U.S. Society

Ethics Villain: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, And Other Observations On The Trump Indictment

/ Jack Marshall / 83 Comments

Last week’s indictment of Donald Trump, engineered by a hard-Left partisan Manhattan D.A. who had made his intentions known when he was running for office, didn’t change any of the ethical calculations here that were recorded when that indictment seemed imminent almost two weeks ago, or in the update, when it appeared that Alvin Bragg might have lost his nerve and decided to be an ethical prosecutor after all, here. I reviewed both posts to see if I would change anything, and I would not, but the final line of the March 18 essay still resonates: “The indictment will remind people of why he won in the first place.” Bragg’s exercise in politically-driven law enforcement will drive far more voters to Trump than it strips away. This makes his actions as politically and pragmatically irresponsible as they seem to be legally and ethically indefensible.

It is necessary to include the caveat “seem to be” because we haven’t seen the indictment yet. Maybe Bragg has legitimate cause (other than “he’s a bad guy and must have done something illegal”) to bring criminal charges against the ex-President, though virtually no unbiased legal analyst with any legitimacy thinks that’s likely. If he does, then his pursuit of Trump may be unwise, and its passion may be fueled by bias, but it is not unethical.

From another perspective, however, even if there were valid and legitimate reasons to charge Trump in this case—and I will be surprised if there are—if there ever were a situation where prosecutorial discretion and restraint were screamingly called for, this is it. The ripples and waves emanating from this indictment and, heaven help us, the arrest and trial will cause so much havoc in our political system, legal precedents, societal divisions, and national discourse that it cannot even be quantified or predicted. They could easily result in Donald Trump being elected again, or arguably worse still, in Joe Biden being re-elected. Whatever happens as a result of Bragg’s conduct, it is certain to be bad for everyone except, maybe, the fanatical Trump Deranged, who have already demonstrated a willingness to destroy the Constitution, the Rules of Law, democratic institutions and ethical standards to get their prey.

Also:

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Got It: Apparently All Criticism Of Progressive Figures Or Positions Is Based Entirely On Hate And Bigotry. Good To Know!

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

I had a strange experience last week. After posting Paul W. Schlecht’s estimable Comment of the Day regarding “Do something!” hysterics regarding gun control, I received an off-site email from a reader who complained that Paul mentioning “Uncle George Soros” in a list of the “Who’s Who of Climate Criminal Lefties” employed a “a “phrase universally understood to be an anti-Semitic slur” and that “it is horrible and unforgivable to amplify bigotry in any form but under the banner of Ethics is even worse.” honest, irresponsible and disgusting habit of defaulting to racism, sexism, xenophobia, ageism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of bigotry to deflect legitimate criticism and intimidate as well as demonize those who oppose them. This reflex has become the predominant weapon of the Left in recent years, instead of, you know, things like facts, logic, common sense, history and reality. It has to be broken of this habit, by patriots of good faith and courage who aren’t afraid to say, “F..sorry… Bite me!“

People often write me directly when they are too timid to present a dubious opinion before the tough crowd here. I was very polite and even grateful to the hitherto unknown lurker, and confessed that if “Uncle George” was truly “universally” known to be an anti-Semitic slur, I had missed it, and I asked the guy to enlighten me. He then sent a link to an ADL opinion piece suggesting that conservative and Republican criticism of the billionaire’s copious funding of various progressive groups and causes was all motivated by anti-Semitism.

This ticked me off, and I wrote back,

I assumed that “Uncle George” had some special meaning: clearly, you just mean deriding Soros itself is  anti-Semitic, which is, frankly, bullshit. He’s a billionaire who supports progressive causes, some of them Far Left. That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s the flip side of the Koch Brothers. It’s his money, and he can do what he wants with it; much of what he wants to do with it is bad stuff in my view, but I don’t see how that has anything to so with his ethnicity.  This line in the ADL piece—“A person who promotes a Soros conspiracy theory may not intend to promulgate antisemitism. But Soros’ Jewish identity is so well-known that in many cases it is hard not to infer that meaning”—discredits the whole article.
 
There’s nothing sinister about Soros supporting the campaigns of really bad prosecutors, but they are still really bad prosecutors. There’s nothing sinister about his spending so much supporting radical environmental groups either, though it’s a waste of money.
 
I know all about Soros and how he’s the Right’s boogeyman, but attributing that to anti-antisemitism is lazy and intellectually dishonest.
 
Did you bother to check to see what I’ve written about Soros? Not much, because I haven’t seen him do anything unethical. I did write one long defense of Soros, at the very beginning of the blog, however. I defended him, and praised him. I wouldn’t change a word today.
 
 

This jerk then writes back, “Your first response to me was that you were “at sea” when it came to Soros, but in your second you said, ‘I know all about Soros’. Sounds disingenuous to me.” I quit reading after that, and also quit being nice. I am happy to engage with fair, serious, sincere readers on my private email account, but oddly, a disproportionate number of those who avail themselves of the opportunity abuse it. So I wrote,

I get it! You’re an asshole.
 
I SAID that I was “at sea” regarding how “Uncle George” was somehow an anti-Semitic slur. I do know all about Soros, and never said I didn’t.
 
You can apologize for this “gotcha!” crap, or stay out of my inbox. I’ve tried to respond to your concerns fairly and politely, and your response is to falsely accuse me of lying.
 
Jerk. Fuck off.

I have to confess that I probably used “fuck off'” as opposed to my usual “Bite me!” because I had been streaming “Succession,” the rich family/cut-throat business politics drama in which literally everyone says “Fuck off!” in almost every conversation, even friendly ones. The bon mot in not really in my repertoire, but after hearing the phase about a thousand times in the span of a few days, it momentarily felt right to me, and it was certainly well-earned. (He did, by the way, indeed fuck off).

I wasn’t going to mention the episode until I saw that my old pal, the Washington Post’s biased-but-conflicted-about -it factchecker Glenn Kessler had issued issue a “Factchecker” column declaring that “incendiary” claims that Soros had “funded” Manhattan’s political hit man qua prosecutor Alvin Bragg (focusing on a tweet by Donald Trump to that effect) were lies. Kessler also asserted that such critiques were motivated by anti-Semitism, writing,

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Giving The Devil His Due: It’s Time For Baseball Say “Sorry” And “Thanks” To That Bastard, Charles O. Finley

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Charles Oscar Finley (February 22, 1918 – February 19, 1996), better known as Charlie O. Finley, was easily one of the worst owners of a major league baseball team in history, and that’s saying something, because it is a repellent batch. He probably falls just below #1, Charles Comiskey, the greedy and abusive owner of the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” largely responsible for his players deciding to take bribes and throw the World Series. (See “Eight Men Out,” one of the ten best baseball movies).

Finley was an insurance mogul who purchased the Kansas City Athletics and eventually moved the team to Oakland, creating a territorial conflict with the San Francisco Giants that violated MLB rules, but he was allowed to do it because Finley threatened to cause havoc with a lawsuit that challenged the game’s immunity from antitrust laws.

That wasn’t the first time Finley was obnoxious and detructive, and it was far from the last. A loud, toxic narcissist, he tried to be the focus of attention on his teams, especially in Oakland, where a crop of talented young stars (Reggie Jackson, Ricky Henderson, Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers and more) made his team one of the great baseball dynasties. Finley underpaid them and treated all of his players like servants; his abuse was a catalyst for the power of the Players Union and the eventual institution of free agency. Dick Williams, his Hall of Fame manager, quit after a World Series, saying that he would rather leave baseball itself than work for a bastard like Finley.

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Update On The Anthony Broadwater Saga

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

New York State will pay $5.5 million to Anthony Broadwater, who spent 16 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of raping the Alice Sebold, a best selling novelist and author, when she was a college student in 1982. He was finally released in 1999. The $5.5 million settles Broadwater’s lawsuit, filed after his rape conviction was vacated in November 2021 by a state court judge.

The justice system in Broadwater’s case certainly malfunctioned badly, as the Times story linked above explains. The main responsible party, however, was Sebold, who not only sent the innocent man to prison with a false accusation and identification, but profited by doing so. She wrote two books, one her successful novel “Lovely Bones,” based on the rape, and an earlier book “Lucky,” an account of her rape and the subsequent identification of Broadwater as her rapist. Sebold passed Broadwater on the street and contacted the police saying she might have seen the man who had raped her. That placed him in the maw of a system determined to pin the rape on someone. She later identified him in court as her rapist.

When Broadwater was released, as I previously noted in this post, Sebold attempted to salve a guilty conscience by issuing an apology on the website Medium, which said in part,

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Morning Ethics Spring Cleaning, 3/28/23: What A Mess! [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Ugh. It’s been a long time between multiple issue posts, and I apologize for that. When I neglect the inventory, important stories, issues and lessons get lost. It’s just been unusually chaotic around here, but that’s my problem, and it shouldn’t be yours.

I do have a satisfying follow-up to relate. This post, about my customer service experience at Staples, attracted some useful critical comments making the case that I was unreasonable. A few days ago I had to go back to the Staples I had sworn never to enter again, because it was the only convenient source for the specific ink cartridge the office required for the crummy HP printer we have (it was supposed tohave been replaced by now with a better model, but I’m behind in everything), and I had a deadline to meet. The manager whose responses to my complaints I had found so unsatisfactory (“We have no customer service”) made a point of chasing me down in the store and asking if he could be of any help. I replied that I was fine, and he said, “I wanted to tell you that I was sorry about our conversation last week. You should be able to expect better customer service than that, and I was being defensive rather than responsive. I promise we’ll do better if you give us the chance.” I told him that I really appreciated his apology, and that I had also been at fault for being so confrontational. Then he offered me his hand, I I took it, and went on to buy my ink. The fact that the ultimate outcome of my “showdown” was a good one doesn’t prove that I handled it correctly (consequentialism alert!), but it was gratifying nonetheless.

1. The Apocalypse is upon us…a few days after listening to a stand-up comic’s very funny riff on the excessive and inappropriate use of “awesome” as a superlative, DC’s Fox affiliate had a graphic on the screen telling viewers that the next day’s weather would be “awesome.” Apparently teenagers are now doing the weather segments. To me, awesome weather would mean cyclones, hurricanes and literal showers of cats and dogs.

I’m waiting for the next stage, which will be when the graphic says that the weather will be “Like, awesome.”

2. Speaking of Fox…the one news network that does not reflexively echo woke and progressive propaganda would benefit the nation and culture more if it at least tried to play its news reporting straight and not pander disgracefully to niche markets. The topic at hand was a poll released yesterday. From Axios:

NORC at the University of Chicago polled 1,019 adults this month by web and phone (margin of error: ±4%).

  • Asked to describe the state of the nation’s economy, 1% (not a typo) chose “excellent.”
  • 56% said a four-year college degree is “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt.”
  • 33% said they have very little or no confidence in public schools.

Look at the tectonic shifts from a Journal/NBC poll 25 years ago, in 1998:

  • Patriotism is very important: Dropped from 70% to 38%.
  • Religion is very important: Dropped from 62% to 39%.
  • Having children is very important: Dropped from 59% to 30%.
  • Community involvement is very important: Dropped from 47% to 27%.
  • Money is very important: Rose from 31% to 43%.

The bottom line: The poll quantifies a generational and political divide that shows a rot at the very soul of our nation.

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Tracks Of The Great Stupid

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Imagine a society where these sentences in the New York Post account of the transgender 28-year-old former student, Audrey Hale, who shot and killed six people, including three kids,today at the Covenant School in Nashville can even be conceived, never mind published in a conservative newspaper:

In online profiles Hale had indicated they used he/him pronouns and also went by the name Aiden. It is unclear whether Hale identified as a man or woman at the time of the slayings.

“They” used he/him pronouns…?

Never mind imagining such a batty society; you’re living in it.

It’s important to know which sex “they” was (were?) identifying as when the guns were fired, to determine whether this was a typical example of a male mass-murderer, or the rare anomaly of a female shooter. The linked Times article hints that because the shooter was born female, maybe it’s fair to list “them” in the female category. But that can’t be right. Isn’t the rule that if a trans individual does something that earns awards or titles, she can pick her gender, but if it’s something bad, he must be a guy?  It was quite irresponsible for Audrey to fail to clarify this before getting shot herself.

I wonder what kind of a swimmer Audrey was….

 

Ethics Observations On “Digital Blackface” (Huh?)

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

You learn something every day, as the saying goes. This morning, it was that there is something called “digital blackface,” and Ethics Alarms engaged in it by posting the viral video of Tyra Banks flipping out on a contestant on her reality show “America’s Next To Model” 14 years ago.

Just to cut to the ethics verdict in case you have a sock drawer crisis: “digital blackface ” is G-A-R-B-A-G-E. Keep reading to learn why.

Naturally, CNN is promoting the concept, probably to intimidate people like me from posting videos of Don Lemon making an ass of himself. Here is how the article by CNN’s John Blake (who “writes about race, religion, politics and other assorted topics”) defines “digital blackface,” which he calls “one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism”:

Digital blackface is a practice where White people co-opt online expressions of Black imagery, slang, catchphrases or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions… racialized reactions…mainstays in Twitter feeds, TikTok videos and Instagram reels, and are among the most popular Internet memes… White people laughing at exaggerated displays of Blackness, reflecting a tendency among some to see “Black people as walking hyperbole”…  it “includes displays of emotion stereotyped as excessive: so happy, so sassy, so ghetto, so loud… our dial is on 10 all the time — rarely are black characters afforded subtle traits or feelings”…If a White person shares an image online that perpetuates stereotypes of Black people as loud, dumb, hyperviolent or hypersexual, they’ve entered digital blackface territory. 

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“Republicans Pounced” So Hard That Biden’s FAA Chief Nominee Who Was Completely Unqualified Had To Withdraw [Link Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

That’s the embarrassingly unfit Biden nominee to head the Federal Aviation Administration above during his confirmation hearing, in the process of saying, “Huh?” or “Whaa?” which characterized his response to material questions from Senators regarding the job he irresponsibly agreed to take. Ethics Alarms wrote about the awful performance of Phil Washington here, concluding in part,

What is ominous about Washington’s hearing responses is that he apparently didn’t feel it necessary to educate himself regarding the subject matter of his appointment at all.

This is a pattern with Biden’s “diversity” appointments, as illustrated just last week by the hearing responses of a nominee for a district court judgeship. Apparently, however, the mainstream news media considers Republicans mean and probably racist to ask questions designed to find out if the designated head of the FAA knows enough to keep planes from falling out of the sky. Here’s Reuters:

Exclusive: Biden nominee to head FAA withdraws after Republican criticism:

WASHINGTON, March 25 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is withdrawing his nomination after Republican criticism that he was not qualified to serve WASHINGTON, March 25 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is withdrawing his nomination after Republican criticism that he was not qualified to serve as the top aviation regulator.

False. Washington withdrew his nomination because his pathetic responses to legitimate questions raised serious doubts that he was qualified to serve as the top aviation regulator. Naturally, the media wants to blame Republicans, because that’s how journalists see their job now. Only two people are at fault for Washington’s fall: Washington, for accepting a nomination for a position he seemingly lacked qualifications for and not having the diligence or integrity to prepare for questioning, and the President, who again seemed to elevate skin-tone over experience and qualifications for an important position. Reuters dutifully related the White House spin: “an onslaught of unfounded Republican attacks on Mr Washington’s service and experience irresponsibly delayed this process, threatened unnecessary procedural hurdles on the Senate floor, and ultimately have led him to withdraw his nomination today.”

Reuters didn’t think the serious allegations that Washington was corrupt were worthy of mentioning. Senator Ted Cruz provided details on a criminal investigation involving Washington:

“Unfortunately, the problems with Mr. Washington’s nomination don’t end with his lack of aviation experience. There are also serious concerns regarding outstanding allegations that Mr. Washington engaged in misconduct during his time as the head of the Los Angeles Metro. He has been named in multiple search warrants in an ongoing criminal public corruption investigation, and he’s been the subject of multiple whistleblower complaints.

“One search warrant was executed just last September, not very long ago. It contained allegations that Mr. Washington pushed forward lucrative no-bid contracts to a politically-connected nonprofit to run a sexual harassment hotline that was hardly ever used, and that he did so in order to stay in the good graces of a powerful politician on LA Metro’s board. The allegations are the kind of local corruption sadly we see far too often across this country, in both parties.

“But a whistleblower who exposed the details of this alleged pay-to-play contracting scheme claims to have been retaliated against by Mr. Washington. After Mr. Washington left the LA Metro the agency settled these claims with the whistleblower for $625,000. I practiced law for a long time. you did as well. A $625,000 check is not a nuisance check. It’s not a “go away” check. It’s indicative that there’s a real there, there. Whistleblowers don’t get settlements for more than a half a million dollars if their claim is baseless.”

To Washington’s credit, if he had any choice in the matter, at least he had the sense to pull his name.

Stop Making Me Defend DEI Deans!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I am unshakeable in my belief that “DEI” is deceitful way of reframing institutional racism to make it seem benign, and that all positions in business, government and academia devoted to enabling this racket need to be abolished before the damage to society in irreversible. Nonetheless, recent implied criticism aimed at MIT’s DEI deans (why in the world would the school need six?) is unfair.

College Fix reports that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will host a scholarly debate on the value, or lack of it, of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, with a panel of invited scholars debating the question: “Should academic DEI programs be abolished?”

The story also notes that MIT’s own “highly paid” diversity, equity and inclusion deans declined invitations to attend. The debate, which is scheduled for April 4, will be moderated by Nadine Strossen, past president of the American Civil Liberties Union, back when the organization was non-partisan and cared about the First Amendment.

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