Month: December 2019

“Miracle On 34th Street,”An Ethics Companion, Continued…Chapter 3: Kris Joins The Macy’s Family! [REVISED and CORRECTED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

(The Introduction is here.; Chapter I is here.;Chapter 2 is here.)

 Kris takes Santa’s throne

Kris’s rave reviews as Santa in the Thanksgiving Day Parade are so good,  Doris hires him play Santa at Macy’s flagship New York City store on 34th Street. He agrees, which is strange, when you think about how busy he should be at this time of year, supervising the elves and all. If he really is Santa, or even if he thinks he is, taking the job in New York is irresponsible.

His supervisor gives him a list of toys to “push”—toys that are overstocked. “Now, you’ll find that a great many children will be undecided as to what they want for Christmas. When that happens, you suggest one of these items,” Kris is told. “You understand?”

Kris says he understands, but later makes it clear in his comments to a co-worker, that he has no intention of “pushing” the merchandise.:

“Imagine…making a child take something it doesn’t want…just because he bought too many of the wrong toys.That’s what I’ve been fighting against for years!”

That being the case, there is exactly one thing Kris needs to do. He needs to quit. What he cannot do, and must not do, and has a clear ethical obligation not to do, is to accept a job when he has no intention of doing what the job requires. This is a sales job. If Kris doesn’t want to sell, then he will be accepting a pay check under false pretenses. This isn’t noble conduct, as the film would have you believe. It’s unethical conduct. It’s wrong.

Kris needs to put himself on his own naughty list. Continue reading →

The Last Ethics Warm-Up of 2019…And I Finally Figured Out How To Get Ethics Alarms Links On Facebook

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ethical New Year!

1. Boy, am I slow. You can link to an Ethics Alarms article by using the Twitter link that every post has. This link works on Facebook, where EA has been banned with no explanation: I just tested it. So an interested reader clicks on that link, and is taken to a tweet that contains the Ethics Alarms link.

From now on, all posts will include the Twitter link to the post at the end.

2. Don Imus. The infamous “I-man,” Don Imus, died last week. He was one more example of the inherently unfair standard that shadows “shock jocks,” who are paid to be improvisational, outrageous, irreverent, and brave, but if they make one miscalculation and go too far (and what “too far” is changes quickly), their careers can end overnight. So it was that Imus and his on-air acolytes made demeaning and racially inflammatory comments mocking a college women’s basketball team, and Imus never recovered. That was even before social media mobs had reached their current strength. Imus was on AM radio and simulcast on TV; no shock jocks dare to do his act under such conditions now.  They wouldn’t last a week. From his Times obituary: Continue reading →

The Life of James Dailey

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Another of the periodic death penalty controversies is unfolding in Florida. The stay of execution for James Dailey expired yesterday. Governor Ron DeSantis now has to decide whether to grant him a new clemency hearing, or uphold his death sentence. So far, the Governor has not been sympathetic.

New evidence provided by the co-defendant in the Dailey’s murder case has been offered by Jack Pearcy, Dailey’s co-defendant in the 1985 murder of 14-year-old Shelly Boggio. Pearcy was sentenced to life in prison, Dailey to death. Pearcy has written a letter declaring, “James Dailey had nothing to do with the murder of Shelly Boggio. I committed the crime alone.” A federal judge issued a stay until Dec. 30 to give attorneys an opportunity to file appeals.

As the New York Times argued in an editorial, Dailey’s conviction also depended heavily on the testimony of a repeat jailhouse snitch who had a cozy relationship with the prosecutors. The Times says, “The rank injustice of cases like James Dailey’s provides yet another reason, as if more were needed, that the death penalty must be abolished.”

No, it doesn’t. I haven’t studied the case, but based on what I’ve read, it certainly appears that Dailey might be innocent, and thus in his case, the death penalty is unjust. (I agree with the Times that jailhouse snitches are unreliable witnesses and should be regarded by juries with skepticism. On the other side, I don’t find a late claim of guilt exonerating a co-defendant especially persuasive. The guy is locked up for life; he has nothing to lose or gain. ) Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Pete Buttigieg

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

“The people who wrote the Constitution did not understand that slavery was a bad thing.”

South  Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg in 2011, disgracing himself and betraying the trust of the a group of students who trusted him to tell them the truth. Instead, he made them ignorant while encouraging disrespect and distrust of the Founders, an especially sinister component of the Democratic effort to undermine the Constitution and to “remake” America.

I reluctantly concluded that Buttigieg was, to be indelicate, an asshole almost exactly a month ago, after he returned the contributions of two lawyers who represented  Justice Kavanaugh when Buttigieg’s party was attempting to destroy him using an unsubstantiated and conveniently recalled alleged episode when he was in high school. With Buttigieg, unlike, say, Joe Biden, I assume he is educated and intelligent, and thus I knew that this was dishonest grandstanding. Mayor Pete knows that lawyers do not personally endorse those they represent, even if much of the public does not. Worse, in justifying his actions, Buttigeig’s campaign declared that Justice Kavanaugh was guilty of sexual assault. I wrote,

Buttigieg rejects fairness, due process, logic and decency to declare a Supreme Court Justice with a history of  impeccable professional and personal conduct guilty of a crime without evidence, and further impugns the lawyers who helped protect him from a vicious political attack, all to suck up to the worst elements of the Democratic base. This is signature significance. Pete Buttigieg is an asshole. Good to know.

It’s also good to know that my assessment in November was accurate, as this re-surfaced episode confirms, and that the mayor didn’t just recently become an asshole as he pursued the Presidency (an occupational hazard) but has been one all along.

Good to know. Continue reading →

Will The Democrats Really Let Someone As Obviously Addled As Joe Biden Be Their Nominee?

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Doing so is per se irresponsible and incompetent.

Before someone tries to play “whataboutTrump” with me, I would remind him, her or it  that in 2016 I wrote that the Republicans had an obligation to refuse to nominate Donald Trump, having failed their obligation not to let him run in the primaries. I was right then, despite the fact that nominating Trump ended up well for the  party, and so far, on balance, for the country, especially when one considers what the Democrats have become. I’m also right about Biden now. If the Democrats expect to catch lightning in a shot glass like the GOP, they are taking a really reckless gamble.

Let’s look at what old Joe said just over the last few days…

  • During a December 29 campaign even in Peterborough, New Hampshire,  Biden completed an attendees question “If we don’t stop using fossil fuels…” with “We’re all dead!”

Now, what is that? Deliberate hyperbole? Outrageous fear-mongering?  Complete ignorance? Nobody has suggested that “we’re all dead” even under the most extreme projections of climate change doom. My guess is that Joe knows nothing about climate change, and that he’s just pandering to the substantial climate change nut-case component of the increasingly hysterical Democratic base. But he could be so stupid that he really believes this.

In addition to the undeniable fact that this is exactly the kind of statement that the mainstream media  pillories Donald Trump for even when it’s clear  s clear can be that he’s exaggerating, Biden’s over-the-top rhetoric feeds the rising Democratic drift toward totalitarianism. If we’re all going to die, then a dictatorship can be justified as a last resort. Continue reading →

Monday Ethics Pot The End Of The Rainbow, 12/30/19: The Post Turns On Maddow, Second Amendment Rights In Action, And A Fast Food Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

There‘s a huge rainbow outside!

Either its the sunshine coming through the just lifted rain, or the LBGTG army has taken over!

1.  But..but..the narrative! On Sunday, a man entered a church in White Settlement, Texas, and started firing on worshippers, until he was shot dead by a member of the church security team. Two worshipers died.  Thettacker was only able to get off two shots before being shot by a security guard ,reportedly an ex-FBI agent, who was an excellent marksman.

Several other armed congregants at the West Freeway Church of Christ grabbed their own firearms and prepared to shoot if necessary.

A 2017 law passed by the Republicans in the Texas legislature allowed church goers to carry licensed guns, on the theory that gun-free zones wouldn’t deter killers and criminals, which yu would think would be self-evident. Democrats and allies of Michael Bloomberg condemned the law.

Where’s that “if it only saves one life” rationalization that President Obama was so fond of? Continue reading →

“Side hustle?” SIDE HUSTLE? 

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Apparently Democrats think this is me…

 “The Side Hustle is Increasingly a Fact of American Life” says the New York Times,  and progressives want to restrict them.  Of course, being a versatile guy who can do a lot of things people will pay to have done, I resent the “hustle” term, which makes me sound like “Seinfeld'”s Kramer with a law degree….and that, making what people like me do sound cheesy and even a little bit shady, is the idea. Legislators and Presidential candidates—guess which party!– have expressed great concerns about the so-called “gig economy,’ arguing that it is proof of  unhealthy capitalism.  (Amusingly, this is exactly what Elizabeth Warren did when she was litigating appeals while serving as a Harvard law professor, but that’s different.) The data does not support the latest argument for controlling your life and mine, however.

A recent poll of those who have more than one way of making money shows that 33% of them take on more than one paying job because they have to, while 48% so it because they want to.

Naturally, those who want to must be stifled for the greater good, and need to get with the program. California’s recently passed Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), set to take effect on January 1, 2020,  will make it illegal for contractors who reside in California to create more than 35 pieces of content in a year for a single company, unless the business hires them as an employee. Continue reading →

From The Ethics Alarms Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: What Does The Public Learn From These Things? Can They Figure It Out Themselves?

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

[This is the successor to a completed post that WordPress, for some reason, deleted beyond recovery when I hit “publish” at about 6:30 am today, thus robbing me of 90 minutes of my life and nearly my sanity. My inclination was to let it stay in cyber-hell and forget the whole thing, especially since the viewership here has similarly vanished lately and I feel like I could be more productively catching up on my “Everybody loves Raymond” episodes, but that would be petulant.]

There are a lot of dots to connect, but it shouldn’t be hard for the unbiased and attentive. I know they are out there, even if the Democratic Party is certain they are not.

So here are the dots…Let’s begin with the attack against a group of Jews celebrating Hanukkah at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York over the weekend. Grafton Thomas used a machete-like blade, and stabbed five celebrants.

  • The attack, which officials said began after 10 p.m. this past Saturday, was the 13th anti-Semitic incident in three weeks in the state and the most recent in a string of violence targeting local Jewish communities in the region.

Earlier this month, four people were fatally shot in  an attack on a Jersey City kosher grocery store.

  • On Friday the 27th, the day before the Monsey attack, Tiffany Harris, like Thomas an African American, was arrested for  punching and cursing three Orthodox women awhile shouting, ‘Fuck you you, Jews.’

Harris then was released on her own recognizance, and a day later arrested for another attack.

  • NYC’s Democrat mayor Bill de Blasio immediately shifted blame and accountability to…well, guess.

You’re RIGHT! He told Fox News, “An atmosphere of hate has been developing in this country over the last few years. A lot of it is emanating from Washington and it’s having an effect on all of us.. Not just the President — I’m saying, but we have to be clear. We need a different tone starting in Washington.”

  • OK, let’s be clear. The members of “The Squad,” Rep. Tlaib, Rep. Omar, and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, have been making anti-Jewish pronouncements since they were elected in 2018. Many member of the Congressional Black Caucus, including the recent co-chair of the Democratic National Committee, Keith Ellison, have had friendly ties with Nation of Islam Louis Farrakhan, who regularly refers to Jews as vermin. Maxine Waters has openly greeted Farrakhan with hugs. New York Democrat Thomas Lopez-Pierre’s campaign slogan was stopping “Greedy Jewish Landlords.” A  black Trenton, New Jersey City Council Chair used the phrase “Jew me down;” a black Jersey City School board member opined in the wake of the kosher market massacre that Jews for were at fault for living in that neighborhood. The “Women’s Marches,” “resistance” protests all, had the endorsement of Farrakhan, and at one of them speaker Tamika Mallory referred to him as the “Greatest of All Time.”

Writes Debby Hall on a pro-Israel site,

Demonization of Israel on the left has also contributed to whipping up the people who would ultimately commit these attacks. BDS, a movement calling for Israel’s destruction, is essentially letting people know that Jews have no right to self-determination and as a result, no right to live.

  •  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo released this boilerplate:

     Nice. Of course, that “zero-tolerance thingy was somewhat undercut by the  release of Tiffany Harris into the community. The Governor also has not been a practitioner of  inclusion and diversity himself, raising the question of what he means when he uses these words. For example, this year he said in part, “These extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay…if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.” In a similar vein, Cuomo has said that those who do not support same-sex marriage don’t belong in his diverse, inclusive state.

Orthodox Jews do not support same sex marriage.

  • Finally, an NBC fact-checker tweeted,

This is, I repeat, a fact-checker. Rationalizations are not facts. From the Ethics Alarms list: 46. The Abuser’s License:  “It’s Complicated”…”The implication is that “yes, this looks bad, but if you knew all of the details, history and considerations, you would understand..If [an act] was unethical, it is important to say so, to make certain that nobody labors under the misconception that it was the right thing to do when they face similar decisions. “It’s complicated” is also lazy…. Complexity doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility of seeking the right approach to these matters. “It’s complicated” is an ethics cop-out.

After she was roundly condemned on Twitter, the fact-checker buried the fact of her own bias, taking down the tweet, making her account private, and finally taking down her account.

Observant Americans should be able to connect these dots, though the mainstream media and politicians, counting on the public’s own biases  and certain that they can fool all of the people all of the time, will try mightily to spin, obscure, bury and otherwise interfere with accurate perception.

___________________________

Sources: Victory Girls, Pittsburgh  Post-Gazette, PJ media, Twitchy, Libertarian Republic, Daily Wire, Washington Post, Israelycool

 

“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” As Chuck Todd Drops The Mask [Corrected!]

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

[Notice of a material correction: I have corrected this post, which incorrectly stated that the words of a letter approvingly quoted by Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” were his own words. I won’t list all the sources that confused me on this point, but I primarily blame Newsbusters for a misleading headline, “Todd Bashes Christians in MTP Rant Against Misinformation, Trump.”  Todd let a year-old letter to the Times do his ranting for him, which is a craven technique, but he did not himself “rant.” He just read a letter bashing religion as “fairy tales,” and used it in a manner that indicated that he agreed with it.

If I had been more careful reading this and similar accounts, this wouldn’t have happened. In the end, it’s my fault. However, my assessment of Todd’s intent is unchanged.

Thanks to Arthur in Maine for flagging my error.]

***

To be fair, it never was much of a mask anyway.

On “Meet the Press” today, host Chuck Todd apparently snapped, or perhaps let a letter snap for him. He dredged up a year-old letter to the Times that read,

“Why do good people support Trump? It’s because people have been trained from childhood to believe in fairy tales. This set their minds up to accept things that make them feel good. The more fairy tales and lies he tells the better they feel. Show me a person who believes in Noah’s ark, and I will show you a Trump voter.”

“Look, this gets at something,” Todd told his guest, the Times’ anti-Trump editor , Dean Baquet, “that my executive producer likes to say, voters want to be lied to sometimes. They don’t always love being told hard truths.”

Why in the world would Todd pick this faith-mocking letter to make that point? It’s a cowardly smear by proxy. He can advance the writer’s position, but if he’s criticized for it, he can always say “It wasn’t me, it was him!”

Todd and his colleagues never accept this excuse when someone they want to get retweets an inflammatory statement, though. This was exactly like a retweet….an endorsement.

You see, for all the abuse heaped on Hillary Clinton for her “deplorables” gaffe, calling anyone who supported Donald Trump over the virtuous and brilliant Hillary Clinton  a racist, a fool, and an idiot, Democrats, the “resistance,” and journalists believed it then, and they believe it now.  Chuck Todd adds the detail implied by the letter: if good people support President Trump—we know why the bad people support him—it’s because they were turned into idiots by religion! After all, the elite and educated know that religion is a crock, God is a crock, the Bible is a crock. Never mind all the “diversity” lip service. If you’re religious, you’re a dope, and you’re the problem. That’s what he thinks. That’s what most of them think. Continue reading →

Last Sunday Of The Decade Ethics Alarms, 12/29/2019: Herman Kahn Rolling Over In His Grave Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Good morning!

In my one, fortuitous one-on-one conversation with futurist Herman Kahn, then regarded as the most brilliant man in America, he observed that society periodically for forgets everything it has learned over the years, and then chaos reigns temporarily until bad ideas and horrific mistakes re-teach the lessons that once were accepted as obvious. He was talking about the Sixties, but it is clear that this is another one of those periods. Kahn also noted that some of the forgotten lessons are re-learned too late to save society from permanent harm. The Sixties gave us socially acceptable promiscuous sex and the resulting normalization of children born out of wedlock, the re-assignment of of abortion as ethical (somehow) rather than criminal, and societal sanctions of recreational drug use.

Nice work, Boomers…

1. Speaking of abortion...can there be a more empty, fatuous justification of it than what Senator Cory Booker tried last week? ”Abortion rights shouldn’t matter to men because women are our mothers, sisters, daughters, friends,” Booker tweeted. “They should matter to men — to everyone — because women are people.”

How profound. Nobody has ever disputed that women are people, and Booker’s non-logic—the statement compels the response, “And SO…????”—is an appeal to emotion without substance. It also makes its own rebuttal screamingly obvious to anyone but a pro-abortion zealot: “Abortion should be repugnant to men and women…and Presidential candidates…because unborn babies are living human beings.” Continue reading →