Character

And Just Think: Abe Lincoln Wrote The Gettysburg Address All By Himself On The Back Of An Envelope…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Hey, it’s only money!

The New York Times today reveals that New York’s governor Kathy Hochul spent about 2 million dollars to outside consultants for help in preparing her 2022 and 2023 “State of the State” speeches. Apparently no previous governor had done that, or anything close: they relied on their staffs for speech ghostwriting.

The extravagant expenditure cannot be justified, though even as the Times exposes it, the paper tries to rationalize Hochul’s waste of taxpayer funds, emphasizing repeatedly that “the speech is among the most significant a governor delivers each year, laying the groundwork for months of negotiations and browbeating over the executive budget and other priorities.” Sure. It’s a speech. It’s not a contract, and what a governor says in it doesn’t commit her to anything, nor is anyone likely to remember what she said within a week of its delivery (especially the way Hochul talks). To be fair to the Times, Hochul is a Democrat, and the Times sees its job as protecting the party, even as the paper reports on inconvenient facts. When it chooses to….

Paying 2 million bucks for help on two speeches not only indicates unseemly insecurity in an elected official, it demonstrates no respect for budgets, priorities, or the public’s hard-earned tax payments. The consultants who got the job also were recipients of non-bid contracts. (Heck, I would have written one of those speeches for some Red Sox -Yankee tickets!)

The arrogance of our current class of elected leaders is a disfiguring blotch on the face of democracy, one that will only get uglier until voters hold them accountable for displays like Hochul’s.

 

Now THAT Was An Unethical “Career Day” Presentation!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Yikes. Talk about ethics alarms failing!

In Lake Oswego, Oregon, Ellen Sawo was giving a “Career Day” presentation at Lakeridge Middle School. Apparently she was not getting the response from students that she felt was appropriate, because she snapped, started swearing at them and finally slapped one student in the face.

Gee, even Judge Duncan didn’t do that, and the Stanford Law students wouldn’t let him speak at all!

Perhaps Career Day speakers need to be more carefully vetted in the future. Anyway, Sawo was escorted from the school and was later arrested by police.

I wonder what career she was promoting. I sure hope it wasn’t “professional ethicist.”

Ethics Dunce: LSU Women’s Basketball Star Angel Reese

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Wow. What a disrespectful, narcissistic, rude and entitled athlete. Now let’s see if anyone has the guts and integrity to tell her she’s completely in the wrong. My bet: Nah.

LSU beat Iowa for the women’s national championship over the weekend. First Lady Jill Biden, ESPN reported, was in attendance at the decisive game and praised Iowa’s sportsmanship. “I know we’ll have the champions come to the White House; we always do. So we hope LSU will come,” Dr. Jill said. “But, you know, I’m going to tell  Joe  I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game.”

OK, the tradition is for the President to invite the winning team in such situations, so suggesting that the losing team deserved an invite to was a bit naive. But truly: big deal. Never mind: LSU star Angel Reese decided that it was justification to blow a gasket and throw a tantrum. Later, someone told Jill that this wasn’t the way it was done, and the First Lady had her press secretary  “walk back” and spin the first lady’s comments, saying they “were intended to applaud the historic game and all women athletes. She looks forward to celebrating the LSU Tigers on their championship win at the White House.” In other words, she didn’t mean what she said, when obviously, at the time, she did.

A gracious, mature individual who knows that our elected leaders and their family members deserve to be accorded a bit more generosity and respect in general and be given some consideration and empathy when they make gaffes than the family next door that gets drunk and parties all night would have left the matter at that, but not Angel, who told a podcast, Continue reading →

Now THAT’S An Unethical Concession Speech!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election Tuesday gave Democrats (well, liberals/progressives—the election is supposedly non-partisan) a one-vote majority as it faces deliberations over the state’s abortion ban, its gerrymandered legislative districts and the voting rules for the 2024 presidential election. Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s defeated former state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly and ended 15 years of conservative control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Kelly’s concession speech made Richard Nixon look gracious. Ethics Dunce, Unethical Quote, Incompetent UN-elected official—Kelly qualifies for several EA designations, none of them positive. His speech alone shows that the voters made the right choice. Who wants a judge with such atrocious judgment?

What a jerk.

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Pointer: valkygrrl

Ethics Villain: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, And Other Observations On The Trump Indictment

/ Jack Marshall / 83 Comments

Last week’s indictment of Donald Trump, engineered by a hard-Left partisan Manhattan D.A. who had made his intentions known when he was running for office, didn’t change any of the ethical calculations here that were recorded when that indictment seemed imminent almost two weeks ago, or in the update, when it appeared that Alvin Bragg might have lost his nerve and decided to be an ethical prosecutor after all, here. I reviewed both posts to see if I would change anything, and I would not, but the final line of the March 18 essay still resonates: “The indictment will remind people of why he won in the first place.” Bragg’s exercise in politically-driven law enforcement will drive far more voters to Trump than it strips away. This makes his actions as politically and pragmatically irresponsible as they seem to be legally and ethically indefensible.

It is necessary to include the caveat “seem to be” because we haven’t seen the indictment yet. Maybe Bragg has legitimate cause (other than “he’s a bad guy and must have done something illegal”) to bring criminal charges against the ex-President, though virtually no unbiased legal analyst with any legitimacy thinks that’s likely. If he does, then his pursuit of Trump may be unwise, and its passion may be fueled by bias, but it is not unethical.

From another perspective, however, even if there were valid and legitimate reasons to charge Trump in this case—and I will be surprised if there are—if there ever were a situation where prosecutorial discretion and restraint were screamingly called for, this is it. The ripples and waves emanating from this indictment and, heaven help us, the arrest and trial will cause so much havoc in our political system, legal precedents, societal divisions, and national discourse that it cannot even be quantified or predicted. They could easily result in Donald Trump being elected again, or arguably worse still, in Joe Biden being re-elected. Whatever happens as a result of Bragg’s conduct, it is certain to be bad for everyone except, maybe, the fanatical Trump Deranged, who have already demonstrated a willingness to destroy the Constitution, the Rules of Law, democratic institutions and ethical standards to get their prey.

Also:

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Pet Goat Ethics: Is There Anyone Behaving Ethically In This Mess?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Are they just not installing ethics alarms any more?

Above you see Cedar the Goat with his 9-year-old owner, now grief-stricken because Cedar ended up on a State Senator’s menu thanks to a series of unethical acts that could have been short-circuited if anyone with power or authority had been a little more ethical, but no.

Jessica Long bought Cedar last year as a pet for her nine-year-old daughter, but for some reason decided to hand the beloved pet over to a livestock auction at a district fair, which stipulated that the all sales were final and Cedar, like all the other farm critters, would be sold for meat. The fair’s brochure clearly stated “no exceptions.” But Long’s daughter was distraught about the prospect of losing Cedar, so her mom begged the fair to give him back before bidding started.

“Pet schmet,” the fair’s rulers essentially replied. “Making an exception for you will only teach our youth that they do not have to abide by the rules that are set up for all participants,” Shasta District (that’s in California) Fair Chief Executive Officer Melanie Silva lectured in an email. So Cedar was duly auctioned off to a representative of California State Senator Brian Dahle for $902. Just $63.14 of that goes to the state fair and the rest, $838.86 to Long.

Thinking hard (but not well) about how to please her daughter, Jessica kidnapped the goat and decided to “take the goat that night and deal with the consequences later.”

Oh, good thinking there, Mom!

The fair’s livestock manager contacted Long warning of “serious consequences” if the goat wasn’t returned. Then a sheriff from Shasta County, filed a search warrant, a judge signed off on it and officers used “breaching equipment to force open doorway(s), entry doors, exit doors, and locked containers in pursuit of their target.” Cedar was the target. Clever Long, however, had sent Cedar into hiding at a distant farm in Sonoma County, but it still didn’t work: authorities got her goat anyway and drove him 200 miles to Shasta County for slaughter.

It is believed that the little goat was served at a community barbecue to which he had been donated as a gesture by Senator Dahl. And that he was delicious.

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Ethics Alarms Archives Encore: “If ‘A Boy Named Sue’ Had Problems, What’s Chance Does An ‘It’ Named Searyl Have?”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Introduction (March 31, 2023)

When I was preparing for yesterday’s final post about the French family fighting to overcome France’s paternalistic government bureaucrats from inflicting the name “Hades” on their infant son, I considered introducing the tale with Johnny Cash’s famous rendition of Shel Silverstein’s “A Boy Named Sue.” But I suspected that I had used the song before, and sure enough I had, in the post that follows, from six years ago.

The main thrust of the essay is the ethical issue touched on in the Hades story as well as others here through the years: the unethical act of giving children weird names. I was surprised, however, to see the post’s prescient and remarkably currently relevant commentary about the transgender insanity that was then no more than a twinkle in the Woke-Deranged mob’s metaphorical eye.

Wow, I nailed it. (Hence my doppleganger Fredo’s appearance in the clip from the Ethics Alarms clip collection.)Too bad only a small cadre of the ethically enlightened and intellectually curious read this blog: forewarned, maybe the current madness that has teachers encouraging fifth grade girls to cut off their breasts and large swathes of society urging momentarily confused boys to call themselves by plural pronouns and “identify” as “non-binary” could have been avoided, or at least minimized. This is my fault, of course; I’m the one who hasn’t figured out how to be an “influencer,” while 21-year-old Kardashians can. I get my self blackballed by NPR by daring to defend Donald Trump on a flaming progressive’s show.

Fredo.

But I digress—sorry. The quote below that struck me was this one:

This is what happens when you let the nose of a flatulent and rude camel into your tent. Those with gender issues should not be abused, beaten, or discriminated against. Agreed. They should have access to medical treatment connected to their condition. Absolutely. They should be able to openly declare their status without fear of reprisals, and people with compassion, manners and ethics shouldn’t teat them like freaks. Got it.

But they do not have leave to re-make the world in their image, and cry foul if the majority draws reasonable lines and says: No. Behave.

Here is the post, from July 10, 2017:

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Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Observations On The House Passage Of H.R.5 (The Parents Bill of Rights)”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Jim Hodgson produced two COTD-worthy responses to the post about H.R.5 which…

…dares to require schools to let parents know what they are teaching, urging students to read, and otherwise indoctrinating their students. I chose this one.

The issue of federalism didn’t enter into my ethics analysis, but it is a valid point: why is the Federal government dictating education policy to the states? Well, it’s an ends and means problem: while a majority of the states are considering laws similar to H.R. 5, those dedicated to using mandatory government education to raise a generation of anti-American little Marxists who change their genders like socks present what may well be an existential threat to the United States envisioned by the Constitution. “The Constitution,” Justice Jackson memorably said in Terminiello v. Chicago (1949) , “is not a suicide pact.”

Is Jim’s Comment of the Day an ethical comment or a political one? We inevitably end up on political turf frequently here, but politics is often inextricable from ethics, as ethically corrupt as it so often is.

Here is Jim Hodgson’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Observations On The House Passage Of H.R.5 (The Parents Bill of Rights)”:

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For an old states-rightist like me, the true sadness is that the local and state governments haven’t acted on this matter (and many others) long before now. You know, enumerated powers, like the Constitution says. But, here in post-Constitutional America, that fussy old document is but a minor impediment to the communists in the land.

I have been active in a number of local, regional and state political campaigns since the 1980s, and have come to know many of the candidates (both incumbents and challengers) personally. I can state with utter certainty that only a minority of them, despite their likely protestations to the contrary, remain dedicated to the causes (and voters) that got them elected in the first place, or to following through with making the changes they declared vital and pledged to make once they got into office. Holding political office is such a process of being co-opted and corrupted for most people. The so-called conservatives have “gone along to get along” until there seems to be little left to conserve. The principled liberals have allowed their Democratic efforts to be hijacked by the radical “social justice” mob. Special interests and money control both parties, top to bottom.

I contact elected officials regularly about a variety of issues, both personally and on behalf of organizations to which I belong. I always make my communications polite, short and to the point, usually containing a bullet list of items, and often a reminder of the official’s prior stated position on the matter at hand. Except from those who know me from a campaign, I seldom get more than a perfunctory “Thank you for contacting us.” message. I get particularly aggravated by members of my state legislature when they ask for input on an upcoming committee or floor vote but seem to have their minds made up despite the amount of public input they get to the contrary of their eventual vote. These legislators depend heavily upon the short memories, attention spans and naivety of the voters to maintain their continuation in office.

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Stop Making Me Defend Hillary Clinton!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Hillary Clinton is being skewered on social media for the above promotional video promoting her upcoming Columbia U. course “Inside the Situation Room.” Clinton was brought onto the faculty to co-teach the offering, which is open by application only to students attending the university’s School of International and Public Affairs and undergraduates from Columbia College, Barnard College, and the university’s School of General Studies.

Some of the criticism is in line with that of Glenn Greenwald and other Clinton adversaries who regard her as a warmonger. “The US official who has urged more wars than anyone over the last 3 decades with the possible exception of John Bolton – including Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine – is teaching Columbia students a class called ‘Foreign-Policy Decision-Making.’ And boy they’re excited!” Greenwald tweeted. The rest of the brickbats are aimed at the video itself, which the Blaze described as “cringy.”

Oh, it’s that, all right. But both critiques are unfair, at least regarding Hillary. Regardless of what Clinton’s policies and proclivities were, she certainly has sufficient background in the field of international diplomacy and foreign policy decision-making to provide students with useful perspective. The press release about the course promises that students will learn “how to analyze and understand the complex interplay between individual psychology, domestic politics, public opinion, bureaucracy, the international environment, and other factors which feed into decisions about foreign policy,” including the “use of force, signaling and perception, intelligence and its analysis, the deployment of other instruments of statecraft, and more.” Hillary is qualified to provide guidance and the benefit of her experience on all of that. I’d take the course, just as I took the negotiation seminar taught by Adrian Fisher, who was the principle U.S. negotiator of the SALT Treaty.

The critique of the goofy video is certainly called for, but Hillary is innocent. She didn’t write, direct or conceive the stupid thing: that’s on the university. Nor is her the quality of her performance being fairly knocked: she’s a lot better than her stiff co-instructor, who has the ineffable air of a bad community theater actress about her. Helen Mirren couldn’t make that script work; I think Hillary was a good sport to do the video, lame as it was. She had just joined the faculty, and she was being cooperative, collegial, and willing to spoof herself to boost student interest.

Well, good for her. I came away from that video liking her more than I did before seeing it.

Comment Of The Day: “Stanford’s Disgraceful DEI Dean Throws Down The Guntlet…NOW Will Stanford Fire Her?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

EA has featured a lot of posts about the Stanford Law shout-down of a conservative federal judge and the school’s “DEI” dean’s complicity in making certain that he did not get a fair opportunity to deliver his remarks. It is, I believe, quite possibly a tipping point regarding many important cultural issues, including Leftist censorship, the decline of higher education ethics and academic freedom, the corruption of the legal profession, and most of all, the toxic influence of the “diversity/equity/inclusion” cult to undermine core societal values in the U.S. The mainstream news media is doing its best to keep the story and its implications far from the consciousness of the average member of the public.

Glenn Logan has offered a helpful Comment of the Day which analyzes Stanford Law School Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach’s defiant and telling op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Glenn is one of many experienced bloggers in the Ethics Alarms commentariat, and at times like these it shows.

Here is Glenn’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Stanford’s Disgraceful DEI Dean Throws Down The Guntlet…NOW Will Stanford Fire Her?”

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Steinbach wrote: “Regardless of where you stand politically, none of this heated exchange was helpful for civil discourse or productive dialogue.“

True, but only because one side decided the right way to deal with debating controversial issues was to make sure that the other side of the debate could not be heard without wading through repeated ad hominem attacks and invective.

At no point does Steinbach recognize that the students were driving the lack of civility. It is also true that the judge’s remarks at certain points crossed the line, but he was under constant attack to the point that he was unable to deliver a coherent presentation. Steinbach either does not recognize these facts, or is okay with them. Based on her prepared remarks, the latter seems to be the betting favorite.

So how can this possibly square with her implied desire for civil discourse? Easy — discourse can only be civil when it’s hers, or she agrees with it, or it is had on her terms.

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