Government & Politics

Melinda Gates Demonstrates How Dangerous Rich People With Agendas and Hubris Can Be

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Tons of discretionary cash allows “philanthropists,” who are frequently tunnel-visioned ideologues and aspiring authoritarians, to magnify their mistakes, misconceptions, biases and delusions into widespread catastrophes, all with the arrogance that luck and good fortune so often creates. Melinda Gates, Bill’s ex, has a couple billion dollars to play with thanks to marrying well and divorcing better, and her recent op-ed in the New York Times illustrates this principle.

There are so many ominous tells in Gates’s “The Enemies of Progress Play Offense. I Want to Help Even the Match” that I don’t have time to flag them all. The headline is one: doctrinaire progressives always equate their agenda items with “progress,” which is a word that implies beneficial change. That rhetorical trick has handicapped conservative thought and policy-making for centuries, though it is demonstrably false. Communism wasn’t “progress,” it was and has been a blight on civilization. The acceptance of promiscuous sex and having children out of wedlock wasn’t “progress;” the acceptance and legalization of recreational drugs isn’t “progress;” letting aliens stream over our borders largely without interference and consequences isn’t “progress;” using abortion as a primary means of birth control wasn’t “progress.” As obvious as these conclusions should be, the “change equals progress” fiction still works, which is why the Left still employs it regularly..

Her declaration to launch her new foundation vibrates with bias as well as bigotry. “We know” she writes, “that women’s political participation is associated with decreased corruption. That peace agreements are more durable when women are involved in writing them.” No, we don’t. That’s hoary anti-male propaganda (and “is associated with” screams “Weasel words!”)

Gates deplores “the Taliban takeover” that “has erased 20 years of progress for women and girls” without having the guts to risk the ire of her progressive audience by pointing out exactly who was responsible for abandoning women to the cruelty of the Taliban. She calls U.S. maternal mortality rates “unconscionable,” which implies wrongdoing. The Times link provided in the column suggests otherwise: the problem of high mortality rates in the U.S. is substantially the result of lifestyle choices available to mothers in a free society, including women in the U.S. delaying child birth past the healthiest time to have children.

Of course Gates doesn’t have the integrity to use plain language when it conveys unpleasant facts that undercut her advocacy: her cover-phrase for being able to kill a nascent human being is “reproductive rights,” neatly skipping the “right to grow and live” component of the issue. She also revels in pseudo-science, writing, “the number of teenage girls experiencing suicidal thoughts and persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness is at a decade high.” Sure, Melinda. Because of all the advances in mind-reading, I’m sure. How would one get that “number”?

And what kind of leader does Gates regard as a model for achieving her version of “progress”? “Recently, I offered 12 people whose work I admire their own $20 million grant-making fund to distribute as he or she sees fit,” Gates reveals. “That group….includes the former prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern.” Gates’ op-ed keeps referring to lost rights, yet one of her most admired people is the dictatorial former leader of New Zealand during the pandemic, who imposed draconian measures on her nation that crushed individual rights, while she sucked up to China, one of the world’s worst human rights offenders, in pursuit of economic benefits. China, of course, was responsible for the pandemic that Asdern used to expand her power to dictatorial levels.

Someone as arrogant and biased as Gates with two billion dollars to blow is like an ADD teen running amuck in a glass factory. Good luck, everyone!

Ethically Provocative Quote of the Month: Duval County School Board Member Charlotte Joyce

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“If we don’t do something about this problem, then it could be the demise of traditional public education in Duval County.”

—-Duval County school board member Charlotte Joyce during a recent board meeting, quoted by Politico in “School choice programs have been wildly successful under DeSantis. Now public schools might close. The Republican governor’s school choice programs may serve as a model for other GOP-leaning states across the country.”

I saw that two-day-old story from Politico while web-surfing late last night, and had two immediate reactions: “What a perfect opportunity for Bruce to make an appearance from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive!” and “Good!”

I know nothing about Charlotte Joyce, her political affiliation or her attitude toward public schools, but I do know this: America’s public school system is broken, and was broken deliberately by ideologues who decided that the best way to achieve radical transformation of American rights, society and culture was to use mandatory public education to indoctrinate children from the youngest ages right through high school, after which college would pick up the assignment. Parents, lazy, apathetic, uninvolved and often badly educated and uninformed themselves, allowed this to happen under their metaphorical noses. The horrific result, among many others, is that chaos on college campuses as students whose minds have been poisoned by intersectionality cant now equate the terrorism of Hamas with the civil rights march on Washington.

Good job, everybody!

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Busted! MIT’s Anti-White Program Exposed As the Illegal Discrimination It Is and Was Designed to Be

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Bravo to Prof. William Jacobson’s Equal Protection Project. Its civil rights complaint filed against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exposed the flaming racial discrimination engaged in by the Creative Regal Women of Knowledge, or “The CRWN” program. (Nice acronym-making there, MIT. I’d let the folks at Harvard try the next one while you stick to equations…) Jacobsen’s blog, Legal Insurrection, announced the complaint in a post, MIT Program Open Only To “Women of Color” Challenged By Equal Protection Project As Violating Civil Rights Laws,a week ago. After it received considerable local publicity, MIT tried to weasel its way out of the scandal by changing the way the program is described on its website, as you can see above.

Are they really that dense at MIT? Do its lawyer really think an announcement that says, “This program is designed to exclude white women, but we can’t stop you if you’re white and are determined to take part in a program where you’re obviously not welcome” complies with anti-discrimination laws. Can you imagine a college program described as one “designed to inspire white women” and “to support and celebrate” whites, but adding that its “open” to non-whites too causing anything but an uproar?

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Final Ethics Observations on the Media’s Alito Flag Set-Up

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

…the main one being that the distress signal is appropriate, because the Axis of Unethical Conduct proved with this fiasco that it is ruthless, shameless, untrustworthy, and will do anything in 2024 to mislead the public if it might mean a few extra votes for Democrats. Or maybe the main one is that your friendly neighborhood ethicist was right about this story from the very start, which is why Fredo asked to make another appearance as my spokesman.

And this, my friends, is why we can’t have nice things.

Or a functioning republic.

Let me not get to far ahead of myself. Right now, the whole, biased, corrupt, anti-Trump, anti-conservative, Biden-protecting propaganda-spewing mainstream news media, the third partner in the Ethics Alarms-dubbed Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance,” and Desperate Democrats completing the troika) is doing a mass Jumbo (“Flags? What flags?”) regarding what was its favorite earth-shattering scandal a week ago. This sudden amnesia was brought on because the Washington Post, perhaps seeking to embarrass its old rival, effectively eviscerated the Times’ “Get Justice Alito!” scoop, which EA first discussed here, and subsequently here, here, and here. (Don’t make me describe it again: I was sick of it days ago.)

Two days ago, the Post revealed that it had known about the first flag episode more than three years ago and had decided that it wasn’t newsworthy (because, as the revealed facts showed clearly, it wasn’t). Now-retired SCOTUS reporter Robert Barnes traveled to the Alito’s home on January 20, 2021, the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration, to follow-up on an anonymous tip he had received from some Alito-hating asshole neighbor about the flag. After investigating, Barnes and the Post concluded there was no story, because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, Alito’s wife, not the Justice, as part of her dispute with her neighbors.

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Ethics Villains: Ireland, Norway, and Spain

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This revolting development tempts me to write a dark parody of “Abraham, Martin and John” called “Ireland, Norway and Spain.” it would end with…

Anybody here not like terrorism?
Would you care to explain?
I guess it’s OK as long as it kills Jews
Say Ireland, Norway and Spain…

Spain, Norway and Ireland announced this week that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state. The coordinated announcements from the leaders of the three countries said that Palestinian independence should not have to wait for a negotiated peace deal with Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel immediately condemned the announcement as validating Hamas terrorism, which it undeniably does. Netanyahu has always held that the establishment of a Palestinian state would pose an “existential danger” to Israel, called the decision by the three nations “a prize for terrorism” that would “not stop us from reaching a victory over Hamas.” Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, said that Spain, Norway and Ireland had decided “to award a gold medal to Hamas terrorists.” The announcements were made just days after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on suspicion of war crimes.

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Note to the “Wise Latina”: There’s No Crying on the Supreme Court!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried. There have been those days. And there are likely to be more.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, where she was being honored….for what, I can’t imagine.

Awww! Poor Sonja! What’s she crying about? That she’s obviously over her head on the Supreme Court with actual legal scholars and experts who can make persuasive arguments about what the law is and what the Constitution means instead of just relying on warm, fuzzy feelings and mandatory progressive sentiment? That mean old conservatives aren’t buying her “But…but…it would be nicer if we decided this way” routine?

Did Sandra Day O’Connor, when she was in the minority on a liberal majority court, ever say she just went into her office and wept when a SCOTUS vote didn’t go her way? Did Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when she was on the losing end of a 5-4 ruling? Did Scalia? No, but this Justice not only weeps over her defeats, she thinks its something to be proud of.

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Nope, Can’t Watch “Bridgerton’ and Respect Myself in the Morning

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

I was looking for a new series to stream, as the time it takes on the streaming services for me to choose a movie almost requires as much time as watching the movie. At least with a series, your choice is pre-determined for many sessions. “Bridgerton” has a new season (#3), and I had never tested it; Grace had it on her list for future viewing, because she was an English literature major and knew the Regency period in England well.

I had quite a bit of trepidation approaching “Bridgerton” because it’s another Shandaland production. I eventually baled on every Shonda Rhimes show I’ve ever sampled, including her flagship, “Grey’s Anatomy”: they are all over-heated soap operas with less nuance than “Dallas.”

But what the hell. I started Episode 1 last night and made it maybe a third of the way through. The production values were high, and the acting was Masterpiece Theater-level at least. It had only two gratuitous and vigorous coitus scenes, which is less than the average for a Shondaland production. I could not, however, stomach the African-Americans and British aristocrats-of-color wandering around early 19th Century English social scene.

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A Critical Addendum to the Left’s Alito Flag Freakout

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I had already decided to shut down my commentary for the day (judging from the traffic, I see that a lot of people are starting their Memorial Day Weekend early) when I saw a fascinating note on The Volokh Conspiracy, and I just can’t let it pass, since it puts the two posts (here and here) about the “Get Alito!” flag fixation in proper perspective.

Josh Blackman, a regular contributor to VC, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, and the president of the Harlan Institute, reminded readers about something that occured the day after election day in 2016, November 9. The Supreme Court was in session, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore the jabot she only sported when dissenting from a majority opinion. Ginsberg herself had explained her sly fashion messaging in in 2014:

but in this case there was nothing to dissent from other than the obvious: Donald Trump, whom Ginsburg had called “a faker” before the election, had defeated Hillary Clinton. The Associated Press got the message and reported on it.

Unlike the Alito flags, there is no question about who was making the political statement regarding President Trump: it was Justice Ginsburg. Nobody fooled her into wearing that collar. A relative didn’t wear it, she did. Nor was the symbolism of the collar in question: Ginsberg herself had said exactly what it meant. This was a far less ambiguous and far more serious display of bias by a SCOTUS justice than the contrived flag outrage, yet no Republicans in Congress exploited the incident to call for Ginsburg to recuse herself from future cases, or to move for a Congressional censure.

Ah, but Ginsburg was a news media favorite, female, progressive, Democrat and cute in her casual and repeated crossing of the lines of judicial propriety. I have to check, but I don’t recall the members of my legal ethics expert association registering any problem with Ginsberg’s open protest of Trump’s election, while the listserv has been roiling over Alito’s flags all week, with Ginsberg-adoring female members being particularly indignant.

At the last second I deleted a comment I was ready to make yesterday after following the hypocritical thread. It read, “I’m sorry, but the partisan bias and hypocrisy being displayed here by alleged legal ethics scholars isn’t just depressing, it’s disgusting.”

Blackman concluded, “I have a very, very difficult time taking the outrage over the Alitos’ flags seriously. The Justices routinely convey messages through their words and deeds. Who gets to decide what is an appearance of impropriety? People who are inclined to despise the conservative Justices will draw the worst possible inferences from all of their acts….These people are loathe to co-exist with anything they disagree with, so will take umbrage at the slightest sleights.”

In contrast, I take it very seriously. The Double standard harshly demonstrates how little integrity and honesty exists even among our most trusted professionals.

Oh-Oh! Now It Seems That TWO Historical Flags Someone Else Has Used As Free Speech Were Seen Flying Over a Justice Alito Residence! Clearly, This Violates the “Obscure Flags” Section in the Judicial Code of Ethics….

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The contrived Justice Alito flags controversy has exactly one valid use: it shows that the panicked Axis has lost all sense of proportion and self-preservation, that its ethics alarms are deader than Generalissimo Franco, and that between now and November nothing can be ruled out, from violent uprisings to horrified leftist wackos tearing off their clothes, painting themselves mauve and running amuck coast to coast while shouting dirty limericks. Good to know.

Here’s the New York Times, which launched the previous “Bad flag, BAD flag! “scoop (as of this moment, the Times has published nine—NINE!—articles about the flags):

Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.

This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.

Three photographs obtained by The New York Times, along with accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by, show that the Appeal to Heaven flag was aloft at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023. A Google Street View image from late August also shows the flag.

In two words, so what?

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Not Exactly An Ethics Hero (Recovering Ethics Dunce, Maybe?): Comedy Central’s The Daily Show

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Look! The Daily Show is finally choosing to mercilessly mock not just absurd Democrats, but even absurd Democrats of color! See?

Well paint me blue and call me Smurphy! True, it only took almost four years, and a Republican with such rhetorical handicaps and brain fog would have been skewered weekly, indeed daily, by all of the Axis-allied comedy shows. Think of Dan Quayle, or David Letterman’s nightly mockery of George W. Bush, and Trump, of course. Late night TV has left a lot of big laughs on the metaphorical table, but it was worth it, the writers and comics concluded—“it” being to divide the nation, insult half of all potential viewers, and abandon their supposed mission of being as funny as possible without playing favorites, and politics be damned—to “get Trump” and make the world safe for Woke Fascism.

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