Ethics Train Wrecks

Ethics Quiz: Trump-Proofing

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

In the last couple of weeks there have been multiple news reports regarding President Biden “Trump-proofing” the government in advance of the newly elected President taking over as the voters have willed. The decision to veto the bi-partisan act that would create more federal judgeships was such a measure: though the new judges are desperately needed to address the backlog in the courts, apparently whoever is pulling Biden’s strings has decided that no new judges at all are better than Trump appointed judges.

Today there was another example. Bloomberg reported that President Biden is will issue an unusually resilient executive order permanently banning new offshore oil and gas development in some US coastal waters.The executive order will bar the sale of new drilling rights in portions of the country’s outer continental shelf, potentially foiling Trump’s promise to ramp up domestic energy production. The plan will exploit a 72-year-old law that gives the White House wide discretion to permanently protect US waters from oil and gas leasing. The same law does not without explicitly empower Presidents to revoke the designation. (It sounds legally dubious to me, but I haven’t read the law.)

Trump is expected to order a reversal of these attempted permanent protections, but whether he will be able to do so is unknown.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is this…

Do you think it is ethical for an outgoing President to take measures to impede the agenda of the incoming President?

I Don’t Understand This Story AT ALL, I Don’t Understand the Biden Administration At All, I Just Don’t Understand…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

From Israel news sources: “Despite heavy pressure from the United States, Israel refuses to allow the transfer of weapons to the security forces of the Palestinian Authority (PA)…According to a report from Army Radio, the U.S. requested that Israel approve the transfer of AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition and armored vehicles. After discussions among security officials, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi decided to recommend the political leadership not approve the transfers….Under the terms of the [Oslo] Accords, Israel must approve the transfer of heavy weaponry to PA security forces, which occasionally confront terror group members that are armed with superior weapons smuggled with Iranian assistance…

“Israel Ganz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council and the chairman of the Yesha Council, praised the ‘correct decision’….’Transferring ammunition and weapons to the enemy, especially during wartime, is complete madness and a breach of security for the citizens of the State of Israel….The Palestinian Authority is a terrorist organization – and a terrorist organization should be defeated,’ Ganz declared.”

Ya think?

My favorite quote is “Transferring ammunition and weapons to the enemy, especially during wartime, is complete madness.” Whether or not the Palestinian Authority is fairly described as a terrorist organization, the official position of all the various Palestinian organizations, convoluted and unstable though they are, is that Israel has no right to exist.

I will admit to the possibility that I am missing something, but it seems to me that pressuring Israel at this time to hand over weapons to any Palestinian group is as responsible as pressuring them to make the official language of their nation Swedish and have Israelis wear their underwear on the outside.

Just because the President is demented doesn’t mean we should try to make other countries behave irrationally too.

Comment of the Day: “Presuming Bias Also Makes You Stupid…and a Failure”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I think it is fitting to end 2024 with one of Steve-O-in NJ’s historical epics, this one in response my challenge at the end of the post to name a figure who would rebut the statement on the Victory Girls blog regarding Kamala Harris, “Never has so much been handed to one person who didn’t deserve it.” My mind immediately went to the Kim Kardashian’s sisters Khloe and Kourtney, who attained fame, celebrity and riches because their oldest sister had a viral sex tape. But moving from government and politics into pop culture is cheating.

Steve-O takes up that challenge with gusto in this Comment of the Day to the post, “Presuming Bias Also Makes You Stupid…and a Failure”. Here is it is….

***

It really depends on how far back in history you are willing to go. I could name you at least 10 monarchs who were handed a whole lot they didn’t deserve for no reason other than accident of birth without even putting on my thinking cap:

  1. Edward VIII of the UK – a child who never quite grew up and just wanted everything his own way, also TERRIBLE judge of character.
  2. Louis XVI of France – clueless and careless, led him to the guillotine
  3. Alfonso XIII of Spain – not up to the job and paved the way for fascist Franco.
  4. Selim II of the Ottoman Empire – called the Drunkard or the Sot for a reason, led to the huge defeat at Lepanto and Turkey’s long slide down into the Third World.
  5. Henry VIII of England – initially might even be considered heroic but ultimately destroyed by his excessive appetites and dictatorial nature.
  6. Mary I of England – Henry’s eldest daughter, called Bloody Mary for a reason.
  7. Charles II of Spain – the misshapen result of generations of Hapsburg inbreeding.
  8. Hirohito of Japan [above, with Khloe and Kourtney] – allowed himself to be a puppet for overambitious generals and admirals, didn’t stand up to them until defeat was certain.
  9. Cixi Yukian of China – waited till it was too late, then foolishly threw in with the Boxers, resulting ultimately in the Chinese Empire collapsing.
  10. Oh yes, lest we forget William II of Germany, who pushed wise old Bismarck aside and led the German Empire into WWI and its destruction.

If I put on my thinking cap, I could probably triple that list. The fact is that when you hand someone power based on something other than merit, you throw the dice and risk ending up with someone who’s either useless or a puppet for the unscrupulous.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Discrimination As a IA Right

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Seriously? Will this ruling stand? Can it? Should it?

The Superior Court of New Jersey’s Appellate Division ruled Dec. 20 against Rajeh A. Saadeh in his lawsuit alleging that the New Jersey State Bar Association had violated the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. The NJSB has a diversity policy that reserves 13 out of 94 leadership positions for members of specified underrepresented groups. Saadeh is a Palestinian Muslim American attorney, and his group didn’t make the cut. He argued that this was discriminatory, while the bar association argued that it had a First Amendment right to select leaders “consistent with its values regarding diversity in the legal profession.”

The Appellate Court overruled a trial judge who had held that the diversity program was an illegal quota system under New Jersey law. “[T]he undisputed facts in this record establishes beyond peradventure that the bar association qualifies as an expressive association, and that compelling it to end its practice of ensuring the presence of designated underrepresented groups in its leadership would unconstitutionally infringe its ability to advocate the value of diversity and inclusivity in the association and more broadly in the legal profession,” the appeals court said. Since the ruling was that the discriminatory policy was protected speech, it did not even address the question of discrimination.

[Two side points: 1) I have an automatic prejudice against any judge, or anyone, who uses the term “peradventure” and 2) I will not forgive the NJSBA for firing me after years of providing it with (acclaimed, profitable and discounted!) musical ethics CLE programs because I exclaimed “Fuck!” a single time to no one in particular in a moment of frustation during a tech check on Zoom when the bar association’s technical staff proved that it had no idea what it was doing.]

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day…

Is that an ethically defensible decision?

Continue reading →

Let Us Give Belated Thanks To President Biden’s Ventriloquists For Another Vivid Example of Unethical Anti-Gun Propaganda

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I missed this, but the White House statement from “President Biden” (Who wrote it? Who approved it? Did the President even know about it?) following the Madison, Wisconsin school shooting two weeks ago couldn’t be a better demonstration of the intellectual dishonesty and ruthlessness of the Left’s anti-Second Amendment fanatics. Apparently gun-phobics are thrilled any time a gun-related tragedy occurs so they can rush out junk like this and fundraising appeals to exploit the event for all it’s worth, and the higher body count the better. The alleged Presidential sentiment deliberately misrepresents the shooting by linking it to standard tenets of the anti-gun agenda that literally have nothing to do with the incident being exploited.

The Biden statement also brands itself as standard issue cant by using the deliberately meaningless Axis phrase “commonsense gun safety laws,” overwhelming used by those whose idea of “common sense” is not to allow legal private gun ownership at all. Then the letter advocates universal background checks, a national red flag law, a ban on assault weapons, and a ban on high-capacity magazines, not one of which would have done anything to prevent the shooting that is supposed to be the subject of the letter.

The shooter in Madison was a 15-year-old girl who couldn’t legally purchase a gun anyway: background checks don’t apply to shooters like her. Nor would a “red flag law” have flagged her, since it doesn’t include children too young to own guns. The shooter didn’t use an “assault weapon”; she used a pistol; nor was a high-capacity magazine involved. Never mind! Guns bad, so this tragedy that might have been prevented if only “we could melt all the guns and give a new world to our daughters and sons” (which we can’t: Who recognizes the song lyric?) justifies rushing out anti-gun propaganda when the appeal to emotion would be most effective.

Yecchh.

_______________

Pointer: Not the Bee

Regarding Biden’s Mass Mercy For Convicted Murderers

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

As was anticipated after reports that were issued over the weekend, “President Joe Biden announced” today that he has commuted the sentences of 37 convicted murderers, thus taking them off federal death row. They will now serve out life sentences in prison, being housed, fed, given medical attention and more at taxpayer expense. This was done deliberately to foil the announced intention of President-elect Donald Trump to carry out the verdicts of juries and the courts.

“Biden’s statement”—this is in quotation marks because he didn’t write it, probably doesn’t understand it and quite possibly never read it or approved it—reads,

“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss. But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Ethics observations:

Continue reading →

When Your Trump-Deranged, Slowly Metamorphosing Into Full Leftist Totalitarian Friends and Relatives Deny What Their “Movement” Has Become, Waive This In Their Smug, Red, Contorted Faces…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This must stop, here, there, and everywhere.

As frequent readers here know, Ethics Alarms has been referring to the Axis of Unethical Conduct (an Ethics Alarms term, and a fair one) as a totalitarianism-leaning, anti-American phenomenon for years now, as I have tracked the frightening progress on the 2016 Ethics Train Wreck and all of its many offshoots. I have used made this point frequently and, I recognize, emphatically to the point that many object to those and related labels as inflammatory and biased, which they are not because my assessment is objective and accurate. I could also say, with justification, “If the show fits, wear it,” and even “If the shoe fits wear it, you assholes.”

Today I was sent promotional spam by my old hometown newspaper, the lone surviving conservative #2 paper in Boston (The Dominating Axis representative is the always Democratic Boston Globe) after the slow amalgam of four newspapers with long histories of service to the people of New England: The Boston Herald, the Boston Traveler, the Boston Record and the Boston American. That headline above was all I needed to spark a head explosion with several subsequent explosions that left bits of brain and bone on my keyboard and computer screen after I read the entire report.

Continue reading →

Is The Worst President the One Who Was Never President at All, and Other Thoughts on Recent Biden White House Revelations

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

It’s no excuse and only moral luck, but I am now glad that I have waited so long to conclude the Ethics Alarms inquiry into who was the worst American President. (That final post on the topic is coming this weekend, I promise.)

For important new data is coming in: The Wall Street Journal issued a report based on extensive interviews with White House insiders and Biden aides that indicates there was a years-long cover-up of the degree of cognitive decline Biden had experienced since he was Vice-President. Both the Journal’s reporting and recent New York Times articles indicate what should be treated as a national scandal but probably won’t be.

His party knew that Biden was infirm mentally and physically before he was nominated to run against then-President Trump in 2020. Once he was nominated, Joe’ true condition was hidden from the inattentive public. I knew that Biden was sinking into dementia as early as 2019; it wasn’t hard to see, and I told many friends and associates that. The ones who hated Donald Trump didn’t car. Biden’s successful 2020 campaign was constrained by the (stupid) Wuhan virus lockdown and a complicit news media oddly incurious about a Constitutional crisis materializing right before their eyes.

Once Biden was elected, the cover-up continued. Top cabinet members were unable to meet with him or even speak with him. Biden held only nine Cabinet meetings in four years! Staff regularly stood in for him at official events. Other staff were assigned to keep him from wandering off. Biden couldn’t hold morning meetings because he was “not at his best” early in the day, and he seldom was up to working past 4pm unless he had spent the day gathering his strength and what was left of his wits. Biden cancelled important national security meetings, with his aides explaining to attendees that the President had “bad days and good days.”

Continue reading →

The Liz Cheney Ethics Zugswang Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Now this is an ethics conflict.

It is increasingly clear that former Congresswoman Liz Cheney broke the law as well as several ethics rules while doing her utmost to incriminate President Trump during the all-Democrat/ Never-Trump Republican J-6 committee star chamber orchestrated by Nancy Pelosi. It is wrong to break the law. It is especially wrong to break the law when you are an elected official and law-maker. Such officials should not only be held to a higher standard, but should be role models for the public that elected them. It follows, then, that when they break the law—it seems that Cheney participated in the destruction of evidence as well as coaching a witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, to lie under oath while unethically meeting with her, a represented witness, without her lawyer being present—they should be treated like anyone else who breaks the law.

If elected officials are not prosecuted and held to account when they violate the law, it is the worst manifestation of the King’s Pass, the insidious and pervasive rationalization (#11 on the list) in which individuals who are famous, popular, powerful, accomplished, productive or successful are allowed to escape the earned consequences of their own misconduct when a less powerful or popular individual would face the full penalties of the law. Such episodes seriously erode public trust in our legal system and power structure. The cliche is “No one is above the law,” but except for the case of indisputable bribery or violent felonies, elected officials are seldom prosecuted, and sometimes not even for those crimes.

Continue reading →

Politifact Lies About the “Lie of the Year”But Everyone Knows What the Real “Lie of the Year” Was

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Wouldn’t you think an alleged ”’factchecking” organization would understand what a lie is? Well, the organization is Politifact, so it’s a trick question. It’s a Democratic Party/progressive propaganda outfit and facts are the last thing it cares about: that group of hacks is easily the most dishonest and unethical of all of these thing, much less trustworthy than second in line from the bottom, which might be Glenn Kessler and the Washington Post’s intermittently fair “The Factchecker” feature. And so it was that as the end of 2024 approaches, Politifact announced that this was its “Lie of the Year,”what Trump said on September 10:

“‘In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs.The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

“With this claim, amplified before 67 million television viewers in his debate against Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump took his anti-migrant, the U.S. border-is-out-of-control campaign agenda to a new level,” Politifact moaned.

But even if the “Their eating pets and wildlife from the parks!” story had been a deliberate lie, it obviously was neither the “Lie of the Year” in either of the two categories relevant to the choice: it wasn’t the most destructive lie, and it wasn’t the most indefensible lie. This was: Continue reading →