An Ethics Alarms “Bite Me!” Goes To Dr. Kirsten Viola Harrison!

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The “Bite Me!”is an Ethics Alarms designation reserved for either an individual whose “response to being bullied, pressured and threatened into submissiveness is to say, “Do your worst. I believe in what I am doing, and I don’t grovel to mobs,” or as used several times here, to impugn the author of unethical conduct that demands the response, “Bite me!”

Dr. Kirsten Viola Harrison is a licensed psychologist and a “spiritual integration coach,” whatever the hell THAT means. She’s seeking her 15 minutes of faux fame by lecturing us about how people can unwittingly give off an “unapproachable energy,” thus sending out a “bad vibe.”

“Giving off a bad vibe’ means unintentionally projecting energy, through words, tone and body language, that others perceive as negative, inauthentic, or that make one appear unapproachable,” she explains. “It often triggers discomfort and mistrust, even when no harm is intended. Since our brains are wired to detect dissonance between what someone says and how they say it, the non-verbal signals which inform our emotional responses are exceedingly influential and powerful in shaping our interactions.”

Dr. Harrison has identified nine phrases she says can create these bad vibes if one isn’t careful. Gee, I wonder if “Bite me, you insufferable, over-credentialed fool!” is on the list? In her case, the “Bite Me!” is earned by abuse of authority and making gullible people stupid with New Age psychobabble. Here is her list, and my reactions.

1.”I’m Just Being Honest!”

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Wells Fargo Bank

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Hmmmm. Well THAT certainly enhances my trust in my bank!

As I told the Wells Fargo customer service agent (“second line!”) when I finally got through to one, I don’t need this. My wife’s sudden death put me in financial hell, punched my business in the metaphorical solar plexus, and sent me on a harrowing odyssey to repair my economic state—debts, credit, taxes—regarding problems I didn’t even know existed. Messages from my bank telling me I am over my credit limit causes my adrenaline level to shoot through the top of my head. Yes, a home repair financing arrangement required me today to employ a new credit card for the full amount: I thought that’s what it was for. Silly me. Foolishly, I didn’t realize that charging $8,000 for an $8000 purchase on a credit card with an $8,000 credit limit would cause me to go over that credit limit.

But I’ve never been good at such matters.

When I called Wells Fargo and asked why I had been sent that alert, I was told that they had no idea. Just fooling around, I guess. Just screwing with me. “I’m sorry. I guess the computer just sent the wrong email,” was the best I got.

Oh.

I pulled my accounts out of Wells Fargo during their last scandal, and came back when I discerned that they were no longer crooked there. Now they’re just stupid and incompetent.

Unethical Quote of the Week: SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

 “Public schools, this Court has said, are “at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny.” … They offer to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society. That experience is critical to our Nation’s civic vitality. Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs. Today’s ruling ushers in that new reality.”

—-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting (ignorantly as usual) in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, the 6-3 ruling in which the Court held that schools have to give parents the option of having their children absent themselves from lessons that are adverse to the family’s’ religious beliefs.

Ethics Alarms already weighed in on this case earlier here, but I neglected to focus on the full calamity of the Wise Latina’s sinister dissent. The flood of incompetent, woke garbage spewing from her colleague Justice Jackson of late has raised a lively debate over which of the two women was the worst DEI appointment. Obama picked Sonia before DEI was a thing, so maybe Jackson, Biden’s selection, wins by default; still O made it clear that it was Sotomayor’s ethnicity and gender and not her legal acumen that got her the “historic” seat on the Court.

Continue reading →

Addendum to “The Supreme Court Rules That The President Is In Charge of the Executive Branch, Just Like the Constitution Always Said.”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

When I wrote the last post, I could not find a link to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sole written dissent in the 8-1 SCOTUS decision today to, you know, let the President of the United States run the Executive Branch, which the Constitution says he controls. Well, I finally did find one here, and the dissent is exactly what you would expect if you’ve read her recent hysterical, legally incompetent rants because her party isn’t getting away with its various efforts to cripple the Trump Administration. She is distinctly echoing the primal scream of frustration that the Axis is emitting because its dreams of a Woke paradise are evaporating by the hour.

She wrote in part, “In my view, this was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground. This case is about whether that action amounts to a structural overhaul that usurps Congress’s policymaking prerogatives — and it is hard to imagine deciding that question in any meaningful way after those changes have happened. Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”

This is a policy complaint, not a legal one. Remarkably, even the pathetic Justice Sotomayor went along with the majority. The fact that Presidents have sought authority to do what the Constitution makes clear that they already have the power to do does not amend the Constitution. The Court lifted the say because it believed it likely that the President’s reorganization of his own Branch would be found lawful. It’s a good bet, given that the Constitution backs him up and there is no progressive majority on the Court more concerned with blocking Republican policies than following the law.

The coalition of unions and activists that sued to block the cuts said in a statement, “Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy.”

Are you sick of this narrative yet? It’s a grave thret to democracy to allow the elected President of the United Sates do what he said he would do if elected. More…

“This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution.”

But it is. Nothing in the document requires Congressional approval for Presidential control of his own Branch. The Founders do not mention “federal workers” at all, and envisioned a government that would not have departments and agencies multiplying like rabbits. Jackson’s tell is the use of her term “wrecking ball.” That’s a political bias without relevance to the law or the Constitution. She is the one advocating an abuse of power, not the majority.

The Supreme Court Rules That The President Is In Charge of the Executive Branch, Just Like the Constitution Always Said.

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Gee. What a radical, authoritarian concept.

“The decision could result in job losses for tens of thousands of employees at agencies including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Treasury,” whines the New York Times. Awwww! That’s completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. That the Times, or some judges, or Democrats, or anyone else doesn’t like the effort to strip down and re-organize the bloated, corrupt, inefficient and profligate Federal government is their opinion and they are welcome to it. But it is the Executive Branch, and the various efforts to block the President from managing his own branch was unethical, an abuse of power, and indefensible.

The decision was preceded by a major ruling on June 27, when SCOTUS limited the ability of judges to block President Trump’s policies nationwide. This should not be treated as a partisan decision, but of course the Left wants it to be seen as so. This, again, demonstrates a death of integrity.

The emergency application on mass firings across federal agencies began with an executive order signed by Trump in February directing officials to prepare for major cuts to the federal work force. Then labor unions, advocacy groups and local governments sued to block it, counting on partisan judges to see it as their duty to block an Evil President. So Judge Susan Illston of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California temporarily paused the administration’s plans for layoffs and program closures, claiming that such cuts were most likely illegal without approval from Congress. There is no legal authority for that contention. She said a President cannot conduct large-scale reorganization of the executive branch without cooperation with Congress and following the process that the legislative branch has approved for government reorganization, and she froze mass layoffs and agency closures while the lower-court case proceeded.

The fact that past Presidents have chosen to seek cooperation from Congress in organization of the Executive Branch, often for political cover, never meant that they had to. Nonetheless, Judge Illston wrote that in order to make “large-scale overhauls of federal agencies, any president must enlist the help of his coequal branch and partner, the Congress.”

Balderdash.

The Trump administration appealed the ruling, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld Judge Illston’s order. The Trump administration then filed an emergency application with the Supremes. Judges defying the Constitution to advance partisan warfare is an emergency. It’s called the Executive Branch for a reason.

Ethics Observations on President Trump’s White House Cabinet Meeting/Press Conference

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

1. Well, Biden didn’t have Cabinet meetings at all for the most part, so I hate to complain. But a public Cabinet meeting is not a real Cabinet meeting. True, Trump proved in the epic confrontation with Zelenskyy that the presence of cameras won’t always inhibit him, but still: a true Cabinet meeting must be private and permit candid and open discussion from all involved.

2. This leads to the second problem: because it is a PR exercise and not a real Cabinet meeting, everyone except Trump comes off as scripted. Worse, they all come off as yes-people and sycophants. However, in front of cameras, Trump’s appointees can’t exactly start arguing with each other or the President. That should be obvious, but I’ve already had one Trump-Deranged colleague get on the phone to say, “See? It’s just like Stalin!” That’s the narrative, and all of the obsequious “Yes, under your leadership, Mr. President, the improvement in this area has been remarkable and America is truly great again!” boot-licking supports it. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Trump should hire me to train his team to be more convincing and less obsequious.

Continue reading →

One More Bit of Evidence That The Government Is Too Incompetent To Be Trusted With So Much Power And Money

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

 The Transportation Security Administration has started to phase out its rule requiring travelers to take off their shoes before going through airport security.  The New York Times writes that “the agency has not officially announced this change and did not confirm the new policy” but it “appears to be taking effect at airports across the country.” Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer, first reported the soft launch of this policy via his travel newsletter. It appears to be happening first at major airports, then trickling down to all of them.

The requirement was one of the best examples of what Ethics Alarms calls The Barn Door Fallacy: a rare or preventable incident occurs attracting lots of media attention, and lawmakers or regulators react hysterically with draconian measures that are expensive, obtrusive, ineffective and unnecessary to ensure that what had never happened before won’t happen again.

Richard Reid (above) is an incompetent British terrorist who tried to bring down a passenger plane in 2001 by igniting a plastique bomb in his shoe. (The fuse was wet, and he couldn’t get it to light.) This coming being so soon after the September 11 bombings and everyone being freaked out over the failure of airport security that allowed that tragedy, the TSA decided to make all commercial airline passengers remove their shoes and have them x-rayed forever. Morons. (My mother observed that we should regard ourselves as lucky that a female terrorist hadn’t tied to set off a bomb in her brassiere.) And it has taken 24 years for someone in charge to decide, “You know, this is kind of stupid.”

“Why now?” Harmon-Marshall asked in his newsletter. “I think it’s politics, not security. A handful of lawmakers have recently ramped up criticism of the TSA, with some even floating the idea of dismantling the agency altogether. From complaints about long lines to inconsistent screening experiences, the pressure has been mounting. And this shoe change? It feels like a direct response to that pressure.”

Continue reading →

President Trump: The Kennedy Center, NPR, PBS…Now Fix The Smithsonian

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I knew there was a reason I hadn’t been to the Smithsonian Institution for so long. Like so many other crucial institutions the apathy of sane and patriotic American allowed to become leftist propaganda weapons over the last 50 years or so, the Smithsonian, along with most of the major museums across the country, “stress on narratives over artifacts.” That’s a quote from Jonathan Turley in his annoying understated mode.

White House official Lindsey Halligan condemned the new National Museum of American History’s Entertainment Nation exhibit, writing, “American taxpayers should not be funding institutions that undermine our country or promote one-sided, divisive political narratives. The Smithsonian Institution should present history in a way that is accurate, balanced, and consistent with the values that make the United States of America exceptional.”

Gee, ya think?

That Star Wars exhibit above would have prompted me to walk out of the building. Turley comments, “I was one of those who went to the movie when it came out, and I cannot recall anyone thinking, let alone connecting, the film to Nixon or Vietnam.” Nor can I, because nobody thought that, even the most politics-obsessed. Even film reviewers, always mostly left-leaning and desperate to find hidden messages in the most apolitical films, didn’t think Jabba the Hut was meant to suggest Spiro Agnew, or something.

We’ve known this about the Smithsonian for a long time, of course, but just shrugged it off because so many other example of insidious political corruption are worse. The Institution tried to slap a war crimes narrative on the Enola Gay. It left Clarence Thomas out of the National Museum of African-American History because being conservative means that he doesn’t count.

Among the flagrant propagandizing noted by Turley:

  • The commentary tied to a 1923 circus poster, reads: “Under the big top, circuses expressed the colonial impulse to claim dominion over the world.” Ah. So those clowns were supposed to be scary…
  • The Smithsonian declares “One of the earliest defining traits of entertainment in the United States was extraordinary violence.” You know, because United States BAD. One of the earliest traits of HUMAN entertainment for thousands of years was “extraordinary violence”! That one would have also had me running for the exits. Gladiators? Bull-baiting? Public executions? Grimm’s Fairy Tales???
  • The Lone Ranger display states: “The White title character’s relationship with Tonto resembled how the U.S. government imagined itself the world’s Lone Ranger.”

Oh for God’s sake…

Fix this, Mr. President. Fire the administrators and curators, all of them. Start from scratch.

The Ethicist Answers An Officious Jerk

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

…and much more nicely than I would have,

“Name Withheld” says that a member of her book club typically regurgitates online reviews of the assigned books that she seldom reads, aggressively presents them as her own, and is begging for a slapdown. “In the days before a meeting, she will casually share with me that she ‘couldn’t get into it,’ but she never says so to the other members. I sit there steaming but don’t reveal her duplicity. What would you do?,” she asks Prof. Appiah, the Times Magazine ethics advice columnist in lat week’s column, “A Woman in My Book Club Never Reads the Books. Can I Expose Her?”

“I get why you’re peeved,” the professor says. So do I: she thinks a social book club is a seminar for credit. “Still, the first rule of book clubs is that someone will always show up having read only the first chapter and the last page, armed with three profound observations from Goodreads.” No, that’s the second rule of book clubs. The first rule is to provide a regular opportunity for people to get together and socialize in the context of a structure more potentially engaging than arguing about Donald Trump. “Your job, in any case, isn’t to police her page turns. Cast yourself as the enforcer, and you betray the spirit of a group dedicated to forging connections through stories.”

Bingo.

“But the goal isn’t to humiliate her…maintain your small, imperfect community. One thing you’ll have learned from your books, after all, is that the flawed characters are always the most human.” Yadayadayada. Maybe she’s having cognitive issues. Maybe she’s dyslexic. Maybe she’s lonely and just wants company. Maybe she’s insecure about her analytical ability. The woman’s cheating in her book club exploits literally hurts nobody but herself at worst, and possibly allows her some human contact that she desperately needs at small cost to the other members.

Sure, the inquirer can expose her. To me, however, the fact that she’d even consider it means I’d rather have the book faker in my club than her.

The Hate [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

I initially was going to make those teets above the subject of an ethics quiz. The question: “Is it fair to use cherry-picked Trunp-Deranged quotes from social media to show that Democrats and progressives have lost all sense of proportion, decency, fairness and even humanity?” But the answer is obvious, isn’t it? No! Social media is a toxic waste dump of awful people and thoughtless expression based on irrational emotion. I daresay one could find many idiotic, nauseating and disgusting statements on all topics and from any ideological point of view. “Democrats” aren’t celebrating the deaths of the flash-flooding victims; sick, warped Democrats are, and they are not representative of their party or their communities.[“I hope.” “Yet.” “Ya think?”]

And yet these outliers are plentiful enough that they lead members of the hateful to blurt out their corrupted attitudes, with, frequently at least, disastrous consequences that are richly deserved. Case study: Dr. Christina B. Propst, a pediatrician, was deluded by her social media bubble and sufficiently de-brained by Axis media propaganda that she really thought she would receive nothing but plaudits for vomiting out this Facebook post:

“May all visitors, children, non-MAGA voters and pets be safe and dry. Kerr County MAGA voted to gut FEMA. They deny climate change. May they get what they voted for. Bless their hearts.”

Why, how did she think it could ever be acceptable for a medical professional to wish death on anyone, never mind a pediatrician claiming that the death of children is just desserts?

Propst’s employer, Blue Fish Pediatrics, couldn’t announce that “the individual is no longer employed” there quickly enough, posting,

The head of the Texas Medical Board, Dr. Sherif Zaafran, tweeted, “There is no place for politicization. The entire focus needs to be on looking for survivors. Any complaints we may receive will be thoroughly investigated.”

It is frightening that once-reasonable people really have surrendered their rational thought and common sense to hate so thoroughly in the throes of Trump Derangement that they could think that a public statement like Dr. Propst’s would be anything but career ending. This was signature significance: no professional who posts such a vile sentiment even once can ever be trusted again. She has terrible judgment and detestable values. 

Update: Here is another one. [Pointer: Other Bill] This woman’s comments are more than “inappropriate”…