Month: August 2023

Now THESE Are Unethical (California) Lawyers…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Famed California trial attorney Tom Girardi was accused of stealing more than $18 million from clients; I was late to the metaphorical party, not covering the long-running ethics scandal until a month ago. (Sorry.)The State Bar of California had opened 205 disciplinary investigations in 40 years against Girardi, but he ducked accountability until the very end, in part because of pay-offs to bar staff.

One of several new regulations designed to prevent future Girardis is the Client Trust Account Protection Program. That requires the state’s lawyers to report whether they are responsible for client trust accounts, to provide basic account information, to complete an annual self-assessment, and to certify that they comply with ethics rules related to safeguarding client funds. The point, of course, is to stop lawyers from stealing from their clients. There are a lot of unethical practices lawyers get away with, but not taking proper care of client funds is supposed to be the third rail of lawyer misconduct.

The deadline for compliance with Client Trust Account Protection Program was April 3, 2023. Lawyers who failed to comply were fined $75 and had until June 30 to meet the regulations. Suspensions began in July. The results: 1,641 California lawyers have had their licenses suspended.

This is not a good sign.

And Speaking Of Mainstream Media Bias, Spinning For Democrats And Misleading The Public, This NYT Report Is A Classic

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

When I read this astoundingly mendacious story in the Times, the first thing that I was reminded of was the memorable moment in “Plain Trains and Automobiles” when John Candy confidently tells a dubious state trooper that his burned out, roofless wreck of a car is “safe to drive.” (This goes right into the Ethics Alarms Clip archive.)

President Biden has repeatedly insisted that he has no knowledge of his son Hunter’s various sleazy business schemes, and that Joe never discussed Hunter’s money-making activities with him. Yet yesterday, in his nearly five hours of closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee, a former business partner of Hunter’s, Devon Archer, revealed that President Biden met with and spoke to his son Hunter’s international business associates on about 20 occasions as Hunter sought consulting deals (translation: lucrative influence and access peddling arrangements).

Hilariously, Archer claimed that the Joe Biden was not party to any of his son’s business deals. You see, Hunter Biden was just trying to sell the idea that he could provide access to his powerful father—by providing access to his powerful father. He was claiming that he could influence his father by showing that he could persuade him to pick up the phone, drop by and shake hands. Yet, reports the Times, Democrats on the panel insisted that it wasn’t what it was, by definition.

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Nate Silver Tells The Truth About Media Bias: Ethics Hero

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The only surprising aspect of Nate Silver’s latest substack essay is that he actually wrote it and had the courage to put it on the web. He is honest about mainstream media bias, and until he got kicked off his own creation, the 538 blog, Silver was a willing accomplice in this rot in the foundation of our democracy, making a lot of money in the process. Now—finally—he’s using his substantial critical thinking and research skills to expose the bad guys (his former pals before they rejected him : yes, I suspect there’s a measure of vengeance in this)who continue to successfully warp public knowledge and the process of an informed democracy by convincing sufficient number of ovine citizens that the concept of progressive media bias is a right-wing conspiracy theory. The focus of his traitorous analysis is how Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has helped address the effects of the media’s partisan bias.

In “Twitter, Elon and the Indigo Blob,” Silver becomes one of the very few progressives of note to admit what has been going on under their cultural assault. Some others include Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Bari Weiss, but Silver is more scientific and detached than any of them, and as a result, his analysis is more persuasive and, I hope, more disruptive to the blue wall of silence the progressive Borg has erected around a throbbing, obvious, disgusting truth.

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