Government & Politics

Wait…What’s The Problem? Isn’t Mayor Wu Just Following The Tactics And Principles Of Her Party?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I don’t understand. The Biden Administration has declared that opponents of his policies are threats to democracy. The current Justice Department has sought extreme and excessive punishment for the protesters and rioters at the Capitol in January of 2021 while ignoring the violent and disruptive acts of the George Floyd Freakout rioters and demonstrators. The Democratic Administration sought to intimidate parents who were critical of woke school boards seeking to inject sexual politics and CRT ideology into public school curricula. And yet when Boston’s mayor Michelle Wu admitted that her staff compiled a list of her most vocal critics and protesters to hand to local law enforcement authorities, the public, which in Boston is primarily Democratic and progressive, howled in outrage.

This is how their increasingly totalitarian party operates in 2023. This is what they voted for. What are they complaining about?

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This Biased Journalism Fiasco Explains So Much It Should Be Taught In Journalism AND Ethics Classes

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! And sure, journalism is a profession! You can always trust journalism icons!

No…no…and no.

Business Insider published an alleged news article headlined, “More people actually moved out of Florida than New York or California in 2021.” Part of the ongoing effort on both the political Rights and the Left to sink Florida Governor Ron DiSantis’s chances of keeping Donald Trump off the GOP 2024 Presidential ticket, the story claimed to debunk the conventional wisdom that the ultra Woke states are bleeding residents while DiSantis’s state’s population is growing. 674,740 residents left Florida, BI told us, exceeding the total of 433,402 residents who had fled California and the 287,249 residents moving out of New York.

It was pure confirmation bias. The stats were unbelievable on their face, but the Business Insider staff believed them anyway, because they wanted to. After being roundly smacked on social media, BI reversed itself with a replacement post headlined, “We got it wrong: More people moved out of New York and California than Florida in 2021,” that revealed,

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Ethics Dunce: Power Line

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The tweet above is a joke, and announces itself as one. What makes the joke especially funny is that it is conceivable that New York’s ridiculous, socialist, Dunning-Kruger victim Congresswoman would really say something like this. That is also why it is extremely important ethically for the satire account’s tweets to make it clear that its output is parody.

The site does that. The account has the handle @AOCpressTwo and the username Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Press Release (parody). Its bio reads, “I’m the boss – you mad bro? (parody)” (www.twitter.com/AOCpressTwo).

However, in conservative website Power Line’s weekly collection of memes, cartoons and jokes covering the previous seven days’ events from a rightish perspective, it includes this version of the tweet:

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One Ethics Villain Promotes Another, As The Associated Press Pimps For Black Lives Matter On Its Anniversary

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Sometimes an ethics story defies my ability to devise an appropriate headline. The AP story “Black Lives Matter movement marks 10 years of activism and renews its call to defund the police” is a prime example. The story is even worse than the headline (“activism” is a deceitful and deceptive euphemism for violence, lies, divisiveness and fraud), with the once-trustworthy news organization displaying the worst of U.S. journalism’s ethics rot.

The scam that is Black Lives Matter has done nothing but damage since its emergence in 2013, but to hear the AP tell it, this is a movement for Americans to honor. Let’s see…I haven’t checked yet, and I promise to reveal what I find: is the AP’s reporter who wrote this junk, Aaron Morrison, an African American?

Why yes, he is! What a coinkydink. This piece of propaganda could only have been written by a devoted supporter; the AP rigged the story. That’s American journalism in 2023.

Let me provide some highlights with commentary:

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Incompetent Elected Officials Of The Month: Oregon Mayors Dean Sawyer And Matt Diaz

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

It demonstrates a critical lack of integrity to claim you believe one thing when addressing the community that elected you and to privately say the opposite. It is also irresponsible and incompetent to assert positions your supporters would object to in less-than-reliably private forums, like social media. As an extra layer of incompetence, two Oregon mayors were active on social media behaving like this when they clearly didn’t understand the perils of social media (though I bet they do now).

First let’s take the case of Dean Sawyer, the three term mayor of Newport, a city of about 10,000 residents in Oregon. A 30 year police force veteran, he joined a private Facebook group called “LE (that is, Law Enforcement) Only in2016, two years before he was elected mayor. All these years, while he has been extolling “diversity” and celebrating LGTBQ+ “pride,” he was mocking both, as well as progressive sacred cows like illegal immigrants, in his posts, often with particularly vulgar and juvenile memes. (During “Pride Month,” for example, Sawyer posted a photo of disgusted-looking, scantily clad women in a dressing room with the legend, “Strippers waiting for EMS to untangle the new girl’s balls from the pole.”) his luck ran out as it usually does with reckless social media users. Somehow Oregon Public Broadcasting got a tip and managed to track down Sawyer’s politically incorrect and wildly hypocritical posts. Then it wrote, in a special report headlined, “For years the mayor of an Oregon Coast city has posted hateful memes on Facebook”...

Since 2016, Sawyer has posted racist memes mocking Mexicans and endorsing former President Donald Trump’s hardline policies on immigration. One post in April made fun of trans swimmer Lia Thomas. Several mocked Bud Light, which has drawn the ire of Republicans for the company’s business relationship with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Both Thomas and Mulvaney have been targets of right wing smear campaigns and online harassment.

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Of Local Radio, Law vs. Ethics, Ruthless Capitalism And “It Is What It Is”: The WOAS Saga

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

WOAS 88.5-FM is a high school radio station, one of only 200 remaining in the U.S., that has been broadcasting from the Ontonagon High School building in Michigan since 1978. It has only10 watts of broadcasting power, but is still one of only two radio stations in Ontonagon, on Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula. Not only does it provide some listening variety for the town, it also is a valuable educational and recreational vehicle for high school students. Two snack vending machines inside the school largely cover WOAS’s costs, and everyone is a volunteer. After school hours, members of the community volunteer their time as disc jockeys.

WOAS is a Class D station, the lowest FCC classification, covering low-power, noncommercial radio stations. These are considered too weak and disposable to warrant regulatory protection, so when unprotected” from other broadcasters, which can legally overpower its signal or simply apply to take over the station’s place on the dial. WHWL 95.7-FM, with10,000 times the broadcasting power of the school station, applied to the FCC to take over its frequency and place on the radio dial. The FCC said, “Sure! Go ahead!” granting a license for a new station on 88.5 FM, where WOAS lives. The high school radio station now has to find itself a frequency, which costs money, or go gently into that good night.

When the high school asked the radio giant why it chose its place on the radio dial to invade, the answer was classic Bill Clinton: it did it because it could. The big station said it needs to expand and FCC rules allow them to just take over. A consultant looked at available frequencies available to WHWL to add stations, and it deemed 88.5 FM “the best.”

The fact that a high school was currently operating from there was not, apparently, part of the equation, or considered at all.

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Now THAT’S An Unethical Lawyer…And Maybe Two

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that lawyer James Saunders, who previously worked for the Internal Revenue Service, violated the law by voting twice in both the 2020 and 2022 national elections. His public defender Scott Roger Hurley—he’s on the right above— is arguing that his client should be acquitted because it was “an accident.” “Mistakes do happen, accidents do happen,” he told the court.

Suuuuure.

Saunders voted in two separate locations in two separate states: Cuyahoga County in Ohio, and Broward County in Florida, and in both elections. “The fact that you do that in consecutive general elections I think takes ‘accident’ to the land of imaginary doubt, and not reasonable doubt,” the prosecutor said.

Ya think?

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Unethical Quote Of The Week And Worst Apology Of The Month: Doug Dechert

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

New York gossip columnist Doug Dechert (above right), during the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.presidential campaign event for the press that he was hosting, became enraged during a contentious exchange regarding climate change and shouted,

“I’m farting!”

as he did, in fact, fart loudly for the assembled. That’s The Ethics Alarms Unethical Quote of the Week, ironically, because it was completely honest and factual. Later, he provided the Ethics Alarms Worst Apology of the Month, and maybe the year, by telling the New York Post, “I apologize for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence.”

This is also ironic, because it is a straightforward and seemingly sincere apology without qualifications, and yet is still terrible, indeed uniquely terrible, because it doesn’t even fit on the Apology Scale.

I suppose the closest would be #9: “Deceitful apologies, in which the wording of the apology is crafted to appear apologetic when it is not (“if my words offended, I am sorry”). Another variation: apologizing for a tangential matter other than the act or words that warranted an apology.” But the wording is deliberately humorous, raising the suspicion that Doug Dechert isn’t sorry at all, and doesn’t care if everyone knows he isn’t sorry. Moreover, intentionally farting at a public event you organized for a presidential candidate and announcing it, thus turning the event into a fiasco that can only embarrass the individual it was supposed to benefit, is one of those things that can’t be apologized for, like setting someone’s cat on fire.

Come to think of it, Dechert also should be in the running for the Ethics Alarms’ Asshole of the Year title. For more reasons than one.

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Anatomy Of A Canadian Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Ugh.

Alberta premier Danielle Smith was photographed with a man wearing the T-shirt you see above. It was circulated on social media. Immediately, she was criticized intensely, and predictably, Smith immediately groveled. Her spokesperson said, “The premier didn’t read his shirt and obviously doesn’t agree with its message. She has always been clear that she supports the LGBTQ+ community and will continue our work to make sure they feel safe in our province.”

What’s going on here?

1. The guy, whoever he is, is a jerk. That’s not a T-shirt, it’s a protest sign, and intentionally confrontational. I have always agreed with the maxim that a person’s IQ is inversely related to the number of words on his or her T-shirt. This is a prime example.

2. Further proving that the T-shirt wearer is someone to be avoided: the back of it read, “Good people disobey bad laws.” No, in fact good people obey all laws, or if they want to engage in civil disobedience, violate the “bad law,” accept the consequences, and see how many people agree with them. Asserting that it is good to break laws you happen to think are “bad” is a recipe for societal chaos.

3. The premier lied, and obviously so. How could she miss all those words, unless she can’t read? The guy’s a walking billboard; you can’t stand next to someone like that and not appear to be endorsing his message.

4. Whoever drafted that statement should be fired. What is it that Smith doesn’t agree with? Should straight people be ashamed? It’s not the message that is objectionable but the in-your-face gesture. It’s like “It’s OK to be white”—the shirt’s purpose is to annoy and start an argument.

5. What does a T-shirt have to do with “feeling safe”? Safe from words? Should non-LGBTQ individuals feel “unsafe” when they see Pride parades, signs and slogans?

Spain Demonstrates Why We Have The First Amendment, And Why The US Must Protect It

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Spain’s Parliament, in its wisdom, has declared dwarf bullfighting illegal. Not because the bulls are treated cruelly, mind you: oh no, that part is fine. It’s the small bullfighters the legislators find intolerable. (That’s a group of them rehearsing above.)

Comic bullfighting shows in which individuals with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, fight with juvenile bulls are now illegal. A new law bans “shows or leisure activities” employing a disability “to provoke public mockery, ridicule or derision.” As a result, the performers who earned their living putting on such shows are now forbidden from plying their craft, and citizens willing to pay to watch them can no longer do so. This is also embarrassing: the same law directs that “people with disabilities will participate in public shows and recreational activities, including bullfighting, without discrimination.”

Spain’s law arises from a failure to distinguish “Ick” from ethics, the same problem that has led some states to try to ban drag shows. There is no question that the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights would absolutely prohibit a law such as the Spanish dwarf bullfighting ban, and we should be grateful for that. The ethical principles embodied in freedom of expression include autonomy as well as intrinsic fairness and the Golden Rule validity of allowing others to have the same right to make their living as they choose without others deciding that because they wouldn’t make the same choices, those choices shouldn’t be available to anyone.

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