Government & Politics

Ethics Hero: Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

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I am obligated to name as an Ethics Hero any Democratic official  who is principled enough to try to lead his party, its supporters and the complicit mainstream news media away from their current dangerous and destructive scorched earth efforts to destroy the President of the United States.

Ethics Alarms has been calling for responsible leadership in this matter since November 9th, to no avail. President Obama is backing “the resistance,” behaving unlike any previous  ex-President since John Tyler joined the Confederacy. Hillary still has her own confederates calling for preemptive impeachment. The new Vice-Chair of the DNC claims that President Trump can and should be impeached immediately.  The new Chair thinks it fair and honest to call Trump “the worst President” in history after a single month in office, and issues outright lies like claiming the President wants to eliminate overtime pay. (Come back, Debbie! All is forgiven!) Schumer and Pelosi look the other way, or gently applaud, their most outrageous and uncivil colleagues. Senator Warren reads a decades old letter to call a Senate colleague a racist, and becomes a feminist martyr through some twisted logic.

In this vacuum of integrity, statesmanship, decency, fairness and responsibility, even an obscure House Democrats stands out for just meeting minimal standards of fairness and rationality.

Moreover, this obscure House member is from Blue on Blue Massachusetts, where presumably he risks partisan fury for not following the “Trump is Nazi Satan Hellbeast and Must be Detroyed By Fire! ARGHHHHHH! “ narrative.  Congressman Stephen Lynch didn’t exactly celebrate the President’s recent address, he was just open-minded, thoughtful, and responsible—you know, unlike everything else we have heard from his party and colleagues. He said in part,

“I think his words were a significant shift from his previous, sometimes inflammatory rhetoric. I thought he was much more conciliatory.He urged us at one part to get past the trivial differences and work together. That’s not been his mode of operating, at least up until this point.”

Lynch went on to say that he remains skeptical of the President’s agenda and ability to achieve it, and that is fine. He’s a Democrat. He should feel that way.

“We’ll just have to wait and see if his actions are similar to the speech last night, or more akin to what we’ve seen thus far,” Lynch said.

Fair enough. Continue reading →

A Very Brief Observation On “A Nation Of Assholes”

/ Jack Marshall / 238 Comments

As those who have been reading Ethics Alarms over the past year know, I stated repeatedly that the greatest danger in electing Donald Trump President is that his boorishness, rudeness and vulgarity emitting from the very pinnacle of American leadership would coarsen the culture beyond repair, creating a nation of assholes for the foreseeable future. I did not expect the Democrats to get the jump on him, and to embrace asshole behavior as the norm for those who detest the President.

Yesterday, not one Democrat offered the President a hand to shake as he made his traditional way down the aisle in Congress to give his speech. Not one member of the opposition party possessed the courage, decency and respect to concede this minimum gesture of civilization in a televised event. Had Republicans treated Barack Obama like that, the entire party would have been condemned as racist. Well, it was anyway.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi had many of the female members dressed in Hillary white, a protest against the election. In Congress. During the equivalent of the State of the Union message. Four months after the election.

The Democratic Party has turned itself into the Asshole Party. Depressing. Disgusting. Despicable.

I’m rushing to a seminar.

More later.

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

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“The state has a reason? Yeah, it does. Does it limit free speech? Dramatically. Are there other, less restrictive ways of doing it? We’re not sure, but we think probably. . . . Okay. End of case, right?”

—-Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, during oral argument in the case Packingham v. North Carolina, describing how state laws are traditionally seen by the Court as infringing on freedom of speech.

Lester Packingham was registered as a sex offender in 2002 after pleading guilty to statutory rape with a 13-year-old girl (he was 21). He served his time and probation, and then, in  2010, Packingham posted on Facebook to thank the Lord for a recently dismissed parking ticket, writing, “Man God is Good! How about I got so much favor they dismissed the ticket before court even started? . . . Praise be to GOD, WOW! Thanks JESUS!”

Jesus, however, did not stop him from being prosecuted for that message under a 2008 North Carolina law that prohibits registered sex offenders from accessing social media, on the theory that it gives them access to minors.

Packingham appealed the resulting conviction, arguing that the law violated his First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court accepted the case, which could  determine whether access to social media sites like Facebook, Youtube, and others are a fundamental right.

In oral argument this week, observers got the distinct impression that this is where the Court is headed. At least five justices, a majority of the temporarily reduced court, suggested during argument that they would rule against North Carolina and for Packingham , whose lawyer says that more than 1,000 people have been prosecuted under the law.

Reading various reports of what was said, I am stunned by how out of touch everyone involved sounds. The Washington Post story describes Justice Kagan like she’s a web-head because she’s “only” 59.  “So whether it’s political community, whether it’s religious community, I mean, these sites have become embedded in our culture as ways to communicate and ways to exercise our constitutional rights, haven’t they?” Kagan asked North Carolina Deputy Attorney General Robert C. Montgomery, who was defending the law.

Do we really have to ask that question today? The law was passed in 2008, which in technology and social media terms makes it archaic. Legislators can be forgiven for not understanding the central role of social media in American life nine years ago, but in 2017, when we have a President tweeting his every lucid thought (and many not so lucid), how can anyone defend the argument that blocking a citizen from social media isn’t an extreme government restriction on free speech? Laws related to technology should all have sunset provisions of a couple years (a couple months?) to ensure that they haven’t been rendered obsolete by the evolving societal use of and dependency on  the web, the internet, and new devices. Continue reading →

Washington Post Writer Stephanie Merry Has A Devastating Metaphor Right In Front Of Her, And Can’t See It. Three Guesses Why…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

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In an essay recounting the Wrong Envelope Oscars Disaster, Washington Post writer Stephanie Merry lionizes  “La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz, who after learning that his movie was not, in fact, the actual “Best Picture” winner, took charge. Faye Dunaway was dashing for cover, MC Jimmy Kimmel was wishing he was in an undersea paradise, and in general everyone was losing their their heads and blaming it on Warren Beatty, but the producer took the microphone and said,“‘Moonlight’ won. Guys, guys, I’m sorry, no. There’s a mistake. ‘Moonlight,’ you guys won best picture.This is not a joke. Come up here.

Then he held up the card just pulled from the actual award envelope, so that the cameras could zoom in.

“Moonlight,” he said. “Best picture.”

Merry seems to think this was some extraordinary act of improvisation and heroism. True, Horowitz did what ethical people do when in a position to: he fixed the problem.  Still, his actions only seem remarkable in light of the incompetence all around him. Ah, but Merry has an ulterior motive, you see, because the Post, like the New York Times and so many other news sources, apparently pay a bounty for every story that can somehow betwisted into a attack on the President. That’s the full time mission now, and journalists really, truly think that’s responsible journalism, and responsible citizenry, though it is neither. So she wrote:

He told the truth even though it was difficult and awkward and embarrassing, because he had just stood in front of the world and thanked his friends and family for an award that wasn’t his. But that didn’t stop him from admitting that he was wrong, even though he was a victim of circumstance. He could have slunk offstage and let Jimmy Kimmel and Warren Beatty continue to fumble through an explanation. Instead he did the dirty work with what looked like pride.

This behavior shouldn’t be all that exceptional, but truth has been hard to come by lately. We’ve all just come off an election in which politicians have happily danced around facts, and the president continues to make false or misleading claims. When the truth is inconvenient, a lot of people spin it or bend it to their will. But that’s not Horowitz’s style.

What, holding on to the Oscar like grim death and screaming, “I WON! I WON!” and running into the wings cackling maniacally isn’t his style? I should hope not! What possible alternative did he have in that situation? He didn’t have to “tell the truth,” he just had to submit to it. Yes, he was gracious. But the episode had no lessons for President Trump, except in Merry’s fevered, Trump-addled mind.

Yet she had laid out a very useful and germane metaphor, so good and timely that I will give her credit for it even though Bias Made Her Stupid, and blind to boot.

Here, let’s see if you get it; it isn’t hard:

“La La Land” had been conceded the Best Picture award for months. Virtually every critic and prognosticator predicted its victory, even when one felt another film was more deserving. The film’s cast and crew had to be very confident entering the theater that night, though the film’s failure to win some of the lesser awards was ominous: the predicted sweep wasn’t happening. Still, all the polls said the movie was a lock.

Then, just when victory seemed certain, it was gone. An underdog competitor took the prize, and not cleanly, either. After all, the deck had been stacked in favor of giving black artists more recognition. And what the heck was going on with the alleged guardians of the voting results?

Remind you of anything? Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Breaking Ethics Thoughts: The White House Bars The NYT And Others From Its Press Briefing”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

 

pewdiepie-youtubeThis Comment of the Day by repeat awardee Humble Talent was really yesterday’s Comment of the Day #2, but it seems silly to keep the 2 when it is being posted today. See how hard my job is? I should hire an accounting firm to take care of this stuff and make sure it doesn’t get screwed up.

I was aware of the PewDiePie  (that’s him on the left) flap, but not enough to investigate it (name bias on my part), and am grateful to Humble for highlighting the story, and its significance. The news media bias crisis is not going to end well, especially if they and their beneficiaries on the Left continue to deny it. Eventually, most of the public will wake up. My wife just flipped out when a Facebook friend posted, as part of her ongoing attack on the President, that he was undermining an “independent press.” It has to dawn on these semi-ignorant partisans that independence without standards, integrity, competence, objectivity and honesty…in short, ethics…just means “unaccountable.” And, of course, the current mainstream news media isn’t independent by a long shot.

Other than that, it was a perceptive observation.

Here is Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day on the post, Breaking Ethics Thoughts: The White House Bars The NYT And Others From Its Press Briefing:

I was thinking of previous administrations, and the news while I was growing up…. It seems to me, and this might be my ‘member berries in action, but it seems to me that I remember a time where the news was biased, perhaps, but it was a subtle bias, the kind of bias that you’d only notice if you were of a mind to look.

They’d report the facts you see, ostensibly giving enough rope to their targets to skip or swing, and the bias would be in the form of selection, not solicitation.

What is…. or should be… absolutely indefensible about how the media covers Trump is in the pillars of journalistic ethics.

https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

Seek The Truth and Report it, Minimise Harm , Act Independently, Be Accountable and Transparent, and Don’t be an Ass.

Alright, I made that last one up, but I bet you could hardly tell. The problem is that the outlets in question don’t even attempt the fig leaf anymore. And this isn’t just unique to Trump…

Continue reading →

Happy Non-Birthday, Frederick! And Welcome Rationalization 25A, Frederick’s Compulsion or “It’s My Duty!” To the Ethics Alarms Rationalization List

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

As any Gilbert and Sullivan fan knows, February 29 is the troublesome birthday of Frederick, the dim and conflicted hero of “The Pirates of Penzance.” (He doesn’t get a birthday this year.)  Apprenticed to a pirate as a child by mistake (his nurse heard “pirate” rather than “pilot”),  the lad was bound to serve as a cutthroat until his 21st birthday, and thinking that the terms specified his obligation to reach until his 21st year, quits the pirate band that raised him and joins the police, who are  seeking to put his old comrades behind bars, or worse. But poor Frederick  learns that because he would only be free of his obligations until his 21st birthday, and since he was born–Oh, horror!—on Leap Year,  he is technically only five (“and a little bit over”), and won’t be 21 by the terms of his apprenticeship until he is 84 years old. His beloved, the equally dim Mabel, vows to wait for him. Meanwhile Frederick, declaring himself a “slave of duty,” joins the pirates again, as they prepare to murder Mabel’s father.

W.S. Gilbert, who wrote this famously nutty plot, was satirizing the substitution of duty (and legal contracts) for reason, morality, ethics, and sanity. The latest addition to the Rationalizations List,  Frederick’s Compulsion is a sub-rationalization of #25. The Coercion Myth: “I have no choice!” Frederick believes that the existence of a contract creates a duty that he must obey without question, regardless of the consequences. He would have made a fine Nazi soldier. He would have shined in the Nixon White House. Continue reading →

The Good Illegal Immigrant

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

carlosThe New York Times placed on its front page this week a profile of an impeccable citizen of West Frankfort, Illinois:

Juan Carlos Hernandez Pacheco — just Carlos to the people of West Frankfort — has been the manager of La Fiesta, a Mexican restaurant in this city of 8,000, for a decade. Yes, he always greeted people warmly at the cheerfully decorated restaurant, known for its beef and chicken fajitas. And, yes, he knew their children by name. But people here tick off more things they know Carlos for.

How one night last fall, when the Fire Department was battling a two-alarm blaze, Mr. Hernandez suddenly appeared with meals for the firefighters. How he hosted a Law Enforcement Appreciation Day at the restaurant last summer as police officers were facing criticism around the country. How he took part in just about every community committee or charity effort — the Rotary Club, cancer fund-raisers, cleanup days, even scholarships for the Redbirds, the high school sports teams, which are the pride of this city.

Now, in part due to a record of two drunk driving arrests, Hernandez  has been  arrested, and is facing deportation. He is, after all, an illegal immigrant, one who crossed into the United States from Mexico in the late 1990s and  never completed efforts to legalize his status. His friends and neighbors, the Times reported, are flooding officials with letters and calls for leniency and forbearance. The mayor of West Frankfort wrote that Hernandez was a “great asset” to the city who “doesn’t ask for anything in return.” The fire chief described him as “a man of great character.” Richard Glodich, the athletic director at Frankfort Community High School, wrote, “As a grandson of immigrants, I am all for immigration reform, but this time you have arrested a GOOD MAN that should be used as a role model for other immigrants.”

“I knew he was Mexican, but he’s been here so long, he’s just one of us,” The Times quotes a West Frankfort resident as citing what she says is a distinction between “people who come over and use the system and people who actually come and help.” “I think people need to do things the right way, follow the rules and obey the laws, and I firmly believe in that,” added the owner of a local beauty salon. “But in the case of Carlos, I think he may have done more for the people here than this place has ever given him. I think it’s absolutely terrible that he could be taken away.” Continue reading →

Orwellian Thought Manipulation As An Ideological Tactic: A Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

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Cognitive linguist  George Lakoff, a far left academic (but I repeat myself),  advises his partisan political brethren to build public opposition to the President’s regulation reform efforts by changing the word that we use to describe regulations:

President Trump has said that he intends to get rid of 75% of government regulations. What is a “regulation”?

The term “regulation” is framed from the viewpoint of corporations and other businesses. From their viewpoint, “regulations” are limitations on their freedom to do whatever they want no matter who it harms. But from the public’s viewpoint, a regulation is a protection against harm done by unscrupulous corporations seeking to maximize profit at the cost of harm to the public.

Imagine our minority President saying out loud that he intends to get rid of 75% of public protections. Imagine the press reporting that. Imagine the NY Times, or even the USA Today headline: Trump to Eliminate 75% of Public Protections. Imagine the media listing, day after day, the protections to be eliminated and the harms to be faced by the public.

Lakoff’s tactic is remarkable in its transparency. Increasingly, the Left has relied on misleading the public by injecting euphemisms and what I call “cover phrases” into policy debates and news reports to obscure the undesirable aspects of a favored measure, including its unethical nature, such as restricting  individual rights. Thus abortion, which involves trade-offs between two human lives and sets of rights, is referred to as “choice,” eliminating the life-taking aspect of the problem from the discussion entirely. Thanks to the efforts of Democrats with the cooperation of the communications media, race-based admission to educational institutions and hiring that may discriminate against whites and Asian-Americans are covered by the benign-sounding term, “affirmative action.” The most brazen of these linguistic cheats is the widespread practice of referring to illegal immigrants as immigrants, thus allowing advocates of unrestrained lawbreaking by uninvited aliens to tar good faith opponents  of open border and amnesty policies as xenophobes and racists.

Lakoff continues his cynical instruction  for aspiring Big Brothers: Continue reading →

2017 Oscar Ethics Post Mortem

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

There were more ethics-related events and issues at the last night’s Academy Awards than usual, and that’s an understatement;

1. Jimmy Kimmel, the Oscars’ designated Johnny Carson this time around, automatically gave the ceremonies the stench of ethics blindness by his very presence. Kimmel, as this site has documented, delights in provoking parents to be cruel to their young children so he can present YouTube videos of the kids’ despair for his audience’s amusement. Kimmel, of course, being bereft of shame or decency, was the perfect choice to execute the Academy’s second most important mission of the night, which was insulting the President of the United States in an international broadcast. He did not fail his dark masters. One well-publicized “quip”:

“Maybe this is not a popular thing to say, but I want to say thank you to President Trump. Remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars were racist? That’s gone, thanks to him.”

Actually, the Oscars are racist, or at least racially biased, as we shall see, and there is proof. I’d like Jimmy to show me the evidence that the President is racist, however, other than the “resistance” talking points he gets in his e-mail.

2. More Kimmel: in a typical Kimmel “human beings are just props to me!” bit, he arranged for a group of unsuspecting tourists to be taken on a Hollywood bus tour that ended up at the Oscars.  The group was escorted through the back doors of the Kodak Theater with no idea what was in store, as  Kimmel had the house lights turned down. When the tourists—Awww, ordinary slobs! Look, Meryl! The little people!”—opened the doors to the stage, the lights came up and all the stars shouted, “Mahershala!” The tourists’ shocked, ope mouthed expression were broadcast live to the world, as their Hollywood betters laughed.

This is called exploitation, and using unconsenting human beings as a means to an end.  Jimmy thinks its funny. Kant didn’t. I think it’s sometimes funny, and always unethical. Candid Camera asked for written consent before broadcasting its victims’ amusing reactions to gags like this.

3. Mel Gibson, justly nominated for his direction of “Hacksaw Ridge,” which also was nominated as Best Picture, sat up front. The Daily Beast tweeted “For Shame!” when the film won a statuette for editing, which it deserved. Let’s see: the theory is that the talented film editor should be snubbed for his work because Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite?  Yes, that’s the theory. The Beast’s Amy Zimmerman wrote a pre-Oscar hate piece on Gibson, which really and truly contained these two sentences:

Hacksaw  tells the story of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who enlisted as a battlefield medic during World War II. Of course, any drama that Gibson directs pales in comparison to his own behind-the-scenes odyssey: the story of an odious individual who, after years on the outskirts of Hollywood, has somehow managed to fight his way back into the mainstream.

That’s right: Amy Zimmerman thinks that the story of a religious man who volunteered to serve as a combat medic despite refusing to carry a rifle and who saved 76 wounded soldiers by dragging them to safety under enemy fire by lowering them, one by one,  on a rope device he improvised on the spot, thus winning the Medal of Honor, pales in comparison to Mel Gibson’s PR problems.

Have some damn respect for those who did risked their lives incredible things so hacks like you can write garbage like that and be paid for it, you stupid, stupid fool. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Fate of Rachel Dolezal

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

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I hope you remember Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP branch president who falsely claimed to be black, double-talked and lied about her racial origins, and was defended by the “race is just a social construct” crowd on the left, as part of the same ideological fantasy that holds that a man can be a woman by just deciding that she is one. Ethics Alarms discussed her strange story here, here, and here.

Following her 15 minutes of fame, Rachel was somehow unable to manage a book contract or a speaking tour, perhaps because she is a walking, talking Achilles heel for several beloved progressive myths, Now she’s jobless and living on food stamps, and facing foreclosure and expects to be evicted next month.

“There’s no protected class for me,” she told The Guardian. “I’m this generic, ambiguous scapegoat for white people to call me a race traitor and take out their hostility on. And I’m a target for anger and pain about white people from the black community. It’s like I am the worst of all these worlds…I do think a more complex label would be helpful, but we don’t really have that vocabulary. I feel like the idea of being trans-black would be much more accurate than ‘I’m white.’ Because you know, I’m not white.”

Of course, she is.

Dolezal says she’s been rejected for  over 100 jobs. She has had offers on the freak show circuit,  in porn and reality TV. But Dolezal is not uneducated or dumb. Surely there are many jobs that she could perform, and well.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz Of The Day is this…

Would you hire Rachel Dolezal?

Continue reading →