Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

“If people want to really blow up one figure here or one word there, I would argue that they’re missing the forest for the trees. I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

—Socialist Democrat and Progressive rock star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in response to “60 Minutes” interviewer Anderson Cooper’s question about her many gaffes and mistatements.

Bingo. There it is, the smoking gun. Proof that Ocasio-Cortez is so self-involved and eager to talk that she isn’t paying attention, even to her own party’s narratives and talking points. Proof that she is ethically ignorant. Proof that she cannot be trusted. Proof that she is a charming demagogue whose passionate assertions can’t be believed or trusted. Writes the Washington Post’s  Aaron Blake, whose orientation is “Please, please don’t make mistakes like this, because we need you to be successful!”,

“She’s practically saying, ‘Well, maybe I was wrong, but at least my cause is just.’”

She isn’t practically saying that; she is saying that. She’s also saying that the ends justify the means, and if the ends are sufficiently righteous, what’s a little bit of fudging on the facts? This is classic “truthiness,” the term invented by Stephen Colbert to mock conservatives and the Bush Administration in 2005 (he has, oddly, never used the word to tweak Democrats, and won’t use it against Ocasio-Cortez, I guarantee…because, as he has now proven, Colbert has no integrity, and is only interested in advancing an ideology, not in even-handed satire). Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/8/2019: A “Bias Makes You Stupid” Spectacular! [UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 66 Comments

Good Morning!

The first appearance of Donald, Debbie and Gene in the New Year!

1. “A Nation of Assholes” update: Conservatives being ugly. The comments and even the posts around the conservative blogosphere regarding Ruth Bader Ginsberg are repulsive, and  reveal a deep mean streak, a lack of compassion and basic respect. Ginsberg, it was announced yesterday, will miss oral arguments–that means she won’t be able to vote on the cases she doesn’t hear—for the first time in her long career. It also may well mean that she isn’t long for this world, or the Court. The gleeful tone of the jokes, sarcasm and mockery being aimed her way by those salivating at the prospect that she will soon be replaced by a right-leaning justice is palpable. (Yes, some of the mean jokes are funny. The blog referring to her illness as a “belated Christmas present” isn’t.)

2. A classic bad argument for illegal immigration in response to an emotional one against it. The advocate? Geraldo Rivera. On a Hannity segment with conservative Dan Bongino [Correction notice: I mistakenly identified Bongino as African American in the original post. He is apparently Italian-American.]  Rivera tried to defend illegal immigration while condemning the use of individual episodes of violent crimes by illegals to justify stronger border enforcement. As Bongino and Hannity shouted around and over him, Rivera objected to Hannity’s featuring the grieving parents of 22-year-old Pierce Kennedy Corcoran who was killed in a head-on car crash with illegal immigrant Franco Cambrany Francisco-Eduardo. Francisco-Eduardo was charged with criminally negligent homicide and driving without a license or insurance,  was turned over to ICE. (Good!). Hannity lit the fuse when he began his panel by saying,

“Their son is dead. Or the people that also aid and abet these people with their sanctuary cities and sanctuary states, criminal aliens in our custody that are not handed over to ICE. You always say it’s about both parties, it’s not,” Hannity stated. “It’s about one party now that refuses to protect the American people…”

Said Geraldo at his most Geraldo-ish: Continue reading →

The Ethics Incompleteness Theory, The Bigot Doctor,”The Hader Gotcha,” And The Apology Scale

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Yes, she actually has both arms. She’s also photogenic: the Democrats should nominate her for Congress.

I christened the Hader Gotcha last year after several athletes were forced to apologize for youthful social media comments that suggested a bigoted or insensitive state of mind. The ethics Alarms position on people looking through old social media posts to embarrass public figures and force them to grovel apologies to which ever group their comments offended was summarized in this post in the moderate, calm manner for which I am justly praised:

As I have written here before, searching for lingering social media idiocy that an athlete authored before he could drink or vote is despicable conduct, as is anyone making an issue of  what the deep Twitter dives expose. First, what a baseball player said or thought—they are often not the same thing—in the past has nothing to do with his job, which is playing baseball and not making social policy, and second, nothing anybody says or even does before their brain has matured should be held against them in adulthood, unless it is criminal, and even then the law urges us to be forgiving. I know that a lot of social justice warriors think that any racist, sexist or homophobic comments made post birth should be treated a crimes, but they are anti-democratic nuts, and hostile to free thought and speech, so to hell with them.

That post was largely ignored, because too many readers here still fail to grasp that ethics issues arising in baseball often, indeed usually, have broader wisdom to convey. Since I wrote it, the employment of the Hader Gotcha has been expanded outside the realm of sports, most notably the recent example of Kevin Hart, the popular comic who was attacked the very day he was designated as the host of the upcoming Oscars. Hart was forced to withdraw because a Hader Gotcah exposed old anti-gay tweets. This time, however, I agreed that the tweets mandated his withdrawal, writing, Continue reading →

WOW! New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Scores TWO “Ethics Dunce” Designations In A Single Day!

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Yes, it appears that the freshman New York House member bids fair to become the Babe Ruth of Ethics Dunces, blowing away the previous record-holder for Ethics Dunce designations, Bill Clinton, and all other contenders. This is her second Ethics Dunce in a single day, something no other public figure has ever accomplished. Her first is here.

On December 22, the media darling issued  successive tweets, signaling her virtue,

 Next time we have a gov shutdown, Congressional salaries should be furloughed as well. It’s completely unacceptable that members of Congress can force a government shutdown on partisan lines & then have Congressional salaries exempt from that decision….(Spoiler alert: most members of Congress are already wealthy!) Speaking as a working class member-elect, I think it’s only fair. It would also cause members who actually depend on their salary to think twice about leadership and take a shutdown vote more seriously.
Five N.Y. members of Congress are giving up their salaries until the government re-opens: U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY-13); U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY-18); U.S. Rep. Max Rose (D-NY-11), who will donate any pay during the time; U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY-01); and U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY-21). So has U.S. Rep. Dr. Mark Green (R-TN), who sent a letter U.S. House of Representative’s Chief Administrative Officer, Philip Kiko, requesting his salary be suspended until a deal is reached and the partial government shutdown ends, as The Tennessee Star reported. Green voted to fund the border wall.Ocasio-Cortez? She has not refused her paycheck. The New York Post reported on Thursday that Oscasio-Cortez ran away when asked about her salary: Continue reading →

Sunday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/6/2019: Snowflakes, Catnip, Coups And Fake Bills

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Good Morning!

[Here’s a Warm-Up warm-up that has nothing to do with ethics. In “Ben-Hur,” which I watched again last week, Charlton Heston’s character is know by three completely different names. One, of course, is Judah Ben-Hur. What are the other two?]

1. Virtue signaling and pandering are both inadequate to describe this. If only it were a joke—but it appears to be proof of institutional  brain rot.  The British army is reaching out to “selfie addicts,” “snowflakes,” “me me me millennials”—remember, I’m not making this up!—“class clowns”, “binge gamers”,and  “phone zombies”  celebrating the alleged virtues these juvenile behaviors demonstrate, such as self-belief, spirit, drive, focus, compassion and confidence. Here are two examples of the new posters:

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

I anticipate a whole bushel of these awards in the next two years, since the young, callow, naive and broadly ignorant “new face of the Democratic Party” possesses the unfortunate combination of a non-stop mouth,  poor education, certitude of her own brilliance, a seal-clapping rookery of blindly fawning supporters who swoon at any of her doctrinaire pronouncements, and a Mainstream media that hasn’t yet figured out that publishing her every word is doing Ocasio-Cortez no favors.

This example could stand as a template for an Ethics Dunce- mandating performance. Showing that she has the back of her equally cocky and clueless colleague, freshman Congress woman Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, lately infamous for gleefully crowing, “We’re going to impeach the motherfucker!” to a “resistance” crowd after she was sworn in, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted,

“Republican hypocrisy at its finest: saying that Trump admitting to sexual assault on tape is just ‘locker room talk,’ but scandalizing themselves into faux-outrage when my sis says a curse word in a bar. GOP lost entitlement to policing women’s behavior a long time ago. Next.”

This is both unethical and cretinous. Let us count the ways: Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I don’t think it is too much to ask for the Speaker of the House to comprehend the limits of her power and position, do you?

Yesterday, as Nancy Pelosi officially seized the gavel from Republican Speaker Paul Ryan, she  declared that she is equal to the President:

Asked if she considers herself Mr. Trump’s equal, she replied, “The Constitution does.”

The mainstream media, invested in defending and bolstering Pelosi, are already spinning the exchange to mean merely that Pelosi considers women the equal of men, and that the Constitution obviously (now) embodies that principle. However, that would have been a question and answer neither worth asking or answering. The question was whether Pelosi, as Speaker, felt that she was the equal of the President in power and Constitutional authority, and she replied in the affirmative to cheers from the “resistance.” Here’s Scott Dworkin, for example, frequent MSNBC contributor and  co-founder of the Democratic Coalition on Twitter:

“The Constitution considers me equal to Trump.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Damn straight. Trump is not the boss of Congress, no matter what Trump’s lapdogs Ryan & McConnell made it look like. Speaker Pelosi reminds us how the pathetic GOP is owned by Trump. Weak & useless pushovers.

Down, boy! Someone get Scott some Prozac. As for Nancy, someone get her a high school civics textbook. Continue reading →

On Greed, Stupidity, And Reality: My Baseball Wish

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

There is now rampant speculation that the twin prime-age free agents who have the so-called Hot Stove League in palpitations—the two are outfielder Bryce Harper (L) and shortstop Manny Machado (R), both 26, burgeoning superstars, and, in the estimation of many including me, assholes—will not sign contracts until February. I find this difficult to believe, since it would be jaw-droppingly stupid (and unethical), but I hope hope hope that it happens, because the ethics lessons the consequences might teach couldl be momentous.

Both young men are reportedly seeking contracts in the range of ten years at 30+ million dollars a year. Both have player agents who are telling them such exorbitant goals are reasonable.  Machado has already made about 34 million dollars in his still-brief Major League career.  Harper had made almost 48 million. Both are in a position in which they could pick out the city and team they want to live in and play with, and say to their agents, “This is where I want to be. Make the best deal you can, and make it happen.” That is what a rational person would do, and indeed, that is what some players, not players with the potential earning power of these two but ones with more brains than Harper and Machado have between them, have done, though rarely.

It is important to note that unless these guys have developed an addiction to eating diamonds or something similarly extravagant, they don’t need to work another day in their lives now. What is their motivation to be paid more than a third of a billion dollars over the next decade, other than having avaricious, unethical agents steering them in that direction? Ego? Insanity? Stupidity? Harper or Machado could call up any one of the 30 MLB teams, ask, “What can you pay me for the next five years?” and have a contract for at least $100,000,000 dollars within 25 hours. How much different will their lives be with those “low-ball” contracts than if they received the longer, richer ones they covet? Not different at all, and quite possibly better. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/3/19: Morons, And More.

/ Jack Marshall / 66 Comments

Good morning!

Still working on the appellee brief in my defense against the frivolous law suit by an angry banned Ethics Alarms commenter whose boo-boo I bruised. How do you write a professional, respectful, effective rebuttal of a 70 page brief that is basically nonsense? I know how to argue against a real good faith legal assertion–indeed, my enjoyment of brief-writing nearly got me stuck in the traditional practice of law. But “this is deranged crap that doesn’t constitute a valid appeal and that wastes the time of everyone involved” isn’t a professional response, just a fair one.

1. “You know…morons!” At least two people—I can’t find the link for the second one, but it was a child—were wounded when spent bullets shot into the air by New Year’s Eve celebrants fell back to earth and hit them. This happens every year. Why do people think shooting guns into the sky is safe? In WW II, my father had to promise a court martial for any soldier under his command who shot a weapon into the air.  This is basic Law of Gravity stuff, but it seems to elude an amazing number of gum owners. I’m only aware of one move that ever featured a death from a falling bullet: “The Mexican,” a failed 2001 Brad Pitt-Julia Roberts comedy.

2. “You know…morons!” (cont.) The Netflix horror hit “The Bird Box,” which involves a blindfolded Sandra Bullock leading her similarly burdened children on an odyssey to escape an apocalyptic threat that only strikes when it is seen, has spawned a web challenge in which people are encouraged to try doing everyday tasks wearing blindfolds. This prompted a warning from Netflix:

“Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE. We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.”

Boy and Girl are what Bullock’s character’s children are called, because she is so certain they are doomed that she doesn’t want to name them. I am tempted to say that anyone so stupid as to try this challenge should not be discouraged, because their demise will only benefit the rest of us. But that would be mean.

True, but mean.

3. Follow-Up…The Federalist has more on the unfolding Steele Dossier scandal. I do not see how any result of the Mueller investigation can hold up in court, no matter how much the mainstream news media spins it, with the degree of procedural irregularity and prosecutor misconduct we already know is behind it. Presumably this is why the focus has shifted to the extremely dubious theory that Trump violated election laws by paying off a sex partner, something he would have probably done whether he was running for office or not, and also a transaction that didn’t involve campaign funds. The media keeps reporting the latter as if it is an unquestioned crime (apparently because Michael Cohen was induced to plead guilty to it), but it just isn’t a crime, and I believe in the end that theory will be thrown out of court too. Continue reading →

Religious Bigotry Ethics: Kamala Harris’s Attack On The Knights Of Columbus

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Sounds like monsters to me!

Here is another embarrassing story the mainstream media is shrugging off, presumably because it exposes one more ugly side of the preferred (by many in the media) candidate for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination, California Senator Kamala Harris. In truth, journalists do Democrats no favors when they cover for them like this: it makes the Democrats being shielded careless, it makes them reckless, it makes them stupid and unable to disguise their extremism and  ruthlessness.

Yes, it makes them into Hillary Clinton.

In recent judicial nominee hearings, Harris teamed up with Sen. Mazie Hirono–she’s the Certified Silly Person who said that Democrats have a hard time connecting with voters because Democrats are too “smart” and “know so much,” you know, like Mazie—but she couldn’t be elected dog-catcher outside of Hawaii, so I’m not going to bother using this episode to further prove what is already proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Yes, she is an idiot. Harris, however, is supposed to be brilliant, plus she’s a lawyer, she’s black, and she’s woke.

Before Christmas, Harris, along with Hirono, attacked judicial nominee Brian Buesche for belonging to the Knights of Columbus, the venerable Catholic social and charitable organization founded in 1882. Senator Harris  demanded that Bunche, seeking confirmation for  a U.S. district court judgeship, end his membership in that organization and recuse himself from cases in which it has taken a position. In other words, being Catholic disqualifies individuals for federal judgeships. Strange, I thought we put this bigotry to bed when Jack Kennedy made a campaign speech promising that he wouldn’t take orders from the Pope.

The Knights, say the two Senators (but let’s concentrate on the Woman Who Would Be President, Harris), assert that the Knights have taken “extreme positions,” meaning that they follow the Catholic Church’s doctrinal opposition to abortion and gay marriage. I don’t see how anyone can interpret the Senators’ position as anything but anti-religion bigotry.  Writes Ramesh Ponnuru,

Support for the traditional definition of marriage is not an extreme position; it is held by roughly a third of all Americans. It was certainly not an “extreme position” at the time of Proposition 8: The initiative won 52 percent of the vote in one of the most liberal states in the country, the same day that state voted overwhelmingly to make Barack Obama president…If Harris and Hirono want to maintain that all judicial nominees must support abortion, beyond just saying that they will respect existing law, then they should just say that there are scores of millions of Christians they would never allow on the federal bench on account of their beliefs.

In 2017, Senator Diane Feinstein hinted of rising Democratic anti-religious hostility, or perhaps more transparent hostility, when she seemed to look askance at Judge Amy Coney Barrett membership in the Catholic Church, observing darkly, “the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.” Continue reading →