Month: April 2020

Let Us Have A Moment of Appreciation For The Rude, The Vulgar And The Defiant, For They Are America’s First Line Of Defense Against Totalitarianism

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Oh, how I love this about Americans!

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new program to help protect New Yorkers against the Wuhan virus outbreak. It’s quite straightforward, really: report your neighbors to authorities.

“We still know there’s some people who need to get the message,” the city’s socialist mayor said on Twitter.  “And that means sometimes making sure the enforcement is there to educate people and make clear we’ve got to have social distancing.”
The simple solution, he explained is to snap a photo of an offending person or crowd, set the location on the image, and  “text it to 311-692.”

“Action will ensue,” de Blasio promised.

History has taught us that governments seeking to bend the public to its will “for the greater good” usually seek the cooperation and participation of citizen lackeys eager to ingratiate themselves with their ascendant masters. Fortunately, the United States was settled and created by people who came here to escape presumptuous tyrants and oppressive governments not of their choosing. The contrarian RNA and traditions run deep, and it always gives me a thrill to see that while they may have been diluted a bit over time, in the face of those who either do not comprehend this nation or do not respect its unique values, the old defiance flames forth. Continue reading →

On Line Ethics (Not To Be Confused With Online Ethics) [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

This isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed this situation—I think the first time was in junior high school—but it may be the first time I have thought about it beyond the immediate flash of irritation.

I decided to give Trader Joe’s another chance, as they have better pre-prepared meals, frozen or otherwise, than anyone else, and perhaps because a storm was looming, the line to get into the store was tolerable, and appeared to be moving quckly. By the time I got close to the Promised Land, however, the line was growing behind me rapidly.

An apparently elderly woman approached the entrance from the parking lot. The woman who was first in line waved her to the front of the line,  and the senior was able to grab a cart immediately. She thanked the younger woman profusely, over and over.

There were more than ten hopeful shoppers behind me in line at that point. including at least one who looked no younger than the lady who got a pass.

What the hell? Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Afternoon Ethics Alarms, 4/19/2020: Facebook, Harvard, Broadway And You Know, Morons…” (Item #2)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The post touching on a Harvard  professor’s criticism of homeschooling  (also discussed here) sparked a lot of debate here as it has elsewhere.

Here is JimHodgson’s Comment of the Day on Item #2 in the post, “Afternoon Ethics Alarms, 4/19/2020: Facebook, Harvard, Broadway And You Know, Morons…”

The resistance to and denigration of homeschooling by academia is a source of constant irritation to me. It is another case of “our minds are made up, don’t confuse us with the facts. It’s like they just can’t stand a parent who declines letting the dysfunctional village raise their children.

The current societal shut-down due to the Chinese flu has made homeschoolers of many parents who are enjoying the experience. (This is based on conversations with my extended family and fellow church members, your mileage may vary.) My niece’s two girls, ages 6 and 9, exiled from their regular school, have easily kept up their school work, completed several art and STEM projects, and learned how to plant a vegetable garden. They are outside every day, weather permitting. My daughter’s homeschooling process continues without a hitch with her boys. The article’s undercurrent of opposition to parents actually raising their own children is ominous. Continue reading →

Which Part Of “A Judge Shall Perform Judicial Duties Without Bias” Confuses You, Your Honor?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Here are a few provisions of the Texas Code Of Judicial Conduct:

  • From the Preamble: “Intrinsic to all sections of this Code of Judicial Conduct are the precepts that judges, individually and collectively, must respect and honor the judicial office as a public trust and strive to enhance and maintain confidence in our legal system.”
  • “A judge shall comply with the law and should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
  • “Canon 2: Avoiding Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in All of the Judge’s Activities”
  • “A judge shall not allow any relationship to influence judicial conduct or judgment. A judge shall not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others; nor shall a judge convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.”
  • “A judge shall perform judicial duties without bias or prejudice.”
  • “A judge shall not, in the performance of judicial duties, by words or conduct manifest bias or prejudice, including but not limited to bias or prejudice based upon race, sex, religion, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status, and shall not knowingly permit staff, court officials and others subject to the judge’s direction and control to do so.”
  • A judge shall conduct all of the judge’s extra- judicial activities so that they do not cast reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially as a judge..
  • “A judge may participate in civic and charitable activities that do not reflect adversely upon the judge’s impartiality or interfere with the performance of judicial duties.”

OK, now you’ve read  that, as presumably all Texas judges have. Now, if you were Bexar judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, would your judicial ethics alarms start sounding as you considered displaying a rainbow flag in your courtroom, using a rainbow pen, a rainbow mouse pad and a robe with a rainbow-style strip of Mexican blanket design? Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 4/21/2020: Groundhog Day

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Hi.

I was talking with a colleague about the most relevant movie to watch these days. As readers here know, the outbreak of elected officials letting power go to their heads led me to designate Woody Allen’s “Bananas” for that honor.  (And yesterday I posited the relevance of “Airplane!” )Still, it’s hard to argue against my friend’s position that the right choice is “Groundhog Day.”

In the interest of sanity, I reject “Contagion” and especially “World War Z” or “Quaranteen.” (All good movies though.)

1. Right now it’s turned face to the wall, but today I’m putting a sheet over it…My college diploma becomes more embarrassing by the day. Harvard University has accepted nearly $9 million from the pandemic relief package. With a 40 billion dollar dollar endowment, Harvard is better off financially than the U.S. government.

[Notice of Correction: I wrote “million” instead of billion in the original post. Really stupid typo. I apologize.]

There is no excuse for the school accepting the money. It is getting widely criticized for taking it, and ought to be.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education said ithat Education Secretary Betsy DeVos “shares the concern that sending millions to schools with significant endowments is a poor use of taxpayer money. In her letter to college and university presidents, Secretary DeVos asked them to determine if their institutions actually need the money and, if not, to send unneeded CARES Act funds to schools in need in their state or region.”

In an episode of Spokesman vs Spokesman, a mouthpiece for the Ivy said, disingenuously,

“By federal formula laid out in the CARES Act, Harvard was allocated $8.6 million, with 50% of those funds to be reserved for grants to students. Harvard is actually allocating 100% of the funds to financial assistance for students to meet their urgent needs in the face of this pandemic. Harvard will allocate the funds based on student financial need. This financial assistance will be on top of the significant support the University has already provided to students — including assistance with travel, providing direct aid for living expenses to those with need, and supporting students’ transition to online education.”

This is an exercise in deflection and rationalization. The only issue is that Harvard has plenty of money to do all of this without any hand-outs from the government, and many other institutions need the money more, which is an easy calculation because no institution needs money less than Harvard does. Continue reading →

When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring Because You Never Were Taught About Nazi Germany

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In Montana, the Valley County Health Department sent out a flier to businesses decreeing that all essential workers from outside the county must wear pink armbands or bracelets signifying their quarantine status in order to shop in the county. Anyone not wearing a pink armband, the flyer said, would be reported to police.

If that graphic is too blurry for you, it reads in part,

Anyone who is from out of town or out of Valley County who has a PINK wristband has been here 14 days or more and no longer needs to do the strict self-quarantine. They may enter your business. Anyone who is from out of town or out of Valley County, staying here/working here, and has not completed the 14 day quarantine is REQUIRED BY THE VALLEY COUNTY HEALTH OFFICER ORDER to use curbside delivery only. They are not to enter your business to shop.

Boy, that reminds me of something. What is it? It’s right on the tip of my tongue…something to do with..is it the Holocaust? Could that be it? No, it can’t be. No health department would be that stupid, would it? Especially when mayors and governors around the country are being accused of having a “Who’s the best dictator?” competition? Would it? Really?

Here’s the Nazi badge code, in case you can’t read German: Continue reading →

Take THAT, Supreme Court Cynics! Ramos v. Louisiana.

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court today over-ruled, 6-3, its really bad 1972 holding that rights, like the 6th amendment fair trial requirements, were not necessarily incorporated into the states by the 14th. Oregon and Louisiana, astoundingly, did not require unanimous jury verdicts of guilty in criminal cases, allowing 10-2 convictions. In Louisiana, the anomaly  was an 1898 relic of the Jim Crow era; I have no idea what Oregon’s excuse was.

Louisianans voted in 2018 to do away with the practice,  passing an amendment to the state constitution requiring unanimous verdicts going forward. But up to a hundred prisoners,  like Evangelisto Ramos who was serving a life prison sentence after being convicted of murder in a 10-2 jury vote, will get new trials because their convictions came under the old, unconstitutional law and their appeals aren’t exhausted. The case is Louisiana v. Ramos.

Two aspects of the decision are especially noteworthy, other than the fact that its seems obviously correct. Continue reading →

‘Our Book Review Section Always Features An Interview With A Literary Figure Or Book-Loving Celebrity, But We Couldn’t Find One This Week, So We Used A Semi-Literate Celebrity Who Obviously Hardly Reads At All’

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Because we’re the New York Times, and we can get away with anything.

One of my goals in life is to leave a legacy of indisputable evidence that America’s self-declared “paper of record” has devolved into an irresponsible hack publication that makes its readers biased and misinformed, while dragging down all of American journalism in the process.

This week’s Times Book Review interview was with the Coal Miner’s Daughter herself, Loretta Lynn. She is a great artist and an iconic figure in her field, but she has as much business holding forth on literature as I have talking about curling. The interview is like a Bob and Ray routine:

What books are on your nightstand? “My family Bible.”

What’s the last great book you read? “I am loving those audiobooks. The older you get, the worse your eyesight becomes…”

Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time? “Doesn’t the Bible count here?”

What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of? “Johnny Cash’s ‘Man in White.’”

Have any books influenced your development as a writer or musician? (She ducks the question.)

Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid? (She ducks the question.)

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain? “I really don’t have one.”

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite? “I wouldn’t….”

…and so on in that pattern. It’s cruel of the Times, it’s embarrassing to Lynn, and she shouldn’t be placed in that position. I don’t care that Lynn, who was married before high school, isn’t a reader, but representing her as a book-lover in the Times Book Review is as misleading as it is foolish.

What a great newspaper.

Monday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 4/20/2020: Phantom Patriots Day Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

The Battle of Menotomy, April 19, 2020.

“One if by land, and two if by sea
And I on the opposite shore will be
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm
For the country folk to be up and to arm!”

Today, the third Monday in April,  is supposed to be Patriots Day in Massachusetts (and  few other states.) It absolutely should be a national holiday, as it celebrates the battles of Concord and Lexington as well as the rides of Paul Revere and his fellow messengers the night before. I typed the excerpt above from Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” from memory; I wonder how many students today  have even heard of the poem, or Concord and Lexington, for that matter.

The original holiday was on April 19, the date of both battles, but Arlington, Massachusetts, where I hail from, was actually the site of a bigger battle than either on the same day. On their way back from Concord after being soundly beaten at the bridge, the Redcoats marched through the town of Menotomy (Arlington now), where 5,100 militia men from surrounding towns had gathered after, unfortunately, the British had marched through the Menotomy on the way to Lexington Green with little resistance.  The volunteers, stationed around houses, stone walls, fields and barns, did considerable damage to the already limping British in the fighting that followed, but Arlington residents have always been a bit sheepish about the timing of the fight, and historians regard it as  anti-climactic following the tragedy at Lexington and the surprise victory at Concord.

Patriots Day is a big  deal in Boston, where the Boston Marathon is run annually on that date. The Red Sox also play a unique 11 am game, so spectators can leave the park and watch the finish of the race. All gone this year, of course.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t remember, and honor, the heroes, victims and events of 1775 that made the United States of America possible.

1. This is the kind of thing that will lead to serious back-lash against the pandemic dictators. The city of San Clemente was alarmed that some teens, bored with pplaying video games all day, every day, continued to skateboard in a local skate park despite orders that all parks be closed. Its solution?  Fill the park, at taxpayer expense, with 37 tons of sand. The money to build the park was raised by a nonprofit coalition of local families who wanted a place for their kids to be able to skate safely, and they were not even notified that the park would be filled with sand, according to KCAL-TV. Continue reading →

An Ethics Analogy

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I’ve been trying to think of the best analogy for the still rolling 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck. Suddenly, while watching “Airplane!” it came to me.

Ironically (and annoyingly), the ideal analogy for how the Democrats/”resistance”/mainstream media “Axis of Unethical Conduct” has behaved is an airplane analogy rather than a train analogy, and I hate mixed metaphors. Never mind.

During the entire 2016 campaign, I argued with a succession of Hillary Haters regarding my announcement that I was prepared to hold my nose, suppress my gag reflex and have six shots of bourbon in order to vote for Clinton on election day. I explained that I believed it to be per se unethical  for a candidate as loathsome as Donald Trump to be allowed to become President of the United States. Here or elsewhere I wrote that it was like having a choice in an in-flight emergency of having a horrible, untrustworthy pilot flying your passenger plane or a dog.

As I recently recounted, I changed my conclusion at almost the last second, deciding that I couldn’t justify voting for either Clinton or Trump. The airplane analogy is still a useful one, however, though the conditions have changed. Continue reading →