Government & Politics

“Why Did No President Think of Doing This Before?” Because It’s Desperate, Transparent, and Stupid, That’s Why…And It HAS Been Done Before

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

President Biden yesterday bestowed the once meaningful Presidential Medal of Freedom honor to a dog’s breakfast—and not even a relatively tasty dog’s breakfast—of 19 individuals. A few of them could be viewed as justifiable honorees, but most were obviously chosen to pander to various voting blocks that Biden desperately needs to be re-elected. A white female Olympic swimmer was chosen to try to woo female athletes and their allies who don’t want to have women’s sports undermined by having to compete against biological men, for example. Catholics are abandoning Biden, as they should considering the “devout Catholic” fondmess for fetus-cide, so a Jesuit priest got a medal. To fake non-partisanship, Biden gave Liddy Dole a medal. Naturally there was the obligatory pandering to the African-American voting block, with race-baiting, former Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) getting his fee for saving Biden’s Presidential nomination in 2020. Clyburn’s disgraceful Ethics Alarms dossier is here. Ellen Ochoa got a medal purely because of her Hispanic heritage and lady parts—there have been a lot of astronauts. Biden sucked up to unions and Hispanics by honoring Teresa Romero, the president of the United Farm Workers and “historic,” as the first Latina to lead a national union in the United States, which, of course, makes her more deserving than all the other union leaders. Even more blatant was the medal given to Michelle Yeoh. Who, you well may ask? She became the first Asian to win the Oscar for best actress this year. She was the most distinguished Asian-American Biden’s staff could come up with for these DEI awards? What an insult to Asian-Americans! Most of the rest were Presidential slobbers over partisan ethics villains like Al Gore, John Kerry, and Nancy Pelosi.

But those selection, however cynical and undeserved, aren’t the reasons for this post. This is: among Biden’s flagrant pandering were Presidential Medals of Freedom awarded to long-dead legendary athlete Jim Thorpe (had to get a Native American into this DEI orgy) and Medgar Evers, the civil rights worker who was assassinated 61 years ago, just to remind everyone what a racist nation we are.

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Morning Ethics Wake-Up Call, May 4, 2024: Campus Anti-Semitism Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I’d say anyone celebrating Star Wars Day today (“May the Fourth be with you!”) on this May 4 needs to get out more.

In addition to being a day that promises further depressing developments on college campuses as the decades of progressive, anti-American, and Marxist indoctrination have their predictable (and probably intentional) consequences—though somehow the ivory tower revolutionaries in charge of those campuses were oddly unprepared for them!—this date has an ominous history.

The Vietnam protests reached their violent zenith with the National Guard shooting four Kent State students on May 4, 1970, a tragedy eerily reminiscent of the Boston Massacre. I’ve been surprised that there hasn’t been a student fatality in the current unrest yet: as always, the protest organizers are hoping for one to “radicalize” the campuses. Another development that seems inevitable is a terrorist attack in support of Gaza and Hamas. Today is a date that portends that, too: during a huge labor protest at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois on May 4, 1886, a someone threw a bomb among the 200 police officers attempting to break up the demonstration. Police then started shooting at the pro-labor crowd, killing more than a dozen protestors and wounding nearly a hundred, several people in the crowd and injuring dozens more. The protest had been organized by pro-labor activists to protest (and exploit) of the killing of a striker by the Chicago police the day before, and about 1,500 workers participated. That episode galvanized both the labor movement and the progressive movement that produced Teddy Roosevelt, Eugene V. Debs, Clarence Darrow, and Woodrow Wilson.

The anti-war rioting at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 also took place in Chicago, and where do you suppose the Democrats are holding their nominating convention this year? If nothing else, you can accuse the party of being superstitious. That call is the equivalent of naming a new cruise ship “Titanic.”

But wait! There’s more! On May 4, 1994, then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat reached an agreement in Cairo on Palestinian self-rule, following the Oslo Accords signed in Washington, D.C. on September 13, 1993. The agreement acknowledged Israel’s right to exist! Israeli agreed to withdraw from most of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho, all land won by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 when the Arab nations collectively tried to wipe Israel off the map. The Palestinians agreed to avoid terrorism and maintain peace. and prevent violence in the famous “land for peace” bargain. The agreement transferred authority from the Israeli Civil Administration to the newly created Palestinian Authority, its jurisdiction and legislative powers, a Palestinian police force and relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Sounds promising, no? Almost immediately after the Israeli military withdrawal, the Palestinians began attacking Israel and its civilians. The periodic terrorism continued: there was never real “peace.” The promise to accept Israel’s right to exist was just words. Seven years later came the “Second Intifada” in 2000, a violent Palestinian uprising against Israel that left over a thousand Israelis dead and thousands injured. The schism was complete when the Palestinians elected the openly terrorist organization Hamas to lead Gaza in 2006. The fable of “The Scorpion and the Frog” comes to mind.

I wonder how many of the campus protesters are conversant in this history?

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On the False Equivilency of Anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia Invoked By President Biden and Others

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“But let’s be clear about this as well. There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong. There is no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-American.”

That’s President Biden in his long delayed statement regarding the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic demonstrations breaking out in college campuses and in cities across the country. As usual, he isn’t clear at all. There have been no demonstrations against Muslims or Arab Americans. What does Islamophobia have to do with the price of bacon, as my father used to say?

The problem at hand is mobs calling for the eradication of Israel, the sole bastion of democracy in the Middle East, and the death of Jews. Those involved are actively declaring their support for Hamas and Palestinian terrorism, meaning, again, advocating the eradication of Israel and the death of Jews.

Throwing this unique and particularly horrible outbreak of ethic and religious hate, discrimination and persecution under the huge progressive abused-minority tent with Arabs and Muslims deliberately dilutes accountability. Americans are justly wary of Islam, with its declared determination to wipe out infidels, and nobody ever set out to exterminate six million Arabs. Nobody murdered an Arab or Palestinian Olympic team, either. Anti-Semitism is different in kind, in great part because it is centuries old lingers in cultures and societies like the shingles virus, ready to break out without warning.

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Reminder to California: Doing the “Right Thing” When It Can’t Possibly Have a Positive Outcome Isn’t Ethical

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments


It’s amazing what a flat learning curve ideologues have.

Certain laws of economics are immutable: if someone’s skills and the value of their labor are not worth the amount they demand in compensation for it, then eventually no one will be willing to hire them. Way back in my foggy history, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce charged me with examining just this issue in my role as head of the National Chamber Foundation, the Chambers public policy research arm. I hired an independent economist to examine the issue, and he concluded that indeed, raising the minimum wage cost the most vulnerable American workers jobs every…single…time. He also explained that the political pressure for raising the minimum wage came from unions, which used a ride in the bottom wages as justification for demanding higher wages in their definitely un-minimum wage compensated fields. Unfortunately for me, my scholar, being independent, also disputed the Chamber’s position that minimum wage increases were automatically inflationary across the board. The President of the Chamber had my foundation’s study pulled out by a Democratic Party minimum wage hike advocate and used to refuse his position on a Sunday morning public affairs show. (My ultimate boss had neglected to read the document.) This, as you might imagine, did not help my status in the organization.

If anything, the advances in technology have made that old study at NCF more accurate than ever. Never mind, though: 21st Century progressives seem to care about virtue-signalling and fealty to socialist cant more than actual results or, to put it another way, reality. Naturally California, one of our extreme leftist kamikaze states, arguably the most reckless one, has adopted this attitude. And thus it came to pass that last fall, Governor Newsom signed into law a $20 an hour minimum wage hike on the fast food sector for the “benefit” of fast food workers, even as the segment of the public that most often consume fast food has been slammed by inflation and higher food prices particularly.

Everything we have learned about minimum wage hikes indicated that this would be a disaster, but advocates of the move in the Democratic party pooh-poohed the objections as more proof that conservatives are cruel and greedy. Do these people ever get tired of being embarrassingly, absurdly wrong? As a Washington Times headline put it, “Fast food chains find a way around $20 minimum wage: Get rid of the workers.”

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Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

This is as good a place to note my disgust as any. In an example of life imitating the Babylon Bee, a bipartisan group of House members decided that in these “challenging times” they have nothing better to do than to troll Gov. Kristi Noem, she of the itchy trigger finger, while sucking up to PETA.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) announced in a post on Twitter, alias “X,” “In light of recent events, we’re launching the Congressional Dog Lovers Caucus today! This group dedicated to man’s best friend aims to foster bipartisan cooperation and will help put paws over politics.” His post featured photos of Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Susan Wild (D-Pa.), alongside Moskowitz, each with a dog.

Mace issued a press release blathering,“While Congress might disagree on everything, we can all agree that dogs are beloved companions, bringing us all so much joy. We started this caucus to champion legislation that protects the rights and well-being of dogs, ensuring they receive the care, respect, and recognition they deserve…In a time of polarization and partisanship, I’m proud to join my colleagues from both sides of the aisle and commit to working on behalf of our pets, who give us so much joy and comfort every day.”

This insulting nonsense, coming on the heels of Congress overwhelmingly passing an anti-hate speech bill that is unconstitutional on its face, raises a genuine question as to whether the nation would be better off with dogs running things in the Capitol instead of these boobs.

The dogs might as well take over the state houses too. The Hill reports that Kristi’s spin on her animal-shooting rampage is now that the dog she shot was a veritable Cujo.

But that’s enough from me: this is your chance to howl…

Letter From Dartmouth’s President: This Is How It’s Done, You Spineless Weenies!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Dartmouth alumnus Curmie—Can’t you just picture him leading that horse into the Dean’s office?—shared this letter he received as a member of the “Dartmouth community” from the school’s first female president, Dr. Sian Leah Beilock. It stands in stark contrast to the nauseating Columbia letter dissected here, and Emerson College’s president’s equally revolting letter I posted on here.

Yes, it’s more diplomatic than my letter would be, but that’s why I’m not a college president. And yes, Beilock’s use of the breathless “amazing”—apparently now taking over from “awesome”—is a bit disturbing coming from an adult in high places, but never mind. She has rescued some of the tarnished honor of the university presidents’ club.

Stop Making Me Defend RFK Jr.!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This has to be one of the most unlikely beneficiaries of the EA “Stop Making Me Defend…” series, though the alums are pretty awful. Biden and Trump lead with the most such posts, of course, with James Carville, both Clintons, Kamala Harris, Bill Maher, Tucker Carlson, NYC’s Eric Adams, Megan Rapinoe (yechhh), even Pete Rose and Louis Farakhan getting their due. RFK Jr., I would argue, is tied with the last miscreant in that list for having imparted no benefits on society whatsoever: at least Pete Rose was a great baseball player.

Third party presidential candidates with name recognition are blights on democracy. Teddy Roosevelt’s run gave us Woodrow Wilson. Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan created the 2000 election debacle. Still, Teddy, Ralph and even Pat had genuine accomplishments on their records other than the fame and influence flowing from the boon of inherited wealth and a cult that worships a surname.

And yet…RFK was just slimed by people even more relentlessly unethical than he is: the Democratic National Committee.

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Ethics and Constitutional Dunces: The 320 House Members (Mostly Republicans) Who Voted for the “Antisemitism Awareness Act”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

You know, or should, that your conduct is unethical and outrageous when it makes Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.) look good by comparison Gaetz voted against HR 690, as every member of the House should have since it is throbbingly unconstitutional on its face, no question, no argument, a flat out First Amendment violation. Gaetz told his followers on Twitter/X that he voted against the proposed legislation because it is a “ridiculous hate speech bill.”

“Antisemitism is wrong, but this legislation is written without regard for the Constitution, common sense, or even the common understanding of the meaning of words,” he wrote. Bingo. The bill, in weasel words remarkable even by recent Congressional standards, declares that “anti-Semitism” is a violation of title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq.), and embraces an expansive definition of the term “adopted on May 26, 2016, by the IHRA, of which the United States is a member, which definition has been adopted by the Department of State; and… includes the “[c]ontemporary examples of antisemitism” identified in the IHRA definition.”

The IHRA definition includes examples of pure speech, and I would expect any junior in high school to know that these cannot be criminalized:

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Ethics Dunce: Emerson College President Jay Bernhardt

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Bernhardt isn’t the only noodle-spined, terrorism-enabling fool running an American college or university right now, but he’s as good a representative as any. I’m familiar with Emerson (most people weren’t before its students started demonstrating for more Jew killing as if there hadn’t too much of that already) because it resides in my old stomping ground of Boston, and my aunt Bea, 97-years-old and still as progressive as they come, graduated from there.

Over 100 Emerson students were arrested in downtown Boston’s Boylston Place alleyway in an early morning confrontation with Boston police last week. The students were illegally participating in an encampment protest by the student organization Students for Justice in Palestine. They also fought with police as the cops tried to do their jobs. But in his letter of three days ago, Emerson College President Jay Bernhardt said that he will urge the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office to drop all charges. Four Boston police officers were injured during the confrontation, one seriously. Never mind, though. These are only adults who can vote, buy liquor and and otherwise have full privileges of citizenship, and they violated the law in support of terrorists. Their hearts were in the right place. They meant well. Anybody can make a mistake. For a full list of the inexcusable rationalizations being used to let these idiots escape accountability for their ignorant, illegal and violent actions, see here, at the Ethics Alarms Rationalizations List. I’m guessing at least 40 of them apply, maybe more.

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Hamas-Israel War Ethics Train Wreck Update: A Case Study in How a News Aggregator Forfeits Trust

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The escalation overnight in the anti-Israel, pro-Jew-killing demonstrations at Columbia University, temporarily at the top of the campus progressives-showing-their-true-stripes and “Oops, I guess we indoctrinated these gullible kids a little too much!” hit parades, was the breaking news I woke up to at 5 am when Spuds asked to go out. I have some ethics observations about this whole disturbing development (the Gaza support on campuses, not Spuds’ bathroom habits), which the Biden administration deserves to have hung around its neck like a stinking dead albatross for signaling that the U.S. sympathizes with terrorists just so it might pick up some Muslim votes in Michigan. In the process of researching that post, I encountered the reason for this one.

Deciding that the immediacy of the 1968 flashbacks justified bumping another post that I have almost completed, I checked the usually reliable news aggregating site Memeorandum (Ann Althouse’s favorite!) to find some early reports and commentary on the student terrorism fans at Columbia taking over Hamilton Hall. And I found…nothing. The top stories as of this moment [remember, by the time you read this, the list may have changed]:

#1: The Kristi Noem dog story! You see, that’s a top story because it reflects poorly on Republicans.

#2 according to the site is an FBI report that crime in the U.S. is really decreasing under Biden—as if there is any reason to trust the FBI any more, and as everyone I know in Northern Virginia is terrified to go into D.C. This is second on the list because it is going to take a huge “It isn’t what it is” push to convince voters that all of those chains moving out of inner cities because of runaway shoplifting are really doing it because they are racist.

#3? Another hit on a Republican, this time from that paragon of objectivity, Rolling Stone.

Coming in at #4…well, I don’t have to belabor the point. There are seventeen more “top stories,” including one about India operating a spy ring in Australia, and the drama at Columbia isn’t anywhere to be found.

Eureka! Now I know that whoever is running this news aggregator site is manipulating the news and trying to mislead the public in support of Joe Biden and the Democrats. Similarly, we have learned that the eruption of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic passion across the nation is just one more example of what a terrible, weak, foolish POTUS Joe Biden is, and how ethically corrupt his party and its supporters have become.

Here’s a third: journalism in this culture is untrustworthy and a metaphorical dagger in the back of democracy….but we knew that.

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