Ethics Train Wrecks

Wow, Look at All the Nice People and Respectable Organizations Profiting From Listerine Killing Alcoholics!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I last posted “The Amazing Mouthwash Deception: Helping Alcoholics Relapse For Profit” in March of 2024, about a week after my wife Grace died suddenly. Her death was almost certainly a direct consequence of her alcoholism, which she frequently serviced through the surreptitious consumption of alcohol-containing mouthwash, usually Listerine. I was not planning on re-posting the piece so soon afterwards, but today I discovered the weird story of how botched contract drafting in 1881 resulted in Johnson & Johnson having to pay six dollars for every 2,016 ounces of Listerine sold, (the equivalent to 144 14-oz. bottles) to Listerine’s many royalty holders. Even though the royalties have been split, sold and traded, they are still worth a lot of money because Listerine is the best selling mouthwash (and secret alcoholic beverage) in the world. You can read the whole, strange tale here , but what matters ethically is this: among the organizations making money off of this deadly stuff are…

  • Wellesley College
  • The American Bible Society
  • The Salvation Army
  • The Rockefeller Foundation
  • The Bell Telephone Company

…and the Catholic Archdiocese of New York owned a 50% stake in Listerine royalties for nearly two decades, making almost $13 million over 16 years.

Shame on all of them. As I first explained in 2010 in a post that has been read over 50,000 times (it’s still not enough), Listerine is a destructive resource for alcoholics, and that use represents an untold, but definitely large, percentage of Listerine sales. The companies that have owned Listerine have deliberately maintained the deception that it can’t be guzzled, and the deception benefits their huge market of addicts, and of course, the companies, their shareholders, and royalty owners.

In my 2016 introduction to the post, I wrote in part, “Most of all, I am revolted that what I increasingly have come to believe is an intentional, profit-motivated deception by manufacturers continues, despite their knowledge that their product is killing alcoholics and destroying families. I know proof would be difficult, but there have been successful class action lawsuits with millions in punitive damage settlements for less despicable conduct. Somewhere, there must be an employee or executive who acknowledges that the makers of mouthwash with alcohol know their product is being swallowed rather than swished, and are happy to profit from it….People are killing themselves right under our noses, and we are being thrown of by the minty smell of their breath.”

And now I know that all sorts of nice people and admirable organizations profit from their deaths.

Once again, here is “The Amazing Mouthwash Deception: Helping Alcoholics Relapse For Profit,” dedicated, as it always will be, to brilliant, beautiful, kind, loving—and dead—- Grace Bowen Marshall:

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This Would Be an Ethics Quiz If I Weren’t So Sure of the Answer…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Is it ethical for the Kennedy Center to cancel its “Pride Month” productions?

Yes, it is. Next question?

Oh, let’s bat this one around for a while. The AP reports that “Organizers and the Kennedy Center have canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights for this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington, D.C., amid a shift in priorities and the ousting of leadership at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions. Multiple artists and producers involved in the center’s Tapestry of Pride schedule, which had been planned for June 5 to 8, told The Associated Press that their events had been quietly canceled or moved to other venues. And in the wake of the cancellations, Washington’s Capital Pride Alliance has disassociated itself from the Kennedy Center.” The more Trump-deranged and woke “Rolling Stone” put it this way: “The Kennedy Center’s war on the performing arts continues to wage on under the Trump administration as a series of events planned around Pride Month have quietly been canceled or relocated.”

“War on the performing arts”! Nice. It’s “war” when a theater venue that is supposed to represent and entertain all Americans stops pandering to group identity and propaganda.

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Ethics Verdict: It Is Now Irresponsible and Incompetent For the U.S. to Provide Any Further Aid to Ukraine

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

This is ridiculous.

Ukrainian officials say they will not accept any formal surrender of the Crimean peninsula to Russia as a condition of ending the war with Russia. Fine. U.S. officials should say that we will no longer assist in funding a war being fought against a superior military power by a nation that resides in fantasyland and governs by delusion. No other response is justifiable.

Russia has controlled Crimea for 14 years. Ukraine is not getting it back, but maintains that it will not recognize that Russia owns the territory, which Barack Obama allowed Russia to take with the U.S. registering little more than pat protests and a shrug. Read this nonsense from the AP report:

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The Significant Thing About The SCOTUS Oral Argument in Mahmoud v. Taylor Is That The Three Liberal Justices Were Too Biased To Recognize The Obvious…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

…Which is that there are no good reasons at all to expose elementary-school-aged children to LGTBQ literature and propaganda. This is depressing. While the Supreme Court conservative Justices have shown themselves capable of ruling against extreme right-wing agenda items when the law dictates, the Three Progressive Sisters on the Court increasingly seem incapable of anything but lockstep wokism.

During nearly two-and-a-half hours of oral arguments last week regarding the case of a group of Maryland parents who sued Montgomery County (Maryland) to be able to pull their elementary-school-aged children out of instruction that includes LGBTQ themes, a clear majority of the Justices indicated that they had the better argument. That is that the local school board’s refusal to give them an opt-out violates the family’s religious beliefs and therefore their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion.

I find it annoying that the case has to rest on Freedom of Religion at all: why shouldn’t any parents be able to decide that they don’t want their children introduced to these topics before puberty, or exposed to indoctrination on subjects that only parents should handle, within the family?

The parents in the case include Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, who are Muslim, Melissa and Chris Persak, who are Roman Catholic, and Svitlana and Jeff Roman, who are Ukrainian Orthodox and Roman Catholic. (Having some Scientologists and Evangelical Christians would have been nice…)

In 2023, the Montgomery County School Board in one of the most Democratic counties in the nation was flushed with the Democratic Party’s totalitarian vigor, and announced that it would no longer allow parents to excuse their children from instruction using LGBTQ-themed books. The parents argued in federal court that the board’s refusal to allow them to opt their children out violated their rights under the First Amendment to freely exercise their religion, since it stripped them of their ability to instruct their children on gender and sexuality and to control how and when their children are exposed to these issues. How radical of them!

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Another Unethical (But Funny!) Use of AI in the Law

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

In March, the Arizona Supreme Court launched two AI-generated avatars named Victoria and Daniel: thats the pair above. These AI, non-existant personas deliver news of judicial rulings and opinions in the state via YouTube videos. Jerome Dewald, a 74-year-old plaintiff was inspired to say, “Hold my beer!”

Dewald created an AI-generated video avatar to deliver his argument via Zoom in court. Five New York State judges at the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department were anticipating his pro se presentation in an employment case on March 26, but instead of the elderly litigant they saw a young man in a button-down shirt and sweater.

“May it please the court,” said the un-named avatar. “I come here today a humble pro se before a panel of five distinguished justices.” Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels, interrupted the presentation before the avatar (the avatar’s pronouns were “it” and “it”) could speak another word , saying “Okay, hold on. Is that counsel for the case?” After Dewald confirmed that he had generated the non-lawyer non-person using AI, Manzanet-Daniels ordered the video to be turned off.

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“Cornell Just Doesn’t Get That Freedom of Speech Thingy” and Other Observations On a Campus Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Read this whole jaw-dropping NYT article (Gift link!) and see if you can find evidence of anyone ethical in the entire story. It’s kind of like “Where’s Waldo?”

1.The headline is “Cornell Cancels Kehlani Performance Over Alleged Antisemitic Statements.” The caption under the photo (above) adds, “Kehlani, a popular R&B singer, is being replaced as the headline act at Cornell University’s annual concert.”

Observation: If she’s a popular performer for her singing ability and presentation, her “alleged Anti-Semitic statements should be irrelevant. This pure cancel culture stuff. Still. How can Cornell teach anybody if its administrators learn nothing?

2. “In a 2024 music video for the song “Next 2 U,” Kehlani danced in a jacket adorned with kaffiyehs as dancers waved Palestinian flags in the background. During the video’s introduction, the phrase “Long Live the Intifada” appeared against a dark background.”

Observation: So what? The event organizers can tell her not to perform that number.

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Ethics Dunce: Elon Musk [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Oh fine. Now Elon Musk is proving that domestic terrorism works.

Elon Musk said yesterday that he will significantly cut back his commitment to DOGE beginning in May to focus more time and energy on Tesla, which this week reported a 71% drop in profits compared with the first quarter of 2024. In so doing, he immediately validated the illegal and unethical domestic terrorism campaign against him that has been wink-winked as valid by leading Democrats and Trump-haters.

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The Pete Hegseth Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

By far, the most extreme, controversial and risky Cabinet appointment by President Trump (well, at least until Matt Gaetz dropped out) was the one that put Fox News personality Pete Hegseth in charge of the Defense Department. EA declared the nomination irresponsible at the time, and nothing that has transpired since has changed that assessment. Loyalty is wonderful, but competence is essential. Now NPR is reporting that “The White House has begun the process of looking for a new leader at the Pentagon to replace Pete Hegseth.” The source is a U.S. official “who was not authorized to speak publicly.”

The report makes sense, and if true, it is good and encouraging news. A competent leader recognizes mistakes and moves to fix them rather than digging in and compounding the adverse consequences. The fact that this particular blunder by Trump was throbbingly obvious from the outset doesn’t alter the fact that fixing it as soon as the need to do so becomes undeniable is still the responsible course of action.

The Defense Secretary, incredibly, is again being accused of sharing classified information in a Signal messaging app group chat, this one including his wife, brother, and lawyer. Hegseth reportedly used his personal smartphone while detailing minute-by-minute classified information about airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. This occurred March during the same period in which Hegseth shared similar details with top White House officials in a different Signal chat group that somehow included a virulently anti-Trump progressive journalist.

When baseball managers are in serious trouble during the season, the kiss of death is usually the dreaded “vote of confidence” from the team owner or general manager. This is essentially what President Trump gave Hegseth yesterday, saying, “He’s doing a great job — ask the Houthis how he’s doing!” Meanwhile, Hegseth is employing the Clinton Three-Step (“Deny, deny, deny”) and White House Paid Liar Karoline Leavitt is doing her job, posting on Twitter/X that President Trump “stands strongly” behind Hegseth.

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A Letter From Harvard, A Response From Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Harvard’s president Alan Garber invaded my email yesterday with a “message to the Harvard Community,” of which, alas, I am a long-time member. It arrived on the same day that the University, with its almost 55 billion dollar endowment, announced that it was suing the government for having the audacity to withhold about 2 billion dollars in federal research grants. Here is Garber’s letter—-you can skim it or jump to the end: it is easily summarized as “How dare they?” …

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“What’s Going On Here?” Oh, Just the Usual Biased and Slanted Journalism Making It Impossible to Know What’s Going On Here…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I cannot describe how sick I am of this phenomenon.

Here is the Conservative Brief’s report on the recent decision by a judge not to take further steps enforcing his order that the Trump White House cease discriminating against the Associated Press following its refusal to embrace the President’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. Headline: “Associated Press Loses Court Case To Regain Coveted White House Access.” But it didn’t “lose the case.” Still, the slanted analysis was reported as fact by the conservative news site PJ Media. Here’s the New York Times spin. [Let’s see if the Gift Link works this time…]. Headline: “Judge Rejects A.P.’s Challenge to New White House Press Policy, for Now.” For now. “The judge said that he needed more time to determine whether the new policy was discriminatory, but said that the elimination of rotating access for newswires was ‘facially neutral.’”

Here’s the Associated Press: “Judge won’t take further steps to enforce his order in AP case against Trump administration.” “U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, who handed the AP a victory last week in its efforts to end the ban, said it’s too soon to say that President Donald Trump is violating his order — as the AP suggests. ‘We are not at the point where we can make much of a determination one way or another,’ said McFadden, ruling from the bench. ‘I don’t intend to micromanage the White House.’”

Having read these three reports and a couple more, what seems to be the story is that the judge who said that the White House couldn’t punish the AP for which name it chooses to call the Gulf by banning it from White House functions (thanks to the White House announcing publicly that this was its motivation, making the ban a government infringement on free speech), the Associate Press could not insist that it has special privileges due to its once-justifiable status as long-time trustworthy news source, and could be placed in rotation with other news services instead of keeping a regular, permanent spot in the press pool.

The judge made clear what his conclusion was: that the proverbial jury is still out on whether the White House is engaging in viewpoint discrimination, which it may not do, or simply treating the AP like any other news service. However, he did reject the idea that because the AP has been anointed with special deference by past Presidents, the Trump White House is constitutionally obligated to continue them.

Especially since the AP now sucks. (But the judge didn’t say that.)