Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Unethical Quote of the Month: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“I don’t think this is our responsibility, but I do think we were irresponsible going into Iraq for a variety of other reasons.”

—Rep. Nancy Pelosi, attempting to absolve her party’s government from responsibility and accountability for the catastrophe in Iraq.

It's all HIS fault, when you get right down to it...

It’s all HIS fault, when you get right down to it…

Nancy Pelosi, like her counterpart in the Senate, Harry Reid, is an ethics corrupter of the vilest sort. The problem isn’t her party, ideology, policy positions or political objectives. What makes her an ethics corrupter is that from a place of high esteem, status and presumed trustworthiness, she constantly engages in unapologetic unethical conduct, encourages unethical reasoning and violates ethical values, all as if they are the right thing to do.

This statement is typically despicable. In saying this, she is denying the long-accepted duties of government, the successive acceptance of responsibility that is essential to the continuity of a democratically elected state, and the essence of leadership, thus misinforming the public and making them less civically competent, if that is possible.

When a future administration allows the economy to collapse because it also refuses to make the hard and responsible choices necessary to keep the nation’s debt from suffocating us but there is no more can to kick down the road, its leaders won’t be able to ethically blame Barack Obama or his predecessors. When you accept the role of leader, all problems, crises, and conditions in the nation become your responsibility, because you accepted the job. Failure is yours, not those who contributed to the conditions, seeded the crises or failed to solve the problems before, just as success is yours. Every competent, honorable, honest and fair leader understands and accepts this. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, among others, do not. Obama always claims the successes (I’m sure there must be one or two) are his alone, and the failures are not his fault, but the fault of others. Continue reading →

#!@&! Ethics Dunce and Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
"Stay classy, Los Angeles!"

“Stay classy, Los Angeles!”

Let me see: What epic event would justify an elected leader, public figure and inherent role model intentionally doing his best to undermine beleaguered efforts by parents, teachers, employers, Federal regulators and ethics blog authors to protect the vital cultural values of civility and respect from the onslaught of the boorish, inconsiderate and inarticulate who would make obscenity part of everyday discourse?

World peace? Curing cancer? Ending poverty? Nah. The occurrence so significant that Los Angeles’s mayor thinks it justifies his use of the vague and slovenly adjective “fucking” in a planned statement is  the L.A. Kings’ Stanley Cup victory. You know…pro hockey? Where they bat that little rubber thing around the ice?

Occasionally, public figures like Joe Biden (but he has…well, you know…issues) have accidentally tossed f-bombs into unwilling ears canals, but never before has an elected official set out to do so. It is irresponsible, and demonstrates how America is increasingly electing children to high office. If the Mayor of L.A. thinks that a hockey game victory provides a sufficient pass to issue officially sanctioned vulgarity to America, what chance do parents and teachers have when they try to instill manners—that is, routine respect for those we interact with— into their young charges? Answer: less of a chance than they had before Mayor Garcetti opened his smug, pandering, dirty mouth. Continue reading →

Now THAT’S An Incompetent Jury…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

clowns

Polled after turning in a not guilty form to the judge in the burglary case of Bobby Lee Pearson, all 12 members of a Fresno, California jury nodded their agreement to the judge’s traditional question, “So say you all?”  Later, however, it was found that the jury had deadlocked 8-4 on the charges. It was a hung jury, and there should have been another trial.

By the the time one of the jury members had come out of his stupor and told the judge that he had voted guilty, it was too late to correct the error because of double jeopardy. “I can’t believe it,” the judge said as he ordered Pearson released. “This has never happened to me in more than 100 jury trials that I have done.”  That’s because he never had a jury as dumb as this one before. It ostensibly understood the requirement that guilty and not-guilty verdicts had to be by a unanimous 12-0 vote, but apparently became confused by the verdict forms, which didn’t include a deadlock option.

The jury system is the simplest distillation of our democratic system, and even that proved too complicated for these bozos.

A depressing note:  Court authorities say the problem was that the jury was substantially made up of college students.

Yes, they really said that.

Meanwhile, to wrap up this travesty of  justice in a classic “Law and Order” surprise ending, Pearson was murdered within hours of his release.

______________________

Source: ABA Journal

Liar of the Year: Susan Rice

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Liar-of-the-Year-2014

I would have laid odds that Jay Carney would win this award, or perhaps Debby Wasserman Schultz. But no, it is Susan Rice, National Security Advisor and designated Obama Administration Sunday Morning Lackey who wins the prize. And yes, I’m awarding the 2014 honor in June, because you can’t be more deceitful than this.

Deceit, remember, is when you say something using phrasing that is literally accurate in some, often technical or tortured, respect,  in such a way that you know a listener or listeners will understand it to mean something very different that is not true. This is a kind of lie, a very effective kind. It is the official language of Washington D.C., however, (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky [because where I come from we don’t regard oral sex as sexual relations, but go ahead and think I mean sexual relations in the common usage sense, and I’ll explain the confusion once I’m caught].”) and politicians think it is perfectly acceptable.

As I commented upon earlier, Rice reprised her infamous Sunday morning talk show tour of last September, when she told America that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous uprising over a YouTube video while the White House knew very well that this was a misleading and incomplete version of what had occurred, this time saying on ABC that  Bowe Bergdahl“…served the United States with honor and distinction…”This description, of course, was and is contradictory to what is known about Bergdahl, who either went AWOL, deserted, or assisted the enemy of the United States. There is no doubt that he at very least left his unit without leave, precipitating his capture. The White House, the military and the national security apparatus had been aware of this for not just days or months, but years.

Rice, however, maintained to CNN that her description of Bergdahl was not intentionally false and misleading, telling an interviewer,

“…what I was referring to was the fact that this was a young man who volunteered to serve his country in uniform at a time of war. That, in and of itself, is a very honorable thing.”

Incredible. Continue reading →

Funny! But Wrong…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
"Hey! It works!"

“Hey! It works!”

Yes, I would say this was an unethical business transaction.

According to a complaint filed with Malaysia’s Public Service and Complaint Bureau, a man paid the equivalent of  $139.00 to a scamster promising to send him a device that would dramatically enlarge his penis.

When the alleged package-enhancing package arrived, it contained only…a magnifying glass.

The directions said only “Do not use in sunlight.”

Ethics observations:

  • It was very wrong to fool an idiot like that and take his money.
  • Rubbing it in with the directions was gratuitously cruel, if inspired.
  • The reporter who wrote the story undoubtedly will say that the name of the local lawyer he consulted about the case—Mr. Kok—was a coincidence, and not a cheap joke.
  • Sure it was.

________________________

Pointer: Above the Law

Source: The Star On-line

 

 

Ethics Quote of the Week: Ralph Peters on the Bergdahl Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Obama hugs parents

“This is a fundamental culture clash. Team Obama and its base cannot comprehend the values still cherished by those young Americans “so dumb” they joined the Army instead of going to prep school and then to Harvard. Values such as duty, honor, country, physical courage, and loyalty to your brothers and sisters in arms have no place in Obama World.’

–—Ralph Peters, a retired army officer and former enlisted man, in the National Review, explaining how it could be that Obama and his advisors actually believed that trading five Taliban terrorists for a likely deserter would bring such universal accalim that the VA scandal would be forgotten and forgiven.

This isn’t even the most memorable quote in Peters’ acid take-down of President Obama and his narrow, politically-stunted staff, especially Susan Rice, and their mad, insulting conduct. That would be this:

“Both President Obama and Ms. Rice seem to think that the crime of desertion in wartime is kind of like skipping class. They have no idea of how great a sin desertion in the face of the enemy is to those in our military. The only worse sin is to side actively with the enemy and kill your brothers in arms. This is not sleeping in on Monday morning and ducking Gender Studies 101.”

Or maybe this… Continue reading →

KABOOM! Susan Rice, Serial Liar; The Obama Administration, Disgrace…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

headexplode

Nothing like ending a long day with a head explosion.

What does it say about an Administration when it uses its U.N. Ambassador and its National Security Advisor to mislead the news media and lie to the public?

What does it tell us when the U.N. Ambassador and its National Security Advisor so employed is the same individual?

Susan Rice’s complacent complicity in the mid- 2012 campaign efforts by the White House to blame the fatal Benghazi attack on an anti-Muslim video well after the CIA had concluded that the attack was planned and coordinated by Al Qaeda elements sent her to five TV news shows with a tailored lie. That deceit cost her the Secretary of State job, as it destroyed her credibility. So Obama defiantly made her his National Security Advisor.  In this role, she is also, apparently,  expected to continue to serve as White House liar.

Silly me: I can’t shake this habit of wanting to believe Presidential spokespersons in high positions. So when Susan Rice, the National Security Advisor, went on ABC and said this...

“Sergeant Bergdahl wasn’t simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield. We have a sacred obligation that we have upheld since the founding of our republic to do our utmost to bring back our men and women who are taken in battle, and we did that in this instance.”  

and that Bergdahl…

“…served the United States with honor and distinction…”

…I actually assumed that was true!

What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with the news media? Most of all, what the hell is the matter with the President of the United States that he treats the public and the truth with such utter contempt? Continue reading →

Zeynep Tufekci Thinks We Should Trust Journalists To Protect Us From Mass Murderers Like Elliot Rodger, And Yet Restrain Themselves From “Protecting” Us From Other Things They Don’t Want Us To Know. And She Is A Fool.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Zeynep Tufekci: so thoughtful, so gentle, so concerned, so dangerous, so terribly, terribly WRONG.

Zeynep Tufekci: so thoughtful, so gentle, so concerned, so dangerous, so terribly, terribly WRONG.

Zeynep Tufekci is a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, an assistant professor at the School of Information and Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, and a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She wants  journalists to censor the news and information they publish for our own good, to protect us from mad killers like Elliot Rodger. Because she has surfaced again, as before, to spread her “solution” to mass killings, this well-meaning, sensitive, smug and utterly deluded academic is once again getting respectful quotes, interviews and nods of approval from the likes of The Atlantic, Vox and National Public Radio. Since the hysterics can’t seem to take down the Second Amendment, now they want to use the latest mass shooting (it was a stabbing too) to wound the principles underlying First.

I have been waiting for someone with more influence than me to point out how dangerous and wrong-headed her “solutions” are. So far, nothing. I guess I have to do it myself.

Tufekci laid out her plan in detail two years ago, and it is being resurrected now. In an article for the Atlantic, she opined that the media is complicit in mass murders like the Santa Barbara shooting, because such deranged killers are primarily seeking fame and publicity as they exit this cruel world in blood and bullets. For the sake of time and argument, let us accept her dubious premise that this is indeed the driving motive behind these incidents. (I am sure that this is the motive in some such cases; it is certainly not the motive in all of them, as with the University of Texas tower shooter Charles Whitman.)

Here were her five recommendations: Continue reading →

Unethical Ad Of The Month: Kurl-On Mattresses

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

A phenomenon I have never understood and will never understand is the destructive herd mentality in group decision-making. Yes, I know there is peer pressure and ass-kissing and strong motivation to go along with the crowd, but when an organization is considering something mind-blowingly stupid, including actions that should set off every ethics alarm within 20 miles, why is it that nobody, not a single person, steps up and says, “What??? Are you all insane? You can’t do this, and here’s why: it’s stupid! It’s obviously stupid. Think about it for ten seconds, and you’ll know it’s stupid, and will be a disaster for everyone.”

But nobody says it. So we get the Titanic without enough life boats, and Pickett’s Charge, and Lawn Darts and a sequel to “The Exorcist” featuring James Earl Jones dressed as a giant locust. On a slightly less epic scale, you get this mattress ad, by the Kurl-On company in India :

Mattress ad

Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: NBA Clippers Owner Donald Sterling (And Yes, I Mean It)

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments
When you think about it, the champion in this fight would almost have to be repulsive for a victory to mean anything.

When you think about it, the champion in this fight would almost have to be repulsive for a victory to mean anything.

The other shoe dropped, and however it may be intended, it’s an ethical shoe. Donald Sterling now says that he’ll refuse to pay the 2.5 million dollar fine levied on him by NBA Commissioner Silver and his fellow owners for what he said in his own bedroom.

Good. I was waiting for this, and hoping that would be his course of action. Ironically, a good, compliant, progressive billionaire, and one who was not, unlike Sterling, a repulsive asshole, who was nationally embarrassed as Sterling has been, would crawl quietly into a hole, periodically send out big checks and mea culpas to Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the NAACP, and in the process, take  big, bloody chunks out of our freedom to think and speak freely, and our personal privacy. Sterling is doing the right thing, although it is going to cause him to be even more vilified by the media and even more assailed as the personification of racism than he has been already—and that has already been disproportionate to his “crime.”

Fighting is also going to be expensive. Never mind. It is revolting to write it, or even think it, but he is fighting for all of us. Continue reading →