Author: Jack Marshall

So: The Dire Predictions By Anti-Gun Hysterics Turned Out To Be Wrong in Florida. Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Federalist recounts some of the furious reactions when Florida became the 26th state to adopt constitutional carry in July 1, 2023:

“Following mass shootings, DeSantis signs permitless carry bill,” one NBC News headline complained. In the article, the producer of “The Rachel Maddow Show” sneered at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for trading what he dubbed “modest gun safeguards” for an “extreme” and “controversial” law. Forbes [quoted] gun control groups including Giffords claiming the pro-Second Amendment law is “dangerous” and “will drive gun violence up and further jeopardize the safety of our families and communities”…“It is shameful that so soon after another tragic school shooting, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a permitless concealed carry bill behind closed doors, which eliminates the need to get a license to carry a concealed weapon,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote. “This is the opposite of common sense gun safety. The people of Florida — who have paid a steep price for state and Congressional inaction on guns from Parkland to Pulse Nightclub to Pine Hills — deserve better.”

“Common sense gun safety.” That’s another one of those BS tell-tale deceitful phrases—like “gender-affirming care” and “reproductive freedom” that should start your ethics alarms ringing. But I digress..

Well waddya know! Florida’s biggest cities saw a significant decrease in violent crimes, including shootings, in 2023. Murders and homicides fell 6 percent in 2023 from the previous 2022 in Jacksonville. Miami. had 49 homicides in 2022, nut last year only 31, the least ever on record. Miami also experienced a 34% in non-fatal shootings 124 fewer “non-contact” shootings than in 2022.

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Ethics Dunce, Life Competence and Workplace Division: Brittany Pietsch

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

My first reaction was to have sympathy for Brittany Pietsch, the Cloudfare account executive who somehow thought recording her Zoomed firing and posting it on social media would be a good idea. Then I learned she was 27. That’s much too old to behave like she did, much less to be self-righteous about it. Her experience ended up on every social media platform and was covered by media outlets from the New York Post to the The Wall Street Journal, and now she is the official “poster girl” for deluded and entitled young workers who don’t get the capitalist system and the competitive workplace.

You can see her nine-minute clip here. If you don’t wince through it, you may need a refresher course in workplace ethics yourself. An at-will employee, Brittany argues with the HR staff who were assigned to dismiss her. Here’s a typical exchange:

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Comment of the Day: “Fani Willis Is Toast and Those Arguing That She Isn’t Are Revealing Their Own Ethics Problems”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The second Comment of the Day of the day emerges from the fertile mind of Humble Talent, who discusses the still popular use of the race card by diversity hires who have been in reality the beneficiary of racial bias, not victims of it. Here is his COTD on the post, “Fani Willis Is Toast and Those Arguing That She Isn’t Are Revealing Their Own Ethics Problems”:

***

There’s a Gordian knot here, and it’s one we’re going to continue fighting with for a very long time.

Fani Willis said in her statement: “First thing they say. Oh, she going to play the race card now? But no. God, isn’t it them who’s playing the race card when they only question one?”

There are competent black people in existence. This is so obvious that it shouldn’t need typing, but Democrats have been so interested in getting in representation regardless of the mediocrity of the candidates that it feels like every time a scandal like this asserts itself, we’re almost invariably criticizing a black person. More, because of the attention of the media, a disproportionate amount of attention gets placed on these cases.

It’s almost impossible not to label these people DEI hires. They tend to have light resumes, their conduct speaks for itself, and the moment they catch whiff of criticism, they reference their melanin and/or their sexual organs.

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Comment of the Day: “Regarding the ‘Substack Supports Nazis’ Controversy”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Joel Mundt makes an interesting comparison (that never occurred to me) regarding the movement by Substack writers to force the platform to ban its small contingent of white supremacists and Nazis. His Comment of the Day also shows that COTD does not have to approach “War and Peace” length to be worthy. Here’s Joel, on the post,“Regarding the ‘Substack Supports Nazis’ Controversy” :

***

This year, a Satanist group put an occult display – I believe it was Baphomet – in our state capitol building, which caused no small amount of consternation among the solid conservative majority in the state. There were calls to tear it down, remove it…all kinds of stuff.

Our governor, a Republican, gave what I thought was a pretty good response: “Like many Iowans, I find the Satanic Temple’s display in the Capitol absolutely objectionable. In a free society, the best response to objectionable speech is more speech, and I encourage all those of faith to join me today in praying over the Capitol and recognizing the nativity scene that will be on display – the true reason for the season.”

Substack has some objectionable content on it…its own version of Baphomet? Don’t eliminate it. Don’t censor it. Don’t force it elsewhere. Objectionable speech should be countered with more speech. Logical arguments and cogent thinking are what give people the chance to understand why some ideas are bad when compared to other ideas. Forcing silence just makes the banished ideas more enticing. Want your children to be white supremacists?…just do what the Left does and attempt to kill the point of view without debate. That will make it super-attractive to juvenile minds that don’t know better. People who simply want to eliminate talk of white supremacy and Hitler and Nazis are those that are probably too stupid to rationally counter it.

Maybe that’s why the Left wants to silence so many different topics.

***

[For the rest of the story regarding that Satanist display, it’s here. JM]

From the “Sentences I Never Thought I’d Read In An Ethics Opinion” File…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“Own up to the fact that, to the best of your knowledge, no significant part of you is Norwegian.”

That was the ultimate advice of Kwame Anthony Appiah, the Times’ ethics advice columnist, to an inquirer who discovered from taking one of those genealogy tests that a Norwegian family he had visited abroad on the assumption that they were relatives weren’t really related to him at all. There was some chicanery around his father’s real progenitor, or something. Prof. Appiah’s questioner wanted to know if he was obligated to tell those nice Norwegians who he enjoyed so much and who were so kind and loving to him that he was mistaken: he had no Viking blood in him at all.

Of course you do, quoth The Ethicist. That was an easy call. How could one reach any other conclusion? Meanwhile, I see no reason to ever take a 23andMe, Ancestry or one of the other tests. I’m perfectly happy with what I know, or think I know, about my genetic history, and it’s not important to me in any event. I’m the same whether I’m related to Agamemnon, Red Cloud, or Jack the Ripper. These tests are a bi-product of the sick and divisive tribal obsession inflicted on the culture by the political Left.

Still, I guess I have to own up to the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no part of me is Norwegian either.

It sure feels good to finally get that off my chest.

Fani Willis Is Toast and Those Arguing That She Isn’t Are Revealing Their Own Ethics Problems

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

When Ethics Alarms first published a commentary related to the unfolding Fani Willis scandal, it was under the headline, “Since the Media is Sure to Report This Major Ethics Story As Late As Possible If At All, I’m Going To Risk Commenting On It Too Soon…” That was a week ago, and it is now clear, though not definitively proven, that indeed Willis did hire her adulterer boy freind as one of the prosecutors on her Trump case, that she has benefited from it personally, and that she has a fatal conflict of interest that will eventually require her removal from the case, probably bar sanctions, and perhaps even criminal charges. Willis using a church appearance to try to shift the issue to racial persecution by the Evil Right was a fairly obvious indication that the allegations in a court filing are true; so is that fact that neither Willis nor her “great friend” have denied the allegations, which would be the obvious move if the scandal was imaginary. Nonetheless, as I expected, the news media is still slow-walking the story, and the usual Trump-Deranged suspects among law professors, legal ethicists and lawyers are trying hard to muddy the water so the public sees the facts as right wing conspiracy-mongering and unethical attacks on the righteous pursuers of their idol.

Mark well those lawyers, ethicists, pundits, professors and publications that try to defend Willis. They have told you, and everyone paying attention, that bias has either made them stupid, or that they are willing to lie “for the greater good.” They are untrustworthy, in either case.

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The News Media Is Apparently Determined To Provoke a Real Insurrection If Trump Wins In November: Is There Any Way To Stop Them?

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

No.

Not that I can see.

Maybe it’s not their intent. Maybe bias has made 95% of all journalists so stupid that they don’t realize what they are doing, or how unethical and irresponsible it is. But doing it they are.

Yesterday was the metaphorical coin dropping. Even though it should have been obvious that Trump, a former President whose single term looks like the “Shining City on a Hill” from the perspective of the current Biden presidency ethics train wreck, would win in a walk over the wan GOP competition in Iowa, Trump-Deranged commentators acted as if the Hindenburg was blowing up before their eyes. So desperate were they to see some progress in their endless “Get Trump!” pursuit that they told readers and viewers that Nikky Haley was a rising star in the weeks before the caucuses, hoping her candidacy would catch fire. Then, as devoted practitioners of old-fashioned democracy were trudging to their meetings during some of the worst winter weather Iowa has seen in years, most national news organizations projected former President Trump as the runaway winner before many Iowa caucus sites even even had ballots to tally. Nice.

Now that’s the way to suppress Trump votes.

Hanlon’s Razor tells us this was stupidity rather than malice, but some conservative sites called the strange goings on “election interference,” and why wouldn’t they? Some polls indicated that a majority of GOP caucus participants believe that Joe Biden wasn’t legitimately elected, and the news media hammered on this “baseless” belief. Message: Republicans are morons. No, Republicans witnessed the Russian collusion hoax, the two contrived impeachments, the steady anti-Trump Big lies every day in the Post, the Times and CNN, the nicely-timed national shutdown that wrecked Trump’s economy, the Hunter Biden cover-up, the sudden transition to voting methods that minimized election integrity, and they have some justifiable suspicions.

As do I.

The narrative is now official: Trump is an existential danger to democracy, an aspiring dictator and an orange Hitler. No balanced coverage is in the offing: the news media, incredibly, is more openly allied to the Democrats and united against Trump than ever before, which is amazing. The objective is to terrify as many Americans as possible, so they will be panicked and desperate if and when the Republicans win the White House.

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Regarding the “Substack Supports Nazis” Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Well, ugh. This is one of those complicated ethics issues that takes a long time to understand and write about, requires a great deal of my time and yours, and on a cost-benefit basis, seems like a misalignment of resources. However, I can’t ignore it, and it is an important case.

As you know, Substack has exploded in recent years as a profitable web platform for subscription opinion newsletters across the political spectrum and on almost every topic imaginable. (As a result, free blogs like mine are going the way of the Diplodocus.) In November, The Atlantic published a piece by Jonathan Katz titled “Substack Has a Nazi Problem.” It’s behind a paywall, but the gist of the article is stated up front:

“…just beneath the surface, the platform has become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Substack has not only been hosting writers who post overtly Nazi rhetoric on the platform; it profits from many of them.

Substack, founded in 2017, has terms of service that formally proscribe “hate,” along with pornography, spam, and anyone “restricted from making money on Substack”—a category that includes businesses banned by Stripe, the platform’s default payment processor. But Substack’s leaders also proudly disdain the content-moderation methods that other platforms employ, albeit with spotty results, to limit the spread of racist or bigoted speech. An informal search of the Substack website and of extremist Telegram channels that circulate Substack posts turns up scores of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters on Substack—many of them apparently started in the past year. These are, to be sure, a tiny fraction of the newsletters on a site that had more than 17,000 paid writers as of March, according to Axios, and has many other writers who do not charge for their work. But to overlook white-nationalist newsletters on Substack as marginal or harmless would be a mistake….

Reacting to Katz’s article, nearly 250 writers hosted on the platform signed an open letter on the issue, beginning with “We’re asking a very simple question that has somehow been made complicated: Why are you platforming and monetizing Nazis?” and concluding with, in part, “Why do you choose to promote and allow the monetization of sites that traffic in white nationalism?… We, your publishers, want to hear from you on the official Substack newsletter. Is platforming Nazis part of your vision of success? Let us know — from there we can each decide if this is still where we want to be.”

The Substack management responded with this. The short version:

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Ethics Quiz: The Emmy-Winner’s Speech

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Neicy Nash-Betts won an Emmy last night in”Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie”—love those Emmy categories— for playing Glenda Cleveland in Netflix’s “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” I didn’t see it: there are some topics too distasteful—no pun intended—even for me. Neicy’s acceptance speech is being cheered all across the news media as “inspirational,” ”powerful” (Huffington Post) “blazing” (The Times) and other superlatives.

“I’m a winner, baby! Thank you to the most high for this divine moment,” Nash-Betts said as she held her trophy. “Thank you, Ryan Murphy, for seeing me. Evan Peters, I love you. Netflix. Every single person who voted for me. Thank you. My better half, who picked me up when I was gutted from this work. Thank you.”

“I want to thank me, for believing in me and doing what they said I could not do,” she added. “I want to say to myself in front of all you beautiful people, ‘Go, girl, with your bad self. You did that!’ Finally, I accept this award on behalf of every Black and Brown woman who have gone unheard, yet overpoliced, like Glenda Cleveland, like Sandra Bland, like Breonna Taylor! As an artist, my job is to speak truth to power. And, baby, I’ma do it till the day I die.”

Personally, I hated the speech.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

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“Stop Making Me Defend Joe Biden” and Other MLK Day Ethics Notes

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

That’s probably the most Dean Martin-ish of all Dean Martin records, and since I didn’t get to post it as I usually do during the holidays, since it snowed all day here yesterday, and since I miss Dean terribly, there it is. Speaking of snow, if I was like the climate change-obsessed (Science!) and had no shame, I’d cite the MLK Day storm along with the fact that it didn’t snow once the whole year when I first came to Northern Virginia over 50 years ago as evidence that Al Gore’s pet issue is a lot of over-hyped hooey. I’m not like Them, however, so I won’t.

Now, some MLK Day ethics notes:

1. Stop making me defend Joe Biden!

The conservative media and its pundit piled on President Biden for saying yesterday, of all days, “Even Dr. King’s assassination did not have the worldwide impact that George Floyd’s death did.” It is a strange and annoying statement to make on a holiday honoring King to be sure, but Joe’s brain-fog is likely to make him say all sorts of strange things. That statement is, sadly, spot on. Dr. King’s life had a historic impact on the U.S., but his assassination made less of a ripple world wide than the death of Princess Diana. Here, there were race riots in several cities (especially D.C.) following his death in April of 1968, but they were less destructive than the previous summer’s rioting. President Johnson used the riots to speed the passage of his signature legislative package, the Civil Rights Act of 1968. It probably would have been passed anyway, but that’s just speculation. MLK Day celebrates the importance of King’s life, a catalyst for civil rights advances, the end of Jim Crow policies in the South and the nation’s acceptance of integration. George Floyd, in contrast, had no positive effects on society while he was alive. It is absurd that his death, a non-racial episode exploited by activists, led first to the massive rioting it did and the subsequent rise of Critical Race Theory-inspired indoctrination in schools as well as intense DEI-fueled discrimination against whites across all sectors, but it is undeniable. Would some other incident have triggered the same response if moral luck hadn’t claimed the life of Floyd? Sure. Nonetheless, Biden was right, just as he would have been right to say the assassination of an obscure Austrian duke in Sarajevo had more “worldwide impact” than the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

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