U.S. Society

Stop Making Me Sort Of Defend Donald Trump!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

One reason (out of , oh, a thousand or so) that I dread another four years of Donald Trump is the inevitable avalanche of “get Trump!” stories from the mainstream news media, trying to instill fear based on what he reportedly said or thought or considered as reported by some malign mole, or, as in this case, deliberately spinning some off-the-top-of-the-head careless musings into existential threats to the nation. These are sinister and disgusting breaches of journalistic ethics supporting Trump’s description of the media as “enemies of the people,” or, in the alternative—there’s that darn Hanlon’s Razor again!—move evidence that bias makes you, or in this case, them, stupid.

I have a confession: when I read the multiple headlines screaming that Trump had said that he would prosecute political foes if he was elected President, I just assumed that he really said that. What’s the matter with me? I know all of these sources are corrupt, dishonest, and determined to undermine Trump’s candidacy by any means necessary, and yet I still default to the romantic, Pollyanna notion that journalists can be trusted.

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As If We Already Didn’t Have Enough Of Them Running Amuck Already, An Ethics Train Wreck From 1989 Reappears

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

When I saw this news story, I felt just like the Ghostbusters in the scene above from”Ghostbusters II.” Few ethics train wrecks have been as controversial and as ugly as that set in motion by the rape and nearly fatal beating of the Central Park jogger, Trisha Meili, in New York City on April 19, 1989. You can refresh you memory (if you were around then) here. To briefly summarize, six young black and Hispanic men were identified in part by statements from the white victim, who had suffered brain damage and lost most of her blood. All were indicted, though one, Steven Lopez, pleaded guilty to a different assault to have the rape charges dropped. The others came known as The Central Park Five—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise —-were convicted of rape and battery charges and served sentences ranging from seven to thirteen years. The way the case had been handled by police and prosecutors had long been criticized, as well as mood of public opinion and the news media, which demanded retribution with little concern for facts, fairness or due process. (Does this sound like any other recent sensational case of more recent vintage?)

Nobody doubted the Five’s guilt: they had all confessed under tough (as in illegal) police questioning, but later recanted. Donald Trump, then only a celebrity real estate mogul, paid for a full page newspaper ad demanding they they be convicted and executed. It read in part, “Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer … Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. … How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their Civil Liberties End When an Attack On Our Safety Begins!”

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Today’s Unethical NYT Headline: “Democrats, No Longer Squeamish on Abortion, Lean Into Searing Personal Ads”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

What an infuriating, despicable headline, though the story is equally bad. If abortion supporters—yes, it’s the Democratic Party exploiting the issue—weren’t “squeamish” about what they so indignantly and self-righteously support they wouldn’t have spent the past 70 years trying to figure out ways to avoid directly admitting what they are advocating. “Baby? What baby?”

The argument for abortion, that is, terminating a developing unique human life distinct from that of its mother before it can grow to be born and go on to experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, has been, and still is, deliberately clouded by misleadng rhetoric about “choice” and “reproductive care,” the current dodge. Wait, how is that other human life in the equation assisted with his or her “reproduction”? Is it “care” to have that life’s own chances of reproducing taken away from it?

And what choice does the victim of an abortion have?

If Democrats weren’t “squeamish” about having to deal with those questions, they wouldn’t be trying (and, tragically, thanks to the abysmal level of attention, critical thought and ethical competence of the average American, largely succeeding) to avoid them.

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Marilyn Mosby Gets Her Just Desserts: Permit Ethics Alarms A Victory Lap

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Ethics Fredo gets his second appearance this month. Ethics Alarms had unethical and incompetent Maryland State’s Attorney pegged for what she was—a virulent, ambitious, anti-law enforcement hack—waaay back in 2015 when she first became the darling of the Barack Obama-led “let’s vilify cops, especially white ones” mob, as she pandered to Baltimore’s rioters slightly more vigorously than Obama’s Justice Department had in the wake of the Ferguson uproar. After her politically motivated prosecution of four Baltimore cops in the Freddie Gray arrest failed, EA further commented, in 2016,

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Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Yesterday was the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi attack on the Jewish community that launched the Holocaust. I found mention of the event rather muted compared to past years; maybe it was my imagination. However, it seems to me that the news media would have been doing its job to make a special point of reminding the public of “The Night of Broken Glass” (which would more accurately be called, “The Night of Brutalized Jews). May be then more Americans would understand why that catchy chant that begins “From the river to the sea” is just a bit more chilling to Jews than “Hey hey, ho ho, LBJ has got to go…”

But that’s just what I’m thinking about. What are YOU thinking about in the mad, mad, mad, mad world of ethics?

Ethics Dunce: North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls [Photo Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct differs little from the judicial codes of the other 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal judiciary. Among its edicts:

  • “A judge should …personally observe appropriate standards of conduct to ensure that the integrity and independence of the judiciary shall be preserved.” [Canon 1]
  • “A judge should respect and comply with the law and should conduct himself/herself at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” [Canon 2]
  • “A judge may speak, write, lecture, teach, participate in cultural or historical activities, or otherwise engage in activities concerning the economic, educational, legal, or governmental system, or the administration of justice….if in doing so the judge does not cast substantial doubt on the judge’s capacity to decide impartially any issue that may come before the judge…”[Canon 4]

Despite all of these strictures, Justice Earls gave an interview to Law360 in which she suggested that the justice system is racially biased, citing the lack of racially diverse clerks, and suggested that white judges and other court personnel discriminate against black and female lawyers. She also stated that her conservative colleagues on the North Carolina Supreme Court are more concerned with advancing the conservative legal movement than with their duty to improve the court system. She specifically singled out her own court’s Chief Judge, citing him as an example of “the general antipathy towards seeing that racial issues matter in our justice system.”

These comments to the media violated all of those ethics provisions above, and arguably some others. A lawyer violates North Carolina ethics rules by impugning the integrity of a judge (NCRPC 8.2), and for a state Supreme Court Justice to do this is infinitely more damaging to the public’s respect for and trust of the justice system. After that interview, the Court launched an official investigation to determine whether she had violated the Judicial Code and undermined the judicial system.

Good.

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Ethics Hero (Surprise!): Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Hillary agreed to go on “The View,” a guaranteed friendly forum but also a den of morons, and, apparently off the cuff, gave a clear, coherent explanation for why the pro-Hamas postures of many in her own party are ignorant and ethically wrong. The only aspect of her explanation that I would fault is her not making it plain that Hamas “took over” Gaza because the population wanted it to., and thus she does not counter the fatuous “innocent Gazans” talking point.

I also give her credit for explaining why Barack Obama, worshipfully cited by peak idiot Sunny Hostin as if his despicable comments on the war were profound rather than fatuous and facile, was in fact full of it while nodding her head and pretending to agree with her ex-boss. She makes it clear (except maybe to the idiots she is talking to) that he is dead wrong. “We’re all accountable to history,” is brilliant doubletalk, absolutely meaningless but diplomatic.

Yes, yes, Hillary dutifully gives lip-service to a future “two-state solution.” It’s about on par with singing “Imagine,” annoying, but forgivable. There’s nothing wrong with saying you want impossible things, as long as you know they’re impossible.

Amidst The Madness And Rot, One Promise Of Hope…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Behold:

1. In Ohio, over 2 million voters put their approval on an official guarantee of abortion rights, deceptively defined in the language of the amendment as “reproductive medical treatment” as if that is the only feature of abortions that matters. This was done, paradoxically enough, even as the pro-Hamas demonstrations and rhetoric coast to coast evoke shadows of the Holocaust, and as the approved measure endorses the approximately one million human lives that will be destroyed by “reproductive medical treatment” this year.

Not one of those voters in Ohio could prevail in a genuine debate of the ethics of abortion. Meanwhile, millions more Ohioans who would profess to finding abortion immoral and unconscionable didn’t care enough about those million aborted lives to bother to vote.

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More Technology Ethics: Electric Planes

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This will, I assume, eventually be recognized as part of the Climate Change Hysteria Ethics Train Wreck.

The New York Times is all excited about the prospect of electric planes, and updates us on their progress. New experimental battery-powered airplanes are showing us “what aviation could look like years from now — one in which the skies are filled with aircraft that do not emit the greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming up the Earth.”

Of course, “modern batteries can support limited range and weight. As a result, the aircraft that they power can generally carry only a handful of passengers, or the equivalent load in cargo.” Not only that, but “widespread flights won’t be possible without expanded infrastructure like vertical landing and takeoff sites and public support” and “the cost of producing such aircraft will also be high to start, limiting their use to the well-heeled and to critical services like medical evacuations.”

Hey, that’s all right: the U.S. has money to spare on projects like this. It’s not like that 1 trillion dollars in interest the U.S. amasses yearly now, the single biggest item in the budget, is real money.

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Technology Ethics Fail: Self-Checkout

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I am happy to say that I foresaw this mess the first time I encountered these things, in a local Home Depot, if I recall correctly. even if they worked reliably and were user friendly—and they don’t and aren’t—it was obvious from the very dawn of the era that they would allow retailers to reduce staff while making the shopping experience less pleasant for consumers. And so it has. But it wasn’t sold that way, and, as usual, much of the public was ovine in its acceptance. Sure, long checkout lines would be a thing of the past! Now you wouldn’t have to deal with the underlings who man the registers. Store employees would be free and able to answer inquiries! Wunderbar!

Right. You still have to wait in line. The checkout kiosks are persnickety if you, for example, fail to set a purchase down in the right spot. Scanning items doesn’t always work, and its easy to scanned an item more than once. Problems and glitches arise so frequently that counter staff are constantly called on to deal with them, meaning that customers who wisely eschewed the delightful self-checkout adventure are stranded in line. Heaven forfend that you try to self-checkout a product with some kind of purchase restriction. Meanwhile, a lot of self-checkout machines break down, and because it’s expensive to fix them, often sit useless for a while, causing more back-ups.

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