Month: April 2023

Incompetent Corporate Exec of the Year Nominee: Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

As Budwieiser lost billions in value since its Dylan Mulvaney fiasco, the company has remained silent. Any PR consultant would have instructed the company to get out immediately with a statement to stop the bleeding. Finally, the company’s CEO emerged from his bunker to deal with the issue. He had several options, none good. He could stand by his, uh, woman, sort of—two women actually, including his clueless vice president of marketing Alissa Heinerscheid who engineered the disaster, saying that he stood by his staff and supported their decision. That would have been brave, responsible, and stupid.

Or he could grovel an apology, saying that the company had made a dire mistake, and be prepared for the full fury of Woke World and the LGPTQ mob. That would have satisfied no one. Best of all would have been to say that Bud’s intent with the Mulvaney stunt was only to emphasize that its brews were for every American, regardless of sex, gender, race, ethnicity or political persuasion, the eccentrics and pariahs, the guy in the hard hat, the working mother, everyone. He could have apologized to Mulvaney for making her a target by his company’s botched messaging, and promised to avoid stumbling into controversial and divisive issues in the future.

Then he could have gone back to his office, and fired Heinerscheid.

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The “Get Trump!” Plan Has Officially Abandoned All Restraint

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The Washington Post revealed that it isn’t just state prosecutors like Alvin Bragg who are determined to find something, anything, to use to convict Donald Trump, it is federal prosecutors too. The Post story also makes it clear that not only are the gloves off, so is any pretense of rationality.

The federal prosecutors still looking for ways to claim Trump was trying to mount an “insurrection” on January 6, 2021 have now begun seeking documents related to his fundraising after the 2020 election. Somebody apparently had a brilliant idea: “Hey! The news media keeps saying that Trump’s claims that the election was stolen are “baseless,” so why can’t we say that Trump or scammed donors by using false claims about voter fraud to raise money?” So that’s the latest Hail Mary. It might be the most ridiculous and dishonest yet.

This latest “Get Trump!” miasma focuses on money raised during the period between Nov. 3, 2020, and the end of Trump’s time in office on Jan. 20, 2021, with prosecutors looking at whether anyone associated with the fundraising operation violated the wire fraud laws, which make it illegal to make false representations over email to swindle people. The Post’s anonymous (of course!) sources say that special counsel Jack Smith’s office has sent subpoenas to Trump advisers and former campaign aides, Republican operatives and other consultants involved in the 2020 presidential campaign, some of these figures have already testified in front of a Washington grand jury. The idea, apparently, is to find communications proving that Trump, his allies allies and advisers were privately admitting that Biden’s election was beyond reproach, while stirring up passionate supporters with appeals using the voter-fraud claims to generate more than $200 million in donations.

Please. Seriously? We are now going to use a fraudulent claims basis to prosecute political fundraising messages? THAT will work out well.

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My Head Is Exploding Because It’s Disgusted That It Didn’t See This Coming…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

From investigative reporter Seymour Hersch, and hold on to your heads…

The Ukraine government, headed by Volodymyr Zelensky, has been using American taxpayers’ funds to pay dearly for the vitally needed diesel fuel that is keeping the Ukrainian army on the move in its war with Russia. It is unknown how much the Zelensky government is paying per gallon for the fuel, but the Pentagon was paying as much as $400 per gallon to transport gasoline from a port in Pakistan, via truck or parachute, into Afghanistan during the decades-long American war there.

…Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”

“Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,” one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. “And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millions” on it.

In related news, the federal deficit topped $1 trillion in the first six months of fiscal 2023 (October through March), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.

KABOOM!

Depressing Illumination From Streaming: UFOs And The Consequences Of Indoctrination

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Two recent streaming experiences further heightened my sensitivity to the ominous unethical forces around us.

1 Showtime’s “UFO” (2021)

I give up on almost all UFO documentaries because they have a tendency to get progressively hysterical and unhinged as they go on. Not “UFO.” It’s a shame J.J. Abrams produced it: having the director of “Fringe” and the Star Trek reboot heading up this project is not the optimum way to have it taken seriously. “UFO,” however, is superb. I know quite a bit about this topic, but the four episode documentary put the issue in perspective with disturbing clarity. The linchpin of the whole tale is the New York Times’ 2017 report, “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program,”but the documentation, interviews and film footage is remarkable.

The most important takeaway from the show, I believe, has nothing to do with UFOs. The unavoidable conclusion one is compelled to reach, if one has the integrity and courage to reach it, is that the government engaged in a decades-long cover-up involving intimidation, lies, the destruction of evidence, secret and illegal black ops operations, official lies, “Deep State” abuse of power and pay-offs to hide information from the U.S. public because it felt it was in the public’s best interest to do so, and, most of all, the government’s best interest to do so.

Nothing encapsulates the fury I experienced watching “UFO” more than my nausea at watching the despicable Ethics Villain Harry Reid, interviewed in retirement, smugly taking credit for setting up the secret agency charged with investigating UFOs while thousands of American citizens continued to be ridiculed for reporting what the U.S. military and government officials continued to insist didn’t exist. “The project had to be secret,” Harry says at one point, smirking,”because Senators knew there would be a lot of public criticism if its purpose was known.” Oh! Well, then, if the project would be criticized, by all means make sure the public doesn’t find out about it! Asshole.

If the government, the Pentagon, Senators, governors, and administrative bureaucrats would devote decades to manipulating public opinion and using the power of the U.S. government to hide events, facts and official activities from the people they are supposed to serve in this area, why should it be trusted regarding its activities, motives and methods regarding anything else?

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Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The participation of two Trump-obsessed newcomers, one now banned and the other self-suspended, swelled last week’s Forum to one of the most active ever. This has been an equally momentous week in the ethics universe if not more so: I’ll be interested to see if we can get both quality and quantity this time around.

On your mark….get set…

GO!

Ethics Quiz: 32,260 Babies

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

CNN reported a study this week that found that after the Dobbs decision correcting Roe v. Wade that had wrongly held that there was a constitutional right to abortion, 32,260 fewer abortions took place from July to December 2022 compared to the average monthly number of abortions before Dobbs. Roe’s reversal, therefore, meant roughly 5,377 fewer abortions a month. 5,377 fewer abortions means the same number of unborn children a month not having their lives terminated, which in turn means 32,260 living children that would not be alive otherwise. I recognize that there are many way that number could be inexact, for example, deaths during childbirth or other post birth fatalities, so let’s settle on 32,000.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is there a valid, intellectually honest argument that 32,000 living human beings who would not be alive were Roe still in place constitutes anything but an ethical result?

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Good Elon, Bad Elon: Round And Round And Round Twitter Goes And Where It Stops, Nobody Knows…

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

I’m still hoping for the best with Elon Musk’s brave though chaotic attempt to rescue Twitter from the agents of progressive and Democrat propaganda….but I’m not going to spend a lot of time ramping up Ethics Alarms new presence on the platform until I am confident that I won’t have to quit in disgust again.

This week so far there have been two Twitter-related events that I view as ethically encouraging:

1. Musk tweaked National Public Radio as it so richly deserves by labeling it “state-affiliated media” on the platform. Trying to be nice, Musk changed the label to “government-funded media,” causing NPR promptly to throw a fit and quit Twitter, announcing that it would “no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform.” (Well, except for the New York Post when Twitter silenced it to keep the Hunter Biden laptop story from hurting Joe Biden at the polls.)

Amusingly, NPR puffed itself up with hot air, huffing that the network is protecting its credibility and its ability to produce journalism without “a shadow of negativity.” “The downside, whatever the downside, doesn’t change that fact,” NPR CEO John Lansing said, “I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility.”

I guess he means “other than NPR,” whose partisan toadying is legendary.

Lansing continued the hilarity by writing, “It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards.” Standards? Hmmm...I can’t recall the last NPR ethics story EA has posted; let’s see…HA! Just a week ago: NPR Wonders If Transgender Athletes Have A Physical Advantage Over Female Competitors. Before that: NPR Says There Are “Pros And Cons” Of A Candidate For Governor Calling Someone “Motherfucker” During A Speech…

Care to guess the party affiliation of the candidate NPR was defending? Tough one! Why, it was Beto O’Roarke, the Democratic candidate to unseat GOP Texas Governor Abbott. NPR described O’Rourke’s gutter language as a “snappy interjection,” though the snappy interjection was somehow not fit to print. The NPR headline used “f-bomb” while the text employed “motherf*****”. We pay taxes for this garbage “analysis”?

The indignant NPR excuse for objecting to “government funded” is also self-indicting. NPR’s own news story says,

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The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

HR 734, introduced in February, is a fine example of the Ethics Alarms motto, “When ethics fails, the law takes over, and usually makes a mess of it.” The objective—I hope— of the proposed law is to eliminate cynical cheating in collegiate and high school sports by male athletes have “transitioned” after going through male puberty. (Lia Thomas—above–guess which one is Lia!— comes to mind.) I say “I hope” because one could read the bill to be expressing targeted animus against transgendered individuals, many/most/some of whom—who knows, really?—are trying to cope with a genuine and life defining problem. However, the bill as written is both too narrow and too broad at the same time, while skirting the major question at issue by pretending it is settled. This is a bad bill, and would be a bad law, perhaps even an unconstitutional law.

I might even conclude that it was composed only to grandstand on the issue for political gain rather than as a good faith effort to address a problem. The Bill states,

“(d) (1) It shall be a violation of subsection (a) for a recipient of Federal financial assistance who operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls.

(2) For the purposes of this subsection, sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.

(3) Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to prohibit a recipient from permitting males to train or practice with an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls so long as no female is deprived of a roster spot on a team or sport, opportunity to participate in a practice or competition, scholarship, admission to an educational institution, or any other benefit that accompanies participating in the athletic program or activity.”.

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Ethics Dunce, Rabbi and “Rolling Stone” Columnist Jay Michaelson Provides A Depressing Lesson In How “Bias Makes You Stupid”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Was this really so hard an episode to respond to competently?

As discussed in this post, the Dalai Lama got himself videoed while pressuring a young boy to kiss him (on the lips) and asking the boy to <cough> suck the holy man’s tongue. Too bad Peter Graves is dead: he could play the Dalai Lama in a movie…

“Joey…would you like to suck my tongue?” was apparently cut. But I digress.

On “CNN Tonight” panel this week, and host Alisyn Camerota asked Michaelson to comment on the disturbing video. Ethics Aalrms frozen solid, the rabbi answered,

“The Dalai Lama is a very playful human being. And we may see this in a weird, kind of gross, sexualized way, but this is about as sexual as a bowl of plain rice. There is nothing sexual … or erotic happening in this encounter. Tibetan culture just has different boundaries…[the tongue] is what we kiss with, it’s sexualized … it’s not seen that way in Tibetan culture. This is a part of the body. It’s something playful….The apology was in order. This was clearly something that was at best, you know, insensitive to how this would be seen by a large swath of the world population. [But]“the Dalai Lama is one of my spiritual heroes. I have met him. Being in his presence is really one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had in my life. And the aura of loving kindness that he has is evident, even here where he’s being playful in a way that in Western culture would certainly be inappropriate.”

Since the rabbi wasn’t defending Joe Biden, Camerota felt free to actually practice journalism and challenge this spin, saying, “the boy doesn’t want to” kiss the Dalai Lama or suck his tongue,” and adding that the Dalai Lama is “taking the boy’s head … just sort of reading the body language here. I’ll take your word for it that it seemed differently there culturally, but the boy doesn’t seem to be wanting to participate in this.”

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Ethics Implications Of The Bar Exam First-Time Test-Taker Demographic Pass Rates

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar released the 2022 ABA data on bar exam pass rates by race, ethnicity and gender. The DEI folks will NOT be happy.

There were 33,721 first-time bar exam hopefuls in 2022. 2,510 candidates were, and presumably still are, black. Their pass rate was 57% in 2022, down from 61% in 2021. Of all of the demographic groups, this was the worst rate. The rest:

  • Native Americans:  60% out of 183 candidates.
  • Hawaiians: 69% out of 45 candidates.
  • Mixed race:  74% out of 1,186 candidates.
  • Asians: 75% out of 2,199 candidates
  • Whites: 83% out of 21,553 candidates.

In the ever amusing gender categories, the breakdown was:

  • 80% for men
  • 79% for the, uh, creative gender identities
  • 77% for women 
  • 63% for those who did not disclose their gender.

The ABA standard for the minimum adequate law school pass rate for first time bar exam-takers is an average of 75% over two years.

Ethical implications:

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