Author: Jack Marshall

DeSantis, The NHL, And The Duty To Confront (Link Fixed!)

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

When corporations, organizations, institutions or professions show that they don’t have functioning ethics alarms, it is incumbent upon those of us who do to sound those alarms for them. Loudly. Forcefully. In a timely fashion. That is the only way to preserve and strengthen an ethical culture.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just demonstrated how this is done. Let’s pay attention, shall we?

The National Hockey League, like all of the professional sports keen to pander to what it sees as predominant social trends if it will mean better media coverage, announced that it will hold a job fair called  “Pathway to Hockey Summit” on February 2 during its 2023 All Star Game festivities in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The idea was to cater to and seeks to attract “diverse job seekers who are pursuing careers in hockey.” Naturally, the whitest of all sports decided that to virtue-signal properly and suck up to the Diversity Equity Inclusion Nazis, that meant that white men need not apply, well, except veterans. They were okay.

“Participants must be 18 years of age or older, based in the U.S., and identify as female, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and/or a person with a disability. Veterans are also welcome and encouraged to attend,” the published event description stated.

Ah, but it was a Florida event, and Florida is governed by a mean, tough, white guy who insists that anyone under his watch must follow the Constitution. That’s Governor Ron DeSantis, whom the mainstream media is recently painting as “worse than Trump.” The governor’s press secretary released a public statement saying,

“Discrimination of any sort is not welcome in the state of Florida, and we do not abide by the woke notion that discrimination should be overlooked if applied in a politically popular manner or against a politically unpopular demographic. We are fighting all discrimination in our schools and our workplaces, and we will fight it in publicly accessible places of meeting or activity….[the NHL must] “immediately remove and denounce the discriminatory prohibitions it has imposed on attendance to the 2023 ‘Pathway to Hockey’ summit.”

And, of course, the limitations on the event were discrimination, though the kind that progressive revolutionaries, Marxists and Democrats believe is good discrimination—you know, like Harvard’s discrimination against white and Asian-American college applicants. Good, I tell you! But like most pandering businesses, organizations, institutions and professions, the National Hockey League can only move the metaphorical cultural needle in unethical directions if nobody pays attention and the majority of Americans shrug and decide, “Ah, so what? We have bigger problems.” At least, these blights on society and deniers of core American values are only inclined to take the risk if they are sure they can get away with it without paying a substantial price.

And thus it was that, faced with someone who was clearly not about to ignore their unethical conduct or let them get away with it, the National Hockey League immediately backed down. They didn’t even try to defend their discriminatory event. They were only sucking up to bigots for cash and compliments because they thought it would be easy. It’s not as if they thought it was right: the cynical, self-serving, none-too bright people who run the NHL, like the cynical, self-serving none-too bright people who run most things, unfortunately, don’t care about what is right and usually can’t figure out what that is without some forceful guidance anyway.

In a laughably dishonest statement,  the NHL has announced that the “original wording of the LinkedIn post associated with the event was not accurate.” “The Pathway to Hockey Summit is an informational and networking event designed to encourage all individuals to consider a career in our game – and, in particular, alert those who might not be familiar with hockey to the opportunities it offers,”  the NHL now says, after  deleting the original event posting last night. The job fair is open to anyone ages 18 and older.

That’s what they always intended, they say. If you believe that, did you know that hockey pucks taste like licorice?

The United States is in the dangerous cultural state it is now in because the public ignored ethics rot and powerful influences against our nation’s foundational principles in education, politics, journalism, academia, entertainment, and literature while those influences took hold over many decades. We left it to others to deal with, and the others we trusted were weak, apathetic and corrupt themselves. It is a principle of ethics that each of us has a duty to confront and oppose unethical actors when we can. It may be too late, and we may have waited too long.

We’ll never know unless we try, however.

Ethics Villains: House Democrats

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Is there any political issue in American history that was more corrupting than abortion rights? Based on last week’s House vote on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, I don’t think so.

The bill stated that any infant born alive after an attempted abortion is a “legal person for all purposes under the laws of the United States.” Doctors would be required to care for those infants as a “reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive.” How could anyone who doesn’t endorse legalized infanticide oppose that measure? [You can read the whole bill here.]

Yet the bill only narrowly passed, 220-210, because every Democrat except two voted “no.” (We all know that the Democratic Senate will block passage anyway.)  Only one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, voted for the bill with one other Democrat, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, courageously voting “present.” All of the rest, totally in thrall to the most extreme pro-abortion activists, want doctors to have the option of dashing out the brains of a living new-born who has survived an abortion against the nearest wall. Don’t think they won’t: doctors who botch abortions get sued. But hey, no baby, no problem! Continue reading →

Thoughts While Reading Classmate Entries In My Alma Mater’s Anniversary Report, #5: Bias Really Does Make You Stupid…Or Worse

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The stunning thing is how many of my aging classmates, no matter what they’ve accomplished and how credentialed they are, have their brains riddled with progressive cant, Trump-Derangement, and climate-change fanatacism. They usually save their rants for the end, after leading the reader on by impressive accounts of career triumphs, arcane literary references, and skilled writing.

A report I read last night by a retired physician was sailing along, rational as could be, and then unravels like the rebel leader in Woody Allen’s “Bananas,” who once he overturns a South American dictatorship gives a speech announcing that the national language will henceforth be Swedish. The doctor warned of madness to come by listing, among the activities he and his still practicing physician wife are passionate about, “seeing Marlon every chance we get.” Surely he doesn’t mean Marlon Wayans or Marlon Jackson; it must be a reference to Marlon Brando.

Okaaay, that’s a little strange: Brando was a great actor and all, but he made maybe ten really good movies (I just checked that: ten is a stretch) and was a self-indulgent, pompous jerk. A non-actor being obsessed with “Marlon” is an ominous sign. Quickly after that admission we get “The Republican push to delegitimize any election they don’t win screams 1938.” Ah, a “Republicans are Nazis” shot…and Republicans push to delegitimize elections they don’t win? A bit of selective history there, Doctor.

Then comes the obligatory climate change hysteria: “The existential threat of climate change has me thinking about Marlon in a haze of worry and terror…Greta Thunberg has it absolutely right.”

Continue reading →

Friday The 13th Ethics, 1/13/23: Scary!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Some follow-up items before we get to the real stuff:

  • I have two more parking lots to report on as I seek evidence on why parking head-first is the most ethical procedure. In my Harris Teeter’s underground garage, notorious for its narrow spaces, the count yesterday was 73 straight in and just 8 back first. Yet the only space available for me involved getting into a tight spaces with a “Backie” on my left and a “Frontie” on my right. For some reason, debaters on this post didn’t seem to see why this is a problem. My answer: try it. If you get close enough to the properly parking car on the right to have room to get out on the left it is impossible to allow the obnoxious “Backie” driver on the left to have a shot at getting into his car if he weighs 280 pounds while not beating MY door full of dings—and I have to squeeze through a barely opened door to get out myself without dinging his car. In my wife’s doctor’s medical building parking lot this morning, it was much closer 22 back-ins to 42 straight ins. But 1) the lot was only half full and 2) it has much wider spaces.
  • I swear I’ll finish the count-down to determining Joe Biden’s competition for Worst President Ever. The last segment was issued in August. I think I can do it a single post; I’m sorry this has dragged out. Yesterday I heard an old stand-up routine by David Cross (who can be clever, but he’s a dick) arguing that George W. Bush was the worst President, and he began by saying that GII was even worse than “Millard Fillmore and James K. Polk.” That statement is a tell: he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Millard wasn’t bad at all, especially for  Vice-President who had to take over, and Polk was arguably a great President, and the best one term POTUS ever. If you think Polk was bad, I don’t really care what your Presidential ranking is. You’re ignorant, and so is anyone who laughs at your critiques. I bet 90% of his crowd couldn’t pick Polk out of a line-up.
  • My Trump-Deranged, Wuhanphobic but otherwise reasonable Democrat sister, expressing disgust with the Biden classified document scandal, said that she hoped somehow both Trump and Biden could be convicted of crimes sufficiently serious to make them ineligible to run in 2024. I told her that there is no such crime, but that I would gladly take that trade, and so would a lot of people in both parties.

1. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. The interim superintendent of Loudoun County schools announced that at least three high schools, Potomac Falls, Freedom, and Loudoun County, did not tell students they had received the National Merit Scholarship awards.That is now a total of six Virginia high schools that prevented deserving students from notifying colleges of their honors in early-admission applications. The official line is that it was a one-time mistake….that just happened to occur in six Northern Virginia high schools at the same time, all overseen by an “equity consultant” whose stated objective is “equal outcomes” for all students regardless of performance. Glenn Reynolds’ rueful comment ends with a quote from “War Games:

You want to live in an area with the “best” public schools, but nowadays those schools are so woke that they sabotage your kids’ college chances in the name of “equity.” And then, even if those schools get your kid into a prestigious college, employers won’t want to know about it, also in the name of equity? And diversity consultants say to hire people without degrees anyway to promote diversity. What a strange game. The only way to win is not to play.

2. Speaker McCarthy fails an integrity check. (Of course he does.) There are calls for Rep. George Santos–you know, the fake Congressman— to resign coming from the New York delegation of Republican members of Congress and state party officials. But at a news conference yesterday, McCarthy said that he had no intention of barring Santos from congressional committees or penalizing him for winning election under false pretenses. “The voters of his district have elected him,” Mr. McCarthy said. “He is seated. He is part of the Republican conference.”

That’s unethical and disgusting.

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Karine Jean-Pierre

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Ed — Ed — Ed, I am — we don’t need — we don’t need to have this. We work very well together… You don’t need to be contentious with me here, Ed.”

—-White House paid-liar Karine Jean-Pierre in a press briefing session yesterday, expressing her shock that a non-Fox mainstream media reporter would be so boorish as to ask her a tough question.

Redolent of the some of the same issues surrounding the inept Secretary of Transportation (who would surely have been sacked long ago if he were not gay and in a cute same-sex marriage), press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was obviously hired because she’s black, an immigrant, and a lesbian who is also in a same-sex marriage. Against all odds, she is even worse at her job than Pete Buttigieg is at his. It’s impossible to hide: she is frequently unprepared, she sometimes reads from the wrong crib notes, she can’t pronounce key words and phrases (Like that toughie, “Nobel Prize”), she gets petulant when she’s challenged, and is almost as incoherent as the President and Vice-President. Worst of all for a paid liar, she sometimes reveals inconvenient truths.

Continue reading →

Friday Open Forum If You Have The Stomach For It…

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I have to confess, this past week has me feeling overwhelmed. There may have been other weeks where the mendacity, corruption and hypocrisy were more apparent, and the prospects for a healthy nation and an ethical culture seemed dimmer, but I must have repressed those memories.

Yesterday, fraudulent GOP House member George Santos said that he had “led an honest life,” Joe Biden excused the latest discovery of classified documents in his garage by saying the garage was “locked,” and three more Virginia high schools admitted that they had withheld notice of National Merit Scholarship awards from students. The school superintendent, who is an DEI consultant and who pledged to seek “equal outcomes” for all students, swears these were independent, unrelated “mistakes.” All made by six high schools in her state. Coincidentally.

Give me hope today.

“Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This week Netflix offered another true crime documentary, “The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.” It tells the weird tale of Kai Lawrence (his real name  is Caleb McGillvary) who went from viral celebrity to convicted murderer in less than a year. It is a very disturbing story, and not just because of the murder. What I found most illuminating if not surprising was the eager exploitation of an obviously disturbed young man with violent tendencies by media types who gave no thought to the likely consequences of their actions.

In  2013, McGillvary, aka “Kai” was a homeless pot-smoking vagrant, living on the streets and depending on the kindness of strangers.  Hitchhiking in the Fresno (California) area, he was picked up by Jett McBride, who, Kai revealed later, he had given a cigarette laced with a hallucinogenic drug. Perhaps as a result, McBride ran down a pedestrian  When a woman rushed to the pedestrian’s aid, McBride, apparently bonkers, assaulted her. This is where “hatchet-wielding” comes in: Kai got out of the car and stopped McBride’s attack by hitting him three times over the head with a hatchet he had in his bag.

Yes, he became a hero by striking a man with a hatchet. The woman felt Kai had saved her life, and a local reporter on the scene quickly grabbed the long-haired, handsome young man for an interview. The reporter was obviously amused and delighted by Kai’s spontaneity and affinity for the camera. At one point McGillvary turned directly to viewers and delivered a well-rehearsed call for all human beings to be “respected for who they are.” The reporter was charmed, even though anyone with open eyes should have known then that they were witnessing the act of seasoned grifter. Continue reading →

It’s Unethical For A Leader To Refuse To Fire Incompetent Subordinates. Somebody Tell President Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The current poster boy for incompetent Biden appointees and subordinates who are apparently immune from firing is Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Like so many in this administration, Buttigieg was hired to please a Democratic Party constituency, not because there was any reason to believe he would be good at his job. He was an ineffective mayor of a small city: that gave him neither experience in key transportation systems or a background in running a large bureaucracy. Buttigieg’s sole qualifications for the Cabinet position were and are that he is openly gay and in a same-sex marriage, making him “historic.” I know, I know: I don’t understand how where you want to put your whackadoodle makes you better at keeping the trains running on time either, but that’s apparently the theory.

To call Buttigieg a disaster in his job would be too kind. The supply chain fell apart on his watch. Shortly after taking over his 58,000-employee department, a supply chain breakdown damaged businesses, harmed consumers and fueled inflation. Meanwhile, the DOT Secretary has prioritized touch-feely DEI measures above actually overseeing the transportation systems. In the midst of the worst of the supply chain crisis, he took two months paternity leave. Throughout Buttigieg’s tenure, railroads had been unable to reach an agreement with the dozen labor unions representing their workers. Buttigieg was vacationing in Portugal when a rail strike seemed imminent in September, so Labor Secretary Marty Walsh stepped in to avert one. So far.

When soaring gas prices made highway transportation too expensive for many Americans, Buttigieg’s contribution was to lecture us on the need to buy electric cars. A system wide collapse at Southwest Airlines resulted in thousands of flight cancellations and delays over the holidays, stranding thousands of travelers. A primary cause was inadequate oversight of the airlines by the agencies under Buttigieg’s command. Then this week, a safety system outage forced the Federal Aviation Administration to temporarily ground all U.S. flights for the first time since the 9/11 attacks.

Continue reading →

The Bottom Line On The Moderna Booster Scandal: Apologies Please, And Now

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It is nice to see CNN practicing journalism again. though.

A CNN report published yesterday revealed that the pharmaceutical company Moderna withheld data from both U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisers last summer pointing to “the possibility that the updated booster might not be any more effective at preventing Covid-19 infections than the original shots.”

The booster’s impact on actual infections, based on trials, indicated that “1.9% of the study participants who received the original booster became infected” while “those who got the updated bivalent vaccine – the one that scientists hoped would work better – a higher percentage, 3.2%, became infected.” The FDA authorized the Moderna bivalent vaccine on August 31, and did not publicize the previously omitted infection data until September 13. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: As The Founders Roll Over In Their Graves…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

The headline: “Hamtramck City Council votes to allow animal sacrifice for religious purposes in the city.”

The act of animal sacrifice is often practiced among Muslims during the celebration of  Eid al-Fitr, and Muslims make up a majority on the council, it seems. There’s not much more that needs to be said, is there?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz to begin this cold and gloomy Thursday (at least where I am) is…

Are animal sacrifices for any reason ethical in the United States of America?

Continue reading →