Incompetent Elected Officials

‘Unethical And Unethical-ler,’ As The Daunte Wright Ethics Train Wreck Speeds “The Great Stupid”Across The Land

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

As if it needed any help…

The police-involved death of 20-year-old black man Daunte Wright, which on its apparent facts (“Oopsie!”) did not indicate either racism or police brutality, quickly demonstrated that this was yet another car on the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck, itself but an extension of the Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck, which emerged from the Trayvon Martin Ethics Train Wreck. All have converged to intensify The Great Stupid, as many parties have learned nothing from the previous fiascos, and too many have learned the wrong things.

Recent unethical developments:

1. Naturally, there was a second night of riots. This is stupid and unethical by definition. So are media accounts like this one, picked at random, from The Boston Globe, about the previous night’s disturbances: “Officials announced curfews, schools suspended in-person classes, professional sports teams canceled games and businesses boarded up after a first night that included peaceful protests – but also clashes between police and demonstrators, as well as looting of local businesses.”

It included peaceful protests, you see, but then there was the rioting and the violence and the looting. This isn’t journalism, it’s spin. It is like writing, “the mob contained reasonable, concerned citizens, but also those who burned down businesses and attacked police.” It sets out to minimize negative reader perceptions—out of what motive? Sympathy? Bias? Incompetence? Malice?

Added: Dr. Emilio Lizardo adds this on the topic of the news media trying to establish the “peaceful protest” narrative.

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Maryland Strips Police Officers Of Substantive Due Process Rights: Oh, THIS Will Work Out Well, Yessiree!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I know this is the second appearance today of James Donald’s anguished coda at the end of “The Bridge Over The River Kwai,” but he arrives when it is appropriate.

Maryland’s Democrat-controlled legislature moved yesterday to pass a “police reform package “that includes the repeal of the state’s Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights (LEOBOR), overriding Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto to do it.

The state’s police Bill of Rights covered due process for officers accused of misconduct. You can read it here. I have. I would call it a not especially radical or permissive document, and its provisions simple codify basic due process rights. I view this move by the legislature as primarily symbolic, a virtue-signaling gesture of support for the individuals who break laws and against those who enforce them.

Yes, this is sure to work out well.

The action of the Maryland House of Delegates is more of the George Floyd freakout, still marching to the dishonest tune of Black Lives Matter, as the news media provides ample fertilizer. Here’s Politico, for example: “The move, a win for police reform advocates, comes amid a national reckoning with policing after the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer last year.”

Morons. First, Floyd did not die “at the hands” of a police officer by any measure. Second, whether the police officer caused his death is a matter being determined in a court of law, a right even police officers have. Third, it is foolish, irresponsible, incompetent emotion-driven policy-making to allow any single event, especially one in a different state, to drive substantive policy changes of any kind.

In his veto statement, Governor Hogan wrote,

“These bills would undermine the goal that I believe we share of building transparent, accountable, and effective law enforcement institutions and instead further erode police morale, community relationships, and public confidence.They will result in great damage to police recruitment and retention, posing significant risks to public safety throughout our state.”

Why would anyone in his or her right mind want to serve as a police officer in Maryland? I guess the state wants police officers who are not in their right minds. Oh, yes, this is really going to work out well.

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/2/21: The All-****Swaddle Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

1. Just a little insurrection. Georgia state Rep. Park Cannon was arrested last week after attempting to barge into the office where Gov. Brian Kemp was signing a the new Georgia voting reform bill into law. Yesterday she argued that her actions were justified. Why? Because when a Democrat thinks a law is misguided, that justifies trying to stop the democratic process, apparently, as opposed to when citizens think that a Presidential election has been stolen. They are completely different. No really. They are.

“I believe the governor signing into law the most comprehensive voter suppression bill in the country is a far more serious crime,” Cannon said. That sounds familiar too, embodying several illicit rationalizations that the idiots who attacked the Capitol on January 6 also would probably echo. Legal act X that we disagree with justifies illegal act Y we resort to because since we disagree with it, Legal Act X is really a crime. This can, of course, be used to justify almost anything.

As with most statements by critics of the Georgia law, Cannon’s raise the question of whether she has actually read the thing or is just going on what she has gleaned from Democrat and news media propaganda. Cannon described the law as a “voter suppression bill” that with “one stroke of a pen….erased decades of sacrifices, incalculable hours of work, marches, prayers, tears and … minimized the deaths of thousands who have paid the ultimate price to vote.” She says this because the bill requires that absentee ballots be properly verified—nobody died to vote by absentee ballot—-and allows the state to take over when it looks like something fishy is going on with partisan election boards. If the bill really was so restrictive in its terms, those trying to demonize it wouldn’t have to make up stuff. President Biden repeated his lie about the law closing voting at 5 pm, a day after the Washington Post reluctantly noted that it was a whopper, or as Joe might say, “malarkey.”

Still, the news media is doing its level best to prop up the propaganda: Yahoo News, which really is a disgrace, referred to the law as adding “voter restrictions.” Meanwhile, Park is raising money for her legal defense on a GoFundMe page titled “I Stand With Park,” as the crowdfunding site bans citizen efforts to impose critical race theory indoctrination in the schools.”

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Unethical? Uncivil? Unprofessional? I’m Not Sure What This Is, But I Am Sure No Competent Mayor Would Do It..

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

mayor_of_charlottesville_03-24-2021-1

Walker is the Mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia.

And they said Donald Trump posted inappropriate tweets…

After that delightful ditty was taken down by Facebook, the Honorable Mayor posted the whole poem, of which she is apparently proud, on Twitter:

mayor_of_charlottesville 2

Either she is having a nervous breakdown, of the citizens of Charlottesville are the most incompetent voters in the nation. I’m desperately searching to find another example of an elected official publicly announcing that he or she hates the city she has vowed to serve. It is a per se breach of loyalty and civic responsibility.

She is ethically obligated to resign. I’m sure she can support herself with her poetry…

Rainy Day Ethics Puddles, 3/24/2021:

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

1 Shut up or be funny. For some reason, the fact that Monday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers’ included a gratuitous and facile lecture by the host about gun control legislation was plastered all over the progressive news media as if he had begun speaking in tongues or channeling the ghost of Emily Dickinson. I hate to be a spoil sport, but who cares what Seth Myers thinks about gun control? He’s a comedian and a comedy writer, and has been nothing but since college. Again, he has no brief to lecture anyone on that topic: he has his job to be funny, and the show he hosts is, theoretically at least, a comedy show. Did Julia Child ever lecture her PBS audience about U.S. nuclear policy while explaining how to cook an omelette? No. Did Walter Cronkite ever break into knock-knock jokes during The CBS Evening News? Never. Did Andy Williams ever pause in the middle of “Moon River” to deliver his analysis of a Presidential campaign? Absolutely not.

Myers has a right to his opinion, as sophomoric and echo chamber-nourished as it may be (he was pimping for “common sense gun laws,” which is what people say when they have no idea what laws will stop the criminal use of guns, but want us to “do something”), but it is arrogant and presumptuous to perform a bait and switch on his audience, which doesn’t come to his show for public policy wisdom. If they do, he has an ethical obligation to make it clear that they shouldn’t. As far as I can tell, Myers knows zilch about law, guns, government, or the Constitution, yet he presumes to use a vehicle awarded to him only because of an alleged gift for topical humor (personally, I don’t see it) for political advocacy.

Be funny, get educated, run for office, or shut up, Seth. And incidentally, there are not mass shootings “three or four times a week” and never have been. In a single atypical week, there were two mass shootings, and no Constitutional gun laws are likely to have stopped either of them.

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Mid-Day Ethics Alarms, 3/22/2021: A Wonderful Father And A Judge Sees The Light, Though Others Not So Much…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Alarms2

1. Spitballing ethics? When everyone is throwing out ideas—you know, “Just say whatever crazy thing pops into your head, don’t worry whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea, just let ’em rip!” is it fair later to hold someone to account because a discarded idea was offensive or politically incorrect? I tend to think not.

Hiroshi Sasaki, the creative director for Tokyo Olympics, was participating in a brainstorming session about the opening ceremony with members of a committee a year ago, and at one point suggested that a popular overweight female Japanese comedian and plus-size fashion designer, Naomi Watanabe, be costumed in pig ears, perhaps a snout and curly tail, and parachute out of the heavens as an Olympic messenger: “Olympig.”

No? OK, bad idea. Let’s move on. The inspiration received immediate negative reviews in the private meeting, but when the president of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee, Yoshiro Mori, 83, resigned this year after saying that women talk too much in meetings, the year-old conversation about “Olympig” was recalled in an article on the website of “Shukan Bunshun,” a weekly magazine. Yes, one of Sasaki’s trusted colleagues had talked. (That’s an easy call: Unethical.)

So you know what comes next, right? Groveling. “Now many people know what I wrote. I cannot apologize enough to Ms. Watanabe,” he said, adding that he was a big fan of hers. “I have been trying not to hurt others by making fun of diversity, gender and physical appearances. But it was a great misunderstanding. I realized my low consciousness and insensitivity.” He resigned.

Now you know that at least for now, when someone says to just suggest whatever pops into your head, no filters, no fear, don’t.

On the positive side, it’s comforting to know that The Great Stupid isn’t just an American phenomenon.

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Tit For Tat Ethics: The Anti-Biden-Pro-Trump Flags

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Anti-Biden flags

Two stories about vulgar flags hanging on houses were so similar, I thought they were a single episode. In fact, they occurred in different states. It didn’t help that in both stories, the politically correct, silly and near-useless news media refused to actually reveal the facts because they might be “offensive.”

In Charlotte, North Carolina, a flag with “graphic language” directed at President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hangs in front of a home down the street from Mallard Creek Elementary School. Teachers and neighbors are upset at “the profane language and blatant disrespect for the President and Vice-President,” and complained that this was was “a terrible example” to set for kids. The house is on a street on the route for all the buses to get to the school.

What exactly is “the graphic language”? We’re supposed to guess: that’s today’s woke journalism, as in “lousy journalism.” Some comments from neighbors are also revealing. A neighbor told the local Fox affiliate, “If she’s concerned about that, then she needs to be getting on these rap songs and everything else.”

Yeah, that’s a classic deflection, in the style of a nice round, ten rationalizations, like 2.Whataboutism, or “They’re Just as Bad,”8, The Trivial Trap (“No harm no foul!”), 8A. The Dead Horse-Beater’s Dodge, or “This can’t make things any worse,” 16., The Consistency Obsession, 22, “There are worse things,” 26, “The Favorite Child” Excuse,” 33. The Management Shrug: “Don’t sweat the small stuff!,” 44. “It’s Not The First Time, ” 50A. Narcissist Ethics , or “I don’t care,” and #58. The Golden Rule Mutation, or “I’m all right with it!” The response doesn’t address the issue at hand, it just shrugs it away.

Too bad they don’t teach basic ethics in the U.S.

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Today’s Evidence That We Put People In Power Who Don’t Understand The Bill Of Rights: Kentucky State Senate Bill SB 211

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

jackheadexplosion

Incidentally,

KABOOM!

The Bill, if it became law, would make it a crime to insult a police officer if the words or gestures provoked a violent response. It would be class B misdemeanor, punishable up to 90 days in prison, when someone “accosts, insults, taunts, or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words, or by gestures or other physical contact, that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person.”

This potential law (actually, it isn’t even potential because the thing would be unconstitutional and a First Amendment breach the second it was passed and signed) is one of the most embarrassing pieces of legislative garbage I have seen in a very long time. It essentially says that if a citizen is so darn mean to a police officer by saying nasty things or making scary faces, and the officer is so unprofessional, incompetent and badly trained that he or she commits violent battery, the victim of the cop’s attack can be locked up! Brilliant!

Let’s look at the relevant section of the Bill of Rights, shall we? You know, that old document they apparently don’t teach in Kentucky schools and that applies to the States through the 14th Amendment? The one progressives don’t like?

“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech…“

This isn’t hard, or shouldn’t be, even for Kentuckians. (My father grew up in Kentucky.) When a law says “you can be imprisoned for saying things that a police officer finds offensive” that’s abridging free speech. What ignoramus composed this monstrosity?

He is State Senator Danny Carroll, (R-Benton), who says the bill is in response to the riots in Louisville last summer (There is another Breonna Taylor demonstration going on in Louisville right now) and on Capitol Hill in D.C.

Oh. What?

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Fairness To Senator Ron Johnson: He’s Not A Racist, He’s Just An Irresponsible Idiot.

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Johnson2

Here’s a rule of thumb: if you are a national politician and are moved to say, “This is going to get me in trouble,” don’t say “this” unless it is so brilliant that your message will eventually enshrine you in the Yale Book of Quotations…and maybe not even then.

In an interview Thursday with syndicated radio host Joe Pagliarulo, Wisconsin’s GOP Senator Ron Johnson said regarding the January 6 rioters who invaded the Capitol,

“I knew those were people who love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn’t concerned.Now, had the tables been turned, and Joe — this is going to get me in trouble — had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa, I might have been a little concerned.”

Now people are calling Johnson a racist, because he didn’t fear a white mob, but would have feared a black one.

Wow, what a stupid thing to say:

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Monday Ethics Final, 3/8/2021: A Bad Day In The Revolution

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

GnadenhuttenMassacre

March 8 should be a day that “lives in infamy,” but it isn’t, in part because of this nation’s, and all nations’, tendency to forget episodes in their history that they would rather pretend didn’t happen. On this date in 1782, 160 Pennsylvania militiamen slaughtered 96 Christian Indians including 39 children, 29 women and 28 men. The Patriots killed their captives by hammering their skulls with mallets from behind, as the victims knelt praying and singing. The Patriots then piled the bodies in mission buildings, and burned the entire Moravian Mission at Gnadenhutten to the ground in the Ohio territory. . The Pennsylvanians claimed that the attack was revenge for raids on their frontier settlements, but the Native Americans they killed were not involved in any attacks. In fact, they were pacifists who had been assisting the Americans against the British by serving as scouts and performing other services.

There were consequences of the massacre, though not to the criminals responsible. Despite talk of bringing the murderers to justice, no charges were filed. But Native American tribes became less willing to trust the Patriots as the Revolutionary War continued. When General George Washington heard about the massacre, he told his soldiers to avoid being captured alive by Indian forces, as he feared the Americans would be tortured. Many were, and Native Americans had longer memories of the atrocity at Gnadenhutten than the citizens of the new nation. In 1810, Shawnee chief Tecumseh pointedly reminded future General and later President William Henry Harrison, “You recall the time when the Jesus Indians of the Delawares lived near the Americans, and had confidence in their promises of friendship, and thought they were secure, yet the Americans murdered all the men, women, and children, even as they prayed to Jesus?”

Theodore Roosevelt, a historian in addition to his other pursuits, called the atrocity “a stain on frontier character that the lapse of time cannot wash away.”

But it has, hasn’t it?

1. And they said Trump supporters were stupid! A group called Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden feel betrayed:

Pro Biden

These people really believed that the Democratic Party was going to “engage” on the topic of abortion, and that electing Joe Biden President would lead to compromises and moderation on the issue. Let me write that again: These people really believed that the Democratic Party was going to “engage” on the topic of abortion, and that electing Joe Biden President would lead to compromises and moderation on the issue.As you know, I have constant difficulty accepting the principle that being stupid isn’t unethical. Outrageous stupidity makes me angry, and maybe that’s unfair. Episodes like this are difficult for me to put in perspective.

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