Government & Politics

A Proposal For The 2016 Campaign Coverage: Broadcast News Reporters Should Just State Up Front That They Plan On Warping Facts, Punditry And Interviews In Favor Of One Party Or The Other

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Kelly and Trump

After all, they are doing it so consistently and blatantly already. Why not be transparent about it?

Case Study 1: CNN Host Brooke Baldwin

On  Baldwins’ “CNN Newsroom” this week, Trump supporter Gina Loudon was talking about the New York Times report on Donald Trump’s dubious conduct with women. The Trump flack brought up Bill Clinton’s  $850,000 settlement payment to Paula Jones for allegedly sexually harassing her. Baldwin cut Loudon off, saying, “Okay, let’s not go there.”

Wait—why not go there? The issue raised by the Times involves Presidential and leadership standards. The Times’ position during Clinton’s administration was that this was “personal conduct” and irrelevant to the Presidency. Is it or isn’t it?

The reason Baldwin doesn’t want to “go there” is that she, like so many of her CNN colleagues,  is a virtual pro-Hillary Clinton operative masquerading as a reporter, and tilts the content of her show accordingly. Later, Baldwin proved it: After Loudon concluded by noting that Clinton should have spoken out in defense of women her husband had abused if she was the champion of victims of sexual abuse that she claims to be,  Baldwin said,

“I think the Clinton camp — and, listen, I would say this either way, just to be fair to both of them — but I think the Clinton camp would point to, you know, her resume of lifting women up through the years.”

Yes, they would say that, Brooke, and that would be a dodge and an evasion, which, if they said it on a competent and non-partisan news broadcast, the host would be obligated to reply, “That isn’t responsive. Is Mrs. Clinton an advocate for women, or will she support their abusers if it’s politically beneficial to her?”

Instead, you’re giving the evasive Clinton spin yourself! Why is that?

Because CNN, with the sole courageous exception of  Jake Tapper, is all in for Hillary, and will distort journalism standards and ethics as necessary to elect her.

Case Study 2: Fox News Host Megyn Kelly
 Continue reading →

Ethics Hero, If A Bit Late To The Party: Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Horrified by this story in the Washington Post and others like it,  Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh has filed suit against Access Funding and other viatical settlement companies, asserting that they take advantage of vulnerable victims of lead poisoning by purchasing their structured settlements at less than fair-market value.

Gee, ya think?

I have written about this many times and in other forums, and even been threatened by a few the despicable companies (“It’s your money!”…”I have a structured settlement and I need cash now!”) in this cruel and predatory industry. 

Few in the general public know about it or understand what’s going on. Structured settlement are annuities bought by insurance companies to ensure a regular flow of compensatory damages to personal injury and medical malpractice plaintiffs to cover their medical costs and living expenses. The settlements aren’t given out in lump sums because many such plaintiffs are poor and have no experience handling money. A large payment of millions of dollars guarantees that needy family members and friends will beg, plead for and demand loans and hand-outs, while the recipients themselves are tempted to buy luxuries they have long dreamed about with funds intended to cover lifetime cancer treatments.

As I wrote in a post almost seven years ago…

Once they are on their own, however, the compensated victims are targeted by viatical settlement companies, both those with cute opera-singing commercials and those without. They undermine the sound advice of the attorneys with slogans like “It’s your money!” and try to persuade the former plaintiffs to unstructure the structured settlement by selling the annuity’s income stream to the viatical settlement company at a deep discount. Result: the annuity company gets the regular income at bargain rates, and the victims get a new, smaller lump sum to dissipate in exchange. The statistics say that the customer of the viatical settlement company will run out of cash long before he or she runs out of the need for it. But for the company, it’s a sweet deal.

Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Incompetence: Healy Baumgardner, Trump “Senior Press Representative” On CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

HealyAmong the various forms of unethical conduct, incompetence is often the one most difficult to assess objectively and fairly. In order to set a baseline standard for what constitutes indisputable incompetence in the performance of professional duties, I offer this, the recent appearance of “senior press representative” Healy Baumgardner on CNN with Carol Costello.

I know it’s hard to watch. Just brace yourself, and hold on. It will be over before you know it.

Healy, I think you will agree, makes Marco Rubio’s disastrous stuck-needle performance (Millennials: Once upon a time, recordings were played on these things called “record” by means of a “needle” on the arm of a “record player,” and a scratch would make the needle…oh, forget it.) during a debate cross-examination by Chris Christie look like deft repartee by comparison.

Fair conclusions to be drawn from this horror show include… Continue reading →

I Know Exactly How The Late Mary Anne Noland Felt…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

trump-clinton-obituary

…however, we all have ethical obligations to our society and nation, and however revolting they may be, we may be required to make difficult choices, accepting our responsibility and, ultimately, accountability. Fleeing out of anger, despair, disappointment, confusion or fear is a breach of the duties of citizenship and community, and is unethical.

Fleeing to the Afterlife, moreover, is almost as bad as fleeing to Canada.

But seriously folks, I appreciate the parting shot engineered by Mrs. Noland’s family, one hopes with her consent and approval, and it gave me a good laugh.

The story isn’t, as some assumed, a hoax. Here, courtesy of Snopes, is the entire obituary, published in The Richmond Dispatch yesterday:

NOLAND, Mary Anne Alfriend. Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday, May 15, 2016, at the age of 68. Born in Danville, Va., Mary Anne was a graduate of Douglas Freeman High School (1966) and the University of Virginia School of Nursing (1970). A faithful child of God, Mary Anne devoted her life to sharing the love she received from Christ with all whose lives she touched as a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, friend and nurse. Mary Anne was predeceased by her father, Kyle T. Alfriend Jr. and Esther G. Alfriend of Richmond. She is survived by her husband, Jim; sister, Esther; and brothers, Terry (Bonnie) and Mac (Carole). She was a mother to three sons, Jake (Stormy), Josh (Amy) and David (Katie); and she was “Grammy” to 10 beloved grandchildren.

______________________________________

Pointer: Michael McMurphy

 

More Evidence That It Isn’t “Gun Safety” The Anti-Gun Forces Are Gunning For, But The Second Amendment Itself

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

anti-gun cartoon

Those who are confident that Donald Trump can’t be elected President might want to contact Hillary Clinton and advise another one of her well-timed policy position reversals. She has aligned herself with those who want nothing less than to eliminate the right of Americans to own guns and be able to defend themselves, and that means she is spitting into the gale of core American values and culture.

And the Constitution, of course.

A clear-thinking and principled United States District Court judge just condemned a sinister anti-gun law that embodies the anti- Second Amendment animus. Judge Richard J. Leon’s 46-page ruling in United States District Court declared illegal a law that gave the police the discretion to grant concealed-carry licenses only to those with “good reason” to do so, such as a specific and reasonable fear of attack  or other reasons, such as having a job in which they carried large amounts of cash or valuables. A citizen wishing to carry a pistol must demonstrate “a special need for self-protection distinguishable from the general community as supported by evidence of specific threats or previous attacks that demonstrate a special danger to the applicant’s life,” the law says.

Wrong. A citizen wishing to carry a gun should only have to show that he or she is a law abiding citizen, and that he or she is trained in gun safety and how to use a firearm.

Judge Leon wrote, “Given the textual and historical evidence, I have little trouble concluding that under its original meaning the Second Amendment protects a right to carry arms for self-defense in public…Given that the Second Amendment’s central purpose is self-defense and that this need arises more frequently in public, it logically follows that the right to carry arms for self-defense in public lies at the very heart of the Second Amendment.”

It also follows that the government deigning to grant the Constitutional right to those few individuals it deems worthy is a direct Second Amendment breach. It is frankly frightening that other judges have ruled differently. If ever citizen has a Constitutionally protected right, a law cannot say that the right only applies to you if the government says so. Laws restricting rights must describe legitimate circumstances that justify the restriction, not presume a restriction on everyone except a sufficiently terrified few. It is up to me to decide whether I need a gun, not D.C.’s police chief. Continue reading →

The “Lying Hillary” Smoking Gun Video

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I know it’s viral now, and perhaps not news. Indeed, the fact that Hillary Clinton is one of the most prolific, shameless, media-enabled and successful serial liars in United States political history is certainly not news, and is undeniable by anyone not yet corrupted by her scorched earth march to power. Nonetheless, this is an ethics blog, and one that has devoted an extensive effort, much criticized as obsessive, to document why the words “ethical” and “Hillary Clinton” must never be used in close proximity to each other. I have to post this.

Does it prove she is spectacularly untrustworthy? Of course it does. Does it prove she is unfit to be President? Yes, except in the horrible hypothetical circumstance that someone even more unfit is running against her, such as, oh, let’s pick someone that no sane and patriotic American would ever consider as a potential President, like Jessica Simps…no, worse, like Alec Baldwi…no, still not bad enough. Okay, let’s say..I know, I know, it’s ridiculous, but…Donald Trump. (I almost said Justin Bieber.)

The stunning thing about the video is that it isn’t nearly complete. For example,  it does not include that dozens, indeed hundreds, maybe thousands, of  instances when Clinton employed deceit, the family specialty. Of course, if it did, the video would be 13 hours long. Days, maybe.

I do have some questions and observations for Hillary Clinton supporters in light of the above. Continue reading →

MORE Gender Issues Confusion Monday, PART 3:The New York Times’ Hit Piece On Donald Trump And Women

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Trump girls

The New York Times assigned six reporters to interview over fifty women who have dealt with The Donald, and the resulting story proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he engages in routine sexual harassment, acts like a high school student, behaves like the archetypal male chauvinist pig, and habitually ogled women and made comments about their appearance. Of course, anyone who hadn’t been in suspended animation for the past decade or so would know or assume all this based on the Trump’s activities and words. This is the dilemma in trying to cover an obviously unfit and unqualified Presidential candidate like other Presidential candidates. For a traditional politician, the Times’s revelations would be devastating. In Trump’s case, we have learned so many worse things about his nature during the past six months that his misogyny is both old news and relatively trivial. It’s like a character “Jurassic World” warning  that the murderous Indominus Rex has bad breath.

It appears that the Times was also sloppy in its reporting, but never mind: the real mystery is how any Democrats thinks that what Trump has done can benefit Hillary Clinton in any way. Nothing Trump is accused of in the article approaches the conduct that women who  were involved with Bill Clinton claim he inflicted on them, only to have their claims dismissed or ignored by the news media and Democrats. That party went on record as believing that personal conduct, no matter how offensive or abusive to women, doesn’t matter, or at least didn’t matter in Bill’s case, because “Bill was on the right side of the issues, especially abortion. Indeed, one famous female journalist wrote that she would sleep with him anytime, just to thank him for supporting abortion.” Continue reading →

Gender Issues Confusion Monday Continues With PART 2: ESPN’s Howard Bryant Argues That It Is Sexist And Bigoted Not To Follow Women’s Sports

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments
You WILL believe she is as good as Stephen Curry, or you are a sexist bigot!

You WILL believe she is as good as Stephen Curry, or you are a sexist bigot!

The culture wars are heating up, and both extreme ends of the ideological divide appear to be dashing to Crazy Town as fast as their legs can carry them. The vital, existential question is this:  how many previously sane people will follow them in all the excitement?

Newsbusters recently flagged an article in ESPN Magazine by Howard Bryant that condemns disinterest in women’s professional sports, specifically basketball, as a mark of bias and misogyny. I wish I could read the whole thing—it requires a subscription—but the excerpts quoted seem clear…and deranged:

A. “Using men as the standard for female athletic achievement is designed to diminish and distort women’s accomplishments….The insistence on being identical to men might appear noble but is actually a false flag.”

B.  “….acceptance of the women’s game on its own legitimate terms, independent of men – feels less promising and more turbulent. And in many ways it parallels the various racial dynamics of integration. Legislation secured the right to exist. Achievement vindicated the movement. Neither assured acceptance. The women’s game is in a similar place. The progress is there. The progressive thinking isn’t.”

C. “The issue is why the women’s game cannot be left alone, without harassment, without needing to be viewed through the invalid framework of the men’s game in the first place.”

D. “Six-foot-10 [male tennis pro] John Isner serves 143 mph. Five-foot-9 Serena does not and never will, which is proof of nothing, another false equivalent in a country built on inequalities.”

E. “These empty arguments, rooted in distortion and misogyny, are not without a sinister purpose. They are intended to devalue the women’s game, block opportunity, attack equal pay or discontinue women’s sports altogether.”

F.”[A]s long as women’s sports remain a cultural priority, financially and legally protected, maybe acceptance really isn’t that important anyway.”

Continue reading →

Screaming At The TV In A Hotel Room…The News Media, GOP, Polls, Trump and Hillary Agree: Lies Don’t Matter!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Shrug2

I was stuck on the road without a laptop this morning, up an hour earlier than I thought I was because the hotel room clock was set an hour ahead (apparently they have double daylight savings time in Boston  now), and found myself watching one segment after another on CNN that had me by turns depressed and furious, with my head exploding repeatedly (I can’t wait to see the cleaning bill.)

1. First, there was a segment about how Hillary Clinton is attacking Bernie Sanders by saying that she supported the auto bailout, and implying that Bernie did not. As the CNN crew pointed out, Bernie opposed the bailout when it was part of the whole economic stimulus package,but voted for it, like Clinton, when it was severed from that bill. In other words, Clinton…and I know this will shock and disillusion many of you…was lying. This lie is the variety called deceit, a Clinton specialty. She doesn’t exactly say that Sanders didn’t vote for the bail-out, but that is the impression her words leave, and are meant to leave.

Get this: the reporter—I can’t find any of this exchange on the web—following Clinton’s campaign said (I am paraphrasing), “It isn’t up to Clinton to explain the nuances of his votes. That’s Sanders’ problem.”

No, you pro-Clinton hack of a lazy and ethics-challenged  parody of a journalist, it’s your problem and our problem, and because you and your Clinton suck-up colleagues won’t inform your viewers that a lie is a lie, it is a really big problem. Sanders did not oppose the auto bail-out, and Clinton, who knows that, is saying otherwise in the patented Bill and Hillary way. It shouldn’t be up to Bernie to try to unravel the deceitful false accusation; he shouldn’t have to deal with it at all, and wouldn’t if he wasn’t running against a shameless liar. I shouldn’t have to keep going on Facebook trying to explain reality to my ignorant friends who believe that Colin Powell’s handful of private e-mails during the Jurassic Period of State Department cyber-security made Hillary’s private server as pure as the ocean breeze, either. Continue reading →

Why Are So Many National Parks Visitors Vandalizing Nature?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

bison calf

My initial impression was that this trend is another canary dying in the mine (yes, I know THAT isn’t a canary!), as being and acting stupid and unethical becomes increasingly culturally acceptable. My theory holds that the public sees so many rich, powerful, successful public figures exhibiting these traits, and yearns to adopt their habits and values

The most recent example is the episode represented by the photo above. Well-meaning but ignorant tourists in Yellowstone National Park, where no human is supposed to get within 25 yards of the wildlife, decided to “rescue” a bison calf they found away from its herd, so they stuffed the animal into their car. They drove it to a ranger station, where they were cited for violation of park rules.

In effect, they had killed the calf. When the young bison was returned to the herd, the mother rejected it, and the beast began approaching humans, seeking food and company.

The park had to euthanize it.

Said the park officials in a statement,

“In recent weeks, visitors in the park have been engaging in inappropriate, dangerous and illegal behavior with wildlife. These actions endanger people and have now resulted in the death of a newborn bison calf.”

Morons. The Park Service should release their names, or give some Yellowstone wolves their scent. This is not a new taboo; there is no excuse for any visitor to a National Park to think this is responsible conduct.

Not fatal but equally infuriating is the tale behind this photo: Continue reading →