Government & Politics

Ethics Alarms Thanks The Ethicist For Some Non-Pandemic Topics

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

With  about 80% or more of all news stories somehow involving the Wuhan virus and its effects (World War II must have been like this), finding non -pandemic stories and ethics issues has become an irritating and challenging job.

Fortunately, Kwame Anthony Appiah’s “The Ethicist” column” this week saw two interesting issues arise, both of which he answered correctly. (There are other questions in the column too.) One inquirer asked, “It has become clear to me, however, that individual senators and other elected officials outside my state do indeed have a powerful effect on the entire country. Is it appropriate for me to donate to candidates in elections in which I cannot vote?”

Of course it is. Appiah wrote essentially what I would: “As you recognize, the effects politicians have aren’t confined to their immediate constituencies. On the contrary, the prospects for our country depend on who holds elective offices at every level. For one thing, representatives from each of the states in the U.S. House and Senate vote on national legislation. For another, policies in one state affect what happens in others….We are one nation; if we’re to aim at liberty and justice for all, we need to do it together.”

Bingo.

The second question was interesting because it is amazing that anyone would have the gall to make such an outrageous request, and fascinating that anyone would be so  puzzled about how to respond that they would seek advice from a third party: Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 3/21/20: I See Terrible People.”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I’m embarrassed that I didn’t come up with “Fu Manchu Flu”…

Yesterday, Chris Marschner set an Ethics Alarms record with two Comments of the Day in a single day. His riff on (yecchh!) “Imagine’ was #1, this more traditional COTD is #2. I’m equally grateful for this one, because I had eschewed mentioning the small matter of the Obama response to the 2009-2010 H1N1 virus and the press coverage of that response. Why? Well, I get tired of being accused of mouthing conservative talking points, even when they are only conservative talking points because the left-wing mainstream media unethically ignores them. It also seems like whataboutism, though it is not: if resistance-allied pundits are going to tell the public that President Trump’s response to the Wuhan virus pandemic is deadly and incompetent, then they are obligated to explain why the previous President’s unquestionable worse response to his virus challenge was considered just fine, thanks. Nonetheless, the “Wait, how can you square your criticism of Trump with your Obama cheerleading?” refrain has become a cliche, even though it has done so because it has been a legitimate question so often.

Thus, twice in a single day, Chris Marschner saved me from a task I was not eager to complete. His starting point was the note in my post about Joe Biden planning on a regular feature online second-guessing the President’s response to the Wuhan virus.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 3/21/20: I See Terrible People.”

We actually have a pandemic that Biden’s actions can be measured against. The 2009 breakout of the pH1N1 flu.

“Final estimates were published in 2011. These final estimates were that from April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010 approximately 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (8868-18,306) occurred in the United States due to pH1N1.”
https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/estimates_2009_h1n1.htm Continue reading →

Once Again, “The Good Illegal Immigrant.” Once Again, I Am Not Sympathetic

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Nor should I be.

Nor should you.

Once again, the New York Times has published another of its entries into what I call “The Good Illegal Immigrant” files. The “good illegal immigrant” is a contradiction in terms, as much as “the good embezzler” or “the good bigamist.” This ongoing propaganda by the Times as the journalistic vanguard of the open borders mission of the American Left is in its fourth year. These features are stuffed with emotionally manipulative tales and quotes about the travails of residents of the United States who broke the law by coming here, and who continue to stay here, reaping the benefits that are supposed to be reserved to citizens while being nauseatingly self-righteous about it. The Times surpasses itself this time, with “Telling the Truth Wasn’t An Option” by Julissa Arce, illegally in this country from the age of eleven, whose dilemma was finally resolved when she married an American citizen.

It’s convenient that the title itself embodies a rationalization, indeed a couple whoppers from the Ethics Alarms list: #25, The Coercion Myth: “I have no choice!” and #31. The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now.” Telling the truth is always an option if one has the courage and integrity to be accountable. The headline applies to anyone who is engaged in an ongoing crime, or guilty of a past one, except that in this case, the individual feels uniquely entitled to not only avoid the just consequences of  her own actions, but to seek sympathy for her discomfort in doing so. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Life Competence Note: There Is No Way You Will Look Smart Or Competent Quoting ‘Imagine'”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I can’t fully express how gratifying it has been to see so many among the commentariat enthusiastically participating in a mass trashing of “Imagine,” John Lennon’s grandstanding ode to faux ethics Karl Marx-style. As I have mentioned here periodically, I have detested the song since I first heard it, and have had dire suspicions about the brain pan depth of any acquaintance who teared up when the thing played. Inspired and encouraged, I put “Imagine” torture among the punishment options in today’s poll on the best way to wreak societal vengeance on the teens deliberately coughing on supermarket produce,   and it’s doing surprisingly well:

A major assist for this Comment of the Day goes to Mrs. Q, who wrote,

Living in Portland it’s almost impossible to not hear this piece of shit song in every coffee shop, restaurant, and wherever else you’re trying not to loose your lunch. Once I was so aggravated at hearing it, I unethically told a fib to our waiter, that my (non-existent) sister committed suicide to the song. He turned it off and I enjoyed the rest of my meal…until Yellow Submarine came on. Karma indeed.

Imagine there’s no Imagine.

I was tempted to take up the challenge and compose an “Imagine There’s No Imagine” parody, but that would have required me to carefully listen to the song more than once, and I’d rather get the Wuhan flu.  Chris Marschner beat me to it, saving my sanity and earning his Comment of the Day on the post, “Life Competence Note: There Is No Way You Will Look Smart Or Competent Quoting ‘Imagine'”:

I have begun rewriting the lyrics and ask all to assist and improve.

Imagine there’s no Seven-Eleven
It’s easy if you try
No Big Gulps for the thirsty
Just whole wheat and rye

Imagine all the people
Living for today
So what else is new (ew ew)

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to plan or hope for
It’s just a fuckin zoo

Imagine all the people
Living life on the streets
They do (hoo hoo hoo)

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
the Bernie bros will welcome you
And the world will be covered in pond scum

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
that means no one can steal from you
Cause your home’s under the bridge span

Imagine all the people
Huddlin to stay warm
(hoo hoo ooh ooh)

You may say that I’m a dreamer
I’m not the only one
There are other nuts among us
Just put your possessions in that box over there
and I will dispose of them when I can.

Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 3/21/20: I See Terrible People.

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Good morning…

1. Asshole move. Joe Biden says he is going to start a broadcast from his bunker essentially second-guessing everything President Trump does. That’s  despicable conduct generally, and wildly unethical conduct in a national crisis.

If anyone can come up with a more civil but equally accurate word for this kind of unprecedented effort to undermine Presidential leadership, please let me know.

2. Meanwhile, apparently terrified that the public isn’t properly blaming Trump for the pandemic, the Washington Post has an entirely anonymously sourced story this morning about how the White House did not take early reports about the virus’s spread in that country that had nothing to do with the pandemic s seriously enough. In “U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic,” we are told, “The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take…. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak…. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month….”

Mark Tapscott notes that on the same op-ed page, nine former intelligence chiefs” warn that: “We cannot let the covid-19 pandemic be a cover for the deeply destructive path being pursued by the Trump administration. The most recent illustration of this unprecedented attack is the continuing dismissal of career intelligence professionals — officers who have ably served both Republican and Democratic administrations regardless of their personal political stripe.” He wonders where those “unsourced” sources for the White House briefings came from, and suggests that “Trump is remaking the leadership of the intelligence community, displacing the entrenched bureaucrats – careerists and career political operators – who tried to sell us the Russia hoax, the Mueller probe and the quid pro quo. So in response, they are weaponizing the coronavirus.” When officials make accusations and won’t go on the record, their motives are suspect, and deserve to be. This is why, once upon a time, the Post and other news organizations were wary of anonymous sources.

3. Kudos to Ann Althouse who mentions, though the Post somehow let this slip its mind, that during this period President Trump was the defendant in an impeachment trial, meeting regularly with his lawyers and Senate members, and was not acquitted until February 5th. The illicit impeachment was designed to cripple the Presidency, and now the Post is accusing the President of not being sufficiently attentive to a Chinese virus outbreak about which these unnamed intelligence officers would not  “predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take.”

Ann gets double kudos for noting:

“And here’s a WaPo article from January 21st, 11 days before the aquittal: “Trump administration announces mandatory quarantines in response to coronavirus.”

The White House declared a “public health emergency” and — beginning on Sunday at 5 p.m. — will bar non-U.S. citizens who recently visited China from entering the United States, subject to a few exemptions…. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar also said the Trump administration would quarantine any Americans who had visited China’s Hubei province, where the disease originated, within the past 14 days….

President Trump so far has remained uncharacteristically muted on the coronavirus and praised China’s extraordinary response to the growing outbreak. On Wednesday, he tweeted photos of his Situation Room briefing and said his administration was working closely with China to contain the outbreak….

“That happened at a time when the World Health Organization was recommending that there be no travel restrictions”

4.  I don’t even know how to title this. Over on The View, even without the participation of the biggest fool in the room, Joy Behar, the ladies treated its audiences to this;

  • Whoopie Goldberg, the smartest one on the panel, God help us, said, “The interesting thing about all of this is whatever channel you’re watching, you’re still watching from home. You’re watching from inside your house. Because a pandemic has happened, and you are stuck, and whatever side you’re on, you understand that when you have leadership you would not be — you would not be stuck in your house.”

That’s right. Every nation is working to keep its citizens from spreading the virus, but if it wasn’t for the President’s mishandling of the crisis, Americans would be going about life as usual.

  • Then Sunny Hostin, who might beat Joy in a Scrabble game, but not by much, again flogged the false narrative that Trump called the virus a hoax.  It has been debunked and debunked, yet ABC had nobody available, certainly not on the biased and information-challenged panel, to correct this lie. Here, one again, is what the President actually said :

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No they can’t. They can’t count their votes.

One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax….

The hoax was and is that the  Democrats, “resistance” and news media—and Whoopie,—are claiming that Trump is at fault for the pandemic. I wouldn’t call that a “hoax”—it’s just a lie, just like saying that  he ever called the disease itself, or the threat it posed, a hoax.

These are all terrible people, and I can only hope that they get what they deserve.

Ethics Train Wreck Analysis: The Richard Jewell Case

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Richard Jewell,” Clint Eastwood’s excellent but much maligned film about a historical episode with many ethics twists and turns, is extremely accurate and fair in all respects, except for the glaring exception of the screenwriter  Billy Ray’s representation that reporter Kathy Scruggs obtained the information that Jewell was under suspicion by the FBI in exchange for one night stand with the agency’s lead investigator. This was the point where the Richard Jewell Ethics Train Wreck of 1996 acquired a car containing the 2019 movie “Richard Jewell.”

Let’s look at those other cars.

I. Jewell

Jewell was a socially awkward, lonely, obese man who lived with his mother. He was in many ways a stereotypical misfit with low  self-esteem, who developed ambitions about becoming a law enforcement officer, a job that would would provide him with the respect and power that he lacked and wanted. The film begins with Jewell’s stint as an office supply clerk in a small public law firm, where he becomes friends with attorney Watson Bryant. Jewell quits to pursue his dream of becoming a law enforcement officer, and Bryant, in saying good-bye, asks his friend to promise that if he ever acquires the authority he seeks, he won’t become a jerk, and abuse it.

This was a real life conversation. Bryant recognized that Jewell was a border-line Asperger’s sufferer, whether or not he knew the name or the clinical condition, and exactly the kind of personality who should never be given a shield and a gun.

Jewell took a job as a campus security officer at Piedmont College, and rapidly realized Watson Bryant’s worst fears by reacting to his authority by abusing it, being over-zealous and generating an unusual number of complaints from students. Jewell was fired, but the need for security personnel at the upcoming Atlanta Olympics gave Jewell another chance at some authority at least. He probably shouldn’t have had such a chance. Jewell was not a man who should have been in the security field or the law enforcement field; his judgment was poor, and his emotional problems made him a bad risk.

Thus the conditions for the ethics train wreck were put in place. It was up to moral luck whether hiring Richard Jewell would turn out to be a disaster, or a  fortunate near miss. Instead, it turned out to be something else entirely, a classic example of a bad decision having a good result—at least for a while.

2. The Bomb

In the early morning of July 27, 1996, Jewell, now working in Atlanta’s Centennial Park as part of the Summer Olympics security force, noticed an abandoned backpack by a bench. Over-zealous, officious and a fanatic about following procedure, Jewell insisted on reporting the pack as a “suspicious package,” despite the chiding of his colleagues, who wanted to take it to Lost and Found. If, as was overwhelmingly likely, the backpack had been just a backpack, Jewell probably would have been mocked. But again moral luck took a hand. He was right. It was a bomb. Jewell and other officers began clearing the area, and the bomb went off, killing one victim, Alice Hawthorne, and wounding many, still  far less serious damage than what might have occurred had Jewell not been so scrupulous in his discharge of his duties.

3. The Hero, the Scapegoats, and the Tip
 Continue reading →

Afternoon Ethics Warm-Up, 3/20/20: Seven Items, Five Pandemic Related, Plus Boston Sports And New York City Schools

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

…feeling like the last living cell in a dead body…

1. I don’t know about you, but I’m just reaching out to random friends to see how they are doing. Some aren’t doing that well, but they appreciate the contact.

2. More of the name game: From a PR release from two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Gail Heriot and Peter N. Kirsanow…

The Commission makes the ill-advised suggestion that referring to COVID-19 with terms like “Chinese coronavirus” is somehow fueling “[t]his latest wave of xenophobic animosity toward Asian Americans.” It is common to refer to infectious diseases by their geographic origin. Examples include Asian flu, Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, Brazilian hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, German measles, Japanese encephalitis, Lyme disease, Marburg virus, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Pontiac fever, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Spanish flu, Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever, and West Nile virus…It is counter-productive to hector the American people (or its leaders) about describing the COVID-19 as “Chinese” or as having originated in China. It did originate there. Ordinary Americans—of all races and ethnicities—who harbor no ill will toward anyone don’t like to have the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights imply that that they are fueling the flames of xenophobic animosity.   We can’t blame them. It is insulting.

Our colleagues on the Commission close their statement by writing under the current circumstances no American should be “ostracized solely because of their race or national origin.” That is certainly sensible enough. We would add that Americans should not be ostracized on account of false accusations that their conduct has been racist, xenophobic and hateful. The promiscuous use of those terms needs to stop.

That’s fine and well stated. My position is even more basic. I refuse to participate in mind-control based on the assertion that a factual statement is “racist,” or that someone is the cause of unethical conduct because others choose to behave unethically. Any more Alyssa Milano comments or complaints about Kung Flu jokes, and I’ll be calling the damn thing the Wuhan Virus from the Capital of the Hubai Province in That Big Asian Nation Called China That Endangered The Entire World By The  Dishonest, Paranoid Manner In Which It Withheld Crucial Information.

Back off. Continue reading →

Pandemic Ethics Observations Part III: Diagnosis

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

Keep it up, Chelsea. Keep it up, everybody, meaning the desperate Democrats, the bitter NeverTrumpers, the anti-America “resistance,” the suicidal mainstream media, and the Social Media Deranged. Virus stat-heads are closely watching “doubling” statistics, showing day to day whether the rate of increase in the number of infections is slowing down or speeding up. (In South Korea, it seems to be slowing down.) I’m watching a different phenomenon, the doubling of increasingly contrived attacks on the the President,  fearmongering by anti-Trump fanatics, and the media as they sense one more opportunity to take this President down slipping away.

The Ethics Alarms diagnosis, not to keep you in suspense, is that this is failing, and indeed has failed for a wonderful reason. There may be a lot of stupid, ignorant, gullible people out there, but there aren’t enough stupid, ignorant, gullible people for this to work. Lincoln was right, as I have found myself observing more often in the past year than in the previous accumulated years of my muddled lifetime combined. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Let’s dispose of Chelsea’s grandstanding tweet, which, among other things, shows why she desperately needed the intervention of Mom and Dad to score her various ridiculously high paying jobs.  She ‘s an idiot. Literally nobody rational blames an international pandemic without precedent that began in China on a U.S. party or an individual, because that conclusion makes no sense. It makes no sense no matter how many hindsight bias stories are contrived and printed on the front page of the Times (there’s another one today.)

Of course not, Dr. Anthony Fauci said when questioned about whether the Trump administration was culpable for the testing kit manufacturing snafu. Americans know that the President isn’t God, and they can recognize the hypocrisy of partisans who have been complaining for three years that the President shouldn’t “act like a king” suddenly doing a 180 and attacking him for not controlling everything.

Chelsea’s tweet is hyper-partisan and incoherent (also remarkably lacking in filial self-awareness: if there was ever a family that has strived shamelessly to profit financially from its position and developing events, it is hers) , but it seems to have been  partially triggered by the late revelation yesterday (discussed in this post) that Senator Richard Burr used the advance information his committee received about the Wuhan virus to sell off stocks before the predictable crash. Somebody should probably explain to Chelsea that selling stocks before a crash is not profiting off of the virus. Buying deflated stocks after the virus causes a crash and waiting until the stock value starts rising, as it will, would be profiting from it. (Betcha that’s what Mom is doing!)

That aside, “they” was quickly revealed to be three Republican Senators, Burr, Loeffler and Inhofe, and one very Democratic Senator, Diane Feinstein (D-Cal), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her husband sold between $1.5 million and $6 million in stock in  the biotech company Allogene Therapeutics, between Jan. 31 and Feb. 18. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce, But He Doesn’t Care: Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC)

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

I know this is unfair, but in almost every non-posed photo I found of Burr, he looks like he’s hiding something.

The Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr,  sold off  between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his stock holdings on February 13 in 33 separate transactions. At the time, Burr had received the government’s most highly classified Wuhan virus briefings. About a week after Burr unloaded stocks that figured to be affected, the stock market began its dive and has lost about 30% of its value since

Today  NPR revealed  a secret recording from February 27 in which the Senator gave a GOP group at an exclusive social club a gloomy preview of the economic impact of the approaching pandemic. According to the NPR report, Burr told attendees of a business executives group luncheon held at the Capitol Hill Club:

“There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history … It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

Continue reading →

Stop Pushing Chinese Propaganda: Giving A Chinese Name To The Virus Is Appropriate And Ethical

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Incredibly, reporters asked President Trump multiple times yesterday to account for a rumor that one of his aides had referred to the Wuhan virus, aka “Century 21”,  or something like that, as the “Kung Fu Flu.”  (Heh. )

A. It isn’t “racist” if someone, or many people, did use the quip, and B. Why is that even worthy of discussion? I may be wrong, but as the news media’s efforts to use Big Lies to impugn the President are based on slimmer and more trivial excuses, I expect the majority of the public to eventually figure out what’s going on.

Axios just released a time line, based in part on a new study of how the virus took hold in China. It introduces its work this way:

Axios has compiled a timeline of the earliest weeks of the coronavirus outbreak in China, highlighting when the cover-up started and ended — and showing how, during that time, the virus already started spreading around the world, including to the United States.

Why it matters: A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.

This timeline, compiled from information reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the South China Morning Post and other sources, shows that China’s cover-up and the delay in serious measures to contain the virus lasted about three weeks.

The study, by Southhampton University, is here.

The information indicates clearly that China is accountable. China is responsible for the severity of the pandemic. China deserves to have that responsibility recognized, and those trying to use race-baiting and linguistic stunts to assist in the cover-up are assisting a brutal totalitarian regime. Those who are doing this out of animus for the President are beneath contempt.

No, China should not be asked to pay reparations for its unfortunate role in the crisis, though a recent poll asserts that 42 percent of Americans “feel that China should pay at least some of the world’s coronavirus bills.” This kind of disaster could happen to any nation, though, as you can see in the chart above, it keeps happening to China. It is more likely to happen in a nation like China, that obstructs the free flow of information. It still didn’t intend to infect the world.

I assume.

However, China should accept responsibility, as well as the shame of having a pandemic named after a Chinese starting point.