Monday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 12/28/20: Happy Birthday, Woodrow Wilson!

2020 end

As 2020 staggers to a conclusion, Ethics Alarms wants to express its gratitude to the core of devoted Alarmist commentators who kept the dialogue going during what is always an annual cratering of blog traffic. I appreciate it. I also appreciated the many kind holiday wishes, in what has been a muted Christmas for the Marshalls for a number of reasons I won’t bore you with.

In case you were among the missing, I draw your attention to…

…among other hopefully edifying and entertaining posts.

1. After signalling otherwise or perhaps just trolling, President Trump signed the truly awful pandemic relief and omnibus spending bill, really sending the national debt into orbit. One theory is that doing so was necessary to avoid a Democratic sweep of the two Senate seats up for grabs in Georgia. I will file the event as one more car on the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck, and one that will do more damage in the long run than most of them.

2. In Nevada, Gabrielle Clark filed a federal lawsuit against her son’s charter school last week for refusing to let him opt out of a mandatory class that promotes anti-white racism. It claims that Democracy Prep at the Agassi Campus forced William Clark “to make professions about his racial, sexual, gender and religious identities in verbal class exercises and in graded, written homework assignments,” creating a hostile environment, and subjecting he son’s statements ” to the scrutiny, interrogation and derogatory labeling of students, teachers and school administrators,” who are “still are coercing him to accept and affirm politicized and discriminatory principles and statements that he cannot in conscience affirm.” The lawsuit includes nearly 150 pages of exhibits documenting the curriculum in the graduation requirement “Sociology of Change,” which promotes intersectionality and critical race theory, in breach of what was promised when the Clark’s first sent their son to the school.

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Comment Of The Day: “Unethical Quote Of The Week: Wayne Allen Root”

2020 election

Chris Marschner adds more perspective to the 2020 Election Ethics Train Wreck. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Unethical Quote Of The Week: Wayne Allen Root”:

I think we need to define the word “Win”. Why do we equate winning with Trump remaining as President? Trump can win by marshaling his resources to continue the fight to convince enough voters that voter fraud is real enough to alter the outcomes of elections. I do agree that if we simply sweep that which occurred in the 2020 election under the rug a certain political party will be emboldened to push for fewer impediments to voting by the living and the dead and the otherwise ineligible.

It is argued that because each state oversees it election process the ability to conspire to rig an election would be out of the question as it would require too many to agree. We can see that such a conspiracy need not be nationwide; for as few as five states that have major urban areas, that routinely have low voter turnouts, and suddenly see a groundswell of support for the Democrat candidate can tip the tide in their favor; a party need not even have to tell its officials in the non-metro areas thus limiting the number of people needed to make the needed vote adjustments. This can now occur whether the folks turn out to vote or not. They merely need to be registered.

Sure the media was, and will remain in the tank for the progressives. I don’t think any of them have the spine to stand up against the “Cancel Culturalists” when the woke mob finds something they don’t like about one of their peers in the media. In fact I think most will become more malleable. Any vestige of critical thinking capacity the media elites might possess today will disappear as they try to preserve their elitist status among the woke. Speaking the truth can make life very uncomfortable and those accustomed to unearned comforts will sell their souls to keep those comforts coming. The media can only deliver a message it cannot control your thinking unless you let them. Therefore, it will mean that fighting the media’s messaging will require better messaging and a willingness to evaluate multiple information streams.

Perhaps winning really means effecting fundamental changes to ensure voter integrity by requiring proof of citizenship and address to register, photo ID at the polls, and other measure such as creating a national voter D system that prevents the same person from voting in two different places in any election.

I would also like to see that every state first deliver a value for the ballot universe. The ballot universe is the number of ballots that are subject to the canvass. Once that universe of ballots is certified absolutely no more ballots can be included in the counting. This is designed to prevent suddenly found ballots from increasing the number of ballots after actual counting of votes begins.

Only after the ballot universe is certified can election judges and observers begin the task of counting votes.

My only caveat to the above is that if the majority of the voting population believes that it is more of the government’s responsibility to take care of us than our own responsibility and they have learned that voting allows themselves to increase money and resources flowing to them from the government then the only losers are the poor SOB’s (Your children and their children) that wind up picking up the bills we frivolously run up so we incur no hardship. They will be the Uyghar equivalents working in the Chinese tennis shoe factories operating in North America.

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Wayne Allen Root

goodbye

“Mr. President, your time is now. There is no tomorrow. Winning again in 2024 is not going to happen. You have to win now — for you, for your legacy, for the 74 million voters you love, for America, for American exceptionalism, for capitalism. There is no tomorrow”

Conservative author, pundit and radio host Wayne Allen Root in a column this morning on Townhall.

A long time ago I subscribed to Townhall, now one of the five most visited conservative sites on the web. I quit because of too many columns like Root’s: hysterical jeremiads about how the United States was doomed. If I still read Townhall regularly, this irresponsible piece would have ended that, probably before I reached the end of the piece.

Root, who has been one of the most vociferous Donald Trump boosters since those halcyon days when he was just regarded as a real estate and casino hustler with as much chance of becoming President as Mr. Whipple, is right about one thing: Trump will not win in 2024. He’ll be too old, and he will have probably used the next four years to become even more polarizing and inflammatory than he already is. Trump might pull a Teddy Roosevelt and run a third party bid, guaranteeing Democrats the election; I wouldn’t put it past him. But he will not be elected President in 2024.  If he were rational, practical and ethical, he would help groom a promising successor, like Nikki Haley. And if I were a yeti, I’d really enjoy the weather right now.

Calling for Trump to “win now” is the equivalent of calling for a violent upheaval across the country. Root writes, Continue reading →

Boxing Day Ethics Warm-Up, 2020: A Tip, An Obituary, A Prank, A Tell, And A Slug

Gifts

Now this is a dedicated grandmother: my sister, who has been risk-averse her whole life, and who is my model of a Wuhan virus phobic, bought a used Winnebago, loaded up her old Havanese, and drove from Virginia to Los Angeles to spend Christmas and another three weeks with her son, his wife, and their seven month-old daughter. On the way cross country she parked her vehicle outside the homes of a series of strangers she was connected to by friends and friends of friends. Amazing.

1. There seem to be a few of these Christmas Ethics Heroes every year. In Bartonsville, Illinois, an occasional restaurant customer on Christmas Eve morning left a 2,000 dollar tip—in cash—for the 19-person staff of the Bartonsville diner. The man didn’t even leave his full name, just “Tony,” though he is apparently the son of a regular who joined him for breakfast. “He just said, ‘Merry Christmas,'” the owner told reporters. “How generous of somebody to do that, especially somebody who doesn’t come in that often. Nobody was expecting it, that’s for sure.”

2. How do you write an obnoxious obituary? Here’s how you write an obnoxious obituary. The Lagacy.com. entry for Grace McDonough, who died on December 21, concludes with this gratuitous and graceless—no pun intended—text:

The actions and inactions of the United States government regarding the Covid-19 virus has caused Grace McDonough and thousands of other nursing home residents to lose their lives to the Covid -19 virus. These same residents had successfully fought and won great battles against other diseases and conditions and yet were placed in harm’s way during the pandemic. These frail, elderly, sick and vulnerable innocents were not protected by the government they supported, fought for, contributed to and now depended on. Shame on the United States government! We, as their loved ones, have the right to be profoundly sad and profoundly angry at the same time. May our loved ones now rest in peace. It is the least they deserve.

Grace was 95 years old. She lived in a nursing home, where residents are in close confinement and where pandemic infections were and are especially deadly. Attributing the death of a 95-year-old on the undefined “actions and inactions” of the government demonstrates a) a dangerous gullibility to Democratic propaganda b) denial of reality and c) the continuation of  what is probably a pattern of looking for someone to blame for every misfortune. Fark, the humorous news aggregator website infected itself with predictable leftist bias, termed the obituary “fierce.” I would call it signature significance indicating a family teeming with jerks.

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Unwrapped Ethics, Christmas, 2020, Because Ethics Never Takes a Holiday [Corrected]

christmas-hero-H

I hope everyone manages to have the best, most love-filled, happy Christmas possible. Everyone but me and the dog are sick, depressed are both in my household, but I’m making it work. It will be a “Christmas Story”-style Chinese food Christmas, though, the way it’s shaking out.

1. Now THIS is an unethical home Christmas decoration…

0002-Kmart-Sign

…except that according to the story, the neighbors don’t mind. At great expense, Jason Pieper erected this 900 pound thing after purchasing it at an auction for over $2,000. He then decorated surrounding trees with blue and white lights to follow the theme: remember those blue light specials? To me, this would seem to be a bit out of whack with the spirit of the holiday, but perhaps no more than the giant Christmas Imperial Walker, the 20 foot inflatable penguin and some of the monstrosities in my neighborhood.

2. Workplace ethics. Jeffrey Toobin should feel too bad. An L.A. County Sheriff’s deputy had his radio mic open while he was in flagrante delicto. His sex partner was moaning over his panting as the dispatcher from the Sheriff’s station tried to get her deputy’s attention without success. “The deputy was immediately relieved of duty,” the Sheriff’s office informed the media.

Americans are becoming such prudes.

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Ethics Dunce, Rogue And Fool To Be Held Up As An Example Forever More: Dr. Anthony Fauci

Fauci

From the New York Times:

“In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent….In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks. Hard as it may be to hear, he said, he believes that it may take close to 90 percent immunity to bring the virus to a halt — almost as much as is needed to stop a measles outbreak.“

No, what is hard to hear, though at this point hardly a shock to anyone with a functioning brain, is that Fauci now admits he’s been lying….you know, “for our own good.”

Don’t heed the spin, the double-talk and the euphemisms: when someone tells you something other than what he or she knows to be true or believes to be true, that individual is deliberately attempting to deceive you by communicating what they believe to be untrue as true. That’s lying. No debate. No defense. That’s what it is, by definition. “I did it for your own good” is a rationalization.

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On Revenge, Tit-For-Tat And The Biden Presidency

tit for tat

I would really like to accept the Biden Presidency as I have accepted every Presidency in my life so far, and without giving away secrets, there have been a lot of them. You see, I really believe what Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton lectured Donald Trump about when they were certain Hillary would win the 2016 election. I believe that the American public, no matter who each individual voter may have favored, ought to welcome the newly elected President with hope and good will, pronounce the past irrelevant, and pledge to do whatever is necessary to make the incoming administration successful. In other words, every American should behave exactly as Democrats (including Hillary and Nancy), progressives, the resistance, numerous professional groups and the vast majority of the news media did not behave when President Trump was elected.

Why do I believe this? As I have said so many times I am sick of me, I believe this because that response is the only way republics can survive, and because that is how this republic has survived and thrived since the Civil War. If you would peruse the Ethics Alarms posts on the topic and related ones since November 2016, as I viewed the impending Presidency of Donald Trump with the approximate enthusiasm of one diagnosed with genital warts, one message was consistent: we break this tradition at great risk. If the Axis of Unethical Conduct (I didn’t call them that for a while, but that’s the alliance that was responsible–-the resistance, Democrats, and the news media) devotes itself to savaging and undermining the nation’s duly elected President by any means necessary, it-they will guarantee a cycle in which political warfare, which once was de-escalated every four years, will be a constant, making cooperation, unity, and competent government impossible.

Is Joe Biden “my” President? Sure he is. I’m an American, and our system made him President. Do I want him to succeed? Sure I do. Failed Presidencies are bad for all Americans, the nation and the world. If Joe Biden asked me to take on a project, a job or an assignment, would I say yes? Unless I found the substance of what I was asked to do objectively unconscionable, yes I would.

However, it is clear as day now that there is no way Democrats and progressives can avoid the consequences of their shattering the norm that once gave Presidents a “honeymoon” and that guaranteed every President-Elect overwhelming public support simply by his stepping into the metaphorical shoes of Washington and Lincoln. Could there have been a way? The manner in which Biden and his supporters have handled the transition so far would have killed any wisp of a chance if there were one, and I doubt there ever was. The “now that we’ve regained power by breaking the rules, we hope everyone will go back to following them again for the good of the country” routine is too insulting and cynical to generate anything but resentment.

Still, what f Joe had come out in November and said,

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 12/23/2020: Stimulating! [Updated]

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1. President Trump says will veto the so-called “stimulus bill.” He should. A nice, articulate Presidential veto statement about what’s wrong with a pork-loaded goody bag that will increase the National Debt even deeper into the red zone would be nice, but he hasn’t come up with more than a couple a nice, articulate statements in four years, so I rate the likelihood as slim.

But there is no downside at all of a Trump veto, even if Mitch McConnell gets the Senate to over-ride it. As Ethics Alarms commenter Humble Talent pointed out two days ago, the thing is a monstrosity and wildly irresponsible, never mind that virtually none of the elected representatives who voted for it knew what they were voting for.

Meanwhile, let’s give an Ethics Hero call-out to Rand Paul, who anyone could have predicted would have a head explosion over this bill, and he did not disappoint. Senator Paul excoriated his fellow Republican senators who voted for the multitrillion-dollar relief package and omnibus spending bills, saying that they abandoned their “soul” and their “fiscal integrity” for political expediency. Paul called the bill an example of the fantasy that “government can spend whatever it wants without the need to tax.” How can anyone seriously dispute his logic when he said,

“If free money was the answer … if money really did grow on trees, why not give more free money? Why not give it out all the time? Why stop at $600 a person? Why not $1,000? Why not $2,000? Maybe these new Free-Money Republicans should join the Everybody-Gets-A-Guaranteed-Income Caucus? Why not $20,000 a year for everybody, why not $30,000? If we can print out money with impunity, why not do it?”

In addition to Paul, only Republicans Rick Scott (FL), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Mike Lee (UT), Ron Johnson (WI) and Ted Cruz (TX) had the courage and integrity to vote “NO.”

Yahoo News, incidentally, really and truly has a story up titled, “Did Congress get it right with the new coronavirus stimulus?” It really does. Note that it doesn’t begin to cover all the junk that’s stuffed in the bill, because the reporter obviously hasn’t read the whole bill either.

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Christmas Week Ethics Warm-Up, 12/21/2020: Clogging, Lying And Spinning

fireplace Xmas

Has anyone come up with a convincing theory about why there are more outside home decorations and Christmas lights than we have seen in a long while, if ever? Another trend, at least in my neighborhood: a welcome return to multi-colored lights after the (cold, boring) white lights appeared to take over years ago.

1. I finally figured out what’s been bothering me about that GEICO “clogging” ad. It’s racist. (In addition to being, you know, stupid.) I guess GEICO thinks that as long as it sticks an inter-racial couple in their ads, nobody will notice (Though according to Madison Avenue, almost every couple in America is inter-racial.)

Here’s the ad, if somehow you’ve missed it:

Ah, those weird white people and their weird activities! Now imagine if the noisy family upstairs was an African-American clan practicing their break-dancing. Or doing authentic African tribal dances.

2. Boy, those college administrators are quick. CNN was reporting this morning that a handful of colleges are finally reducing tuition. “A Princeton spokesperson said that the Covid conditions have “diminished the college experience.” Really? Not being on or near a campus, being isolated from classmates, not participating in clubs, social activities and late night “bull sessions,” not to mention only seeing one’s professors through a screen, isn’t as valuable as actually attending college?

I’m only speaking for myself, but I would have regarded my own college experience as little better than a correspondence course under today’s conditions. All colleges were ethically obligated to cut tuition substantially. They got away with not doing so because they are selling degrees, not education or personal growth.

3. With all the legitimate questions being raised about Hunter Biden, his apparent influence peddling abroad, and what his father’s role was, the Biden team allows him to be interviewed by…Stephen Colbert. Are even the most impenetrable Biden supporters not troubled by this? If not, do they even have ethics alarms any more? Even with a journalistic establishment filled with shameless pro-Democrat hacks, the toughest interview the President Elect was allowed to brave was by a comedian?

And not just any comedian, but a comedian who dedicated himself to anti-Trump, anti-Republican propganda for four years. Thus here is the type of question Joe had to answer—one that was phrased with the assumption that the Hunter Biden laptop matter was just another conservative conspiracy theory:

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A Sensible Reaction To The Election (And Ethical, Up To A Point)

Stop the steal2

Powerline, the conservative blog, has been catching flack from conservatives over two posts that were regarded as “limp noodle” reactions to a stolen election. But the acceptance of reality is always ethical. Excerpts from the two posts, by Scott Johnson and Steven Hayward:

The Trump litigation has proven a bust. Indeed, most recently, in the Wisconsin federal district decision held over the weekend, the Trump legal team entered into an agreed statement of facts and declined to call a single witness. Called to put their cards on the table, the Trump team all but folded. The court’s decision rejecting President Trump’s claims is posted online here. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on it here. Sidney Powell and Lin Wood in particular have prompted me to recall Eric Hoffer’s observation: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Hoffer’s observation has been echoing in my mind over the past few weeks.

Anyone who uses that Hoffer quote, a favorite here, is jake with me.

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