Ethics Train Wrecks

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.

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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 →

At the University of Michigan, A Controversy Reveals Dishonesty and Hypocrisy Underlying the DEI Fad

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

If Donald Trump accomplishes nothing more in his next four years than ending the nation’s tolerance to open borders while fawning over “good illegal immigrants” and driving a metaphorical stake through The Great Stupid’s DEI fad, electing him will have been worth all chaos that will come along with it.

DEI thrives as a hypocritical way to discriminate against white men and shift to a society based on rewarding achievement, diligence and ability to one based on group membership. That makes it un-American to the core. At the University of Michigan, the “director of the university’s office of academic multicultural initiatives”—you know, DEI—spoke out at a conference of such officers the university to opine that her university was “controlled by wealthy Jews and that because Jewish students are “wealthy and privileged” the don’t need diversity services. “Jewish people have no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel,” Rachel Dawson was quoted as saying.

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To Defenders of the Biased Mainstream Media: Ethics Alarms Challenges You to Find An Innocent Explanation For Why the NYT and WaPo Don’t Regard This Story As News [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Heck, even CNN reported it (but not MSNBC). Crystal Mangum, the exotic dancer who in 2006 accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape launching an ethics train wreck that ended up costing the city of Durham damages, derailed the academic careers of the three students, got the lacrosse team coach fired, and resulted in a rare instance of a prosecutor being disbarred, finally admitted what everyone should have figured out by now.

“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong. And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me,” Mangum announced on the podcast “Let’s Talk with Kat.” “I made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.”

Oh.

What?

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Unethical Wise-Ass Quote of the Week: Baseball Writer Keith Law

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Of course, the size and length of the deal look absurd, and I doubt anyone expects Soto to still be a $50-million-a-year player in 2039, when he’ll be 40 if we haven’t burned up the planet by then.”

—Baseball writer Keith Law, writing in The Athletic regarding the impact of the Mets signing outfielder Juan Soto to a 15 year, $765 million dollar contract as discussed on Ethics Alarms here.

I’ll start with a full disclosure: I’ve had some unpleasant personal interaction with Keith Law, who is a talented baseball analyst of long-standing but out of his depth in the field of business and sports ethics, where his nasty exchanges with me occurred more than a decade ago. This quote would be flagged by me as unethical if had been made by my sister in a national publication.

Experts have an obligation to not abuse their authority, influence, presumed wisdom and ability to persuade the public. Keith Law is a very qualified commentator on all aspects of baseball, from the business of the game to talent evaluation and statistics. Unlike a lot of sportswriters, he has an impressive educational background including an undergraduate degree with honors in sociology and economics from the same disgraced but unfortunately still prestigious college that I graduated from, as well as a Masters in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. He is not, however, a climate scientist, and as it appears that his every waking hour has been and is devoted to the wide, wonderful world of baseball, it is safe to presume that he has not acquired any special expertise in the area of climate change other than what he reads in the New York Times (which owns the Athletic) and other progressive propaganda media.

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Former President Barack Obama Runs For 2024’s “Hypocrite Of The Year”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Oh, shut up, Barack!

In a speech yesterday at his foundation’s Democracy Forum, Barack Obama demonstrated his abundance of gall by calling for an end to “divisiveness” and for Americans to embrace compromise while building coalitions, something he refused to do as President.

Obama, after pledging to be a President of all the people, “bringing black and white together,”also exacerbated racial divisions like no President before him since Woodrow Wilson, a big Jim Crow fan. He chose to avoid political compromise during his entire term, laying the foundations of the gridlock we have seen since with the enthusiastic assistance of Nancy Pelosi in the House and the now thankfully dead Harry Reid Senate. As a former President, Obama did not extend his successor the same courtesy George W. Bush extended to him, which was to stay on the sidelines and withhold public criticism. He vividly illustrated why the unwritten rule and “democratic norm” in the U.S. has been that former Presidents, as the New York Times stated in 2007, “should speak respectfully of their successors, or at least with some measure of restraint.”

Did you know that Donald Trump doesn’t respect “democratic norms”?

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Condign Justice For The Biased News Media

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The incoming Trump administration has signaled that it will be giving some podcasters, bloggers and news commentary websites access to White House briefings. As the night follows day, the Axis media is freaking out. The James S. Brady Press Briefing Room only has a capacity of 49 seats (the room could be changed to a larger one, of course) and adding participants means that some legacy media reporters will have to go. Good.

Here’s the objective, fair, unbiased headline at NewsCastStudio, the trade publication for broadcast news media: “Report: Trump officials may meddle in White House briefing room seating, add pro-MAGA outlets.” Allow me to translate: “pro-MAGA outlets” means non-Axis propagandists, those who may not see it as their duty as ‘advocacy journalists’ to undermine Republicans in general and Trump in particular.

The White House Correspondents’ Association is technically in charge of deciding seating access and assignments, but the White House controls who gets access to the building and room. Having the White House Correspondents Association decide who can be part of the the press corps questioning the White House spokespeople in daily briefings is a classic “fox in the hen house” system. Still, the White House has the power to block the access of a particular reporter or an entire network (Bye-bye, MSNBC!) by denying security passes. This would, of course, be condemned as undemocratic and something Hitler would do, but the Biden team kicked the conservative Daily Signal out of the briefings because it was inadequately supportive of Joe.

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“Wicked”: A Review (Part 2: Politics and Propaganda)

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” became a critical and financial success by merging the Frank L. Baum children’s series with contemporary issues and values, notably discrimination, prejudice, the abuse of power, and corruption. The still-running Broadway musical “Wicked” softened the preaching and propaganda a bit, but it has come back with full force in the movie adaptation now playing at inflated prices in theater near you. (I purchased a box of Junior Mints and regular size coke. They cost 15 bucks.)

In the novel and the musical, the witch-to-be is born green, leading to a life of being the victim of hate and discrimination. The movie cast not just a black woman in the role, but one with pronounced African features (in contrast to, say, Halle Berry) making it nearly impossible not to experience the plot as a thinly veiled Critical Race Theory brief. Though there are black actors and actresses in Oz here and there, only the white characters are seen to be repulsed or frightened by Elphaba (Maguire gave her a name), because the director correctly calculated that in his film, the character is as much black as green. We see her rejected and cast aside (to be raised by a bear) by her father the moment he sees her skin shade, so it is clear where this is going: Elphaba is going to be forced to fight against the cruel culture that rejected her. Thus we know that she is a personification of the Black Lives Matter riots within the first ten minutes of the movie.

Just as early in the movie we know we are in the grip of sensitive wokism obsessions when we we find ourselves in Munchkinland and the Munchkins pretty much look like anyone you know. The movie “Wicked” is obsessed with, the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz,” had the Munchkins played by the Singer Midgets, a little people performing group. In the Baum book that started it all, they are described as being about the same size as Dorothy, who is about 10, but one way or the other, we know the Munchkins are small. Ah, but Disney’s endlessly delayed “Snow White” movie got into trouble after the most famous acting dwarf, Peter Dinklage, declared that the whole idea of portraying the Little People of the familiar fairy tale was offensive, so Disney eliminated the dwarfs entirely. That was also attacked by Little People activists—erasing them, you know. Similarly, Peter Jackson got in trouble for using computer magic to make a full size actor look like he was a a yard or so tall in the “Lord of the Rings series.” So “Wicked” director Jon M. Chu punted and just made the Muchkins normal size and boring. And that wasn’t all: to make sure Dinklage didn’t find some reason to take shots at his movie, the Little Actor was hired to provide the voice of a talking goat.

This is DEI at its silliest. The film gets credit for hiring an “under-represented minority” who was personally responsible for the film not hiring many more members of the same minority. Furthermore, while I like Dinklage (who became famous in “Game of Thrones”) as much as anybody, the only reason he’s a star is because he’s so short. Sure, he plays lawyers, doctors, gangsters, but no matter what he plays, he plays it as a dwarf. That’s the only thing that distinguishes him from hundreds of other equally able actors. It makes no sense at all to hire Peter Dinklage as a voice actor. His unique feature can add nothing to such a gig. The film took away another talented vocal actor’s job so it could be “inclusive” and hire a dwarf for his voice alone.

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A Nelson For All The Progressives, Democrats and Trump-Haters Freaking Out Over Biden’s Pardoning His Son

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Didn’t everyone know that Joe would eventually pardon Hunter? The fact that they didn’t shows the depth of Woke-World’s delusions.

EA had an Ethics Quiz on this topic yesterday but the point was to determine what Biden’s most ethical course was, not to suggest that it wasn’t obvious what he would do despite all of his “promises.” I stated that for me the ethical course was clear: the President has an obligation to do what is in the best interests of the nation regardless of its effects on his family or himself. Just as I was preparing a post on how the EA ethics decision-making systems would help the President to the right thing, I heard about the pardon, rendering the issue moot, or at least too moot to justify an hour of my time.

The Axis really exposed its stupidity on this one. Here’s a supercut of the Left’s propaganda merchants praising Biden’s integrity for promising not to pardon his son..

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From the Harris Campaign, a Post Mortem That Will Stand As a “Bias Makes You Stupid!” Monument For the Ages…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

A social media commentator called Caesar listened to a long, long podcast exploring the Harris loss with her chief advisors and the architects—if you can call them that without choking—of her campaign, then summarized what he heard here. His summary is too long to summarize on Ethics Alarms, and based on the little I could stand listening to of the podcast, it seems accurate.

The major ethical use of the jaw-dropping results is as a perfect example of the Ethics Alarms motto, “Bias makes you stupid,” in its full, destructive, mind-blowing glory. There is denial and delusion here in abundance, beginning with Caesars first two summaries of what he heard in the post mortem:

  1. The campaign was perfect, and
  2. Harris was perfect.

They also tell you how warped the perception of these presumably intelligent people was and is.

Another unavoidable takeaway from the summary is that Democrats and progressives should be terrified about the prospects for their party if this stunning blindness is typical of their compatriots. They literally don’t understand, not merely why they lost, but also the nation, American society, our culture, our history, Donald Trump, how to process unwelcome data, the essential skills of self-examination and learning from mistakes, and more.

The summary also supports a conclusion I came to shortly after Kamala Harris was installed as Biden’s replacement as the Democrat’s Presidential nominee. The party will never be able to nominate a male, especially a white male, again until a woman finally is elected President. Like General Burnside’s doomed troops at the battle of Fredericksburg, it will keep charging up the hill with inadequate forcesas if there is realistic chance of victory though each failed charge makes the odds worse.