Author: Jack Marshall

Ethics Hero: Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.)

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

We have come to quite a disturbing point in our political culture when an elected official can be designated an Ethics Alarms Ethics Hero for doing nothing more than telling the truth. Yet here we are.

The House Majority Whip wasn’t revealing any great secret, just telling the truth about what Joe Biden and so many other Democrats have been lying about—well, one of the the matters they have been lying about. Asked on MSNBC about the inflation affecting typical citizens that they feel might be caused by Democrats spending like there is no tomorrow, Rep. Clyburn answered, “Well, let me make it very clear. All of us are concerned about these rising costs, and all of us knew this would be the case when we put in place this recovery program. Any time you put more money into the economy, prices tend to rise.”

Oh. So it wasn’t the pandemic, or Trump, or Putin as the President and his paid liar, Karine Jean-Pierre, have been saying for months, or “unanticipated and large shocks to the economy” as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claimed in June. It was all the spending by Democrats, like the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Biden signed in March, that sent prices soaring, and Democratic leadership knew it would do exactly that. And I guess they weren’t too concerned, since they went ahead with the huge spending bill anyway, even though the Administration was already exploding the National Debt.

Well, thanks for the candor, Congressman. We knew this anyway, but its refreshing to hear one of those most responsible admit it.

How Does Kevin Spacey Get His Career Back?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

He doesn’t, that’s all.

Yesterday, a federal jury in Manhattan found actor Kevin Spacey not liable for battery in actor Anthony Rapp’s  lawsuit accusing Spacey of climbing on top of him and making a sexual advance in 1986, when Rapp was 14. This was the accusation that ended Spacey’s acting career five years ago, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein feeding frenzy with #MeToo Valkyries searching the landscape for villainous men to destroy. Actual justice was only a small part of the mission; mostly it was a power play, a mass cancellation project designed to bring down as many powerful men as possible and to provide accusers-who-must-be-believed with their skin to wear as trophies.

Of course, once such hobgoblins of little minds as consistency required a necessary ally of the Left like Joe Biden to also suffer the consequences of his repeated sexually harassing ways, the fever broke. Still, lots of genuine villains were metaphorically killed along the way, many who “needed killin'” as Texans are wont to say, like Weinstein, surely, and also Matt Lauer, Louis C.K., Bill O’Reilly, Bill Cosby, Rep. Blake Farenthold, CBS chairman Les Moonves and others. More were just swept out in “The Terror” for no good reason, like poor Sen. Al Franken, or without the accusations against them being substantiated of tested in court. In the majority of the cases, the once powerful men were replaced by women, and that was part of the mission as well.

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Morning Ethics Wake-Up, 10/21/2022: Krugman, Logan, Justice Barrett, Garbage And Poop

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

October 21 reminds me that I’m only up to Woodrow Wilson in the Ethics Alarms examination of qualified competitors for Joe Biden in the “Worst U.S. President Ever” Competition. Biden, as we can see every day, looks worse and worse, but this date in 1921 stands as a reminder that a President whom conventional historical wisdom usually relegates to the bottom of the barrel was more than the corrupt, sex-obsessed boob he has been portrayed as by predominantly Democrat academics. On October 21, Harding gave a brave speech in Alabama condemning lynchings, which at that time were occurring in the South at a rate of about two black men lynched a week. Harding, in contrast to his Jim Crow-supporting predecessor, Wilson, advocated full rights for African Americans as well as suffrage for women. He supported the Dyer Anti-lynching Bill in 1920, which passed in the House but died in the Senate, thanks to the determined resistance of Southern Democrats.

1. Garbage to the left of me, garbage to the right…today’s refrain on Fox News is that the record-setting early voting in Georgia “proves” that  Biden and Stacey Abrams calling the new Georgia election law  “Jim Crow 2.0” was race-baiting and lies. The Democrats’ despicable rhetoric was indeed race-baiting and dishonest, but the voting turn-out proves nothing of the sort. How could it? Less than 50% of the public votes; less than 50% would probably vote if all they had to do was to do so psychically. For all anyone knows, all the extra early voters haven’t been affected by the new rules at all, and would have voted if the law had never passed. Next, Abrams, who really is a horrible character, tried to answer the conservative media’s mockery by “clarifying” that she never meant that the new law would stop anyone from voting who was willing to put in the effort, just that voting should require no effort at all. Oh. But Jim Crow actually made it impossible for blacks to vote no matter what they did. I feel like I’m watching a debate between an idiot and a con-artist… Continue reading →

Most Unethical Non-Criminal Cabinet Member In History?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well, I don’t know. Quite a few Cabinet members have been convicted of crimes in office, and the Biden Cabinet has other bad apples, notably Attorney General Merrick Garland. Still, it’s hard to imagine any federal department head more incompetent or guilty of dereliction of duty than Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Or more of a weasel. To be fair, he is the first Cuban-born Homeland Security Secretary, which makes him “historic” and yet another diversity feather in the current Democratic regime’s cap. And after all, that’s what’s really important, right?

I wish I were kidding.

Mayorkas, you no doubt recall, says that our Southern border is “secure,” apparently using the archaic definition of “secure” that meant “as porous as cheesecloth” in Chaucerian English. He also attempted to install an Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board, until even the Democratic Party’s captive news media objected, which always signals that the Left’s totalitarian aspirations are getting ahead of themselves. But he really secured his place in the U.S. Cabinet Members Chamber of Horrors, it has now been revealed, by deliberately condemning border agents of whipping illegal immigrants along the Texas-Mexico border when he knew the allegations were false.

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Funniest Ethics Quote Ever: The Marshall Project

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

—The Marshall Project, in its analysis of President Biden’s much ballyhooed mass pardon for people convicted of federal marijuana possession, heralded in the news media as the largest act of clemency in a generation.

Weeell, that wasn’t exactly true, was it? As the Marshall Project analysis explains, while the act may have symbolic force in prompting some states to extend clemency to pot violators, and while at the federal level there aboutt 6,500 people with prior marijuana possession convictions on their records may benefit from the pardon by restoring civic rights like voting, or serving on juries,  but only if the marijuana charge was the only felony on their record.

In short, the grand gesture, a sop to the Democratic Party’s drug-loving base, was pure deceit, misleading the public to believe it was something it was not to a ridiculous degree. The way the mainstream media played it, the President was letting harmless, non-violent offenders out of prison and addressing “over-incarceration.” In realty, the “mass pardon” released nobody. Continue reading →

Hypocrisy Check: If You Think Suffering Lingering Effects From A Stroke Disqualifies John Fetterman For The U.S. Senate, How Can You Support Herschel Walker?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Those who fervently believe that it is important to the future well-being of the nation to get the U.S. Senate out of clutches of the Democrats understandably regard the U.S. Senate race in Georgia, where ex-football hero Herschel Walker is attempting to knock Sen. Ralph Warnock out of office using celebrity, Donald Trump’s endorsement, an “R” next to his name and little else, as a crucial battleground. However, one can’t espouse ethical principles and discard them when they become inconvenient. (Well, one can, but it is dishonest and wrong.) The same people who rightly insist that John Fetterman’s lingering disabilities resulting from a May stroke make it irresponsible for him to continue running for Senator in Pennsylvania are choosing to ignore Herschel Walker’s claims that he has been “cured” of dissociative identity disorder (DID), aka. multiple personality disorder, that favorite mental aberration of Hollywood horror movies. Continue reading →

What Is The Fair And Just Punishment for Charles Southall III?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

After all, his crimes were non-violent. He’s African-American, and systemic racism has caused the “over-incarceration” of black men. He’s a man of God, and the Bible tells us to forgive. It says that there should be redemption even after heinous wrongdoing. Should Charles Southall III even spend time in prison at all?

For more than three decades, he has led the First Emanuel Baptist church in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. But the minister also embezzled donations from congregants that were supposed to fund charity projects and building improvements. He stole grant and loan funds from the Edgar P Harney Spirit of Excellence Academy that he had created, and deposited them in a bank account controlled by him and an accomplice. He converted rental and sale payments on properties owned by his church. All together, the minister took about $900,000, and used the money to pay off his personal expenses and purchases.

He pleaded guilty and has pledged to pay back what he can. The guess is that Southall will spend less than a decade in prison, probably much less. Are you satisfied with that result?

I’m not.

The verdict here on Ethics Alarms is that even a decade isn’t enough. This man has done far more harm than the typical thief, even more than the typical thief of nearly a million dollars. He took money that was supposed to help the needy. He misused funds families of ordinary means gave to the church in the spirit of charity and generosity. He abused their trust, and quite possibly damaged the faith of many of them. Southall betrayed his profession, and it is a profession that is supposed to bolster virtue and values in society, not make a mockery of them.

What Southall did is worse, in my view, than armed robbery. It deserves the same kind of harsh sentence Bernie Madoff received for stealing the assets of foundations, investors and retirees. Madoff took billions, and was sentenced to 150 years, because that was the maximum the law allowed. Madoff, however, didn’t steal his money in the name of God, charity, and community service.

150 years locked up for Southall seems about right to me.

Sunset Ethics Reflections, 10/19/2022: How Much Of This Stuff Matters, Anyway?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I’m increasingly feeling like it is impossible to distinguish the important and substantive ethics developments from those that are just annoying or depressing. For example, this:

That’s the new  Anna May Wong quarter, honoring the Chinese-American actress who joined the Hollywood community during the silent film era. Yes, it’s “historic”: she is the first Asian American to appear on US currency. This is the fifth new coin in the American Women Quarters Program. The others, all appearing in 2022, feature poet and activist Maya Angelou (of course); the first American woman in space, Sally Ride; Cherokee Nation leader Wilma Mankiller; and suffragist Nina Otero-Warren.

I don’t really care, but Wong is a trivia answer. She only is getting this honor because of her race. Quick: name a famous Anna May Wong role or film. Hint: There aren’t any. Handing out honors like having one’s image on a quarter based on race alone is racial discrimination. You want important American women on some quarters? Fine: try Eleanor Roosevelt. Abigail Adams. Harriet Beecher Stow. Lillian Hellman. Babe Zacharias. Marion Anderson. Sophy Treadwell. Emily Dickinson. Inventor-Actress Hedy Lamarr. Heck, Julia Child. There are hundreds of women who contributed more to U.S. society and culture than Anna May Wong, but she was the “right” color.

The question is whether this kind of thing is too trivial to bother with, or whether it is another unethical precedent-setting, tiny metaphorical cut.

1. No, John, this isn’t a medical record, and it doesn’t help. In a useful example of how one can convince everyone that he is indeed hiding something, the John Fetterman campaign released a letter by Dr. Clifford Chen saying that the Pennsylvania Democrat running for the open U.S. Senate seat  has “significantly improved” following his stroke in May and “can work full duty in public office.” The campaign  called this a “medical report” after Fetterman’s refusal to release his  health records began being criticized even in the Democratic Party allied news media. “Overall, Lt. Governor Fetterman is well and shows strong commitment to maintaining good fitness and health practices. He has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office,” Chen wrote. But Chen, while he is one of Fetterman’s doctors, is a Democratic Party donor and a Fetterman donor as well. That’s a conflict of interest, and a letter from one’s physician is not the equivalent of health records. Why not just release the records? Well, we know why. It’s the same reason that Donald Trump doesn’t release his tax returns. Continue reading →

Is Everyone Being Unfair To Kamala Harris?

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments
Nobody says that public philosopher Jordan Peterson is an inarticulate boob, and Veep Kamala Harris now has an unshakeable reputation as one. Yet Harris has never exceeded the level of Authentic Frontier Gibberish spewed by Peterson in that clip, which cannot be claimed to have been “taken out of context”: there is no context under the stars in which Peterson’s blather is anything but doubletalk delivered with stunning passion. It immediately reminded me of the Monty Python classic about “meanings,” here.

I confess; when any public figure engages in such blatant oral obfuscation or convoluted rhetoric, I am suspicious of their trustworthiness from that point onward. Ann Althouse, however, defends Peterson, and, by extension, Harris (and Joe Biden and many more) by writing today,

We’re living in a time when your worst few seconds will be ripped out of context and held up to discredit you. Better never to speak on camera at all than to risk creating one of these horrible clips to be used against you. We’re created a mediascape where only the cocky and reckless will speak freely. Ironically, Peterson will be one of those people. Everyone else will shrink out of public view.

Is it unfair to expect public figures and those who opine and speak for a living to do better than that, though? I know I’ve had some bad moments on the radio and in public presentations over the years, but surely there is a level of gabled thought and rhetoric that can be fairly taken as signature significance, and proof that a speaker just isn’t worth paying attention to.

Or is that unfair?