Author: Jack Marshall

Unethical—And Funny!— Quote Of The Week: BLM Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“This doesn’t seem safe for us, this 990 structure — this nonprofit system structure. This is, like, deeply unsafe. This is being literally weaponized against us, against the people we work with.”

—-Patrice Cullers, co-founder and former executive director of Black Lives Matter, referring to the Federal laws that require all charities and non-profits to disclose their finances and activities to the public .

Yeah, I bet the laws requiring Black Lives Matter to keep records of its donations and how they are spent make you feel unsafe, Patrisse.

As Ethics Alarms discussed in February, Black Lives Matter is being slowly but surely exposed as a scam, as its fundraising arm can’t account for much of the $90 million it raised when the group pulled off a massive white guilt-fueled shakedown of corporations and individual donors. Cullers helped rip the veil away herself when she spent $3.2 million on real estate across the United States after BLM closed out 2020 with $60 million in the bank. Though BLM denied that Cullors spent BLM funds on her personal properties, the organization and other activist groups under Cullors’s control offered contracts to an art company run by the father of her only child. A coincidence, I’m sure.

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The Great Stupid And Seattle Transit

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

In Michael Crichton’s”The Lost World,” a “Jurassic Park” follow-up not to be confused with the “Jurassic Park” film sequel of the same name and not one of the writer’s best, there is an interesting discussion of how some species of dinosaurs may have caused their own eventual extinction by developing toxic habits, like not caring for their young. It was the first thing I thought of when I read about the ridiculous transit system crisis in Seattle.

Oh-oh.

It shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose, that the city that encouraged woke support for the destructive George Floyd riots in 2020 has adopted other unethical policies that make the Left’s anointed feel good even though the policies can’t possible work and constitute irresponsible leaps onto ruinous slippery slopes. 

The Seattle light rail public transit system has no turnstiles: passengers are supposed to  buy a ticket or tap their pre-paid card. It’s an honor system, but in woke Seattle, the ideal purpose of government is to for almost everything, so 70%—Seventy per cent!!—of the riders are freeloaders. This means that fares cover just 5% of the system’s operating costs. 40% was the minimum Sound Transit set as a requirement.

All public transit systems lose money (though they are approved after estimates that routinely overstate likely ridership), but they will help us avoid death by climate change, see, so they are essential and wonderful per se. However, if a city just lets riders cheat, such systems cause wider problems in the social contract.

(Do we really have to keep explaining this?)

Seattle’s Sound Transit stopped even minimal enforcement of fare requirements after a study revealed that blacks were disproportionately getting fined. Ah HA! The system was racist then! How far a jump is it to apply the same logic to other laws? It is how San Francisco. ended up legalizing shop-lifting.

I’m sorry: my tone is snarkier than usual this morning. But this is all so infuriating. And unethical. And stupid. Continue reading →

At Yale, An Unethical Question And An Ethically Ignorant Answer

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx) was recording a live episode of his podcast “Verdict” at Yale with his co-host, conservative writer Michael Knowles. The topic was the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson as the next member of the Supreme Court, but a student, “Evan”, asked Cruz a question that was juuust a bit off-topic.

“Assuming it would end global hunger, would you fellate another man?” Evan queried as the audience guffawed. Hahahaha, you’re an asshole, Evan. The question is rude, unserious, and designed to embarrass a U.S. Senator. It’s Golden Rule breach, of course, because the question is of the “when did you stop beating your wife?” variety. For a conservative like Cruz, any answer would get him into trouble.

I would have shut the student down, myself, and asked him to leave. A question like that is the live equivalent of trolling. Instead, Cruz threw the question to his co-host.

Big mistake.

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Whoa! How Did I Miss THIS? “The Media Narrative Chart”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Conservative political writer, author, marketing consultant and all-around smart person Jon Gabriel developed that chart way back in 2015, and it has proven a reliable predictor ever since. It is at once mordantly funny, sad, and true.

Today’s mass shooting in New York will be a nice test: the suspect is believed to be a black male, 5 feet, 5 inches tall and 175 to 180 pounds.

PM Ethics Shadows, 4/12/2022: Civil War Memories, Crazy Climate Change Terrorists, Someone Figures Out That BLM Is A Scam, And More [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The Civil War started on this date in 1861, as Southern forces fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor. That’s about all that needs to be said. All wars are ethics nightmares, but none has had more ethics ramifications for this country, from the lives sacrificed to end slavery, to the war crimes of Andersonville, and the total war tactics of Sherman, to the myriad instances of astounding courage, cruelty and incompetence on the battlefields and the ongoing debate about how best to glean the right ethics lessons from them. (Tearing down statues is not it, though.) The Civil War took away our greatest POTUS, Lincoln, and gave us Presidents Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and McKinley, Civil War veterans all. The one non-veteran in the sequence, Grover Cleveland, is an ethics controversy himself because of it: Grover paid someone else to take his place in the draft. And yet….try asking the nearest college grad to give you the dates of the Civil War. I asked a Cornell law grad and former associate of one of the most prestigious law firm in the nation once.
She guessed “Somewhere in the 1930s, right?”

1. I’ll take “Unethical environmental fanatic nutballs, Alex!” Adbusters, a self-described “international collective of artists, designers, writers, musicians, poets, punks, philosophers and wild hearts” posted instructions on how to deflate the tires of “rich people’s” gas-powered vehicles. [Pointer: JutGory] “Wedge gravel in the tire valves, leaflet the SUV to let them know the tires are flat and why it was done, and walk away. It’s that simple,” the group said in a tweet. The group cautioned “to avoid targeting vehicles with disabled stickers or hangers.” That’s considerate of them…

This is what climate change hysteria does to people who lack ethics alarms. Here’s what they want you to leave on the windshield when you disable a car:

2. Good. Now what took you so long? On the Huffington Post, progressive opinionater Stephen Crockett authored a rueful essay bemoaning the fact that Black Lives Matter is apparently a racket. (Please note that this space figured that out years ago, and it wasn’t hard.)

He writes, Continue reading →

“Jen Psaki’s Job Is Not An Easy One (Easy One!)”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well! Jen Psaki has been hot as a firecracker lately! Before we get into details, however, let’s add a verse to that immortal Gilbert and Sullivan song above, shall we?

When Joe Biden utters something idiotic (Idiotic!)
Or he babbles what his puppeteers forbid (They forbid)
Jen Psaki must deny he even thought it (That he thought it)
And insist he never did what he just did. (What he did!)
Though her figurative pants may be on fire (Pants on fire!)
Do admire her for the tales she’s boldly spun. (That she’s spun)
It’s a chore to be Joe’s designated liar (She’s his liar!)
Jen Psaki’s job is not an easy one.

OHHH!

Since deceptive propaganda must be done, must be done.
Jen Psaki’s job is not an easy one…Easy one!

There, now that I’ve got that out of my system, Jen’s latest hits!

First, the “Putin Price Hike” lie…

This goes beyond mere lying, which is what Psaki does every day. The claim that gas prices and the skyrocketing inflation are the fault of the Russian Ukraine invasion is gaslighting. Funny, I seem to recall both gas and other prices heading up at today’s trajectory long before Vlad decided to become a war criminal. Must be my imagination…

How stupid does the Biden administration think American are? Very stupid, apparently. Psaki has been repeating “Putin Price Hike” for quite a while now: obviously it was decided upon by some focus group exercise as the Democrats’ best chance to hypnotize Americans into believing that spending trillions the nation doesn’t have and blocking energy production to make Greta Thunberg happy haven’t caused the price hikes in everything, because it’s all Putin’s fault (and greedy American corporations). Of course, polls showing about 40% of the public still thinking Joe is doing a bang-up job does encourage the “these people will believe anything!” conclusion. Continue reading →

Looking Back: This Week’s Ethics Alarms Monday Retrospective (I Know It’s Tuesday)

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Last week was a very lively one on Ethics Alarms; you’d hardly know it was an “echo chamber.” The uptick in quality may or may not have been the result of not having to argue with a now self-exiled commenter who kept complaining about the process here (and explaining why the New York Times wasn’t really biased because not all of its articles were biased), and having to correct a now banned knee-jerk progressive who believes every bit of spin and fake news that warms the hearts of progressives.

Here are five highlights that you might want to check out if you missed them, but you could just read all the April 7 posts…

From 4/4: A COTD instant classic.

From 4/5: More bang for your metaphorical buck: 10 ethics stories instead of just 5. (Special attention should be paid to #5,#9, and #10)

From 4/7: In which some Democrats and journalists advocate defying the Supreme Court in the interests of democracy. I’m not kidding!

From 4/9: No, AOC, you idiot, nobody believes corporations are people….

From 4/10: Student questions expose the embarrassing hypocrisy of a “disinformation” conference.

What Is The Ethical Response To This Astoundingly Stupid Story?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I really don’t know.

In Florida, two teenage males—Can we say “males”?—were playing a fun and exciting game: they took turns wearing body armor while the other shot a gun at him, police have concluded. Surprisingly, at least to them, one of the kids was shot dead when a bullet hit a place that the body armor didn’t cover.

Christopher Leroy Broad, 15, died after being rushed to a hospital. 17-year-old Joshua Vining has been charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child with a firearm. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) announced on April 6 that Russians and Belarusians who had been accepted to compete in the 2022 Boston Marathon and are currently residing in either country, will not be allowed to compete.

“Like so many around the world, we are horrified and outraged by what we have seen and learned from the reporting in Ukraine,” said President & CEO of the B.A.A. Tom Grilk. “We believe that running is a global sport, and as such, we must do what we can to show our support to the people of Ukraine.”

Morons.

Clearly, The Great Stupid (TGS for short) has variants like the Wuhan virus. This one is not directly related to George Floyd Ethics Freakout like the original “antiracism”/ let’s pretend every couple in America is biracial and make race and gender the most important criteria for goddamn everything TGS, but it’s almost as brain-crippling.

This one started in Germany, as I recounted here. Russian conductor Valery Gergiev was fired from the Munich Philharmonic orchestra this week. His offense? He is a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and refused to publicly condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I began by writing that at least that undemocratic version of TGS hadn’t made it to the U.S., but it rapidly made it here. Anna Netrebko, the celebrated Russian opera soprano, failed to submit to the company’s demand that she distance herself from President  Putin, and was dismissed by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. I wrote then,
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Funny! But Unethical…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Among the more diabolical guerilla tactics to highlight the epic failure of the Biden Presidency is the “I did that!” stickers, which turn up stuck on gas pumps across the country. There are many versions, including a “We did that!” sticker featuring Kamala. They are available all over the web, including on Amazon, here. I found them funny the first few times I encountered them.

The problem is that putting them on gas pumps is unethical. Come on, you know it is. The pumps are private property, and slapping a sticker on anyone’s property without permission is vandalism, albeit a mild variety.

Thus I cannot mount a great deal of sympathy for one Thomas Richard Glazewski, 54, of Manor Township, PA., who was charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, harassment and criminal mischief, all related to a gas station “I did that!” rampage. “Off to the gulag with Glazewski!” exclaimed conservative site Moonbattery. Sure. This was a political prosecution? Prove it. When Joe’s apologists are allowed to post “Putin did that!” stickers with abandon, then I’ll consider it.

Mr. Glazewski also apparently sprayed gunk over his stickers to make them difficult to remove. I don’t know about you, but I won’t be joining the “No Justice, No Peace” protests in Manor Township.