Character

OK, I Give Up: What IS This?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

In an interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, Joe Biden said he had no recollection of Reade, but said she “has a right to be heard but then should be vetted, and the truth ultimately matters. And I give you my word, it never ever happened.”

Then O’Donnell asked what he would say to women who were “eager to vote for Joe Biden but this gives them serious pause because they do believe Tara Reade.”

“Well, I think they should vote their heart,” Biden replied. “If they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn’t vote for me. I wouldn’t vote for me if I believe Tara Reade.”

What is that? Continue reading →

“What’s Good For The Goose Is Good For The Gander” Isn’t “Good” For A Lawyer

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

New Jersey lawyer Brian LeBon Calpin might still be practicing law instead of serving a suspension for a year if he had only perused the Ethics Alarms Rationalization List. Or if he had followed ABA ethics opinions. Or if he had properly functioning ethics alarms.

A former client, a massage parlor owner, had  given him negative online reviews of legal skills and acumen. In retaliation, Calpin posted a negative review of her business, which he later defended with the “what is good for the goose is good for the gander” line. (It’s “sauce for the goose,”not “good,” you illiterate clod!) Calpin wrote,

“Well, Angee is a convicted felon for fleeing the state with children. A wonderful parent. Additionally, she has been convicted of shoplifting from a supermarket. Hide your wallets well during a massage. Oops, almost forgot about the DWI conviction. Well, maybe a couple of beers during the massage would be nice.”

Unfortunately, as Calpin would have known if he attended my last ethics seminar, the ABA has clarified in a recent ethics opinion what other state bar associations have held, which is that just because information about a former client is published and available to someone looking for it, unless it is is generally known as in “widely recognized by members of the public in the relevant geographic area”or “widely recognized in the former client’s industry, profession or trade,” the information is still protected by attorney-client confidentiality, and cannot be disclosed by the client’s lawyer. That’s the professional ethics prohibition on what Calpin did. The Ethics Alarms list explains what’s unethical about “sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” in Rationalizations 1, 2, 2A, 7, 11A, 17, 24A, 40A, 53, and 59.

As is usually the case, Calpin’s career shows other evidence of flawed ethics alarms. The disciplinary board noted that he had previously violated ethics rules regarding neglect, diligence, keeping clients informed, delivering client funds or property, and returning client property after representation. He’s lucky that he’ll get his license back after only a year.

Whether New Jersey residents should consider that lucky is another issue.

Fake History Ethics, Baseball Division.

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Yesterday was the anniversary of a famous day in baseball and American race relations history. From Nationalpastime.com:

May 13, 1947: During the pregame infield practice, a barrage of racial slurs is directed at Jackie Robinson by the Cincinnati fans during the Dodgers’ first visit to Crosley Field this season. Brooklyn shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a Southerner from Kentucky with friends attending the game and captain of the team, engages the black infielder in conversation, and then put his arm around his teammate’s shoulder, a gesture that stuns and silences the crowd.

This  episode in the well-known saga of Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in baseball has taken on the status of legend. It is in the (excellent) biopic about Robinson, “42.” It was re-told in Ken Burns’ documentary “Baseball.” Most enduring of all, the moment is memorialized forever in the statue outside Dodger Stadium—well, forever until Robinson or Reese is cancelled because something unforgivable is unearthed in their past, whereupon UCLA students will pull the thing down as progressives cheer.

I’m preparing a program for the Smithsonian Associates on how baseball has influenced American values, culture, politics, language and society, so it is of special interest to me that there is considerable controversy over whether Reese’s mid-game gesture ever happened. Writes much-lauded baseball essayist Joe Posnanski,

“There is no mention at all of the embrace in the newspapers. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote that very day that Robinson “was applauded every time he stepped to the plate.” Meanwhile, there is no mention of it in the black press either; Burns insists that the embrace had happened, the black papers “would have done 15 related articles.” There is no photo of it. Robinson’s 1948 book about his first season called “Jackie Robinson: My Own Story” does not mention any such incident….There isn’t a single contemporary account of the embrace in any of the newspapers or magazines.”

Theories abound. The episode happened on a different date. It happened, but not in view of the fans. It is a story that accurately describes what Reese’s support of Robinson—Reese was a white southerner and a team leader, and he and Robinson did become close friends—meant to the black rookie as he battled abuse and racism in that first season of 1947, but there was no literal arm around the shoulder.  Craig Calcaterra, recycling  the controversy yesterday on his NBC blog, theorized, Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/14/2020: Only One Pandemic Note Out Of Five!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Good morning!

I am disgusted with this brain-dead talking point: perhaps my most Trump Deranged Facebook friend posted a rant–at least he wrote his own this time rather than searching the web for the latest from established “resistance” pundits (Dana Milbank, Paul Krugman, Joe Scarborough, about a hundred others)—making the “point” that President Trump wasn’t “elected to do heart surgery,” so the argument that Dr. Fauci’s opinions on the Wuhan virus shouldn’t dictate policy because “he wasn’t elected” were foolish. How did people like my friend get this way? He is obviously amazingly receptive to Democrat-crafted narratives, and probably hypnosis as well, so I guess I should be glad he doesn’t think he’s a chicken.

We elect leaders to consider and weigh many opinions of advisers, experts and specialists in narrow fields to balance those among other considerations in deciding what is in the best long and short term interests of the nation. That’s why, among other reasons, the we have a civilian in charge of the armed services. This increasingly popular (and tiresome) claim from the Left that if the recommendations of scientist aren’t followed, it is proof of ignorance and recklessness is logically, historically and politically unsupportable. If it’s sincere rather than a partisan tactic, it is ignorant  as well.

Scientists aren’t accountable to the public for their opinions; if they are wrong, they just come up with new theories and conclusions.  Scientists and health care specialists also, as we have said here many times, operate within the tunnel vision and priorities of their own specialties. All Dr. Fauci focuses on is the likely (as they appear at any given point) health consequences of national policy. Economic, security, political consequences are not his concern, nor should they be. Arguing that his position on the best national policy must be accepted by the President is irresponsible as well as incompetent, and this is true without even considering the fact that Fauci and the “experts” have been repeatedly wrong about the pandemic already, as Senator Paul pointed out this week.

1.How sports teaches character. I am going to have to take two hours out of my day because the MLB channel, improvising like crazy to come up with programming without any baseball games to cover, is replaying the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds, best known for Game 6, when Carlton Fisk hit a walk-off home run in the 12th inning of arguably the most exciting World Series game ever played. I was at Game Six and two more in that seven game series (thanks to the generosity of my late law school friends and classmates Mitch and Myron Dale, whose father was then president of the Reds), but it was one I didn’t see in person, Game 4, that was the Ethics Game.

Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant, with his team facing a daunting three games-to-one deficit if it lost, pitched a nerve-wracking, complete game 5-4 victory, protecting a one-run lead for most of it despite lacking his best stuff against the toughest line-up in baseball. Nearly every inning, the Reds had men on base and threatened to take the lead; over and over again Sox manager Darrell Johnson trudged out to the mound to replace Tiant, only to have his ace shake his head, insist that he would get the job done, and demand that his boss return to the dugout. TV closeups of the Cuban’s grim and sweat-covered face showed pure determination as he took the fate of the team on his own back fearlessly and without hesitation. Tiant, an old man in baseball years, threw over 180 pitches that night in the era before they counted pitches; today, starters are seldom allowed to throw more than 100. Even more than the famous Curt Schilling “bloody sock” game in 2004, that athletic performance epitomizes for me the ethical virtues of professionalism, honor, perseverance, accountability, fortitude, courage and sacrifice. I have pictured Luis Tiant’s face  many times since when I have been under pressure to succeed, or facing a challenge while not feeling at my best. Continue reading →

Ethics Time At The Senate Senate Pandemic Hearing [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

There is no reason why a Democratic Senator couldn’t have distinguished himself or herself today during the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, eschewing politics and partisan talking points with a statesmanlike and courageous presentation, thus earning Ethics Alarms accolades.

Instead, we got disinformation from Senator Warren, the party’s prime demagogue.

Questioning the ubiquitous Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Senator Warren asked for Fauci’s confirmation of inflated figures.

“As I understand it, we have about 25,000 new infections a day and over 2000 deaths a day … and some are estimating we could be at 200,000 cases a day by June,” she said.

“Wrong, Fearmonger Breath!” the good doctor essentially said, as he disputed the 200,000 new cases per day by June figure and said he expected the real number to be much lower. The other two figures were also false, however.

The 200,000 new cases per day by June estimate was probably from that leaked draft  report that the Times put on its front page this week, presumably to scare people. The White House disavowed the report and its predictions, the CDC disavowed the report and its predictions, and the scientist that created the model disavowedthen too, since  there were multiple possibilities included and he hadn’t completed his calculations.  Elizabeth Warren quoted the half-baked model anyway, because that’s the kind of thing she does.

Her other numbers…well, nobody knows where they came from.  According to the NBC News  death tracker, which compiles information from state officials, the daily Wuhan virus death rate in the U.S. has been under 2,000 since the beginning of May. NBC News’ new case tracker shows that while the number of new cases was around  25,000 a day through April, the rate has fallen off since the beginning of May.

The White House corrected Warren’s misrepresentations later.

From the truth-seeking perspective, rather than the false narrative-building approach, we had Senator Rand Paul, who is a physician (an ophthalmologist), challenging the authority of experts from a position of some authority himself. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Declaration: I Know Who I Won’t Be Voting For In November, And Why”

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

When I wrote this post, I knew it would cause some consternation, and it did. I wrote it after becoming disgusted with Alyssa Milano, Kamala Harris, and all the other passionate #MeToo advocates who insisted that a decades-old, recovered memory, conveniently-timed, recited-in-a-baby-voice accusation against a distinguished judge nominated for the Supreme Court was sufficient to disqualified him for that office because respecting “women/victims/survivors” was a paramount and non-negotiable value in our society,  but that a more credible accusation by a Presidential candidate’s former staffer alleging a more serious sexual assault by that man should be shrugged off because beating Donald Trump is more important than those same values we were told could not be outweighed. 

I realized, as every day the latest outrageous trick, lie or plot from the Axis of Unethical Conduct (that’s Democrats, the “resistance”, and the news media) dragged me closer to a decision to vote to re-elect the President, that if I reached that decision I would be doing exactly what the #MeToo hypocrites are doing.

Oh, I could rationalize a difference: their convictions regarding Trump are based on propaganda, Big Lies and impeachment cabals, and they are, in the case of the Milano types, ignorant of the threat to democracy that today’s Left poses, and in the case of Harris, Klobuchar, Pelosi, Warren, and the rest, they are part of it.  My problem is different, as it stems from the fact that while one choice this November is undeniably worse than the other from an ethical perspective, making either choice requires me, as an ethicist, to contradict the principles and values I spend all day and all year trying to promote.

I have to pick an ethics system, and after reviewing the ethics decision-making models, I believe in my case, where integrity is crucial, the system to be applied is Absolutism, where the Rule of Universality applies. The only other choice is the most brutal form of utilitarianism, the ends justify the means. I feel that if I choose that I should author an apology to all of Biden’s #MeToo supporters (and Bill Clinton’s too) and pack it in.  Kill Ethics Alarms, close down ProEthics, and become a porn flick director.

Here is Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Declaration: I Know Who I Won’t Be Voting For In November, And Why:

I think that as a Canadian, I can take a step back and look at this from a different view from people in America.

Frankly, I get this. 100%. I’ve been really struggling talking to some of the people I used to talk with constantly, because I find them… aggravating. It’s like there’s an Anti Trump-Derangement Derangement, where people that have held conservative beliefs for their entire life all of a sudden turn on a dime to defend Trump from what they would have called out 10 minutes ago from anyone else. i get how it happens, Trump has been under siege for years and it’s sometimes hard to figure out whether or not the criticism laid at his feet is legitimate or not. But frankly, sometimes it isn’t hard at all to point out when the criticism is legitimate or not, it is, and the response from previously thoughtful commentators is so obviously mired in this deep morass of tribalism, except instead of a left-right tribalism, the crux of the differentiation is a type of blind loyalty to Trump. I don’t find that interesting, intelligent, thoughtful, or even particularly honest.

Loyalty to Trump is not a defining principle of conservatism. It’s even less of a defining principle to any other ideology, other than Trump’s cult of personality. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Expresses Its Gratitude To CNN For Providing Such A Superb Illustration Of “Fake News” As I Compile The Directory Of Same

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The fake news category is “polls.”

Gallup released the results of a survey in which various attitudes regarding the pandemic were explored. One question asked “How soon would you return to your normal day-to-day activities” if “there were no government restrictions,” giving respondants four options to choose among. The most popular answer was “after the number of new cases declines significantly,” getting 40% in the most recent results. The least popular answer was “after a coronavirus vaccine is developed,” with  9 %  choosing that.

Here is how CNN reported the results: Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/12/2020: I Admit It—I’m Fighting Hard To Avoid Getting Angry, Because I’m Not Ethical When I’m Angry

/ Jack Marshall / 48 Comments

As we face these challenging times, we at Ethics Alarms salute the heroes, the indomitable, the resolute and the vibrant, who endure with good will and good cheer for the well-being of the community. We are Americans, and we are in this together, and

IF I HAVE to listen to insincere, calculated, virtue-signaling crap like this many more times, something is going to ‘pop!’ in my head and I’ll be  grabbing the nearest long, sharp implement and leaving the confines of these walls to begin the historic Alexandria Massacre.

Go ahead! Test me!

The rule in our house is that any channel that runs a commercial that begins with “In these..” or that shows someone wearing a facemask or looking at a webcam will be switched to another channel, never to be revisited during that day. If everyone follows this simple rule, and makes their policy known, maybe we’ll be able to halt this torture.

1.  What’s going on here? Is the idea now to proclaim how biased the news media is and the double standards it uses and mock those of us who care by showing there’s not a thing we can do with it? Is that it? Governor Cuomo actually said at a press conference yesterday  that the pandemic virus came from Europe in January and “no one knew” about it. “With all the sophistication, with all the public health organizations, with that whole alphabet soup of agencies, nobody knew the virus was coming from Europe,” the governor said, on the same day he finally retracted his deadly order requiring nursing homes to take in infected, elderly residents. Then he called the virus “The European Virus.” He really did. No, seriously. I’m not making this up.

The mainstream news media just ignored this idiocy yesterday, though President Trump calling the virus the Chinese virus, which except for the obscure papers Cuomo was apparently citing, is consistent with what most researchers have concluded about its origin, was attacked as racist because, you know, Big Lie #4.  Cuomo’s atrocious decision to expose nursing homes has also been barely covered in the left-leaning media.

2. If you are wondering why Ethics Alarms hasn’t covered in any detail the apparent emerging evidence that President Obama was intimately involved in the scheme to frame Michael Flynn, it is because there is literally no news source I can trust. Conservative sources are stating outright that Obama is squarely in “What did the President know and when did he know it” territory, with declassified documents indicating that Obama was aware of the bogus investigation and efforts to railroad Michael Flynn. The mainstream media appears to be doing what it did during Obama’s entire 8 years, which is refusing to probe suspicious activities and events, and maintaining the illusion that our first black President must be seen to be  as pure as the driven snow, because he was the first black President.  Unless a non-right wing source or reporter plays the role of the Watergate era Washington Post and “Woodstein” to get the truth out, we will be kept in the dark…and you know what the Post says happens in darkness. Continue reading →

Observations On An Ethics Mess

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Ethics Messes are situations too chaotic and ugly to qualify as Ethics Train Wrecks. This is an Ethics Mess. Think of it as a runaway Ethics Train Wreck that hit a nitro-glycerine factory and was then stomped by Godzilla. All we can do is sift through the gore.

California State University, Sacramento associate professor Tim Ford and his wife had a confrontation with their neighbors during which Ford’s wife, who was intoxicated, called one of the neighbors a “nigger” several times as well as a “bitch.” The target of her abuse, Mikaela Cobb, videoed the exchange and posted it on Facebook. The professor’s conduct was far from civil as well, as he is caught shouting, “I’m a professor at Sac State, dude. I have a Ph.D. I don’t need to be dealing with shit like this!”  He can also be seen tossing  a can of some beverage at the neighbor’s window.

Sacramento State President Robert S. Nelsen said last week that he had recently received and watched the “very disturbing video” that showed the professor and his wife in “an ugly verbal dispute with their neighbors.” Even though the couple’s neighbors are not Sac State students, Nelsen said, he still regarded the situation as serious and a school matter, and he said that the video had a harmful impact  on the campus community. Continue reading →

Declaration: I Know Who I Won’t Be Voting For In November, And Why

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

I have to be nicer to the Democrat hypocrites who are saying that they will support Joe Biden even after insisting that #MeToo and  condemning sexual harassment and sexual assault was a  core value of their party and their own beliefs. I owe them a debt of gratitude for eliminating any question in my mind regarding who I won’t be voting for when the election rolls around.

It won’t be anyone in the Democrat Party; I knew that even before Joe Biden started looking like the the Presidential candidate. The Democrats cannot be trusted with national power in their current anti-democracy, anti-Constitution, anti-American mindset; they really need to change their name, to what, I don’t know.

Nor can the unconscionable strategy they have been pursuing since they lost the Presidential election in 2016 be permitted to succeed. If it does succeed, and, tragically, perhaps even if it doesn’t, American democracy will be permanently scarred. Completely embracing the ends justify the means as a party philosophy, Democrats set out to destroy an elected President before he ever had a chance to do his job, a stunning defiance of basic democratic norms as once stated by the exact same individuals who led the revolt. They did this in defiance of law and ethics; they encouraged internal betrayal, illegal sabotage, and the breach of basic decency, loyalty, and responsibility. Taken as a whole, the party’s attack on American institutions was far worse than what Richard Nixon and his cronies did, and it continues today.

I predicted that if he was elected, President Trump’s flamboyant lack of character would corrupt public discourse as well as much of the public. That has proven true, but the damage done to the nation by “the resistance” and Democrats has been far more damaging, and, I fear, far deeper and long-lasting. It has, for example, completely corrupted the news media, meaning that the “informed electorate” the Founders pronounced essential to a functioning United States of America no longer has a strong and trustworthy institution that can ensure that, even in its previous far-from-perfect state. It has, for another example, managed to undo in a little more than a decade much of the progress the U.S. had made in racial trust and accord by seeking to ruthlessly exploit racial division in sick mimicry of the GOP strategy of the Seventies.

Regarding the Democratic Party and the fate it has earned for itself, I am repeatedly reminded of the memorable line uttered by actor Jeff Corey (written by William Goldman) as Sheriff Bledsoe in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” The two likable outlaws come to him in desperation, hoping for some way out of their dilemma, which has a price on their heads and a relentless, highly-paid posse on their trail. The sheriff, an old friend,  shatters their hopes, saying, essentially, that they are doomed.

“It’s over, don’t you get that?” he says.  “Your time is over and you’re gonna die bloody, and all you can do is choose where.”

That is the fate the Democrats deserve, and I fervently hope it is the one they get. My willingness to say this, however does not mean  that I can or will vote for Donald Trump.

The reason I cannot is the same reason (well, one of the reasons) I find Nancy Pelosi, Alyssa Milano, Senator Klobuchar and so many of my Facebook friends contemptible who now say that they must vote for Joe Biden because beating Trump is more important than what they once said was a moral imperative. Their fecklessness and hypocrisy proves that it was never a moral imperative; it was a posture of convenience.

My position as an ethicist and a leadership consultant cannot be a posture of convenience. I have to stand for certain essential principles, and I do not have the luxury, as some do, indeed as virtually anyone reading this post does, of deciding that circumstances require,  in this rare ethics conflict, rejecting the principles my credibility and integrity rest upon in pursuit of a greater good. That would be what the #MeToo hypocrites are doing, or think they are.

Absent my professional and public assessments as a professional ethicist, I would have no difficulty at all in officially concluding that Donald Trump is the preferable, indeed essential, choice to lead the country in the next four years when the alternative is a party that has revealed the corruption and antagonism toward American ideals as has the Democratic Party. But President Trump, as I pointed out repeatedly in 2015 and 2016, is the antithesis of the kind of leader my knowledge and expertise  indicates should ever be placed in a leadership position of any kind, or in a position of power and trust.

For me to vote for such an individual would render my credibility in my profession, and what is more important, my personal and professional integrity, void.

An ethicist cannot, in my view, support or vote for Donald Trump as President, nor can an ethicist, at least this ethicist, have any position but the rejection of the current iteration of the Democratic party as antithetical to American values.