Author: Jack Marshall

The Strategy For Avoiding Accountability For Inflation Under Biden: Obfuscate, Confound, And Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This is not, I think you will agree, an ethical course of action.

In the McLaughlin & Associates national survey represented above, 84% of likely voters said inflation and higher costs have adversely affected their lives. 46% said they were “struggling to make ends meet.”A recent NBC News poll found only 38% of voters on the national level approve of President Biden’s handling of the economy. A New York Times/Sienna College poll conducted last month found 52% of registered voters in key swing states had a poor view of the economy.

The White House and Democratic propaganda merchants approach to this is to claim that the silly public just doesn’t understand how wonderful everything is, including prices. Thus the White House released cheery press releases and social media posts patting itself on its metaphorical back because the average cost of the feast was down approximately 4.5% compared to last year according to the American Farm Bureau’s annual survey. That meant that a typical Thanksgiving meal of 12 classic dishes for a feast of 10 would average $61.17 a diner, compared to last year’s record high average of $64.05. Big whoop.

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Vanity Fair’s Subliminal Woke Mind Programming Experiment

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Nah, the mainstream media isn’t a woke propaganda machine! That’s just a conservative conspiracy theory.

Sure.

Subliminal advertising in movies and on TV began in the Fifties with things like this..

…being flashed before viewers’ eyes in fractions of a second. As a result, in 1958, the National Association of Broadcasters banned subliminal ads in 1958. The FTC views such ads as inherently deceptive and therefore illegal. If you look really closely at that screenshot, it says “Try racial justice” in faint grayscale letters.

Sharp-eyed Ann Althouse gets credit for finding this, which she posted and then, being Ann, ignored the real issues the stunt raises in order to go off track about the lyrics of “Try a Little Tenderness,” among other things.

Ooops, gotta run…I’ll have more to say in the comments…

Guest Column: Shoplifting Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

by Sarah B.

[Introduction: This excellent post by Sarah B, who has a history of them, posed a dilemma. It was originally posted in this week’s Open Forum, but the comment easily could have been a Comment of the Day on two recent posts, “Irony: The Washington Post Telling CVS How To Handle Rampant Shoplifting,” and “Technology Ethics Fail: Self-Checkout.”

In the end, I decided to publish it as a guest post, as Sarah herself told us up front what she was commenting on, writing, “This article, about a woman who wrote a piece for the newspaper anonymously about how and why she shoplifts, is worth discussing,” referring to “I’m a middle-class shoplifter – and here’s why I’m happy to confess it” in the UK’s Independent. Proving once again that valuable insights can be obtained from idiotic essays, Sarah’s post is far, far, FAR superior to the article that apparently spawned it. The explanation of “anonymous” about why she’s apparently “happy” about being a shoplifter was so devoid of either logic or ethics comprehension that it made my phantom hair hurt. Among her fatuous excuses and rationalizations were “It’s easy, so it’s the stores’ fault,” “I don’t even see it as shoplifting” (#64 on the rationalizations list, “It isn’t what it is”), “I’m owed it,” and #22, the worst rationalization of all, “It’s not the worst thing,” because she “would only do this in a supermarket chain, rather than any family-run small business.” People like the author make me want to chuck my business and profession and become a pimp or something. Why do I spend so much time on ethics when so many people think like this? Fortunately, Sarah had a different and more constructive reaction.—JM.]

***

First, there is no doubt that her actions are unethical, and while we could just analyze this as a “name the rationalizations”, I also think that a deep dive into the article can show many things about our society and make for a good discussion. There are options for discussing how she doesn’t shoplift because she has to, but does it to decrease the prices of expensive alternatives instead of paying for what she wants. However, I want to look at how I think we could combat her “how-to guide”.

This seems to me to be a great case study in “locks keep an honest man honest.” The author admits that much of her stealing is predicated on the app-shopping and self-checkout philosophy of big stores. My main proposal, after looking at this, is to somehow return to the “good old days” of customer service.

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Confronting My Biases, Episode 4: People Who Are Still Wearing Masks

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I can say right up front that I’m not getting over this one.

I am a bit less hostile if the mask-wearer is elderly, as I can imagine that they might be seriously immuno-compromised. But when I see a family with young children and they are all masked, I can only think “child abuse” and “morons.” Indeed, I am tempted to ask them what the hell they think they are doing.

Today, in Northern Virginia, I still see teens walking alone outside wearing masks. I still see clerks at my CVS wearing masks, often working side-by-side with maskless co-workers. Most of the masks I’m seeing now are not the medical-grade masks that might have some small value in preventing infection: they are primarily plain old cloth masks or paper masks, as in “useless.”

The mask-wearers are, I am certain, almost 100% woke, virtue-signaling knee-jerk progressives who would happily elect Kamala Harris as President if given the chance. Wearing the things is a political statement as much as anything else. I perceive the masked as gullible to government propaganda and media scare-mongering for political advantage. I view them as fearful, lazy and apathetic individuals who have completely rejected core American character traits, like risk-taking, autonomy and independence.

Perhaps most important of all, I view the wearing of masks now as a deliberate signal that the individual does not want to interact with me, the community or society. I can’t read their expressions; when they talk, it is muffled and I have trouble hearing them. For me, they might as well be wearing paper bags over their heads.

I believe the masked among us are eroding the vital inter-relationships, human contact and communication that makes society enjoyable and productive.

No, I’m not getting over this bias.

I’m not even sure it is a bias.

Comment Of The Day: “KABOOM!! Apparently There Is No Criminal Law To Charge This Police Detective Under”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I challenged veteran EA commenter Jim Hodgson to respond to the oft-repeated accusation that “all cops lie.” Here is his response, a Comment of the Day on the post about the retired Boston detective who manufactured evidence to get more than a dozen (at least) innocent people convicted and jailed, “KABOOM!! Apparently There Is No Criminal Law To Charge This Police Detective Under”.…

Oh…I do want to make it clear that the choice of Mark Fuhrman to lead off this COTD is not in any way intended to subvert Jim’s points. I just believe that when asked for an example of a cop lying on the stand to avoid revealing information that might endanger a conviction, Fuhrman is who most Americans would think of first. My mind goes immediately to the corrupt detective played by Orson Welles in “Touch of Evil,” but you know me and old moves….

***

I think a lot of the phenomenon of police corruption (of all types) is dependent on where an officer works (the particular agency and its culture as well as the jurisdiction and its culture, crime rate, etc.), in addition to the moral character of the individual officer. I spent my whole career here in the mid-south, the so-called “Buckle of the Bible Belt,” in small cities and rural counties. The largest agency I worked for (27 years) had about two hundred officers and maybe forty civilian employees when I retired in 2014. Crime rates where I worked were nothing compared to major population centers. Our citizens were typically much more worried about residential burglary than violent crime. We usually had no more than two or three homicides per year, and perhaps six to ten armed robberies annually, mostly traveling criminals off the interstate highway.

I began my career in 1974. New York’s Knapp Commission had just released its final report on NYPD corruption (think “Frank Serpico”) a little over a year before I began. The report of the U. S. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice report was pretty fresh, as well as the multi-volume report of the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals. Most agencies in this region were trying to overcome the stereotypes of Southern “good-old-boy” knuckle-dragging law enforcement, and embracing new and higher standards in recruitment, hiring, training, retention and performance. Police corruption of all kinds was certainly at the forefront of concern for local politicians and police executives, and that trickled down throughout their agencies.

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It Appears That SCOTUS’s Dobbs Decision Saved 30,000 Lives So Far

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

How does one make an ethics case that this is a bad thing?

A new study by economists at Georgia Tech and Middlebury College, published by the nonprofit Institute of Labor Economic, indicates that in states with significant limits on abortions or outright bans, births have increased. One of the study’s researchers, Caitlin Myers, went on NPR’s “All Things Considered” to discuss the results as if they were describing the Johnstown flood.

I found this genuinely mind-boggling. The exchange demonstrates how ethics rot can set in so decisively that even the most hard-wired and socially beneficial ethics alarms don’t work at all. Abortion supporters are so vehement in their love of the [procedure that prematurely ends nascent life in the womb that they are apparently willing to ignore all other issues in order to (try to follow, now…) punish Republicans who were responsible for getting a President elected who appointed Justices to the Supreme Court who were finally willing to over-rule a decision, Roe v. Wade, that most legal scholars, even those who defend abortion, conceded was poorly reasoned and wrongly decided.

Myers says at the end of the interview,

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Easiest Ethics Quiz Ever: Which Rationalizations Are Rep. Santos Using To Defend Himself?

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

This was so predictable it’s almost funny. Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), one of the most slimy and unqualified members of Congress in U.S. history, is about to be expelled after an epic Ethics Committee report on his myriad crimes and ethical lapses.

The 56-page report said the panel’s bipartisan investigation found a “complex web of unlawful activity involving Representative Santos’ campaign, personal, and business finances.” The committee’s investigation found that Santos had committed multiple frauds and thefts from his campaign while falsifying campaign and personal finance reports. This is all on top of the nearly two dozen federal criminal charges that Santos faces from two indictments, including wire fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds. And, of course, it has long been established that virtually his entire resume was fiction.

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Once Again, The Single “Fact-Checking” Source That I Once Thought Was Fair And Trustworthy Shows Its Partisan Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I can start this post with part of the opening section of a post from July, 2022:

For decades now, I had held on to the hopeful fiction that at least one factchecking organization, the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.Org, at least could be relied upon to make a good faith effort to do its job objectively. Oh, it has always had a left-leaning bias, make no mistake about that. Many years ago I was at a conference where the keynote speaker was the head of FactCheck.Org. She proudly proclaimed the organization’s “absolute objectivity and non-partisanship.” When it came to time for audience questions, I couldn’t restrain myself: by pure coincidence, I happened to have in my briefcase a recent “factcheck” by the group that outright misstated a fact to minimize negative characterizations of Bill Clinton. I read the relevant passage to the speaker, and asked, “How can you honestly describe that passage as anything other than partisan and biased?” Her response was, as I recall, “Huminahuminahumina...”

But still, I am a sap. I so wanted to believe that there was an exception to my conviction that factcheckers are all Democrat propagandists. And now FactCheck has engaged in an instance of flagrant (and inept) propaganda under the guise of factchecking…

Now fast-forward to the post-Hamas massacre progressive crisis. FactCheck.Org posted a factcheck titles, “Cruz Distorts Facts on Biden Support for Israel.” Writer Eugene Kiely concluded that there is “little support” for Senator Ted Cruz’s claim in a Fox News interview that “literally from within minutes of when this horrific attack began on Oct. 7, the Biden White House has been telling Israel, do not retaliate, cease-fire, stop, do not kill the terrorists.”

Heck, anyone who reads Ethics Alarms could have debunked the debunker. I wrote here,

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The DEI Debates: Appeals To Aristotle

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Recently, I read an argument from a conservative pundit that Aristotle perfectly summed up why the “diversity/equity/inclusion” movement (fad, cant, scheme) is foolish and destructive. Primarily the author’s approach was to appeal to the authority of the philosopher, who lived in ancient Greece about 2,500 years ago. Aristotle is one of handful of amazing human beings, like Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci and Ben Franklin, who seem to have been visitors from another planet, so freakishly talented and astute were they for their times, indeed any times. If you are going to use the Appeal to Authority fallacy as the foundation of your arguments, it is certainly an optimum strategy to employ an authority who was much smarter than you or anyone you could possibly argue with.

Indeed, Tottie (his friends called him “Tottie”) did warn about the perils of too much diversity of culture and language in a democracy like the one he lived in. The likely consequences of unassimilated immigration were, he concluded, dire:

“Heterogeneity of stocks may lead to faction – at any rate until they have had time to assimilate. A city cannot be constituted from any chance collection of people, or in any chance period of time. Most of the cities which have admitted settlers, either at the time of their foundation or later, have been troubled by faction. For example, the Achaeans joined with settlers from Troezen in founding Sybaris, but expelled them when their own numbers increased; and this involved their city in a curse. At Thurii the Sybarites quarreled with the other settlers who had joined them in its colonization; they demanded special privileges, on the ground that they were the owners of the territory, and were driven out of the colony. At Byzantium the later settlers were detected in a conspiracy against the original colonists, and were expelled by force; and a similar expulsion befell the exiles from Chios who were admitted to Antissa by the original colonists. At Zancle, on the other hand, the original colonists were themselves expelled by the Samians whom they admitted. At Apollonia, on the Black Sea, factional conflict was caused by the introduction of new settlers; at Syracuse the conferring of civic rights on aliens and mercenaries, at the end of the period of the tyrants, led to sedition and civil war; and at Amphipolis the original citizens, after admitting Chalcidian colonists, were nearly all expelled by the colonists they had admitted….”

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Friday Open Forum, Late Edition…

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

I’m sorry! The Thanksgiving/ 43rd wedding anniversary disruption of yesterday threw off my Friday-dar, and I only just now realized that I owe readers an open forum. Judging from the activity on Ethics Alarms the past two days, it’s going to be a sparsely attended event, but you all have surprised me before.