Incompetent Elected Officials

Early Evening Ethics Aggravations, 5/23/2022: Facts Don’t Matter, Words Don’t Matter, Aiming A Loaded Shotgun At A Black Jogger Doesn’t Matter…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Currently bugging me…

  • Walking Spuds just now before the rains come, I saw no fewer than five fellow Alexandrians, ranging in age from about 60 to 13, walking along on a lovely, cool day without appearing to look up once from their cell phone screens. I said “Hi!” to two of them, but they didn’t hear me because they had earbuds blocking out all auditory stimulation from the outside world. One was walking a dog trailing behind., but I could have replaced it with a rabid wolverine for al she would have noticed.
  • Right after I posted about Stacey Abrams’ ongoing con and the mainstream media’s immediate resort to the “Republicans pounce!” deflection, New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel tweeted, “Why did John Fetterman chase down a Black person with a shotgun?’ asks Barnette. The GOP use of this 2013 incident – which some PA Dems predicted would be used in the general to discourage Black turnout – has begun.” Barnette is recently defeated GOP Pennsylvania Senate hopeful Kathy Barnette, who raised the 2013 incident when Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman detained an innocent African-American jogger with a loaded shotgun and pointed it at his chest. How rude of her! (That was criminal assault, by the way.) Instapundit asks, “Who Among Us Has Not Chased Down an Unarmed Black Jogger with a Shotgun?” and the National Review muses on how the mainstream media would handle a similar incident if the candidate in question were a conservative rather than an extreme progressive “Bernie Bro.”

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Nancy Pelosi’s Unethical Quote Of Her Career Proves What An Ethics Villain She Is…But We Knew That Already

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

“Who would ever [have] suspected that a creature like Donald Trump would become president of the United States, waving a list of judges that he would appoint, therefore getting the support of the far right and appointing those anti-freedom justices to the court?”

—Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on CNN yesterday

Almost exactly four years ago, progressives, Democrats and the news media accused Donald Trump, then President, of racism because he referred to border-jumping MS-13 gang members as “animals.” At that time, Pelosi delivered this pious rebuke:

We believe some of us who are attracted to the political arena and to government and public service that we’re all God’s children. There’s a spark of divinity in every person on Earth and that we all have to recognize that as we respect the dignity and worth of every person. … And so when the president of the United States says about undocumented immigrants, ‘these aren’t people, these are animals,’ you have to wonder, does he not believe in the spark of divinity? The dignity and worth of every person? ‘These are not people, these are animals,’ the president of the United States. … Calling people ‘animals’ is not a good thing.

Of course it was a cheap shot by Pelosi, but she specialized in cheap shots during the Trump years. If one is going to call anyone an animal, the brutal, lawless MS-13 gang members are a good choice. Now, however, Pelosi calls a President of the United States a “creature,” which is even lower than “animal,” evoking slimy insects, reptiles, and this guy…

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The Biden Ministry Of Truth Fiasco: “Disinformation,” “Misinformation,” And De-Information

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The New York Times this morning had no reports whatsoever on the emerging truth that the head of the Department of Homeland Security’s ominous-sounding “misinformation and disinformation” board, Nina Jankowicz, has not only been a purveyor of “disinformation” (aka. “intentional lies”) herself, and also, in the blunt words of the editorial board of the New York Post, “a partisan hack,” but also a narcissistic whack-job, as the TikTok video above clearly shows.

The fact that the Biden Administration would be so dense as to appoint a woman like this to head an agency that was guaranteed to set heads exploding everywhere but in the anti-free speech community called Wokeville (see “evil” hidden in there? Huh? HUH??)is just one more indication that common sense and basic competence have left the building, the building being the White House. And Ethics Alarms mocked Trump for not hiring “the best people” as he had promised on the campaign trail! I owe Donald an apology. Even Omarosa, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon weren’t any more untrustworthy than Jankowicz, and they hadn’t been put in charge of a censorship operation.

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Signature Significance: Washington Post Editorial Board’s Fantasy

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

How can anyone take seriously, much less trust, a newspaper with an editorial board that would publish something like this?

The headline was clickbait, at least for me: “Biden shows once again why he is a huge upgrade from Trump.” I had to read it. “Once again”? “Huge upgrade”? I wondered what on earth the Post could be referring to. The answer took me by surprise.

The editorial was lauding Biden’s pardoning or commuting convicted criminals who committed nonviolent federal crimes. Well, I’m not going to quibble: the traditional POTUS use of the Presidential pardon power is a low, low, lower than low bar to clear. I haven’t seen the full information on those who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted, but they were overwhelmingly drug offenders, and overwhelmingly “of color,” because that’s how this Administration rolls. There is, I surmise, virtually no chance that Joe was personally involved in the choice of who to pardon, and scant chance that he had to do anything more than sign off on the selections made by Elizabeth G. Oyer, the Justice Department’s pardon chief.

Still, the Presidential pardon power is shamefully underused, and has been grossly misused in the past, notably when Bill Clinton, in the waning days of his Presidency, pardoned fugitive Marc Rich, who had been indicted on federal charges of tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and making oil deals with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis. Why did Clinton do this? His ex-wife pledged millions to Clinton’s Presidential library, and suddenly Rich was pardoned.

It was a bribe, straight up. How does the Post describe what Clinton did? A “pardon of a Democratic donor looked like a quid pro quo.” Is that a fair or accurate description? No, but the deceit allows the Post editors to say “President Donald Trump was far worse.” Really? Far worse than taking millions of dollars to pardon scum like Marc Rich? That deliberate misrepresentation is also an excellent reason not to trust the Post.

Trump is condemned by the Post because he pardoned some of his loyalists like Mike Flynn, Joe Arpaio and Steve Bannon, all of whom the Post ranks as worse than Rich by virtue of being connected to Trump. I hold most of those pardons justifiable. The Democrats criminalized politics when Trump was elected: those associated with the President had targets on their backs for partisan prosecutors to aim at. Though the Post’s editors don’t mention it, Trump also pardoned a lot of non-violent offenders who were worthy of mercy.

Here is something else that they don’t mention: if all we are talking about is pardons and commutations, Biden is a “huge upgrade” over Barack Obama, and so was Trump. By Thanksgiving of 2010, a full two years into his first term, Obama had pardoned two turkeys (one the previous year) and no human beings.

But of course the Washington Post doesn’t have the integrity to mention that.

The larger point is this: It is ridiculous to cite the use of the pardon power as evidence of any President’s virtues as a leader. There are literally millions of Americans who would be spectacular at issuing pardons. That doesn’t mean that they would be effective Presidents. How often are numbers of pardons and commutations cited by historians in assessing Presidencies? I can answer that: almost never. It is a relatively minor part of the job, and being a responsible and competent wielder of that power (giving Joe a very large benefit of the doubt) doesn’t make Biden a “huge upgrade” over any of his predecessors.

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Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month AND Unethical Tweet Of The Week: Mass. State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa (D-1st Hampshire District)

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

  • Do we really have more elected officials at the local, state and national levels who are spectacularly ignorant of basic civics and the U.S. Constitution, or does it just seem that way?
  • How typical is this idiot/totalitarian of Democrats generally?
  • How can anyone trust, never mind vote for, someone who thinks she won’t be pilloried for stating that government power should not be constrained by laws?
  • Incompetent elected officials like this are far, far more dangerous than Joy Behar, who thinks the Supreme Court passes bills. All Joy does is talk on TV. Sabadosa is in a position where her ignorance and fondness for government dictatorship can do real damage.

The Great Stupid And Seattle Transit

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

In Michael Crichton’s”The Lost World,” a “Jurassic Park” follow-up not to be confused with the “Jurassic Park” film sequel of the same name and not one of the writer’s best, there is an interesting discussion of how some species of dinosaurs may have caused their own eventual extinction by developing toxic habits, like not caring for their young. It was the first thing I thought of when I read about the ridiculous transit system crisis in Seattle.

Oh-oh.

It shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose, that the city that encouraged woke support for the destructive George Floyd riots in 2020 has adopted other unethical policies that make the Left’s anointed feel good even though the policies can’t possible work and constitute irresponsible leaps onto ruinous slippery slopes. 

The Seattle light rail public transit system has no turnstiles: passengers are supposed to  buy a ticket or tap their pre-paid card. It’s an honor system, but in woke Seattle, the ideal purpose of government is to for almost everything, so 70%—Seventy per cent!!—of the riders are freeloaders. This means that fares cover just 5% of the system’s operating costs. 40% was the minimum Sound Transit set as a requirement.

All public transit systems lose money (though they are approved after estimates that routinely overstate likely ridership), but they will help us avoid death by climate change, see, so they are essential and wonderful per se. However, if a city just lets riders cheat, such systems cause wider problems in the social contract.

(Do we really have to keep explaining this?)

Seattle’s Sound Transit stopped even minimal enforcement of fare requirements after a study revealed that blacks were disproportionately getting fined. Ah HA! The system was racist then! How far a jump is it to apply the same logic to other laws? It is how San Francisco. ended up legalizing shop-lifting.

I’m sorry: my tone is snarkier than usual this morning. But this is all so infuriating. And unethical. And stupid. Continue reading →

Tuesday Ethics Afterthoughts, 3/29/2022: A Cheat Sheet, Mask Mayhem, And More

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

(THERE IS NO GOOD GRAPHIC FOR “AFTERTHOUGHTS”)

The 29th is another of those ill-starred days in U.S. ethics, topped off in 1973 by the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, the half-way war that was an ethics train wreck for decades. Two years earlier, on the same date, Lt. William L. Calley was found guilty of premeditated murder by a U.S. Army court-martial at Fort Benning, Georgia. Calley, a platoon leader, had led his men in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians including women and children on March 16, 1968. Ten years before Calley’s conviction, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. They were executed in 1953, a flashpoint in the schism between the American Left and Right that still is a sore point. (Ethel appears to have been a genuine villain.)

1. I thought this was a hoax. It’s not, unfortunately: someone got a photo of the cheat cheat for “talking points” that President Biden was holding when he massacred his explanation for his Russian regime change outburst in an exchange with Peter Doocy.

This does not fill me with confidence. You? The ethical value at issue is competence.

2. The propaganda and misinformation continues. Though some recently departed here could never grasp it, honest and trustworthy newspapers shouldn’t be publishing falsity and partisan propaganda in house opinion pieces. That’s when the opinion is offered using misleading or incomplete facts—deceit–and the New York Times does it almost every day. I can’t trust a group of editors who permit that. Examples:

It’s incredible how quickly we’ve normalized the fact that the last president tried to retain power despite losing the election and that a mob he incited stormed the Capitol. Many people took part in the effort to overturn the election — among them, we recently learned, the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice, who hasn’t even recused himself in cases about the attempted coup.

The President in question wanted to challenge the results of an election he believed was the result of illegal manipulation, and as President, he had a duty to do that. I know Krugman isn’t a lawyer, but incitement is a term of art and a crime, and Trump did not “incite a mob” by addressing a crowd. Saying Justice Thomas “hasn’t even” recused himself because of the completely legal communications of his wife falsely implies that doing so is required or the justification for him to do so is undeniable. It isn’t. Editors should not allow such deliberately confusing and misleading opinion material Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Sen. Amy Klobuchar

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“The facts are clear here. This is unbelievable. You have the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice … advocating for overturning a legal election to the sitting president’s chief of staff. She also knows this election — these cases are going to come before her husband. This is a textbook case for removing him, recusing him from these decisions.”

—-Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) on ABC’s “This Week,” blathering nonsense to co-anchor Jonathan Karl today, as he, predictably, showed neither the erudition nor the guts to correct he, as she insisted that a conflict of interest that does not exist in law is a “textbook case.”

I was tempted to let the Senator’s outrageous misinformation (Will Twitter suspend her for it? Nah….) slide, except that 1) Too many lawyers and reasonable progressives of my acquaintance settled on her as their favored 2020 Democratic Presidential hopeful, and she said ridiculous things like this throughout the debates, using false certitude for fact and reason, and it ticked me off; 2) her statement isn’t just wrong, but spectacularly wrong, and 3) you know how I hate to see high officials that the public trusts use their megaphones and influence to make it even more ignorant than it already is.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month (And Maybe The Year): Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

“As long as they’re dangerous, I hope they all die in jail if they’re going to go back and kill Americans. It won’t bother me one bit if 39 of them die in prison. That’s a better outcome than letting them go. And if it costs $500 million to keep them in jail, keep them in jail. Because they’re going to go back to the fight. Look at the fricken Afghan government that’s made up of former detainees at Gitmo. This whole thing by the left about this war ain’t working.”

Senator Lindsey Graham in a meltdown at the confirmation hearing for SCOTUS nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, before walking out in a tizzy.

Hmmm. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that high ranking elected officials from both political parties appear to have little regard for core Constitutional principles? I’m going out on a limb here by stating that it’s a bad thing.

In fact, it is terrible.

Graham, an alleged conservative, proudly went on record as supporting “pre-crime” punitive measures (Watch “Minority Report” for a fair assessment of how that works) along with a pure “ends justifies the means” endorsement, spiced up by some “if it saves just one life” false logic. Continue reading →

Is It Fair To Say Kamala Harris “May Be The Dumbest Person Ever Elected Vice President In American History”?

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments

[ Forgive me for using the above clip in the jokey context in which it was presented: It was the best I could find on YouTube, meaning that I could embed it easily. ]

During remarks she made in Sunset, Louisiana this week on a stop to highlight the value of bringing high-speed broadband internet to communities, Harris got herself stuck on the phrase “the importance of the passage of time” in between her usual inappropriate giggles. Then, today, yet another Harris staffer fled the coop, moving former Speaker Newt Gingrich to say,

“You know, he [Biden] may or may not have cognitive decline problems at his age, but at her age, she’s just dumb. Let’s be clear, Kamala Harris may be the dumbest person ever elected vice president in American history and that’s why people keep resigning.If you were her national security advisor, and you were competent, and you’d worked hard, and you knew what you were doing, and you watched her in Poland break up laughing when she’s asked about Ukrainian refugees, you had to feel a sense of total humiliation. So I’m not surprised that that particular advisor resigned because it’s very clear that Kamala Harris should never, ever be allowed to leave the country.”

Is that a fair thing to say?

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