Ethics Heroes

Are You Really A Hero When You Decide Not To Commit A Crime?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
19-Year-Old New Mexico Man Visits Local ATM and Finds Bag with $135K Inside, Returns It

 

José Nuñez Romaniz drove to a local Wells Fargo bank last weekend  to deposit money at the  ATM …and saw a clear plastic bag filled of $50 and $20 bills that he later learned added up to $135,000.

“I didn’t know what to do. I was, like, dreaming,” Nuñez, a Central New Mexico Community College student, told CNN. “I was just in shock. I was looking at myself and just thinking, ‘What should I do?'”

Really? If one finds obviously lost money belonging to someone else, what’s the mandatory response? Is this  a tough question?

 Nuñez eventually made the responsible decision to call the Albuquerque Police Department, who then sent two officers out to pick up the cash. Well, of course he did. How many movies have there been about previously law-abiding citizens who discover a large amount of money try to keep it? In almost every one, they end up on the run, dead, or in jail.  This was the premise of “It’s a Mad,Mad,Mad,Mad, World.” I think the grimmest one is “A Simple Plan,” where the nice people trying to keep the windfall to “have a better life” trigger the deaths of  five people and destroy their marriage.

“This money could have made an incredible amount of difference in his life if he went down the other path,” a spokesman for the Albuquerque police said. ” But he chose … the integrity path and did the right thing.” Right. Tell  Billy Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton about the difference finding a stash in a crashed private plane made in their lives.  Nuñez chose the “integrity path: because he’s not an idiot and doesn’t have a death wish.

The Albuquerque police even presented him with a plaque.

“Meet Jose, this week his selfless actions lead him to contact police and help return $135,000 in cash that he found near an ATM. He is pursuing a degree in criminal justice,” the department wrote on Facebook. “Chief Geier and Mayor Tim Keller invited Jose to the Police Academy where he was recognized and honored for exhibiting the pillars of APD: Integrity, Fairness, Pride and Respect.” Nuñez was also offered season tickets for the University of New Mexico football team by local sports radio station 101.7 FM, and at least three businesses in the area gave him $500 each for his good deed.

Well, the guy seems nice and sincere, and I suppose nothing is wrong about him receiving some gifts and publicity for doing what any citizen should be expected to do, when he really had no other reasonable option. Nevertheless, representing  obeying the law and not stealing someone else’s money as an act of heroism sends very warped message.

Pointer: Michael

Here’s Some More Refreshing “Kool-Aid”: Prof. Turley Explains The Mike Flynn Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

The prevailing attitude toward the growing and eventually irrefutable evidence that hostile forces within the FBI and the Justice Department were unethically,  illegally and unconstitutionally working behind the scenes to undermine the President and, if possible, have him removed from office was that this was just another right-wing conspiracy theory. That spin allowed the mainstream media to justify refusing to investigate the many smoking guns that were being uncovered,and to report on them using the familiar techniques it employs when it wants to protect its fellow Axis of Unthical Conduct allies, the Democrats and “the resistance.”

The illegal FISA  warrants to allow surveillance of the Trump campaign that a federal judge eventually ruled constituted both judicial and prosecutor misconduct were a small part of the ethics train wreck that was the Mueller investigation. When Ethics Alarms accurately described this breach of law and ethics, I was accused here of “drinking the Kool-Aid,” in a now familiar ploy by blinded or unscrupulous partisans to throw up metaphorical sand and dust, allowing wrongdoing to prevail. By their definition of the term, Prof. Jonathan Turley has mixed-up another delicious pitcher of the beverage. Yum!

Let me interject here what a continuing Ethics Hero Turley is. Almost alone among law professors, scholars and academics, he has been willing to call out ethical misconduct throughout the Trump Administration years thus far without consideration of who benefits or whose political fortunes the truth might harm. For this, progressives have regularly denigrated as a traitor to the cause, the cause being “Get Trump.”  Turley is a Democrat and an old fashioned liberal—you know, the kind that had integrity—but never flinches when it is time to call out the Left on its increasingly unconscionable conduct.

Now the Constitutional Law expert has turned his legal analysis skills on the developing Michael Flynn story. His unequivocal conclusion: “The Flynn Case Should Be Dismissed In The Name Of Justice.” Continue reading →

Before The Rot Set In: Wendell Willkie And James Beggs [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

A quote in an obituary for long-time NASA chief James Beggs, who died this week at the age of 94, shocked me into realizing once again how alien basic ethics have become to our leaders in business, government, politics…hell, just about anywhere.  And once again, I’m wondering what good I’m doing, and why I bother.

Beggs had overseen more than 20 successful space shuttle launches, but he was on administrative leave due to an investigation of his conduct when the Challenger launched and exploded in 1986. As we have discussed on Ethics Alarms, a landmark example of failed ethics and decision-making caused the temporary leadership of NASA to ignore dire warnings from two engineers and send the shuttle and its precious human cargo up in dangerously cold weather.  Indeed Beggs called NASA  from his exile that fateful day to express his concern about icing. He resigned from NASA in 1986, about a month after the Challenger disaster.

Beggs was reluctant to criticize his former agency’s culpability in the accident, but he was adamant that “they shouldn’t have launched.”  “Whether I would have done anything different at the time, I’ve thought about that,” he said. “I think I would have, but that’s pure conjecture.”

Remarkable. How often does a critic of a past decision have the intrinsic fairness and integrity to say that? The Wuhan virus landscape has been polluted by extravagant and unjust second-guessing from the start, as everyone from politicians to pundits to plumbers are just certain that they would have known how to handle an unprecedented situation with significant unknown factors and substantial risk. They would have reached a different, quicker,better approach than the individual who actually had to make the call.

It’s a disgusting spectacle, and an unethical one. The “right” decision can always be made to seem obvious after the fact; critics cannot possibly know what their state of mind would have been at the actual time the decision had to be made by someone else. Beggs’ acknowledgement of that, in a situation where he could have credibly second-guessed his colleagues without equivocation, demonstrates the character of a decent and ethical professional determined to do and say the right thing even when opportunities are present for personal gain.

That story, in turn, reminded me of…Wendell Willkie. Continue reading →

Ethics May Day, 2020: Biden, Reade, Planned Parenthood, A Renegade Times Pundit, And The Democrats Get Their Way.

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

It’s May! It’s May!

1. So Joe Biden went on “Morning Joe” and denied that Tara Reade was telling the truth. So what? What does this tell us? Was there any chance whatsoever that he was going to say, “Yup, I finger-fucked her. I don’t know what came over me!”? No. This is like the Kurt Gödel conundrum about the island where there are only truth-tellers and liars, and there are some questions where they will give exactly the same answers. He picked a screamingly partisan journalist, Mika  Brzezinski, to ensure soft-ball treatment (she actually was a bit tougher than expected), and, to some eyes, looked as if he had rehearsed his statement. Ann Althouse does an extensive analysis here.

I don’t see the point. It’s a pro forma denial, and Biden was pressured into it.

I do think the Post article used some unfortunate phrasing..

“The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was rebutting Tara Reade’s accusation that he reached under her skirt to penetrate her with his fingers somewhere in the Capitol in 1993. This denial requires him to thread a thin needle.”

2. Showing it has more integrity than most women’s groups, Planned Parenthood, the Daily Beast reports, was the only one among  the major pro-abortion groups in the nation that responded directly to the progressive site’s request for a comment regarding Tara Reade’s allegations. The “Democrat-aligned” groups either “did not respond” or ” replied and did not provide a statement”…except Planned Parenthood.

Its president released a statement saying in part, “We believe survivors—and saying we believe survivors doesn’t mean only when it’s politically convenient…Joe Biden must address this allegation directly.'” Continue reading →

Captain Crozier And The Ghost Of Billy Mitchell

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Billy Mitchell, at the court martial he wanted…

Why I didn’t think to include the tale of General Billy Mitchell in the Ethics Alarms posts regarding Captain Brett Crozier, the former commander of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt who forfeited his job by going around the chain of command to protect his crew, I really don’t know. But it’s normal for people to forget about Mitchell, and I don’t understand that, either. He, like Crozier, was an unconventional Ethics Hero, and a crucial one. And he may well have saved the world.

Do you not know the story of William Lendrum Mitchell, born December 29, 1879, died February 19, 1936? You should. Every American should.

He grew up in Milwaukee., Wisconsin. At age 18 he enlisted as a private in the army, and by the age of 23 he had become  the youngest captain in the U.S. Army. It was a pattern; being a prodigy and trailblazer in the military came naturally to Mitchell. In 1913, at the age of 32, he became the youngest officer ever assigned to the General Staff of the War Department in Washington. At a time when most in the military considered the airplane a novelty, “a risky contraption” of little or no value in combat,  Mitchell immediately saw the potential of air power, and believed that planes represented the future of warfare.

The United States had only fifty-four air-worthy planes  when it entered World War I in 1917, and only thirty-five air-worthy officers, including Mitchell, to lead them. Again he was a first, this time the first  American officer to fly over enemy lines. He organized the first all-American Air Squadron; one of his recruits, Eddie V. Rickenbacker, became a legend as  Mitchell moved his American air units to counter Manfried von Richthofen, the “Red-Baron.” When Germans planned to unleash a major ground offensive and the Allied commanders were desperate to learn where  it was being mounted, Mitchell volunteered to fly low over the enemy’s lines, and his daring mission discovered thousands of Germans concentrating close to the Marne River. Armed with Mitchell’s intelligence, the Allies launched a surprise attack on the German flank and scored a major victory. Mitchell’s solo reconnaissance flight was hailed as one of the most important aerial exploits of the war. Continue reading →

Let Us Have A Moment of Appreciation For The Rude, The Vulgar And The Defiant, For They Are America’s First Line Of Defense Against Totalitarianism

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Oh, how I love this about Americans!

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new program to help protect New Yorkers against the Wuhan virus outbreak. It’s quite straightforward, really: report your neighbors to authorities.

“We still know there’s some people who need to get the message,” the city’s socialist mayor said on Twitter.  “And that means sometimes making sure the enforcement is there to educate people and make clear we’ve got to have social distancing.”
The simple solution, he explained is to snap a photo of an offending person or crowd, set the location on the image, and  “text it to 311-692.”

“Action will ensue,” de Blasio promised.

History has taught us that governments seeking to bend the public to its will “for the greater good” usually seek the cooperation and participation of citizen lackeys eager to ingratiate themselves with their ascendant masters. Fortunately, the United States was settled and created by people who came here to escape presumptuous tyrants and oppressive governments not of their choosing. The contrarian RNA and traditions run deep, and it always gives me a thrill to see that while they may have been diluted a bit over time, in the face of those who either do not comprehend this nation or do not respect its unique values, the old defiance flames forth. Continue reading →

Afternoon Ethics Update, 4/8/2020: It’s A Wonderful Day To Think About Ethics!

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

—even if so many people are not.

And can’t.

Today is my wife’s birthday. All we can do to celebrate is to be together, and be grateful that we found each other, and are still together, a miracle of chaos theory in so many ways. She is, and will always be  my inspiration, my rock, my balance, the one who constantly keeps me from spinning out of control, and the love of my life.

1.  Pandemic ethics and religion. It’s unfortunate when religions misbehave during catastrophes:

  • The Pope made the fatuous comment in an interview that the pandemic offers an opportunity to slow down the rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world. “We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods?” the Pope said. “I don’t know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature’s responses.”

Whatever that’s supposed to mean. Maybe it sounds better in Italian.

  • Yesterday, I turned on the TV only to see a live broadcast from one of the evangelical mega-churches, packed to the rafters, nobody wearing masks or practicing social distancing.

Irresponsible and infuriating.

About 44 percent of likely voters in the United States see the coronavirus pandemic and economic meltdown as either a wake-up call to faith, a sign of God’s coming judgment or both, according to a poll commissioned by the Joshua Fund, an evangelical group run by Joel C. Rosenberg, who writes about the end of the world, and conducted last week by McLaughlin & Associates, pollsters for President Trump and other Republicans.

David Jeremiah, a pastor who has been one of President Trump’s informal evangelical advisers, asked in a sermon recently if the coronavirus was biblical prophecy, and called the pandemic “the most apocalyptic thing that has ever happened to us.”

No, it’s really not. This “end of days” stuff is either hysteria from the ignorant whose knowledge of world and U.S. history begins in 2008, or it’s worse, deliberate scare-mongering by church leaders to goose membership. Yes, I know a recent earthquake in Utah even shook the Salt Lake Temple so hard that the golden trumpet fell from the angel Moroni’s right hand. That is exactly as significant a portent of the Apocalypse as Chris Sale having Tommy John surgery.

In other words, incredibly significant.

After I get this post up, I think I’ll go watch “The Omen”—the good one, with Gregory Peck. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Mario Salerno

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Not all the people giving lip service to “we’re all in this together” are virtue-signaling hypocrites. Some really mean it.

Surveys conducted last month estimated that 40 % of renters in New York City, if not more, would not be able to pay their April rent, which was due  last week.

This threatens landlords as well, as the shortfall will make it difficult for them to pay their own water and sewer bills at their buildings, not to mention taxes,  The 200-300 tenants in Mario Salerno’s properties, however, found a version of this sign taped up in the halls:

 

Mario Salerno said in an interview that he did not care about losing his rental income in April, nor care what the exact amount was that he would not be collecting from his 80 apartments.  He will be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars by canceling the month’s rent, but his sole concern, he said, was trying to make life a little easier for his renters. He is even forgoing rent for those who kept their jobs and are working from home.

“My concern is everyone’s health,” said Salerno. “I told them just to make sure that everyone has food on their table.”

He’s not exactly Michael Bloomberg. During the day, he runs the Salerno Auto Body Shop and gasoline station, which his father opened in 1959.

In the 1980s Salerno bought vacant lots across Brooklyn to store cars damaged in accidents before they were repaired, and eventually turned 18 of the lots into apartment buildings. He’s counting on the auto business to keep food on his own table until conditions improve for his renters.

“I say, don’t worry about paying me, worry about your neighbor and worry about your family,” he told reporters.

Ethics Hero: Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I’m being generous; the original headline was “Joe Biden Makes Sense!” which I decided was too arch.

I stopped watching the Sunday talking head shows once all of them defaulted to “resistance” narrative-pushing-all-the-time, but every now and then I drop in for a few minutes of nausea. Today I caught “Meet the Press,” once my favorite of all such shows (when Tim Russert was practicing real journalism there), but now, with the embarrassingly dim Chuck Todd at the helm, a rotting symbol of how far the professional has fallen in ethics and quality, I avoid the program like an Alec Baldwin movie.

Joe Biden was being interviewed (I have excised here a good, fair but tasteless joke about what Todd interviewing Biden resembles) and Todd asked this despicable question:

“Do you think there’s already blood on the President’s hands considering the slow response?”

Hack. Asshole. Todd breached one ethics rule by stating as fact what has not been shown to be true and cannot be shown, that the President’s “response” was “slow.” Todd’s colleagues called Trump’s response of shutting down travel to China racist and precipitous. There is not a single death due to the Wuhan virus that can be attributed to the President; China, perhaps, but not President Trump. It’s hard to imagine a more inflammatory and unjustified, not to mention irresponsible, question. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Don Giuseppe Berardelli

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Be sure to tell David Brooks about this..

Don Giuseppe Berardelli, an Italian priest, died from the Wuhan virus after giving up his respirator to a younger patient, a stranger.  The following is from the Google Italian to English translation of this source:

 Don Giuseppe had been archpriest of Casnigo for almost fourteen years and would have concluded his mission in Casnigo. He ended it earlier, in a hospital in Lovere, hit by the coronavirus. Already last year he had had health problems. His perennial smile, his availability, but also his activism in the realization of important and expensive works, that smile hid the worries.

He was a simple, straightforward person, with a great kindness and helpfulness towards everyone, believers and non-believers. His greeting was ‘peace and good’. Always friendly and available to the public administration, associations and not only those of the parish, he participated in all the events without ever being intrusive…. He was loved by everyone: his former parishioners still came from Fiorano after years to find him. But he also had an incredible ability to solve economic problems, to knock on the right doors for help.

This is the testimony of Giuseppe Imberti, long mayor of Casnigo: “Don Giuseppe died as a priest.  And I am deeply moved by the fact that the archpriest of Casnigo, Don Giuseppe Berardelli – to whom the parish community had bought a respirator – announced his will to assign it to someone younger than him.” Continue reading →