Law & Law Enforcement

The Amazing Trevor Bauer Ethics Train Wreck, Part 2: Villains, Victims, Heroes And Confusion

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

There has already been an addition to what is known about this horrible ethics story. That’s the main (but far from only) villain of the tale above, Lindsey Hill, who plotted to extort Major League pitching star Trevor Bauer, as described in Part 1. I had never seen a photo of her before: she looks exactly as I would have expected her to look. Hill is already hard at work trying to squeeze every last drop of celebrity out of her scheme, and, of course, the popular culture being the scummy place it is, there are plenty of disgusting people out there ready to accommodate her. Now that Howard Stern is old and woke, she moved on to Alex Stein, who had her as a guest on his show “Prime Time With Alex Stein” on Glenn Beck‘s Blaze Media network. Stein is a professional asshole whose idea of comedy is to disrupt public meetings and confront politicians in public. Having Hill on his show gave this creep a chance to get into graphic descriptions of sexual activities, a la Stern.

Hill played the cliche “I’m an alcoholic, pity me” card, then tried to stick to her lie using various strategies. She reminded her host that two more women came out as she was in the process of extorting Bauer to claim he had abused them too. Two words regarding that: Bret Kavanaugh. The me-too #MeToos provided even less convincing evidence than Hill did, and we now know she was lying. She also offered the risible explanation of the damning morning-after video revealed by Bauer that bad lighting was to blame for the apparent absence of the injuries she had claimed. Was bad lighting also responsible for her grinning like the Cheshire cat?

Since we’ve started on Hill, I might as well finish.

1. Lindsey Hill, Villain

As I said, she’s the Number #1 Ethics Villain, and she did far more harm than just derailing Trevor Bauer’s career and reputation. She kicked #MeToo in the metaphorical solar plexus when it already was reeling. “Believe all women” had already been discredited as a slogan, but thanks to Hill, “Don’t automatically believe any women” is about to take its place. And there was more damage, which I will discuss here later.

Several conservative commentators have already opined that the law needs to find some way to punish sociopathic predators like Hill. Writes Miranda Devine in the New York Post, “It will never end until there are penalties for making false allegations that ruin a man’s life. Hill needs to be charged, like Jussie Smollett was for faking a hate crime.  Without consequences, malignant behavior only proliferates.” That sounds good, but this will only happen when women’s rights activists and the eager-to-pander politicians who grovel to them reverse course after opposing any negative consequences for women who falsely claim rape, harassment or sexual abuse. The standard argument remains the same: women are already too reluctant to accuse powerful men of sexual misconduct, and if they face real penalties should their allegations not meet evidentiary standards, even fewer will brave the storm, so more evil men will have their way. This is, and has always been, a utilitarian balancing act, with no clear or ideal solution.

The best that can be done about people like Hill right now is cultural and societal shunning. We should make sure everyone knows that generically attractive blonde face and her name, and employers as well as potential friends and lovers should be well aware that she’s a grifter who cannot be trusted. Post her image and deeds widely. If she ends up alone and making a living in low rent peep shows or as a geek biting the heads off live chickens, good. That’s one kind of justice.

It is only fair to mention that there is an unintended benefit of Hill’s vile conduct. Providing an ugly, throbbing example of how the #MeToo ideology can be abused (and why the Obama/Biden directive to colleges and universities to stack sexual misconduct cases against male students) is useful to those fighting these excesses. Thanks, Lindsey! You’re a blight on society, but not a completely useless one.

2. Trevor Bauer, Ethics Hero

Bauer is the only hero in the train wreck. He did nothing wrong (how he and his consenting sex partners choose to enjoy themselves is not wrong) and consistently denied wrongdoing throughout his ordeal. He followed the system, worked through his labor union and kept his mouth shut other than to tersely insist on his innocence. He did not attack Major League Baseball, nor take to social media to tell the world about Hill. Although well-versed in that mode of pubic communications, Bauer did not seek pity, threaten, or post drawings of himself standing with Jesus. His conduct throughout has been exemplary.

Most admirable of all, Bauer did not pay off Hill. No weenie he. It would have been easy to do so, his career would have continued unblighted, and he would barely miss the money: even with his suspension without pay for more than a season, Bauer has made $111,654,099 so far in his career, and at 32, he may not be done yet. In this matter he is an exemplar and role model. He was determined to fight, and that’s what ethical people should do. True, because he was already rich, Bauer could afford to be principled, but so many others who also can afford it, don’t.

This is as good a place as any to note Hall of Fame Braves pitcher Tom Glavine’s comment on the Bauer fiasco. “I would not want to be playing any professional sport in today’s world,” he said. “Listen, the money’s great, it always gets better every generation, but the things that guys have to deal with today, it’s off the charts. I mean, you can’t go anywhere without somebody having a camera. You can’t go anywhere without somebody videotaping.” In short, they are marks for evil people like Lindsey Hill, and unscrupulous women empowered by society’s current groveling to feminists and #MeToo activists.

3. Ethics Villains, the sports media.

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Do Progressive Voters Comprehend The Significance Of Their Elected Officials’ Hypocrisy And Flip-Flops?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Rhetorical question. Based on the evidence, the clear answer is “No.”

Exhibit A for today is that part of the 16th St. “street mural” that Black Lives Matter protesters painted next to the official “Black Lives Matter” lettering ordered up by Democratic Mayor Murial Bowser in 2020, when she pandered disgracefully to the Marxist, racist, scamster movement by re-naming the area running directly to the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza.” At the time this stunt was intended by Bowser and teh D.C. City Council as a rebuke to then-President trump, but its syill there, even though Bowser has, weasel-like insisted that the “Defund the Police” message isn’t part of the official D.C. mural. Typical Bowser: the protesters are correct; that’s an equal sign to the left, making the full message “Black Lives Matter = Defund the Police.” BLM does stand for defunding the police, among other things (riots, unpunished crime, thugs resisting arrest…). Three years ago, Bowser dodged the a question on ABC’s “This Week” as to whether she would remove the unauthorized message. “It’s not a part of the mural,” mewled, adding that she hadn’t “had the opportunity to review it.” It’s still there, of course.

Nonetheless, just a few days before the embarrassing episode where a Democratic Congressman had his car hijacked at gunpoint, Bowser, whose city is in a crime wave like so many other Democrat-run cities in the thrall of the George Floyd Freakout and The Great Stupid, announced that her city needed more police. “We don’t have the officers that we need, and sadly we’ve lost three to four hundred officers in the last four years,” she said. “We haven’t had officers in our schools, and we have policies that make it difficult to recruit new officers.”

The obvious rejoinder should be, “And whose fault is that, you dummy?” But it isn’t. Joe Biden’s intellect-challenged mouthpiece blamed Rep. Cuellar’s hijacking on Republicans, though the party virtually doesn’t exist in the nation’s Capitol. Moreover, who voted for Bowser, not to mention that long trail of incompetent and/or corrupt Democratic mayors before her stretch back to convicted felon and crack-head Marion Barry (who has a statue honoring him downtown)?

When elected officials act like Bowser, it is convincing evidence that they can’t be trusted. Changing one’s position in the wake of facts that show you were wrong is simply competent leadership, but arguing two positions that are mutually exclusive is the mark of a politician who lack integrity, accountability, and sufficient brain cells to rub together to make small fire. We are seeing this self-indicting conduct coast to coast, from New York—where New York City’s major and the state’s governor still insist that they govern “sancuaries” for illegal immigrants but who are complaining that they don’t have the space or funds to actually be what they say they are—to California, where Gavin Newsom, hoping to fool an entire country into giving him power when he has presided over the ethics and societal rot that is now California, is brazenly taking contradictory positions on a slew of issues. President Biden, much to Donald Trump’s amusement, is now trying to build Trump’s “wonderful wall.”

Hypocrisy and a flagrant flip-flopping apparently means nothing to voters, perhaps because they have been raised to lack integrity themselves.

Meanwhile, back in D.C., the CVS in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of D.C. regularly looks like this:

You see, black lives matter, and black teens, gang members and thieves regularly loot the store, leaving almost all the shelves empty. “A big group of kids, like 45 or more, walk in before school, after school and late at night to steal chips and drinks,” local station Fox 5 reported this week. “They even throw the food and beverages on the ground and stomp on them, leaving behind a big mess. Staff at CVS have been alerted that thieves are aware of when new shipments come in and that’s when they target the store.” Street vendors are allegedly paying people to go in and steal the merchandise so they can resell it.

The neighborhood is almost exclusively black, so the majority of law abiding citizens in the area are the ones being most harmed by the collapse of the rule of law in the District (Black Lives Matter = Collapse of the Rule of Law), but you watch: they’ll still vote for Bowser next time around, or if not, someone as bad or worse. This was the result in Chicago, when voters got rid of one incompetent, lying, leftist mayor only to replace him with someone more radical and inept than even she was.

As Pete Seeger, himself a reality-challenged Marxist, sang in his best composition, “When will they ever learn?” It’s beginning to look like the answer may be “Never!”

The Amazing Trevor Bauer Ethics Train Wreck: It Has Everything: #MeToo, Kinky Sex, Ethics Zugzwang, Predatory Women, ‘Guilty Until Proven Innocent,’ “The Asshole’s Handicap,” Legal Ethics And Baseball! [Part I: The Story] (Updated And Corrected)

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

This story broke a couple of days ago, and readers have been chiding me for not posting on it. I must admit, I was stalling, because it is a total mess that will take two major posts to unravel, and to cap it all off, my baseball posts don’t attract enough interest to meet the time/reward minimum. Nevertheless, this disaster raises major ethical issues. Ignore at your peril.

1. Background: Trevor Bauer: I have written a great deal about Trevor Bower, a talented Major League starting pitcher who, somewhat like Curt Schilling (recently discussed here), had a well-earned reputation for being an eccentric, and kind of a jerk. Bauer was also Donald Trump-like on social media, with similar, if more narrowly focused, results.

He once knocked himself out of a crucial post-season start by cutting a pitching hand finger playing with a drone (he loves drones). In 2018, while pitching for the Cleveland Indians, Bauer appeared to carve “BD 911” into the pitching mound during a game. That has been Truther short-hand for “Bush Did” the 9-11 bombings, and Bauer was widely criticized for the stunt. He then angrily denied that the message meant anything political, but never explained what it did mean. This also did not make him popular in a sport that is branded as patriotic and embodying core American values. In 2019, a sportswriter started claiming that Bauer’s tweets made him a “problem” because he had a contentious exchange with a female Twitter user. He was accused of harassment. It wasn’t harassment, but a pattern was set that eventually bit Bauer, hard.

In 2019, after allowing seven runs, Bauer threw a baseball over the centerfield wall after seeing his manager Terry Francona come out of the dugout to remove him from the game. Bauer apologized profusely, but it was the final straw for Francona, and the Indians traded him. Bauer was among the most vocal critics (and one of the few player critics) of the Houston Astros’ cheating scandal (see here), and cheating in baseball generally. This is also not the way to be popular in the clubhouse. In 2021, MLB announced that umpires would be checking the balls more carefully and regularly to ensure that the rule against doctoring pitches wasn’t being violated. The first pitcher to have his thrown baseballs collected for inspection based on suspicion of doctoring was…Trevor Bauer, Anti-Cheating Crusader. Bauer reacted sarcastically to the report on his Twitter account, and noted that many baseballs were being collected from games across baseball, not only from him. I wrote that this was an ethics red flag for me, as was his reaction when baseball announced the new policy, saying that there would be no way to determine who doctored the balls.

Luckily for Bauer, the SOB can really pitch. In the shortened season of 2020, Bauer won the National League Cy Young Award as one of the two best pitchers the Major Leagues. The King’s Pass reigns supreme in baseball (as in other sports): if a player is good enough, he can get away with almost anything. Almost. The Dodger signed Bauer to a rich, three year contract.

2. The Scandal. Bauer had a much larger scandal coming. A restraining order was taken out against him in late June of 2021 by a former sex partner. The woman claimed she had what started as a consensual relationship involving rough sex with the pitcher, but in a 67-page document, alleged that Bauer assaulted her on two different occasions, punching her in the face, vagina, and buttocks, sticking his fingers down her throat, and strangling her to the point where she lost consciousness twice, an experience she said she did not consent to. After the second choking episode, the woman claimed she awoke to find Bauer punching her in the head and face, inflicting serious injuries. She contacted police, and an investigation of Bauer by the Pasadena, California police department began.

Baseball, which had made the NFL and the NBA look bad (they are bad) by cracking down on domestic abuse by players, placed Bauer on indefinite “administrative leave” although her allegations were unsubstantiated. At the time, I wrote,

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Incompetent Tweet Of The Month

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“Penny” is an LGBTQ activist who didn’t think this tweet through before posting. (This is why Twitter is dangerous to the impulsive, emotional and none-too-bright.) After someone pointed out what the tweet seemed to be saying, it was taken down.

Too late.

Confronting My Biases, Episode 2: The Presumptuous And The Officious

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

If I didn’t find the term offensive, I might have called this post “The Attack of the Karens” (The first love of my life, in high school, was named Karen. She married my best friend. I don’t want to talk about it…). It’s also another Spuds story. Let me state right up front: this is one bias I have no intention of banishing.

We live in a cul-de-sac by a church, its parking lot and a public grade school, with a picnic area, a playground and an athletic field nearby. Spuds needed to attend to his morning toilette, so as I have for the nearly three years we have had the pleasure of his company, I followed my pit bull mix on his leash as he went to his favorite peeing place, on the grass just across the cul-de-sac from our home. My dog was just about to complete the job, whereupon he would quickly return to his perch on our sofa, when we were interrupted by a woman, who walked up to within about 15 feet of us and said, “Sir, dogs upset my animals.”

I had noticed that on this day the church or the school had set up a temporary petting zoo near the picnic tables and by the school playground, about 10 yards from where Spuds and I were. Quite a few young kids and their parents were crowded around a pen that appeared to contain a couple of goats, a lamb or two, and an alpaca.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, annoyed at her attitude.

“Well, sir, I don’t want you to bring your dog up to the pen. It will upset my animals.”

I was not in the mood to put up with this, in part because I have long vowed not to.

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Hypothetical Ethical Quote Of The Month: Rep. Jamaal Bowman

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

To be absolutely clear, the hypothetical apology by Rep. Bowman that follows can’t occur now; it is too late. He has not only lied too much, but most of his allies are now totally committed to his lie, so he couldn’t back out if he wanted to.

However, there was one, brief, shining moment, as King Arthur sings in “Camelot,” when Bowman, realizing that his illegal and unethical conduct had been caught on video, had an opportunity to do a very good deed that would have created immense benefits for him, for his party, for Congress, for young American, for young African Americans, for Congress, for society, and for the nation. Bowman didn’t take that opportunity,because he is corrupt and stupid, and even today probably couldn’t be made to understand why issuing the following statement was the wise and ethical course. But it would have been.

Here is what I would have advised Rep. Bowman to say, had I been his ethics consultant:

“As has been widely reported, a video shows me pulling a fire alarm in the Cannon Office Building before the House’s vote on the interim funding bill. Let me be straightforward and honest now, because the American people deserve no less from their elected representatives. I did this deliberately, in a foolish rush to delay the vote, even though I knew at the time, as I have known all of my adult life, that it was a crime, and was wrong. I have no excuses for this. I committed the same mistake that we all must learn to avoid as we proceed through life: never make decisions rashly, in an emotional state, under the pressures of time and passion. Yet that is exactly what I did. I am ashamed of myself. This conduct was a serious betrayal not only of my constituents and my state, but also of my party and the nation I serve.

I apologize to all of them. I also betrayed myself and my values, and also  every young person in America who should be able to look to me, as they should look to all elected officials, as role models. At this moment, I am not a fit role model. I have a long journey back to be deserving of trust.

In recent months there has been a lot of public discourse about double standards in our justice system, and the dangerous political use of our laws. I am stating right now that I will not be the beneficiary of any such double standard. I broke a law and an important one: I should face the same penalty as any citizen. After this statement, I plan on presenting myself to the proper authorities. There is no need for any investigations. I am guilty, and I will accept any punishment and consequences that the District of Columbia and Congress deem appropriate.

Polls show that there has been a terrible decline in the public’s trust in its democratic institutions. I am overwhelmed by regret and remorse that my conduct in this incident has probably exacerbated that. Today I vow that as part of my contrition and restitution for what I did in the Cannon Building, I will, if I am allowed to remain a member of Congress, dedicate myself to restoring that lost trust. I also call upon my colleagues, on both sides of the aisle, to join me in that mission.

Thank-you.

Too bad he couldn’t see it. Too bad none of our members of Congress would, in all likelihood.

In Which I Speak Regarding A Head-Exploding Donald Trump Post That Should Speak For Itself (Res Ipsa Loquitur)

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

How can anyone in their right mind want to have someone who thinks posting something like this is appropriate as their President?

I initially thought that post was a hoax. Silly me. It is now clearer than clear that this chaotic man is capable of saying or posting anything. He has no filters, he has no shame, the ethics alarms were never installed, and his narcissism knows no bounds. Even knowing all this well, I was still stunned to see Trump take his messianic and martyr complexes to this extreme.

Actually, I can answer, sort of, my opening question with this social media post in response to Trump’s…

Maybe this poster is in his right mind, but his right mind has an IQ of 46.

You can almost hear the more intellectually capable of conservatives desperately spinning. Here’s the reaction, for instance, of Joel Abbott of “Not the Bee”:

The name of Jesus Christ has been sanitized from our halls of power. You can’t get supposed Christian politicians to even whisper his name. They talk about “God” and providence and the divine – with a little “Amen and Awoman” on the side these days – but they won’t dare talk about Jesus. So sure, you can rant about how Trump clearly needs a savior, and how some of the Trump crowd clearly needs to tone down the messiah worship comparing him to Christ…But as for me, I am glad that such a man would share silly boomer memes of himself hanging with Jesus in the courtroom, because the name of Jesus is being magnified one way or the other. Meanwhile, the wisdom of the world – the so-called experts with their high-browed decorum – are being clowned by the foolishness of God, who would use a man like Trump in spite of Trump.

Just in case you are bothered by the Left making excuses and being in denial regarding Jamaal Bowman and the fire alarm, that’s what the Right is capable of.

Further observations:

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How Hard Is It To Make A Competent And Responsible Interim Appointment To Fill A U.S. Senate Seat? Too Hard, Apparently, For Gov. Gavin Newsom…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In California, the governor has the power to appoint a senator to serve until the next regularly scheduled statewide general election. Current California Governor Gavin Newsom had the opportunity to exercise this power because, in a previous example of unethical conduct by a California elected official, Senator Diane Feinstein had died in office after irresponsibly running for re-election when she was already 85 and declining in health and mental acuity. (California voters, who would vote for a pet rock if it had a (D) next to it, dutifully sent her back to the Senate anyway).

Newsom is running a shadow campaign to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for President in 2024 in case President Biden does a Feinstein, and has recently shown his utter lack of integrity (but we knew that) by vetoing three progressive bills that his rhetoric had previously supported, one that would have given striking union workers in California the opportunity to apply for unemployment benefits, another requiring judges to consider children’s gender identities in custody disputes, and a third that would have barred California’s prison system from sharing information about incarcerated immigrants with federal officials, in keeping with California’s “sanctuary state” position. You can almost hear the wheels turning: Newsom knows that progressives will vote for him over Donald Trump no matter what he does, so he’s trying to look like a moderate to those millions of apathetic and ignorant voters who haven’t been paying attention to what’s happening in California under his watch. Good plan! Unethical, weasel-like, but smart.

In a similarly cynical calculation, Newsom promised in 2021 to appoint a black woman should Feinstein’s seat become open. Not only was this an announcement that Newsom placed pandering to poweful Democratic constituency groups over seeking the most qualified person to fill a crucial legislative position, it also was a betrayal of his duty to the population of Claifornia, all of whose interests must be served by a U.S. Senator, but also to the citizens of the United States as a whole, who require the best representation in their republic available. Gender and skin color are not qualifications for high elected office.

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Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Rehabilitated Brain-Eating Cannibal”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I did not, when I decided that the saga of Tyree Smith justified an ethics quiz, foresee that the story neatly dovetailed into a larger theme covered extensively by ethics alarms of late, the untrustworthiness of “experts” and the danger of blindly accepting their pronouncements, influenced as they too often are by ideological biases and political agendas. Longtime commenter Michael R., however (3, 425 comments since October 26, 2012!) managed to connect the dots.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Rehabilitated Brain-Eating Cannibal”:

***

This is why it is time to remove the monopolies these professional groups have on essential services. The psychiatrists and psychologists have a monopoly on confining people for mental illness and, in this case, releasing the criminally mentally ill. How many times have they failed in this? James Holmes (above), the 2012 Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooter, is a good case in point. He had been banned from seeking psychiatric help because he was deemed too dangerous, but the very establishment that deemed him too dangerous to be around THEM, refused to sign papers that would let the police involuntarily confine him. At least they successfully determined he was a danger to those around him, they just refused to help the general public. We have them pushing puberty blockers and surgical sterilization on children with no evidence this will help. In fact, the actual ailments they suffer from were probably caused by the very ‘experts’ that get to decide the ‘treatment’.

Let’s look at medicine next. The medical associations regulate themselves and are calling for ideological conformity in all physicians. Anyone who disagrees about COVID masks, vaccinations, DEI, affirmative action, etc can’t be a physician. Pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they don’t agree with the physician’s treatment, or diagnosis, or they think the person looks sketchy. Medicine is an essential service. We can’t have such groups dictating if we can get care or not.

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Meatball’s Lawyer’s Infuriating Excuse For Her Client’s Role In Philly’s Looting Spree: Yes, It’s Unethical, But Not For The Reason You Might Think

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

[Unlike the previous post, I remembered to attach the statement I’m writing about in this one. The Bowman update now has the missing information, thanks to Old Bill who reminded me this morning that I’m a moron ]

Following close on the metaphorical heels of Rep. Bowman’s ridiculous excuse for setting off a fire alarms to delay a vote in Congress yesterday (‘Oh THAT’S what a fire alarm looks like! Who knew?’) comes the equally ludicrous statement of Jessica Mann, the criminal defense attorney for Dayjia Blackwell who represents the 21-year-old Philadelphia “influencer” known as “Meatball.”

Blackwell was arrested and charged with burglary, conspiracy, criminal trespassing, rioting, criminal mischief, criminal use of communication facility, receipt of stolen property and disorderly conduct. This seems fair, as she not only livestreamed the destructive rioting and looting that took place for two days in Philadelphia last week, but encouraged her fans to participate, and took part in the crime spree herself, announcing what she had stolen in the video feed. Then, after her arrest, she begged her fans to donate money for her bond (she told her 196,000 followers, “All I want to do is go treat myself” and plugged her Cash App handle) then quickly had T-shirts, hoodies and other items made using her mugshot above— and thanks, Donald Trump, for creating this obnoxious new trend. Those are selling briskly. “Remorse” does not seem to be part of her defense—-nor innocence, since she’s on video doing everything she’s charged with.

Despite all this, lawyer Mann posted on Instagram…

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