Government & Politics

Ethics Movie: “The Company You Keep”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

2012’s “The Company You Keep” was the last film directed by Robert Redford, which tells you something. Redford is an excellent director but often not a commercially popular one: this movie, about aging Sixties radicals and their slow-dawning realization (or not) that their “movement” was ethically and logically flawed did not do well at the box office, and after his previous ethics movie (“The Conspirator,” which I posted about here) bombed, Redford’s days of getting studios to bet on his work were over.

“The Company You Keep” is not as good as “The Conspirator,” but it is surprisingly relevant in 2025 as we watch the American Left struggling with its hypocrisy, foolish utopianism and increasingly obvious hatred for its own country. Redford plays a former Weatherman (“The Weathermen” was the violent faction of the Students for Democratic Action) who has been in hiding in plain sight since a domestic terrorism action by the group turned fatal. When his long-standing alternate identity as a prominent lawyer is outed by an idealistic young journalist, Redford goes on the run. In the process he encounters former fellow-revolutionaries, some of whom still burn for the cause.

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An Eternal Ethical Dilemma at Arlington National Cemetery

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Once an institution publicly embraces or endorses something that wasn’t that institution’s proper role to endorse, the mistake cannot be remedied without the undesirable result of appearing to reject what should never have been embraced in the first place. The reverse is also true: as EA has pointed out, when the government starts legalizing previously banned substances, it appears that society now approves of their use.

The Trump administration is falling victim to the first version of this phenomenon in its admirable purge of DEI propaganda and practices across the government and its agencies. Naturally, this is being weaponized by the Trump-Hating news media. Today’s example: “Arlington Cemetery Website Loses Pages on Black Veterans, Women and Civil War” at the New York Times.

The story goes on to say, after the deliberately inflammatory title (President Trump is a racist and a misogynist, you know!), that the pages were taken down in response to the administration’s policy of ending promotion of the woke “diversity, equity and exclusion” fad, which is designed to inject “good discrimination” and group preferences into the culture.

The cemetery is operated by the Army, and issued a statement that it is dedicated to “sharing the stories of military service and sacrifice to the nation with transparency and professionalism.” The missing pages are being re-drafted. Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, accused the Trump administration of trying to erase the accomplishments of women and people of color.

Of course he did.

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Why Is So Much of the Public Ignorant, Badly Informed, Confused and Stupid? THIS….

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I had several other posts on the runway (including a Kennedy Center Symphony crowd booing J.D. Vance: stay classy, you patrons of the arts!, but with the developing theme today of The Great Stupid, I couldn’t resist this one. We began with a moronic “influencer,” proceeded to a state-appointed adviser who thinks she’s a reptile, and now an apparently respected black journalist named Karen Hunter.

For some ridiculous reason (that’s the second time I’ve used that intro: it’s a quote from “The Pirates of Penzance”), I was sent an email by SiriusXM about “host SiriusXM host Karen Hunter’s podcast today.” It featured loudmouthed, race-obsessed sports commentator Stephen A. Smith, who because he always drags politics into everything, is now being treated like an expert on politics.

What follows is the exchange during the podcast that was sent to entice me into becoming a follower, springing from Hunter’s questions about “buzz” around Smith being a possible Presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2028. To his credit, he said that the idea was absurd, but I’m more concerned with what this radio host said:

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Peak “Great Stupid” in Oregon (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I heard some mocking talking heads on Fox News joking about this yesterday and it made no sense to me at all, so I ignored it. Then I found out what had provoked all of the giggling about turtles.

The state of Oregon has appointed JD Holt to an Oregon Mental Health Advisory Board. JD says her pronouns are “they/them/terrapin.” She/they/it is not kidding. So she is out of her frickin’ mind.

From Fox News: “JD Holt, who also goes by “JD Terrapin” on Facebook, is one of roughly two dozen “consumers” on the OHA’s Consumer Advisory Council (OCAC). The council, established by administrative statute, is appointed by OHA Director Dr. Sejal Hathi, who was appointed by Gov. Tina Kotek (D, of course.) The purpose of the OCAC is to advise Hathi on the state’s provision of mental health services, including through investigations and reviews of current practices.”

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Observations on a Jobs Graph

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

That provocative graph above is brought to you by Apollo Global Management.

It purports to reveal what proportion of new jobs added each year since 2016 were in the private and public sectors. I have no way of telling whether the numbers are accurate, whether the manner of presenting them is fair, and whether Apollo has an agenda in presenting them this way. I guess that’s the first ethics observation. It is now impossible to trust news accounts, statistics, analysis, surveys, studies and data, no matter where it comes from. We can add this to the fact that photographs, films, recordings and videos are also untrustworthy.

But here are some more observations on the off chance that the numbers are correct and can be trusted:

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Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Rashida Tlaib, (D-Mich)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The neck-and -neck race to be the worst member of the House was narrowed down considerably last week after such worthy contestants on the GOP side as Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene were lapped by all of the Democrats who beclowned themselves during President Trump’s “Address to the Joint Session of Congress,” aka. “The State of the Union.” But “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib (above), already a strong favorite of the Las Vagas oddsmakers to win “Worst Member of Congress Alive,” seemingly swept aside her fellow Squad members, Jasmine Crockett, Eric Swalwell, Al Green, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the motley crew they as if they were flies on her face by being the only member of the House to vote against the Subterranean Border Defense Act.

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Ethics Quote of the Day: Prof. Jonathan Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“If you view conservatives judges and justices as “lawless,” then every decision that they issue can be construed as a “crisis” in failing to adopt your own interpretive approach.”

—George Washington University law professor and lawyer Jonathan Turley

I decided to ignore the recent open letter signed by approximately 950 law professors declaring the second Trump administration a “Constitutional crisis,” because it was so obviously a mass exhibition of both “bias makes you stupid” and the overwhelming partisan slant of the legal profession, upon which Ethics Alarms has commented many times. The letter is the equivalent of the infamous one in 2020 signed by all those national intelligence experts who wanted everyone to know that the Hunter Biden laptop was really Russian disinformation, but the current letter is worse. Lawyers, as professionals, are required to be trustworthy. Trustworthy lawyers don’t put their names on legal misinformation and political propaganda like this latest “Trump is a dictator” attack. (The American Bar Association has issued a similar statement.)

I’m glad I waited and let Professor Turley eviscerate these disgraces to the law and academia. Cruelly, he has more influence, visibility and credibility than little ol’ me. In his blog post and column for The Hill titled “Panic politics: Law professors’ umpteenth ‘constitutional crisis’ falls flat”, Turley neatly points out,

  • “The latest letter follows a familiar pattern that has played out like a political perpetual motion machine since the first Trump impeachment. It works something like this: A legal academy composed of largely liberal academics announces a “constitutional crisis” caused by conservatives, and then a largely liberal media runs the story with little scrutiny or skepticism. On most echo-chambered media sites, the public rarely hears an opposing view.”

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! On my Facebook page, lawyers and even a couple of professors regularly proclaim as fact that President Trump is “defying” the Constitution.

Biased, ignorant and Trump-Deranged is no way to practice law, son.

Read the whole thing, but here are some more excerpts: Continue reading →

The 2024 Gallup “Americans’ Ratings of Honesty and Ethics of Professions”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I write a post about this annual Gallup survey every year, but my observations apart from the obvious have been increasingly redundant. This will be reflected in my comments this year as well, largely because little has changed significantly since 2023. Gallup writes in its introduction,

Gallup began measuring public trust in various professions in 1976, initially covering 14 jobs. Over the years, the list has changed, with some occupations added and others removed. Since 1999, 11 professions have been tracked annually, while others have been included periodically.

The average very high/high ethics rating of the core 11 professions has decreased from routinely 40% or higher in the early 2000s to closer to 35% during most of the 2010s. It rose slightly in 2020, to a seven-year high of 38%, reflecting enhanced public trust in healthcare workers and teachers during the pandemic. Thereafter, the average declined each year through 2023, when it reached 30%, and it held there in 2024. This mirrors the long-term decline in Americans’ confidence in U.S. institutions.

There is mordant humor in that text: the enhanced public trust in healthcare workers and teachers was wildly misplaced. The healthcare profession was inept and dishonest during the pandemic, and the teachers unions crashed the economy by lobbying to keep the schools closed for their own interests. It also reflects the trend I’ve see in these surveys for years: the public tends to trust occupations they have to trust, explaining why pharmacists and nurses have always been among the most trusted professions.

One reason the trust freefall has slowed, I believe, is that so many professions are trusted so little now that there isn’t much farther for them to fall. Only 8% of those surveyed trust Congress strongly: I’d assume that just the number of apathetic ignoramuses in the population would account for that number. It will be interesting to see if this clown show…

…drives trust in Congress lower still in the 2025 survey. And who knows what horrors are to come?

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Three Word Summary of “Working at Anheuser-Busch, I Saw What Went Wrong With the D.E.I. Movement”: “It was D.E.I.”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“The principles that built great American companies are simple: Hire the best people, serve your customers well and let merit and financial results determine success. While expanding opportunity and making employees feel welcome are worthy goals, how D.E.I. policies were carried out often strayed from these foundational principles and might have even created other forms of discrimination.”

It might have even created other forms of discrimination! Gee, ya think?

In a jaw-dropping example of the “Tell me something I don’t know” variety of journalism, the New York Times gives us “Working at Anheuser-Busch, I Saw What Went Wrong With the D.E.I. Movement” (Gift link!). Anson Frericks tells us that water is wet with the solemnity of a doctor announcing a cancer diagnosis. He was shocked–shocked!—when his company, having announced its commitment to “DEI,” turned down a beneficial distribution arrangement with another company because “being associated with Black Rifle was too politically provocative, especially in progressive circles.” This, in 2022, two years after the beginning of the George Floyd Freakout, made Anson realize that his employers were more interested in virtue-signalling to the Looney Left than selling beer.

What did he think “diversity, equity and inclusion” was going to mean?

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The Ethics of Deporting Mahmoud Khalil For Pro-Terrorist Advocacy, II.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Shortly after posting a discussion of conservative legal scholar Illya Somin’s article at Reason declaring the Trump administration’s effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil “unjust and unconstitutional,” I became aware of the article at City Journal in which conservative legal scholar Ilya Shapiro defends the policy as legal and constitutional. It is clear from the essay that he also believes the policy is appropriate and ethical.

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