least as long as public scrutiny maintains its attention span. Internally, though, the rules look more like game theory, and the bureaucracy will naturally tend to reject anyone who doesn't want to play the game.
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
The DA who brought the case, Kim Ogg, is an elected official. Top Google result for her name is this campaign page: https://www.kim-ogg.com/ https://www.kim-ogg.com/. Further down the list is a news article about threatening employees with performance reviews to appear at a food drive for her political benefit. Had the judge not thrown out this case, she'd have another feather in her cap, another headline for the website: "Kim Ogg puts nepotistic, racist, embezzling doctor behind bars!" Doesn't need to be honest, just needs to sound good.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  I am a Houstonian and absolutely hate Ogg. She bills herself as the "most progressive DA" and therefore prosecutes/does not prosecute certain things based on their political appearance. That is not what a DA should be doing, and she is the embodiment of all that is wrong with the "progressive" left these days.
  - jfk13 6y ago
    Sounds like the embodiment of what's wrong with the US system of treating jobs like DA as elected posts.
  - adamesque 6y ago
    not to mention this is an insanely anti-progressive prosecution once you dig into the details. just dumb.
    - edbob 6y ago
      Why is this anti-progressive? It sounds like he's being prosecuted because he gave vaccines to lighter-skinned people. Kim Ogg wouldn't be prosecuting him if he'd given them all to dark-skinned Black people. The official statements of the medical associations in the article state: “It is difficult to understand any justification for charging any well-intentioned physician in this situation with a criminal offense.” As there is clearly no legal justification, the only justification in sight is progressive identity politics attacking a "white-adjacent" physician.
robin21 6y ago
Why does it matter if what he did was immoral? Many things that are not immoral can have bad outcomes.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

Covering your ass isn’t a weak defense for the underlings. There exists a leader(s) somewhere that made the rules and that can change the rules. They are the only ones responsible, and I don’t see why anyone else should stick their neck out and risk their income for it. It’s actually a strategy for leaders to want the underlings to stick their neck out, so that they can be sacrificed as a scapegoat when convenient. (in these bureaurocratic situations, obviously I’m not talking about a leader asking people to murder others and them not being responsible for that).

grayhatter 6y ago
Where does the moral line lie then? what's difference that makes 'just following orders' suddenly not apply? In this specific case; where's the prosecutorial discretion? If it's coming down from on high, why aren't their names in this article?
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  With the prosecutor. In a government, it starts with the politician. I don’t know why the article doesn’t state who is responsible for the rule making, but I’m always an advocate for more transparency. > what's difference that makes 'just following orders' suddenly not apply? I don’t know, but this situation isn’t it in my opinion. It can be fixed with a flick of a pen (or email) by a higher up.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  > Where does the moral line lie then? I don't know that that's a useful question in this context. Bureaucracies function in intensely amoral ways. Even ones with a moral mission. You can embarrass the leadership with moral judgments, and that will steer things for at least as long as public scrutiny maintains its attention span. Internally, though, the rules look more like game theory, and the bureaucracy will naturally tend to reject anyone who doesn't want to play the game.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago

The DA who brought the case, Kim Ogg, is an elected official. Top Google result for her name is this campaign page: https://www.kim-ogg.com/ https://www.kim-ogg.com/. Further down the list is a news article about threatening employees with performance reviews to appear at a food drive for her political benefit. Had the judge not thrown out this case, she'd have another feather in her cap, another headline for the website: "Kim Ogg puts nepotistic, racist, embezzling doctor behind bars!" Doesn't need to be honest, just needs to sound good.

da_big_ghey 6y ago
I am a Houstonian and absolutely hate Ogg. She bills herself as the "most progressive DA" and therefore prosecutes/does not prosecute certain things based on their political appearance. That is not what a DA should be doing, and she is the embodiment of all that is wrong with the "progressive" left these days.
- jfk13 6y ago
  Sounds like the embodiment of what's wrong with the US system of treating jobs like DA as elected posts.
- adamesque 6y ago
  not to mention this is an insanely anti-progressive prosecution once you dig into the details. just dumb.
  - edbob 6y ago
    Why is this anti-progressive? It sounds like he's being prosecuted because he gave vaccines to lighter-skinned people. Kim Ogg wouldn't be prosecuting him if he'd given them all to dark-skinned Black people. The official statements of the medical associations in the article state: “It is difficult to understand any justification for charging any well-intentioned physician in this situation with a criminal offense.” As there is clearly no legal justification, the only justification in sight is progressive identity politics attacking a "white-adjacent" physician.

robin21 6y ago

Why does it matter if what he did was immoral? Many things that are not immoral can have bad outcomes.