Government & Politics

“This is What Happens…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Except that this was no shark attack, and it wasn’t a boating accident or Jack the Ripper. This is what happens when an entire political party decides that it will never give an elected official the minimal bi-partisan support required to make our three Branch system work, and will ignore, breach or distort basic, core essential democratic principles and traditions to destroy him for as long as it takes.

That arm belongs to Lady Liberty.

Yesterday, two of the terrible consequences of the Democratic mania to destroy Donald Trump, first as President, then as ex-President and Presidential candidate, became especially vivid. Let me say, because if I don’t blow my metaphorical horn no one else will, that Ethics Alarms warned about all of this, tirelessly and repetitiously.

WordPress shows me the 10 tags I have used most frequently since Ethics Alarms began in 2009. Nine are what you would expect on an ethics blog: fairness, ethics, responsibility, integrity, trust, respect, hypocrisy, honesty…and the 2016 Post Election Train Wreck. That tag originated in 2016 when Ethics Alarms first blew the metaphorical whistle on the Democrats’ (along with “the resistance” and the news media) destructive, divisive, unprecedented and totalitarian-tending reaction to the (greatly deserved) loss by Hillary Clinton in a presidential race they thought was a sure thing. I have said repeatedly that the 2016 Post-election Ethics Train Wreck is the most serious and important ethics story in the 21st Century, and one of the five or so worst in our nation’s history. We survived the others, but were lucky. There is a substantial chance that this time, our luck will run out.

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Unethical “Journalist” of the Month: Jason Sattler

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ethics Alarms just added “Unethical Journalist” to its categories. I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier, but the furious “It isn’t what it is” caterwauling from so many mainstream media voices that it is absurd–absurd, I tell you!—for anyone to think that Joe Biden isn’t ready to win “Jeopardy” and recite the Constitution from memory sealed the deal. The spectacle has been as depressing for the public as it is embarrassing for the rotting profession of journalism.

Some sectors managed to barely turn around and accept reality, sort of: the New York Times, after publishing ridiculous denials from Paul Krugman and others, issued an editorial Sunday expressing alarm at the combined effect of the Biden DOJ’s Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 388 page report stating that the President had “diminished faculties” and was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” But even that cry in the dark concluded that Biden “needs to do more to show the public that he is fully capable of holding office until age 86,” a statement that disingenuously implies that Biden has done anything that indicates he can do his job now, much less in five years.” How can he do “more” to show something is true when it is so obvious that it isn’t true? It’s like complaining that public schools need to do more to show that they are unbiased and competent.

And naturally, the Times’ only stated impetus for its alarm was not that having a mentally deficient President is a peril to the nation, but that “the stakes in this presidential election are too high for Mr. Biden to hope that he can skate through a campaign with the help of teleprompters and aides and somehow defeat as manifestly unfit an opponent as Donald Trump.” (Don Surber, a newspaper journalist turned Substack pundit, notes that his old employers, which have seen their circulation more than halved in the last 20 years and opines that newspapers have destroyed their credibility by dropping all pretense of credibility and are doomed. “It is not that the media gets the story wrong; it is that the media seldom admits it was wrong,” he writes.)

Which brings me to “journalist” Jason Sattler.

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Forget “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” The Proper Reaction Should Be “What the Hell Is the Matter With You Hacks?”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The furious wagon-circling by left-biased journalists (or “journalists,” for short) in response to the DOJ Special Counsel’s stunning “Look! The Emperor has no clothes!” declaration in his report is another smoking gun in the “controversy” over whether Donald Trump was as right as he has ever been to call the media “enemies of the people.” It might even be the smokiest gun of all—more damning than the news media’s blatant cheer-leading for Barack Obama’s candidacy and destructive Presidency, more damning than its Black Lives Matter pandering during the BLM riots and its fearmongering during the pandemic, even more damning, perhaps, than its successful efforts to hide the evidence of Hunter Biden’s laptop until Donald Trump was safely defeated.

Confirmation bias and willful blindness still have their limits. How can any American with two brain cells to rub together observe the shameless gaslighting compiled in the video above and not be offended, disgusted, and angry?

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Ethics Quiz: The Governor’s Ex

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

We are getting closer to the Fani Willis hearing, which should be fun, but another Democrat has raised eyebrows with what seems like another outburst of nepotism and the appearance of impropriety.

Uber-woke Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey (D, as if you didn’t know) nominated her former girlfriend, Gabrielle R. Wolohojian, to serve on the state’s Supreme Judicial Court. Wolohojian is currently a Massachusetts Appeals Court Associate Judge. (About “girlfriend”: I’m afraid I’m using that term because I just heard lesbian comic Sandra Bernhardt’s rant about the cold inappropriateness of the favored term “partner” “What are we, a gay law firm?,” she said. No, I didn’t find the routine especially funny, but it stuck in my brain anyway…)

Wolohojian seems eminently qualified for the new position. Her law degree was earned at Cornell; she has been a partner at a major law firm; she clerked for a US District Court judge, and she has 15 years of experience on Massachusetts Appeals Court.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is Healey’s nomination still unethical if Wolohojian is legitimately qualified?

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What a Surprise. SCOTUS Agrees That the Left’s 14th Amendment Fantasy To Rig the 2024 Election Is the Cynical, Anti-Democratic Ploy That It Is.

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Reports on the oral argument before the Supreme Court indicate that the Justices’ questioning was harshly critical of the ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court under scrutiny. That was the declaration that former President Trump’s conduct after the election in 2020 made him ineligible to hold office under the 14th Amendment section barring those who engaged in an insurrection from running for office.

It wasn’t just the solid conservatives (above) who doubted the Colorado ruling; even two-thirds of the so-called liberal bloc of the Court seemed unimpressed by the Colorado decision banning Trump from the ballot, which by extension makes the Supreme Court’s decision applicable to Maine as well as any other Trump-fearing states that are inclined to try the same tactic. Every Justice except the pathetic Sonia Sotamayor expressed skepticism at the Colorado argument and appeared to be more sympathetic with Trump’s lawyer’s positions.

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Normalizing Theft

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Since we began the day with a dead canary in the mine of democracy, here’s another. That video shows a thief rampaging through an Apple Store in Emeryville, north of Oakland (where Woke Kindergarten romps). Nobody tries to stop him. Nobody even appears alarmed by him. He escapes by running right by a police car.

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Comment of the Day: “The Deceitful January Jobs Report”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This epic and must-read Comment of the Day by Chris Marschner—which he had to battle to get posted because of the WordPress glitches that have been plaguing EA commenters (and me, of course) for months, had me rejoicing in the wide range of expertise and experience the Ethics Alarms readers bring to the mission here. Then it caused me to become frustrated and depressed. The media makes no effort to explain these issues and enlighten the public with similar clear exposition, and if it did, I wonder how many Americans would take the time to read it. I also wonder how many Americans would understand such an explanation even if they tried.

Meanwhile, I despair of any politician or candidate for office having the clarity of thought and speech to bring what Chris is talking about into the political campaigns this year—-and there are no more crucial matters than these for voters to understand. In the 1992 presidential campaign, rogue candidate Ross Perot bought time on network TV to explain the national debt and why it was dangerous. He used humble tools: paper charts and a pointer. But Perot understood what he was describing, pulled no punches, and spoke clearly and simply. It was a national service: I voted for him as my gesture of gratitude.

If only Donald Trump could explain and debunk the lies being used to misrepresent the economy as clearly as Ross Perot explained the debt…but Trump couldn’t explain that the square of the hypotenuse in a right triangle is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides without descending into stream-of-consciousness blather.

Isn’t there some way we could draft Chris Marschner to run for President?

Here is his Comment of the Day, supplemented by his subsequent comment expanding on his original post, on “The Deceitful January Jobs Report”…

***

I was hoping you would address this issue of misleading economic data. The jobs report is one that is always subject to deceit. Beyond the absolute numbers and hours worked we should mention that the growth sectors of jobs were health care, low wage hospitality and government. Many of these jobs are driven in large part by the massive numbers (about 7.5 million) of illegal “migrants” who have been given parole by the Biden administration and dispersed throughout the country.

When I taught first year Economics I would tell my students that numerical values do not tell the whole story and you must dig into the numbers to draw any real conclusions. For example, a higher investment value does not mean our capital stock is increasing which would lead to more output at lower costs. I see the Biden administration as the proverbial glazer who breaks windows to increase business. That activity will increase nominal GDP but we are wasting resources unnecessarily.

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Regarding “The Appeaser’s Apology”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In last week’s open forum, there was discussion regarding this incident:

During his testimony in a U.S. Senate hearing on social media and its negative effect on children, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to a question inquiring whether he had taken any action to mitigate the problem, such as firing employees, providing compensation to alleged victims or apologizing to the families of people who were harmed by posts on Facebook or Instagram, which his company also owns. In response, Zuckerberg stood up, turned to an audience including parents holding up pictures of loved ones, and said,

“I am sorry for everything that you have gone through. It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things your family has suffered. And this is why we invested so much and will continue doing industry leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things your families have had to suffer.”

Tasked (by himself) with deciding where this statement falls on the Ethics Alarms Apology Scale, commenter JutGory opined,

It almost looks like a Number 8 (A forced apology for a rightful or legitimate act, in capitulation to bullying, fear, threats, desperation or other coercion.), except that Zuckerberg is not apologizing for a rightful or legitimate act. The Legislators were ascribing acts to him when he did nothing.

It also looks like a 10 (An insincere and dishonest apology designed to allow the wrongdoer to escape accountability cheaply, and to deceive his or her victims into forgiveness and trust, so they are vulnerable to future wrongdoing.), except that, again Zuckerberg is not apologizing for something he did.

I think the Apology Scale needs another collateral entry that does not actually fit on the scale: The Appeaser’s Apology: A forced apology offered in response to a baseless accusation of wrongdoing because the person demanding the apology is too stupid or self-righteous to bother reasoning with.

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Stop Making Me Defend Tucker Carlson!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’m reasonable sure I have made my ethical assessment of Tucker Carlson clear for years now: he’s an opportunist, he’s a demagogue, he’s ambitious and it is impossible to determine what he really believes. He’s also glib and articulate, and I could not care less what he advocates or opposes, since he makes such calculations based on ratings and their perceived usefulness in giving him fame and power.

However, lately Carlson is taking flack because he is in Russia, apparently preparing to interview Vladimir Putin. The criticism is across the partisan and ideological spectrum. The Left, predictably, detests Carlson and would criticize anything he did. But conservatives are attacking him too. Bill Kristol, the NeverTrump director of Defending Democracy Together, said sarcastically, “Perhaps we need a total and complete shutdown of Tucker Carlson re-entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital on CNN that Carlson is “either remarkably stupid or consciously evil.” “He’s not stupid,” replied CNN’s John Harwood. Adam Kinzinger, who along with Liz Cheney served as one of the only two Republicans on the House select committee that turned the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot into an extended “Get Trump!” kangaroo court, pronounced Carlson “a traitor”.

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Flat Learning Curve at Harvard

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Two depressing items to diges in the apparently unstoppable decline of Harvard University: the headline was composed based on the first, but the second may be even more disturbing. (Incidentally, I feel I should apologize for presenting so many EA posts involving my alma mater —and that of my sister and father, and where my mother was briefly a dean. However, its decay and current crisis mode would be ethics fodder of the same import if I had matriculated from Podunk U.)

First, here is the main substance of the proud announcement I was gifted with over the weekend from Harvard’s interim president. Recall that Harvard’s recent fiasco was seeded by a leadership group and campus culture that prioritized “diversity, equity and inclusion” to such an extent that it elevated an under-qualified, academically devious dean who had been involved in woke debacles during her tenure to be the new university president, primarily on the basis of her career-long obsession with “diversity” (and her color and gender, naturally). Coming under just and vituperative criticism for both engineering Claudine Gay’s ascent and later, after she had proven herself unfit for the job, acting to cover-up the scandal until the pressure by donors and students became too intense, was the Harvard Corporation, an all-Democrat and progressive woke cabal that ironically lacked diversity itself in the areas of world view and thought. Behold the two new members of that body selected in the wake of the criticism:

“…We write to let you know that two accomplished alumni will join the Harvard Corporation in the coming months…

Ken Frazier, a 1978 graduate of Harvard Law School, is former chairman and CEO of Merck & Co… he has had a distinguished career as a practicing lawyer, first in private practice and later as Merck’s general counsel. Known for his dedication to expanding opportunity for others, he recently co-founded OneTen, a nonprofit coalition focused on expanding family-sustaining employment opportunities for people lacking a four-year degree with an emphasis on Black Americans....

…His many honors include the Anti-Defamation League’s Courage Against Hate Award (2020) “for using his platform to speak out on behalf of marginalized communities and serving as an exemplary role model for corporate leadership.”

…Joe Bae, a 1994 graduate of Harvard College, is co-CEO of KKR, a global investment firm…he has served on numerous boards, including institutions such as the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (current vice chair), Phillips Academy Andover (former trustee and chair of nominating and governance committee), the Asia Society, the Hong Kong Ballet, and the Nature Conservancy’s Asia Pacific Council. He is also a co-founder and board member of The Asian American Foundation (TAAF), which was established in 2021 to serve the Asian American and Pacific Islander community….Along with his wife, the novelist Janice Y. K. Lee ’94, he led a recent philanthropic drive to support an FAS initiative to expand education and scholarship in Asian American studies.

Frazier is black, and has concentrated on programs and initiatives assisting African Americans. Bae is Asian, and his focus has been substantially in the area of advancing the interests of Asian-Americans. Bae’s appointment is a pretty transparent reaction to Harvard’s losing the lawsuit by Asian-Americans who claimed they had been discriminated against by the school’s affirmative action policies, recent ruled illegal by the Supreme Court.

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