I was a couple posts short yesterday: sorry. A lot was happening, but then a lot is always happening since the election: if I spent every waking hour at Ethics Alarms, I couldn’t keep up with all the events, stories and quotes that deserve posts. I checked out early yesterday because it was, after all, the beginning of the 2025 Major League Baseball season, which has disproportionately and illogically dominated my time and passion for at least six months of the year since I was 12. In return the game has taught me much about life, right and wrong, faith, loyalty, courage, chaos and the universe, so I am convinced the obsession has been worth all the lost hours, pain and distraction. (The Red Sox won in stirring fashion in Texas, 5-2.)
I find myself depending on the forum more than ever (and I still am looking for guest posts). There were at least two mind-blowing ethics items in the news yesterday, well, early this morning and yesterday. Elon Musk tweeted,
“On Sunday night, I will give a talk in Wisconsin. Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election. I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote. This is super important.”
Oh…what? What is that?
Then there was this, an Executive Order directing “the Vice President, who is a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to work to eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.”
Again: WHAT? What is “improper” ideology? What is “divisive” ideology? (What isn’t divisive ideology?) How does one measure “working” to do something? Has any previous executive order ever ordered a Vice-President to do something? I haven’t been to the National Zoo for a long time: is something sinister going on there?
(Thank you, Dana…)
Help me out here…
Ethics Alarms 
What is the Supreme Court election? Did I miss something? Did he make a typo?
The only thing I can think of with regards to the Museums and the Zoo is that some exhibits may take liberties with the audience by reframing certain instances in American history as racist, sexist, etc. A good example might be if a frontier exhibit paints settlers as opportunistic, bloodthirsty racists murdering the peaceful, environmentally-conscious natives. In many cases, that did happen, but some exhibits seem blind to the depredations of some of the Indian tribes.
The National Zoo? I dunno…maybe there are a lot of climate change lectures? I can see common lessons on deforestation, pollution and loss of feeding grounds could be painted as part of an overall emphasis on man-made Climate Change.
It’s the Wisconsin Supreme Court election…which makes the million dollar give-away even stranger.
Ah, okay…so they elect their judges. And Musk is inviting only those who voted and offering an arbitrarily awarded check to two of them?
I think I’m more confused than before.
I believe the situation is such that which ever party gets this seat gets control of the redistricting of Wisconsin which, given the narrow majority the Republicans have in the Federal House of Representatives, could decide which party controls the House.
Musk is blatantly trying to keep the House Republican, but is doing so by encouraging people to get out and vote. He couldn’t legally award the checks to people for voting a particular way, but he could just make it an enticement to vote, and count on higher voter turnout supporting the Republican candidate.
I believe he did this in Pennsylvania for the presidential election?
There is a progressive Democrat retiring from the Wisconsin Supreme Court and this election is to replace him.
Two years ago, April 2023, Wisconsin elected a progressive to replace the Republican justice who had held the seat, and that flipped the court from 4-3 Republican to 4-3 Democratic. About a day after the election, the Democrats filed a lawsuit challenging the legislature’s redistricting maps (which the Wisconsin Supreme Court had already upheld), and the new court ended up holding them invalid.
I think the Wisconsin congressional delegation is currently split 4-4 and the Democrats are trying to make it 6-2 Democratic with new maps. So that could have national implications.
But wait. There’s more! Back in the early 2010’s then governor Republican Scott Walker got Act 10 enacted, which forbade collective bargaining by public employees — and which has been upheld previously by this same Wisconsin Supreme Court. Act 10 has save Wisconsin untold sums of money, and perhaps improved their children’s education outcomes.
So if the Democrats win this race, you can expect another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Act 10. And the progressives on the high court in Wisconsin seem to have no regard for the actual law or constitution any longer, just their political goals.
So that is what brings Musk into this battle, along with many out of state Democratic billionaires. They’ve blown past any previous funding records for Supreme Court races already.
Well, for example, the new museum of African American History leaves Clarence Thomas out of its group of high-achieving African-Americans, unless that’s been fixed.
That would be a good example of divisive ideology.
The creation of that museum is itself divisive. African American history is part of American history. Indigenous American history intersects, but has a distinctive and separate existence and time-line.
“What is the Supreme Court election?“
The WESconsin SC election has America’s Dairyland Lefties generally, and 77 Square Miles Surrounded By A Sea Of Reality denizens specifically, dutifully $#!tting themselves sideways.
On the neighborsnextdoor app (THEY Report/YOU Decide!), Lefty’s positively aghast that EVIL (READ: Conservative) Billionaire Elon Musk is trying to “steal/buy” the election.
Out-of-state billionaire$, they slobber thunderously, subvert the democratic process.
When one humbly suggests that as of 03/15/2025, Uncle Georgie Soros (NY-$4.451M) Reid Hoffman (CA-$14.46M), J.B. Pritzker (IL-$6.515M) and Karla Jurvetson (CA-$7.331M) are by no means residents?
PWS
Here was a discussion in the comments section of a Quora answer (in which I participated) about the COVID-19 lockdowns.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-wrong-with-allowing-COVID-19-to-just-run-its-course-I-have-heard-several-people-seriously-discussing-this/answer/Barbara-LeMaster?comment_id=462275036&comment_type=2
1957 pandemic killed 70,000 Americans, without lockdowns.
1968 pandemic killed 100,000 Americans, without lockdowns.
2009 pandemic killed over 12,000 Americans, without lockdowns.
Covid pandemic killed 1.1 million Americans WITH lockdowns. Can you imagine the death toll without any lockdowns?
The US didn’t get it wrong. By the end of March 2020, well over 100 countries worldwide had instituted either a full or partial lockdown. No one liked the lockdowns; but to stop the virus from spreading like wildfire all across the country and to ensure adequate hospital care for those who needed it most, lockdowns were the most sensible and impactful action available. On a personal level, the lockdowns were incredibly difficult and have had lasting negative impacts on my family. But the lockdowns also probably prevented the early strains from reaching my parents’ small midwest town where they likely would’ve died from it.– Other Person
So in those other pandemics, the US let people die instead of shutting down the economy.
What do we say to the families of those who died in those earlier pandemics, when the government refused to do lockdowns?– Me
Lockdowns are extremely disruptive to society and the economy — not a decision taken lightly. If you read up on the 2009 virus, there were many actions taken to surveil and rapidly respond to the spread, but the risks didn’t outweigh the costs of lockdowns in that case.– Other Person
Maybe the zoo is labeling non-native animals as “immigrants”?
Those who take issue with DOGE axing wasteful government programs might want to note this incident, in oh-so-liberal Minnesota, of successfully prosecuting the operators of a program meant to feed children. Of $250 million received by the grifters, apparently only 3 million was spent on providing meals. The government has little hope of being able to recover a large percentage of the lost funds.
Is it generally ethical for high-ranking government officials to have national security policy discussions on a messaging app, even if no actual classified information is discussed?
I think the question, as you’ve asked it, basically comes down to this equivalent question:
Is national security policy information inherently considered classified, even if not explicitly marked or designated as such?
–Dwayne
when the app is preloaded on their government issued phone and was added by the previous administration? You forgot part of the facts.
My comment wasn’t meant as sarcasm. I’ve wondered about proper channels of communication in the digital age.
Ethics dunces: English Speakers
We’ve so lazied ourselves to rely on autocorrect, and wildly punch in letters, that we’ve come to start using the word “boarder” in place of border.
I can’t tell you how many times now I see discussions about securing the “boarders” and Americans need to invest in the “boarders” and other countries believe in their “boarders” so why can’t we?
I mean, if our naval contingent of soldiers specifically tasked with assaulting and securing enemy vessels after having come alongside them is that weak, then by all means let’s invest in our boarders.
But I’ve seen the typo become so ubiquitous that I half expect the miscreant dictionaries that normalize slovenly slang to include in the definition of “boarder” the meaning of “border”.
Let’s do better people.
You know that I’ve made that typo many times…almost as many times as I misspell “Michael”
We all have. I’ve just noticed the frequency of the typo anymore implies:
1) we’re extra extremely careless checking it
2) we’re slowly normalizing the misspelling.
In my case, it’s just ingrained stupidity.