Month: September 2023

Nah, There’s No Big Tech Partisan Censorship! [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

When you consider the many ways elections can be “rigged,” “fixed” or “stolen,” consider the subtle, often invisible ways search engines like Google prioritize sources of information, advocacy, and political opinion. There is plenty of evidence that this is occurring with increasing vigor (Ethics Alarms itself appears to be a target), and the recent experience of video journalist Matt Orfeala is particularly chilling.

Orfeala made and posted the video above that consists entirely of video clips, arranged to make the quite valid point that Democrats have “denied elections” for decades without being accused of criminal fraud or supporting insurrections, insurrection defined as “attempting to disqualify states’ slate of electors.” Nonetheless, the video was “demonetized” by YouTube, which is owned by Google, on the grounds that it advocated a “dangerous organization.” You know, like Joe…

…says the Republican Party is. Here’s the notice YouTube sent :

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A Cautionary Tale: The Worst Social Media Influencer Ever?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

(Don’t bet on it.)

Here at Ethics Alarms we try to steer clear of posts on conduct that is so obviously unethical that even the dimmest MSNBC host could figure it out. Normally, a mother being arrested after one of her kids escapes from the home, emaciated and with restraint marks, and begs a next door neighbor for help, would fall into this category. But this mother was a renowned web expert on parenting, with a popular Instagram account and YouTube channel. Her @moms_of_truth account on Instagram had 341,000 followers, and until it was mysteriously shut down last year, her “8 Passengers” YouTube channel (named after her, her husband, and their six kids)had a very profitable subscriber base of almost 2.3 million.

Ruby Franke, the wise and admired mom, was arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse in Ivins, Utah this week. A press release issued by the Santa Clara-Ivins Public Safety Department stated that on Aug. 30, 2023 “a report came into our dispatch center regarding a juvenile asking for help.” Franke’s son, 12, had “climbed out of a window and ran to a neighbor’s home,” according to the police booking affidavit. The boy asked the neighbor for food and water. “The neighbor observed duct tape on (the boy’s) ankles and wrists and contacted law enforcement. Upon arrival, law enforcement judged the boy’s wounds and malnourishment to be “severe.”

Funny, Ruby never discussed that child-rearing technique on the web…

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Ethics Corrupters: “Work Friend” Advice Columnist Roxane Gay And The Irresponsible Newspaper That Employs Her

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The latter would be the New York Times. Gay (above) has a long and disturbing dossier at Ethics Alarms (under two tags, here and here, because of her annoying misspelling of her own first name).The last time I visited her work as an ethics corrupter, I wrote,

It tells you pretty much all you need to know about the biases of the New York Times that its workplace ethics column, “Work Friend,” is authored by race-obsessed, radical, and combative gay feminist Roxane Gay. No biases there! …I have concluded that Gay is too often intellectually and rhetorically dishonest because of her ideological mission, and people like that shouldn’t have regular platforms (or advice columns) in the New York Times.

Now I have discovered that I was too kind in that evaluation. It isn’t just that Gay is so woke she can’t see or think straight; her ethics are rotten to the core, if one can call them ethics at all.

In today’s edition of her weekly workplace advice column for the Times, an inquirer writes that she and her colleagues have discovered that the sales office’s star employee has been faking her results, and is being rewarded for it. “She’s logging calls that never happened, and falsifying her activity to get to the top. This colleague now gets special praise each month, got promoted and is in a mentorship role, and makes everyone else’s numbers look bad,” the questioner writes. What should be done?

What should be done??? Could a work-related question be easier? Go to the management with your colleagues and your evidence, and demand that the lying, fabricating co-worker be properly dealt with. Be prepared to go up the ladder as far as it is necessary to go. The situation has to be exposed, and nothing short of a fair resolution should be accepted. Continue reading →

“I Don’t Feel I Can Trust The Teachers,” Says A Colorado Parent. Gee, Lady, What Was Your First Clue?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Since the utter corruption and lack of trustworthiness of journalists was the topic of today’s first post, it’s only fair to re-visit the other contender for America’s most corrupt alleged profession, educators. Deciding which of the two now virtually full-time Leftist indoctrination groups is more unethical makes an ethicist sound like Faye Dunaway being slapped by Jack Nicholson in “Chinatown”: “She’s my daughter!” <slap!> “She’s my sister!” <slap!>My daughter!” <slap!>“My sister!”

What sparked this sudden epiphany from the school board member (in the JeffCo Public Schools district in Jefferson County,Colorado) was this revelation: Teachers have been giving students surveys about their “gender identity,” because they believe that this is more important than, say, teaching them to add, write, and think. There are several parent lawsuits regarding the practice, so the Colorado affiliate of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, instructed its members to destroy any evidence of having given students a gender identity survey

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On The Washington Post, Its Readers, Its “Fact Checker,” And Spinning For Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“If you can’t hide it, decorate it!” the maxim goes. Thus it is that someone in the ethics-free “resistance”/ Democrat/mainstream media alliance (“The Axis of Unethical Conduct” we call it in in these parts) decided that President Biden’s problem with the truth—he ignores, distorts, and denies it regularly—must be dealt with, since part of the strategy to defeat Donald Trump is to emphasize his “falsehoods” and “lies.” So a directive went out to the Washington Post’s “Factchecker,” Glenn Kessler: “Hey, Glenn, do one of your cool columns, the ones with the Pinnochio-head ratings system, about Joe’s fabulism, but make sure you’re careful which whoppers you mention, and make sure you don’t call them ‘lies.’ Trump lies. Joe…well, you know, he just does what he does, but it’s no big deal, in fact it’s kind of endearing.” And whoever it was—heck, it might have been Dr. Jill, Chuck Schumer or Merrick Garland!—added, “And besides, it will be good for you, too! It will prove that you’re objective, fair and non-partisan!”

The Post dutifully agreed, because it is not objective, fair, or non-partisan. Neither is Kessler, whom I have tried mightily over the years to regard as a man who tries to do his job ethically, but because bis biases make him stupid, can’t quite manage it. Ethics Alarms officially recants that sympathetic assessment. Yesterday’s Post feature by Kessler headlined “Biden loves to retell certain stories. Some aren’t credible” clinches it. Kessler is a disgusting hack with no shame or integrity, and the Washington Post is a full-time agent of the Democratic Party and an enemy of democracy.

As for its readers…well, I’ll get to them.

“President Biden, like many politicians, likes to tell stories — stories that attempt to connect his life story with his audiences and make up an essential part of his persona,” Kessler begins. He uses a “everybody does it” approach right away, mitigating Biden’s serial lies and sliding over the fact that lies from the president of the United States are not in the same category as lies by “everyone.” “The Fact Checker” also defines Biden’s lies out of existence by labeling them “stories.” Stories are entertaining! Stories are fun! Stories aren’t lies. See, when Donald Trump said that he saw Muslims in the U.S. celebrating after the 9-11 bombings—it was on TV someplace—that wasn’t a story, that was a lie. When he described how he vehemently opposed the Iraq invasion from the very beginning (in fact, he initially said he agreed with it), that was a lie too. But when Joe says that he never, ever, ever discussed his slime-ball son Hunter’s business dealings with him that’s just a story. When Joe says that U.S. citizens weren’t allowed to own cannons in the 18th Century (which he does almost every time he talks about gun control), that’s just a story too, a charming, completely made-up story, like George Washington and the cherry tree. Stating that he attended a “historically black college” while addressing an African American audience? A harmless story! Saying that Beau was killed in Iraq? A comforting story from a grieving father. Understand?

Yeah, I understand, all too well.

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A “Great Stupid” Mash-Up! Ethics Hero And Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa…And Some Related Comments Of The Day [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I never expected to see those two categories in the same post, did you?

But it has come to this: San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa told reporters this week that he regretted his vocal support of California’s Prop 47, which voters passed in 2014, which reduced certain thefts and drug possession crimes from felonies to misdemeanors if the value of the stolen goods was less than $950. This, amazingly, led to an explosion in retail crime and other social pathologies, with videos on social media showing looters casually walking out of stores with merchandise. Some prominent retail locations in San Francisco, LA and other cities have closed in response.

This was all part of the progressive-Democratic response to “over-incarceration,” with politicians like Joe Biden, California Governor Gavin Gavin Newsom, and mercifully retired NYC mayor Bill De Blasio, among others. The Retail Federation reported retail shrink across the U.S. reached nearly $100 billion in losses in 2022.

Gee, what a brilliant idea Prop 47 was !

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Another Ethics Quizworthy Query To “The Ethicist”: The Dying Man’s Secret

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

My mind’s made up on this one, and I disagree with “The Ethicist’s” answer, but I have a strong bias, and I want to see what EA readers think. “Name Withheld,” who for some reasons sends The Ethicist (Kwame Anthony Appiah) a lot of questions, asked in part,

I am 76 and have lived a full and interesting life. My doctor recently gave me the news that the cancer I was treated for last year has returned and metastasized. I have started a course of immunotherapy treatments that, hopefully, should keep the cancer at bay for roughly the next two years.

I have not told my wife, my son or any of my friends about this. I don’t want to have to endure two years of pity. I would rather enjoy life with everyone as I have always done — and then break the news only when the time comes….Am I wrong to keep this from the people I love?

The Ethicist replies that he is wrong. “By depriving your loved ones of the facts, you deprive them of the chance to face the future together with you,” he concludes. “Because your diagnosis affects their lives as well, I hope you’ll let them come to terms with this important truth.”

Your Ethics Alarms Labor Day Weekend Ethics Quiz is…

Is “The Ethicist” right?

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Unethical Headline Of The Week [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This headline link has been up at the Citizen Free Press for hours now: Billionaire Jimmy Buffett passes away at 76…

I’m sure they will eventually claim it’s a joke. It’s not. The real joke is that millions rely on such irresponsible people running news aggregators to find out what’s going on in the world. And thatisn’t funny.

Yes, Jimmy Buffett managed his money well, and some sources credit him with having an estate worth a billion dollars. But Jimmy Buffet’s death is not notable because of his wealth. He is “singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett,” or, as the Times calls him in its headline today, “Jimmy Buffett, Roguish Bard of Island Escapism…” If Warren Buffett, like the late Senator Orrin Hatch, moonlighted as a part-time song-writer for fun, the financier’s obituary would not be headlined, “Song-writer Warren Buffett dead.” Paul McCartney’s wealth will not be the focus of his final headline.

So either Citizen Free Press really mixed up Jimmy and Warren, or it deliberately composed a headline to make sure its readers did.

Well, Warren Buffett is probably Jimmy Buffett in his dreams…

More Weird Tales Of “The Great Stupid”: Martha Stewart Abuses An Iceberg

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Mock away. The climate change fanatics are truly bananas.

Lifestyle media icon Martha Stewart was vacationing on a cruise around Greenland and posted a photograph of a cocktail chilled by ice she said had been chipped off an iceberg. “End of the first zodiac cruise from @swanhelleniccruises into a very beautiful fjord on the east coast of Greenland,” she wrote in the post. “We actually captured a small iceberg for our cocktails tonight.” Wait a sec—Marlon would like a word…

Stewart was immediately scorched on social media because using ice from an iceberg is promoting global warming, or cruelty to icebergs, or anti-Semitic (“Iceberg, Goldberg, what’s the difference?”) or something. “Wealthy white people drinking their iceberg cocktails while the planet is in flames is a bit tone deaf,” wrote a typical hysteric. “Please don’t use an endangered whale or seal to make any elitist meals like you did with the disappearing iceberg,” wrote another. You know: morons.

Martha is no weenie: She followed up by posting a photograph of an iceberg and wrote, “Pleated iceberg. Perfect for cocktails!”

Perfect response, too.

I would have been tempted to post a photo of me eating a polar bear steak.

“Ick” vs. Ethics: The Nazi Gems Collection

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Once again, we encounter the conundrum of so-called “dirty money.”

In May, the auction house Christie’s sold a collection of jewels and jewelry from the estate of Heidi Horten, an Austrian philanthropist. The auction earned $202 million, establishing the Horten sale as the biggest precious gem sale ever. There was, however, an ethics controversy: all that jewelry had been bought with a fortune amassed by Horten’s husband Helmut, a Nazi who bought up Jewish businesses in forced sales during the Holocaust.

The Holocaust Educational Trust called the May auction a “true insult to victims of the Holocaust.” Yoram Dvash, president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, wrote, “In a time of Holocaust denial and the resurgence of antisemitism around the world, we find it especially appalling that a world-renowned auction house would engage in such a sale.” David Schaecter, president of Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA, which represents support groups for victims’ families in the U.S., called the sale “appalling” and said it had perpetuated “a disgraceful pattern of whitewashing Holocaust profiteers.” But Christie’s officials argued that the proceeds of the sale would go to the Heidi Horten Foundation, which supports medical research and a museum containing her art collection. The auction house also pledged to donate some of its own profits arising from the sale to Holocaust research and education.

Since May, however, attacks on the collection, Chistie’s, and the money paid for the jewels at auction have escalated. Christie’s announced this week that a scheduled November sale of more lots of jewelry from the Heidi Horten collection would be canceled, citing the “intense scrutiny” from Jewish organizations and some critics. The Jerusalem Post reported that other Jewish groups had rejected Christie’s donations from the May auction.

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