Month: March 2023

The Horror. “You Probably Won’t Get Any Student Loan Relief Thanks To A GOP-Controlled Supreme Court”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

That was the predictably partisan slant of Vox regarding the highly skeptical reception Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness bribe to young voters in the run-up to the 2022 midterms got from most of the Supreme Court Justices in oral arguments in two cases, Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown. But that’s Vox for you.

Whether the $400 billion treasury heist is Constitutional or not, it is definitely unethical to the core, and not just because the U.S. is already approaching—has surpassed?—perilous National Debt levels during an administration determined to buy votes and power. Responsible taxpayers are going to be forced to gift irresponsible students who took out loans they couldn’t afford, with many hoping they wouldn’t have to. Responsible college graduates (or their parents) who paid back all of their student loans or never got them will be played for chumps. This is the measure that Vox, and to be fair, most of the mainstream media, is representing as wonderful.

The legal and Constitutional disputes are closer than the ethical one. A sloppily drafted 2003 law authorized the Secretary of Education to address emergencies, in full knowledge, one assumes, that the party favoring brute federal power believes that “no emergency should go to waste.” The language of the law is especially dangerous in an era where much of the Democratic Party is is openly totalitarian in methods and rhetoric. The Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, the HEROES Act (Oooo! Such a clever acronym!), gives the Secretary of Education power to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” to protect borrowers affected by “a war or other military operation or national emergency.”

Like all laws now, most Senators and House members probably didn’t read or think about the bill carefully if at all: it was a post 9-11 reflex. President Bush didn’t have the sense to veto it either. Now, thanks to the contrived “national emergency” of the pandemic, there is at least a colorable claim that the act enables the obscene giveaway. It might be stupid, but SCOTUS is supposed to decide if it is legal.

Continue reading →

There Is Hope! Chicago Voters Threw Out Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Who Then Demonstrated (Again) Why They Were Fools To Elect Her In The First Place

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

There are some really, really, unethical, incompetent big city mayors running amuck right now, but it would be hard to argue that any of them are worse than Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot. She easily won the Ethics Alarms 2022 award as “Most Unethical Mayor of the Year.” From that post…

Lightfoot moved slightly ahead on the pack after it was revealed that she asked teachers to try yo dragoon Chicago students into volunteering for her campaign, then lied about it, but this was standard stuff for her. In May, she tried to incite violence against the Supreme Court. She’s classy, too: Lightfoot took the stage at a “Pride” event–she is gay, after all—and declared, “Fuck Clarence Thomas!” But her forte is clearly hypocrisy, denial, and dishonesty, while counting on Chicago blacks, the primary victims of her inept crime policies, to support her anyway. No wonder: this year she suggested that blacks caught on camera speeding or running lights should  get a break on extra fines and fees, or  pay based on an amount proportionate to their income.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The USS Chancellorsville

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

In a final flurry of Black History Month pandering by the Biden administration, the missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville was renamed USS Robert Smalls. A US government Naming Commission reviewed military bases and vessels that appeared to honor the Confederacy and made recommendations regarding which should to be renamed. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin approved the commission’s recommendations in October 2022, and this was one of the results. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced that the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser would lose its previous name and henceforth would bear the name of Smalls, a former slave who took over a Confederate ship and delivered it to the Union navy.

Esteemed reader Steve-O-in NJ brought this story to ethics Alarms’ attention, and makes this argument:

It used to be we would name carriers after battles, but, for whatever reason, when these cruisers, once the most expensive and most sophisticated non-carrier vessels afloat in the US Navy, were built, they decided to name them after battles instead (with one exception, the USS Thomas S. Gates, which left active service long ago because it was not built with the vertical launch system).  I questioned this choice of names from the get-go, since as far as I know all US ships named after battles were named for US victories or at least battles where our forces gave a good account of themselves (one of the other ships in the class is the USS Chosin, another the USS Anzio).  Why did they decide to name this one after a disastrous US defeat?  Well, presumably the same reason the names USS Semmes, USS Buchanan, USS Waddell, and USS Barney found their way into the Charles F. Adams and Spruance classes of destroyers, but are unlikely to be used again.
 
I can think of a long list of names that would not break the class tradition, nor stick out like a sore thumb, and speak to the entire US.  Notably the names USS Saratoga and USS Lexington are not presently in use, nor the names USS Coral Sea or USS Midway.  Give me a few minutes and I’ll come up with a dozen more.  But of course this couldn’t be just a switch of names to something more universally admired, it HAD to be the name of a former slave, as a rebuke to those evil racists who dared name a ship after a legendary victory led by Robert E. Lee, and now everyone who sees it or hears the name will know of the rebuke.  
 

A two-part Ethics Quiz of the Day arises from this discussion:

Continue reading →

From “The Great Stupid” Files, Ethics Dunce: Katy Perry

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The simplest commentary on this episode would be, “Oh, grow up.”

A 21-year-old mattress salesman named Trey Louis performed Whiskey Myers’ 2016 song “Stone” as his “American Idol” audition for pop singer Kay Perry and fellow judges Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan. (He wasn’t bad at all.) After receiving a positive response from the three, Louis was asked by Bryan why he’s auditioning out for “American Idol.”

“I’m from Santa Fe, Texas. In May 2018, a gunman walked into my school,” Louis replied, becoming emotional. “I was in Art Room 1. He shot up Art Room 2 before he made his way to Art Room 1. I lost a lot of friends. Eight students were killed. Two teachers were killed. It’s just really been negative, man. Santa Fe’s had a bad rap here since 2018.”

(That doesn’t exactly answer the question, but never mind…)

Perry quickly throttled the other judges in over-the-top emotional grandstanding, first putting her head in her hands and weeping, and then screaming, Continue reading →