Business & Commercial

Ethics Trivia, Horror Stories, and More…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Rest of the Story: After picking up frozen entrees at Trader Joe’s yesterday, this afternoon I went to Harris Teeter’s for staples, like coffee and soft drinks. And guess what! The same woman who hit me up yesterday flashed her “I am poor with children and they are hungry…” card at me again, and a second woman, using what looked like the a copy of the same card, stopped me a bit later! I reported both of them and got them kicked out of the store. I should have told them, “The ice section is right over there…”

Also:

1. Memories! Last night I re-watched “Swing Time,” my favorite of the Fred & Ginger movie musicals (directed by George Stevens before filming the death camps in Europe during World War II convinced him that he didn’t want to make comedies any more) and was jarred into a reminiscence when Fred started doing his homage to Bill “Bojangles’ Robinson, one of his tap-dancing mentors. I remembered how in 2018 I wrote a serious ethics post about how Astaire’s blackface number “Bojangles of Broadway” was an example of using black make-up as simply make-up, and not as a racial slur. When I poste it on my Facebook page, Facebook banned Ethics Alarms, with any link to it causing a post to be taken down, for over two years. At the time, a lot of my views were coming from Facebook, and the censorship was harmful. So no, I don’t forget, and won’t forgive, Woke World for its suppression of speech, opinions and ideas as practiced by Big Tech and the social media giants through to the end of the Biden administration, and yes, that experience taught me that the “liberal” side of the ideological spectrum wasn’t liberal at all. Here’s that post.

Now watch me get banned again…

2. Some Democrats are really talking about impeaching President Trump because he said that he would wipe out Iran’s civilization. Why would anyone take this party seriously? I’ve been trying to think of what Trump’s variation on Teddy Roosevelt’s most famous quote, “Speak softly but carry a big stick” would be, not that TR always spoke softly by any means. “Speak like a madman and keep them guessing?”

Pages: 1 2

How Another Hour Of My Life Was Just Consumed By A Conspiracy of Incompetence…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I wonder if I can create a mass tort claim against the people responsible for episodes like this. Behold:

1. On March 28, I received a threatening letter from First Source, LLC, a debt collector. It alleged that I had an account with something called AfterPay U.S., which I have never heard of, for $750, that I never spent, for something that I still have no idea what it was. The letter also said that I now only owed $590.64, since I had paid $187.50, which I have not. My bank doesn’t thinks so either.

2. I called First Source, which …Hallelujah!…has an automated system that got me to a human being almost immediately. That human being was Rhea. She was cordial and professional, and did not constantly read from a script. She heard me out, and said that she would initiate a fraud investigation. I didn’t have to do anything more.

3. Yesterday I received two cheerful emails from AfterPay. Both involved alerting me that I had changed my email associated with my imaginary account. I hadn’t done anything regarding AfterPay, because I still don’t know what the hell it does other than charge people for stuff they never bought, and my email has been the same for 20 years. “Please log into your AfterPay account to view these changes. If this information is incorrect, please update so we have the most up to date information for you,” “Shiara” of Customer Support informed me. “Have a great day.”

Bite me, Shaira.

4. This morning I called FirstSource back to ask what’s going on. But instead of Rhea, I reached Michael, who appeared to be an idiot. As I tried to explain what had happened, he kept reading disclaimers and asking me for the same information I had already given to Rhea and that was already in my file, since it was repeated in the letter FirstSource had sent me. I told him, “I have a simple question you need to answer,” and he replied, “I can’t answer it because you keep interrupting me!” “No,” I said, “I keep asking you to stop reading a script that I have heard already, and to talk to me like a human being, and listen to what I am trying to tell you.” He hung up.

5. I called back and got Michael again. He acted as if we hadn’t just spoken second earlier. He read the same script, an asked me for the same information: my full name, my date of birth, my mailing address, and my “reference number.” It was literally de ja vu: a near exact replay of our previous conversation. This time, he said, “We have closed your account, so you will have to contact AfterPay.” Progress! He then gave me a phone number.

6. I called it. It didn’t work.

Pages: 1 2

Ethics Conflict at Trader Joe’s

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

It’s as if these situations seek me out.

Here I was at Trader Joe’s, doing a quick grocery run after a Zoom seminar, when a small, dark, middle-aged woman woman speaking some variation of English stops me. “Please, sir.” she says, and flashes a card with words written on it. “I am poor and hungry and have children,” it says.

That’s a first: a panhandler in a grocery store. I told her to wait a second and I dug in my wallet to find six bucks, which I gave to her. Then she showed me a basket of some kind of consumables. “Buy food?” she said. What, did she take credit cards?

I shook my head and left. But by the time I got to check-out, the scenario bothered me. Trader Joe’s has a hippie vibe, even a cultish vibe, so maybe panhandlers are welcome, but an in-store competitor seemed a bit over the line. I ultimately decided to blow the whistle on her, and told the store manager on duty that someone was peddling their own commodities in the store. My reasoning: if Trader Joe’s wants to allow that sort of thing out of fatal empathy, it’s their choice. But they at least should know about it.

I half expected the manager to say, “Oh, that’s just Gladys. She’s harmless.”

This ethics decision-making episode fell into my Golden Rule basket. If I was the store owner, I would want to know about Gladys, or whatever her real name was.

I’m still feeling guilty, however.

Update on “Ethics Observations On the Allied Injury Group’s ‘Your Favorite Attorney’ TV Ads”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Last year, almost a year ago, I posted this commentary about the Allied Injury Group’s TV ad that embodied all of the horrors the legal profession used for a century to ban lawyer marketing and advertising (thus forgetting about the First Amendment thingy, you know, just like today’s progressives..). In the process, I managed to make an unethical mistake, mislabeling the slimy law firm involved and calling it the Allied Law Group, a non-slimy law firm that was none too pleased. I apologized profusely to the representative of that firm who called to ream me out and made the correction pronto.

The main thrust of the original post was that the ads seemed to present the silly character giving the pitch as a lawyer, and no matter how unlikely that seemed it was a bright line ethics violation as misleading advertising.

This morning I saw the firms’ new add, which dropped at the end of March. That notice, with chase lights running around “not a lawyer,” appeared a few second in.

Good. We ethicists have to take our meager victories, however rare, to maintain our sanity.

Consumer Alert! Merrick Bank Is Incompetent: Do NOT Get A Merrick Bank Credit Card

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I’ve had it. Some day, before I die, I am hoping against hope that just one month will see all of my online bill-paying take place smoothly and without my having to spend 30 minutes to an hour negotiating a terrible, non-user friendly system, usually made more frustrating by a well-meaning, polite, but nearly incomprehensible non-English speaker. I just went through one of these nightmare experiences with Merrick Bank, which I am forced to deal with because I use its credit card for certain minor expenses. Almost every month, there is some kind of snafu, forcing me to grit my teeth and call customer service. Here is what happened this time:

Pages: 1 2

A Crucial Baseball Ethics Fix That Worked (and I Missed It!)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Tyler Kepner wrote today that any baseball fan looking for optimism about next season, which is currently imperiled by a looming player strike or owner lock-out over the lack of a collective bargaining agreement, can look to the results of an under-reported rule change for hope that MLB and the union can find creative compromise solutions that work.

That’s nice, I thought. Wait—WHAT under-reported rule change?

For many years before the 2022 collective bargaining agreement between players and the owners, it was standard practice for a team to keep a promising rookie in the minors until after the date passed that would have given the player credit for a year of MLB service. Since young players are bound to their signing teams for a set number of seasons before they have arbitration rights and finally free agent rights, that extra year of control teams got by leaving a minor league stud in the minors was worth millions to the team who owned him. Never mind that it made the team keeping a potential star down less competitive and gave the team’s fans a lesser product. Never mind that it cheated a rising star out of contract that recognized his true worth: it was all about the team’s money.

But in 2022, a new rule was negotiated to discourage service-time manipulation. If a player finishes first or second in Rookie of the Year voting, he gets a full year of service time no matter how much time he spent on the roster. If such a player wins Rookie of the Year or finishes in the top three for MVP or Cy Young before becoming eligible for arbitration, his team receives an extra draft pick.

There have been only four days of games in the 2026 season so far, and several rookies who in past years would have still been languishing in the minor leagues as they teams played the “he needs a little more seasoning” game came out of the gate blazing. In the first weekend (three or four games for every team), rookies batted .309, compared to .226 for veteran players! They also hit 15 homers with a .622 slugging percentage and a 1.008 OPS. Those are all records since 1900 through every team’s first three games.

The games were better. The teams were better. The rookies weren’t being manipulated by the teams, and the teams have a chance to benefit too. This was a smart and fair compromise that epitomizes exemplary ethics at work: everybody wins.

There is hope.

Oh Look: The ABA Wants To Circumvent The Second Amendment (Again)…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

As a lawyer who has scrupulously avoided joining the American Bar Association (except when a discounted membership allowed me to feel more comfortable when the ABA invited me to speak about ethics at a convention), I found the recent resolution calling for the repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, (“PLCAA”), 15 U.S.C. §§ 7901–7903, consistent with what I now expect of the nation’s largest legal trade association. Over the last several decades years, the ABA has moved steadily leftward on the ideological spectrum, and signs that bias had made it stupid began turning up as early as 1987, when four members of the association’s special committee evaluating Supreme Court nominees found the extremely well-qualified Robert Bork, nominated by President Ronald Reagan, unqualified purely because of his conservative judicial philosophy. This gave Senate Democrats the ammunition they need to reject Bork, thus beginning the destruction of a crucial “democratic norm” that Presidents should be able to choose SCOTUS justices as long as they were sufficiently qualified and experienced.

You can read Resolution 604 here. Ten states (New York, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington…do you see a pattern?) have enacted “Firearm Industry Responsibility Acts,” and the ABA, being properly woke, is calling for a national version. The resolution purports to be concerned about a “small percentage” of “irresponsible” gun manufacturers who violate consumer protection or engage in deceptive trade practices, and wants the gun industry’s unique immunity from product liability lawsuits to be narrowed and reformed.

Because the latest resolution begins its arguments with the usual scaremongering statistics compiled by anti-Second Amendment activists—“Approximately 46,000 Americans are killed by a gun every year—approximately 125 people every day,” I find the resolution to be disingenuous, a “camel’s nose in the tent” tactic to make gun manufacturers so vulnerable to lawsuits that the business becomes untenable, and guns become so expensive that the right to bear arms is illusory.

Pages: 1 2

Unethical Quote of the Month and Axis Media “Methinks They Doth Protest Too Much” Tweet of the Century”: CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Ethics Alarms had flagged CNN’s incompetence and bias too often already this week: it was getting boring. Then the network, damn them, forced me to write about its crummy ethics again, by posting that ludicrous protest above.

Here is the “journalism” CNN stands behind:

Pages: 1 2

March Madness Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3-14-2026

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

A brief “The Unabomber Was Right” update: yesterday I explained how changes to my Apple phone caused me to miss a planned appointment because I couldn’t figure out the new “improved” alarm setting process. Later, the phone creeped me out. I had intentionally not put my email account on my phone because of security concerns, because people scrolling through their messages when I’m with them annoys the hell out of me, and because I didn’t know how to install it even if I wanted to. At exactly 5:47pm, my email inbox appeared on my phone anyway, without any directive from me, at least not a deliberate one. I’m sure there’s a rational explanation, but I don’t think I’ll like it.

Meanwhile…

1. Professor Turley is alarmed at the quality of faculty members elite universities are hiring now. “Welcome to the party, pal!” He writes in part,

“Professor Muhammad Abdou, who until recently taught students at Columbia University, appeared online this week to spread calls for religious-based violence and glorify the murder of Jews. He did so as part of an event at the Union Theological Seminary, an institution associated with Columbia. While the university recently ended Abdou’s teaching, it is important to remember that this unhinged fanatic was previously chosen by Columbia faculty and administrators to teach their students. Those individuals remain at Columbia… The Islamic studies scholar called on students to “be a threat” as part of the event titled “Death to the Akademy: How to be a thorn in their throat amidst snakes in the grass.” …Abdou told the students: “Let us engage in jihad, and there are rules for jihad, and Muslims know that Allah has commanded rules. We don’t engage in wanton violence, but we don’t accept the negative peace either.”…He praised Elias Rodriguez, the man facing multiple charges for the murder of a young Jewish couple. In what Abdou called the “assassination of two Zionists,” Rodriguez is accused of murdering Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, the two Israeli employees in 2025 in Washington.

“He then reportedly praised their accused killer: “God bless him. He took action. … Take action. Not only that kind of action, just to be very clear, because there’s also building. We need to destroy. We need to create alternatives.” [His speech] is reminiscent of the speech of other radical faculty like Cornell Professor Russell Rickford, who celebrated the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7th. Their extremism was not a barrier to being hired. It was likely an enhancement.

“They are examples of why faculty members are unlikely to change the overwhelmingly liberal appointments. Conservatives and libertarians have been largely purged from most departments. While even a moderately conservative faculty candidate will often face organized opposition, radicals like Abdou and Rickford find an eager audience on faculties….Abdou offers just pure hate. There is no discernible intellectual content or insight. Just rage masquerading as scholarship.”

Pages: 1 2

Ethics Quiz: The Movie Star’s Daughter

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I have no idea what’s right or wrong in this scenario, so it makes an appropriate topic for an ethics quiz. The realm is high fashion and modeling. There are few things I know less about than those subjects. I’m kinda weak on metallurgy and thoracic surgery too.

That’s Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s daughter, Sunday Rose, above. The teen recently became the object of vicious social media scorn following her appearance at New York Fashion Week on February 13, 2026.

The 17-year-old’s big time modeling debut at a Calvin Klein show put her under a harsh spotlight. Many mocked her runway demeanor and declared that her qualifications for high-profile modeling opportunities consisted of famous parents and a movie-star mother, and nothing else. The central ethics issue is nepotism. One social media critic wrote, “Remember when models were stunning, unique and natural? Not just some celeb’s child.”

To be honest, no, I don’t remember when models were natural. Were they ever? Most of them look like freaks, with odd proportions that resemble newspaper drawings of women wearing dresses, and too many of them have looked like recent concentration camp escapees in make-up. But again, I don’t get the whole fashion thing, why it exists, or why anyone pays attention to it.

To my untrained eye, I see nothing about Sunday Rose (what an awful name!) that explains why she is a model except her Hollywood pedigree. Do you? She’s not particularly pretty, seems sullen, and resembles the original “Young Sherlock” in drag. See?

Some models resemble whomever that is with Young Sherlock…

But the real question is how to treat the children of the rich, famous and powerful fairly. Surely the fact that she is Nicole Kidman’s daughter shouldn’t prevent a young, talented, aspiring model from pursuing her dream, but how can unfair advantages be avoided? Nepotism is even more advantageous in Hollywood. Acting success is normally based more on luck and opportunity than stand-out talent, but the children of already established stars are born lucky.

Should they be blamed for accepting what their lineage hands them? Horror writer Joe Hill deliberately used a fake name on his first attempts to follow in his father’s footsteps (Dad is Stephen King) so he could be sure that his work was judged on its own merits. He’s an ethics hero for that, but the list of the offsprings of movie stars who used their names to get on screen and went on to respectable careers, sometimes even surpassing their parents, is too long to publish.

Still, if the the daughter of a movie star puts herself out in range of public judgment, is it unfair for critics to take aim? Does it change the question if she is only 17, like Sunday Rose?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

What is ethical treatment for the beneficiaries of nepotism in modeling or any other competitive field?