There’s not much I can write or say about Pearl Harbor that hasn’t been explored already, except that it all should be said, every December 7, as long as Old Glory waves. What I wrote last year is still apt:

At 7:55 a.m Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber emerged out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. 360 Japanese warplanes followed in a devastating attack on the unsuspecting U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Pacific fleet was nearly obliterated: Five of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged; more than 200 aircraft were destroyed; 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded. Japan lost just 30 planes and fewer than 100 men. By the sheerest luck, all three Pacific fleet aircraft carriers were out of the harbor and at sea on training maneuvers, allowing the U.S. to use them to turn the tide of the Pacific war against Japan at the Battle of Midway six months later.

I always felt connected to the tragedy at Pearl Harbor through my father. At the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., Dad introduced me to a veteran who had survived the attack, and just shaking his hand was a moving experience I shall never forget.

I should have added that the sneak attack finally drew us into a war that had to be fought, one that cost 400,000 American lives. ( In this post from 10 years ago, I lamented the mainstream media’s neglect of the date’s significance, though because this anniversary ends with a zero, it is getting more attention than usual.  Sigh. With the exception of Michael West, none of the commenters who weighed in on that post drop by any more.)

Other housekeeping notes:

• I am still planning on holding a Zoom discussion of “Clickbait,” the Netflix series about social media and cyber activity gone horribly wrong. If you want to participate and haven’t watched the show, get cracking. I also welcome ideas about topics raised by the series.
• Yesterday, for no discernible reason, was a banner day for the blog, with four new followers and 30% more traffic than Mondays this year. Ethics Alarms sometimes goes weeks without any new sign-ups.
• This morning I had my first radio interview since NPR blackballed me for explaining why sexual harassment accusations for many years-old conduct were not always what they seemed. The host was Maine’s Mike Violette of The Mike Violette Show, and we mostly discussed the Hilda and Jesse eatery’s anti-cop and gun stunt. Mike is that rarity, a fair interviewer who gives his guest a chance to talk. (EA commenter Arthur in Maine was another in his radio days.)

1. I’d like to see this challenged in court. It is being called a “victory for conservatives” that the routine drafting of women is being stripped from the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act, even though both the House and Senate versions of the bill would have expanded the Selective Service System beyond men. No, it’s a victory for double standards and incoherence. Either we discriminate on the basis of gender or we don’t, and institutionalizing one form of gender bias allows others to flourish. If women can meet the requirements for combat, then let ’em fight. Otherwise, there are plenty of ways they can serve. Conservatives look like Victorians in aspic when they object to obviously just advances like this. Exemptions should take care of any concerns about mothers and related issues.

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The previous open forum, in the midst of Thanksgiving weekend, was a bit of a dud (though EA applauds those intrepid, dieting readers who posted), so I’m hoping for a rebound. This is especially true because I’m swamped all of a sudden with more ethics stories than I can cover with the thoroughness they deserve. And this morning’s paper added to the crisis with six new issues or revealed angles on old ones that need coverage.

See what you can do. I’ll be grateful.

Yes, December 2 is the day Enron, one of the great corporate scams of all time, declared bankruptcy. On this date in 2001, the saga of the Enron Corporation began to unfold, and what an ugly story it was.

Formed in 1985 as the merger of two gas companies, Enron prospered under chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay to rise as high as number seven on Fortune’s Top 500 U.S. companies. By 2000, the company was employing 21,000 people and claimed revenue of $111 billion. But rumors of shady dealings caused Enron’s stock price to plummet, and by November 30, 2001, it was worth 26 cents a share. Lay sold off his Enron stock, while encouraging Enron employees to buy more shares, ssuring them that the company was on the rebound. Nice. Employees’ retirement savings accounts were wiped out, and by the end of the year, Enron’s collapse had cost investors billions of dollars, put 5,600 out of and rendered almost $2.1 billion in pension plans worthless.

Somewhere in my office I have a copy of an Enron employee ethics handbook with a touching introduction by Ken Lay about the company’s commitment to integrity, honesty, and transparency.

1. Bye! I was just in Shirlington Center in Arlington faced with time to kill as a service station fixed a tire. I was about to wander into a new establishment called “Damn Good Burgers,” but there was a prominent “Black Lives Matter” sticker on the door, so I went elsewhere. I don’t care about the politics of businesses or their owners, as long as they deliver what they advertise at reasonably good quality and prices. But if they require me to tacitly endorse a racist, violent, anti-American movement led by Marxists, they can bite me. If your business is going to engage in cheap virtue signaling, it better be actual virtue.

2.’This is the tragedy of Woke Hysteria. Won’t you help with a tax deductible to help people like this?‘ “The Ethicist” (in the New York Times Magazine) got a tortured inquiry from a young woman called “Name Withheld By Request.”

When my father died, I inherited a large trust fund and sole ownership of a family business. I was young and woefully unprepared, so I put my inheritance on the back burner and lived my life as if I was financially “normal.” However, since the pandemic, my portfolio has hit a new high. I am utterly distraught. I feel that I should have never gotten so wealthy when people are suffering so much.

I’ve been seriously considering giving a large portion away, but the more I talk to people, the more I realize that to give away large sums of money responsibly and ethically turns my life into a job that I never wanted. I don’t want my father’s money to become my life, my career or the most significant thing about me, even though I know that I benefit from it. I have privileges with it, it gives me options and frankly I could not afford to live in a big city without it.

My questions are these: How much money is it ethical to keep, and how much would it be ethical to give away? What is the best way to decide who should receive the money? And how much time and responsibility and rewriting of my life do I owe this gift that often feels like a burden?

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Carrie Bourassa, aka. “Morning Star Bear”!

And you thought Elizabeth Warren was bad!

Carrie Bourassa, a public health expert and scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health, was suspended this month and is presumably on her way out after the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published a lengthy expose on her background, which, contrary to her increasingly colorful representations, has no connection to indigenous people whatsoever. She is not a member of the Métis nation, as she has long claimed, but the descendant of immigrant farmers who came to Canada from Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

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