Month: November 2022

15 Dawn’s Early Light Post-Election Ethics Notes

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments

Spuds woke me at 5:30 am, so I might as well get this up now….

1. The good news is that there’s not going to be any violence: the one scenario that makes civil unrest vanishingly unlikely occurred. There was no GOP “wave,” but the party still will get control of the House, albeit unimpressively, and can eke out a bare majority in the Senate, although we might not know for sure until December. Yay.

2. I watched Fox News and CNN track the election returns. Neither were overtly biased; both played it straight.

3. The unavoidable conclusion from the night’s proceedings is that the vast majority of voters will vote for inanimate carbon rods it they have the right party affiliation. This is not a healthy, competent or ethical way to behave in a democracy, and it plays into the hands of manipulative power-seekers.

4. The Stopped Clock Award: I hate to say this, but Mitch McConnell was right: his party shot itself in both knees by running too many sub-par, extreme or otherwise unqualified candidates.

5. Both #3 and #4 above are illustrated by John Fetterman’s victory. He is wildly unfit to serve and was irresponsible to stay in the race. Dr. Oz was a foolish, needlessly poor choice to oppose him.

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Ethics Quiz: When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring And You’re A Drunk College Senior

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Sophia Rosing, 22, a University of Kentucky student, was drunk. Really drunk; drunl as a skunk, as the saying goes. As she tumbled into a campus dorm lobby, the student at the front desk, Kylah Spring, tried to stop her, because Rosing had not presented her ID. The besotted senior launched into tirade against Spring, physically attacking the young black woman while calling her a “bitch” and a “nigger,” the latter over 200 times.

When campus security arrived, Rosing kicked and bit the officers as they tried to place her under arrest. University Police were finally able to take Rosing into custody just before 4am. She was charged with public intoxication, assault and disorderly conduct.

The incident was, of course, videoed and posted on social media. Rosing is out on bail, but she will certainly face criminal penalties.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Beyond the criminal penalties, what are fair, just and ethical consequences for Sophia Rosing now?

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Just Think: There Are Thousands Of Supposedly Mentally Fit Citizens Who Are Going To Vote For This Idiot Today [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I continue to be awash with remorse for not coming up with a list of 2022’s “Dirty Dozen” to highlight the most unethical and unfit candidates for office. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a New York Democrat representing the state’s 17th Congressional District, might even deserve to nudge out a member of The Squad. Well, probably not, but still: asked by an interviewer, “Hudson Valley residents are feeling pain at the pump and at grocery stores, what have you done, and what do you plan to do to help solve our inflation problem?” Maloney replied,

Yeah, well, I grew up in a family where, you know, if the gas price went up, the food budget went down. So by this time of the week, we’d be eating Chef Boyardee if that budget wasn’t gonna change. So that’s what families have to do.

Or they could try library paste, dog food, and maybe just eat the dog. Yup, that’s what families have to do when Pat’s party restricts pipelines, drilling leases and energy production while spending billions on specious climate change solutions for uncertain conditions that can’t be solved by U.S. policies anyway and at best might benefit Americans a hundred years from now. Or not. Whatever.

The Congressman’s answer isn’t just callous and demonstrative of voids in responsibility and analysis. It’s signature significance for an asshole of epic proportions. Fortunately, it looks as if Maloney is going to lose his seat, but it’s close.  How in the Wide Wide World of Sports could any sentient voter cast a ballot for such a jerk? Oh, right: to save democracy to be run by clueless morons. See, even Maloney is preferable to a Republican because, as Rob Reiner told MSNBC’s Joy Reid last week to no resistance at all, the members of that evil party

…are only interested in power. They are only interested, and they will do anything to get the power. And they are willing to kill, literally kill, to get the power.

And they probably don’t even like Chef Boyardee!

UPDATE: Somehow, I missed the fact that Maloney was also the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair….which tells you something about the party, and it isn’t good.

A Non-Election Day Ethics Special! An Ethics Test For Baseball Hall Of Fame Voters

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The major League Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown released its eight-player Contemporary Baseball Era ballot yesterday, as part of its revamped enshrinement process. A 16-person committee including of Hall of Fame players, baseball executives and veteran sportswriters will vote on the candidates at baseball’s winter meetings in December. A player must receive 12 votes to be elected.

All of the eight players failed to get enough votes through the regular voting process. The players on the list, limited to distinguished players who made their greatest contributions from 1980 to the present era, include…

  • Barry Bonds
  • Roger Clemens
  • Curt Schilling
  • Albert Belle
  • Don Mattingly
  • Fred McGriff
  • Dale Murphy, and
  • Rafael Palmeiro.

A clearer ethics test for the voters would be hard to imagine. The threshold question is whether last year’s admission to the Hall of Red Six icon David Ortiz, who once tested positive for an unidentified performance enhancing drug according to test results that were illegally leaked, will be regarded as sufficient precedent to admit Bonds, Clemens, and or Palmeiro. That Bonds was a long-time steroid cheat who did great damage to the game is undeniable. The evidence against Clemens is weaker, but still damning. Palmeiro had the distinction of going before Congress and proclaiming that steroids were the bane of the game and he would never sully himself by using them, and quickly thereafter testing positive himself. None of those three should be admitted to the Hall, and the presence of current Hall of Fame members, I hope, may ensure that they are not. Continue reading →

Election Day Ethics Warm-Up, 11/8/2022: Joys Of Democracy Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

That’s a screen shot from the video of a fight that broke out last week at a rally for New York Governor Kathy Hochul when some supporters of Republican Lee Zeldin showed up. That’s a white male Democrat with his hand on the neck of a black female Republican, but for some reason, the mainstream media has chosen to publicize it as they carry forward the message of Republicans being a threat to democracy….

Nevertheless, the flagship of the pro-Democratic Party bolstering media is apparently strictly heeding the talking points memos and going all the way with this narrative. Here was the New York Times’ editorial board’s explanation yesterday about “What’s at Stake in These Elections”:

Eight Republican senators and 139 Republican representatives sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election on the basis of spurious allegations of voter fraud and other irregularities. Many of them are likely to win re-election, and they may be joined by new members who also have expressed baseless doubts about the integrity of the 2020 election. Their presence in Congress poses a danger to democracy, one that should be on the mind of every voter casting a ballot this Election Day.

It will also be the first time that the U.S. electoral machinery will be tested in a national election after two years of lawsuits, conspiracy theories, election “audits” and all manner of interference by believers in Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

No, eight GOP Senators and 139 Representatives in fact voted to withhold certification of the 2020 Presidential election in a largely symbolic vote expressing doubts about the integrity of the vote and seeking further investigation, just as Democratic Senators and Representatives did so in 2000, 2004 and 2016. They did not “seek to overturn” the results—that’s not reporting or even honest punditry. It’s misleading spin from the Times editors, just like so much of their paper’s news reporting since 2015.

What voters really have an opportunity to do today is demonstrate the genius and vigor of the American system by signalling their bi-partisan disgust at the arrogance, ineptitude and undemocratic ways of Democratic governors and lawmakers, in their dictatorial pandemic response, their rejection of the rule of law, their embrace of race-based preferences, their climate change madness, and their attempt to demonize and criminalize political opposition. Not since the Great Depression has a political party so deserved to be shamed and ejected from power. (In fact, the Democrats deserve such a fate more than the post-’29 crash Republicans did, but that’s a discussion for another day.) One market research authority predicts the midterm loss for the Democrats will be 75 seats in the House of Representatives and 11 seats in the Senate, which would be glorious, and the stinging message the party has earned. Others prognosticators (like the Times) are being far more optimistic about the likely fate today of their allies. Either prediction could be the product of confirmation bias, wishful thinking, or missed signals.

We shall see. But up in Founding Father Heaven, I’m pretty sure who Tom, George, James, John (Abigail) and Ben are rooting for this time.

1. Integrity! The campaign of Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate and poster boy for brain-damaged politicians, filed a federal lawsuit yesterday claiming that mail-in ballots with an incorrect or missing date should be counted despite the recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling against them being included in the vote count, since doing so violates state law. The claim is that not counting the votes on the grounds of an issue with the date violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that election officials cannot deny someone the right to vote based on an error on the ballot that is “not material” to determining whether the individual is qualified to vote under state election law. Of course, there was very limited use of mail-in ballots in 1964; this is literally an effort to exploits a loophole in order to allow dubious votes to determine a close election.

The media has cast the GOP lawsuit that resulted in the ruling as an effort to infringe on voting rights. Yes, requiring voters to follow the minimal requirements of legal voting is so, so unreasonable—that’s the argument. It reminds me of the Democratic claim during the 2000 Florida recount that the pathetic voting attempt of an idiot who couldn’t figure out how to punch out a chad and wrote “I vote for Gore!” on the ballot should be counted. As I wrote at the time, “Why not just shouting out his choice near the polling place? How about tying a note to a rock and throwing it through a window?”

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Why There’s No Ethics “Dirty Dozen” This Election, And Those Wacky Shavers: Whatever The Truth Is, The Father Is Unethical And The Son Is Untrustworthy

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This story reminds me that I used to have a post every election cycle listing my “Dirty Dozen”—a list of 12 candidates for re-election or office that I deemed ethically unacceptable. The list would include, in addition to automatic honorees like Rep. Maxine Waters, such oddities as Rich Iott, whose candidacy foundered when it was discovered that he had an obsession with dressing up as an SS officer. Usually I made an effort to include an equal number f Democrats and Republicans—it wasn’t hard.

It wouldn’t be hard this time, either. What would be hard, indeed, I decided, impossible, would be to keep the list to just a dozen. To begin with, “The Squad” would take care of all of the Democratic slots right off the bat. Every one of them (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri) is an embarrassment: incompetent, blindly ideological, and anti-American to the core. There wouldn’t even be room for Waters, or Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Majority Whip (and hypocrite “election denier”) James Clyburn, or the ridiculous Stacey Abrams. Then we have Nancy Pelosi, who has crossed more ethics lines with each passing year, and the truly horrible Adam Schiff (D-Cal). I couldn’t fit John Fetterman onto the list, or any of the awful Democratic governors running for re-election—and if I tried, then there would be no room for the Republicans who should never hold political office, like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), or (you knew this was coming) Herschel Walker, the creepy Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who compared the Capitol riot to a “normal tourist visit,” and Rep. Tom Massie (R-Ky) who thought this was an appropriate Christmas card…

Well, I could go on, but this is depressing me. The point is that there are far, far too many ridiculous, incompetent, unethical people making our laws for anyone to be able to trust the government….and I haven’t even drilled down to the state level, where it’s worse.

So meet the entertaining Shavers. Clyde Shavers, the Democratic candidate for Washington state’s 10th legislative district, claimed to be an officer serving on a nuclear submarine in the Navy for eight years. He wasn’t one. He also has claimed to be a lawyer. He isn’t a lawyer either; in fact, he doesn’t know what a lawyer is. On his website, Shavers writes,

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Ick Or Unethical? OK, It’s Just Icky, But There’s Something Deeply Disturbing About…”Tattoo Harvesting”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ew.

Cleveland-based company Save My Ink Forever offers  the opportunity for clients to have their tattoos preserved as artworks after they pass away. Yes, their skin. Two words: Ed Gein.

We are trying to do this in the most dignified manner possible. To people, some of these things really are pieces of art,” mortician Kyle Sherwood said. “It gives that family another option and instead of having just the remains or the burial, we can still do that, they have actually a piece of their loved one. They are pieces of art, and it is just amazing the tattoos we get.” The preservation requires  a complex process that takes roughly three or four months. Once it’s done, clients a have a parchment-like artwork that requires no maintenance at all. They can frame it and hang it in the living room! They can make a lampshade out of it!

Save My Ink Forever works with funeral homes around the US, sending them special kits and video tutorials on how to remove the tattoos. The strips of skin are then shipped to Cleveland. Where else? Cleveland was the home of two of America’s most infamous serial killers: The Cleveland Torso Murderer, also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, and  Anthony Edward Sowell, known as the Cleveland Strangler. Save My Ink Forever won’t preserve face and genital tattoos, and has refused to process the skin art into book covers.

That, after all, would be in bad taste.

Comment Of The Day: Ethics And The Diesel Crisis, From Open Forum 11/4/2022

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I wasn’t even aware of the diesel shortage until I was alarmed by back-up White House paid liar John Kirby—he’s the competent one— was asked about it and he huminahumina-ed “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” This means, “Hey! That’s am embarrassing question; you’re supposed to be covering for us here, not causing trouble!” Then Tucker Carlson took up the topic as his scare of the day, but since I don’t trust him, I didn’t listen to it. Yes, I should have posted on the issue then: like so many of the current government fiascos, this one is about, most prominently, competence. The perils of running out of diesel fuel implicates at least four Cabinet Departments: Energy, Commerce, Transportation and Homeland Security. It is a big topic, and fortunately, a conscientious commenter, Sarah B., has done the research and analysis that I should have done.

Here is Sarah’s essential Comment of the Day regarding the diesel fuel problem, from the most recent Ethics Alarms open forum.

***

I think we should talk about a topic near and dear to my heart: the looming crisis caused by the diesel shortage in our nation. I will say right out that I do not have a solution to this crisis, but instead, I want to discuss how we got here, and the issues that stand in the way of fixing it. Getting here was an ethical failure on many levels, most of which can be laid without much hesitation at the feet of our current President and his party, but not to the exclusion of Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. I know this is long, but I’d love to start communication on this issue.

The first thing to know about the diesel shortage is that it isn’t just diesel. In refining terms, the shortage is of all distillates. Light and medium distillates include kerosene, heating oil, jet fuel, aviation fuel, and diesel. Each of these are competing products from similar oil breakdowns, so a shortage of one results in a shortage of all. Many of these products seem as though they are the same thing with different names, and to an extent they are. But the government regulates and licenses each one slightly differently with slightly different specifications on each product, so aviation fuel and jet fuel can both run an airplane, but depending on the airplane, one is legal, the other isn’t. The point, however, is that the diesel shortage extends beyond what we typically recognize as diesel usage.

What is the extent of this problem? Some sites note that we have a 25.9-day supply of diesel, which is the lowest point we’ve been, comparatively, in a very long time. Generally speaking we tend to want to run at about 35-40 days. More specifically, the diesel supply is at the lowest point this nation has ever seen coming into winter. Some pundits argue that we are fine, that we’ve seen years with similar shortages, but they are being either ignorant or disingenuous. The shortages they cite occurred in April of their respective years, such as 1925. April shortages are a different beast than October and November shortages. April is at the far end of the cold season; October is at the very beginning. April is at the tail end of most major southern refinery turnaround season, whereas October is just entering into turnaround season. In other words, a shortage in October is like have a food shortage right after harvest and going into the lean months, whereas a shortage in April is expected because we’ve just emerged from the lean months, but we expect new crops soon. And if the shortage is bad now, how bad will it be by April?

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Possession? Mona Charen Is Sounding Like Marion Barry!

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Charen is another one of those former conservative pundits, like George Will, Bill Kristol, Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin, who was so repulsed by Donald Trump that she flip-flopped on all her previously held principles and became a Democratic Party shill. But channeling the late, memorable D.C. Marion Barry, a lovable rogue, is something new.

In 1989, then-Mayor Barry told a luncheon audience at the National Press Club. ″Except for the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.″ In the midst of a drugs and murder crime explosion, Barry’s comment was mocked in the news media from end to end of the ideological spectrum, because, after all, it was an incredibly stupid thing to say. But those were still the days when journalism, though already corrupted, biased and crumbling, hadn’t completely rotted away. Today, however, almost all of the mockery has come from the Right, while the mainstream media pundits have been largely silent—after all, Mona is just trying to save democracy.

One notable exception is left-leaning Washington Post columnist Helaine Olen, who wrote in reaction to Charen’s tweet, “I can’t believe this still needs to be said but ‘crime is down except for murder’ is not a winning or persuasive argument.”

Ya think?

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 11/7/2022: Approaching Dread Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Speaking of threats to democracy: this is the anniversary of the day in 1944 that voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a fourth consecutive term. There is little question in my mind that had FDR been healthier, he was perfectly capable of deciding to run for fifth and sixth terms too; this was a looming American dictator who wasn’t hiding it, and Americans still blithely voted for him. Everything about Roosevelt made him the template for a democracy-busting, cult-of-personality Big Brother USA, including his ruthlessness. We were lucky: another of the many examples proving Bismarck right when he said, “There is providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.”

Oh, he probably didn’t say it, but I’ve taxed quote maven Tom Fuller enough for one week…

1. For my own mental health, I’m going to eschew reading the pre-election freak-outs by New York Times pundits showing up today with titles like “Republicans Have Made It Very Clear What They Want to Do if They Win Congress” and “Dancing Near the Edge of a Lost Democracy.” Still, I couldn’t resist starting to read “What Has Happened to My Country?” but quit when Margaret Renkl made me read, “…Right-wing politicians and media outlets have turned American democracy upside down through nothing more than a lie. They put forth Supreme Court candidates who assure Congress that they respect legal precedent but who vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade the instant they have a majority on the court….”

There is nothing inconsistent about respecting precedent while deciding that a particular case precedent is too misguided and destructive to uphold, Margaret.

“…They endorse political candidates who openly state that they will accept only poll results leading to their own election….”

No candidate has stated that, openly or otherwise, Margaret, you hack.

“They denounce calamities where no calamities exist…”

That was it! I quit. A mouthpiece for the party claiming that electing Republicans will destroy democracy, whose #3 ranking official in Congress compares the U.S. today to Germany in the 1930s when Hitler was on the rise [Pointer: Other Bill], that thinks “The Handmaiden’s Tale” is about to become reality because of the Dobbs decision, and that has gone all in on speculative climate change doomsday predictions does not get to say that about Republicans and be taken seriously.

2. Dangerous slippery slopes ahead….NBA superstar Kylie Irving shared a tweet that promoted the “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America” documentary and book. Both are, by all reports, pretty vile, with familiar anti-Semitic tropes like Holocaust denial and claims of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy. There is nothing inappropriate about employers disciplining employees who put their organizations in unflattering light that might hurt reputations and profitability, nor with the Brooklyn Nets suspending Irving for “at least five games” without pay over the controversy. That’s reasonable, even a bit lenient. He responded with a publicist-drafted apology. Then Nike announced that it is suspending its relationship with Irving and will not release Irving’s highly anticipated new shoe, the Kyrie 8, which was scheduled to be released this month.

That’s also fair. A celebrity who represents a corporation and its products can’t engage in high profile prejudice and expect to keep the gig. The loss of the Nike deal will cost Irving many millions of dollars, and that’s what happens when you embarrass a business partner. However, now the Nets have given Irving an ultimatum of sorts: in order to rejoin the team and start collecting his salary, he must.fulfill six requirements:

  • Apologize and condemn the film he promoted
  • Make a $500,000 donation to anti-hate causes
  • Complete sensitivity training
  • Complete anti-semetism training
  • Meet with the ADL and Jewish leaders
  • Meet with team owner Joe Tsai to demonstrate an understanding of the situation

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