Workplace

Comment of the Day: “Presuming Bias Also Makes You Stupid…and a Failure”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I think it is fitting to end 2024 with one of Steve-O-in NJ’s historical epics, this one in response my challenge at the end of the post to name a figure who would rebut the statement on the Victory Girls blog regarding Kamala Harris, “Never has so much been handed to one person who didn’t deserve it.” My mind immediately went to the Kim Kardashian’s sisters Khloe and Kourtney, who attained fame, celebrity and riches because their oldest sister had a viral sex tape. But moving from government and politics into pop culture is cheating.

Steve-O takes up that challenge with gusto in this Comment of the Day to the post, “Presuming Bias Also Makes You Stupid…and a Failure”. Here is it is….

***

It really depends on how far back in history you are willing to go. I could name you at least 10 monarchs who were handed a whole lot they didn’t deserve for no reason other than accident of birth without even putting on my thinking cap:

  1. Edward VIII of the UK – a child who never quite grew up and just wanted everything his own way, also TERRIBLE judge of character.
  2. Louis XVI of France – clueless and careless, led him to the guillotine
  3. Alfonso XIII of Spain – not up to the job and paved the way for fascist Franco.
  4. Selim II of the Ottoman Empire – called the Drunkard or the Sot for a reason, led to the huge defeat at Lepanto and Turkey’s long slide down into the Third World.
  5. Henry VIII of England – initially might even be considered heroic but ultimately destroyed by his excessive appetites and dictatorial nature.
  6. Mary I of England – Henry’s eldest daughter, called Bloody Mary for a reason.
  7. Charles II of Spain – the misshapen result of generations of Hapsburg inbreeding.
  8. Hirohito of Japan [above, with Khloe and Kourtney] – allowed himself to be a puppet for overambitious generals and admirals, didn’t stand up to them until defeat was certain.
  9. Cixi Yukian of China – waited till it was too late, then foolishly threw in with the Boxers, resulting ultimately in the Chinese Empire collapsing.
  10. Oh yes, lest we forget William II of Germany, who pushed wise old Bismarck aside and led the German Empire into WWI and its destruction.

If I put on my thinking cap, I could probably triple that list. The fact is that when you hand someone power based on something other than merit, you throw the dice and risk ending up with someone who’s either useless or a puppet for the unscrupulous.

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An Eternally Troubling Ethics Conundrum—at Least to Me

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist who teaches at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has authored a guest column for the New York Times that opens up, for the umpteenth time, an ethics topic that makes me uncomfortable. His subject is the cultural delusion shared by many in American society that rewarding effort is just as important as rewarding success, and perhaps moreso. He writes in part:

“….we’ve taken the practice of celebrating industriousness too far. We’ve gone from commending effort to treating it as an end in itself. We’ve taught a generation of kids that their worth is defined primarily by their work ethic. We’ve failed to remind them that working hard doesn’t guarantee doing a good job (let alone being a good person)…..[W]hat worries me most about valuing perseverance above all else: It can motivate people to stick with bad strategies instead of developing better ones…What counts is not sheer effort but the progress and performance that result. Motivation is only one of multiple variables in the achievement equation. Ability, opportunity and luck count, too. Yes, you can get better at anything, but you can’t be great at everything.” 

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Two More Pieces of Evidence Supporting a Mandatory Retirement Age and Term Limits in Congress

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I. Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), 79, was being wheeled into the House by a staffer when Politico photographer Francis Chung took his picture. Punchbowl News reports that the Congressman screamed, “Who gave you the right to take my picture, asshole?” Nice! The First Amendment gives him the right. Scott was in full public view, and has no expectation of privacy. He doesn’t know that? Why is anyone in Congress who doesn’t understand Bill of Rights 101? Scott has served as the U.S. representative of Georgia’s 13th congressional district since 2003. How can he not know this after 20 years in Congress? Did he once know it and somehow forgot? That seems plausible. Scott has chaired the House Agriculture Committee since January 2021, but colleagues in the House have expressed, all anonymously, of course, concerns about his fading mental abilities. They say he often reads from a script and has “trouble” discussing finer points of policy. Scott also frequently leaves Agriculture Committee meetings and does not return, even though he’s the chairman.

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Ethics Dunce: Baltimore Ravens Wide Receiver Diontae Johnson

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It is sad but probably to be expected that so many professional athletes don’t get the ethics thingy. The latest incident: Diontae Johnson, a wide reciever for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens, for refused when his coach ordered him to take the field late in the team’s Week 13 game against the Philadelphia Eagles. The Ravens are still trying to make the play-offs, but it wouldn’t matter if the game had no importance to the Ravens’ fortunes at all. Johnson is a member of the team; he draws a salary. Apparently he was angry and frustrated over his lack of playing time since the Ravens acquired him, and had been complaining to teammates for weeks. “Tough noogies,” as they used to say when I was a kid in Arlington, Mass. (An alternative was “tough bunnies.” I never understood that, any more than I knew what a “hosey” was.)

Johnson was immediately suspended.

Wait…why was this a difficult decision? It was an obvious decision. This week the Ravens announced that Johnson was told to stay away from the team as a likely disruptive influence. There was some question why the Ravens didn’t just release him, but apparently that is because they don’t want any other teams strengthening themselves during the play-off run portion of the season.

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Suzannah Van Rooy’s Self-Righteous Bigotry Not Only Makes Her A Bad Bar Employee, It Makes Her A Bad American

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Suzannah Van Rooy, a server at Beuchert’s Saloon on Capitol Hill in D.C., told “The Washingtonian,” “I personally would refuse to serve any person in office who I know of as being a sex trafficker or trying to deport millions of people.” “It’s not, ‘Oh, we hate Republicans,’” she explained. “It’s that this person has moral convictions that are strongly opposed to mine, and I don’t feel comfortable serving them.” “People were a lot more motivated the first time around to do those kinds of shows of passion. This time around, there is kind of a sense of defeat and acceptance,” Van Rooy added. “But I hope that people still do stand up to this administration and tell them their thoughts on their misbehavior.” Van Rooy also felt it was appropriate to make similar comments on the restaurant’s social media accounts.

Ms. Van Rooy was promptly fired for her misbehavior. Good. In announcing her canning on its Facebook page, the restaurant said in part, “[A]s a restaurant we are simply horrified to be associated with base prejudice. None of us saw this coming….we would welcome any opportunity to clarify that Ms. Van Rooy is not a manager at our restaurant but instead a part time server and that she had no authority or permission to act as spokesperson or hijack our social media accounts. We beg you all not to condemn the group of hardworking folks who have made Beuchert’s Saloon a neighborhood mainstay for a over dozen years. We are still the same restaurant known for its warm service and friendly staff, and hope you will all visit us soon. We look forward to serving you. All of you.”

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An Ethics Movie Where The Ethical Choice Is Clear But The Hero Doesn’t Make It

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Netflix has a Christmas movie (well, if “Die Hard is a Christmas movie, this is) about a TSA agent caught up in a diabolical scheme to kill all the passengers on a commercial airplane for some reason or another—that part doesn’t really matter. In “Carry On,” our hero stumbles into the plot and is made the unwilling pawn of the villains, who are ubiquitous, brilliant and high-tech. Through an earpiece, the agent learns that the love of his life who is also pregnant is being watched by the bad guys and will be murdered at any second if he doesn’t use his position to get a piece of luggage containing a device that will release nerve gas through security screening. Suspense, thrills and unexpected twists ensue.

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At the University of Michigan, A Controversy Reveals Dishonesty and Hypocrisy Underlying the DEI Fad

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

If Donald Trump accomplishes nothing more in his next four years than ending the nation’s tolerance to open borders while fawning over “good illegal immigrants” and driving a metaphorical stake through The Great Stupid’s DEI fad, electing him will have been worth all chaos that will come along with it.

DEI thrives as a hypocritical way to discriminate against white men and shift to a society based on rewarding achievement, diligence and ability to one based on group membership. That makes it un-American to the core. At the University of Michigan, the “director of the university’s office of academic multicultural initiatives”—you know, DEI—spoke out at a conference of such officers the university to opine that her university was “controlled by wealthy Jews and that because Jewish students are “wealthy and privileged” the don’t need diversity services. “Jewish people have no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel,” Rachel Dawson was quoted as saying.

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Comment of the Day: “Critics of Federal Workers Telecommuting May Exaggerate But the Truth Is Bad Enough”

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

This Comment of the Day by new participant in the comment wars Dr. Blae cheers my pre-Christmas cockles more than most for two reasons: 1) I always love it when a first time commenter weighs in with a Comment of the Day. This is especially true since I spend so much time reading attempted first-time comments that read: “You suck, asshole!” 2) Genuine expertise on these topics is always a godsend. I am a pan-ethicist, meaning that I work in the ethics field regarding too many areas to count, legal ethics substantially but also business ethics, government ethics, sports ethics, academic ethics, journalism ethics, and more. I am neither a participant nor an expert in many of these fields themselves, so when ethics and one of them intersect, a specialist is especially welcome.

Here is Dr. Blae’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Critics of Federal Workers Telecommuting May Exaggerate But the Truth Is Bad Enough”:

***

So let’s break this down…

  • Federal agencies have been maintaining uninhabited office space in some of the most expensive real estate markets in the US.
  • The majority of federal workers, that can, telework/remote work and avoid coming into the office.
  • There is an assumption of a lack of efficiency due to telework/remote work, but the evidence is anecdotal or not directly relevant (e.g., office occupation).

Now for a couple of questions… prior to COVID:

  • When were government employees accused of being efficient?
  • What is efficiency? This is really important since the implication is a quantitative comparison, so we need some numbers.
  • Are all jobs/positions the same? Is there a single solution?
  • Where do most federal employees (in the DC area) come from?
  • How do you “drain the swamp” by reconcentrating employees in the swamp?
  • What is a comparison of costs between an employee doing telework/remote work v. being physically in the office?
  • Why do federal agencies continue to rent unoccupied spaces when according to GSA regulations/policies they are supposed to “right size” office space?

Ok let’s take into consideration a few points…

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Ethics Observations on the $765 Million Baseball Player

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

My Aunt Bea, the family progressive and knee-jerk Democrat, died this year at the age of 96, cantankerous and opinionated to the end. She was a big Cincinnati Reds fan (she lived in Dayton, Ohio) and I remember her having many arguments with my father when free agency exploded the salaries in Major League Baseball in the late 1970s. “No baseball player is worth those salaries,” she insisted. My father would laugh and say, “Bea, by definition they are worth those salaries, because the people who benefit from their unique talents are willing to pay them.” Then she would talk about teacher salaries, and my father would say, “It may seem unfair, but a lot more people are capable of teaching than are able to hit a fastball, and the sad fact is that a a large number of Americans care more about sports than they do public education.”

I wonder what my aunt and my father would be saying now after the announcement that Juan Soto, the young (26), amazingly talented slugger widely recognized as a generational talent and a certain Hall of Famer barring some catastrophe, agreed yesterday to a 15-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets.

In his short major league career so far, Soto has already earned over 80 million dollars. Even though the previous record-setting contract was given out just last year to freakish Shohei Ohtani, who is both a great hitter (he was the National League MVP in 2024) and an ace starting pitcher, Soto’s new deal for just his batting prowess topped it. This contract automatically raises the worth of every other player, increases team payroll expenses, increases ticket prices, makes it increasingly unaffordable for families to attend baseball games, makes it more difficult for small market teams to compete, and, once again, makes Gordon Gekko look prescient when he said in “Wall Street,” “Greed is good!”

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Critics of Federal Workers Telecommuting May Exaggerate But the Truth Is Bad Enough

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

Last week one head-exploding story sparked by the rise of DOGE was the allegation that so many federal workers are allowed to work from home without supervision. Quotes…

“We only have six percent of our federal workforce actually going into work every single day.” – Senator Joni Ernst on FOX News, December 5, 2024

“If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!” – Elon Musk, Twitter/X, December 5, 2024

“Most federal workers are eligible to telework and 90 percent of those are…Nearly one-third of federal workers are entirely remote …Service backlogs and delays, unanswered phone calls and emails, and no-show appointments are harming the health, lives, and aspirations of Americans.”– Senator Joni Ernst, “Out of Office: Bureaucrats on the beach and in bubble baths but not in office buildings“.

I read these and many news stories arising from them and, frankly, found the claims hard to believe. As one would expect, the American Federation of Government Employees rushed to defend its members. Given the mission of that organization and its membership, one can reasonably expect it to shade reality and the statistics used to explain it to the public so the federal workers under attack are placed in the best light possible. I don’t trust statistics advanced by interest groups, and neither should anyone else. But just for giggles, let’s assume that all of the statistics raised to rebut federal workforce-bashers in “Exaggerating use and misuse of telework is demeaning attempt to justify job cuts” are 100% accurate, objective and unbiased. Then we know…

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