Ethics Dunces

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Golden State Warriors Owner Chamath Palihapitiya

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay. You bring it up because you care and I think it’s nice that you care. The rest of us don’t care. I’m just telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line.”

—–Golden State Warriors owner Chamath Palihapitiya, in an interview.

This statement, classic signature significance, neatly explains why the National Basketball Association remains metaphorically in bed with the brutal regime in China, why the Biden Administration refuses to hold the country responsible for its role as an international outlaw (and inflicting its virus on our population,economy and the world), and if you change just one word, why the United States allowed Hitler’s Final Solution to proceed as far as it did.

Give credit where it is due: at least Palihapitiya is being honest. As for his fellow owners, we can see that they feel exactly the same way through their conduct, but prefer not to say so out loud. It might cut down on the profits from souvenir NBA jerseys. Continue reading →

From Great Britain, A “Laws Are For The Little People” Scandal, And From The Prime Minister, A Terrible Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Boris Johnson, Great Britain’s eerily Trump-like Prime Minister, was caught behaving like Nancy Pelosi, California Governor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, Dr. Deborah Birx, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, John Kerry, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, just-exited NYC mayor Bill de Blasio,  and others in the U.S. who have violated the restrictions they placed on the public’s liberty and right to the pursuit of happiness in their embrace, at least officially, of Wuhan virus panic.

Three days ago, an email “emerged,” as they like to say now, showing the PM’s  private secretary inviting people to a lawn party at 10 Downing Street while the rest of the country was under a strict pandemic lockdown. The cheery missive concluded, “bring your own booze!” Continue reading →

It’s Only January 11, And Yet This Might Already Be The Ethics Story Of The Year: The Nazi-Loving Police Chief

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This story made my head explode, and for once, it was worth it. I LOVE this story! It touches on so much…idiocy,incompetence, dead ethics alarms, unions, a soupçon of “The Producers,” incredible excuses and more—I don’t want to give away the one detail that made me laugh out loud yet. And perhaps best of all, it comes out of Washington state, one of the epicenters of The Great Stupid.

I am going to try to relate the tale without giggling, and then I’ll have some observations at the end. Alert: my telling may contain a bit of sarcasm here and there. I’m sorry. I can’t resist.

In Kent, Washington, a King County suburb of Seattle, Mayor Dana Ralph (D) apologized profusely to her city in a 30 minute video. Why? Well, she admitted that her administration badly mis-estimated what the public’s reaction would be to the town’s decision not to fire Assistant Chief Derek Kammerzell, and to instead suspend him for two weeks while allowing him to treat the time off as a vacation, meaning that he was paid. You can understand why the mayor and her staff would be blindsided by the outrage; after all, all Kammerzell did was show every sign of being a Nazi.

All right, that may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. An investigation that began in September of 2020 after a complaint lodged by a member of the police force determined that Kammerzell, a 27-year Kent police veteran, Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month (And Signature Significance): Barack Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Few people have done more for this state and this country than this driven, brilliant, sometimes irascible, deeply good man from Searchlight, Nevada.”

—-Former President Barack Obama, speaking at former Democratic Party Senate leader Harry Reid’s funeral.

Harry Reid was asked about his repeated lie during the 2012 Presidential campaign that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes over the previous decade.  Reid even made that allegation from the floor of the Senate.

Reid’s accusation was an outright, brazen lie. Romney released his tax returns for those years. In 2011, Romney paid $1.9 million in taxes; in 2010, he paid slightly more than $3 million in taxes. The Washington Post Fact Checker, a reliable defender of unethical conduct by Democrats, gave Reid Four Pinocchios for his “no taxes” claim. Another inveterate left-biased factchecking group, PolitiFact, gave the claim a “Pants on Fire” rating.

Reid’s answer to the query became infamous: he responded, “Romney didn’t win, did he?” Later, he insisted  that the lie was “the best thing he ever did.” Continue reading →

“Ethics? What’s Ethics?” Mayor Adams Takes The Reins…[Updated!]

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Next time a New York Democrat complains about an elected government official’s ethics when he or she identifies as Republican, breaking out into uncontrollable laughter would be appropriate.

New New York City Eric Adams, elected as the “anti-de Blasio,” almost immediately proved that he has at least one thing in common with New York’s “Worst Mayor Ever.” Just a few days ago, Ethics Alarms noted that the former mayor had defiantly continued to ask corporate contractors for the city to contribute to a de Blasio slush fund, in a time honored unethical shakedown ploy known as “pay to play,” even though he had been formally warned to cut it out by the city’s ethics board. Now the new improved mayor is also signalling that he isn’t very concerned about ethics, the appearance of impropriety, or conflicts of interest.

Adams appointed as his sole male deputy mayor (the other five are female) Philip Banks III, who comes with some interesting baggage. (That’s Banks above on the right, the new mayor is on the left.)

Continue reading →

RETRACTED! “The Guardian’s “Person Of The Year” Poll Disaster” [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well, once again, I was lied to, fooled, and made an unwitting accomplice in a fake conservative news scam. Worse, I was led to the fake story by three sites I already have had bad experiences with, and thus should have been wary. ( Though memeorandum also pointed me to the story, and that is a reliably non-partisan aggregator.) As is usually the case in such situations, confirmation bias, mine, was at the heart of the mistake.  In the end, this is my responsibility, and thus my fault. I know better.

If I were Al Sharpton or Dan Rather, I might argue that what I wrote about the Guardian could have happened this way, so the article is accurate, though not true. I’m not, though. Here’s what really happened: the Guardian closed down not a poll on “The Person of the Year,” but reader nominations. It is true (maybe) that J.K. Rowling received the most nominations, but the nominations were closed because it was time to close them. She’s still on the slate of candidates.

I apologize to Ethics Alarms readers, commenters, the Guardian, J.K. Rowling, oh, everyone. And if I ever trust those sources again, hit me over the head with a brick when I’m not looking.

Thanks to Phlinn for catching this when I did not.

UPDATE: None of the sites that have run this botch have clarified or retracted it, except this one, as of 7:30 am the next day.

And there it is, right at the bottom in tiny print. The British paper “The Guardian” ran an online poll to determine readers’ 2021 “Person of the Year,” and then suddenly pulled the plug. Why would they do that?

They did it because J.K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” books, was winning the poll handily.  Rowling is currently a pariah with transgender activists for her quite reasonable assertions like insisting that human beings with penises cannot accurately be called “women” just because they want to be, and that the movement to recast what have been called women as “persons with uteruses” is ridiculous. She has refused to grovel an apology like most public figures threatened with “cancelling” because of views that differ from Leftist cant, and instead has doubled down repeatedly. Earlier this month she mocked Scotland’s law enforcement policy that allows accused rapists to self-identify as female, tweeting, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.” Continue reading →

That’s Nice: They “Considered” Taking A Stand For Ethics!

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

(The relevant section of the SNL skit above begins at the 5:36 mark.)

Lia Thomas, a recently “transitioned” male collegiate swimmer at Penn, has been making a burlesque of female college swimming records as well as demonstrating what the future of women’s and girl’s sports will look like if post puberty males continue to be allowed to compete as women once they can legally switch genders. Her—just because she should be called a “she” doesn’t mean she should be competing against biological shes—team mates have anonymously expressed discomfort with what their matches have become, while Lia is just thrilled to be winning in her new, less competitive category, and Penn’s swimming coach doesn’t care about fairness, only winning.

In such obvious situations of injustice, the sole road to remedy is courage and confrontation. This is true not only for the ethics debacle of trans athletes crushing original women in sports, but other situations as well. Philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) made her legacy a series of quotes about what happens when those who are aware of wrongdoing—Hannah’s short-hand was “evil”—duck their societal obligation to take action. Here’s a few of them:

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Ethics Dunce: Jared Schmeck [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

That’s nice…embarrassing the President of the United States while he’s engaged in a non-partisan Christmas-related appearance. How clever. How brave.

What an asshole.

As you can see above, President Biden and the First Lady were set up by (allegedly) a father participating in the annual White House NORAD Santa-tracking call, who ended his conversation with POTUS with the “Let’s Go Brandon,” the code for “Fuck Joe Biden.”  After the caller, identified as “Jared from Oregon,” but later revealed to be Jared Schmeck, wished the President and Jill Biden a merry Christmas and added, “…and let’s go Brandon!” Poor clueless Joe responded “Let’s go Brandon, I agree!”

Hilarity and ridicule quickly followed in conservative media- and social medialand.

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Ethics Dunce: Brooke Shields

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Brooke-Shields-barbara-walters

This post pains me. I am a long-time admirer of Brooke Shields. She navigated the perilous waters of child stardom as well as anyone, survived an overbearing (and often unethical) stage mother, and managed to turn her childhood and teen super-modeling career into long and variegated show business success that included several Broadway shows and a successful TV sitcom, all while appearing to maintain at least the appearance of sanity and good sense. However, during a recent interview with Dax Shepard on his “Armchair Expert” podcast, Shields decided to attack legendary broadcast journalist Barbara Walters for an interview she did of the then-15-year-old in 1981.

The podcast was following the trail of an October interview the current version of Shields, the one that is 56, did for Vogue. In that one, Shields expressed anger at the famous Calvin Klein ad that immediately preceded her intense cross-examination by Walters, the naughty TV spot that had the leggy teen clad in skin-tight jeans saying provocatively, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”

In Vogue Shields said of the ad, “I was very naive. I didn’t think it had to do with underwear. I didn’t think it was sexual in nature. I’d say that about my sister, nobody could come between me and my sister… they didn’t explain [the double-entendre] to me.” As for the interview discussing the ad with Walters, Shields described her questions probing Shields’ sexuality as “practically criminal.”

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Is Your “Little Library Contributing To the Gentrification” Of Your Black Neighborhood? No, The Problem Is That You’re A Racist And A Hypocrite. Fix It!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Racist library

The New York Times has an astounding, depressing op-ed by a black woman, a “journalist and an author” named Erin Audrey Kaplan in which she announces unequivocally racist, bigoted, anti-white sentiments without a hint of self-awareness. It would be nice to think the Times printed her hateful essay as a “Don’t be like this bigot!” cautionary tale. Knowing the Times as I do, I doubt it.

Kaplan writes that she lives in “a mostly Black and Latino city in southwestern Los Angeles County.” She decided to build a Little Free Library (one of my neighbors in Alexandria has one) in her front yard. The birdhouse-like object (see it in the photo above?) invited pedestrians walking by to borrow (and later return) a book. Kaplan says she erected hers “to signal to my longtime neighbors that we had our own ideas about [community] improvement, and could carry them out in our own way…I envisioned it as a place for my neighbors to stay connected during the pandemic.”

She relates that she took pleasure in observing various neighbors stopping at the tiny library and accepting its friendly invitation, until…

..a young white couple happened by. She writes,

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