Month: August 2022

Weekend Ethics Loose Ends, 8/21-22/2022: Brian Stelter Does A Cheney

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Now THAT was an insurrection! On August 22 in 1831, Nat Turner, an educated slave, killed his owner and escaped withe seven followers, planning on recruiting a slave army and capturing Virginia’s Southampton county armory. His strategy was then to march 30 miles to Virginia’s Great Dismal Swamp, where his army could hide out and strike at will. Turner and his recruits attacked homes throughout Southampton County, killing about 60 white men, women and children. The Virginia state militia, with greatly larger numbers, ended the rebellion while killing many of those who had joined him. The episode resulted in vengeful lynching of many slaves, even those who were not involved in Turner’s revolt

Nat Turner eluded capture until the end of October. Unrepentant, he  was tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged on November 11.

I noticed, in researching this story, that apparently the word “slave” is now taboo, and the politically correct term is “enslaved people.“

They were slaves. That is what I will continue to call them. Next we will be commanded to refer to them as “non-volunteer unpaid employees.” The only way to stop creeping Orwellian linguistics is to refuse to tolerate it.

1. Careful…whatever it is that Liz Cheney has might be contagious. Cheney’ s vainglorious self-celebration and presumption of martyrdom after being justly crunched by Republican primary voters in Wyoming was quickly followed by an even more outrageous display of imagined virtue by the ridiculous Brian Stelter, now looking for some other news organization to help pervert. Among a myriad of other flaws, Stelter’s fake journalism watchdog show, “Reliable Sources,” had finally tanked in the ratings (along with CNN in general), perhaps because it no longer even pretended to report informatively on how well (and ethically) the news media was doing its job, and was only repeating anti-Trump, anti-conservative talking points and attacking Fox News.

In his final show, instead of leaving in an ethical and dignified manner, Stelter decided to perform a Cheney on steroids. Among his gagworthy declarations was that “teachers use segments from this show all the time in classrooms, in lessons, guiding and teaching the next generation.”

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Electric Cars And The “Following The Science” Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Policy-makers often use science, or perhaps more accurately “science” as dishonest justification for the policies they want to inflict for ideological motives. Climate change is perhaps the most glaring example, though the handling of the Wuhan virus runs a close second. Most government experts allow their political biases to slant their application of science in their advice and recommendations, and few elected officials comprehend science and relevant research sufficiently to make competent policy consistent with the nuances of the scientific matters involved.

Let’s look at electric vehicles, for example, which are currently being encouraged by tax credits.

Ashley Nunes, Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program fellow, has pointed out that a gas guzzler may, in some circumstance, actually be better for the environment than an electric vehicle. When did you hear anyone in the Biden administration admit that?

Nunes found that many owners of electric vehicles (EVs for short), usually wealthy Americans who take advantage of  federal tax credits to purchase one as a second car, are harming the environmental because they aren’t driving enough.

Manufacturers of electric cars need lithium, and finding and mining lithium  takes a lot of energy, with more still required to make a functional car battery out of it. Creating a clean-burning EV battery creates twice as much greenhouse gases as making an internal combustion engine.
Because, as Nunes explains, “an electric car is almost always cleaner to drive per mile compared to a gasoline-powered one, you can burn off the emissions associated with manufacturing the car.” Still, it takes 28,069 miles of driving, or about 2.73 years, for the EV to overcome its initial polluting disadvantage to gain a “green lead” on a gas-powered car with its low per-mile emissions. Paradoxically, you need to get people to drive more in order to get an emissions advantage…and all of the climate change propaganda is aimed at getting Americans to drive less. And since EV purchasers tend to be wealthier people who use them as a second cars, it takes about a decade for the electric cars to produce any emissions benefit. How many wealthy household hold on to a car of any kind for ten years?

Thus, Nunes has concluded, some people are “better off driving a gas-powered car if they care about the environment.” EV owners tend to sell the vehicle before it’s reached the green break-even point in miles. 

But wait—there’s more.  Nunes’  research indicates that people who own both gas  and electric-powered vehicles choose to drive the gas-powered one most of the time. It is the  people who buy EVs secondhand, the poorer households that drive them for many miles and years as their primary vehicle, who achieve  the emissions reductions that electric vehicles are supposed to provide. But government subsidies miss this group entirely! The federal government tax credit of up to $7,500 only accrues to those who purchase new electric vehicles. Even with some states like California offering additional rebates on top of that, new electric vehicles often cost more than the average American earns in a year.

“If you’re a poor American and all you can afford is a $10,000 car, this rebate isn’t going to matter to you,” Nunes concludes. “And by and large, we find that, guess what, the person buying a $120,000 [electric vehicle] would have still gone out and bought the car without a $7,500 subsidy.” 

Policymakers’ EV hype is self-defeating, and doesn’t “follow the science,” because the politicians have a shallow understanding, to the extent that they have any at all, of al the relevant factors. 

The policies are wasteful and ineffective, no matter how smug and certain the climate-change scolds are about them. The electrical car advocates are assuming expertise and scientific justifications they simply don’t have.

It’s incompetence seasoned with dishonesty, abusing science rather than using it properly.

Cognitive Dissonance Also Makes You Stupid: Now NeverTrump Conservatives Are Offended By “1776”

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Anti-Trump madness, aka. Trump Derangement, is causing some Republicans and conservatives to support Democrats, progressives and anti-American totalitarians on the rise in their gradual rejection of all traditional American institutions, heroes, symbols and images. On the Left, the reason for the push to kick them into the dustbin of history is a basic dislike of the nation and its values generally: it’s always been racist, sexist, and imperial, you see, essentially bad, so it needs to be torn down. Everything American became unbearable once slavery was strategically accorded a position so deep and low on the cognitive dissonance scale that the United States’ historical connection to it drags literally everything American below the center line.

Here’s Dr. Festinger’s essential scale again:

The idea is that what we associate with something or someone inevitably affects how we feel about them. If, for example, I am positively inclined toward a character on a TV show—let’s say that character has a plus 4 score on my scale—and that character states admiration for someone whom I detest, say Megan Rapinoe (at least a minus 20 in my estimation), that obnoxious opinion would pull the once-admired character well below zero, which indicates neutral regard. Dr. Festinger’s theories argue that Megan would also improve her ranking by being connected to that character. Continue reading →

The NY “Body-Snatchers” Case: Why Do Good People Do Bad Things? It May Be That They Aren’t The Good People They Think They Are….

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I intended to write a post after seeing Tony Dye’s 2010 documentary “Body Snatchers of New York” a few years ago. Through a series of interviews with law enforcement officials, lawyers, journalists and victims, it tells the story of a sensational case out of Brooklyn in 2006 where a former dentist and his associates operating a company called Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, New Jersey, conspired with funeral homes to steal human bone and skin from dead bodies. The tissue was then sold to various processing companies to make medical products, including dental implants and spinal disc replacements. These, in turn were sold to hospitals to be transplanted.

In some cases, the families of the deceased individuals were told that their loved ones had been cremated when in truth they had been carved up and skinned. One such body belonged to the late Masterpiece Theater host, Allistair Cooke. Biomedical Tissue Services made as much as $250,000 from processing each body. In addition to lying to families and not receiving consent to distribute tissue and bone from corpses, the company also routinely sold body remnants from dead individuals who had suffered from drug and alcohol addiction, cancer, AIDS, hepatitis, and other diseases that compromised the safety of the tissue without informing their purchasers, tissue recipients or their doctors.

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Afternoon Ethics Picnic, 8/20/2022: Today’s Theme? Not Giving A Damn…

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Yesterday, walking Spuds, I was on a path temporarily blocked on one side by the fencing for a school toddler play area. I glanced over into that area, and suddenly, bearing down on us, was tall young man jogging hard and apparently prepared to run at us. Bad idea: on the leash, Spuds is protective unless he knows an individual or that individual’s dog. I literally had no place to go to avoid this guy. I assumed he would break to my left, but couldn’t be sure; if he kept going, I would have to pull Spuds left, and I wasn’t sure there would be time to get him far enough away to prevent his interacting with the jogger. Literally at the last moment, the jogger veered to go around us. Spuds lunged, and I just barely was able to keep him off this jerk by throwing all of my weight into the leash. I’d estimate that Spuds was within an inch of nipping him…and he would have deserved it. The jogger just happily ran on, never saying a word. Spuds, who had never been charged by a stranger like that before, was upset. I was more upset. I have long considered the great majority of joggers self-absorbed, inconsiderate and anti-social creeps who treat the rest of the world as an afterthought. This was only the latest proof of my thesis.

1. Bias makes you stupid, but it can’t make you this stupid, can it? Chris Isidore claimed  in a  CNN Business article that the drop in gasoline prices from their earlier high is like a “$100-a-month tax cut. Or a maybe $100-a-month raise.” This is challenger for most audacious cherry-picking of all-time. “The steady drop in gas prices over the last few months has turned into an unexpected form of economic stimulus, coming at a time when the Federal Reserve is trying to cool the economy and battle rising prices with higher interest rates,” this alleged journalist “explains.” But contrary to Isidore’s shameless and dishonest spin, economists estimate that Americans are  spending  an extra $5,200 in 2022 just to buy the same things they bought in 2021. Another calculation put the extra cost at $460 extra each month, or more than $5,500 this year.

CNN trying to frame this as a boon for consumers because of a drop in price of a single commodity is–what? What do you call it? Is it better or worse than Biden and media propagandists claiming that an 8.5 percent inflation increase is actually “zero,” or that two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth indicates a depression this time as it always has before (except for the strange year of 1947)? In truth, it’s all the same: a biased and corrupt media that sees its job as not informing the public, but to misinform them to ensure that they keep voting Democrat. [Pointer and Source: The Federalist] Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: GOP Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate Kari Lake

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Boy, there are a lot of horrible, unqualified, inept Republicans running for office! In Georgia, Senate candidate Herschel Walker continues to make little sense while mangling facts every time he opens his mouth. Carl Paladino, the New York GOP’s candidate for Congress who already declared that Adolf Hitler was a “doer” and the kind of leader we needed today, recently said the US attorney general should “probably be executed.” After people had a problem with this for some reason, Paladino swore he was just joking. He’s a funny guy!

In Pennsylvania, where the Democratic candidate for on open U.S. Senate seat is suffering the after-effects of a stroke and still has trouble speaking (though his party’s President has lowered the bar on that score considerably), the GOP is running TV doctor and Oprah acolyte Mehmet Oz because Republican primary voters just can’t resist unqualified celebrities (See Walker above). Oz made his honesty an issue when he was asked an easy question: “How many homes to you own?” Dr. Oz’s reply: “Well I, legitimately, I own two houses. But, uh, one of them we’re building on; the other ones I rent.”

Translation: “Huminahuminahumina…” As a little research rapidly demonstrated, the former TV doctor actually owns ten residential properties (plus as many as eight commercial ones). After this was pointed out by his opponent, Oz “clarified” by resorting to the Clintonesque tactic of distinguishing a house from a home. Obviously Oz wouldn’t give an honest answer because it would make him look like what he in fact is: someone who is, by average American standards, wildly wealthy…not that there’s anything wrong with that.

And now we arrive at Kari Lake, another Trump-endorsed Republican candidate, running for Governor of Arizona. She’s attractive! She’s female! She’s conservative!

She endorsed a raging anti-Semite!

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Ten Ethics Observations On This Head-Exploding Interview

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The president and vice president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers gave us the gift of this KABOOM!-worthy interview in which they respond to a pandering interviewer on Good Morning America about the “controversial” provision in the new teachers’ contract that is racially discriminatory. Ethics Alarms wrote about it here,earlier this week. The provision isn’t controversial: there is no legitimate controversy. The contract requires that white teachers be laid off before “teachers of color” regardless of seniority or any other factor. That’s illegal. It violates the Civil Rights laws and the Constitution. No question, no argument. Can’t do it. No controversy about that at all.

The two union officials’ smug, intellectually dishonest and evasive comments in the interview, if nothing else, demonstrate that neither is qualified to teach any students anything. Since they are the leaders of the Minneapolis teachers, and they are, the interview demonstrates in great measure why public education is failing.

Watch the interview, if you can stand it, and consider:

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TGIF Ethics Sighs, 8/19/2022: Goodbye Brian Stelter, And Worse News

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

A few words on “diversity” (this will save me a rant later):

I just turned on PBS while having lunch, and was told that the network appreciated “all the diverse communities” that they serve. Gack/Blechh!/Yuck! And what about those non-diverse communities? What are they? Bigots? Evil, Un-American? And what kind of diversity counts, on the PBS scorecard? This is just rote virtue-signaling with a little indoctrination and brain-washing thrown in. Human beings are diverse, even within homogeneous groups. Prioritizing one kind of “diversity” over another is an ideological edict.

The program that followed was John Williams conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in his various famous compositions last year. There was nary a black or brown visage anywhere to be seen among the musicians. Should I care? Should anyone? All that ought to matter is whether the orchestra sounds as good as possible, correct? Or should a proper orchestra be judged on the basis of its EEOC categories as well as its musical excellence?

I would not be surprised if the local PBS outlet here gets complaints from contributors “of color” that the concert should not have been broadcast, since the orchestra did not “look like us.”

This is madness, and people of all colors, ethnicities and creeds must have the integrity and courage to step forward and say, “Just stop. Now.”

1. Did you know President Trump lied all the time? Last March, the current, always honest President said, in order to brush off complaints about the number of illegal immigrants streaming across our borders,

“It happens every single, solitary year: There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter.” 

That was calculated malarkey then, when the numbers of illegals crossing the border were higher than during other winters, and it really looks like malarkey now, as the winter level never dropped off, and is headed to record territory.

But these denials of what is open and undeniable, habitual Jumbos, are now the predictable MO of President Biden and his party. Inflation is transitory! High gas prices are a good thing! There is no recession! The public has to be gullible, ignorant and stupid for this cynical strategy to work, and part of it is to make the public as gullible, ignorant and stupid as possible. Continue reading →

Case Study (Not Related To Politics!) Of Our Incompetent News Media: The Murder Car’s Parking Tickets

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

On CNN’s HLN, cheerleader-host Robin Meade was aghast this morning. The story: Bob and Angie Shepherd, who live in my current home town of Alexandria, Virginia, had their car stolen and used in a crime spree, including a murder in Suitland, Maryland. The immediate concern of Bob and Angie, however, is the $400 worth of DC parking tickets the crooks racked up using their car. The Shepherds have been charged with all of them, as owners of the vehicle. (DC is notoriously relentless in collecting parking fines.)

“Are you kidding me?” Bob Shepherd told reporters. “Car is stolen, involved in a homicide, and then you want to charge me for the tickets, even though I’ve given you all of the documentation showing that it’s been involved in a homicide?”

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Ethics Quiz, Special Life Competence Edition: The Embarrassed Magician

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Handling oneself in moments of defeat, failure and embarrassment is a core life competence that few of us have mastered. Consider, for a wild, random, out of the blue example, Liz Cheney, whose approach to a landslide loss was to frame it as a badge of honor.

On this week’s “America’s Got Talent,” the live show was filling time by having a previous season’s finalist, Jon Dorenbos, work his magic—literally, since Dorenbos is a professional NFL player turned professional magician. The illusion required judges Simon Cowell, Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum, and Sofia Vergara to pick random numbers out of a box and letters (signifying colors) off a board. The wondrous effect was to be that he would then reveal four football jerseys secretly already hanging in four onstage gym lockers, each jersey with the judge’s name and bearing the color and number he or she had chosen. The jerseys in the lockers for Cowell, Mandel and Vergara were properly amazing, but when Heidi Klum showed her number (8), the magician knew he was sunk. Although the Klum jersey’s color, red, matched the letter she had picked voluntarily, the number was not 8, but 20.

All magicians have illusions go wrong occasionally. (I once did the old “bake a cake in a hat” bit with a fedora belonging to my parents’ guest, and ended up filling the hat with milk because the trick pitcher malfunctioned.) However, TV magic is almost always pre-recorded, so having a magician’s botched routine make it to broadcast is extremely rare: I’ve never seen it happen. It is also a possible career-wrecker.

Here is how Dorenbos dealt with his humialation on live TV, saying,

I thought you were going to pick 20. That’s OK! Sometimes in life it’s OK to be off by one, because guess what, baby? Every time I take this stage, you all make me feel like a rock star! Being part of the AGT team, I love every second. Whether it’s in the locker room or my life, I try to be the best teammate I can be and also bring my A-game, baby. May we all make the decision to be the best teammate we can be in this world!

Your Special Ethics Alarms Life Competence Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was the magician’s response to failure competent?

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