I only got two posts up yesterday. That’s not acceptable, and I’m sorry. Ethics Alarms has a goal of registering four posts a day, come rain or shine, because even that level—it’s typically about 3,500 or more words a day, counting typos—doesn’t keep up. I don’t feel too badly when I can only manage three. Yesterday was a terrible day, beginning with the ordeal of having to deal with liars, incompetents and SOBs along with malicious technology as I tried to get an overdue waste water treatment bill handled. By the time what should have been a 15 minute process was over, it was after noon, Spuds was annoyed (I almost wrote “ticked” which has other meanings when a dog is the subject) and I was so furious and frustrated that I could hardly function.
Workplace
Oh Look, What a Surprise…California is Considering Another Law Sticking the State’s Nose Where It Doesn’t Belong
I don’t understand why anyone continues to live or work in California, a state with a culture that lurches between stupid, irresponsible and deluded.
The headline above does not refer to the recent, bone-headed decision to give fast-food workers up to a 25% raise, with cooking Big Macs the minimum wage jumping to $20 an hour in that sector next week. “It’s a big win for cooks, cashiers and other fast-food workers ” says taxpayer-funded progressive propaganda organ NPR. Right. Fast food wages have been growing at a faster clip than almost any other sector since the pandemic, with the result that more outlets are moving to automation, which means, as has happened every time the minimum wage jumps, lower-paid workers—whose skills often aren’t worth the minimum wage— will lose their jobs. Meanwhile, fewer people with strained budgets will buy fast food because of the duel problems that it’s no longer fast, and is absurdly expensive, and California is already one of the most expensive states.
Oh, who knows: maybe all those vegans and health nuts in the Golden State want to wreck the fast food business. More likely, however, it’s just that legislators there—Suspense! Will they actually vote to make all Californians-of-the-right-color millionaires?—don’t understand economics, cause-and-effect and reality.
But I find the proposed law this post concerns more offensive from an ethics point of view if less destructive. California Assemblyman Matt Haney wants California to be the first in the country to give employees the legal right refuse to respond if their superior calls after hours. Then the law would permit workers to ignore emails, texts and other work-related communications until the next day after the work day has begun. “People now find themselves always on and never off,” the Nanny State fan said. “There’s an availability creep that has reached into many people’s lives, and I think it’s not a positive thing for people’s happiness, for their well-being, or even for work productivity.”
Oh, shut up. The law aims to give workers a legal right to be unprofessional. If you have a job and believe in ethical work values, you believe in diligence, responsibility and self-sacrifice. If you believe in personal autonomy and character, you believe that human beings need to be able to make intelligent choices about their life, including their careers, without being bolstered by the legal right to stand up to bullies, jerks and unreasonable supervisors.
Somebody Please Sue Scribd, and Other Rueful Observations on the Collapse of American Customer Service
Too late to thank her, my wife’s death has made me realize what a terrible job she had dealing with all the companies, websites and cyber-traps one encounters trying to do business and deal with finances in today’s America. It also has brought into sharper focus what I had been aware of: that since the pandemic lockdown, customer service live and online has deteriorated to an extent that cannot be justified. When the Biden lackeys (like the execrable Paul Krugman) insist that the economy is wonderful and that the public doesn’t realize how great things are, this aspect of the economy should be thrown in their faces. Maybe elites like Krugman never have to go shopping in person or deal with a company’s website. If they did, they would realize that the quality of life has declined precipitously, and that it is fair to blame inflation (from profligate government spending) and excessive minimum wage levels as well as the remaining carnage from the Wuhan pandemic lockdown.
I hate to point a finger at Wells Fargo, as my bank has generally been more helpful over the past month than almost anyone else, but what follows is a prime example….
“Didn’t Earn It”
I hadn’t seen or heard the derisive (but accurate!) nickname for DEI, as in “diversity, equity and inclusion” until I saw the Scott Adams “X” post above. I think he’s right. When a quick, pointed and accurate characterization makes people slap their foreheads and think, “Wait, why have I been willing to accept this nonsense?,” it can move metaphorical mountains.
The DEI fad has already been destructive to the economy, the workforce, society and its institutions beyond all imagining, making it one of the more damaging outgrowths of “The Great Stupid,” which really got rolling when its Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse equivalent (the fourth horse was a scratch, thank goodness) began galloping together in 2020. They were the George Floyd Freakout, the Black Lives Matter Scam, and the Wuhan Virus Panic, and together they brought virtue-signaling overdrive, progressive preening and an attack on core American and ethical values, not to mention civilization.
DEI , like the slogan “black lives matter,” was another ingenious manipulation of language to trap the slow of thought and the weak of character into going along with a movement that was intrinsically dishonest and unfair. Who could be against such benign concepts as diversity, equity and inclusion? But the objective was and is obliterating the cultural acceptance of merit as the aspirational basis of the American ideal. Along the way, the DEI industry itself emerged as an engine of waste and carnage with mostly underwhelming and undeserving drivers at the controls, as Harvard University demonstrated for us spectacularly.
Oh, we know how this will go: “Didn’t Earn It” will be roundly attacked a racist slur. Long screeds will be published to dispute “the lie”: the beneficiaries of DEI did earn it, the public will be told, just as anyone with ancestors on distant branches of the family tree who were victims of slavery at least a century and a half ago “earned” million of dollars in reparations today. (That response will anchor DEI to an absolutely indefensible policy goal: perfect.) Eventually, because this is what the dishonest and relentless far Left does, it will come up with another moniker, because DEI will finally have the aura of stench about it that it should—you know, just as “illegal aliens” became “undocumented workers” and are now “migrants” (or “visitors”), “performing major surgery on minors because they have been encouraged to believe they are the ‘wrong’ sex” became “gender-affirming care,” and the classic, “aborting the innocent unborn” was recast as “a woman’s choice.”
Never mind. “Didn’t Earn It” is an ethical tool to combat an unethical practice and ideology that is wasting financial and human resources.
I recommend using it.
__________________
Pointer: Instapundit
No, Taylor Preparatory High School, There Is No “Rap Singing Teacher Principle”
I want to credit esteemed EA commenter JutGory for both the headline and the pointer. He properly identified this ethics tale out of Detroit as an important contrast to the “Naked Teacher Principle” and its many variations. The NTP et al. (like the the “Drag Queen School Principal Principle,” “the Porn Actor University Chancellor Principle,” and many others) holds that if you are a teacher or in some other position that requires the respect and trust of your employers and stakeholders, having photographs of you appearing naked or in other sexually provocative conditions appear on line justifies your separation from your job and leaves you no leave to complain.
Domonique Brown, however, a recent “Teacher of the Month” at Taylor Preparatory High School, did not have any naked photos or anything close on the web. She was fired from her job as a history teacher because the school learned that she had a second career as a rising rap artist named “Drippin’ Honey.” Brown had proven herself to be a skilled and popular teacher for seven years, and is pursuing a master’s degree and a doctorate. But when a parent alerted the school in an anonymous complaint last October that Domonique was also a rap artist, she found her fitness to teach being questioned.
Speaking of Conflicts of Interest and To Prove I’m Occasionally Right: Let’s Revisit “‘Baseball Super-Agent Scott Boras Has Another Super-Conflict And There Is No Excuse For It,’ the Sequel”
I have never recycled a post so soon (this one was was featured in January) but these are special circumstances:
- After my analysis of the Fani Willis conflicts scandal did not jibe with the judge’s decision, my self-esteem is at a low ebb, and I feel the need to point out my prescience in this matter
- This, like Willis’s self-made disgrace, is a conflict of interest, and one involving law as well…but also baseball.
- The conflict of interest I flagged in January has now had some of the adverse results I predicted, and attention should be paid.
- Baseball is one of the few things that has a chance of cheering me up right now, having gone through my first two weeks without Grace’s companionship and support. We followed the seasons (and the Red Sox) together since before we were married, as I taught her the game by taking her to watch the Orioles play Boston in old Memorial Stadium.
Two months after I wrote the post that follows, Spring Training is almost over and the season is less that two weeks away. Yet the two star pitchers I flagged as the victims of their agent’s greed and unethical conduct remain unsigned. I strongly believe that the reason they are unsigned is that the agent/lawyer they foolishly employ has been pitting teams against each other while using each pitcher as leverage to benefit the other, or so Scott Boras would argue. There is no question in my mind that if Blake Snell (above, right) and Jordan Montgomery (above, left), both talented left-handed starting pitchers that fill the same niche, were represented by different agents, both would have signed rich, long-term contracts by now. Because they have allowed themselves to be marketed by the same agent–an unconscionable conflict that baseball should prohibit and Boras’s bar association should sanction—they will not be ready to start the season even if both signed tomorrow. Pitchers who have had to miss large portions of Spring Training have frequently had off-years as a result: Boras’s greedy practice of representing competing talents may result in off seasons and even damage to their careers.
All of this could have and should have been avoided, and would have been, if baseball’s agents were subjected to any genuine ethical regulation.
Now here is the post… Continue reading
Friday Open Forum: Waiting to See If I’m Right…
Judge Scott McAfee confirmed yesterday that he will announce the fate of Fulton County’s designated “Stop Trump!” agent Fani Willis some time today. From the moment your friendly neighborhood ethicist heard the basic facts in this annoying story I was convinced that one way or the other she would have to leave the Trump case. One of my legal ethics colleagues emphatically disagrees, arguing that whatever conflicts of interest she created by hiring her illicit boyfriend to help prosecute Trump were matters of legal ethics discipline but irrelevant to the defendants. He also pooh-poohed the “appearance of impropriety” issue, echoing the American Bar Association’s logic when it took that category out of the ethics rules: actual impropriety matters, the mere appearance doesn’t.
Yet Willis is a government attorney, and employees of the state are required to avoid the appearance of impropriety because it erodes the public trust. If there was ever a prosecution that mandated a squeaky clean leader beyond suspicion or reproach, this is it. Instead, Willis has left an odoriferous trail of conflicts, arrogance, hypocrisy, dubious explanations and likely lies, all supported by her obnoxious reliance on race-baiting. I have been certain that she would eventually go down for all of this, and that my learned friend–who is apolitical— as well as the my myriad partisan-biased colleagues in the legal ethics association I belong to are wrong.
Well, we shall see . If you see Fredo (“I’m smart! I’m not dumb like everybody says!”) leading off a post today, you’ll know I was right.
Meanwhile, talk about whatever interests you in the Wonderful World of Ethics.
Oh-Oh. Another Ethically Obtuse Question for “The Ethicist”
Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but it sure seems to me that the questions being asked of the New York Times “The Ethicist” column (or the ones he’s choosing to answer) are increasingly obtuse. This suggests a dangerous trend. Are most Americans really that ethically incompetent? Or are the increasingly frequent (it seems to me) instances of blatantly unethical conduct modeled by our elected leaders and shrugged off by our news media causing galloping ethics rot?
The latest query for “The Ethicist” was, in my estimation, steeped in grade school-level ethics ignorance. A female designer who used to work for a sexually harassing boss when she was just getting started eventually told the bastard off and was fired in retaliation. Now she asks,
I LOVE This Lawsuit! It Might Be the Best “Great Stupid” Lawsuit Yet!
Mohammad Yusuf, a 43-year-old Chicago police officer, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city because it refuses to allow him to change his race from “white” to “of color,” or something. The Chicago police department allows cops to change their gender identity according to whim, and he argues that this is a double standard.
Yusuf “currently identifies as Egyptian and African American.” When he first joined the force in 2004, the Great Stupid had not yet spread darkness over the land, and he only had a few race option to choose from, he says. Now he believes Caucasian is inaccurate, and besides, despite the woke Chicago police department claiming to have a race-neutral and merit-based promotion system, Yusuf claims he has been “repeatedly bypassed” for promotions in favor of less qualified black officers.
No, really? I don’t think Chicago would ever be a party to something like that, do you? Well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, as the saying goes.
Did I mention how much I love this lawsuit?
Yusuf even provided his 23andMe genetic testing results to prove he is mixed race and it all depends on which he chooses to identify as when it comes to tribal designations and their DEI rewards. Still, the police department obstinately refuses to allow him to be black. It’s strange, his lawyers argue, that other officers can change their genders on official records, since no genetic test would back that up. That Y chromosome is there for life. Is this not a double standard?
“While other CPD officers are afforded the opportunity to have their gender identity corrected to match their lived experience, Officer Yusuf and others in similar positions are barred from obtaining accurate racial designations that align with their racial identity,” the suit says.
Isn’t this great?
Regarding THIS…
Apparently, as I have noted before, the Biden Administration doesn’t believe in firing anyone—well, anyone who doesn’t behave like this clown—which is itself a form of incompetence and avoidance of responsibility. A competent President who wasn’t more concerned with avoiding conflicts with the loosely-allied progressive tribes in his party than with upholding standards of conduct, ethics, and performance under his authority would fire everyone behind that screed above.
All right, he would do it immediately after giving Merrick Garland, Pete Buttigieg, Anthony Blinken, Lloyd Austin, Dr. Miguel Cardona, Alejandro Mayorkas, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and Karine Jean-Pierre their well-earned pink slips.
No executive in any organization has to tolerate public dissent like this regarding his or her leadership. For a President, such open defiance is divisive, confusing to the public, disloyal and disrespectful. It also erodes trust. The proper way for any staff member in any pursuit at any level to express his or her disagreement with the organization’s policies and actions is to do so privately, through proper channels, or publicly after resigning. Those are the only ethical options, and the latter course has severe ethical limitations based on confidentiality and mutual trust.
Having a staff express disagreement with a President and his administration as the letter jaw-dropping above does is unprecedented, and it had better not become institutionalized, because no government—indeed, no organization—can function effectively and with the full confidence of its constituency and stake-holders that permits such rebellions.
Moreover, even if such grandstanding could be justified—there must be an exception out there somewhere—this surely wouldn’t be an acceptable precedent. The letter above absurdly supports an act of self-terrorism by a mentally-disturbed fool, thus aligning themselves with the radical agent of chaos who issued this tweet…
Brilliant. This New York-based writer and apologist for terrorism lumps protesting peacefully, dissent, marching and heckling politicians in the same category as suicide, rioting and law-breaking. Yet even he has a better grasp on reality than “the Staffers for Ceasefire.” In a related tweet, he suggests to these fools, “The best eulogy you can offer Bushnell is resigning en masse.”
Exactly. By all means, honor that pathetic would-be martyr.
Theirs isn’t even smart dissent, persuasive dissent, or patriotic dissent. The letter represents a group of people who are making policy recommendations above their pay-grade, literally, and displaying their biases and ignorance while doing so.
Biden should fire each and every one of them. That he doesn’t and won’t would be proof of his unfitness to lead and incompetence as a Chief Executive even if he could sing ” I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General General” backwards in 12 languages, including Urdu.
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