Government & Politics

Friday Afternoon Ethics Jolt, 9/6/2019: Unethical Teachers, Schools, Pundits, Lawyers And Australians

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Perk up!

1. Now THIS violates the Niggardly Principles! Poor, angry, Australian vegan Cilla Carden has filed complaint after complaint with various courts, most recently the State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia and the state Supreme Court arguing her neighbors cook fish so often on the barbie that she’s been deprived the enjoyment of life.

“All I can smell is fish! I can’t enjoy my backyard, I can’t go out there,” Carden told reporters. Yet her entreaties keep getting thrown out of court, even though she says the neighbors are deliberately trying to nauseate her.

So, naturally, after Carden’s story went viral,someone launched a Facebook page titled Community BBQ for Cilla Carden  promoting an event scheduled for Oct. 19, in which Australian carnivores will descend on  Carden’s neighborhood grilling like there’s no tomorrow.

“Don’t let Cilla destroy a good old Aussie tradition, join us for a community BBQ in protest of her actions, and help Cilla Carden GET SOME PORK ON HER FORK,” the event invitation says. More than 4,500 Aussies have RSVP’d.

2. Of course, many of us knew this from the start. In a video posted to Twitter,  Debra Katz, the lawyer for Christine Blasey Ford says that Kavanaugh “will always have an asterisk next to his name” when he “takes a scalpel” to  Roe v. Wade. This, she says, is “part of what motivated Christine,” and Katz adds,

“I believe that Christine’s testimony brought about more good than the harm misogynist Republicans caused by allowing Kavanaugh on the Court, We were going to have a conservative. Elections have consequences.”

Translation: Blasey-Ford’s objective, enabled by her unthical lawyer, was to smear Kavanaugh to make it easier to impugn his motives when he was part of an entirely hypothetical, opinion overturning Roe in a yet to be filed or accepted case. Continue reading →

Schultz Bails. Good. [CORRECTED]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Howard Schultz, the Starbucks CEO who had announced a third party, independent  run for President, has withdrawn. Here, in part, is his statement:

Eighty-four percent of Americans do not consider themselves far right or far left. Among them are an “exhausted majority” who want common sense, collaborative and truthful governing. …Statistically and anecdotally, there is an undeniable appetite for meaningful political reform in America. I had hoped to represent this common-sense view, but I’ve come to face a few truths…First, despite a variety of efforts to initiate conversations about political reform, extreme voices currently dominate the national dialogue, often with a vitriol that crowds out and discourages thoughtful discussions. And despite their hunger for reform, the exhausted majority has largely tuned out of political life online and in the news, leaving the extreme voices to define the debate. In addition, not enough people today are willing to consider backing an independent candidate because they fear doing so might lead to re-electing a uniquely dangerous incumbent president. There is considerable concern that four more years of a Trump administration pose a graver threat to our democracy than four more years of political dysfunction. I agree, but I’m also concerned that far-left policy ideas being advanced by several Democratic candidates will further alienate voters who believe those ideas will inflict more economic harm than good. The nomination of a far-left Democratic candidate could result in more votes for Trump—unless a moderate independent is also on the ballot….If I went forward, there is a risk that my name would appear on ballots even if a moderate Democrat wins the nomination, and that is not a risk I am willing to take. Finally, a back injury in April and three subsequent surgeries have required a level of recovery that has prevented me from continuing my travels and engaging with people to the degree that is necessary. My belief in the need to reform our two-party system has not wavered, but I have concluded that an independent campaign for the White House is not how I can best serve our country at this time.I will spend this election cycle and the years ahead supporting bold and creative initiatives to transform our broken system and address the disparity of opportunity that plagues our nation. The money that I was prepared to commit to a presidential campaign will instead be used to invest in people, organizations and ideas that promote honesty, civility and results in our politics, and that move the country beyond two-party gridlock. Common-sense policies and initiatives that can help address widening inequality at home, while strengthening America’s standing in the world, will be a priority. Among my early efforts will be to advocate for increased national service opportunities for young people…. Let us agree that we will always have differences, because that is the nature of the republic we have created, but let’s also acknowledge that we are stronger when we unite under shared values. Let’s agree that we owe our children a less divisive America, and that we have the power to create a healthier climate, one where opinion and truth can stand side by side, where disagreement is followed by compromise, extremes are tempered by moderation, and divisiveness is eclipsed by decency.

Observations: Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: David Harsanyi, On The CNN “Climate Crisis” Town Hall

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

“[T]he most benign climate-change plan proposed during CNN’s seven-hour Democratic Party presidential candidate town hall was more authoritarian than anything Donald Trump has ever suggested during his presidency.”

 Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi, who continued, “Democrats were not merely proposing massive societal upheaval but mass coercion.”

I did not and could not watch the town hall; someone would have to pay me to do that, and frankly, anyone who would watch such a monstrosity without compensation has some serious intellectual and cognitive issues to deal with. This was a discussion among non-scientists about a complex topic none of them understand or are qualified to opine on, moderated by an equally ignorant and biased journalist, with questions being posed by activists rather than informed and open-minded citizens. It wasn’t journalism, and it wasn’t public education. Questioners were allowed to wear shirts with climate change slogans on them, like this…

One commentator correctly analogized the scene to Fox News holding an abortion town hall with all the questions coming from anti-abortion activists, with many wearing “ABORTION IS MURDER” shirts.

However, now I have had time to peruse the transcripts to the extent that I could without my head exploding, and reviewed the reviews. Not surprisngly, but depressing nonetheless, the mainstream news media whitewashed the event, focusing on the most benign and relatively reasonable-sounding statements, while ignoring the bat-crazy, “Oh-my-god-did-I-really-hear-that?” moments that should haunt the Democratic Party all the way to November 2020. The Times, for example, headlined its “review,” “CNN Climate Town Hall: Here’s What You Need to Know.”  Since the Times strategically decided that you didn’t need to know that old Joe Biden’s left eye filled with blood, readers should understand what THAT means: “Here’s what we want you to know.”

The Times and other mainstream media organs don’t want you to know, for example, what Hirsanyi accurately points out: the party that has been promoting the big lie that President Trump is a dangerous authoritarian and a threat to democracy is led by individuals who advocate gutting the economy, democracy and personal liberties to address an “emergency” hyped in order to justify doing so. For example,

  • Joe Biden was asked by  Anderson Cooper if the Green New Deal, which to the extent that it means anything stands for banning   fossil fuels, 99 percent of cars and planes, retrofitting our buildings and eliminating meat within the next decade, “goes too far,” and was “unrealistic, promising too much.” Joe answered, “No, no it’s not.” It  “deserves an enormous amount of credit,” said Joe. Recall that Saikat Chakrabarti, the former chief of staff of Representative Ocasio-Cortez and widely believed to be the main architect of the GND, told the Washington Post  that ” it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all, because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

In other words, declare an emergency to take over the economy.

To be fair, does anyone think that Biden has read the Green New Deal? Continue reading →

Joe Biden’s Eye

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

“Joe Biden’s eye just started bleeding? This isn’t a joke what in the hell just happened,” tweeted one individual who for some reason had nothing better to do than to watch CNN’s “climate change town meeting.” Indeed it had, and in some universes, like social media, this was the big story of the night. The Washington Times and Washington Examiner reported it; so did Fox News and The New York Post.  If you couldn’t figure it out from those clues, it was the conservative news media that thought this was an event worth knowing about. In the parallel an corrupt universe of the mainstream news media—you know, the ones determined to  influence the election so Donald Trump is a one-term President? That one?—it was “Eye? What eye?”

The New York Times hasn’t mentioned it yet. On Memeorandum, the useful news aggregator that I thought was non-partisan but now I’m wondering, didn’t have a single link about it. Even CNN, which hosted the debate, ignored the moment. I couldn’t believe it, so I searched for “eye” in the debate coverage  on the CNN website, and got only “At times, candidates waged a bidding war to show liberal activists their plan was the most audacious — and even expensive. But with an eye on November 2020, others warned against throwing the economy out of the window.” The story was headlined “What happened during CNN’s climate town hall and what it means for 2020,” so as far as CNN is concerned, nothing happened. Politico, the left-leaning website, at least alluded to the eye by joking, “Even the shallow matter of what we now call “optics” went badly for Biden. He chose to sit through his appearance—Harris, Sanders, and Warren all stood—and by the end of it, a burst blood vessel in his left eye was noticeable.” Optics, get it? AOL, which I would call anti-Trump, distingished itself by importing coverage from the Wrap headlined, “Biden’s mysterious bloody eye overshadows CNN climate town hall.”

Wait: how could something “overshadow” the event, and simultaneously not be worthy of news coverage? Continue reading →

High Noon Ethics Warm-Up, 9/5/2019: Arggh!…Yay!…Yechhh!…Hmmm…and Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Mornin’!

1. More historical ignorance to make you suicidal: Here’s Anna L.’s review of her visit to the Gettysburg Battlefield on the park’s Yelp page:

Boooorrrringggg. First off, it was nothing like the movie. All I saw were a bunch of fields and rocks. All the tourist shops, bars, and hotels in the area kept saying how I should check this place out. I kept getting confused with all of the plaques and monuments. Who was fighting who, I have no idea. The abandoned cannons looked tacky. I give this one star for the overweight character actor in the square, but that’s about it. Yaaawnnn.

I don’t even want to think about the political positions and favored candidates of an American this…this…I can’t even think of a good description. “It was nothing like the movie”????? And how many people like her are out there, rotting our culture and values from within?

Arrgh.

2. It’s about time. wouldn’t you agree? I’m amazed this took so long. Starting next year, BMC Toys in Scranton will begin adding  little green  Army women to the little green Army men that are such a standard kids’ toy. Since they debuted in 1950s, none of the iconic toy’s  manufacturers  have crossed the gender line. BMC is one of the  ew producers of plastic soldiers left in his country, and will soon be offering these:

Yay! Continue reading →

Observations On The President’s Stupid Hurricane Map “Scandal.”

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Destined to take its place in “resistance” and mainstream media obsessions along side President Trump’s stubborn misrepresentation of his inauguration crowd, the controversy over the bizarrely altered Dorian path  map was one more in a long nauseating chain of similar incidents. If you were lucky enough to miss it, here’s the scoop.

In the middle of a Labor Day tweeting frenzy, President Trump issued an erroneous tweet that Alabama would be affected by Hurricane Dorian. I have no trouble in filing this part under “Who cares?” He’s not a meteorologist, a scientist or even a relaible source of information. Over-heated and contrived complaints that his goof “endangered citizens” are just familiar Trump derangement: anyone who depends on the President for weather predictions when there are so many obviously more reliable authorities available may be doing the gene pool a favor.

Officials with the National Weather Service quickly issued a public correction, tweeting, “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east.” That should have ended it

But, in the throes of the kind of inexplicable, self-destructive, foolish impulse that we have all grown to expect and love, President Trump then appeared in a video released by the White House in which he displayed a weather forecast map, dated from 11 a.m. on Aug. 29, supposedly showing that Alabama would  be affected. The graphic appeared  to have been crudely altered with a black Sharpie, however, as you can see above.

“We had, actually, our original chart was that it was going to be hit — hitting Florida directly,” Trump says. “That was the original chart,” Trump said. “It could’ve, uh, was going towards the Gulf.”  Later, he tweeted out that chart, saying,

This was the originally projected path of the Hurricane in its early stages. As you can see, almost all models predicted it to go through Florida also hitting Georgia and Alabama. I accept the Fake News apologies!

Here’s the  chart that he tweeted:

It also includes misleading lines drawn onto the graphic.

Why, why, WHY??

Observations: Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 9/4/2019: “Is We Getting Dummer?”* Edition.

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

The old Simon and Garfunkle song accurately describes when I woke up this morning…

1. I think that settles it. I’m going to flush myself down the toilet...Yesterday, an educated, adult woman of my acquaintance told her Facebook friends about her terrible treatment by Alamo Rental Cars. When a FBF responded with a refeence to Santa Anna, she replied, “???” Yes, she had no idea what “Alamo” referred to. This speaks to a catastrophic failure of the American education system.

On the bright side,  ignorant citizens are the target audience of many of the highest polling Democratic candidates for President.

2. Ethics Hero: Whoopi Goldberg? On ABC’s “The View,” a show that relentlessly lowers the IQ of anyone who watches it for more than 5 minutes, co-host Whoopi Goldberg began the first show of the new season to condemn efforts in actors in Hollywood to  blacklist conservatives and Trump supporters, a practice encouraged by tweets from   “Will and Grace”  stars  Debra Messing and  Eric McCormack over the weekend. After some back and forth with the assorted idiots who share the panel with her, Whoopi said,

Listen, last time people did this, people ended up killing themselves. This is not a good idea, okay? Your idea of who you don’t want to work with is your personal business. Do not encourage people to print out lists because the next list that comes out, your name will be on and then people will be coming after you. No one — nobody — we had something called a blacklist and a lot of really good people were accused of stuff. Nobody cared whether it was true or not. They were accused. And they lost their right to work. You don’t have the right in this country. People can vote for who they want to. That is one of the great rights of this country. You don’t have to like it, but we don’t — we don’t go after people because we don’t like who they voted for. We don’t go after them that way. We can talk about issues and stuff but we don’t print out lists, and I’m sure you guys misspoke when you said that because you — it sounded like a good idea. Think about it. Read about it. Remember what the blacklist actually meant to people, and don’t encourage anyone, anyone to do it!

I wonder how many people who don’t know about the Alamo know about the blacklist? Continue reading →

The Novelist Is Scared By Red Caps. What’s The Ethical Response To That?

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

“AAAAAAAIIIIIII!!!! Take it away! TAKE IT AWAY!!!”

Rebecca Makkai, an American novelist of moderate success, tweeted,

Fascinating!  And her tweet raises some trenchant ethics questions:

1. How should good Americans regard someone who suggests that it isn’t normal to support the elected President of the United States?

Answer: As a bad American, as well as stunningly arrogant. The impulse is fascist: those who don’t agree with the political positions of Makkai and her ilk are not merely wrong, mistaken or misguided, but abnormal. It is particularly subversive to pronounce those who are behaving exactly as U.S. citizens have behaved and have been expected to behave since 1789 as not being normal, while Makkai, one of the divisive and destructive members of the “resistance” attempting to undermine the nation’s unity and institutions, pose as respectable.

2. Does an individual’s aversion to red caps because one variety carries a slogan deemed objectionable to the Trump Deranged qualify as a sensitivity anyone is obligated to observe in their choice of headgear? Continue reading →

Late-Starting Week Ethics Warm-Up, 9/3/2019: Why We Have Fake News

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

A post-Labor Day mess in San Francisco…

Good morning!

1. Why we have fake news, Part A: “Journalists just make stuff up.” From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

A survey of American Jews showed continued disapproval of President Donald Trump, with anti-Semitism high and Israel low on the priority list for Jewish voters. The survey, conducted for a liberal-leaning Jewish organization, the Jewish Electorate Institute, by Greenberg Research, which does polling for Democratic candidates, showed 71 percent of likely Jewish-American voters disapprove of Trump and 29 percent approve, commensurate with polling since Trump’s election…The survey released Wednesday of 1,000 Jewish voters nationally was taken between May 6 and 12, and is consistent with past polling of a constituency that leans strongly Democratic…The poll showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s favorable/unfavorable score as 45/38. Netanyahu used to score high approval among American Jews, but his sustained clashes with Obama on Palestinian and Iran policy, and his closeness to Trump appear to have eroded American Jewish support.

Gallup:

….Our aggregate from January through August of this year shows a 29% Trump job approval rating among Jews, with 69% disapproval….

Now here’s ABC News Chief Political Analyst Matthew Dowd on Twitter:

Dowd is just citing statistic pulled out of the air, apparently. How can anyone trust these people? Continue reading →

The Division Of Conscience And Religious Freedom Vs. Basic Workplace Ethics [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments

In May, the Trump administration issued a new rule  that gives health care workers the power to refuse to provide services their religion disapproves of, such as abortion, sterilization or assisted suicide. A religious conviction isn’t even essential to trigger the rule; a matter of conscience is enough. The measure essentially revived a Bush rule that the Obama administration reversed.

It’s a bad rule, and an unethical rule, as Ethics Alarms has held before. If you can’t perform all the duties of a job, then don’t take the job. If an employee can get his or her employer to agree that he or she is exempt from certain duties, that’s freedom of contract. Fine.  The Trump rule, however, like the Bush rule before it, breaches a basic principle of the workplace, and common sense as well. It also leads inevitably to messes like this one:

The federal government has accused  the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, Vermont of violating  federal law by forcing a nurse to participate in an abortion despite her objections. The hospital denies it.

The nurse, who is Catholic, filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights. It  alleges, that she was misled by supervisors to believe she was assisting in a procedure scheduled after a miscarriage. “After [she] confirmed that she was, in fact, being assigned to an abortion, [her employer] refused her request that other equally qualified and available personnel take her place,” the complaint reads. She then participated in the procedure and “has been haunted by nightmares ever since.”

Now the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services has filed a notice of violation against the hospital, the  first since the Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom was added to HHS in  2018. Continue reading →