Government & Politics

Thoughts While Reading Classmate Entries In My Alma Mater’s Anniversary Report, #5: Bias Really Does Make You Stupid…Or Worse

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The stunning thing is how many of my aging classmates, no matter what they’ve accomplished and how credentialed they are, have their brains riddled with progressive cant, Trump-Derangement, and climate-change fanatacism. They usually save their rants for the end, after leading the reader on by impressive accounts of career triumphs, arcane literary references, and skilled writing.

A report I read last night by a retired physician was sailing along, rational as could be, and then unravels like the rebel leader in Woody Allen’s “Bananas,” who once he overturns a South American dictatorship gives a speech announcing that the national language will henceforth be Swedish. The doctor warned of madness to come by listing, among the activities he and his still practicing physician wife are passionate about, “seeing Marlon every chance we get.” Surely he doesn’t mean Marlon Wayans or Marlon Jackson; it must be a reference to Marlon Brando.

Okaaay, that’s a little strange: Brando was a great actor and all, but he made maybe ten really good movies (I just checked that: ten is a stretch) and was a self-indulgent, pompous jerk. A non-actor being obsessed with “Marlon” is an ominous sign. Quickly after that admission we get “The Republican push to delegitimize any election they don’t win screams 1938.” Ah, a “Republicans are Nazis” shot…and Republicans push to delegitimize elections they don’t win? A bit of selective history there, Doctor.

Then comes the obligatory climate change hysteria: “The existential threat of climate change has me thinking about Marlon in a haze of worry and terror…Greta Thunberg has it absolutely right.”

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It’s Unethical For A Leader To Refuse To Fire Incompetent Subordinates. Somebody Tell President Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The current poster boy for incompetent Biden appointees and subordinates who are apparently immune from firing is Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Like so many in this administration, Buttigieg was hired to please a Democratic Party constituency, not because there was any reason to believe he would be good at his job. He was an ineffective mayor of a small city: that gave him neither experience in key transportation systems or a background in running a large bureaucracy. Buttigieg’s sole qualifications for the Cabinet position were and are that he is openly gay and in a same-sex marriage, making him “historic.” I know, I know: I don’t understand how where you want to put your whackadoodle makes you better at keeping the trains running on time either, but that’s apparently the theory.

To call Buttigieg a disaster in his job would be too kind. The supply chain fell apart on his watch. Shortly after taking over his 58,000-employee department, a supply chain breakdown damaged businesses, harmed consumers and fueled inflation. Meanwhile, the DOT Secretary has prioritized touch-feely DEI measures above actually overseeing the transportation systems. In the midst of the worst of the supply chain crisis, he took two months paternity leave. Throughout Buttigieg’s tenure, railroads had been unable to reach an agreement with the dozen labor unions representing their workers. Buttigieg was vacationing in Portugal when a rail strike seemed imminent in September, so Labor Secretary Marty Walsh stepped in to avert one. So far.

When soaring gas prices made highway transportation too expensive for many Americans, Buttigieg’s contribution was to lecture us on the need to buy electric cars. A system wide collapse at Southwest Airlines resulted in thousands of flight cancellations and delays over the holidays, stranding thousands of travelers. A primary cause was inadequate oversight of the airlines by the agencies under Buttigieg’s command. Then this week, a safety system outage forced the Federal Aviation Administration to temporarily ground all U.S. flights for the first time since the 9/11 attacks.

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The Bottom Line On The Moderna Booster Scandal: Apologies Please, And Now

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It is nice to see CNN practicing journalism again. though.

A CNN report published yesterday revealed that the pharmaceutical company Moderna withheld data from both U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisers last summer pointing to “the possibility that the updated booster might not be any more effective at preventing Covid-19 infections than the original shots.”

The booster’s impact on actual infections, based on trials, indicated that “1.9% of the study participants who received the original booster became infected” while “those who got the updated bivalent vaccine – the one that scientists hoped would work better – a higher percentage, 3.2%, became infected.” The FDA authorized the Moderna bivalent vaccine on August 31, and did not publicize the previously omitted infection data until September 13. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: As The Founders Roll Over In Their Graves…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

The headline: “Hamtramck City Council votes to allow animal sacrifice for religious purposes in the city.”

The act of animal sacrifice is often practiced among Muslims during the celebration of  Eid al-Fitr, and Muslims make up a majority on the council, it seems. There’s not much more that needs to be said, is there?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz to begin this cold and gloomy Thursday (at least where I am) is…

Are animal sacrifices for any reason ethical in the United States of America?

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Ethics Observations On The 2022 Gallup “Americans’ Ratings of Honesty and Ethics of Professions”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Here it is…

Those polled were asked, “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields — very high, high, average, low or very low?” Continue reading →

What’s Going On Here? You Tell Me…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

This isn’t an ethics quiz. It’s not ethics commentary. This is clearly an ethics episode, but, frankly, I’m exhausted. I’m fighting some kind of flu (no, not Wu-Flu); I have a pile of half-begun and half-thought out ethics stories on a cyber-pile, and I just feel overwhelmed and depressed. So I’m just going to present this weird event from the public [NOT ‘pubic,’ as I typoed once again] school chaos, and I invite readers to explain what ethics issues they see here.

Ready?

For  the latest edition of  the NPR’s podcast “Planet Money”,  Shale Meadows Elementary School third grade teacher Mandy Robek was scheduled to read books reading “The Sneetches” to her class as part of about the theme of economics education from in children’s books. Amanda Beeman, the assistant director of communications for the Olentangy Local School District (in Ohio) prepared for the segment by choosing books from the school’s library. The district had stipulated that politics were off limits for discussion. “Pancakes, Pancakes!” by Eric Carle; “Put Me In The Zoo” by Robert Lopshire; a poem from “Where The Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein, and “The Sneetches” by Dr. Seuss were ultimately read to the class. Well…almost.

You know “The Sneetches,” right? Published in 1961, the story is about a community of long-necked birds that all look identical except that  some have stars on their bellies and some don’t. The Plain-Belly Sneetches are traeted by the rest as inferiors, so entrepreneur Sylvester McMonkey McBean sells them stars so they can aspire to be Star-Belly Sneetches.The Star-Bellied Sneetches, resenting the intrusion on their select domain, then succumb to a scheme to have them pay to remove their natural stars. Now the once- Star-Bellied Sneetches will be Plain-Belly Sneetches, and can look down on the former Plain-Belly Sneetches all over again. Meanwhile, supply and demand makes the local capitalist rich. 

“I don’t know if I feel comfortable with the book being one of the ones featured,” Beeman was heard saying on the podcast during the middle of “The Sneetches” reading by the teacher. “I just feel like this isn’t teaching anything about economics, and this is a little bit more about differences with race and everything like that.” As if on cue, a third-grade student soon piped up, “It’s almost like what happened back then, how people were treated … Like, disrespected … Like, white people disrespected Black people!” Continue reading →

On The Biden Administration’s Proposed Gas Stove Ban

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

If this doesn’t make a lot of Americans understand the conservative agenda items seeking smaller government, less powerful government agencies and reduced federal regulation, nothing will.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is opening a period of public comments on the “dangers of gas stoves.” An estimated 40% of the public uses gas stoves. Most restaurants use gas stoves; some foreign cuisines, like Chinese varieties, depend on them. Nobody has complained noticeably about gas stoves being deadly in the 200 years they have been in use. Never mind: CPCP commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told Bloomberg News, “This is a hidden hazard. Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

How are gas stoves “unsafe”? The EPA and WHO say they “emit pollutants including nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter” above levels deemed acceptable. The sudden rush to ban the stoves appears to have been triggered by (or was waiting around hoping to find such a claim as) a single study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Of course, the Climate Nazis have been agitating about gas stoves on the sidelines for decades, which, they say, “jump-starts childhood asthma, increases the risk of respiratory problems, and emits planet-warming gasses.” Naturally, then, the mainstream media can be expected to cheer-lead the latest government effort to use the environment as an excuse to control American lives and choices just a bit more, because they know best. The Washington Post’s climate change propagandist gave her seal of approval yesterday.

Don’t worry about the extra costs of getting those electric ovens, she assures us. After all,

…the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate bill passed last year, includes cash to help low- and moderate-income households move away from their gas stoves. Starting later this year, millions of Americans could get up to $840 off the cost of an electric or induction stove.

Inflation reduction! Landmark! Hand-outs for low- and moderate-income households, as long as they spend the money on what they’re told to! National debt? What’s that? Nah, the mainstream media isn’t pimping for the Democrats! Why would anyone think that?

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Rep. Ilhan Omar

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“I think it would be [hypocritical] for [Speaker McCarthy] to remove, you know, the first African-born on the subcommittee on Africa on the Foreign Affairs Committee, where I’ve had the opportunity to not only represent my constituents but the voice of so many people who have never had a voice on the Foreign Affairs Committee.”

—Rep. Omar (D-Minn), playing the race card, as usual.

I take no stand at this point regarding the tit-for-tat move of Speaker Kevin McCarthy to pull Omar from the the Foreign Affairs Committee, presumably because of her frequent anti-Semitic outbursts. The Democratic House had kicked Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene off the Budget and as well as the  Education and Labor Committees in February 2021 over her comments pushing conspiracy theories about Jews. McCarthy is simply applying the standards Nancy Pelosi established. (Both Greene and Omar are unethical Congresswomen who embarrass the institution as well as the districts that elected them.)

However, Omar’s claim that “historic” officials (translation: some combination of black, foreign-born, female, Muslim, gay or trans) should be held to different (translation: lower) standards of conduct than others is, while wholly predictable,  unethical by definition, as well as self-serving, discriminatory, and nauseating.

But that’s Rep. Omar.

And her party.

And the progressives who make up most of the membership of that party.

And the various tribal groups they cluster in.

Ethics Villains: Fairfax Virginia High Schools, And Why Isn’t The News Media Treating This As The Major Scandal It Is? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Let’s start with a memorable quote from that eloquent villain, Auric Goldfinger: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”

This is enemy action against motivated and talented students, responsible and trusting parents, and core American values. It should be reported as such and responded to with the vigor and relentlessness the attack warrants, but the news media is burying the story, because they are enemies as well.

Happenstance: My fault. I reported this story as the last item in the Ethics Alarms Christmas Eve ethics outrage collection, here, pretty much guaranteeing that even fewer people would see it than usual. It should have been a full post. I wrote,

City-Journal reports that at Thomas Jefferson High in Fairfax, Virginia, two administrators have been withholding notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s students awarded them, most of them Asian. This denied those students the chance to use those awards to boost their college-admission prospects and earn scholarships. The author believes that this was intentional, a part of “the school district’s new strategy of “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.” School administrators, for instance, have implemented an “equitable grading” policy that eliminates zeros, gives students a grade of 50 percent just for showing up, and assigns a cryptic code of “NTI” for assignments not turned in. It’s a race to the bottom.”The school’s leadership is acting as if it was just an oversight—for at least three years. Read the article. [Pointer: Mark Metcalf]

Well, hey, that’s just one DEI-obsessed principal, and she’s apologized and maybe will get fired, so all is well, right? Wrong:

Coincidence? The Fairfax Times reports that while Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Michelle Reid claimed the principal at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology withheld National Merit awards from students in a “one-time human error,” Langley High School Principal Kim Greer sent an email to parents apologizing for doing the same thing:

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Oh, Fine…Now I have To Defend George Santos

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

It isn’t as if there aren’t more than enough legitimate accusations one can make against Rep. George Santos, the phony, lying, none-too-bright Republican from  New York who somehow faked his way into Congress Nonetheless, the Republican-hating news media still has to manufacture absurd accusations against this jerk  to demonize the whole party, to wit: Based on the instant captured in the photo above, we were told…

  • “In a now-viral photo, Santos is shown with his fingers forming an OK gesture, a symbol that the Anti-Defamation League calls a sincere expression of white supremacy.”[Vanity Fair]
  • “Embattled Republican congressman George Santos faced criticism after he appeared to flash a white supremacist symbol while casting his vote on the House floor.” [Pink News]
  • “Incoming Rep. George Santos appeared to flash a widely known white supremacist hand sign on the floor of the U.S. House on Thursday evening, according to images captured by photojournalists.” [Newsday]
  • “Newly elected freshman Rep. George Santos (R-NY) makes White power gesture as he casts his vote for House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy.” [Intellectualist]
  • “While raising his right hand to signal his vote in support of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for House Speaker on Thursday, Santos made an “OK” hand gesture with his left hand.It’s unclear why Santos made the gesture, but some right-wing trolls have increasingly used the “OK” symbol as a way to signal support for white supremacy…” [MSN]

And so on.  All completely unfair and contrived, as this video shows: Continue reading →